Posts Tagged ‘James Younger’

LinkSwarm for January 31, 2020

Friday, January 31st, 2020

Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! If you’re reading this, you haven’t died from the Coronavirus yet, despite China’s best efforts! And so many Babylon Bee slams of CNN that I couldn’t just pick one:

  • This morning’s contarvirus totals:
    Total Infected: 9,776 (up from 2116 Sunday)
    Total Deaths: 213
    Total Recovered: 187
    Number of Countries Where Cases Have Been Confirmed (new in bold): 22 (China (including Hong Kong), Thailand, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, Malaysia, Macau, South Korea, United States of America, France, Germany, United Areb Emirates, Canada, Italy, Vietnam, Cambodia, Finland, India, Napal, Philippines, Sri Lanka)

    Thoughts: If that’s not quite exponential growth it’s a pretty good first cousin. A case in Mumbai is scary. 11 cases in Japan is scary for the opposite reason, in that the Japanese take hygiene very seriously and have been unable to prevent spread there. No confirmed cases in Indonesia, which is probably only a matter of time.

  • The Cornoavirus is the demon bedeviling Xi Jinping: “Yes, ‘demon’ is a metaphor for a pathogen capable of killing millions. However, it is a demon the dictatorship’s repressive policies animate and tolerate in lieu of free communication.”

    2019-nCoV, however, is beyond Xi’s dictatorial control. China’s dictatorship may awe Free World idiots, but it cannot intimidate a pathogen.

    The coronavirus and its potential consequences of mass death expose the dictatorship’s brittleness. If you prefer, substitute “incompetence masked by police intimidation and lack of free expression” for “brittleness.”

    Brutal authoritarian political control exacts overt and covert systemic costs. Western commentators — The New York Times’ Tom Friedman is a particularly smarmy example — admire authoritarian China’s alleged skill at solving major problems that dithering Western democracies cannot. What really dazzles Friedman and his ilk is the regime’s one-command-solves-it pose. Information control, especially control of dissent, bolsters this fraud.

    Since 1980, China has made extraordinary economic progress, but its government’s destructive decisions are telling. The notorious one-child policy produced a demographic devil. What Western admirers touted as a farsighted plan to promote zero population growth killed millions of baby girls, skewed female-male sex ratios and, as of 2010, began creating a worker shortage.

    Doctors in China and several Asian countries — the virus is on the verge of savaging Thailand — advocate isolating infected patients. The Great Firewall of China isolates the Chinese people from global information access and sharing. Beijing demands its citizens use state-sponsored social media in lieu of global alternatives. Isolation from information sharing hinders angry citizens from criticizing the communist leaders.

    But this system isolates Chinese leaders from bad news — like mass illness — that caring human beings must share….As the party bigwigs dither, a deadly pathogen kills.

  • More thoughts from Richard Fernandez:

    It was an example of ‘No Borders’ but not in a good way. The pathogen got on a plane abetted by a delay in acknowledgement. “The Chinese government failed to act quickly enough to curb the spread of the Wuhan virus, risking further outbreaks,” Guan Yi, the Director of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Hong Kong told the Asia Times. The Chinese government’s own data, hosted on Wikipedia, confirms this. It shows how at the beginning the numbers were small, the infection still all in one place. After a week it blew up.

    This illustrates how giant totalitarian governments like China’s can be at a disadvantage in dealing with emergent events. What it gains in ruthless response cannot always make up for lost response time caused by the official denial of embarrassing facts. That explains why establishments are often surprised by events like Brexit and Hillary Clinton’s shock loss. They are unexpected because they were not in the 5 year plan. They arrive like a bolt from the blue.

    When the unexpected happens the official Narrative often increases the reaction time of the system. While events are slow moving there may be no penalty but in the fast moving global world threats like the coronavirus may hit the public even before institutions admit it exists. The old model of globalization has paradoxically both speeded up the rate at which events occur and slowed the rate at which behemoth transnational institutions can respond.

    The result is a mismatch and failure of institutions is the theme which unites Brexit, the US impeachment and the repeated viral threats from China.

  • Back on January 1st, eight Chinese doctors tried to warn people about a “viral pneumonia” going around. Want to guess what happened? That’s right. They were punished for spreading rumors.
  • First person-to-person coronavirus transmission case confirmed in Chicago, bringing the total to six cases in the U.S.
  • Kurt Schlichter thinks that President Donald Trump needs to get ahead of the coronavirus curve by communicating with the public, lest the impeachment-thwarted Democrats and media (but I repeat myself) make it into his “Katrina.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Meet Dr. Peng Zhou a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Leader of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunization Group. You know, the same institute that posted a “help-wanted” ad to research Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses in bats just before the local coronavirus outbreak there. What are the odds?
  • Seems that the college station student reported on last week tested negative for the coronavirus. Indeed, all four suspected Texas cases tested negative.
  • Speaking of China, I meant to blog this and forgot until Dwight reminded me: Charles M. Lieber, the chair of Harvard’s chemistry department, “a leader in the field of nanoscale electronics, has not been accused of sharing sensitive information with Chinese officials, but rather of hiding — from Harvard, from the National Institutes of Health and from the Defense Department — the amount of money that Chinese funders were paying him.”

    Dr. Lieber was one of three scientists to be charged with crimes on Tuesday.

    Zaosong Zheng, a Harvard-affiliated cancer researcher was caught leaving the country with 21 vials of cells stolen from a laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, according to the authorities. They said he had admitted that he had planned to turbocharge his career by publishing the research in China under his own name. He was charged with smuggling goods from the United States and with making false statements, and was being held without bail in Massachusetts after a judge determined that he was a flight risk. His lawyer has not responded to a request for comment.

    The third was Yanqing Ye, who had been conducting research at Boston University’s department of physics, chemistry and biomedical engineering until last spring, when she returned to China. Prosecutors said she hid the fact that she was a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army, and continued to carry out assignments from Chinese military officers while at B.U.

  • If one pandemic were not enough, there’s also an outbreak of Lassa Fever in Nigeria.
  • Know how the MSM keeps harping on President Donald Trump’s “unpopularity?” A deep dive into various poll metrics suggests “not so much.”
  • This is pretty interesting:

    (Hat tip (and more at) The Other McCain.)

  • More on that CNN clip I talked about yesterday:

    63 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. Are they all slack-jawed yokels motivated by hostility to geography, and facts? Do they all — or even most — have strong Southern accents? And, irrespective, is a Southern accent a predictor of stupidity? Many of my neighbors have strong southern accents. One of them is a surgeon. Whither nuance?

    This particular clip has landed with such a bump because it also serves as an example of how inaccurately mediocrities tend to see themselves. Rick Wilson’s joke was second-rate and obviously pre-written, and yet Don Lemon reacted as if Wilson was Dave Chappelle — even going so far as to say he “needed” it. This behavior is learned. Since Donald Trump was elected, a certain set of political “strategists” — many of whom aren’t actually strategists, Ana Navarro — have come to see CNN as a clearing house for their bad one-liners, each sitting at home preparing zingers that they hope, once delivered, will go viral. This one has gone viral, of course, but for the opposite reason than its architects hoped: Because it is pathetic.

  • “CNN Announces Daily ‘Two Minutes Hate‘ Segment”
  • “CNN Unveils New Format Where Hosts Just Watch Fox News And Yell At It.”
  • Possibly my fav: “Flock Of Monocled Geese In Top Hats Joins Don Lemon In Round Of Laughter At The Commoners.”
  • Political correctness and liberalism are literally killing people in Seattle.

    It’s about squishy prosecutors and judges who let repeat offenders walk free. It is about a city council that has designed this because anarchy will allow them to rebuild the city in a socialist image.

    Today, a woman is dead and seven others are injured. A 9-year-old remains in the hospital. It is shameful but unfortunately predictable, given who we have running things around here.

    Snip.

    We do not let the cops do their jobs. The cops know who the gang members and drug dealers are. They also know that if they see a drug transaction and write it up for the prosecutor’s office, it’s going to get kicked because it’s not a serious enough crime. And when prosecutors pursue criminals, judges let them walk free.

    The two suspects in this downtown shooting have been arrested 44 times with 20 convictions and 21 times with 15 convictions. Marquise Tolbert, the one with 20 convictions, had three felonies last year alone. You tell me how someone with three felonies in 2019 is walking around free and able to engage in a shootout that kills a woman and injures a bunch of other people, including a 9-year-old kid. Both Tolbert and William Tolliver, the other suspect, are just 24 years old. They both have previously been arrested and charged with drive-by shootings and unlawful possession of a firearm in 2018. So the courts knew full well that these were gun-toting gang members. Why did our justice system let them walk free? Why do we place criminals above law-abiding citizens?

  • “Trump at the March for Life Seals Irrelevancy of Never Trumpers.”

    Never Trump Republicans looked even more ridiculous at the end of the March for Life than they did that morning.

    Trump was embraced by the largest gathering of pro-life Americans and Trump embraced them. Trump at the March for Life:

    Sadly, the far-left is actively working to erase our God-given rights, shut down faith-based charities, ban religious believers from the public square, and silence Americans who believe in the sanctity of life. They are coming after me because I am fighting for you and we are fighting for those who have no voice.

    Never Trump Republicans can’t imagine a man like Trump attending the March for Life.

    Never Trumpism is built on a foundation of sanctimony.

    These sanctimonious few don’t like how Trump speaks. They don’t like his bombast. They don’t like his past. He’s not George Bush.

    Get over it. He’s winning.

    That he is not George Bush might be Trump’s greatest transgression to Never Trumpers. Much of the hatred is mercenary, as so many have suffered financially from the end of their consultancy gravy train.

    But Trump actually attended the March for Life. If you don’t think that matters to the 100,000+ who marched, then you can’t judge prevailing winds.

    Snip.

    What’s also striking about the Never Trumpers is how their hatred resembles a pathology, like some deep raw childhood memory. Trump is their aunt’s cat who used to viciously scratch them each visit. Trump is the playground bully who threw the football at their face. Trump is the twisted cousin who made you look at his dead animals in jars hidden in the back shed. He’s the bogeyman of their nightmares.

    It all wells up in them, decades later, in outbursts, fears, and rage. It’s unhinged.

  • “Trump Derangement Syndrome is burning out the core audiences that made the media profitable. The Impeachment Eve rallies failed miserably with turnouts in the hundreds in Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. A month later, turnout at the Women’s March had declined from the hundreds of thousands to the thousands. Even as impeachment was underway, the audience wasn’t there.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Chip Roy produce a proposal to fix health care.
  • James Younger case ends with joint custody and crazy mom not allowed to inflict hormone therapy on her eight-year old.
  • Border agents find longest smuggling tunnel yet discovered in San Diego, over three-quarters of a mile. “It includes an extensive rail/cart system, forced air ventilation, high voltage electrical cables and panels, an elevator at the tunnel entrance, and a complex drainage system.” (Hat tip: CutJibNews at Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Leaked French Internal Intelligence Report Claims 150 Neighborhoods ‘Held’ By Radical Islamists.”
  • Minority kids perform better in conservative school districts.
  • Democrats caught teaching illegal aliens how to break the law and vote. Yet again. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Bernie Sanders is backing hard left challenger Jessica Cisneros against Texas Democratic incumbent congressman Henry Cuellar for the 28th Congressional District. The winner will face Republican Sandra Whitten in the general.
  • Germans have proof Huawei colluded with Chinese intelligence agencies. Duh, of course they did.
  • IBM replaces longtime CEO Virginia Rometty with Arvind Krishna. Probably a good move. The few people I knew who worked at IBM under her tenure had little good to say about the company, whose longterm trend has been offshoring and outsourcing rather than hiring fulltime U.S. employees. But every group in IBM seems like its own little fiefdom.
  • Dwight offers a moderately deepish dive into two fraud cases, including a celebrated social scientist and a celebrated organic farmer.
  • Congrats to Republican Gary Gates for winning the Texas House District 28 special election runoff over Democrat Eliz Markowitz. This is Gates’ first successful race in eight tries, and he supposedly threw a ton of money into it.
  • Noted without comment: “2nd California child molester dies after beating with cane.”
  • Florida New Jersey Man Mayor.
  • “Utah man builds bulletproof stormtrooper suit with 3-D printer.” Caveat: Not all of it is bullet-proof and it took 400-600 hours to make.
  • Gaming the buffet. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Too painful to laugh, too funny not to laugh. Bet she was pissed off… (Hat tip: Michele Frost.)
  • Looks staged. Still funny.