Author: Californiacontrarian

As is my habit on Sundays, I write about an individual or individuals that are worthy of our praise. Today that group are students from Callisburg High School in Texas.

Callisburg High School janitor known as Mr. James to the students had his rent raised by $400 and he wasn’t able to make ends meet without going back to work.

From Blaze media:

Students at a high school in Callisburg, Texas, were upset when they heard that an 80-year-old custodian was forced to come out of retirement in order to afford his rent, so they jumped into action.

Three students decided to open a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for Mr. James, and they set their goal for $10,000.

“Hey guys I’m having a fundraiser for our janitor who is struggling to pay his rent. He had to leave retirement to continue to pay his rent that was raised. Just a little will change his life!!” the description read.

After the campaign went viral on Instagram, the students raised more than $30,000 in just two days.

Only a week later, the campaign has raised more than $162,000 with more than 5.2k donations.

“Nobody deserves to work their whole life. They deserve to enjoy everything,” said student Greyson Thurman, one of the organizers of the campaign.”

To hear of high school students doing something unprovoked and kind is always refreshing. These students should serve as an example of how young people should act. Kudos to them.

3/5/23

Just today I was just telling a friend that I will never believe that Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 presidential election … the emphasis on “fairly.” Then lo and behold I read something by Joe Fried in American Thinker, and now I am more convinced than ever that I am right. The following are merely some examples of skullduggery (cheating) that occurred in multiple swing states.

Arizona:

At an Arizona Senate Committee hearing on January 24, 2022, we learned that precisely 95 percent of Maricopa County overseas military members (and their families) voted for Joe Biden. That is an amazing (as in phony) percentage, given that the overall county-wide vote was fairly even between Biden and Trump (51 to 49%). Winning the military vote in Maricopa County with a 90 percent margin strongly suggests the likelihood of fraud.

Georgia:

Garland Favorito is the head of VoterGA.org, and has a forty-year background in information technology. In a detailed press conference, Favorito and his cyber experts itemized fifteen categories of ballot irregularities found during their analysis of ballot images acquired from Fulton County, Georgia.

The number of unsupportable ballots found for this one county is forty-five times larger than Biden’s margin of victory for the entire state. (He goes into great detail emphasizing that many of the results were “not possible.”)

Michigan:

Before the 2020 election, the Michigan Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, implemented an illegal procedure that seriously undermined the integrity of the election. She announced that all signatures would be presumptively valid — even if they were only slightly similar to registration signatures. The announcement was, effectively, an invitation to fraudsters to grab all the unused ballot applications they could find or buy; and fill them out and send them in.

Trump opposed Benson’s new procedure, and he ended up winning in court — four months after the election.

By using an illegal standard for processing of signatures, and by announcing that new standard in advance so that fraudsters could exploit it, Benson effectively invalidated the Michigan election certification.

Nevada:

Three months before the 2020 election, the Democrat administration in Nevada passed a law that gutted election controls, and made the 2020 election impossible to certify with credibility.

Under the new Nevada law, all registered voters are automatically mailed ballots (not just applications). In 2020, this created mountains of unused ballots because lots of registered voters are not interested in voting, are not necessarily citizens, may have already moved to a new location, or are already “living” in the city cemetery.

How hard was it to cheat in the 2020 Nevada election? In Clark County you just had to walk into any large apartment building, go to the mailbox area, scoop up a handful of ballots, sign them, and mail them in. There was no ID required, and it was very hard to fail a signature test in Nevada. That is still true today.

The new Nevada law, coupled with its lack of an ID requirement, made the 2020 election unverifiable.

Pennsylvania:

When the Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth certified the election on November 24, 2020, there were 202,377 more ballots cast than the number of people shown to have voted. This irrefutable fact is one of several reasons many Pennsylvania legislators wanted Vice President Mike Pence to delay counting the electoral votes on January 6, 2021.(FYI: Pence did nothing!)

A reading of the Pennsylvania Code (25 PA. Stat. §3154) suggests that the certification may have violated Commonwealth law. The statute states that, if there is a significant unidentified excess of votes cast over persons who voted, there must be an investigation before the votes are recorded.

There was no investigation. 

Wisconsin:

In some amazing way in Madison Ward 124, the voter turnout increased in that ward by 1,285 percent.That very unnatural increase could explain why Madison refused to provide ballot access to post-election auditors. The sharp increase in Madison’s voter turnout could be due to incredible voter enthusiasm. But more likely, it is due to the 200 drop boxes that were placed in the Democrat stronghold for special voting days called “Democracy in the Park” (a two-day, Biden-promoted event of very questionable legality).

The Ward 124 anomaly has never been investigated.

Like I said in the beginning of this piece … There is NO way that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, FAIRLY!

For those who wish to delve further into these and more 2020 election irregularities, may I recommend Fried’s book, “Debunked.”

3/4/23

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if SCOTUS,especially John Roberts had worn “big-boy pants,” back in January, 2021.

This piece is from 2/24/21.

Duck, Duck, Goose-egg

Sometimes I wonder why we actually have a Supreme Court when they seemingly duck on important issues. They are supposed to be the brightest legal minds, but when it comes to these bright legal minds actually making a meaningful decision  . . . they duck, and the country gets nothing (a goose-egg). They’ve been ducking various abortion issues for years and now they are presented with serious issues related to the abuses of freedoms and the making-up of laws because of Covid.

Well, News Flash! . . . they just ducked again, and consequently the country got a goose-egg. This week the Court ducked on two election issues out of Pennsylvania. They seem now to have “ducking” down to a science. The vote on these Pennsylvania cases was 6-3 in favor of “ducking.” One might say, 6-3 is not close as two votes would have to be changed in order to make it 4-5. However, whereas a 5-4 majority is needed to ultimately decide a case, only four (4) votes are needed to hear a case. As pointed out in The Keneally Chronicles, this is referred to as the “Rule of Four,” meaning that only one more of the Justices needed  to agree to hear the case. Only one additional Justice needed to have the fortitude not duck these election issues. I am not surprised that Chief Justice Roberts ducked, as he seems to be losing courage year after year, but I am very surprised that Roberts’ outrage against hearing any election cases a few months back is continuing to have an effect on Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett. 

Thank God for Justice Clarence Thomas who is not afraid to speak his mind.

“One wonders what this Court waits for,” understates Thomas in his dissent, adding “we failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave election law hidden beneath 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.”

Justice Thomas adds,

“The Constitution gives to each state legislature authority to determine the ‘Manner’ of federal elections…Yet both before and after the 2020 election, non-legislative officials in various States took it upon themselves to set the rules instead…. [T]he Pennsylvania Legislature established an unambiguous deadline for receiving mail-in ballots… the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended that deadline… (and) ordered officials to count ballots received by the new deadline even if there was no evidence—such as a postmark—that the ballots were mailed by election day. … these cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address (this) before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”

Inexplicable . . . unless you are a duck!

2/24/21

3/4/23

Many of us surely remember the Limbo … a popular game, based on traditions that originated on the island of Trinidad, originally as  an event that took place at wakes. In the 1950s, the Limbo dance was popular – the aim to pass forwards under a low bar without falling or dislodging the bar. The refrain from the Limbo song is “how low can you go?” I was reminded of this refrain as I listened to Stuart Varney during his latest “My Take,” “Varney & Co,” as he discussed the costly California exodus as more residents flee the “formerly Golden State,” arguing the state isn’t “bad enough yet” to turn itself around. 

Barney pointed out that California’s population dropped by more than 500,000 people between July 2020 and July 2022. That’s a real danger to the state because those who leave, take their money with them. 

Two thirds of California’s income tax revenue come from people making over $200,000 a year, and those are the people who are leaving. 

The exodus is costing the formerly golden state billions of dollars: the deficit is over $22 billion and rising rapidly.

High cost of living, increasing crime, homelessness, high taxes and chronic educational decline, and you have a recipe for an exodus. Some say that the exodus is now up to 700,000. If 700,000 ex-tax-paying residents isn’t enough, how high can it go? What will it take to reverse the present trend toward oblivion?

Will the policies of California’s Democrats eventually kill the goose that laid the golden egg? 

Stuart Varney thinks that things have not gotten bad enough. He feels that things will have to get significantly worse, before policy changes will occur. “Don’t hold your breath waiting for a California turn-around. It’s not quite bad enough, yet.”

I am too old to move out of California, and even though I was never much good at doing the limbo, I do need to ask, “California, how low can you go?”

3/3/23

Yes, CBS News has a “medical spokesperson” who has suggested that heart disease is an infectious disease. Even though she did not come right out and say those specific words, she did say that  the increase in heart disease during Covid was because individuals did not wear masks!

This is amazing in more ways than one!

CBS News’ medical contributor Celine Gounder M.D.  insinuated on 2/13/23 that the young people who suffered an unprecedented spike in lethal heart attacks during the first two years of the pandemic might only have themselves to blame.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is among the agencies and experts that have acknowledged a link between the COVID-19 vaccines and heart issues, Gounder suggested that the spike in heart attacks was instead likely resultant of young people with generally stronger immune systems not getting vaccinated and failing to wear masks.

On Twitter, she said:

“How can you reduce your risk of heart attack from COVID?

-getting vaccinated

-wearing a mask, especially in indoor public spaces during COVID surges

-ventilation & air filtration.”

By saying that wearing a mask and improving ventilation and air filtration would have prevented this increase in young people with heart attacks, she is insinuating that heart attacks are caused by some infectious agent. Because this blog is rated G and is for children as well as adults … “poppycock!”

She made this inane statement despite the recently published article out of Israel that said basically the opposite. 

From the abstract from SciRep:2022 Apr 28;12:

“Using a unique dataset from Israel National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) from 2019 to 2021, the study aims to evaluate the association between the volume of cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome EMS calls in the 16-39-year-old population with potential factors including COVID-19 infection and vaccination rates. An increase of over 25% was detected in both call types during January-May 2021, compared with the years 2019-2020. Using Negative Binomial regression models, the weekly emergency call counts were significantly associated with the rates of 1st and 2nd vaccine doses administered to this age group but were not with COVID-19 infection rates. (emphasis, mine)

It’s amazing that Celine Gounder is supposed to be some sort of expert medical contributor, but then again, she is on CBS!

3/2/23

I have written many pieces concerning the benefit of Ivermectin to treat Covid in many places throughout the world. 

Last week I was sent an abstract of a JAMA published study that did not support the use of ivermectin among outpatients with COVID-19.

I guess I could go back and find the details of my many prior pro-Ivermectin pieces, however, at this point what purpose would that serve? For all intents and purposes, Covid is basically over. Whether this recent JAMA study that demonstrated no benefit for Ivermectin, is correct, I am not sure we will ever know … “ no me importa.”

To me more important is the heavy handed way that Ivermectin and those who wanted to prescribe it were treated. If Ivermectin was a person, this would indeed be a case of racial profiling. Let’s be perfectly clear, Ivermectin has been used in millions of people, especially in Africa to successfully treat River Blindness, and it is remarkably safe … in fact, overwhelmingly safe!

The off-label use of drugs in the U.S. is done many, many times each day, but yet Ivermectin could not be used off-label to treat Covid. Hmmm! Prescriptions for Ivermectin were not filled because of dictates from those, many of whom were either not physicians, or who were physicians who had not actually seen a live patient in years.

Last week someone called me an “anti-vaxer,” and because I had been double vaccinated in addition to being boosted, I rightfully objected. I said that I was not an “anti-vaxer,”  but rather I was a “pro-choicer.” In other words, let each individual decide if he/she was going to receive the vaccine. 

I say the same thing about physicians prescribing and patients taking Ivermectin for Covid. If the physician wants to prescribe it, and the patient trusts his physician and wishes to take it, so be it. In a free country, the real point is that both the physician and the patient should be allowed to exercise freedom of choice!

3/1/23

Now to start out I need to be clear. Neither my wife nor myself own an electric vehicle (EV). We have two gas powered cars. Furthermore in spite of Biden’s exorbitant gas prices, we have no plans to buy an EV in the near future. Granted our cars are old, 2000 & 2013, but if either were to bite the dust, like the other 93% of new car purchasers, we would buy another gas powered vehicle. At present, EVs, still only make up about seven percent of all new-vehicle purchases. Why would I not buy an EV? No, it’s not because of the price, as I can afford one. Rather, it’s because, at heart, I am an environmentalist. 

I can almost hear the guffaws, and the comments, “Not buying an EV, because of concern for the environment is an oxymoron.”

However, a study recently published by an environmental advocacy group, the Climate +Community Project expresses concern. According to this study’s authors:(Climate and Community Project, Jan 2023):

“A crucial aspect of electrified transportation is new demand for metals, and specifically the most non-replaceable metal for EV batteries– Lithium. If today’s demand for EVs is projected to 2050, the lithium requirements of the US EV market alone in 2050 would require triple the amount of lithium currently produced for the entire global market. This boom in demand could only be met by the expansion of mining. 

Large-scale mining entails social and environmental harm, in many cases irreversibly damaging landscapes without the consent of affected communities.”

Destroying the environment by lithium mining is a significant concern according to this environmental advocacy group. Their nonsensical solution to this potential environmental quagmire is … to stop driving automobiles, which is not going to happen.

So, it seems that we have an EV oxymoron in that the building of EVs which are supposedly good for the environment are destroying the environment.

Hmmm!

2/28/23

We are all aware that Rochelle Walensky is the Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Prior to being the head of the CDC, Prof. Rochelle P. Walensky, was the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, USA.

We are all probably aware that Rochelle Walensky is the Director of the 

However, we are all probably not aware that in 2020, Rochelle Walensky was a signatory of the John Snow Memorandum which was a kind of rebuttal to the Great Barrington Declaration.

For those not familiar with the John Snow Memorandum the following is from BlazeMedia:

“The John Snow Memorandum endorsed the efficacy of lockdowns, denied evidence of natural immunity following COVID infection, and essentially acted as the blueprint for ‘zero COVID.’ All of these positions were, of course, resoundingly discredited in the ensuing years.

Walensky’s signing of the John Snow Memorandum was in keeping with what may be her most damning quote of all. In a radio interview just before being appointed as CDC director, Walensky contrasts Sweden’s light-handed response to COVID negatively with China’s ‘really strict lockdowns,’ and gives her stamp of approval to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) data purporting to show that the lockdown of Wuhan had succeeded in eliminating the virus from all of China.”

With her backing of China’s lockdown policy in Wuhan, and with her signing of the John Snow Memorandum, we should not have been at all surprised by some of the “I run the CDC, and I know best” things that she has done over the last few years.

Knowing that a zebra doesn’t change its stripes, no one should have been taken aback by some of the things that came out of her testimony before Congress last week.

Again from BlaseMedia:

“In just a few hours, Walensky managed to tell Congress that the CDC’s guidance to mandate masks in schools would never change regardless of new evidence, that the CDC had conducted no randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as to whether masks were effective because it was so obvious that they worked, and that COVID vaccines had been added to the child immunization schedule so they could be given to uninsured children.

“Walensky has a long history of testimonies nearly as terrible as these. Back in 2021, Walensky couldn’t explain to the Senate why the CDC hadn’t conducted any field studies on natural immunity from COVID.

And then there was the time when Walensky explained that the CDC’s initial bravado for vaccine passes, mandates, and grandiose promises about vaccine efficacy back in 2021 had been based on a ‘CNN feed’ claiming the vaccines were ‘95 percent effective.’

When asked about the efficacy of masks a Walensky quote tells me more than I need to know about Walensky s persona. 

From Twitter:

“I’m not sure anybody would have proposed a clinical trial because, in fact, there wasn’t equipoise to the question anymore.”

I would guess that 99+% of Americans are not familiar with the word, “equipoise.” Even after I looked it up, I still do not understand the meaning of her sentence. However, now I am cognizant of why I couldn’t understand the logic of what Walensky has been saying over the last few years … I don’t speak “Harvard-ese!”

2/27/23

Born and raised in the small town of Geraldine, Alabama, Buford “Hody” Childress served in the U.S. Air Force for eight years, was a farmer for 50 years, and worked at Lockheed Martin’s Alabama Space Center until he retired. He continued farming until two years before his death.

For almost ten years Mr. Childress had a secret, and the few that knew this secret were sworn to secrecy themselves. Buford “Hody” Childress recently died , and so his secret came out.

From Epoch Bright:

His daughter, 58-year-old hairdresser Tania Nix, lives in nearby Ider, Alabama. When Hody suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other health issues, he had trouble moving around and was pretty much bedridden. He knew by then his end was approaching and he couldn’t keep his secret any longer.

“I was going to the drugstore one day and he told me, ‘I’ve been doing something for a while, and I would like to continue doing this as long as I’m alive,’” Nix told The Epoch Times. “I said, ‘Okay, what is that, Dad?’ and he said, ‘I’ve been carrying a $100 bill to the drugstore on the first of the month, I give it to Brooke, and she has the liberty to do what she chooses to help someone. I told her just to tell them it’s anonymous, and it’s a blessing from the Lord.’”

Nix told her father she would be glad to take the money on his behalf. She handed the bill in the pharmacy Geraldine Drugs but had no idea how long her father’s tradition had been going on until after he passed away, peacefully at home, on New Year’s Day 2023.

The family of the Alabama farmer discovered a moving secret on his deathbed: the 80-year-old donated $100 to a local pharmacy every month for ten years, in secret, to help people access the medicines they needed but could not afford.

Before the funeral, we gathered to reminisce about Dad,” Nix said. “One of my cousins was a personal friend of Brooke Walker [the pharmacist at Geraldine Drugs] … she immediately sat down and started telling the story … that’s how I found out about the depth and magnitude of what he had done.”

Walker had been “sworn to secrecy,” by Hody but felt the family deserved to know about Hody’s heartfelt mission.

“He never was one to be down and out, no matter the circumstances,” Nix said. “I feel very blessed that I was raised by a man that was so gentle and kind, and I feel very thankful that he was able to give back to the community.”

2/26/23

I just hesitantly came to the conclusion that perhaps, just perhaps, there is some hope for California. As background, last year the “woke” principal at a local high school decided to do away with honors classes in a number of different subjects. Apparently she felt that by doing away with these honors classes, and having all students take the same classes was the equitable thing to do. The parents of the students at that high school were not happy for a variety of different reasons, and wrote letters and showed up at a  PTA meeting. The principal was forced to backtrack on her decision to dumb-down the curriculum, and the honors classes were restored.

Here just recently a similar thing was happening in Culver City, California.

From the NY Post:

“Parents at a Los Angeles area school district spoke out at a Tuesday school board meeting against the administration’s decision to eliminate honors classes in the name of racial equity because they didn’t enroll enough Black and Latino students.

Earlier this school year, the Culver City Unified School District (CCUSD) replaced honors classes at Culver City High School with a one-size-fits-all approach that officials said would give students of all races an equal education, the Wall Street Journal reported. Many parents attended the school board meeting to ask the CCUSD administration to reinstate honors classes, which they laid out in a two-page resolution. 

A group of parents representing the Culver City Families for Education and Equity introduced the resolution at Tuesday’s meeting, arguing that a history of inequity requires a robust and varied array of learning opportunities, so students at all levels can get the support they need to achieve their highest potential. 

‘Our beloved local school district, Culver City Unified School District, is in crisis,’ one parent told the school board during the meeting. ‘We have entrenched patterns of disparity amongst different student populations when it comes to academic performance and an alarming reduction of educational opportunities that are available to every student with no input from key stakeholders: parents, families and students.’”

Getting down to the nitty-gritty … are all students equally prepared for high school? A resounding “NO.” Why is that? To me the answer is obvious, and can only be one or a combination of three things:

• most students are inadequately prepared for high school, because they did not learn what they were supposed to in elementary and middle school.
• the parents did not emphasize that learning and the hard work necessary to learn were critically important.
• certainly all high school students do not have equal IQs; according to standard distribution curves a portion will have higher IQs and a portion will have lower IQs. This has nothing to do with the gender or the race of the children attending high school.

Culver City is in the Los Angeles area, and the fact that the parents ifirst in San Diego and then in Culver City did not like the new “woke” equity plan is encouraging. Could it be that there is actually some hope for California?!

2/25/23