Follow the Science - 11/14/2021-2

"Follow the science."

"Okay, I will. Show me the science on virus transmission from people with naturally acquired immunity."

 

"There is none. Our scientists haven't studied it."

 

"By 'our scientists', are you referring to the scientists whose science you advocate that I should follow?"

 

"Well, yes."

 

"Are these scientists too lazy to study natural immunity, too stupid to know it should be studied, or too dishonest about their motives to study something that might take big pharma money out of their pockets?"

 

I'll tell you why I think they haven't studied it. Bureaucrats and regulators have decided a one size fits all approach, with all of the eggs in the vaccine basket will be easier to oversee and manage. They are also beholden to and endlessly trying to ingratiate themselves to big pharma, and there is no money for big pharma if you are naturally immune (aka a virus survivor) and do not require an injection.

 

Follow the science, my ass. Follow the dollars.

Pandemic, Endemic: A Personal Responsibility Manifesto - 11/14/2021

It looks like the Communist Chinese have given us a gift that will keep on giving. We are stuck with the CCP Virus and it's mutations, and not just for a little while, but forever. It's going to be here forever. This morning I'm going to talk about that, and I'm going to be very blunt. Tune out now if that's not your style, okay? F-bombs will be dropped.

 

First off, the virus isn't a hoax. It's real, way too real, really. So I'm not a denier. I'm not a zealot either way. I've taken precautions, like most people have. I haven't taken those precautions as far as I know some of you have. Neither have I been nearly as cavalier about it as some of you have been. I got the shots (Moderna) and I got the booster, too. I wore a mask every single time it was required and sometimes when it wasn't. Before I go on, let me say that I have NEVER had much confidence in the mask. And I was disappointed when I learned that the vaccines don't prevent you from catching or spreading CCP Virus. But I do believe that if I am infected, that I am better off having had the shots than not. My opinion. I'm not telling you you're wrong, even if you are. I'm not saying I'm right, because I know that maybe I'm not. My choice.

I take Zinc, extra Vitamin D and extra Vitamin C every morning. I check my temperature and my blood oxygen level every morning, too. Right now I'm at 98.7º and my blood oxygen is 98%. Mostly due to my wife's urging, I sanitize my hands after I get in the car after eating or shopping, getting gas, etc.

I practiced plenty of social distancing and hand washing and for a time I cut back on eating out, shopping, etc., too. I didn't cut either of those things out completely, but for several months I did cut way back. I know people are still catching the virus, and that I might, too, but I am for the most part done with limiting my shopping or dining out because of a virus which is a) no longer a pandemic, b) for which I am vaccinated, and c) for which there are many treatments and many medical lessons learned as to how to treat it available now that weren't months or a year ago.

I have mild COPD. twice last week in a "walking through the airport" type situation, where masks are required 24/7, I had difficulty breathing through my mask, a real shortness of breath. Gasping. I remember exactly what I was thinking the second time: "Fuck this stupid fucking mask it ain't even a fucking pandemic anymore and this stupid useless fucking mask is strangling me!"

It was a one-two punch thing for me that precipitated writing this ranting piece. Walking through the airport gasping in my mask was part one, The second was finding out on Friday (I think it was Friday) that the CDC has finally admitted that it doesn't have any data to show even one single case of a person with naturally acquired immunity, i.e. a CCP Virus survivor, transmitting the virus to someone else. Not that it has never happened, but rather that they simply don't know because they haven't collected any data on it. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. No interest in it at all. These are the same motherfuckers who are pushing vaccine mandates. They can go fuck themselves.

These are the same motherfuckers who have consistently poo poo-ed any drug that might help fight the virus if that drug is out of patent. Why? Because their big pharma masters won't make any money on out of patent drug treatments that are available to us cheap and over the counter.

It's time, friends. It's probably way past time, but suffice it to say, it's time. What time is it? It's time for mandates and restrictions to move into the realm of personal choice. It is time for us all to take personal responsibility and for the government, total slaves to their big pharma PAC money handouts and the influence of corporate greed, to stop with the fucking mandates and restrictions and pull back to making recommendations. I may follow those recommendations, but I will rankle and speak up against mandates. The fucking scientists who you overstepping pricks want me to follow are in lock step with corporate big pharma, slaves to big pharma dollars, and aren't even looking at natural immunity. So I say fuck 'em.

We have gone from 15 days to flatten the curve all the way to now imposing restrictions and mandates in a very flawed effort to totally eliminate a virus they are simply NEVER going to eliminate. We are threatening companies and worker's jobs if they won't get a vaccine even if they have survived the virus and have natural immunity. And the pandemic meanwhile is over. It's over. What we're in now is the ebb and flow of living with this virus forever. That means an endless string of virus variants will come and go. There will be peaks, valleys, spikes, and periods of relative stability. But in the big scheme of things, it ain't going nowhere.

You think the vaccine, or one of the vaccines is right for you and your family? Get it. I did. I would again.

A booster is right for you? Me too. I got it. But when and where will boostering end? I'm not going to get a shot every 3, 4 or 6 month for the rest of my life. Big pharma would love that. $$$$$!!!! Fuck them.

You think cutting back on your shopping trips and visiting restaurants will reduce your chances of getting the virus? Cut back, by all means.

You believe wearing a mask will protect you? Wear it. I will decide if it's right for me. Or at least I should. Unfortunately, there are still many of you pushing your government to overstep and intrude into my life and my personal decisions. Fuck you for that. Hospitals, dentists, doctor's offices require a mask? I'm okay with it, I don't know that I am a threat to anyone's health, but I'm okay in that situation.

You own a restaurant or store and you want me to wear a mask to shop there? I'll respect that IF I decide that you're selling something I need or want badly enough to put the thing on. But know that there are times I simply won't frequent your business if the mask requirement was your idea. I'll give you a break if your state, local, or our federal government require you to do so. But if it's your idea, I think that's your prerogative. You will be less likely to see me if that's the case.

You have a compromised immune system or other health issues that put you at high risk and you have to tread very carefully as we move forward living with this virus among us in perpetuity? I respect that and if you want me to wear a mask when we visit, or to reduce our interactions, or to plan them in a way that is safe for you and works to ensure your safety? I absolutely will do that. Why? We're either friends, family, co-workers, or something. Even if you're a shopkeeper, if you have high risk factors, AND you make that known, I will wear a mask or whatever when I come in. But if you're just a fearful scared person with no health issues or other high risk situations and you want to tell me how I need to carry on with my life as we move forward? You can go fuck yourself.

You own a store and you want to see my vaccination card so I can shop there? You can go fuck yourself, twice.

Look. It's time.  It's time we each own our own health and our family's health. This shit is no joke. It can make you really sick. It makes some people really, really sick. It has killed people who I know personally. But it's time to get the government out of my life. It's time to end the divide between maskers and anti-maskers, vaxxers and anti-vaxxers and to respect each other's choices. It's time for personal responsibility and for people to mind their fucking business otherwise.

Phony White Supremacy - 11/5/2021

 

Happy Birthday, Marines!

Now that MSNBC, CNN, and a host of others (leftist media outlets, you name 'em, they're all in) have deemed voting for a black, immigrant woman (and a Marine!), she being the first black Lieutenant Governor in Virginia history, and voting for a Hispanic Attorney General in Virginia proves that voters there are and support white supremacy, it's time for the rest of us white supremacists to join together. We must vote in more conservative, female, minority, and immigrant candidates everywhere. Because that what white supremacists do!

 

Winsome Sears, first Black person ever elected to be VA Lt Gov.

 

Hispanic Republican Jason Miyares, VA's new Attorney General Elect.

Bereft of popular ideas, that's what these hateful, spiteful, little people do. Losing an argument (or an election)? Point the finger and cry, "Racism! White supremacy! Bigotry!" When the ONLY card in your hand is the racism card, that's the only card you can play. And sadly, that's all they got. The fact they're so uniformly playing the racism, white supremacy card proves some contrary logical explanation for their behavior is NOT true. They've got NOTHING, so racism, white supremacy it is.

 

 

Speaking of bereft of ideas...

Listen Up - 11-3-2021

Listen up leftist Democrats and progressives: This b.s. of pre-judging, stereotyping, categorizing, and labeling everyone who disagrees with you or your radical initiatives and policies as a racist or as a violent radical isn't cutting the mustard. And you moderate Democrats, if there really is such a thing anymore, You need to speak up against the bullshit. I think we're seeing some of that in yesterday's election results, but leading up to Election Day your silence has been deafening. So, listen up. Moving forward, you need to speak up. Because if the radical, progressive left continues to brand concerned parents who want a say in our children's education as terrorists, and if radical progressives want to defund police departments, and you don't speak out against that kind of nonsense, you're in for a really rude awakening in 2022.

I read a lot. And a lot of what I read are books about US History. In book after book I have read about famous historical figures who were slave owners, and about others who opposed slavery. I have read many books about the conquest of the west, which was more a conquest of Native Americans and of Mexico in the southwest. The reality of what took place and how Black and Native Americans were treated is NOT some dark secret that evil white propagandist historians hide from you or your children. It's readily available on a library shelf in every city and town in America.

I would contend NOT that there was not racism toward both red and brown/black skinned people. Surely there was, and anyone who denies that there indeed was is stupid, lying, or both. But I would contend that the underlying motivation for what happened to red and black skinned people was greed. Evil? Yes. Racist? Yes. Greed? Absolutely. I also contend that not all whites were party to it, supported it, or endorsed it. To blame all whites for it, I can't abide with that. And to blame all whites for it more than 150 years AFTER slavery was abolished, it's never going to fly with me.

Listen up. Lemme tell you where my interest in dialoguing about race ends. Finis. Kaput. Done. Done for. As soon as that discussion blankets all white people with generalizations and stereotypes that would absolutely be unacceptable things to say about black, brown, red, or yellow skinned people. And to me that seems to be the basic premise of the controversial Critical Race Theory, this presumption that we need to understand the evils perpetrated by whites and how it has led to unfair advantages that we as whites have enjoyed, and the unfair plight of people of color. I don't see a single fucking solution in it anywhere. It's finger pointing, blaming, and perpetualizing the problems of the past into the future. It fixes nothing, except maybe to satisfy someone who's thinking, "I sure told them motherfuckers."

Listen up. I'm not defending racists. I'm not defending deniers who would claim there was no racism or that there is no racism now. I'm not saying racism isn't an evil to be addressed and treated as what it is: evil. I'm saying stop generalizing and using it as an excuse for every disagreement we have. Not all whites are racists. Not every problem every person of color has has racism at its roots.

Listen up: lemme give you another example of the kind of ridiculousness your race obsessed and divisive leaders are doing that's a big backfire waiting to happen: paying people who enter our country illegally $450,000.00 per person because their families got split up. Oh, and blaming Trump and racist Trump supporters. Just stop it. This is insanity. But you so-called moderate fuckers, you're saying nothing about it. You're too chickenshit scared of the leftist progressives, so you remain quiet while radical judges, lawyers, and progressive leftist leaders peddle this nonsense. When, not if there's backlash, and there sure as hell will be, YOU and YOUR SILENCE will be to blame.

Biden's approval rating is in the toilet. Where it should be.

Listen up. Democrats lost by a surprisingly good margin in VA. It's neck and neck in NJ. In Minneapolis, the ridiculous defund the police initiative went down in flames. Whose fault is that? First, it's the fault of the radicals Democrats have allowed to control their party, their President even. And second, it's the fault of every moderate Democrat who was squeamish about the radical agenda and failed to stand up and say, "These radicals DON'T speak for me." Want to know what you can do different moving forward? How about vocalizing that Senators Manchin and Sinema have the right idea. How about telling your Senator, your Congressperson, and your local Democratic Party organizations that you support Manchin and Sinema and that you want to see more moderate, reasonable policies and hear more reasonable voices in lieu of these radicals. 'Cause, listen up. The shit your party is doing right now, from the puppet in chief, down to the activist in your neighborhood, it ain't working.

Saturday Quick Hitter - 10-09-2021

 

Biden's numbers are in the toilet. We know why. He's a terrible president, a weak leader, and a puppet of far left progressives.

Moderate Democrats are afraid of the far left part of their party.

Independents are unhappy about the direction of our country.

None of this will end well. Not for Biden, me, you, not for anybody. Progressives will stop at nothing to get their way, and breathe fear into the lives of anyone who dares to oppose them, which is how and why moderate Dems have been so effectively neutralized and silenced. President Biden cowers and kowtows to them.

It's a mess and I hope in 2022 moderates and independents will rise up and squash the anti-American, anti-capitalist, progressive, totalitarian racists who now effectively control the Democratic party.

It's bad y'know.

Couple of Thougths on Facebook's Whistleblower - 10-6-2021

The Facebook whistleblower's revelations shouldn't surprise any of us. It's obvious Facebook has continuously engineered and re-engineered the Facebook experience. For none of the reasons the whistleblower felt it necessary to speak out, I was disappointed in how those changes impacted my interactions with friends. Before I delve into that, let me describe, in the simplest terms I can, what Facebook did.

Back in the earlier days of Facebook, our timeline, or 'feed', would present the posts made by all our friends in chronological order. Then for a long time they started showing us 'top stories'; I think that's the way they said it. But with determination and effort, we could still select 'most recent' as our preference for our timelines. I remember again and again having to go back, frustrated about it as hell, and re-select 'most recent'. Facebook's definition of tops stories is probably less what that says it is and more like 'most likely to get users to click on it'. Eventually, if I am not mistaken, the option to see 'most recent' was eliminated altogether.

Something else that happened during this slow transition, and this goes back a number of years, is that the algorithm was also changed to diminish how often we see posts from friends with whom we don't often interact. So if I have an old friend, a school chum, perhaps, and we don't talk or at least rarely talk, the program reduces visibility to each of us of the other's content. This always bothered me. I can still see their content if I go specifically to their timeline, but with 500 or 700+ friends, that became rarer and rarer. So I lost touch with many people who I came to Facebook specifically to stay in touch with.

Facebook didn't do ANY of the above to improve our experience. They did it to increase the number of mouse clicks we make each time we're on. Money for them. They study our behavior, individually and collectively, and continuously tweak the algorithm to put likely mouse clicks into our feed and to remove less likely mouse clicks. So screw my old school chum and the fact that Facebook allowed us to connect and to stay in touch. That may be what I want, but it's not what Facebook finds to be in their own financial best interests.

The content we have shown Facebook to be profitable is the stuff that gets us mad. Political stuff. Social stuff. Controversial stuff. We click on it. You and me. As we do, our timeline adjusts itself away from other content and toward the controversial stuff slowly but surely. And thus we enter into the echo chambers of our own political thought. And sadly, and scary, too, is that this echo chamber is far less affirmation of the good things the politicians and personalities we support are saying and doing, but more often it's the stuff that angers us that those with whom we disagree are saying. And a lot of that kind of content is very caustic, hateful, and spiteful. We become inculcated with animosity to the other side, a natural reaction to being immersed in things that inspire our anger. The Facebook echo chamber specifically engenders division.

As a result of this, I know I am personally guilty of muting people, friends of mine, who are deep within their echo chamber, find these caustic and confrontational positions normalized, and then push them out. I can think of one dear friend from work, and African-American woman, whose posts I took as in essence calling me a racist again and again and again. Regretfully, I defriended her. But it seemed pointless to try and convince her I'm not a racist simply because I disagree with her on US immigration policy. Another friend of mine, this time from my football tailgate group, repeatedly posted articles by Dan Rather and the like that called Trump supporters, which I take to include myself, as stupid. I took it to mean she thinks I'm stupid for supporting Trump. How else was I supposed to interpret that? I muted her. I miss the interactions, but I'm not fucking stupid. I just disagree with you. Joe Biden if the fucking stupid one. There was a guy I know from when I was working. During the 2016 election, he posted that he was "ready to go to jail" over the election. I muted him, too.

Before I tell you why I think all three of the aforementioned friends were so comfortable insulting me, I want to make this perfectly clear: this is not exclusively a problem from the left. The one on the right is just as problematic an echo chamber as is the one on the left. I cringe at some of the garbage that's been normalized that comes from both sides.

That fact we're deep in these click driven echo chambers doesn't make us right about anything, but it sure makes us think we're right. I know speaking for myself, and this is probably true for most of you who are taking the time to read this, I like reading articles that are aligned with my own views and opinions. It's reinforcing. The echo chamber that our clicks, mutes, defriends, unfollows, etc., create is that, but times 1000.

This brings me to the concepts of 'fact checkers' and 'disinformation'. It's all well and good for Facebook to say they're going to ramp up fact checking efforts to reduce disinformation, but I know damned well that whoever they designate the arbiter of truth and accuracy will be someone deep in the left's echo chamber, and as a result their thinking will be highly propagandized, leftist, elitist, and anti-right in almost every way. It's further down a slippery slope, not a fix to the problem.

This mouse click and greed driven echo chamber has been bad for social and political discourse. It has divided families. It has ended friendships. It has created far more problems between people than we even realize.

If Facebook offered two options: 1) See content from ALL of my friends, and 2) See most recent content, rather than tailoring my experience and pushing me into my right wing echo chamber, I'd take it on a heartbeat. Whether you're on the right, or from the left, wouldn't you? Oh, and for the record, I don't trust Facebook to fix this problem. There's more money in divisiveness for them than in letting friends stay in touch, and besides, the arbiters of accuracy and truth they'll employ to do it are ALL going to be from deep within their echo chamber, anyway. It's damned if they do and damned if they don't. Because my two options, 'all friends' and 'most recent' are not going to be anywhere near any option that Facebook will actually consider.

No Mean Tweets 10-2-2021

I have no confidence, as in none, zero, zip, zilch, nada, in President Joe Biden.

 

Lyin' Joe Biden

• I don't believe he's honest. He lied about the 2500 troops in Afghanistan, he's lying about all kinds of stuff. He was a dishonest plagiarizer 35 years ago, he's a liar now.
• I don't believe he's mentally competent.
  
• I don't believe he has the energy the job requires. He's a tired old man.
• I don't believe he projects the image needed for diplomacy in the US's best interests (which I don't believe are his puppet master's interests, anyway).
• I don't believe he's a leader who can get us through a crisis. In the Marines we'd talk about leaders we'd follow anywhere. I wouldn't follow Joe into a convenience store to buy a candy bar.
• I don't like how he's handling issues (well not him, the puppet masters who make him dance and talk): Covid is worse numerically, not better. The Afghanistan withdrawal was a disaster, the border is a mess, the economy is faltering, on and on and on.
• I don't like his advisors, their vision of America is a polar opposite of my own. Under Puppet Biden the US will decline. It's happening now.
  
• I don't believe he gives a damn about me or other middle and upper middle class voters at all, not a rat's ass.

Joe Biden is the worst and weakest President of my lifetime. But hey! No mean tweets.