MILESFORTIS – Page 756 – ESSE SINE METU IN FACIE INIMICI TUI. TUENDAM INOPS ET FACERE NON MALI.

The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense

There’s a war against truth… and if we don’t win it, intellectual freedom will be a casualty.

The West’s commitment to freedom, reason, and true liberalism has never been more seriously threatened than it is today by the stifling forces of political correctness.

Dr. Gad Saad, the host of the enormously popular YouTube show THE SAAD TRUTH, exposes the bad ideas—what he calls “idea pathogens”—that are killing common sense and rational debate. Incubated in our universities and spread through the tyranny of political correctness, these ideas are endangering our most basic freedoms—including freedom of thought and speech.

The danger is grave, but as Dr. Saad shows, politically correct dogma is riddled with logical fallacies. We have powerful
weapons to fight back with—if we have the courage to use them.

A provocative guide to defending reason and intellectual freedom and a battle cry for the preservation of our fundamental rights, The Parasitic Mind will be the most controversial and talked-about book of the year.

Barack Obama Smears Trump’s Latino Voters.

Confounding Democrats across America, President Trump made big gains in the Latino community on Election Day in states like Florida and Texas, vastly improving his 2016 performance with them.

The data doesn’t lie, as Politico explains:

Despite four years of being defined as a racist for his rhetoric and harsh immigration policies, Trump improved his margins in 78 of the nation’s 100 majority-Hispanic counties. And he did better with Latinos in exit polls of each of the top 10 battleground states, a POLITICO review of election data found.

Joe Biden still won Latino voters overall. But as post-election data trickles in, Democrats are growing concerned. Trump’s notable gains weren’t limited to Miami’s Cuban Americans or border-region Tejanos. Although Florida and Texas stood out for the notable shift, Puerto Ricans as far away as Philadelphia and Mexican Americans in Milwaukee drifted Trump-ward.

………..

There are many reasons for Trump’s improved standing with a voting bloc that has long been crucial to Democrat wins at the state and national levels. We’ll get into those in a minute, but first, let’s take a look at how former President Barack Obama tried to explain away Trump’s gains.

In an interview to promote his new book “A Promised Land,” Obama told the New York City-based “Breakfast Club” radio program Wednesday that Hispanic voters who went for Trump ignored his allegedly racist rhetoric and instead supported him because he was pro-life and against gay marriage:

“Those of us who live in DC or New York or LA,” Obama argued, sometimes lack “a good enough sense of how big this country is and how a lot of folks do not accept at all” policies that people living in larger metropolitan areas take for granted.

The former president turned to the topic of Hispanics who voted for Trump as an example.

“People were surprised about a lot of Hispanic folks who voted for Trump, but there’s a lot of evangelical Hispanics who, you know, the fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans, or puts detainees, undocumented workers in cages. They think that’s less important than the fact that he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion,” he explained.

While Trump is indeed pro-life, gay marriage was never a focal point of his 2016 presidential campaign, nor did he make it an issue during his presidency.

So with that in mind, on what did Obama base his claims? He didn’t say, but it’s a safe bet to guess that the basis for his remarks came out of the same old Democratic playbook that almost always boils down Republican gains among key voting groups to some form of bigotry or ignorance, because minorities who vote for Republicans couldn’t possibly be rejecting the Democratic Party for legitimate reasons, right?

Contrary to what Obama told the Breakfast Club hosts, the Hispanic voters who pulled the lever for Trump and other Republicans in down-ballot races did so because they rejected the Democrat messaging on socialism, defunding the police, and job-killing initiatives like the Green New Deal:

Continue reading “”

The party of tolerance, diversity and inclusivity:

Morning Joe: We Have No Reason to Tolerate, Understand Anyone Who Supported Trump.

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough has a habit of picking on his own friends and family members who supported President Trump, but on Tuesday’s Morning Joe, he took it a step further and plainly admitted that his obsessions with the President are more important to him than the concerns of the American people.

Speaking to wife and co-host Mika Brzezinski, Scarborough griped: “[W]e can sit and try to figure out, Mika, why people feel the way they feel. I’m more concerned on why they’re as comfortable as they were with an autocrat —“.

Knowing where this diatribe was going, Brzezinski interrupted: “I am too.” Naturally, their own concerns that they whine about every morning overwhelm those of the American people.

Sounding just like a caricature of a closed-minded journalist, safely shielded from regular Americans in his liberal bubble, he arrogantly added: “I don’t — I don’t know that — that journalists that have been cloistered in New York City and Washington, D.C., uh should — should run around America trying to figure out why people feel the way they feel. I think people have told us through two elections.” Continue reading “”

David Prowse, Man Behind the Darth Vader Mask, Dies at 85

The Englishman worked on the first three ‘Star Wars’ films, but it was James Earl Jones’ voice, not his, that was heard. He could have played Chewbacca instead.

David Prowse, the champion English weightlifter and bodybuilder who supplied his 6-foot-7 frame — but not the voice or the deep breathing — to portray Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, died early in the morning on Saturday following a short illness. He was 85.

Prowse’s death was confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter by his agent Thomas Bowington on Saturday night. Bowington Management also shared the news on Twitter, announcing his passing with “great regret and heart-wrenching sadness for us and million of fans around the world.” Continue reading “”

‘Safety’ Tips from Gun Prohibitionists Have Hidden Agenda

“Gun sales are way up, in Pennsylvania and across the country. And many are first-time owners,” The Philadelphia Inquirer notes in a “Philly Tips” column. “Here’s what you need to know about gun safety.”

Gun owners can be forgiven if that assertion causes their antennae to go up. The mainstream press, what I call the DSM (Duranty/Streicher Media), has not exactly been supportive of the right to keep and bear arms. Plus, we have seen too often how the term “commonsense gun safety laws” is contorted by gun-grabbers (with little actual knowledge of firearms and shooting) to mean more infringements that won’t do a thing to stop evil people from doing evil things and stupid/lazy people from doing stupid/lazy things.

So, the initial questions ought to be: Who are the experts? What are their qualifications? Do they have an observable agenda?

Scott Charles is the first “authority” we meet, presented as “a gun violence educator and trauma outreach coordinator for Temple University Hospital.”

He says he’s a gun owner, but if he has any specialized training/credentialing that give him notable credibility as a gun safety expert, whoever wrote up his Temple Safety Net profile failed to list them. Instead, we find he has been “an at-risk youth specialist for the State Department of Education [and] assisted in the development of a statewide rite of passage program for young African American males.” He went on to get some degrees that have nothing to do with firearms and has been featured on network television, PBS, and a “documentary” about urban criminals using guns. He’s received some community awards, one of them being from CeaseFire PA, a group that used to admit it was about “gun control.”

So what are Charles’ “gun safety” qualifications? If you didn’t give him time to look it up on the internet, would he know who Jeff Cooper was and be able to explain his rules? Would he be able to tell you what to do about safety issues shooters may encounter at the range like misfires or hangfires? Could he even tell you what those are? Maybe he could. Maybe we just need to see a relevant CV. Maybe.

“As a gun owner and someone who sees the consequences of gun injury, this is something we should take seriously,” Charles pontificates. “We have a lot of novice, first-time gun owners taking that gun home where there are children, and the data we have says that firearm is most likely to be used to harm somebody in the home.”

So we see him adopting the gun-grabber talking point that guns in the home are more dangerous than not having them in the home. But he nonetheless says he has them in his home. Agenda much? Then you go to his Twitter page and his political predispositions make it all clear. Continue reading “”

Yeglesias is to paraphrase Paul( of Tarsus) ; ‘A Proggie of Proggies’
Maybe he’s also one of the ‘new gun owners’ and he bought an AR even?

BLUF:
Yglesias’ piece has been met with mostly positive comments from his audience, and several say that they’ve been persuaded by his argument, which is fantastic. Look, as much as I’d love to convert every one of these folks to Second Amendment stalwarts, I know that’s not going to happen. I tend to subscribe to Milton Friedman’s view of politics:

The important thing is to make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. If it is not politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either.

I’ll accept the wrong people doing the right thing for purely political reasons if it leads to our Second Amendment rights becoming more secure. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to continue to evangelize on the issue of the importance of our Constitutional rights, but we also need to think about ways to make our case in language the Left can understand, and Yglesias’ argument is a good exercise in how to do so.

Vox Co-Founder: Democrats’ Embrace Of Gun Control “Misguided”

Gun owners and conservatives have been saying this all along, of course, but it’s rare these days to hear someone on the Left admit that gun control isn’t such a great idea politically speaking. Kudos to Matt Yglesias for stepping up to the plate. The pundit, who recently left Vox because even his progressive views were ticking off the young socialist staffers and he wanted the freedom to speak his mind without them pitching a fit over his columns, headed off to Substack, where he’s writing for a paid audience and enjoying complete editorial freedom.

In his latest piece, Yglesias admits he’s stirring the pot with his lefty audience by arguing that Democrats would be better off dropping gun control as a political issue, but this isn’t just an attempt to troll his audience. As Yglesias puts it, the “juice here just isn’t worth the squeeze.”

The entire piece by Yglesias is well worth a read and far too long to quote extensively here, but his basic point is simple: Americans may say they support a few individual gun control agenda items like universal background checks or red flag laws, but there’s no stomach or yearning for the kind of firearm-free society that gun control advocates embrace.

Yglesias is a lefty, and he’s not making an argument trying to convince his audience of the importance of the Second Amendment as an individual right. His point is that it’s not an issue that Democrats should run on. Continue reading “”

Robbery suspect fatally shot by victim in Lauderdale Lakes

LAUDERDALE LAKES, Fla. – A man was fatally shot by the victim he was trying to rob last week in Lauderdale Lakes, authorities said.

According to Broward Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Carey Codd, the unidentified man and another suspect, identified as Litanis Alcira, 41, of Margate, committed an armed robbery around 10:30 p.m. last Friday in the 3900 block of Northwest 34th Way.

Codd said one of the robbery victims fired his gun and shot Alcira’s accomplice.

Alcira drove the man away from the scene and called 911, Codd said.

She said deputies responded, as well as Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue personnel.

The man who was shot was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died.

Alcira was arrested on charges of murder and two counts of armed robbery.

The case will be forwarded to the Broward County State Attorney’s Office to review the circumstances of the shooting by the robbery victim, Codd said.

Resident shoots 2 suspects in Lynchburg home invasion

The Lynchburg Police Department is investigating a home invasion that occurred on Wooldridge Circle early Wednesday morning, Nov. 25.

According to police, at 1:40 a.m., officers responded to the 100-block of Wooldridge Circle for a report of a burglary in progress.

They say two men knocked on a residence and assaulted the resident before trying to enter the home. The resident shot both suspects who suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

27-year-old James Franklin of Roanoke is charged with breaking and entering and assault and battery and 26-year-old Alan Douglas Mould of Lynchburg is charged with breaking and entering and assault and battery.

Don’t understand? Au contraire mon ami. They hold it in contempt.

Axios Founder: Most media publications don’t understand 50% of America.

The founder and CEO of Axios, Jim VandeHei, says that he’s concerned America will split in two over the lack of understanding of Trump supporters’ values.

Clerk shoots robbery suspect in Tuscumbia

TUSCUMBIA, Ala. — A robbery suspect was airlifted to Huntsville Hospital Monday after being shot at a Tuscumbia gas station, police said.

Tuscumbia Police Chief Tony Logan said the robbery happened at the Fuel City on Highway 72 around 11 a.m. A clerk shot the suspect as he was trying to get away, Logan said.

The clerk, Miranda Mullins, told News 19 she was suspicious of the man when he came into the store because he had his hood up and was wearing sunglasses.

Mullins said the man demanded money at gunpoint. As he was leaving, Mullins said she pulled a gun from under the counter and shot him in the shoulder.

The suspect got into a vehicle with a woman, who drove off and then was involved in a wreck at Avalon and Montgomery avenues, near Helen Keller Hospital, Chief Logan said. The woman was not injured in the crash, he said.

The suspect was airlifted from Helen Keller to Huntsville Hospital. His condition was not immediately available Monday afternoon.

Mullins continued working her shift after the incident.

Authorities are investigating the possibility that the suspect is connected to other armed robberies across the Shoals.

Justice Department hires More Guns, Less Crime author John Lott

The Justice Department hired a Second Amendment advocate last month who has argued that crime could be reduced through less gun control.

John Lott, 62, was hired to be a senior adviser for research and statistics at the Office of Justice Programs division, which provides over $5 billion in annual grants.

“I took a job at the Department of Justice. I’m really not supposed to say more than that,” Lott told Politico.

Lott came to the agency from a nonprofit organization he founded in 2013, dubbed the Crime Prevention Research Center, which studies the “relationship between laws regulating the ownership or use of guns, crime, and public safety.” Continue reading “”

What a Biden Administration Means for Border Security

“Whenever Obama was in there, drug cartels were so bad that it didn’t seem like anybody was fighting the drug cartels… the cartels ruled everything. They ran the dope, they trafficked the young girls, and there were so many more killings.” — Border resident, US Southwest.
“Trump had more Customs and Border Patrol agents at the border. Cattle crossings from Mexico were checked, inspected and limited. The cartels have used cattle to move dope for years. Now they’ll go back to moving cattle and laundering money back through the crossing here [Santa Teresa, NM] with less law enforcement. It will be a serious step backwards.” — Border resident, US Southwest.
The Americans paying the very high price for Biden/Harris reckless open borders policy are in border communities. Biden’s reversals spell doom for overloaded (and closed) hospitals, schools, public housing, and courts. Remember: Biden (and the rest of the Democratic presidential field) promised free healthcare to all illegal aliens.
U.S. Customs Service Officer Patricia Cramer, president of the Arizona chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union, revealed in an interview that persons crossing into the United States from Mexico are not health-screened in any way. No temperature taken, no cursory visual exam, nothing.
Remember: In “COVID-world,” you cannot go to the gym, and you must “social distance” in absurd ways — but the border is open, and no one is screened.

A Biden administration means two dramatic and dangerous reversals on Trump policies that will endanger the American public: 1. Termination of President Trump’s signature 2016 campaign issue — The Wall; and 2. Loosening of immigration restrictions.

“There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, No. 1,” Biden told National Public Radio earlier this year. “I’m going to make sure that we have border protection, but it’s going to be based on making sure that we use high-tech capacity to deal with it.”

Biden is not really promising any border protection at all. It sounds good, but it is a hollow falsehood. Most of the American public does not know about or has forgotten the $30 billion dollar disaster known as “SBInet.” We have been down this “high-tech virtual wall” road before. The only winners were defense contractors. The virtual wall does nothing to deter or prevent unlawful entry across the border. It merely provides surveillance and recording of the illegal activity. Thousands of hours of video recordings of such crossings are available on the internet right now. Technology contractors are encouraged that a Biden administration would like to continue watching and recording millions of people entering the country illegally. Continue reading “”

M&P SHIELD® EZ® PISTOL IMPORTANT SAFETY RECALL NOTICE FOR PISTOLS MANUFACTURED BETWEEN MARCH 1ST, 2020 AND OCTOBER 31ST, 2020

Smith & Wesson announced this week that it has identified two M&P Shield EZ pistols on which the hammers manufactured by the supplier were cracked. In those firearms the hammer failed to fully engage the sear, which caused the round to fire, cycling the slide and potentially resulting in multiple discharges without depressing the trigger. In all cases, the firearm will NOT fire unless the grip safety is depressed.

This condition has been found only in two hammers, and Smith & Wesson’s investigation suggests the pair of incidents are very isolated. Any unintended discharge of a firearm, however, has the potential to cause injury. Therefore, Smith & Wesson has established this Safety Recall as a precautionary measure to ensure that all M&P Shield EZ Pistols in service meet it design specifications, as any unintended discharge of a firearm has the potential to cause injury. This notice applies only to M&P Shield EZ pistols (including Performance Center models) manufactured between March 1, 2020, and Oct. 31, 2020, and only to a small percentage of that population. It does NOT apply to all Shield pistols.

Stop using your M&P Shield EZ pistol until you determine whether it is included in this safety recall, and if so, until it has been inspected and repaired by Smith & Wesson, if necessary. Owners of all M&P9 Shield EZ and M&P380 Shield EZ—including Performance Center models, should visit this special web page and input their pistol’s serial number, or call (888)-871-7114 immediately to determine if the hammer of their M&P Shield EZ Pistol was from a manufacturing lot that was potentially affected. This notice applies only to certain M&P Shield EZ models, and not all M&P Shield pistols.

If your M&P Shield EZ Pistol is included in this recall, as determined by the website link or telephone number above, discontinue its use immediately and follow the instructions on the website link—or call (888) 871-7114—and the company will arrange for the return of your firearm to Smith & Wesson for inspection. After inspection, if the hammer from your firearm is affected, it will be replaced at no cost to you. It is anticipated the entire process will take no longer than 10 business days, and pistols will be returned as quickly and efficiently as possible. All shipping and replacement costs will be covered by Smith & Wesson.

M&P Shield EZ Pistol owners outside the United States can refer to the Smith & Wesson list of Authorized Warranty Centers, where your pistol can be inspected and hammer replaced as necessary.

Robbery Attempt Leaves One Man Dead

One man is dead and another was shot after an apparent home invasion and robbery attempt went bad early Saturday morning in Elk City.

25-year-old Isaiah Johnson was arrested Sunday on a complaint of second degree murder for his role in the crime.

According to authorities with the Elk City Police Department the shooting took place inside a home in the 600 block of N. Watkins. The home owner would tell police that two men, Johnson and 39-year-old Samuel Castro Junior had entered his home and approached the victim in his bedroom. He would say that Castro would point a gun at his head and demanded money. Fearing for his life, the homeowner would successfully overpower and take the gun from Castro and stated that he shot Castro multiple times until he fell to the floor. Castro died at the scene. The homeowner stated that Johnson would flee the home.

Later, police were contacted by the Great Plains Regional Medical Center to report a man that was being treated for a gunshot wound to the chest and arm. The man, Johnson, was treated and released to the Elk City Police where he was transported to the Elk City Police Department for questioning.

Police say after a lengthy interview, Johnson would allegedly confess the he knew that Castro had a handgun before entering into the home. Johnson would tell police that he was inside the room where the shooting occurred and would flee the scene after being shot in the chest and arm. He stated that he then walked to the hospital for treatment.

Johnson is currently being held in the Elk City Jail on a $1 million bond.

The Truth About The Distinction Between Military and Civilian Firearms

It’s a common trope of American political discourse: a politician will emphatically declare his respect for the Second Amendment. He will deny that he’s “coming for your guns.” After all, he knows that gun-grabbing is unpalatable to many Americans.

But, in his very next breath, he’ll backpedal a bit — surely, civilians don’t need and ought not possess “military” firearms, those notorious “weapons of war.” And…well, yes, he will come for those guns.

Clearly, the politician believes that there is a real, categorical distinction between military and civilian firearms. Many American voters do, too. Moreover, they think this distinction somehow matters.

There are two problems with that perspective.

First, in all of American history, there has never been any substantial distinction between military and civilian firearms. Rather, there has always been tremendous overlap of guns used by the military and guns used by civilians.

Continue reading “”

And with the states where the citizenry doesn’t need to have a permit to carry concealed, the author gets the point that this is is a minimal number.

There Are Nearly 20 Million Concealed Carry Permit Holders in USA

There are nearly 20 million concealed carry permit holders in the United States and perhaps untold millions more who carry every day in the 16 states that don’t require such permits.

The NRA-ILA reported figures from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) showing there are over 19.48 million concealed carry permit holders in the USA, including 820,000 permit holders who were added in 2019 alone.

The near-20 million permit holders represent a 34 percent increase over 2016 figures.

In 14 states, more than ten percent of the adult population has a permit to carry. Those states are Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, and West Virginia.

On November 2, 2020, Breitbart News reported that October was the tenth consecutive month of record firearm background checks. That means every month in 2020, beginning with January, set a record for the most background checks performed in that given month.

In other words, more checks were performed in January 2020 than in any January on record, and more in February than any February on record, and more in March, and in April, and so on, all the way through October.

On November 17, 2020, Breitbart News reported National Shooting Sports Foundation numbers showing Americans own a total of 434 million firearms.

A Time of Chaos Upon Chaos Atop Chaos
There is a series of battles to come in January 2021, in 2022, and in 2024 that will be definitive, if the chaos of 2020 does not become even more chaotic.

America will weather its current hysterias.

But the tensions and furor are reminiscent of the last generations of the Roman Republic. In its last century, Romans began to adjudicate politics by obsequious partisan town criers (their version of our media), mass demonstrations, and freelance street gangs. Looters, arsonists, and demonstrators did pretty much as they pleased in the streets of Rome without fear of legal consequences.

In our time, the media has now vanished—kaput, no more, ended.

Within a few hours, it goes from a Ministry-of-Truth love session with Joe Biden to a steaming verbal assault on the president’s press secretary—without a shred of awareness how ridiculous they appear in their passive-aggressive schizophrenia. The only constant is that reporters unapologetically seem to jettison their principles and professionalism to calibrate what they say and do by whose politics they support. They would prefer to be entirely discredited under a Biden presidency than be real journalists during a Trump Administration.

The current unspoken subtext of the media-progressive party fusion line is the following: It would be a felonious crime should conservatives now dare to disrupt a transition in the manner that the Left did in 2016. They should not dare to sue about voting machines in key states as did the Clinton surrogate Jill Stein. They would never attempt, in 2016 fashion, to sabotage the Electoral College voting by appealing to constitutionally appointed electors, or surveille top Biden campaign and transition officials and coordinate such monitoring inside the Trump Oval Office.

The point of the Steele dossier, the Russian collusion hoax, the calls for future impeachment even during the Trump transition, the abuse of the foreign intelligence surveillance courts and the weaponization of the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department was to weaken the Trump campaign, to disrupt the Trump transition, and to wound fatally the Trump presidency. For the architects, abettors, and enablers of those past efforts now to accuse Trump officials of adhering to what they created on a massive scale is comic. Continue reading “”

“I’ll think about considering it’s a crisis when people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis”
and speak of the devil……..

Climate Change Alarmist Harrison Ford Seen Landing Private Jet to Pick Up Son Ahead of Thanksgiving.

Harrison Ford, who has spoken publicly about the perils of climate change, was reportedly seen landing his private plane to pick up his son ahead of Thanksgiving.

The Raiders of the Lost Ark star was snapped disembarking from the plane in the Boston area on Saturday to pick up his son Liam from college for the holiday break, according to a report from the Daily Mail. The actor appeared to disregard the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that Americans avoid traveling for Thanksgiving due to the coronavirus. Continue reading “”

Revenge of the Republicans
Political turnabout is fair play

The 2020 election has provided fertile ground upon which Republicans can spend the next four years doing to Joe Biden what the Democrats did to Donald Trump and George W. Bush.

For four years, Democrats and their media allies trumpeted every claim, no matter how baseless or crazy, that Trump’s 2016 election win was illegitimate and fraudulent. Despite zero evidence that so much as a single vote was interfered with, Democrats peddled the hoax that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to elect Trump. Even after the Mueller investigation exonerated Trump and his campaign from the collusion canard, Democrats, led by the shameless Adam Schiff, continued to allege collusion. Their simple goal was to undermine and delegitimize the Trump presidency. It clearly worked to the degree some voters turned their backs on Trump even as they voted Republican down-ballot.

As Biden’s razor-thin win in a handful of states that pushed him past the 270-electoral vote threshold needed to win the presidency, Trump and his allies claimed that voter fraud and other Democrat-led schemes stole the election. Unlike the bogus Russia bunk, however, there are documented voter fraud issues and other unexplained results that call into question the election. For example, one analysis found that Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton in every major city except, conveniently, Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta. Because of this and other election oddities, a significant chunk of voters don’t believe Biden actually won the election. He’ll now spend four years governing an America in which just under half of its citizens believe he wouldn’t have won had everything been done fairly and squarely.

Though he managed to get far more done than people give his team credit for, Trump governed under a dark cloud for most of his presidency. His team had to waste precious time and energy defending him against the Mueller investigation with its phalanx of Democratic hitman lawyers and corrupt FBI personnel. The media aided this assault by running stories over the last four years based on anonymous sources, several of which ended up being false. No president has had to undergo so thorough an investigation on such thinly-sourced claims. Trump may be lots of things, but he is as patriotic and faithful to America as any man who ever occupied the Oval Office.

Continue reading “”

Lockdowns Are “Saving” Our Seniors? From What, Exactly?

Elderly citizens are exceptionally vulnerable to COVID-19. Ninety thousand, or 36% of official deaths, have been recorded in long-term care facilities. Strategies like lockdowns are intended in part to protect this population from the ravages of the virus.

But saved them from what, exactly?

As reported by The Associated Press, “[A]dvocates for the elderly say a tandem wave of death separate from the virus has quietly claimed tens of thousands more, often because overburdened workers haven’t been able to give them the care they need.”

A nursing home expert who analyzed data from the country’s 15,000 facilities for The Associated Press estimates that for every two COVID-19 victims in long-term care, there is another who died prematurely of other causes. Those “excess deaths” beyond the normal rate of fatalities in nursing homes could total more than 40,000 since March. [Emphasis mine.]

In too many cases, stopping a COVID death has meant isolation, loneliness, and neglect in the patient’s last months.

I had occasion to share my thoughts on senior care back in September. Eldercare was a daily reality for me from 2014 until 2017, when both my parents passed away a few months apart.

Mom spent the last three years of her life in a nursing home. She was slowly slipping away with dementia, but remained as a sweet teenager still in love with my Dad to the end. He saw her nearly every day, but was unable to take care of her. These Depression-era savers lived modestly, which meant at the end Mom could afford a private sitter — an extra set of eyes and ears to insure proper care — in addition to the considerable expense of private nursing care.

There are good nursing homes and not-so-good nursing homes, but in the end, each one is a business. In 2017, my parents could afford a good sitter; with dementia, it’s more about preserving the patient’s dignity than it is about prolonging their life.

Take away visits from family and friends, and standards are bound to suffer.

Dad, by contrast, had all his faculties. We moved him into assisted living, a wonderful place where he made new friends. He never got used to the “chow”, as he called it. In his last three years, I listened to his old Navy stories many times over and came to appreciate just how socially engaged he was. … In a lockdown, Dad would have felt just as depressed and isolated as Mom [because he would have been denied his daily visits to her nursing home]. It may have been worse for him because he had the capacity to understand.

My parents died in their 92nd year, their 73rd year together as husband and wife. Neither was afraid to die. Toward the end …

… Dad became more patriotic than ever. He would tear up at the sight of a flag, and military displays on TV invariably caused him to weep openly. He spoke constantly of how he cherished our God-given freedoms and how his grandchildren and great-grandchildren represented our nation’s future.

Our nation has blundered in this pandemic because we have focused on counting that which is easily counted: COVID deaths and infection rates. Our strategy has been to keep those numbers low at all costs. When you’re an epidemiologist, every problem looks like a novel coronavirus.

Who is keeping score of the diffuse (but real) negative costs of our response? Not just hidden nursing home deaths, but suicide, drug overdose, domestic abuse, depression, anxiety, and mental illness are part of the tally. So are the consequences of delayed and deferred health care.

It remains to be seen if the vaccines will be effective and for how long. Political leadership seems to be slouching toward renewed lockdowns. We need clear-headed leadership who realizes that dealing with COVID is not a one-dimensional problem; interminable rolling lockdowns are of limited use.

At some point, we must get back to normal.

I AM STRONG, I AM INVINCIBLE. I AM WOMAAAN!!!!
No! NO! NO!! Boys have cooooties!!!!!

Comment o’ the Day:
They’re actually doing men in fraternities an inadvertent favor, since due process does not exist for males accused of sexual wrongdoing. Especially at Duke, where 88 professors joined The New York Times, Nancy Grace and Dan Abrams in proclaiming the Duke Lacrosse Team members guilty of rape in advance of any trial.

Men should NEVER have any sort of personal or romantic relationships with female coworkers or fellow students. If women don’t like that, they can address their complaints to feminism.

Duke sorority council bans events with male groups.

The Panhellenic Council at Duke University voted to ban chapters of member sororities from hosting “mixers” with all-male organizations, vowing to place chapters that violate the rule on social probation.

The Duke Panhellenic Association “unites women across 10 chapters” of various sororities and is the “largest unified body of undergraduate women at Duke University.”

According to a post on the Duke Panhellenic Association’s Instagram page, the Panhellenic Council voted to ban mixers with all-male organizations to focus on women’s empowerment. The post states that all-male organizations cause concern amongst other groups due to gender dynamics and the objectification of women.

The post defines mixers as “exclusive events between organizations.” Continue reading “”