Filed under: family, health care, Humor | Tagged: Covid-19, Memes | Leave a comment »
A Normal Thanksgiving Day
Posted on 26/11/2020 by Grumpa Joe
NOT! The weather is normal, but the circumstances are totally out of whack. A grey cloudy day, cold, and a little wet, but where are my friends, where is the turkey in the oven and the stuffing next to it? Where is the cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes, and the pumpkin pie, where are the friends and family? All hunkered down. In compliance with our governor’s mandate to stay at home, celebrate alone, or virtually. How does one pass the gravy over a Zoom meal?
For as long as I can remember, and that is not long these days, Thanksgiving has been at my house or at one of my kids’ houses. It is not to be this year. I am made to feel like I am placing my life in jeopardy by visiting my daughter for dinner. God did not encourage us to have families so we could abandon them during the holidays.
Add to the gloomy day, and the lack of familial fellowship is the gloominess of having lost an excellent series called Home Fires. I got hooked watching this historical drama about a small town in England just as WW 2 begins in Europe. The folks are privy to having an RAF Airbase located right out side their town limits. This soap opera has stories galore to tell. Nearly everyone in the population has some part to play. The number of social issues and taboos is limitless, such as divorce, lesbianism, the call to duty, the declaration of conscientious objection, poor versus rich or class distinction, crooked business men taking advantage of the government spending, cancer, rationing, black markets, spousal abuse, women living without their men, etc. The actors all fit their parts and play them well. So well in fact that I had become one of the residents living next door to the action. This is one story that could well have run for ten or more seasons with many episodes in each and it would not fail to fascinate me. Evidently, I am not enough of an audience to meet the needs of the producers. Sadly, I have just read that the producers learned that the program leaned toward an older audience and have chosen to look at something that’ll lean toward youth. Being an old fart I will agree with their assessment, but not their action.
I switched to a new series being pushed by Amazon labeled The Pack. This mindless non-sense will no doubt run forever without adding a single scintilla of good to the world. It will make dog lovers happy, and since all of us love dogs the program has a chance, but I didn’t finish watching the first episode and will avoid any more.
I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving Holiday.
Filed under: Aging, family, Movie Review, Seniors | Tagged: Covid-19, Home Fires, Thanksgiving, The Pack | Leave a comment »
201119-PSA-COVID-Snippets
Posted on 19/11/2020 by Grumpa Joe
- The dumbest thing I ever bought was a 2020 planner.
2. I was so bored I called Jake from State Farm just to talk to someone. He asked me what I was wearing.
3. 2019: Stay away from negative people. 2020: Stay away from positive people.
4. The world has turned upside down. Old folks are sneaking out of the house & their kids are yelling at them to stay indoors!
5. This morning I saw a neighbor talking to her dog. It was obvious she thought her dog understood her. I came into my house & told my cat. We laughed a lot.
6. Every few days try your jeans on just to make sure they fit. Pajamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom.
7. Does anyone know if we can take showers yet or should we just keep washing our hands?
8. This virus has done what no woman has been able to do. Cancel sports, shut down all bars & keep men at home!
9. I never thought the comment, “I wouldn’t touch him/her with a 6-foot pole” would become a national policy, but here we are!
10. I need to practice social-distancing from the refrigerator.
11. I hope the weather is good tomorrow for my trip to the Backyard. I’m getting tired of the Living Room.
12. Appropriate analogy. “The curve is flattening so we can start lifting restrictions now” is like saying “The parachute has slowed our rate of descent, so we can take it off now.”
13. Never in a million years could I have imagined I would go up to a bank teller wearing a mask & asking for money.
14. The spread of COVID-19 is based on 2 things:
1. How dense the population is.
2. How dense the population is.
Filed under: family, Humor, Satire | Tagged: Covid-19 | Leave a comment »
Pandemic War
Posted on 18/11/2020 by Grumpa Joe
The following is my opinion.
One of the greatest accomplishments President Trump can brag about is his action against China. Ever since President Nixon broke the barrier in the 1970’s with his ground breaking visit to China we as a country have been rushing to give everything we own to the Chinese government. All of it was under the guise of getting stuff made cheaper, and giving our companies a leg up in the great Chinese market. During that same time frame, I began working on an automation process for the product my employer produced. My boss (owner) resisted the urge to move equipment and processes to China because he didn’t trust the communists. He felt that giving his product to the Chinese to make was the same as giving them the business. He was absolutely correct. I retired thirty years later after forty years with the company and the boss still felt the same way. By then my team had successfully designed and built automation systems to make our product. We didn’t use much manual labor in the process, at least not enough to warrant sending our sensitive process to China where they would promptly copy it and use it without shame against us.
China has been stealing our technology, processes, and product designs ever since the USA has been sending them products to manufacture. Yes, we get it cheap, but after they copy the product and the process they make it cheaper and sell against us. When I began working at this company we had two competitors world wide. When I left we had seventy. Most of them were from China.
When Trump began speaking about the Chinese rip-off of America I cheered. Finally, someone had the guts to stand up to these thieves and tell us like it is. Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese made goods. The economists all began tearing their hair out proclaiming that we will begin a trade war and lose. The trade war didn’t happen and the Chinese wound up paying billions of dollars in tariffs to the USA. The Chinese took counter actions but they failed and for once the Peoples Republic of China was stymied.
It is my opinion that China wanted to punish the USA for the actions we took against them, and even though China has been building a strong military, they would still lose against the USA. What should they do? Well, how about if they unleash a potent virus from the their germ warfare lab. There is no doubt in my mind that China had a vaccine ready to go at the same time they unleashed the virus. To make it look like an accident they did a controlled infection of their own people, and then let these infected people travel all around the world spreading the virus as a cover for their actions. The result was a pandemic. The pandemic was collateral damage for the real goal which was to disable the USA. They nearly succeeded too.
Trump’s actions to stop all travel from China and later from Europe into the USA was a stop gap measure. Next, he shut down the economy at a great expense to the people of the USA and to the economic health of the country. Had we stayed quarantined another two weeks we may not have recovered as quickly as we did. We may actually have gone bankrupt. China did not expect us to recover. They had controlled the virus in their country by vaccinating the epicenter of the attack. It always seemed strange to me that China was able to recover so quickly and so completely while we struggle with doing so. Of course China does not ask their people to quarantine as we do here, they tell their people what they are to do. China had the manufacturing for masks, and as a result could divert all production to their use while we were rationing personal protective equipment waiting for shipments to come from China. Since they were at war with us they could control how they shipped and what they charged. Eventually, our own manufacturing was re-established and we were able to overcome the shortages.
At this point the USA continues to struggle with resurgences of the virus. The vaccines are nearly ready to begin dispensing and shortly the war will be over. In the meantime, the people of the USA continue to do business with China as though they are equally affected. China was never equally affected, they controlled the release and the spread of the virus in such a way as to benefit China.
What we have now, is a claim by Biden that he will take control of the virus and cure the world. My guess is that he will make a deal with China to stop the release of new viruses in exchange for lifting the tariffs. In so doing he will enslave the USA to China. A deal such as that is the only thing Biden can do to be different from that which Trump has already put into place.
Believe it or not.
Filed under: economy, Election, family, Government | Tagged: China, Covid-19, Pandemic, war | Leave a comment »
Shift the Paradigm
Posted on 24/10/2020 by Grumpa Joe
During the last debate I heard some pretty wild claims that President Trump is responsible for 240,000 deaths from COVID-19. I also heard his rival Joe Biden promise that he had a plan that follows the science and that will protect us from COVID-19 deaths. The problem is that he didn’t really explain what his plan is. I think we are looking at the problem totally wrong. We shouldn’t be looking at how many deaths there were, but rather how many lives were saved.
All of the claims are based on following the science. The only science anyone has are the predictive models. All of the scientific models used back in March, 2020 predicted over that over 1.7 million deaths will occur if no action whatsoever is taken. Without any knowledge of how the virus spread, or why it spreads so quick, or why it affects some people and not others was totally unknown. All the science knew was based on experience gained from previous viruses like H1N1, SARS, and MERS.
Biden very boldly claimed the President is responsible for all the 224,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States. I rather like the fact that the President saved 1.5 million lives with the action he took as early as he did.
Biden’s logic that his new COVID-19 plan will save lives. Joe’s plan, as far as I know it, is exactly the same as Trump’s which began in March, 2020, and will save the same number of lives that Trump’s plan is doing. Testing is another complaint that Biden has. Testing does not kill the virus, it merely lets us know who does or doesn’t have the virus at the time of the test. One could go home from the test and get it. But Biden believes that everyone in the country should be tested and the responsibility of testing should be given to the Federal government (another Bureaucracy in the making). If we choose to do that we will be looking for adequate testing capacity two years from now. Another part of his plan is to involve the federal government in how you will protect your people in the workplace. Again, a noble idea but scary as hell. I, for one, would not want the Feds to come into my place of business and dictate how I should run my process. I will protect my workers by the best means I have, but one of the means is not the Federal government. Biden’s plan is expensive, time consuming, and redundant. Trump put together a viable plan in less than two months bringing ventilator production on line, developing and implementing testing, and manufacturing PPE for the country. What new things Biden brings to the table with his plan is negligible.
No doubt, what is not shown in Biden’s plan are new laws that will make not wearing a mask, and not social distancing at all times, a federal offense punishable by huge fines and jail time.
What we need is a presidential candidate who does not ride on the success of his rival but rather depends on the common sense of we of the people to control the virus. All of Biden’s actions do not erase the virus they merely delay one from getting it, and we can do that ourselves. As long as there is COVID-19 there will be deaths attributed to it, even when we have drugs that will keep us alive.
Just as Obama Care has a death panel whose job it is to decide who will be treated and who will not, I’m sure Biden-Care will treat COVID-19 patients with the same compassionate care and allow nature take it’s course when dealing with difficult to treat souls.
Filed under: Conservative, Election, Government, health care, Sarcasm, Uncategorized | Tagged: Biden-Care, Covid-19, Science, Trump | Leave a comment »
