Thoughts On A Sunday

The ice on the big lake is getting thinner, with much of it appearing dark blue. There are more openings in the ice sheet, with some areas being totally ice-free. Some of the small bodies of water are already ice-free, though one pond that I use as an early indicator of Ice Out on Lake Winnipesaukee still has a rather large ice sheet. (The pond is usually free of all ice about a week-and-a-half to two weeks before Ice Out is declared on the big lake.)

In anticipation of Ice Out and the start of the boating season, all arrangements have been made to get the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout ready with the anticipated launch date being early in May.

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The rhetoric about Ukraine continues, with clashing news reports painting entirely different pictures about how well/poorly Russian forces are doing with their invasion. We are now 30 days into the 3-day “military operation” to ‘save’ Ukraine from its people and government. Things have not gone well for the Russians at all. Even Russian propaganda can’t paint their failure to achieve their objectives in a positive light. They can’t hide the casualties – wounded and KIA – no matter how hard they try. When sons and husbands stop writing, texting, or calling home, it’s a sure sign something is wrong.

Ukrainian troops have managed to push back Russian forces east of Kyiv while Russian forces to the north of the city appear to have made little or no progress toward Kyiv for weeks.

Then SloJo pays a visit to Poland and spouts things that are going to make things even worse.

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Like Covid-19, the Joe Biden “I Did That!” stickers are evolving new variants.

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By way of Powerline comes this thought from Kevin Sorbo:

“You think your job is hard? Try being the sign language interpreter for Biden.”

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Senator Liawatha is at it again.

She wants SloJo to cancel student loan debt, all $1.5 billion of it. Her reasoning?

Student debt is a gender justice issue.

Umm, say what?

I tried to follow her ‘logic’ for making the claim, but it was seriously flawed. She states “Women owe over two-thirds of student debt”. Could it be because almost two-thirds of college students these days are women? Could it be because so many female college students got degrees in majors that are not what many would consider useful? (Most of those majors end in the word “Studies”.) It isn’t easy to pay off those student loans when working low paying jobs – barista, food delivery driver, waitress, etc. - the only jobs their degrees qualify them to work.

Considering a good percentage of male students enter STEM or Business majors, their ability to pay off their student loans is certainly better than the women with “Studies” degrees.

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Remember when Coca-Cola announced their requirements for racial quotas for outside law firms representing them?

It appears the folks at Coca-Cola would like everyone to forget that. They now deny they had any such policy. The problem (for them) is that the Internet is Forever.

On January 29, 2021, we covered a new diversity plan implemented by then Coca-Cola General Counsel Bradley Gayton that imposed racial quotas for attorneys at outside law firms that wanted to do business with the beverage behemoth, Coca-Cola Imposes Racial Quotas On Outside Counsel Staffing.

The letter (pdf.) to outside counsel provided a chart and description of the quotas, including who qualifies as a “diversity” attorney and what the minimum percentages need to be...

It will be interesting to see how Coca-Cola is going make this go away. It’s almost as embarrassing as their “Try to be less white” diversity training debacle.

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The evidence keeps mounting that lockdowns driven by Covid-19 didn’t work and haven’t prevented anyone from dying from Covid.

For the past few weeks, in a series of reports probing the science that has underpinned key pandemic decisions, The Mail on Sunday has investigated the accuracy of PCR tests and the chaotic way Covid-related deaths were recorded.

Today, in the final part, we talk to the growing number of experts who say that lockdowns had little benefit – a cure that was worse than the disease.

One of them is Professor Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, who has recently published a book, The Year The World Went Mad, about the UK's pandemic policy failures.

Speaking this week on The Mail on Sunday's Medical Minefield podcast, Prof Woolhouse said: 'I think that lockdown will be viewed by history as a monumental mistake on a global scale, for a number of reasons.

'The obvious one is the immense harm the lockdown, more than any other measure, did in terms of the economy, mental health and on the wellbeing of society.

But there will be those here who will insist we have to lock down to protect people. I can see that if you isolate infected patients, but quarantining healthy people makes no sense. Over 100 years experience with previous pandemics – the Spanish Flu and Hong Kong Flu, just to name two - has proven that. But The Powers That Be decided to ignore that experience and instead listened to those not-in-the-know. (Worse, they listened to Dr. Fauci, a bureaucrat that hasn’t practiced medicine for 40-some years.)

Those areas that didn’t lock down didn’t see more cases or more deaths from Covid-19. In many cases, they saw less. They also didn’t see the follow-on surges experienced by those that did, and if they did, they weren’t anywhere near as severe as experienced elsewhere.

Of course, I expect the Feds will ignore any such evidence and impose lockdowns should another Covid-like pandemic occur. The states, on the other hand, may be less likely to do so, seeing how much damage was done to their economies and the health of their residents the last time. Or at least I’d like to think so.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the temperatures are yo-yoing up and down, the ice is breaking up, and Ice Out and Tax Day will be vying for each other in the news headlines.