Why do they do things like this?

Mark Wahlberg said he spent 12 hours naked on a pier while filming his latest movie "Me Time." Well, he wasted his time. The movie was probably the worst movie in several decades. I watched about 12 minutes and turned it off. Utter garbage.

A Non-sentient Race

The human race was living in North America 15,000 years ago. The area was still in the throes of the last Ice Age, which would not end for another 3000 years. The average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere was 46 degrees, some 11 degrees cooler than it is today.

The human race is still living in North America. Or I think it’s the human race. Sometimes I’m not sure.

Anyway, the average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere has risen 11 degrees, a process which not only has the human race survived, but during which it has thrived and multiplied, but we are told that we will be catastrophically destroyed if the temperature rises another 2 degrees.

To repeat a bit; we survived an 11 degree rise, but we will not survive a 2 degree rise. Does that sound a little bit stupid to you? Did we lose our ability to adapt? Or did we merely lose our intelligence?

Since we, apparently, no longer can change ourselves or the way we have been doing things for the past 100 years or so (other than by using electricity to do it instead of “fossil” fuels), we propose to change the way the planet has been doing things for more than 15,000 years.

Sea levels are rising, we are told. I have seen no observable evidence of that in the more than fifty years that I have been going to the beach, but let’s assume that sea levels are rising and will drown our big cities.

Perhaps we should be talking about moving our big cities inland and to higher ground, away from those rising seas. We’re not doing that. Not one person is suggesting that. We are, instead, talking about stopping the seas from rising. I spent time in the Navy. News flash. The oceans are really big.

There was a king named Canute tried what we are proposing. He was a powerful guy, being king of England and Denmark, and Norway and Sweden. He got wet.

Temperatures are rising, we are told, so maybe we should be talking about moving our populations farther north and/or to higher altitudes where it is cooler. Adapting. We’re not talking about that either. Instead we’re talking about stopping the temperature from rising, stopping the entire freaking planet from doing something that it has been doing for more than 15,000 years.

Sorry for being so blunt, but that is just plain stupid.

Government Accuracy

The "Employment Survey" produced by the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the economy produced well over 500,000 new jobs last month, which was hailed by the media as proof that there is no recession and that the economy is growing like mad. The stock marked soared.

The "Household Survey," also produced by the BLS, reported that there were only 150,000 newly employed persons filling those newly created jobs. That should have created some suspicion about the jobs report, but it was ignored.

Do economists think that each of the newly employed persons filled 3.33 new jobs?

Redefining Reality

After a report saying that the nation has experienced a second quarter of negative growth in GDP, which has been the definition of a recession for more than fifty years, the White House is denying that we are in a recession because two quarters of negative growth is not the definition of a recession as everyone has thought for the past half century.

Just like we thought that a vaccine was a product that prevented the spread of an infectious pathogen. We were set straight on that one by the Biden White House. A vaccine does not stop the spread of a disease, like the smallpox vaccine did, it merely “reduces the risk of hospitalization or death.”

So we are now told that a recession is not defined by negative GDP, but is defined by “a much broader spectrum of data points,” which for some reason they cannot list for us. Probably because they have not made them up them yet. After all, the second negative GDP quarter was only announced yesterday.

From Politico we learn that the “National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee can determine whether the U.S. economy is in a recession, based on a multitude of factors that can only be found several months or up to a year after a recession actually begins.” And, presumably after the current election cycle has passed as well.

Economist Ben White provided a tweet reading, “Yeah I did a bad tweet a while ago referring to two negative q’s in a row as  a recession. Should have known better at the time but it had been a while since I’d studied recession criteria and that’s not it.” Right. It had, "been a while since I’d studied recession criteria."

That was not particularly illuminating, so he amplified that the actual definition is “NBER and lots of data points beyond GDP.” He, too, does not elaborate on the “lots of data points.”

Wikipedia, which cannot be used for toilet paper because it is a virtual source, admits that its article, “may be affected by the following current event: Increased political debate in the United States.” No shit.

Anyway, it says that a recession, “In the United States, a recession is defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) as ‘a significant decline in economic activity spread across the market, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales’."

Wikipedia follows that with the statement that, “In the United Kingdom and most other countries, it is defined as negative economic growth for two consecutive quarters,” which is basically saying that the NBER, and the White House, are full of shit, which is kind of awesome.

Note that, despite its name, the NBER cited repeatedly above is a private economic research organization.

I don’t really care what the “lots of data points” are, two quarters of negative GDP growth tells me we are in a recession, and my observation and common sense told me that several months ago.

Say What?

A military expert is challenged with respect to his predictions on the war in Ukraine. "You have been predicting that the Russians will soon run out of missiles, ammo and men since mid-March. And yet as predictions go it never seems to come to pass." 

The expert responds, "It is an ongoing process." 

And we keep paying attention to these oracles of wisdom, seeking their "wisdom"  and publishing their opinions.

Echoing Obama

It was only a matter of time before Biden was parroting Obama with, "If Congress won't act, then I will," by means of imperial executive order.

Because we don't need no stinking constitution.

When in Doubt, Overreact

I love the hyperbolic overreaction to many of the recent Supreme Court decisions.

"Omigod, the government is not allowed to regulate carbon emissions any more!" 

Well, yes it is,  only the Supreme Court says it has to be done by elected legislators, not by unelected bureaucrats.

Roe v. Wade

Polling regarding the most recent Supreme Court decision is almost entirely stupid, because is seeks opinion on the legality of abortion, and the Supreme Court made no decision on that issue whatever. What it decided was simply that it is not a federal issue, is not an issue to be decided by the constitution, and that it must be decided by each state rather than by a federal court.

Each state is perfectly free to rule that abortion is entirely or partially legal within its borders, and many have done so. That includes California, which is experiencing rioting over the supposition that the Supreme Court outlawed abortion. Actually, the Supreme Court's decision had no effect whatever in this state, where abortion remains available to precisely the same degree that it did before the ruling. 

The media has not helped. Robert Kuttner, of The American Prospect, said of the ruling that, "the Court’s ruling today does a lot more than criminalize abortion." It did nothing of the sort, of course, let alone "a lot more." The Wall Street Journal referred to the decision as "eliminating a constitutional right to an abortion," which is another fiction. There was never a "constitutional right to an abortion," and this decision merely eliminated the fiction perpetrated by an earlier court.

What the Supreme Court even said in its ruling is that if the people of this nation want a nationwide legal right to abortion, then they can prevail upon their legislators to pass a federal law to that effect. Such a law would not be struck down because, while the constitution does not contain a provision guaranteeing abortion, it does not contain one prohibiting abortion either. The Court said explicitly they would have no problem with such a federal law should Congress decide to pass one.

Will Congress hear what was said and pass a law reflecting public opinion? Not only no but, "Oh, hell no." That would require a level of courage far above that which is possessed by Congress. They want no part of any decision on which the nation is anywhere near to being evenly divided. They punt such decisions to courts, and the executive branch. That's why they leave it to the President on all matters affecting the use of military force. That's why they will not pass a budget until the President proposes one, so that the media will endlessly prate about "the Bush tax cuts," even though Congress passed them. That's why "Obamacare" is called "Obamacare" even though Obama had almost nothing to do with any of the few good parts.

They won't pass an abortion law either; won't even allow the media to let the voters know that such a thing is possible.

"We Can't Look"

This is Willy protecting his sister, Missy, while their dad is watching a Dutchman in an English car being chased by a Spaniard in an Italian car for more than twenty laps. (Formula 1 does live up to its claim of being international racing.) A certain amount of swearing and yelling seemed like it might be pending.

Carlos Sainz was never more than 1.05 seconds behind Max Verstaffen, and was often as close as 0.025 seconds for the entire 20+ laps, and all it would have taken was for Max to breathe wrong and he would have been passed. The pass never happened, and the swearing and yelling was averted. A small amount of screaming did occur when the Red Bull took the checkered flag, but the cats are used to that.

Sunday's Stock Car Race

Dale Earnhardt Jr said that Sunday’s race at Charlotte, NC was a “good race” which he enjoyed watching.

I would like to know what his definition is of “bad racing.” There were 28 caution flags during the race, on average one every 14 laps, and 17 of 38 drivers (45%) failed to finish due to crashes.

Not sure how anyone could describe that as a “good race.”

Failure to Think

 Is building homes for the homeless really a solution?

You have a family member who is running a fever, with a temperature of 105 degrees. You take him to a doctor who says he will solve the problem by putting the person in a bathtub filled with ice water.

If you have any capacity for critical thinking, you know that the fever is not the problem. The fever is the result of an underlying illness, and you expect the doctor to discover that underlying illness and to treat it.

So why do we settle for politicians “solving the homeless problem” by simply building homes for the homeless?

When a politician sees a person living in squalor on the street, he tells us that we can take care of that person by saying that the person’s problem is that he/she is “homeless” and giving that person a free home.

But being homeless is not that person’s problem any more than the 105 degree temperature was your family member’s problem. Being homeless is the result of a problem that the person had before they became homeless. That problem might be any one of or a combination of many things; alcohol or drug addiction, mental health issues, family problems, employment problems and more.

To actually help that person it is necessary to look at her/him not as a member of a class (“homeless”), but to look at him/her as an individual and determine why that person lost their home to begin with, and to help them with that problem.

But that is hard to do, and politicians don’t do hard things.

On "Rushing In"

I have an explanation, I suspect, for the cops in Uvalde who loitered outside the school. They were pretty sure that it would be necessary to shoot and kill the shooter inside, and that the shooter was a person of color. 

They also knew that if you take down a criminal who is a person of color, you will be put on trial for murder and will spend the rest of your life in prison.

On Banning Guns

A person becomes enraged and drives his car into a crowd of people, killing many. Not hypothetical. It has happened more than once. How many times has it resulted in calls to ban automobiles?

Clarity of Thought

According the the latest Rasmussen poll, 44% of the American public approves of the job Biden is doing, while only 26% think America is heading in the right direction.

 How many people inhabit both the "performance approval" and "wrong direction" groups is not readily apparent from the poll, but clearly, even if 100% of the "right direction" group are Biden supporters, 41% (18% of the 44%) of Biden supporters approve of the manner in which he is leading this nation in the wrong direction.

Moon Soil?

"In a NASA-funded study, scientists at the University of Florida grew plants in soil collected from the moon, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology." 

 I'm not sure why they're so excited about this. The best tomatoes I ever ate were grown at the University of Arizona Agricultural Extension using no soil at all.

Photographic Evidence, Not

I have found it interesting that so many news items lately, especially with respect to the “Special Military Action” in Ukraine, but not limited to that subject, are accompanied by photographs which actually seem to prove the content of the article to be inaccurate.

For instance, one article went on at great length about Russia digging trenches with bulldozers and committing mass burials of bodies in Ukraine. It was accompanied by an aerial photograph of a field filled with what are obviously neatly dug individual graves in precise rows, so clearly visible that the viewer can see that one row and part of another are still open and waiting to be used.

Another article was reporting the tale of a Ukrainian soldier who had observed the destruction by artillery of a Russian column attempting to cross a river which he said would require “about ten pontoon segments” to bridge. He went on to report that the artillery began when eight segments had been placed and that dozens of tanks were destroyed and about 3000 Russian soldiers were killed.

That article, too, was accompanied by an aerial photograph, showing four tanks, a river and some pontoons. One pontoon spanned halfway across the river so it would take two, or at most three, of them to facilitate the river crossing, and in any case only two pontoons were shown in the photo.

I really don’t get the media’s process of, “I’m going to show you a picture that illustrates the falsity of the story I just told.” Weird.

Government Speak

San Diego Gas & Electric paid $100 million for a franchise to deliver power to the city of San Diego just one year ago. It was the second such payment, agreed upon after the first franchise expired. There was only one bidder; which is quite understandable, since SDG&E already had the infrastructure in place and any other bidder would have to purchase that infrastructure from SDG&E if they were to assume the franchise.

The city then formed what it calls a "consumer cooperative," in which the city  purchases power from other producers and delivers it to SDG&E customers over SDG&E power lines, passing a law that forced SDG&E to accept the proposition and set the transmission rates that SDG&E could charge. They also made it automatic that all consumers in the city are automatically enrolled in the "cooperative."

 

Calling something that is owned and operated by the city government rather than by the membership who are consuming the product a "cooperative" is pretty weird. It's actually a form of socialism, but of course the city government didn't want to go down that rabbit hole.

This action, of course, made the franchise worth far less than SDG&E paid for it, but the city government considered that a feature, not a bug. Any time a government can screw a business, it will leap at the opportunity.

So the local newspaper carried a headline on May first, when the "cooperative" went into effect and the franchise was officially breached, "SDG&E Monopoly Ends Today." Monopoly, forsooth.

Waiting

There has been quite a lot in the news lately about a mysterious outbreak of unexplained hepatitis in young people. Unexplained as in not caused by the usual viruses and causes.

Most people think that hepatitis is a specific disease, but it’s not. It is merely a “disorder,” meaning that there is something wrong in the liver. It can be caused by a number of things, most of which have been identified.

This latest outbreak has not been, and current thinking is an adenovirus. Not very likely, actually, since the virus in question has been around for a very long time, is extremely common, and has never caused hepatitis before. Why would it do so now?

I have been waiting for someone to connect this liver ailment to an article regarding the Pfizer Covid vaccine, describing an issue which almost certainly applies to all mRNA Covid vaccines.  The article is very technical and a bit difficult to read, but it says a couple of things that are of concern.

One is that the mRNA in the vaccine does transcribe into DNA in human cells, which it was not supposed to do, and the other is that the liver is one of the primary places that it does that. In other words, the mRNA vaccine is, in fact, engaging in genetic engineering in the people who receive the vaccine, the vaccine is actually "gene therapy," and specifically the DNA change is happening in the liver.

Is that connected to the hepatitis outbreak? I have no idea, as the subject is way over my head, but why is no one asking that question?

Define "democracy"

We charmingly claim that the United States, and the local governments within it, are democratic because we elect representatives who govern in accordance with the principles and wishes of the citizenry which elected them to office.

Case in point, a headline that reads, “San Diego County Supervisors vote 3-2 to redefine ‘woman’.”

Specifically, the council passed an new ordinance which makes it illegal to discriminate against women in the City of San Diego. On the face of it, such an ordinance would seem to be entirely symbolic, since state and federal laws already make it illegal to discriminate based on sex, but the City Council injected a twist.

The new ordinance provides that the protection, “extends to transgender women, gender nonconforming women, youth, and those assigned female at birth, which includes transgender men and intersex communities.” 

"Intersex communities?"  The ordinance includes both transgender women and transgender men, so the City Council apparently believes that you are a woman and are protected as such even if you declare yourself to be a man. I’m not sure I get that, but I am old enough to not quite understand the principles of transgenderism.

To make sure the ordinance is not unclear, it continues to declare that, “the term ‘discrimination against women’ includes any distinction, exclusion, or restriction on the basis of gender and sex assigned at birth.” Assigned by whom?

So far, that is all just a case of Democratic Party liberalism, no big deal, and the ordinance passed with three Democrats voting for it and two non-Democrats voting against.

There was, however, a time for public discussion prior to the vote, and 437 members of the public spoke against the measure, while only 40 spoke in favor of it. One person said that, “[I]t is an honor to be women, and the idea that men can simply identify as one, is degrading to all women.”

So with the public speaking more than 10:1 against the measure, all three members of the Democratic Party voted in favor of it. The irony is hard to miss, but pretty much all Democrats will miss it.

Clickbait

Every once in a while, I bite. I can't help it. Curiousity.

One deal shows the little black diamond on a tape measure and says it's going to tell you why it's there. I've never survived all the clicks, gotten past all of the other "facts" (many of them nonsensical), that might be required to find out. I know it has something to do with the center of studs in the wall of a house, but I didn't learn that by hitting clickbait.

Another one is going to tell you why there are holes in the prongs of an electric plug. Hell, I'm a licensed electrician, so I probably should know that. Embarrassingly, I don't. I've hit that clickbait several times, spent endless hours clicking "Next," crashed my computer twice, and I still don't know.

I read comments, so if you know, feel free.

 

Update, Wed. Apr 20: Aha. I was right; the holes in the electric plug are definitely not to engage a detent in the socket.  Some guy dismantled a bunch of sockets and none of them had any such detents. 

 

Turns out that, according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association the holes are "optional, but if present must be located as illustrated above and are for manufacturing purposes." Most plugs are cast, and the holes are for a rod to hold the prongs in position while the material is poured into the die and allowed to solidify.

Unhinged

There is a bill pending in the California legislature, and one like it at the federal level, which would mandate that all companies with 500 or more employees adopt a 32-hour work week, paying overtime to those who work more than 32 hours in a week.

Politicians refer to it as a “populist” concept, and workers are thrilled at the idea of working fewer days/hours per week. As far as I can tell, economists are silent on the subject so far, but I have gone through all of the economic problems that this country is suffering at the moment, and it seems to me that every one of them would be made significantly worse by this policy.

We have shortages of practically every product one can name, so let’s have workers work fewer hours, make fewer products, and create even more severe shortages. Why does anyone think that this is a good idea?

Perhaps the idea is that more workers will be hired to fill out the work week, but we also have a labor shortage, so how is that going to pan out? We can’t fill the job openings we have, so let’s create more job openings. Really?

Inflation is eating up wage gains, so the pay that workers are receiving is  buying less and less.  So let’s reduce their buying power even further with a reduction of their income due to shorter working hours. Brilliant.

If we increase workers’ hourly pay to offset the reduced hours it would mean increasing the price of the products they are producing. That would make inflation even higher than it is now, and it’s already the worst it has been in four decades. Who thinks that is a good idea?

On the other hand, reducing working class income means less consumer spending, which trashes the economy. We all want to see that happen, right?

This nation has broken out in an epidemic of highly contagious stupidity, which seems to have originated in California and is spreading out of control.

Hot Air

The endless ranting about how Democrats are going to “lose control” of Congress in this year’s midterm election is beginning to get on my nerves.

For one thing there is no guarantee that any such thing is going to happen. Democrats are still very much in control of the election process, a process while lasts almost an entire year and of which “election day” in November is more or less merely symbolic. It is done mostly in back rooms (no longer “smoke filled”) and involves primary elections in which only party hacks and fanatics vote. 

 

In the last general election involving the US Senate in California, voters were offered a choice between two Democratic candidates, both of whom were females.

You call that a democratic (small ‘d”) election?

And that's assuming that today's elections are legitimate, which is by no means assured. Maybe they are, but I would not stake my fortune making a bet on it.

 
Even if it did happen, there is no reason to think that it would effect any meaningful change in governance of the nation. No Republican Congress has ever undone anything that the preceding Democratic ones have done in several decades.

The last time we had Republican control of both houses of Congress we had a Republican president in the White House, and Congress claimed it could do nothing because it was hamstrung by the Democratic minority which “blocked its initiatives at every turn.”

Funny how a Democratic minority can frustrate a Republican majority, but the inverse situation creates an unfettered Democratic control of Congress, which can be frustrated only when one or two of its own party members refuses to “toe the line.”

14,610 Days

To save you the time of breaking out your calculator, that is 40 years, the length of time since the last time I got drunk. It's also the last time since I had a drink of alcohol. Same thing.

The Dragon Reawakens

If you thought the freedom-killing coronavirus crisis was over because you've been distracted by the beginnings of WW3 in Ukraine, be advised that your freedom to engage in social pursuits is soon to be lost again, and Fauci did not slink off into the sunset like the proverbial tribe of Arabs.

Omicrin BA.2 is ravaging Europe and Indonesia, while parts of China are locked down tighter than the proverbial fiddler's bitch. It has us bracketed and we are next. We will die in droves unless "vaccinations" are imposed in record numbers.

But relax. Maybe WW3 will happen quickly and Russian nuclear bombs will obliterate us first.

Update, 10:20pm: Wow, this variant is really deadly. According to ABC News, Hong Kong has the highest death rate, at 0.004%. Awesome.

I Am Not Alone

...in being trivial. Headline today,

"NATO Chief Tells Putin to Stop The War."

 

Why didn't Winston Churchill think of this in 1939?  It would have saved the world a whole lot of death and destruction.

I Am Sometimes Trivial

I keep seeing these commercials for walk-in bath tubs, the ones with a little door that allows you to walk in and close the door behind you. They are supposedly aimed at old people like me who cannot step over the rim of a regular bath tub.

For the record, at 78 I can step over the edge of a bath tub just fine, and I take showers anyway, not tub baths.

That does not keep me from wondering just how fast these things fill up once you have stepped into them. Do you close the door and then have to sit there naked for fifteen minutes waiting for the damned thing to fill up?

NPR Joins The Panic Fest

NPR, which for stands for “National Propaganda Radio,”  is warning us of the new subvariant of Omicron, the one that is coming to send the country back into Democrats’ preferred status of isolation and shutdown again.  “BA.2 has now been found from coast to coast,” they tell us, “and accounts for an estimated 3.9% all new infections nationally, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It appears to be doubling fast.”

They report from the Yale School of Public Health  that, "A lot of us were assuming that it was going to quickly take off in the United States just like it was doing in Europe and become the new dominant variant." They do add that so far that hasn’t happened but add their own assessment that, “The fear is that spread may be on track to rapidly accelerate in the near future.” ( Yes, English is their first language, but sometimes it’s hard to tell.)

 

After telling us that the new BA.2 variant is at 3.9% and “appears to be doubling fast” according to the CDC, they add that, "If it doubles again to 8% (actually 7.8%, ed), that means we're into the exponential growth phase and we may be staring at another wave of COVID-19 coming in the U.S.," according to Samuel Scarpino, the manager director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation.

Notice that NPR has combined two sources for that scary prognostication, the CDC and Rockefeller Foundation. If one source’s material isn’t sufficiently frightening, combine material from two sources and you can scare the shit out of anyone. It may be inaccurate, but accuracy is not the object here, spreading fear is the point.

Reviving the Panic

The general population is beginning to catch on to "the sky is falling” narrative,” forcing even California to begin dropping the most serious socially stifling mandates. But there is still hope for the panic mongers, as yet another “new variant” rears its ugly head, offering opportunity to renew, perhaps even increase the panic level. As a bonus, we are building a case for another round of vaccines.

Emphasis in the following is added by me.

CNN  Feb 19, “The BA.2 virus -- a subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus variant -- isn't just spreading faster than its distant cousin, it may also cause more severe disease…”

They go on to say, “And like Omicron, it appears to largely escape the immunity created by vaccines. A booster shot restores protection, making illness after infection about 74% less likely.”

I love the precision of the “74% less likely” in a virus that has, at this point, only infected 83 people, 64 of them “fully vaccinated.” Okay, I made up that last part, but so did the people who came up with the 74% number.

Deseret News Feb 18,  “New lab experiments in Japan found that BA.2 has a number of features that can make it capable of causing severe Covid-19 symptoms on the same level as previous strains.”

They too add more, saying that, “The research — published before peer review on the bioRxiv server — found that BA.2 can resist Covid-19 vaccines and some treatments,”

 

So not only cannot we be vaccinated against this new variant, there is no treatment for it either. "We are all going to die," returns to the narrative.

 

If you think we’re done with Fauci and Walensky, I fear you are going to be disappointed.

Formula 1 News

The title is misleading, as there isn't any news in Formula 1. The only items published in Formula 1 are about the decision ending the final Grand Prix race in Abu Dhabi which "cheated Lewis Hamilton of his eighth world title." 

 

The FIA has been  "reviewing that decision" and is close to announcing a decision as to what will be done about this terrible, horrible, immoral decision in which the greatest Formula 1 driver of all time was conspired upon by an evil cabal to deny him of his rightful due, because when an English Knight of the Realm is driving in a race it is immoral and illegal for anyone else to win.

I believe that their decision should acknowledge that they are allowing the inmates to run the asylum. Drivers, not the FIA control the system, so at the end of the race there should be a vote of the drivers to determine who won, irrespective of track position. Voting should be based on championship standing with each driver being allowed a number of votes based on his current standing. Each driver should be given the number of votes equal to his current number of points in the championship race.

That would assure that Lewis Hamilton could win every race, which would keep him out of hiding and active in social media and would keep the fans assured that all is fair and well as the "greatest driver of all time" remains unbeaten.

Observations

Some people tune in the Super Bowl for the new commercials. What they got was, in the words of James Howard Kunstler, “a cavalcade of frantic hallucinations suggesting a near-complete detachment from reality for an audience of ADD-disabled cell phone slaves locked into a Big Tech induced consensus trance.” Yep.

He goes on to say that, “You could barely tell what these advertisers were trying to sell in their commercials, the psychotic dazzle of half-second jump-cuts was so ferocious. One interesting note, though: people of non-color (PONCs) seem to have been magically sucked out of the universe.”

The latter phenomenon has not been limited to the Super Bowl commercials, of course. I don’t know if advertisers have suddenly decided that BIPOCs have an enormous amount of money to spend and therefor represent a huge untapped market, or if they are catering to the dictates of our “authoritarian democracy.”

He referred to the halftime show as “Snoop Dog’s half-time house party” and as “Hollywood’s G-rated version of a BLM riot,” which I thought was fairly apt except the G-rated part. I thought much of it bordered on pornographic, but I’m a little old fashioned. I paid little attention, as I was cooking ribs and wings for the second half.

The football game, for once, was great. Mostly.

I was a little frustrated when the Bengals scored from 75 yards out on the first play of the second half. Granted, the Bengal receiver fouled Ramsey, and not just once but twice. He put his shoulder into Ramsey and shoved him, then he grabbed his face mask and pulled him off balance, and the official did not call either penalty. But the receiver would not have been able to do either one of those things if Ramsey had not been sound asleep at the time.

It seemed like the Bengals mostly had the upper hand. They were both running and passing reasonably well, and utterly killing the Rams running game. But they didn’t score points and put the Rams away. You can’t let the other guy hang around. If you let your opponent keep the score close they often rise up and bite you on the ass.

Los Angeles rose up and bit Cincinnati on the ass.

Andrew Anglin Nails It

I enjoy a well turned phrase, and came across the phrase "authoritarian democracy" today, in this case applied to Canada, but...

It was Andrew Anglin, discussing the feckless position of the Canadian government confronting the truckers strike against strict Covid mandates. He says  that, "The government can’t possibly roll back their measures at the behest of protesters, or the whole entire concept of an authoritarian democracy collapses."

 

That concept should, of course, collapse of it's own weight which is, needless to say, precisely his point. Nicely put.

The Commanders?

The team formerly known as the "Washington Redskins" is no longer being known as "The Washington Football Team," a name that I actually rather liked, but is now to be known as the "Washington Commanders."

 

That is just pathetic.  That is a team name that belonged in the old and justifiably defunct "American Alliance of Football," which didn't even last one full season before becoming bankrupt. All of the teams had weird names like "The Commanders."

 

Team names included the "Legends, Express, Iron, Hotshots, Fleet," and yes, the league included a team named the "Commanders." So why Dan Snyder came up with that weak sister defies comprehension.

Feline Fun

Our DVD player has been crapped out for some years, longer than we have had our two cats. We bought a new player this past week and I installed it on the lowest shelf of the television stand, about a foot or so above the floor, and it is driving the cats nuts.

 

There's this little drawer that pops out, of course, just when they are dozing peacefully on the rug, and freaks them out. Then it pops back in and they don't know where it went, which leaves them in a state of high anxiety. They just know that it is going to pop out again when they least expect it and bite one of them on the butt. They skulk around, eying the new device suspiciously, filled with dread.

We've had more fun watching the cats than we have watching any DVDs.

Home Field Advantage

They both were the #1 seed in their conference. They both had the previous week off to rest and prepare. They both had home field advantage. They both were significantly favored by Las Vegas odds makers. They both lost. Wow.

Update, Monday morning: Three playoff games won by field goals in the last few seconds and a fourth tied with 00:00 on the clock when the kick went through the uprights. That game was won in overtime by a touchdown. Wow again.

In that last game, the lead changed four times in the final two minutes of regulation while the two teams scored a combined 25 points. KC put the period on regulation by scoring the tying field goal after receiving the ball on its own 25-yard line with 0:13 remaining in the game.

Brer Rabbit Diplomacy

Biden and his minions have been issuing dire threats against Putin as to what will happen to Russia if that nation invades Ukraine. It is hard to imagine why Russia would want to invade the decrepit, dismal, decayed and utterly useless nation that is Ukraine, but... They have been warned!

"But," you retort, "Russia has all those troops along the border." Those troops are there because of the trouble we are creating in Ukraine, pumping in weapons and agitating the government of Ukraine. And, by the way, while Russia may have troops at the border, we have troops in Ukraine.

In due course a sufficient time will have passed, during which Russia will not have done what it never intended to do, that is invade a country which it never intended or threatened to invade, and Biden will raise his arms in triumph and claim, "The Russians don't want war with me because they are afraid of me. I made them back down from invading Ukraine."

Sort of like Brer Rabbit begging not to be thrown into the briar patch, which was the safest place for him to be. Or Obama's retort that the stimulus bill was not large enough, "Think how bad things would be had we not passed it."

Computers Can't Think

More and more, I am noticing that once a store is out of stock on an item, more often than not it never regains a supply of that item. The result is a steadily diminishing supply of goods on the shelves, diminishing at an accelerating pace.

I have not been able to confirm, but I suspect that computerized ordering has much to do with this.

Computer ordering bases its order on what the store is selling. When the item first runs out there is still a robust history of sales, so the computer will reorder. The next time it places an order, however, there have been no recent sales (the store was out of stock), so it does not reorder that item.

So even if the item came in after the initial outage, it was not reordered afterward because of the period of non-sales. Then there are some sales which may trigger an order, but the computer shows diminished volume on the item, due to the period when it was out of stock.

That order, then, may be for reduced quantity, which causes the item to be out of stock even sooner, and reduces the sales history even further. That causes the computer to cut the next reorder quantity even further.

You can see the diminishing numbers that the computer is looking at, right? Diminishing numbers that eventually tell the computer that it is no longer worth reordering the item at all.

Shortage? Bad store management? Or both?

On Political Violence

Ted Rall posted a piece at The Unz Review on the current attitude toward political violence in this nation which is well worth reading.  I do think he misses a couple of points, which I will address later, but he does address a couple of glaring contradictions in the manner in which we view political activism.

“Our republic rests,” he writes, “upon a paradox. We teach schoolchildren that in the late 18th century, the personal assessment of some colonists that the British government was unjust followed by their decision to take up arms was not merely justified but noble and heroic. In the 21st century, however, any analogous judgment that this government is corrupt and unresponsive to their needs is beyond the pale — and an armed revolt would be the act of treasonous maniacs.”

He goes on to say that those who fought for the South in the Civil War were never brought to trial, nor were they even deprived of their weapons. They were, in fact, sent home to live in peace, unlike those who stormed the Capitol Building on January 6th without any weapons and without apparent intention to damage the structure.

“To sum up the official line,” he continues, “the American Revolution was a fully justified, admirable use of political violence (24,000 dead British soldiers) that created the best country ever. The Southern secession that attempted to cut the best country ever in half, … was forgivable.

Political violence now, on the other hand, is not now, nor ever will be, morally or legally permissible.”

The counter argument, of course, is that the British government was wrong, The Yankee government was righteous, and Democrats are… Well, whatever they are.

The point that I think he misses is that the present government policy of stamping down political violence very ruthlessly  is based on an extreme fear of such violence, which is entirely natural in a government that was born in political violence (the American Revolution) and which used even more extreme violence (the Civil War) to survive.

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?