Category: Uncategorized

Going along with my Sunday’s theme today Mr. Kurt Beathard is featured. He was an assistant football coach at Illinois State University (ISU). In August 2020, he returned from bereavement leave following the death of wife from breast cancer. Then all hell broke loose.

The gist of what happened is summarized in a Chicago Tribune article from 9/5/21:

When he returned, he found a Black Lives Matter poster attached to his door. He took it down and replaced it with his own handwritten poster that said, “All Lives Matter to Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” That poster was subsequently taken down after the head football coach told him to take it down. However, a colleague of Beathard’s shared a picture of the poster he took down. In response, some football players boycotted practice, and a campus wide boycott ensued and a list of demands was created by ISU students. One of the demands was for the department of athletics to publicly support the Black Lives Matter movement.

A few days later, Beathard was fired. He was dismissed on Sept. 2, 2020, by head coach Brock Spack, and the decision to terminate was authorized by then-athletic director Larry Lyons.

Beathard claims he was told he was fired because Spack did not like the direction of the offense. This is strange since Beathard set several records and the team achieved national ranking with his offense in 2014 and 2015 and again in 2018 and 2019.

Mr.Beathard is standing up for himself. He is suing the school’s head football coach and its former athletic director, claiming his First Amendment rights were violated after he replaced a Black Lives Matter poster from his office door with another poster.

Doug Churdar, Beathard’s attorney, maintains that Beathard’s views should have been respected in a public university.

“It’s come to this. If you put the government’s message on your door, you keep your job,” Churdar wrote in a news release. “If you replace it with your own message, you’re fired. That’s exactly what happened.

“There’s only one reason Beathard isn’t offensive coordinator at ISU: he did not toe the party line on BLM.”

So let’s cut to the chase here. The head football coach and the athletic director caved to the demands of the football team.(We won’t practice unless the athletic department backs BLM.) Because Kurt Beathard did not go along with this extortion, he was fired.

Certainly Kurt Beathard is not the only one who suffered because others caved to BLM demands, but Mr. Beathard is one of the few who said, in essence, “this is not right.”

To me this case involving an unknown assistant football coach in a relatively unknown State University in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois is very important. Why? 

I project that the defendants will be under a lot of pressure to settle by widespread entities both in and outside of Illinois. Can you imagine the tsunami of similar suits that will occur if Kurt Beathard wins in court against the bullies who basically say, “Do it my way … or else!”

Me? I am saying a prayer that Mr. Beathard wins big time!

1/2/22

Is it possible that this coming year will indeed be the year that the Supreme Court develops a backbone? Is it possible that 2022 will be the year that our Supreme Court demonstrates that it does have at least a remnant of cajones … no offense intended to Amy Coney Barrett. 

Early in 2021 and late in 2020 when the Court had the opportunity to actually stand for the rule of law, it bailed, and It bailed big time!

Behind closed doors the Chief Justice supposedly angrily warned that if they took up any of the election issues, there would be rioting in the streets. While other Justices were radiating an amber glow to various degrees, Justice Clarence Thomas stood out as a giant among minions.

In February, when the Court decided that a Pennsylvania election dispute was moot, although it didn’t say precisely why, Justice Thomas said, “One wonders what this Court waits for. We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we fail to provide clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave election law behind a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence. Our fellow citizens deserve better, and expect more of us. I respectfully dissent.”

With innumerable things being mandated, the Court has been basically incognito for an entire year. Is it possible that someone has snuck the equivalent of that infamous little blue pill into the bottled water now being used at One First Street, NE, in Washington, DC.? They are actually going to hear a case concerning Biden’s mandates on 1/7/22. Will this be a signal that 2022 might be “the year of the backbone?”

1/1/22

I just read an article published on 11/17/21 in the journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. This piece was co-written by an M.D. (physician) and a J.D.(attorney). The gist of this opinion piece is that unfortunately many hospitals are taking care of Covid patients based on monetary rewards, and not always on what is best for the individual patient. There are a number of alleged “pay-offs” for taking care of Covid patients in certain ways, all of which are not always solely for the patient’s benefit. 

From this article the following is written about remdesivir:

“There are deaths from the government-directed COVID treatments. For remdesivir, studies show that 71–75 percent of patients suffer an adverse effect, and the drug often had to be stopped after five to ten days because of these effects, such as kidney and liver damage, and death. Remdesivir trials during the 2018 West African Ebola outbreak had to be discontinued because death rate exceeded 50%. Yet, in 2020, Anthony Fauci directed that remdesivir was to be the drug hospitals use to treat COVID-19, even when the COVID clinical trials of remdesivir showed similar adverse effects.”

If I were to be hospitalized with Covid, I believe that I would refuse remdesivir, just like I would refuse a ventilator. I have already advised the individual responsible for my medical decision making that under no circumstances, if diagnosed with Covid, would I consent to being put on a ventilator. 

As pointed out in this opinion piece, “in ventilated patients, the death toll is staggering. A National Library of Medicine January 2021 report of 69 studies involving more than 57,000 patients concluded that fatality rates were 45 percent in COVID-19 patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation, increasing to 84 percent in older patients. Attorney Thomas Renz announced at a Truth for Health Foundation Press Conference that CMS data showed that in Texas hospitals, 84.9% percent of all patients died after more than 96 hours on a ventilator.” 

However, dying is not the part that worries me … rather it would be living, living after prolonged being on a ventilator, and my consequent quality of life. A few anecdotal stories about individuals who had spent a significant period of time on a ventilator because of Covid is enough to convince me … No thanks!

12/31/21

Last week I went out to lunch with a friend of mine, and during lunch the name Elon Musk came up. Basically, in essence, we agreed that our opinion of Elon Musk has swung to “more favorable,” and furthermore continues to swing in the even more favorable direction. My buddy, let’s call him, Jim, was especially impressed with Musk’s building Tesla from an idea to a car … basically on his own. Jim had just recently finished a book about the Musk/Tesla project and I am now in line for that book. 

My increasingly positive take on Elon Musk has more to do with his steadily increasing display of common sense, which when combined with backbone is tough to beat. Back many months ago, when the Governor of California was attempting to shut down his Tesla plant, Musk, in so many words, said, “screw you, Gavin.” He has subsequently followed through on his threat to move his company’s headquarters to Texas, and now it’s official: Tesla is now a Texas company. The electric automaker announced the move in a filing with the US Securities Exchange Corporation, and on December 1, 2021, Tesla, Inc. relocated its corporate headquarters to Gigafactory Texas.

From Townhall:

During a recent Babylon Bee interview Elon Musk gave his thoughts on woke-ness. “At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful. It basically gives mean people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue,” Musk concluded.

As a frequent target of the woke crowd, Musk’s thoughts on the issue are well-put. “Generally I think we should be aiming for, like, a positive society and it should be okay to be humorous,” Musk explained. “Wokeness basically wants to make comedy illegal — I mean Chappelle? What the f***. Try to shut down Chappelle? Come on, man, that’s crazy,” he remarked. “Do we want a humorless society that is simply rife with condemnation and hate basically?”

Talking about Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and her unprovoked attack on Musk, he noted that “she struck first” with her Tweet accusing Musk of being a freeloader, to which he responded with a jab, calling Warren “Senator Karen.”

“I’m literally paying the most tax that any individual in history has ever paid this year, and she doesn’t pay taxes basically at all, and her salary is paid for by the taxpayer,” Musk pointed out. “If you could die by irony, she would be dead,” he added.

Now that great comeback to ditsy Pocahontas … “If you could die by irony, she’d be dead.” … may well turn out to be a classic. Likewise when speaking about classic remarks, Musk’s commented on this Babylon Bee interview that he was probably not perverted enough to be on CNN!

12/30/21

As you all are probably aware, I have been and hopefully always will continue to be a fan of the police. However, the video I just viewed has shaken the pillars of my support. The situation captured by the video occurred in a busy New York City restaurant, and I needed to view it more than once, as I was having difficulty believing what I was seeing. The video depicts a cadre of NYC policemen harassing a family, including a tearful young boy who appears to be about five years old.

“Do you have the [vaccination] cards? If you don’t have them you’re going to have to leave,” an officer asks the table.

“Unless you have vaccination cards you have to exit the restaurant. If you leave voluntarily, there won’t be charges pressed against you. Otherwise, you will be arrested for trespassing. This is your only warning,” the officer said into a bullhorn. 

The other patrons in the restaurant weren’t supportive of these Gestapo-like tactics.

“Wow. Scaring a child. Traumatizing a child. Hope you feel good about yourself NYPD. This is disgusting. This is gross. It’s disgraceful,” a woman is heard saying. “You’ve failed yourself NYPD. You’ve failed yourself. Is this what you signed up for? Is this what justice looks like for you? Is this what you dreamed of when you wanted to be a cop?”

“A child crying is funny, right? For you?” she continued

This tweet from Matthew Loop pretty well sums up my response:

“NYPD harass a young boy and mother because they don’t have vaccine cards. Sickening! Meanwhile, real criminals continue to loot, murder, and steal on the streets of New York.”

Consider the irony here … crime in New York is raging out of control with murders up 47 percent, and a considerable number of “New York City’s finest” are harassing innocent people asking them to show their proper I.D. Remember, this is what Hitler’s Gestapo did!

Matthew Loop’s tweet concludes:

“The ‘just following orders’ excuse won’t save you cowards from justice.”

Recall the Gestapo were also just following orders!

Indeed a sad day for NYC, the U.S., and especially for police!

12/29/21

What do the following companies have in common?

Charles Schwab, 

Jacobs, 

McKesson Corp., 

CBRE Group, 

Core-Mark International, 

Oracle, 

Tesla, 

Hewlett-Packard.

If you guessed that they are all Fortune 500 companies, you would be half right, as they are Fortune 500 companies have relocated to Texas from California in the last six years.

From Blaze Media:

Add yet another … Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, known for TV shows such as “Hell’s Kitchen” and for operating high-class restaurants worthy of coveted Michelin stars, is moving his North American restaurant operations from Los Angeles to Las Colinas, a suburb in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area.

But why move to Dallas? Company CEO Norman Abdallah pointed to tax policies — and especially the financial benefits of operating from Texas — as encouraging the move.

The more obvious question to ask the multiple companies still in California … “Why stay?” Many companies have figured it out, and it’s only getting worse for California.

The Hoover Institute at Stanford University released a report in August finding that 74 companies had relocated out of California during the first six months of 2021. By comparison, only 62 companies moved their headquarters to California in all of 2020.

And what makes the situation even worse is that the nincompoops who are in charge in Sacramento are busy covering their eyes, and their ears, but not their mouths … recall Lorena Gonzales (D-SD) who tweeted “F**k Elon Musk” when Musk threatened to move Tesla to Texas.

12/28/21

Believe it or not, I had the following written and in the queue ready to go … but was beaten to the punch so to speak, by right handed left-handed Phil Michelson, the golfer.

First what was written a day ago and stuck in my queue.

From the Epoch Times:

“A high immunity among South Africans that stems primarily from prior infection is likely a contributing factor to the lower hospitalization rate the country has recorded amid the surge in COVID-19 cases after the Omicronvariant.

“In the first 31 days of the current wave, 164,911 cases were recorded, but just 3,432 patients required hospital care, and 194 died. In comparison, during the same time period of the last wave, 38,577 cases were recorded, with 10,088 requiring hospital care and 668 dying.

‘We believe that the evolution of cell-mediated immunity from prior natural infection and vaccination is resulting in the uncoupling of the high case rates seen with the Omicron variant and the rates of severe disease,’ South African researchers said in one of the new studies, a preprint done with funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.”

That brings up an interesting question. If the Omicron variant is producing mainly mild disease would it not make sense for some individuals to “purposefully” get that variant? This way after catching that mild variant, they thus could possibly be immune from further Covid infection. Actually this could even be a possible very reasonable route for those unvaccinated among us. For those who actually read my latest book, The Keneally Chronicles, you will recall that a small town in the American Southwest opted to have its citizens purposely be exposed to Covid. The reason there was mainly economic as the town was dying economically, and the mayor suggested that the populace attain herd immunity on purpose. Today in real life, perhaps a similar idea, but with a twist … namely the Omicron variant.

However, before publication of the above blog … I was beaten to the punch by a Phil Michelson tweet:

“Serious question since I’m not a dr. If omicron is contagious but not deadly(25,000 cases in Africa with no deaths) why try and control it? Why not let it go and let people get it and develop immunity? Especially for those who won’t get vaccinated? Pls no hate, I’m just curious.”

FYI, an interesting fact for those who are unaware. Phil Michelson is a professional golfer who is and has always been right-handed. He learned to swing a golf club by standing directly across from his right-handed father, and mimicking his motions in a mirror image fashion, and thus he swings a golf club left-handed.

12/27/21

As today is Sunday my blog will focus on someone we can and should all admire.

On 12/5/21 Deshawn Presley was shopping at a Kroger grocery store in Butler County, Ohio. He was with his 1-year-old daughter when he struck up a conversation with 87 year old Pat Goins. When the two went into separate checkout lines, it happened.

From Fox News:

“I heard her screaming and yelling … it was the yell that I need help,” Pressley said. “And I just turned around and did what I needed to do as a citizen.”

He chased the purse-snatcher out of the store in Lemon Township and into the parking lot. Security footage shows Pressley taking down the suspect in the parking lot and making a citizen’s arrest.

(I reviewed the video … and let’s just say that there was nothing genteel and polite about his takedown of the purse snatcher.)

“He was running and looking back, running and looking back, and I was like ‘yeah, I’m on you’re a–,” Pressley said.

Pressley also said that his grandma, who raised him after his mother died, had instilled in him the values to help others. “She did very good by me,” he said. “It was good that she taught me what she taught me, and I’m thankful for her.”

For his heroic efforts, Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones presented Pressley with the Citizen’s Award on 12/16/21. Pressley was also reunited with Pat Goins, the woman whose purse was snatched.

“I’m glad that he received this honor because he’s my hero,” Pat Goins told FOX19 Cincinnati.

For the record Deshawn Pressley is black and Pat Goins is white. Also for the record, Deshawn Pressley’s daughter has much to be proud about as her dad is indeed an American hero.

12/26/21

www.californiacontrarian.com

I just came across an interesting observational study that was carried out in two nursing homes in Yepes, Toledo, (Spain). Before I summarize the results of this study, let me point out that it was published initially on line in January, 2021, and then in April, 2021 in a medical journal.

(Pulm Pharmacol Ther. 2021 Apr; 67: 101989.

Published online 2021 Jan 16. doi: 10.1016/j.pupt.2021.101989)

Note that the online publication was about one year ago!

[For those of you who are interested in reading the study in its entirety, here is the reference:

(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7833340/#!po=34.9057)

I realize that most of you are saying something like, “no way am I going to read or much less understand a lot of medical mumbo-jumbo, so just cut to the chase.” However, after I relate the results of this study to you, I predict that many of you will find yourself clicking on and then at least skimming this surprisingly well done observational study.

I want to emphasize that the authors point out that “this study has the limitations of all observational studies. Hypotheses inferred by observational studies must be subsequently confirmed by randomized controlled clinical trials that verify the causality of a certain effect. …

Therefore, randomized controlled trials and observational approaches are complementary, and not interchangeable.”

This spiel about randomized controlled trials sounds a lot like what Dr. Fauci has said many times. I find it interesting that although I read the complete article on PMC (US National Library of Medicine;National Institutes of Health), I do not think that there has been any randomized controlled trials to confirm this interesting and remarkably inexpensive treatment for COVID-19. To that I will merely say, “Hmmm!”

As background the authors point out that the pandemic began in Toledo at the beginning of March(2020) and increased rapidly in intensity in the following weeks. They emphasize that because of the gravity of the situation in Spain, many hospitals collapsed and had to restructure their Medical Services and Intensive Care Units (ICU) to facilitate the large volume of patients. Because of the dire medical situation in Spain, the physicians in these two relatively small rural nursing homes had to basically fend for themselves, and so they used basic, inexpensive therapies in a simple reproducible laddered protocol that depended on the severity of symptoms.

The basic initial treatment consisted of:

Antihistamines every 12 h, Azithromycin 500 mg orally every 24 h for 3 days to 6days depending on the response, acetaminophen 650 mg/6–8 h if there was pain or fever, and nasal washing and gargling with sodium bicarbonate water (half a glass of warm water with half a teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate).

If the symptoms increased in severity, additional antibiotics and prednisone were used.

The study population includes 84 elderly residents and 64 employees located in two separate nursing homes.

The results:

“All of our patients evolved satisfactorily and were recovered at the beginning of June (2020). No adverse effects were recorded in any patient and no one required hospital admission. At the end of June, 100% of the residents and almost half of the workers had positive serology for COVID-19, most of them with past infection.

After starting our treatment protocol we observed a mortality rate of 0%. The comparator retirement homes (in Albacete with 1084 patients),had a mortality rate of 28%.”

Wow! Incredible! Holy Toledo!

(I told you that you might well want to look at the entire study, if nothing else to insure that I am telling the truth, the whole, truth, and nothing but the truth.)

From my perspective, a few simple questions:

Why didn’t the NIH do a follow-up double blind controlled study?

Why weren’t the results of this study publicized?

Were the encouraging results of this small observational study purposely hidden from the general public? 

And if so … Why? 

Hmmm!

12/24/

From the Wall Street Journal:

“‘Follow the science’ has been the battle cry of lockdown supporters since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Yet before March 2020, the mainstream scientific community, including the World Health Organization, strongly opposed lockdowns and similar measures against infectious disease.

That judgment came from historical analysis of pandemics and an awareness that societywide restrictions have severe socioeconomic costs and almost entirely speculative benefits. Our pandemic response, premised on lockdowns and closely related “non-pharmaceutical interventions,” or NPIs, represented an unprecedented and unjustified shift in scientific opinion from where it stood a few months before the discovery of Covid-19.

In March 2019, the WHO team declared that large-scale home quarantine was ‘not recommended because there is no obvious rationale for this measure.’

A September 2019 report from Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security reached a similar conclusion: “In the context of a high-impact respiratory pathogen, quarantine may be the least likely NPI to be effective in controlling the spread due to high transmissibility.” This was especially true of a fast-spreading airborne virus, such as the then-undiscovered SARS-CoV-2.

Even at the outset of Covid-19, the unwisdom of lockdowns guided mainstream epidemiology. When the Wuhan region of China imposed harsh restrictions on Jan. 23, 2020, Anthony Fauci questioned the move. ‘That’s something that I don’t think we could possibly do in the United States, I can’t imagine shutting down New York or Los Angeles,’ Dr. Fauci told CNN. He likely had the scientific literature in mind when he advised that ‘historically, when you shut things down, it doesn’t have a major effect.’”

As we all are aware, lockdowns were mandated, and as with most mandates, lockdowns have not worked. Why now after almost two years of Covid-hysteria are we still flirting with and threatening a further “lockdown strategy?” Is it possible that a CYA strategy is in play? Can anyone imagine Public Health officials coming out and now saying … “Oops, sorry. I guess we made a minor mistake with our lockdown advice. Although this strategy ended up ruining the lives of millions, theoretically it probably saved the lives of many. Actually way back, we recommended lockdowns because … because we didn’t know what else to do, and certainly we just had to do something!”

‘Having to do something without knowing the efficacy of that something,’ naturally leads me to the masking of school children. OMG! To me this seems like a blindfolded man playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey … total arbitrary randomness. Evidence? Science?  … or perhaps the ultimate CYA!

For instance:

The state of Michigan released data last week that show schools with mask mandates have “similar” COVID-19 case rates to those not requiring face coverings.

The state published the “Michigan COVID Response Data and Modeling Update” on Dec. 14. The analysis examined COVID-19 data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the Michigan Disease Surveillance System as recently as Dec. 3, of school students ages 5-18.

The report stated, “Case rates in 5–18-year-olds have become more similar across mask rule types.”

The latest reporting actually shows that schools with “few/no mask rules” had fewer 7-day average cases per 100,000 than schools where masks are required or schools with “partial mask rules.”

Despite the transmission results, health officials noted, “It remains important to mask up in indoor settings (schools and otherwise) to prevent transmission.” … This appears to be another example of CYA!  Or perhaps it is that same blind folded man and the same donkey!

What about mask mandates in general? From different researchers:

Researchers from the University of Louisville examined COVID-19 case growth and mask use in the United States, comparing states with mask mandates to states without, and found that “mask mandates and use likely did not affect COVID-19 case growth.”

“For our study, we wanted to determine if effects of mask mandates and use were observable in the general population,” Dr. Damian Guerra, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Louisville, said. “Essentially, did the theory of mask effectiveness hold up on a population-wide level?”

The results contradict the popular belief that mask mandates effectively reduce the spread of COVID-19.

“It appears that mandates and typical mask use among the public have no substantial impact on COVID-19 growth,” Guerra said. “Early in the pandemic (Summer 2020), there was an association between lower infection rates and mask mandates and use. However, this association disappeared when transmission levels rose despite increased mask use in the Fall and Winter.”

When are we going to stop this CYA nonsense and actually take the blindfold off?

12/23/21

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