Month: April 2021

Stacey, come on! Everyone knows that your hullabaloo over Georgia’s voting law is really about voter IDs. Likewise everyone knows that the brouhaha is really about people voting who should not be voting. Stacey, even you, really know that people of color are just as able as anyone else to get a picture ID. There is nothing racist about this law. if everyone in Mexico needs a government issued picture ID to vote, surely everyone in the US could and should be able to do likewise.(FYI, Stacy, in Mexico, the ID that is needed to vote, in addition to having a picture on it also has a thumbprint on the laminated ID.)

By this time, Stacey, I am assuming that you are retorting, “So what’s the big deal if someone votes who shouldn’t? What’s one measly vote?Needing an ID to vote is disenfranchising someone who cannot get the ID, and it is obviously racial.”

Well, Stacey, here’s the deal. Let’s assume that I vote for candidate X, and someone who is dead or someone who is not a citizen “casts a vote” for candidate Y. Similarly, I vote for candidate X and an enterprising individual kindly fills out a ballot and votes for candidate Y on behalf of someone who has Alzheimer’s or who is strung-out on drugs. In both of these situations my vote for X has been cancelled out by someone whose vote for Y is really not supposed to count.

Let’s be clear here, Stacey. You are an educated lawyer and so you certainly understand that if my vote was cancelled, because of there being no voter ID, I could take legal action. The fact that my legal vote was cancelled by a non-legal vote gives me standing, and with standing I can sue.

My suggestion would be that some enterprising lawyer, in a state that does not have a voter ID law, sue on behalf of someone whose vote was cancelled by an illegal vote.

It’s all about standing, Stacey.

Today another mask story . . . A truly frightening mask story. 

Maggie Williams — competing in an 800-meter run last week for Summit High School in Bend, Oregon — collapsed at the finish line.

Now she did not just collapse because of exhaustion, but rather she was unresponsive according to witnesses. Her coach Dave Turnbull said Williams, with her mask on, suffered “complete oxygen debt,” the Oregonian reported, adding that she was unresponsive after her fall.

“I’ve been doing this for 31 years, I’ve never seen anybody basically lose consciousness,” Turnbull told the paper. “I’ve never seen that in the way it happened with Maggie.”

Maybe she was out of shape and shouldn’t have been running in the first place. Err . . .  No.

“She just ran a 2:11 in Arizona without a mask on,” Turnbull told the station in regard to Williams. “Three seconds faster from my experience isn’t going to cause a kid to hit the track. When you’re in a mask, it certainly does.”

But this dangerous insanity is not restricted to Oregon.

Earlier this month, a New Hampshire track coach said he was fired after refusing to make his athletes wear face masks during competitions as recommended by the state athletic association.

Bradley Keyes called the mask requirement “senseless, irrational, cowardice bulls**t” in a letter to Pembroke Academy’s athletic director.

The Mayo Clinic indicated that the highest-risk activities for spreading COVID-19 involve unmasked people in close contact for long periods of time, the Bulletin noted.

Note to all of you “mask zealots,” track meets are outdoors, there is minuscule close contact, and races do not last for long periods of time! Hmmm!

To me it continues to be amazing how wrong some of the dictums that we have been forced to follow have been. For example:

• Continued lockdowns and mandatory mask requirements:

        Texas and Florida are continuing to report fewer new cases of the Chinese coronavirus per capita than blue states such as Michigan,  Pennsylvania, and New York, according to Centers for Disease         Control and Prevention (CDC) data.

        Texas and Florida, two red states which remain open for business          and do not have statewide mask mandates, are continuing to fare         just as well, if not better, than pro-lockdown blue states, which  continue to operate under health and business restrictions. Hmmm!

  – Masks

       I still am still befuddled on masks. If masks were so good, how come two and even three masks are becoming increasingly in vogue. Even President Biden was recently seen wearing two masks . . . and he has been vaccinated. Hmmm!

• Close all the gyms. Even though the incidence of Covid being spread inside a gym is minuscule. Why?  The following is from an abstract in the Journal of Clinlcal an Experimental Medicine: “The practice of physical exercises acts as a modulator of the immune system. During and after physical exercise, pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines are released, lymphocyte circulation increases, as well as cell recruitment. Such practice has an effect on the lower incidence, intensity of symptoms and mortality in viral infections observed in people who practice physical activity regularly.” Hmmm!        

• Here in California . . . “Close all beaches!”  “Close all parks!” In fact “those who know best” were mandating yellow crime seen tape be strung across entrances to both beaches and parks. From the beginning, anyone with an ounce of common sense knew that walking around a park by oneself could be nothing but good for that individual. Now everyone is aware that being outside is the very safest place to be. Hmmm!
• Always wipe everything down over and over.                     HealthDayNews — There is a low risk for surface transmission of the new coronavirus and continuously disinfecting surfaces may do more harm than good, according to updated U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Airborne transmission of the virus is the major threat. “In most situations, cleaning surfaces using soap or detergent, and not disinfecting, is enough to reduce the already low risk of virus transmission through surfaces,” Hill said. “Disinfecting surfaces is typically not necessary, unless a sick person or someone positive for COVID-19 has been in the home within the last 24 hours.” When cleaning surfaces, Hill advised people to focus on high-contact areas such as doorknobs and light switches, CNN reported. ….  Hmmm!

Many US cities are having difficulty keeping police officers.

Is this a surprise after all the anti-police rhetoric lately? … Duh!

From the Blaze:

Philadelphia:

The Philadelphia Police Department currently has 268 vacancies and is expecting even more shortages in the near future.

“From Jan. 1 through Apr 22, 79 Philadelphia officers have been accepted into the city’s Deferred Retirement Option Program, meaning they intend to retire within four years, according to Mayor Jim Kenney’s office,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. “During the same time period last year, just 13 officers had been accepted into the program, the office said.”

“It’s the perfect storm. We are anticipating that the department is going to be understaffed by several hundred members, because hundreds of guys are either retiring or taking other jobs and leaving the department,” Mike Neilon, spokesperson for the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police, told the newspaper.

New Jersey:

New Jersey is facing a “recruiting crisis,” according to Pat Colligan, president of the New Jersey State Policemen’s Benevolent Association.

Col. Patrick Callahan, the acting superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said the state’s largest police agency received a “historically low” number of applications this year. In some years, the New Jersey State Police would usually receive between 15,000 to 20,000 applications – this year they only received 2,023 qualified applicants as of 4/22,21 according to NJ.com.

Baltimore:

The Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3 said there were “recruitment and retention issues,” which prompted the “topic of closing police district(s).”

“Our Patrol numbers are now below 700 officers which is about 300-400 below what is needed,” the Baltimore FOP said, according to WBFF-TV. “This creates huge safety issues for our officers and for the citizens of Baltimore.”

Los Angeles:

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) is proposing to increase the budget of the Los Angeles Police Department amid skyrocketing violent crime and increased vacancies within the department.

From Fox News:

Louisville:

Statistics provided by LMPD on Tuesday show the department has hired 26 new members so far this year, while 43 have left. The 1,069-person department falls 255 people short of its “authorized strength” of 1,324 — the number of personnel it is authorized to employ, statistics show.

Meanwhile as of 4/25/21 there had been 84% more non-fatal shootings so far this year, with 201, compared to the 109 instances reported during the same time in 2020, LMPD statistics show. There were 56 murders reported as of Sunday — a 75% increase from the 32 reported by April 25, 2020.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Minneapolis:

In Minneapolis, about 40 officers retired last year, and another 120 took leaves of absence. That’s nearly 20% of a police department with about 840 officers in the city. Police officials are waiting to see whether the leaves of absences in the Minnesota city become retirements.

Chicago:

In Chicago, 560 officers retired in 2020 in a police department that had about 13,100 sworn officers as of March, records show. That’s about 15% more cops retiring than during the previous year, when the number of retirements rose by nearly 30%.

John Catanzara, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police union, said he can’t see how the police department’s recruiting can keep pace with the retirements and pointed to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s latest budget, which eliminated 614 police vacancies.

“They have just made policing in this city and state near-impossible,” the police union boss said. “They have given control to the criminals.”

And from FreedomWire the coup de grâce:

New York:

In New York City, the nation’s largest metropolitan area, cops are retiring from/quitting the NYPD at alarming rates following last summer’s anti-policing riots, which have continued unabated this year.

The New York Post reported, “More than 5,300 NYPD uniformed officers retired or put in their papers to leave in 2020 — a 75 percent spike from the year before, department data show.

The exodus — amid the pandemic, anti-cop hostility, riots, and a skyrocketing number of NYC shootings — saw 2,600 officers say goodbye to the job and another 2,746 file for retirement, a combined 5,346.

In 2019, the NYPD had 1,509 uniformed officers leave and 1,544 file for retirement, for a total of 3,053.

The departures and planned departures of 5,300 officers represents about 15 percent of the force. Already, as of April 5, the NYPD headcount of uniformed officers has dropped to 34,974 from 36,900 in 2019.

All of these cities and many more are losing cops. Is it going to be a long deadly summer this year? … “Duh!”

Single moms . . . good? bad? indifferent?

Single moms . . . increasing incidence? decreasing incidence? the same ?

According to the Census Bureau, the number of children living with two parents has dropped since 1968, while the percentage living with their mother only, has doubled.

“About 7.6 million (11%) children lived with their mother only in 1968 compared to 15.3 million (21%) in 2020,” the Bureau found.

So what ?

Brad Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies and the director of the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project, warned that the trend could spell disaster if not reversed.

He cited an essay he wrote for Slate, in which he pointed out that “boys raised in a single-parent household were more than twice as likely to be incarcerated, compared with boys raised in an intact, married home, even after controlling for differences in parental income, education, race, and ethnicity.”

“Of course, many kids raised by single moms do just fine,” Wilcox added. “I was raised by a single mom.”

“This is bad news because kids raised by single mothers are markedly more likely to grow up poor, fail in school, be depressed, and end up incarcerated,” Wilcox tweeted. 

Again from the Census Bureau: 

“Monitoring these trends is important because children’s living arrangements can have implications for children’s outcomes, such as academic achievements, internalizing problems (e.g., depression and anxiety), and externalizing problems (e.g., anger and aggression).”

But why should this be the case?

Is there any similarities in other animal species?

I recently read an article that started off by describing a past problem at Pilanesberg National Park in South Africa. It was written by a Will Alexander, of whom I am not familiar, but from the photo adjacent to his article, he is a black African American.

Pilanesberg National Park, or Pilanesberg Game Reserve as it is often called, is located in the Bojanala Region, within the North West Province and relatively near Johannesburg, South Africa.

I usually do not do this, but because I found Mr. Alexander’s story about Pilanesberg Park so interesting, most of the following is copied word for word from his piece:

“Years ago, South Africa’s Pilanesberg Park had big trouble. Tons of it. Someone went on a killing spree of its prized white rhinos. Thirty-nine of the 5-ton ungulates were mysteriously turning up dead around the park. That was 10 percent of the park’s endangered rhino population.

“A break came in the case when staff saw a video of young elephants terrorizing tourists. Others witnessed elephants taunting and bullying rhinos for hours.  After tracking the herds, chronicling their behavior, and developing rap sheets on the most aggressive ones, rangers found their killers: gangs of teen male elephants.”

But why?

“The problem went back two decades. Kruger National Park, half the size of Switzerland, was dangerously overpopulated with elephants. Adult males were too big to relocate, so the excruciating decision was made to shoot them and move the children and some of their mothers to other parks.”

This is where Pilanesberg National Park enters the picture as it received some of these young elephants. Mr. Alexander goes on describe a male elephant hormone called “musth,” which has a lot to do with aggressive male adolescent aggressive behavior, and must be tempered.

Alexander continues:

“But what seemed like a good idea at the time severely disrupted the delicate balance of life in elephant society. It triggered a disaster. Young elephant herds, deprived of adult male leadership, were forced into an extremely destabilized childhood that turned deadly in their teens.

“ ‘You don’t want to believe that an elephant is capable of killing a rhino,’ said Gus Van Dyk, the Pilansburg’s field ecologist. ‘What’s different is they don’t have a father,’ said Dyk. ‘I think everyone needs a role model, and these elephants that left the herd had no role model and had no idea of what appropriate elephant behavior was’.

“‘Like juvenile delinquents from urban jungles, they’ve grown up without role models,” said journalist Bob Simon, who reported on the story for 60 Minutes in 1999.

“To solve Pilanesberg’s problem, adult male elephants were brought back to the park on specially designed trucks emblazoned with the words: ‘We’re on our way to kick butt in the Pilanesberg.’ And that’s what happened.  The adult males established a new hierarchy, and the rhino killings stopped.  Simon called it the ‘biggest Big Brother Program in the world.’”

Now although it would be interesting to go to Pilanesberg National Park, the reality is that I will never see it in person. Sure I like wild animals, and this story is interesting, but is what happened in Pilanesberg Park many years ago, relevant to anything in our world today? 

Hmmm!

I will close with a 17th Century English Proverb:

“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.”

Sometimes I wonder why I do not read about certain stories in the paper or hear about them on TV. Could it be that some stories are just not interesting enough to publicize or could it be that some of these stories are squelched because they do not seem to go along with some preconceived narratives?

Last night it did not take long for me to come across these two following stories by pure serendipity. I was not looking for them.

Note that neither involves the action of an alleged racist white cop on an innocent black victim. Perhaps, just maybe, that’s why the Main Stream Media is not interested in either of them . . . obviously idle speculation on my part?

Let’s start out with Jaslyn Adams who was shot and killed on 4/18. 

Does that name ring any bells? . . . Thought not.

She was in a car with a man, who was seriously wounded, and underwent successful emergency surgery for his gunshot wound. However, Ms. Adams, who sustained multiple gunshot wounds was not as fortunate, and did not survive despite being rushed to the local trauma center in the back of the police SUV squad car. 

Joslyn Adams did not take drugs, and her Fentanyl level was not out of sight high, but zero. She was African American, and no, BLM did not march down the streets of Chicago to protest her death.

Joslyn was in first grade . . . she was seven years old!

“Never heard of her,” you say. 

What about Nyaira Givens? Does that name ring any bells? … Thought not.

Cincinnati police said Ms. Givens was stabbed to death on 4/19 during a fight near the family’s home on Topridge Place. Investigators said she was taken to the hospital where she died after the stabbing. 

No, Nyaira Givens was not seven years old . . . she was thirteen, and was stabbed by another thirteen year old. As opposed to a similar situation on 4/20 in Columbus, Ohio, Nyaiira Givens was not fortunate enough to have a police officer shoot her knife-wielding assailant.

FYI: Yes, Nyairia Givens was African American . . . and no, BLM did not march up and down the streets of Cincinnati to protest her death.

“Nope, never heard of her,” you say.

I ask myself two questions:

How many more similar “nope, never heard of her” stories could I find if I was actually looking for them?

How many times does BLM march in their memory?

It was pretty much chaos. The mob marched around the courthouse screaming and yelling all day long. Many of those in the mob were self-identified by signs and placards with three capital letters . . . XXX.

As they walked into the courthouse, the witnesses were intimidated and subtly threatened. If they dared to speak on behalf of the defendant, there could well be consequences and everyone knew it. The jurors were not sequestered, and many who lived in the town basically knew who they were. If the jury arrived at a verdict different than what the outside mob wanted, there was little doubt of what would happen to them and to the town.

The judge could have easily declared a mistrial, but he too had to live in the same town as those who were marching outside the courthouse. In all likelihood he did not live in a gated community, and when they wished, the mob could easily find out where he lived. Furthermore they could find out where his kids and grandkids lived and went to school. He was certainly aware of the consequences were if he were to fold.

The politicians proclaimed that they hoped that the jury would “do the right thing.”

That was back in Alabama in 1921 and some of the mob outside the courthouse were self-identified by three large capital letters – XXX . . . K.K.K.

Certainly nothing similar to that could ever happen again in the 21st century . . . could it?

From Candace Owens, a conservative well educated black woman: “She was in the process of KILLING another human being! You are a LOSER for defending this criminal. The police officer is a hero. He SAVED a black life.”

 What? What is Candace Owens talking about?? Who is she saying is a Loser? What is she responding to?

She is responding to a since deleted tweet that shows a picture of what appears to be a white police officer with the words “you’re next,” 

Of course everyone knows that the tweeter is suggesting that this police officer is guilty of murder. He is implying that no trial, not even a Minneapolis show trial, is needed. Certainly the tweeter must be an expert in police matters. He most certainly has a Masters or a PHD in Criminology.

What was this tweeter so p.o.-ed about that he would tweet, “you’re next” right next to the picture of a white policeman?

I looked into it:

The story is that a girl, who was black, was shot and killed by police on Tuesday afternoon in Columbus, Ohio. Video of the incident, according to Columbus police, shows that a police officer shot the girl as she attempted to stab another black girl.

Witnesses and neighbors saw the policeman as a hero (Daily Caller).

I would guess that the tweeter felt that he could express his opinion because he was right there on the scene in Columbus, Ohio. Maybe he had a different angle, and saw something that the video did not reveal? Err . . . No.

BLM protestors took to the streets of Columbus that night over the shooting . . . perhaps in response to this apparently well informed tweeter who certainly cannot be accused of race-baiting.

Why was this tweet quickly taken down? 

Was Twitter trying to protect the tweeter? 

When I read about this , I asked myself, “Why would Twitter want to protect him?

Could it be because the tweeter is black?

Could it be because the tweeter is a multi-millionaire?

Could it be because the tweeter is a very liberal professional athlete?

Could it be because the tweeter is an elitist who lives on the coast?

Could it be because the tweeter with a mere high school diploma thinks that he is an expert in everything?

Could it be because the tweeter has made a fool of himself in the past?

Most likely the answer to all of the above questions is . . . “Yes!”

Let’s assume that two individuals say somewhat similar things. Let’s further assume that while individual A is visited by the police, individual B is for all intents and purposes either ignored or patted on the back. What would be a reasonable word to describe this difference? “Enigma?” “Conundrum?” “Dichotomy?” The word that I would use . . . “Scary!” 

If and when this were to start to happen, it would indeed be scary, as the implication is that someone or something has decided to make arbitrary decisions as to what is and what isn’t okay. These days in this political climate we now have Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc making decisions on what is and what isn’t acceptable. As best I can tell there is no hard and fast criteria by which some of their decisions are made . . . even when they specify that XYZ was censored because of ABC. In these situations most often ABC is gobbledegook, and basically those in charge do not like XYZ. An argument can be made that because Twitter, Facebook, and Google are private companies, they can do pretty much what they wish. Again . . . “Scary!”

But what happens when a private company is not involved? What would be an appropriate word to describe seemingly divergent responses if the ABC proclaimer is the government?

To me that word is . . . “SCARY!”

On one hand Maxine Waters can travel across state lines to seemingly incite violence. The congresswoman told protestors “we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure they know that we mean business” (RedState).  Some believe her comments led to the gunshots fired at a National Guardsman in Minnesota (Fox News). What is the response of those in charge to theses obviously incendiary comments? . . . At this point – Nothing!

On the other hand, a podcaster out of California, who goes by the name “Human Rights Watch Watcher” on Twitter, posted the following on April 7, 2021:

“@AOC did a livestream with Michael Miller, the head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. She was asked about ‘peace between Israelis and Palestinians.’

Her response was incredibly underwhelming, to say the very least.”

(I watched AOC give her “answer” to the question, and I think that calling it, “underwhelming to say the very least” was actually quite charitable.)

He put that tweet up on April 7th, and here was a tweet he posted on April 8th, less than 24 hours than the first one:

“I’m really shaken up right now. I was just visited by two plainclothes police officers from California Highway Patrol at my home. They said they came here on behalf of the Capitol Police and accused me of threatening @AOC on Twitter yesterday.”

Notice the dichotomy of the response by “the government” toward what Maxine Waters said and did compared to what some schmo said on Twitter out in California . . .  “SCARY!”

Rumor has it that the NCAA has reached out to Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, for advice. His “ready, fire, aim” approach is working out so well for MLB, that the woke at the NCAA figured “why not make a fool of ourselves also.” 

[While MLB enjoyed the highest favorability rating among Republicans of the four major U.S. sports leagues in mid-March — 47 percent — that number plummeted to 12 percent in a survey taken last week, according to new data.

Morning Consult’s Alex Silverman notes that baseball “isn’t the first sport to see its net favorability among Republicans significantly decrease as a result of … embracing social justice issues.” ]

The issue here is not laws passed by elected representatives, but rather transgender athletes playing women’s sports.

At present the Florida legislature is in the process of discussing the transgender-sports issue. House and Senate Republicans in Florida are focused on women’s sports as a priority in 2021, following the path of more than 20 other GOP-leaning states that are using the issue to limit transgender females from competing against those “from-birth females.”

“There is an inherent, biological, undeniable difference between men and women, boys and girls,” said state Rep. Traci Koster (R-Tampa). “Simply put: we were designed differently.”

On 4/12/21, the NCAA put states like Florida on notice, warning that locations that don’t treat all student athletes with “dignity and respect” could be ineligible to host future championship games. 

The national polling is not even close. Rational people do not think that it is appropriate or fair for transgender females to be competing against their children, their grandchildren, or their neighbors’ children.

Really, NCAA? 

Is this really the hill you want to die on?