Posted: December 1, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized
Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked them, but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
After he placed his hands on them, he went away.
Matthew 19:13-15
There was a slightly comic moment last week at mass.
At the point where the Our Father (or as our Protestant Brother’s call it the Lord’s Prayer) was stated there was one voice that was much louder than the rest.
It was a boy about four or five years old who said it with such gusto that the entire church could hear it. Both my wife and I smiled and after Mass before grappling with a crowded parking lot she talked to his mother (and I his father) about how it brought a smile to our faces before I ducked into the confessional for a quick confession.
The reason why the parking lot was so full and the reason my confession was so quick was because Father was flat out. Apparently two Baptisms were scheduled for after mass one at 11 & one at 11:30 so as the time was tighter than normal he asked the 1st family to show a tad early and the deacon asked the 2nd to show a tad late.
There have been baptisms after mass almost every week lately so much so that the absence of them at yesterday’s mass stood out.
But while there were no new Baptisms the little boy who had been loud the previous week was there in the pew ahead of me along with his three sisters and two older brothers with his parents flanking him taking up the entire pew. He was not as loud but just the sight of him kept the smile up.
And when I turned to greet others (the sign of peace is not longer explicitly done due to COVID but everyone turns and waves anyways) it was clear that their pew was not the only one filled by a family with four or more children.
Some are annoyed by the crowd these baptisms make in the parking lot or the large amount of kids, I’m not.
I would like my parish to still be there in my old age and the bottom line is that if the people at your church do not take the time to “be fruitful and multiply” as scripture says there won’t be a church in a generation.
Posted: December 1, 2020 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
By Christoper Harper
A new study shows that the pandemic may not have caused as many deaths as previously reported, but the research was quickly suppressed by Johns Hopkins, the source of the information.
The study, which was published by Dr. Genevieve Briand at Johns Hopkins University, noted that there were some significant errors in the reporting of COVID-related deaths.
It is already well established that COVID-19 is most dangerous to those over the age of 65 and have preexisting conditions. There has been a mortality rate of 2.1 percent in the United States, with elderly individuals making up over half that number.
However, according to the study, the number of deaths in the United States show no significant change and even mirror past trends of seasonal illness.
According to the CDC’s data from the last six years, total deaths have remained relatively constant, and increases can be explained by various factors such as a larger population. The spikes in fatalities in 2020 are consistent with historical trends, only topping 2018 by 11,292 deaths. There have been more than 260,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the United States.
Perhaps more important, the spike in recorded COVID-19 deaths seen in 2020 has coincided with a proportional decrease in death from other diseases.
According to a graph in the study, deaths labeled under COVID-19 increased while deaths labeled under other causes decreased. It is important to note that this sample only applies to the month of April as the author noted these were the weeks with the highest reported deaths until recently.
In the week ending April 18, for example, the number of people who died of heart disease, cancer, respiratory illness, and other diseases dropped by 2,540. The number of COVID deaths increased by 2,561. A similar trend occurred the next week, with a decrease of deaths from various illnesses other than COVID by 1,605, while the number of COVID cases increased by 1,651.
Furthermore, Briand’s research noted that the number of deaths has remained relatively constant through all age groups. COVID death statistics seem to mirror the normal distribution of death among various age groups, lending credence to the contention that many fatalities were recategorized as COVID deaths.
“All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary,” Briand maintained.
Although the study only analyzed the month of April when COVID was at one of its highest levels, the data seem to support the argument that the pandemic may have been overblown.
Now that the COVID scare has put Joe Biden into the White House, it wouldn’t be surprising if there somehow was a recalculation that Joe came to the rescue. There wouldn’t be a need to scare people!
Sir Humphrey Appleby:Oh is that you Norman? ‘Walkies’.
Yes Prime Minister One of Us 1986
As a rule I don’t like posts with question marks in the title as it means people are guessing but something hit me in the middle of work that made a lot of sense.
A lot of people were shocked at the VERY early Fox call in fact I recall reading how at the time of the call the 8-1 betting odds favoring Trump suddenly plunged to 2-1 which got a lot of bookies thinking something was up.
In the first game of the 1919 World Series, Eddie Cicotte of the Chicago White Sox went to the mound and promptly hit the first batter he faced, Cincinnati’s Morrie Rath, square in the back.
Too much adrenaline, most in the crowd thought, or perhaps a case of butterflies.
But for others more decidedly and deviously in the know, the 35-year old’s first delivery was deadly accurate.
It was a signal that the World Series was on its way to being fixed.
Cicotte’s beanball was the public signal that the game was on and when I remembered it it struck me that if you were going to have that meeting I speculated about a while back where everyone agreed to get blood on their hands…
No each of them had to have blood on their hands so to speak. Each of them had to be sure that the other bosses necks would be on the line. Each of the had to be sure that they would be all in on the steal (and I suspect each of them had to be sure that the media and the tech giants would back them up, I would not be surprised if there was coordination with those folks during the pause in the count.) and I suspect only when they agreed to hang together rather than risk hanging repeatedly did the counts resume.
…then you need a public signal to get the ball rolling. Something out in the open that everyone could see to be sure nobody backed out and of course something for the foot soldiers who would have to get the ballots ready, fill them out and ferry them to the various places knew things were on.
I submit and suggest that the most logical way to send such a signal would be through the media and the best type of signal would be a move that would be considered inexplicable from a source that would not be expected.
Even better the call of Arizona also fed the narrative that would be necessary to sell the fraud, although to be fair, the media would have been more than happy to buy it for any reason.
Again I am just speculating and have absolutely no proof of this, but if I was the guy in charge of getting the word out on election night that the fix was in, that’s how I’d do it.
More than once President Donald Trump–and as most recently as this morning in a telephone interview with Maria Bartiromo–President Donald J. Trump has called with media “the enemy of the people.”
And for the most part he is correct. On the national side most writers are propagandists for the left. Things are slightly better on the local level, which the president noted in that discussion with Bartiromo. After all only local TV stations were pressing Joe Biden during the presidential campaign about whether he’d pack the court with liberal justices. This is a very serious issue as it would upend and transform one of the three branches of the federal government. Eventually Biden, like a typical liberal, punted the decision by announcing he’d form a committee to explore issues of injustices in the legal system. And the elite media once again practiced the sin of omission in their reporting.
Old line magazines such as New York, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker are dominated by left-wing journalists. You know, the smug-elitists who got their jobs by way of nepotism and their attendance at an elite university, which probably admitted them because of one of their parents also attended that college. Actually these publications might not have any conservative writers. The last one, the New Yorker, offers a newstand price of $8.99. In my opinion it’s not worth 99 cents. All are behind an internet paywall. All of these publications are intellectually irredeemable and likely doomed to insolvency.
Let’s get back to newspapers. I cancelled my print subscription to the Chicago Tribune years ago and although I toyed with the idea of subscribing online,being the enterprising sort I learned that the only thing, outside of an occasional sports story, that I cared to read in the Tribune was John Kass’ column, which I discovered I could find on other newspapers sites or Real Clear Politics for free.
Buffett is right. Newspapers are dead men walking. And magazines. Mostly. Oh, Chicago’s other major daily newspaper, which was purchased by a consortium a few years ago that included the Chicago Federal of Labor for $1, isn’t going to make it. You can bet on it.
The Tribune, once a strong conservative voice in heavily Democratic Chicago, has been drifting lefward for years. Now it’s “woke.” Except for columnist John Kass. And the Trib is a shell of its former self. Like Warren Buffett–and here the similarities between us end–I’m a former newspaper delivery boy. I hated Thanksgiving Day editions because the papers were jammed with Christmas shopping ads–making the delivery of those bulky papers take three times as long. I have this year’s Thanksgiving Day Tribune lying right next to me. It’s thinner than the Saturday editions–a low readership and therefore a low-advertising day–that I used to deliver.
Here’s my idea for saving and perhaps transforming daily newspapers and magazines out of the liberal echo chamber that they are now. For instance, the cost of a Tribune subscription, once the promos end, is $3.99 a month. For a dollar more you can have the print edition delivered to your door too. Now, and union rules may have to be changed for this to happen, but I propose for subscribers to have one-quarter of their subscription fee to go directly to the columnist of their choice. If there’s a sports writer or a movie reviewer who you really like, then of course choose that person. And of course I have all newspapers, magazines, and online-only publications in mind.
My selection at the Tribune would of course be John Kass, a strong conservative voice who suffered a demotion of sorts by seeing his column moved from the coveted page 2 location to the innards of opinion section. The impetus for that move was a rebellion by his leftist co-workers about a column explaining how George Soros funded the campaigns of far-left prosecutors such as Kim Foxx in Cook County, Illinois. Those propagandists called Kass’ column anti-Semitic, even though Kass never mentioned the faith of Soros in that article. Soros is a secular Jew, not a religous one, by the way. Kass was attacked by his colleagues not because he was wrong about Soros–but because he was right.
Kass on a personal level is the antithesis of the media elites of you find elsewhere on the Tribune or at the New York Times and the Atlantic and their ilk. He attended–but did not graduate from–Columbia. That is Columbia College in Chicago, which my daughter once also attended, not the “other” Columbia in New York. The mainstream media of of course is always calling for more diversity within its ranks. But never for more intellectual diversity. Or class diversity.
So my proposal has two obvious merits. It can save newspapers and it can up the conservative presence at the legacy media. Before it becomes the extinct media.
John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit and is available for hire by a legacy media publication.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 