COVID-19, Family, Ilana Mercer
My husband has taken to cooking defensively. When I say, “I’m off to the kitchen to make dinner,” he’s like, “Don’t worry; I’ll cook today.” But inside he’s screaming, “Noooooo.” I’m a terrible cook. I try my best. Sometimes it works. Mostly it doesn’t. He, however, has become a really good cook.
Conservatism, COVID-19, Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Intelligence, Internet, Iraq, Paleolibertarianism, War
Please pray for my longtime reader and dear friend James Huggins. A member of my American family, really.
James was diagnosed yesterday with COVID-19, among other serious ailments that come with age.
As with so many seniors, COVID was likely contracted in a nursing facility.
I love James and I am moved to tears—humbled—that he urged his kids to contact me as soon as he was hospitalized, so as to keep me in the loop. We are usually in regular contact on Facebook, which he joined at my urging. We had messaged about a month or two ago, and I had been worrying about James since he fell silent.
Over the years, my column has proven a good litmus test for drawing quality people to me. And James was one of the first to hound me mercilessly on WND.COM, in the early 2000s, for what he believed was my misguided anti-war stance. (Archive here.)
But so bright and free a man is James (“I’m cleaning my guns on the kitchen table,” he would email), that he quickly came to the philosophy of freedom, which precluded much of the Republican Party’s politics, and certainly Bush’s war.
After we had had one of our arguments about Bush’s war, James once wrote, at WND, that he’d rather go up against Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards than confront Mercer. So enamored was I of the man’s good-natured, Southern flare—idiom and humor—that I urged James to contribute to BAB.
James soon became a regular and valued contributor to my Barely A Blog. Regrettably, BAB’s thriving Comments section was closed, at the urging of one Christy Kiltz, an arrogant web-developer to avoid. (This Oregonian, and the coven of tantrum-prone witches that huddled at her office, generally got irate when their client dared to politely reject their ugly designs and rotten, shrill advice. Apparently, a client’s role is to comply with the girl gurus. (Kiltz, moreover, has the audacity to call herself a guru of coding, when she could not even convert a PHP archive to WordPress for me. A real guru did it in a matter of days.) Sadly, however, Kiltz was successful in intimidating me into closing “Comments.” (“Spam,” you know.) At the behest of this unpleasant and errant brander and developer, I lost the readers that frequented the site daily. With my blog closed to Comments, I also lost valued, daily contact with James Huggins.
Here are some of his BAB blog posts:
“Letter of the Week: In Defense of Coulter”
“In Defense Of David Koresh.” [Well, of course.]
This bright, funny and fabulous granddad deserves—and must have—many good years ahead. Join me in praying he gets them.
China, COVID-19, Economy, Globalism, Ilana Mercer, Ilana On Radio & TV, Nationhood
On July 2, 2020, I joined my favorite broadcaster, “Col. Mike” of the John Fredericks Show, syndicated out of Virginia, for a wide-ranging discussion about the issues of the day—from the Soweto-style shantytowns that had sprung-up in Seattle, to China and the Covid quagmire, to America’s immigration-visa labyrinth, and more.
In his interview style, the Colonel, so dubbed in deference to his military rank, will remind older listeners of the legendary George Putnam (by whom I was honored to be interviewed years back).
To wit, when this columnist ventured that the Seattle police had no business deserting their headquarters and posts; that their first duty was to uphold the negative rights of the citizens of Seattle, not to obey the politicized commands of Police Chief Carmen Best and Mayor Jenny Durkan—Col. Mike, who knows a thing or two about a chain-of-command, roared:
“They should all be fired.”
Businesses looted and boarded-up are currently suing the City of Seattle. This farce was explored during the interview—for who do think will pay for their legal remedy? You, the taxpayer! Taxpayers are subsidizing the degeneracy of politicians like Mayor Jenny, who should be collared and cuffed for abnegating her constitutional duty to uphold the property rights of her constituents.
Spotlighted was the manner in which high-tech was changing the city, draining it of its character and of the many quirky characters that made Seattle what it was.
Discussed, too, was the outsourcing of American lives to China (and India), a matter this column has been covering since the early 2000s. By “lives” we mean the very stuff of life. Not mere jobs; but careers, not just some products, but entire production lines; not one or two manufacturing plants, but the means of production.
More crucially, China didn’t force the traitors of the American economy to shift crucial production lines to its country and strand Americans without surgical and N-95 masks and medication; homegrown turncoats did. Giants of industry and technology, aided by the philosophical pygmies in government: They made these decisions, all by their lonesome.
COVID saw many a Chinese multinational galvanize to ship supplies to the Mother Ship: back home. Ostensibly international, Chinese companies operating in Australia, for example, began vacuuming up tons of medical materials in the host country and beyond, between January 24 and February 29, in order to send back to China.
Indeed, home is where you ship your masks to.
And much more.
The spouse alleges that I blurted out that the sight of policemen and guardsmen across the U.S. kneeling before their black tormentors conjured scenes from the film “Deliverance.” Denied!
If nothing else, you’ll enjoy the debonair Colonel:
Business, Conservatism, COVID-19, Critique, English, Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, War
Face it, we live in a country in which, increasingly, big corporations with political clout prevail in the economy. In politics, it’s the factions with the biggest corporate donors and the slimiest lobbyists: their politics and policies rule the day.
What is particularly sick-making is not only that a (subsidized) sham like “Tesla is allowed to reopen in defiance of the shelter in place order,” applied diligently to small companies—but that Tesla doesn’t care to protect its employees.
Hardly a good corporate citizen.
“Resentment Builds When COVID-19 Reopening Rules Apply To Some Businesses, But Not Others“:
“At the beginning we immediately closed our store, shut off our lights, put up messages to the community saying ‘we’re all in this together and we’ll be back,” said Marcy Simon, co-owner of Ashby Flowers.
But even now, the tiny shop is not allowed to bring flowers outside for curbside pickup by customers. It’s legal in the rest of Alameda County but Berkeley has its own health rules that say florists can only deliver. Meanwhile large Whole Foods Market right next to it–which also sells flowers—has a long line of people waiting to get inside.
Simon is like a lot of others who thought they were doing the right thing, but are now starting to get mad.
“I think that many people are now definitely looking for ways to get around the rules, there’s no question about it,” she said.
Clinical psychologist Judye Hess says that shouldn’t be a surprise. She says people naturally lose respect for laws when it feels like they’re being unfairly applied.
This mentality applies across the board. How many times, over 20 years, have I heard the shameless refrain from conservative outlets that, “We won’t syndicate a column that doesn’t come from the major syndicator”? To be syndicated by a major syndicator you have to parrot received opinion pretty much on everything. Neither can you be a stylistically risque, interesting writer. With few exceptions, monotony of style and mind are a must if you are to be syndicated.
Other than “too idiosyncratic,” there were the other refrains around the time my column was first syndicated unsuccessfully (2001 or 2002), chief among them were these: “You are neither Republican nor Democrat. And you don’t support Bush’s war.” (The Iraq onslaught was supported by most members of the duopoly.)
The idea that the gritty little gal or guy carries the day, or that individualism is cherished in the USA: These are fallacies in my experience.