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One of the most frightening things about the Russia revelations of the last few days is how the establishment and their media lackeys dismissed them.
Ali Velshi, MSNBC host: The "Obamagate" conspiracy theory that President Obama, Vice President Biden and others were somehow involved in an illegal effort to target [Michael] Flynn or something like that. It is a conspiracy theory.
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They pushed the Russia conspiracy theory for years. And now we have actual evidence that the Russia collusion story was fantasy, that the Mueller investigation was an illegitimate fiasco, that leading Democrats like Adam Schiff, deliberately lied for years to the American people, that the fearsome apparatus of law enforcement was deployed by the state to take down political enemies on phony pretext.
That instead of upholding the centuries' long tradition of peaceful transition of power, the losing side in the last presidential election tried to cripple its successor, that the permanent Washington establishment aided and abetted by shameless propaganda arm, the establishment media, colluded in this orgy of norm-destroying and rule-breaking driven by condescending contempt for Donald Trump and his supporters.
Who are these people? What is this? It's not democracy. It's the tyranny of the technocrats -- regardless of actual election results, power in the hands of a ruling elite who think they're smarter and better than you, but they're not.
Obama, Biden, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Holder -- all of them used law enforcement against their political rivals. This is the behavior of a police state. Sure they're all for democracy and the Constitution as long as it delivers the right result, more power to them.
Who are these people? What is this? It's not democracy. It's the tyranny of the technocrats -- regardless of actual election results, power in the hands of a ruling elite who think they're smarter and better than you, but they're not.
Their ideology -- globalism, open borders, endless war -- it failed. That's why people voted for Trump in 2016. Ever since then, the technocrats have been plotting to get their power back, first, with Russia, then with Mueller. After that, impeachment.
Now, they're using this corona crisis to grab power. Of course, they are trying to blame Trump.
Barack Obama, former president of the United States: This pandemic has fully finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge, know what they're doing.
But look what actually happened. The reason we have a pandemic in the first place is because the outbreak was covered up by the authoritarian dictatorship in China. Who spent the last 50 years sucking up to them? Not Trump, but the technocrats.
The reason we couldn't contain the outbreak and had to shut down our economy was because we didn't have tests that worked right at the start. Who screwed that up? No, not the evil Trump, but the saintly public sector, CDC -- the technocrats again.
Has there ever been a more catastrophic case of technocrat bungling? Why is this man by the way, still in his job, "Dr. Death and Destruction" Robert Redfield of the CDC?.
Now, we do have testing. It is because Trump got rid of regulation so the private sector could do it. Why were we running around desperately trying to get ventilators and PPE and whatever? Because the technocrat geniuses shipped manufacturing overseas and let other countries control the supply. It was Trump and Jared Kushner and his team who turned that around in record time. So now we are shipping ventilators to other countries.
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Trump was right about the shutdown. They told us to flatten the curve, and we did. They told us to slow the spread and we did.
So why are we still shut down? Here's the toll -- and no, it's not a choice between life and livelihood, between health and the economy. Even if you ignore the economic catastrophe, the health cost of the shutdown is reason enough to end it.
Dr. Harlan Krumholz, Yale University: My hunch is that it may be a good third of the toll of people dying out of the hospital, maybe because of preventable illnesses that are not the direct result of the virus but actually indirect result of people being fearful about getting care.
How long do they think we can keep going like this? They seem to think the government can be a substitute for real life. But where do they think the money will come from if they shut down the economy?
Dementedly, the technocrats still push the shutdown. It saved lives, they say. Yes, but it costs lives, too.
In New York, it looks like the shutdown actually added to the death toll. Sixty-six percent of New York hospital admissions were from people who are locked down at home. And that's before you get to the suicides, the substance abuse, the child abuse, the loss of health insurance, the lower life expectancy caused by shutdown-induced poverty.
The shutdown fanatics say they're following the data. That's a complete lie. When have you ever heard a single one of them give you data about the health costs of the shutdown?
Liz Cheney weighed in to back the technocrats this week. "Dr. Fauci is only interested in saving lives," she tweeted, adding cliche to injury. No, Dr. Fauci is only interested in saving lives from coronavirus. Of course that's important, but it can't be the only concern. What about saving lives lost by the shutdown?
How long do they think we can keep going like this? They seem to think the government can be a substitute for real life. But where do they think the money will come from if they shut down the economy?
Of course, for them, the 37 percent work-from-home elite, the economy isn't really shut down anyway. But for the majority of Americans who can't earn a living from their laptop, this is a disaster. And where real people try to earn a living, the technocrats punish them, like that salon owner in Texas, the game store owner in Florida or that gym owner in California.
You see it with the creepy surveillance drones and the bullying cops, the arrest of people trying to get fresh air. It is the true face of today's establishment -- a leftist technocratic elite with increasingly authoritarian instincts.
Last week, they said the shutdown in Los Angeles would go on until August. Who said that? Was it the mayor? The elected board of supervisors? No. It was the LA County public health director, Dr. Barbara Ferrer.
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When I talk about leftist technocrats, I'm not kidding. Dr. Barbara Ferrer is a registered Democrat who has made multiple donations to Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Still, Dr. Barbara Ferrer, right? We've got to listen to the doctors except guess what her doctorate is in? Medicine? Epidemiology? Public health?
Sorry, she is a doctor of social welfare. But it's OK -- she has also got a BA in community studies. Perhaps she can study the community she is destroying right now with her unscientific summer long shutdown.
Oh, and guess what she is paid for putting millions of people out of work? It's a big city, a big job -- maybe 150 grand? 200? Guess again. Not 200, not 250, not 300, not even 400 grand is enough for her.
Ka-ching! That's her salary right there -- $465,000 a year. And you can only imagine, a luxury pension that goes with that, paid for by us.
Here's an idea: No federal money for any state unless every public official who keeps the shutdown going agrees to have their pay stopped and given to local food banks for the duration of their shutdown. They can apply for unemployment along with the rest of their victims. It's called "skin in the game."
This technocrat takeover is not even competent. Look at those stupid, capricious, unscientific reopening rules. You can go on the wet sand, but not the dry sand. Keep schools closed even though the data shows they should be the first things reopened. Temperature checks when that misses most people who do have the virus and catches people who don't.
Contact tracing after a pandemic, when it's far too late. They don't know what they're doing. They talk like scientists, but act like novelists. They're making it up as they go along.
A few weeks ago, I said this is like Friedrich Hayek's "Road to Serfdom." He warned in 1944 that wartime mobilization would lead to a massive expansion in government and a disastrous loss of freedom. Well, it's happening again, just read Nancy Pelosi's $3 trillion far-left wish list.
The worst of it is, it's all so unnecessary. Right from the start, we said to protect the vulnerable. But now, we're all vulnerable to the technocrat tyranny. That's why what Attorney General William Barr is doing is so important. He is taking a stand against the arrogant technocratic establishment.
America wasn't designed like this. America wasn't designed to be run by these people. It was designed to be run by the people, by we the people. Not you, James Comey; not you, John Brennan, not you, Dr. Ferrer; not you Dr. Fauci. Not the technocrats, not the bureaucrats, not this snooty new breed of insufferable McKinsey Americans with their hubristic master plans and bloodless wonkery.
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Of course, with Biden, they would all be back. And since he barely knows what day it is, with his constant mental malfunctions, he'd be the puppet of Pelosi and the puppet of the technocrats.
We must fight back. Curb their power. Cut their pay. Kick them out. Beat them in November. That's the next revolution we need.
Adapted from Steve Hilton's monologue from "The Next Revolution" on May 17, 2020.
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