Monthly Archives: July 2020

The Space Force Logo

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The logo is pretty cool, but because I like to pick nits, I have one here.

The text is hard to read, so here are the four explanations, clockwise from the upper left.

The silver outer border of the Delta symbol signifies defense and protection from all adversaries and threats from the space domain. The black area inside embodies the vast darkness of deep space.

Inside the delta, the two spires represent the action of a rocket launching into the outer atmosphere in support of the central role of the Space Force in defending the space domain.

In the center of the delta is the star Polaris, which symbolizes how the core values guide the Space Force mission.

The four beveled elements symbolize the joint armed forces supporting the space mission: Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marines.

My nit is this. Rockets don’t launch into the outer atmosphere in support of the Space Force mission. They launch through the entire atmosphere into the emptiness of space, which is where the mission is executed/executed from.

Some Actual Data

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Because as most in the current administration do, Progressive-Democrats natter on about, and the NLMSM bleats hysterically we should do, here are some actual data and some actual science that we should follow regarding the Wuhan Virus and our current situation.

The subheadline pretty much tells the tale.

Research suggests the new coronavirus kills about five to 10 people for every 1,000 that it infects, though rate varies based on age and access to health care

The Executive Summary:

That research—examining deaths out of the total number of infections, which includes unreported cases—suggests that Covid-19 kills from around 0.3% to 1.5% of people infected. Most studies put the rate between 0.5% and 1.0%, meaning that for every 1,000 people who get infected, from five to 10 would die on average.

Age matters, too, but the slope only increases sharply above an age:

Researchers in the US and Switzerland examined data from the Swiss city of Geneva to calculate fatality rates for different age groups. They found those over 65 had an infection-fatality rate of 5.6%….

As a side note, another avenue of research occurs to me from this datum. Sixty-five is associated with retirement (plus or minus) in the western developed world. How much does the increased level of sedentary-ness associated with retirement contribute to that higher mortality rate? Could a sedentary life-style itself be a comorbidity?

It’s instructive that Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden seems not to be aware of any of these data. It’s further instructive that the NLMSM studiously ignores them.

Let ’em Burn?

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That’s what Bill McGurn and some others think as Progressive-Democrat-run cities suffer increasing rioting and looting and chaos while those same Progressive-Democrat mayors increasingly vociferously object to Federal law enforcement personnel presence and actions.

Opening with

Because President Trump believes such [foreign] concerns aren’t America’s business, he has been reluctant to involve US troops abroad. So it’s surprising that he now appears eager to intervene in the mostly Democratic-run American cities that have been wracked by chaos, shootings and destruction in the weeks since George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Then, near his close:

There’s no doubt the president has both the responsibility and the authority to protect federal property, which is what DHS is doing in Portland. But Mr Trump would do well to narrow his rhetoric to make clear any federal intervention will be for this purpose and this purpose only—unless cities specifically ask for federal assistance.

Let the cities burn. Let the innocent burn in them alongside the thugs.  Don’t exercise any initiative.

Trump may not be responsible for the welfare and safety of a metaphorical 25 million Iraqis (as Colin Powell once suggested to President Bush the Younger), but he is responsible for the welfare and safety of 330 million Americans—all of us.

That includes the innocents whose lives are being destroyed and businesses razed—literally and through denial of access to customers—by rioters and looters in cities where Progressive-Democrat mayors, with the full backing of their Progressive-Democrat governors, have abrogated their responsibilities for the welfare and safety of the residents of those cities, the citizens of those States.

It might, in the short term, feel good to let the cities burn freely without Federal intervention, but it would also burn millions of innocent Americans, all to make a political point—which is what those mayors and governors are doing, to make a political point.

Then McGurn had this bit of excuse-making—it’s all the cities’ residents’ fault.

It’s difficult to argue that these leaders have done so without the consent of the governed. Whether it was Bill de Blasio running against the police in New York or Jenny Durkan offering her own progressive agenda in Seattle, they didn’t hide from voters what they stood for.

Those leaders were not elected unanimously, however. A significant minority voted against them or for the opposing candidates. We must protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority—that’s the basis of our federal republic structure of governance.

McGurn closed with this:

The chaos now consuming American cities has arisen on the watch of progressive politicians just like Mayor Wheeler, and they don’t deserve to be so easily let off the hook.

But the innocents don’t deserve to be hung on that hook along with the cities’ governing politician failures.

The misapprehension is widespread on the left, too. In response to a comment on McGurn’s article warning of the tyranny of the majority, one commenter asked, “[T]yranny of the majority? So who gets to rule?”

The answer would be obvious to anyone who’s actually had a jr high Civics class. No one gets to rule in the United States of America. Governing, though, is done by the majority—within the framework of respect for and protection of the wishes and rights of the minority.

Trump just needs to make the case directly to the people—around the nation and especially in those Progressive-Democrat-forsaken cities—bypassing the NLMSM gateway/filter/censor.

Update: Left out a couple key words that changed the meaning of my comment on McGurn’s excuse-making. Now corrected.

The Biden Fed

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden has a plan for the Federal Reserve system of banks. This bit jumped out at me in the article at the link that describes his plan.

[T]he policy blueprint Team Biden cooked up with Bernie Sanders’s economic advisers argues, “the Black unemployment rate is persistently higher than the national average, which is why Democrats support making racial equity part of the mandate of the Federal Reserve.”

Because blacks are fundamentally incapable of competing in America without special treatment. This is the soft bigotry of low expectations.

This is the overt bigotry of the Progressive-Democratic Party and of Joe Biden—If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black—made manifest.

Opening Schools—Two Schools of Thought

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California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has ordered all schools—private and public—not to open until his Omnipotent State declares it safe to do so. This seems at the behest of California’s teachers unions, which fear competition from private schools—and which are losing that competition, as they’ve been doing for some years.

Catholic school tuition, for instance, costs $1,000-$4,000 per student less than the union public schools, and they provide better education—academic, discipline, moral values. And they’re ready, willing, and anxious to open on schedule.

In contrast, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt (D) has sprung some of his discretionary education funds to cover school costs for families whose kids went to private schools last year, but for whom the Wuhan Virus situation has hammered their finances this year.

What’s really at stake? The virus risk to the kids in K-12 is vanishingly small: they’re simply unlikely to get infected, and among those who do, the severity of their infection very usually is slight.

The science is uncertain on how infectious the kids are when they are infected but asymptomatic. They appear not to be mutually infectious; the uncertainty is how infectious they are to the adults around them, the teachers, teacher aides (a relatively recent, and seeming featherbedding, addition to staff), administrators and staff, janitors. The data, though, are leaning increasingly in the direction of not very infectious.

There are occasional moves to stagger in-person schooling with half the students present some days, the other half the other days, at socially distanced desks, and with virtual schooling (a disastrous failure last spring, but maybe practice teaches) for the kids at home on those alternate days.

This is unnecessary. The kids are as safe from each other with the Wuhan Virus as they are with colds and flu. Bring them back.  All of them.

While the risks remain uncertain, it would be cumbersome but easily and straightforwardly doable to socially distance the teachers from the students in their classrooms. They spend a fair amount of their class time on the chalkboards at the front of the rooms, anyway. Or could easily go back to that.

Teachers unions holding out for deus ex cashina (I wish I’d thought of the term, but it’s the WSJ editors’) State and Federal interventions are acting in their petty interests rather than the interests of our children. Easier said than done, but these unions need to be decertified. Their selfish greed borders on child abuse.