More info about the new mutant COVID…

Gathering facts for my own edification, here is what I’ve learned about the new strain of COVID:

• It was originally named “B.1.1.529 coronavirus variant” but is now called by WHO simply “Omicron.”  HERE is some history of why Nu and Xi names were skipped.
• It is said to have originated in the region of South Africa several weeks ago, likely around October 2021. However, concurrent cases were noted in Egypt.
• It is believed to have originated in an individual with an already compromised immune system, possibly in someone with acquired immune deficiency (AIDS).  The COVID strain was enabled to fester and mutate within that host, and mutate into what is now called Omicron.
• Omicron is the result of many more mutations than the Delta variant had; therefore it is likely to be somewhat resistant to current vaccines -  but the extent is yet to be determined.
• Many of the people in Africa and Europe who have been infected with Omicron had previously been fully vaxed.
• HERE IS THE MONEY FACT:  Those who have naturally acquired COVID and recovered have a much higher immunity to the current as well as new strains of COVID than those who have been fully vaxed.
• It is likely to have already spread to most nations of the world, including the US.
• Travel bans will only slow the spread by as much as one month.  The benefit of that is to buy more time for research and developing a strategy to fight the new strain.
• The major pharmaceutical firms expressed that it will not take long to develop new, effective vaccines for Omicron.  This is debatable since COVID, like all viruses, are constantly evolving targets.
• While the transmissibility is much higher than the Delta or original strains, the lethality is not known, but is estimated to be about the same as the original strains.
• High doses of Vitamin D3 (6,000 to 10,000 International Units) supplemented by weekly doses of Vitamin K will significantly strengthen the human immune system.  These supplements are recommended by many, including Dr. John Campbell of Great Britain who has been providing daily updates on COVID since March of 2020. Vitamin K added to D3 amplifies the benefits of both as explained HERE. I’m doubling my daily dose from 4,000 IUs to 8,000 and adding Vitamin K2 that I didn’t know about till now. I’m researching the best dose of K2.
• COVID burnout, society’s reaction of being told what to do based on questionable science, will result in more protests, civil disobedience, and civil unrest. Governments will likely react even more forcibly.
• We can only guess what impact this new COVID strain will have on world and especially US economies – I doubt it will be pretty.
• The jury is still out as to whether this new variant is merely “overblown fear porn” or something to be genuinely concerned about.

Stay tuned.  New and better information will be coming to us about the expected impacts of this new strain rapidly over the next two weeks.

Rittenhouse absolutely should have been there…

Many folks, including some conservatives, but especially snowflakes and leftists, argue that Kyle Rittenhouse had no business being in Kenosha during the riots.  They believe it was “poor judgement” on his part – that he never should have been there. 

I have no doubt that the great majority of parents would have forbidden their 17-year old to go to a town where an ongoing riot was taking place.

Why do they believe that way?

First of all, our culture has become one that believes that teenagers are still irresponsible “children.”  Many, perhaps most, parents have not given their kids of that age responsibilities that nurture adulthood.  Many “kids” today remain basement dwellers in their parents homes through their twenties. To bolster this conclusion, read Diane West’s “Death of the Grownup.”

Kyle was an exception.

Second, Kyle’s family lived in Kenosha.  He had relatives who had businesses there.  Those businesses were threatened by the rioters.  Those family members invited Kyle to Kenosha to help them defend their business in a town whose failed leaders ordered both the cops and the National Guard to “stand down” and let the rioters do their thing.

And finally, we have have become a nation of “anything goes.”  Our highest value has become “don’t offend anyone.”  Don’t judge anyone’s behavior.  That has morphed into “let the rioters do their thing.”  That leads the majority of us to believe we shouldn’t get involved or be involved in defending anything.  That would require judging others.  The left believe the rioters shouldn’t be judged. Why?  Because what they do is merely protesting “injustices” brought about by our founding fathers, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, Catholics and Jews.  Anyone who opposes a good riot must be a racist.

Kyle was an exception. 

I was saddened by his remarks in a recent post-trial interview that he even supports Black Lives Matter (the Communist front organization.)  Not sure if his attorneys told him to say that as cover or he really believes it.  But he said it. But he is not a racist.

No, Kyle is merely an “adult” teenager who believed in doing the right thing when called upon to help.  He had the fortitude to go, and the skill set to defend himself. He did what the great majority of Americans would have done 50-100 years ago.  But sadly, most now believe that we all should mind our own business and refrain from defending our communities from vandals, rioters, and looters.  Even many city officials now believe this.

Kyle is an exception, a hero, and a role model for what many more of us should become – especially city officials.

Governance without representation…

The American Revolution was fought on the basis of “taxation without representation.”  The Boston Tea Party was among the early acts of that revolution:  They didn’t want tea taxed by a far off, out of touch, greedy, out of control, unresponsive government entity which happened to be England.

Today we have a broader problem beyond mere “taxation” without representation.  We have “governance without representation.”

Sure, we tell ourselves we are being represented.  But are we, really? At least half our population believe we are not.

I submit that we are taxed and governed by a far off, out of touch, greedy, out of control, unresponsive government every bit as much as the colonist considered England to be.  The fact that the governing authority happens to be on the same continent headquartered in Washington DC is irrelevant.  The government might as well be in England or Mars.

The results are the same:  Governance without real representation.  Let’s call it what it is:  Fake representation; in many cases, NO representation.

The problem is a matter of scale.  We as a nation have gotten too big to have any real representation. There is no way effective representation can be provided on the scale we now have.  England and the colonies had a greater potential for real representation than the 50 states and Washington have. Washington is as much a distant authority to the states as England was a distant authority to the colonies.

The additional problem we have is more than a state/federal divide.  Our current political and cultural divide is not regional as much as it is between urban and rural.  In every state, whether in the northeast, south, Midwest, or west coast, there is an urban/rural divide.

Politics, policies, taxation, and regulation in cities of all sizes tend to range from liberal, to socialist, to communist. Politics, policies, taxation and regulation in suburbs and especially rural areas tend to range from moderate to conservative to libertarian.

How could greater representation than what we are currently subjected to be achieved?

There would need to be two federal governments set up. Such governments could not be formed on a regional basis because the interests of urban and rural/suburban would remain in conflict.  The two governments would need to be on the basis of cities in one nation and non-cities being another nation.

The impracticality of that arrangement highlights the difficulty of our current state of non-representation. Thus we have the seeds of revolution sown in our current form of non-representative, “representative” government.

“Measured response” is for losers - or for those who don’t care all that much about surviving or winning.

The United States fought three significant wars where our strategy was a “measured response”:  Korea, Vietnam, and most recently Afghanistan.

Our thinking, if you can call it that, was that we have such overwhelming power we dare not use it. It might be considered “unfair” if we did.  So we didn’t use it.  We held back.

This was seen over and over in Afghanistan via our “rules of engagement.”  Basically it was “don’t fire until fired upon.”  On top of that, we must not do anything that might be perceived as insulting the enemy, his culture, and his satanic religion whose primary tenant is to erase the infidel.  In fact, we must not have any sign of Christian or Jewish religion within sight of the enemy or he might not just merely be offended but might be made angry.

Fast forward to Kenosha, Wisconsin and the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.

The same demented mentality is being applied in that trial by the persecution, err - prosecution.  The argument is attempted that Rittenhouse brought a gun to a…to a…to a what?  A street party"?  A carnival?  A demonstration?

Or did the prosecution deliberately ignore the fact that Kyle was asked to help some of the merchants protect their businesses during three nights of riots, burning and looting.  And all in a city where its leaders told both the police force and National Guard to “stand down.”

The prosecution deceptively framed the shootings as if there were seconds or minutes for Kyle to assess his situation, review his options, and act on the best one.  In fact, there were split seconds to act or die.

That sounds familiar.  Our troops in Afghanistan were told countless times to stand down.  We might use too much force.  We might have even won – God forbid. Many unnecessarily died.

So Kyle brought his gun to the town where most of his family lived, Kenosha, at the request of friends.  Why?  To help them protect their businesses from rioting, burning and looting in the absence of law enforcement who were told to stand down.

Kyle must have appeared to the rioters as a goody goofball worthy of being attacked.  So they did.  A number of the mob, not sure how many, but several, decided to teach this kid a lesson.  First by pummeling him with a skate board.  Skate boards weigh up to five pounds, by the way, as much as a sledge hammer. And while he was down on the ground another “innocent Amish boy” took some time out from burning and looting to promote “social justice” and pointed his Glock at him.

Kyle fired his AR.

For this, the prosecution claimed he used “excessive force.”  He should have used his fists but he was “too cowardly” to do that.  Shades of our Afghanistan rules of engagement – our incompetent leaders told us to figuratively use our fists, which in that case meant “play nice.”

This to me sounds like rampant insanity, both in wars and in riots.  We are told to do nothing to defend ourselves and to do as little as possible to win.

The first insane thing was to tell police and National Guard to stand down, allowing the mob to burn, loot, and riot.

The second insane thing was to mock, demean and legally harass those who not only attempt to protect their community but those who take measures to defend their own life in the face of mob attack. They call such civic minded folks “vigilantes.”

This is life in another dimension.

By the way, Mark and Patricia McCloskey are also present in Kenosha to provide support to Rittenhouse.  They suffered similar persecution for merely holding weapons – leftist media calls it “brandishing” - on their front yard to defend against demonstrators who broke into their gated community.

I pray that every clear thinking person not imbued with a will to die or leftist dementia will take advantage of all available measures to defend himself and prevail if found in a similar situation.

And our nation should do the same in any war it feels necessary to engage in.

Changing Clocks twice a year is stupid…

I agree with Marco Rubio and his sentiment about the dumb “clock changing ritual” twice a year.

*****

Sen. Marco Rubio: Changing Clocks Is 'Stupid'

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Capitol Hill on April 21, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Graeme Jennings-Pool/Getty Images)

By Marisa Herman    |   Friday, 05 November 2021 09:40 AM

Daylight saving time will end at 2 a.m. Sunday, much to the chagrin of Sen. Marco Rubio.

The Republican senator from Florida is once again leading the charge to make daylight saving time permanent across the country.

Earlier this year, he reintroduced the Sunshine Protection Act, which would stop the changing of the clocks for good.

His initiative is backed by 19 states: Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Idaho, Louisiana, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah, Wyoming, Arkansas, Delaware, Maine, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, Florida, and California.

Rubio railed against the fact that he will have to set his clock back an hour on Sunday in a video message.

"We’re about to once again do this annual craziness of changing the clock, falling back, springing forward," he said. "The overwhelming majority of members of Congress approve and support [ending this]. Let's get it done. Let’s get it passed, so that we never have to do this stupid change again."

Proponents of making daylight saving time permanent argue it betters the health and safety of the nation by saving energy, preventing traffic accidents, and curbing crime.

Jim Reed of the National Conference of State Legislatures told USA Today that six states enacted measures to make daylight saving time year-round during this year’s legislative session, meaning no clock changes.

Currently, states can opt out of participating in daylight saving time. However, it requires a change to federal law.

According to the 1966 Uniform Time Act, states must change the clocks to daylight saving time at a specified time and day or follow standard time throughout the year.

Daylight saving time was first enacted by the federal government during World War I as a way to conserve coal.

Standard Time resumes Sunday and lasts until March 13.

From Newsmax

Do you notice any resemblance?

 

Both senile, both grumpy.