Regardless of how dangerous or communicable this disease turns out to be, here’s the latest info on . . .

. . . and a country by country breakdown.

. . . Means MORE CRIME.

From The Epoch Times:

Prosecutors Say California Policy Reforms Favor Criminal Suspects Over Victims

From the piece’s conclusion:

“Daniel Chung, a career prosecutor and former deputy prosecutor for Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen, said criminal justice reforms have become ‘imbalanced.’

“According to data from the California Department of Justice, prosecution rejections in criminal cases are at their highest rates since the 1980s.

‘I think that DAs [district attorneys] these days in certain jurisdictions are trying to become very progressive and less about punishment and more just about services,’ Chung said.

‘They’re losing their focus on their main responsibility, which is to enforce laws.’

“He referred to an attempted murder case that the district attorney had asked him to dismiss. Chung said the case involved a young man who allegedly robbed three stores with a gun and shot at a bystander in the third store. The bystander wasn’t struck and fled the scene.

‘DA Rosen wanted me to consider dismissal, Chung said, suggesting influence by special interest groups.

‘That’s how much we’ve gotten soft on crime.'”

“The Epoch Times reached out to District Attorney Jeff Rosen for comment, but didn’t hear back by press time.”

Chung said that “the ​​state legislature needs to strengthen criminal laws, allow prosecutors to prosecute criminal offenders, and roll back policy reforms that are leading to early releases.”

This idea that the PERPETRATOR is MORE A VICTIM than the ACTUAL CRIME VICTIM is a great topic for MORAL PHILOSOPHY CLASS, but it has NO ROLE in cases where SERIOUS CRIMES HAVE IN FACT BEEN COMMITTED.

At THAT point, the WHY isn’t RELEVANT. What matters is ENFORCING THE LAW TO THE LETTER.

We are, after all, A SOCIETY OF LAWS.

Or at least, PURPORT TO BE.

Here’s another guy I don’t care much for, DOING THE RIGHT THING.  Especially when you consider he’s an AI FREAK.

Still, he understands that we are — at least as presently constituted — SOCIAL ANIMALS.  And that we need to interact in ways where we can see, smell and otherwise sense each other not just as IMAGES or FACSIMILES but as CORPOREAL BEINGS IN THE FLESH.

As for me, the deeper lessen is this:

BEWARE OF NOT TOLERATING PEOPLE WITH WHOM YOU DISAGREE AS YOU MAY FIND OUT THAT THERE ARE AREAS WHERE YOU ARE IN COMPLETE ALIGNMENT WITH THEM.

And if not THIS, then what is the ESSENCE of a CENTRIST?

What a CENTRIST does is PIVOT.

Luongo isn’t someone whose politics I generally agree with.  Yet, I still read him as we have similar views on CERTAIN TOPICS.

And here’s one of them:

“What would you do to survive? To protect your family? Your position? Your conception of yourself?

“Everyone’s morality has limits. Everyone. Everyone has a shadow, a dark side, a place where they retreat to their Hobbesian self and see the world purely in terms of ‘a war of all against all.’ Anyone who refuses to admit this to themselves is someone you should run screaming from.

“Those that always claim the moral high ground, who are always ‘the goodies!’ are those without limits on their behavior. As the great H.L. Mencken proclaimed nearly 70 years ago:

‘The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts.'”

The Left is UTOPIAN in the same way Christianity is.  It doesn’t want to HEAL disease, it wants to ERADICATE it.

In a universe such as this, THERE’S JUST TOO MUCH EVIDENCE OF WHAT A FOOL’S ERRAND THAT IS.

No, it’s neither the EARLY 70’s nor the LATE 70’s.

WOULD THAT IT WERE.

No, we’re in a much more FRAGILE TIME.

But of course, the average American gives this VERY LITTLE THOUGHT as s/he continues to sleepwalk through an increasingly mine-planted field.  Even while expecting — completely mindlessly — to go on, as if by magic, flipping on light switches and turning ignitions keys.

Trouble is, this time, it’s more than just a PRICE-HIKE energy crisis but also one involving AVAILABILITY OF SUPPLY.

From OilPrice. com:

“The world faces a ‘much bigger’ energy crisis than the one of the 1970s, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, told German daily Der Spiegel in an interview published on Tuesday.”

“Back then it was just about oil,” Birol told the news outlet.

“Now we have an oil crisis, a gas crisis and an electricity crisis simultaneously,” said the head of the international agency created after the 1970s shock of the Arab oil embargo.”

• “The world, especially Europe, could face a summer of shortages of gasoline, fuel, and jet fuel . . . .”
• “Refinery capacity for supply, globally and in the U.S . . . is now a few million barrels per day lower than it was before the pandemic.”

THE MAN IS TALKING SHORTAGES.

Jesus, it doesn’t take this much to run BROCCOLI HALL.

They could call me in to HELP CUT COSTS.

So, will these numbers now rise?

Where were you?  You’re vigilantes, aren’t you?  Righters of wrongs?

Well how about this?

Chicago Police: 52 Shot, 10 Killed Over Memorial Day Weekend

If not BLM, who ya gonna call?

Pinkertons?

The James-Younger gang?

From Charles Hugh Smith:

Why America Decays: The Tyranny of Self-Interest

And as usual, Smith simply tells it.

Key points:

• “I’ve discussed the moral rot consuming the American Project in blog posts and my books.”
• The failure of Americans to “discern the rot is the result of the gradualness of the decay.”
• “Forty years ago, student loans were unknown and healthcare costs did not bankrupt households.”
• “Forty years ago, relatively few Americans were obese.”
• “Our ability to discern the difference between serving the public interest/common good and making a modest profit doing so and harming the common good to maximize private gains has been lost.”
• “Synthetic opioids offer a good example.”
• “The phony PR cover for the the tyranny of self-interest is that the pursuit of maximizing profits by any means available magically benefits the public.”
• “America is doomed to decay as long as we can’t tell the difference between the public interest/common good and self-interest.”

And as he often does, Smith ends the piece with one of his EXPANSION/COLLAPSE S-curve diagrams:

Smith’s analyses have proven disconcertingly accurate for over a dozen years now.

Which is NOT surprising.

HE’S A TRUTH TELLER.

Where US stands for U.S.

From Gallup:

“Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index measured -45 in May, down from -39 in each of the previous two months. It is the lowest reading in Gallup’s trend during the coronavirus pandemic, and likely the lowest confidence has been since the tail end of the Great Recession in early 2009.”

THIS AIN’T NO PARTY, THIS AIN’T NO DISCO/THIS AIN’T NO FOOLING AROUND