Month: November 2019

What do the following have in common?

 #1. An older gramma confined to bed suffering from fever,  joint and muscle pain, headache, and a rash.

#2. A young mother of three young kids, all under the age of five, who is confined to bed with symptoms of fever, rash, and joint pain.

#3. A young severely disabled infant with microcephaly.

All of the above noted individuals live in Honduras, and they all have separate medical issues . . . all of which are related to mosquitos. #1 has dengue fever, and this is not her first episode. Unfortunately there are four different serotypes, and so an individual can get dengue fever more than once, and a recurrent bout is often more severe. Hopefully this recurrent episode will not turn into deadly Dengue hemorrhagic fever with its internal bleeding and liver damage. #2 has Chikungunya, which is a self-limited viral infection spread by mosquitos. She has been in bed and unable to care for her children now for six days. Fortunately she appears to have turned the corner, although it is likely that her joint pains will persist for many months. The only good thing with Chikungunya is that one can only get it once, as there is only one serotype of the causal virus. #3 is an unfortunate baby whose mother had a Zika infection while she was pregnant. This child will probably never walk or talk, and will eventually die in this same orphanage which rescued him after his birth mother abandoned him.
At present Dengue is near endemic in some areas of Honduras. The Dengue virus is transmitted by female mosquitoes mainly of the species Aedes aegypti and, to a lesser extent, Ae. albopictus. This mosquito also transmits Chikungunya, Yellow Fever, and  Zika infection. This same mosquito also plays a critical role in the incidence and the transmission of malaria, which is more potentially lethal than either Dengue or Chikungunya. As best I can tell there is little or no malaria in Honduras, otherwise I am sure there would be a #4.
A recent Wall Street Journal article estimated that worldwide a child dies from malaria every two minutes!! That equates to over a quarter million children dying from malaria each year! Over the last fifty or so years since DDT was banned, that adds up to a lot of people dying of malaria. Some estimate that Rachel Carson and her 1962 book, Silent Spring, have been responsible for more deaths than Hitler.
The deaths from malaria are horrific, but there is also an enormous amount of suffering not only from malaria, but also from Dengue, Zika, and Chikungunya. All of these diseases require the mosquito, specifically the female mosquito, which is a critical part of the transmission and spread of these diseases. 
In a perfect world, the answer would be to get rid of the mosquito! In the past some pesticides proved to be successful in decreasing the population of mosquitos, and subsequently there was a decrease in the incidence of malaria. Unfortunately, especially for all of the dead malaria children, pesticides, specifically DDT, were banned about fifty years ago largely because of the arguments of environmentalists. Giving environmentalists the benefit of the doubt and especially with the increased thickness of some bird’s egg shells, it is probably not totally reasonable to blame them for the yearly quarter million children who die from malaria, in part because there is no DDT! Also, in a non-perfect world, it is probably not totally reasonable to blame them for the daily suffering of thousands of #1s, #2s, and #3s. 
Luckily, according to the same Wall Street Journal article, there is a new front on the war against the mosquito. Target Malaria is a Gates Foundation-supported research effort to develop genetically modified sterile female mosquitos. Target Malaria recently conducted a carefully controlled experimental release of these sterile mosquitos  in Burkina Faso following years of research and successful releases in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Wow it sounds like there is hope. Oops, apparently there is environmental “activist opposition promoted in recent years by United Nations agencies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, as well as by European governments, and European Union-funded nongovernmental organizations.” I do not pretend to understand the staunch opposition to relieving the suffering caused by these mosquito illnesses.

In a perfect world, perhaps we could require at least ten different members of each of these activist organizations to spend six to twelve months each year in Africa or in Latin America. Hopefully a fair number of them would contract malaria, Dengue, or Chikungunya, or in a perfect world, each would contract all three of these mosquito illnesses. I do not wish for them to die like the malaria children, but rather I would want them to report back after they had walked in African or Latin American shoes!

This morning after getting gas at 8:30 a.m., my wife went into Von’s, a local grocery store, to buy some milk. While looking at some leftover Halloween markdowns adjacent to the front door of the store, two young men, probably in their twenties, brushed past her and out of the store. Each of them had a significant amount of merchandise in those carry-in-your-hand store baskets that each were carrying. She saw steaks, shrimp, beer and toilet paper in one of these baskets. (They apparently were not stealing so that their small children would not starve!) The 40-something manager of the store yelled for them to stop, but to no avail. 
My wife asked, “Is what I just witnessed, brazen shoplifting, an unusual thing? She was told, “No, it happens three to four times every day.” When she then asked if a security guard would help, she was politely told by the store manager that security guards, who are usually in their 50s and 60s are unarmed and are unable to stop these younger and stronger young men. “What’s next? Get their license plate number, and call the police?”“Actually, we do not call the police anymore, and all of these shoplifters know it. That is why they are so bold!” replied the store manager.“You don’t call the police! Why?”His terse answer, “Proposition 47, and it’s unforeseen consequences!”
From the National Review:
California’s Proposition 47 downgraded a variety of “non-serious, nonviolent crimes” that had previously been considered felonies to misdemeanors. These include shoplifting, grand theft, receiving stolen property, forgery, fraud, and writing bad checks. As long as the total value of the stolen property is under $950, only a ghost of an offense has occurred. A thief may now steal something under that limit on a daily basis and it will never rise to felony status.

In the event that a perpetrator is pursued and apprehended, the consequence can be a small fine or a brief stay in jail, In reality, these repercussions are rare. In addition, DNA samples aren’t collected from misdemeanor offenders. Thus the DNA database has shrunk, making it more difficult for law-enforcement agencies to solve cold cases, including those involving rape and murder.

For law enforcement, however, there is little incentive to chase down low-level criminals. Even if the person is escorted to the station, odds are great he’ll be back on the street in an hour or so.

The underlying premise of Proposition 47 was to free up funds so the state could focus on violent and serious offenders. Savings would be diverted to school-based prevention and support programs, victim services, and mental-health and drug treatment. Therefore petty thieves, who might be drug addicts, would avoid costly and ultimately detrimental incarceration. The referendum had the support of California Democratic party and the American Civil Liberties Union, and the state’s voters passed it into law in 2014 . . . repeat “ had the support of California Democratic party and the American Civil Liberties Union.”                                    
And: “State voters passed it into law.” ( Another example of basically how dumb California voters are! To the typical California voter if anyone mentions the possibility of “unforeseen consequences,” it’s like they are speaking a foreign language . . . any foreign language except Spanish, that is!)

What about that? Do you think that there are any unforeseen consequences to Prop 47? Duh!! Actually the “unforeseen consequences,” are actually foreseen consequences, and they have been a disaster! 

Again from National Review  – “Outrage in these circumstances is apolitical. A liberal Berkeley student studying in a café whose laptop is swiped from a table feels just as violated as the right-leaning visitor to Los Angeles whose luggage is stolen. A struggling small-business owner wonders how long he can withstand the damage done by constant pilfering.” Bike theft . . . epidemic! Package theft . . . epidemic! Theft of anything valued at less than $950 . . . epidemic!

Basically what Prop 47 has done lowered the standards that we who live here have to accept. Personally, I am sick of these liberal, “feel good” Democrat-backed policies like Proposition 47! 

But more importantly: Will California voters ever become smarter? . . . Probably not in my lifetime, unless a lightbulb goes on in the brains of a lot of its citizens as their bikes and cars valued at less than $950 are increasingly stolen with impunity.i

A few weeks ago, it was deja-vu. I thought, “I have heard this song before.” It was when Nancy Pelosi was “concerned“ about the mental health of President Trump, after she had instigated an argument with the President while in the Oval Office. She was arguing about something that was completely different than what the meeting was supposed to be about! This sounded eerily similar to this past May 22, when she did the same instigating before walking out of another Oval Office meeting. She also expressed concern about President Trump at that time . . . a few weeks ago was an instant replay as her lapdog, Chuck Schumer, walked out with her both times. Perhaps Chuckie had also heard the song before. 
Anyway that got me thinking about the present Democrat’s list of candidates and deja-vu. There is a serious concern of those in the know about their chances of success with the uber progressive leading candidate, Elizabeth Warren. Warren’s lead is eerily similar to Sanders’ lead back in 2016. At that time those in the know, notably the DNC, went out of its way to make sure that Sanders did not get the nomination. The question is not if, but when, will those in the know pull the plug on Warren.

At some point they will  realize that Warren is too far left to win over Trump, and those in the know will be forced to assert their authority. They will have to get someone closer to the center in order to win, and so the question at this time is who will those in the know finagle into a front runner spot. This process has already started with the names of some moderates being floated out there to see if there is any hint of a bite – namely Senator Sherrod Brown, Michael Bloomberg, John Kerry, Eric Holder, and yes, even Hillary! This noise will eventually get louder if Biden continues to struggle, and at some point those in the know will be forced to push some moderate candidate into the forefront.
The main question in my mind is whether or not the progressive Democrats will react to this upcoming theft in 2020 like they did in 2016. At that time they felt like they were cheated . . . they were! Because of the actions of those in the know, Hillary got the nomination, and many of the progressives stayed home when it came to voting in November. One can only hope for deja-vu!

I watched a lot of the World Series that just finished, and it was exciting. The camera angles, the replays, and the statistics made the games all the more interesting. At some point during the Series, it dawned on me that perhaps baseball is the only sport in which being successful 1/3 of the time is considered an outstanding achievement. For those of you who are not baseball fans – if a player gets a base-hit one time out of three at bats, his batting average is .333, and he is considered to be very proficient at hitting. However, in football, if a quarterback completes only 1/3 of his passes, he is judged as a sub-proficient quarterback, and in all likelihood will soon be on the bench. Likewise, if a tennis player gets only 1/3 of his serves in, he needs a lot of work on his serve to be judged as proficient. If no improvement, he will not be winning much of anything!  Could it be that batting average in our national past-time, baseball, has clouded our judgement in other areas, such that being proficient 33% of the time is okay? This long lead-in is a segue to the recent results of the “Nation’s Report Card,” which are the results from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). The results assess the progress of students nationwide every two years. This years results were obtained from testing mostly about 300,000 fourth-graders and just short of 300,000 eight-graders, mainly in math and reading. The students that were tested attended both public and Catholic schools nationwide. Children from both large city public schools as well as smaller urban and rural area schools were included in the test group. The results nationwide as well as the results for various sub-groups were okay if you compare them to baseball batting averages, but woeful if you compare them to quarterbacks’ completion percentages. For math, as a nation, the percent of students who were “at or above NAEP proficient“ was 34% in eighth-grade. For eighth-grade reading the percent that tested “at or above NAEP proficient” was also 34%! Over the past decade there has been no significant improvement in either math or reading performance, and in fact, nationwide the average eighth-grade reading score has declined three points compared to two years ago!  Help!

Even more depressing, the percent NAEP-“at or above proficient” for twelfth-graders nationwide decreased to 25% in math! ( the twelfth-grade reading proficiency was about the same as in eighth-grade at 37%.). Help! Even more astonishing, the “at or above proficiency” for eighth-grade students was 18% for US History (12% for twelfth-grade) and 23% for eighth grade Civics (24% for twelfth-grade). In a few years these uneducated students will be eligible to vote! Yikes! HELP!
Is this the best we can do as a nation? 
Many years ago, the Beatles sang, “Help, we need somebody. Help, not just anybody.”
Perhaps, we should pay more attention to these Beatles lyrics, and go back to the drawing-board for elementary & middle school education. (Start over from scratch?) “At or above proficient” with regards to the education of our children should not be judged the same as baseball batting averages!

Getting on to northbound I-15 at Mission Gorge Road in San Diego between 7:45 and 8:15 a.m. on weekdays is a nightmare. The backup to get on the on-ramp is usually about a half-mile long with, of course, no separate way to get onto the carpool lane without waiting in the long line. Typically there are close to five-hundred cars lined up in two lanes, spewing car-exhaust fumes into the air for close to twenty minutes before getting onto the I-15 freeway. This is reality. I know as I have been there in the line.So of course what does the city council do? They approve close to 1000 new apartments to be constructed on Mission Gorge Road (MGR) approximately a half-mile east from the end of the present wait line to get onto I-15. Add in an additional at least 500 more cars each morning that will be waiting in line to get onto the same now backed up on-ramp. Does anyone think that any member of our city council has to use MGR? Dollars to doughnuts, none of them ever use MGR to get to work, and in all likelihood none of them have used Mission Gorge Road in the past few years, but they know best! I do not need to use MGR to get to work in the morning, so I am not NIMBY on this issue, but guaranteed the traffic on MGR will be even more of a nightmare in the not too distant future!

In the same vein, the same city council have recently okayed new apartment construction within walking distance of our rapid transit system (the Trolley). The problem here is that they waived the standard requirement of on-site parking accommodations for these new apartments. Because they were to be built within walking distance from the Trolley, they assumed that none of these new tenants would have cars! Once these new tenants begin to take up all of the local street parking spaces, it will be too late. Oops! The reality is that many of these new apartments dwellers will have at least one car per apartment, and if they actually try to use the rapid transit to get to work, they will quickly get dis-enamored. Odds are that none of the know-it-all members of the city council live in the same neighborhood as these new apartments, but they know best!

This “I know what is best for you” philosophy is not restricted to members of the San Diego city council. In fact this attitude is pervasive in California. Those members of the state legislature who passed this state’s exorbitant recent gas tax, in all likelihood do not need to buy gas when they are in Sacramento, and I would bet that they get some sort of “transportation allowance.” They do not have to struggle to pay the state’s inflated gas prices, but they know best!

Likewise how many environmentalists live where the recent conflagrations have destroyed communities? How many of those who adamantly argued against thinning the dead trees and underbrush actually have suffered a live changing disaster because of these deadly fires? My guess . . . very few, if any! However, they have convinced the state legislators that they know best!

I could go on and on about the “we know best” people who are running California, but I am at my word limit for this piece. 
BTW: Does anybody think that it is just a coincidence that the San Diego City Council, the vast majority of California’s state legislators, and the environmentalists of California are all Democrats?