Deep within the bowels of The New York Times website is a blueprint of why Joe Biden is in trouble.
It took me a long time to track the analysis down because it got virtually no play on the Times’ opening web page. Maybe that’s because it shows how badly Biden is doing in the eyes of voters throughout the country.
The Times Opinion focus group included 13 undecided, independent voters. “To a striking degree, most of the participants tilted toward Mr. Trump, even though they disliked his personality,” the analysis offered.
“Almost all the voters (who range in age from 22 to 64) were most worried about the economy and how their groceries and other bills were too costly. Some were also deeply troubled by the crisis at the southern border, and some were concerned about the Israel-Gaza war and disliked U.S. aid to other countries,” the report continued.
When asked to describe Biden, the participants seemed particularly worried about his age and competence, using words like “senile” and “unfit.”
“I keep hearing the government say that things are getting better. I’d like to know who they’re asking, because I don’t see the economy getting better. I see us spending more money in our households, in the government. Here in New Hampshire, it’s never been this bad, ever,” said Robin, a 59-year-old retiree from New Hampshire. “They’re spending billions and billions of dollars on stuff that I don’t understand. Where is that going?”
Natalie, a 22-year-old college student in New Jersey, agreed. “I wanted to get my master’s, but it’s like I’m never going to be able to afford it. Where is the government’s money going? It should be going toward stuff like education. I’m never going to see loan forgiveness. I just see myself in debt forever.”
Twelve of the 13 participants said they viewed the economy as the most important issue in the election, while one chose the crisis in Israel and Gaza.
But the focus group also underlined some fundamental issues that Biden faces, particularly among ethnic groups that traditionally support Democrats.
For example, Yalena, a 22-year-old stay-at-home mom in Alabama, described Biden as “disingenuous.” Yalena, a Latina, added: ”I don’t feel like I’m being told the truth. I don’t feel like I’m being told anything upfront. I was just so disappointed — with the ounce of hope I had left — when we just started pouring money into the Israel conflict.”
Although Henry, a 60-year-old black consultant from Georgia, said he plans to vote for Biden, the president is “not inspiring at all.”
Gary, a 64-year-old driving instructor in Michigan, said he plans to vote for Trump but had some advice for the former president: “Stay off Twitter.”
Although the general election is months off, I hope DaTimes continues taling to this set of people who seem to have a better grasp of the state of the country than all of the pundits and talking heads combined.
Right now the left has the Gays and the Transgenders and the Hollywood elites & media in which they are overrepresented and they figure that’s the best things to have, but in America Islam is a thing of the future. In 20 years the children of Muslims now being raised on the tenets of Sharia law in America will be old enough to vote and Democrats going to make sure they get those votes when the time come, not now but 10-20 years from now.
The various anti-Semitic marches and events tearing through the country in general and campus’ in particular have rightly gotten plenty of press. To a large degree this is made possible by the steady increase of Islam in the country whose effect some Jewish liberals are finally grasping after ignoring warning from folks like Pam Geller, Robert Spencer and occasionally me.
But being of an optimistic nature one likes to look and the bright side of this change and one of those bright sides is getting almost no press:
A Minneapolis area school district says it will let families opt out of LGBT curriculum materials after several Muslim families threatened to sue.
St. Louis Park Public School District just west of Minneapolis said it will allow families to opt their kids out of reading books with LGBT themes.
Somali Muslim families had threatened to sue the district, alleging that not allowing families to opt out potentially violates the Constitution and state law.
But on this issue, they’ve caved pretty fast, no big publicity campaign, no MSM trying to shame the parents, no grandstanding by Hollywood or academia or clever “don’t say gay” tag for the school system in question. Just a quick retreat. As Robert Spencer put it when writing about the case:
Of course, school district officials in Minneapolis, which has a significant Somali Muslim population, may not have wanted to appear so “Islamophobic” as to fight Muslim families in court. This was especially true because the families based their case on Islam: “on November 2, the families’ attorneys sent the district a letter explaining Islamic teachings around gender and sexuality and outlining the timeline of parents’ complaints about the LGBT books.”
He also notes a great mistake being made by Christians there.
The real pity here is that Christian parents and those from other faith groups didn’t join the legal case as well. The Muslim families acted after “some of the families’ elementary school children had been exposed to LGBT characters in picture books, which caused ‘significant confusion and distress,’” according to the letter the families sent to the school district. Christian and other parents have also experienced “significant confusion and distress” over this propaganda being forced onto their children, and they should have protested.
You’re going to see a lot more of this and it’s going to eventually force the left to make a choice and my guess is they will choose Islam, at least if they know how to count.
Closing thought. How fast would the school board have laughed the parents out of the place if they had been Catholic and not Muslim?
Okay, let me get say this before I get into the details of our ten-day cruise. Yes, barely, we can afford a cruise. So I’m not bragging about our wealth. Because we have nothing to brag about.
To celebrate an anniversary birthday for Mrs. Marathon Pundit–I’m not going to reveal the year–we departed on a Caribbean cruise earlier this month which concluded last Friday where it began, Fort Lauderdale.
Which cruise line? Let’s just call it Joyful Cruises.
This post is designed to start an honest conversation about cruise ships, one that you will be less likely to find in dinosaur corporate media, largely because cruise ships are major advertisers with them.
I have no such restraints. Oh, I am not a doctor or any sort of health professional.
On the upside, a cruise makes affordable–barely again, for us–visits to remote places such as Carribean islands. I can drive from my home near Chicago and reach Key West, Florida in a couple of days. I can make it a week-long trip with extended stops. I cannot drive from Key West to the Bahamas.
The highlight of the cruise for us were the excursions in Charlotte Amalie, US Virgin Islands, St. Lucia, Martinque, and Antigua. Issues with high waves cancelled plan stops at “Joyful Cay” in the Bahamas and Dominica. I understand, snowstorms and hurricanes force highway closures and baseball games are rained out. But according to a cruise Facebook group, those stops were also cancelled on that same Joyful cruise ship, which departed the same day our cruise ended.
To compensate for the missed stops, our already paid for excursion was refunded and we each receivedc a $75 on-ship credit.
Fewer stops means more time on the ship–more time to interact with other passengers–and more time to become ill.
And people get sick–not just motion sickness–on cruise ships. Norovirus, commonly but mistakenly referred to as “stomach flu,” is a big problem on cruises.
Outbreaks of the stomach bug have surged on cruise ships this year, reaching the highest levels seen in 10 years. Since January 2023, there have been 13 confirmed norovirus outbreaks [My note–there were just 12, one of those was salmonella and E. coli] on cruise ships under U.S. jurisdiction — that’s more outbreaks in six months than there have been during any full year since 2012, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More…
Most recently, a norovirus outbreak in June on the Viking Neptune sickened 110 passengers (over 13% of the ship’s guests) and nine crew members with vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal cramps, according to the CDC. The CDC has tracked outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness on cruise ships through its Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) since 1994.
Several weeks prior, a Celebrity Summit cruise ship reported an outbreak of norovirus that sickened more than 150 passengers and 25 crew members, per the CDC. It was the third norovirus outbreak on a Celebrity Cruises vessel this year. Another popular cruise line, Royal Caribbean International, has reported four outbreaks since January.
Late on the eighth day of our Joyful Cruise, Mrs. Marathon Pundit became quite ill, and her symptoms were fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. I visited the medical center of the ship on her behalf, the medical staffer explained that my wife would need to be confined to our stateroom–really, it was a tiny cabin—for 24 hours. Or longer if her symptoms continued. Notably, he didn’t say “quarantine.” Per CDC protocol, my wife was required to complete a form about her illness and conditions. He provided her with anti-diarrheal medication, the charge for it was $14.
A day later it was my turn to get sick. How sick?
While sitting on the toilet doing, well, you know, I took advantage of the compact bathroom in our stateroom, which allowed me to simultaneously and painfully vomit into the sink. A two-for-one cruise ship special! And four days later the soreness remains. The lower back muscular pain from the unnatural vomit-induced contortions severely challenged my fit body.
I didn’t bother to visit the medical center–I already knew what was wrong with me. And I didn’t need fill out a report. As we disembarked our ship in Fort Lauderdale, I overheard a few other passengers complain about “stomach flu,” and there was a mention of it on the unofficial cruise Facebook page organized by another passenger.
Getting sick with norovirus on a cruise is surprisingly common. Last year, the Miami Heraldreported, “Some people know it as the ‘cruise ship virus’ because it’s often the cause of over 90% of diarrhea outbreaks on cruise ships, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Neither Mrs. Marathon Pundit nor I were officially diagnosed with norovirus. But that 90 percent CDC statistic works for me.
So far in the seven weeks of 2024, the CDC has reported official illness outbreaks on two cruise ships, one was confirmed as norovirus.
On the flipside, norovirus is not a cruise ship-exclusive bug, it’s far more common in schools and nursing homes, according to the CDC.
The CDC reports on norovirus cruise ships outbreaks are incomplete, because they don’t include people like me who silently suffered in their staterooms, or passengers who didn’t exhibit symptoms until after disembarking.
Still, not everyone gets sick on cruise ships. Most don’t. And of the folks we mingled with on our Joyful cruise, most said, even after over a dozen cruises, that they’ve never gotten sick.
Where did we go wrong? Out of convenience, we ate all but one of our cruise meals–three of them most days–in the crowded “hot bunk” style set up in the buffet dining hall, even though our cheapskate package allowed us, with a reservation and paying an eighteen percent “cover charge,” to dine in some of the restaurants. Mrs. Marathon Pundit, who you’ll remember got sick first, spent a lot of time in the ship’s spa.
Our cruise ship boasts that it can hold over 3,600 passengers–our trip was sold out–and it has a crew of over 1,300. Most of the crew sleep in compact steerage rooms in bunk beds. Perhaps that’s too many people in too small of a space for too long of a time.
Our two port cancellations increased the odds of illness. You’re more likely to get sick with any bug on a massive cruise ship as opposed to a beach or a rain forest.
I’m not a germophobe. During the COVID pandemic, I was against the lockdowns and mask mandates. While I don’t have any specific suggestions, I believe cruise lines can do better, even if that means simply informing passengers that they face a norovirus risk. COVID warnings, many that have turned out to be exaggerated, have desensitized us to health advisories, so it’s no surprise that the handwashing stations outside the buffet halls were little used. Washing hands of course is a good thing.
My guess was that the median age of the passengers on our cruise was 65–and most were overweight. That meets my definition of a vulnerable population.
When I returned home, I entered “norovirus” into the Joyful Cruises website search box. I received just two matches.
Do better.
Will we go on a cruise again? Perhaps on a smaller ship. And not for ten days. Supposedly a norovirus vaccine is in the works. If it’s available and we decide to head to sea again, I’m taking that jab.
I’m going out for a run now, despite that back-muscle pain from the puking.
And once again, Happy Birthday Mrs. Marathon Pundit!
John Ruberry, pictured on that cruise, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
The first of the two relics shows is a fragment of the Crown of Thorns, the 2nd is a Holy Face Relic whose origin is explained by our speaker in his talk.
Michael Petroch of the Confederacy of the Holy Face of Jesus was our primary speaker who talked about the origins and benefits of the Confederacy. His presentation is in two parts
You might notice that the video is a little shaky, that’s because for the life of me I couldn’t find my monopod that morning and thus had to hold my little Cannon Camera by hand for the 28 minutes of his talk.
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