Small Bites End of Year Edition - Sports, COVID and Idiocy in 2021

 So, as it's Christmas Season, I work 4 days a week and spend the other three on schoolwork, and I can guarantee, unless something juicy happens that demands a full blog, this will be my last Small Bites of the year.  I really hope to do better next year.  My apologies.

The news hit today the Brown/Raiders, Seahawks/Ram and Eagles/Team Formerly Known as the Redskins games will be rescheduled.  Anyone who thought the NFL was going to let any games be forfeited is taking some really good drugs.  At no point, and especially during playoff races, did the NFL ever have any intention of a game not getting played.  Also, their policy was specific in that it related to unvaccinated players, and not vaccinated players, and most of the 100 players currently in COVID protocols are vaccinated.  Apparently, the NFL is the number one proving ground for the idea, promoted not just by fringe "anti-vaxxers" that vaccinated people can contract and spread COVID.   If you want to throw that one out, look at the NHL, who has put three teams out of action until Christmas.  Or the NBA, who cancelled several games this week due to huge COVID outbreaks, almost all of them among the vaccinated.  It's so bad for the Brooklyn Nets that they activated the controversial unvaccinated Kyrie Irving, because their vaccinated players are in COVID protocols.  The irony is delicious.  Maybe it shouldn't be, but it's been clear, since late summer, that new variants of COVID are able to break through the protection the vaccines offer.  Despite protestations to the contrary, there is such a thing is natural immunity, and it may very well be as robust as the vaccines.  We don't really know, because in this country we won't do the studies to actually find out.  Israel did, but we don't pay attention to that science.  Regardless, I find this whole situation incredibly amusing.  If that makes me a bad person so be it.  I don't think it does.

Everyone is so wrapped up in COVID panic, that they are drowning out the voices in the wilderness who are talking about all the bad things that happened because of how we chose to deal with COVID.  We know that children are generally not susceptible to serious illness from COVID.  We know that schools are not superspreaders for the disease.  And yet we kept vast swaths of kids out of school for more than a year and subjected them to substandard education.  We took away their ability to socialize, to see people laugh, to hang out with their friends.  The effects of that will plague them long into the future.  In the short term, they are showing up in ERs in droves and not with COVID.  With mental health issues that no child should have.  Suicides are up, attempted suicides are up.  Mental health units are overwhelmed and have no beds available.  Drug use and abuse, along with overdoses are magnitudes higher.  Also astronomically high is the incidence of heart attack and stroke, which happens when people forgo medical treatment for more than a year due to fear.  Hospitals are closing, after losing billions of dollars when hospitals were basically only operating as emergency wards.  People are living in abject fear of a virus that has a 98% survival rate.  They test positive and show up in the ER, even if they have mild symptoms, or none at all.  It's crazy, and it's a public health failure on the highest level.  The cure is far worse than the disease.  Walk a mile in my shoes, or my husband's shoes, and you will see a far different picture than the media and the politicians portray. 

Meanwhile, while so many people are acting like Chicken Little when it comes to Omicron, little factoids are lost in the shuffle.  After the mess in Afghanistan in August, the State Department told us only about 200 Americans were left behind.  Last week, a small detail was released and no one even knew it happened.  That State Department said they had exfiltrated 900 Americans since then.  Apparently, their numbers were bull, but we knew that didn't we?  With all the evidence in major sports, our *President is still saying that vaccinated people can't spread COVID.  They keep acting like inflation isn't a big deal (tell that to my gas and grocery bill), and have spent months blaming everything and everyone that isn't them for the horrible side effects of their own policies.  

In short, 2021 was barely any better than 2020, and 2022 could be worse.  All things being equal, 81 million Americans voted for this.  Apparently many of them are regretting that, but I have little to no sympathy for them.  You get what you ask for.  

As for me and mine, we will not lay down and die so the elites can live in their utopia where they rule and everyone worships the ground they walk on.  It's more likely, if that happens, we will feel more like North Koreans than say, the workers paradise that these people claim they can bring about.  Either way, I won't back down.  I hope some of you will do the same.

Small Bites, Edition Five

 I know, I've been MIA for awhile.  Life gets crazy, you know?  I've actually discovered a better way to keep this blog going, so we'll see if that works.

I've decided not to delve into the Afghanistan situation (I was going to say "debacle", but I'm trying not to come out swinging...all the time.)  First, it would take more than a paragraph, and second, my tear ducts simply can't take a rehashing of that event, when there are others here that will give them plenty of a workout.

I'm not a big fan of Bob Woodward.  Frankly, I think the man has been churning out the book equivalent of tabloid magazines for years in hopes of reclaiming his Watergate glory.  Since his expose of that coverup, there isn't a President he hasn't tried to take down, and each time he claims it's far worse than Watergate.  It's not just Republicans either.  He's tried to nail them all.  Give him time, and he'll have some sordid tale about Joe Biden too.  I say all that, because I have been largely skeptical of his claims that General Mark Milley did what Mr. Woodward says he did.  Until General Milley himself didn't deny that he did it, only stated that what he did was well within his rights.  Say what?  Unless your head is buried under a rock, you know by now that our Allies, our actual Allies, felt completely blindsided by the way the US withdrew from Afghanistan. You would think, if General Milley really thinks he was within his rights to gather military leaders to by pass a sitting President, and if he thinks he was within his rights to contact his counterpart in China (not exactly an ally) and give assurances that he would warn him if we chose to attack, he might have considered calling our allies and letting them in on our withdrawal plan.  Apparently he didn't.  As other news stories have shown, our own *President tried to convince the Afghani President to paint a better face on the actions of the Taliban whether it was "true or not."   General Milley didn't seem all that concerned that our *President was bold faced lying to the American public about what was really happening.  No, he was worried about Donald Trump starting a nuclear war, a completely unfounded worry.  I humbly suggest it might be time for General Milley to retire, possibly to a military prison.

Do you know what the FBI was doing in 2015 and 2016?  We know what they weren't doing.  They clearly weren't arresting Larry Nassar for multiple instances of sexual assault with multiple minors.  This does not, in any way, absolve USA Gymnastics and the USOPC.  There are a lot of people walking around free who deserve to be in jail.  The rub here, is that maybe they would be if the FBI hadn't sat on claims that a rampant pedophile was on the loose and had been given access by these very organizations to a full compliment of victims.  Instead, for 17 long months, they didn't do a damn thing.  Honestly, if the stories are true, that they were offered jobs and benefits by USAG and USOPC, it's frightening that FBI agents can be bribed to allow a prolific child predator to go free.   The FBI director at the time was James Comey.  That guy so many people trusted on the fairy tale of Russian Collusion.  Yeah... he should hide under a rock too.  Do yourself a favor. The next time you think the FBI has any integrity, go watch the Senate Hearing with Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, Maggie Nichols and Ally Raisman.  That should cure that delusion.

I saw an article this weekend about a transgender female who competed in MMA.  He/She completely annihilated the biological female he/she was facing.  This is bad enough.  What was worse was finding out that he/she had served 6 years in the US Special forces, a division of the armed forces that, until very recently, was the province of men.  We are watching women's sports become obsolete as we allow more and more biological males to compete as women.  It's simple.  Get a female hairstyle, get some boob implants, cut off your penis and be given a fake vagina, and you can now, legally, beat up on a women.  No amount of hormones changes basic biological facts, you know that thing called science that everyone wants to follow, unless of course it's the science of biological gender.  We don't want to follow that science.  I remember a time when a man knocking around a woman was a crime, one that could cost you everything, including your career.  Ray Rice remembers too.

Last, I came across a nice little tidbit this morning.  It appears that Facebook (I know, you are laughing before I even say it, but it's not funny....at all), anyway, they apparently hid internal company studies that show instagram increases mental issues in young girls.  Young females who spend time on instagram are more likely to have an eating disorder, suffer depression and anxiety and even commit suicide.  And Facebook knew this, even while telling everyone that their social media platforms are doing nothing of the sort.  It shouldn't really be a surprise, considering I also discovered this past week that Facebook has a small group of untouchables.  People on their platform that can say and do pretty much anything, even if it violates the community standards that keep landing us peons in facebook jail.  Those people are celebrities, big corporations who subscribe to Facebook groupthink, and politicians of the same persuasion as Facebook.  Yeah, really not surprising.

Until Next Time....

Science! Or Not

How do you raise a gender neutral child? That's the question I find myself asking today, as I read news that the American Medical Association wants to remove the sex designation from the public section of birth certificates. Ten states allow you to designate your child as "X" on their birth certificate.  My assumption is that is done so that parents can't be accused of misgendering their child, and can allow their child to decide, at some point, which sex they wish to be.  The other 40 don't allow that, but a full 48 states will allow you to change your gender when you discover whether you want to be a boy, a girl, or something else.  I'm not sure what that something else is, but let's go with it for now.  But still, I ask myself, how to you raise a gender neutral child?  What name do you give them?  What clothes do you dress them in?  What toys do you buy them?  What if by the age of 5 they still don't know what gender they are?  How do handle going to school when the vast majority of their peers are either boys or girls, but Mommy and Daddy never told them if they're a boy or a girl?  

Biological sex is fixed.  I know that's not a popular thing to say these days, but it is a scientific fact, except in the rare cases of intersex people.   Your biological sex is determined at conception.  You either have two X chromosomes or a X and a Y chromosome.  Those chromosomes determine your biological sex.  When I say this, please understand I am not discounting those who suffer from Gender Dysphoria or Gender Identity Disorder.  GID is a real thing, with real causes, and real ramifications, physical and psychological.  There are people who feel like they are one gender and trapped in the body of the opposite biological sex.  Notice how I did that?  Gender and biological sex are not the same thing. 

That's where all this is leading me.  If biological sex is a fixed scientific fact, and it is, then how do you raise a gender neutral child, or to be more precise, how can you possible think that's an okay thing to do?  It's as if that child is already starting out on the wrong foot, so to speak.  The highest figure for people who have GID is one out of every 20,000.  That means that 19,999 children born will identify their gender with their biological sex.  If you declare your child gender neutral, there is a very good chance they will spend some of their most formative year being denied the ability to be who they really are, to use the transgender movement's own words.  Do you really think you are doing your child a favor?  

In order to make life easier on your child, if by some chance they are the 1 in the 20,000, you are making your child's life infinitely harder if the are the 1 in 19,999.  Despite what some doctors say, I don't believe a 2 year old or even a 5 year old have any idea what gender they are, outside of how they are raised.  My daughter spent 18 months thinking she was a dinosaur.  It didn't make her a dinosaur.  She liked dolls, but she also really loved hot wheels.  Neither of my girls wear dresses unless they absolutely have to... weddings, funerals.  That's about it. They are more comfortable in a jeans and a t-shirt.  Does that make them a boy?

So I get back to, how do you raise a gender neutral child? What I really am asking is how do you raise a gender neutral child who isn't screwed up for life, because mom and dad decided to jump on some politically correct train that says if you label your child a girl or a boy you are damaging them.  People with GID suffer, and you not labeling them won't change that.  You can't change their sex before they are born, you can't even change it immediately after they are born.  It's those physical characteristics that cause psychological problems, and no matter what you do, you can't change that.  So give your child a bloody gender and stop damaging them.

Amy Branches Off

 As anyone who reads this space knows, I generally stay in the political realm.  I have been known to branch off occasionally into football, but that's usually still connected in some way to politics.  Today I want to take a minute to focus on another sport that is as closely followed by people in my house as football.... gymnastics.

There is no way to describe the disappointment we felt when they postponed the Tokyo Olympics to 2021. The Summer Olympics have been my favorite for most of my adult life.  I love volleyball and beach volleyball, swimming, diving, equestrian competition, and most of all, gymnastics.  Having followed gymnastics since Mary Lou won her gold medal in 1984, I am supremely aware of how hard the sport is, and how little the general public understands what it takes to be an Olympic Gymnast.  Thousands upon thousands of little girls join the sport with a dream, and at the end of the day, five are chosen.  That's it, five.  Imagine telling a class of college football draftees that only five of them would be chosen.  More, tell those high school and college players there is no life outside their sport.  They have to train at their sport for eight hours a day, six days a week, and even then, the odds of reaching their dream are closer to 0% then 100%.   It's hard, it's physically and mentally punishing.  So I know if I was disappointed, the athletes themselves must be devastated.  

I could go into the ridiculousness of the FIG, when they decided to shrink the teams from five to four and institute their crazy World Cup system that no one really understood.  Or how many American news sites put a bullseye on Jade Carey, who qualified through the World Cup and then had the audacity to get better and then start competing in the runup to trials. (In fairness, the World Cup system is jacked, and if you don't follow the sport all the time you would have no idea how it worked.  I doubt those only Olympic year gymnastics reporters have any clue, and frankly, it's really not their fault.)

Instead, I want to talk about USA Gymnastics.  Unless your head is buried under a rock, you know that the USAG suffered a real hit to it's reputation, credibility, and pocket when it was revealed that the long-time team doctor, Larry Nassar, was arrested for molesting hundreds of young gymnasts.  It's horrifying that this went on, and what's more horrifying is that it took Maggie Nichols to finally report it in June of 2015.  It doesn't say anything good about the organization or it's hundreds of member coaches that this was going on for decades before one girl had the guts to talk about it.  It puts a huge spotlight on the Karolyi's and USAG's decision to put them in charge.  Heck we all thought the worst part of gymnastics was the berating and driving young girls to eating disorders.  This is worse.  USAG failed to report sexual abuse of a minor in compliance with the law.  Steve Penny, the then president, Marta Karolyi, the then national team coordinator, and Maggie's coach.  They all broke the law.  According to USAG, and Michigan State University, Maggie Nichols was known as "Athlete A".   The Indy Star was, of course, chasing this down at the same time that Maggie was fighting her own battle.  Thank God they did. Without their tireless investigation and refusal to give up, I'm not sure Maggie's case would have gone anywhere. 

While USAG sat on the allegations for 5 months, they did report it to the FBI in 2015.  What happened next is such a travesty of justice, and one that has barely been mentioned.  The FBI sat on the information, for months.  Many, many months.  USAG actually had to contact the FBI 8 months after they reported it, because nothing was being done.  Eight months.  In which time it is alleged that somewhere between 40 and 70 girls and women were the victims of Larry Nassar's abuse. The FBI slow walked an investigation.  There are some allegations that Steve Penny was offering jobs with the USOC to the agents.  So what?  You are a law enforcement officer.  One of them was the Special Agent in Charge.  This was your job, and I don't care if he offered you Emperor of the World, these women and girls deserved better from the nation's top law enforcement agency.  I'll insert a little politics... maybe they were just too busy spying on then candidate Donald Trump to actually do their job.

USAG, USOC, and the University of Michigan don't deserve any credit.  The FBI failing to do their job does not exonerate those organizations for their own failures.  The most outspoken girls, I have discovered, are the ones who attained their dreams.  They are on the news and have profiles done about them, but until Netflix made Athlete A, no one knew how instrumental Maggie Nichols was, or what she sacrificed.  You see, Maggie should have been a 2016 Olympian.  She deserved to go.  We were told that Marta said she had to be able to do that harder vault to have any chance of making the team, a vault that 3 other girls chosen for that team could not and did not do.  I believe Maggie was left off the team because she threatened the reputation of the very person making the decision.  Maggie was sexually assaulted at the Karolyi's national team camp.  They knew, and they waited 5 months to report it.  They had files of girls abused by coaches that they never reported.  And so, she was shunted to the back of the pack, and her dream was done.  Maggie is the hero.  Not Aly Raisman, not Jaime Danszcher, McKayla Maroney, Gabby Douglas, or even Simone Biles.  Maggie.  The girl who gave up her dream so that in the future, many other girls will hopefully be saved a devastating, life-altering, horrific act.  Thank you, Maggie.  She did go on to have an amazingly successful collegiate career, becoming the NCAA All Around Champion in both 2018 and 2019. 

Now USAG's high performance coordinator is Tom Forster.  Tom is a different breed.  Still tough and demanding, but different.  He wants the best for those girls, but he also knows so many of them will never be an Olympic Champion.  There were some interesting rumblings when fan favorites (like Gabby Douglas had once been) were left off the National Team and not invited to Olympic Trials.  Tom really liked some of those girls, but in the end, only the best can go, and he chose the best.  So you are pissed that your favorite didn't get to go.  I was pissed in 2016 when they left Maggie off the team, and she wasn't my favorite. (I'm a GOAT fan all the way.) I still rooted for our girls to win.  You should too.  And you should be utterly thankful that the guy in charge isn't a Karolyi.  

There She Stands

 

It's the flag, the one that represents our country.  Some people still fly it in front of their homes.  Some people actually have them flying from their cars.  I remember a time nearly 20 years ago when everyone was flying them, carrying them... it was a different time.  When I look around today, I start to think it was a different place.

 "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color." - Colin Kaepernick

That's where it really all started.  Yes, there were a few people here and there who burned flags or danced on them or whatever, but for the most part it was Colin, kneeling on a football field.  I could spend time going into his reasons for doing so - what he said they were and what I believe they were - but that's not necessary for this post.   Colin further explained that much of what he was protesting was police brutality.  White police officers shooting unarmed black men.  Half the problem with his supposed reason is that he was basing it on recent wide spread news media coverage of unarmed black men who were killed during police interactions.  Quite a few of those very covered stories turned out not to be as benign as they were billed.  Full disclosure:  Hands up, don't shoot never happened.  On average, about 10 unarmed black men are shot by the police every year.  You are far more likely to be killed by the police if you are white.  That's an inconvenient fact no one ever talks about.  All 10 of them MAY have been tragic.  Unarmed doesn't equal not dangerous.  However, we are literally upending our history for something that is more rare than death by lightning strike.

That's all the background I'm giving, because this post will be way too long if I start talking about systemic racism, Critical Race Theory, and the 1619 project.  The fact is, in this country, there are people who truly feel they are oppressed.  Maybe it's because oppression in our country, at least for the last 50 years, is not the way oppression is defined by a good portion of the rest of the world.  A few examples:

Go to Iran and start a public fight for women's equality issues.

Go to Saudi Arabia and fly a pride flag.

Go to Hong Kong and protest China.

Go to Russia and complain about Vladimir Putin.

I could keep going, but I don't think it's necessary.  Oppression, true oppression, isn't something most living US citizens can comprehend.  Oppression is a statue of some Confederate General, someone flying the Confederate flag, a person saying something someone disagrees with...shall I keep going?  Oppression in the US is about words and requires trigger warning.  Oppression in Russia is getting poisoned by the former KGB.  Oppression in China is re-education camps and slave labor.  Oppression in Saudi Arabia is a death sentence.  In Iran, the woman gets stoned for being raped, while her rapist walks free... by law.  I think I'm making my point, but maybe not.

This morning I woke up to the news that the citizens of Cuba are protesting their communist overlords, who have, not surprisingly, made living in Cuba pretty terrible.  (People don't try to swim the 90 miles to Florida for nothing.)  One of the articles I read had this picture posted:

 Amazing.  People in an oppressive country, are carrying an American flag.  Let's rewind to 2019:

Those people there are Hong Kong Citizens protesting the Chinese government with.... an American Flag.  

Why?  What do all these people, from other countries, see in our flag that our own citizens fail to see.  Recently a BLM Chapter in Utah declared the US Flag a Hate Symbol.  But in truly oppressive countries with truly oppressed people, they carry that flag as a symbol of something they want, something they crave, something for which they hope.  Frederick Douglass had that same hope, which he expressed in the same speech that leftists drag out on 4th of July.  You see Douglass new that a nation founded on the principles in the Declaration of Independence would (and did) shine a light on the injustice of slavery.  That the genius of the founders and the country they created would necessitate the end of slavery and eventually the equality (not equity) that the slaves craved.  That flag stands for hope.  It is a light to all the oppressed in the world.  We would do well to remember that.

When evil calls itself a martyr
When all your hopes come crashing down
Someone will pull her from the rubble
There she stands

We've seen her flying torn and tattered
We've seen her stand the test of time
And through it all the fools have fallen
There she stands

By the dawn's, early light
And through the fight. She stands

~Michael W Smith

Small Bites, Edition 4 (May 30, 2021)

I'm sitting here, at this moment, reading news headlines.

Nearly 1/3 of Americans have been vaccinated against COVID-19.  Dr. Marty Makary, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, believes nearly half of all Americans have developed natural immunity to COVID-19.  Now some of those who had the virus also got vaccinated, so there is overlap that does not allow us to calculate the actual number of immune individuals in our country.  I believe I had COVID before they had a test, or even knew the disease existed.  With recent news of three researchers being hospitalized with COVID symptoms prior to the Chinese deciding to report on the virus, it is even more likely my belief is correct.  A recent study has found that even asymptomatic and those with mild symptoms have the same level of immunity as those vaccinated, and the studies propose that people who have been infected could continue to make antibodies or the rest of their life.  I am choosing not to get vaccinated.  That is my choice, and I will not allow anyone to bully me into getting vaccinated on the idea that I am a danger to others.  Vaccinated people are protected, according to the CDC.  They do not have to mask up in all but very specific circumstances.  Why? Because they are protected from the virus.  Those with natural immunity are also protected.  Those who either didn't have COVID or aren't vaccinated should take whatever precautions they feel necessary.   

OSHA has decided to avoid discouraging employers from encouraging or even mandating the vaccine, so they will no longer require employers who mandate the vaccine to report adverse effects as worker's compensation claims.  I'm trying to play this out in my head, but if you are injured or made sick by something you employer mandates that you do as part of retaining your employment, isn't that the definition of a worker's compensation claim?  Whether it's being vaccinated or driving a forklift shouldn't matter.  But, we need to jam vaccination down everyone's throat, so no, even if your employer makes your continued employment contingent on you getting vaccinated, they don't have to pay up should you miss work, be hospitalized or even die from their mandate.  This is not safety, it's asinine.

The University of Louisville did the first major study on the efficacy of mask mandates at stopping the spread of COVID.  Guess what they found?  Yep, you got it, mask mandates did not, in any way shape or form, regardless of the level of the outbreak, slow the spread of COVID.  Got that?  Mask mandates were nothing more than political theater.  They even say that, in a nice way.  The mandates provided a sense of solidarity and community, but as an effective medical protection, they were utterly useless.  Since mask mandates did indeed increase the level of mask wearing, but had little to no effect on the spread, you can extrapolate that masks themselves did little to stop the spread of COVID.  We had virtually no flu this season and people insisted that was because of masks, yet we had a huge winter spike in COVID, and that was because people weren't wearing the masks.  Common sense fails people, all the time.

Places all over the country are trying to hire employees but can't.  Some people (see common sense failing) are insisting that it's because employers aren't paying enough.  But most of the places around me are paying twice as much as minimum wage, sometimes even more.  See, when you pay people to stay home, they have no incentive to go to work, and some states allowed you to refuse to return to a job if you were scared of COVID.  They incentivized people to stay home.  Duh.

Yeah, today was all COVID all the time.  Sorry about that.  That other subjects on my list cannot be covered in one paragraph.

Until next time....

COVID Panic Porn

Project Veritas somehow managed to get a CNN executive to admit that they used COVID-19 trackers to induce fear, because fear sells.  For almost a year, they had their case and death counters up on the screen 24/7.  As I don't watch much CNN, I'm not sure if they are still doing that, but my guess would be that, now that Donald Trump is no longer president, they don't need to keep people living in fear of orange man killing them all.  Still, I don't know, so don't take my word for it.

CNN may no longer be inducing panic with their tickers, but our president*, despite the fact that he's fully vaccinated, is still wearing one, and sometimes two masks.  Last week, he had a video climate summit and wore a mask... on a video call.  No other world leader felt it necessary to wear a mask on a call where the participants were all in another country.  I'm guessing ours is still trying to play up the pandemic, even though, by any sane person's best guess, he doesn't need to be masked up all the time.

The New York Times also wants to keep the panic porn alive and well with this article on Friday: How COVID upended a Century of Patterns in U.S. Deaths

It starts out with this line:

"The U.S. death rate in 2020 was the highest above normal since the early 1900s — even surpassing the calamity of the 1918 flu pandemic."

Then they share this little graph:

Which clearly makes it look as bad as they wanted it to.  Later on they shared yet another graphic which kind of undercuts what they said, but it wasn't at the top of the page, so likely most of the public won't ever see it, and trust me, no major media source is going to publish past the first graph.

Clearly, we didn't really break the pattern of the 1918 Spanish Flu.  Not even close. But then we got this tidbit:

Combined with deaths in the first few months of this year, Covid-19 has now claimed more than half a million lives in the United States. The total number of Covid-19 deaths so far is on track to surpass the toll of the 1918 pandemic, which killed an estimated 675,000 nationwide.

There are other charts as well, but you can get a graph to say anything you want depending on how you input the data.  The fact is that little paragraph is widely misleading, in that it attempts to equate our current pandemic with the Spanish flu of 1918.  Except you can't not really.  The US population was one third of what it is now.  So I did some number crunching.

If COVID is on track to kill as many people as the Spanish Flu did, accounting for population differences, the numbers would have to be this:

US Population 2020: 330,222,422

Positive Cases: 92,462,278

Deaths: 2,034,170

But this is the current information:

US Population 2020: 330,222,422

Positive Cases: 31,883,289

Deaths: 565,272

So no, we aren't anywhere near the Spanish Flu, which was far more virulent (10% verses 28%) and more deadly (1.7% verses 2.2%).

So even if CNN is backing off their panic porn (once again, I have no idea), the Times is keeping it alive, along with our President* who is vaccinated and still acting like the end is near.

**This took me all of 20 minutes, to find the data, do the math, and then put it in a blog.  The Times must really think we're idiots.

Small Bites, Edition 3, April 23, 2021

 So, I took an unexpected break.  I have bosses who need to use vacation time.  Vacation time for bosses, means more working hours for me.  I don't mind, I have great bosses, and they richly deserve all their time off.  However, when I'm working all those hours, I don't have time for much else.  I'm trying so hard to make this more regular, I promise.  On that note, here's your third edition of Small Bites.

This week, a jury convicted Officer Derek Chavin of one count of second degree murder, one count of third degree murder, and one count of manslaughter.  The third degree murder charge, per Minnesota standards didn't even apply, but hey, whatever.  Derek Chauvin should go to prison.  I don't believe he was the sole cause of the death of George Floyd, but he was partly responsible.  What do I mean?  He didn't inject Floyd with a lethal overdose of fentanyl.  He didn't block his coronary arteries either.  He did however fail to address the obvious medical issue Floyd was having, and that makes him complicit in the man's death.  For that, he should be going to prison.  However, some of our more vocal citizens may have made that not possible.  Maxine Waters should have stayed home, instead of going to Minnesota and inciting violence.  The Minneapolis Star Tribune should have avoided printing nameless in depth biographies of the jurors in their newspaper on the very day the jury was to start deliberating.  BLM shouldn't have threatened to burn down the city if they didn't get the verdict they wanted.  All of those things could give the defense the opportunity to appeal for a mistrial.  The judge in the case even said as much.  And at least one juror has said "I didn't want the city burning down again.  I was afraid they would come after me."  Yikes.

Apparently Loudon County in Virginia is going to do away with advanced math classes for anyone under 11th grade.  No more honors math for your kids!  Way to deprive math geniuses of their chance in the STEM fields, especially female kids.  All this is supposed to be in the name of equity.  Here's the thing. Not every kid, no matter how smart, is good enough in every subject to take advanced classes.  The ones who are should have the opportunity to do so.  Depriving them of that opportunity in the name of equity is just plain stupid.

I have a message for certain members of our elite, and by elite I mean, politicians, actors, and CEOs.  (I use elite in the loosest way possible, since I don't truly believe those people are better than me.) Stop telling black people they are too dumb, backward, poor or whatever, to do simple things.  It's denigrating, even when you clothe it in kente cloth, kneeling, and anti-racism.  You can't buy alcohol without ID.  You can't board a plane without ID. You can't buy a gun without ID.  You can't go visit the White House...oh wait, nevermind, you can't do that anyway because it's behind a fence.  My point is, you can't get through life without a photo ID.  So claiming that needing one to vote is somehow racist, is pretty much claiming that living life is racist.  And claiming that, particularly, minority people are unable to do something required to participate in life is just... well, it's racist.  So please, stop.

Lebron James targeted a police officer, and then deleted the tweet, when it caused more hate.  Duh.  It's obvious King James was drafted right out of high school, because I would hope a college attendee would realize that posting a picture of a police officer saying "you're next" is inviting the kind of hate one purports to be against.  That is to say, hate not involving hating on white people, cops, and anything the Chinese government hates.  Chinese government hate is good.  It wasn't hate that was being spread by the way.  It was people calling out James because apparently he cared more about the knife wielding criminal then the poor black girl about to be gutted.  Tweet deleted, but not before everyone basically called him the fool that he is.  

Which leads me to a reflective moment.  Why do we care so much what actors, sports stars and mediocre pop singers think?  These are people who pretend to be someone else, play a game, or get auto-tuned for a living.  They aren't better than us just because they have their mug on our TV screen.  They aren't more altruistic or morally superior.  They are there to entertain us, not to educate us.  Pardon me for sounding like a horrible person, but I don't want them educating me.  Most of them just aren't that smart.  Yet we have made them our de facto spokespeople.  Why?  It's sad that they think they have the ability to influence the way we think, or maybe it's sad that we actually let them influence the way we think.  

Yeah, that's it from me.  Until next time....

Postponement of Edition 3 of Small Bites and New Endeavors

 

I know, I'm failing.  I have bosses who have massive amounts of use it or lose it holiday/comp time.  They are being forced to take whole weeks off, which means, I have to step in and play boss.  This translates to Amy is not overly available for anything but work.  My poor chinchilla has had to postpone his moving plans (from a cozy cottage to the penthouse suite) because mom doesn't have time to put his new house together.  There's a 200 pound cage in my dayroom, still in the box. My middle daughter has had to pick up the slack, doing many things I should be doing, but can't, because well..work.

So while I have a few minutes I thought I would take a moment to put together a post to tell you all about a new endeavor said middle daughter and I are trying out.

We've noodled the idea around for a year, but have finally decided to give a weekly podcast a try.  We will most likely attempt to run it through Facebook or Youtube, but the odds of us getting jailed are pretty astronomical.  We won't toe the acceptable line on what you can speak about these days.  We aren't known for that.  Heck, my American flag is still being flown upside down.  

It doesn't yet have a name, but our first episode will be immigration centered.  The current crisis, and yet is is a crisis, on the southern border, enabled by the words of our current President* and his administration deserves some illumination, not just about the crisis, but about immigration policy as a whole.  So, hopefully, you will see us live on Friday evening.  After 9 pm.  When the the little ones are in bed.

Oh, and also, small bites will return this Friday/Saturday.

Small Bites, Edition 2: March 12, 2021

 As I stated last week, this will become a regular feature.  There are several reasons for that.  One is that I don't have the time to write up a full length blog on one subject every week.  I may still write one occasionally, but the research required for those is a lot harder than plucking a few headlines and writing a paragraph about each.

This week Congress finally got around to passing the stimulus bill that was so important during the election.  They had to impeach the former President first for a riot he didn't start and then they had to take a short vacation.  Turns out there is less stimulus and more giveaways.  We are bailing out underfunded union pension funds, New York City and San Francisco, art museums (again), and various other things that have little or nothing to do with COVID and the American people.  That is not to say that some of these things shouldn't be taken up, as a matter of course, just that cloaking them in COVID relief is kind of...icky.  There were some tears over the removal of the $15 an hour minimum wage, and few more tears by some group naming themselves "Evangelicals for Biden" for the taxpayer funding of abortions, but both of those wish list items were dead on arrival.  Anyone who thought differently is living under a rock.

Minneapolis now looks the same as Capitol Hill, in other words like the DMZ, due to the trial of Derek Chauvin.  He's the police officer who is being tried for murdering George Floyd.  Apparently, there's still some question as to whether Mr. Floyd died from being strangled or if he died from a lethal dose of Fentanyl.   I have no opinion, at this point.  I do know something I'd like to share with you all.  You are less likely to die at the hands of a police officer if you 1) don't commit crimes, 2) if you do commit crimes don't resist arrest.   Those two things can save a life, no matter what your skin color.  

President Joe Biden* apparently gave a speech on Thursday night.  It wasn't a great speech.  I'm not sure, despite reading several comparisons, that it was as bad as Jimmy Carter's malaise speech, but it also wasn't very positive.  Telling your country that they "might" be able to have a small gathering in July if they are vaccinated doesn't quite rise to the level of inspiring.  I want to make sure I'm not being unfair to the President*.  He struggles with words, and reading, and remembering where he is, so it might not be entirely fair to criticize a speech he probably won't remember tomorrow.  

Harry and Meghan are in the news.  Why?  Because apparently the royal family is full of rabid racists who did horrible things and made Meghan want to kill herself.  For the record, little Archie was not entitled to a...title.  At least not at this present moment.  No one was taking away his title because he's 1/4 black.  Harry and Meg chose to leave the royal family,and whatever their reasons, when they chose to do that the left behind the trappings, but also the wealth of the royal family.  Lest you think they live in poverty, they are living in a 14 million dollar mansion, have multi-million dollar deals with Disney, Netflix and Spotify, not to mention the 25 million Diana left to Harry.  They aren't poor.  I have come to the conclusion that the Brits have finally found a way to pay us back for 1776.  

Finally, I have a message for the wokinistas.  You are not smarter than me.  You have no business telling me how I should live my life.  You overestimate my ability to care what you think.  Let me clue you in:  none, zero, zip, nada.  That is my ability to care.  You are more than entitled to your opinions, but you are not empowered to make me care what you think of me.  You may call me simple minded, or crazy, that's fine, because as I have already stated, I don't care.  You see, every day, I get up and go to work, and I deal with a public that is frustrated, lonely, cut off, and tired of being told they can't live their lives because if they do, they don't care about their fellow man.  But who cares about them?  We are so busy trying to keep people from dying of COVID, that we've stopped caring about everything else, except maybe white privilege and gun control, neither of which is going to help the people I see every day.  You purveyors of woke thinking don't care.  You just pronounce your moral superiority, and you feel good in your warm gooey places.  Which is good for you, but pretty darn crappy for the fellow man you claim to care so much about. So go ahead, cancel me.  I don't care.  I have only three little words left for you....Go Pound Sand.

Until Next Time....

Small Bites, Edition 1

It's morning, and the odds of me finishing this post before I have to go unload a 420 case truck are slim and none.  I'm not even sure what I'm writing about other than the news tidbits over the last few days.  What I do know is that many Biden supporters should be scratching their head right now.  So let's take on just a few of the things in the news.

Dr. Seuss, or at least some of his books, have been cancelled.  "I think I saw it on Mulberry Street" is going for the affordable price of $1600 on Amazon last time I looked, but my guess is, it will be banned from sale on Amazon like other books recently.  Want to make a book no one was talking about popular?  Ban it from Amazon.  Currently, "When Harry Became Sally" has a hold line longer than Harry Potter when it first came out at my local library.  If the goal was not to let people read the book, it failed.  I imagine in the next few weeks, Dr. Seuss books will be raking in the dough as people clamor to purchase as many as they can.  Who thought we'd be living in "Fahrenheit 451"?

Among other things currently hiding in our latest stimulus bill is up to 21,000 dollars for federal employees who can't go to work because their kids can't go to school.  That's per employee.  Sorry to you other poor slobs who have to go without a paycheck because your kids can't go to school, even though there is no scientific evidence that schools are super spreader environments for COVID.  I'd like to remind all our petrified teachers that I've been working, with the public, since June 9th.  All I do is feed people's alcohol addiction.  I'm trying to figure out how my job is more important than the education of young minds, but so far, I haven't really come up with a good reason.  Also, I haven't caught COVID.

Recently, I was made aware that I no longer have to quarantine for close contact with a COVID infected person if I'm fully vaccinated.  Fully vaccinated apparently means 2 weeks after the second dose of a two dose vaccine, but not more than 3 months since the second dose of a two dose vaccine.  So, the vaccine is good for 10 weeks.  Yep, I'm clamoring to go get 2 needle sticks that last me 10 weeks.  Antibodies from the infection last longer than that....

QAnon has turned into some mythical monster with the ability to pronounce on the internet that they are going to do something everyone knows they aren't going to do, and yet manages to get the center of a national government locked down for 2 more months.  Meanwhile Antifa is still trying to burn down Portland. Eventually they will succeed, since even if arrested, they are back on the street the next day trying again.  

Apparently it's neanderthal thinking to not fine or jail people for not wearing masks, but it's okay to release COVID positive illegal immigrants into a population.  A funny thing happens when you say you won't deport anyone for 100 days.  They realize you won't deport them so they run across the border as fast as they can, and they really don't care if we are in the middle of a pandemic.  Our current President* seems to think Americans can't make basic decisions about their health and well-being, but who gives a crap if we just let a bunch of people not from our country run around free and clear to spread the 'Rona.  People want to know why New Zealand had success?  They DIDN'T LET ANYONE IN!  Of course, that's easier to do when you are an island surrounded by water on four sides, which I said from the beginning, but at least now we have our progressive friends admitting that too, so I guess that's something.

Andrew Cuomo is on the hot seat for sexually harassing at least 3 women.  It's good cover for the fact that he killed 15,000 grandparents with his insane nursing home policy.  He wasn't the only one.  More than half of all COVID deaths in my state, Pennsylvania, can be attributed to congregate care facilities.  Good thing Dr. Rachel* Levin moved her mama into a posh hotel before the Wolf Administration's own death policy.  If they were using federal guidance, which some of them have claimed they were doing, why did 45 other states not follow the same policy?  There are only two answers.  1) there was no federal guidance for them to mandate COVID positive patients go back to nursing homes, or 2) 45 other administrations were far smarter than them.  You pick which one.  It doesn't matter which one you pick, because it's all being obscured by Cuomo's creepy Joe Biden-like behavior.

I've decided to make this a weekly thing, so you have now read the first edition of Small Bites.  See you next week!

P.S. - I finished this post on Friday, March 5th.  As predicted, I didn't have time to finish it before that 420 case truck.