"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Patricia McCarthy yesterday at the American Thinker had a revealing post entitled When are enough Americans going to realize our government is a criminal enterprise? The mafia and our government operate somewhat similarly in that each offers protection from miscreants in return for "protection money." The difference used to be that we got to choose our various government officials and that the laws were spelled out and written down in advance. The mafia, on the other hand, operated like a feudal lord. But all that has changed. Today elections are routinely rigged such that one no longer has the representation they voted for. The laws are turned on the law abiding, contrary to how the laws are written. The government is doing everything in its power to criminalize and destroy the middle class. We now have a government of organized thugs using our tax dollars against us.

While these so-called progressives have been undermining our constitutional and Judeo-Christian values since the turn of the last century (Woodrow Wilson was their patron saint), it was Obama that took the move toward tyranny from gradual to sudden. Now we are there. Surveillance, censorship, and control are their goal, the Constitution be damned.

Our law enforcement agencies have interfered to affect the outcome of the last three elections. They persecute their political opponents with their typical abuse of the law — lawfare — anyone remotely conservative, anyone perceived as a threat to their power, is on their radar for destruction.

Trump is their number-one enemy for good reason; he actually cares about the American people while they loathe them. The American people are merely an annoying inconvenience to the left. They want us gone, voiceless.

What has happened to those who protested the results of the 2020 election on J6 is right out of the Soviet playbook. What is most enraging about all this? That so many Republicans are guilty of letting it happen; too many of them are on the anti-Trump train. They were never going to upset the uniparty's applecart. Far from it. Mitch McConnell? Mitt Romney? Kevin McCarthy? Dan Crenshaw? Liz Cheney? Just a few of many who have opted to sell out the country. The 149 Republicans who voted to incur $50T in debt over the next ten years are part of the uniparty.

There are too many weak, compromised, and corrupt Republicans to mention, but their capitulation to the radical wing of the Democrat party that is loyal to the CCP has brought this nation to its lowest point in U.S. history. We are in decline by design, by globalist intent, with the full approval of Obama and his wreck-America cronies. We are also in grave danger. Biden's lust to see Putin overthrown has made his persecution of the war in Ukraine the most dangerous since the Cuban Missile Crisis. China has surpassed our military readiness on every score. Evil is on the march, and too few among our elected leaders are willing to rise up and fight.

McCarthy makes the point in the above paragraphs that the uniparty, the Democrats and the Rhinos are actually in league with a foreign and hostile government, acting against the American people. They have created numerous hoaxes, including the climate change hoax, the great pandemic hoax, the radiation hoax I wrote about as well as the fat is bad hoax in order to injure the cattle industry. These hoaxes are created and publicized to create the impression that we are in imminant danger from (name of hoax) and we must do (desired action) now! No time to waste studying and debating!

You can be sure that someone, somewhere is getting rich off of these hoaxes, and you and I are paying for it. Like Orwell's novel 1984, H. L. Mencken's dictum "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary" was meant as a warning, but our criminal class has taken it as a how-to manual.

McCarthy has laid out a pretty convincing case that our government has become a criminal enterprise designed to keep them in power and money. I urge gentle readers to read the whole thing, and to think about how to throw sand in the machine.

You Have Been Lied To

Science, the real science, being the making of observations, followed by a hypothesis, followed by experimentation to disprove the hypothesis, has been undone by influential "scientists" in a number of fields, to the public's detriment. Real science is never settled. Indeed, the theory of gravity is only a theory yet to be disproved. Once one understands how real science works, one becomes suspicious whenever someone appeals to the authority of a "consensus of scientists," for there can be no such consensus in real science.

One such field is that of nutrition. I have recently read a book by Nina Teicholz entitled Big Fat Surprise Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet. The book, of which fully half of it is just footnotes referring to published scientific papers, explains how we came to believe that a low fat high carbohydrate diet LFHC was healthy. It turns out that it is not healthy, and has resulted in the obesity epidemic facing Americans, as well as a whole list of the "diseases of modern civilization." Teicholz spent a decade working on the book, and it shows. The story is one of egotism, a very influential doctor with a flawed idea, narcissism, billion dollar corporate greed of both Big Food and Big Pharma, and of course government connivance. For a look at what a proper human diet might look like, go visit Dr. Ken Berry, who advocates for a low carbohydrate, high fat (LCHF) diet he calls the carnivore diet. But there are many LCHF doctors now, that advocate for a range of LCHF diets depending on individual needs.

It turns out that the public's understanding of the threat to health of radiation has been similarly distorted by the influence of a group of people to fulfill their own agenda. John Dale Dunn, MD brings this to light at the American Thinker today in an article entitled The Nuclear Theory You Never Knew Was Nonsense.

Gentle readers should know that investigating the history of how we came to believe in the Linear-No Threshold Toxicology (LNT) model, that pervades both the radiation and the chemical exposure worlds is to go down a rabbit hole. Just as my investigation of the high carbohydrate, low fat diet sent me down a rabbit hole that has consumed many hours of reading, and videos, there are a number of hyperlinks in Dunn's article, that if followed completely will consume a lot of time. But Dunn has done the yeoman's work to tell us that the LNT is nonsense. Like everything else, the dose makes the poison. A low level of radiation above the background is benificial, known as hormesis.

LNT says there is no safe level of radiation exposure, but obviously, the better rule is the rule of Paracelsus: "All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes that a thing is no poison." (The dose makes the poison.) No threshold of LNT throws that maxim out the window.

My negative attitude about LNT was nurtured by a twenty-plus-year interest in the work of Ed Calabrese, U. Mass Amherst, reigning expert on low-level radiation hazards and the theory of heresies (sic-should be hormesis) that asserts a tri-phasic effect of exposure of all kinds — 1) a no effect level, 2) a beneficial effect at low exposure levels, and 3) a toxic effect at higher levels of exposure. My medical experience with drug effects shows that same hermetic diphasic effect — drugs have a sweet spot between no effect and toxic effect.

Please go read Dunn's short article, and as many hyperlinks as you have time for. Understand that this is why we do not have nuclear power in this country, which would be a great boon. Just like the fact that the low fat, high carbohydrate diet made you and me fat, and Big Food and Big Pharma rich, the LNT has denied us the beneficial use of radiation. You have been lied to about fat, about the climate hoax, and about radiation.

For Squirrels and Sech

 Are you one of those who think that the police and military that we hire to protect us would never turn their guns on us?  According to Kurt Schlichter at Townhall.com in an essay entitled They Will Turn On You, you may be whistling past the grave yard.

Chairman Mao, the unspoken hero of our garbage ruling caste, understood that power flows from the barrel of a gun, and it’s not unreasonable to wonder whether the institutions in America that carry guns – law enforcement and the military – and who are supposed to protect us will turn those guns on us if commanded to by the ruling elite.

Stop wondering.

Their answer is that to a greater extent than those of us who grew up in America, when it was a free country before it became our present crypto-leftist tyranny, want to admit, they will. Right now, they are hiding news that undermines their rule. They are censoring opponents. They are locking up political dissidents. And eventually, when the current junta feels truly threatened by the emerging backlash from patriotic citizens, too many of these alleged protectors will kill for their masters – and I mean more than just the occasional and totally unpunished massacres of unapproved dissidents like at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Pretty harsh? It is harsh, but it’s not wrong. Explain why that is the red line they suddenly stop at when they have blasted through the red lines of lying, of censorship, and of framing the opposition using a two-tier justice system. “Yeah, those things are fine, but we won’t go all the way. Oh no, never.” Where’s the guardrail that is going to block the trend that is now sending SWAT teams out to bust people for praying at abortion clinics from accelerating into actually using those big, scary assault rifles?

Schlichter points out that some of these people are reacting to purely human weaknesses: fear of loss of jobs or financial security, belief that what they are doing is correct, or the belief that we are so dangerous that to kill us is for the benefit of society. Of course, they would be wrong, but that doesn't change the outcome.

We thought we could rely on the members of these institutions to refuse the commands of their leaders if those leaders turned them upon the citizens. We properly hanged Nazis for “just obeying orders” and established a personal responsibility not to be a cog in the gears of tyranny. But look at our law enforcement agencies today. Look at the disgraced FBI, an organization that differs from the Stasi only in that many of its members are fatter. They share the communist secret police’s leftism and the delight spying on and framing citizens. The agents have accepted pursuing political opponents, framing a president, and all manner of lies and deceptions, and we know they accept it all because they don’t resign. A few whistleblowers have come forward, but the vast majority have stayed at their posts, participating indirectly or even directly in the oppression that is the hallmark of this modern Ministry of Truth. We can only hope that those few good apples don’t contaminate the barrel full of bad ones.

Why do they do it? Human weakness. Most have invested in their shabby careers. Most are eying pensions. They go along. They follow orders. And if you think that, given the order and the chance, they will not pull a trigger for the ruling class, well, I have a burnt patch of Texas dirt to sell you. Cheap.

Schlichter paints a gloomy picture for us. The institutions we have depended on to make our society the best that the world has offered, though it is far from perfect, either are, or have failed us. Every one. But then, he also offeres a hopeful note. We outnumber them by about 50 to 1. They have the advantage of being organized, but we can organize too. Keep your guns and ammo for we may need it for squirrels and such.

Alan Korwin: We Need Consequences For Infringements

To gun owners and journalists, the name Alan Korwin has been known for years. He is the author if various states gunowner's guides. Indeed, as he shows here, he is the go to person when you have a question about gun laws. And, in fact, keeping and bearing arms it is pretty confusing and risky as each state has different gun laws, and in some cases, just moving from one county or city to another jurisdiction can put gun owners in serious jeapardy. Therefore, Korwin's work is invaluable.

With that introduction to who Alan Korwin is, let us take a look at his recent article at Townhall.com entitled Giving The Constitution Teeth: The Truth About Aggravated Infringement - A Felony. Korwin's point is absolutely correct, there is no way to hold people accountable for violations, or infringements of rights and provision of the Constitution itself, for the Constitution assumes that those who have taken an oath to defend it against all enemies foreign and domestic will keep their word. Too many have proven they will not do so. Here is what Korwin proposes:

The U.S. Constitution, for all its strengths, revered and imitated worldwide, has a fatal flaw. A weakness of Greek-tragedy proportions. The Constitution lacks punishment for those who would violate its terms. Yes, there are avenues of recourse, but these have been neutered and rendered feckless in so many ways.

Politicians these days believe they can get away with anything, right? Graft, bribes, gaslighting, obtaining office by any means legal or otherwise, all-out bald-faced lies, scare tactics, misappropriation of funds... They’ll use the organs of government to assault domestic opposition (not the same as domestic enemies), place them under arrest, strangle their voices by deplatforming, controlling so-called “news” media and playing them like stenographers, it has gotten totally out of hand. Why? And what to do about it? Even when they’re exposed, red-handed—did you review John Durham’s report?—they seem to skate. Here’s why:

The ultimate protection of our “Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness”—a way to force government into compliance—is use of force. Our Declaration of Independence recognized and encouraged that “...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."

That option, which held more meaning right after our bloody founding, has lost some if not all its impact. It’s too extreme, too hard, too violent for subtle infringements and little incursions on our liberties. That allows the thousand cuts to build up until they are intolerable acts. Then use of force is too late. We’re there now. But there’s hope.

What America needs, what our Republic and Constitution need, is strict adherence to a policy of, “No infringement shall be tolerated.” Small encroachments—like licenses to carry arms or speech codes—must subject people proposing such violations to penalties. Gross infringements like, “We’re going to take away your favorite rifle—and of course we’ll keep ours,” require prison terms. Stiff penalties.

I can already hear gentle readers mumbling to themselves "Yeah? Who is going to enforce it. Don't we already have something about depriving people of rights acknowledged by the Constitution under color of law? Why, yes we do. It is 18 U.S Code Section 242. But really doesn't apply to the politicians themselves, though it could apply to the officials of the Deep State. But again, who will enforce it against them when it is the Attorney General himself who is directing these bad actors. But let's hear Korwin out, shall we?

Talking about violating constitutional rights is fine. That’s free speech, protected to an almost holy level. Acting to violate the rights though, like by proposing laws in clear usurpation beyond delegated powers, that is Simple Infringement, a misdemeanor.

Formally proposing infringement legislation is a bad thing. But acting on existing infringements, that is Aggravated Infringement, a felony, with stiff sentences and strict liability, even for a first offense. You cannot offer such tripe into the legislative hopper. It’s like proposing slavery. Argue for it with speech, this is an American’s prerogative. So many of my liberal friends argue for banning guns, taking away guns you own, outlawing the purchase of new guns, making new categories of prohibited people. We must support this, it is a right to speak.

You politicians, elected or appointed, and your bureaucratic functionaries—hired, appointed or in office by law—you are banned from doing these things. Without teeth though, the ban is feckless, as we see all around us. Under these proposed new statutes—you get fined for a first offense, jailed for repeat offenses. Don’t do it.

Unfortunately, Korwin never really answers the question of just who or what institution will enforce these laws. The Supreme Court has proven to be feckless very often. In any case, the cost to get something in front of the court...maybe...would bankrupt the average citizen many times over. The Attorney General is often part of the problem. Even if it is Federal judges, these are appointed individuals who are, sadly not angels themselves.

I agree with Mr. Korwin's idea, but I have my doubts as to its practicality.

Remain Committed to Seeking Truth

 I have mentioned before that you and I, gentle readers, must remain committed to speaking the truth.  For to give in to the Left's redefinition of language and words is to become demoralized in the literal sense.  If we lose the truth, we lose our integrity.  Today, we have two articles dealing with the topic.

The first article is by Laura Hollis at Townhall.com entitled Truth Is The Foundation Of Our Nation. Hollis thesis is that man is corrupt from the start, and must cleave strongly to Godly principles, however short of the mark his efforts cause him to be. But of late, society seems to have given in to the Father of Lies:

In Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, the introduction of evil in the world starts with a lie. Satan tells the first humans that if they defy the express will of God, they "shall be like gods" themselves, something which is neither true nor possible. Whether one believes in the biblical story of creation as fact or sees it merely as allegory, the lesson is the same: at the heart of the worst human behaviors is the desire to be God, including the belief that the truth is whatever we declare it to be.

History is replete with examples, but a recent one is the transgender phenomenon. We find ourselves being told now by "experts" that men can become women and women can become men merely by declaring that they identify as such. Chromosomal biology, we're told, is irrelevant. Physical differences -- even in competitive sports -- are now deemed immaterial. Demands for fairness and the desire for privacy and safety -- in sports, in bathrooms, in locker rooms, even in prisons -- are no longer considered natural and normal but condemned as irrational "phobias" and expressions of hatred.

This is by no means the first lie that exalts human desire over scientific fact. The abortion movement has depended for decades on the falsehood that the developing child in utero is "just a clump of cells," "not a person," "not a baby." Despite advances in technology that enable us to see the developing child, including surgery in utero and 4D ultrasound, people still deny the humanity of the living human child in his or her mother's womb.

These falsehoods are born of another lie -- the oft-repeated belief that science and religion are antithetical to each other. Science and superstition may be, but science and religion, per se, are not. In fact, much of humanity's greatest technological -- not to mention artistic and literary -- advancements have been inspired by faith and achieved by believers.

In fact, attacks upon God inevitably become attacks upon science. Once the belief in an ultimate source of truth is abandoned, truth itself becomes malleable, dispensable; whatever one wants or needs to be for his or her personal aims.

While man has always been tempted with such lies, in recent decades they have become ever more pervasive. The unholy alliance between government, the media and Big Tech, and now people designated as "experts" who determine for us what is true and false have generated a monster that threatens to strangle the truth in its crib. It is here, where J. B. Shurk at the American Thinker takes us deeper into the lies and propaganda with his article entitled A Government At War With Its People.

Instead, ordinary information enjoyed and shared among regular people is now targeted for classification. An alliance of national governments, international institutions, and propaganda engines disguised as disinterested nonprofits has sprung up to toss "unacceptable" thoughts into garbage piles for "mis-," "mal-," and "dis-" information trash bins. As with everything else in modern society, the cult of expertise has even given us "disinformation experts" to decide what knowledge belongs where.

The small coterie of "disinformation experts" recognized and promoted by governments then monitor what the common people are saying among themselves, cast their nets around anything "unacceptable," and stigmatize those words and thoughts as deserving of censorship. Perhaps one day soon there will be academic degrees in "disinformation" or special licenses distinguishing State-approved professionals as qualified to tell the rest of us what is real. As a rule of thumb, if you want to know what kinds of knowledge governments fear their citizens possessing, look to the subjects that require numerous layers of authority validation before access is granted or titles are conferred. Now the knowledge that governments fear their citizens possessing is simply information outside their control.

Shurk, having fully stated his thesis, delves into the nature of truth, and praising those who seek the truth. As he points out, anyone can be mistaken on a topic, but if someone is dedicated to seeking the truth, he will over time come closer to the truth and abandon lies. But, what damage have the lies done to the fabric of our society? If as Hollis says, truth is the foundation of our nation, one would expect that our societal fabric is moth eaten.

This war directed against Americans' minds has been raging for quite some time. What is different today is its pace and brazenness. Lies about Russia collusion, COVID, vaccine effectiveness, climate change, Biden family corruption, impartial justice, biological sex, American history, border security, debt sustainability, crime rates, gun safety, banking solvency, military engagements, racial disparities, religious doctrine, Western civilization, childhood development, healthy obesity, government surveillance, hydrocarbon energy, human slavery, acclaimed literature, anthropology — no topic is off limits for those who manipulate the public for a living.

Increasingly, the question is not whether the government is lying, but rather how malicious its intentions are. Did bureaucrats mandate mRNA injections that were neither safe nor effective because they are bad at science? Because they needed an alarming reason to rig the 2020 election with mail-in ballots? As a means of rewarding pharmaceutical companies and the politicians they own with windfall profits? As an opportunity to accelerate the World Economic Forum's "Great Reset"? As a way to condition people to think of property, free speech, and personal liberty as "selfish" and instead submit to the national security surveillance State?

Are the climate change cultists committed to taking over farms and ending hydrocarbon fuels because they are too dumb to understand weather patterns, solar and geothermal energies, and chemistry? Because they are committed communists who believe in global government and command-and-control economies? Because they wish to induce instability and famine that will depopulate the planet?

Do extraterrestrial UFO stories confirm that the government has long covered up an important truth, or are they hoaxes meant to distract the public from something else?

Whew! If you read all the embedded articles, I know it will take quite a while to digest them all. But it is important to flush out the constant propaganda being put out by what I call the government-Big Tech-media complex. Much of it has to do with idea of bringing about a communist, one world government and whittling away the population. Both of these things are horribly misguided and evil. Whether they succeed only God knows. But each of us can resist, indeed throw some sand in the machine grinding us down, but telling the Truth.

The Founders Second Amendment

 One of the commentors to this article said that if he didn't know better, he would think it was satire.  But then he noted that the author was on Kurt Schlichter.  But let's get into it shall we?  The article in question is Mandatory Assault Weapons Now! by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall.com.

Before we discuss the possible strenghths of the idea, let's discuss what the rights in the Second Amendment means. The Second Amendment states that "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Rights properly understood are liberties that one may take advantage of, but one must both assert the right and pay for any expense entailed. So, for example, while one has a right to freedom of the press, the government doesn't buy you a press, paper, and a staff of writers. Similarly, the Second Amendment acknowledges your right to own and carry a weapon, but you must purchase the weapon, ammunition, cleaning supplies, training and range time. Essentially, the rights provided in the Bill of Rights are negative rights.

The Left, however, has a different definition of rights. Under the Left's understanding, if someone has a right, it means that these rights must be provided to the person by society at large, meaning the government. Such rights are thought to be positive rights. The theory under which Obamacare was past would be an example of positive rights. Everyone has a right to health care, which is true enough. Under negative rights, you must pay for your own health care costs, whether that is health insurance, or health savings accounts, or pay as you go. Under the Left's positive rights, the government subsidizes part or all of the costs of your health care. (The fact that they don't actually do what they promised should concern everyone, but I digress.) Schlichter is here taking the Left's word quite literally, and applying it to a right the Left would like to erase.

There is an assault weapon problem in America – too few Americans are ready to do their duty to deter and defeat criminals and tyrants because they do not own the kind of weapons necessary for a free and secure people to remain free and secure. Right now, America has only 1.2 guns per person – this tragic shortage is nothing less than a crisis, considering that each citizen should have a battle rifle and a handgun in order to perform his or her duties.

A modest proposal: Make owning an assault rifle mandatory and have the government supply one to those who cannot afford one. I say we ensure an M16 in every pot.

This only makes sense. If a citizen has a gun, he is a citizen. If a citizen does not have a gun, he is not a citizen. He is a serf at the mercy of his feudal overlords. The right to keep and bear arms is not merely a right but a duty to keep and bear arms – everyone who is a law-abiding and healthy adult must have a real assault rifle and the ammunition to use it to protect himself, his family, his community and his Constitution.

This is a non-delegable duty. Like serving on a jury and paying taxes, you can’t slough this off on others. You have to step up personally. Relying on cops is a cop-out – we must all be first responders, and there’s no better response to criminals and aspiring tyrants than a bunch of Americas packing the same heavy-duty firepower that our soldiers do. We must make it mandatory, because some people are half-stepping, and we must supply those Americans without the means to buy the necessary guns and ammunition with a weapon and bullets so that they too can know the pride of participating fully in their own governance.

I like the idea. Indeed, I have floated it in the past. Every young man would train for two years in the military, and at the end of that time, would take home an M16, 100 rounds of ammunition and a side arm with ammunition. Each year, each man would be obligated to spend two weeks in military training, during which they would bring their weapons and ammunition, and ample range time to be available to refresh their weapons skills. At the same time, a program like this would obligate men to keep themselves fit enough to serve. I think this is what the Founders intended. They certainly never wanted us to have such a large professional army.

Personally, I think the Founders, if they were alive today, would find Schlichter's idea absolutely a good one.

No Forgiveness, and We Won't Forget

 John Daniel Davidson has an article at The Federalist entitled No Forgiveness For Pandemic Sins Until The Guilty Repent. Davidson tells us that to be forgiven, a necessary part of the process is for those who seek forgiveness to admit their guilt and ask for forgiveness. In addition, the guilty must repent, which means they agree not to do whatever they are seeking forgiveness again. None of these things have been done. The guilty have not asked for forgiveness, nor have they admitted their guilt. That means that they will do the same thing, given the chance.

Christianity Today published a curious piece by Paul Miller on Thursday calling for everyone to forgive each other for our supposed “pandemic sins.”

He doesn’t exactly say who sinned, just that “We got things wrong,” and “Some officials made mistakes in the early days.” Things happened. Mistakes were made. It’s time to move on. Miller’s argument is basically a warmed-over, lightly Christianized version of the essay Brown University economics professor Emily Oster wrote for The Atlantic last November, which argued for a “pandemic amnesty” on account of how “uncertain” and “complicated” things were in the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic like Covid. The ruling class did its best, OK?

Oster’s piece elicited well-deserved scorn from many on the right, including our own Joy Pullmann, who noted that a genuine amnesty “requires an admission of guilt and a commitment to repairing the wrongs done.” The absence of such an admission and commitment to change, says Pullmann, is “an indication that you’re going to do it again,” and makes it impossible to rebuild trust.

Of course, the people responsible for shutting down the economy, closing schools and churches, destroying countless businesses, and condemning the elderly to die alone in their hospital rooms are not at all sorry about what they did. To this day, they don’t acknowledge any wrongdoing whatsoever. Certainly not Anthony Fauci, who in an April interview with The New York Times defiantly faulted ordinary Americans for failing to listen to him, the self-proclaimed embodiment of science.

The same people who needlessly imposed massive learning losses on schoolchildren, or barred families from burying their dead, then foisted an ineffective vaccine on the public and tried to shame or coerce everyone into taking it, regardless of their age or health status. Plenty of Americans, including those in the military and medical professions, were faced with the terrible choice of taking a shot they didn’t trust or losing their careers and livelihoods.

None of the people who did this are sorry about it. In fact, they’re proud of it — and they will absolutely do it again the next chance they get...

So, no. No forgiveness for pandemic sins, and we will not forget. 

Here in North Carolina, our Covid Czar was one Dr. Mandy Cohen, a woman who took great delight in telling North Carolinians what to do, where they could go and not go and other dictatorial edicts with zero scientific basis. She shut down church services, and many were cowed into staying away. She shut down sports events and made going to a restaurant a torturous event. I could never figure out why one had to wear a mask to walk to the table, but then one could take it off when one sat down. Clearly it had nothing to do with spreading the disease and everything to do with social control. Unfortunately, she is going to be the new CDC Director.