Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Sweden riding high and the triumph of the rational herd immunity approach

On Tuesday, Sweden reported 0 deaths and just 77 cases. Over the past week, deaths have been no higher than two per day. What is so remarkable is that while there are other countries that have had near-zero deaths for even longer, Sweden has achieved this through herd immunity; prevented the lockdown deaths, emotional abuse, drug deaths, suicides, and financial ruin plaguing other countries; and – most importantly – is more fortified against a resurgence than these other countries that delayed herd immunity.

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Ilhan Omar’s grifty and sordid reelection campaign

Ilhan Omar has spent $2.97 million on her reelection this year. If you set aside refunds and transfers, her operating expenditures are $2.59 million. Only five members of Congress have spent more on operating expenditures so far this cycle.

Where is all that money going?

Much of it is going to her husband.

In March, the congresswoman (who perpetually scolded anyone who inquired about her multiple marriages) married her top campaign consultant, Tim Mynett. Mynett’s ex-wife alleged in divorce filings that her husband and Omar were carrying on an affair while both were married. Why does the congresswoman’s extramarital affair matter?

For starters, marital fidelity and sexual ethics reflect on character, which matters for elected officials.

But also, when Omar is funneling the lion’s share of her fundraising to her paramour-turned-husband, it’s a matter of public corruption.

As of June 30, according to her campaign’s latest filing, Mynett’s firm, the E Street Group, has pocketed $1.04 million of her $2.59 million in operating expenditures. That means that 40% of every dollar donated to reelect Omar lands in the bank account of her husband’s firm.

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Don’t. Side. With. The. Powerful.

Don’t side with the powerful against the disempowered. Just don’t.

Learning to distinguish between empowered parties and disempowered parties can be a little tricky, because nobody likes to think of themselves as siding with the powerful against the weak. It’s something we all know intuitively to be wrong, so we’ll often find clever ways of using an incomplete analysis of the power dynamics at play which allows us to feel as though we’re fighting the power when we’re really doing the exact opposite.

And propagandists are of course all too eager to help us do this.

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DARPA’s Man in Wuhan

Michael Callahan’s career began in USAID and in the bioweapons labs of the former Soviet Union, advancing the agenda of the global bioweapons and pharmaceutical cartels. He would take what he learned there to execute a massive expansion of DARPA’s biodefense portfolio and today finds himself squarely in the center of the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

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