Social Justice in New York

 I remember moving to Spanish Harlem...108th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam...in the summer of 1984. $1,000 a month for a run down 325 square foot two bedroom apartment overlooking a back alley and a side alley. In today’s money, $2500/ month. Did I mention it was a fourth floor walk up? 

Defund the Police. Release the oppressed people in jails as the new LA Prosecutor has vowed to do. Because Social Justice. That’ll cure our cities.

The Crack Wars were going when I moved to New York. Spanish Harlem was actually pretty safe as it was a tight neighborhood where people socialized on the front steps, so they knew who belonged on the street and who didn’t.

We had a very nice guy from Costa Rica as manager. His first day on the job he opened a trash can and found a drug dealer looking at him. At least the drug dealer’s head was looking at him. Welcome to the Big Apple🍎, Enrique!

My first week in NY, riding the subway, and as the doors closed as the train pulled out of a station a guy slammed between them and out, with a gold chain he’d broken off a woman’s neck on the way. Same week I’m walking down the sidewalk...West 11th street...guy runs toward me and past, followed by a guy with a .38 snubby. Ah. That’s ok. .38 snubby = cop. Still the first week: guy with at least a dozen layers of clothes, none of which have been washed in at least a decade, standing behind a dumpster committing..um...inappropriate touching to himself. Quite enthusiastically. Keep moving: this is The Big Apple🍎.

The apartment rental agent, an old friend, tells me of an apartment I’d looked at but not taken. Real nice kid from Indiana took it. Young, clean cut. Innocent. Then he moved out a week later. Bad tenant, huh? Hmmm: got burgled three times his first seven days, the third time after spending $800 of his own money on burglar bars. Turned out the guy in the unit above was a junky who was teaching his five year old brother a trade: lowered the little bro out the window by his foot so he could get in the newbie’s window and open the door for his big brother. Give a kid a fish....

Another week, back in Spanish Harlem, big crash in the alley: three people pile out of another building’s window, slamming each other with 2x4s. Yeah: not like Hollywood. 2x4s break bones. Call the cops. Another guy shows up with a .38 snubby in hand.

My next door neighbor, very smart, very attractive woman in her twenties. Her boyfriend signed up for welfare, spent his entire first payment on drugs, except for a dollar seventy five he dropped on a present to demonstrate how much he loved her. Yeah. He got a job driving a limo, came home and told us he was going to work his way up, buy his own limo, and another. Make a lot of money. He was too stoned to go to work the next day. End of limo service ownership for him. His girlfriend, my neighbor, edited children’s primary school books for a major publishing house. She was still living with him three years later, because judging him would be just too harsh. Actually, since she paid all the bills, he was living with her. Don’t be harsh.

I only rode a bus through black Harlem, north of Central Park, a couple times, but that was Crack Wars Central. Both time I saw guys fighting in the middle of the street, middle of the day. Knock down, drag out fighting. No guns tho. At least that I saw, but I was on a Greyhound. Nobody paying any attention.

That’s what a city can be like when the politicians and more importantly the people who vote for them value criminals more than they value the decent people, and the decent people buy the politicians’ patter.

Because Social Justice. Or something.

Watch what happens to all the Social Justice Meccas over the next few years. 

Ideally from a distance.

White and Black, Jews, Nazis, and Enemies

There was a good, if somewhat rambling columnabout the difference between US and British views on race and Jews by Robert Koerner at the Foundation for Economic Freedom site, to which I replied. It got marked by someone as spam, perhaps by accident or perhaps to hide it, but I asked it be revealed. we’ll see. In any case, my comment:

That was a thought provoking column. Thank you.
“And no, I’m not your enemy, whatever you tell me.” I’m not sure that I agree with that.

At one level it makes sense, in that German Jews/Jewish Germans weren’t enemies of Germany: they were Germans. Same with Austrians, Poles, Dutch, French Jews. However, the Nazis didn’t allow them to be other than enemies, and it didn’t matter as a practical issue if the Jews didn’t consider themselves enemies of the the Nazis.

I was in a voluntary organization many years ago in which two rival factions were running things. The arguments between them were largely over ideological purity vs political practicality. The practical faction considered the pure faction impractical and personally abusive, both of which had some truth to them. The pure people considered the practical people evil, and were quite outspoken about that.
I wanted to stay on the sidelines on that debate, but the pure people would not allow that. One was either on their side or an enemy. Take your pick, but those were the only options. No Sidelines Option was available. Ally or enemy. Take your pick.

While I eventually decided to simply leave the organization, I did decide that while people may not want to be other’s enemy, the decision is not up to them: it is up to those who demand all be either allies or enemies.

So, it seems to me that if BLM, the DNC, the RNC, or any other group declares me to be an enemy, then I am in fact their enemy. It doesn’t matter that I don’t want to be their enemy: it isn’t my choice. It’s theirs.

European Jews of all nationalities WERE enemies of the Nazis, not because they wanted to be but because the Nazis designated them as such. It wasn’t in the Jews’ power to not be enemies. It simply wasn’t up to them. It was up to the Nazis.

It also seems to me that one of the biggest failures of European Jews was the majority’s failure to understand that, internalize it, and act on that sad realization, either by fleeing or taking up arms and fighting their genocidal enemies.

There may not be much we can do to lessen the power or growth of the virulent racists on the left. Apologizing, self-flagellation, and submitting will be no more effective than it was for European Jews.

We can keep an eye on them, and we can in most states consider arming ourselves against overt violence. I think we should do so, because the time to prepare against assault is not after the assault has taken place but before. Steve Scalise was prepared with armed guards, and that preparation saved not only his own life, but those of the other Republicans at that soft ball practice.

Think of the so-called protests in Portland a few weeks ago, in which leftists blocked traffic, re-directed vehicles, and beat on vehicles. Suppose it had gone a bit further, and people were dragged from their cars and beaten. Would the time to prepare be the next day? Ask Reginald Denny after he was dragged from his truck and a cement block dropped repeatedly on his head. Minding his own business, until he was surrounded by people who designated him their enemy.

I don’t know how violent these leftists will get, nor how many allies they will attract, but it does seem important to keep an eye on them, and to prepare for worse violence than they are now committing, because at some point it may be too late to prepare. We won’t have the option of not being their enemy. It will be their decision, and by their own statements they have already made it.

“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL”.

“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL”.

My phone blared the alert warning sound, and I'll tell you, that message got us from the living room to the walk-in closet in 30 seconds or less.

Couldn't find anything on line via my phone, at ten minutes wondered why the air raid sirens weren't going, another ten minutes or more before we found news sites saying oops, and forty minutes before the Dems bothered to use the same alert system to tell us they goofed.

We were home so no idea how it went elsewhere, but standing in the closet waiting for the walls to blow in was interesting enough.

Yet another case of the sheer incompetence of the Democratic Party of Hawaii, which has ruled here for over half a century.

Upside to the non-drill: we will move an emergency radio, water, and some food out of the kitchen and into the closet. This is pretty much the only emergency for which this makes sense, but for this one it does.

Downside: US Pacific Command headquarters is on the next ridge, and we overlook Pearl Harbor, so we may well be floating around the ionosphere before we know there is a real attack. So it goes. Do what we can.

Our Responsibility: Preparing for Low Probability/High Consequences Events

Juliette Kayyem, in The Atlantic magazine :

The “never again” standard is as absurd as it is simplistic. It is as vague as it is damaging. It tried to convince Americans, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that invulnerability was a possibility. This has hindered homeland-security planners for a decade and a half: Knowing that no security apparatus can stop all forms of harm, including “lone wolfs,” progress is better measured in how well people prepare and educate themselves for the inevitable. What if the United States simply accepted, as a nation, that bad things happen and get ready for that possibility?

I agree with Juliette Kayyem about preparedness rather than a hopeless focus on prevention, but what does this really involve at the personal level?

With the exceptions of hurricanes in hurricane zones, major earthquakes in earthquake zones, and the like, most threats are individually highly dispersed and/or low probability/high consequences events.

Just as we reasonably expect our home to never burn down, but have insurance anyway, should we consider these individually improbable events like terrorism against us personally something we should individually insure against? If so, what to do?

I suspect that government in a relatively free society cannot deal easily with highly dispersed threats like terrorism or even random crime: police cannot be everywhere at all times, nor should we want them to be.

Several million Americans have gotten concealed carry licenses, while millions more have gotten their state legislatures to do away with the need for CCW licenses entirely. So far as I can tell, there have been no great negative consequences to either of those events. If there have been, the news media, no friend of law-abiding private citizens carrying handguns, has done a lousy job of covering them.

Imagine what might have been different in Orlando or Paris if if even a few people had been carrying guns. Given the US experience with legal concealed carry, background crime would not have been 'blood in the streets', while one or two people shooting back might have saved dozens of lives.

Even a strong defensive mindset might have made huge differences in the kill counts: apparently no one in Orlando or Paris counter-attacked even though the murderers had to pause multiple times to reload. Imagine if someone had the defensive mindset to attack, either with a chair, a bottle, or even barehanded. Instead they got out their cell phones and shot videos.

Wrong mind set.

The less radical preppers may be on to something: personal responsibility for one's self and family. I'm not talking about the quasi-millenarianist End Of The World As We Know It people, but those who take preparing for disasters quite seriously, with food, water, medical supplies, defensive weaponry, communication equipment -at least battery powered receivers so one can hear news reports- a ready reserve of cash (actual cash in small bills, in case the ATMs and cash registers are down for a few days or weeks), sanitation, and the like, sufficient for a few weeks.

It seems outright foolish not to have such preps if one lives in a hurricane or earthquake zone, but perhaps people in the rest of the country might do well by considering their own circumstances and prepare for the more likely disasters.

An interesting aspect to preparing for 'normal' short term disasters is that the preparations are pretty much the same: preparing well for the more probable issues also prepares one for the less probable.

Kayyem:

I have come to believe—as a security expert but also as a mother of three—that among all of its flaws, the worst aspect of “never again” was that it let experts like me run the show. We have failed to show that the conflicts and choices inherent in protecting the homeland are really not that different from those Americans and people around the world encounter every day. In our day-to-day lives, people try to protect those closest to them, but they also plan for the bad things that will happen. The essential aspects of those two priorities—preparedness, planning, flexibility, communication, back-up systems, learning from mistakes—are essentially the same. By too easily separating the homeland from the home, experts have failed to nurture the vigor and resiliency which is the greatest strength of a nation that was built on vulnerability: the American public.

And if the United States could build resiliency one home at a time, maybe, in another 15 years, the country will have stopped asking the question to some anonymous bureaucracy with strange acronyms and esoteric risk assessments: “Are we safer?” Instead, people should start embracing, “Am I ready?”

Taking personal responsibility is self-empowering. What is right about that?

The Slow Overnight Collapse of Venezuela

This is the best short description I've seen recently about the industry by industry collapse of Venezuela -once the richest country in South America- into...well...collapse like tin foil hat wearing preppers worry about. It can take many years for a prosperous country to fall apart, it just looks sudden at the end. No toilet paper, refrigerators are worthless because there is electricity only two days a week, but that's really OK because there is no food to put in the non-working refrigerators.

Now they don't even have enough money to pay for printing more inflationary currency, and the foreign printing companies which were flying it in, in fleets of 747s, have stopped because Why trust Venezuela to pay the printing and shipping bills?

Between corruption and Marxism, and corrupt Marxism, and Marxist corruption, the Venezuelans have well and truly buggered each other left, right, and upside down. Right along with all the good, decent people who did NOT vote this calamity.

How To Open A Can With A Spoon

This looks like fun. It does look a lot less messy that rubbing the top rim of the can against a rock or piece of concrete.

"Pentagon Moves More Communications Gear into Cheyenne Mountain"

Curious:

The Pentagon is beefing up its communications setup inside a hollowed-out section of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains less than a decade after it had largely abandoned the site....

...The gear is being moved into Cheyenne Mountain to protect it from electromagnetic pulses, said Adm. William Gortney, commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD.

“[T]here is a lot of movement to put capability into Cheyenne Mountain and to be able to communicate in there,” Gortney said Tuesday during a news briefing at the Pentagon.

Electromagnetic pulses, or EMPs, can occur naturally or by manmade devices such as nuclear weapons. For years, the Pentagon has been working on building weapons that could fry the electronic equipment of an enemy during battle.

Who'da thought the Pentagon was full of tinfoil hat types?

Maybe it isn't.

Yahoo has more here.

Lloyd's Insurance on Solar Storm aka CME Effects On North America

Gotta love that British understatement:

...major and widespread social unrest, riots, and theft…major global financial impacts…major disruption to transport, food supplies, emergency and hospital services…would quickly effect water and fuel supplies, sewage systems and flood defenses… potential for large-scale, long-term economic and societal chaos

Power outage…good scenario: 16 days. If new transformers are needed: minimum 5 months. Ok, maybe 16 months. Bad scenario: 1-2 years.

You can find the whole understated report here. It's only 16 pages.

Global Warming Hits Arizona

I knew there was a reason no one lived in Arizona until air conditioning.

Why Americans Have Weapons Instead of Guns

I just read a review of a new variant of the AR-15 rifle, which was designed to be legal in all fifty states. It sounds like an interesting response to a bewildering thicket of state level regulations, all of which I believe are prohibited by the Constitution. Big deal: my opinion won't change things.

One of the commentors objected to another's use of the term 'weapon' rather than calling it a gun.

My response:

"should NEVER ever be referred to as weapons(.) they are guns or firearms(,) weapons are what police and military use....we cause problems on ourselves by referring to our gun as weapons"

You have a legitimate point, but I do disagree with it.

My guns are weapons. Every last one of them, from a Belgian Browning 20 gauge A-5, through a Remington pump .22 Model 12A to Mini14s and S&W J-frames, and 1911s.

The Constitution protects arms. Not goose guns, not air rifles, not deer guns, not target pistols, except at they contribute to use and familiarity with military grade weapons or can substitute for them. The Constitution protects militia grade arms precisely for the purpose of killing people. That is demonstrated without any doubt by the 2nd Amendment's explicit tying of the right to keep and bear arms to a well trained militia. The writings of the Founders, published concurrently with the ratification debates and available today, make explicit the role of arms which are protected: they are explicitly for killing tyrants, foreign or domestic.

Anti-gunners freak at the idea, especially at the 'domestic' aspects as they inaccurately associate 'tyrants' with 'politicians', but weapons ownership, use, and the bearing of them should not be controversial in an age where domestic terrorists and ordinary criminals alike can strike anywhere, any time, and the police are incapable of being everywhere, all the time, to protect us.

That it is controversial is in part our fault: For decades we let the anti-gunners frame the debate. It is time to frame that debate ourselves, and force them to respond to us instead of us to them. We can do so only by using terms like 'weapons' and 'shooting people who need shooting right now', and defending those concepts as good and proper. If more people than the LEO at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris had been armed, more might well have survived: Killing murderous assailants is exactly what weapons are for, and that is a good thing. If the observer who videod the killing of the Paris LEO on the sidewalk had had a Mini-14 or AKM at hand instead of a video camera, the LEO might well have been killed anyway, but the murderers might have been stopped right there. They are exactly the kind of domestic tyrants the unorganized militia has a chance of stopping. By shooting them with weapons.

The 2nd Amendment protects 'arms', not just guns, but arms, for the purpose of arming the militia, including the 'unorganized militia', which means us: civilians such as those brave passengers aboard United Flight 93, who gave their lives defending us against the Islamists on 9-11. That means that not only are guns protected, but so are all other militia usable weapons: knives, including bowies, bayonets, and switchblades, cudgels, including billy clubs, and metal or plastic knuckles. Laws prohibiting them are explicitly prohibited by the Constitution. That such laws exist and are widespread today is only evidence of our refusal to submit to the Constitution. Rather than submit, even by amending it, we have preferred to pretend that it does not mean what it clearly says. That is our shame.

The Constitution protects weapons which carry a single round, like the Liberator .45 of the Second World War, and it protects AKMs, AR-15s, and M-16s and their 20 & 30 round magazines. It protects sniper rifles and target rifles which may be used by the unorganized militia as sniper rifles. It protects submachine guns and full auto rifles ie actual assault rifles. The Constitution protects all of them for the explicit purpose of shooting those who would do us and our country harm.

Given that a number of the Founders owned ships with cannons, and given that the Constitution explicitly provides for issuing letters of marque and reprisal to privately owned ships, I expect that a plausible argument could be made that the Constitution also protects crew served weapons such as belt fed machine guns and at least light artillery.

We are on firm ground when we say that the Constitution protects military grade arms, and great big scary ones at that. If we refuse to make that point, the other side is on the way to victory.

Instead of allowing the anti-weapons crowd to cow us into refusing to defend weapons ownership, I prefer to make them confront our issue head on: The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to protect our ability to arm ourselves against tyrants, foreign and domestic. Those tyrants may be common criminals or politically/religiously inspired criminals such as disciples of al Qaeda, ISIS/ISIL, AQAP, and others. In any case, when they strike, the police are almost sure not to be there. The victims are always there, and only armed victims, willing to shoot them with weapons they bear, are capable of shooting people who desperately need to be shot.

The original article, "50 STATE LEGAL AR-15 – ARES DEFENSE SCR" by Sam Trisler in'Guns America', is here.

Preppers Are Right Wing Sickos, Of Course

Just remember: If you take admonishments of the Mayor of New York, the Governor of New York, FEMA, and others, seriously, and actually prepare for disasters, you are an unstable nut case fantasizing about shooting the neighbors.

Panic-buyers flood grocery stores and commuters are begged to stay home ahead of 'historic' blizzard that threatens to drop THREE FEET of snow on New York City and up to 57 million on East Coast
Huge lines were pictured in food stores and warnings flooded in to stay home amid snow falling at 4 inches per hour
Bill de Blasio warned New Yorkers not to 'underestimate' the storm, which could drop 36inches in places
Snowfall expected to be accompanied by hurricane-strength winds blowing at up to 65 miles per hour
New York governor Andrew Cuomo warned commuters to go home early as roads and the subway could be closed

Who would believe that a mere 57,000,000 could strip grocery shelves bare?

Many New Yorkers reacted to the predictions - which could make for the most snow in one storm since records began in 1872 - by piling into local stores to stock up on food.

Shopping with your 57,000,000 nearest and dearest friends. I think I'll pass. Shopping under pressure seems like a great way to buy too much of the wrong stuff, and too little of the right.

Shoppers were pictured lining up round the block in Manhattan just to get inside so they could grab hold of rapidly-diminishing stocks before the bad weather begins.
Warnings have also been issued around New Jersey and New England, with authorities saying inadequately prepared people could die making unnecessary journeys.

Call it Evolution in Action.

If you are interested in preserving the bloodline, see here. It's easy, it's cheap, and it sure beats slogging through the snow and slush to find one lousy loaf of pumpernickel left.

"Your data is our data, your equipment is our equipment."

This really isn't news, but it is something to pay attention to:

According to top secret documents from the archive of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden seen exclusively by SPIEGEL, they are planning for wars of the future in which the Internet will play a critical role, with the aim of being able to use the net to paralyze computer networks and, by doing so, potentially all the infrastructure they control, including power and water supplies, factories, airports or the flow of money.

No water means cities of all sizes die within a couple weeks. Less, in many cases, maybe a lot less.

One must admire the Remote Operations Center's motto, though: "Your data is our data, your equipment is our equipment."

Act of War By North Korea?

If the conclusion by the FBI that North Korea committed the Sony hack, followed by threats of violence for screening "The Interview", the comedy about Kim Jong Un, would the hacking constitute an act of war?

If so, what is our government going to do about it? Open discussions to discover Kim's wants, needs, hurts, and potential for growth? Or accept that the Korean War, which has never been declared over, is ramping up and bomb North Korea back into a civilized country?

Better Have A Bunch Of Batteries: FEMA/DHS Says CME Could Leave 100,000,000 Without Electricity For Months

Don't forget to stock a few flats of water:

“An analysis of the space weather impacts indicates that the greatest challenge will be to provide life-saving and life-sustaining resources for large numbers of people that experience long-term power outage from damage to the U.S. electrical grid,” the FEMA document, dated March 1, 2012, states.

The FEMA fact sheet noted...that an extreme solar storm could leave “130 million people without power for years,” and destroy or damage more than 300 hard-to-replace electrical grid transformers.

The problem with such widespread and long lasting power outages isn't the run on candles, but the lack of drinkable water: without power, the water grid and sewage treatment grid also go down. So do the gas pumps which allow people to drive to an unaffected area. If food distributors' computers don't work, they don't know what they have or where they have it, nor, without electricity, do the chillers keep it from rotting. Imagine multiple cities without potable water, with overflowing toilets, for even 10 days. At the same time, in August. It wouldn't be unpleasant: It would see thousands or hundreds of thousands dead. Possibly millions.

One of the problems with preparing for a Carrington type event is that while there is no question whatsoever that they happen, they don't happen often enough to keep people's attention. Their infrequency is a good thing for an electrically based economy, of course, but when the big hits of 1859 and 1921 are so far apart, people don't pay attention to the consequences of a low probability event. Such an event might not occur in our lifetimes, so people naturally discount the possibility despite the horrific consequences.

A brace or two of 55 gallon barrels of water in the garage or basement seems about as stupid and paranoid as a good home insurance policy.

Here is the story.

Why NJ and NY Make Ebola Quarantine Mandatory

Here's the story of the quarantined nurse in NJ. It makes clear to me why quarantine should be mandatory, not voluntary.

Kaci Hickox,...has been caring for Ebola patients...in Sierra Leone. Upon her return to the U.S. on Friday, she was placed in quarantine at a New Jersey hospital....

I am a nurse who has just returned to the U.S. .... I have been quarantined in New Jersey. This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me.
I am scared about how health care workers will be treated at airports when they declare that they have been fighting Ebola in West Africa. I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see...quarantine....

Again, I wondered what I had done wrong...

I had spent a month watching children die....

I recalled my last night at the Ebola management center in Sierra Leone. I was called in at midnight because a 10-year-old girl was having seizures. I coaxed crushed tablets of Tylenol and an anti-seizure medicine into her mouth as her body jolted in the bed."

I think the level of denial shown in this is remarkable. It boils down to "I did a good and unpleasant thing by helping Ebola patients in Africa (true) and now you disgusting scary awful people are locking me up in quarantine. How DARE you question my medical status (just because many, many, many doctors and nurses have already contracted ebola and died)? How dare you question my right to take a cab, ride the subways, and go bowling any time I feel like it? I am a good person. How dare you treat me like I might be infected?"

And this is exactly why NY and NJ have, in my opinion properly, made quarantine mandatory and not a mere suggestion. Like exposed, probably exposed,and possibly exposed people before her in the US, she makes it pretty clear than voluntary quarantine is not going to happen, because SHE did a good thing and should not be made to suffer at all for it.

Locking up such people as public health hazards strikes me as one of the few things our government...oh wait, strike that...two state governments are getting right.

See the whole scary story in the Dallas News.

US Falls To 12th Most Free Economy

America's descent down the ladder of economic freedom is unsettling, in itself. More troubling, however, is the chief factor behind the US decline. The biggest drop in US economic freedom has been in the country's legal structure. The report notes that, "increased use of eminent domain to transfer property to powerful political interests, the ramifications of the wars on terrorism and drugs, and the violation of the property rights of bondholders in the auto-bailout case have weakened the tradition of strong adherence to the rule of law in United States."

Political actions have consequences. Politicize the economy enough, and Atlas doesn't have to shrug. Atlas can be crushed in place.

The rule of law has long been the foundation of America's economic prosperity and liberty. The US ranking in this area has plummeted to a terrible 36th place in the world. This, combined with increased regulation is stifling US economic growth. The report observes, "[t]o a large degree, the United States has experienced a significant move away from rule of law and toward a highly regulated, politicized, and heavily policed state."

We no longer live in a free country, and there are very powerful interests indeed which like it that way: Controlling the regulators and the subsidizers is more effective for the bottom line than producing goods and services the consumer wants, at a price consumers are willing to pay.

Curtailing government's leviathan isn't simply solving a math problem, i.e. getting revenue and spending figures for government to balance. A far larger threat is the accumulation of thousands of rules and regulations that not only stifle innovation but also undermine our personal and property rights.

Again: That is the way the Crony Capitalists want it, and they have entrenched themselves deeply in the political system. We may never again have anything like a free economy or a free society: Interests already in place may already be too powerful to overcome.

Breitbart has more here.

The original, at CATO Institute, is here.

Quarantine Those Exposed To Ebola?: "How is this going to look?"

The country's safety is in the very best hands:

“When [Graham] gets [Brantly] over into the hospital, they come in and they quarantine him,” Beck said. “There are, I think, 35 others that have returned from Africa that were working in that hospital, the same as [Brantly]. They’ve been around this doctor. They’ve been around the hospital.”

“We all saw the caravan, but what we didn’t see is this: Franklin says, ‘Okay, we’ve got 35 people. Where do we keep them for 21 days?’” Beck said, noting that Ebola can incubate for 21 days. “The CDC says, ‘Oh, don’t worry. Just send them home.’”

“Now, here’s Graham, not a doctor, saying, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t think sending them home is a good idea. … They should be in the quarantine for 21 days. We don’t know if they have the Ebola.’”

So Beck said Graham found a place near the hospital and asked those exposed to the Ebola virus to stay there until they were confident they wouldn’t spread the disease to the rest of the country.

“Well apparently, several days into this, the hospital finds out that they’ve done this,” Beck said. “And the hospital is upset because of PR. ‘How is this going to look?…’

Don't worry: It's just ebola.

Color me radical, but it seems to me past time to fire the complacent administrators at CDC. Given that that is unlikely to happen, it may be time to stock up on N-95 masks and surgical gloves, plus food and water for a month or so.

ISIL Infiltrating The US Across The Southern Border?

Thanks to the federal government, it would soooooo difficult.

A senior Homeland Security (DHS) official confirmed to Congress on Wednesday that militants associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) are planning to enter the United States via the porous southern border.

A bit more here.

I have trouble believing they are not already here.

Historian William Forstchen, author of "One Second After" has a new novella out about the consequences of ISIL infiltrating the country. "Day of Wrath" is all too believable.

Just When I Thought It Was Safe To Take Off My Tinfoil Hat And Crawl Out Of The Bunker

Managua (AFP) - A mysterious explosion that rocked Nicaragua's crowded capital Managua, creating a large crater, appears to have been caused by a small meteorite, officials said Sunday.

Amazingly, in a sprawling city of 1.2 million people, the impact near the international airport did not cause any known injuries, but it did leave a crater measuring 12 meters (39 feet) across and was felt throughout the capital late on Saturday.

With any luck, the Guy Upstairs is just warming up for Tehran and Gaza.


More here.

The Collapse Of Western Leadership Has Consequences

While the collapse of Western leadership around the world has major consequences, I am no longer sure that that is not exactly Barack Obama's intention.

Ask: If you were a mole in the Oval Office, determined to reduce America's, and American capitalism's, influence on world affairs, what would you have done differently since Obama took office?

Would you have engineered the survival of the Mubarak regime in Egypt? No.

Would you have supported Moammar Khadafi in Libya as a return for his ending his program to produce nuclear weapons? No.

Would you have re-evaluated the troop withdrawal from Iraq as things fell apart? No.

Would you have closed the border with Mexico to illegal invaders? No.

Would you have created a magnet for illegals by suggesting they would be given amnesty? Yes.

Would you have sent guns to the Mexican drug cartels, in some cases paying for them with taxpayer's money? Yes.

Would you publicly 'joke' in an early speech that you would sic the IRS on your political opponents? Yes.

Would you then use the IRS against political opponents, abuse upon a scale never before so grand? Yes.

Would you have denounced all criticisms of policy as racist? Yes.

When Boston police responded to a 9-1-1 call about a possible burglary in progress, and they insisted that the men found in the house provide IDs, would you announce that "the police acted stupidly"? Yes.

If your parents were Marxists, and your grandparents were Marxists, and your high school mentor was a paid employee of the Communist Party of Hawaii, and your first political fundraiser was in the home of Marxist revolutionaries who were just some people in the neighborhood who you really didn't know, and your pastor of 20 years called on God to damn America, and you had never renounced the beliefs of any of those people, would you act pretty much as Barack Obama has behaved? Possibly.

Would you in January dismiss ISIS as junior varsity, while in August consider ways to defend Chicago from them? Hmmmm.

In any case, Richard Fernandez has an interesting column over at PJ Media.