Author: Californiacontrarian

On Sundays I write about individuals that make a difference … individuals who we can look up to and praise. Sheldon Theragood is such an individual.
From Epoch Bright:
In his youth he was a good basketball player in fact he was such a good dribbler that neighborhood kids would come to watch him play. Because of hip pain, he had to stop playing basketball, and got hired as a youth detention officer in Harris County, Texas.
A bit later he said, “Working there, I was going to be around teenagers who had made life mistakes. I felt like that was going to be a great place for me to help teenagers.”
Mr. Theragood spent time mentoring the youth, listening to them, and helping them build a plan for when they would be released. However, after working there for four years, he was discouraged to see some of the youth get re-detained. He decided that becoming a police officer was the best way he could help. “I thought that was the only position for me; the whole deal for me was to save the kids’ lives out on the streets, and to do whatever it takes—that’s my motto—to make a difference.”
Mr. Theragood then realized that he could teach teens valuable lessons through introducing them to the homeless men and women he met. “I brought them so that they could understand that nobody’s born like this,” he said. “This is just choices. Hey man, this could be you. Sometimes you have to be realistic with them and give them that little scare so they start thinking, ‘I want to change my life.’”

So in 2010, Mr. Theragood got the inspiration to start TheraGood Deeds, a nonprofit to involve children of all ages and backgrounds in community service.
After he got support from a community center to introduce kids to his program, his nonprofit took off, with children ages 4 to 16 doing at least one community outreach project per month. Activities range from serving in soup kitchens to hosting a Christmas toy drive and organizing celebration events for the homeless.
Over the years, some of the teens who joined TheraGood Deeds have grown up and gone to college, and thanks to donations from local sponsors like the Ashley Jadine Foundation, the nonprofit is able to provide them with scholarships.”

Sheldon Theragood was on a mission to help teens, and he found a unique way to do that in Houston. Kudos to him!

7/14/24

As I was reading about the recent Joe Biden Parkinson’s kerfuffle, two questions crossed my mind:
Does he or doesn’t he?
&
If he does have it, does it matter?

When I practiced medicine, I did not have a lot of patients with that diagnosis, and so I do not consider myself to be an expert on Parkinson’s disease. However, Joe Biden does have the one manifestation that is the sine-qua-non for that diagnosis, namely ‘bradykinesis.’ When I watched the recent debate, it was obvious that Joe Biden was afflicted with something from the very beginning. Biden’s entry on to the stage demonstrated a slow and shuffling gait, which is a Parkinson’s symptom. Also with his entry the movement of his right arm was significantly less than the movement of his left arm. Selective bradykinesis (slow movement) is likewise a symptom of Parkinsonism. Similarly, during the debate I noticed that he did not blink a lot, another possible sign of Parkinson’s disease. I also noticed that his right eye was smaller than his left eye … not the pupils, but rather the eye opening. However, as far as I am aware, this is not a sign of Parkinson’s disease.
These were my non-neurologist observations, but what do real neurologists say?
An emeritus professor of neurology told The Free Press that he believes Biden has “Parkinsonism,” as demonstrated by his “masked face, reduced blinking, stiff and slow gait, hunched posture, low-volume voice, imbalance, freezing, mild cognitive disturbance, and difficulty turning.”
Another neurologist agreed, reportedly stating:
“All the disturbing symptoms we all see are called Parkinsonism. . . . In fact in medical school we watch videos of patients with Parkinsonism like Biden to illustrate to the students how this manifests.”

My second question … If he does have it, does it matter?
Is it possible to have a competent President who has Parkinsonism? My answer to that would be a qualified, “yes.” Qualified, because there is a form of dementia that can go along with Parkinson’s … Lewy body dementia.
Lewy body dementia (LBD) is a common type of dementia that happens when clumps of proteins called Lewy bodies build up in one’s brain. They damage parts of the brain that affect cognition, behavior, movement and sleep. LBD is a progressive condition, meaning it gets worse over time.
Could this be what those who are behind Joe Biden are worried about? Is this why everything about Joe Biden’s health is so hush-hush, and does it matter? Since LBD is slowly progressive, at some point, if a diagnosis of Parkinson’s was made public, there would always be a continuing concern that Biden’s mental state had progressed to the point that he was not able to carry out the duties of his office any more. Thus, for the good of the country, it does matter. It would not be prudent to have a President with Parkinsonism.

7/14/24
www.californiacontrarian.com

Granted, I am not a big fan of trite sayings, but for some, “the end justifies the means!” Let me be more specific – for some Democrats, “the end justifies the means!” Let me try to even be more specific – for a lot of Democrat politicians, “the end justifies the means!”
Again with the risk of being repetitive – for almost all of the Democrats in the U.S House of Representatives, “the end justifies the means!” How else could anyone justify all but five Democrats in the House voting against the SAVE Act.
From the Daily Signal:
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, known as the “motor voter law,” to require that states obtain documentary proof of U.S. citizenship from someone before he or she may register to vote.
Five Democrats voted for the legislation, but 198 Democrats voted against it.”

One might naively ask, “Why would anyone vote against having only American citizens vote in American elections?” Obviously, because to these Dems the end of having more illegal individuals vote for Democrats justifies the means.
Keep in mind that this question has been posed to the American citizens, who this support this common sense concept by 81% to 87%.
Hopefully, these “the end justifies the means” House Democrats will have to defend their position to the American people when they run for re-election this November.
A similar bill that came up for a vote in the Senate, and was defeated in the Democratic Senate. For those who are running for re-election a vote against what 81 – 87% of Americans think will be interesting and perhaps telling.
For those House Dems and those Senate Dems who voted against the SAVE Act, hopefully this will be the end for them!
7/12/24
www.californiacontrarian.com

On 6/4/2022 I wrote the following in my blog:
“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.”
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, depending on which side of the bed you get up on in the morning … right vs. left, the Dems do not read my blogs, and so they now have a “Houston, we’ve got a problem” problem.
Here I am referring to that “Joe Biden problem.” Like with the hurricane, Beryl, the storm surge got worse and worse for Biden’s candidacy, as an increasing number of Democrats are bailing on poor J.B. (Even Adam Schiff on Sunday’s Meet The Press said that Joe Biden and Donald Trump should both take a cognitive test. If I were Trump, I would agree to this, but only after both conventions !)
Now, even Hollywood is turning against Joe! Lifelong Democrat and mega-donor, George Clooney, on 7/10/24 penned an op-ed in the NYT, saying that J.B. cannot win.
However, at this point Biden is not amenable either to dropping out of the race or to resigning from the presidency. Resigning now would give Kamala better odds against Trump as she would then be running as the incumbent in the November election. However, this will not happen, as practically speaking if Joe resigns, effective immediately, then how is he going to pardon his son, Hunter? It would be better for Joe and for Hunter if Joe just decides to step aside and not run for another term. By doing this he can delay Hunter Biden’s pardon until the last minute, just prior to the official end of his present term. Let’s be clear here, Joe’s promise not to pardon his son will hold up about as well as an old helium balloon.
My prediction is that Joe will soon decide not to run “for the good of the country.” If he decides not to run then the sticky problem of how to deal with the thousands of delegates that Biden won in the primaries will be resolved prior to the convention.
Not to pat myself on the back, but in my blog of 6/26/24 I wrote that the reason for the extremely early date, 6/27/24, for the first debate was to give the Dems seven weeks figure what to do if Biden did not do well in that debate. And despite the fact that a decreasing number of Dems are saying that J.B. is still their candidate, the dam is starting to crumble. What they didn’t count on was the stubbornness of both Joe and Jill!

7/11/24
www.californiacontrarian.com

I am going to assume that the vast majority of my readers do not own Electric Vehicles (EVs) for a variety of different reasons. However, then let’s assume that you can afford to buy an EV, but do not have solar panels to charge your own EV, what then will be the main problem for you and your EV?
From BlazeMedia:
Electric vehicles require charging stations. Unless Americans are to be confined to 15-minute cities, there needs to be a juiced network of such stations.
The infrastructure is not in place, however, thanks in part to the Biden administration’s bungling of its promised national rollout of EV charging stations. The Democratic administration has established fewer than a dozen of the promised 500,000 charging stations across the country.
Even if there was a satisfactory number of active stations, there is no guarantee they would be useful on account of power supply issues.

Last month, the California-based software company Xendee released the results of its survey of leaders “involved in the development, operation, and commercial use of EV charging infrastructure.”
75% of respondents said electric grid limitations were a “significant roadblock to the rollout of EV charging infrastructure for commercial EV usage.

Princeton University recently projected that the U.S. will need 3,360% more electricity on hand to satisfy the Biden administration’s EV goals, reported the Daily Mail.
“Right now, our infrastructure is likely ‘OK’ for the slow trickle of EV adoption,” Robby DeGraff, the manager of product and consumer insights at AutoPacific, told the Mail. Increased demand shaped by government mandates will, however, mean that “the grid will certainly need to be revamped.

Many of Xendee’s clients have apparently opted to install fossil-fuel-powered generators to power their charging stations. So in effect, there’s a good chance that EV drivers
who manage to find charging stations, will find those that are powered by the same energy source the EV is supposed to have made redundant — if not by a generator on-site, then by a predominantly gas-powered grid.
Circular reasoning at its worst!
Hmmm!

7/9/24
www.californiacontrarian.com

So just like millions of others I watched the entire recent presidential debate. Prior to watching it I had hoped that Joe Biden would do a belly-flop, but did not expect him to be flailing from the high diving board, and thus make a huge disastrous splash. Most of the diving judges gave him a score of a 1 or a 2, whereas the Main Stream Media judge said that because of a “cold,” he could not accurately comment on Joe’s performance.
Be that as it may, one thing did come out of Joe’s huge belly-flop. Because he lied at least twice during his debate debacle, it allowed us to review the past numerous lies that J.B. has told during his presidency. While I had forgotten some of Biden’s past mendacities, I just read a review of his whoppers in a piece written by Larry Elder and published on Townhall on 7/4/24.
From Townhall:
“As to Biden’s lies, they include, but are not limited to: how, why and where his son Beau contracted brain cancer; that Biden desegregated movie theaters and restaurants; that he finished in the top half of his law school class; that he got arrested trying to visit Nelson Mandela during apartheid; was “raised in the black church”; played football for the University of Delaware; claimed the driver who accidentally struck and killed his first wife and daughter was drunk; intentionally misstating what Trump said about Charlottesville; that Trump said to drink/inject bleach; that Biden didn’t pressure Ukraine to fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma; that Biden never discussed son Hunter’s business dealings; that a small kitchen fire “almost killed” his wife; that he was “shot at” in Iraq; that inflation was “9%” when he became president; the Border Patrol endorses him; the NAACP endorsed him in “all” of his elections; World War II’s Uncle Bosie was eaten by cannibals; that “no one” advised him the Afghan government would quickly collapse and the Taliban would return if he abruptly pulled out of Afghanistan; that Trump referred to World War I American vets who lost their lives as “suckers and losers”; that Trump praised Hitler; among others.”
While Donald Trump is indeed prone to exaggeration, Joe Biden is the primo-prevaricator … the antithesis of George Washington.

7/8/24
www.californiacontrarian.com

On Sundays I give praise to someone who has acted courageously or acted on principle. However, different from a typical Sunday piece, today’s piece is about individuals whose names I do not know.
From Epoch Bright:
Back on May 14, 2024 bystanders at the 3 Avenue-149 Street subway station saw the man disabled and in distress. Prone on his back, the distressed man was “experiencing a seizure” and “had fallen onto the subway tracks.”
At around 5:30 pm, the bystanders flagged down help from NYPD officers of the 47th Precinct assigned to the turnstiles at the northbound platform.
The man had fallen onto the subway tracks, and was only inches away from the third rail, with an oncoming train rapidly approaching the station. Despite the imminent dangers, the officers sprang into action & without hesitation pulled him off the tracks.
Footage from the scene posted to X by the NYPD shows the officers springing into action to assist the male, seen lying across the tracks immobile. One officer gained access to the subway via an emergency exit opened by a bystander; another was seen hopping the turnstile.
Despite the imminent danger of the incoming train, the department tells the newspaper, the “officers quickly jumped to the roadbed and with help from MTA security personnel and good Samaritans, safely rescued the male back to safety.”
Pedestrians at the station aided them in getting the fallen man back onto the platform. One of the officers nimbly made it back up himself, but another is seen in the footage making several attempts to no avail. NYPD told us his “gun belt kept getting stuck on the edge of the platform preventing him from climbing back up.” With the help of his partner and bystanders, he soon successfully climbed out of harm’s way.
The man who had fallen and suffered a medical emergency was taken by emergency medical services to Health + Hospitals/Lincoln and, according to police, is in stable condition.

Meanwhile, over 70,000 viewers witnessed the rescue on X. Many heaped praise on the officers involved.
One comment on X summed it up nicely, “Unbelievable how they put their lives on the line everyday… like it’s nothing… it’s just what they do.”
Congrats to the officers of the 47th precinct.

7/7/24

Yesterday two separate interviews happened., and I have some advice for each interviewee.
First:
While Donald Trump was caught on camera while seated in his golf cart when someone asked him about Biden and Kamala Harris. Donald, being his usual self, did not hold back by describing Biden as an “old, broken-down pile of crap.”
“He just quit, you know. He’s quitting the race,” Trump predicted. “I got him out of the race, and that means we have Kamala. I think she’s gonna be better. She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic. She’s so f***ing bad. Can you imagine that guy dealing with Putin and the president of China, who’s a fierce person? He’s a fierce man. Very tough guy.”
Even though I suspect that this Trump interview was surreptitiously obtained, my advice to DJT, “Be much more circumspect when you say anything. While I agree with you that Kamala would be no match for Putin or Xi Jinping, do not be brash when talking about either Biden or Kamala. Independents may be the key to this upcoming election, and some will not vote for you if you act like a bully. … ‘Nuff said.
The second interview was George Stephanopoulos’s interview of Joe Biden on ABC. No, I do not typically watch ABC unless there happens to be a sporting event that I wish to watch. And no, I did not watch this Biden interview live.
Stephanopoulos appeared to ask reasonable questions concerning Biden’s mental state, and he even tried to force our President into agreeing to a neurological evaluation. To this Biden wisely responded, “I get a full neurological every day.”
On follow-up Stephanopoulos then asked, “Have you had specific cognitive tests, and had a specialist evaluate you?”
To that Biden responded, “No one said I had to.”
My advice to JB, “Do not let anyone bully you into getting any tests. Stand firm! The American people have no right to more information. … ‘Nuff said.

7/6/24
www.californiacontrarian.com

After looking at some of things that Joe Biden has said since his disastrous debate performance, I thought, “And The Beat Goes On.” As some of you may recall “The Beat Goes On” is a song written and composed by Sonny Bono and recorded by Sonny & Cher back in 1966. Subsequently it entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart on January 14, 1967, peaking at number six. (Those not quite as old as myself may remember a remake by the Whisperers in 1979.)
Be that as it may, read some of the chaotic word salad that our President has said just over the past few days, and then tell me that he is the one that should be leading the country.
At a Fourth of July gathering at the White House for military families Biden said the following:
“One last thing, about congestion on the highways. There’s no congestion anymore! No, we go out on the highways, there’s no congestion! And so the way they’ll get me to stop talking, they’ll say ‘we just shut down all the roads, Mr. President, you’re going to lose all the votes if you don’t get in,’ but anyway, I’ll be back out.”
“And the Beat Goes On.”

Then there is this from a recent Philadelphia radio station interview.
From Townhall:
The president’s interview on Philadelphia radio was a mixture of sadness and his usual half-brain-dead self: he described himself as a black woman: “By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first Vice President, the first black woman, to serve with a black president.”
Huh?? … “And the Beat Goes On!”

From Twitter:
In one of his only interviews since the debate (a radio interview), Biden says: “I’m the first president that got elected statewide in the state of Delaware when I was a kid.”
Huh!! Huh?? … “And the Beat Goes On!”

After reading these nonsensical utterings, my feeling that Joe Biden should be the Democrat’s presidential nominee has only been reenforced.

7/5/24
www.californiacontrarian.com

Some, but not neatly all Democrats are all-in Joe Biden.
On 7/3/24, 24 Democratic governors and the Democratic mayor of Washington D.C. met with President Biden and Kamala Harris at the White House. After the meeting three… 3 … III … of these governors came out to speak to the press in support of Biden. Granted not all of the Democratic governors were physically present at the White House, but while nearly a dozen of the state leaders attended the meeting in person … only THREE spoke with reporters afterwards. To me what that implies is that only three of the twelve that were present had the wherewithal to stand up and speak to the press. If there was agreement and real support for Joe B., all of those present at the meeting would have been standing behind the governors of New York, Maryland, and Minnesota and nodding their collective heads in agreement. Bit only THREE spoke in support of Biden.
Now do not get me wrong … I want Joe Biden to be the nominee. The fact that three misguided governors said that they were behind J.B., good for them, and I hope that a lot of Americans were listening to their attempt at gaslighting.
From Reuters:
“California Governor Gavin Newsom, who participated in person, posted his reaction on social platform X: ‘I heard three words from the President tonight — he’s all in. And so am I.’”
Well, bully for you, Gavin! Why weren’t you out there speaking to the press?
This might be the one time that I can agree with California’s termed-out governor, as I also hope that Biden is “all in!”

www.californiacontrarian.com
7/4/24