Saturday, February 13, 2021

February 12, 2021 Ridley's Believe It Or Not Chinese New Year

 

Ridley’s Believe It Or Not February 12, 2021

      CV World Cases: The CV pandemic across the planet continues the new year with surging cases now over 108 million at 108,248,345 with 454,369 new cases (a .42% increase) 25,445,850 of which are active, 83,092,780 closed with 80,705,350 recoveries (97.13% and 97.13% yesterday) and 2,387,430 deaths (2.87% and 2.87% yesterday) to continue the trend of increased cases with increased recovery percentages and decreased death percentages with some plateaus.

      CV USA Cases: Total cases now over 28 million at 27,043,159 with 342,530 new cases (a 1.24% increase) with 9,605,336 active cases of which 20,406 (.21% of active cases and a decrease now of 8,865 from a peak of 29,271 on December 31) are in serious or critical condition, 18,437,823 closures, 490,437 of which have been deaths (2.66% and 2.64% yesterday) and 17,947,286 of which have been recoveries (97.34% and 97.36% yesterday). Our death rate percentage continues to improve and after many months is now .21% lower than the world rate and now .04% lower than Canada which has the socialized type medicine Biden may well want to implement here  and on a deaths per million population measurement on a steady climb to 1482 ranks behind Belgium (1855), UK (1707) which had passed us despite leading world in testing), and Italy (1540) and only slightly worse than Portugal (1462), Hungary (1404), Bulgaria (1387),  Spain (1384), Mexico (1320), Peru (1301), France (1236), Sweden (1226) that never closed its economy down like we did but has recently been experiencing a rapid rise in  deaths, Switzerland (1121), Brazil (1106), Argentina (1101), Poland (1069), Chile (1002), and Bolivia (938) and we have now conducted  331,952,598 tests (now at 999,244/M) compared to Russia at 726,160/M) as we are conducting  more tests in number and on a per capital basis for all nations (other than those nations that contain small populations like Bahrain, Denmark,  Israel, Malta, Singapore and UAE) other than the U.K. which remains off the testing charts with tests at 1,189,955/M.

       US Vaccinations: In the U.S. as of 2/12/2021 50.1 million doses have been given, 1.66 million per day in the last week. In California 5,111,429 total doses have been given (up to 69.2% of doses received), but typical of Newsom’s ineptness and despite the power of growing signatures on his recall petition, California has slightly improved and is now at 34th  out of 50 in terms of the percentage of doses administered as a percentage of doses delivered to the states. A long way to go to get herd immunity but some improvement relative to other states but still a good reason to recall this inept governor. As of 2/12/2021 in California we have reduced hospitalizations to 10,505/M with COVID-19 patients hospitalized occupying 17.4% of all hospital beds.

      Non CV Case News: While the Blues edited Trump’s speech on the 6th to imply he was trying to incite a riot, the Reds’ defense video included all of the times he used the word “fight” or “fighting” and none of those utterances could possibly be construed as inciting a storming of the Capitol and to add insult to injury to the Blues’ total hypocrisy showed a video of Blues on the campaign trail urging their supporters to fight and in Schumer’s case actually threaten SCOTUS on the steps of the building  housing SCOTUS (one can assume that the ears of the Blues were made up a long time ago and they will vote to a person to convict but with that this whole wasted theater will come to an end); Cuomo was in the Swamp today in his capacity as Chairman of the National Governors Association to meet with President Biden along with other governors to talk about the pandemic but stayed in hiding after the meeting to avoid questions from reporters as his nursing home deaths scandal cover up keeps getting worse; the anti-Trump Lincoln Project scandal keeps getting worse as its co-founder Weaver has been charged with harassment of male staff, co-founder Steve Schmidt resigned and revelations that a very large portion of the money raised or better year extorted from donors wanting to be PC  went not to anti-Trump causes but lined the pockets of companies controlled by Lincoln Project insiders; the former white head of the Spokane NAACP, Rachel Dolezal  who claimed she was transracial is now complaining she cannot find employment; Psaki is becoming the dodger in chief at White House briefings, this time dodging questions about whether Israel is still an important ally in the Middle East; Jim Acosta demoted from covering the White House must wish Trump was still there to hitch his ratings star to as he weighed in on the slap on wrist one week pay suspension of Deputy Press Secretary Ducklo for threatening a reporter and indicating he would destroy her by ranting about Trump’s claim that the press was “an enemy of the people”; the Secretary of State Blinken has just revoked the Yemen rebel group the Houthis’ terrorist group designation despite its recent brazen attack on a Saudi airport;  here’s the link to join the final less than 100,000 signatures needed to put Newsom on a recall ballot where he needs to be given his unmitigated ineptness: https://recallgavin2020.com/petition/

          Chicago Gun Violence: HeyJackass.com is back to show that through February 11, 2021,  gun violence involving mostly persons of color shooting persons of color in Chicago is alive and well with 324 persons shot of whom 69 have died.

As always, I hope you enjoy today’s holidays and observances, factoids of interest for this day in history, a musical link to “Grenade” by Bruno Mars,  the fact that your integrity is not that of a quantulum and a quote from a child soldier recruited by FARC, secure in the knowledge that if you want to send a gift for any memorable events like Father’s Day, college graduations, birthdays, weddings, or anniversaries, you know that the Alaskanpoet can provide you with a unique customized poem at a great price tailored to the event and the recipient. Please contact me for the details on the pricing.

          1. Chinese New Year—celebrating the end of the Year of the Rat and beginning of the Year of the Ox and if you could find a Chinese restaurant not closed by the CV pandemic, a great day to celebrate with copious amounts of Chinese food.

         2. Red Hand Day—A UN observance created in 2002 to promote the end of the practice in some countries and guerrilla groups of using soldiers who are mere children in wartime.

         3. 2011 Number One Song—the number 1 song in 2011 on this day with a run of 3 weeks not continuous in that position was “Grenade” by Bruno Mars to join 13 other number 1 songs. Here is a recording of Bruno Mars singing "Grenade": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR6iYWJxHqs Mars started performing in 2004 and has been on a roll ever since, rolling in the dough from his records and tours.

         4. Word of the Day—today’s word of the day is “quantulum” which means a small quantity which probably describes to a tee the amount of integrity or objectivity we find on our political scene.

          5. An F for the Trooper Who Smokes and Drinks--celebrating the birth on this day in 1919 of Forrest Tucker noted actor and one of the tallest at 6’5” and best remembered for his Sgt Bilko like role in “F Troop” but who may have inherited his alcoholic mother’s genes and struggled with alcohol and smoked way too much  to die of lung cancer and emphysema on October 25, 1986 at age 65.

          On this day in:

a. 1915 the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial was put in place.

          b. 1974 Russian author Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, 1970 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature for his works criticizing the Stalinist excesses and Gulag was exiled from the Soviet Union.

          c. 2001 the NEAR Shoemaker space probe landed in the “saddle” region of Near Earth Asteroid Eros 433, the first probe to land on an asteroid.

          d. 2004 the City of San Francisco started issuing same sex marriage licenses as a result of a directive of Mayor Gavin Newsom.

          e. 2016 Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill signed an Ecumenical Declaration in the first meeting of the leaders of the Catholic and the Russian Orthodox Churches since their split in 1054.

           Reflections on being a child soldier:  “They bring the people they catch ... to the training course. My squad had to kill three people. After the first one was killed, the commander told me that the next day I'd have to do the killing. I was stunned and appalled. I had to do it publicly, in front of the whole company, 50 people. I had to shoot him in the head. I was trembling. Afterwards, I couldn't eat. I'd see the person's blood. For a week, I had a hard time sleeping.... They'd kill three or four people each day in the course. Different squads would take turns, would have to do it on different days. Some of the victims cried and screamed. The commanders told us we had to learn how to kill.” O age 15. Recruited a) By FARC (a guerilla group in Columbia active from 1964 to 2017) at age 12.

           Please enjoy the poems on events of interest on my twitter   account below (if you like them, retweet and follow me) and follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and entertaining poems on my blogs—click on the links below. Go to www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com for Ridley’s Believe It Or Not—This Day in History,  poems to inspire, touch, emote, elate and enjoy and poems on breaking news items of importance or go to  Ridley's Believe It Or Not for just This Day in History.

 © February 12, 2021 Michael P. Ridley aka The Alaskanpoet

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