Month: June 2022

Ilya Shapiro became a target of progressives in January because of a series of Twitter posts in which he criticized President Joe Biden’s use of identity politics to only consider black women in his choice of a replacement for retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. Georgetown’s Black Law Students Association called for his firing. Georgetown Law Dean William Treanor placed him on leave, pending the outcome of an investigation by the office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action (IDEAA).

At this point one might ask, “What the hell is the IDEAA?”  

I have an i-d-e-a that it is a made-up, woke way to railroad anybody who says anything that “offends” anyone.

Georgetown Law had suspended Ilya Shapiro for months for questioning race and gender criteria used by the Biden administration in its selection of Supreme Court justices. What makes this story even more unbelievable is that Ilya Shapiro was not a Georgetown employee back in January!

The IDEAA investigation found that Shapiro’s comments were “harmful” and caused “pain” in the campus community, but agreed that technically Shapiro shouldn’t be punished, since he wasn’t yet a Georgetown employee when he wrote those comments. At this point one has to wonder about the decision making process of Law Dean William Treanor.

Notice that Georgetown Law is seemingly a law school that is amazingly against free speech. It sounds like the IDEAA is saying that free speech is okay as long as what is said is something they agree with, and more importantly does not “offend” anyone. OMG, Georgetown Law is teaching its students this paradoxical nonsense.

At this point, it’s bad enough … but it gets worse.

From Epoch Times:

Shapiro also pointed to progressive faculty members whose comments caused outrage but went unpunished. For example, political science professor Carol Christine Fair in 2018 said white men who don’t immediately believe sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh “deserve miserable deaths,” with their corpses castrated and fed to pigs.

“When Prof. Fair advocated murder and castration based on race and gender, Georgetown did not initiate an investigation, but instead invoked Georgetown’s free expression policy,” Shapiro wrote. “Apparently it’s free speech for thee, not for me.”

Hmmm! I guess the Georgetown snowflakes were not offended by a progressive professor wishing for miserable deaths and castration for white men. Apparently at Georgetown it’s free speech for progressives, but not for anyone else.

BTW, for what it’s worth, I agree completely with what Ilya Shapiro said.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will forever be known as the black female Justice, and not for her judicial wherewithal.

Note to IDEAA, … Even though I do not work for Georgetown, “Bring it on!”

6/9/22

www.californiacontrarian.com

I am going to assume that the vast majority of you do not remember the song, Mr. Sandman, by The Chordettes … after all it was recorded back in 1954. The first line of that song …

“Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream”

How many of you remember Nicholas Sandmann?

To refresh your memory, in 2019, Sandmann came under attack from the media after a video of him wearing a red Make America Great Again hat went viral, showing the teenager standing in front of a Native American elder on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the March For Life.

How many of you remember Kyle Rittenhouse?

Rittenhouse was charged with two counts of homicide, one count of attempted homicide, and other charges after fatally shooting two men and injuring another during the Kenosha riots of 2020. He was ultimately acquitted of all charges in November of last year after testifying he acted in self-defense. 

The two are tangentially related because Sandmann  sued some of the various entities that defamed him, while Rittenhouse is now in the beginning of that same process. 

Sandmann said that Rittenhouse’s litigation decisions are ultimately up to him, but that he would sue the media outlets he believes defamed his character.

“It’s really a personal call,” he said, adding that 2022 will mark three years since his own experience with the press, and six cases remain in progress.

This week Mister Sandmann brought Kyle Rittenhouse a dream, as the lawyer who represented Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann during his defamation cases has joined Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal team. The newly added attorney says there will be “at least 10” defamation lawsuits against prominent figures and companies for comments against the teenager. 

“I’ve been hired to head the effort to determine whom to sue, when to sue, where to sue,” Todd McMurtry, who now represents Rittenhouse, told Fox News Digital in a phone interview on 6/2/22. “We’re going to look at everything that’s been said, determine which of those comments are legally actionable and proceed from there.”

McMurtry said it’s ” pretty much assured that there’s probably 10 to 15 solid” cases against “large defendants.” 

“Let’s just use for an example what Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg said about [Rittenhouse]. They said that he was involved in a mass murder incident,” McMurtry explained. “This was not a mass murder incident. It was clearly factually false.”

“To call somebody a mass murderer is seriously defamatory. And then to use the power of social media to basically … censor any views that would take opposition to that mass murderer statement is a serious effort to destroy his character. And it was seriously mistaken and seriously defamatory.”

McMurtry represented Nicholas Sandmann after the media lambasted him over a confrontation at the 2019 March for Life in Washington, D.C., resulting in numerous settlements with media companies such as NBC-Universal, CNN and the Washington Post. 

Back in February I saw Rittenhouse’s interview on The Tucker Carlson Show. I must say that even though I was very skeptical of Rittenhouse before that interview, I was very impressed during and subsequently afterwards. 

I say, “Go Kyle! Sue their asses off. Make them pay for publicly demeaning your character.” 

6/8/22

www.californiacontrarian.com

Those on the left seem to always go by feel. “If it feels good … do it!” could be their motto. Think about possible consequences … “never!”

Let’s look at the state of Oregon. As most of you are probably aware, Oregon is a very blue liberal state. 

From Blazemedia:

“Voters in the state of Oregon voted to decriminalize all hard drugs in the pursuit of encouraging those struggling with drug addiction to seek medical help. The measure, referred to as Ballot Measure 110, was the first of its kind in the U.S. and went into effect in February of 2021 after being approved by the public the year before.

Ballot Measure 110 made it so that it was no longer a felony or misdemeanor of any kind to possess drugs in the state of Oregon. At most, people carrying hard drugs are subject to a maximum fine of $100 which can be waived if the person receiving the citation calls a public hotline and receives a free health assessment.”

What could go wrong!?

Again from Blazemedia:

“Of the $300 million that was meant to be allocated to public health resources to fight addiction, only $40 million has been dispersed.

The Daily Mail reported that Ballot Measure 110 has largely had an inverse effect and has led not to more people seeking treatment but to more drug-related deaths and the proliferation of hard drug use throughout Oregonian communities.”

Is any rational person actually surprised?

Democrat Shemia Fagan, the Oregonian Secretary of State, said that Oregon residents approved Ballot Measure 110 to “improve the lives of people, to improve our communities.”

Fagan said, “When the voters of Oregon passed Measure 110, we did so because it was a change of policy in Oregon to improve the lives of people, to improve our communities, and in the years since, we haven’t seen that play out.”

She concluded, “Instead, in many communities in Oregon, we’ve seen the problem with drug addiction get worse.”

Republican state official Lily Morgan said, “We have overdoses increasing at drastic rates. In my community, [there has been] a 700% increase in overdoses and a 120% increase in deaths.”

An example of real life consequences of another leftist folly!

6/7/22

www.californiacontrarian.com

President Joe Biden and his administration have done a number of dumb things  … dumb mandates following previous dumb mandates. Mandates that will obviously be rejected by both the courts and sane people. However, he astonishes by continuing to one-up himself with dumb-and-dumber! … and this most recent mandate is the dumbest of the dumb.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the Biden administration announced on May 5 that all state and local agencies that receive federal funding for meals, more specifically including schools, must not discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity. 

OMG … blackmail. Joe is resorting to blackmail!

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem announced on June 2 that, to protect fairness in women’s sports, she intends to sue the Biden administration over an overhaul of the federal school lunch program to be more in line with Title IX.

“President Biden is holding lunch money for poor Americans hostage in pursuit of his radical agenda. He is insisting that we allow biological males to compete in girls’ sports or else lose funding for SNAP and school lunch programs,” Noem said. “South Dakota will continue to defend basic fairness so that our girls can compete and achieve. I would remind President Biden that we have defeated him in litigation before and are ready to do so again. Mr. President, we’ll see you in court.”

Holding lunch money for poor Americans hostage in pursuit of his radical agenda is dumber than dumb. Punishing the poorest in South Dakota … punishing the poorest of the poor anywhere is truly beyond the pale, especially for the dumbest of reasons … to allow biological boys to compete in girl’s sports.

My prediction is that this nonsensical mandate will be scrubbed by the courts on both counts … both on punishing poorer children for something that they are merely innocent bystanders, and having birth-boys playing against birth girls.

Stick it to him, Governor Noem!

6/6/22

www.californiacontrarian.com

My Sunday blogs are traditionally about someone(s) that we can and should all look up to and admire. These tributes are not limited to the U.S., as the traits that these individuals have demonstrated are universal. Today, I am commemorating the generosity of Julie and Steven McMaster, who are from down under, New South Wales, Australia.

From Epoch Inspired:

In February, Julie and Steven McMaster were celebrating 20 years of marriage at a Lord Howe Island restaurant  and happened to be seated next to the elderly pair who were celebrating their 60th anniversary. Julie, 45, began chatting with the older woman and found her to be really friendly and lovely. When the mother of two teenage children told the elderly woman that she and her husband were celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary that day, the woman shared that they were celebrating their 60th anniversary. She also revealed that they had visited Lord Howe Island eight times and had honeymooned there 60 years ago.

“They just seem like such a lovely couple,” Julie said. “I just wanted to do something that would hopefully make it just a little bit more special.”

Witnessing their love for each other struck a chord with her. She told her husband that she wanted to anonymously treat the elderly couple to their 60th-anniversary dinner, a kind gesture that she hoped would make the celebration sweet and unforgettable.

Steven was onboard and considered it a great idea.

Later that evening, Julie approached the waitstaff and arranged to cover the check. To her surprise, she learned that it was not just the couple’s 60th anniversary, but also the elderly woman’s birthday. Soon, candles were lit and the crowd in the restaurant were singing “Happy Birthday.” It was not until then that they found out that the elderly woman’s name was Helen.

The next day, although Helen and her husband, Robert, had left, there was a handwritten note waiting for the McMasters with the restaurant staff. While Julie and her husband had intended to pay anonymously for the couple’s meal, it seems that Helen and Robert had found out about their kind gesture. In the note, they thanked the couple for their “lovely surprise,” on their special celebratory evening.

Generosity … a good thing.

Generosity to strangers … a better thing.

Generosity to strangers anonymously … the best thing.

Kudos to Julie and Steven. Hopefully we can imitate them.

6/5/22

In general, it is always easier to preemptively do something to avoid a problem rather that trying to fix that same problem once it it already on the scene and picking up steam. 

For instance, Europe is in a real pickle as it was going green in reference to energy without a real backup plan. 

On 5/30 the European Union agreed to ban most imports of Russian oil. This is after they had already barred imports of Russian natural gas.

With the war driving up prices, the European Union has been paying Russia 23 billion a month for Russian oil, while Russia is financing the war primarily with revenue from the sale of refined petroleum and natural gas.

Note that 27% of the EU’s imported oil comes from Russia, and energy generated from windmills is not going to be able to take up the slack. Now the EU will be forced to scramble to find alternative sources of energy, and guaranteed, for the people of the European Union, it is going to be quite painful.

Oops, perhaps they should have had a plan in place to preemptively deal with any energy emergency.

Here in the U.S we can snicker at the foolishness of those dunderheads in charge in the E.U. for not having the foresight to plan ahead. However, in the US it appears that we also have similar numbskulls in charge. With their uber printing of money shouldn’t they have seen inflation coming? (Economists generally agree that a COVID relief package passed last spring, which injected more money into the economy, exacerbated inflation.) Of course, they should have seen it coming. However, as best I can tell their only plan was to blame it on something else other than their own ineptitude. 

Likewise, with the shutting down of pipelines and the restrictions on drilling, should someone have asked, “what are we going to do when the price of gas goes up to $6 and beyond?” Err, of course, someone should have been able to see what was going to happen. Their plan, ostensibly, is to blame Putin even though the increase in gas prices started well before Putin invaded Ukraine..

Speaking of Ukraine, does anyone else think that it would have prudent to take a stand against Putin while he was amassing 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border? To me this is just another example of reacting instead of thinking ahead by our dunderhead-in-charge!

6/4/22

www.californiacontrarian.com

For a long time I have been talking about Vitamin D and it’s beneficial effect as far as Covid. If I had seen a well controlled double blind study to document my feelings about Vitamin D and Covid, I just do not recall.

However, I just read about a Vitamin D study that was started back in 2020.

From Epoch Health:

The peer-reviewed study, published in the Archives of Medical Research, enrolled 321 frontline health care workers from four hospitals in Mexico City, who all tested negative for COVID-19 at the start of the study.

“The results of our double-blind, placebo-controlled, prospective study demonstrate that vitamin D supplementation is effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection in high risk, frontline healthcare personnel,” researchers said in their report.

“To our knowledge, this is the first controlled study evaluating the role of [Vitamin D] supplementation as a prophylactic measure to prevent SARS-Cov-2 infection and therefore has profound clinical and public health implications,” the researchers also noted.

A total of 94 people in the vitamin D group and 98 people in the placebo group completed follow-up in the study. Researchers found that the infection rate of COVID-19 in the vitamin D group was lower than in the placebo group, at 6.4 percent compared to 24.5 percent, respectively, with a p-value of less than 0.001. A p-value of less than 0.05 is normally considered statistically significant.

The authors concluded that supplementation with vitamin D in highly exposed individuals “decreases the susceptibility for SARS-CoV-2 infection,” and the preventive effect is “independent of vitamin D status.” They also said that medium doses of vitamin D (4,000 IU daily) “seems safe for short periods of supplementation.”

My question here is this: if a relatively very safe non-toxic (except at quite high doses) vitamin can prevent or even lessen the severity of Covid, why hasn’t the CDC or the eminent Dr. Fauci said as such? (Regardless of the growing evidence of the effectiveness of vitamin D, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) does not recommend it for COVID-19 because they claim there is not enough data.) ????

Researchers from Denmark knew in 2010 that vitamin D was essential for activating our immune system defenses, and without it, the immune system’s killer T-cells would not be able to react to and fight off serious diseases in the body.

Vitamin D deficiency affects over 1 billion people worldwide, including 42 percent of Americans, and those with a darker complexion having a higher risk of vitamin D deficiency: 82 percent of blacks and 69 percent of Latinos have inadequate levels.

Hmmm … wasn’t the mortality for Covid higher in the Black and Latino population? … Coincidence?

This study from Mexico City was done back in 2020, almost a year and a half ago. Why wasn’t a similar study done in the U.S. and why wasn’t this simple relatively non-toxic treatment advised for everyone? Hmmm!

After reading this, I know that you are asking about me and Vitamin D … yes, I take it regularly and have been taking Vitamin supplements for quite a while … 4000u/day.

6/3/22

Granted, I am not a big fan of the New York Times, but occasionally David Leonhardt has a good column. On 5/31 he had a column titled:

“Masks work. So why haven’t Covid mask mandates made much difference?”

While reading his column I was reminded of my experiences back in the day when I was a practicing physician. I would go to medical meetings and listen to speakers, who were the purported experts. Not infrequently I would come away thinking … “what planet are they on,” as what they talked about had little relevance to what ordinary physicians saw in their day-to-day medical practices.

Back to Leonhardt’s column:

“In U.S. cities where mask use has been more common, Covid has spread at a similar rate as in mask-resistant cities. Mask mandates in schools also seem to have done little to reduce the spread. Hong Kong, despite almost universal mask-wearing, recently endured one of the world’s worst Covid outbreaks.

“From the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a paradox involving masks. As Dr. Shira Doron, an epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, puts it, ‘It is simultaneously true that masks work and mask mandates do not work.’

“Masks reduce the spread of the Covid virus by preventing virus particles from traveling from one person’s nose or mouth into the air and infecting another person. Laboratory studies have repeatedly demonstrated the effect”

Now here is where the experts who test masks in the lab are on that same different planet as the speakers at my past medical conferences. When you have masks that are fitted specifically to an individual’s face, chances are that they are going to work … err, in the laboratory. However day to day life is not the laboratory, and I still see masks that are obviously not tight fitting – in fact far from it.

Again from Leonhardt’s column:

“Airplane passengers remove their masks to have a drink. Restaurant patrons go maskless as soon as they walk in the door. Schoolchildren let their masks slide down their faces. So do adults: Research by the University of Minnesota suggests that between 25 percent and 30 percent of Americans consistently wear their masks below their nose.”

Good grief! Is it any wonder that mask mandates are ineffective! Oy-vey!

6/2/22

For those of you who might not be aware I was born in Chicago, and lived on the far west side of the city till age sixteen. Yes, times change as this Austin district on Chicago’s west side is now one of the hotbeds of shootings and murder in the city. (On Memorial Day weekend 51 injured and 9 killed in shootings in the Windy City.) Just west of Austin Blvd. which is Chicago’s western border is the suburb of Oak Park. For what it’s worth I went to Catholic grade school and high school in Oak Park, and used to go to dances and football games at Oak Park River Forest (OPRF) high school. Back in the day OPRF was a very good high school, and, in fact, students from adjacent suburbs would pay to be able to go to OPRF high school. But times, they are changin.’

News flash … “Wokeness” has hit Oak Park River Forest high school.

From PJmedia:

“The local Oak Park and River Forest High School has many distinguished alums and has won awards for being one of the best high schools in the country.

And I suppose that next year it still will be — for the white (and presumably Asian) kids:

Oak Park and River Forest High School administrators will require teachers next school year to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students.

School board members discussed the plan called “Transformative Education Professional Development & Grading” at a meeting on May 26, presented by Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning Laurie Fiorenza.

In an effort to equalize test scores among racial groups, OPRF will order its teachers to exclude from their grading assessments variables it says disproportionally hurt the grades of black students. They can no longer be docked for missing class, misbehaving in school or failing to turn in their assignments, according to the plan.”

Wow, times they are a changin’ … but for the better?

However there seems to be a bigger problem at OPRF as indicated by the following from West Cook News:

According to the Illinois State Board of Education 38 percent of OPRF sophomore students taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) failed.

The OPRF failure rate was 77 percent for black students, 49 percent for Hispanics, 27 percent for Asians and 25 percent for whites.

Still from PJMedia:

“George W. Bush, in one of the memorable things he ever said, described “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

OPRF High School is putting that into action, and the stink of it is going to stick to every minority kid who graduates from there, including the kids who do the work and earn real grades.”

6/1/22