Ridley's Believe It Or Not December 23, 2020
CV World Cases: The CV pandemic across the planet continues with 719,116 new cases (a .92% increase compared to a 1.26% increase yesterday) to bring the total over 79 million to 79,057,222, 21,671,024 of which are active, 57,386,198 closed with 55,648,450 recoveries (96.97% compared to yesterday’s 96.97%) and 1,737,748 deaths (3.03% compared to yesterday’s 3.03%) to continue the trend of increased cases with increased recovery percentages and decreased death percentages.
CV USA Cases: New cases of 240,866 (a 1.39% increase compared to yesterday’s 1.03% increase) to bring the total over 18 million to 18,917,152 with 7,481,468 active cases of which 28,728 (.38% of active cases), recently on a disturbing upward trend with no dips from a high of 19,155 on July 23 (28,426 yesterday which means the peak of 28,206 on December 17 has not been reached), are in serious or critical condition as trend has shifted and is still continuing to go up, and 11,436,084 closures, 334,218 of which have been deaths (2.92% compared to yesterday’s 2.94%) and 11,101,866 of which have been recoveries (97.08% compared to yesterday’s 97.06%). Our death rate percentage continues to improve and after many months is now .11% lower than the world rate and .31% 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 1007 ranks behind Belgium (1631), Italy (1165). Peru (1123), Spain (1063), and UK (1015 which has now passed us despite leading world in testing), and only slightly worse than Bulgaria (1008) and newly added to the list and just passing France (949), Argentina (932), Mexico (928), Hungary (893 and (839) three days ago so added to the list; Brazil (887), Chile (845 that we recently passed), Sweden (817) that never closed its economy down like we did but has recently been experiencing a rapid rise in deaths, Ecuador (786) and Bolivia (772) and we have now conducted 1,883,858 more tests to bring the total to 240,135,749 (now at 723,444/M compared to Russia at 596,707/M so Trump was telling truth that we conduct more tests in number and on a per capital basis for nations (other than those nations that contain small populations like Bahrain, Denmark, Israel, Singapore and UAE) but for the U.K. which remains off the testing charts with tests at 760,346/M.
Non CV Case News: Biden still is unwilling to address the Hunter Biden scandal with China that is not going away as Peter Doocy of Fox asked him again to be dismissed as a “one horse pony” which once again shows his failing mental skills as the idiom is “one trick pony” (Doocy whose journalistic skills blow Acosta out of the water is becoming the thorn ala Acosta Biden cannot stand); Trump may have his faults but ignoring loyalty is not one of them as he issued today 26 pardons and 3 commutations to the likes of Kushner, Stone and Manafort; total chaos on the stimulus front with Trump demanding $2,000 as opposed to $600 and elimination of millions upon millions of dollars of goody bags that have nothing to do with CV and in many cases are going to foreign countries; the Defense Appropriations Bill which did not contain a repeal of section 230 which enables social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to stifle free speech from conservatives was vetoed by Trump; in one week 1,000,000 vaccine doses have been administered which should bring some light the darker days Biden is forecasting; another unarmed black holding a cell phone in one hand was shot and killed in a garage by Adam Coy, a 19 yr. veteran of the Columbus Police Department who did not turn on his body cam until after shooting and offered no medical attention to the victim while waiting for an ambulance (time to consider a requirement that cell phones come coated or partially coated in red to show it’s not a gun?); autonomous vehicle startup Nuro has been given California DMV approval to begin driver less delivery service and collect fees for it (another class of workers—drivers are soon to join the endangered worker category.
Chicago/Baltimore Gun Violence: In Chicago as of December 21, 2020, the number of shootings increased to 4,114 of whom 701 have died (total travesty of BLM when blacks are shot and killed by blacks in droves and only sounds of silence and complete absence of any protests in front of City Hall demanding action to curb the killings and shootings); Baltimore with a fraction of Chicago’s population and hoping against all hopes that 2020 will not be a record in terms of deaths but now seems to be shooting less and killing less and is now 373 behind Chicago at 328 murders (when will Chicago and Baltimore get serious about this carnage or is this the case of true racism as a Blue run city turns a deaf ear and a blind eye to the slaughter of people of color by people of color and when will the left focus on the problem of color on color shootings in Blue run cities which have been way more deadly and way more numerous than shootings by police or by random mass shootings which occur far fewer times);
As always, I hope you enjoy today’s holidays and observances, factoids of interest for this day in history, a musical link to “Winchester Cathedral” by the New Vaudeville Band, the fact that your work is viewed as prosilient and a quote from Jerry Stiller on Festivus, 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. Festivus Day—created by author Dan O’Keefe as a noncommercial Christmas parody and made popular by an episode on this day in 1995 on a Seinfeld episode “The Strike” written by O’Keefe’s son Daniel O’Keefe.
2. National Pfeffernusse Day—celebrating a cookie whose name in German, Dutch, and Danish means “pepper nut” which contains some pepper and nuts like almonds and eaten and enjoyed during the Christmas season.
3. 1966 Number One Song— the number 1 song in 1966 on this day on a run of 2 weeks was “Winchester Cathedral”) by the New Vaudeville Band to join 26 other number 1 songs and join 15 other acts with their first number one song. Here is a recording of the New Vaudeville Band singing the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT0Jh9lUhrc. The band hit the music scene in 1966 after the song “Winchester Cathedral” that was performed by sessions musicians only for one song and was active until 67-68 and continued with a few of the original band in the 70’s and 80’s.
4. Word of the Day—today’s word of the day is “prosilient” which means outstanding or distinguished above others which is a word that does not describe the talents of the “journalists” of the MSM.
5. The Big H Is Too Hard--celebrating the birth on this day in 1941 of noted folk singer songwriter James Hardin, who unfortunately was introduced to heroin while serving in the Marines while posted in Southeast Asia which took over a promising career culminating in a heroin overdose death on December 29, 1980 at the age 39.
On this day in:
a. 1947 the transistor was demonstrated at Bell Labs.
b. 1968 82 sailors from the USS Pueblo, captured by the North Koreans in International Waters 11 months earlier were finally released but their ship remains in North Korea as a museum.
c. 1979 in what would become the Soviet Union’s Vietnam War, Soviet forces entered Kabul, Afghanistan.
d. 1986 Voyager, a plane piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager touched at Edwards Air Force Base in California after flying the plane around the world without any refueling on land or in the air after taking off from Edwards 9 days 3 minutes and 44 seconds earlier on December 14, 1986.
e. 2002 a U.S. MQ-1 Predator was shot down by an Iraqi Mig-25 in the first case of aerial combat between a drone and a conventional aircraft.
Reflections on Festivus: “There was no Christ yet, no Yahweh, no Buddha. There were great ruins and raw nature. But there was a kindling spark of hope among men. They celebrated that great thunderous storms hadn't enveloped them in the past year, that landslides hadn't destroyed them. They made wishes that their crops would grow in the fields, that they'd have food the next year and the wild animals wouldn't attack and eat them. There's something pure about Festivus, something primal, raw in the hearts of humans.” Jerry Stiller, in his Foreword to Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us (2005) by Allen Salkin.
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.
© December 23, 2020 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
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