John Bernard Books: What good’s your assurance when my veins are filled with your damn juice?

The Shootist 1975

According to this data via the the VAERS website the COVID 19 vaccines have caused more, life threating events, more permanent disabilities and more direct deaths than all other vaccines combined since 1990.

Furthermore the number of adverse reactions to all other vaccines since 1990 is 824K vs 778k for COVID.

And of course these numbers only count stuff that has been reported and we have reason to believe that these numbers are low

If a batch of Hamburg had reported 1/10 of the side effects these virus had it would be recalled and the lawsuits would be legendary.

Eventually another administration will be in power and all of this will come out. I presume when it does (and particularly if it’s led by Donald Trump) the media & the tech companies that censor this data will suddenly discover it newsworthy and the vaccines will suddenly become the “Trump” Vaccines.

#Unexpectedly of course

Update: One argument I’ve heard from people concerning this stuff is that there have been few immediate side effects from the vaccines (and given these figures 500K adverse reactions out of 150 Mil people vaccinated in the US comes to .3% and that’s a fair point to be made and even the 7,347 deaths and 8,628 disabilities amount to only 15,975 people or .01% of the population ) so the math is still very much in your favor but there are three things I would point out.

  1. The actual odds of dying from COVID are also less than 1% for everyone except those in the highest risk ranges
  2. A person who has already had COVID would already have antibodies against the disease which would decrease these odds even further.
  3. Those figures above represent only the immediate side effects, we don’t know the long term effects that might result. Under a standard that only considers immediate effects for one year afterwards Cigarette Smoking would be consider a safe and harmless recreational activity.

This is not to say that some, indeed many may consider this an acceptable risk and I have no problem with those who have and those who choose to play these odds.

But I submit and suggest that nobody should be forced to play them

(added the John Wayne quote from the shootist)

Answering that question depends what you think a cult is.

The magazine Wired has produced a number of fascinatingly good articles and videos with interesting stories, and one of this weeks YouTube videos hit the mark yet again. Dr. Janja Lalich is a survivor of a political cult, the Democratic Workers Party, and she answers a number of cult-related questions in her video. Her responses are both focused and enlightening.

Dr. Lalich defines a cult as having 4 characteristics

  1. A charismatic leader that is typically a narcissist
  2. A transcendent belief system that has the answers to all questions
  3. A System of Control that controls behavior
  4. A System of Influence that plays on emotions to encourage conformity

Dr. Lalich also separates cults from religion in that religions encourage freedom and independent thought while having guidelines to live by, whereas cults enforce their guidelines.

Given her definition, let’s see how today’s military stacks up:

  • The charismatic leader part is a mixed bag. On one hand, the glitz and glamor that many of the flag and general officers decorate themselves in definitely contributes to a feeling of awe for these people. However, many of them aren’t very charismatic or engaging. The narcissist trait is definitely present in the military’s worst leaders.
  • The transcendent belief system is spot on. The military has a set of rules for everything. Haircuts? Check. Restrictions on your first amendment rights? Check. Poke-mon Go? Check.
  • Control is achieved through the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which can still punish offenses like adultery and conduct unbecoming of a gentlemen that aren’t considered offenses in most civilian systems.
  • Influence is achieved through awards, assignments, and promotions. If you conform with the rules and stay out of trouble, you tend to promote.

3.5 out of 4 is pretty close. The only questionable point is leadership, and that doesn’t surprise me. Every time I’ve had a bad military leader, military life felt oppressive. Dr. Lalich talks about how all people have doubts when they are in a cult, but they get put on a shelf. If too much builds on the shelf, it collapses.

I think shelves are now starting to collapse in bigger numbers than before. The military has the setup to become a cult, and it is only good leadership that prevents this from happening. But military leaders continue to get put in hard circumstances. How do you explain the Afghanistan withdrawal to your soldiers? Or the poor maintenance our ships receive at a shipyard to your Sailors? Or how almost nobody was fired for massive scandals like the mismanagement of Arlington National Cemetery? You simply can’t, and young people asking hard, pointed questions won’t be satisfied by the bland responses from a Pentagon press secretary.

At some point, the good people get tired and leave, making way for those all too happy to defend the status quo. We’re seeing that happening now. The vocal ones, like Lt. Col. Scheller, make the news, but quietly, we’re going to see more and more people simply walk. The military is designed to replace people. The Marines will find another person to fill Lt. Col. Scheller’s spot. The person will at least be adequate, but anyone taking that roll is going to think twice about speaking out or showing too much independence.

That lack of independent thought will make the military stick to what it knows. We shouldn’t be surprised that the military is slow to embrace ideas like autonomous vessels, AI and robotic fighters. When you’re the best, or at least you think you are, you keep doing what was done in the past. Thus, it shouldn’t surprise people that the Navy still uses an antiquated program designed in 1998 to administer personnel reports, instead of moving to a secure cloud based system, or at least something resembling Microsoft Word.

We will eventually pay dearly for these mistakes, even if it isn’t so obvious now.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you want an epic story to read in the meantime, please check out my book on Amazon.

Here’s some big news from WQPH 89.3 FM Fitchburg. Fr. Leonard Mary Revilla is coming to Massachusetts.

Here is the flyer as a PDF if you wish to join us

You’ll want to sign up for those events ASAP. I’ll be at the Fitchburg and tentatively at Boston events (by Land)

In all the excitement I forgot to post about the October Indulgence Calendars. They are available for Download here

The full calendar for October

The Blank Calendar

Feel free to use the blank calendar at your parish to make your own indulgence calendar.

UPDATE: Some good news for those who wanted to go on the Boston Land and Sea event.

The bus for the event will start in Fitchburg at the Madonna of the Holy Rosary Church. Be there for between 6:45 and 7 AM. From Fitchburg it will go to Medford for the 8:30 Mass at St. Joseph’s church. After mass the bus will head into Boston as planned. The land event will continue as planned for $90 in the North End, but the price of the sea portion has dropped from $240 down to only $150

So call now at 781-391-1496 to reserve your spot now!

It is safe to say that all across the United States parents are outraged.  They are outraged at the incessant progressive indoctrination that their children are subjected to on a daily basis.  This indoctrination has infected just about every school in this nation.  It exists in so many different forms, the most nauseating form is Critical Race Theory.  Parents are also rightly outraged over Coronavirus restrictions, such as mask mandates and vaccine mandates. 

To combat this progressive indoctrination and Coronavirus mandates parents are exercising three of their most important God-given natural rights: freedom of speech, freedom to petition, and freedom to assemble.  Parents are attending school board meetings to express their outrage at what is going on.  Most often the school boards simply ignore the concerned parents. Couple this with the obscene level of insidious indoctrination, you get a large number of very outraged parents attending school board meetings, resulting in very heated school board meetings.  At these meetings a small number of parents have crossed over the line into unlawful behavior. None of these isolated incidents have escalated beyond a point where local authorities could easily handle.  All of these incidents have been very isolated and have taken place at local school board meetings.  No provision of the Constitution gives the federal government the slightest authority to investigate or intervene in any of these incidents.  Despite the lack of authority United States Attorney General Merrick Garland issued this MEMORANDUM FOR DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION DIRECTOR, calling on the FBI to stick its nose into this purely local phenomenon.  Here is the justification for this unconstitutional and unwarranted intrusion

In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools. While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.

Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values. Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.

This is a whole load of equine excrement.  There has been no spike in harassment and intimidation across the US at school board meetings.  All of these incidents together do not even come close to matching all the intimidation, harassment, and outright violence perpetrated by BLM, ANTIFA, or any other darlings of the political left, not even remotely in the same universe.  All of the actual leftwing violence has been steadfastly ignored by the Biden regime and the FBI.

The parents who are speaking out at these meetings are right wingers who speaking out against the nonsense being perpetrated by the political left.  That is why they are being targeted now by the Biden regime.

Here is the plan outlined in this odious memorandum.

The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate. In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.

Coordination and partnership with local law enforcement is critical to implementing these measures for the benefit of our nation’s nearly 14,000 public school districts. To this end, I am directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days of the issuance of this memorandum. These meetings will facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.

All of this is being done for one reason, to silence opposition to all of the leftwing garbage that has infected our public school system.  This one sided and purely political attack by a federal government law enforcement agency goes against everything the United States stands for.

You might be wondering why the Biden regime chose to undertake this unconstitutional and unconscionable attack on parents speaking out against progressive indoctrination and mandates.  It was done in response to this letter from the National School Boards Association.  That association is a large and vocal leftwing lobbying group.  By comparing the text of NSBA letter and the text of the Garland memorandum anyone can see who the Biden regime takes its marching orders from.

America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat. The National School Boards Association (NSBA) respectfully asks for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation. Local school board members want to hear from their communities on important issues and that must be at the forefront of good school board governance and promotion of free speech. However, there also must be safeguards in place to protect public schools and dedicated education leaders as they do their jobs.

NSBA believes immediate assistance is required to protect our students, school board members, and educators who are susceptible to acts of violence affecting interstate commerce because of threats to their districts, families, and personal safety. As our school boards continue coronavirus recovery operations within their respective districts, they are also persevering against other challenges that could impede this progress in a number of communities. Coupled with attacks against school board members and educators for approving policies for masks to protect the health and safety of students and school employees, many public school officials are also facing physical threats because of propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula. 1 This propaganda continues despite the fact that critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class.