The Daily Mail (UK) is not exactly a conservative rag. But they are more willing that American media outlets to report inconvenient facts. The following article should go off like a bomb, but will probably be ignored by the MSM:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10070677/No-cases-influenza-RSV-detected-Ohio-2020-21-season-just-2-cases-B-strain.html

“during the 2020-21 season, no cases of influenza A were detected and just two cases of influenza B were found”

Here is the graph.  It is beyond obvious:

This of course was explained away by the experts saying that mask mandates and social distancing instituted to protect from COVID-19 may have inadvertently stopped flu transmission.

I know Kaiser Permanente is not buying this, because they are sending me notices to get my flu shot.

One will note that there are numerous reports of false positive COVID-19 tests. At least some of these people had, RSV or the flu. The question is did the flu disappear or was it camouflaged as COVID-19, which is more useful in scaring people.

The doctor interviewed viewed this as evidence about the great effect of wearing masks, proper hygiene, and isolation. Then he says: “‘It can be a simple non-medicinal way to save lives.”

The following article from Health Impact News published in 2014, is very interesting because it claims the CDC was over stating the number of deaths from the flu because it wanted to sell the necessity for flu shots.

CDC Inflates Flu Death Stats to Sell More Flu Vaccines (healthimpactnews.com)

Did 80,000 People Really Die from the Flu Last Year? Inflating Flu Death Estimates to Sell Flu Shots (healthimpactnews.com)

Reading these now, in view of how the CDC has handled COVID, definitely raises some very important questions.

The attempt to scare people into fearing the flu did not work. This concerned people like Dr. Fauci who thinks it would be wonderful if every one got a flu shot and he complained that people didn’t understand the danger from flu.

The following article is from the Gateway Pundit, which sometimes exaggerates things but, in this case, they published a transcript that seems to be verified by multiple sources:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/explosive-video-emerges-fauci-hhs-officials-plotting-new-avian-flu-virus-enforce-universal-flu-vaccination-video/

Incredibly, this shows that Fauci and others “WANTED” a COVID-19 kind of illness because people weren’t scared enough by the flu.

The follow excerpt from the transcript is mind-blowing:

Fauci: In order to make the transition from getting out of the tried-and-true egg growing which we know gives us results that can be beneficial, I mean we’ve done well with that. There must be something that has to be much better. You have to prove that this works and then you’ve got to go through all of the clinical trials: phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, and then show that this particular product is going to be good over a period of years. That alone, if it works perfectly, it’s going to take a decade.

Bright: There might be a need or even an urgent call for an entity of excitement out there that’s completely disruptive, that’s not beholden to bureaucratic strings and processes.

Fauci: So we really do have a problem of how the world perceives influenza and it’s going to be very difficult to change that unless you do it from within and say, I don’t care what your perception is, we’re going to address the problem in a disruptive and in an iterative way because she does need both.

Bright: But it is not too crazy to think that an outbreak of novel avian virus could occur in China somewhere. We could get the RNA sequence from that.. to a number of regional centers if not local, if not even in your home at some point, and print those vaccines on a patch of self-administer.

The MSM is ignoring this. But one way or the other, this screams for investigation. This appears to show intent to overstate the danger from the flu, (consistent with the previous report) and Rick Bright, Director of HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) literally dreamed about an outbreak of a novel avian virus, from someplace like China, that would create the opportunity for a brave new vaccinated world.

In addition, it appears as though at least one Democrat is thoroughly disgusted with the extreme partisanship in his own party.

Manchin Shakes And Holds Head As Schumer Blasts Republicans After Debt Limit Pass – Bing video

Shortly after hearing this Manchin literally got up and walked out. The comments by Manchin later seem to confirm his disgust with Chuck Schumer.

Then, today, Joe Biden declared victory after a shockingly bad jobs report was issued. This report was so bad that even CNN shuddered. We expect politicians to lie about things, it is in their DNA. But lying is one thing, trying to present a totally false reality is something else. If Joe Biden believes this, he is totally delusional. Sadly, that appears to be the most likely explanation. But I am reminded that these are the same people who argue that both extremely cold weather and extremely hot weather is caused by man-made climate change, by which they mean global warming.

The best way I could think of to describe this mess is to create a new word. “Fluey”

TDM

In 1968, David Clayton-Thomas wrote a song for Blood Sweat & Tears called spinning wheel.  The first line of that song is:

“What goes up, must come down, Spinnin’ wheel got to go round.”

spinning wheel lyrics – Bing

I was flying combat missions in Vietnam at the time. I underestimated how much things were destined to change.

Everything on this planet moves in cycles. We sometimes forget that, when we feel we are on top of the world. We also forget it during times of trouble. Today a lot of supposedly smart people are shrieking about climate change. Some are proposing taking insane action to save us from global warming. President Biden and John Kerry refer to climate change as an existential threat to humanity. They say climate change, but they always mean global warming. The cold hard truth is that it doesn’t look like the earth is actually getting warmer. For example, on September 16^th, the Arctic Sea ice reached its annual minimum of 4.72 million square kilometers. Now one will note that 4.72 million square kilometers of ice is quite a bit larger than the ice free arctic predicted by that eminent scientific scholar, Al Gore. But this is also the most ice we have seen in the arctic, at this time of year, since 2014.

Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis | Sea ice data updated daily with one-day lag (nsidc.org)

Just in case you were wondering, the Antarctic is not exactly experiencing a heat wave either. The following article from the Seattle Times explains why the South Pole is experiencing record cold, which is an anomaly in a warming world:

South Pole posts most severe cold season on record, an anomaly in a warming world | The Seattle Times

The average temperature at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station between April and September, a frigid minus-78 degrees (minus-61 Celsius), was the coldest on record, dating back to 1957. This was 4.5 degrees lower than the most recent 30-year average.

And, by the way, there is more ice there too!

The extreme cold over Antarctica helped push sea ice levels surrounding the continent to their fifth-highest level on record in August, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

So, the best evidence of climate change (global warming) is that both poles are getting significantly colder. You probably don’t know this because CNN is not covering the story.

This type of logic explains why Joe Biden is shutting down pipelines in the U.S., encouraging pipelines in Europe, discouraging drilling for oil in the U.S. and demanding we switch to electric vehicles that will be serviced by a grid using far fewer fossil fuels. If this seems insane, it is because it is insane.

It is also insane to demand everyone get vaccinated, because vaccinations protect vaccinated people from getting terribly sick from COVID, but they must still wear a mask so that vaccinated people don’t spread COVID to unvaccinated people. This, of course, includes people who have already had COVID and have at least 20 times more immunity that people who have merely been vaccinated. This is all necessary to continue following the science.

The same logic is used to demand that all school age children, get vaccinated, before they can go back to school where they will still need to wear masks, to protect the teachers. This is because the only people exempt from getting vaccinated are teachers who are members of the teachers union.

Our healthcare system is improving daily by requiring all health care works to get vaccinated. This has resulted in numerous healthcare workers getting fired or quitting. This has resulted in some healthcare systems rationing care. This, of course, is all designed to help us end the pandemic and return to normal life. Once again, following the science.

This same logic is used to demand that all future elections be conducted only with mail-in ballots, which both Democrats and Republicans agree are a recipe for fraud, so that we can all have more confidence in our elections.

The good news is that spinnin’ wheel keeps on spinnin’ and no amount of false logic changes that. Democrats were publicly humiliated when they couldn’t stop spitting at each other long enough to pass the “Biden Agenda.” Every time Biden tries to show why he is President, and everyone should listen to him, he only provides more evidence of his own senility and incompetence. A level of incompetence exceeded only by his designated replacement, Kamala Harris.

The San Francisco Giants, predicted to win, perhaps 72 games this year, if they were lucky, just finished the season with 107 wins, the most in franchise history. That would be 1 win more than the Los Angeles Dodgers, who also had their best year in franchise history, winning 106 games, only to come in second. They now face a one day sudden death playoff game with the hottest team in baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals. The Giants only exceeded expectations by a mere 35 games, proving once again that many of the people we rely on to predict things have zero credibility. They are guessing and one reason they are often very wrong is that they forget about that “spinnin’ wheel.”

“What goes up, must come down. Spinnin’ wheel got to go ‘round.” True about the weather. Also true about politics. No amount of spin by the MSM can stop that wheel from going “round.” Don’t sell your coat.

TDM

Anyone remotely familiar with the NFL is all too familiar with the “prevent defense.” This is where a team suddenly decides, typically during the last two minutes of a game, to dramatically change the way they run their defense. They drop their cornerbacks and safeties way back to prevent the other team from making a long play. Wise announcers often say that the “prevent defense” only prevents the team deploying this from winning. We saw a classic example of that last Sunday night. The Packers were playing the 49ers and went ahead with 37 seconds on the clock. The 49ers kicked off and immediately went into the “prevent defense.” The result was what anyone remotely familiar with Aaron Rodgers expected. He threw a couple of 20 yards passes. That took Green Bay from their own 25 yard line to the 49er 32 yard line. Then they kicked a field goal as time ran out, winning the game.

The 49ers had made life difficult for Aaron Rodgers all game. Perhaps I am wrong, but I suspect if they had run their traditional defense that would have made it much harder for Aaron Rodgers to beat them. One should note that I did not care who won that game, so this is just an observation, not a gripe.

Today we are seeing the political version of “prevent defense” and odds are it will have similar results. Democrats have been promising to pass a $1.5 trillion bi-partisan infrastructure bill, which isn’t actually bi-partisan and then a $3.5 trillion social justice bill which they hope to pass through reconciliation. They need to do this through reconciliation because no Republican, even RINOs like Mitt Romney, will vote for this disaster. But there is trouble in River or should I say Capital City. It turns out Democrats can’t even pass the $1.5 trillion bi-partisan infrastructure bill, because it isn’t actually bi-partisan and progressives in the Senate are on a mission for all or nothing. Nancy Pelosi dropped this down to $500 billion, and still couldn’t get it passed. In the meantime, if progressives can’t get their $3.5 trillion play toy, they are going to take the ball and go home. Meanwhile moderate Democrats, a term used extremely lightly, in the Senate like Manchin and Sinema, are opposed to the “Big Deal.” Krysten Sinema has already left Washington, so there already are not enough Democratic votes in the Senate.

Nancy Pelosi delayed the bill because she knew it could not pass. Joe Biden is on the way over to congress ready to put his incredible personal leadership and communication skills on full display to push this over the line. I doubt that this will impress anyone. This is a hot mess, for Democrats, but great news for the rest of us. The reason I called this the “prevent defense” is that Democrats already know they are on their way to a historical drubbing next fall. Everything Joe Biden has touched, and I do mean everything, has turned out to be a complete disaster. The economy is tanking, inflation is soaring, and even the MSM is concerned about the potential for 400,000 plus new future star citizens to cross our open borders, without bothering to pass goal and certainly without getting vaccinated or tested for COVID. So, in order to prevent getting hammered next year, Democrats decided they must pass something, anything, so they can at least pretend an accomplishment only to prove that they can’t even get enough support within their own party to do anything.

No one in the Democratic Party is going to be happy about this. Perhaps the person who will get the most blame is Nancy Pelosi, but Chuck Schumer won’t be far behind. Everyone already blames Biden, so he won’t feel much impact. Incredibly Progressive Democrats are planning on Kamala Harris taking center stage and leading their base to victory in November 22. What could possibly go wrong with that brilliant strategy?

Like I wrote in the first paragraph, the “prevent defense” primarily prevents winning. In this case the good news is that if Democrats keep up this brilliant path to glory, November 2022 is likely to result in a world class day of Thanksgiving.

TDM

It appears that the first time “SOS” was used when after the Titanic struck an iceberg. It was Morse Code for Save Our Ship. Now one could argue that “SOS” stands for “Stuck on Stupid.” The Democratic Party is officially stuck on stupid, with predictable results. Democrats were forced to choose Joe Biden as their nominee for President, even though he was clearly unqualified for the job. Biden has a long history of telling ridiculous lies and being wrong on almost every major foreign policy decision. His family appears to be hopelessly corrupt, and he has a personal history of creepy behavior. He has zero public speaking ability and is absolutely incapable of reading a room.  In his previous attempts to run for President he was basically laughed out of the contest with about 5% of the vote. In fact, during the 2020 primary season, the same thing was happening to Biden until the South Carolina Primary. Everybody in both parties knew he was a loser. Ultimately Democrats were forced to choose between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. They reluctantly chose Biden. Incredibly, he was still better than all the other Democrats who ran for President. Astonishing when you think about it.

Compare that to the Republicans who ran for President in 2016.  John Kasich, Gov of Ohio; Ted Cruz, Sen from Texas; Marco Rubio, Sen from Florida; Ben Carson, Neurosurgeon; Jeb Bush, Gov of Florida; Jim Gilmore, Gov of Virginia, Chris Christie, Gov of New Jersey; Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard; Rick Santorum, Sen from Pennsylvania; Rand Paul, Sen from Kentucky; and Mike Huckabee, Gov of Arkansas. Any of them far superior to Joe Biden. They lost because Donald Trump beat them.

In addition, Republican candidates who withdrew before the primaries included George Pataki, Gov of New York; Lindsey Graham, Sen from South Carolina; Bobby Jindal, Gov of Louisiana; Scott Walker, Gov of Wisconsin; and Rick Perry, Gov of Texas.  Even these guys, none of whom came close, are all better than Joe Biden.

The result is that even though Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, they have not been able to accomplish ANYTHING. Instead, Joe Biden made a bunch of idiotic executive decisions, all of which made everything worse. I cannot think of a single thing that has improved since the 2020 election. But we have achieved the worst military defeat and diplomatic fiasco in American History. The whole world is either throwing up or laughing at us. Unemployment is skyrocketing, crime is skyrocketing, gas prices are skyrocketing. Heck, the cost of everything is skyrocketing and due to worldwide supply problems, even with the higher costs, businesses have trouble even getting product. These are just some of the problems and Joe’s only plan is to force everyone, except illegal aliens, to get vaccinated. Democrats still desperately try to blame everything on Donald Trump, but that ship has sailed.

For months we heard about the bi-partisan infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion mega deal. Both of them went completely down in flames. Democrats didn’t come close to passing either. Instead, as I predicted, Democrats and Republicans united on the one thing that always unites them, kicking the debt ceiling limit a little farther down the road.

Think about this for a minute and allow yourself a tiny little smile. Joe Biden is obviously a disaster, but if he were to be replaced, what Democrat is available to do the job? Joe Manchin would have zero chance of getting support from the Democratic Party. Gov Cuomo has resigned and Gov Newsom was nearly recalled. Name the Democratic Governor with nationwide name recognition. Don’t bother, there are none. The somewhat well-known names, like Gretchen Witmer from Michigan and Phil Murphy from New Jersey have serious problems in their own states. Democrats literally have no bench. Instead, they have “leaders” like AOC, who are actually neither talented nor smart.

Mitch McConnell just destroyed Chuck Schumer by agreeing only to suspend the debt limit and doing nothing else. He didn’t even agree to raise the debt limit, instead he said that was the Democrats job. The problem for Democrats is that their margin in the House is razor thin and they have zero margin in the Senate. The progressives are demanding huge spending bills and the moderates are saying no way.  There are about 48 progressives in the House, so it will be extremely difficult for Democrats to pass something they oppose. Yet any legislation acceptable to progressives will not be acceptable to moderates. The result is that while Democrats have a majority, they have no leadership, and they are bitterly divided. The Republican party, on the other hand, appears to be very united and even RINO Republicans are sniffing the air, sensing the sweet, sweet smell of victory.

The few remaining smart Democrats have to be looking at Biden’s polling results and experiencing night sweats just thinking about the 2022 election. Many feared that Biden would be a puppet president, but it is clear he is making his own decisions. Even Obama has started to trash Biden. He only listens when someone reminds him to put on his mask, refuse to answer questions and where to locate the ice cream.

No one in either party is expressing any confidence that Democrats will do well in the 2022 elections. An off year election is historically bad for the party in power. When you combine this with the disastrous performance by the Biden administration, a perfect storm is brewing. Democrats know they are in serious trouble, but the biggest problem is not the polling, it is the increasing evidence that they are stuck on stupid.

TDM

Following is an article from the Sunday Times in London. This is amazing and devastating. If only a major U.S. Newspaper had the integrity to publish the obvious truth:

So Trump was right: the election was rigged. And our next one will be too | Comment | The Sunday Times (thetimes.co.uk)

The American public is slowly waking up to the fact that they are being led by an ineffectually devious, senile halfwit. Donald Trump is back in the lead in the opinion polls. Imagine how awful a president must be if people would rather that sack of meat with mittens were back in charge.

Soon the public will wake up to something even more unpleasant and sinister: that the last presidential election was a fraud, rigged by big business, the labour unions and, more than anything, the media and the tech companies. If that election had taken place in any other country, it would have been called “unfree”. And, as more and more evidence emerges, it terrifies me that the same thing could happen here.

This not only attacks the Biden Administration, but it also attacks the MSM in the U.S.

What worries me most is that so few liberal commentators seem capable of understanding that this was a grotesque manipulation of democracy. And yet surely they must see it, no matter how appalling Trump seemed to them (and indeed, quite often, to me). Instead, those very acts that subverted democracy are depicted as valorous.

Let me translate: “hating Donald Trump, although understandable, is not a substitute for truth and logic.”

We are truly living in parallel universes. One, created out of whole cloth by the Trump hating MSM, and the other populated by truth which is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Regardless of what one wanted to believe, prior to that Senate Hearing, it is no longer possible to even pretend Biden is remotely capable of being President of the United States. Every single military officer who testified threw Biden under the Bus. Either they were lying, or he was lying. Few will believe that it was Biden telling the truth.

Now, thanks to a London Newspaper, we finally have someone willing to talk about the elephant in the room. I will paraphrase: “Just because you so desperately wanted to defeat Donald Trump does not mean he was wrong when he said the election was rigged.” BINGO There actually is evidence the election was rigged. The big lie is pretending the opposite is true. This is not some myth created by the delusional Trump and his deplorable followers. It was rigged. That has been obvious to a lot of us from day one.

We all knew that during the campaign there was an illegal conspiracy between high tech, the DNC, the MSM and RINO Republicans to defeat Donald Trump, by any means necessary. Then, when this did not work, they resorted to rigging the election. An election so obviously flawed that a liberal writer from London, who absolutely despises Donald Trump, has been forced to admit the truth. The big lie is that the election was not rigged. The bigger lie is that this is not a threat to all of us.

The MSM remains convinced that overturning the results of the 2020 election is the worst-case scenario. Trump has not made this easier with his continues rants and raves. Ironically, if he had just gone home, turned off his twitter account and just shut up, there would already be a national demand to fix this by reversing the results of the 2020 election. But I don’t think that will happen, I think the best we can hope for now is a new national election, not involving mail-in ballots. Yet there is no provision in the constitution for dealing with any of this.

At least people are finally being confronted with the cold, hard truth and it is about TIMES.

TDM

The hearings today with the top military brass are shocking for a lot of reasons. One is that the top brass all threw Biden under the bus. It is clear that Biden and Biden alone owns this mess. Although they dumped on Trump, as expected, they admitted that Trump was at least listening to them. They also admitted monumental failure of their own leadership:

Afghanistan updates: Generals say they opposed Biden decision to withdraw all troops (msn.com)

In his opening statement Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin admitted that our entire effort in Afghanistan was a failure:

“We helped build a state, Mr. Chairman, but we could not forge a nation,” he said. “The fact that the Afghan army we and our partners trained simply melted away — in many cases without firing a shot — took us all by surprise. And it would be dishonest to claim otherwise.”

They directly contradicted Joe Biden:

Milley: “My assessment was back in the fall of ’20 and remained consistent throughout that we should keep a steady state of 2,500, could bounce up to 3,500, something like that, to move towards the negotiated gated solution,”

McKenzie: I recommended that we maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. And I also recommended earlier in the fall of 2020 that we would maintain 4,500 at that time — those are my personal views. I also had a view that the withdrawal of those forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces, and eventually the Afghan government,”

Biden: “no one” that “he can recall” advised him to keep a force of 2,500 troops behind.

Milley did not actually justify himself regarding the call with China, but in attempting to save himself, he threw Nancy Pelosi completely under the bus:

Milley Told Pelosi He’s Not Qualified to Determine Trump’s ‘Mental Health’ (businessinsider.com)

Here is what the “book” says Pelosi told Milley:

“He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy,” Pelosi reportedly said, adding, “[I]s there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this?”

Milley:  “Pelosi in January called him to “inquire about the President’s ability to launch nuclear weapons. I sought to assure her that nuclear launch is governed by a very specific and deliberate process.”

The top US general said Pelosi was “concerned and made various personal references characterizing the President.” Milley underscored to Pelosi that the president has unilateral authority to launch nuclear weapons “but he doesn’t launch them alone,” he said.

Milley added that he also told Pelosi, “I am not qualified to determine the mental health of the president of the United States.

Milley confirmed that Trump was rational and was not issuing insane demands:

“I know, I am certain, President Trump did not intend on attacking the Chinese and it is my directed responsibility to convey presidential orders and intent.” 

“My task at that time was to de-escalate. My message was consistent: calm, steady, de-escalate,” Milley said. “We re not going to attack you.” 

So, if anyone attempted an insurrection, it was Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who literally called the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and told him to ignore commands from the President of the United States because she thought he was crazy. She also made insulting reference to President Trump’s weight, which is not actually evidence of insanity.

Somethings are clear. There is bi-partisan outrage at this. Even Democrats are questioning the threat to National Security because of the relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan since Pakistan is reported to have 150 nuclear weapons.

One thing I have noticed is that Democrats are not exactly carrying the water for the Biden Administration. While some have tried to shift some of the blame to Trump, no one is pretending this was a good result. There is bi-partisan concern and outrage.

This will not go unnoticed, even by the MSM. Jake Tapper even talked about focusing totally on Donald Trump regarding the 2022 elections because otherwise Democrats are in deep trouble. That is an open admission that the MSM is on a mission to cover-up for Democrats and an admission that they are finding the task increasingly difficult.

TDM

I must admit that I have never watched the View. My only knowledge of the show comes from internet reporting, mostly negative. But I did watch a replay of the fiasco last week and it was EXTREMELY valuable.

Here are a series of video’s:

The View: Co-Hosts Test Positive for COVID on Live TV! – Bing video

This is beyond ridiculous. These hosts were expelled from the set because Kamala Harris was scheduled to appear. They could not risk exposing her to COVID. When she did appear, it was remotely, not in the studio.

Kamala Harris’ in-studio ‘The View’ interview goes on remotely after 2 hosts test positive for COVID-19 – Chicago Sun-Times (suntimes.com)

When Harris appeared, remotely, she said they would both be fine because they had been vaccinated. But it gets even better because it turned out neither of them actually had COVID. They were “false positives.”

What a joke. Here is what was reported today:

‘The View’ hosts say they had false positive Covid tests during Kamala Harris interview (nbcnews.com)

“Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro were pulled off the air Friday in a startling moment of live television that forced an abbreviated Harris interview to be conducted remotely.

None of the hosts who were on Friday came into contact with Harris. Hostin and Navarro, along with Joy Behar and Sara Haines, were tested multiple times over the weekend and all results were negative, the show said.

“It really was uncomfortable for my results to be released publicly before I even knew what was going on,” Hostin said on Monday.

She said her husband, a doctor, had to be pulled out of surgery as a precautionary measure when the news became known, and her children were taken out of school. All are safe, she said.

“I was flabbergasted,” Navarro said.”

So, here’s the deal. All of the hosts were vaccinated. They were tested multiple times, all negative. Then, just before the show, they were tested again, to be double damn sure, and two of them tested positive. The show was a mess where the remaining hosts had to ask for questions from the audience. Kamala Harris was too terrified to show in person, so they rigged up a video feed. She still managed to botch almost everything she said about the border crisis, the crisis she is supposed to be managing. Now were learn that the two hosts weren’t positive after all.

But the damage wasn’t limited to a stupid TV show. Oh no, Sunny Hostin’s husband is a surgeon and they literally pulled him out of surgery because of the positive test. And, by the way, her kids were pulled from school.

If people were paying attention, and that is questionable, lessons were learned. One is that we are testing far too many people far too often. Another is that at least some of the positive tests are false positives. In addition, the response to the false positives, from two fully vaccinated people who had tested negative numerous times recently, resulted in a surgeon being pulled from surgery, kids being pulled from school and the Vice President of the United States too terrified to visit the set of the View.

This is mostly funny, but it is also public display proving that the Biden Administration is literally insane regarding COVID. Today Joe is publicly getting a booster shot. People are wearing masks all the time. People are being forced to be vaccinated, including some people who are already immune and others who have very little risk of getting sick if they catch COVID. Its’ become a mad, mad, mad, mad world and it is increasingly clear that the inmates are running the institution.

All of this was put on display in full public view, yet my guess is that most of the people dumb enough to watch this program failed to grasp the significance of what was going on, even though it was in full view.

TDM

There is a lot going on that could have a major impact on the world economy. One of them is the possible economic collapse of Evergrande, a Chinese property company.

Remember when a couple of really stupid kids would play a game of chicken with their cars. There were even movies about this. Both cars would head straight toward each other. Obviously, if there was a head on collision, both drivers would likely die. The loser was the person who was the first to swerve away. In other words, the first person to act responsibly was considered the loser. Wow!

Right now, Democrats and Republicans are playing chicken with our entire economy at stake. This is regarding extending the debt limit.

While most of us believe the government spends money without any regard to the consequences, there actually is a debt limit. This is the amount of money that Congress will allow the Treasury to borrow to keep the government running. Think of it like a limit to your VISA or Master Card. Once you exceed that limit, you can’t buy anything, even things you need desperately. When this happens to a family, they may go bankrupt. Many companies have gone bankrupt when they couldn’t pay their bills. This is exactly why some predict that Evergrande may go bankrupt with economic consequences felt around the world. The attached article from CNBC does a good job of explaining this:

Evergrande debt: Collapse could have domino effect on China properties (cnbc.com)

Currently the debt limit appears to be set at $28.4 trillion, which is already pretty staggering. In 2019 the GDP was about $21.4 trillion, so we already owe more than the entire economy produces in a single year. Everyone agrees that we owe a lot more than we should and that at some point this is going to be a problem.

Now we are very close to exceeding the debt limit and if that happens the Treasury will have to take drastic action, including failing to make payments due on our debt, which may be owed to foreign countries. Everyone agrees that this is beyond bad.

But even though both Democrats and Republican agree this is a huge problem, they do not agree on how to fix it. Democrats are demanding Republicans agree to add trillions of dollars to our current spending for this infrastructure bill and a lot of additional entitlement spending. Republicans are standing firm and saying that they will not vote to increase the debt limit if these bills are part of the agreement. Neither side appears willing to budge.

Democrats WANT that spending bill. Republicans are deeply opposed to that spending bill. Somebody is either going to swerve or there will be an economic head-on collision.

Historically there has always been a last minute, bi-partisan bill, to extend the debt limit without addressing other issues. That is what happened when Trump was President. So far, this time, neither party appears to be willing to budge.

The following article from MSN typically blames everything on Republicans.

GOP plan to block House measure could trigger an unprecedented $28tn default (msn.com)

This will happen on October 1, 2021, so time is rapidly running out. My best guess is that they will do what they have always done before, which is just pass a stand-alone bill to increase the debt limit and kick the ugly can down the road one more time.

One thing is certain, there is little or no potential for Democrats and Republicans to work together in a responsible manner for the good of the country. You can blame that on either party, but that is the sad reality. When you combine that with an obviously inept President totally incapable of even pretending to provide leadership, the problem is compounded. Throw in a Senate that is deadlocked and the recipe for disaster is obvious. If is often said that nothing serious ever changes until things reach rock bottom. American was an isolationist nation, even after Hitler invaded France, until Japan attacked us on December 7, 1941. Then and only then did the nation become unified in a mission to defeat both Germany and Japan.

The consequences of failing to extend the debt limit are impossible to fully predict, but everyone agrees it would be beyond horrific. But so would be the failure to recognize that we simply cannot keep spending money we do not have. Venezuela is a classic example of that. It went from being one of the richest nations on earth to an economic disaster. That will not happen here, the United States is not Venezuela. But at some point, the chickens will come home to roost and delaying that just increases the size of the ultimate disaster and the cost to put things in order.

In the meantime, watch the chicken dance going on in Washington.  We do not know what will happen, but we do know it will really matter. If only we could find a way to limit the casualties to the chickens.

TDM

There are now a lot of people accusing each other of the “big lie.” So far, only one “big lie” has been investigated and that was the Russian Collusion Hoax. We now know, thanks to John Durham, that this was just an extremely poorly sourced hit piece bought, paid for, and promoted by Hillary Clinton and the Hillary Clinton campaign. We also know that the sole motivation for this was their hatred of Donald Trump. Apparently hating Donald Trump is grounds for doing anything. We also know that the FBI bought this and the witch hunt, which included the entire Robert Mueller fiasco, should never have happened. If you want to talk about illegal activities specifically designed to overturn the results of a federal election, look no further.

All of the MSM refers to the big lie as Trump saying the 2020 election was rigged. Unfortunately, there is a huge difference between noticing what is obvious and proving it. That has never been truer than regarding the 2020 election. A lot of things happened that are grounds for suspicion, and these were not invented out of whole cloth by Donald Trump. One of the problems is that the entire election process was so sloppy that it is hard for anyone to be confident in the results. There were massive mail-in ballots, sent to millions of people, creating numerous opportunities for fraud. Even Democrats admitted that, before the 2020 election, when they thought it might impact them. Each party assumes the other party will do anything to win, and odds are they are both right.

But a few things are obvious. Democrats dominate every major metropolitan area. Is this because their policies are so popular? Or is it because it is easier to control results in these areas. Anyone remotely familiar with Chicago politics knows the power of the machine. If someone is even suspected of voting the wrong way, it can be a painful experience. In 2011 a Republican won the race to replace Anthony Weiner in congress. Democrats had held that seat since 1920. Previous winners of that seat include a guy named Chuck Schumer and Geraldine Ferraro. But one of the interesting things is how Bob Turner won this seat. The following article from the Daily Beast provides an interesting insight into what happens in Democratic districts:

Anthony Weiner’s Old Congressional Seat Claimed by Republican Bob Turner (thedailybeast.com)

The people pulling voters to polls and handing out palm cards on street corners were mostly supplied by the unions endorsing Weprin. 1199SEIU, the UFT, the UFOA, and the construction workers’ union were most prominently visible in the polling sites around Weprin’s headquarters. The Daily Beast spoke with about 20 field volunteers, 15 of whom were workers sent by their unions to leaflet at polling sites. The 1199SEIU campaign worker holding the door to Weprin’s campaign office even told The Daily Beast that his union was paying him to be there. But Weprin, who again thanked unions for their support after the results of the race had become clear, seemed unable to muster sufficient neighborhood enthusiasm for his campaign. Union-supplied campaign workers don’t know the neighborhoods as well as grassroots volunteers might, and even on a day when no other race was dividing the neighborhood’s attention, the Queens County Democrats apparently could not put enough local volunteers on the streets.

There were people supplied by the unions around every polling site. In a normal year, they would have been outnumbered by Democratic volunteers. They were pulling people to polls, handing out palm cards and working hard to get every voter to vote and to vote the right way.  Because there are so many people packed in such a close area a political organization may literally have information on every voter in the district. It is quite simple, the smaller the district, geographically, the easier it is for this type of organization to control results. The only reason a Republican even came close is that Anthony Weiner was beyond toxic.

I can’t begin to count the times I have watched election results, where a Republican was winning, by a narrow margin, and some reporter said they were waiting for votes from some Democratic district that would probably change the results. It seems like the only time the Republican won was if the lead was so overwhelming in the rest of the state that there weren’t enough votes left to change the outcome.

The point being that denying that there is any systemic fraud regarding our elections is ridiculous. The only question is how much fraud and whether it was enough to change the results. Even if the 2020 election was as perfect as being reported on CNN consider the following: In 2020 Donald Trump won in 2,497 counties while Joe Biden won only 477 counties. But those 477 counties account for 70% of the economy. Is this really fair?

Fair and Honest elections are one of the cornerstones of our society. People in both parties pointed out the obvious problems with mail in ballots.

‘Chaos.’ ‘Fraud.’ Democrats Once Warned Against Voting Changes They Now Call For (townhall.com)

Back during the 2008 Democratic Primary when Florida was considering mail-in ballots, Obama specifically cited the need for signature verification, to ensure “they can check to make sure that the right people are voting.”  Remember, he was competing against Hillary Clinton at the time, so he had legitimate cause to be concerned.

In 200 CNN reported that DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s position on proposals to vastly expand mail-in ballots responded by saying: “A mail-in ballots has wrong written all over it.”

In 2002 Steny Hoyer and Bernie Sanders co-sponsored a bill saying: “First-time voters who register by mail will be required to produce some form of identification.”

The “big lie” is not whether or not the 2020 election was rigged. We actually don’t know the answer to that yet. The “big lie” is that this was the most honest election in history and there is nothing suspicious about Democrats working so hard to prevent any legitimate investigation. The really “big lie” is that there is no problem with a massive mail-in election. As stated above, both parties are on record admitting this is a serious problem and a recipe for fraud.

Joe Biden is literally self-destructing. His performance during the UN speech and subsequent meeting with Boris Johnson was beyond pathetic. It is increasingly obviously that his own staff is terrified he will answer questions and go off script. We are facing crisis after crisis, none of which were handled well by Biden and most of which are the direct result of poor decisions on his part. This cannot continue. Even the MSM has turned on Biden. A lot of people really hate Donald Trump. In 1940, most of the British establishment hated Winston Churchill. On May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill was chosen to be Prime Minister because there was no other acceptable option. Donald Trump should never be confused with Winston Churchill, but Joe Biden is a case study in the Neville Chamberlain school of mismanagement. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Something must be done. Something will be done. The only remaining question is what and when. One thing is certain, overturning the results of the 2020 election is no longer the worst-case scenario.

TDM

There are more and more stories surfacing, all designed to portray Donald Trump as dangerously delusional. But one of the problems with these type of stories is that they can go both ways. For example, Trump is roundly criticized for saying he didn’t think the U.S.S. Gerald Ford Aircraft carrier looked right. He also complained about the cost and the efficiency of the elevators. Here is a report on that from Business Insider:

Trump Ranted About US Aircraft Carrier to Military Officials: Book (businessinsider.com)

I don’t doubt that this story is accurate. But it is also ridiculous. One notices that Trump didn’t demand they overhaul the ship. He just said complained about the cost and said: “The generals and admirals were horrible businessmen, Trump complained repeatedly, and particularly terrible at acquisition and deal making on ships, ensuring the military was always being ripped off,” the book said.

One will note that President Eisenhower warned us about this when he was President. Here is what he said in his farewell address:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction…

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together. [emphasis added]

Trump was basically saying the same thing. That there is danger in having all decisions made by what he called the military industrial complex. Yes, he has red hair. Yes, his personality can be annoying. But, at least in this case, he had a point. Check out how many former flag officers are now bagging big bucks from Defense Contractors. The conflict of interest is obvious. There are some people who describe what they consider to be spectacular failures as a result. They are not necessarily correct in their evaluation, but these are legitimate questions. Here is what William Astore wrote about this in March of this year:

The spectacular and expensive failures of the U.S. military – Alternet.org

He is a retired Lieutenant Colonel (USAF) who taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Post Graduate School. I don’t pretend to be qualified to answer his questions or confirm the validity of his opinions. But read what he wrote about the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers:

* And speaking of boats, perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the Navy has had serious problems of its own with its most recent Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers. That service started building carriers in the 1920s, so one might imagine that, by now, the brass had gained some mastery of the process of updating them and building new ones. But never underestimate the allure of cramming unproven and expensive technologies for “next generation” success on board such vessels. Include among them, when it comes to the Ford-class carriers, elevators for raising munitions that notoriously don’t operate well and a catapult system for launching planes from the deck (known as the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System or EMALS) that’s constantly breaking down. As you might imagine, not much can happen on an aircraft carrier when you can’t load munitions or launch planes effectively. Each new Ford-class carrier costs in the neighborhood of $14 billion, yet despite all that money, it simply “isn’t very good at actually being a carrier,” as an article in Popular Mechanics magazine bluntly put it recently. Think of it as the KC-46 of the seas.

So, instead of being offended that Trump would ask questions, maybe General Milley should have asked himself if Trump had a point. Perhaps if he did that, Trump wouldn’t have felt the need to bring it up over and over and over again? Is the problem here that Trump kept asking the same question or that Milley just didn’t want to hear about it? In other words, what if Trump had a point?

I think the advancements in technology are a large part of what has kept us safe. The success of Iron Dome in protecting Israel against multiple rocket attacks borders on miraculous. On numerous occasions the U.S. had completely destroyed sophisticated air defense systems thought to be effective. Check out how quickly the U.S. overwhelmed the Iraqi air defense system. But history also teaches us that sometimes the most important lessons come from highly flawed messengers. Sometimes we assume that because some lacks what we consider to be the right level of expertise that nothing they say could be true. And if we don’t like someone, we may not hear something very important.

I have personal experience with this. When I worked for Spartan Stores, Inc. we had an SI Order Matic Machine (We called it Big Blue). It was 30 ft high, and it was really amazing to watch in action. We were all very proud. All these boxes of groceries would just slide down onto this multistory conveyor system and the boxes came out the other end, in exactly the right order to put on pallets. I sometimes took visitors from other countries on a tour of our distribution warehouse just so they could see this amazing machine in action. Yet I remember talking to someone who worked on the machine, and he laughed and said, “Sometimes I wonder if this does not take more effort than it is worth.”  I ignored this, because to me the SI Order Matic was an obvious success. For the record, I had little influence over the operation of this machine.

Later, I went to work for Fleming Foods. When I visited their distribution center, I instantly noticed they did not have an SI Order Matic. That surprised me, so I asked them if they had ever considered it. They laughed and said: “We had one, we realized it took more effort to run it than it was worth, so we tore it down and went back to manual picking.” I later learned that Spartan Stores discontinued using the SI Order Matic for the exact same reason, in 1987.

Penicillin was discovered by a Scottish scientist named Andrew Fleming.

Alexander Fleming Discovery and Development of Penicillin – Landmark – American Chemical Society (acs.org)

He had a bunch of petri dishes that contained colonies of staphylococcus, the bacterial that causes boils. But on one dish, he discovered one area where the bacteria was not growing. He noticed that there was a blob of mold there. Prior to this, no one seriously considered mold to be much help in curing illness. He then did more tests and found out this mold juice killed streptococcus, meningococcus, and diphtheria bacillus. He was able to isolate penicillin from the “mold juice.” He published a report on this in 1929. But not much was done until some doctors at Oxford started working on it in 1939. Ironically, the first person they used it on was a man who scratched his face while pruning roses and developed a life-threatening infection. He was injected with penicillin and started to recover, but they ran out of the drug, so he died anyway. But someone realized how valuable penicillin could be if made available to British troops wounded on the battlefield. To make a long story short, a decision was made to visit the U.S. and get help producing this more efficiently. Several U.S. Pharmaceutical companies including Merck, Squibb, Lilly, and Pfizer were looking into this when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Suddenly, the need became urgent. By March 1942 there was enough penicillin available to treat one patient. By 1943 they were able to produce 21 billion units, in 1944 they produced 1,663 billion units. In 1945 that had increased to 6.8 trillion units. By 1949 the annual production of penicillin in the U.S. was increased to 133,229 billion units and the price dropped from $20 per 100,000 units to less than ten cents. Penicillin has saved a lot of lives, including mine. I was injected with massive doses of penicillin when I got Scarlet Fever while in basic training.

The point being that sometimes the greatest lessons come from listening to people who notice things that matter. Mocking Donald Trump, President of the United States, and ignoring important questions because you don’t like his personality is the opposite of leadership.

TDM