Covid19 vax and bivalent booster added to CDC recommended childhood vax schedule

Title says it all. I’ll add links to this post specific to this.

First up.

NY already has legislation pending to add the covid vax to the mandated list. Please note that NY refuses to acknowledge religious refusal of such, and has a history of refusing medical exemptions with the covid vax.

NH states it has no intention of forcing the Covid vax.

ICANN getting ready to challenge laws requiring it


Just….no

Ok look. I made it very clear what I thought of the 2020 shut down of the world. I think the whole PPP loan was a mess in the making and a bad idea with good intentions. I firmly believe that there are people who got PPP loans who shouldn’t have. And I also will be NOT shocked to learn that there are people who took PPP loans who used them for things they shouldn’t have.

That doesn’t change the fact that loan forgiveness was written into the contract of the PPP loan. You take a PPP loan, you use it to pay your employees instead of laying them off or firing them, your loan is forgiven.

PPP loans are nothing like student loans.

But apparently whoever is running the White House Twitter account isn’t aware of that fact:

I’m not a huge fan of student loan forgiveness. For a variety of reasons.

I did have student loans myself, though not tons thanks to my parents. And I’ll also admit that my parents helped me pay off the loans I did have. I empathize, A LOT, with the folks who are stuck unable to pay their loans. I empathize less with the folks who took those loans to pay for degrees that were extremely unlikely to turn into lucrative jobs. But lets be honest here. Society has decided that in order to be successful you must go to college. Teenagers want to be successful. College tuition has gotten stupid expensive cause they know people will pay it. Its a vicious cycle.

IF we’re going to forgive some portion of unpaid student loans it needs to be part and parcel of fixing the college degree cost system. No, I don’t know the correct way to do that, I’m not generally a fan of the .GOV getting into the middle of things and that holds true here. But without fixing the system thats causing those loans its going to make absolutely no difference in the long term.

And it pisses off the rest of the country who paid theirs, or avoided them completely, which really isn’t useful. Meanwhile farmers are paying astronomical funds to buy the equipment they need to feed everyone. Tradesmen are paying large sums for the specialty trucks they need, or other big equipement. All things needed just to keep the world turning, and all things being ignored.

But stupid social media posts by those, supposedly, in charge of things comparing apples to oranges doesn’t help either.


NYS to require license to purchase semi-auto rifle, plus more

Actual text of bill S9458 here

Summary:

Relates to the purchase or taking possession of a semiautomatic rifle; requires a license to purchase or take possession of a semiautomatic rifle; establishes the crimes of criminal purchase of a semiautomatic rifle and criminal sale of a semiautomatic rifle; requires recertification of licenses to purchase or take possession of a semiautomatic rifle every five years.

This was apparently part of a 10 bill package, summary list here.

S4970A

Requires the creation and imposition of restrictive commercial practices and stringent recordkeeping and reporting to prevent gun sales to individuals with a criminal record; provides that such measures shall be promulgated by the superintendent of state police; restricts premises of sales; requires employee training;  prohibits straw purchases; imposes additional license conditions; requires reporting on a seized or recovered gun to the criminal gun clearinghouse.

S89B

Establishes the crimes of making a threat of mass harm and aggravated threat of mass harm.

S4116A

Requires DCJS to certify or decline to certify that microstamping-enabled pistols are technologically viable and if certified as viable, to establish programs and processes for the implementation of such technology; and, establishes the crime of the unlawful sale of a non-microstamping-enabled firearm

S4511A

Requires social media networks in New York to provide a clear and concise policy regarding how they would respond to incidents of hateful conduct on their platform and maintain easily accessible mechanisms for reporting hateful conduct on those platforms

S9229A

Eliminates the grandfathering of large capacity ammunition feeding devices that were lawfully possessed prior to the enactment of the Safe Act or manufactured prior to 1994.

S9407B

Makes unlawful the purchase and sale of body vests for anyone who is not engaged in an eligible profession. Eligible professions include law enforcement officers and other professions designated by the Department of State in consultation with other agencies. Also requires that any sale of a body vest be done in person.

S9465

Creates a new Task Force on Social Media and Violent Extremism in the Attorney General’s office to study and investigate the role of social media companies in promoting and facilitating violent extremism and domestic terrorism online.

S9113A

Expands who may file an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) petition to include health care practitioners who have examined the individual within the last six months; requires police and district attorneys to file ERPO petitions upon credible information that an individual is likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to himself, herself or others; requires the State Police and the Municipal Police Training Council to create and disseminate policies and procedures to identify when an ERPO petition may be warranted; amends the firearm licensing statute to make it clear that when an individual has been reported by a mental health practitioner and a county mental health commissioner has concurred with such practitioner that the individual is likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to themself or others, such report is considered in determining whether or not to issue a firearm license to the individual; and, expands the mental health practitioners who can make such reports.

S9456

Expands the definition of a “firearm” to include any weapon not defined in the Penal Law that is designed or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by action of an explosive. This is intended to capture firearms that have been modified to be shot from an arm brace, which are evading our current definitions of firearms and rifles.


How much electricity would it take….

I saw this breakdown on Twitter and had to see if I could duplicate it for NY state using publicly available information. All of the numbers used in the following were found using a standard search engine for easily accessible public data, I don’t link to most of the sources, feel free to find your own set of numbers and run your own math:

There were 4,232,748 automobiles registered in NY state in 2020. Some percentage of those aren’t driven year round, or daily, but its the simplest number to work with. For the record there’s over 12 million licensed drivers in NY state. For the sake of the math I’m going to round down to 4 million cars.

Looking at a couple different sites, the average number of miles driven by the average person per day varies from 25-39 miles depending on who’s doing the figuring. For the sake of the math I’m going to go with the 25 number.

So that means that in NY state alone 25 x 4,000,000= 100,000,000 miles driven in the average day.

The average amount of energy used by an electric car, per mile, varies quite a bit. Google tells me anything from .24kWh to .87kWh. For the sake of the math I’m going to go with .5kWh.

So 100,000,000 x .5kWh = 50,000,000kWh = 50GWh (50,000MWh) PER DAY for NY state alone to switch all its cars over to electric. Thats a LOT of electricity.

Figuring out how much electricity currently produced in NY state took a bit more digging, but it was still publicly available data. In January 2022 NY produced a total of 11,198 MWh of electricity.

So. In order to power 4 million electric cars ONLY (nothing else, no household electricity, no hospital electricity, NOTHING), we’d need to generate 5 times as much electricity as we currently do. Since powering households isn’t optional, we’d need to produce 6 times as much electricity just to power the average household and business AND 4 million electric cars.**

But wait, NY is determined to switch off natural gas produced heat, which is going to increase the amount of electricity used in the state, by a LOT. I’m too lazy to see if I can figure out those numbers, but that alone is going to cause a huge jump in electricity required.

And they want to switch all small motors used around the house to battery too.

And…..

And thats just NY state.

Even if only half of those 4 million cars are actually driven on a daily basis, that’s still a HUGE jump in the amount of electricity required. And it doesn’t take into account the power lines needed to move that much electricity around the state. And the lithium and cobalt and other such minerals needed for the batteries.

**Edited to add: There’s a screw up in the above. I calculated the PER DAY electrical usage of these cars. And compared it directly to the PER MONTH electrical production. Ooops. So ACTUALLY, if we divide 11,198MWh by 31 days, thats 361.23MWh of electricity created PER DAY in NY state. For a DAILY estimated usage of 50,000MWh needed for the whole state to switch to electric cars. Now sure, we can (and do) get electricity from other states but what happens when EVERY state makes this switch?


Dear NY, you suck

Not that this is new, but periodically they go out of their way to remind me.

I was browsing the news yesterday and this popped through my feed.

For those of you who don’t want to click through, basically it turns out that there’s a proposed bill that by 2050 the entire state needs to be no longer using natural gas. They want to switch all current natural gas users over to electric heat/cooking. The power company that supplies the gas an electricity for most of the state is, of course, not thrilled with this idea and the article is about their proposal to modify the bill.

The only GOOD thing (for values there-of) about this one is that it’ll affect the cities and suburbs more than it’ll affect the rest of the state, unlike the rest of this sort of stupidity. Once you get out of the suburbs most houses are heated with propane and/or wood or variations there of rather than natural gas.

But seriously, there’s a point where taking this whole going green thing to far. Electric heat, in this sort of climate, is expensive as hell. It’s fine as a supplement, but as the main heating source? People are going to freeze to death because they’re going to be unable to afford their heating bills.

And where do they think that electricity is going to come from? Oh right, all those solar farms they keep putting in while they shut down the nuclear plants.

And of course, this is on top of the requirement that by 2035 all new consumer cars in the state will have to be electric/battery. And the proposal that all lawn care equipment be switched to electric/battery by 2027.

Look guys, this isn’t California. Can we keep it that way?


And here we go

I grew up in eastern MA, currently living in upstate NY. I can honestly say I don’t EVER recall gas over $4/gallon before here. Certainly not since I started driving at any rate. And NEVER this sort of price jump. This was a jump in price of over 20cents in the space of 8hrs. Various news sites inform me that Cali gas prices have hit record highs.

Never mind the fertilizer shortages.

Never mind the raw materials shortages.

Never mind the shortages on basic ingredients for foods.

THIS ALONE would cause prices of EVERYTHING to jump through the roof. EVERYTHING depends on fuel in some shape or form.

And our PTB have gone out of their way for the last year to make the USA as dependant as possible on outside sources for our fuel.

I get that no one wants a oil or fuel pipeline in their backyard. I get it. But you know what? Freezing to death on the streets because you had a choice between food and rent, gas money to get to work and money to pay the heat bill, THAT sucks even more.

I’d love to be able to rely on renewable sun and wind and water based energy. But its not realistic. And shutting down the domestic power and oil sources is about to backfire on us hard.

Add in those fertilizer shortages? And those shortages of raw materials, and ingredients?

Oh yah.

Here we go.

Hold onto your hats people. This is going to suck hard.


Carhartt Vaccine Mandate–New Coat bleg

Carhartt has decided that its vaccine mandate will stand, even though the OSHA mandate was put down by the Supreme Court. Link, Link, Link, Link.

Carhartt as a company certainly has the right to mandate what it wants it’s employees to do. I stand by their right to mandate the C19 vaccine if they so desire.

But I have really strong feelings about a mandate that forces people to get a medical procedure that hasn’t even completed its full testing regimen and in a different political climate wouldn’t even be FDA approved yet. So while I normally try to ignore a companies politics when shopping, this means that I won’t be buying any more Carhartt while that mandate is in place.

Which pisses me off, I love my Carhartt gear. It holds up to the abuse, and on the occasion there’s a problem with it they’ve helped. They’ve sent me, FOR FREE, replacement zipper pulls when a coat’s zipper pull broke. I love their stuff. I literally just bought new gloves from their local store a couple weeks ago, and have been haunting their website waiting for the coat I want in the size I want to come back into stock so I can replace my current one, which at 10+ years of abuse is finally showing its wear enough to need replacement.

So now I need a new winter work coat. I usually buy Carhartt’s Duck Canvas with the heavy quilted lining in mens XL. The combination of mens style and XL size means that while it fits me well enough to wear on its own, its also big enough to wear additional layers underneath if I need to, or to wear over my insulated overalls comfortably. I prefer the style that does NOT have elastic at the bottom, Carhartt calls that “Full Swing”.

I don’t suppose anyone knows of a comparable quality coat out there?


The more overweight you are the worse Covid is

I mean, we’ve known this practically since day 1. Overweight to obese people have been significantly more likely to get seriously sick and/or die from Covid-19 right from the start, even if they were otherwise healthy.

But instead of encouraging people to exercise and get more fit the .GOV scared people into hiding at home, shut down parks, beaches, play areas. Arrested people exercising alone or in household groups. Shut down gyms.

Now researchers have found that the coronavirus infects both fat cells and certain immune cells within body fat, prompting a damaging defensive response in the body.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/health/covid-fat-obesity.html

Here’s a link to the actual study.

Instead of taking advantage of this to encourage people to get healthy the .GOV did their damndest to convince people to get sicker instead. Instead of making people healthier the .GOV scared them into huddling into small indoor spaces, spaces that might have well been designed to SPREAD respiratory disease. Forced them to avoid one of the very things that would make it less likely for them to get sick. And obesity has spiked hard during this whole mess. In both children and adults. Along with mental health problems. And its not getting better. Not to mention the damage done to immune systems by being terrified of sniffles.

People are STILL scared of being around other people. Terrified of being too close to other people while getting exercise that they NEED to stay healthy. So they’re choosing NOT to exercise, which in turn is making them more likely to get seriously sick from Covid. I see it every day on social media “I tried to go to the gym today but when I got to the gym there were more than X number of people there so I couldn’t stay away from people so I went home”.

The UK is looking at an expected 700,000+ extra cases of cancer JUST FROM MISSED APPOINTMENTS over the last two years. Because we terrified people into not going to the doctor, shut down “non-emergency” treatments, shut down urgent cares.

Everyones freaking out because people aren’t getting the Covid vaccine, and meanwhile children are missing out on their childhood shots because they weren’t able to get into the doctors offices for any one of those many reasons. Are we TRYING to get additional cases of measles? Cause it sure looks like it.

Deaths from TB are continuing to spike due to lack of treatment in the 2020 shutdown. Malaria.

And the .GOV is STILL freaking out at every rise in cases, regardless of actual hospitalization increase numbers. And at the same time is taking steps to REDUCE hospital bed availability across the country. Millions and millions sent to every state for “Covid relief” and how much of it went towards increasing hospital bed availability and nurse/doctor availability?

But on no, we have to shut down “elective” procedures, we have to spread out the number of patients seen in a day, we have to……resulting in people not being able to get treatment for cancers, heart problems, joint repairs….anything that is “scheduled ahead of time” rather than “has to be done right now to save a life” is considered elective. And yet here we are again, killing more people cause god forbid we chance exposing them to a respiratory virus they’re going to get ANYWAY at some point in their life.