It’s Monday, August 10th, 2020…and 75 years ago today, Emperor Hirohito bowed to the irresistible might of the industrial giant his nation awakened from its slumber the morning of December 7, 1941:

“I do not desire any further destruction of cultures, nor any additional misfortune for the peoples of the world. On this occasion, we have to bear the unbearable.“

Who could have imagined a U.S. President would abase himself and his country by bowing to Hirohito’s son 64 years later:

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, in a must-read…we say again, MUST-READ…commentary at The American Mind via Jeff Foutch, Angelo Codevilla offers no quarter to any of the parties and individuals involved as he details the unpleasant reality of…

The COVID Coup

And how to unlock ourselves.

“Panicked by fears manufactured by the ruling class, the American people assented to being put essentially under house arrest until further notice, effectively suspending the habits, preferences, and liberties that had defined our way of life. Most Americans have suffered economic damage. Many who do not enjoy protected status have had careers ended and been reduced to penury. Social strains and suicides multiplied. Forcibly deferring all manner of medical care is sure to impose needless suffering and death. In sum, the lockdowns’ medical and economic dysfunctions make for multiples of the deaths and miseries of the COVID-19 virus itself.

Bad judgments and usurpations—the scam, not the germs—define this disaster’s dimensions. The COVID-19’s devastating effect on the U.S. body politic is analogous to what diseases do to persons whom age (senectus ipsa est morbus) and various debilities and corruptions had already placed on death’s slippery slope.

Outside of the few who have gained (and are still gaining) power and wealth from the panic, Americans are asking what it will take to end this outrage—not to modify it with any “new normal” decided by who knows whom, on who knows what authority. Since no one in authority is leading those who want to end it, Americans also wonder who may lead that cause. What follows suggests answers.

What history will record as the great COVID scam of 2020 is based on 1) a set of untruths and baseless assertions—often outright lies—about the novel coronavirus and its effects; 2) the production and maintenance of physical fear through a near-monopoly of communications to forestall challenges to the U.S.. ruling class, led by the Democratic Party, 3) defaulted opposition on the part of most Republicans, thus confirming their status as the ruling class’s junior partner. No default has been greater than that of America’s Christian churches—supposedly society’s guardians of truth.

Since obfuscation, pretense, and lies concerning the COVID-19 are the effective agents of the panic and of the seizure of arbitrary power, truth and clarity about it are the foundational requirements for escaping its effects. Here is a dose…”

Though what follows is lengthy, it’s as complete a compilation of the truth as we’ve viewed to date, and provides a great resource when engaging those still convinced their life depends upon destroying the lives of tens of millions of their fellow Americans.

In other words, whatever anyone’s intentions back on March 15th when Trump called for a two-week nationwide shutdown to “flatten the curve”, since then, it’s been all about defeating The Donald on November 3rd.

Since we’re on the subject of those willing to sacrifice others for their own personal gain, writing at NRO, Kevin Williamson recounts…

The Decline and Fall of the National Rifle Association

And the rise of something sinister

“Wayne LaPierre is not the first nonprofit high-roller.

One of the scandals of the 1990s that never quite got off the ground the way Democrats had hoped had to do with how much the Red Cross paid its CEO, at the time Elizabeth Dole, who had been labor secretary in the George H. W. Bush administration and was wife to then-Senator Bob, soon thereafter the 1996 Republican presidential nominee. The Red Cross paid Mrs. Dole $200,000 a year, or about $380,000 in 2020 dollars, a $15,000 bump over what it had paid her predecessor. She donated her first year’s salary as a goodwill gesture.

There was never any serious argument that there was anything improper about Mrs. Dole’s salary. But that kind of a paycheck just feels unseemly to certain people — mostly those who do not themselves make a lot of money and believe that they really should. In reality, nonprofits and charities compete in the same labor market as any other institution, and high-end executives cost a lot of money. The highest-paid nonprofit CEOs of 2017 (the most recent year for which the Economic Research Institute has reported data) were mostly (but not exclusively) executives in health-care systems, and they were paid salaries similar to what they would expect to earn as executives in for-profit health-care systems or banks: $21.6 million for the president and CEO of Banner Health, $12 million for the head of Carilion, $11.9 million for the head of Money Management International, a nonprofit credit-counseling operation funded by institutions that want debtors to pay their debts. (“Nonprofit” does not imply the absence of self-interest.) The CEOs of large ($1 billion or more in assets) nonprofit credit unions make on average about a million and a half bucks a year, and the best-paid of them (again as of 2017) took home $12.5 million in total compensation. As with their colleagues in for-profit banking, credit-union CEOs usually draw a relatively small salary but can earn a great deal of money in performance-based pay by achieving certain business goals.

Against that background, it is important to understand that there are at least three things going on with the New York attorney general’s attempt to have the National Rifle Association legally dissolved: The first of those things is a political jihad that may or may not end with the NRA’s having its charter revoked but that certainly will subject it to ruinous litigation costs and disruption, a transparent effort to sideline it before the November election; the second is a longer-term effort to discredit the NRA by appealing to the same kind of envy-based politics that were deployed against Mrs. Dole all those years ago; the third, currently being treated almost as an afterthought, is a legitimate investigation into potential financial wrongdoing at the NRA, of which there is more than a whiff.

…What is going on in New York State is not about Wayne LaPierre’s bar tab or who pays for him to get from point a to point b in rock-star style. It is totalitarianism on the subscription plan, the slow emergence of a distributed police state whose headquarters is nowhere and whose jurisdiction is everywhere.“

We’ve never been a fan of Wayne LaPierre; his rhetoric’s repetitive, his communication skills significantly lacking, particularly for a position where the ability to articulate the goals and beliefs of one’s membership is so important.  Sorta like the NRA version of Sean Hannity.

Here’s the juice: membership in the NRA is voluntary; residency in managed care facilities is most often not.  It seems to us the Empire State A.G.’s time would be better spent investigating the decisions leading to the deaths of so many seniors in New York’s nursing homes, rather than politically-motivated grand-standing against an organization headquartered outside her jurisdiction. 

Then there’s this meme we created on the occasion of the latest act of perjury committed by a member of the Obama Cartel:

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s these five from Balls Cotton…

…along with a couple more from Mark Foster:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with yet another sordid story straight from the pages of The Crime Blotter, as Progressives’ Summer of Love and Lawlessness moves back to the nation’s capital:

Washington DC shooting kills teen, injures 20

Gunfire erupted at outdoor cookout that drew hundreds of people

“…Police responded to reports of shots fired shortly before 1 a.m. at a large gathering in the 3300 block of Dubois Place,  part of a residential neighborhood in southeast Washington. [Chief] Newsham said 20 people were wounded at the scene. At least 11 of the victims are female.

Christopher “Poppy” Brown, 17, was shot and pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, Fox 5 DC reported. An off-duty DC Metro police officer was shot and is “struggling for her life right now,” Newsham told reporters at the scene…

The gunfire erupted at a cookout with hundreds of people gathered outside, a neighbor told WUSA. Several social media posts advertised the annual “34th-n-EAT” block party to be held in the area Saturday night with bottles of alcohol and a DJ. Newsham said a dispute broke out at the gathering and several people produced weapons and exchanged gunfire.

The mayor said the gathering was illegal on a number of levels. “It is illegal to drink on the street in the District of Columbia; it is illegal to smoke marijuana on the street in the District of Columbia. It is illegal to be in a gathering of more than 50 – all of those things are not good,” she said…”

As per the advertisement above disseminated via social media details, the party started at 2200, which begs the question not only why an off-duty D.C. police officer attended such a gathering without reporting it, but more importantly why her colleagues didn’t act to break up the “illegal” gathering sooner?  Or do Muriel Bowser’s police no longer patrol the streets of Southeast D.C.?

When it comes to protecting the lives of darker-skinned American urbanites, it’s almost as if every Progressive politician in the country is down with the Don of Detroit:

Magoo