Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Logan County GOP Meltdown


The Ultimate Branch Covidian Story Coming Next Week

We have watched the Logan County GOP as numerous complaints came in from Republicans that were tossed out of the group or incensed about the far, far, right wing/abolitionist views. Two of the primary instigators of that movement went on to win the GOP, District 3 Congressional Chairman ship, Daniel Navajas and the Logan County GOP Chair was won by Kyle Brown.

Last week there was a really bad melt down by the two, warning that they were under some sort of investigation and that someone was out to get them somehow. The video has since been removed but not before we snagged a copy of the video for your viewing pleasure. Next week we will cover the story, upload the video so people can watch the melt down, and cover several other scandals they two are associated with.

Monday, April 27, 2020

Tiger King Tunes


Here Kitty, Kitty

Of all the things that came out of the hit show on Netflix called The Tiger King the song that Joe Exotic wrote about Carol Baskin has gotten the most traction.  Now Joe's rendition was pretty hoaky but there is a music video on Youtube that is actually quite good.  I can actually see this thing making the pop radio circuit.  And with all the lock down seriousness having a laugh is a good thing so enjoy this version of the Here Kitty, Kitty song.

The 'Astroturf' Protests


Proof that the Branch Covidians are Astro Turf

After another flop drive by protest on Monday at the Mayor's office, the week just got worse for Tulsa 912 leader Ronda Vuillemont Smith. Politico got hold of a leaked document from Freedom Works proving that the protests that broke out the last few weeks weren't spontaneous uprisings but planned by Freedom Works on a national level.

The Politico story claims that the OKC rally was done two days after Freedom Works coordinated with Tulsa 912 and that other rallies were also coordinated. The story also pointed out that Americans for Prosperity has backed away from supporting the rallies in an effort to not be seen as opposing President Trump.

Sunday, April 26, 2020

More McDugle Scandals



Cat Piss McDugle V. Justin Dine Hearing

Looking like a perverted Donald Duck we see McDugle sitting on the left side of the screen wearing a V shaped PPE mask. The hearing for McDugle V. Dine starts around 2:30:00 into the video and ends around 4:30:00 in the video, two hours of McDugle lying his butt off and trashing women that were witnesses against him.  His biggest complaint was cat urine and people flipping him off.

McDugle is a filthy person in our opinion. Probably the worst in the legislature, one of his few accomplishments actually. Recall that McDugle admitted that he is a sexual pervert during open court, claiming that he has a sex addiction but was “pure” 95% of the time. Well 5% of 24 hours is 1.2 hours, an anyone that is a self professed sex addict for 1.2 hours a day claim “purity”?  Or does he go off the wagon one and a half days a month?  During his one of his divorce hearing his soon to be ex wife literally inferred McDugle was a homosexual and had “hook ups” with other men using Craigslist and other online platforms during their marriage. It was more than inferring, it was a strong insistence that McDugle was as queer as a three dollar bill.

Monday, April 20, 2020

What is Next?



What is Next?

Our advice is to be patient and let the medical experts advising Governor Stitt see what happens in the next ten days. It appears that Stitt is planning on re opening everything around May 1st and that jibes with what Trump is asking.

And despite the news stories and nattering nabobs, few people are missing out on that much work. In my industrial park not a single company has closed, there is some amount of interest in work coming in via phone calls and email, customers are getting out and visiting the stores and shops. Most shops are handling things wisely, limiting customers coming in for necessary things and trying to pre screen the ones that call in asking if they are open.

The Branch Covidians Are Getting Restless.



The Branch Covidians are Getting Restless

Now that there is funny, no matter who you are, Branch Covidians. That was coined after the “protest” at the State Capitol on Wednesday that largely fizzled out unless you believe the reports of those organizing and promoting the event.

One TV station ran a helicopter camera shot that showed right at 100 vehicles. Another TV station's headline was “Dozens of Protesters.....”, while activists on site claimed hundreds of vehicles yet they provided no count of vehicles or pictures that had more than a dozen or so cars . Under any criteria, it was a complete flop.

Sunday, April 19, 2020

Where Are We?



Where are We?


The U.S. has had just over ¾ million confirmed cases so far and around 40,000 deaths as of noon Sunday. Around 109,000 cases have closed with 63% recovering and 37% dying. Of course there are hundreds of thousands of non confirmed cases yet these are mild strains of the virus or perhaps people with better immune systems.

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Covidiot Update


Covidiot Update


They continue to bleat and beat their chests and cry conspiracy theories despite all the logic and facts. Sweden is their current talking point, a country that limited their shut down, mainly the at risk population. But Sweden has around 10,000,000 people and 10,000 cases and almost 900 deaths, one case per thousand people, closer to 88 deaths per million people. That is not good.

Monday, April 13, 2020

Take Courage


We will all be going back to work very soon. My industrial park has few shops that have closed, most are doing a little business and taking precautions. The industrial supply house brings you your order to your car. Same with the paint store. One restaurant I heard about from a friend, a sandwich shop chain, said their profits were up as well as their sales doing curb side service. Fewer employees needed, less cleaning needed, less trash to dispose of. Businesses will begin taking more precautions, operating with fewer employees than they thought they needed, and letting some work from home part of the time.

Some Good News for Oklahoma Conservatives



David Van with Sooner Politics has a great story on the filing period that ended on Friday. Nearly all of the conservative House members didn't draw a candidate, I think there were 43 of the House and Senate members that drew no opponent. A few previous members like Mike Christian and George Faught are running again.

Conspicuously absent was Rep Chris Kannady's minions. Only one didn't draw a challenger, Josh West, and the blowhard threats against conservatives by Kannady's dark money group simply didn't materialize this year. In fact, the word is that not a single candidate was willing to work with Kannady this time around. The man has become quite toxic, his money has begun drying up, along with his political power since his melt down at the Republican caucus retreat in November.

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Oklahoma CCP Flu Status



Oklahoma CCP Flu Status
Oklahoma has done well in managing the spread of the virus. About one in ten tests comes back positive, more of a sign of panicking people with hay fever or flu symptoms wanting tests than how wide spread the virus has become. That is around 1868 cases as of this afternoon, with 446 hospitalized, a bit higher than the usual 80% mild cases, with 94 dying so far.

Who is getting infected?

Questioning Ventilator Treatments


Hope?

There was an interesting story out last week on medium.com, not the best source as it is crowd based “journalism” but it had some intriguing ideas. The story covered anecdotal evidence coming out of the world's hot spots for CCP virus that suggests the treatment protocols for treating the virus are completely wrong.

The data suggests that there is no pneumonia or ARDS cases although the course of the disease mimics them so the normally used intubation and ventilator protocols are doing more harm than good. Doctors have long known that once a person goes on a ventilator many do not come back plus the scarring and ulcers caused by having a tube down your throat.

Monday, April 6, 2020

What are the Legal and Constitutional Limits on Liberty?


Covidiots and Liberty:
What Should a Patriot do?
  Facebook is full of idiots virtue signaling and the “liberty” people are some of the worst. Reading their posts makes you think the government has rounded up their friends and families and smoke is coming out of a chimney as they cremate what is pouring out of the gas chambers. Some claim that they are simply letting government know that someone is watching so they are as careful as possible with our liberties. Others are full on Covidiots. Most don't even understand what they are whining about.
When in doubt, it is best to start with the definition of the words being used.
Liberty:
1 : the quality or state of being free:
a : the power to do as one pleasesb : freedom from physical restraintc : freedom from arbitrary or despotic (see despot sense 1) controld : the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privilegese : the power of choice
2:
a : a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant : privilegeb : permission especially to go freely within specified limits was given the liberty of the house
3 : an action going beyond normal limits: such as
a : a breach of etiquette or propriety : familiarity took undue liberties with a strangerb : riskchance took foolish liberties with his healthc : a violation of rules or a deviation from standard practice took liberties in the way he played the gamed : a distortion of fact The movie takes many liberties with the actual events.
4 :
 a short authorized absence from naval duty usually for less than 48 hours
Now consider #1 to be useless, 1a and b to be useless unless one is wealthy and has no responsibilities, 1c make sense to a lot of us, 1d makes sense but during a pandemic who is sure this is even possible, 1e once again makes sense only if people have choices.
#2 isn't what we are talking about I think, our civil rights are not privileges or granted by anyone but God. 2b likewise is a privilege.
#3 well some of us have certainly taken liberties with others like Chris Kannady and Kevin McDugle, and the rest of the definitions under #3 are likewise not germane.
Leaving us 1c as the most likely definition, the freedom from arbitrary or despotic control.
But lets consider other words the Covidiots use claiming they are being oppressed.
Freedom:
1: the quality or state of being free: such as
a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or actionb : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independencec : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous freedom from cared : unrestricted use gave him the freedom of their homee : easefacility spoke the language with freedomf : the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken answered with freedomg : improper familiarityh : boldness of conception or execution
2
a : a political rightb : franchiseprivilege
#a is worth considering, the absence of coercion or constraint. The rest of #1 are repetitive with Liberty's definitions. #2 is a political right granted by politicians I suppose.
We are left with two definitions, the freedom from arbitrary or despotic control, and the absence of coercion or constraint.
Now let's look at the latter first, the absence of coercion or constraint. Most of us realize by the time we are two years old that life without coercion or constraint is pretty rare for most of us and pretty dangerous if one could achieve it. I am coerced to get up every morning in order to earn a living. If I was wealthy I suppose I would be coerced by failing health to get up each morning and move around. If not my back and boredom would certainly coerce me into getting up. I unlock my car, coerced into locking it due to criminals and living in a city. I am coerced into inserting the key and starting the car by the car itself, it refuses to move until I do that. Tomorrow I will be coerced into filling the gas tank as my car refuses to run without gas, the tyrannical bastard.... I get to work and I am again forced to unlock my door, then coerced by my customers to do some work to complete their projects or ship the products they paid for. And I am constrained all day as well. There is no steak and lobster in the fridge at work. I am limited to 60 minutes of work in each hour and my tyrannical body forces me to stop after eight hours lest it punish me with pain and aches or simply refuse to be efficient.
Okay, we have to admit then that life is always going to contain coercion and constraint. That leaves us to worry about the arbitrary or despotic control of our lives.
Arbitrary limits to life would be when you can do something and others cannot in the same circumstances. Fairness I suppose, if Chris Kannady is ridiculed for picking his nose on the House floor we should also ridicule others. Are we being exposed to arbitrary limits with this lock down? I am sure some might claim that and I am sure that they might have a good case. Why allow a weed dispensary or liquor store to remain open if they close down the local arts and crafts store? Perhaps a person is addicted to needle point or bedazzling clothing. I think anytime we give the power to government to restrict our actions we can expect some bad decisions on their part which is why we shouldn't give them this power except under extreme circumstances. Someone is gonna bitch no matter what.
And that leaves despotic control. What the heck is a despot? A byzantine bishop or a middle ages military leader or prince, or someone that rules with absolute power and authority. And that last one is the one we are looking for.
The Covidiots might claim that Governor Stitt, Trump, or the Health Department officials might have this kind of power but they would be delusional, most of us will not agree with that. So far what has been asked of us has been reasonable and somewhat reasonable exemptions have been given. Companies can work on maintenance or cleaning as long as they follow the social distancing guidelines. They can even sell stuff as long as they keep people out of the stores of non essential businesses, call ahead and order what you need, they will meet you at the curb.
If you owned a restaurant, well you either learn to do curbside service with a skeleton crew or shut the place down for a month. You get to make that decision and the government has put in place plans to borrow money to crank back up or to pay your bills till we can set people free again. Your employees can go on unemployment. Your service contracts for things like advertising, trash pick up, or even rent ought to have a force majeure clause, an allowance for an overwhelming reason why you cannot fulfill your contract. No doubt this isn't a new issue at law and the courts will know how to settle things. But you did have a choice in all of this, right?
And how is that? How did the restaurant have a choice in all of this? Businesses are known for being recession proof or recession prone to failure. Boils down to if people can do without you in bad times. If you are Kevin McDugle renting our your services as a love slave then you ought to know that during hard times the demand for your services might dry up. If you are selling food to restaurants, business will slow down in slow times and you might not sell anything during a quarantine unless you market to individuals or grocery stores so you better have a plan ready for bad times or you are a piss poor business owner.
The thing is that most essentials of life are also highly competitive businesses, low margins in grocery stores for sure. Restaurants can make high margins but they are risky, as are bars. You get to pick as an employee or business owner, do you want security and low pay or high risk and high possible rewards?
So what do these Covidiots want? The restrictions we are asked to follow are not arbitrary or despotic. We elected representatives that wrote the laws that allow these restrictions so the people had a say in things. Some states shut down churches, a wise move in my opinion, but the governor's backed down when enough people pushed back. Not sure if that was wise on their part but it does show that we are not ruled by despots.
About all that is left to consider is that the Covidiots want anarchy.
anarchy:
a: absence of governmentb : a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority the city's descent into anarchyc : a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government
2
a : absence or denial of any authority or established order anarchy prevailed in the ghettob : absence of order : disorder
In a perfect world with perfect and rational people I would be all for anarchy. But that is a pipe dream, human nature will not allow such a thing. We had a run on toilet paper for God's sake.
One of the best writers on freedom in the 70's was James M. Buchanan. He wrote that men want freedom from constraints while at the same time recognizing the need for order. That is a paradox that becomes more troublesome the more the state provides for the citizens. An example he gave was the Law itself, providing a set of rules we should all live under.
Once you have laws you hope that peer pressure, public opinion, and voluntary compliance provides enough enforcement. Yet we see that juries and even the public opinion sometimes blanches at the task of enforcing the law to punish the criminals. This unwillingness, like the current popularity for soft on crime agendas, leads to the destruction of the order we supposedly cherish. Democratic mob rule by citizens will always lead to the destruction of order. Buchanan put it best when he wrote:
“Ordered anarchy” remains the objective, but “ordered” by whom? Neither the state nor the savage is noble, and this reality must be squarely faced.”
Another great writer on freedom was John Stuart Mill, a nineteenth century philosopher and economist. He wrote this on the sole reason for using power over others:
“That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant ... Over himself, over his body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
Now Mill was an advocate of utilitarianism, basically that which produces the best outcome for the good of others or self and that the consequences of an act are the sole judge of it being morally right or wrong. This allows exceptions to that simple rule, for example for children or “barbarians”. A simple way to put it is that those incapable of not producing harm to themselves are not ready for self determination or freedom.

Mill ordered our basic liberties in order of importance, the freedom of thought and emotion, the freedom to purse tastes that do not harm others even if they are thought to be immoral, and the freedom of assembly as long as all are of age, no force is used, and no harm is done to others.
Let;s face it Mills was a libertarian. Yet even Mill said that freedoms could be pushed aside in certain situations, there is no cause for rescission of rights in a civilized society. Mill completely rejected the idea that liberty was for the sole purpose of selfish indifference.
Consider one of the examples that Mill used, what to do when someone sees a person about to cross a damaged bridge without being aware of the risk. If a police officer sees the unaware person about to take a risk he is unaware of then the officer would be correct in stopping the person from crossing and using force if needed. If the means are available, it is right to stop the unaware person.

I think that most of us would thank the officer once we were aware of what we had avoided thanks to a temporary loss of our freedom. Then there will be those like one person who told me this week they would do what they want when they wanted and for those souls the average person enjoys seeing them earn the karma.

But is that the right thing to do in this case, a communicable disease that is doubling every four to five days, with a long incubation period that allows spreading when the infected show no symptoms? A disease with no known perfect cure and no vaccine. If the Covidiot was wanting to cross a bridge into a country full of the virus I'd say let them go if they refused to be warned. But he cannot be allowed to come back and spread the disease.

But aside from ethics and responsibilities, what has our court system said about issues like quarantine and pandemics? SCOTUS decisions have pretty much left the decisions in state government's hands as far as quarantining people but there are overlapping federal statutes. And we have to break out those that actually have the virus from those that are merely exposed to a virus. Isolation is for those that are ill or carriers of the virus. Quarantine is for those known to be exposed to a contagious disease but not yet showing symptoms or testing positive.
We have faced this before but it wasn't a pandemic, the ebola threat in 2014, and Congressional Research Service said the power to quarantine is reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment. In 1824 the Gibbons v. Ogden case decided who was responsible for regulating such things within the state and that included specifically police powers including quarantine and isolation of people for just reasons.
The federal government also has the right and responsibility to deal with containing communicable diseases between states and from foreign countries and in general the feds put that power into the hands of the CDC who answers to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. There are also seldome used statutes that allowed the feds to quarantine and isolate after WWI in the Spanish Flu pandemic and George W. Bush issued an executive order that is still in place that covers isolation and quarantine.

So that is the rights of the fed and the states, how about your rights? You have the 5th and 14th Amendments, Due Process and Equal Protection under the law. What SCOTUS has said on that is that any health regulations must not be arbitrary, oppressive, or unreasonable. Sometimes SCOTUS has ruled that a local or state government hasn't met those standards.
One such case was Wong Wai v. Williamson, decided at the California Supreme Court that ruled arbitrary laws aimed at Chinese residents while trying to suppress the bubonic plague were unconstitutional due to unequal application with white residents and the city not proving that the Chinese were responsible for carrying the disease. Later decisions from higher courts laid out the requirement that isolated and quarantined individuals be told why they are being held, notifying them of their right to counsel, and other constitutional rights they might have. You basically have a right to a medical review and to ask a federal court to review why you are being held.
So there are established and tested rights of state and local government to isolate and quarantine people. The problem is how to enforce those laws. We have already seen stories of people being quarantined by order of their local or state health department and violations of that order but the Health officials do not have the power of arrest in some states. Oklahoma does have laws, Section 63-1-504 makes it a misdemeanor to violate a quarantine order by any health officials. Then Section 63-1-502 gives the State Health Department the ability to formulate regulations to help stop communicable diseases including closing of stores and regulating public meetings or gatherings in an epidemic situation. That includes regulating vehicles that might spread the disease and making any rules it can justify as needed to control an epidemic.
Generally the most medically sound decision wins over the least restrictive or least expensive to the economy. If a plaintiff can prove that another medical decision that is less restrictive would provide the same benefits to the state then they might prevail. And of course these measures always transfer the costs of the action to others, that isn't disputed and the judges realize it is inevitable. When the state tells you to stay home, your pocket book suffers as does your employer or business. Tough luck basically if the plaintiff cannot prove the medical reasoning was flawed.
Prior to 1900 the quarantine or vaccination cases focused on giving the power to decide to the state but gradually the courts saw advances in medicine and started focusing on the medically trained officials as most able to understand the science and make the best decision. At first the courts took notice but left the power with the elected officials rather than the health officials.

By 1913 though the power shifted to the medical experts and science, we started requiring the pasteurization of milk and while the court agreed that science was fallible and might change, it was the best theories at the time of the decisions that ought to decide if a medical decision was proper.
By 1922 Barmore v. Robertson pushed the ball a few yards down the line toward relying upon science. A boarding home owner was quarantined and sued to be released on the basis that neither her husband nor any of her guests had come down with the typhoid she carried. Laboratory proof of her infection won out over proof of spreading the disease.

Then in 1973 the New York Association for Retarded Children v. Carey reconsidered the rights of those infected. In this case fifty retarded kids carrying Hepatitis B were refused entry to a public school. They sued and won and were required to be enrolled. The board of education then segregated the kids and were sued again because other less restrictive methods existed to contain the spread of the virus. They compounded the problem by not testing the normal children to find out if any were carrying the virus. At this point, the power of the state was rejected in favor of the power of the medical advice for less restrictive methods of containing the spread of the virus.
The next major case was in 1982, Grube v. South Bethlehem Area School District. A kid with one kidney wanted to play foot ball but a couple of doctors decided it was too dangerous for a child with only one kidney. A sports medicine expert was consulted and thought otherwise,a set of custom protective pads and the fact that no one had ever lost kidney function from playing football won out over the two doctor's opinions. They had no identifiable facts but under an abundance of caution they decided that playing with one kidney was unsafe.
At this point the courts have crystallized police powers and their limits. Rational rules and the least restrictive means are determined by medical opinions and facts, the state now needs to justify any quarantine measures or any police power actions to accomplish public health.
The State of Oklahoma can in fact constitutionally infringe on an individual's rights as long as a medical risk assessment has defined the perceived threat and how widespread that threat might be both in physical terms of territory and in just how dangerous the threat is to the public health. They then are required to choose the least restrictive medically appropriate means of mitigating the risk. The doctors and specifically the epidemiology experts in charge must not consider civil rights or public pressure but must focus strictly on medical facts and current known best practices. To do otherwise turns our Republic into a dangerous Democracy ruled by public pressure and mobs.

Covidiots


 

A new word was coined this week, used to describe people that claimed the Covid virus, also called the CCP virus, was a hoax. Covidiot, and what a clever person that coined that word as it fits perfect for some.
There are well meaning people no doubt on the other side but that doesn't mean they aren't Covidiots. Their arguments run a vast range, some say it is all a hoax, that this is no worse than the flu or daily car deaths. Others want to claim it was manufactured by liberals or the deep state to upend the economy and ruin Trump's hope for re election or that these same bad actors were spinning the facts to make it worse than it is. Another is the Pollyana denier that seizes the smallest thread of “fact” without verifying it is a fact and claiming that a certain city has started downward and that we are only five days behind them.

Sunday, April 5, 2020

Where the Hell Are We with this CCP Virus?





Where the Hell Are We with this CCP Virus?

And where is the U.S. with this pandemic? Our daily cases are rising at a 45 degree angle, doubling every nine days which is actually an improvement but in no way a sign that it is slowing down.



Our nationwide death rate is doubling every four days, not good, but remember that it takes two weeks for most cases to cause mortality, we don't know if that death rate will continue. And of course they are using the confirmed cases of infection, how many others were with mild cases and never went to get tested or get medical care? In the end does it really matter if the number of deaths is doubling every four days? The actual morbidity rate on the entire nation is unknown but could be catastrophic.