Changing Times

All the rhetoric about how this country is a racist nation, and the uninterrupted history of police brutality takes me back to an incident I experienced sometime in the early 1970s. I was at a smallish party and was introduced to a man who, I was told, had come to this country from Poland. He said he had been here about a year, living in Atlanta, Georgia.

At one point I asked him what one thing most impressed him about America. He did not hesitate even slightly before replying, "One doesn't have to be afraid of the police."

He was black. Think about that for a moment.

Changing Times

Offered without judgement.

When I was in the Navy if a female sailor (they were known as WAVEs back then) got pregnant she was discharged. Today she is issued new, free, maternity uniforms. Might be a bit awkward on the deck of an aircraft carrier, but...

Well, okay, maybe a little bit of judgement.

For the Sake of Clarity

It seems I am losing my ability to communicate accurately, as the last several posts have led to readers completely missing the point I was trying to make. I will address just yesterday’s post for the sake of simplicity, a post in which readers suggested I was promoting misinformation and lies.

Let’s assume that Fauci’s statement in the first paragraph, that the vaccine will protect adequately from the Omicron variant, is true. It has been suggested that my comment in that first paragraph was was intended as contradiction of that statement, but that is not what I wrote. What I wrote was that the following content of the news report contradicted his statement.

I did not claim that the following content of the news report represented truth, merely that NBC News reported it. All of the “facts” in that material, about positive Covid tests in professional football teams and what have you, may have been lies and misinformation. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I did not present them for the purpose of making any argument about the validity or otherwise of the vaccine.

I presented them merely because they were things that the media was reporting along with Fauci’s statement that the vaccine is effective and with statements urging people to get vaccinated if they had not already done so.

The one opinion I offered as to vaccine effectiveness was when I said that I regarded the requirement for vaccinated persons to wear a mask as indication of the government’s lack of confidence in the vaccine’s effectiveness. That is not an unreasonable assumption. It was not intended as a reflection of my confidence or lack thereof in the vaccine.

Perhaps, for clarity, my last sentence should have read more along the lines of, “Why would the media urge people to get vaccinated after reporting a host of lies and misinformation that seem to indicate that the vaccines do not work?”

I have no axe to grind. I don’t know whether the vaccine works or does not work. I don’t know whether or not it is dangerous. If you are vaccinated, I applaud you. If you are not, I don’t care. But I am able to think rationally, and I recognize when the media is printing gibberish, and it is that upon which I was commenting.

Contradictions Abound

I watched NBC News yesterday evening and the contradictions contained within a single 30 minute news report boggled my mind. Fauci tells us the vaccine plus booster is working fine and will protect against the new Omicron variant, but everything else in the same news report contradicts every part of his statement.

More people have died of Covid this year, with vaccines available, than did last year before the vaccine was introduced. Hospitals are overloaded and staffs exhausted, just as they were last year. The head of the CDC proclaims her fears that it will "get far worse in the weeks ahead."

Professional sports is becoming more and more crippled by players sidelined due to positive Covid tests, despite a plethora of "protocols," vaccinations and frequent testing. The NFL Cleveland Browns, who are 95% vaccinated, have no fewer than 7 team members on the disabled list because they tested positive for Covid.

No few states, California among them, are again requiring masking in public venues even if vaccinated, which suggests to me that the government believes that the vaccine does not work, or at least does not work very well.

 

All of the above in one evening's news report. Why would the media urge people to get vaccinated after reporting multiple news items that seem to indicate that the vaccines do not work?

Nope, Insanity Increased

The article in the previous post was followed by one informing us that two cases of the "Omicron variant" had been discovered in San Diego and that both were in persons who were "fully vaccinated and boosted." The article went on to urge that  everyone who has not already done so should hasten to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

The article did not say why anyone should get vaccinated.

Hopefully, the Topper

Hopefully peak insanity has arrived, as NBC News tells us that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine will not protect you from the Omicron variant of the pandemic virus, but that three doses will keep you safe. They are, therefor, urging everyone to get yet another shot of the vaccine that they admit is not working.

Keeping to the American principle of, "If it's not working, do it harder or do more of it."

State of the Pandemic

The media is back in panic mode with the advent of the Omicron variant, but preliminary information from doctors who have actually treated it is that it follows the typical pattern of viral evolution and is less pernicious than the original. The Delta variant is clearly part of that pattern, in that deaths from the virus are less common with that variant than with the original. At this point in California:

1.2% of people who become ill from the virus die from it. That sounds a bit dire, but it turns out that one is very unlikely to become ill.

3.0% of people who are tested for the virus test positive.

That means that 0.036% (less than 4 of 10,000) who are tested will die.

0.04% per year, (4 of 10,000) is the percentage of California's population who will suffer death from the virus. Per year.

Are we over-reacting?

Weirdness

The San Diego Union Tribune is raving about trolley ridership taking "a jump" (increasing) after the new Blue Line extension was opened on Sunday. Why would it not? At the time this astonishing news was first published the new extension had been open for all of one day, and MTS offered free rides on the extension for that day, which was a Sunday.

I can't wait to see what the numbers will be on a weekday, when they are charging regular fares to ride the new extension.

San Diego Crazy

San Diego has its own form of crazy. Some of it is the California influence, but we have our own individual touch that we add to it.

 

A young woman just went past my window jogging with her dog. It is, as is usual for this time of year, a gray, cool morning. So she was wearing a down-filled parka, zipped up, with the hood up and tied around her face. She was also wearing short shorts and flip flops.

Repeating tthe Past

I am 78 years old, so perhaps my perspective is a little more long term than today’s space travel enthusiasts, who are wildly excited that some rich guy got to ride weightless in orbit for ten minutes.

I recall when the US space program was able to put Alan Shepard into a weightless orbit on the edge of space in 1961, no less than sixty years ago and half again longer than this “adventure.”

What are we doing? Who are we, to be celebrating that we have regained the ability to do something that we first did more than half a century ago?

We have a little vehicle driving around on Mars, but we did that in 1997, almost 25 years ago.  We are planning to land an unmanned rocket on the Moon, but China did that last year, and we first did it in 1970, again, more than fifty years ago. We are still not even planning a manned mission to the Moon, something we first accomplished 52 years ago and are not presently capable of doing.

We are excited as all get out about repeating “exploration” of fifty years ago, but what are we doing (and by that I mean doing, not just talking about) that is actually new or ground breaking?

More Contra-Narrative

Merck, announced today that they filed an “emergency use authorization” request with the FDA for an oral antiviral medicine for treating Covid-19. Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb lobbied for the emergency use authorization, declaring the untested pill to be “a profound game changer.”

Question: If the vaccine works the way that public health agencies and the government claims, as justification for requiring the vaccination in order to keep your job and participate in our social fabric, why is a pill such as this needed on an emergency use basis?

And why would it be seen as a “profound game changer” if the vaccine was working effectively to prevent the spread of the virus?

Pandemic Logic

There may be a planet somewhere on which it makes sense to complain about a shortage of employees to fill vacant positions while firing the employees you have because they refuse to be politically correct, but this is not that planet.

Misinformation as a Public Health Crisis

San Diego City Council passed a resolution last week declaring that “Covid misinformation is a public health crisis.”

No specific action was included in that resolution, merely that the conclusion be “studied,” and that methods be devised to prevent misinformation from being spread.

Meanwhile the public health agencies, along with doctor and nursing agencies, continue to urge everyone to get vaccinated immediately if they have not done so because this “surge” is happening due to the “fact” that Covid is now “the disease of the unvaccinated.” They claim that nearly all of the “cases” today are occurring among people who have not received the shot(s).

Other countries, much more heavily vaccinated than the US, are experiencing something rather different.

 

 

San Diego claims that 75% of our population is “fully vaccinated,” and that 25% of our population is now causing more cases than 100% of the population caused a year ago when the vaccine was not available. To anyone with more than a few functioning brain cells, that seems highly unlikely. Who’s spreading misinformation?

So perhaps the difference between San Diego and Israel, Iceland and Gibralter, all with vaccination rates and infection rates higher than ours, is not so much the experience as the degree of honesty.

Little Noticed

Yes, the Formula 1 “race” was a farce, but too little notice is given to the Red Bull team rebuilding Sergio’s car and having it ready to race in less than two hours. The guys in the garage are the unsung heroes of auto racing.

Also unnoticed was the action of Kevin Harvick on the final lap at Daytona last night. Caught in the middle of a massive multi-car pileup, his car was pretty much destroyed, but he managed to drive free of all the wreckage and make it all the way down the track and across the finish line.

His wreckage (I won’t call it a car) was visible in the background as Ryan Blaney was celebrating at the finish line. I think his effort, which gained him several positions in the race results, deserved comment, but it escaped NBC’s notice.

Childhood Memory

 I was reading a blog yesterday in which the writer mentioned how, as a child, she would have felt unsafe if her parents were not in charge, and it brought back a childhood memory.

I was 7 or 8 years old and had been brought to the hospital with a fairly severe concussion. After making me stay awake for some time, they finally got me admitted and into a room and told me I could go to sleep.

I was having no part of that, and continued to fight hard to stay awake. “It’s okay, William,” they kept telling me, “you can go to sleep now.” I refused and continued to fight the sandman. I wasn’t entirely sure why it was not okay, but I was just not comfortable letting sleep take me.

Then I heard my father’s voice out in the hallway and I was asleep before he made it into the room.

After 46 years we seem to be doing the same thing and, while it's a bit on the trivial side, we're using the same type of helicopter to do it?  

 

Update, Monday, 10:15pm: I was not actually intending to imply criticism. The CH-46 Sea Knight is a fine bird. Like the B-52, which we are also still using in quantity, it was built by Boeing back when that company was run by engineers rather than by bookkeepers.

Adapting

The human species was well established in North America during the last Ice Age, which means they saw the end of that Ice Age coming.

Were they panicked? Did they see the ice cap melting and scream hysterically at each other about the disaster that would befall them if all that ice continued to melt? Did they frantically try to imagine ways to stop the ice from melting further, because of the unimaginably bad conditions that would result if all the ice melted?

“We have to build fewer camp fires, because we’re all going to die if the ice melts.”

They didn’t stop the ice from melting, of course (if they tried, which is doubtful), and things didn’t get all that bad, they actually got better.

So here we are with the ice melting again, and no one is suggesting that we ought to be coming up with ways to live with the change, they are hysterically screaming that we have to stop the change.

If you see a boulder rolling down the hill at you, which is the better course of action? Step aside, or try to stop the boulder? Well, if you are a “climate scientist,” the obvious answer is “stop the boulder.” Good luck with that.

Humans have one advantage over any other being in the animal kingdom. We can use our intellect to adapt to change. Well, we used to be able to do that.

Mandatory Vaccination Unravels

Hysteria over the “Delta variant” has completely unraveled the vaccination mandate, although authoritarian government has not yet recognized that and is still trying to ban you from employment, travel and entertainment unless you submit to a jab that, from a public health standpoint, is completely useless.

Fear of the “Delta variant” may be real (may be), but rationale for the vaccine mandate most certainly is not, now that the CDC has announced that people who are vaccinated can get infected and carry viral loads as high as, and even higher than, people who are not vaccinated.

This means that people who are vaccinated can spread the “Delta variant” as easily as those who have not been vaccinated, which in turn means that there is no public health benefit to vaccination. Yet more and more companies and governments are denying access unless you have been vaccinated. That might be a reasonable precaution to protect others if vaccination prevented, or even reduced the spread of Covid19 but, according to the CDC, it does not.

Sign of the Times

An article recently, on a different subject, mentioned that Obama made cuts to NASA so that private industry could take over the space effort. I checked, and rather big cuts were made during his administration. Spending is always blamed on the president (falsely of course), so Obama’s influence on those cuts is not entirely clear, and the reasons for the cuts are not clear at all, but they were made and private industry did take over.

So, what was the effect of this transition from government to private funding of the “space effort?”

Well, under government spending we sent men to the Moon and built the space station. Under private funding we have built reusable rockets to give billionaires ten-minute rides into space, which they have greatly enjoyed.

Zampolit by Another Name

In the Soviet Navy each ship of any size had a Zampolit officer as part of ship’s company. The Zampolit was there to ensure political conformity and report on any ideologically impure crew members, including the Captain.

We are seeing the Left attempting to implement the same structure in the US, only the title is different. The equivalent of the Zampolit officer has infiltrated all major US corporations as the “Chief Diversity Officer.”

Decisions, Decisions

I gave up on the SRX racing series because a) the racing was boring and b) listening to Danica Patrick is like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard.

Next week, however, the series will feature Bill Elliott racing against his son Chase. That has only happened once (Bill won, but Chase was still just a kid), so it is being rather seriously hyped at this point. So I have to decide a) is it being overhyped and b) is watching it next Saturday night worth listening to Danica Patrick?

Tough call. Very tough call.

Space Program

Space program? What space program? What are we doing today that we did not do fifty years ago?The equipment that we landed on Mars is a little bit more fancy, but the first Mars lander was in 1976, 45 years ago.

52 years ago we landed a man on the Moon, and not only can we not do that today, we do not even aspire to do that today. We have some loose talk about sending a crew to Mars, but we do not even have designs drawn up for a vehicle to do that. Such a mission is not even serious talk at this point.

Are we an advanced nation? Not when we cannot even plan to do what we actually did half a century ago. Biden is the perfect leader for us today. A senile old fossil, dreaming of past glory.

Doing It Right, Part 2

There is a lake in the infield at Indianapolis, but unfortunately for the announcers, it is not on the track, so Scott Dixon will not be able to demonstrate his ability to drive his car to victory across a body of water. 

I'm sure they have no doubt that he can do that, but it's too bad that he won't be able to demonstrate it for them. The other drivers are just there to provide contrast.

Doing It Right

This coming weekend, at the Coca-Cola 600, each race car will carry on its windshield the name of a person who lost their life in service to this nation.

It’s not the first time NASCAR has done this, and it’s something that the organization has absolutely gotten right. The driver of the car almost always mentions the person being honored on his car in interviews,  he has spent time with that person’s family, and frequently the family is at the race.

The announcers often speak about the honorees during the race as they feature a car. “The 29 car carries the name of…”

Thank you, NASCAR, for your respectful celebration of Memorial Day.

Modern Economics

From an article by Michael Hudson explaining why President Biden is refusing to cancel student debt ,

“The fact is, if the government were to write down all the student debt, it wouldn’t cost the government a penny right now. And that wouldn’t cost the banks a penny because the debt is owed to the government and the government would simply be canceling a future source of revenue.”

I think Mr. Hudson’s definition of “debt” needs to be refined, because it is not currently in contact with reality. “Future revenue” would be something along the lines of “no money has changed hands yet, but some day in the future you will buy something from me.”

Debt would be more like, “you have my money and I want it back.” So when you cancel that debt I don’t get my money back and therefor I do actually lose my money. If the government gets into the habit of randomly cancelling debts, it’s going to become really difficult to find anyone who will lend you money.

The key, of course, is that Mr. Hudson says that the government “it won't cost the government a penny right now,” which is a tacit admission that it will cost the government money in the future, namely when the student loans are supposed to be paid. But he doesn’t worry about tomorrow. “Carpe diem.” Seize today

Good Advice

The Haas team in Formula 1 has two rookie drivers, Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin, who will be racing at Monaco for the first time this coming weekend. Monaco is a legendary street course with no runoff areas, walls on both sides everywhere. Tricky place to race, to say the least.

Team principal Guenther Steiner had some advice for his two rookies, telling them to, "Stay out of the walls and off the barriers."

 

Well, duh. Does he think they were planning to hit the walls and barriers on purpose?

Logic Should Apply

Dr. Fauci and the Director of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, both gave the same explanation for the change in policy regarding face masks, namely that it was not so much as change in “science,” as it was simple observation. We have now been administering the vaccine long enough, they told us, and to enough people (some 153 million), that we can now be assured that it works well enough that we can quit wearing face masks.

I don’t know why anyone would have a problem with that. We’ve been trusting these people for fifteen months or so when they are delivering bad news, why should we quit trusting them merely because they deliver some good news?

What they didn’t address is the 33 million people who have what is called “acquired immunity” due to having been infected by the virus and recovering from the resulting illness. Applying the same logic of observation to that group, we should note that an even lower number of that group has become ill a second time (effectively zero, in fact) than in the immunized group, and should acknowledge that this group’s immunity is as good, or even better, than those who have been vaccinated.

In fact, in all known viral diseases where acquired immunity exists at all, (10 out of 14) it is superior to vaccination, being essentially 100% effective, and in all those cases it is well known to last for a lifetime. Why should we assume this one is different?

Two viral diseases, the common cold and annual flu, are not a single virus in either case. Both consist of multiple viruses which combine and mutate annually, obviating any opportunity for acquired immunity. The flu vaccine is developed each year based on the best guess of what next year’s dominant flu virus will be, and in a good year is 40% effective.

The herpes virus is incurable and becomes a latent virus in the host, and since the host cannot get rid of the virus no acquired immunity can be developed.

The rabies virus has such a low survival rate that data on acquired immunity cannot be developed. Vaccines provide immunity for approximately ten years.

All the rest (smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, hepatitis, polio, ebola, hantavirus, and yellow fever) provide an acquired immunity which last a lifetime. Chicken pox virus can remain latent in the host and return as shingles, but it does not cause a recurrence of chicken pox.

So, if you are going to evaluate this virus against other viruses, you cannot do so against the clod and flu because this is not multiple viruses, it is a single virus with very minor variats. If these variants are not rendering the vaccine impotent, they cannot be doing so to acquired immunity.

You cannot compare this virus to herpes, because clearly we are finding that it is possible to rid the host of the virus, that is to cure the patient.

You obviously cannot compare it to rabies. The death rate is far too low.

So you simply have to compare it to the ten other viruses, all ten of which provide lifetime acquired immunity. Why would you assume this one does not? That’s not to say the issue should not be studied, but you should start with the most likely assumption, especially when that assumption is consistent with current observation to date.

Only Biden...

Biden has another new program, assisting homeowners with their mortgage. To qualify you must owe less than $356,825 and not have missed a payment in six months.

 

?  Why the odd amount? But more to the point, if you have not missed a payment in six months, why do you need help? Weird.

Perspective is Needed

The media is hyperventilating about the Coronavirus pandemic in India, even to the extent of speculating about social collapse of one of the world's most populous nations.

Virtually every state in this country has an infection rate of around 9.8% since the pandemic began. Oddly, regardless of the level of mask mandates, shutdowns, and other measures, 98 out of 1000 people have become infected since the beginning of the pandemic, 902 have not.

 

India, with 1.4 billion people, has incurred 17 million cases of Coronavirus infection cases. That is an infection rate of 1.2% of the population, or about 12% of the rate experienced in this country. That is not to say that 17 million cases is not a tragic problem, but using raw numbers without context can distort reality.

 

Update: Sunday, May 2, 2021

 Put another way, compare India's case count and rate above (17 million, 1.2%) to the same numbers for the Unites States. This country has experienced 33,180,441 cases since the beginning of the pandemic. With a population of 33 million people, that is 10% of our people who have become infected, compared to India's 1.2%,

Redistribution of Wealth

The top 1% of households in this nation holds $34 trillion in wealth, which sounds really appalling. We should, we are told, take some of that wealth away from them (Elizabeth Warren says 2%) and give it to the 99% who are not wealthy.

Defining a “household” as three people (definitions run from 2.6 to 3.4 persons) there would appear to be 110 million households in the US, of which 1.1 million are in the top 1%, leaving 108.9 households as recipients of the largesse.

So let’s call Elizabeth Warren a piker and take all, not part, of the wealth of the top 1% and give it to the 99% equally. Each household would get $31,313 as a one-time bonus. Elizabeth Warren's 2% would give each household a $631 bonus.

If we decided to give it only to the bottom 50% then each household would receive a $62,000  bonus. One time only, remember. There wouldn't be any more, because we took 100% of their wealth.

Don’t spend it all in one place.

The Grand Experiment 3

By way of a followup, when in the history of the practice of medicine has anyone been told that they needed to be vaccinated against a disease that they had just recovered from?

The Grand Experiment 2

Use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is suspended due to a reaction which occurred in six people, out of 7 million people who have received the vaccination. There have not been six deaths, only one of the six died, so we are talking about one death out of 7 million vaccinations.

We are in the midst of a frantic effort to get everyone vaccinated in the face of what is being presented as the most dangerous pandemic in modern history, one in which the fear of death is presented as imminent and all-pervading. And we stop use of a successful vaccine because of a one in 7 million chance that it might kill you.

There is something going on here that we are not being told about.

A Narrative Of... Magic?

We will have to wear the mask, we are told, even after being vaccinated. Not just for a couple of weeks until the vaccine can establish our own immunity, but for an indefinite length of time “until herd immunity is achieved.” That just makes no sense to me.

How is herd immunity to be achieved? Well, by vaccination, of course. So we have to wear a mask until everybody else is vaccinated. Why? What does someone else’s immunity have to do with my risk of catching the virus, or with the danger of me spreading the virus?

It makes it sound like there is no such thing as individual immunity, There only exists a magical “herd immunity” which suddenly appears when a critical mass of vaccinations have been reached. No one is immune until everyone is immune.

We can take off the mask after being vaccinated, we are told, only if we are in small groups of other people who are all also vaccinated. What?

That kind of sounds like they are saying that the vaccine protects me from the virus only if I am not exposed to the virus, which doesn’t make any sense at all. Making even less sense is the idea that my immunity depends on someone else being vaccinated.

 “Follow the science,” we are told. This narrative doesn’t sound like science to me. It sounds like magic or, perhaps, sorcery. If you follow this, the only place you are going is down a rabbit hole.

Cowardice as a Virtue

 Americans today, it seems, make a virtue out of their lack of courage.

 

A stunning example of that was made by the head of the CDC recently during a nationally aired speech in which she said that she was experiencing a “sense of impending doom,” and added that “frankly, I’m scared.”

 

It was the opposite of leadership from the person selected to head the department which is central to the process of navigating the nation through a pandemic. It was a disgusting and disgraceful display of craven cowardice.

 

She even went so far as to specifically articulate the abdication of her responsibility as Director of the CDC by saying that, “I am not speaking to you today as the Director of the CDC, I am speaking to you as a mother and a wife and…”

 

She should have been fired before she left the stage.

The Grand Experiment

When I was a young kid, probably age 9 or 10, I watched my mother living in a full body cast for almost a year because she was given a polio vaccine which had not been adequately tested. (The experience was not as passive as “watching her” sounds, of course.)  I won’t go into the details of that vaccine fiasco, but you can look them up if you want. They are fairly readily available.

It seems we do not learn from experience because we are now not only releasing, but are aggressively promoting an unapproved vaccine that was tested on humans for only two months before the FDA released it “for experimental use” on the general public. We do not, however, appear to be recording the results of that “experimental use.”

When you got the shot(s), were you told specifically, that you were participating in an experiment? Were you given a form to send to a central recording agency, as to any effects you experienced after the shot, any exposure you have to the virus after the shot, and as to whether of not you became ill from the Coronavirus? Of course not.

“Experimental use;” but if you are not recording the results, you are not conducting an experiment.

The medical establishment is not using the vaccine as authorized by the FDA, it is generally administering a medication that is not approved for general use, and the government is not only allowing that illegality, it is actively encouraging and concealing it.

So no, I have not gone down and invited anyone to stick a needle into my arm and enroll me in a grand experiment which without recorded results cannot, as an experiment, benefit anyone.

Brilliant

San Diego Gas and Electric is advertising solar power panels, and the illustration they picked is of a gas water heater.

Just a Quick Thought

I wonder if those Dr. Seuss books were being read at the library's children's Drag Queen Reading Hours.

Entirely Unsurprising

I was pretty certain that the “five weeks to flatten the curve” which transmogrified into “until a vaccine is developed” (or more accurately "until a Democrat is in the White House") would be extended by some goalpost extension method yet to be revealed, and it turns out I was right.

From CNN we hear that, “Several experts predicted Tuesday the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant first detected in the UK is likely to fuel another surge of cases in just a matter of weeks.”

And from Yahoo News and even more dire warning that, “A coronavirus variant that probably emerged in May and surged to become the dominant strain in California not only spreads more readily than its predecessors but also evades antibodies generated by COVID-19 vaccines or prior infection and is associated with severe illness and death, researchers said.”

So the vaccine that we are told does not eliminate the need for masking because it is not 94% effective at preventing infection, but is only 94% effective at preventing the need for hospitalization, has now been rendered moot by California being once more in the vanguard of new ways to defeat free enterprise and business development by creating a new and more deadly virus.

Well played establishment, well played.

Thinking Things Through

I can’t find the video clip now, but a politician and an automotive executive are displaying and expounding upon the virtues of an electric car to a group of people, apparently media. They show off the features of the car and demonstrate how simple and easy it is to plug it in for recharging.

A member of the audience asks, “Okay, very nice. And what is it that replenishes the battery in your car?”

The automotive exec looks at him as if he was the village idiot and replies, “Well, this charging station right here replenishes the battery.”

The guy responds, “And that station is powered by our local grid, which gets 90% of its electricity from burning coal.” The car people say nothing, looking at him as they would if he just killed their puppy.

Something Doesn't Add Up

If you want to know whether or not someone is telling the truth, match their actions to their words. If they are lying, words and actions will not match.

Over the last six months or so we have been told that Covid-19 is a deadly disease and that, while it is killing more elderly than young people, it is deadly to young as well and is killing youthful people in large numbers. It is so deadly that we have had to destroy our economy and throw millions into unemployment to prevent young people as well as the elderly from catching Covid-19.

So, what does our healthcare system do when someone comes in for a Covid–19 test and it turns out to be positive? They send that person home.

They do not send that person to a doctor, or instruct that person to see a doctor. They do not call a doctor over to give that person a check up, such as listening to their lungs. They do not give medication to stop the disease, or advise them of what steps to take to get that medication. No, they just send him home.

So the medical system is telling us how deadly this disease is, and that it is killing people regardless of age, but when they find someone who has contracted the disease they do not medically treat that person in even a cursory manner, they simply tell that person to go home.

Sending someone home without a doctor’s intervention and without treating them is not the action taken by someone who believes that the person is in danger of dying. You can only do that if you are certain that the patient has contracted a minor, self-limiting disease. “You have a common cold. Go home and take Tylenol.”

Something is wrong here. I don’t claim to know what it is. Maybe the Coronavirus is a deadly as claimed. If so, then our healthcare system is grossly and criminally deficient. But there is far too wide of a mismatch for me to sit back and believe that things are the way they should be.

Well, That Was Embarrassing

The America’s Cup is so named because this nation won it the first time it was sailed in 1851. America won it continuously for 116 years, and at least participated in it until 2000. After failing to make it into the race for the next ten years, America returned in 2010, winning 2 of the next three cups, so the overall record is by no means bad.

This year has been beyond embarrassing. The American boat has been one of three competing for the right to challenge New Zealand for the next America’s Cup, and was disqualified yesterday after sailing in nine matches, losing all nine and forfeiting one.

One loss was what a non-sailor might consider close, 30 seconds in a race that took 26 minutes to complete (to a sailor, 30 seconds is not even hand grenade distance), but the rest have all been by two minutes or more. This would compare to a stock car losing at Daytona by 20 laps or more purely because it is slow and/or was poorly driven.

There was one conversation with the American skipper which pretty much summed up for me why the boat’s performance was so sub-par. In discussing why he lost the start of the race he said that the opponent, “got his timing right, so we were not able to execute Plan A.” The commenter asked how he could have executed his plan and he repeated himself. “If he gets his timing right, you don’t.”

If your plan depends on your opponent making a mistake, it is a bad plan. It is a plan that you should not be using. It is a plan that pretty much assures that you will lose. If I had been using such a mind-numbingly stupid plan I most certainly would not admit it on television. It’s like asking Dale Earnhardt how he plans to beat Bill Elliott in the upcoming race and hearing him reply that, “I plan to drive carefully and hope that he hits the wall.”

The commentator, of course, either did not pick up on the stupidity of “Plan A” or decided to ignore it, and moved on to other things. He was too busy, in any case, conducting a pity party and making excuses for the American boat.

The Americans, he lamented, had been forced to spend the downtime repairing their boat’s damage incurred when it capsized, while the Italians were able to spend that time improving their boat. Well, boo hoo. If the Americans hadn’t capsized their boat they would not have had to be doing repairs and could have been making improvements just like the Italians.

The commentator even went so far as to lament that he felt sorry for the Americans and that it was “..all so unfair. It’s just unfair.” Oh, get over it. It wasn’t an act of bad sportsmanship by the Italians that capsized the American boat. It wasn’t some freak fluke of nature. It wasn’t some arbitrary inequitable act by the officials. It was pure bad seamanship by the American captain and crew that capsized the boat.

There was nothing even remotely unfair about their plight; their hardship was entirely self inflicted. They’re lucky they only had to forfeit one race.

What Comes Next?

When the pandemic started we were told that we would have to stay home, wear masks and close our businesses for five weeks in order to avoid overwhelming the hospitals. Given that the hospital ships sat empty the precautions either worked extremely well or were not needed.

Then, after five weeks, the empty hospital ships were sent home and we were told that we would have to "continue precautions" until we got a vaccine. This was known, somewhat cynically, as "moving the goalposts." They also sort of hid the goalposts as well as moving them, since they would not give us a time frame for the arrival for the vaccine, only that it would be a long time. Certainly not until after Trump was out of office.

Now the vaccine is here and the goalposts have not been moved again, they have simply been removed. We will have to "continue the precautions" even after vaccination, and now we must wear two masks instead of just one. Reasons vary from unlikely to absurd.

"We know the vaccine prevents the severe kind of Covid, but we don't know if it prevents the mild kind, which can still be spread." News flash. They are the same kind. The difference is in your body's ability to cope with the virus. Secondly, we should be afraid of a virus which is likely to cause death, but if all we have to be concerned about after vaccination is "the mild kind..." Please. Thirdly, we do know it prevents "the mild kind" because in testing the vaccine they tested for presence of the virus in any form after the vaccine was given.

That's even if you can get the vaccine. I'm 77 and high risk, and I can't. My health care system had 11,000 applications for 200 appointments and advised not even calling.

I'm afraid to ask what the next stage of this pandemic and its government controls might be.

Again: Thinking Things Through

The San Diego Mayor just imposed an upper limit on what can be imposed by third party delivery services who deliver food orders; 15% of the total amount of the order. He says that will help the companies that are selling delivery food, because drivers were adding as much as 30% to the cost of the order. 

 

 First, it's usually the customer that pays the fee, not the seller, so I'm a little uncertain of his thinking, but let's assume that the high delivery fees are driving customers away. How does it help if you drive the delivery service away? (You see what I did there? Twice!) 

 

Let's say you are delivering a $25 order. You have to get in your car, drive to the restaurant, wait for the order to be ready, drive to the customer, take time for the customer to pay you, process the credit card payment, pay the cost of the credit card payment (usually 3-5%), and then drive home. At a 30% fee, you would receive a princely sum of $7.50 for doing all this. The Mayor wants to cap this at a maximum payment of $3.75. 

 

Does that meet San Diego's minimum wage of $15/hr? I don't think so. Sort of an odd political agenda to want to raise what workers earn and then cap what they can charge. Still, he is a Democrat, so we should not expect consistency or logic from him.

 

What they Mayor did, of course, is raise to approximately $100 (for which the driver would get $15) the minimum food order that you can get delivered. That may be okay for four or more people who live together, but for a single person or a childless couple who want to stay home and have food delivered it might not work out too well.

The Cost of Oil

What liberals and the media will not tell you is that canceling the Keystone XL pipeline is not going to reduce oil consumption by one drop, and is not even going to reduce the amount of oil moving to the Gulf Coast. It's just going to keep the cost of that oil higher in dollars, environmental impact, and human suffering.

That oil is presently being produced, and most of it is moving to the Gulf. Some is going by way of existing pipelines, the rest is going by rail. Rail transport is much more costly than a pipeline, and it is incredibly more dangerous to the environment and to human life when trains derail and the oil burns.

The media did features in the past on such derailments, since they are very dramatic and make for colorful and frightening imagery on the nightly news, but the “ecology movement” has prevailed upon them to downplay that danger in favor of preventing the construction of pipelines.

Biden and his followers would have you believe that they are reducing the amount of oil used by blocking this pipeline. They are lying, because they know they are not. They are merely preventing the safer and less costly transport of existing and ongoing oil usage.

Garbage Wrapper

Wrapping your garbage in the San Diego Union Tribune has become an insult to perfectly good garbage these days. 

 

An article in Sunday’s paper (behind a paywall), which apparently required two “journalists” to compose began, “Online misinformation about election fraud plunged 73% after several social media sites suspended President Donald Trump and his key allies last week…” 

 

That’s much like saying that horseshit in the streets diminished after the sheriff shot and killed 90% of the county’s horses. It finds it useful to remark that horses don’t shit in the street after they are dead, and it asserts that shooting and killing horses is a virtuous act. 

 

Not to mention that it is “misinformation” only because they say it is.

Best Play of The Year

If 2021 gives us nothing else, we can look back to this; one last meeting between two old guys on the field at the Superdome, after the game. Tom Brady came out after the game to visit with an old friend and, among other things, threw a pass for Drew Brees' son to catch. Nice moment.

Paranoid Much?

Not only are Democrats (well, the Establishment in general) posting more than 25,000 armed troops in Washington to "keep the inauguration safe," they are vetting those troops to be sure that all of them are "loyal." 

 

What the "loyalty check" consists of is not specified, but probably footlockers are being searched for MAGA gear.

Section 230

Liberals and the media are fulminating at great length about “Section 230,” a law which they claim allows the internet companies to permit “hate speech” to be published on their systems without fear of lawsuit. In fact, Section 230 does precisely the opposite of that. Here is the “meat” of that section of the US Code,

"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected."

 

Note the words I underlined. This law, in fact, is precisely what allows internet companies to block hate speech (or anything which they consider to be hate speech) without recourse against them. It permits them to do what they are now finally doing, in fact, which is to cancel people whose messages they dislike.

It means the people who are suing them for cancellation will lose, because the law does not say who decides what material is “excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” Cancelling Section 230 would, in fact, prevent internet companies from blocking hate speech and from cancelling objectionable (to liberals) contributors.

Liberals are cheering the “cancellation” of the “other side” and delighted that their platforms will no longer be contaminated by writings that they don’t want to have to read, and at the same time they are demanding repeal of the law that permits that cancellation to happen.

This is another instance of knee jerk irrational liberalism. They are so upset to discover that a law protects an institution which they hate, even when their daily political activity is utterly dependent upon that institution, that they don’t even bother to find out what that law protects the institution from.

Ships and Fires

The USS Bonhomme Richard recently caught fire pierside in San Diego and burned for more than a week before the fire was brought under control. There are many things of interest about that fire and the course that it ran, which I will not go into here. They do not reflect well on the Navy.

Even more interesting is the end result, which is that the damage was so extensive that the Navy decided to decommission and scrap the ship.

The major lesson that should be taken from this incident is that Navy ships are still vulnerable to large fires. Fire, in fact, is the sailor’s greatest fear at sea. The fear of sinking is so far down in second place that there is no second place. The thought of fire at sea causes nightmares.

Enter the Arleigh Burke class destroyer, the most numerous class of destroyers the Navy operates. It’s an old class; they’ve been around forever, and have undergone more upgrades than anyone can count. Among those upgrades was the brilliant (!) idea to build the superstructure out of aluminum. Doing so, the theory went, would lower the center of gravity and make the ship more stable in heavy seas.

It worked like a charm. The ships rode out storms very well indeed. Then one of the new ships suffered a major fire at sea and the aluminum superstructure melted, because that’s what aluminum does in such a fire. Steel just gets hot, maybe turns red, but aluminum melts. A ship with a melted superstructure is not a ship.

Subsequent Arleigh Burke destroyers, ships of all classes in fact, have been built with steel superstructures. Seemed like the Navy had learned a lesson.

Not so much. The new “Littoral Combat” ships not only have aluminum superstructures, they have aluminum hulls as well. That which has been learned can be unlearned.

Excellent Logic

This could happen only in California. 

 

The Public Utilities Commsion has approved an increase in electric rates during summer for the specific purpose of reducing power consumption, in the same month that Governor Newsom declared that 15 million vehicles must be replaced by electrically powered vehicles within the next 15 years.

 

Not to mention that the PUC authorized power companies to shut off power during times of high fire danger, so how does the governor suggest that people who have electric cars escape danger when there is a fire in their area?