Covid in the time of Leftism or Election Dejection

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It's taken me some time to get to the point that I can even discuss the election. But, without knowing specifics that I can point to, this is my analysis of the election. Mind you, the state I live in kept saying that there wouldn't be voting on the day of the election. So I sent my ballot in early (I've been voting by mail since it's been available because that year I was going to be in Israel on Election Day and I was caring for my parents who were having increasing difficulty walking the 4 blocks to our polling place) -- about a week before election day I finally found out where the box was and put it in, while the rain was pouring down on me. 

In any case, I was concerned about the election, not because I worried that Donald Trump didn't have enough support to win the election. I was concerned because the left doesn't value integrity and truth. And, because of that, the left would find a way to make it look like Biden won the election. 

I'm glad the Trump camp is fighting. I don't know if they will win, but I'm hoping a few figurative heads will roll. 

The mob has even found a way to make it seem like Georgia Senators (both of whom are up for election this "round" -- coincidentally) didn't win their elections either, so there can be a run-off in January.

As it stands now (assuming the election stands as it is now, though I'm hoping it doesn't) the Republicans need to win at least one of the two senate races in Georgia. But I think the leftists have learned how to cheat even better through doing it so well in at least 5 different states -- Pennsylvania being their "crowning glory". There are hundreds and hundreds of affidavits testifying to the rampant voter fraud in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin. Many of us believe that if the layers and layers of fraudulent activities would be stripped off the election results (particularly in the abovementioned four states plus Arizona and Nevada) Donald Trump would be the victor by a landslide. I'm one of those "many". 

It doesn't make sense to me how Trump could be drawing tens of thousands of people to his rallies and not have won, even in a squeaker, but most likely in a landslide. 

But beyond the election (and even before the election), we need to analyze the leftist response to the Covid-19. 

One of the most important things we have to remember is preventing deaths in totality from Corona, besides being impossible, is NOT the goal of the left. Despite their protestations, it is quite clear that their goal is power. If you listen to AOC (or as Tucker Carlson calls her "Sandy Cortez") and Bill Gates, you can tell that these are some of the things they are after: 

1) Fewer People in the world
2) The Government paying people to not work
3) Their own power and their "privileges" (like eating out with friends, going to get a haircut, spending time with their families, taking vacations, etc.) 

These are some of the things I hold dear that the left doesn't value at all:

1) G-d (and the way of life I have thanks to G-d)
2) Family (and friends who are like family)
3) Thanksgiving, Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Jewish and Christian holidays -- like Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Christmas and Easter, for example
4) Gratitude -- the left believes in entitlement

I'm sure these are both totally incomplete, just small samples of the differences. 

And this is how the representatives of the left managed to cheat themselves into a presidential election "Victory" -- step one, convince liberals that they have more to fear from conservatives than they do from the left (so untrue) -- Dennis Prager's "PragerU" videos, like This one and this one explain this far better than I can (each is a 5 minute video so if you want to know which side of the fence you are on, watch them). Step two, spend campaign time setting up constructs for election day so that even without a dynamic candidate with a popular platform who has stimulated the economy and attracted millions of Americans to a movement called "Make America Great Again" or, alternatively, "Keep America Great" loses because you promote various "irregularities" in the election. This way, the hand-picked  puppet, er, candidate of the "people"  (those people being BLM, Antifa, the Cancel Culture and most sycophantic Democrats), a 77 year old man who can't put together a cohesive sentence and thinks Covid tests are Cognitive tests who has been calling himself "Kamala Harris's" running mate and openly brags about how he got a prosecutor to drop an investigation into his son's "financial dealings" (read: influence peddling) can appear to be the people's choice.

I find it hard to believe that so many are still allowing the "face mask" to be pulled over their eyes by these open leftists. I don't know about you, but I really love the US and I really don't want to see this experiment of Liberalism (I mean that in the 18th century way) to be destroyed from within. We are experiencing the decay of our values thanks to leftist teachings in the schools (from elementary on up) and "softening" of people's defenses against the left. If you don't want our country to be little more than a clone of Venezuela or China, we need to stand up to the cancel culture. 

Remember what is attributed to Martin Niemoller: (This is a paraphrased version of this quote -- it was not recorded when he spoke, so the groups mentioned and the order they are mentioned is not a direct quote, but I hope you all get the idea)

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew
Then they came for the Catholics and I did not speak out because I was not a Catholic
Then they came for the Trade Unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.

Don't allow this wonderful country to be corroded by self-serving demagogues (read: Democrats).  Remember, the dictators also known as Blue State Governors are not trying to keep you safe -- they are trying to keep you down. 

Ask Not What Your Country Can do for You

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My BFF and I were talking tonight and she, as she often does, revealed to me something I had never thought of before. She's a few years younger than I (I'm a Baby Boomer and she is sort of on the cusp between the Baby Boom generation and Gen X) and she and I were talking about a Dennis Prager video I saw today where Dennis talked about ingratitude.

 I remember when I was "little" -- My Mom was very specific whenever we wanted something, we always needed to say "the magic words" -- Please and Thank You. There were times when our parents wouldn't give us what we asked for if we didn't say Please (or they would concatenate the word Please onto our request or remind us to say Thank You when we got what we asked for).

That is how we all were raised back then. I find myself, these days, trying to get other people's children to say "please" and "thank you". We need to raise our children to be grateful, to understand that food comes from G-d, from farmers and their hard work and sweat, the truckers who drive the cases of food to the stores and the workers in the grocery stores who stack and stock the stores so we can buy the food. 

As long as we are able to work together as a country and a people, Americans can pull just about anything together. We need to be grateful for what this country has given us. And, because of that, we need to give back. We need to stop pushing the government to feed us when we are totally capable of feeding ourselves (and our families). 

Earn your place in the world. Whether you are a farmer, or a steel worker, or a journalist, or an oil worker; whether you  are an engineer or a miner, or a teacher, or a garbage worker, if you earn your food and your car and your house you can feel proud of yourself (and your contribution to our people and our country). 

This country is strong and will stay strong as long as we stand up to internal tyranny. As long as we fight the people who are trying to bring marxism/socialism/communism, or, more succinctly, ruination.

Teach your children gratitude. Express gratitude yourself, including to your children -- thank them if/when they do their chores (even if they don't do it perfectly -- they will learn). Make them feel loved and wanted.  And make sure you thank people in your life. 

If you can, keep a gratitude journal. And encourage your kids to also. To paraphrase Dennis Prager, a grateful person is a happy and good person and an ungrateful person who believes that (s)he is due everything will always be a bad and sad person. 

The National Pasttime

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When I was in college, I wanted to be a sportscaster. I watched any sport I could get -- Basketball, Football, Hockey, NASCAR, Olympic sports, you name it. 

But once I realized that sportscasting or sports-writing wasn't for me, I pretty much dropped them all except for Football (sometimes), figure skating and gymnastics (very occasionally) and my first love (sports-wise) Baseball. I'm a dyed in the wool, card carrying Mets fanatic, but I love to watch baseball of all sorts (MLB, of course, college baseball, minor league baseball, World Baseball Classic, even replays and Little League). 

So what's left sports-wise regularly (as opposed to "I'm bored and nothing's on TV") is Football (which is once a week) and Baseball. 

But lately, the left is taking over everything and politicizing sports. It started with Colin Kaepernick. I wrote a blog post on that on a different blog. I have to be honest, I never thought Mr. Kaepernick was a very good quarterback. And as his value was dropping in the football world, he decided to appeal to the lowest common denominator in the millennial world -- the "entitled", the ungrateful, the young people who are removed enough from their family's immigration to this country that they have no idea what their ancestors left behind, why they endured terrible hardships (often being stripped of money and dignity). But for some reasons, the only people that leftists think have suffered are people with dark skin. 

With the schools teaching students to hate their country and their parents, children are not learning to be grateful. Too many parents have no idea what their children are learning. Too many children (who are now growing or have grown) think that the world owes them. They are too self-centered. They never learned how to help others. They never learned that taking care of yourself or others is very rewarding, sometimes emotionally rewarding, sometimes financially rewarding. They never heard their parents say "money doesn't grow on trees" and they never had to do chores to earn their allowances. They never had a paper route (a job once held mostly by boys) or a babysitting job (a job once held mostly by teenage girls). They never learned that in order to buy things you need to earn money. 

So when they learn about Socialism, it clicks with them (particularly if they aren't learning the history of Capitalism and Marxism). They don't know that socialism has failed wherever it has been tried. They don't know that Capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty". They don't know that Socialism/Communism/Marxism is a ponzi scheme where most people lose everything. 

Dennis Prager's "Prager U" has many videos about socialism including this one . They helped me see what socialism really is. Until then, I thought socialism meant that the government would get you a job in your field and pay you what you needed to live. But that's not what socialism is. Socialism is a system where the government owns and controls the "means of production". They own the companies. 

When people own the companies, they make money by pleasing their customers. If they make things their customers want, they make sales. If they make too many, more than people will buy, they lose money. The government, on the other hand, doesn't have this motivation. So they end up making to much of some things and too little of others (like toilet paper). And, because the "customers" aren't paying, they end up waiting on lines for any product they need. 

So back to sports. This year, there was so much politics in sports that I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I wasn't exactly boycotting, I just wasn't in the mood. I watched the Mets (my favorite team) but nothing else and I didn't watch the post-season. And I just don't feel like watching football this year. Seeing people "take a knee" for anything other than running out the clock feels wrong to me. To me, this year at least, sports is not my escape, not my way to enjoy something that in the scheme of things doesn't mean much. It took on a dark, evil tinge and I just couldn't watch it. When politics invades entertainment (which is supposed to make you feel good), entertainment no longer entertains. 

BTW, Baseball was the one sport that mostly avoided that. And that is why I at least partially stayed with it, despite how miserably the Mets did this year.

Get out and Trump the Left

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As we are getting closer to the election, and those of us who are worried about becoming yet another totalitarian Marxist/socialist/communist failed state full of poverty, hatred, violence need to think about what we can do to prevent this. 

Obviously, our voting matters. We all need to vote. Toward that end, we need to find out which is the safest way to vote (as in least likely to lead to fraud, with our votes for Trump flushed down the toilet or thrown in the garbage, etc.) 

With only today and tomorrow left, we need to vote for the candidate who gets things done. It shouldn't matter what you think of Trump and Biden as human beings. We are not electing them Pope. We are voting for a president, someone to lead the country.

While Joe Biden has spent 45+ years in congress, I can't name one thing he is known for (and that might even include vice president). And, at the risk of sounding like I watch Sean Hannity every night (for the most part I do, but that's beside the point) Donald Trump has accomplished, in less than 4 years:

1) improving the economy (not once but twice), lowering unemployment to historical lows.

2)  improving relations in the Middle East by helping Israel negotiate 4 different treaties with Arab/Muslim nations.

3) returned manufacturing jobs to the US.

4) renegotiated international economic trade deals (including one with China).

5) trashed the uneven deal with Iran that put the entire Middle East region in military danger.

6) cut taxes.

7) cut regulations that were strangling small businesses.

That's the short list -- here is a longer list.

So, though many two term presidents don't do much the second term, Trump is not that type. Notice how many rallies he's has since he had Covid. 

So go out now and vote or deposit your mail-in-ballot into a ballot box or mailbox. Just get it out there. And help us move into an "era of prosperity" for all citizens and away from socialism. 

The BLM is off the Rose

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This morning I saw a very interesting video that made me see BLM for what it is. 

Since I became aware of BLM, I've instinctively known that something was wrong with it. I knew they were violent, I knew they were taking people's stories and twisting them. I knew they were haters (of police, of "whites", of Jews and Israel, of people who disagree with them). But what I felt, what set off the alarms in my head, was that they particularly hated the people they claimed to be helping. 

The gentleman (and I use that term for several reasons -- 1) I generally use it as a term of respect and to keep emotionally charged language from giving my listeners and readers the opportunity to prejudge a person or a situation and 2) in this case, the star of this video deserves this reference both out of respect and because he seems to me to be a gentle man) in this video had wise parents -- they told him during the "talk" (that is the talk that parents of black people, mostly boys/men, have with their children on how to deal with the police) that he should treat the police with respect. That's right -- respect. 

Can you imagine how different things might have been if any of the "causes celebre" of BLM (George Floyd, Eric Garner or Michael Brown for example) had just done what police legally asked of them as this gentleman did there wouldn't have been an uproar or even a death. 

As a matter of fact, part of the reason there is a number of these sorts of deaths (police shooting and killing Black Men) is that BLM and their cohorts spread fear. People act one way if they are calm or only minorly agitated and another way altogether if they become convinced that they are in a situation where they are going to be killed or badly injured or attacked in some way. In the latter case, they fight as though it is for their life. And, because of this, they find themselves in a much more dangerous situation -- their adrenalin is pushing them to the "fight" part of "fight or flight" where the police believe these people are dangerous to them and to bystanders.  

So it seems to me that the BLMers and leftists in general are using the narrative of "systemic racism" to spread fear throughout the black community so that relatively minor incidents from the perspective of the police (protecting all Americans is what they signed up for and I thank them for that -- remember, Blue Lives Matter too) escalate and the perspective victims get killed because of the narrative not because  of any level of racism. Crime has no race. But victims do and a vast majority of victims are black. Victims' Lives Matter too, Black children, Black babies, Black mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers, Black families matter. 

We need to change the narrative to the truth -- 

1) BLM does NOT treat black people as though their lives matter. BLM treats people as though they are "untouchables", inferior to the superior Marxist, Socialist utopian society they are pushing. They treat them as means to an end, as in "let's use their deaths to spread Communism".
2) BLM is getting people killed by making them fear the police.
3) BLM does not care for any people -- they are interested in spreading fear and giving themselves an excuse for killing people. 
4) Every place in the world Marxism/Socialism/Communism have been tried, the results have been disastrous -- crime rampant, food and other commodities scarce and non-existent, people fear for themselves and their families, hunger and starvation and long lines are rampant. Why should we want this for ourselves?

As members of this current generation come out of schools, they push for Socialism because the school inculcations have brainwashed children and teens that they don't need to work, the government will take care of it all. The problem is that when the government does everything, nothing gets done. And, without people actually doing something, nothing gets done. 

So we need to spread the word, teach young people that important traits include courage, independence, hard work (meaning putting yourself into your work, picking something you enjoy and are good at -- it doesn't mean digging ditches, unless that's what you love doing) and collaboration. As a country, we need hard work, cooperation, and a strong market economy. The more of this we accomplish, the better off our country will be. The better off our country is, the better the world will be.