Get Ready for Pulitzer to Be Canceled in the Name of Social Justice

Here is a series of rather belittling, sexist sayings courtesy of Albert Pulitzer’s son, Walter, from his 1904 book, A Cynic’s Meditations. Walter dedicated this cute book of femme mockery to his father, who also took great humor in making sport of women. Seeing as how both Pulitzer senior and junior were sexist men… men woke SWJs would incorrectly label misogynistic… perhaps there should be a call to end the Pulitzer Prize in journalism, a woke cancellation, and even a call for all its historical winners to throw their prizes in a pile and burn them. Honest journalism is pretty much dead in America anyway, so don’t stop with canceling Dr. Seuss, Dav Pilkey, and Pepé Le Pew. Let’s cancel Pulitzer, past, present, and future, too!

Society is the mother of – dissension.

Walter Pulitzer, A Cynic’s Meditations
  • A woman in need is often a devil indeed.
  • A woman’s most happy topic is self; after that some other woman.
  • Woman spends half her life deceiving herself – the other half before the mirror. It’s the same thing.
  • Deception is the cornerstone of vanity.
  • Generally speaking, a woman is – generally speaking.
  • The only certain thing about a woman is her uncertainty.
  • To many women a man is but like a mark on a slate, to be rubbed off and brought back at will.
  • The saying, “Two’s company, three’s a crowd,” must have originated with Adam when the Serpent came on the scene. Somehow, Eve didn’t seem to see it.
  • Most women get what they want by saying they don’t want it.
  • No plain woman is quite certain she is plain. She is ever waiting for the man to come along who will say it is not so.
  • To ask a woman what she means is almost as unwise as to ask her if she has any.
  • Faint purse ne’er won fair lady.
  • In the female vocabulary, men may come and men may go, but shops go on forever.
  • A woman without a past should be happy – but she isn’t.
  • It isn’t so much that a woman wouldn’t, but she hates you to think she would.
  • Nothing hurts a woman so much as when a man won’t give her the opportunity of saying “No.”
  • A widow is never more dangerous than when she tells a youth that she was never really happy in her married life.
  • To win a difficult maiden, make love to a widow in her presence.
  • When jealousy claims a woman, Love and Hate shake hands.
  • A woman is never so happy as when she refuses to forgive.
  • In marriage, he who hesitates is bossed.
  • Some women agree with their husbands – in name only.
  • Home has its use if it even only affords a man a place where he can vent his temper.
  • What you call temper in your wife, you call temperament in yourself.
  • The Reformer and the Showgirl are alike in that they both are kickers, and both aiming high.
  • A man doesn’t know how to live until a woman has taught him, and then it often happens he prefers to live alone.

One touch of merriment makes the whole world – grin.

Biden formally recognizes atrocities against Armenians as a genocide | Fox News

Giving credit when credit is due. Gutsy move, Mr. President. Thank you.

President Biden on Saturday became the first U.S. president to formally recognize the systematic deportation and massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as a genocide — something the successive White Houses have avoided out of concern for damaging relations with Turkey.

Source: Biden formally recognizes atrocities against Armenians as a genocide | Fox News

LeBron James’ sponsors, Lakers, NBA silent in wake of controversial tweet targeting Ohio cop | Fox News

LeBron incited his 50,000,000 Twitter followers to take violent action against a white police officer. Why? Because the white officer had the audacity to answer a 911 call placed by a person of color and actually try to stop black-on-black crime and save a young black girl’s life. King James just distilled everything BLM stands for into a three-word tweet. FYI, Twitter is just fine with it.

The NBA, Los Angeles Lakers and many of LeBron James’ sponsors have remained silent in the aftermath of his since-deleted tweet that has been accused of inciting violence against the Columbus police officer involved in the shooting death of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, who was Black.

Source: LeBron James’ sponsors, Lakers, NBA silent in wake of controversial tweet targeting Ohio cop | Fox News

Reported STDs Reach All-time High for 6th Consecutive Year | CDC Online Newsroom | CDC

This is just a reminder that diseases other than Covid-19 are a growing threat to our communities. Sexually transmitted diseases, diseases that disproportionately affect America’s intersectional minorities, alternative sexualities, and alternative genders, cause a host of morbidities from pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancies, and infertility, to cervical, anal, and oropharyngeal cancers. Unlike Covid-19, no political leader is trying to control the sexual behaviors and freedoms of Americans through executive order.

Source: Reported STDs Reach All-time High for 6th Consecutive Year | CDC Online Newsroom | CDC

More than 2.5 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea & syphilis reported in 2019

New data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that reported annual cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the United States continued to climb in 2019, reaching an all-time high for the sixth consecutive year.

The newly released 2019 STD Surveillance Report found:

  • 2.5 million reported cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis, the three most commonly reported STDs in 2019.
  • A nearly 30% increase in these reportable STDs between 2015 and 2019.
  • The sharpest increase was in cases of syphilis among newborns (i.e., congenital syphilis), which nearly quadrupled between 2015 and 2019.

“Less than 20 years ago, gonorrhea rates in the U.S. were at historic lows, syphilis was close to elimination, and advances in chlamydia diagnostics made it easier to detect infections,” said Raul Romaguera, DMD, MPH, acting director for CDC’s Division of STD Prevention. “That progress has since unraveled, and our STD defenses are down. We must prioritize and focus our efforts to regain this lost ground and control the spread of STDs.”

STDs can have serious health consequences. People with these infections do not always experience disease symptoms, but, if left untreated, some can increase the risk of HIV infection, or can cause chronic pelvic pain, pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, severe pregnancy and newborn complications, and infant death.

CDC’s 2019 data provide the most recent full picture of STD trends in the United States before the COVID-19 pandemic. Preliminary 2020 data suggest that many of these concerning trends continued in 2020, when much of the country experienced major disruptions to STD testing and treatment services due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The STD burden is not equal

The burden of STDs increased overall and across many groups in 2019. But it continued to hit racial and ethnic minority groups, gay and bisexual men, and youth the hardest.

Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups

  • In 2019 STD rates:
    • For African American or Black people were 5-8 times that of non-Hispanic White people.
    • For American Indian or Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander people were 3-5 times that of non-Hispanic White people.
    • For Hispanic or Latino people were 1-2 times that of non-Hispanic White people.

Gay and Bisexual Men

  • Make up nearly half of all 2019 primary and secondary syphilis cases.
  • Gonorrhea rates were 42 times that of heterosexual men in some areas.

Young People Aged 15–24 years

  • Make up 61% of chlamydia cases.
  • Make up 42% of gonorrhea cases.

“Focusing on hard-hit populations is critical to reducing disparities,” said Jo Valentine, MSW, associate director of the Office of Health Equity in CDC’s Division of STD Prevention. “To effectively reduce these disparities, the social, cultural, and economic conditions that make it more difficult for some populations to stay healthy must be addressed. These include poverty, unstable housing, drug use, lack of medical insurance or regular medical provider, and high burden of STDs in some communities.”

COVID-19 highlights needs and opportunities for STD control

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, reductions in STD screening, treatment, prevention, and partner services contributed to STD increases for many years. Since the pandemic began, large numbers of STD program staff at the state and local level have been deployed to the COVID-19 response, which can lead to more delays in services.

According to one surveyexternal icon, as of January 2021 about one-third of state and local STD program staff were still deployed to assist with COVID-19 response efforts. Staff also report burnout as they pivot from COVID-19 back to STD intervention and partner services. As noted in the recent reportexternal icon on sexually transmitted infections by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “COVID-19 pandemic has exposed weaknesses in public health preparedness due to weak infrastructure, an under-capacitated and under-resourced workforce, and limited surge capacity.”

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated an already stretched system for STD control in the United States and accelerated the need to deliver accessible, high-quality STD services in new ways. CDC has identified several new and innovative ways STD services can meet more people where they are—during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the future—including:

  • STD express clinics, which provide walk-in testing & treatment without a full clinical exam.
  • Partnerships with pharmacies & retail health clinics, which can provide new access points for STD services (e.g., on-site testing and treatment).
  • Telehealth/telemedicine, which can close gaps in testing and treatment, ensure access to healthcare providers, support self-testing or patient-collected specimens, and is especially critical in rural areas.

Many of these services are among the strategies highlighted in the recently released HHS Sexually Transmitted Infections National Strategic Planexternal icon, which provides a roadmap to develop, enhance, and expand prevention and care programs at the national, state, tribal and local levels over the next five years to reverse the course of the STI epidemic.

“STDs will not wait for the pandemic to end, so we must rise to the challenge now,” Romaguera said. “These new data should create a sense of urgency and mobilize the resources needed, so that future reports can tell a different story.”

Transgender Women Urgently Need More HIV Prevention and Treatment Services, New CDC Data Show | CDC Online Newsroom | CDC

This is a reminder that diseases other than Covid-19 remain real problems in our communities. Despite no cure in sight, no political leader has issued an executive order restricting the behavior and movement of America’s transgender population. Think on that and compare it to how quickly some state and local governments suspended religious gatherings regardless of the protections church leaders put in place to stop the potential spread of Covid.

Source: Transgender Women Urgently Need More HIV Prevention and Treatment Services, New CDC Data Show | CDC Online Newsroom | CDC

A CDC report released in advance of National Transgender HIV Testing Day found that 4 in 10 transgender women surveyed in seven major U.S. cities have HIV. The report, one of the most comprehensive surveys of transgender women in the United States to date, also revealed that nearly two-thirds of African American/Black transgender women and more than one-third of Hispanic/Latina transgender women surveyed have HIV.

These findings demonstrate the pressing need for scaled-up HIV prevention and care strategies for transgender women. CDC is actively working to address disparities through strategic program funding and partnerships throughout the nation.

Interviews conducted in 2019 through early 2020 with 1,608 transgender women living in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle found that 42% of respondents with a valid HIV test result had HIV.

The report found stark racial and ethnic differences in HIV rates among respondents. Sixty-two percent of Black transgender women and 35% of Hispanic/Latina transgender women had HIV, compared to 17% of white transgender women. Furthermore, nearly two-thirds of the women surveyed lived at or below the poverty level, and 42% had experienced homelessness in the past 12 months.

“These data provide a clear and compelling picture of the severe toll of HIV among transgender women and the social and economic factors — including systemic racism and transphobia — that are contributing to this unacceptable burden,” said Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH, director of CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention. “Reducing HIV in these communities will require that public health and other providers of social and prevention services design innovative and comprehensive status-neutral solutions to overcome barriers to whole person prevention and care.”

A status-neutral approach to HIV services means ongoing engagement in HIV prevention, care, and treatment regardless of a person’s HIV status. HIV testing serves as the gateway to services for HIV prevention or treatment.

The study also examined use of specific prevention services and found that only 32% of participants without HIV reported using pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). PrEP is recommended for people who are at risk of HIV exposure from sex or injection drug use. When taken as prescribed, PrEP is highly effective at preventing HIV. Previous studies have found that low uptake of PrEP among transgender women may be due to a range of factors, including medical mistrust due to experiences of transphobia, lack of trans-inclusive marketing, and concerns about drug interactions between hormones and PrEP. In this study, 67% of participants without HIV were taking hormones for gender affirmation.

These results show how critical it is that HIV prevention and care efforts reach beyond traditional settings and are culturally informed and responsive to community needs. To reverse these findings, increased partnerships with the transgender community and expanded efforts are essential to eliminate socioeconomic barriers to care, including systemic racism, poverty, and stigma, and address unequal access to health care, educational inequity, housing instability, and employment circumstances.

As part of CDC’s ongoing mission to confront HIV and the social determinants of the epidemic, CDC has accelerated efforts to reduce health disparities among transgender women and other groups. Transgender people are a priority for CDC’s major HIV prevention funding programs, including funding to state and local health departments and community-based organizations (CBOs). For example, CDC is providing 30 CBOs with focused funding of nearly $11 million per year over five years to support HIV testing, linkage to care, and prevention services with a focus on transgender people.

The ongoing Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative also supports efforts to overcome barriers to HIV prevention and treatment in the 57 areas of the country hardest hit by HIV, including the seven cities where this survey was done. Ending the HIV Epidemic priority areas account for about two-thirds of new infections among Blacks and Hispanics/Latinos in the U.S. At the heart of the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative are community-driven plans that require funded recipients to actively engage people with, and at risk for, HIV in the design and implementation of localized HIV prevention activities. This includes the use or expansion of innovative, community-tailored HIV testing and care strategies for transgender people.

National Transgender HIV Testing Day is observed each year on April 18 and is an opportunity to recognize the importance of routine HIV testing and status awareness — as well as HIV prevention and patient-centered care — for transgender and gender non-binary people.

“HIV testing is the gateway to all treatment and prevention, and expanding testing means more transgender women are aware of their status and can engage in the care they need — if we help them connect to appropriate and responsive care services,” said Joseph Prejean, PhD, acting deputy director for surveillance, epidemiology and laboratory science in CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention.

For more information from CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, visit www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom

Rebuilding Mulberry Street using Social Justice Teachings

No home, no parents, no race, no gender, no culture, no history, no future, no judgment. The Street is rebuilt and reduced to a story of a single page with no imagination whatsoever.

Social Justice Warriors Burn Mulberry Street to the Ground – No Arrests Made

If you are much younger than your mid-fifties, you likely have had little exposure to the prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination that Asian immigrants suffered in America between the 1840s and 1980s. In the 19th Century, hated Chinese migrants competed with Irish, German, Italian, British, and French migrants for jobs building the railroads, mining wealth during the Gold Rush, as well as service businesses such as laundering and bathhouses. In the 20th Century, America fought three wars involving four Asian nations, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and China, all breeding suspicion and enmity between Asian immigrants and white and black Americans. America took in wave after wave of Asian immigrants in the 20th Century, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians all fleeing war, political oppression, and genocide between the 1940s and 1980s.

Their faces, languages, dress, and cultures were very foreign, to the point of being alien. The Irish hated the Germans, but Germans were a long-standing and familiar, even comfortable, adversary. This was not the case with Asian immigrants. They were all really… different. When I was a teen, my hometown took in a lot of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians between 1978 and 1984. It took years for the locals to really understand the immigrants’ stories, and years for the immigrants to integrate, learn our language and customs, and overcome the prejudgement of the local community.

Dr. Seuss’s children’s book, To Think I That I Saw it on Mulberry Street, published in 1937, is a wonderful story about the power of imagination. The story’s protagonist, a shock-haired, little Italian boy named Marco, turns an ordinary walk home into a fantastic tale of sights and sounds. Unlike today where being Italian is classy, in 1937 being Italian in America was a bad thing. They were the victims of bigotry and discrimination, and in 1891 were the victims of the largest single lynching event in American history. Dr. Seuss took a risk using an Italian American protagonist, instead of little Johnnie or Billie, as most Americans distrusted Italians and saw them as mafioso. That was the kind of man Dr. Seuss was… always challenging bad norms of the day.

One of the things little Marco imagines he sees on Mulberry Street is a Chinese boy (or man, depending on how old your copy of the book is) dressed in traditional Chinese garb, eating traditional Chinese food with chopsticks. The drawing of the boy is historically accurate for 1937, not some racist trope. The boy is happily unmolested, accepted for who he is and what he looks like as he walks along Mulberry Street. When the Chinese boy looks across the street, perhaps he imagines Marco as a little Italian boy eating spaghetti with a fork. What a fantastic little town, where a little Italian boy and a little Chinese boy could walk along Mulberry Street as a natural, accepted part of the community. Marco’s town did not need a Little Italy or Chinatown segregating its ethnic populations. His imagination, meaning Dr. Seuss’s imagination, was certainly better than the real 1937 where ethnic minorities stayed in their own neighborhoods for their own safety. When this wonderful scene triggers a temper tantrum in some stupid Social Justice Warrior, inside or outside Dr. Seuss Enterprises, it demonstrates the types of ignorance and immaturity that Dr. Seuss spent a lifetime attempting to overcome.

Disneyland has a Fantasyland ride called It’s a Small World that brags nearly 300 animatronic puppets representing ethnic traditions from all around the world. As you float along in your little boat, the ride celebrates all our colorful cultural differences in physical appearance and dress. In Ursula Le Guin’s 1971 novel, The Lathe of Heaven (a story aptly placed in Portland, Oregon, a hotbed of Social Justice intolerance) antihero George Orr’s nightly dreams become reality the next day. In an attempt to eradicate racism, George dreams the world to be uniformly gray. That is what Dr. Seuss Enterprises just did by banning further printing and sales of Mulberry Street. It is no different than if Disney decided to replace every piece of animatronics in their It’s a Small World ride with uniform, non-binary, gray-scale puppets indistinguishable from one another. It is a sickening anti-diversity development in our society and bodes ill for our future.

Shame on you, Dr. Seuss Enterprises. How dare you celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday in such a dystopian fashion. That’s just evil.

Supreme Court rules against California’s limits on in-home religious gatherings | Fox News

The U.S. Supreme Court in a divided decision late Friday ruled in favor of lifting restrictions on in-home religious gatherings, overturning a lower court ruling that upheld Gov. Gavin Newsom’s limits on people from different homes.

Source: Supreme Court rules against California’s limits on in-home religious gatherings | Fox News

This is the fifth time SCOTUS has had to override the Ninth Circuit in defense of Constitutionally protected liberties in California. I understand the emotional argument that supports suspending the Constitution and entering a state of quasi-martial law to prevent the spread of disease and ‘to save lives.’ I have lifelong friends in healthcare who have pitched it to me with the best of heated intentions, saying that old people shouldn’t have the right to go to church because it was suicidal.

However, during the height of the AIDS crisis in the early 2000s, they were on the opposite of the fence. Since 1990, AIDS-related deaths worldwide exceed 40 million, near a million in the U.S. alone, with no cure. I recall talking about AIDS with them at the time, and the idea of making homosexuals carry HIV test results cards and making homosexual gatherings and parties illegal simply to protect them from themselves horrified my friend… despite HIV being a disease of choice for most people, spread primarily through promiscuity and illegal drug use.

Why the difference? First, I believe society, as well as my friend, have drifted further to the left than they realize, making a once bad idea palatable today. Second, people with non-traditional sexual orientations and practices are a very activist class and are a legally protected intersection in our society. Using the power of the state to restrict their movement would be discriminatory and phobic. Christianity is not a protected intersection in America. Third, over the last two decades, most media in and outside of America has become agenda-driven fake-news journalism and Covid-19 news has been exaggerated “exponentially” since day one, used to bludgeon President Trump and liberty supporting conservatives in general. Last, the left side of America and our government has a general disdain for personal freedoms, especially those freedoms they disagree with. Free speech. The right to bear arms. Freedom of religion. Hence the rise of Cancel Culture. So shut up, take your ration of chocolate, and do what you are told, as the ‘smart set’ knows better than you how to live your life.

Fortunately, with RBG gone and ACB in, Constitutional liberties live on for another day or two.

The Real Definition of Exponential

Have you noticed that undereducated journalists, talking heads, pundits, and “experts in the field” are in love with big, important-sounding words they often do not know the definition of? The 2020-21 Most Abused Word Award has to go to the term, ‘Exponential.’ Journalists everywhere, left and right, just throw the word out there because it sounds cool, when all they are doing is aggrandizing an otherwise dull reality, trying to make their reporting sound more apocalyptic than it really is.

“The traffic out here is building exponentially, Karen. I am choking on greenhouse gases. Now back to you!”

“Ships are jamming up in the Suez Canal exponentially, Karen. There were four, but now I see six. Now back to you!”

“Asian hate crimes are rising exponentially in NYC, Karen. I blame Dr. Seuss. Now Back to you!”

“Covid-19 is spreading exponentially around the world, Karen. I see dead people. Now back to you!”

“Global temperatures are rising exponentially, Karen. The end is near. Now back to you!”

Let’s start with the mathematics term, ‘exponent.’ An exponent is a symbol written above and to the right of a mathematical expression to indicate the operation of raising to a power. It is easier to see it than to write it.
In the equation 10x, X is the exponent. It represents how many times you multiply 10 by itself.
102 = 10×10, or 100. 103 = 10x10x10, or 1000.

‘Exponential’ is the result of or relating to the exponent. For example, bacterial cell division is an exponential process. One cell divides into two. Those two cells divide into four, then eight, then sixteen, and so on, and that is why a deep puncture from a thorn can potentially kill you in a matter of days.

Do not confuse ‘exponential’ with ‘linear’. Linear growth is more like 10+20+15.

For the last year we have been hearing about nothing but the “exponential growth” of Covid-19 infections, a truly apocalyptic claim. Except Covid-19, at 1.044430, never came anywhere near real exponential growth. The spread of the disease, death rates, and current infections never left the territory of linear growth.

It is easier to see it graphed out. This is an exponential graph of 2x with daily doubling.

With daily doubling, it take 27 days to hit 130 million and 33 days to exceed 8 billion. This is what exponential growth looks like.

Next up we have the global data reported to date.

With the exponential daily doubling of Covid-19, we would have reached 130 million total cases in less than 30 days instead of the 430 days it really took.

If Covid-19 spread exponentially, active daily cases would have to have peaked in the hundreds of millions, and it would have happened a year ago.

As you can see, if Covid-19’s rates of infection were exponential, despite our best efforts, Earth would have seen total cases in the billions within a few months instead of a the 130 million cases that took well over a year to come and go. So the next time you hear some clothes rending, teeth gnashing, false journo-prophet crying out,

“IT’S EXPONENTIAL, KAREN! THE WORLD IS ENDING SO I NEED TO PUT IN A WORD ABOUT CONVERTING YOUR IRA TO GOLD WITH GOLDLINE. NOW BACK TO YOU!”

you will know what they really mean is the traffic jam is growing at a steady, linear rate, the world isn’t going to end, and Goldline paid him a nice fee for the advertising.