Are we being played??

Are we being played or what??

I confess that I don’t know. I also confess that I thought a quick shut down was a good thing. But I don’t think this phased start up will work. And I think the people who are pushing this are spouting statistics while we know that their first numbers were off by the millions and that failure trend follows.

Figures don’t lie but liars figure. Especially people who desperately want to be right because that is their claim to fame and key to power.

So, I started looking around.

Sweden, which has been roundly condemned, has never closed. You would think that their death rate would be at least equal to Italy, which is 376/per million/population, but its not. Or maybe Spain, which is 417. But it’s not. Okay, maybe twice what our rate is. But its not. Sweden’s death rate is 139 vs our 107.

Now I’m not down playing that 32 difference. With our population of around 320 million that’s 10240 (32 x 320) which is not a number to be sneezed at. With reported current deaths of 35500 the total would have been 45740 based on the Swedish model.

We have approximately 800,000 hospital beds, 2834 hospitals with a least 10 each acute care units and 1 ICU.  And, per John Hopkins on 4/1/20....“1 study estimated that US acute care hospitals own approximately 62,000 full-featured mechanical ventilators. Calculations suggest that about 28,883 of these ventilators (46.4%) can be used to ventilate pediatric and neonatal patients. The study also reported an additional 98,000 ventilators that are not full-featured but can still provide basic function in an emergency during crisis standards of care......... One study reported the clinical outcomes of 191 patients in Wuhan, China and found that 58 of 191 hospitalized patients (31%) required mechanical ventilation.”

When you consider that 99.999% of the  people who died,  did so in a hospital  then of the 35500, then about one/third, 11715, needed a ventilator if you use the Wuhan numbers.

When you use the Swedish numbers, 45740, the number becomes 15094.

Given that all of the need didn’t happen at the same time, the number drops to a much lower number. Much much much lower.

So, what happened? Again, from John Hopkins: “The study also reported an additional 98,000 ventilators that are not full-featured but can still provide basic function in an emergency during crisis standards of care. However, the need for ventilation services during a severe pandemic could quickly overwhelm these day-to-day operational capabilities.”

They panicked. And now they are unwilling to admit that their numbers are wrong. And instead of admitting that; we are knee deep in testing and phases. They are so wound up in the numbers they can’t see the forest.

And the fact is that in the forest there are, and will be, trees that the person tested clean this morning will be positive some days in the future and the cycle starts over.

https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/resources/COVID-19/COVID-19-fact-sheets/200214-VentilatorAvailability-factsheet.pdf

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

Who are we?

I know that I am not as smart as the talking heads on TV or the mealy mouth elected representatives who whine and opine whenever a camera is within ten miles.

But I am growing curious. Curious as to why we are any better than any Central or South American country that has government overthrows as regularly as the flow of the tides and the phases of the Moon.

I mean we are continually told that Impeachment of the President is not a legal thing. That Impeachment is a “political” thing. That the Founders did not mean legal things when they wrote:

“SECTION. 4.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

If it be true that Impeachment does not require a violation of law, then it follows that anytime the majority party in the House of Representative so desires it can vote to remove the President for no violation other than they dislike him or her.

That the Senate, with august members who love to talk but not act, may or may not convict is of no importance. The damage is done just as damage is done when a revolution fails in those countries we scorn because they are not democracies or republics.

Then what are we? We are hypocrites. Pure flat and simple. Own it.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

TANSTAAFL – “There aint no such thing as a free lunch. “ Robert Heinlein, circa 1952.

I see that Princess Warrenliar has called for free healthcare for all. Various sources have said that will cost 34 trillion over 10 years. Lets break that down.

$34 trillion is $34,000,000,000,000, or stated in powers of 10, that is 34 x10 to the 12th.

Given that the population of the country is 350 million, or 350,000,000 or 3.5 x 10 to the 8th.

Divided that is $9.7 to the 4th or $97,000 or $9,700 per year per person over 10 years.

Given that the government has no money except what they take from the individual, and given that the young, aged and disabled do not earn taxable income, then the number of people paying probably drops 50% to around 175,000. This means that the actual tax payer will owe $19,400 in health care taxes a year.

Since it obvious that the individual cannot pay that then the government will have to pay it by just printing money. That, of course, will just lead to inflation and devaluing the dollar so you will be able to get health care for starvation because your grocery bill be a couple of grand a week.

TANSTAAFL

Brother, can you spare a grand?

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper “

Do you or do you not want your country?

The so-called Native Americans came across the Siberia-Alaska land bridge and filtered down and across the continents. Among the things they are noted for is human sacrifice, slavery and cannibalism. Their societies/cultures ranged from hunter gather tribes in the north to feudal kings and peasants groupings in the central and south.

Everything was cool until the southern Europeans arrived. The southern Europeans were aggressive, had better weapons, including germs that the NA’s had never been around before. The result was conquest, settlement and a feudal society based on what they had in southern Europe resulting in land owners with peasants huddled around the Catholic Church. But the NA’s were better off. No slavery, no cannibalism and no human sacrifice.

Basically, nothing has changed to the south. They have gone from weekly revolutions to establishment of failed socialism experiments…Venezuela doesn’t have toilet paper or antibiotics and Honduras is the murder capital of the world. Their exports are bananas and people…..who have flooded into America to the tune of 11 million or so. When called out they riot and fly Mexico’s flag and demand the right to vote.   They seem determined to establish what they, or their parents, fled from. Poverty, chaos, crime and dictatorship.

Later the northern Europeans arrived to the north. They were no better to the NA’s than their peers to the south. But they did have one thing the southern Europeans didn’t have. Budding democracy. They had the Magna Carta. The powers of kings were finite and the people were to have a voice.

“We the people….” Became real.

None of this is pretty. The NA’s lost. What the Europeans found were people who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, defend the land that they had taken from the previous owners.

We now find ourselves on the same page that was the Aztec’s. Do we want to defend and hold this land, this civilization, or do we want to surrender to the flood of people from the south and the flood of Muslims Obama and Hillary imported from the east?

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper “

Censored

These are some of the videos that FB has deemed offensive and demanded I delete them.

But the one that really gets my goat is the Heinlein quote that puts entertainers and athletes in their place.


"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper “

Avoid the question and change the sunbject....

This comes from the Tennessee Star article and is from governor candidate Randy Boyd.

“Many of our universities are not at capacity. If you’ve got a hotel, and you have 30 percent empty rooms, you don’t charge 300 percent more to those last few rooms. The variable cost is fairly small in filling those up. We’ve got a lot of those universities that would actually make a significant amount of money charging just the normal, full tuition – rather than charging a penalty of triple”

This is a perfect example of a politician using what is called a “False Equivalency.”  The issue in question is should we give in state tuition to illegal aliens attending state schools. His argument is that doing so would fill the schools’ empty seats.

This raises several questions.

Why is tuition for citizens so high? If the problem is price why not lower the costs for everyone and fill the seats?

Why did the schools over build? If you fill the seats, at whatever price, won’t the schools launch a new building program and create another “empty seat” problem?

Is it a price problem or a content problem? In marketing if a product is not being purchased it is normal for the product to be closely looked at to determine why it isn’t selling.

And isn’t the real issue, why aren’t we serving Tennessee citizens better, rather than how can we serve illegal aliens better?

http://tennesseestar.com/2017/12/25/randy-boyd-looking-for-a-way-to-give-illegal-aliens-in-state-college-tuition/

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

Who's next?

“Baltimore takes down Confederate statues in middle of night”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/16/baltimore-takes-down-confederate-statues-in-middle-of-night

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

------Martin Niemöller



If unpopular views are not allowed, who will decide what is popular?

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper