Author: Rick

So trying to wrap my head around all of the protests, looting and destruction, my wife and I decided to take Doc Rivers’ advice and ask the hard questions. The question became, who do you talk to without being judged a racist or angering that person. The good Lord presented us with the perfect person.

There is a gentleman, Calvin, who is a couple layers up the chain for the company we work for and a no nonsense kind of guy. Follow the rules and do your job. He loves to teach you if you ask the questions of something you do not know and he grew up in Alabama. Perfect choice in my estimation. After the usual, how is business, how are you doing, he says, “What do you make of all of what is going on with the death of George Floyd.”

Obviously his death was murder and we are trying to understand all of the fallout following his murder. Calvin, like us, no fan of the death, destruction and violence. We brought up the systemic racism. His response were things we were never taught in school. Our learning stopped at the Emancipation Proclamation. Laws were still written by the government to put restrictions on black people. Police brutality came up, Calvin’s response, ” The color of my skin is considered a weapon.” It is a crap shoot if you get pulled over, you don’t know what you are going to get. Calvin to us, black people are more aggressive than white people. I could have the same conversation with the two of you and a black person and someone watching it could get two different views of the conversation. My wife to Calvin, a lot of black people seem to have no respect for themselves or where they live. They wear their pants around their ass and have no problem throwing stuff out on the street. Calvin’s response. If you have had rules and laws for over a hundred years put in place to keep you down, how would you respond?

Where do we go, how can we make it better? If systemic racism stems from the government and it’s agency’s and most black people vote Democrat…. Calvin said you get what you vote for. He suggested businesses build in low income areas. “I don’t care if they build a wall around it in the beginning.” Give people in urban areas a place to work that they can walk to or take the bus. Having jobs would help remove the pawn shops and liquor stores on every corner. Eventually people could get off of welfare. The community would eventually raise itself up.

Here is my take. We found answers from Calvin, he gave us insights we never had learned. Just based on the definition of systemic racism, Congress again is the issue. Congress has been the bane of my blogs existence. Pelosi, 33 years, McConnell 30 years, Schumer over 30 years, here is your definition of systemic racism. They are part of the Legislative Branch of the government, they make the laws. This whole awful situation should lay at the feet of Congress past and present. This primary season here in Ohio, my wife and I did not put our vote for anyone who was the incumbent. Jaylen Brown of the Utah Jazz said it best. “We need to do our homework on who we vote into office.” This is screaming term limits to Congress from my perspective!!!

You would literally have to be living under a rock to not know George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. I believe America as a whole was mad as hell! There were calls for justice followed by rioting then looting across the major cities in America.

So the next thing you do is watch the news and one of the first talking points is systemic oppression. So let’s get a definition. Oppression that occurs at the institutional level, such as in government policy-making, within educational institutions and the throughout the health care system. While one-on-one experiences of discrimination might stand out more in our minds, systemic oppression is even farther-reaching because it is coded right into the institutions we depend on to survive.

For days while cities burned and people died all I kept hearing was we need to stop racism. Police brutality needs to stop. I am mad and angry. People need to listen. Systemic racism needs to stop. The news turns to the celebrity view. Doc Rivers, ” we need to ask the hard questions.” White coaches and players from the NFL, this needs to stop and I support the protests. Dale Earnhardt Jr., ” I learned some things and this needs to stop.” LeBron James, “We are being hunted everyday!” Drew Brees was asked about the standing for the flag. He hoped people would stand to respect the flag. The responses, Malcolm Jenkins, “F**k you Drew!” Marquis Colston, “You don’t get it bro!” In the case of Malcolm Jenkins his first response was taken down and replaced.

Eventually the officer that was kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck was arrested. As the looting and rioting continued the America that was united under the unnecessary death of George Floyd turned to horror at the destruction and not understanding, WHY! Congress members were at home over fears of the Corona Virus. The only voice from the government, from my perspective was President Trump.

Here is my take. As soon as all of this craziness started all I kept hearing was talking points. Everyday the same talking points regurgitated by anchors and celebrities alike, no answers, no solutions, talking points!! Most of us had not heard of systemic racism until this started. The one and only person I came across that had any sort of help to the issues we face was Stephen A. Smith. Maybe we should have a national police czar to oversee the police departments. Nobody else shared experiences to help the rest of us understand. My wife and I work in part of what is considered not a nice area of Cincinnati. We don’t see the racism. We are not naive enough to say it does not happen, there are assholes everywhere! We get along with everyone, they are happy to see us and we are happy to see them.

The Corona Virus has done a lot of things to this country. Economy shut down. Stay at home orders. People arrested for stupid reasons. Media manipulation of the virus. Elected officials becoming overbearing tyrants. If you didn’t follow the rules, Mom or Dad would punish you further!!

I have already stated in previously written articles that I was missing something regarding the virus. How many of us did our due diligence in investigating the risks of the virus to our own safety? I did for four hours! All too often people are locked into their phone and their apps to venture outside their own self absorbed world to measure the risk/ reward of their actions. The boogeyman was spoon fed to us by a compliant media always looking for the biggest T.V. rating over a competing network.

You get to find out a lot about people when you take things away from them for two months. Three different groups emerge, in my estimation, the compliant group willing to do whatever is told of them. The second group willing to play by the rules but also willing stand up to the bully and take the fight to the bully, if the bully gets a bit crazy. The third group just blatantly ignorant of what is going on around them and don’t care about the consequences.

We are very lucky to live in United States of America, we have the Constitution that gives direction to us if we need to keep the Government in check. Just a few of the things guaranteed to us under the Constitution are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As the weeks have gone by we continually see more citizens of this country stand up to the overbearing orders given by some Governors or Mayors around the country.

Here is my take. The people of this country are reminding the Government at every level who is in charge. The Government is not in charge of our lives. The Constitution provides the framework to live our lives in this country as we see fit. It reminds me of a quote from Admiral Yamamoto regarding the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. “I am afraid we have awoken a sleeping giant.” Those of us who understand the Corona Virus can make educated decisions regarding our lives and those it may affect. Those same elected officials come November may find out how their media loving scare tactics changed public opinion of them.

The United States jumped into the Corona Virus fray on January 31st. President Trump banned all flights from China. The Democrats as usual, called his ban racist and xenophobic. The first case of the Corona Virus was confirmed on January 21st. Nancy Pelosi was in Chinatown on January 24th saying it is safe everyone come down to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

President Trump has put his face out in front of this issue, on T.V. almost everyday with his team. Good, bad or indifferent of your personal view on the man, he has been in front of the issue. The media has blown up this virus to monumental status from the get go, along with the supposed lack of PPE equipment. My wife and I every morning before work watch ESPN, low and behold, sports stars were able to buy and ship PPE equipment to healthcare workers in their communities. What about the shortage? The Massachusetts Governor asked Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots to fly the team plane to China for PPE, again, the shortage?

There are no pro sports in America right now. No revenue what so ever, think of all of those stadium employees out of work. Countless sports stars donated money to their teams employees to make sure they had paychecks. Upper management of teams are taking pay cuts to keep people afloat. President Trump donated his quarterly salary to fighting the Corona Virus. One! Only one member of Congress donated salary to the Corona Virus fight, Senator Rob Portman, from Ohio donated two months of salary to help.

We have had at least four members of Congress save themselves millions of dollars in the stock market by their standing in certain committees. They broke the law being involved in, insider trading, using their knowledge ahead of news hitting the mainstream media. I am sure those four weren’t the only ones. We had the CARES ACT almost ready to pass, Nancy Pelosi came swooping in and managed to block it, spouting her joy of blocking the first iteration of the bill, eating ice cream from her millionaire kitchen. Some members of Congress don’t want to come back to work because of the virus, they are still getting paid!

Here is my take. Leadership comes in many forms, I prefer the kind that is honest open and at the end of the day, I can look myself in the mirror and say I did good things today. In some cases decisions I had to make were not easy and made my life a little harder in the short term. The long term affects made me better prepared for any bump in the road. That being said, I see no leadership from Congress, too afraid to step up because they will have to face the voters at some point! They think “their leadership” comes from the chair they sit in, in the halls of Congress. You don’t know true leadership until you put your face in front of an issue!

The 2020 Election is just about 7 months away. It is going to be f#$%ed up to say the least. The best economy this country has ever seen!! Lowest unemployment ever!! All gone because of the corona virus, Wuhan flu, covid 19, Kung flu, whatever you want to call it. Fear by the media and politicians seems to perpetuate the situation.

President Trump has been under attack by the Democrats and the media even before he took office. Every attempt to discredit him or administration has come up empty, on fact less information, hearsay and lies. Russia died! Mueller report died! Impeachment died! Along comes the Wuhan flu, covid 19. One of the past proven methods of removing a President from office is to have an economy tank, because the voters suffer. I have done previous blogs about my thoughts on this virus.

Just two days ago, on a morning radio show, the commentary talked about how most of the false disinformation and outright lies about the covid 19 flu come right from the politicians and celebrities. This study was from “the” Oxford University. A former Obama advisor said in the past, not to let a good crisis go to waste. The Democrats have tried to add things unrelated to the corona virus to the first Cares Act bill. One in fact was, mail in ballots for all Americans.

One thing not reported in the U.S. is the fact that Sweden never shut down, Singapore never shut down. Their covid 19 deaths are no more or less than what is happening in the world at this point. It seems that the death rate is the same regardless of “flattening the curve

Ballot harvesting, also called vote harvesting, is the collecting and submitting of absentee or mail-in voter ballots by volunteers or workers. It occurs in some areas of the U.S. where voting by mail is common, but is illegal in some other states. An article I read today talked about how there are 28 million absentee votes out there ready to use by either party to suit their needs. A co-worker posted an article the other day from Stanford University that stated voter fraud doesn’t help either party. My first reaction, you are calling fraud OK!

So please tell me, our all knowing Congressional leaders, how can both sides claim, one there is no fraud and there is fraud. Democrats say there is no fraud and Republicans say there is fraud. The article I mentioned earlier with missing absentee votes is from the Federal Election Commission. So they know it happens and more than we actually are aware. You have had folks in Michigan and New Jersey arrested for voter fraud acts, in the last year.

Here is my take. The media is going to use corona virus as a fear tool to help the Democrats push for mail in voting. Death rates, infection rates as they are now will be hammered into anyone listening to the news. All of those people waiting in line to vote could wind up killing each other, we need to keep Americans safe. Democrats in Congress will say in the name of saving lives we need mail in voting. We just had the primary here in Ohio, the day I personally went to drop off our ballots, there were people in line to vote. Guess what, social distancing was in place. Bottom line we need to vote in person and we need to show ID to vote!

Leave it to the Federal Government to screw up a good thing for the citizens of the United States. The Paycheck Protection Program designed to help small businesses to pay their employees during the shutdown, of course got abused. The Federal Government again proved probably for the 1,000 time it can not be responsible for spending money! It makes you wonder what the bank accounts of these fools look like, oh wait, their all loaded.

Both parties seem to take the stance of, let’s just throw money at the wall and see what sticks. No less than 75 publicly traded companies received money from the PPP. Another part of the CARES act allowed universities to take advantage of the program as well. This has been a fast moving story so even as I was researching things have changed. It seems the public outrage has changed the mind of some of these big businesses to take the loan. Steak Shake took a loan and returned it. Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse a company that had sales of $441 million last year took $20 million and has decided to return it. Harvard University which is sitting on $41 million in endowments took $9 million and it took President Trump calling them out on national T.V. for them to return the money.

So we know some of the who, now for the how did it happen. In a Vox article I found this about the bill. As written in the legislation, any business that’s classified as an accommodation or food service that has 500 or fewer employees at its individual locations, is eligible. Senator Marco Rubio even said that they were lobbied by industry groups to give the bill a gray area. He called out some of these companies, great you called them out, thanks a lot!! So throw in the lobbyist groups circling around Washington D.C. like vultures for their cause, smells like trouble to me!

Let’s talk about franchises for a moment. You have a parent company, let’s say McDonald’s. They give the franchisee the right and ability to sell their product at a location for a fee, that is paid to the parent company every year. Basically, free money that looks good on your bottom line and the stock reports. In this example McDonald’s total revenue for 2018 was $21 billion and earnings were $5.9 billion. So do the parent companies of these franchisee’s think so little of them that they need to lobby Congress to put in a gray area into the Cares Act to take advantage of, or are they greedy? You see all over T.V. our drive thru is still open, no commercials on how they are helping their franchisees stay open. I deliver buns to three Burger Kings during my work day. A month into the pandemic, their bun orders are right about to pre-pandemic orders. Their lobbies are still closed!

Here is my take. Congress again shows it is the problem! How much money was paid to them for the gray area in the Cares Act. As a group they proved again why there should be term limits. They can’t effectively come up with a bill to help the small businesses without the lobbyists greasy hands out. Our elected leaders don’t seem to understand business, wait, probably don’t care! I am going to jump up and down in public for the people then tow the party line when it comes time for the vote for the bill. The election is coming up, we need to remember these last few months and what Congress didn’t do for us, the little guy!!

So here in Cincinnati we are four weeks into what I call, shit hitting the fan! As a bread vendor, we are essential, so we do not get to stay home. It’s business as usual and business has been more than usual. We see people everyday have interaction and get to hear what other folks are doing during this unusual time.

First off let’s mention Congress, which seems to be one of my pet peeves. They came together to work on the stimulus bill, well do you think it would be bi-partisan? No that did not happen!! Democrats kept trying to add “pork” to the bill which was totally unrelated to the situation at hand. The Kennedy Center got $25 million from the bill. Please tell me how the Kennedy Center is related to the Covid 19 pandemic? To top it off, Nancy Pelosi managed to get $5 million of the $25 million to go directly to the Democrat National Committee. What the hell!! Thanks for thinking of the American citizens out of work!!

The media still tries to dump on President Trump, this is 3 1/2 years later. I find it very odd that all of the former Presidents have been quiet on this pandemic. Anyway the media continues to try and paint President Trump in any bad light whenever possible. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine the malaria drugs have shown promise to stop Covid 19. President Trump mentioned there could be hope using these drugs, the media said you are giving people a false hope. He talked about the possible death toll, you are being too dark, not giving anyone any hope! Nancy Pelosi said he could have 200,000 deaths, blood on his hands! So here we are per usual, the blame game instead of working to come up with solutions to the problem. OK Nancy you have been a “leader” cough, cough in this country for 37 years and you have sat back, probably counting your hundred dollar bills, while 40,000 Americans die from the flu each year. A little quick math tells me that there were 1,480,000 deaths from the flu in that time, you did nothing about. It seems to me, since you have seen it all, you could have been ahead of the curve but chose to follow rather than be a leader!! So now sitting back in your Speakers chair you can lay blame at the feet of someone that had nothing to do with the pandemic other than to react to it.

Let’s jump back to December 30th 2019. I woke up to a scratchy throat. I rarely get sick and most years go the whole year with not more than a sniffle. So Tuesday the 31st I woke up to the full blown flu, fever, weakness. I worked all day, because I own my business, head down and plow thru. Upon getting home at 4:00 pm I went right to bed and was in and out of sleep until 9:00 pm. I broke the fever at that point, the fever came back at least two times thru the night which my body broke the fever each time. Wednesday I woke up feeling better but I had what I call the “stupid cough”. It was a cough with nothing behind it. I kept the cough for two weeks after it started.

My best friend in Pennsylvania had the stupid cough the week before Christmas. The back door receiver at the Walmart we service had the stupid cough for two weeks after Christmas. One other bread vendor we see on a daily basis had the full blown flu complete with shortness of breath for four weeks from Christmas. I deliver to a Big Lots where the gentleman who generally verifies my delivery talked about his recent bout with the flu. Him and all of his co-workers all developed the flu complete with the stupid cough and at one point all called off from work. A Burger King employee double pink eye, respiratory issues, flu like symptoms was bed ridden for two weeks. The general manager got sick as well with respiratory issues. If any of you have done research into Covid 19 there seems to be a lot of common symptoms with this virus that we all seem to have contracted. It is as if Covid 19 was already here………….

Another bread vendor we work with has another story. Part of his route is in downtown Cincinnati. The hospitals are in that area and he delivers to one of them, what do you think is going on there? Not much, it is quiet, not panic, not ambulances running in constantly. My wife has a friend, his wife is a nurse. They are not working crazy hours. Workers have been asked to go home.

There is no, here is my take this time. Just real people with real stories and observations. You come up with your own take!! Happy Easter everyone, stay safe!!

As I write this, my wife and I are still left with, what are we missing regarding the Chinese flu, corona virus, covid-19. As with any virus it will spread, look at the flu numbers every year and the millions of just Americans it infects. It also kills thousands per year in America.

We understand all of the things they want us to do. Social distancing, stay home etc to save lives because there is no “flu shot” for this virus. Currently there are 452,168 cases of the corona virus world wide.

The only thing I can do is compare previous information to get a view on what is going on. The last pandemic we experienced was 2009 swine flu. 60,800,000 million Americans contracted the swine flu with just about 12,500 deaths. Those numbers are based on a year. April 2009 to April 2010. Just under 20% of the population contracted the virus. If you average the infections over the course of a year, that is 5,066,666 people a month. Right now we are at 812 deaths with the corona virus and 60,653 infections.

The first case of the swine flu was reported in the U.S. in April 2009. President Obama declared a national state of emergency October 24, 2009. China reported to the World Health Organization the corona virus as an epidemic on December 31 2019. President Trump initiated his travel ban on January 31st 2020. The national state of emergency was declared on March 13th 2020.

In looking at the information I compiled, the corona virus is more infectious versus the swine flu 1.46% to 2.25%, so again, I get the a stay home, no travel restrictions. The World Health Organization estimates that 290,000 to 650,000 die each year from the flu. Again the flu. In 2017-2018 in the United States there were roughly 61,000 deaths from the flu. The CDC considers flu season from October until February, that would be an average of 12,200 deaths per month during the “season”. We have 819 deaths from the corona virus to this point in the U.S. 20,494 total in the world.

Here is my take. The media has been blowing this up since it’s inception. I seem to be missing something, numbers don’t add up. Why the panic this time? There was no panic in 2009. There is no response like this every flu season with the amount of people that die. It seems to me that if you take these numbers from the CDC and extrapolate them out to one year, we seem to be ahead of the curve.

The World Health Organization was informed December 31, 2019 of a cluster of pneumonia outbreaks in Wuhan, China. For me it was weeks later that corona virus became something you would hear about everyday. As the days progressed it became more serious of and outbreak and COVID-19 was attached to it. Now I am no doctor or health professional but when I see “19” after COVID, it tells me there might be 18 other COVID’s out in the world.

Well if you spend any time on the CDC website, like I did, you will find out there are 7 corona viruses. The first four are the typical corona virus people get every year. Number 5 on the list is the MERS-CoV corona virus 2012. Number 6 on the list is the SARS-CoV corona virus 2004. Now number 7 in our face everyday is our COVID-19 corona virus. If you look at what the CDC recommends for the corona virus, aka, the flu and COVID-19 they are basically the same!! The same CDC has recommendations for those with a high risk of contracting the virus, those folks that are elderly and those that have complications from other diseases. Those recommendations are basically the same, the high risk folk are the ones that are recommended to stock up on supplies, not, the general population.

The CDC defines a pandemic as an epidemic that has spread over several countries or continents, usually affecting a large number of people. The CDC says there are roughly 45 million people in the United States that were diagnosed with a corona virus (flu) between October 2019 and February 22, 2020. Of those 45 million, there were 46,000 deaths from a corona virus (flu). As of March 7th there were 164 cases of COVID-19 in the United States.

Let’s revisit the swine flu, a corona virus, from 2009. The CDC estimated there were 151,700-575,400 people that died from this version of a corona virus world-wide. The CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases of swine flu, 274,304 hospitalizations, and 12,469 deaths in the United States due to the swine flu. This particular corona virus was first detected in April 2009 and a reliable “flu” shot for this particular strain was not available until November 2010. In 2009 there were 2,437,163 total deaths reported in the United States.

Here is my take. This is just another strain of the flu, they mutate all of the time. Please just stop the hysteria! Facts folks, the news is not out for facts! Ratings or agendas are the norms for the news media today. I took about 4 hours of research and typing for this article. Had I not had any inclination to write an article I could have been armed with all the pertinent information to make an educated decision in about 30 minutes. Take care of yourself and do the basics you are supposed to do daily!

So we all know what an embarrassment the Impeachment side show was for this Country. My wife and I actually watched the vote on T.V. thru all of the guilty, not guilty votes. So this leads to my, what the hell happened here.

Right after the impeachment vote happened Mitch McConnell gave a speech and answered questions. When he was done Chuck Schumer did the very same thing and then left. Now mind you this is all on C-Span live. The video feed then goes back to the Senate Chamber with Mitch McConnell taking a seat at a table in front of the raised dais where the committee members would sit and ask questions. Mitch McConnell then asks the Chair that he would like to nominate so and so judge for this part of the Country. You then hear but not see the Chair recognize the nomination then ask for the “yay” votes on the nomination. McConnell says “yay”, there are no other “yays” . The Chair then asks for the “nay” vote, no response, gavel slam judge appointed. Mitch McConnell was the only Senator in the room. This went on for about 10 appointments again, what the hell happened here!!

I usually have my take on whatever I write about but in this case I have two. My take one, I still have not figured out what happened on February 5th. Democrats have been jumping up and down about everything and anything related to Donald Trump being President, the resist crowd!! The Senate Judiciary Committee usually appoints judges, wouldn’t you think some of them would have been there for this? Lets name some names Cory Booker not there, Kamala Harris, not there, Amy Klobuchar, not there and the ranking member Diane Feinstein not present !! These are some of the most outspoken Democrats critical of Donald Trump and three of them I listed were former candidates for President. They, the Democrats all talk of how horrible President Trump is and we must resist him at every turn! Well from my view you aren’t practicing what you preach! Oh wait, someone has coined the phrase, “Do nothing Democrats!”

My second take is , how much do you people work!! Some person from Congress mentioned right before the impeachment ramped up that they may have to work 33 hours a week during the whole process! Oh the horror!! As of 2017 the average salary of a U.S. citizen was roughly $56,000! Cry me a river you might have to work 33 hours a week and make $174,000!! My wife and I usually work about 12 hours a day! Obviously, public servant means nothing to our elected officials.