OBSERVATIONS ON THE GREAT HUNKERING (15) [WITH COMMENT BY JOHN]

• There is so much good (and also bad) analytical work appearing every day that calls into question the conventional wisdom about both COVID-19 and the hard lockdown remedy that just about every country has adopted. There’s so much that I can’t keep up, and can’t decide from day to day which items to pass along to Power Line readers. Fortunately for us, the British journalist Toby Young has put together a pretty good one-stop-shopping site called Lockdown Sceptics. Worth a look each day.

Other good recent reads on lockdown skepticism include Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic (“Take the Shutdown Skeptics Seriously“), and Matt Ridley writing about the train wreck of Neil Ferguson’s “crude mathematical guesswork.”

• How the virus crisis is going to play out in the election in November is wholly unclear at this point. Democrats are going to try to blame Trump for whatever economic woes linger by saying he failed to address the problem early enough or effectively enough. Hard to say whether this will work, or whether Trump’s instinct for the counterpunch will serve him well or ill.

But Democrats may have done us a great favor in proposing an additional $3 trillion spending bill this week, because two of their priorities may not play very well with voters in many of the key states. First, they want to bail out fiscally unsound blue states like California, Illinois, Connecticut, and New York, and they want to revive the SALT (state and local tax) deduction that the Trump tax reform eliminated. If Democrats sweep the election in November, you can expect this package to be high on their agenda for the next Congress.

If Democrats sweep the election in November

....The country is dead. Post Trump era will be ugly very quickly. The left will smell blood. I would prep and get 2A abundant expecting the very worst SHTF. It would be advisable to stay out of the DNC controlled areas.

“...The country is dead. Post Trump era will be ugly very quickly. The left will smell blood. I would prep and get 2A abundant expecting the very worst SHTF. It would be advisable to stay out of the DNC controlled areas”.

Many of us feel this way. Young and old we see the current attempted destruction of the Constitution and Amendments as disastrous. Many of us think Pelosi and her group could be successfully prosecuted as traitors. I see no reason not to...if nothing else, it would make very clear what constitutes treason.

Some of us see the division between logical thinking and emotional output as so divisive it cannot be bridged. It is a shame our schools have gotten so bad we think this is a problem.

The sun had just set on Dec. 25, 1776. Troublesome storm clouds were brewing in the darkened skies. George Washington stood at the shore of the Delaware River, looking for any signs from the far side. His thoughts were heavy with new intelligence that indicated the British might be planning their own crossing, perhaps within days, when the river finally froze over. He turned to his trusted artillery chief, Henry Knox. Washington allowed himself a rueful smile as he remembered what he and Knox had shared through the last dreadful months. "Henry, old friend, what do you think?" Washington asked. "Well General, I..." Washington screamed. "He's got a virus! Everyone back in their tents for a mandatory 14 day quarantine!!!" The British crossed two days later and wiped out the continental army, still shivering in their tents. And that, boys and girls, is why we spell words in odd ways, like "colour" and "harbour", and why every magazine in the supermarkets contains fawning stories about the royal family. God Save the Queen. Two years later, Washington was led up the gallows in London, to be executed for treason. A huge crowd had gathered, and though no one would dare say it aloud, the looks on many faces showed a sadness, a loss, as thoughts turned to what might have been. As the noose was placed around his neck, the executioner asked "Do you have any final words?" Washington smiled a triumphant smile. "I may have lost the war, but no man can deny that my bold actions slowed the spread."

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