It’s Friday, November 19th, 2021…but before we begin, the Morning Jolt recognizes an inauspicious milestone for a wholly-unnecessary event, as he marks…

A Disquieting Anniversary

My younger son’s science teacher told him yesterday that it was the two-year anniversary of the first COVID-19 case. That teacher is correct, at least as far as we know, in the sense that the South China Morning Post reported in March 2020 that the Chinese government believed the first known patient was a 55-year-old Hubei province resident, diagnosed on November 17, 2019. Because the Chinese government never shared that information, no one can independently verify it. So “Patient Zero” who started the pandemic might have been that 55-year-old Hubei province resident, or it could be someone else, such as the three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology who became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care and who lost their sense of smell. But hey, maybe (As 46*, all our intelligence agencies and health bureaucrats would have us believe!) it’s just a big strange coincidence! Big strange coincidences ALWAYS seem to happen involving the Chinese government!

In another WuFlu-related item, Jim Geraghty suggests you…

Don’t Fear Thanksgiving…Unless You’re a Turkey

“As we start Year Three of the COVID-19 pandemic, a minor rise in cases has a bunch of media voices warning that the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday is a potential disaster.

“Holiday COVID alarm as cases rise 20 percent,” warns Axios.

“We’re Having a Holiday Gathering. Are We Nuts?” asks the New York Times.

“Philadelphia Health Officials Concerned Region Could See New Wave Of COVID-19 Cases As Holidays Approach,” reports the Philadelphia CBS affiliate.

But these warnings and expressions of concern are focusing on the measuring stick of an increase in the daily rate of new cases, and as I try to emphasize, over and over again, cases are no longer the most useful measuring stick for the severity and risk of this pandemic.

COVID-19 and the Delta variant are going to keep jumping around from person to person for the foreseeable future. A vaccinated person can still catch COVID-19, and they can still carry it and spread it to others. Vaccination’s primary objective is to prevent you from having a severe reaction to the virus — up to and including death — if you do catch it. While vaccinated and unvaccinated people carry a comparable “viral load” — how much of the virus is in their systems — a recent study indicated that the viral load decreased faster for fully vaccinated people with a Delta infection than for unvaccinated people. The less time the virus is in your system, the less likely you are to spread it to someone else.

In the majority of cases, vaccinated people who get exposed to COVID-19 are either asymptomatic or have minor, manageable symptoms. The country has had more than 48 million diagnosed COVID-19 cases by now.

The more useful measuring sticks for the severity of the pandemic are hospitalizations and deaths. COVID-19 hospitalizations are down 1 percent in the past two weeks, and COVID-19 deaths are down 14 percent in the past two weeks. Right now, the U.S. has about 49,000 hospital beds being used by COVID-19 patients; back in early September, that number was about 95,000. In early January, it was about 125,000 on any given day…”

Wake up and smell the totalitarianism, America.  Then again, as this meme from Balls Cotton suggests…

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, FOX reports…

NPR is slammed over story highlighting ‘disappointment’ over Boston electing Asian woman mayor

NPR deemed Wu’s win a ‘letdown’ for some after she defeated African-American candidates

“…“Michelle Wu, an Asian American, is the first woman and first person of color elected to lead the city. While many are hailing it as a turning point, others see it as more of a disappointment that the three Black candidates couldn’t even come close,” NPR tweeted. It deleted the tweet after online criticism, although the thrust of the story remained the same.“

Which helps explain, as The Washington Free Beacon via White House Dossier reports, support for Democrats is slipping with Asian-American voters.

Speaking of the impact of inherent, institutional racism, NRO‘s Charlie Cooke records…

The Collapse of Kamala Harris

You hate to see it.

“…At CNN this week, Donna Brazile suggested that the White House should keep “the vice president on the road almost constantly” — which sounded like an eminently pragmatic way of ensuring that Harris remains safely out of the way until I realized that Brazile was envisioning Harris using those trips to talk to American voters. Harris, Brazile added, “is a wonderful messenger.” But is she? Really? Think back over Harris’s entire career. Can you find a single utterance of hers that has so much as approached being compelling or worthwhile? I doubt it. Harris is not interesting, she’s not substantive, she’s not provocative, or innovative, or wry. She’s not funny. She’s not amiable. She’s not accomplished or persuasive or adroit. She’s a heedless, cowardly, cackling cipher — an insipid, itinerant woolgatherer, whose first instinct in any situation is to resort to farcical platitudes or to suggest wanly that we should all have a “conversation about that.” Were she to be cast in a kids’ movie, it would not be as the hero, but as the ghastly mid-level bureaucrat who sends the hero’s dog to the pound halfway through the second act. All in all, there is no reason for anyone to be shocked by Harris’s failure, because there was no reason to anticipate that she’d end up as anything else. Presidential campaigns start off as vanity exercises in which overpaid marketing teams present their candidate as their candidate wishes ideally to be seen. When Harris was such a candidate, she gained 3 percent support in the polls. What, exactly, did her team think was going to happen when she was forced into the real world?

And what did Joe Biden think? Whatever it was, the gamble clearly did not come off. Were Biden more popular — and more alive — the disesteem in which his vice president is held might serve as a mere inconvenience. “Ah well,” he might think, “at least she’s not a threat.” But Joe Biden is not popular — and he’s not obviously alive, either — which makes his having chosen such a dud of an heir apparent a “big f***ing deal.” Absent a Nixon-Agnew-style cataclysm, the next cast of Democratic primary voters is going to have to choose one of three excruciating courses for 2024: (1) ask an 82-year-old Joe Biden to run for the White House again; (2) ask Kamala Harris to step in and take the reins; or (3) rip the party apart with a vigorously contested primary that, given the long lead-times that mark American politics, would last in one form or another for the lion’s share of Joe Biden’s post-midterm presidency.

You hate to see it.“

The only thing better than watching the Dimocratic Party rip itself apart in an orgy of self-inflicted wounds…

…would be having hot, buttered popcorn on hand while we enjoy the show.

Next, courtesy of The Corner, Jim Geraghty highlights the hypocrisy of dealing with Beijing as anything but a tyrannical totalitarian terrorists, as a… 

Tennis Association CEO States ‘I Have a Hard Time Believing that Peng Shuai Actually Wrote the E-mail We Received.’

“Earlier today, Chinese state-run media ran stories purportedly quoting missing Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who recently accused former vice premier Zhang Gaoli of coercing her into sex. (Background here.) In the alleged released statement, Peng retracted her accusation of sexual assault, said, “I’ve just been resting at home and everything is fine,” and asked the Women’s Tennis Association to not publish any further news about her without verification from her. To say the released statement is unconvincing is an understatement.

…The fact that we have not seen Peng Shuai on camera is particularly unnerving; it is quite possible that for making her sexual coercion accusation public, the Chinese government or allies of Zhang Gaoli have abducted her and are detaining her, or, God forbid, something even worse has happened to her.

Who is willing to play along with this demonic charade? And who is willing to stand up to this?

And should a country like this be hosting the Winter Olympics in a few months?“

As if this same country being responsible, either inadvertently or deliberately…perhaps in collusion with Dimocrats looking to take Trump down by any means…for loosing the WuFlu upon the world, not sounding the alarm and then covering up its culpability was not enough.

Moving on, here’s a octet of specially selected stories certain to interest inquiring Conservative minds:

(1). NRO reports a recent poll indicates less than a year into his first term nearly half of voters are questioning nearly hafl of voters are questioning 46*’s mental fitness.  The other half are either profiting from his Socialist policies or as insensate as he is.  As the Morning Jolt observed:

“Since becoming president, Biden’s public comments have grown stranger and more meandering even by his usual standards. He has odd angry outbursts — “That was four or five days ago!” He holds to a light schedule, almost never does nighttime events, hasn’t sat down for an extended on-camera interview with any major journalist, and is spending as much time as possible at his Delaware home. He keeps insisting that he was never briefed on his options in Afghanistan, even as his military advisers have testified before Congress that he was.

Joe Biden has been in the public eye for decades; we know what is normal for this man. He’s not the same guy he was when he was vice president. Biden turns 79 on Saturday. He pledged to release the results of a complete checkup earlier this year, but that checkup hasn’t occurred yet.“

(2). Townhall.com‘s Katie Pavlich offers an update on the alleged whipping of Haitians illegally entering the country by Border Patrol agents on horseback.  Apparently, the DHS “initially referred the investigation to DHS’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). The OIG declined to investigate and referred the matter back to CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility.” And, as Jim Geraghty noted, “the Office of Professional Responsibility is still working on it, two months later, even though DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas pledged to Congress that the investigation would be completed in “days, not weeks.””

(3). In an abject act of moral cowardice, the Journal reports Catholic bishops have dropped their effort to ban communion for politicians who support abortions.

(4). NRO reports the 46* clown car can chalk up another unenviable achievement, as the lax border enforcement which has enabled Mexican drug cartels to smuggle record breaking amounts of fentanyl-laced meth, heroin, and fake prescription pills into the country coupled with its continued, counterproductive COVID restrictions have led to a record-breaking number of drug overdose deaths.  Let’s go, Brandon!!!

(5). Judge Bruce Schroeder banned MSNBC and NBC staff from the Rittenhouse trial following a police report one of their “journalists” ran a red light while attempting to follow the bus transporting jury members.  James J. Morrison told officers he was a news producer employed by MSDNC, and had been instructed by a superior in New York to follow the bus and photograph the jurors.

(6). Kevin Williamson details 46*’s patent prevarication behind his phony gas-price investigation, while reminding us Biden has always been a complete stranger to the truth:

“Biden peddles outrageous lies for political purposes and has for the whole of his very long career. Remember his claim that Mitt Romney intended to put African Americans “back in chains”? That’s typical Joe Biden poison.

The man doesn’t give a fig for the facts of the case.“

Or the reality of anything else.  Not to mention the longstanding lie his wife and daughter were killed by a drunk driver, or his demonstrably false story of a long-dead Amtrak conductor speaking to him from beyond the grave.  Which begs the question why, in the best tradition of Cal Thomas’s fond remembrance of Teddy “Kopechne Killer” Kennedy, the likes of Brit Hume and Tucker Carlson continue to characterize The Groper as if he’s Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles:

Here’s the juice: “Nice guys” don’t oversee the deliberate destruction of their country through the complete and utter overturning of its Constitution and the rule of law.

(7). The Journal‘s Kim Strassel informs us, when it comes to the Reconciliation bill, Dimocratic “moderates” like New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan, Arizona’s Mark Kelly and Nevada’s Catherine Masto, all up for reelection in 2022, have been awfully quiet of late, as they’ve been afforded cover, at least for now, by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

(8). When even Conservatives cartoonists are somehow hornswoggled in believing…

…a $1.2 TRILLION “infrastructure” bill with less than a tenth of the total actually devoted to infrastructure, and which was supported by only 13 Republican Representatives, is somehow “bipartisan” and “benefits all Americans”, we should fear for America’s future.

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

Then there’s these from Balls Cotton…

…Speed…

…and one Billy Gribbin, as quoted by Tucker Carlson:

Finally, since we’re on the subject of Kenosha, we’ll call it a week with another real shocker from The Crime Blotter, as it’s been revealed…

Maurice Freeland, man caught on tape kicking Kyle Rittenhouse has lengthy criminal history

“…Freeland approached the prosecution to testify in exchange for immunity for other charges, including a DUI, but they rejected the offer, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

Wisconsin arrest records show that Freeland has a lengthy criminal history, including charges for battery, disorderly conduct, possession of marijuana and other offenses this year. 

Freeland could not be reached for comment on Thursday…”

Yeah, likely ‘cuz he was either drunk, stoned or in stir.  Which begs the question whether ANYONE rioting in Kenosha didn’t have a criminal record?!?

Magoo

Video of the Day

Courtesy of Balls Cotton, Michael Anton provides a fascinating look in the history of China, Taiwan and the complexities of the global economy and world politics in the 21st century.

Tales of The Darkside

Tucker asks and answers why Progressives let Kenosha burn.

On the Lighter Side

Just when you thought educated White idiots couldn’t blame anything else on racism, this short by Ami Horowitz proves you need to think again; as well as demonstrating the TOTAL disconnect between White Liberals and the Blacks they purport to support.