THIS & THAT XXIV

                     It is now possible to piss some people off by referring to “Chinese New Year” as “Lunar New Year,” and vice versa.

          Be careful.  If you are insufficiently woke, just keep your mouth shut.

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           I don’t think “latinx” is ever going to catch on, do you?

          There’s a name for this kind of word.  It’s an exonym, meaning a name for a race or an ethnic group that does not come from the people themselves.  And since it does not come from the people themselves, there’s always the possibility that the people it refers to won’t like it.

          That is not always true, of course.  We call people from Germany “Germans.”  It’s an exonym because Germans call themselves Deutsche, but the term “German” has no pejorative subtext.  However, Germans are also called krauts, heinies, and huns.  These are all exonyms, and they are insulting.

          “Eskimo” is an exonym that was never complimentary (it comes from Algonquian languages, and it means “eaters of raw meat”), but nobody was much offended by it until recent decades when group identity became so politicized.  Now it is considered a racist term.

          That seems to be the direction latinx (pron. “la-tin-x”), is going.  The purpose of it appears to be to eliminate the gendered terms “latino” and “latina,” since in the woke universe, sex and gender are just social constructs with no immutable meaning.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be how most latinos feel about the matter.  Spanish is, after all, a gendered language.  There are male nouns and female nouns, and that is characteristic of romance languages.  Imposing the woke ideology of non-gendered language on Spanish speakers is not only an affront to their culture and traditions, it will be much more difficult than it would be for English speakers.

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          Trump had some classified documents at his compound at Mar-a-Lago, Biden had some in his Corvette and in a closet at the U of Penn, Sandy Berger (remember him?) had some stuffed in his pants.  And don’t forget Hillary.

          What’s the problem here?

          Nobody knows how many classified documents there are, but one estimate is that there are 50 million new documents classified every year.  Maybe the problem is that the people who deal with classified documents, and are responsible for classifying new ones, don’t take the process seriously.  How could they?  The bureaucrats who mostly deal with these things know that 1) there is no cost or downside to having documents classified, 2) it makes people look important if they work with classified documents or cause them to be classified in the first place, and 3) having documents stamped Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret (the three “classifications”), is a good way to prevent them from embarrassing you later on.  In addition, the people in charge of the process know full well there is no justification for classifying the vast majority of documents.

          There’s an easy way to fix this.

          First, each agency that classifies documents must review the documents it has classified, and de-classify 99% of them.  Give them a year to do this and if they fail to do so, they lose the power to classify any further documents until the culling has been completed.

          Following the completion of this Phase One, mandatory criminal penalties will kick in for mishandling of classified documents.  The person responsible for allowing a classified document to wind up in a place where it shouldn’t be goes to a federal prison for six months (minimum).  This will solve the other problem---nobody takes them seriously because nobody ever has to pay a price for breaking the rules.  Sandy Berger never went to jail, and the feds had to fish some embarrassing Clinton-era papers out of his boxers.  Even Hillary paid no price, and her use of an insecure homemade email server to house classified documents almost certainly led to security breaches and the deaths of Americans.

 

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“It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled."                                                                                                                                                                                                                 ---Mark Twain

          As one of those who resisted the COVID madness from the beginning, I grow increasingly optimistic that we are approaching a tipping point on the dangers of the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.  Stories that were uniformly suppressed by governments, the press, NGOs, academia, social media, medical organizations, pharmaceutical companies, health insurers, and financial institutions are now seeping into the public consciousness on the internet and even in media outlets that spent the last three years reporting ONLY the accepted narrative.

          The stories bobbing to the surface come from everywhere.

          The COVID experience in India constitutes an accidental study in the effects of mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna), versus the Viral Vector products (like Johnson & Johnson) or the Protein Subunit types (like Novavax).

          India is a heavily vaccinated place, but unlike Europe and the U.S., none of the shots were mRNA shots.  India health minister Mansukh Mandaviya was the person responsible for negotiating with Pfizer and Moderna over the use of their products in India, and he reported the negotiations fell through because the companies demanded legal immunity for any injuries resulting from their vaccines.  While the U.S. and many other countries routinely grant this immunity to vaccine-makers, India never has, and Mandaviya refused to in this case.

          The significance of this arises from the near-absence of vaccine deaths in India.  These tend to be difficult to count anywhere, largely because in Europe and the US, the authorities have not wanted to count them, so the enormous numbers of vaccine-related deaths have been suppressed.  That does not mean the numbers cannot be teased out of the data, however.  In the United States (from the CDC’s VAERS database, for example), it appears the vaccines have killed about 350,000 people.  In the EU, there is a vaguely-similar website called EudraVigilance, run by the European Medicines Agency, with comparable numbers of reported vaccine deaths.

          India tracked vaccine injuries too, and their best data indicates there were about 1000 vaccine deaths among 100,000,000+ people vaccinated, or about one out of every 100,000.  Another measure published by the Indian government at the end of 2021 was vaccine injuries (“adverse events”).  Official counts of vaccine injuries were 0.2% of shots in the US, 0.7% in the UK, and 0.006 in India.

          India’s experience is powerful evidence that the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are the villains in the COVID vaccine death-toll.

          Another chink in the COVID-orthodoxy armor comes from the FOIA lawsuit filed by the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency against the FDA in September, 2021 over the FDA’s refusal to release documents submitted in support of vaccine authorizations.  Involved were 300,000+ documents, which Pfizer offered to release at a rate of 500 per month, stretching the process out to somewhere north of 2080.

          U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman (N.D. Texas), ruled against the FDA in January 2022, and all responsive documents have now been released.

          But what do you do with 300,000+ documents?  You need somebody to read them and analyze them and put the pieces together.  The on-line sites Daily Clout and The War Room took on that challenge and attracted 3500 volunteers, including medical professionals and lawyers, to the task.

          The result is “Pfizer Documents Analysis Reports,” an eBook featuring 50 essays on different aspects of Pfizer’s deception.  Pfizer knew (and suppressed), the dangers of its mRNA vaccine, and thus, there could be no informed consent among the hundreds of millions who took the shot and suffered the damage.  The collusion of the CDC, the FDA, and the media in the lies is also apparent from the Reports.

          At this point we have all heard of the heart injuries the vaccine has done to young men.  There has been less publicity, however, about the effect on young women in their reproductive years.  The results of vaxxing pregnant women were frightening.  Of the pregnant women in the Pfizer trial who took the shot, 270 reported injuries.  Of those 270, Pfizer followed only 32 of them, and of those, 28 lost their babies.  There is also ample evidence of vaccine-related changes to women’s menstrual cycles, though the seriousness of these alterations is not yet clear.

          Elsewhere, mandates are being quietly dropped (even in California!), and legislation is being introduced to ban mRNA vaccines.  Here and there, a few public health officials (minor ones), have publically apologized for pushing the COVID security state protocols upon us in spite of the absence of evidence supporting them.

          It all adds up, I hope.  Of course I would like to see Fauci and Klaus Schwab and Cuomo and Newsom and Bill Gates, and all the other architects of this attempted fascist takeover, in prison for their crimes against humanity.  But in this world where people are never held responsible for their crimes but only for the crimes of their ancestors, we cannot expect these monsters to pay any sort of price.  I would like to see them shamed from public life, however, and never again have the opportunity to pursue their totalitarian dreams at our expense.  I would like to see the three years from 2020 to 2022 viewed for what they were---a dystopian nightmare and fraud that killed millions and should never be repeated.     

 

                   

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki  

2023 NFL PLAYOFFS---Superbowl

 Philly (-1) vs. Kansas City

          This will be brief because there’s not much left to say.  The two #1 seeds, and what appear to be the two best teams in the NFL, are meeting for the Superbowl.  Aside from Tua Tagovailoa (and possibly Garoppolo), Hurts and Mahomes are the two best QBs in the NFL this season.  Both have been injured, but both are mostly recovered from their injuries.

          The Eagles have a slightly better AYP than KC (7.3 to 7.1), and Philly has the best defensive AYP in the league at 4.0, while KC’s pass defense is only slightly better than average at 5.2.

          Both of Philly’s playoff wins were blow-outs, while both of KC’s wins (by 7 points and 3 points), went down to the wire.  I think that means something.

          The better team does not always win the Superbowl, but Philly is the better team.  Take the birds and lay the point.

 

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki

2023 NFL PLAYOFFS---Conference Championships

           My record this week was 3 – 0, with wins by the Iggles, Cincy and the 49ers.  I passed on the Jacksonville – KC game.  I’m now 6 – 1.

          Both conference championship games are home games for the #1 seeds in each conference---Philly in the NFC and KC in the AFC.  Since the spreads on these games are very small, we are basically looking for the teams that will win and advance to the Superbowl.  I will be on the Eagles and the Chiefs.

 

          San Francisco @ Philadelphia (-2.5)

          The 49ers looked better and better as the season progressed, winning the last ten regular-season games and now two more in the playoffs.  Brock Purdy at QB is a sort-of seven-day wonder who posts one great passing performance after another, and never seems to make a mistake.

          The Eagles, on the other hand, dominated the NFL for the first fourteen weeks and then, when QB Jalen Hurts injured his shoulder, suddenly became vulnerable and lost two games (to Dallas and New Orleans).  Hurts returned for the last game of the regular season, beating the indifferent Giants to clinch the top seed in the NFC, but he did not look to be 100%.  Heading into the Division Week match-up against those same Giants, it was reasonable to wonder whether Hurts would be at his best, and whether the Iggles were still the best team in the NFL.

          Hurts was at his best and so were the Birds.  New York had just won their Wildcard game, on the road, easily defeating Minnesota, and they were confident in their chances coming into Philadelphia.  And they were COMPLETELY DOMINATED in every aspect of the game.

          The last three minutes of the first half looked like garbage time, and the score at intermission was 28 – 0.  The final was 38 – 7.

          In other words, the Eagles (and Hurts) are back, and they are once again the best team in the NFL.  In fact, they look better than before.

          Philly had the best AYP in the league this year at 7.3, slightly better than San Fran’s 7.0.  Also, Philly’s defensive AYP was also the best in the league (4.0), and was significantly better than San Francisco’s 4.7.

          Philly has superior numbers to San Francisco, they are healthy, and they are playing in South Philadelphia.  The line should be much larger than 2.5.

          Lay the points and take the Eagles.

 

Cincinnati @ Kansas City (Pick ‘em)

          This story is much the same as in the NFC.  The top seed is playing at home, has a better record, and boasts better AYP numbers than the challenger.  The disparity is even greater here, with KC’s AYP of 7.1 versus Cincy’s 6.4.  In the NFL stats, Mahones had the second-best QB rating at 105.2, while Burrow’s 100.8 was 6^th.  The Chief’s defensive AYP is also a hair better than that of the Bungles.

          Of course, the question hanging over this game has been: “Is Mahomes really Mahomes?”  We have known he will play, but will his recent high-ankle sprain limit his effectiveness?

          We can’t be sure about that, of course, but the reports are that the injury is less severe than feared and that he is practicing well.  It is still possible that his ability to scramble will be compromised or that he will limit his efforts in that dimension out of simple prudence.  But I don’t really care about that.  I’m relying on his ability to throw the ball down the field because that’s what wins in the playoffs, so if he stays in the pocket all day, that would be fine with me.

          Cincinnati has had a great run, and nobody would be surprised by a Bengals win.  (They already beat the Chiefs once, by a field goal, on December 4.)  They won their last eight regular season-games and two playoff games---an extremely lucky victory over the Ravens and a dominating win over the Bills.  But the Chiefs, over the course of the season, have been better.

          Take KC, and be grateful you don’t have to lay any points.

 

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki    

2023 NFL PLAYOFFS---Division Week

 

          My record for the wildcard games was 3 –1.  Won with Jacksonville, Miami and the Boyz; lost with Cincy.  I passed on the Seattle - SF game and the Giants – Minnesota game.

          Last year, all the Division Week games were decided with last-second field goals or in OT.  I don’t expect that will happen in 2023.  I see at least two mismatches.

 

Jacksonville @ KC (-10)

          As an Eagles fan, I will always love J’ville coach Doug Pederson.  I also find KC coach Andy Reid (and the widespread reverence for him), intensely annoying.  I loved Jacksonville’s preposterous comeback win over the Chargers last week and I would love to see Dougie go into KC and beat the Chiefs.

          But let’s get real.

          In the AFC, KC’s 7.1 AYP is the best by a wide margin, while the Jaguars’ 6.3 AYP is a distant 5^th among the playoff teams.  K.C’s defensive AYP is also better than that of the Jags.

          In addition, while Trevor Lawrence must get some credit for the Jaguars comeback, his wildcard game was objectively the worst of any QB in Wildcard Weekend, and that includes Tom Brady and Skylar Thompson.  The guy threw four picks.  He may indeed wind up with three or four Superbowl rings before he’s done, but he won’t get one this year, and this Saturday will be his last game of the season.

          However, when evaluating KC, one must always remember that Andy Reid’s history is not primarily one of success.  Rather, it is marked by those numerous occasions when his heavily-favored team comes into a critical contest appearing totally unprepared and clueless.  Andy’s story is a tale of losing the big one, and that is always a possibility.

          Considering Reid’s uneven record, and considering that Jacksonville has only been blown out once this year, I cannot feel confident about laying 10 points with the Chiefs.  I expect them to win, but I won’t bet this game.

 

NYG @ Philly (-7.5)

          Daniel Jones had a very nice game against the mediocre Vikings.  Two touchdowns, no picks, 301 yards on 24/35 passing, and an AYP (in the one game) of 8.6.  That’s not really who he is, of course, and against a Philly pass defense that is the best in the tournament, one must expect Danny’s performance will revert to the mean, or below the mean.

          Philadelphia has the best AYP in the tournament and the best defensive AYP in the tournament.  That is not to say they are a lock against San Fran or the Chiefs or the Bills, but they are a lock against the Giants, whom they have already beaten twice---48-22 on December 11, and 22-16 on January 8.  The second victory was not as close as it may appear.  The Giants scored 3 points in the first three quarters, then put up another 13 in garbage time.

          Lay the points.  Da Iggles will cover.

 

Cincinnati @ Buffalo (-5.5)

          Gee, I wonder if Damar Hamlin will be there.

          Neither of these teams especially distinguished themselves last week, and both must consider themselves lucky to be here.  Both QBs put up a 6.5 AYP last week, and that is nothing special.  Over the course of the season, Burrows had a better QB rating than Josh Allen---100.8 to 96.6.  His AYP was also slightly better.  The Bills would appear to have a better pass defense, though that was not terribly apparent last week against Miami’s third-string quarterback.

          I’m just not seeing the essential wonderfulness of Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills this year.  What I do see is a Bengals team that may appear to get lucky sometimes, but they have now won nine in a row, four of which were blowouts.

          I don’t know who will win this, but I’m taking Cincy with the points.

 

Dallas @ San Francisco (-3.5)

          This is the other mismatch.  San Francisco will win this by as much as they want to.

          Dak Prescott had a good game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which was the worst team in the playoffs this year.  He went 25/33 for 305 yards with no interceptions.  It may have been his best game in a mediocre year where he finished 16^th in QB rating.

          But Brock Purdy’s win against Seattle was supernatural.  He committed no mistakes en route to an 18/30 day with 342 yards and no INTs.  This amounts to an 11.6 AYP, the best game of any quarterback in the six games of Wildcard Week.

          The 49ers are superior to the Boyz in every other meaningful category as well.  Take San Francisco and lay the points.

 

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki      

2023 NFL PLAYOFFS---Wildcard Week

 

         I refer the reader to previous articles on my NFL playoff predictions for the philosophy that guides me.  In a nutshell, the teams that win the NFL playoffs are teams that can complete long passes.  The best defensive teams rarely win.  Teams with run-based offenses never win.  What you have to do to win a Superbowl is throw the ball down the field.

           For this reason, my primary tool is a number I call AYP, or “adjusted yards per pass.”  This is the number of yards gained passing during the season divided by the number of passes thrown, and adjusted downward for the number of interceptions thrown.  A very good team will have an AYP over 7 for the season.  An AYP of 6 is pretty good.  Teams with an AYP under 5 do not play games in the month of February.

          Since AYP can also be calculated for a team’s pass defense, I do so, mostly so I can look at the extremes: who has a really good pass defense, and who has a bad one.    I also glance at point differentials over the course of the season.

          Finally, I note how each playoff team did in blowouts (defined as a game decided by 11 or more points), during the season.  When one good team beats another good team with a last-second field-goal, I’m not always sure what it means.  But when a good team beats another NFL team by 28, it tells me something.

          Every year, I divide the contestants into three categories.

          PRETENDERS are those teams with very little chance of winning a game.  This year, there are eight of them: Jacksonville, the LA Chargers, Baltimore, Miami, Minnesota, Tampa, the Giants, and Seattle.  Miami is on this list only because Tua Tagovailoa, the best quarterback in the NFL this year, is barred from playing because of a recent concussion.  If he were playing against Buffalo in the opening weekend, Miami would be listed here as a contender.  Without him, Miami has little chance in the tournament. 

          COULD GET LUCKY is where I put the teams that (follow me here), could get lucky.  Some of them, perhaps most, will win a game or two.  They tend to have something wonderful going for them or they are peaking at the right time or they have a relatively easy path to the Superbowl.  This year, Cincinnati and Dallas qualify.

          CONTENDERS are the teams that are good enough to be in the Superbowl.  This year, there are no surprises: KC, Buffalo, Philly and SF. 

Seattle @ San Francisco (-10)

          Since October 30, San Fran has won ten games in a row, seven of them by blow-out margins.  The team AYP is a 7.0, which puts it among the elites.  They are among the best pass defenses in the NFL as well, and the team has outscored its opponents by over 10 points per game.  On September 18, the 49ers beat Seattle 27 – 7 in San Francisco, then beat them again in Seattle on December 15 by a score of 21 – 13.

          One interesting aspect of the Niners’ run is that it doesn’t seem to matter who is playing QB.  Jimmy Garoppolo had a passer rating of 103 this year, third best in the league (along with a 7.3 AYP), but he was injured in mid-December. Brock Purdy then stepped in, however, and posted a 6.9 AYP and a 107.3 QB rating while winning the last four games.

          Seattle’s season has been a success by any measure.  They have apparently found a replacement for Russell Wilson in Geno Smith, who earned a 100.9 QB rating (in something of a dink-and-dunk offense) but got them to the playoffs with a 9 – 8 record.

          It ends here, however.  Seattle has been improving throughout the season, so I would hesitate to lay the 10 points against them, but this should be a relatively easy win for SF.  I pass on the spread.

LA Chargers (-2) @ Jacksonville

          The wrong team is favored.  Take the Jaguars.  After all, they beat the Chargers 38-10 in Week 3.

          Neither one of these teams are going much further, but somebody has to win this game.  Their AYP’s are about the same (5^th and 6^th in the AFC), and their pass defenses put up similar numbers as well.  Jacksonville has a better record in blowouts and has outscored its opponents by three points/game while the Chargers have not outscored their opponents at all.  And the game is in Florida where the Jags have beaten some decent teams like Vegas, Baltimore, Tennessee, and Dallas.

          Trivia: the Chargers rushing defense in 2022 gave up 5.2 yards per carry.  This is the biggest number since the 1959 Redskins.

Miami @ Buffalo (-13.5)

          I strongly suspect that the only reason Tua is not playing for Miami in this game is NFL politics and PR.  After his concussion two weeks ago, he has apparently become the league’s poster child for head injuries.  Especially after the Hamlin heart attack, the NFL feels it MUST demonstrate its caring and nurturing nature.  So Miami has to lose this game.

          Tua Tagovailoa was the best QB in the NFL this year, with a quarterback rating of 105.5 (Mahomes was second at 105.2).  His AYP was an almost unbelievable 7.9 (Mahomes was 7.2).  Josh Allen, who did not have his best year, posted a 96.6 quarterback rating and a 6.3 AYP.  With Tua playing, Miami would have had a real shot at winning this game.

          Buffalo’s strength is mostly on defense, and they were one of two teams (SF was the other) to give up less than 300 points this season.  Defense is not what wins playoff games however, so I remain suspicious of the Bills’ chances to go all the way.  I am also suspicious of their ability to cover a 13.5 spread against a team as good as the Dolphins have been.

          Take the points.

NYG @ Minnesota (-3)

          How do you achieve a 13-4 record while being outscored by your opponents?  Just asking. Of course, the Giants were also outscored this year.

          These are probably the two worst teams in the playoffs.  Their AYPs are about 6, and that is near the bottom of the list.  They also have the two worst pass defenses in the tournament.  Also, both had negative records in blowouts (i.e, both teams lost more lop-sided games than they won).

          Minnesota was 8-1 at home, including a 27-24 victory over the Giants on Christmas Eve.  That game seems as good a way as any to predict the outcome.  Look for a close game with the Vikings managing to eke out a victory.

          Pass.

Baltimore @ Cincinnati (-10)

          This line opened at 6.5.  It is now 10, which reflects the perception that the prospects for Baltimore are rapidly declining.

          Lamar Jackson suffered a knee injury in Baltimore’s December 4 win over the Broncos, and missed the last five games of the regular season.  His replacement, Tyler Huntley, did a serviceable job through four starts, but sustained a concussion on January 1 (“Yo Tyler---what year is it?”).  Anthony Brown then started in Week 18 and stunk out the joint with two interceptions in a 27-16 loss to Cincinnati.  Though Huntley has not been declared “out” for this game, it seems almost certain Anthony Brown will start, and the Ravens will lose.

          On the other side, Joe Burrow will probably never replicate the numbers he posted in 2021 (108.3 quarterback rating, 7.5 AYP), but his 2022 season put him 6^th on the list of NFL QBs.  Also, Cincy is coming into the tournament the way any Bungles fan would like them to.  The team was 4-4 on Halloween and won their last eight games.  They have outscored their opponents by 6 points per game and were 7-1 in blow-outs.

          Ten points is a lot in a playoff game but I’m going to lay them here.  Take the Cincinnati Bengals.

Dallas (-2.5) @ Tampa

          Besides Minnesota and the Giants, the other possible choice for “worst team in the tournament” is Tampa Bay, which won the dreadful NFC South with a losing record and was outscored by almost 3 points per game.  The high point of Tampa’s season was opening day, September 11, when they crushed the Cowboys, in Texas, 19-3.  Since then, the only playoff team they have beaten was Seattle, in November, while taking blowout beatings from Carolina, San Francisco, Cincinnati and Atlanta.  This must be Brady’s worst season.  He finished 18^th in quarterback ratings with a 5.8 AYP.

          And on the other side, you have perennial mutt Dak Prescott with his 1-3 career playoff record (Brady is 35-12).  This year, Prescott was 16^th in quarterback rating, not much better than Brady.

          AYP for Dallas and Tampa are about even---they are 6^th and 7^th among the NFC playoff teams.  By all other measures, however, Dallas has an edge.  Their pass defense is significantly better than Tampa’s.  The Dallas record in blowouts is 7-2 while Tampa’s is 1-4.  Dallas has also outscored its opponents by over a touchdown.

          There are analysts who will tell you Tom Brady is still Tom Brady and he will rise from the ashes of his 2022 season to sparkle in the playoffs.  But I don’t believe it.  The GOAT is dead.

          I will hold my nose and ask Dak Prescott to cover the spread for me.  I’m betting the Boyz.

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki

THIS & THAT XXIII

People wearing masks as they shop in my big-box store don’t bother me much, but when I see one with a two-year-old in their cart and the child is wearing a mask too, I want to grab the parent by the shoulders and set them straight.  And when they are Asian, as they often are, I want to scream at them, “Aren’t you people supposed to be smart?”

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Wikipedia Humor (from the article on Richard Gere):

“Despite not being a vegetarian, Gere has often been erroneously included on lists of famous vegetarians.”

I guess that’s what happens when you study Buddhism and tell people you want to free Tibet.

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The Biden Administration is still fighting in federal court to reinstate the mask mandate in airplanes.

The US is also the largest (among a dwindling number) of countries requiring foreign visitors to show proof of a COVID vaccination. 

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In 1933, the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag (the German Parliament building), and framed communists for the blaze.  The next day, by decree, almost all civil liberties in Germany were suspended, including free speech, freedom of the press, public assembly, and the privacy of mail and telephone communications.  None of these freedoms returned until after WWII.

Though the evidence is only slowly emerging, history will record that the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021were our own American Reichstag Fire, orchestrated by leftists embedded in our government agencies in order to criminalize and silence dissent from conservatives who oppose them.

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I was invited to a Christmas Eve party where a condition of attendance was a negative COVID test.  I would have liked to attend the party, which was hosted by a friend, but I declined.

I won’t be polite about this anymore.  If you have the power to fire me from my job or grab me off the street and throw me in a quarantine camp, I will probably bend.  But I won’t wear a mask in your house and I won’t take a COVID test to attend your party.  And if you try to wear a mask in my house, I will ask you to take your crazy home with you.

I have tried to be the “nice guy” about this, and tried to avoid any bitterness, but I have failed.  I had friends and neighbors who no longer speak to me.  My extended family has no use for me and I expect I will never see any of them again.  Doctors I liked, and whom I need, have dumped me.  I’ve been banned from a social club I loved because I was not vaccinated.

Most of my social life at this point is on-line.  Sandy and I often talk about moving.

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2023 New Year’s Resolutions:

1) Juggle regularly and improve my skills.

2) Learn about the field of artificial intelligence and stay current with developments.

3) Don’t offend anyone unintentionally.

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A new term, TERF, comes to us from the culture wars at Cambridge University, where Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists have been physically attacked by trans-activists and gender enthusiasts because the TERFs believe treating trans women as women (and allowing them to join radical feminist groups) only hurts their cause and undercuts the battle for female equality.  The trans activists want TERFs not just canceled, but arrested for hate speech under the UK’s Equality Act.

Recently, a judge-led panel held a trial on the position of the radical feminists, and ruled that “gender-critical” speech is not a crime within the meaning of the Equality Act.  In other words, you cannot be jailed in the UK for saying there are two sexes.  Yet.

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In Philadelphia, retail theft under the value of $2100 has been a misdemeanor since 2018.  Then, in 2020, Police Commissioner Outlaw and DA Krasner decided retail theft would be included in a list of offenses (drug crimes, car theft, prostitution, and others), for which the police will no longer arrest people.  Someone may be detained for these offences long enough for the person to be identified and a warrant issued, but they are then released.  As a practical matter, this means no warrants are issued either and no one is punished for shoplifting unless they brandish a gun or commit other criminal acts.  Shoplifting is not a crime anymore, either in Philly or in any number of other American cities run by the Left.

Two weeks ago, the third-quarter earnings of a major retailer made headlines in the business press for revealing a loss of $400 million to shoplifting, a shocking number that affected the company’s bottom line.  Other national retailers face the same forces to a greater or lesser extent.

At my big-box store, we are all familiar with the professional gangs as well as the family units (e.g., grandma working with her grandson), and many other variations.  Store security forces are basically helpless.  About the only deterrent that appears to have any effect is placing a uniformed policeman at the front door, with a police car parked outside on the sidewalk where no one can miss it.  Renting these police and cars from the city, however, costs about $100 per hour and the store is open fourteen hours a day.  Also, the city is currently short of police (it seems nobody wants to be a policeman in Philly anymore), so the store often can’t get these overtime officers.

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Emily Oster is an economist at Brown University who has written a number of comments on COVID and the pandemic response over the past 2 ½ years.  On October 31, 2022, “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty” was published in The Atlantic and started a vigorous debate.

The point of her brief article was that calls for punishment of those government and public health officials who had engineered our disastrous pandemic response were unjust and should be ignored.  Acknowledging the bitterness of those who had had their lives disrupted by the lockdowns and mandates, Ms. Oster seemed to characterize the mistakes of the powerful as honest errors, and suggested it would be unfair to punish anyone for policies enacted in (what she presumed to be) good faith.  In other words, “mistakes were made.”  As an example of the “mistakes,” she cited the early uncertainty about whether traditional vaccines (like Johnson & Johnson’s) or the mRNA vaccines (like Pfizer’s), would be more effective.

Her article touched off an explosion of responses from other pundits, websites, magazines, and other sources, and what surprised me about them were the number of people who agreed with her, some of whom I would never have expected.

Don Boudreaux, for example, is an Austrian-school economist at George Mason University who publishes a syndicated column called Café Hayek.  During the COVID madness, he wrote regularly about the lockdowns, mandates, censorship, and government overreach, yet his response to the Emily Oster article was surprisingly mild.  He seemed to feel that holding people like Fauci, Cuomo, other politicians and public health officials responsible for their actions would be to “politicize” the issues, and that would lead only to more recriminations and counter-recriminations in the future.

Charles Eisenstein is an author and essayist, a hater of free markets and capitalism, and something of an oddball.  He’s a good writer who is capable of expressing complex ideas, but he is a leftie who truly believes we are all doomed by climate change, and one of his heroes is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., (whom I regard as an idiot in the King Charles III class).

HOWEVER…Eisenstein has been positively brutal in his writings about the fascists behind the attempted creation of the Covid security state, its ugly effects on the third world (i.e., starvation), and the price we all have had to pay in the abuse of schoolchildren and the horrific vaccine injuries inflicted upon the innocent.  Yet he too argues that the authoritarian evil of the COVID madness should not be addressed by holding the obvious monsters responsible.  Instead, he claims, we must get to the root of their evil.  It’s complicated.  Try his essay entitled “Victory Will Not Solve the Problem” on Substack.

Maybe I’m just unforgiving, but I see nothing to forgive.  In particular, I see no innocent mistakes.  The lying, which was intentional, dates from the very beginning.

On April 3, 2020, Fauci, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, and the CDC all decided that their prior position (which had been quite definitively expressed), on masks and respiratory viruses was incorrect.  Not only were cloth and paper masks NOT useless, they were now so important that everybody had to wear them.  There was no new study, no new “science” they could cite, but suddenly we all had to wear the damn things.

This was not even the beginning.  Two months earlier, American news media had shown us the absurd videos of Chinese COVID victims falling over in the streets and being whisked away instantly by medics in hazmat suits.  This is what is happening in Wuhan, we were told.  Sure it was.

Then there was the widely-circulated story about the apparently healthy German woman who flew home from Seoul to Hamburg and only developed symptoms of COVID a couple days after arriving in Germany.  Asymptomatic spread, you see, was the key to the construction of the entire apparatus of the security state.  In the past, if you had a cold or the flu, you stayed away from your elderly friends, but now that wasn’t good enough.  You might be sick anyway.  Hence the masks, hence the lockdowns, hence the social distancing. Though the story of the German woman was later debunked (very quietly), it was the justification for all the restrictions to follow even though Fauci himself had earlier told us that asymptomatic spread was a crock.

Need more items for the list?  How about the suppression of any investigation into the Wuhan lab origin of the virus, Fauci’s enthusiastic support of the research, and the U.S. government financial support for it?  Why, for more than two years, were all reports of vaccine injuries instantly deleted from all social media sites?  And why were doctors and epidemiologists and other scientists sanctioned, censored, defunded and de-platformed whenever they tried to publish anything that might conflict with the orthodox COVID narrative?

None of this was accidental.  None of it was “mistakes.”  The lies, the censorship, and the coercion were intentional, with the idea that the virus could be used by some for partisan political purposes and by others to create panic and pave the way for a totalitarian form of government.

Note that the people responsible for this have not changed their tune, and they have not apologized.  They still claim masks can stop respiratory viruses and they still are pushing the mRNA vaccines despite the growing body of evidence of their lethal dangers.  The architects here have simply loosened the screws a bit and backed off from the most vicious aspects of the enforcement program.  Totalitarian governments do not take control all at once because if they tried to, they would risk an armed revolt.  Instead they increase the pressure slowly, get the populace accustomed to the new restrictions, and then relax them slightly before cranking up the controls to an even higher level.

We cannot let Fauci and Trudeau and Trump and Biden and Cuomo and Klaus Schwab and Albert Bourlas and all the rest of them off the hook for the deaths and destruction they have brought to the world.  I will not forgive and move on.  I want them in prison actually, but I will settle for visiting the scorn of mankind upon them and removing them from public life.     

          

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Now that drag shows for little kids are a regular feature at libraries and schools, it’s probably time to bring in some minstrel shows for kids as well. Like drag shows, blackface comedy also makes fun of a group of people based on their mostly immutable characteristics.  On the one hand, it’s exaggerated boobs and butts and hips and high-pitched voices and hair-dos; on the other, it’s skin color, kinky hair, Southern accents and big lips.  

Both varieties have long traditions of delighting audiences.  And kids will enjoy blackface reading hour every bit as much as they have enjoyed drag queen story time.

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Where the hell is my Harriet Tubman 20-dollar bill?  Years ago, they promised me they would replace Andrew Jackson with my favorite God-fearin’, pistol-packing, abolitionist commando.  I mean, Harriet Tubman is truly a great American. And of all the DWMs on our bills, Andrew Jackson is the least likeable by a wide margin.

Also, and not to put too fine a point on it, but have you noticed there is now a Maya Angelou quarter?  Now, even granting that quarters have dozens of different images on them, how the hell did she make the cut?  Ms. Angelou seemed like a nice lady, but can we all acknowledge that she is a truly minor poet and that we are required to revere her only because she once wrote a poem for Bill Clinton?  And can we also acknowledge they slapped her on a quarter only because the people who decide such things believe we don’t have enough black faces on our money?

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki

THIS & THAT XXII

           On the internet, I am a sucker for the “23 Life Hacks That Will Save You Hours Every Day” variety of clickbait.  And, of course, they are always disappointing.  Typical of the advice you get is to “Save cabinet space by hanging your pots and pans on hooks!!!”

          However, I recently saw one life-hack that struck me as brilliant, and which might literally save my life someday.  When disposing of a body, the site advised, bury it vertically.  Since all of the imaging tools cops use, from helicopters and such, are designed to find objects underground that are six feet long and two feet wide, your victim will never be flagged.

          For additional safety, once you bury the human body, put a dead dog on top of it so that even if the cops decide to dig, they will find the canine and dismiss the search as a “false positive.”

 

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          There are two things that bother me about tomorrow’s mid-term election.

          First, I wanted (and expected), this election would be a referendum on COVID policy over the last two years.  I understand people care about crime, and the reversal of Roe, and the miserable condition of the economy, and the sexualization of schoolchildren, but I also hoped the COVID madness of lockdowns and mandates would be addressed.  I would like candidates to be asked, among other thing, “Would you authorize a mask mandate under any circumstances, and if so, what are those circumstances?”  Yet the horrible damage inflicted on all of us by leftwing politicians and authoritarian bureaucrats has never been addressed.

 

          The other concern is the level of cheating we will see from the Democrats.  I think we can expect the Dems to get crushed across the country, but there will inevitably be some close contests decided by a few thousand votes.  In a big Democratic city, with an entrenched Democratic machine (Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Philly, Detroit, for example), any close race where a Republican gets more votes is likely to be stolen.   

 

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          One of the ways LGBT/Trans activists teach the youngest schoolchildren their philosophy is with the Gender Unicorn, a purple Barney-like figure.  The five aspects of “gender” are listed as Gender Identity, Gender Expression, Sex Assigned at Birth, Sexually Attracted To, and Romantically/Emotionally Attracted To.  Each of these has its own symbol, which appears on the cartoon unicorn.  For example, the Gender Identity symbol is located in the unicorn’s head, and the Sexually Attracted To symbol appears on the unicorn’s heart.  The overall effect of the image is to stress that Sex Assigned At Birth is of very minor importance in determining your Gender.

          This is what is used to teach five- and six-year-olds.

 

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          A new taste treat I discovered on Halloween this year is the combination of a dry red zinfandel with a cherry Tootsie Roll Pop.  Since the Tootsie Roll Pop takes a while to consume, you might need two or even three glasses of the wine, so make sure you have plenty on hand.

 

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          Trivia: the standard Tootsie Roll Pops are chocolate, grape, cherry, raspberry, orange and lemon, though the company makes many other flavors, including pomegranate.

 

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          “One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument.  They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans---anything except reason.”  ---Thomas Sowell

 

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          Call it a “conspiracy theory,” but I am slightly concerned that the government’s politicized DOJ will be mobilized in tomorrow’s election to arrest people and seize election materials on the grounds that Republicans are “suppressing” votes.  It may not be that likely, but I also didn’t think the federal government would censor social media sites or raid the home of a former president.  And then they did.

 

Copyright2022MichaelKubacki