Christmas day in the DaTechGuy House was first rate. It started with mass the previous night where the family got together and managed an updated picture:
That would be a good Christmas Card if we did Christmas Cards.
Anyways the boys crashed over our place, we all slept a tad late Watched the George C. Scott Version of A Christmas Carol (one of the best in my opinion) Cooked a solid late Breakfast and had a late ham dinner.
I had called my brother Dominic and it turns out that he was at home rather that with his son and grandson on Christmas. It seems both he and his wife had the sniffles and everyone decided it was best they stayed up just in case.
And that’s where the COVID came in.
My first instinct was to invite them down for dinner as it didn’t seem serious enough to warrant them being home alone for Christmas but under the rules where my wife works she is tested daily. If she ended up with a positive test, even if completely asymptomatic, she would be out 10 days and has only one sick day to play with and under the rules of my place if she was out with COVID I’d be in quarantine as well.
It wouldn’t matter if we were actually sick the test for the virus would have been enough to lose us work.
Because of this I reluctantly didn’t invite my brother and sister in law over and they spent Christmas with each other. Not a bad thing when you’ve been married 36+ years I’m sure but I think it’s a crying shame.
If this was 18 months ago when we knew a lot less I could see it, but with where we are and what we know it’s a crying shame. They’re not spending Christmas alone because of COVID they spent Christmas alone because under the current rules our income would be jeopardized.
Don’t get me wrong, my wife had long COVID and I’m very aware that for some it can be rather nasty, just like the flu can be nasty, but we’re reached a point where we’re cutting our throat out of irrational fear and or politics.
It’s become a lie that people are living and in a sense that’s appropriate, because by it’s definition a post Christian society is going to advance the cause of the father of lies.
With Christmas past us it’s time to look back at the current year, 2021. And with a less than a week left we can say that 2021 was America’s worst year since 1864.
Why was 1864 so bad? While there were significant military successes for the Northern armies fighting to keep the United States together–Atlanta and Savannah were captured and General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was locked into siege warfare in Virginia–and a potential political victory of the Confederacy was averted by Abraham Lincoln’s reelection, Americans were still killing each other by the thousands. The following year was an improvement, despite Lincoln’s assassination. The Civil War ended in the spring of 1865 and the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, was ratified.
As for 2021, it got off to a wretched start when hostiles, American ones, stormed the US Capitol in a riot. We have to go back to another horrible year for America, 1814, when the British Army seized the Capitol, for the only other time that happened. The hooligans who entered the Senate and House chambers on January 6 were not participating in an insurrection, despite claims made to this day by CNN and MSNBC. Sure, the rioters wanted to keep Donald J. Trump in power, but they had no plans for a coup, such as imprisoning Joe Biden, taking control of the military, and dissolving Congress.
And what about the people who were supposed to protect the Capitol, such as the Capitol Hill Police and the who they report to? You know, Congress, which is run by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They failed America.
In the fraught election of 2020, a feeble old man, Joe Biden, was elected president. “Lunch Bucket Joe from Scranton” was chosen as the Democratic nominee because he was viewed by many as the “safe” alternative to Trump, and not a radical like Bernie Sanders. Biden’s “good years,” assuming he ever had them, are well in the past. Biden, and the people who control him, such as Ron Klain or Susan Rice, went full-blown leftist on Inauguration Day. Economically, the result is the highest level of inflation in decades. These price increases, once dismissed by the Biden White House as “transitory,” will likely continue indefinitely, serving as a hidden tax for all Americans.
While not quite energy independent as Trump claimed, our nation was headed into that direction under his leadership. Shortly after his inauguration Biden suspended new drilling and fracking on federal lands. It has since been reversed in court, but the White House maintains a malevolent attitude towards the world’s most reliable form of energy, fossil fuels. Gasoline costs over $1 more per gallon since Biden became president. Biden also cancelled the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, essentially firing thousands of union workers.
An effective commander-in-chief, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, does his job so well it appears that he is doing nothing at all. While Trump certainly doesn’t have Ike’s soft touch, I’m of the belief that Trump would have seen the possibility of a supply chain crisis coming and would have taken steps to ensure we would not have seen the bottleneck of cargo ships outside America’s largest harbors.
Meanwhile in the Biden administration the cabinet officer in charge of our supply chain, Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, went on an unannounced two-month paternity leave just as the shipping crisis began. Rather than resigning for failure or dereliction of duty, Buttigieg’s is being hawked by some Democrats as a possible 2024 Democratic presidential candidate should Biden choose not to run for reelection. While family is of course important, liberals often claim that public service is the highest calling. Buttigieg could have simply quit as Transporation secretary. Or not taken the job at all.
While not something that the federal government is directly in charge of, violent crime plagued America’s largest cities this year–and all of those cities are run by Democrats. A dozen cities endured record murder totals. Some jurisdictions, such as San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los Angeles County, Milwaukee County, and Cook County (Chicago), are burdened with woke prosecutors engaging in catch-and-release policies regarding criminals.
Biden was elected last November because more voters saw him as more capable to fight the COVID-19 epidemic than Trump. But wait, what’s this? There were more COVID deaths in the United States in 2021 than in 2020, despite the availability of vaccines. And lockdown and mask mandates are ramping up again with the new omicron variant, which so far has killed one American. That number will surely climb but I have a strong suspicion that omicron will not be killing 15,000 Americans a week as soon as next month, which is what the politicized CDC is predicting.
In order to prove Trump wrong, Biden has proved him right in regard to enforcing the law at our southern border. In late October the Washington Post reported that a record 1.7 million people arrested while trying to cross that border. In addition to illegal aliens, it’s believed that large amounts of fentanyl have been smuggled across the border in 2021.
As Biden as Biden is, his vice president is even worse, the inept cackler, Kamala Harris.
I’ve saved the worst for last. America suffered a humiliating military defeat in Afghanistan. Biden vowed that our departure from Afghanistan would look nothing like our bugging-out from South Vietnam in 1975. He was right, it was worse. As with the border crisis, the Biden White House blamed Trump for the debacle. While Trump did enter an agreement to pull our troops out of Afghanistan this year, it was not a treaty. We could have back out. Trump says, and I believe him, that he never would have made our country look so feeble, yes, feeble like Biden physically and mentally is, if we had departed Afghanistan under his watch.
When the next international crisis comes, our allies will have understandable doubts about American resolve.
So far, Irving has been unwilling satisfy New York City mandates and become vaccinated to play home games, but the turbulence of the ongoing NBA season has caused the organization to reconsider their preseason decision to fully sideline Irving, sources said. https://t.co/OdfJT6Kd26
It’s kind of hard to argue that the unvaccinated Kyrie is a danger to the team when all over the NBA, NHL & NFL games are being delayed and postponed by COVID breakouts among fully vaccinated players but I give yahoo sports credit they give it their best shot:
The harm, aside from common sense, science and everything believed to be true about teams with championship aspirations, consistent standards and chemistry concerns, seems to open a sliding door that may never be closed again, as Irving will be allowed to play in road games — except for Toronto.
Alas both common sense and science suggests that it’s Kyrie and not those who banned him that were right.
Now this doesn’t change the fact that Kyrie brings the same non-covid baggage that he always carried before there was such a thing as a pandemic and the fact that he almost immediately ended up in the COVID protocols means a delay in the Nets getting him on the floor.
But the bottom line is that Kyrie’s return is a blow to the narrative that has been pushed by the various sports teams in solidarity with the Biden Administration on the vaccine but reality doesn’t care about the narrative and the reality of the cost of cancelled games in cash is starting to have an effect to the point where leagues are reconsidering rewriting the rules concerning COVID protocols.
The NFL and the NFL Players Association continue to discuss changes to their COVID-19 protocols that could ease the burden on vaccinated individuals, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
The two sides are working to test vaccinated players less frequently and address player concerns about the number of vaccinated, asymptomatic players who are being forced to miss games because of positive tests.
The real losers in all of this are the players who took the jab and feel like chumps who’ve been played:
The NFLPA has been under pressure in recent weeks from players who are upset because they feel they were effectively forced to get vaccinated (because of the far stricter rules that apply this year to unvaccinated individuals) and as a result of the proliferation of COVID-19 variants are now testing positive and missing games anyway. This has led to player dissatisfaction with other of the league’s COVID-19 mitigation strategies, such as mask wearing and physical distancing in team facilities.
Now as I’ve said repeatedly I have no problem with people getting the vaccine if they feel the cost benefit analysis works for them and I’m sure there are plenty of players in the all the major sports who took the vaccine and thought it was the right move for them.
Kyrie didn’t think so and in the long run it’s worked out for him, and if nothing else he will always be one up on those who took the vaccine unwillingly to play and now feel like chumps.
While I don’t have a print subscription to the Military Times newspapers, I still get their morning email, and today’s headline featured the US Navy not accepting any religious exemptions for the COVID vaccine:
As the deadline for active-duty sailors to get the mandatory COVID-19 vaccine passed Monday, the sea service has yet to grant any vaccine exemptions on the basis of religious accommodation, according to figures released Tuesday.
As of Tuesday, 2,531 requests for exemption from the vaccine mandate had been filed by sailors on religious grounds, though officials could not say how many of those requests had been ruled upon.
I’m not surprised, because in my experience, the Navy (and most services) don’t really care about your religious beliefs. Never have, never will, because in today’s service, the service is the religion.
I noticed this trend when I first joined the Navy. I remember having to beg the Commanding Officer on my submarine to get a mere 45 minutes off on Sunday to hold Catholic services. Mind you, we weren’t on mission, at war, or even strapped for time, but he couldn’t be bothered, and it wasn’t until I talked with the squadron chaplain that I was grudgingly granted the time. This was despite the fact that there are plenty of instructions stating that time and space will be provided unless a submarine is on mission or executing critical duties. My Commanding Officer viewed my request as a nuisance, and he told me as much to my face.
It wasn’t just one CO though. At multiple duty stations, there would be this unwillingness to grant military members the time off to celebrate their faith, be it Christian, Jewish or anything else. In Bahrain, where Sunday is considered a workday, I essentially caused a small office revolt by going to noon Mass on Sunday and telling my boss I simply wasn’t going to work yet another 12 hour work day when we weren’t in crisis mode. I distinctly remember the Admiral there telling us at an all-hands call that he was expecting 6 day work weeks, and even most Saturday mornings, despite no apparent need to do so. It was like the Navy was his “god,” and he couldn’t pray enough while slogging through the mass of self-induced paperwork at his desk.
If the Navy can’t provide a simple hour for Mass once a week, its no surprise they won’t approve vaccine exemptions. Now, to be fair, I encourage people to vaccinate because I think its far better than catching COVID, but I also don’t really think its a hill worth dying on or kicking people out over, similar to why I don’t think we should be stopping everything to chase the extremely tiny number of extremists that might exist in the ranks.
Kicking people out over a COVID vaccine is just one more reason the Navy is going to be hurting for recruitment come 2024-2025. The lip service paid to everything from ship maintenance and strategy to human resources and bonuses is becoming more obvious every day. People are catching on that the Navy views itself as its own religion, and if you’re not willing to worship, then you’ll be shown the door.
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 liked this article, consider supporting the author by purchasing his book for either yourself or as a Christmas gift.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 