Is This a Bug or a Feature? Covid Edition

Posted: October 11, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

As a general rule if I see a story at Hotair authored by Allahpundit I tend to pass it by, but this caught my eye because it touches on something that I’ve been talking about for a while. After looking at the piece as usual it wasn’t worth my time but the basic point that President Trump made concerning the Trust of the Biden administration is worth touching on.

Both the Biden Administration and their sycophants in the media and big tech have been pushing the vaccine to the nth degree and doing their best to demonize and/or punish anyone in the nation who dare defy their demand to receive said vaccine.

That alone is reason enough to be suspicious but there are two facts here that should be pointed out.

  1. The reason we have these vaccines at all is because of the Actions of the Trump administation to speed up their development and suspend the norms usually followed for vaccines: (Remember Kamala Harris’ very public statement that she would not take a “Trump” Vaccine?)
  2. The fact that Donald Trump was president when the vaccine was released and that Joe Biden is president as the Vaccine is being pushed has no bearing on if the Vaccine safe or effective.

The vaccine doesn’t care who is president, whether or not it’s effective or has side effects, short or long term. The vaccines are what they are for good or ill, only the messaging is different.

I guarantee you that if Trump was in office there would be no shortages of media stories questioning the numbers and even the slightest side effect would be front page news.

That we have reached this point is an indictment of us as a society.

The answer to Durbin’s favorite question for SCOTUS nominees is in: Merrick Garland favors restricting personal freedoms

Posted: October 10, 2021 by John Ruberry in culture, education, News/opinion, politics
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Blogger with Durbin in Chicago in 2019

By John Ruberry

When Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland in the final year of his presidency to replace Antonin Scalia on the US Supreme Court he was hailed by some as a moderate. 

Well “Moderate Merrick,” if he ever existed, is gone. 

Garland’s nomination was never acted upon by the US Senate, which was then in Republican control, and President Trump nominated Neal Gorsuch for the Scalia seat–and the Senate went on to confirm Gorsuch.

Had Garland faced the Senate he might have been asked this question from Sen. Dick Durbin, who is from Garland’s home state of Illinois, “Will you restrict the personal freedoms we enjoy as Americans or will you expand them?” Durbin posed that query to John Roberts during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings sixteen years ago and he has asked the same question, as did his predecessor, Paul Simon, during confirmation hearings for other SCOTUS nominees. 

Well we have the answer to the question that Durbin never asked Garland. Joe Biden’s attorney general favors restricting personal freedoms.

Last week, citing unnamed threats against unnamed school board members, Garland in a memorandum declared, “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.”

In short, Garland is unleashing the FBI against parents who have spoken out against hateful and bigoted Critical Race Theory offal that is being rammed down the throats of their children. Do you want someone like Agent Petty from Ozark showing up at your front door? Clearly Garland is plotting to separate parents from their children. After all, leftists from Karl Marx on have viewed parents as an obstacle to pursuing their goal of a perfect society, which of course is a totalitarian state where the elites, who of course are so much wiser than everyone else, guide the rabble. Yes the rabble. You know, people like me and you, part of a multi-million member conglomeration similar to Ozark’s redneck Langmore clan. That’s how our leftist “betters” see us.

Last month at a Virginia gubernatorial candidate debate, the Democrat nominee, longtime Clintonista Terry McAuliffe, let loose this surprising bit of candidness, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

I believe parents should have the defining voice in school curricula—as do undoubtedly most Americans. 

In his farewell address in 1989 Ronald Reagan said, “And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” And that is as it always should be.

But in his first inauguration speech as California governor the Gipper warned, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.”

We now have an attorney general–and a White House administration–that favors restricting freedom.

Don’t look for Durbin to call them out on it.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Some Data from the present and a prediction of the Future

Posted: October 10, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

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)

Has the military become a cult?

Posted: October 9, 2021 by ng36b in News/opinion, Uncomfortable Truths
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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.

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