The holidays are over.\u00a0 Daily life resumes.\u00a0 I\u2019ve read all the columnists predicting, extrapolating, interpolating, deducing, inducing, reducing and producing a lot of heat but not much light.\u00a0 Those on the Left are either whistling past the graveyard or shrieking in fury that all of this bad news is Trump\u2019s fault.\u00a0 Those on the Right are rubbing their hands together and licking their chops and crowing that Joe Biden will be the downfall of Left and everything will be back to where it should be.\u00a0 Blah, blah, blah.<\/p>\n
Where we really are is interesting.\u00a0 Omicron is delivering much as predicted.\u00a0 Everybody is catching it but almost everybody is asymptomatic or experiencing a cold.\u00a0 Very few people are going to the hospital and very, very few people are dying from it.\u00a0 Because of the enormous number of people testing positive even the Covidian true believers are facing reality and minimizing the impact of the \u201cstop the spread\u201d protocols.\u00a0 Instead of staying at home for fourteen days after testing positive, it\u2019s five days at home and then five days wearing a mask at work.\u00a0 And I read where some hospitals that fired non-vaccinated nurses and doctors were pleading with them to come back temporarily to help out during the spike.\u00a0 The powers that be are pushing the same narrative of death and destruction for the unvaccinated but the average person is starting to realize that the story doesn\u2019t fit the facts on the ground.\u00a0 It should be interesting to see if Biden decides to declare victory and fold his tent soon.\u00a0 Probably the biggest test will be what happens on January 7th<\/sup> when the Supreme Court reviews the OSHA vaccine mandate.\u00a0 If they throw it out that might be enough to force the feds to say uncle.<\/p>\n Outside of COVID many of us are looking out at a high inflation economy and thinking of ways to save a few pennies here and there to avoid eating away at the nest egg.\u00a0 Well, they say Americans are too fat.\u00a0 Maybe we can all tighten our belts a little bit and save some money that way.\u00a0 But for families with children, it\u2019s a little more of a problem and definitely not a laughing matter.\u00a0 This general anxiety over money will continue to hound the administration and will come back to bite the Democrats in the November elections.\u00a0 Good.<\/p>\n I read a ton of copy on how urban crime is a top concern for citizens.\u00a0 And Mayors are wringing their hands trying to convince their constituencies that they\u2019re doing everything humanly possible to rein it in.\u00a0 I very much doubt that they are and so the problem will fester and I believe that this deterioration in law and order will become the largest factor in political change over the next several years.\u00a0 The inability of Democrats to address unchecked black criminality will be their Achilles Heel.\u00a0 But whether the cities will be restored to safety is very much in doubt.\u00a0 I\u2019m of the opinion they will become like Detroit and Baltimore, third world hell-holes that reasonable people will avoid at all costs.<\/p>\n On the personal front here at the compound, we\u2019re still battling the war against cold because of our defective heating system.\u00a0 Our heating oil provider (which is also our heating system maintenance contractor) has made almost ten trips out and still hasn\u2019t solved the problem.\u00a0 I believe there was a problem with the installation of a fan called a \u201cpower venter\u201d and this installation issue has metastasized into a fatal flaw.\u00a0 I will have to fight the good fight and convince the bureaucrats at the oil company that they are the guilty party and must make things right.\u00a0 Camera Girl is very vocal in her opinion that I haven\u2019t been forceful enough in my efforts to goad the contactor to take action.\u00a0 But the truth is the mechanics who might be able to get something done have been away on vacation and won\u2019t be back until Monday.\u00a0 Forcing them to send out the \u201cD\u201d team on a holiday weekend is worse than useless as we found out last week around Christmas.\u00a0 We\u2019ll limp through until tomorrow and then I\u2019ll ramp up the pressure for a final solution that probably involves replacing the replacement unit and performing a careful installation.\u00a0 Ah, it feels like the good old days of project engineering when haranguing mechanical contractors was my daily exercise.<\/p>\n On the review front, I\u2019ve made it to the halfway point of season three of Star Trek and it\u2019s very painful.\u00a0 Many have told me to abandon this horrible and meaningless pursuit but I\u2019m just too obsessively compulsive and stubborn to quit.\u00a0 What renders this task so Kafkaesque is that each succeeding episode is an order of magnitude worse than the preceding one.\u00a0 Don\u2019t ask me how that is possible but it\u2019s true!\u00a0 I plan to bang through the rest of the episodes as quickly as humanly possible.\u00a0 I apologize to the readers in advance.\u00a0 Read them at your own peril.<\/p>\n So here we are in January.\u00a0 It\u2019s a weird and confusing world but some progress has been made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The holidays are over.\u00a0 Daily life resumes.\u00a0 I\u2019ve read all the columnists predicting, extrapolating, interpolating, deducing, inducing, reducing and producing a lot of heat 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