Nov292021

Episode 454 – Dude, Toughen Up!

Here we go again. A new variant. I guess it’s time for us to run around like chickens with our heads cut off.

It might be time to stop wearing Levi’s.

And the Left is showing the contempt for the Constitution and no one is paying any attention. So I will.

 

Here We Go Again

I’m telling you, this is never going to end. A new variant of COVID-19 has been discovered.

 

The Variant

A new variant of the China virus has been found in South Africa earlier this month. I have looked up this variant and here is some of the information I got from the World Health Organization (China for short):

  • The TAG-VE was convened on 26 November 2021 to assess the SARS-CoV-2 variant: B.1.1.529.
  • It was first reported to WHO from South Africa on 24 November 2021.
  • Preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection with this variant, as compared to other VOCs.
  • Current SARS-CoV-2 PCR diagnostics continue to detect this variant.
  • As such, countries are asked to do the following:
    • enhance surveillance and sequencing efforts to better understand circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants.
    • submit complete genome sequences and associated metadata to a publicly available database, such as GISAID.
    • report initial cases/clusters associated with VOC infection to WHO through the IHR mechanism.
    • where capacity exists and in coordination with the international community, perform field investigations and laboratory assessments to improve understanding of the potential impacts of the VOC on COVID-19 epidemiology, severity, effectiveness of public health and social measures, diagnostic methods, immune responses, antibody neutralization, or other relevant characteristics.
  • Individuals are reminded to take measures to reduce their risk of COVID-19, including proven public health and social measures such as wearing well-fitting masks, hand hygiene, physical distancing, improving ventilation of indoor spaces, avoiding crowded spaces, and getting vaccinated.
  • They included to references to follow. Both references are for following the rules of the previous variants.

What do we know about this variant. Nothing. The WHO has nothing new about it except, like Delta, you can catch it if you’re vaccinated or have been infected with an earlier variant. They do not even know how dangerous it is or how infectious it is.

https://www.who.int/news/item/26-11-2021-classification-of-omicron-(b.1.1.529)-sars-cov-2-variant-of-concern

 

But She Knows

Dr. Angelique Coetzee, a board member of the South African Medical Association, first noticed otherwise healthy patients demonstrating unusual symptoms on Nov. 18. She saw that it was the China virus but it did not behave in the same way as the previous variants so she alerted the WHO.

But she does have some interesting tidbits of information.

 

In other words, people have a mild case of the flu. By the way, as the virus matures, it is going to become less deadly. The virus is designed that way. It’s designed to spread, not kill. It wants people to survive so it can spread to other organisms. Just about all viruses do this.

She continues with a warning (which is what doctors are suppose to do):

“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease.”

Well, duh! We know that people who are not vaccinated may experience harsher symptoms. The hospitals are not being overrun. There isn’t a huge uptick in cases.

Here’s what I think is happening and it’s going to happen for the rest of time. This virus is going to mutate, just like the flu. All the previous variants are going to run through the population or people are going to get the vaccines (which we still aren’t sure of). Each new variant is going to become weaker and the population is going to become less susceptible to the disease.

In two years, it’s going to be another version of the flu. End of story.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/south-african-doctor-omicron-variant-symptoms-unusual-mild

 

Let the Overreaction Begin

“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” said Obama progressive Rahm Emmanuel.

The Left has re-invented Emmanuel’s quote:

“Make a non-crisis into a crisis so we can never let a crisis go to waste.”

The Leftists are going off.

Joe Biden made a statement while vacationing, again, in a billionaire’s home in Nantucket:

“We don’t know a lot about the variant, except that it is of great concern. It seems to spread rapidly. And I spent about a half-hour this morning with my COVID team, led by Dr. Fauci, and so, that was the decision we made.”

Oh, yeah, and get vaccinated against a variant we know nothing about. Never let a good crisis go to waste.

There are a few problems here. First, it’s not a great concern in South Africa, where it was found. That news is from South African doctors! 

Second, it’s not spreading rapidly. Hospitals in South Africa are not being impacted. That’s according to South African doctors!

Third, the WHO doesn’t know anything about the variant. Shouldn’t we learn something about it before we make alarmist statements?

Finally, Dr. Fauci has been wrong and been lying about everything! Why is Biden listening to him!

Biden implemented a travel ban from the African countries of South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Malawi. Something that got a lot of attention on social media since Biden and Kamala called Trump a racist for implementing a travel ban. What’s worse, they called Trump a racist on social media so everyone knows they did it! What a pair of tools.

But there’s more.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an Executive Order declaring a “Disaster Emergency in the State of New York” in anticipation of winter COVID-19 case increases. She’s preparing to shut the state down again and gain more control. She declared that elective surgeries are to be cancelled.

Didn’t they do that before and it fixed nothing except kill people because they saw a heart stint as being an elective surgery? I have to tell you, she’s worse than Andrew Cuomo. Wait till Gavin Newsom of California finds out. Can’t wait to hear what he’s going to do.

Israel is shutting its borders again even though 90% of the population is vaccinated. I thought the vaccines worked.

Great Briton is reimplementing mask mandates.

Fifteen days to slow the spread.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-fauci-urge-americans-to-get-vaccinated-as-omicron-concern-grows
https://www.dailywire.com/news/ny-gov-hochul-declares-disaster-emergency-as-omicron-coronavirus-variant-takes-focus
https://www.foxnews.com/us/state-department-issues-do-not-travel-warnings-eight-countries-omicron-variant
https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-fda-head-gottlieb-bidens-omicron-travel-ban-counterproductive
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-south-african-travel-ban-necessary-omicron

 

And This Is Just Funny

According to Fox News:

The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed it skipped the Greek letters “nu” and “xi” in naming its new COVID-19 variant, which it dubbed the “omicron” variant.

“‘Nu’ is too easily confounded with ‘new,’ and ‘xi’ was not used because it is a common last name, and WHO best practices for naming disease suggest avoiding ‘causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups,’” a WHO spokesperson told Fox News in a statement on Saturday.

That’s right, they skipped two Greek letters because they were too close to the name of the dictator of China and they openly admit it. See, being politically correct does have its problems for Leftist organizations.

By the way, “nu” is problematic because it’s original pronunciation is “nee” (which means “new”) and is too close to “xi” which is the dictator’s name.

Needless to say, there was a lot of mocking of the WHO on social media:

https://www.foxnews.com/world/who-nu-xi-omicron-variant

 

Man the F-Up

Apparently it might be time to stop wearing my favorite clothing.

After Kyle Rittenhouse was found innocent last week, Levi’s Strauss, the makers of Levi’s jeans, had to hire a trauma specialists because they thought that some of their employees might start to suffer PTSD from the thought that a convicted child-raping pedophile was killed in mid-attack.

Levi Strauss chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer Elizabeth Morrison said in a letter to staff:

“With the news that Kyle Rittenhouse was not convicted in the shooting of three individuals — two of whom lost their lives — during racial justice protests last year, this is a difficult day for many.

“To help promote safety, sharing and to encourage healing, I’ll be hosting a fireside chat and Q&A with Dr. Jamila Codrington, a licensed psychologist and racial trauma specialist in early December. Dr. J and I will talk about the mental and psychical impacts of back-to-back social and racial justice events and trauma coping mechanisms during our discussion.”

Now I know Levi Strauss is a Leftist organization (they are located in San Francisco) but I think it is rich that they think they have such pansy employees when the product they sell is touted as cowboy rugged. You know? Flying off horses and bulls and crap and the jeans can handle it. Heck, Levi’s has always been an American icon for masculinity. You’re not even suppose to wash the damn things. Throw them in the freezer for an hour of so and they’re clean (that is recommended). I can’t think of anything more masculine than that.

But this isn’t the only place that’s doing that. You know the colleges were going to have a negative response to the verdict. I mean, people are banning a story about a white boy helping a black slave escape because they were naked on a raft in one scene and they said words.

California State University, Long Beach gave students and faculty the chance to attend a “debriefing” of Rittenhouse’s acquittal, which would be attended by staff from the Counseling and Psychological Services office.

University spokesman Jim Milbury told The College Fix in an email:

“When there are higher-profile events and issues in the public discourse, it is not uncommon for our university to provide spaces for our campus community to discuss those topics.”

God, we need a bloody war with a common enemy to toughen our kids up.

On the brighter side of the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, The View’s Joy Behar and Whoopie Goldberg are getting sued for $60 million by Rittenhouse for defamation. That was quick. That kid is going to be so rich.

By the way, Rittenhouse is taking online classes at Arizona State University and not the students want him kicked out. He’s taking online classes!

https://www.dailywire.com/news/levi-strauss-provides-racial-trauma-help-for-employees-troubled-by-rittenhouse-verdict
https://dailycaller.com/2021/11/29/left-wing-groups-arizona-state-university-kyle-rittenhouse-withdrawn/

 

Sorry, Not Surprised

Remember the multitude of times I said the Left doesn’t care about the Constitution and will just ignore it when it’s convenient? Well, they aso feel they don’t have to go through the amendment process to implement an amendment.

Remember the Equal Rights Amendment that was being pushed way back in the 1960s and 70s? It never became an amendment, though it was close, and the time expired in making it an amendment, not to mention five states de-ratified it after they found out what was in the amendment.

Here’s the story in case you’re not as old as I am (though I was too young to understand it at the time):

  • At issue is the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a benign-sounding Nixon-era amendment that concealed an unpopular feminist agenda. Critics say it would erode the legal protections of women and create a constitutional right to abortion just as Supreme Court justices seem poised to amend, or overturn, Roe v. Wade.
  • The Equal Rights Amendment seemed destined to become the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1972.
  • Article V of the Constitution requires amendments to pass Congress by a two-thirds margin, then be ratified by three-fourths of the states (38 states out of 50)
  • The ERA — which was championed by democratic socialists Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY), Gloria Steinem, and Betty Friedan — passed the U.S. House of Representatives by the required margin in October 1971 and cleared the Senate five months later.
  • But the legislation they passed contained a time limit: The ERA had to be ratified within seven years.
  • That hurdle seemed insignificant, as a total of 30 states ratified the ERA within a year — 14 of them within the first month. Five more states followed by 1978, when the Democrat-controlled Congress voted to extend the deadline to June 30, 1982.
  • Enter Phyllis Schlafly, a well-educated mother from Illinois. She found:
    • women’s exemption from being drafted into military service;
    • separate facilities for showers, restrooms, college dorm rooms, battered women’s shelters, and prisons;
    • federal programs like Title IX, Social Security benefits for women who worked in the home, and Women Infants and Children (WIC)
  • The Senate began to read the amendment and began to, in a bipartisan fashion, to strip the bill of some of its major language.
  • After the United States had an opportunity to digest these arguments, momentum stopped, then reversed. Although the Democrats extended the ERA’s ratification deadline, no additional states signed on, and five states rescinded their previous ratification votes: Nebraska (1973), Tennessee (1974), Idaho (1977), Kentucky (1978), and South Dakota (1979).

Enter the Left.

How extreme is this amendment? Ben Johnson of the Daily Wire wrote:

Although you have likely not heard much about it from the media, the Democrats recently unveiled a plan to illegally add an element of their radical, intersectional agenda to the text of the U.S. Constitution. The controversial amendment could eliminate all laws that recognize biological differences between men and women, and it could force taxpayers to fund abortion-on-demand. Worse yet, their actions come decades after the Left tried and failed to convince Americans to adopt the proposed amendment democratically.

Right now, the House is holding hearings to make this bill an amendment even though it didn’t pass 40 years ago.

Though the amendment is dead, blues states ratified it anyway. Those states were Nevada in 2017, followed by Illinois in 2018, and Virginia in 2020. According to the Left, that means the amendment has been ratified and it is part of the Constitution. Nevermind the fact that five states went against the ratification later, that doesn’t matter.

The DOJ under the Trump administration said that the bill could not be ratified because it expired. The Left argues that the expiration is procedural and not written into the ERA itself so that doesn’t count. They also say that states do not have the right to decertify because it’s not in the bill. Therefore, the fives states that pulled out don’t count.

Guess it’s kind of important to read and understand bills before voting for them. That’s something out politicians haven’t learned yet.

The Left tried to sue and make a judge declare the amendment part of the Constitution. In March, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, an Obama appointee, ruled that a “ratification deadline in a proposing resolution’s introduction is just as effective as one in the text of a proposed amendment,” so the deadline to adopt the ERA “expired long ago.”

Even the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seemed to reject the Left’s arguments. She asked in 2020:

“How can you disregard states that said ‘we’ve changed our minds’? I would like to see a new beginning” for the ERA’s ratification, starting from scratch, she said.

But the Left don’t need to follow them stinking rules:

  • First, in March, the House passed a resolution from retiring Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) retroactively repeating the ERA’s 1982 ratification deadline, 222-204.
  • Then on October 21, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform held a hearing where they said the ERA is part of the Constitution.
  • All this stuff, by the way, is unconstitutional.

Then, the Left decided to bring in the big guns. Enter Alyssa Milano, the has-been, Who’s the Boss star. She testified in front of Congress:

The states have directed Congress to amend the Constitution, and it is now the duty of Congress and the Administration [sic] to get out of the way and remove the arbitrary, unnecessary, and shameful deadline that was cynically imposed nearly a half century ago as a poison pill. … The lack of Constitutional [sic] protections for anyone who is not a cisgender man is a blemish on the very idea of Americanism. … The Framers failed us when they did not include women in the Constitution. Congress failed us when it added the deadline for ratification of the ERA. You, the members of this committee, have the opportunity and the obligation to fix the constitution [sic] and stop it from failing us.

That worked! How can we reject the wisdom of a has-been actress?

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) said, “I contend based on this testimony, that the ERA is now an amendment to the Constitution duly ratified by the 38th state, the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

Well, if Gerry and Alyssa say so it must be so.

This is going nowhere but it does show something. It shows the disdain the Left has for the Constitution and the rule of law. This is why when they talk of the Constitution and democracy, I cringe. I reject the way they view they law and I don’t want their version of democracy. Their version of democracy looks hauntingly like communism.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/an-obligation-to-fix-the-constitution-alyssa-milano-and-democrats-team-up-to-illegally-amend-our-founding-document