Thomas Massie: If Voter ID Is a Tax on Voting Rights, Firearm Licensing Is a Tax on 2A Rights

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) used a Wednesday hearing to suggest that if Voter ID is a tax on voting rights, then firearm licensing is a tax on Second Amendment rights.

Massie made this point while cross-examining Voter ID opponents, contending that their arguments break down if they oppose issuance of ID’s for one constitutional right but look the other way when ID’s are required for the exercise of a a different right.

Fox News reported Timothy Jenkins, a witness in the hearing and board member of Teaching for Change, criticized Massie for bringing up licensing for gun rights during a discussion about licensing for voting rights.

Jenkins said:

Let me tell you this: that the whole business of being able to vote is not intermeshed with the business of bearing arms. You are taking the time that we’re trying to deal with a constitutional right to be a citizen and turning it into something else. Use another forum! We don’t have many opportunities to get a right to vote. We don’t have an opportunity to talk about the whole business of the way in which the Constitution has been distorted. And don’t take us off on some rabbit trail to talk about arms.

Jenkins also said, “Let the record show, that nobody has died because of their being deprived of bearing guns.”

Massie interjected:

What you’re saying, Mr. Jenkins, is absolutely incorrect. I had a staffer … who worked for me. She watched her husband be gunned down in front of her in a gun-free zone, because her firearm — she followed the law and left her firearm in the vehicle. So do not tell me, and do not tell her that nobody has ever died because they were deprived of their right to keep and bear arms.

In a separate but pertinent example, Breitbart News reported Carol Bowne applied for a license to possess a gun for self-defense in April 2015 and was stabbed to death on June 3, 2015, while waiting for the state of New Jersey to issue the license.

The Courier-Post reported Bowne sought state’s permission to have a gun so she could protect herself from a former boyfriend. It was he who was charged with stabbing Bowne to death as she waited for the state to grant her a license for gun ownership

 

Mike Bloomberg’s Campaign Has Fired Up At Least One Group: The NRA and Gun Owners.

Billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg’s presidential run helped gun-rights groups light a fire under owners of firearms who grew somewhat complacent in the era of President Trump.

Gun groups ranging from the National Rifle Association to Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership are whipping up their members with dire warnings about a potential President Bloomberg.

A former mayor of New York City who leapfrogged to the top-tier in the Democratic presidential race, Mr. Bloomberg has a long record of challenging the Second Amendment from his get-tough policies as mayor to bankrolling a massive gun control advocacy organization.

The National Association for Gun Rights alerted its members on social media to Mr. Bloomberg’s $300 million campaign to “DESTROY the Second Amendment,” calling on them to unite and stop “his anti-gun agenda.”

“Our members are motivated by Mike Bloomberg and have been for a while,” said Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights. “He is a billionaire and one of his main focuses has been spending his own personal money to destroy the Second Amendment. And he has been relatively successful. All of the groups on the left rely on his money.”

The NRA recently penned an editorial detailing the former mayor’s high-dollar push to limit soda consumption through taxes and shut down coal-fired power plants, arguing he will do the same to guns.

“Bloomberg has promised to spend ‘whatever it takes’ from his $55 billion personal fortune to control you from our nation’s capital,” the NRA article warned of his self-funded run for the Oval Office.

Amy Hunter, the NRA’s director of media relations, said Mr. Bloomberg is just like the other Democratic presidential candidates pushing for “registration, confiscation and bans,” but his deep pockets make him a top enemy for legal gun owners.

“His hypocritical desire to strip all Americans of their right to self-defense while he enjoys 24/7 armed security and his willingness to spend billions to destroy the Second Amendment make him a greater threat to those who cherish their constitutional rights,” said Ms. Hunter.

Alan Korwin, a consultant with Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, said the group is convinced Mr. Bloomberg’s goal is gun confiscation.

“He reflects everything that is wrong with the mainstream Jewish population in America. He doesn’t understand why guns are important and he takes a strictly anti-gun rights view. He wants to confiscate guns,” Mr. Korwin said.

Gun Control And Demographics: I

mmigrants Vote Against American Gun Rights

So Virginia gun owners just dodged a legislative bullet in the form of a proposed ban on so-called assault weapons. But a demographic bullet is still aimed right where it can do the most damage: the ballot box. The Great Replacement that Leftists celebrate—even as they call it a racist conspiracy theory—is the primary reason gun rights are in the crosshairs in Virginia and throughout the country. Immigration has consequences, meaning foreign-origin voters, and if the GOP doesn’t figure that out soon, gun rights will go the way of Confederate statues, along with other American rights currently undreamt of.

Consider the most recent near miss: Four moderate Democrats sided with Republicans in Virginia’s Senate to block a ban on semi-automatic sporting rifles such as the AR-15. Magazines of more than 12 rounds were targeted, too.

This provoked some eloquent opposition. “The people of Virginia are demanding that someone, anybody that is in power, please stand up and defend the Second Amendment,” said Sen. Amanda Chase, a gun-rights champion and GOP gubernatorial candidate. “If I am going to continue to do the law-abiding work of the people I am going to have to arm myself, so I went through all the training, got the licensing and all that and I will just tell you—I won’t miss” [‘We don’t need weapons of war’: Va. Gov. Northam reacts to failed assault weapons ban, by Tim Barber, WJLA.com, February 18, 2020].

Senator Chase was right: Real Virginians are indeed demanding that someone defend their rights, as the massive gun-rights rally on January 20 surely showed. But the last election results showed something else: Non-white Third World immigrants in Richmond and Northern Virginia who put the Democrats in power last election are doing their best to take those rights away.

“The 2020 legislative session kicked off shortly after noon with several history-making firsts as women and people of color assumed leadership roles previously held only by white men for the last 400 years,” gloated The Associated Press:

One of the House’s first acts was to elect Del. Eileen Filler-Corn as the new speaker, the first woman to serve in that role. She is also the first Jewish speaker.

Her top deputy, House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, is the first black woman to hold that role, and the House elected Suzette Denslow to be the first ever female clerk. Ghazala Hashmi, who unseated a Republican incumbent to help Democrats flip the Senate, became that chamber’s first Muslim female member.

[Newly empowered Virginia Democrats promise action, by Alan Suderman and Sarah Rankin, January 8, 2020]

The New York Times has published two separate articles that celebrate the immigrant-driven demographic displacement of white Virginians and what it means for those who still “cling to their guns or religion,” as the presidential scion of a Kenyan immigrant famously put it.

“Guns, that is the most pressing issue for me,” Indian engineer Vijay Katkuri told the Times of his vote for a Democrat. “There are lots of other issues, but you can only fix them if you are alive.” Enthused the NYT, “once the heart of the confederacy, Virginia is now the land of Indian grocery stores, Korean churches and Diwali festivals” [How Voters Turned Virginia From Deep Red to Solid Blue, by Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff, November 9, 2019].

The paper gleefully noted that 10 percent of Virginian voters are foreign-born, up from 3.6 percent in 1990, and that the white population in Katkuris’ district has plummeted from 91 percent to 64 percent.

Such is the shift, the New York Times reported in its second tribute to The Great Replacement, that a Muslim woman born in India, Ghazal Hashmi, defeated an incumbent Republican in suburban Richmond:

At the root of this district’s—and Virginia’s—political transition is a slow-moving demographic change, a new kind of suburbanization that is sweeping through national politics. From Atlanta to Houston, this pattern is repeating itself—suburban housing developments gobbling up rural areas and farmland and lifting Democrats to power.

[What Made Virginia Change Its Mind on Guns? by Timothy Williams, January 30, 2020].

Of course, the GOP didn’t help its cause last year by leaving 33 General Assembly races uncontested—10 in House, 23 in the Senate—particularly given that Democrats control the House by a slim two votes and the Senate by 11. Nor can one ignore Michael Bloomberg’s 90-caliber shot at gun rights: $2.5 million that overwhelmed the National Rifle Association’s popgun [Mike Bloomberg’s gun-control group just vastly outspent the NRA to help Democrats win in Virginia, by Lauren Hirsch, CNBC, November 6, 2019].

But demographics are what mattered in the election and will matter long term, as MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough cheerily explained.

Tweeted the ex-conservative:

https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/1226906496170102795

U.S. Coronavirus Outbreak Widens: Rhode Island confirms its first case of the virus, while number of cases in King County, Wash., rises to six.

New cases of the novel coronavirus in Washington, California and Rhode Island on Sunday raised fears of a wider spread of the disease in U.S. communities, prompting federal officials to ramp up efforts to test for and fight the widening outbreak.

Health officials are focused on a cluster of confirmed cases in Washington state where some patients had no clear path to exposure, including the first death from the virus in the U.S. Those cases, and several others in Oregon and California signal that there might be wider spread of the virus in some American communities with many cases still undiagnosed.

 

Black Churchgoers in Selma turn their backs on Bloomberg during service.

Congregants at the historic Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama, silently protested 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg as he delivered remarks there Sunday, standing and turning their backs on the former New York City mayor.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Mike Bloomberg Campaigns Ahead Of Super Tuesday

The churchgoers remained standing through the end of Bloomberg’s remarks.

Before he spoke, Bloomberg was introduced by the Reverend Leodis Strong, a pastor for the historic church, which was a key meeting place for activists during the civil rights movement. Strong recalled first inviting the presidential candidate to appear before churchgoers and said Bloomberg initially declined the request, citing his campaign schedule.

Coronavirus: Italian Virus Deaths Rise to 29, Number of Confirmed Cases Goes Above 1,000

Schools and universities will stay closed for a second consecutive week in three northern Italian regions in an effort to contain Europe’s worst outbreak of coronavirus, dashing any hopes of a swift return to normality.

The decision was taken as the death toll from the contagion rose by eight during the day to 29, while the total number of cases jumped by 240 to 1,128 — the vast majority in the wealthy regions of Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia Romagna.

Iranian Coronavirus Cases Jump as More Officials Infected

Iran’s coronavirus cases continue to spike, with more cases confirmed among government officials days before a high-ranking delegation is poised to attend a critical OPEC meeting in Austria.

There were 205 new coronavirus cases in the country, bringing the total count to 593 with 43 fatalities, Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpour said. That’s the highest number of deaths from the virus outside of China.

The number of lawmakers infected rose to six on Saturday, after Masoumeh Aghapour said she had tested positive for the virus, the semi-official Tasnim news reported. So far 100 MPs have been tested and a growing number of current and former officials are being diagnosed. Previously, one of Iran’s vice presidents, Masoumeh Ebtekar, and deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi were confirmed to have the virus. Tasnim news agency reported that a lawmaker died of the flu, but said he had not contracted the coronavirus.

Washington state declares emergency after first patient dies from coronavirus in US

Washington state declared a state of emergency Saturday only hours after a man in his 50s with underlying health problems was identified as the first person in the U.S. to die from the coronavirus outbreak.

Washington state public health officials said two additional confirmed cases of the virus are associated with a longterm care facility in the state. Officials said 27 patients and 25 staff members at the Life Care Center of Kirkland had reported symptoms similar to the coronavirus. The facility has 108 residents and 180 employees.

The two additional cases include a facility staff worker in their 40s, who was in satisfactory condition, and a facility resident in their 70s, who was in serious condition.

The patient who died was identified by state and county health officials as a man in his 50s. The patient was being treated at EvergreenHealth Medical Center in Kirkland, Washington, with serious respiratory issues, according to hospital spokesperson Julia Irwin.

Coronavirus spreads to Washington nursing home

One of the patients, a woman in her 70s, is in serious condition, said Jeff Duchin, Seattle and King County health officer. The other patient is a woman in her 40s who is health care worker at the facility, Life Care Center of Kirkland…………

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is sending a team of experts to help local officials investigate the cases. Officials have already found that 27 of 108 residents at the nursing home report some symptoms of respiratory illness, Duchin said, and 25 of the 180 staff do, too. Health officials are investigating these cases but they don’t yet know if the people are sick with coronavirus.

Trump: Democrats’ coronavirus criticism just their latest ‘hoax’

President Trump jeered Democrats Friday night for criticizing his response to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, saying that it was a “new hoax” after a failed attempt to remove him from office over Ukraine.

“They tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia — that didn’t work out too well,” Trump told a cheering crowd in South Carolina. “They tried the impeachment hoax. That was a perfect conversation.”

“And this is the new hoax,” Trump declared.

Trump told the audience that just 15 people had been diagnosed in the US with coronavirus as of Friday, excluding Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, and the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

“Let’s get this right: A virus starts in China, makes its way into various countries all around the world, doesn’t spread widely at all in the United States because of the early actions that myself and my administration took against a lot of other wishes. And the Democrats’ single talking point and you see it is that it’s Donald Trump’s fault,” he said.

The president praised his administration’s response to the coronavirus, highlighting his decision to bar foreign nationals from entering the US if they visited China in the past 14 days. “Democrats will only say horrible things even though they know we’re doing a great job,” he said.

US Signs Peace Deal With Taliban, Will Withdraw All Troops If Taliban Keeps Commitments

https://twitter.com/TOLOnews/status/1233743305445384194

The United States signed a peace deal with the Taliban Saturday that would end America’s longest war, if the group keeps its commitments.

Under the deal, the U.S. would reduce deployment numbers in Afghanistan from 13,000 to 8,600 over the next several months. The U.S. will withdraw completely within 14 months if the Taliban holds to the deal’s commitments of controlling terrorism.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo personally oversaw the signing of the deal in Doha, Qatar, where U.S. negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad signed the deal with Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

“This country is not in the best shape after 40 years; they’ve been suffering from conflict. If we ripped everybody out overnight it would, almost in a certain sense, threaten everything we’ve done,” one senior Trump administration official familiar with the deal said.

The officials emphasized to reporters on background that the troop withdrawals will happen “if and only if” the Taliban hold up their end of the deal.

Indeed, the signing only took place after the Taliban proved willing and capable of minimizing violence under the reduction in violence agreement signed earlier in February.

Among the officials’ top priorities was ensuring that a U.S. withdrawal didn’t result in a power vacuum, as it had under the Obama administration, leading to the rise of ISIS.

“If this all blows up that’s unfortunate, but fine, we’ll just start killing them again,” one official said…….

Milwaukee Brewery Killings Highlight How Suppressed Information Enables Infringement

“The people are tired of Moscow Mitch’s deadly obstruction,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared in response to the Milwaukee brewery murders in a tweet that has since been taken down and replaced with a longer statement citing “universal background checks” as some sort of solution. “A year ago, we took action in the House to save lives. Every day that he and the Republican-controlled Senate refuse to act, 100 Americans are killed by gun violence.”

Since so little information was released at that time, how any citizen disarmament bill floated by Democrats would have had any impact on saving lives is left unsaid. And that’s intentional.

Michael Bloomberg, the bodyguarded gun-grabber who almost let slip that he had “bought” Pelosi, was quick to slam President Donald Trump and call for “background checks,” per CNN Politics.

Bloomberg’s “seed money” venture, The Trace, wasted no time exploiting the killings to push its agenda. “True” to its journalistic “ethics,” the report aimed at disarming those of us who behave ourselves, was co-written by the “daddy issues”-plagued flack whose father was a mob hitman.

And Vox, ignoring that correlation does not equal causation, played to those who don’t think things through and tried to tie the killing in with Wisconsin Republicans rejecting disarmament laws that ignore due process. That’s hardly a surprise — being disingenuous about guns is SOP for those guys.

We still don’t know much about what laws (besides the obvious) the lunatic may have ignored. Reports citing the police say he had “two handguns, one with a silencer,” but do not mention their “legality.” If his suppressor was owned in accordance with the rules, Pelosi’s background check argument goes out the window. If not, background checks won’t stop black-market transfers anyway. And can you imagine the field day the antis would be having had he used a quote/unquote “assault rifle”? One with “20, 30, 40, 50 clips in a weapon”…?

What deterrents may have been in place are unknown (by me) at this writing. Per Molson Coors Employment Principles:

“Workplace Security Molson Coors is committed to maintaining a workplace that is free from violence, harassment, intimidation and other unsafe or disruptive conditions due to internal and external threats. Security safeguards for employees are provided as needed and will be maintained with respect for employee privacy and dignity.”

How they meet that commitment is unclear. Especially since the facility’s “No Guns” policy was ignored.

When I started gathering links for this article earlier today, his identity had been unannounced, and that was just revealed as I was writing this. That fits right in with what I blogged last night before going to bed, nothing prescient, just a realization of the way these things always seem to be handled:

It’s been hours and we still haven’t been told who the killer is?  No doubt any social media accounts will be shut down before we do, meaning we will be entirely dependent on “authorities” and “Authorized Journalists” for information and unable to find any dots for connecting on our own.

Lo and behold, once the killer’s identity was released, we’re told his photo  was “taken from a family member’s Facebook page that has since been removed.” Yet despite what appears to be an attempt to bury relevant background information, it was internet sleuths, not “Authorized Journalists,” who uncovered an Elizabeth Warren connection.

The first thing that’s obvious is we’re not talking about one of those “white right-wing nationalists” we’re constantly being warned are the greatest threat we face. If the killer had been one, and if he had social media posts brimming with sentiments that allow “progressives” to dismiss anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders as a Nazi, it would be headline news. It certainly would not have taken this long to release who he was, and odds are good some of his more egregious posts would have survived, at least in screenshot form. As it is, the victims are being blamed for racism, and that’s in spite of a corporate “code of conduct” policy that is now being alleged to work every bit as well as its “security safeguards.”

This in itself is dangerous to freedom. By hiding his identity until they’ve got their ducks lined up, and by ensuring his internet tracks have been swept to only release information supportive of the narrative being told by “the authorities,” our ability to glean public interest information, which is needed to be informed, self-governing citizens, is diminished and effectively deprived.  If our only source of that information is the government, disseminated and amplified through its media mouthpieces, our system becomes no more credible or any less manipulative and tyrannical than China’s or Iran’s.

When that’s the only information out there, demagogues like Pelosi and Bloomberg can say whatever they damn well please without fear of being contradicted, or at least given a reality check. That’s the stuff that influences public opinion and finds its way into legislation with real-world effects on our freedoms.

I’m not sure what the solution is, but it’s one I’d like to see made part of a wider conversation. One can make the case that some information should be withheld pending notification of family members, and other information is temporarily suppressible because public dissemination may have an impact on police investigations, criminal proceedings, national security and the like.

That said, there ought to be a way to find out more about such freaks without government automatically putting their backgrounds on lockdown. Questions about what kind of causes and candidates a killer identified with are unquestionably relevant, not only to protect innocent parties from being blamed and smeared, but to keep political opportunists from circumventing the truth, exploiting ignorance, and imposing more infringements. Significantly, they can only get away with that when key facts are suppressed by those whose mandate should be “to secure the Blessings of Liberty,” and to enforce rights as well as laws.

Masked intruder shot during home invasion in Katy

What is it with these inept Bunglers in Katy Texas?

KATY, Texas — A home invasion suspect was shot Friday morning in Katy, a sergeant with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.

The suspect, who was reportedly wearing a mask, was shot in the arm after burglarizing a home in the 18700 block of Sandleford.

The suspect was taken to a nearby hospital where he is expected to survive.

Detectives are on scene investigating.

Man shot, killed after breaking into girlfriend’s apartment

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A man was shot and killed after breaking into his girlfriend’s apartment, police say.

It happened at about 6 a.m. Saturday in the area of Fairfield Avenue and 59th Street S, according to the St. Petersburg Police Department.

Police say a 26-year-old man got into his girlfriend’s apartment when he was confronted by a 48-year-old man. At some point, shots were fired and the 26-year-old died at the scene.

The 48-year-old suffered a non-life-threatening injury, police say.

Two women and a child who also were in the apartment were not hurt.

 

Person dies from coronavirus in Washington state, first in the US, health officials say

Sources in Washington state had heard of this report last night, but as it was unconfirmed at the time, I didn’t post it. Not that this should have been an unexpected thing.

Health officials in Washington confirmed Saturday that one person has died from coronavirus, marking the first disease-related death in the U.S.

Seattle and King County Public Health officials issued a vague media advisory announcing the first COVID-19 death in the U.S., adding that there was an undisclosed number of new cases as well.

News of the death comes on the heels of three new cases in California, Oregon and Washington in which the patients were infected by unknown means. They had not recently traveled overseas or had come into contact with anyone who had.

President Donald Trump said during a press conference Saturday that 22 people in the U.S. have been stricken by the new coronavirus and that additional cases are “likely.”

“Unfortunately, one person passed away overnight,” Trump said.

“She was a wonderful woman a medically high-risk patient in her late 50s. Four others are very ill. Thankfully 15 are either recovered fully or they’re well on their way to recovery. And in all cases, they’ve been let go in their home.

Gun Owners Cause Peace- the amazing experiment in Richmond, Virginia proves the media wrong.

The mainstream media tells us that guns cause crime. The media shows us night after night that guns are bad. We see it in their “news” and in their Hollywood dramas. We recently conducted another massive public experiment and the results contradict the media’s story about guns. We put tens of thousands of armed men and women on the street in one small area. The rate of crime dropped precipitously when these armed civilians were there. Guns brought peace. Let me show you what happened.

Virginia Capital on Second Amendment Rally Day

Twenty-five-to-fifty thousand people came to the Virginia Capital on one morning to lobby the legislature. Once they filled the capital grounds, they overflowed into the streets in every direction.

A few thousand people deliberately disarmed to enter the capitol building. I can’t prove that everyone else was armed, but the vast majority of them were since this was a second-amendment protest. Judging from the pictures I’ve seen and the people I’ve talked to, for each person who was not armed at the rally, there was another person who carried multiple firearms. Call it one gun per person in round numbers.

Show us your badges- Virginia Gun Owners Rally Day in Richmond

I couldn’t find reports of violent crime in the area of the protests when I searched the news and police records. The protesters even brought trash bags and left the city streets cleaner than they’d found them. The single reported arrest I could find was of a counter-protester.

Video from ground level- https://t.co/NXZPwDxpPG

This peaceful gathering isn’t a surprise once you study the record of legally armed civilians in the US. We’ve seen this phenomenon before and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I routinely stand in a room with twenty-to-thirty thousand armed individuals. I’ve done that over a dozen times and the results are uniformly boring.

I’ve never seen violence at those sites. I’ll go a step further and say that people are polite and there is very little conflict of any kind. We’ve searched police records and the rate of crime drops in every city when that many gun owners gather together. A public experiment on that scale is a sociologist’s dream come true.

Honest gun-owners bring peace rather than crime and conflict.

It is remarkable when we gather that many gun owners together, and we conduct that experiment for free year after year. You could argue that we conduct a similar experiment every day when these honest gun owners return home and go about their lives.. armed. We are there day after day, but concealed is concealed, and you never see us.

That leaves an obvious question unanswered. Ask yourself why the media continues to sell the lie that guns and legally armed citizens cause crime.

 

2 new coronavirus cases emerge in Washington, in King and Snohomish counties

Here you go Bob.

SHORELINE — Two new COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Washington, in a King County woman and a Snohomish County teenager, state and local officials said Friday night.

The woman had recently been to South Korea, a country affected by the outbreak. But the Snohomish County patient, a high school student, did not recently travel to any countries affected by SARS-CoV-2, the official name of the novel coronavirus, said Snohomish Health District officer Dr. Chris Spitters.

“It’s concerning that this individual did not travel, since this individual acquired it in the community,” Washington state health officer Dr. Kathy Lofy told reporters Friday at a news conference at the Department of Health Shoreline. “We really believe now that the risk is increasing.”

Both cases are considered “presumptive positive,” as test results were confirmed at the Shoreline site Friday, but are also being sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for confirmation. A case awaiting confirmation by the CDC was also reported Friday in Oregon.

The case in Oregon, two in California and the new Snohomish County case do not appear linked to travel to a country affected by the outbreak.

The Snohomish County student, who attends Henry M. Jackson High School in Mill Creek, became ill Monday with a fever, body aches and a headache, and visited two clinics in the county this week, Spitters said.

Because he was feeling better, he returned to school Friday morning, but after his tests came back positive, he went home before attending class…………

The King County patient is a woman in her 50s, said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, health officer at Public Health – Seattle & King County. She returned to Washington from South Korea on Feb. 23 and worked for one day before developing symptoms, Duchin said. Her husband then called county health officials to report her symptoms and travel history.

She did not interact with the public during her workday, Duchin said, and is recovering at home “without complications.” A workplace investigation is underway.

Her husband has not shown any symptoms. He is also under home quarantine………

The 35-year-old Snohomish County man who was the United States’ first patient confirmed to have the virus is considered fully recovered. He had recently visited Wuhan, China, where the global outbreak began in December.

BERNIE’S OWN PRIVATE DENMARK

Whenever Bernie Sanders’s socialism comes up in the Democratic debates, he deflects criticism by saying he favors something along the lines of Denmark’s model. Sanders’s debate rivals almost invariably let this answer pass. (I think Pete Buttigieg tried to take it on in the last debate but couldn’t get the floor.)

In reality, the policies Sanders advocates bear little resemblance to those of Denmark and other Scandinavian countries today. They do resemble many of the policies these countries tried 50 years ago. However, these policies failed and were discarded.

The Vermont socialist is getting away with false advertising, including bait and switch.

But with Sanders now the clear frontrunner, and perhaps on the verge of nailing down the nomination, some liberals are starting to look behind Sanders’s Denmark dodge, as Buttigieg tried to do in the most recent debate.

Fareed Zakaria calls Sanders on it in this Washington Post op-ed. He writes:

The image [Sanders] conjures up is of a warm and fuzzy social democracy in which market economics are kept on a tight leash through regulation, the rich are heavily taxed and the social safety net is generous. That is, however, an inaccurate and highly misleading description of those Northern European countries today.

Take billionaires. Sanders has been clear on the topic: “Billionaires should not exist.” But Sweden and Norway both have more billionaires per capita than the United States — Sweden almost twice as many. Not only that, these billionaires are able to pass on their wealth to their children tax-free. Inheritance taxes in Sweden and Norway are zero, and in Denmark 15 percent. The United States, by contrast, has the fourth-highest estate taxes in the industrialized world at 40 percent.

The Scandinavian economies were once more in line with Sanders’s socialist vision, but these policies were ruinous. Accordingly, they eventually were abandoned:

In Sweden, government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product doubled from 1960 to 1980, going from approximately 30 percent to 60 percent. But as Swedish commentator Johan Norberg points out, this experiment in Sanders-style democratic socialism tanked the Swedish economy. Between 1970 and 1995, he notes, Sweden did not create a single net new job in the private sector. In 1991, a free-market prime minister, Carl Bildt, initiated a series of reforms to kick-start the economy. By the mid-2000s, Sweden had cut the size of its government by a third and emerged from its long economic slump.

The story is essentially the same throughout Northern Europe, including in Denmark, according to Zakaria. And speaking of Denmark:

A 2008 OECD report found that the top 10 percent in the United States pay 45 percent of all income taxes, while the top 10 percent in Denmark pay 26 percent and in Sweden 27 percent. Among wealthy countries, the average is 32 percent.

The United States has a significantly more progressive tax code than Europe, and its top 10 percent pays a vastly greater share of the country’s taxes than their European counterparts.

Sanders doesn’t want Denmark’s taxation policy. Nor does he advocate other key elements of the Danish model — flexible labor markets, light regulations, and a deep commitment to free trade.

Sanders favors policies much more along the lines of those that failed Scandinavia in the 1960s and 1970s. Or perhaps a mixture of those policies and the ones that are failing in Venezuela today.

As I said, liberals have been slow to point this out. If Sanders is the Democratic nominee, conservatives, with President Trump in the lead, won’t be.

Breaking: Pompeo to Sign Historic Peace Agreement With Taliban

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo is soon traveling to sign a historic peace deal with the Taliban, President Donald Trump said in a statement Friday.

Defense secretary Mark Esper will be signing a joint declaration affirming the administration’s partnership with the Afghan government in concert with the Taliban peace deal. The president described the ceremonies as ‘a powerful path forward to end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home’.

President Trump has been pushing for a peace deal with the Taliban in order to keep his campaign promise of ending the decades-long war in Afghanistan. Under the proposed deal, the US would gradually withdraw troops from Afghanistan in exchange for promises from the Taliban that they will not engage in or fund terror.

he president ceased negotiations with the Taliban in September after the group took credit for a suicide car bombing that killed an American service member. However, talks resumed after the Taliban promised that they would be open to reducing violence, a huge change for a group that was committing violent acts at record highs last year. The US and the Taliban reached a seven-day reduction in violence agreement this past Friday, which was not equivalent to a ceasefire but expected the Taliban to avoid any major forms of violence.

Trump stated, ‘these commitments represent an important step to a lasting peace in a new Afghanistan, free from al-Qaeda, Isis, and any other terrorist group that would seek to bring us harm. Ultimately it will be up to the people of Afghanistan to work out their future. We, therefore, urge the Afghan people to seize this opportunity for peace and a new future for their country.’

Secretary Pompeo noted that the US would sign a fuller peace agreement ‘if and only if’ the reduction in violence was successful, adding that it would likely be signed ‘on or about February 29’.

Critics have warned that the Taliban may simply resort back to violence or seize control of the Afghan government after the deal is made, but the administration contends that they are clear-eyed about the risks of negotiating with the terror group and are willing to retaliate with military force if necessary.

Two New Community-Spread Coronavirus Cases Found In Northern California, Oregon

That second case I posted the article about earlier? Now there’s a third.

On Friday evening, authorities confirmed that two people – a woman from Santa Clara County, California, and a patient from Washington County, Oregon – had contracted coronavirus from unknown sources within the community.

According to The Washington Post, the woman from Santa Clara County, in Northern California, is 65-years-old and has not recently traveled outside the country. The patient tested positive for coronavirus on Friday, according to “people familiar with the case.”

The second case, which has occurred in an unknown individual from Washington County, Oregon, was confirmed by state health authorities, reports the news agency. The patient, who is an adult and currently at Westside Medical Center in Hillsboro, Oregon, didn’t have contact with other people known to have the coronavirus, and had not recently traveled outside the country.

The two cases confirmed Friday night represent the second and third community spread cases that have been found in the United States. The first case, a person from Solano County, California, was the first confirmed instance of community-spread coronavirus in the United States, and the patient is currently at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, California.

The two California cases have occurred within 100 miles of Travis Air Force Base in Northern California, where some of the 400 U.S. citizens aboard the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship were for quarantine. As of Thursday evening, six passengers from the cruise ship out of the 3,711 people on board have died, including five Japanese citizens and a British citizen, reports Forbes.

Suspect shot by homeowner in Walker Co. charged with several crimes

While this crim is a ‘prowler’ alright, notice his current charges are theft & breaking into a vehicle, not burglary. Outside of Texas, shooting a thief just for thieving is a risky proposition that puts a person at the mercy of ‘prosecutorial discretion’. Apparently in that section of Alabama (and I know of many other areas) a prosecutor won’t bother charging a homeowner if a known miscreant gets his just desserts, but that’s relying on politics and not the law to keep yourself out of legal jeopardy.

WALKER COUNTY, Ala. (WBRC) – A suspect who was shot by a homeowner in Walker County has now been charged with breaking into multiple vehicles and stealing items.

Several people in the Boldo community called the sheriff’s office on January 31 to report a prowler near their homes.

While Deputies were en route to the scene, the prowler was shot by the homeowner in the leg. The homeowner recognized the man as Jimmie Sanders, due to Sanders staying in the vicinity recently. Sanders then ran from the scene.

Deputies were able to locate Sanders, who was taken to Brookwood Baptist Hospital in Jasper for treatment.

During the investigation, it was determined that Sanders had broken into multiple vehicles in the neighborhood and had stolen several items in the process.

Throughout the night and the next morning, Investigator Brad Curtis received many other complaints concerning vehicles that Sanders was believed to have broken into.

Sanders has been charged with numerous counts of theft crimes, as well as breaking and entering a Motor Vehicle. The investigation is ongoing and more charges are expected.

PREPARING FOR CORONAVIRUS:
Getting ready for the possibility of major disruptions is not only smart; it’s also our civic duty

This applies to all “prepping” as a general concept. The better you can look after yourself and yours, the less of a drain you are on emergency resources. The press wants to treat prepping as selfish, but it’s actually the opposite.

As the new human coronavirus spreads around the world, individuals and families should prepare—but are we? The Centers for Disease Control has already said that it expects community transmission in the United States, and asked families to be ready for the possibility of a “significant disruption to our lives.”

Be ready? But how? It seems to me that some people may be holding back from preparing because of their understandable dislike of associating such preparation with doomsday or “prepper” subcultures. Another possibility is that people may have learned that for many people the disease is mild, which is certainly true, so they don’t think it’s a big risk to them. Also, many doomsday scenarios advise extensive preparation for increasingly outlandish scenarios, and this may seem daunting and pointless (and it is). Others may not feel like contributing to a panic or appearing to be selfish.

Forget all that.

Preparing for the almost inevitable global spread of this virus, now dubbed COVID-19, is one of the most pro-social, altruistic things you can do in response to potential disruptions of this kind.

We should prepare, not because we may feel personally at risk, but so that we can help lessen the risk for everyone. We should prepare not because we are facing a doomsday scenario out of our control, but because we can alter every aspect of this risk we face as a society.

That’s right, you should prepare because your neighbors need you to prepare—especially your elderly neighbors, your neighbors who work at hospitals, your neighbors with chronic illnesses, and your neighbors who may not have the means or the time to prepare because of lack of resources or time……

Staying home without needing deliveries means that not only are you less likely to get sick, thus freeing up hospitals for more vulnerable populations, it means that you are less likely to infect others (while you may be having a mild case, you can still infect an elderly person or someone with cancer or another significant illness) and you allow delivery personnel to help out others.