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Let’s play a little game of “what if.”
What if President Joe Biden has a poor showing in the first presidential debate on June 27 of this year? What if he demonstrates some elements of confusion during this debate? What if he gets flustered or angry?
What if it’s pretty clear during the debate that he should not be the Democratic candidate?
What are the Dems going to do on June 28? At this point they will have a little over seven weeks to decide what to do, as the Democrat’s Convention does not begin until August 19.
Personally, I suspect that this not so coincidental timing might have been the Dem’s plan all along … Be able to evaluate Biden’s debate performance well in advance of having to make a final decision on who was going to be their nominee. Why such an early date for the first debate? Why such a late starting date for their convention in Chicago?
What if Biden bombs the debate. What are the options then?

Option one is to do nothing … basically throw in the towel, and just continue with J.B as their candidate. If Biden tanks in the debate, I am pretty certain that they will not just give up!
Option two is to convince Joe Biden to withdraw his name from the nomination. If this were to occur, what would be the reason? They could never say that JB’s mental state is a real issue as they have been telling us for almost four years that Biden’s mental state is just fine. They could not say that they now realize that he is too old to be president, as they have been saying all along that his age is not a concern.
Realistically, they are not many options left. Of course, if he were to die sometime in the following month, then they would not have to invent an excuse. We all hope that this excuse would not have to be used. However, what if Biden developed an illness prior to the August 19th Democrat Convention? If this were to occur, it would be obvious that he was no longer fit to be President. He would not have to immediately step down, but rather “for the good of the country,” he would voluntarily withdraw his name as the Democratic nominee in this coming November’s election.
Who would replace him on the ballot in November? At this point a lot of Dems would not care, as anything would be better than J.B.
The other advantage for Biden is that he could pardon his son, Hunter, or commute his sentence. As long as he does either while he is still President, and no one would much care!

6/26/24
Californiacontrarian.com

On Sundays I write about someone who deserved our praise because of something he/she did. Today that honoree is Branson Baker.
Remember the horrific grouping of tornadoes that hit in Oklahoma in late April.
From CBS, Fort Worth:
“The only way he found his way back was with lightning strikes that lit the road. He ran as fast as he could, as hard as he could, he made a mile in 10 minutes. That’s pretty impressive for a little kid,” said Branson’s uncle, Johnny Baker. “The last thing Branson told them was, ‘Mom, dad, please don’t die, I will be back.'”
From C&C:
Remember the big Oklahoma twister in the news a couple weeks ago? Afterwards, CBS Fort Worth ran a delightful local-interest story headlined, “9-year-old’s heroic act saves parents after Oklahoma tornado: “Please don’t die, I will be back”.”

Alert Oklahoma resident and baseball fan Branson Baker, 9, was evacuating during the storms with his parents just north of Marietta when they encountered one of the state’s seventeen fierce tornados. In what must have been a terrifying trial, the twister tossed the little family’s truck right into a tree.
It was ugly. According to the family’s GoFundMe, the accident broke Wayne Baker’s back, neck, sternum, ribs, and arm, and he lost part of a finger. It broke Lindy Baker’s back, neck, jaw, ribs, and right hand, and punctured her lung.
But miraculously, little Branson was unhurt.
Nine-year-old Branson managed to squirm out of the mangled truck and didn’t waste a moment. Over the roar of the storm, he shouted “Mom, dad, please don’t die, I will be back!” He then raced more than a mile over difficult terrain in pitch darkness — keeping his bearings using lightning flashes — and ran to a neighbor’s house to get help. The young man might even have set a ground speed record for his age bracket, clocking in at a tidy and impressive ten minutes over land and easily beating the field.
Branson’s parents are recovering in the hospital.

“Be like Branson.”

6/23/24

I just recently watched a few NBA basketball games … the first time in many years. I have never watched regular season NBA games after Michael Jordan retired, and have not watched any NBA playoff games in many years.
FYI: The most watched NBA game with 36 million viewers, was in 1998 … the 6th and final game of the playoffs between the Chicago Bulls and the Utah Jazz, in which Michael Jordan hit the winning shot.
But that was then (36 million TV viewers), and this is now.
From Imprimus:
In the 2020 NBA finals LeBron James’ Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Miami Heat in 6 games. The TV viewing audience for that 6th game was 7.4 million. This means that the NBA had lost 80% of its viewers, despite the fact that between 1998 and 2020 the population of the U.S. had increased by 30%!
This dramatic drop did not surprise me as although many years back I would watch some playoff games when the games actually counted, I had not watched any NBA playoff games since the NBA became “woke.”
Lest you have forgotten, in 2020 the league painted the slogan, “Black Lives Matter” on its basketball courts. Then the players in both the NBA and the WNBA began replacing the names on their jerseys with left-wing political slogans. Likewise back in 2017 the NBA pulled its All Star Game out of Charlotte, North Carolina because the legislature passed a bill to keep men out of women’s bathrooms! Finally after that ludicrous act in 2017, by 2020, I had both stopped watching any NBA games, and also refused to read anything NBA-related in the newspapers.
That was then.
Now one of my daughters, her husband and their kids are now avid enthusiastic Boston Celtics fans. For those unaware, the Boston Celtics play in the NBA, so I thought that perhaps I would watch a game. In fact I have watched a few. I have to admit that the games were entertaining, and to boot, there was no graffiti on the courts or on the uniforms. For those not aware, the Boston Celtics won the championship in five games.
The Boston Celtics head coach, Joe Mazzulla, is not confused about who deserves the praise after winning the NBA championship … and it was not Black Lives Matter or anything to do with the trans insanity!
During Game 5 of the NBA finals, Mazzulla wore a black crewneck shirt on the court sideline. But after his team defeated the Dallas Mavericks in a 106–88 rout, Mazzulla stripped off the long-sleeve shirt to reveal a second shirt underneath.
This is now …
“But first … let me thank God,” the shirt said.

Could it be that the NBA has awakened from its “woke” insanity?

6/20/24
www.californiacontrarian.com

Last night I was playing poker with a group of cohorts of all political persuasions. I am one of the few on the right, while most are staunchly on the left. Although political discussion is typically verboten, there was one thing the guy on the far left and I could agree on … “in general, voters are dumb!” We thought that for different reasons. He basically said, “how could voters be dumb enough to vote for Donald Trump?” When anything political is even tangential to the table talk, I usually keep my mouth shut. I am proud to say that I did not break my tradition, even as I thought about two simultaneous stories of that same day.
As even the dumb voters are aware, at this point, nearly four months before the November election, inflation is having a disastrous effect on everybody. (Well almost everybody, as those who do not have to buy their own gas and their own food are clueless … are you listening, President Biden?) Those who have even some minimal knowledge of economics understand that one of the main things in the genesis of inflation is increased government spending. Two of that days headlines underscored the lunacy of what the government spending is actually doing outside of Washington D.C.

First headline:
“Biden Looks to Indefinitely Dismantle $230 Million Gaza Pier”
Let’s try to understand the effect of what our president did to dumb voters nationwide, as he was trying to win votes in Michigan … he spent $230 million of taxpayer dollars on something that was a boondoggle to begin with. Predictably, the pier was a target of Iran-backed terrorists in the region and rough weather repeatedly damaged the pier or made it necessary to move the pier to protected waters off Israel’s coast.
This $230 million could well be the poster child for frivolous government spending!

The second headline from Daybreak Insider:
“Retail Store Closures Increase by 24% in a Single Year”
Just the News: More companies are declaring bankruptcy and shutting down operations, citing inflation and high costs. Inflation and the economy remains a top issue among all voters, according to a recent The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll. Retailers are closing nearly 3,200 stores this year, according to a recent analysis from CoreSight Research. The closures are a 24% increase from 2023.”

So there you have it. The first headline describes the cause, while the second headline describes the consequent effect.
If the voters elect Joe Biden, they are indeed “dumb voters!”

6/21/24
www.californiacontrarian.com

May I suggest to Donald Trump a way to begin the debate with Joe Biden on 6/27/24. Typically, each candidate will have a few minutes at the beginning for a statement. If I were Mr. Trump, I would bow my head and say, “Before beginning could we please have a moment of silence for Laken Riley and her family. For those who may not recall, Ms. Riley was a young nursing student, who was out for a morning run in Georgia. Unfortunately she never finished that run as she was beaten, raped, and murdered by an illegal immigrant from Venezuala … an illegal immigrant that was in this country solely because of the policies of President Biden.”

After a thirty second moment of a bowed head, Donald Trump could then continue with his usual opening statement.

Likewise somewhere in the middle of the debate, President Trump should ask for another moment of silence. ‘Before going any further, might I ask for another moment of silence for Rachel Morin, a mother-of-five who was brutally killed on a hiking trail last year. Morin went missing in August after going for a walk along the Ma & Pa Trail in Maryland’s Harford County. Investigators believe that the suspect, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez attacked Morin and dragged her into a drainage culvert, where he murdered her.

Mr. Hernandez came through the U.S. border last year from El Salvador, after he kiIIed a woman there.  Hernandez is also linked to other violent activities since his arrival in the U.S.

As we all, including President Biden, are aware Mr. Martinez Hernandez was only in this country because of the policies of President Biden.”

Again with a bowed head … another short moment of silence, before restarting. 

In my opinion, instead of ranting and raving about Biden’s insane border policies. Donald Trump should use these moments of silence to appeal to the emotions of Independents.

6/19/24

www.californiacontrarian.com

The following was written in 2017 by Steven Lyazi, a student and worker, who lived in Kampala, Uganda.

From Townhall, 4/21/2017, by Steven Lyazi: 

“Solar technology in Africa, including my country of Uganda, would bring good news to millions of people who today must use firewood, charcoal and dung for cooking. Millions of Africans die from lung infections caused by breathing fumes from these fires, millions more from eating spoiled food, drinking contaminated water and having spoiled medicines, because we don’t have electricity, sanitation or refrigeration. What we do have in abundance is extensive, sustained poverty.

However, we must not look at wind and solar as anything more than short-term solutions to fix serious, immediate problems. They do not equal real economic development or really improved living standards. Our cities need abundant, reliable electricity, and for faraway villages wind and solar must be only temporary, to meet basic needs until they can be connected to transmission lines and a grid.

Only in that way can we have modern homes, heating, lighting, cooking, refrigeration, offices, factories, schools, shops and hospitals – so that we can enjoy the same living standards people in industrialized countries do (and think is their right). We deserve the same rights and lives.

That is why I react strongly to people and organizations that think wind and solar electricity and solar ovens should be enough, or the end of our progress, and everyone should be happy that their lives have improved a little. I do not accept that. But I see it all the time.

“I watched a Blazing Tube Solar demonstration and asked some questions. Their system has a long shiny metal trough that holds a tube filled with vegetable oil. The hot oil heats up a small oven at the top, to bake bread and cook other food. It has handles and wheels, so it can be moved easily. The cooker is mostly metal, so it should last a long time. But it can take 45 minutes to boil some eggs, and it costs $260.

Another problem is the sunlight. Even in Uganda, which is on the equator, the best sun comes from October through February. Other times of the year, it’s not as good because of clouds and rains. So the solar companies mostly come around when the sun is best and their ovens perform the best.

When it’s cloudy for several days, families cannot cook at all, unless they have solar cookers that actually run on electricity from photovoltaic panels on their homes. But those systems are even more expensive, and the battery power only lasts a couple days. Then families have to go back to wood, charcoal and dung.

They are very aware of the deadly respiratory diseases. But they have no choice. And many just prefer the cheaper means of cooking and surviving than the fancy, expensive solar innovations.”

My Question:

Has anything substantially changed in Africa since 2017? Actually, no, not much as this is the present situation in Africa … 

From Townhall, June, 2024:

“For the 80% of humanity in Africa, Asia and Latin America who still live on less than $10 a day – and the billions who still have little to no access to electricity – life is severely complicated and compromised by the hypocritical “green” agendas of wealthy country elites who have benefited so tremendously from fossil fuels since the modern industrial era began around 1850.”

Is it right for “those who know best” to dictate the continuing poor living standards to the millions who live in Africa, because the ruling elites know that “green” is best and fossil fuels are bad?

Take a few minutes and think about what our President and his cohorts are doing to African people, because they know best!

6/18/24

Way back in the 1700s some very smart men included the three branches of government not on a whim but for a reason.

In 1748 Montesquieu summed it up quite nicely when he said,

“When the legislative and the executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty: because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.”

Every rational person realizes that Joe Biden has never been a Constitutional scholar even though on 6/16/24 at a fundraiser in L.A. Joe Biden said that he taught Constitutional Law for nine years … (this might be an appropriate moment to point out that Joe Biden graduated law school near the bottom of his class, and has never taught anything!).

At that same fundraiser JB intimated that he is just as qualified as any Justice on the Supreme Court to interpret Constitutional law.

From Coffee and Covid:

“In case you are not aware last month, the Biden Administration extended Title IX protections — originally meant to protect women’s sports and ensure equal access to education — to trans people, pre-empting protective state laws and allowing punishment of any colleges and schools that ban biological men from playing in women’s sports or accessing their private areas.”

Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho filed suit, and late last week, federal district judge Terry Dougherty approved the four states’ emergency request for an injunction to halt the new Biden policy.”

Finally, some rationality!!

Judge Dougherty was ungentle in his conclusion, explicitly calling Biden’s new Title IX rules “an abuse of power,” and quoting ancient wisdom about tyranny. In his order he correctly labeling executive overreach as a “threat to democracy:”

Judge Doughery basically went back to the basics as he pointed out that the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances exist in this country for a reason.

6/17/24

At this point Joe Biden has not yet had a “basket of deplorables” moment similar to what Hillary Clinton had back in 2016 when she was running for President. As many will recall on September 9, 2016, at a campaign fundraising event, she used that phrase to describe “half” of the supporters of her opponent. The next day, she expressed regret for “saying half”,  but it was too late, and the Trump campaign repeatedly used the phrase against Clinton during and after the 2016 presidential election.

Could New York Gov. Kathy Hochul by her recent misstatements have given something for Republicans to run with in 2024 … similar to Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” in 2016?

Just weeks after suggesting black children “don’t even know what the word ‘computer’ is,” and then calling a New York Supreme Court justice an “extremist” for following the law, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul concluded on CNN’s “The Lead” on 5/23/24 that the constituents of this diverse crowd of working-class Americans at a Trump rally in the South Bronx were “clowns.”

Now let me be clear, even though Trump has pulled to within nine points in New York’s most recent polling, I do not think that he will win New York.

However, Hochul’s “clown” statement and similarly her saying that black children “do not even know what a computer is,” could well come back to hurt the Democrats. I can almost picture the commercials with her words superimposed on black Trump rallyers in both the Bronx and in Harlem. Broadcasting a spot like this in areas across the country that have sizable black populations, could be enough to boost the black Trump vote by just a few percentage points, and who knows what that will do in November. Who knows?

Thank you, Governor Hochul !

6/15/24

However, in addition to the financial difficulty that primary care physicians find themselves in, there is the additional burden of merely trying to keep up with their day to day challenges. Whereas the “electronic medical record” (EMR) was supposed to make life easier for physicians, in fact for the most part the opposite has happened. Yes, it did solve the problem of not getting updated records from other physicians, but at what cost?

Many primary care physicians that I know often have to spend hours at home trying to complete the records for the patients that they had seen that day. Why? … because there is just enough time in a typical fifteen minute time slot, to actually connect with the patient and complete the EMR in that same time slot. So in reality what happens? Either, the physician must spend the entire fifteen minutes not looking at the patient, while keeping his/her eyes constantly on the keyboard … or, … the notes must be finished after the usual office hours.

In addition, if the patient has a more complicated medical problem, the primary care physician must, for his/her own survival, refer that patient to a specialist, which now has a long waiting list for appointments because of all the referrals from primary care.

To make matters even worse for primary care physicians, they are getting increasingly punished by administrators to see more patients in a day. More patients means more notes and more referrals and more time spent at home just trying to survive.

The other thing that happens is that some more experienced primary care doctors advance up the ladder into administration. Whereas one might think that having a ex-primary care physician looking after other primary care physicians would be a good thing, however, when they become administrators they seem to forget how difficult it was to make it through each day in the office. 

Ergo, who is taking the side of the primary care physicians? No one is!

Is this an unanswerable problem? 

From my perspective could it be that the only reasonable way to resolve this problem is for the primary care physicians to unionize?

6/14/24

In this country there is already a significant shortage of primary care physicians ((PCPs), and it is slowly getting worse.

From the Washington Post:

“The percentage of U.S. doctors in adult primary care has been declining for years and is now about 25% — a tipping point beyond which many Americans won’t be able to find a family doctor at all.

Already, more than 100 million Americans don’t have usual access to primary care, a number that has nearly doubled since 2014.”

There are multiple reasons for this. The Covid pandemic obviously prompted a number of older primary care physicians to head for the exits. However, the main reasons for the worsening dearth of primary care physicians go much deeper than Covid. As an example, someone I know opted to leave Southern California, because “if I ever wanted to own a house, it was clear to my wife and I that we had to move. I owed $200,000 in loans, and there was no way that I could pay-off my loans and buy a house in SoCal at the same time.” While this economic dilemma is worse in California, it is a practical and realistic issue just about everywhere in the US, because med school is so expensive. Furthermore, it is worse for primary care physicians because they are at the bottom of the salary remuneration totem-pole.

Again from the Washington Post:

“One explanation for the disappearing primary care doctor is financial. The payment structure in the U.S. health system has long rewarded surgeries and procedures while shortchanging the diagnostic, prescriptive, and preventive work that is the province of primary care. Furthermore, the traditionally independent doctors in this field have little power to negotiate sustainable payments with the mammoth insurers in the U.S. market.”

In general, if you want to attract someone to something, you have to somehow make that something more attractive. As far as convincing med students to become primary care physicians, one would have to guarantee that their future lives would be better … such that they could afford to buy a house, go out to dinner occasionally, and even send their kids to private schools if they wished. To start this could be a simple economic proposal. For example a state could say, “if you become a primary care physician in our state, we (the state) will pay off your school loans over X years.”

For each state the choreography of the guaranteed loan pay-off would be different as the cost of buying a house and the amount owed on the individual loans is much different from state to state, and from individual to individual.

Granted this solution would not address the total deficit of primary care physicians in the US, but would shift this deficit among the different states. 

In part 2 I will address the more pressing day-to-day frustrations of PCPs.

6/13/24