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."