Rant #2,739: Lyin' Eyes

More lies, more untruths, more bending of the truth …
 
Yes, we are in for a further run of this nonsense, since the Centers For Disease Control )CDC) –or does CDC stand for the Centers For Disease Conundrum--has told us that certain members of our society need a coronavirus booster shot RIGHT NOW, and that others will need the shot later.
 
First off, what is a booster shot? What is a booster shot for not just the coronavirus, but simply, what is a booster shot?
 
A booster dose of any shot is supposed to provide added protection for those who already have their shot(s) against a particular disease.
 
It is supposed to bolster what you already have, complement what you already have, but it is not supposed to be a strict “third dose” of the shot that you already have in you. It is supposed to be a lesser, complementary dose, nothing more or less.
 
It is almost like the air bags you have in your car. You are protected in your car by the very makeup of the car in case of an accident, and you are also protected by wearing a seat belt.
 
The air bag further protects you from an accident by emerging when the force on your car is such that it is needed.
 
It is the same thing for a booster shot.
 
A booster shot is not supposed to be another full shot of the same thing you already have in you, but the powers that be and the CDC have decided that once again, they are going to misappropriate a word and use it for their own benefit.
 
First, they appropriated the word “vaccine” for the original coronavirus shots, telling people that if you got the shots, you would be fully protected against getting COVID-19.
 
We already know that that was a lie from the beginning, and that while the shots might mitigate the adverse reaction you might get from contracting the virus, it no more protects you from the elements of the virus—and your possibility of getting it—than an upturned umbrella protects you from getting wet in a rainstorm.
 
Well, now we have the “booster” shots, which are being marketed as “add-ons” to the two shots you already have in you, but are actually a full third coronavirus inoculation.
 
And this is not the way it is supposed to be.
 
According to the UChicagoMedicine website (https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/third-doses-and-covid-booster-shots), a booster dose and a third dose are not supposed to be the same thing:

 
“A booster is given to people who got a full course of a vaccine and developed a good response. For some vaccines, antibodies and other aspects of a person’s initially strong immune response start to decrease (or wane) over time. When that happens, people are offered booster doses to pump their immune response back to previous levels.
 
Unlike boosters, third/additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines are for people who received the complete starter series of vaccines but then their immune systems didn’t have a good enough response. Evidence shows these are generally people whose immune systems are weaker. That’s why the FDA and CDC are recommending an additional dose for immunocompromised individuals.”
 
So, my friends, when you get a “booster” dose of the shot, you are actually getting a third dose of the coronavirus “vaccine,” and that is not what the “booster” dose—and booster dose for any disease--is supposed to be.
 
And how many “booster” shots will there be; I can see the day very clearly when we are told we need a fourth dose, which means the fifth and sixth doses are right around the corner, too.
 
This all came into play for me the past few days.
 
When “booster” doses were released to certain members of the public, my 90-year-old mother—who had gotten her first two doses of the “vaccine” in February during the tumultuous period—said that she wanted to get the “booster” shot.
 
I called around, and found one local drug store that was giving the shot. Other local drug stores stated that they were waiting for further guidance before offering the extra shot.
 
However, right on its website of the pharmacy that was giving the shot, it said that booster shots were still being studied, and that we should check back at a later date to find out where that stood.
 
Now, we already knew that my mother’s friend—a woman in her late 80s, and like my mother, in good health—had received the shot from the same drug store, so I called them up on the phone, because of the discrepancy, and because I had no idea where or how to apply for the next shot if it was available.
 
After waiting five minutes on the phone, someone picked up, and told me that yes, they were giving this shot, but you could only get an appointment through the online site.
 
I brought up two things: 1) since the shot was being given to mainly seniors, why were they going the Internet route again; hadn’t they learned anything from the chaos that ensued last February and March when seniors had no idea how to make an appointment for the shot, and 2) why does the website state that nothing is set about the “booster” shot, yet your pharmacy is giving it?
 
The pharmacist or whoever I spoke to talked herself into a paper bag, talking like a politician and not answering any of my questions with anything much more than “because, that’s why.”
 
But I did get out of her that the “booster” was a full shot, which I refuted, and I did find out that you had to apply online in the “vaccination” part of the website, even though, as I said, the site literally said to come back at a later date to find out about “booster” availability.
 
So I made an appointment for my mother to get the “booster” yesterday during the late afternoon, and I asked the person giving her the shot about the “booster.”
 
He plainly told me that the booster is, yes, simply a third shot of the coronavirus “vaccine,” and that there is no difference from the earlier shots and this one.
 
I told him that that wasn’t correct, or at least what I had read tells me that this isn’t correct, and he reiterated that the “booster” was simply a third coronavirus shot.
 
You can call it what you want, but it is being marketed as a “booster,” not a third coronavirus shot, which it evidently is.
 
And you wonder why half the population won’t even get the first shot!
 
We have been lied to from day one about this virus, and the lies and mistruths and bending of the truth continues to this moment.
 
I do believe that if we were told the truth about the inoculations from the beginning, probably 90 percent of the population would have gotten their shots—but there are people who have seen through this from the beginning.
 
Don’t blame those who haven’t even gotten the first shot for the problems we are having now; blame the supposed “experts” and elected leaders who continue to doubletalk us ad nauseum because they so want us to comply with their orders.
 
And then, let me tell you about my MRI on my right leg …
 
Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

Rant #2,738: Bits and Pieces

It is time for another installment of “Bits and Pieces,” where I look at some stories that need to be looked at, but in smaller doses than in a full Rant.
 
So without further ado, as Jackie Gleason used to say from Miami Beach …
 
“And away we go!”
 
Gabby Petito Case Drags On: I don’t think that this case is going to end as soon as some people would like, and there appears to have been some blunders made by the police to make this an odyssey rather than a short tale of madness.
 
Look, I know we are not talking about the New York City Police Department or some other big city police department, but the cops in that part of Florida or wherever they were first pulled over should have done more to find out what was ticking in fiancé Brian Laundrie’s head before leaving the dim-witted couple to their own means.
 
And if you need more proof to the pudding that this case has more of a Mayberry feel to it than an NYPD feel, the authorities can’t find Laundrie—this guy, whose mental capacity has to be questioned, has thus far eluded authorities.
 
And his family isn’t talking, via advice from their attorney. And they have no obligation to talk, other than a civic responsibility, but once they talk, once they open their mouths, they are open to police questioning and possible implication,  so why bother … even if they do know something that no one else knows.
 
Doing the right thing as a human being has nothing to do with doing the right thing by our laws, so why should they tell authorities anything at this point in time? Heck, it is only their son and their sibling who is implicated in this mess … not a good enough reason, I guess.
 
And then we have another edge to this, where certain people and organizations are coming out of the woodwork stating that this case should not be getting the level of coverage it is getting, and it is getting it because the deceased is a white girl.
 
They say if she was a black girl, or even a black man, the case wouldn’t get a second look from authorities.
 
Of course, racism from certain quarters is permitted now, and rather than lambast these obvious racists for saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time, the media is almost giving these imbeciles credence to what they are saying, simply by posting their views and having them analyzed.
 
Bringing race into a non-racial story is always a slippery slope, and let me tell you, it is just so inappropriate here.
 
This story is getting the coverage it is getting mainly because it has strong ties to the New York Metropolitan Area, the largest news and media center perhaps in the world.
 
The story began on Long Island, and once the local New York news media picked up on it, it almost had to go national.
 
It is like in the old days, when a record got played on New York’s WABC Top 40 station—the most popular radio station in the country, one that you could easily listen to not just in New York, but as far away as Florida and into the Midwest—it almost certainly became a hit.
 
The same thing here, so stop with the race baiting, and with everything, no matter what the subject, having to do with race.
 
Enough already.
 
Elvira Comes Out as a Lesbian or as a Bisexual or as ???: Heck, I don’t even know what to say about this story that hasn’t already been said, but I am going to say a few words about it anyway.
 
In her recently released biography (yup, of course the timing is perfect to sell even more books), Cassandra Peterson, better known to all as Elvira, the sexy and fun goddess of whatever you want to call it, has come out as being gay, but I—and I think she—is confused at what level of gayness she is actually at in her life.
 
As she tells it, she was in a normal, heterosexual marriage with a man, had a kid with this guy, and then the marriage ended. OK, I have been there, done that myself, but here is where things get very weird.
 
The actress states that during the worst days of her breakup, she would go to the gym, and she started to admire this person from afar for “his” manly attributes, including his muscles and his stacked body.
 
OK …
 
She continued to admire this “guy,” and started to fall for “him” from afar.
 
Then, she worked up the guts to talk to him, and she found out that this guy, whose manly attributes she was very attracted to, was, in fact, a woman!
 
They worked up a friendly relationship, and then one night, this person came to her house, with no other place to go after her own relationship went sour.
 
The actress let her in as any friend would, and one thing led to another, and these two people, both in the midst of broken relationships, finally shared a bed with each other, and as they say, the rest is history, and for 19 years, this has been going on with few people knowing about it.
 
First off, yes, I was personally pretty surprised, but I continue to believe that Cassandra/Elvira is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, and this continues as she has turned 70 years of age.
 
But I have to say that it appears that she is still in some denial about her sexual proclivities, because she continues to state that she fell in love with this person’s manly attributes, almost saying that while the person is a woman, she was still taken by the “guy stuff” that the person possessed.
 
And also, although doctors have thrown out such a theory, this almost sounds like this is a lesbian relationship out of convenience, and that in a weird way, the actress is not a lesbian or bisexual at all, as the two began to share a bed because they were both down and out and fell into each others’ arms due to common need.
 
Look, it is what it is, it will certainly pick up sales of her autobiography, and the very reason she said she never revealed this to anyone—she had to “protect” her sexy alter ego Elvira and her appeal to men—is the very thing that in some eyes makes her even sexier now.
 
I don’t get the whole thing, to be very honest with you.
 
I Go For My MRI Today: Land sakes alive, the day has finally come, and I will get an MRI on my ailing left leg.
 
I have already been told that through a simple X-ray, doctors have found that I probably have a meniscus tear, but the MRI will give them a better image to work from.
 
Funny, since the first two of three days of experiencing this—where the pain was enormous and I could barely walk—I feel much better, and the pain has pretty much subsided to not a constant one, but one that tells me that it is there from time to time.
 
Now, we will find out if this is what they think it is, but let me tell you, if this is what it is, I can certainly learn to live with it.
 
I am not scheduled to run any 40-yard dashes in the coming weeks, nor marathons, and my days as a guy trying to be an athlete are over, so what, me worry?
 
That’s it for this installment of “Bits and Pieces.”
 
Speak to you again tomorrow. 

Rant #2,737: Get Ready

Yesterday, I did something that I hadn’t had to do in a very long time.
 
I don’t regret the action one iota, because I have learned through my life that sometimes, this action is the only thing people understand.
 
I won’t go into graphic detail about the entire situation—as I said in previous Rants, I am not telling you the half of what my family and I have been going through now—but I will tell you enough that I think you will understand.
 
Dealing with agencies and organizations that are supposed to help you when you are in times of need is often a daunting task, and as they say, “the cure is often worse than the disease” when it comes to getting these groups to do what they are supposed to do, which is to help you.
 
Anyway, I have been trying my darndest to get some help from a human resources organization that is supposed to help people like myself and my family, but up until yesterday, I got nothing from them, just empty promises and baloney that anyone with a brain wouldn’t need a sharp knife—or even a dull one—to cut through.
 
I have called them any amount of times, but it always led to a dead end, even though I was assured that it wouldn’t.
 
Well, yesterday I had had enough.
 
I got through to an operator after about an hour wait—previous hold times were up to two hours, and once, after waiting about 90 minutes, I got cut off in the middle of my conversation and had to start all over again—and after explaining what I needed from them, I was getting the same replies that I received the other times I spoke with them over the past week or so.
 
And then I got a brainstorm.
 
Taking a page out of my past, I used a simple phrase to get them on the same page as me and to eventually get what I wanted from them.
 
I told them the following:
 
“If you do not help me today, I am going to get a lawyer and sue you.”
 
Period.
 
To the point.
 
I had forgotten about that tactic from my past, but it sure worked back then, and yes, it worked here, too.
 
Within moments, the operator took my email address, my phone number, and assured me that someone would call me on the phone later in the day to discuss the matter with me.
 
“Later in the day” amounted to about a half hour, and I received what I wanted from them within a few hours.
 
Now that’s service!
 
Look, dealing with these organizations can be extremely frustrating, but nobody wants to, or needs to, be treated as if they were an idiot, which I believe was the situation here.
 
And no one wants to be threatened with legal action, so when you do, they get scared, and eventually comply with your actions, and do it quickly.
 
I have done this before—not for a long time, though—and it works like a charm each and every time.
 
I hate to even bring this personal “ancient history” up to you, but I used to employ this action with some regularity when my daughter was younger and in school, because her mother refused to provide me with any information whatsoever on my daughter’s education, even though we had joint custody and thus, my ex was supposed to be doing this by the law.
 
Back in the 1990s, divorced fathers were looked at as something akin to criminals, and even though I had joint custody, I had few rights, or at least the rights I had were never enforced by the court.
 
So my ex would consistently stymie me from finding out any information about my daughter in school, and thus, I had an extremely difficult time finding out about and attending parent/teacher conferences, plays that she was in, even attending graduation ceremonies.
 
I had to do it all on my own, and this went through my daughter’s college level, believe it or not.
 
And when I explained to the various schools as to what was going on, they simply did not want to get involved.
 
I remember one teacher explained that since she considered me “the 26th parent in a 25 parent class,” she refused to see me during parent/teacher conferences, but after forcing the school to tell me when these conferences were and forcing the to put me on the visiting parent list with a threat of legal action, I showed up at the teacher’s classroom anyway.
 
This happened any number of times, and I had to force myself into the class to speak to my daughter’s teachers.
 
One time, my daughter was appearing in a play as a background player, and my ex refused to provide a ticket for me, so I called the school, which told me that the room was already filled to capacity and that “I should have gotten a ticket from my daughter’s mother," and they could not provide me with one.
 
The threat of legal action led them to actually provide me with a chair to sit on during the performance. I guess they found some room for me.
 
This situation also happened during graduations—from grammar school all the way through undergraduate school—and somehow, the threat of legal proceedings always got me what I deserved to have gotten in the first place.
 
So I used that tactic for the very first time in years yesterday, and I guess that even in this COVID-laced world, it is a tactic that still works.
 
And I am not happy to say that. You would have thought that the world would have changed in the past 10 or 11 years or so since I threatened legal action to one of my daughter’s schools for the final time--to get tickets to her undergraduate school graduation--but it hasn’t.
 
Sorry to report that, but I know my rights as a citizen and as a person, and if I have to use that tactic again to get what I want, need and deserve … well, let’s just say that it is in my toolbox. 

Rant #2,736: Give "Peace" a Chance

Good morning to you!
 
It is Tuesday, September 21, 2021, the 264th day of the year.
 
We only have 101 days left until this wretched year ends, and we are able to try again in 2022.
 
Yes, 2021 is just what we used to describe as “a silly millimeter longer,” taking after a cigarette commercial from a long time ago.
 
Anyway, I believe that today is also the final day of summer, an up-and-down season for myself and my family this year, to be honest with you, and I think an up-and-down year for our civilization too, what with the delta variant spoiling a lot of plans for a “normal” summer.
 
But today is also something else, a day that I had no idea actually existed.
 
As I look at my desk calendar, today is also the day we are all supposed to celebrate “Peace Day.”
 
I had no idea what “Peace Day” was, so I looked it up, and this comes from the actual official site of the day, https://internationaldayofpeace.org/
 
The site describes the day as the following:
 
“The International Day of Peace ("Peace Day") is observed around the world each year on 21 September. Established in 1981 by unanimous United Nations resolution, Peace Day provides a globally shared date for all humanity to commit to Peace above all differences and to contribute to building a Culture of Peace.”
 
And this year is particularly significant, because if you can add two and two together, you can see that 2021 is the 40th anniversary of this special day.
 
I will bet dollars to donuts that you didn’t know about any of this; I know that I certainly didn’t.
 
To me, it is a nice holiday in practice, but is it really practical?
 
Not only do wars and unpeaceful acts continue to permeate our civilization, but right here in the good old U. S. of A., there is plenty of infighting and other unpeaceful actions that we feel and experience every day, a lot of it around the pandemic that we are all fighting, and specifically about wearing a mask or not, and whether certain decisions constitute a loss of freedom.
 
A lot of it centers around our schools, whether students and teachers should be wearing masks or not.
 
I think a lot of people on both sides have made this subject, and our educational institutions, into their own personal battlegrounds, and that certainly hasn’t brought much peace to the school districts involved—whether you are talking about the largest school system in the country in New York City or those in the suburbs, like the Massapequa School District, which is suing to prevent New York State from enforcing mask mandates in the district’s schools.
 
No, when you see the protests, and the craziness form both sides of the coin, there is nothing peaceful about any of this, and all it does is make our children pawns in this game their parents and the school districts are playing.
 
So Peace Day, while on paper a nice idea, simply isn’t an idea which is viable.
 
We are always at each others throats about something, and for the day to come from the United Nations itself—one of the most polarizing political bodies on the face of the planet—begs one to hold their nose and cover their eyes in disbelief.
 
I would give the day an “A” for effort, but a “D’ in execution.
 
Reading a little bit more about the day, I found that to inaugurate the occasion, the United Nations Peace Bell is rung at UN Headquarters in New York City.
 
The bell is cast from coins donated by children from all continents except Africa, and was a gift from the United Nations Association of Japan, as "a reminder of the human cost of war.”
 
The inscription on its side reads, "Long live absolute world peace"
 
I have never heard this bell rung; have you?
 
Each year, Peace Day has a theme, and 2021 is no exception.
 
The 2021 theme for the International Day of Peace is "Recovering Better for an Equitable and Sustainable World.”
 
So that theme, I assume, covers two hot political topics of our current time, including the pandemic and climate change.
 
Just based on that theme, it is already a turn-off to me, because even something that is supposed to celebrate peace is nothing but another excuse to bring politics into everything we say, do or think on a daily basis.
 
I mean, did I expect anything else from the United Nations?
 
“Peace Day,” while a nice idea, is just another day for the U.N. to push its own agenda, and that doesn’t seem too peaceful to me.
 
To me, September 21 simply means the final day of summer, nothing more and nothing less.
 
I’ve given their version of “peace” a chance, and it simply doesn’t work for me.