A Quick Run Around the Web (5/4/2020)

"How to build a Cache & Select a Site | Always be prepared"--Tactical Rifleman (47 min.)

A couple ex-Green Beret's discuss how they would go about caching supplies or a rifle, go about burying it, recording the location, and recovering it. I have a question, however, to those readers that might have experience with caching: is there a reason not to bury a cache tube vertically so you just have to dig down to the cap, remove the cap, and then pull the items out of the cache (you could put a sling under the cached items inside the tube when you stuff it into the tube so you could just pull on the rope or material and pull it all out) without removing the cache tube?

• "Department of Defense Chooses 6.5 Creedmoor Ammo from Hornady"--The Firearm Blog. The real story here is that the military is abandoning the .300 Winchester Magnum for the 6.5 Creedmoor.
• "An economical battery of guns for the backwoods home"--by Massad Ayoob at Backwoods Home Magazine. Short list: "At an absolute minimum, I would suggest four guns for the backwoods home. These would be a .22, a shotgun, a defensive-type handgun, and a high-powered rifle." Low cost .22 rifles he lists are the Mossberg Plinkster, the Ruger 10/22, and the Marlin Model 60. For the shotgun, the low cost examples he gives are the Mossberg 500 and Remington 870 pump shotguns. The high-powered rifle is seen by Ayoob as primarily a hunting weapon, and therefore will depend on where you live and what game you intend to hunt; he mentions lever-actions like the Winchester Model 94 .30-30 and Marlin Model 336 as possibilities, as well bolt-action rifles shooting modern center-fire loads. Because it is for hunting, Ayoob does describe the high-powered rifle as optional if you don't plan on doing any hunting. As for handguns, Ayoob writes:

Cost effective choice: For a small .38 Special or .357 Magnum revolver with a short barrel that lives in your pants pocket, a Ruger, Taurus, or Smith & Wesson will do nicely. The MSRP can range from low $400 to around a grand. In a holster-size semiautomatic pistol in a caliber with authority (9mm, .40, .45, or .357 SIG) you’re looking at Glock, Ruger, SIG, Smith & Wesson and Taurus in a roughly $400-700 range bought new.

But he also suggests a .44 Magnum if you are in big bear country.

• "Concealed Carry Corner: Things To Consider When Carrying In A Vehicle"--The Firearm Blog. Main takeaway is that laws on carrying a weapon in a vehicle vary considerably from state to state, or even from one county or community to another. Even the definition of what constitutes a "loaded" firearm varies widely.  
• "Knife Defense Exercises You Need to Practice"--Survival Sullivan. The author writes:

      Defending against a knife attack is a high-stakes all-or-nothing affair; it is certainly not the flashy, artistic series of feints and parries you see on the big screen or demonstrated by practitioners of Far East martial arts. Knives are easy to hide and blindingly quick into action.

     Many victims do not even know they are being attacked by a knife until they see their own blood gushing out of their bodies. This is something you simply cannot get wrong, and anything less than subconsciously programmed and relentlessly drilled responses will fail.

     Today, let this article serve as a primer for your entry into the world of knife defense techniques and tactics. While no article on the internet, even here on Survival Sullivan, will ever replace training, blood, sweat and effort for keeping you safe, it can serve as a guide to point you in the right direction.

He continues:

      Knife-defense techniques that work in the real world don’t look good. At least they don’t compared to the traditional fancypants stuff above we talked about. They look ugly, brutal and crude.

     You might say they look like a fight looks. That’s because they do, and that’s what you’ll be in. If you want to get out of the fight with the same number of holes you came into it with, you had better start paying attention.

     Knife defense is not about fending the knife off all day long. Even if you are supremely fast, strong and coordinated, you’ll get cut and/or stabbed eventually.

     As your wounds pile up and the bad guy keeps coming, you’ll be losing more and more blood and he’ll be getting closer and closer to that big payday stab deep into your trunk or a limb. Then it’s over.

    Instead, knife defense for success revolves around three simple concepts: One, stuff the attack before you are hurt, or stop the follow-on attacks if you get caught unawares.

     Two, tie up or immobilize the “sharp” limb to minimize its threat or remove it from play entirely. Three, go on the offensive tearing into the attacker with such rage and ferocity the urn containing his parent’s ashes will scream in terror.

Read the whole thing.

• "Why 'Moderate' Pro-Gun Groups like ACRGO Always Fail"--All Outdoor. This 2015 article is still true today:

      The main reason that these fake pro-gun groups keep cropping up is that there’s a perpetual fantasy on some parts of the left that goes something like this: if only there were a reasonable, non-insane alternative to the NRA, then everyday, sensible, non-extremist gun owners would surely turn out in droves to sign up. Thus, the reasoning then goes, why don’t we find a semi-celebrity spokesperson who also happens to be a gun owner and make one!

      Unfortunately for the people who think this way, the only NRA alternatives that have gotten any traction in recent years are even further toward the gun rights absolutist end of the spectrum than the NRA. If the folks who dream up and fund these “moderate” gun organizations had actually talked to real gun owners, then they’d find that most are concerned that the NRA is too squishy on gun rights, not too extreme, hence the growth of gun rights orgs that are even more stringent.

• "An Argument for DA/SA Pistols"--Modern Survival Online. I've seen a lot of good arguments why double-action/single-action pistols (where the first shot is a double-action pull starting with the hammer decocked and the following are single-action) are passé, at best, or obsolete monstrosities at worst. The typical argument focuses on the difference between the two modes of fire and that the long DA pull will result in the first shot being missed. And its true that the trigger pull for even the best double-actions on a pistol are heavy and long. But, just as there arguments for carrying a revolver in this age of high-capacity auto-loaders, there are also arguments in favor of the DA/SA handgun. The author writes:

      The current gestalt among pistol shooters is that striker gun-equals-better gun for all the reasons I mentioned above; simpler, consistent, easier to shoot, etc.

     Are those qualities all that matter in a defensive gun? Is raw “shooting” performance the first and only barometer of a good defensive gun?

     I say no, that while it is certainly important there is far more that can and will occur when it is time for you to defend your life with a gun in hand, and the design and operation of that pistol will either contribute to keeping you safe or help set you up for failure.

After discussing the reasoning for the single-action or striker-fired pistol, the author continues:

      A student with a DA/SA semi or DA revolver whose teacher preaches the old dogma of placing just the tip of the trigger finger on the trigger to shoot will quickly become frustrated with their lack of performance and annoyed with how difficult the gun is to operate.

     You don’t pull one of those longer, heavier triggers the same way as you would a custom 1911 with a 3 lb. trigger. More leverage is needed to yield the control required to move these heavier triggers to the rear consistently.

     The trigger itself is particularly important on a DA/SA pistol. Weight is often emphasized here, with lighter being better (and it often is) but of even greater importance is that the trigger be smooth and hitch-free.

     A smooth, consistent trigger is easy to manage and shoot well with just a little bit of practice, even for beginners. Paying proper attention to grip and trigger finger placement is easily taught and more importantly easily executed. After that first shot and the gun transitions to single action mode most students are in for smooth sailing.

     As far as the rest of the case against DA/SA pistols having a complex manual of arms, I refuse to subscribe to that notion in any way. Compared to the majority of striker-fired pistols that lack decockers or manual safeties, sure, a typical DA/SA gun is more complicated… By a matter of exactly one extra step!

     Critics of these pistols would have you believe that running one additional switch, the decocker or safety-decocker, at the conclusion of shooting is simply too great a burden to bear and too hard to teach to your average adult.

He then moves on to what he considers the advantage to a double-action first shot:

      A longer, heavier trigger is more likely to prevent an unintended discharge than a lighter one. No two ways about it. If a finger or foreign object should make its way into the trigger guard when no shot is intended and begin to apply pressure to the trigger, a short, light trigger will result in a discharge more often and more quickly than the aforementioned long pull. I can hear some hate simmering in the comments already…

     I have heard from many peers, readers and dissenters who proclaim any modern handgun more than safe enough irrespective of action if only the user is well trained enough to keep their stinkin’ finger off the trigger. That is the key absolute to safety, they say, and will hear no discussion to the contrary.

     Fair enough. Most unintended discharges are indeed negligent instead of truly accidental so their claim has merit. But what if I told you that their entire premise is a flawed one? And more than that that the vagaries and stress of a life-or-death encounter means managing your pistol entails far more than just getting a short mouse-click trigger press before sending lead downrange?

     While I do not doubt that many readers are extremely well trained and take their practice as seriously as life itself, I do doubt very much their claims of flawlessness, that they won’t make mistakes and that sheer bad luck has never overtaken them.

      I have trained and trained with too many shooters who I would consider excellent and reviewed too much video of both live events and seriously high-pressure force-on-force training to believe in perfection when it comes to trigger finger discipline any more.

     Whether from extreme stress, fatigue or fear, a curious phenomenon manifests itself in these situations, which is that of the shooter quickly, briefly placing their finger down onto the trigger seemingly in an effort to ascertain that it is still there.

     This pre-emptive positioning most often occurs with the shooter having no conscious knowledge of it occurring. During a later debrief when it is brought up to them they swear on all that is good and holy that they did no such thing.

     But cameras do not lie, and the proof is positive: this curious glitch whatever you care to call it does occur, and should it happen on a gun with a light, short trigger when muscles are tense or the shooter is startled the result can be an ND.

     The long, heavy pull of the first DA shot provides more feedback to the shooter between pressure accumulating on the trigger and bang that “something is happening,” and this can be enough to correct the deficiency.

     Furthermore, a long trigger pull can allow a shooter to back off of a trigger in time before breaking the shot should the need to shoot vanish or new information change the scenario.

     With light single-action and striker-fired pistols there is precious little that happens between “decision to fire” and “bang,” and while a double-action pull does not take that much more, it is sufficiently long and tactile to allow a shooter to cancel the shot should the need arise.

Another advantage he discusses is there being a hammer on the DA/SA autos, because it gives you some control and tactile feedback when holstering the weapon. That is, if you have used a decocker to let down the hammer, attempt to reholster and your shirt gets tangled in the holster and starts to pull the trigger, you will be able to tell if you keep you thumb on the hammer (as you should) when reholstering. The author adds:

      Once again, it is too easy to proclaim that it won’t happen to you, that you are safe, reholster carefully and verify the mouth of the holster is clear of any obstructions before proceeding. Yeah, you are that good, or maybe it is just hubris worming its way into your mind.

     If this capability was only a fringe benefit as some have suggested why would companies like Tau Development group and their Striker Control Device, or “Gadget” be gaining a small but vocal and legitimate group of expert striker gun users in professional circles?

     The Gadget, in case you are unfamiliar, is a replacement backplate for Glocks that features an articulated hinge or button that is depressed by the user’s thumb during reholstering in order to prevent the striker from moving to the rear, which in turn prevents the trigger bar from moving which in turn halts the trigger itself. This akin to what your thumb should do when holstering a gun with a hammer and accomplishes the same thing.

     Sounds like capability like that is, perhaps, a good thing to have during what is statistically one of the most dangerous operations you can perform with your pistol- holstering it. Something to think about.

      I've carried and shot SA-only 1911 style handguns carrying cocked and locked, DA/SA handguns, double-action revolvers, and striker fired pistols. They all have pluses and minuses. I would also offer an additional argument in favor of DA/SA pistols: when doing dry fire practice, you don't have to rack the slide between each "shot." 

       By the way, if use a 9 mm Glock pistol with the standard width slide for concealed carry, I would definitely recommend the Glock gadget. It is worth that extra peace of mind when holstering.

• On a similar note: "The Value of a Hammer"--Priority Performance. The author argues:

A hammer on a handgun gives us an extra layer of safety. If we control the hammer while holstering not only will it give us tactile feedback of what the trigger is doing, but it has mechanical advantage over the trigger. If pressure is applied to the hammer, the trigger cannot move to the rear. If something were to inadvertently press the trigger, like an untucked shirt, or the draw string on a pullover, or magic fairies bent on our demise, it (or they) wouldn’t be able to press the trigger as long as we maintained pressure on the hammer.

This author also offers up the Striker Control Device (SCD) as an example of the continued need for some tactile way of being sure you are holstering safely.

• Never say "never": "Four Reasons to NEVER Carry Just a .38 Snubnose"--Ammo Land. "RIP my inbox – but hear me out before you glass me from orbit," the author writes. He goes on to contend that "[a] snub-nosed, double-action-only revolver in any caliber is a very difficult firearm to shoot both accurately and quickly." By "accurately" he is complaining of the heavy DA trigger pull and recoil. By "quickly" he means to reload. The accuracy issue is a matter of practice and finding the right grips/stocks. The people from Ergo Grips wouldn't know me from Adam, and I don't get anything for saying this, but their Delta Grip really can make a big difference. As for "quickly" I guess it comes down to whether you think you are going to be a statistical outlier to Frank McGee's “rule of three” as to the average gunfight: three rounds, three yards, three seconds. For many years, my primary carry gun was a 5-shot J-frame. But in the last couple years, I've also carried a 6-round "pocket sized" semi-auto and a larger, 13-round semi-auto. 
• "Leatherman P4 Review"--Loose Rounds. Short take is that the multi-tool was cheaply made and wasn't very good.
• "First look: KelTec P17 pistol"--Bayou Renaissance Man. He likes it so far, but promises a more detailed review after he has been able to shoot it some more.
• "The Trust Deficit"--City Journal. Excerpt:

      ... In case after case, we see leaders—from ship crews to local police to federal officials—who seem more concerned about potentially unruly behavior by ordinary citizens than about the crisis at hand. In reality, most civilians show impressive calm and resilience in emergencies. Nonetheless, authorities find it hard to shake their fear that any big disruption will turn the public into a panicked, or even criminal, mob. In response, they often try to limit or spin information, clamp down on public movement, and step up measures against anticipated lawbreaking.

       It’s understandable that officials want civilians to stay put and out of trouble during disasters. That’s usually good advice—but not always. People on the upper floors of the World Trade Center were told to “shelter in place”—standard procedure at the time—after planes struck the towers on 9/11. The only survivors from those floors were those who defied the instructions. In 2014, hundreds of South Korean high school students obediently followed orders to stay below decks while the ocean-going ferry MV Sewol took on water and sank, killing more than half of the 476 passengers and crew on board. Authorities also frequently mobilize to prevent anticipated spasms of lawbreaking. After the Alaska earthquake of 1964, officials in Anchorage temporarily halted searching for survivors in order to defend downtown stores from a nonexistent army of looters.

"Solar Superstorms | Ending the Modern World"--Suspicious Observers (14 min.)

• "How to Get Blood Stains Out of Sheets"--Apartment Therapy. "There’s a high chance you’ve had the unpleasant experience of waking up to blood-stained sheets at some point in your life," the author notes. Yeah, like after that drug-fueled drinking binge in Bangkok ten years ago. Just kidding, but it is amazing how omitting a handful of words can be used to make something sound worse than it really is. Anyway, the article continues:

 It can be panic-inducing to find blood on your bed sheets or pillow case, but the most important first step is not to panic—the cleaning process isn’t as bad as you think.The second step? Strip your bed and gather your supplies. The stain-removing task at hand is far from impossible—it will just take a little time and effort to do it right.

      The author first offers some tips and advice: (1) start immediately before the blood dries because dried blood will cling more strongly to the fibers and be harder to remove; (2) always use COLD water as warm or hot water can also cause the blood to set; and (3), if the fabric is silk or wool, avoid enzyme cleaners (which are otherwise recommended) because they can damage the fabric. The author then offers up some recommendations on products to treat the stain: hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), "Wine Away," sodium percarbonate bleach alternatives such as "The Laundress’ All-Purpose Bleach Alternative," and "Nature's Miracle" (an enzymatic cleaner).

      Now for the steps:

1. Blot out the stain with a clean, dry cloth

      The first step is to remove any excess blood from the sheets. Use a dry cloth to gently blot at the stain, removing as much blood as you can from the sheet with a brush or cloth. You may want to adjust your cloth periodically to blot with a clean section of cloth, to avoid spreading the stain.

2. Rinse with cold water

      Dunk the stained area of the sheet in cold water to rinse, essentially to dilute the stain and make it easier to remove.

3. Treat with a stain-removing solution, then launder as usual

      Treat the stained area with your stain-removal product of choice, following whatever directions are on the label (or our directions above). Goodman recommends pre-treating by creating a soaking solution in a plastic bucket with 25 ml liquid detergent per gallon of cold water. Allow the stained portion of the sheet to soak for up to 30 minutes, using the weight of a towel to keep it totally submerged. After treatment, wash the sheets as you normally would, always making sure to use cold water.

4. Air- or line-dry your sheets

      If the stain remains after air drying, you should treat the stain again, or try an alternate method/product from the list above. Don’t machine-dry your item because the heat could set the stain. “It’s not impossible to get a stain out of something if you’ve run it through the dryer, but it will be a lot harder,” Richardson says.

And what about a dried blood stain or a stubborn stain?

      While it’s always best to attempt removing a stain as quickly as possible, you can still remove dried blood from your sheets with the same steps as above. But there’s an important first step, Richardson says. Just make sure the affected spot is moist before washing it. “Make the blood spot wet with some water, and then treat it like normal,” Richardson says. 

     If the stain is particularly stubborn, follow the same steps an additional time.

• "And then they came for Tolkien"--Vox Popoli. Vox Day notes that one of the SJWs latest targets is J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth works and, specifically, what they contend is the implied racism behind the portrayal of elves and orcs. According to the SJW he quotes, "Orcs are depicted in fantasy literature mirrors the racist tropes and narratives about indigenous and black people that was used to justify colonialism and slavery." The author then goes on to praise certain games for how they have re-imagined orcs. Of course, the mythology upon which Tolkien drew upon pre-existed European contact with "indigenous and black people," but we don't want to confuse the SJWs with facts. Besides, I think this has more to do with justifying the recycling of Tolkien's universe because the SJWs lack the creativity to come up with their own worlds than it has to do with addressing racism.

• Related: "Lovecraft Country’s first trailer teems with monsters, genre subversion, and social allegory"--Vox. HBO's new series "Lovecraft Country" is based on H.P. Lovecraft's works but with a twist: the main characters are blacks and it is set in the 1950s to the background of the Jim Crow era--as a dig to H.P. Lovecraft's supposed racism. That the New England states, where all of this supposedly takes place, didn't have Jim Crow laws, seems to have escaped the author's notice. Thus, again a situation where someone is using alleged racism to justify recycling someone else's works because he or she has no original, creative ideas.

• "Women are driving America into the future"--Fabius Maximus. Excerpt:

The progress of feminism is the chief manifestation of the Left’s power. It is one of the largest social engineering experiments in history (e.g., see this and this). The first three waves of feminism obtained increasingly broad forms of equality, each facing weaker opposition. Now we have fourth-wave feminism – the quest for superiority. It abandons any pretense of society as a joint endeavor of men and women. It is about organizing women to work for their own benefit.

As an example, my wife and I watch a couple television programs on IMDb's streaming service, and I've noticed this past week an ad from Tide honoring the first responders and people on the front line of "fighting" the Wuhan virus, and all the fire fighters, police, nurses, etc., are women.

• "Unconscious Contempt"--The Rational Male. Excerpt:

       I’ve seen a few of these “I got a vasectomy and my wife thinks it’s funny” social media posts before this one. Creating little post-it note jokes to apply to the snacks in the pantry might seem cute, but why is this even a thing? Why is it women/wives think it’s cute to publicly ridicule their partner about the impotence he elected to have? Amongst the Facebook and Instagram shots of her life, amongst the motivational quote memes, and among the complaints about kids, marriage and domestic life a moment of ridiculing their husband seems par for the course. And it’s all acceptable so long as the context is one of being ‘all in fun’.

* * *

      Imagine what the outrage would be on social media were you to make ‘cute’ jokes in the same way about your wife’s uterine ablation or tubal ligation. At the very least women wouldn’t think it was funny. No one tells women, “Lighten up. What, are you so insecure in your femininity that you can’t take a joke?” When a woman is rendered infertile it doesn’t occur to anyone to make light of it, but for a man to be neutered – and at the mutual agreement with his wife – we find the hit to his masculinity hilarious. Why is this?

• Because it's ugly: "WHY YOU HATE CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE"--Current Affairs. From the lede:

The British author Douglas Adams had this to say about airports: “Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of special effort.” Sadly, this truth is not applicable merely to airports: it can also be said of most contemporary architecture.

• Related: "Eyesores Galore" by Theodore Dalrymple at Taki's Magazine. He begins: "Compared with the slum dwellers of São Paulo who erect their own shacks in a day or two, the average French (or British) architect is a complete aesthetic illiterate and incompetent, or perhaps moron would be a better word for it. Aesthetically, if not hygienically, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro are to the modernist quarters of Paris what Fra Angelico is to Damien Hirst."

• "Hydroxychloroquine Saves Nursing Home In Texas: All Of The Models By The Professional Medical Community Are Wrong"--The Captain's Journal. There seems to be a lot of evidence that hydroxychloroquine can save lives, especially if administered early on (see, e.g., this article about a Chinese study). Another article, discussing the mechanism of how the Wuhan virus attacks the body and is blocked by hydroxychloroquine also notes:

Finally, further confirmation of this hypothesis is provided by the data collected in the register of the SIR (Italian Society of Rheumatology). In order to evaluate the possible correlations between chronic patients and COVID-19 SIR interviewed 1,200 rheumatologists throughout Italy to collect statistics on contagions. Out of an audience of 65,000 chronic patients (Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis), who systematically take Plaquenil/hydroxychloroquine, only 20 patients tested positive for the virus. Nobody died, and nobody is in intensive care, according to the data collected so far.

But, instead of supporting the use of hydroxychloroquine, the top bureaucrats medical experts like director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Anthony Fauci are touting an expensive, still patented remdesivir, which the FDA has approved for use by patients suffering from coronavirus. In backing use of the drug, Fauci stated: "The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery." Nevertheless, as the same article makes clear, "[f]or now, there simply isn’t enough data to be certain of how remdesivir changes outcomes for patients suffering from COVID-19. Only a handful of studies have been conducted so far, and results have been mixed." The article continues:

       Fauci’s praise for the drug referred to a recent, government sponsored study where around 1,000 COVID-19 patients were treated with either remdesivir or a placebo, with neither the patients nor their caregivers knowing which they received (this is known as a controlled double-blind study). While there was no statistical significance in the small difference in mortality rate between the two groups, remdesivir patients spent less time in the hospital overall: an average of 11 days compared to 15.

      A shorter hospital stay means less time spent at risk of developing complications. It also means ICU beds and ventilators can open up to serve other patients more quickly. But the study’s full data hasn’t been released to the public or reviewed by other scientists, so it’s difficult to know how these results could be applied to patients in general.

* * *

      Gilead recently released the findings of its own study conducted over the last several weeks, which reported positive results. However, this study didn’t compare remdesivir to a placebo—it only tested patients taking either five- or ten-day courses of the drug. That means its data doesn’t prove that remdesivir is more effective than no antivirals or other types of treatments. A third study conducted in China, which focused on patients with more severe COVID-19 than those studied in US trials, reported no significant benefit from remdesivir.

Nevertheless, reports Quartz:

The pharmaceutical supply chain is moving rapidly to treat coronavirus patients. On May 1, the US Food and Drug Administration granted the antiviral drug remdesivir emergency use authorization, meaning it can be used as treatment. The head of the Gilead Sciences, which makes remdesivir, today said the company had donated its full supply to the US government, and that federal authorities will begin shipping the drug across the country in the next few days.

There is something fishy going on here what with Fauci dissing hydroxychloroquine but throwing his support of remdesivir on less evidence than that supporting the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, the coordinated attempts to discourage doctors from using hydroxycholoroquine, and the media bandwagon clearly being in the anti-hydroxychloroquine camp.

• It's no longer about flattening the curve. The Boston Globe complains "Six weeks after social distancing began, Mass. coronavirus hospitalizations and cases remain high. Why so little improvement?" The article relates:

“A lot of the models were a little bit misleading in terms of suggesting that there would be these nice, perfect bell curves,” said Thomas Tsai, a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “And what we are seeing is that, realistically, instead of a peak and then a rapid climb down the mountain, so to speak, there’s more of a plateau, especially when it comes to hospitalizations and deaths, because those are lagged behind development of new cases by a few weeks.”

Hmm. Curve no longer bell-shaped, but showing a plateau: that is the very definition of flattening a curve! 

       John Nolte, writing at Breitbart, expresses the growing frustration:

       In order to flatten the curve of the coronavirus, the politicians told us we must lockdown and be quarantined while our economy collapsed. They told us we had to flatten the curve to ensure our health care system was not overwhelmed by the sick and dying. They told us that if the health care system was overwhelmed, people would die who could otherwise be saved. They told us losing people who can be saved is intolerable, and America agreed…

       And so, for the first time in recorded history, healthy Americans dutifully fulfilled our end of the bargain and went into quarantine by dutifully agreeing to go into lockdown while our economy collapsed.

       And now we know we were suckers…

      Now we know the politicians lied to us.

      This was never about saving the healthcare system from crashing, because we have saved the system from crashing, and most of us are still in these goddamned lockdowns.

       He asks why extend the lock downs? But that is to ask why the scorpion stings or the snake bites--it is the nature of government and our elites. "Past Crises Have Ratcheted Up Leviathan. The COVID-19 Pandemic Will Too," proclaims Reason Magazine. And, frankly, a lot of the elites simply like to see much of the country locked up. Breitbart reports, for instance:

       Robert Redford and his son, film director James Redford, say one of the “pleasant surprises” of the Chinese coronavirus is how lockdown measures have been a means for “potential environmental repair.”

     “As many of the world’s transportation and industrial sectors have reduced operations, there has been a remarkable decline in global levels of carbon dioxide emissions,” wrote the Redfords in an op-ed published by NBC News on Thursday.

       There is certainly no factual reason for continuing the lock downs as long as some are suggesting. "The latest figures on overall death rates from all causes show no increase at all. Deaths are lower than in 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2015, slightly higher than in 2016. Any upward bias is imparted by population growth." 

       Now writing a book on the crisis with bestselling author Jay Richards, Briggs concludes: “Since pneumonia deaths are up, yet all deaths are down, it must mean people are being recorded as dying from other things at smaller rates than usual.” Deaths from other causes are simply being ascribed to the coronavirus.

     As usual every year, deaths began trending downward in January. It’s an annual pattern. Look it up. Since the lockdown began in mid-March, the politicians cannot claim that their policies had anything to do with the declining death rate.

      A global study published in Israel by Professor Isaac Ben-Israel, chairman of the Israeli Space Agency and Council on Research and Development, shows that “the spread of the coronavirus declines to almost zero after 70 days—no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it.”

      In fact, by impeding herd immunity, particularly among students and other non-susceptible young people, the lockdown in the U.S. has prolonged and exacerbated the medical problem. As Briggs concludes, “People need to get out into virus-killing sunshine and germicidal air.”

     This flu like all previous viral flues will give way only to herd immunity, whether through natural propagation of an extremely infectious pathogen, or through the success of one of the hundreds of vaccine projects.

     No evidence indicates that this flu was exceptionally dangerous. On March 20th, the French published a major controlled study that shows no excess mortality at all from coronavirus compared to other flues. SARS and Mers were both much more lethal and did not occasion what Briggs’ reader “Uncle Dave” described as “taking a hammer and sickle to the economy.”

      We now know that the crisis was a comedy of errors. The Chinese let it get going in the raw bat markets of Wuhan. But together with the Koreans, the Chinese dithered and demurred and allowed six weeks of rampant propagation to create herd immunity before they began locking everyone up. Therefore, the Chinese and Koreans were among the first to recover.

      The Italians scared everybody with their haphazard health system and smoking fogies. Crammed together in subways and tenements, the New Yorkers registered a brief blip of extreme cases. Intubations and ventilators turned out not to help (80 percent died). This sowed fear and frustration among medical personnel slow to see that the problem was impaired hemogloblin in the blood rather than lung damage.

      The New York media piled on with panic, with bogus reports of rising deaths. “Coronavirus deaths” soared by assuming that people dying with the virus were dying from it and then by ascribing to the coronavirus other deaths among people with symptoms of pulmonary distress, even without being tested.

Yet as the statistics stack up and show that all of the models are wrong, the "experts" are once again relying on a modeling study from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota to claim that the disease won't be contained for at least another two years. But Americans are not going to stay in lock down for much longer--the walls are already cracking as more and more Americans decide to ignore lock down orders and/or protest those orders. In Michigan, which has suffered under the tyrannical Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, armed protesters rallied at the Capital to protest any extension of the emergency powers given to Whitmer (the legislature voted against the extension, but Whitmer contends she doesn't need legislative authority to extend lock downs, which will probably lead to a showdown between the legislature and the governor). Marches were also held last week in North Carolina to protest the lock down in that state.Chicago residents have torn down fences to get into locked down city parks. A handful of sheriffs in Washington and Arizona have stated that they will no longer enforce lock down orders.

      But, as with all other things, there are two sets of laws: one for the elites and those for the general peasantry. Thus, we see Illinois Governor Pritzker was discovered to have recently sent his wife and kids to Florida during the state stay-at-home orders. Last month, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot went to a hairstylist visit amid coronavirus outbreak, despite barbers and stylist's businesses being shut down for public safety. While New York City remains under lockdown, Mayor de Blasio still goes jogging in a park 12 miles from his home, and even visited the YMCA. And Michelle Obama released a recorded message in which she said, “Remember, we urge you to stay home except if you need essential healthcare, essential food or supplies or to go to your essential job,” even as her husband, former President Obama, went to play a round of golf. 

• Extending the research on the lack of social cohesion in diverse communities: "Diversity and the Death of Labor"--Unz Report. Excerpt:

      Bombshell leaked emails showing that Amazon strikebreakers uses racial diversity to ensure workers at Whole Foods never unionize only confirms taboo research showing that multiculturalism destroys civic cohesion and engagement of all kinds.

      Unionized workers — and their threat to strike — is a massive threat to executive bonuses and a companies stock value. America’s plutocrats are the wealthiest in the world, even as living standards for the majority decline.

      According to Amazon’s internal documents, more racially homogenous stores, which is usually codeword for white, have higher rates of sales, but tend to be “hot spots” for the threat of unionization. In other words, it’s not even totally economic, but also a question of power. Jeff Bezos would rather sell fewer products than have to negotiate any conditions with his workers.

• Related: "Bush Center Slams Trump: We Want More Migration"--Breitbart. 

      The economics director at President George W. Bush’s advocacy center slammed President Donald Trump’s popular, pro-American immigration policy.

     The May 1 slam came just before Bush posted a May 2 video urging national unity in the coronavirus crash that has pushed more than 25 million Americans out of jobs.

     “The most important thing to remember in this is that we don’t want [Trump’s] temporary policy to become permanent immigration policy,” economic director Laura Collins said a video posted on the center’s Twitter account. 

• An inconvenient truth: "NOAA Satellite records second largest 2-month temperature drop in history"--Watts Up With That. 

      In April, 2020, the Northern Hemisphere experienced its 2nd largest 2-month drop in temperature in the 497-month satellite record.

      The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for April, 2020 was +0.38 deg. C, down from the March, 2020 value of +0.48 deg. C.

      The Northern Hemisphere temperature anomaly fell from +0.96 deg. C to 0.43 deg. C from February to April, a 0.53 deg. C drop which is the 2nd largest 2-month drop in the 497-month satellite record. The largest 2-month drop was -0.69 deg. C from December 1987 to February 1988.