Just a quicky today. Lots of stuff to do at work and home.
I've been listening to JPII's Theology of the Body book lately. I also muddled through the first few hours of Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazereth. What struck me in both were the references to the Old Testament. As a mostly-uneducated Catholic, I never understood how much we take forward from the Old Testament. That's cool.
It also means that you inherit all of the problems of the Old Testament and you can't just brush them away with a "Well, that was in the past and we don't really cotton to all that wrath and smiting stuff." Enter The Bible In A Year Podcast with Father Mike.
BiaY has taught me so much about the Old Testament, what it means and how to read it. Thanks to Father Mike, I have fewer problems reconciling the Old with the New.
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| "Man, oh man!" is one of Father Mike's favorite expostulations as he explains what we read today. I need this shirt. |
President Biden is out on Twitter saying that his elebenty gajillion dollar infrastructure bill will be free. No, seriously, he's saying that it's free.
The Democrat who runs the House Budget Committee or whatever it is gave a speech to some donors eating rubber chickens saying that the government cannot go bankrupt because it can print money.
Glenn Kessler of the WaPo, whose professional dignity must have committed hari-kari long ago, lectured us on Twitter with great exasperation that there's a difference between a net cost and a gross cost. The elebenty gajillion will be paid for, you morons, so it's free.
And then there's this from the soulless chick who tells the credulous press corps lies every day*.
Jen Psaki: It’s “unfair and absurd” that companies would increase costs for consumers in response to us taxing them more. 😳 pic.twitter.com/rHilrYdj4j
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) September 28, 2021
For a while this morning, I didn't know what to make of it. It's so patently false that I couldn't figure out why she said it.
It finally hit me that she and her political masters have reached the spoiled toddler phase. They are simply screaming at us to give them our money and be quick about it. This is nothing more than banging your spoon on your high chair, your face beet-red, howling for ice cream.
It's free, it's free, it's free! Gimme gimme gimme!
Last week, we were patiently explaining to the Elites that men and women were substantially different. This week, we have to teach them about money. Earlier, they couldn't understand that removing cops from the cities would lead to crime.
Next week ... what?
* - I'm not singling her out here. Every press secretary lies constantly. Why we still have the position and why the media show up to these things to ask questions is beyond me.
... please slap me.
Dig the ages of our 26 oldest senators.
| State | Name | Party | Age |
| California | Feinstein | Democratic | 87 |
| Iowa | Grassley | Republican | 87 |
| Alabama | Shelby | Republican | 86 |
| Oklahoma | Inhofe | Republican | 86 |
| Vermont | Leahy | Democratic | 80 |
| Vermont | Sanders | Independent - Dem Caucus | 79 |
| Kentucky | McConnell | Republican | 78 |
| Idaho | Risch | Republican | 77 |
| Maryland | Cardin | Democratic | 77 |
| Maine | King | Independent - Dem Caucus | 76 |
| Illinois | Durbin | Democratic | 76 |
| Connecticut | Blumenthal | Democratic | 74 |
| Massachusetts | Markey | Democratic | 74 |
| Delaware | Carper | Democratic | 74 |
| New Hampshire | Shaheen | Democratic | 74 |
| Utah | Romney | Republican | 73 |
| West Virginia | Manchin | Democratic | 73 |
| Hawaii | Hirono | Democratic | 73 |
| Oregon | Wyden | Democratic | 71 |
| Massachusetts | Warren | Democratic | 71 |
| Rhode Island | Reed | Democratic | 71 |
| Missouri | Blunt | Republican | 71 |
| Michigan | Stabenow | Democratic | 70 |
| Washington | Murray | Democratic | 70 |
| New York | Schumer | Democratic | 70 |
| Arkansas | Boozman | Republican | 70 |
These people are pathetic. None of them need the money. For the most part, they are voting robots. They come from deeply-partisan states, too. Seriously, does anyone think that if Blumenthal or Romney decided to retire, they wouldn't be instantly replaced by a younger model of themselves?
What are they doing?
This is further support for my thesis that the government is way too big. If it was about half its current size, it might not matter all that much if the residents of Casa de Mañana were running it.
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| What a loser. |
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| The New Yorker, aimed at the Elites, is pondering the destruction of infrastructure to fight |
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| Those same Elites want to spend eleventy gajillion dollars on infrastructure. |
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| The money to pay for the infrastructure will be printed. |
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| The debt and currency debasement that has enslaved and impoverished the younger generations is being pushed by people who will all be dead soon. Dittos for the people producing the hideous results of our education industry, illustrated in the New Yorker essay above. |
I always wonder if there's some element of our over-credentialed, Ivy League class who understands how parasitical this is. My bet is that there is such a group, but left-wing censorship is so strong that we don't know they exist. Voices in the wilderness, if you will.
In any case, the New Yorker article came across to me like a great example of Keynes' suggestion that we hire some unemployed people to dig holes and others to fill those holes.
Bonus Tidbit: I saw some reds gloating about Chuck Grassley of Iowa deciding to run for reelection to the Senate. Old Chuck, or rather, Very Old Chuck, is a shoe-in to win and keep that seat red. Yay!
Chuck is 88. Yay.
I'm working on the environment and decorations for an upcoming men's retreat wherein Papists from across San Diego will be discussing how to poison wells and eat babies. Or something like that.
Anyway, the theme of the retreat is "abide in His love." The leader is a fellow who would be most at home in a Mexican beach house. Working on the sign for the retreat an artist friend and I came up with the idea shown below, where each letter reveals part of a different picture. The first four are either Mexican beach photos or a color pattern in that style. The last is a forest, waterfall and pond image from Alabama.
Hey, I get to put a little of myself in the thing, too, you know. :-)
Enjoy.
... and I mean ratchet, not racket. Ratchet as in only going in one direction.
All the illegals pouring across the border will almost certainly stay in the US forever. At some point, they will be naturalized and will be able to vote. That will put the cap on the plan - importing a huge number of voters that will, hopefully for the Ds, vote straight D.
It doesn't matter if Biden's numbers are tanking or if the Ds take a beating in the midterms. The damage is already done.
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| Playing the long game. |
I saw this on Twitter and loved it. I had something else in mind for today's post, but there was a lot of yelling at work and I had to deal with that instead of going tappity-tap on the keyboard. Oh well.
Enjoy!
From yesterday's Tucker Carlson Show comes this mention of Article 4 Section 4 of the Constitution, which further supports my semi-contention that any state wishing to secede has pretty decent grounds to do so.
What follows is a mental exercise to which I don't really have an answer.
What makes a nation? I can think of a couple of crucial characteristics.
As I watch the border "crisis*" unfold, I keep thinking that secession is a decent solution and that needs to be executed before all systems have completely failed. Today, I began to wonder, from what would states secede?
We don't have a border any more.
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| The Haitians at Del Rio have begun making lean-tos. On the plus side, there are no kids in cages. On the minus side, they're being released into the "United States," whatever that is, with only the most dilatory requests to file some paperwork, somewhere, at some time in the future. That means their constructions are probably not worth the effort. |
Can you really say you have a set of laws if they only apply to some people and not to others? See: vandalism, arson, looting, murder, etc. during the BLM riots.
We have a currency, but its debasement continues apace with the Fed printing like mad.
We sort of have a common language, English, but here in San Diego, you could make a strong case for there actually being a pair of official languages, Spanish and English.
We have a governmental structure, but given the fact that our border laws, legally enacted by our democratically-elected legislature mean nothing, what is the actual form of government? President Biden is claiming he can create a vaccine mandate without any voting by the legislature at all. Isn't that at odds with our understanding of how the government is supposed to work?
If a state wanted to secede, from what would it be seceding? Would you say, "Texas, you may not secede. You must stay and have your land overrun by non-citizens. You must obey laws that people all around you do not obey. You must use a currency that is being generated out of thin air. You must communicate to us in English. You must send us two senators and n congresscritters to represent you in an near-powerless legislature. Finally, you must accede to the wishes of our judiciary, whatever those wishes happen to be at the moment."
It seems to me that the US, as presently composed, is not nearly as solid and well-defined of a thing as one might think.
* - It's not a crisis if it's intentional.
... and if it comes back, great is the rejoicing!
I blogged before about arthritis issues in my knee. I thought I'd never again walk without a limp and definitely never thought I'd run again. When I realized that it wasn't going to get better, I went back to weightlifting, thinking it was my last chance at it.
Well, after about three months of serious work with the weights, going to the gym almost every day, the knee pain is not only completely gone, I can also jog again. Booyah!
I think there's a lot to be said for getting in shape to stay generally healthy, but I never really practiced it before. Having been given a reprieve, I won't take this for granted again.
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| Never again. |
Watching the unfolding "crisis*" in Del Rio, Texas, I kept wondering what might happen if we had a wall and sufficient Border Patrol resources to completely control the border. It wouldn't have to mean a shutdown of immigration, would it? I mean, if we chose to do so, we could allow 1,000,000 Haitians, 2,000,000 Hondurans and 10,000,000 Mexicans to come into the country every year. We could specify any mix we chose and any numbers we chose.
Securing the border is independent of immigration limits.
If the border is out of control, then we can't specify any limits at all. We can vote every three months** to elect new representatives. They could go meet in session in Congress and enact any immigration bills they wished. The president could sign them into law. Nothing would change because the border is a sieve.
Why is the border a sieve?
It's a sieve so we don't have the ability to set any limits. The elimination of border control is not about the border, it's about us. Just like the Supreme Court's rulings on abortion and gay marriage, we are seen by the Elites as too stupid, too ignorant and too bigoted to be allowed to make choices about these things. I mean, just imagine what we might do if we were given political power. Why, we could limit immigration, enshrine one man - one woman marriage and even make our own decisions about when life begins! Horrible!
We are unworthy of the right to vote. Since they can't take that away, they simply remove the linkages between voting and real results.
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| Our elections are the equivalent of this toddler's driving toy. We can pretend to drive just like mommy does, but in reality, we aren't doing a thing. |
* - In my book, it's not a crisis if it's intentional.
** - I've ingested the message that voting is the most important thing you can do to the point that I now think our political season should never end and we should have elections as often as possible.
Since I use this blog to store recipes and cooking tips, I thought I'd summarize my best practices for briskets. I made one the previous night for a party the next evening. Here's what I learned.
Tip 1: Don't cook it at night. Get some sleep instead.
By the time evening rolls around, I'm not at my best. I made one serious mistake, shown below, because I wasn't thinking and didn't take the time to review the plan. Also, briskets are notoriously unreliable with cooking times. The first breakpoint, 165 degrees, should have taken 6 or so hours to reach. This one reached it after 4. When I got up in the middle of the night to check it, I found it had gone up to 180 and I was late wrapping the thing.
Tip 2: Use this rub from Southern Living. It's awesome.
Tip 3: Use this recipe for the mechanics of cooking the brisket from Hey Grill Hey. The paper wrap for the second phase is crucial.
Tip 4: PUT THE BRISKET IN A FREAKING ALUMINUM PAN, YOU IDIOT! I didn't and so I lost all the glorious drippings. Also, the paper stuck to the bottom of the brisket after I wrapped it at 1 AM. See Tip 1, above, for why 1 AM is a stupid time to be wrapping a brisket.
In any case, start it in a pan, wrap it in a pan, store it in a pan. It's the pan part that made me a fraud. I didn't add it until the smoking was done and when I reheated the brisket for our guests, I added some homemade beef stock to simulate the drippings.
Lies, lies, all lies! I feel so dirty!
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| The brisket, as carved for dinner. The reddish-pink rings make it look like a proper brisket. Hah! It wasn't. Lies! |
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| Look, it's in a pan! There are juices! More lies! |
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| Here it is, the fulsome, scurvy truth. It's in the smoker with rich, nourishing juices simply running out and burning up in the fire. Horrible! Unconscionable! Inexcusable! |
In all seriousness, the next time I do a brisket, I'll look it up on the 'Post and find these notes and do it right. Our guests raved about the dinner, but I knew it could have been much, much better. Oh well. Live and learn.
I hope you're having a great weekend.
Instapundit linked to this article, howling about how the Federal government is funding a border wall in Tajikistan, but not one in Texas.
While the Biden administration halted construction of the border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, the United States is funding border security efforts for Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic trying to keep Afghan insurgents and refugees out.
One day after the Biden administration's Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan, the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, announced that it had launched a project to construct new facilities for a Border Guard Detachment in Ayvoj, along the Tajik-Afghan-Uzbek border.
That facility is designed to help Tajik security forces better respond to Afghans seeking to flee Taliban rule or insurgents seeking to cause mischief to its neighbor.
As usual, there are cries of "Hypocrisy!" from the right. They're wrong. This isn't hypocrisy at all, it's the concrete realization of the progressive world view. Dig this from Ivy-League Princeton.
Princeton University required all incoming freshmen to watch an hour-long video that likened personal denials of racism to segregation, urged the students and university to do more for “undocumented immigrants,” and warned that those who protested the 2020 presidential election bear some resemblance to Confederates.
The purpose of the video was to grapple with “systemic racism and Princeton University,” according to the video’s subtitle.
I sampled a bit of the video, which you can find at that link, and it was about what you'd expect once you realized that the people running Princeton hate America and want to see it fundamentally changed. It's a litany of evils, bereft of context or comparison.
Incidentally, we could make the same video about the people running Princeton, using horrors pulled from abortion, black-on-black crime, the poisoning of sexually-demented trans children, child pornography and much, much more. It dawned on me as I watched some of that video that such a response is precisely what is needed - a story told with the same world-weary, intellectual, matter-of-fact tone.
In any case, the progs see Tajikistan as righteous and deserving of a nation. They do not see the US in the same way.
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| This invasion, allowed because it will change the racial demographics of the country, is a moral good to the people running Princeton. |
We know a family with a kid who caught a cold. The kid was banned from school and ordered to take a Wuhan Flu test. This despite the fact that, as a kid, he was statistically more likely to be shot in Chicago than die of the WuFlu.
Where I work, the physical security office only lets one person come in at a time and has one of those utterly pointless plexiglass shields up, covering only 1/3 of the person's body, with huge gaps at the top and sides, so when you talk to the clerk, you talk through the shield, but the virions travel around the shield to get the clerk anyway. Yesterday, I posted Brown University's insane masking and social distance policies for their student body, which is 95%+ vaccinated.
I would argue that we can indulge our neuroses because we're printing money. We don't have to perform up to normal because we're backstopped by mountains of cash.
Under normal circumstances, when you face stresses or setbacks, you can't wallow in self-pity or hide under your bed in fear because you've got bills to pay. You've got to suck it up and get back to work. All of this printed money being handed out by the government gives us the opportunity to turn into full-blown head cases.
And boy howdy, have we done that.
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| It's not enough for us to be neurotics, we're teaching our kids to be neurotics as well. |
One of the themes of this blog is the long-term effect of destroying trust in all of our institutions. What are we supposed to do when a real crisis hits and we can no longer believe anything we hear?
Dig these two items.
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| A drone photo of illegals underneath the International Bridge in Del Rio, TX. They don't need the vaccine because shut up. |
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| Restrictions on student behavior at Brown University, which is part of the Ivy League, where over 90% of the student body is vaccinated. |
Nothing from our institutions and authorities makes sense because they don't care if it makes sense. They live in a world of unreality, in a world of castles in the air.
Our institutions and authorities are at least as concerned about the environment as they are about the Wuhan Flu. Well, not the real environment all around us, but the global environment. Dig this video from the streets of Philly.
#Philadelphia, #Kensington Avenue. The most lively city of the #USA. Now, the city is full of #drug #addicts & #Homeless #People. But #newyorkTimes is still looking for a story in #Mumbai's #slums. pic.twitter.com/DMvj1HyBLf
— Anshuman Tripathi (@tri_anshu) September 12, 2021
Yes, the addicts are stunningly horrible, but to tell you the truth, having lived with some in my family, I've seen it before. What hit me was the trash. Most of Los Angeles looks just the same. LA and Philly are both run from top to bottom by devout "environmentalists" who don't talk about the garbage on the streets.
Their concerns are not real. None of it is real. The environmentalists only care about the theoretical parts of the environment, the models and graphs and charts showing Global Warming Climate Change. The filth and rubbish washing about in the cities they run, that's not a big deal.
Meanwhile, it's all right in front of our faces.
What on Earth are these people thinking?
Me, I got none.
Here's the intro:
BREAKING: Hudson mayor demands all school board members resign or face possible criminal charges over high school course material that he said a judge called "child pornography."
— Jenny Beth Martin (@jennybethm) September 14, 2021
“I'm going to give you a simple choice: You either choose to resign or you will be charged." pic.twitter.com/guhp0zc0ns
Here are the details:
Mayor Craig Shubert made the statement during Monday night's board of education meeting after multiple parents complained about the content of some writing prompts contained in a book called "642 Things to Write About" provided to high school students who are taking a college credit course called Writing in the Liberal Arts II.
Parents said there was a prompt that asked students to "write a sex scene you wouldn't show your mom," and another which said "rewrite the sex scene from above into one that you'd let your mom read."
Writing a sex scene you wouldn't show your mom is the very definition of porn. In the comments of the linked article, defenders are saying, "Well, it's no big deal because it's actually a college class."
Huh?
I don't know about you, but when I was in college, we weren't given any porn-writing assignments at all.
Claims of ignorance by the school officials are bald-faced lies. The teachers giving and grading the assignments clearly knew it was there. No one cared until some parents when ballistic.
Our education industry is degenerate.
Thinking about Biden's speech the other day wherein he said that vaccines were safe and effective, protecting you from the Wuhan Flu, and then less than 14 minutes later said we needed to jab everyone in the arm to protect those who have already been vaccinated, the real shock was not the obvious contradiction, but its proximity to the original assertion.
The message a lot of people are getting from that speech is that you will be told what to do with only the flimsiest of excuses. Your freedom was illusory as shown by Biden's claim that his patience was running out. "We gave you a choice and you chose the wrong thing. Now you will be forced to do what we want." There never was a choice, not really.
Still, that's not the thing I took away from the speech. To me, the key was that they don't think you're worthy of an explanation. It's not like they didn't read the first draft of the speech and see that they said, in sequence:
They saw that and sent the old dude out there to read it off the teleprompter anyway. Who cares that everyone saw the contradiction? Who cares what you think? You are beneath their consideration. That was the real message of the speech. It wasn't that vaccines are good and we should all take them. It wasn't that we need to protect people. It wasn't that you have to do what they tell you. It was that you're not even worth the time it takes to craft a logically consistent speech.
You're a swine.
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| Count the Ivy League graduates in this photo, all properly masked and solemn. |
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| And now here they are, moments later, with those ridiculous masks off, chatting with each other. |
How long before they don't even bother with the performance art part of the thing?
Wife kitteh and I are at the stage in our lives where we've got decent investments and real estate. We spent many decades building these and now we reap the fruits of our labors and self-denial.
Looking at our investment statements, we're making money hand over fist. The money that's being printed is almost all ending up in the stock market and real estate, driving prices up and up and up. Those what got are getting more.
Inflation for consumer goods is real. I've tracked a few items at Costco over the last couple of months and I don't believe inflation is only 8%. My bet is that if you didn't doctor the numbers, it would be about double that.
We've got a gardener who comes every other week and a housecleaning crew that comes every other week. We haven't given them a raise in a few, inflation-benign years because they can be replaced easily for the same or less than we're paying, thanks to the "compassionate" open borders. Meanwhile, they live in a world of cash and rent. While we see big increases in our wealth, their real income and assets are going down. Those what don't got are getting robbed.
This is obscene.
We don't have to, but we're going to give them a healthy raise. The progs would call this trickle-down and to that I'd say that your policies result in financial drought for the working poor. All that borrowing and spending has put piles of dollars in my pockets at the expense of these people.
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| The transfer payments that led to this debt were really transfers from my gardener to me. |
Wife kitteh is volunteering as the librarian at a small, Catholic grade school for poor kids. She's been going through the books and has been shocked at the number which contained explicit sexual encounters. Needless to say, those are being tossed. Since the school librarian is a volunteer job and wife kitteh is working above and beyond the required hours, it's a good bet the previous librarian didn't have the time to examine the collection closely.
Now check out some of the video below. A minute or so will give you an idea of what's going on in that particular public school. That should get you to the point where it reveals that it has library books describing how 4th graders have gay, oral sex.
That's the before. Now dig the after.
This broke my heart.
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) September 12, 2021
I grew up in hook up culture. I've felt the letdown and experienced the meaninglessness that comes with it.
It's inevitable: hook up culture only works if the sex means nothing, and the only way sex means nothing is if the people think *they* mean nothing. pic.twitter.com/vriyxQDCNw
So the schools are spreading sexual degeneracy in the early grades and girls in their 20s are harvesting the results. The chick in that video is gorgeous. If I had known her when I was in college, I wouldn't be calling her, drunk, in the middle of the night and asking her to come over and service me. It's pathetic that she did it at all, but how was she supposed to know she was worth more when our professional class, at least the ones she interacted with in school, told her this was all way cool?
It's so sad that she wishes she had a boy that was proud of her, that would show her off to his friends. She wishes she had a boy who would take her out to dinner. Dinner? Are you joking? If I was her age, I'd be asking her what mountains she wanted me to climb, what oceans she wanted me to swim, what dragons she wanted slain and if there was a knight I needed to defeat in single combat to win her favor.
Instead, she's responding to drunk booty calls in the middle of the night.
Way to go, guys. Looks like love won again.
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| We don't need the Lord to smite us. We're smiting ourselves. |
Bonus Tidbit: We've been pushing for more and more women in college to the point where women now outnumber men, 60-40. That's almost a Surf City ratio where Jan and Dean told us there were two swingin' honeys for every guy. The results end up just about the same - the guys hold all the cards. If you don't answer that booty call, there's another chick who will. Brilliant move to claim that men and women have the same sexual needs, progs. You got what you wanted. Enjoy.
... it should end in a decade or so.
We hit 8.3% PPI this week. Hurrah! Big numbers are better, right? If that's the case, things are bound to get even better with Yale geniuses like John Yarmuth (D-KY) acting as the Chairman of the House Budget Committee. Here's John on why we can spend as much money as we like.
Thanks, John! We can trust you, you have a degree from Yale!
These people have no idea how anything works.
... it's about the utter corruption of our intellectual class.
Yesterday, President Biden said he was going to take steps to protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated. I didn't hear any of our medical organizations speaking out against it. If you're vaccinated, you don't need your neighbor to get vaccinated to protect you. The vaccine protects you. That's the point. That's why we have vaccines in the first place.
You can get vaccinated, take your mask off and go live a normal life now.
The Delta variant is on its way out. Here's yesterday's data from the covidestim website. Almost every state is past its peak. We're talking about jamming things down people's throats to fight something that will vanish on its own.
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| Infections per 100,000 |
We know that if you've had the Wuhan Flu, you're much more protected than if you got the vaccine. In many states, we're above 50% in that category. Even if there's another "wave," it's not going to have much of an effect. We're forcing things on people to fight something that's disappearing.
None of our medical organizations spoke out against the mandates. I'm vaccinated and believe in the efficacy of the things. I think I've also had the WuFlu so I'm super-protected. It's the government jamming things on us when we don't need them that must be fought. I don't need you to be forced to do things for my safety because my safety is not at risk. It's all lies.
Some talk idiocy and worry about future mutations where your natural immunity won't protect you. Well, if natural immunity won't protect you, the current vaccines won't either, so the mandate is worthless in that case.
It's not all about the virus, either. The whole trans movement is like mass prescriptions of Thalidomide long after we knew what the side-effects of Thalidomide were. Dig these horror stories from a message board for parents of trans kids.
I have no clue what to do, daughter can't get the bottom surgery and is becoming suicidal.
Hello, I have always been in support of my transgender daughter. When she was still a boy, and started expressing a want to be a girl, I did everything right. Therapists, then puberty blockers, everything. Now she is 20 and everything is falling apart. We had to hold off on the body surgery because of costs, but now finally had enough and went and got several consults. All have said the same thing. The puberty blockers have left her with a micro penis. She has to get part of her vagina made with her colon. Well one of her friends had that surgery, and even years later it smells fairly colon like.
Obviously my daughter is now distraught. She is in counseling, but is becoming worse and worse in her mental state and I am frantic. On top of this, she has never had any sexual function. No urges, no erections, even when she tried masturbation to see if she could stimulate herself...nothing. The doctors say this may not change even after the surgery. Her dating life is dismal as well. We knew it would be hard. But it's impossible. The one man who was with her for a while, soon just became frustrated by her lack of sexual anything and broke it off.
I don't know what to do? A friend suggested I post here for advice. Please help me help my child!
The poisonous effects of hormone blockers and alien sex-hormones has been well-known for years and yet, here we are. Doctors are prescribing them out of "compassion."
In both cases, the payoff for the intellectual class is the same - the sexual frisson of moral masturbation. You can tell each other that you care, you don't judge, you're "helping." It's all nonsense. You're not doing anything good. Instead you're doing damage, either by deepening our political divisions or by poisoning children.
It's sick.
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| At least, in the Simpsons, little Ralph Wiggum is relatively harmless. |
Lily, the smaller of the two Catican Guards, has picked up the habit of bark-talking at us when she wants something. It's not like normal barking, it's more conversational. "Woo-woo-woo-woof," she'll say when she wants a treat or some attention.
Lately, she's decided she needs dessert after dinner. A jerky treat would be fine, thank you very much. Last night, she mixed her spoken request with a sad look.
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| Don't you love me any more? |
Mind you, dinner was a real feast. I recently made some beef stock and saved the meat and carrots. I mix them in with their kibble, add a little stock and voila! fine dining for dogs.
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| They devour it with gusto. |
Still, that wasn't enough. She needed her dessert.
I gave it to her, of course.
... means no contradictions!
Normally, I try to ponder the meanings and implications of things. In this case, I don't understand it at all, so I need to buy some time.
Long time friend, Ohioan, did some research on Ivermectin testing and found out some interesting stuff. First, Google is hiding the research.
I did a Google search on "Ivermectin (IVM) and CoViD-19". I found only negative papers. Or more precisely, I didn't find any positive ones on the first page of the results (as I'd expected). I kept looking into the later pages, mostly because I consider it a given that Google ("Be Evil"™) will be 'protecting' me from what they consider 'misinformation' (a.k.a. anything that does not line up with the official woke/left beliefs). Anyways, the difference between me and a person who would make a statement such as the above is that I distrust all of the media, while they seem to trust the media that tells them are smarter than everyone else. (Why does that sound familiar?)
It wasn't hard to find two studies that are positive (and I stopped after the first two because my intent was to READ them so I could make up my own mind and hey, two, and specifically the first two from Google, disproved the statement that there is only one, and they seem like as good a good place to start as any).
Why does Google try and shove you to the negative papers? Why not show them all and not bias the search results? Hmm.
Once Ohioan made it to the positive results, here's what he found.
Now I'm no expert on meta-analysis, nor would I claim to understand the details of the analyses, but I do understand statistics well enough to know that a study with 1,131 subjects may well be too small to be confident that they see an effect, while 3,428 might be big enough. I also note that the effect in the T+ve paper is given as "ivermectin reduced risk of death compared with no ivermectin (average risk ratio 0.38, 95% confidence interval 0.19–0.73)". Note that a 95% confidence level (a.k.a. a p-value of 0.05) means they are reporting a 2σ error bound. That means if you want to go to the 99% confidence level (3σ), the result would not differ from the null hypothesis. It also means that a sample only 1/3 the size would almost certainly not report a result different from the null hypothesis (as σ would be bigger by roughly a factor of √3).
Conclusions: In any case, while I'm not yet willing to say that IVM is clearly an effective treatment, I would insist that at the barest minimum the book is still open as to that possibility, I see no reason to claim huge problems with the larger study (as the difference may be nothing more than the march of science), and that further studies are absolutely necessary and should be underway NOW!
I'll let you go read the whole thing, which I recommend.
I'm trying to figure out the point of the concealment exercise. I can understand the wokesters hiding sites like the Daily Wire and so forth, but why take a side on Ivermectin? I don't recall the Bad Orange Man pushing it, although maybe he did and they're reflexively banning it because of that. Something to ponder, that.
I have to admit, I stopped reading One Brow's comments a long time ago. He rarely addressed the point of my posts and his interactions with the regulars here were frustrating, to say the least. His most recent comment scrap with another long-time friend, WC Varones, is a perfect illustration.
This blog is an exploration of ideas and I'm grateful for the guidance, corrections and conversations, but recently, it's become exhausting to scroll through acres and acres of ever-shifting contradictions. This isn't a democracy, it's a blog and I don't have the time or energy to police it constantly.
Sorry, OB, but you'll need to go somewhere else.
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| Original Python skit here. |
It looks like we've got anywhere from a couple hundred Americans trapped in Afghanistan to a thousand or more.
What happens to them if we stop caring?
I've been pondering how this might play out and wondering if the suggestions that the Taliban are sitting on a gold mine of ransom money might be overstating the issue. Who's to say we don't lose interest and wander off while they're being held as prisoners? Unless it does further damage to their poll numbers, which will only happen if the press keeps it in the public view, I could see the political class doing their best to avoid the topic. Hence, this, as reported by Kaitlan Collins of CNN.
President Biden is set to deliver what's being described as a pretty big Covid speech tomorrow, per multiple people. Officials still finalizing specifics, but expected to have several components on schools, private companies, fed workers. The most they've done to date, one says.
That brought out this particularly pointed response from John Hayward which pithily summarizes my thinking.
Joe is SO over you losers who stayed behind in Afghanistan.
You're so self-centered. It's always me, me, me: help ME, get ME out of here, don't leave ME behind, the Taliban wants to kill ME.
Why don't you think about Joe and what *he* wants to do for a change?
Snark aside, in a postmodern, post-honor world, what's the half-life of hostage value? Referring to what sure looks like a hostage situation in northern Afghanistan to me, our Secretary of State simply denied it was what it was.
Biden administration Secretary of State Antony Blinken responded to claims that dozens of Americans and perhaps hundreds of Afghan allies are being held by the Taliban at Mazar-i-Sharif Airport (MAZ), unable to board privately chartered planes out of the country, telling a press conference in Doha, Qatar that he is “not aware” of any “hostage-like situation,” only a “relatively small number of Americans” who should be allowed to leave Afghanistan.
“We are not aware of anyone being held on an aircraft or any hostage-like situation in Mazar-i-Sharif,” Blinken said when asked about the six planes on the ground at MAZ, reportedly unable to leave.
Who cares?
Can't you just see the Taliban leadership looking at each other in stunned amazement about a month from now, wondering what to do with 500 Americans no one wants?
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| The view from Chevy Chase, VA. |
As long-time sufferers of this blog know, I indulge in a failed Dixie experiment every year. Two years ago, I ruined some tobacco. Last year, I floundered around with cotton. This year, I've been killing watermelon plants. I started with well over 50 and slaughtered my way down to a single Nancy which, despite my best efforts, seems to be thriving in one of our raised beds.
Or is it just one?
We've got a strange volunteer coming up where the last Stone Mountain allegedly died. I turned the water on to it and it's growing, but it's leaves don't match those of the Nancy. Dig this.
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| My Nancy. Note the deeply lobed leaves. |
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| What in the world is this guy? |
I found an article suggesting that some watermelons have lobed leaves and some not-quite-so-lobed leaves.
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| Phenotypes of leaf shapes in watermelon. (a) Lobed and non-lobed leaf watermelon seedlings. (b) Two different leaf shapes in watermelon. Small symmetrical marginal protrusions are marked with red arrows. (c) Comparison of the first ten true leaves from lobed and non-lobed phenotype seedlings. Source. |
Previously, the bed had been used to grow tomatoes and herbs. The Mystery Plant is not a tomato and it's not any of our herbs.
What could it be? Might I have gotten lucky and the Stone Mountain survived?
Ms. Greene is a Republican congresswoman who, as I understand it from the news media, I'm supposed to regard as a crank. I have no idea why, nor do I want to know. Suffice it to say that I've seen her name associated with general nuttiness.
Ms. Greene penned a Twitter thread the other day wherein she suggested that the progs are selling us out to China. Like any good conspiracy theory, it's got plenty of facts behind it. Two key ones for me are, first, the resources we allowed to go fallow in Afghanistan that the Chinese will now exploit, having signed a treaty with the Taliban within days of our frantic, "successful" departure.
The second is Afghanistan's location, placed astraddle what could be a superhighway from China to Iran and Turkey and thence to Europe. Her map, below, doesn't show that route, but it's not hard to figure it out from what was drawn.
She lays out China's mercantilist plans for world domination.
The Belt and Road Initiative is the centerpiece of Communist China’s economic plan.
Many countries all over the world are financially invested in helping China dominate the world in manufacturing and trade.
The entire world will depend on China for essential supplies.
Again, she's right on the money. After that, she swerves into the ditch.
They (the progressives) have been working for decades to shift America to Socialism without ever firing a bullet.
The pandemic is now providing the perfect cover and is being used as a political weapon to control people in order to finish the shift.
The first sentence is arguably correct, but the second is pure fantasy. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is no plan. There is no plan. Of plans, there are none. The box of plans is empty and the cupboard wherein plans are kept is similarly barren of plans.
There's no plan.
The Elites don't know how anything works and have consequently lost the ability to think strategically. These are the same imbeciles who abandoned Bagram air base in the middle of the night, only to have to send 5,000+ soldiers to secure Freaking Kabul Airport* in a disorganized panic. This has led to a 10 point or more drop in Biden's poll numbers. They live and die on poll numbers, these priests of politics, so that hits them where it hurts the most. That wasn't planned, it was simply a consequence of their fantasies about social justice, the right side of history and all the rest.
These are the same people who are stunned to find that inflation is returning after having printed trillions of dollars while at the same time locking down the economy so there were fewer goods and services to buy.
These are the same people who were shocked to find that chasing the cops out of black neighborhoods led to more murdered blacks.
There's no plan. None. No plan at all. No conspiracies, either. They're not capable of conspiracies because they don't live in reality, they live in a world conjured up out of their sense of moral superiority.
I'll give one final data point that should put an end to the idea that the progs are working with China. John Kerry, that horse-faced avatar of progressive righteousness, just went to China to negotiate some kind of climate agreement with them. The Chinese don't give a rat's rear end about the environment and, having just seen our armies routed in Afghanistan, have no respect for this crew of morons at all. They sent Mr. Marry-Into-Money, Ivy-League Nincompoop packing with threats and demands. They told him that they wouldn't even consider a climate agreement until we did X, Y and Z. And if we do those, they'll come up with new demands.
Kerry's meeting with the Chinese, a perfect example of how the progs will relate with a serious superpower, went something like the video below. If that makes you think of what's going on here in the US as some kind of conspiracy, please see a mental health professional.
* - Freaking Kabul Airport is it's actual name.
I've got three or so pieces in my head*, but due to family commitments, I don't have time to write today. Instead, I'll leave you with this montage of personal videos shot by marines and soldiers in Kabul during the recent, chaotic evacuations. It gives lie to all the assurances that the thing was anticipated, well-planned, executed professionally and was a success.
Of special note is that none of the brass have resigned, either in protest or in shame. Instead, they're back to hunting down extremists and racists in the military.
This is the worst leadership class in the history of the country.
In any case, watch and marvel at what it was really like at Kabul Airport.
* - And not much else.
This is an older photo, but I came across it today and really liked it. I tried shooting some of our flowers, but was unhappy with the results.
Wife kitteh and I have been fighting sleep something fierce lately and I just don't have anything else in me. She struggles getting to sleep and sometimes doesn't nod off until 3 AM. I'm the opposite. If I wake up after anything more than 4 hours of sleep, I'm probably doomed. I woke this morning at 1:45 AM.
Yurgh.
Anyways, enough complaining. Here's a handsome finch that might be worth a click. Enjoy!
Ivermectin is in the news right now because podcast giant Joe Rogan took it while sick with the Wuhan Flu. Many references to it in the news said it was a horse dewormer. I looked into it a bit more and discovered it won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015.
Here's a good video describing it and why some people might have thought it was useful against the WuFlu.
Does it really work? Beats me. To me, the bigger question is why you would refer to it as a medicine for livestock. All you're doing is damaging your credibility in exchange for ... what?
Seriously, what's the upside here? Joe Rogan's use of it will fade from view in a day or two, but people seeing you as a partisan liar won't fade for quite a while.
Dig this handy racial classification chart shared on Twitter.
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| "I am angry beyond words. My 3 year old grandson whose dad is a high ranking military officer, just started pre school at a military sponsored program. Click to see the racist chart they made on day one. Parents, please wake up and act before our kids & nation are ruined for good!" |
A while back, I pondered what might be the best way to do racial classification.
Who is white? Without an objective definition, we can't effectively choose up sides. For example, I know a young lady who is half-black. Is she white? She doesn't have a lot of stereotypical black features. If her husband is white, will her children be white? After all, they will be a quarter black. Perhaps we should consult one of my favorite infographics of all time, the Nazi racial chart from the Nuremberg Race Laws.
What if we decide that black and white refer strictly to skin color? We could then be issued color swatches to use when classifying our neighbors and coworkers. Imagine the fun we'd have, whipping out the swatches and holding them up against foreheads, arms, legs and scapula. We'd all look like a load of Nazi researchers. Yes, again with the Reich, but, hey, if you're going to obsess about race, why not learn from the master race?
Really, how else are you going to do it, short of taking DNA samples? That would be more precise, but who's going to pay for them? If we shell out that kind of dough, we might have to fire a diversity coordinator to make up the difference*. No, the color swatches are the best way to go.
I guess I should take back all those snarky blog posts about the left having almost no practical knowledge.
* - Oh, who am I kidding? We'd just print more money. Duh.