Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
1. Hospitals
2. Iron Dome
3. Subs
4. BLM
5. J6 Protest
6. Ammo
7. Servants
1. Hospitals. One of the things I’ve been poking into for a couple weeks are stories about stressed hospitals here in Alaska and elsewhere. My assumption has been that media is lying through their teeth about the shortages in order to further the COVID narrative to enforce vaxxing, which makes research difficult. What appears to be going on is that the Harris – Xiden vax mandate is being enforced by Medicare / Medicaid, and as such becomes a hard requirement for anyone who receives money from either system. Depending whose bogus numbers you believe, up to 40% of the docs, medical staff, and technicians are refusing and are in line to be fired. A bunch have already resigned. A bunch more are requesting religious and other exemptions. I use the precise number “bunch” as I have nothing better as yet. So far, these self-induced staffing shortages are showing up in in North Carolina, Georgia, and NY state. Here in Alaska, both of the largest hospitals in the state have vax requirements that are going into place next month. Suzanne Downing in Must Read Alaska has ran a number of articles on personal stories about people caught up in the festivities. This series has links to previous pieces at the bottom of Part IV. They are well worth your time to peruse. I expect we are not the only ones with similar problems. While it is true that ICU beds are full, they are SUPPOSED to be full, as they exist based on the expected historic traffic rather than the current level of COVID hysteria being fanned by media and politicians. My personal prediction is that there will be a lot of people leave their current positions. Should they leave the profession, that would be a mistake. A better approach would be to never, ever resign. Instead, force each HR department to terminate you. Force them to use the current system. Force them to go thru each and every step in the process in excruciatingly detail. Always appeal every decision. Claim religious and other allowable exemptions. Force them to adjudicate those exemptions and deny them. Then appeal the denials as far and as long as humanly possible. Keep good records and eventually hire a lawyer. In short, you will be using the Cloward – Piven on the HR world, which couldn’t happen to a nicer, more worthless group of people. Now, I know this is easy for me to say, as I am no longer employed, but it is the path I would (and will travel) if necessary.
- Add to the festivities with hospitals refusal of medical professionals to have anything to do with alternative treatments and you have the making of a real problem. For example, there are docs out there who won’t consider any alternative treatment – HCQ, Ivermectin, Remdesivir. There are pharmacists who adamantly refuse to fill prescriptions for these alternatives. No wonder people are going the vet horse paste route. Somewhere along the line, we are going to have to deal with this problem.
- Final negative piece is the vax mandate in the military. Refusal to vax will be grounds for separation under less than honorable conditions, the functional equivalent of a felony conviction. No religious exemptions will be approved, even though DoD has fallen all over themselves embracing religious exemptions for beards, hair and head gear. Ain’t equality grand? There are a lot of people simply resigning their commissions. This might be an intentional part of the continuing purge.
- Now that I’ve painted a bleak picture of the current affairs, what to do about it? I think all these people who refuse to play will hang around for a while and stand up a parallel medical system, one unencumbered with the bureaucratic overhead associated with Centers for Medicare / Medicaid Services and other government agencies. My guess is that we will see a spectacular growth in consigliere medical care, where you pay a flat fee for your medical care every year and are covered with catastrophic care handled via separate insurance.
2. Iron Dome. The Iron Dome anti-missile system was jointly developed by Israel and the US. It is used to defend vital targets from incoming Hamas and Hezbollah missiles. The system is fully automated. If the incoming isn’t going to hit what is being defended, it is not engaged. It is a real good system, and last week the object of the anti-Israeli democrats in the House of Representatives, who managed to get Speaker Pelosi to pull funding for the system from budget legislation in process. AOC’s Squad and other anti-Semitic democrats were quite proud of themselves, that is until the House Ways and Means Committee brought up the $1 billion or so funding in separate legislation that made it to the House floor and passed 420-9-2, with eight democrats and one Republican voting against it. AOC, who originally led the removal changed her vote to “present” and announced the change with a suitably teary-eyed visage, something about Iron Dome being hard on the Palestinians and Iranian proxies of Hezbollah.
3. Subs. One of the things that the O’bamaoids infesting the Harris – Xiden administration and their media cheerleaders tried to claim during the campaign and after being elected was that the “adults” were now back in charge. You know, the same “adults” that fled Iraq giving us ISIS and following it up by doing the same thing in Afghanistan, leaving over 1,000 Americans and people with green cards, along with some $82 billion in front-line military gear. Yeah, those adults. They didn’t stop with Afghanistan, turning their sights on a military procurement deal between France and Oz for diesel-powered submarines. Subs are becoming important tools in that part of the world with CCP expansion into the South China Sea. The French – Oz deal was for $90 billion and abruptly cancelled when Oz changed their mind, deciding to purchase nuclear subs from the US. Great Britain was also involved in the deal. This infuriated the French, who cancelled a gala in DC and withdrew their Ambassador from the US for “consultation.” At least the CCP is unhappy with the new deal. What do you do to placate a putative ally? Washington Examiner suggested that the US broker a deal between France and Vietnam selling the diesel subs to Vietnam. This would help the French cash flow and make China’s problem in the region just a little bit larger. And they probably won’t like that deal either, another positive outcome.
4. BLM. A long-term Scott Adams observation may be on its way to coming true, as black activists find common ground with conservatives over the vax mandate. In this case, BLM activists are going after NYC’s vax mandate, calling it another racist social distancing practice. The event took place at Carmine’s in NYC when three black women from Texas entered the restaurant. They showed their vax cards and were given a seat. Two additional men showed up to sit with them but did not have cards. All five of them were removed from the restaurant to the sidewalk where a brawl broke out between the group and restaurant staff. BLM NYC showed up with protests outside the restaurant in the days to follow. In this event, BLM is on the same side as anti-vax conservatives, though for different reasons. They are on their way to figuring out that they have a common enemy, democrats in political office.
5. J6 Protest. There was a protest in DC on Sept 18 that was aimed at calling for justice for Biden’s (and the FIB’s) political prisoners languishing in federal jail following arrest for the Jan 6 protest. The event was apparently attended by more media and FIB infiltrators (and agents’ provocateur) than actual protesters. Capital Police were out in force with all their riot gear. Nancy Pelosi put the concertina back up around the Capital building again in preparation for yet another “insurrection.” Fortunately, this time around no armed capital police shot another unarmed woman. Most Trump supporters and conservatives understood the high likelihood the entire affair would be yet another exercise in entrapment by the feds, and for the most part stayed away. Trump himself warned it was a trap. One of the people who Capitol Police arrested was probably an undercover fed. Memes of feds in civilian clothes abounded and were hilarious. I don’t think they fooled anyone.
6. Ammo. Ammo.com published a study of 18 months of ammo sales during the pandemic, BLM protests, calls to defund the police, a contentious election, the Biden presidency, and a surprise ban on popular Russian ammo. They originally did one based on the impact of COVID on their business. This is a follow-up. From a pre-pandemic baseline, the following changes in overall sales took place:
- 590% increase in revenue
- 604% increase in transactions
- 271% increase in site traffic
- 77% increase in conversion rate
The baseline data was Aug 2018 – Feb 2020. This data is Feb 2020 – Aug 2021. The top increase in sales volume was in Texas, with 9 mm being the most popular ammo. Texas increased 736%. 9 mm ammo increased 1,866%. There were also demand spikes in 7.62 and 5.56 ammo. There were demand spikes during the Jan 4 – Jan 20, 2021, period. BLM protests also drove ammos sale spikes.
7. Servants. One of the ugly things falling out of government response to the pandemic has been the creation of two sets of rules, one for the elite and the other for the servant class. The elite get to wander around mask free, while those who actually work for a living are forced to mask up. This had been noticed throughout the last 18 months, typically when democrat politicians refuse to abide by the same sort of rules they inflict on everyone else. The 3-day long O’Bama 60-year-old birthday celebration was completely maskless for the attendees. Support staff was masked. Last week’s Met Gala, with AOC’s Tax the Rich gown was really awful, with none of the attendees in masks but all the black-clad staff in masks. Glenn Greenwald made the case last week that the most disturbing part of elite behavior is not what they have prohibited, but rather what they have decided is permissible. When it comes to mask mandates, it is now common for two distinct classes of people, the maskless who are served, and the masked who serve them. The maskless elite no longer need to cast their eyes on the faces of their overwhelmingly non-white servant class, converted into servile robots. Greenwald was scathing in his description of what is going on. Washington Times followed his piece with a similar one about the two classes of people at the Emmy Awards in Hollywood a weekend ago, those who have to obey the COVID restrictions and those who don’t. And guess which category you fit into. Its not that the Emmy attendees should have to mask up. Rather, it’s that everyone else in the country shouldn’t be forced to wear them either.
More later –
- AG