Statue Hysteria, or is it?

By Donald A. Loucks, TEM

28 June, 2020

One may wonder why it is that after many decades, and sometimes over a century,

there is a sudden interest in being offended at statuary and monuments. Is it the
video recording of the brutal death of a man in police custody? Or is it political

opportunism?

The image of a Black Lives Matter (BLM) employee demanding that a white
woman kneel before him and apologize for her “white privilege” is galling, both
for the demand of the Marxist BLM thug and especially for the woman who
actually acquiesced to the absurd demand. It would be no different for a White man

to do the same to a Black. Appalling.

There is much more to these “riots” than we have seen. What if there is proof they
had been planned for years? The “sleeper cell” method has been described in
previous columns. New undercover videos expose the depth to which our society

has been penetrated by these subversive groups.

The indoctrination of middle school children in some Minneapolis neighborhoods
has been clearly documented, as well as U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar being

present at a riot scene.

The children are used as cannon fodder for organizers who set up plans for riots far

in advance.

The Minneapolis riots are a perfect example. Everything was in place, ready for a
precipitating event to occur that would “justify” unrest. Then the plan was
implemented. The documentary is very disturbing. The riots are bad enough, but to

learn about the calculated method of subversion should be terrifying.

The school children mentioned were trained to be arrested by police in order to
overload law enforcement to the point where there would be fewer officers
available to prevent mayhem.

There have been many to jump on the BLM bandwagon, even here in Bastrop
County. A favorite tool of the Left is to stir up emotions where none have existed
before. Suddenly, the Civil War Memorials on Courthouse Square have become

offensive to the opportunists. Especially to those who are ignorant of history.

Confederate Memorials have been displayed and revered for many, many decades
as a means of remembering history and those who sacrificed their lives on BOTH
sides. To characterize the Confederate soldiers and civilians who died during the
civil war as somehow being evil is a travesty. This was not a foreign war.

Everyone fought and died on American soil.

Those who desecrate Confederate graves are doing so to American Veterans’
graves as decided by an act of Congress. So, unless you have the votes to reverse

that, be careful of what is destroyed.

It would be nearly comical to see the monuments to U.S. Grant, an abolitionist and
other pre-Civil War American figures come under attack. But it is indicative of the

real thrust of the fake indignity movement.

The real goal is to erase all history. Does that sound preposterous? That is exactly
what the Communists and the Nazis attempted to do. Book burnings and purges,
and the placement of dictators’ images in churches all happened. What the Leftists
in this country are attempting is little different than that. If they were serious about
the Confederate monuments, why do they not differentiate between those and all

the others they are destroying?

When are the mobs appeased? The answer is never.

So, perhaps our Commissioners Court should short-circuit the issue of removing a

hunk of granite.

Put the issue of removing or not removing the monument on the November ballot
as a referendum for the voters to decide. That way everyone will have the
opportunity to be unhappy and the court will be off the hook.

[Millie Weaver report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh4ZUKJrSFY]

Is There Any Reason to Riot and Destroy?

Donald A Loucks, TEM
Former Bastrop County Commissioner

Below is the text of my speech from the court held Monday, June 22, 2020:

Good morning, Members, Director.

I am Donald A Loucks. I lived in Cedar Creek since 1992.

We have all seen the horrific riots, arson, beatings and killings in the news, nearly all of which have taken place in Democrat-controlled cities, counties and states.

It has been reported that this was sparked by the killing of a man in police custody. I saw the horrific videos. I sincerely hope that those four officers get a fair trial and, if convicted are punished appropriately.

Is that a valid reason to riot and destroy?

Why is it that this lawlessness has suddenly popped up?

What difference is there between the pulling down and desecrating statues off our country’s founders’ to the Taliban blowing centuries-old Buddhist statues carved from a mountainside to bits?

After extensive training in strategy and tactics as an Air Force Officer, Fighter Pilot and Test Pilot; additionally, I was also trained as an intelligence officer.

After studying open-source reports, it is my calculated and inescapable conclusion that this insurrection has been planned for some time.

Secret sleeper/training cells have been known to exist for decades, not just Antifa, but also radical Islamist groups which allied with Antifa.

After all, they have the same goal: The downfall of the United States.

Such organized disturbances require LOTS of money.

The use of “sleeper cells” is the clandestine method of leaderless organization for insurrection, it is also characterized as asymmetric warfare. That forces a disproportionately large amount of resources to be expended in defense against said insurrection.

Look at what the rioters – insurrectionists, really – have expended in proportion to the seemingly hapless authorities, and you will begin to understand what we face.

These techniques were first quantified by the Soviet Communists around 1928. As pertaining to the goal of destroying the United States, they saw that the best option was pitting one group against another. Here, that is White verses Black.

As we have seen, that has been extremely successful.

Anarchists thrive in lawlessness. Watching no action being taken to protect lives and property in beautiful cities like Seattle sickened me; not just for the damage and livelihoods destroyed, but for the destruction of the TRUST in the people who were selected to keep law and order.

And now the cry to disband the police. Asinine!

It is now remarkable how local amateurs will jump onto the attention bandwagon to demand we destroy historical monuments at our courthouse for their fifteen seconds of fame.

But remember, those responsible for law and order will be held responsible by the people should they fail.

I pray you will not fail.

A Life Cut Short

By Donald A. Loucks, TEM
Submitted 31 May, 2020

One would hope that Patrick Underwood will not be remembered by the riots that swept and swirled our Nation, but rather the life he led. When people feigning outrage either do not remember or have never learned the name of a black man who was killed, then for what purpose did that mayhem serve?

In fact, is there a reason for the rioting to occur primarily in blue states, in blue cities? Even Texas is not immune. But property owners here can fight back and are not afraid to do so. Where is the police protection for which all that blue state tax money supposedly pays?

It seems that when it comes down to quelling organized violence, certain police departments are sorely lacking. In a recent television interview, former federal prosecutor and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani put it this way in describing the first stages of a riot: “Arrest the very first person who breaks any law, then the second and third immediately.” From his experiences in this matter, it is clear that an early establishment of authority is essential to protect the law-abiding pubic.

Such leaders as Giuliani described above were missing in city after city. You see, if one inch is given to rioters and their paid organizers, they will keep taking more and more until cities are ablaze. There are numerous studies concerning group dynamics and dangerous gatherings. One of the best is “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind” by Gustave Le Bon (1895).

This passage offers a glimpse into the psychological changes an individual undergoes in a crowd (or riot): “By the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian — that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings, whom he further tends to resemble by the facility with which he allows himself to be impressed by words and images — which would be entirely without action on each of the isolated individuals composing the crowd — and to be induced to commit acts contrary to his most obvious interests and his best-known habits. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.”

[Direct quote; European spelling]

Over the weekend, Both President Trump and the Secretary of State said that Antifa, the supposed “anti-fascist” group that employs fascist methodology, would be declared a “terrorist organization.” This was immediately denounced by the now-irrelevant American Civil Liberties Union.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, compelled to chime in, claimed that the Ku Klux Klan was responsible, which is ludicrous on its face since the KKK was founded by Democrats.

The President would not have made such a statement if he had not known through intelligence gathering and infiltration that Antifa was involved. After all, it had all the earmarks of sleeper cell activation in the cities where the “demonstrations” initiated. How did the same “I can’t breathe masks” appear in all the riot scenes at the same time?

The escalation was predictable in form. The dupes were sent to the front to engage the police, then the instigators started launching missiles over the dupes into the police lines which then pushed into the dupes.

Further, predictable escalation took place with the breaking of windows, looting, and the inevitable fires. All of this follows a pattern that must be broken early to be stopped. It was neither broken nor stopped.

Who suffers? Everyone in Minneapolis, certainly. In other cities where this has happened in the past the recovery was long-term or none-existent. The Black man who put his life savings into a sports bar that was about to open in the city he loved saw it burned to the ground.

It also seems odd that certain cataclysmic events happen at just the right time. A virus pandemic was described as the worst since the Spanish Flu (1917-18) never materialized as a major threat, except in nursing homes in states like New York where they were ordered to accept COVID-19 patients which then infected staff and the most vulnerable: our elderly. And this happening just as our economy looked unstoppable.

Or, the nation-wide race riots days before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee begins hearings on Obamagate, the politicization of the federal intelligence and judicial system to corrupt an election and foment a soft coup.

As the ancient Chinese curse goes (how appropriate): “May you live in interesting times.”

And remember the Black man I mentioned in the first paragraph? Patrick Underwood was a Federal Officer murdered while protecting life and property by a rioter’s bullet in Oakland California.

Outrage, where art thou?

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/05/31/black-federal-officer-patrick-underwood-shot-and-killed-in-oakland-riot/

Death By Unemployment

By Donald A. Loucks, TEM
Submitted 29 April, 2020

We are now seeing the COVID-19 pandemic evolve into something much more far reaching than an imported Chinese virus.

To sum it up, we see empty hospital beds as well as massive – and growing -- unemployment. In Texas the reported unemployment is climbing past 1.4 million. As of the writing, 663 people have died from COVID-19 in Texas.

That translates to 2,112 jobs lost per death. It also translates into the “collateral” deaths by suicide and drug overdose due to depression.

Betsy McAughey addressed this aspect of the pandemic in RealClear Politics: “Every 1% hike in the unemployment rate will likely produce a 3.3% increase in drug overdose deaths and a 0.99% increase in suicides according to data provided by the National Bureau of Economic Research and the medical journal Lancet. These are facts based on experience, not models. If unemployment hits 32%, some 77,000 Americans are likely to die from suicide and drug overdoses as a result of layoffs. Scientists call these fatalities deaths of despair”.

We have heard the Liberals’ cry of “If it will save one life…” Please apply that to the above paragraph.

It is also becoming clear that the initial calculations regarding infection and mortality were very wrong. It is an unfortunate fact of statistical life that if there is a lag in the acquisition of data collection, then the more error there will be in the predictions.

Initially, the mortality projections were predicting a very mild infection and mortality rate. Suddenly, it appeared that things were going south very quickly with 30-plus nursing home patients dying from COVID-19 in the same facility.

Then the hotspots came to light: New York, Seattle, New Orleans, etc., and near panic set in. Field hospitals were set-up in Central Park. Hospital ships docked in New York and Los Angeles. Orders for “social distancing” were issued as well as house arrest, oops, shelter in place.

Then the patients flooded the hospitals.

Not!

USNS Comfort left New York after never having more than 20 patients on board at any one time. The curve seems to have been flattened.

This is where leadership should come in, but doesn’t. The Nation’s governors have been given recommendations from the Federal Government to protect their citizens. It now becomes clear that one-size-fits-all is not working for the several states. New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, for example, have serious problems due to the commuter infection from China the entire previous year. Expecting North Dakota (with an extremely low infection rate) to follow suit would be economically devastating and unneeded.

Certainly, some states should be treated much differently than others. Our Nation’s economy must be repaired immediately. A medical axiom holds true in this case: The cure should not be more harmful than the disease.

Here is the latest statistical whammy: Research in Los Angeles reports that the infection rate – those who have or have had COVID-19 – is too low by a factor of 28 to 55 TIMES higher than the confirmed cases. As announced by Los Angeles County Health Director Barbara Ferrer, “That estimate is 28 to 55 times higher than the 7,994 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported to the county by the time of the study in early April.” That sound bad, right?

No. It means that the mortality rate is far, far lower than was initially predicted. Many people are getting the highly contagious virus, but few are actually sickened. This means that not everyone is in danger of dying from COVID-19, but some are very much at risk and should be protected such as elderly, diabetics, obese, etc.

The decision must now be made to open the economy without destroying it by spending our way into irrecoverable debt.

Spending trillions of dollars we don’t have will not cure the economy; employment will.

References
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/13/shutdown_could_kill_more_americans_than_covid-19_142934.html

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/early-antibody-testing-indicates-far-more-covid-19-cases-lower-mortality-rate/2349275/

Fighting Two Virus Wars at Once

By Donald A. Loucks, TEM
Submitted 19 April, 2020

There are two virus battles today. The first one we already know about: the travel restrictions, restaurant closings, quarantines, shelter-in-place orders, and or course toilet paper shortages.

Some of the restrictions are questionable, like disallowing church services. But some are examples of bizarre overreach.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer single-handedly outlawed solitary golfing, using a boat with a motor, the purchase of paint, floor covering and some construction material and vegetable seeds. (Yikes!) There have been massive protests in Lansing, Michigan’s capital, over the draconian and inexplicable edicts. If she had banned toilet paper there surely would have been a total rebellion.

That was hard to understand, but fighting the COVID-19 virus from a medical and epidemiological aspect can be more easily grasped. President Donald Trump’s daily briefings have kept the public knowledgeable of the progress the U.S. government has been making in treating infected patients and preventing and slowing the disease’s spread with the partnership of the states.

The second war is beginning in the background. The first war against COVID-19 must be waged and won before any of the other necessary action is taken.

China knew.

It knew on Jan. 3 that a virus had escaped from its “research lab” in Wuhan and issued a gag order to all parties concerned at the lab and medical personnel dealing with the immediate outbreak. One of the doctors involved with the initial outbreak, a 33-year-old healthy man, died of the disease, or so says the Communist Chinese government. Remember, a healthy 33- year-old should survive an infection; unless he was a whistle blower, which this man was.

All discussion was silenced. Almost all. Word did spread as well as reports from other countries of COVID-19 reaching their shores. Trump initiated the first travel ban on Jan. 19, much to the ridicule of the press and, tellingly, the World Health Organization, now led by an Ethiopian politician, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Ghebreyesus denounced travel bans, especially those preventing Chinese from entering the United States.

What doesn’t smell right is that Ethiopia is up to its ears in debt to the Communist Chinese, and Ghebreyesus helped get his country there.

The Chinese mode of operation is to control those countries, companies and organizations that owe it money or who need economic access to its markets. Ghebreyesus’ pronouncements were antithetical to the control of a pandemic, thereby discrediting the scandal-plagued organization.

So, on Jan. 14, WHO denounced the travel ban. Epidemiologists extrapolated that if the ban had been enacted one week earlier, combined with isolation protocol, there would have a 66% reduction of infection. If the ban had been enacted two weeks prior (right after the Chinese discovered the deadly virus had escaped) the reduction would have been 86%. Can you see why so many countries feel betrayed by the ChiComs?

Here is one more part of the devious puzzle: If COVID-19 now on the loose matched the samples in the Wuhan lab, the world would know that the disease originated from that lab. But now we know almost certainly that indeed happen. More important is that the ChiComs hid it and lied about it to make themselves look blameless. They even tried to blamed its introduction on U.S. Army soldiers in China participating in war gaming prior to the virus release.

What will be the cost to the world? Certainly tens of thousands of lives will be lost. The countries most severely affected at this point are Italy, Spain, Turkey, the Czech Republic and the Republic of Georgia. Those countries and others have been betrayed and endangered by their soulless, formerly-trusted trading partner.

This act of cowardice and treachery will not be forgotten by the millions of people worldwide who have suffered economically as we are now, and who have lost many friends and relatives over the course of the pandemic. Does anyone think that Communist China will maintain its station in the world economy?

Plague me once, shame on you ...

U.S. must reconsider its shutdown to give economy a lifeline

By Donald A. Loucks, TEM
Submitted 5 April, 2020

After having our lives severely restricted for the last month, some of us are beginning to wonder if this extreme curtailment of normal American life is still necessary to address the coronavirus pandemic. Some public health professionals are using new data to recommend a different course to protect both health and the global economic future.

But first, it is appalling that so many ninny-nannies are chiming in to criticize President Donald Trump’s leadership amid the pandemic. To compare Trump’s actions to President Barack Obama’s is specious at best. While Obama may have held a meeting to discuss possible responses to public health risks, it should be remembered that it was under the Obama administration that funding for emergency health supplies was cut, thus leaving our nation vulnerable to what we are facing today.

So, why are we taking the extreme path we are currently on? When dealing with an emergency situation, good emergency managers must constantly evaluate the situation, note changes and adapt as quickly as possible. The original method was defined as the “OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, then repeat) Loop” by U.S. Air Force Col. John Boyd, known as the fighter pilot who redefined modern warfare. This is now a standard business philosophy.

The point is Trump and his expert advisers can only make decisions by analyzing the data presented to them. In the early stages of a pandemic the data will not be 100% accurate or useful, but it is all we had. As more information is reported and analyzed, corrections to course should be made quickly.

Epidemiologist Dr. John Ioannidis from Stanford University and others are now saying that the drastic action we are now taking may not be needed in the light of new, more complete data.

Not all countries compile disease information in the same way. For example, one European country assigns cause of death of a patient with COVID-19 — the disease caused by the coronavirus — if the patient was infected even though the patient had other life-ending illnesses. In other words, the patient was at death’s door to start with.

It now appears that a reevaluation of America’s drastic shutdown is warranted.

We must consider what the long-term benefit to shutting down our economy as opposed to the long-term cost thereof? Sweden did not shut down but cautioned it citizens to take extra steps to prevent the spread of the virus. There has been no catastrophe there.

Many states such as Iowa have few cases and do not need to take the same measures as New York City. The point is, the shutdown is also killing us economically.

The unemployment rate today is likely higher than any point since the Great Depression, according to the New York Times, with the Labor Department reporting last week that almost 10 million Americans applied for unemployment insurance in the previous two weeks. The long-term effects may include the loss of thousands of businesses, compounded poverty, severe mental health issues dealing with loss of income and homes and shortened life expectancy.

The economic consequences of long-term and repeated shutdowns are very dire indeed. Congress approved and Trump signed a massive $2 trillion emergency pandemic package that included Democrat-added funding for frivolous areas such as fine arts and pet projects plus attempts to revise the voter law.

We are at a cross-road. All this massive spending must be paid for at some time. So, remember how much of our debt communist China holds.

The World at War with Communist China

By Donald A. Loucks, TEM
Submitted 22 March, 2020
[The following in the submitted article, not the newspaper's edited copy.]

The Enemy
Communist China learned well the lessons of her generals over the millennia. All of the strategy and subterfuge currently at play has been described in collections such as “The art of war” by General Sun Tzu. Communism has cemented the philosophy of patience and cunning because the government has total control over everything; the economy, news media, internet censorship, elections, and healthcare where the state profits by harvesting the organs of “condemned” prisoners that are then sold for transplant into wealthy westerners.

Now, we are at the mercy of a virus which apparently originated in Wuhan, China. There has been conjecture about the virus being a product of the probable germ warfare center at Wuhan, but there is also a “wet market” located nearby. A wet market is the standard throughout Asia even though most countries have “outlawed” them. The quotes around the word outlawed are there because crime cartels largely control them and pay off/threaten local officials to keep them open.

When the outbreak was discovered by the Communist Chinese government, in December, it was kept quiet. This terrible act will likely cost tens of thousands of lives worldwide.

Between the short time the outbreak was discovered and our government was made aware and took action by closing travel form China. Tens of thousands of Chinese and Americans had traveled back and forth across the Pacific Ocean, not knowing that they might be infected and be infectious.

The Disease
Multi-cell organisms like you and me have DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) as the “instruction manual” in each of our cells. A strand of DNA looks like a two-strand helix connected by nucleotides. Before the reader’s eyes glaze over, let’s simplify this. DNA is much more complicated than RNA (Ribonucleic acid). RNA has only one strand of nucleotides instead of the more complicated two-strand DNA. Viruses are very simple in comparison to animal cells. Virus genetic codes are simple RNA strands

What appeared to have happened in China is that an animal disease virus, probably from a bat, made the jump to a human.

The Pandemic was on. By now, we are all aware of the travel and meeting restrictions, school, restaurant, and business closings. And of course there is the run on groceries, especially toilet paper. [One wonders if, in a future pandemic, if the symptoms are severe diarrhea instead of respiratory issues, will people then hoard Kleenex?]

The epidemiology of what is now officially called COVID-19 is still not completely charted out. It seems to induce upper-respiratory discomfort first; runny nose, sore throat, and fever. But then the killer function may kick in with a form of pneumonia that is extremely difficult to treat in that it clogs the lungs with thick mucus. The elderly and those with immune system issues are most vulnerable.

Another factor is uncontrolled migration. Italy and parts of Europe are paying dearly for political correctness in accepting migrants willy-nilly from all over the world. In fact, even after the pandemic was acknowledged Italian officials encouraged citizens to hug Chinese as a symbol of solidarity. And, evidently, stupidity.

So, we stop flights from China, Europe, U.K. and Ireland, and the Democrats still do not want to secure the Southern Border. Last week, President Trump closed the Canada and Mexico border crossings to non-essential travel. Good!

The shelter-in-place order is almost certainly to come soon to Texas. No half-measure will be effective.

We are all familiar with X-Y graphs. So here is an easy explanation what this battle to control the spread of COVID-19 is truly about. A vertical axis of the graph represents the units of hospital facilities available. This number is not easily increased, although measures are being taken to do so.

The nasty part is the number of infections represented by a line from the origin and marching right, along the horizontal axis time line. As the number of cases increases, the number of cases rises.

If the infection line crosses the hospital unit line, we are in Italian-style trouble, without enough beds to serve the ill.

Italy has so many infections that is no longer treats – turns away – all patients over 60 years of age. Let that sink in a moment.

We absolutely MUST control the rising number of infections, because past that point the mortality rate skyrockets.

The Politics
So far, President Trump has done a superb job in managing this dire crisis and marshalling the leadership, brain power and resources to meet the challenge head-on.

It is disturbing to see the games being played by the Democrats, especially Speaker Pelosi by throwing pet project funding into the initial bill for pandemic relief. Why is millions of dollars for Planned Parenthood pertinent to fighting a pandemic? Imagine any member of Congress, let alone the Speaker, pulling such nonsense after the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941. Shameful.

Another inexplicable attitude is that of the press with their hectoring questions at the daily Pandemic briefings. Trump’s tone has changed at these meetings and rightly so. In this emergency, he should not be seen as combative, so he has become much more of a calming figure.

It was interesting to watch the first several press briefings where some of the reporters tried to lure him into angry arguments. It did not seem to work. While there were many testy exchanges, the funniest was when an ABC reporter asserted that calling COVID-19 the “China Virus” was racist. His brief and devastating reply was simply: “It’s from China.”

This pandemic is just the beginning.

The Next War
Always pay attention to what your enemy says. In the last two weeks, The Communist Chinese Government threatened two things that have been largely ignored by the press. One threat was blatant; to disable our South China Sea Naval Fleet with a nuclear detonation-created electro-magnetic pulse (EMP). Yes, they threatened a nuclear attack. Then, they threatened to kill Americans by stopping exports of the pharmaceuticals made in China for the U.S. That would be crippling as 90% of pharma sold in the United States is made in China.

It was proposed over the weekend that China should forgive all debt as reparations for the unleashing of this virus and the cover up that exacerbated the spread all over the world. However, there must be a coalition of nations to execute that policy. Note: The corrupt United Nations was not mentioned.

Does anyone think that it might have been bad strategic planning to let that dependence on China to have happened in the first place. One has only to look at previous administrations and congresses to find the answer to that. It was the lazy way to do business.

President Trump is well aware that fighting the pandemic is absolutely the first priority. Following that, securing the U.S. both in military might and economic power must take hold or we will find ourselves victim of lazy, corrupt politicians and predatory foreign enemies again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7nZ4mw4mXw&fbclid=IwAR1UXCTZM09_Sq9ywLARFMjLBfONFCzGxtNdpuoutp3gcSzwn5BM6HETHxw&app=desktop