IT'S TIME TO TAKE BACK YOUR LIFE And I mean this in the best possible way. After stressing mightily about whether or not going to Costa Rica in a pandemic was a good idea I'm happy to report it was. It was a wonderful vacation in a beautiful country and it fed my soul in a way I didn't even realize I needed so badly. I'll tell you all about it, and I even did a blog post with all the details and links that will be posted right after the show today (I don't want you to read ahead!) and I hope I inspire you to be motivated to get out and go this summer. After you've been vaccinated, of course.
COME SEE ME NEXT WEEK AT A COOL EVENT THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE LAST YEAR It's the Wine and Wind Down Event from the Colorado Women's Alliance next Tuesday evening and you can join us by clicking here!
SO IT LOOKS LIKE THE SAME NONSENSE AS WHEN I LEFT IS ON DECK I scanned the news last night and was happy to see not much has changed. But the news about vaccinations is GOOD, friends, really, really good. Let's start there.
ISRAEL IS DOING JUST FINE WITH MOST OF THE POPULATION VACCINATED And by fine, I mean SUPER FINE as they dropped to ZERO covid deaths for the first time in ten months as 80% of the population is vaccinated now. They have a positivity rate of .4% and don't miss that decimal point there. In comparison Colorado's positivity rate is just over 5% right now. More importantly, there have been so few side effects on these millions of doses and because their entire health care system is completely connected they have great data on everything. And Israel is OPEN. No mask requirements, no limits on crowds, concerts are selling out in matter of minutes and people are getting back to normal. We can have that here if we can just get more people to trust this vaccine. Speaking of which...
WHY WON'T TRUMP SUPPORTERS GET THE VACCINE? We are hitting what is being called the vaccine hesitancy plateau where people who want the vaccine have gotten it or can get it and now we're all looking at the people who haven't and are asking why not? At least I am. Now this story shows that Trump supporting counties have lower rates of vaccination. Some of this is most definitely in the sparsely populated counties where people don't live on top of each other who haven't been wearing masks or doing much different this entire time. What's it going to take to get you vaccinated? I only ask because if there are too many unvaccinated people it could allow a variant to take hold that could mutate out of vaccine effectiveness, so now I'm back to being locked in our house. How much data do you need to prove effectiveness? What has to happen? I'm genuinely curious about this because I happen to think Republicans are smart people and I don't understand this blanket rejection of something that can allow us to go about our lives again.
HEY LET'S CHECK OUT TEXAS So what happened in Texas? Not the apocalypse predicted by so many when Republican Governor Greg Abbott dropped all state restrictions. Since Abbott engaged in his Neanderthal thinking, cases have plummeted over 50% and deaths even more. This as states with strict lockdowns like Michigan and Maine have seen cases rise. It just goes to show that we have no idea what we're doing here and all the lockdowns and mask mandates and nonsense is just us thinking we have some control over a virus which obviously has other ideas.
IF LOCKDOWNS WORK, WHY DO WE HAVE SO MANY EXCESS DEATHS? This is going to be an interesting statistic to follow as we begin to emerge from the pandemic and get back to life. As we look back and crunch the data to find out what worked and what didn't, it is going to be interesting to analyze why so many EXTRA people died in 2020 from things OTHER than Covid. Especially younger people. This is a good article on that and it begins to peel back the onion and it's not good.
NO ONE WATCHED THE OSCARS Apparently no one, judging by the ratings. I saw the huge outcry because Anthony Hopkins beat the late Chadwick Bozman for Best Actor but Hopkins turn in The Father was honestly a master class in acting and utterly brilliant so I have no beef with it. The ratings are in and it was a complete collapse and perhaps the beginning of the end for these awards as we know them. They certainly have to be doing some navel gazing after this garbage.
I'M SURE NOT CALLING THEM ILLEGAL ALIENS WILL CURB THE BORDER CRISIS As Veep Kamala Harris goes everywhere except the border to work on the humanitarian crisis at the border, the Biden admin has taken the bold move of ordering government employees to no longer use the term "illegal alien" and instead use the phrase "undocumented non citizen" because I'm sure that's what is going to solve things. More Newspeak I don't care about.
NOBODY LIKES A BULLY And this boxing coach showed this guy what's up. There is some BAD LANGUAGE but the whole thing is oddly satisfying.
RYAN LONG MAKES FUN OF ANTI-TRUMP BLOGGERS And it's also oddly satisfying.
THANK GOD PARENTS ARE FIGHTING BACK OVER CRITICAL RACE THEORY A very high performing wealthy school district in Texas jumped full force into making race the central theme of their educational system and parents are having none of it. Especially because this district has NO racial gap in achievement and incomes over four times the average in Texas. These are high performing kids with high performing parents. Now there are lawsuits and recalls flying and THANK GOD. We have to stop allowing schools to teach our kids that race matters more than anything else and if you're born white, you are fundamentally a horrible person because that's what Critical Race Theory does.
WHAT DO YOU ARGUE ABOUT WHEN YOU'RE IN THE CAR? OMG it's like they were IN the CAR with me and Chuck. A new survey shows the top things people fight about in the car and I feel heard.
COLORADOANS DRIVE WELL IN BAD WEATHER ALLEGEDLY At least according to this story which breaks down the reasons people get into accidents. I'm encouraged but skeptical based on personal experience.
ARE WE DONE WITH PRIVATE SECTOR UNIONS? It seems that way when you read stories about the defeat of the unionization effort in Alabama recently at Amazon, but unions are still agitating to make it easier for them to force you to give them money you earned. This is a great article about the legislative push unions are making to get even more access to employees to harass and irritate them into joining. This article gives more info about the peak of unionization and why unions will struggle because of the tight labor market. Both are worth your time, especially if you're on a union break.
CLIMATE EMERGENCY? NOT SO FAST SAYS AN OBAMA ERA CLIMATE SCIENTIST And I'm going to get Dr. Steven Koonin on the show when his book comes out, because this excerpt has me intrigued. Just read this:
But doubts began in late 2013 when I was asked by the American Physical Society to lead an update of its public statement on climate. As part of that effort, in January 2014 I convened a workshop with a specific objective: to “stress test” the state of climate science.
I came away from the APS workshop not only surprised, but shaken by the realization that climate science was far less mature than I had supposed. Here’s what I discovered:
Humans exert a growing, but physically small, warming influence on the climate. The results from many different climate models disagree with, or even contradict, each other and many kinds of observations. In short, the science is insufficient to make useful predictions about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect our actions will have on it.
We shall find out more May 4th when his book drops.
AND NOW, AN HOUR OF COSTA RICAN JUNGLE SOUNDS Because why not?
THE ONLY THING WORTH WATCHING AT THE OSCARS WAS TYLER PERRY'S SPEECH He accepted an award for his Humanitarian work.