Our new washer has arrived

 Our new washing machine, an Amana, was delivered this morning. The 40 year old Kenmore was great--best I've ever had--but sprung a leak our first week here, and who has a part? Now we'll have to hire a plumber (who weighs less than 120 lbs), because the hook up is spliced and diced and the drain pipe opening is near the ceiling. A second home has all the appliances that fail in the other home, but only about 1/5 of the living time. In the last two years I've replaced the oven, the dryer and the washer. The new owner will enjoy them.

Health equity?

Demands for "health equity" for racial and ethnic groups is a push for more government control. The CDC reported in 2014 that the 5 top causes of death were diseases primarily of personal behavior, 1) diseases of the heart, 2) cancer, 3) chronic lower respiratory diseases, 4) cerebrovascular diseases (stroke), and 5) unintentional injuries. These are most often a result of obesity, smoking, drinking, drugs, lack of exercise and other risky behavior. HIV rates are still very high among young black men who have sex with men, and CDC says risk factors are poverty, high rates of unemployment, and cultural stigmas. Doesn't mention risky sex. I'm no doctor or researcher, but any poor, unemployed man who doesn't have sex with men will not be at risk for HIV.  The costs of unintentional injuries are huge--motor vehicle, drugs, suicide,  work, falls. The burden on employers and society in general runs in the billions of dollars annually. . . $1,097.9 billion 

Potentially Preventable Deaths from the Five Leading Causes of Death — United States, 2008–2010 (cdc.gov)

How Many People Die From HIV/AIDS Each Year? (verywellhealth.com)

Health Risks of Overweight & Obesity | NIDDK (nih.gov)

Societal Costs - Injury Facts (nsc.org)

JAMA editor not woke enough?

I have no horse in this race--but JAMA is a journal I read often and is frequently quoted in the media.

"Mike Davis, founder and president of Unsilenced Majority, today released the following statement regarding the firing of Dr. Howard Bauchner, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). 

“You would think that in the middle of a pandemic, the Journal of the American Medical Association would be focused more on its medical reporting and less on woke nonsense, but you’d be wrong. The firing of its top editor speaks to the priorities that have infected so many of our institutions: feelings, not facts; tone, not substance. Unfortunately, while our leaders in government, science, media and technology dedicate their attention to assuaging the woke mob, the advantages we have as a country are deteriorating. Scientists’ only concern should be science. Journalists’ only concern should be journalism. Educators’ only concern should be education. THE MORE WE GIVE INTO THE NOTION THAT IT'S ACCEPTABLE AND EVEN EXPECTED TO CANCEL THOSE WHO DEVIATE FROM WOKE ORTHODOXY, THE MORE WE'RE SETTING OURSELVES UP FOR DIVISION AND FAILURE. JAMA should rescind its unfair and ridiculous politically-motivated firing of its top editor immediately.”

The editorial policies have been pretty liberal for years, but with "structural racism," we're dealing with a religious cult and one of the underlings insulted the most high goddess and denied her awesomeness and truthiness in a podcast. Dr. Bauchner groveled and apologized (my interpretation of reading about it in our unbiased news like CNN and NYT), but that goddess has no mercy in this religion.

The entrepreneur

Met a young entrepreneur today in Lakeside. He's opened a shop of "vintage" sports wear. Used t-shirts, jeans and athletic logo clothes from the 80s and 90s. Although I have clothes older than he, it was great to see the ambition. He "sources" his own stuff by going to yard sales and resale shops. If Jeff Bezos goes into space, this guy has his feet planted firmly on the ground.

Returning to normal

Here at Lakeside, Ohio, things look pretty close to normal. Hand shaking and hugs. Very few masks. Several programs inside Hoover Auditorium due to bad weather (but that's a start). Restaurants with normal seating. The dock is closed but that's because of a 2 day storm with 9' waves that possibly damaged it and threw benches and light poles into Lake Erie.

  

It was beautiful but strange last night.  Gorgeous sunset and no one on the dock which has been declared unsafe because of the storm a week ago.  I've never seen this before.

Transgender athletes

The Gallup poll asked Americans: “Do you think transgender athletes should be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity (or) should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender?”⠀
⠀
A massive majority (62%-34%) of American adults said transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on teams that match their biological sex (“birth gender”).

How is deplatforming different than any other discrimination?

Our internet was out this morning so I was watching via antenna a Detroit station which featured a story about a local civil rights legend. There was film of her (now deceased) retelling her story of being denied service at a recreation park (or something public) because of her skin color. It reminded me of Big Tech denying President Trump service any Democrat, anarchist or Palestinian terrorist can have because he exposes the swamp and collusion with oligarchs which threatens them.

Wall Street Journal: "Facebook Inc. said it is suspending Donald Trump’s accounts for two years, formalizing a long-term penalty for the former U.S. president after its independent Oversight Board said the company was wrong to keep the ban open-ended. 

Facebook said it would revisit the suspension two years from the date of its initial move to suspend him on Jan. 7, the day after the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Assuming he is then reinstated, Mr. Trump will face a “strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions” if he commits further violations, including permanent removal of his pages and accounts, the company said. 

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously expressed a desire to run an open platform enabling free speech. So much for that. This latest decision to attempt to edit U.S. political speech means many more editing decisions await. The Journal reporters note:
In responding to the board’s criticism, Facebook also opens the door for more, as the company will now be required to make more subjective decisions on whether posts from political figures violate its rules surrounding misinformation, hate speech and other issues that are hotly debated. Those judgment calls are likely to escalate partisan complaints around whether the company is being fair in how it applies the rules.

Will Facebook now ban Dr. Anthony Fauci and other scientists who dismissed the idea of a laboratory origin for Covid-19 in 2020?"

Checking through old exercise blogs

 I used to be in an exercise blogging group, Exercising through the Church Year (40days40miles.blogspot.com).  I never met any of the women, and by 2015 there were only 2 of us still writing, and then only once or twice a year, so it sort of died a natural death.  Since I didn't establish the blog, I only contributed, I can't delete it!  But today I was browsing through some of things I'd written about exercise and weight loss or exercise and osteoporosis, and I clicked on one of the other women in the group, Michelle Francl-Donnay.  Found out that although she never said much in our group, she is a writer--a science writer in chemistry. Tracked her down and see she also writes for the Vatican.  Here's an interview  Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe: Molecules, Particles and People - ideaXme (radioideaxme.com)  She's had an interesting life.

Science Writing | Michelle Francl-Donnay (michellefrancldonnay.com)

Speaking of exercise, I did pretty good today.  I did 6 miles at the wellness center here in Lakeside, and 2 additional miles walking.  It's partly cloudy, but has warmed up some.  Some days I've walked to the wellness center (which would make sense), but today I drove since the sky looked iffy. 

The struggle--never ending

  

In summer we spend a lot of time reading books on our porch, 

then a short walk to the kitchen for a snack.

 

University of Virginia embarrasses itself

Infecting more minds of mush, The University of Virginia School of Law said Wednesday that Robert Mueller will participate in a class on his infamous investigation, which examined alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia, Russia, Russia. He probably won't reveal why, when they knew by the beginning of the investigation, that the whole FISA warrant was fake and illegal. Now if he were going to explain himself for that travesty, it might be a class worth attending. Otherwise, all it will be is an outline of how to drag in people on process crimes, and destroy the people's trust in the system. I don't know why a law school would demean itself by doing this, except he graduated there in 1973.

Biden in Tulsa

I see Biden was beating the racism drum again, promising more federal assistance to black businesses to close the wealth gap. This time he was in Tulsa, a terrible tragedy's 100 year anniversary, but in deaths and dollars hasn't matched the Year of Floyd. Biden's become rich in the business of politics for 45 years, he's contributed to so many of the inequities and "help" of the past, like trying to defeat black candidates, killing black babies in the womb, marginalizing and weakening the black community with years of "help" with promised federal money that bought nothing but votes. Even the current V.P. hand picked for color and sex called him a racist and sexist during the primaries. But, hey, it's worked before, why not use the same strategy to fool Democrats again?

How will police be replaced with social workers?

Perhaps you've wondered how Leftists are going to reimagine policing by sending in social workers? How will gun violence, breaking and entering, domestic violence (often the source of calls to police) and child abuse be handled? Your problem, like mine, may be we're thinking of the traditional social worker we knew years ago. Tsk, tsk. Now it's "radical social workers" who will be saving the homeless, the ex-con, and those others oppressed by white people. Notice, although whites are the majority of those in social dysfunction like crime, homelessness, and family distress, they are also blamed by the researchers and experts (who are also mostly white) for the "system." 

This is a review article called "The opposition." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6145824/ It cites the latest trendy academic sources to lead the unrest, division and violence. Learn the ever evolving language. The key word is "transformative." Transformative potential, transformative consciousness, transformative action. The author cites his own unpublished work and leans heavily on CRT. This article is 4 years old and predates the years of Obama and Trump, but you can see the ground work was prepared decades before for the year of Floyd. This "perfect storm" wasn't an accident. These ideas always spring from academe, not the grass roots or neighborhood.

The Marxist roots of critical race theory

"Critical race theory (CRT) was officially organized in 1989, at the first annual Workshop on Critical Race Theory, though its intellectual origins go back much farther, to the 1960s and ’70s. Its immediate precursor was the critical legal studies (CLS) movement, [which is] an offshoot of Marxist-oriented critical theory. "(Britannica)

"Critical theory (CT) is the Marxist-inspired movement (1920s) in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt School (also influential for National Socialism, aka the Nazis). Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed.

 
Believing that science, like other forms of knowledge, has been used as an instrument of oppression, they caution against a blind faith in scientific progress, arguing that scientific knowledge must not be pursued as an end in itself without reference to the goal of human emancipation. Since the 1970s, critical theory has been immensely influential in the study of history, law, literature, and the social sciences." (Britannica)

The Germans involved in the Frankfort School left Germany and found positions of power in America's most prestigious universities in the 1930s-1940s from which many of the current problems stem.

New study from Europe suggests evidence Covid19 comes from lab

 An explosive new study claims researchers found 'unique fingerprints' in COVID-19 samples that they say could only have arisen from manipulation in a laboratory

DailyMail.com exclusively obtained the new 22-page paper authored by British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Sørensen set to be published in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery

The study showed there's evidence to suggest Chinese scientists created the virus while working on a Gain of Function project in a Wuhan lab

 
Gain of Function research, which was temporarily outlawed in the US, involves altering naturally-occurring viruses to make them more infectious in order to study their potential effects on humans

 
According to the paper, Chinese scientists took a natural coronavirus 'backbone' found in Chinese cave bats and spliced onto it a new 'spike', turning it into the deadly and highly transmissible COVID-19

The researchers, who concluded that COVID-19 'has no credible natural ancestor', also believe scientists reverse-engineered versions of the virus to cover up their tracks

'We think that there have been retro-engineered viruses created,' Dalgleish told DailyMail.com. 'They've changed the virus, then tried to make out it was in a sequence years ago.'

The study also points to 'deliberate destruction, concealment or contamination of data' in Chinese labs and notes that 'scientists who wished to share their findings haven't been able to do so or have disappeared'

 
Until recently, most experts had staunchly denied the origins of the virus were anything other than a natural infection leaping from animals to humans

Earlier this week, Dr. Anthony Fauci defended US funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, saying the $600,000 grant was not approved for Gain of Function research

Chinese scientists created COVID-19 in a lab and then tried to cover their tracks, new study claims | Daily Mail Online

Memorial Day, 2021

 Our terrible storms on Lake Erie have cleared out (Port Clinton was in a state of emergency) and the holiday to memorialize the fallen heroes of our wars has appeared warm and sunny.

I walked to the Wellness Center on Sixth St. (about a mile) and then spent 3 miles on the exercycle.  The cycle had been moved (and maybe replaced, not sure) to a different window, so I couldn't see the pool.  However, I did see the small woods and open lot, and had the fun of watching a young deer nibbling tender shoots for breakfast.  I walked back home through the woods and Seventh Street rather than walk along the lake, the lakefront still being strewn with debris from the storm.  So I had five miles in before 8 a.m.

Then at 10:30 I went to the Memorial Day event on the lawn in front of the pavilion, and enjoyed it immensely.  We are usually not in Lakeside on this holiday, and I found the small town atmosphere with a mayor and city council (from Marblehead), and locals telling about the service of their fathers in WWII quite moving. One man's father had been in the Philippines waiting for the invasion of Japan, when the bomb was dropped.  He said there was much rejoicing--something we don't often hear about that terrible loss of Japanese people, yet it did save thousands of American lives. One woman told of her own father whose 4 year enlistment was up on December 8, 1941, so he was commanded to remain another 4 years. She was born after he returned after the war.  Bob Grim, head of the Lakeside Board also told of visiting Normandy with a 95 year old veteran who had been there when he was 19 years old. 

I sat next to a woman, my age or older, whose name was Nancy.  It was her first time in Lakeside and she was quite charmed by it all.

I took me back over 75 years, probably a year or so after WWII to the Memorial Day service in Mt. Morris.  The rifle salute scared me then as much as today, but I knew my Dad was home. I also thought about Uncle Clare, killed in 1944 in China and how my mom and grandparents grieved. Collecting My Thoughts: Remembering Uncle Clare on Memorial Day

Five characteristics of successful civilizations, guest blogger Michael Smitih

Earlier Michael wrote:  "It is hard for anyone with an open mind to look at the policies and executive orders of the Biden administration, contrast and compare them with those of the Trump administration, and not see the Democrat's total, unrestricted, all-out war on every aspect of America - what she is, who we are and how we live.

You can see the attacks accelerating, the condescension and threats are turning into actions - if they cannot bring us to heel with laws, rules, and regulations, if they can't make every single one of us a dependent beggar, they will make your savings worthless and break the entire country with spending and debt."

That passage made me think about how I once proposed that the most successful and long-lived civilizations of history have the five characteristics in common, that the loss of any one of the five results in decline, loss of more than one results the fall of the civilization. In these civilizations, the overwhelming majority of their members share:

• A common theism,
• A common ideology,
• A common culture,
• A love of the aforementioned, and
• A willingness to defend all the above (with deadly force and to the death, if necessary).

A common theism is important – to be a unified civilization and survive challenges from other, competing civilizations, there must be a unity at a spiritual level. Contrary to what our ruling class and the elite academia believe; the rise of Islamic terrorism is not driven by economic or political motives. Most academics and devotees of secularism deny that Islamic terrorism has a religious and spiritual genesis because they give little or no credence to their own spirituality and are motivated by a form of dialectic materialism rooted in their own fealty to socialism and communism. Jihadis come from all strata of Islamic and Western society, we have seen the wealthy and the poor, the educated and the ignorant become agents of human destruction. Islamists conceptualize this “struggle” as Islam versus the infidels – this is the only dimension they understand. If Western civilization cannot unite behind a single, motivating, spiritual organizing principle, it will fall. The Crusades are often thought of in pejorative terms but in more visceral times, the Islamic threat was far more obvious and therefore imminently more visible.

A common ideology (and by ideology, I mean a concept of freedom, liberty, and the governance necessary to preserve them) is also necessary. A common understanding of the political process, the legal environment and a broad understanding of the governing structure is essential. To avoid an arbitrary and capricious nature of savagery, people must be able to predict how their interactions will affect others and what the reaction from those “others” will be. This commonality must also be as minimal as possible – for it to bind all the civilization, it must be simple and clear enough to be understood by the most common of men in that civilization.

Like ideology, a common culture is required – and this does not mean that it is unchanging or without variation, just that it is shared across the civilization as new, unharmful and enhancing aspects of other varying cultures are assimilated (and assimilated is the key point). Important aspects providing strength to a civilization are the stability and predictability brought about by the common bonds between its people – Rousseau called it a social compact or contract. It is the mutual understanding of how things are going to work in society and what are the expectations of, and duties between, members of the civilization.

It goes without saying that the members of a given civilization must love it – that is to be totally and completely devoted to it. Members must value liberty, the systems that protect it, the culture that drives it and the spirituality that preserves it. Absent that level of devotion, the final aspect of defense is impossible - the willingness to defend the civilization with force and with the risk of one’s own life.
For better or worse, it seems clear that Western civilization has witnessed varying degrees of success in the intermixing of these five characteristics. It is a personal belief that America’s success has resulted from

 a) Christianity, 

b) the classical liberalism of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, 

c) the unique American ability to assimilate the best of the world’s cultures and create a singular American culture, 

d) the nationalism and patriotism of American exceptionalism and 

e) the willingness to expend its treasure and give the ultimate sacrifice of American lives to defend the ideals incorporated in these five characteristics and to provide the opportunity for the rest of the world to benefit from them as well.

America’s decline is not an inevitability; it is a choice – we are choosing to violate the characteristics of success (or at least we are not stopping those who are).

Every single one of these five characteristics are under active (and passive) attack. Given that the failure of one set us on a path to destruction, it is not a stretch to imagine that multiple violations of all five will spell our end just as it has the great civilizations of antiquity.

Biden wants $2 Trillion for infrastructure

Who owns U.S. Infrastructure? Not the federal government. So with a $2 Trillion request from Biden for something it doesn't own, where is the money going? State and local governments and the private sector own 97% of the nation’s nondefense infrastructure, and they fund 94% of it. This is just a "green new deal" tax. In other words, a pay back to unions, oligarchs and party hacks for getting Biden into office.

Who Owns U.S. Infrastructure? | Cato Institute

Dave Ramsey says Millionaires are made, not born.

79% of millionaires in the United States didn't inherit ANY money.

Our team conducted the largest study of millionaires EVER. The top 3 careers of the over 10,000 millionaires we talked to were, 

1. Engineer 

2. Accountant 

3. Teacher. 

They became millionaires through consistent investing, avoiding debt like the plague, and smart spending. No lottery tickets. No inheritances. No six-figure incomes.

You have what it takes to build wealth and leave a financial legacy. Stay the course. You got this!

A look at Lakeside's weather for the holiday week-end

I read this on Facebook.  Temps have dropped (Thursday evening).

"For those packing for the weekend - here's a quick heads up that the weather starts off  HORRIBLE! Friday will be wet and cold and windy, with steady rain all morning turning to showers in the afternoon. High temps barely above 60 (so plenty of room at the pool.  Winds will be blowing steadily out of the northeast all day, turning quite strong by Friday evening with gusts > 35mph at times. So no dock walks either .

Saturday will still be chilly but drier with some sunshine (although the NWS still says there is a chance of showers until 2 pm, I just don't see that as much of a threat after sunrise at the latest.) Highs in the 60s.

Back to near 70 with sunshine by Sunday and well into the 70s and dry Memorial Day too."

When lie dresses like truth

The Lie said to the Truth, "Let's take a bath together, the well water is very nice. The Truth, still suspicious, tested the water and found out it really was nice. So they got naked and bathed. But suddenly, the Lie leapt out of the water and fled, wearing the clothes of the Truth.

The Truth, furious, climbed out of the well to get her clothes back. But the World, upon seeing the naked Truth, looked away, with anger and contempt. Poor Truth returned to the well and disappeared forever, hiding her shame. Since then, the Lie runs around the world, dressed as the Truth, and society is very happy...

Because the world has no desire to know the naked Truth.

Painting: Truth Coming Out Of The Well, Jean-Léon Gérome, 1896.