Vax-A-Nation

 

I've always been a huge fan of statistics.  Assuming they are recorded correctly, statistics don't change.  Sure, overall numbers and percentages of things can change over time, but if you record a statistic of any sort over a defined time period, that number is very real.  Scientific hypotheses can change as more information becomes available.  Things that we once thought were bad may now be shown as good.  Things that we once thought were good may now be shown as bad.  I trust science, but statistics are hard numbers, and I really trust statistics.  I love sports statistics and baseball statistics especially, and I spend way too much time on baseballreference.com.  Those statistics tell a story.

Statistics on Covid tell a story too.  However, statistics are super easy to manipulate to tell a story that you want to tell if you're clever (or dumb) enough.  And when we are trying to figure out why statistics are what they are, we may attribute them to the wrong reasons.  After all, correlation does not imply causation.  And if you've studied statistics at all, you know about standard deviations, etc.  But whether or not you have, it's important to take a step back to look at the bigger picture.  Narrow-minded views won't work.  Looking at statistics through the lens of conclusions you've already drawn isn't going to help either.

Some important questions you may want to ask about Covid are what the excess mortality rate has been since the start of the pandemic, what the number of new cases per day looks like now in your area, and what the death rate is as of late compared to the number of cases.  When deciding whether or not you should get the vaccine, you'll want to know what the chances are that you'll get a severe case or that someone you're near could catch it from you and get a severe case.  You'll want to know what the efficacy rate is of the vaccines that are available to you.  And you'll want to know what the chances are that you'll get a severe reaction or side effect from the vaccine.  Your doctor can also help you to make a determination, based on whatever unique situation you're in (pregnancy, underlying condition, age, bad side effects from other vaccines, etc.), of whether or not you should get a vaccine, and which one you should get if so.

I chose to get vaccinated last month, and I chose the Moderna vaccine.  The main reasons that I made this decision were because I looked at statistics and articles, from the left, right, and supposedly neutral sources, and I spoke with two of my doctors about my situation.  I'm not going to tell you, like many will, that the vaccine will be safe and effective for you.  In all likelihood, yes, it will, but I don't know your personal situation.  So I'm going to tell you to do the same thing that I did.  Read up on it, and speak with your doctor.  I highly recommend considering getting the vaccine.  Heck, you'll notice that I'm not even going to give you any statistics here, because I want you to find them yourself.  But I will say that I was extremely hesitant to get the vaccine, because I'm one of those people who had a rare and severe reaction to the flu vaccine years ago.  And I know someone who had a family member get the vaccine and nearly die from a rare heart issue that occurred because of it.  I chose to get it anyway.  Besides, I have some older family members who are not vaccinated, and I've also seen friends and family who nearly died from Covid.

The first doctor I spoke with, during my annual physical, recommended that I get it, and the second one, a specialist, asked me how I got there.  I knew where he was going already.  There was more risk that something bad could have happened to me on the way there in my car (especially with the way people drive in CT- Is it just me, or have drivers in general gotten worse lately?).  Based on my situation and what he knows about the vaccines, the doctor told me, straight up, "Don't get the Johnson & Johnson."  That advice might be different for someone else, but at that point, I decided to figure out whether I would get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, as he suggested I get one of those.

Moderna appeared to be more likely to cause mild side effects, and Pfizer appeared to be more likely to cause severe side effects (though both were highly unlikely to do so based on the statistics, and absent of performing a full statistical analysis, it may not even be a statistically significant difference).  Moderna also appeared to have better efficacy, and this was right on the heels of a study that showed diminished efficacy for Pfizer against the Delta variant (though it still offers quite a lot of protection).  So I chose Moderna.  I literally walked up to the daily free vaccine clinic they have on the town green and asked for it.  That was it.  About 15-20 minutes later I left.

My body doesn't like things going into it that don't belong in it, so I had a cold sweat right after getting the shot (same as what happens when I get an IV or eye drops), but I was fine and not light-headed at all.  I drank some water.  Over the next day or so, I was a bit tired and had a very mild headache, also known as an average working Thursday, so not really any symptoms to report there.  My arm was a bit sore, but that's what happens when you get a shot.  I'll get jab number two soon.  I can expect an increased chance of a slightly worse reaction- that is to say, I'll be perfectly fine in all likelihood.

For those of you holding out on the vaccine, I recommend that you make sure you are doing so for the right reasons.  If you're pregnant, for example, that makes sense to me.  Last I checked, even the CDC wasn't giving that a full endorsement, though it seems unlikely that there would be any adverse effects.  If you don't want to get it because you've calculated your risk higher than your reward, read up on it and verify that it's true.  If you don't want to get it because you've already had Covid, it was mild, and you now have antibodies to it, that's your choice, though after six months or so, the numbers are still showing that you will be more protected with vaccination (antibodies go away over time- I'm pretty sure I had Covid in February 2020, but when I was tested for antibodies over a year later, they weren't there).  If you're immunocompromised, I highly recommend talking to your doctor.  However, if you're not getting it because of what a handful of experts have said against it in opposition to a myriad of others, or because you believe the government is trying to kill you with it based on some random guy on the internet thinking this is the Tuskegee Experiments Part II, or because people have died after getting the vaccine (if more than half the population is vaccinated, some number of those people are going to die), I would ask that you read up on it more.  Search out articles and statistics from unbiased sources, or since very few truly unbiased sources exist, seek out information from both left and right wing sources.  Feel free to reach out to me if you'd like as well, and I can point you to some statistics.

If you're on the right and love to listen to Ben Shapiro, I would have trouble finding someone more pro-vaccination than he's been from the very beginning (when VP Harris said she would be wary about a vaccine developed under the Trump administration).  I think he's offered a trove of great information and statistics on the vaccine during this podcasts, despite some on the left wrongly accusing him of being anti-vaccination, a blatantly false claim.  It does seem that folks on the right are more hesitant to get the vaccine than folks on the left, in general (hence why I am pointing to Shapiro as a resource here, even though I would trust his wife, an actual doctor, more on the topic), though it is also true that it's more of a problem to have lower vaccination rates in densely-populated urban areas that are largely blue than sparsely-populated rural areas that are largely red.  For those on the left who haven't gotten it, yes, it was developed under President Trump, and Trump has been extremely pro-vaccine, but don't let the early errant comments by VP Harris dissuade you from getting it.  Look at the numbers and decide for yourself.

And the numbers now are telling a story.  Cases have spiked, in large part due to the Delta variant, but deaths have not followed suit in the same way as they have in previous spikes.  Why?  Well, you can speculate that this variant is less dangerous, but I don't believe that's accurate.  Those who are not vaccinated have the same risk factors as they have had throughout this pandemic.  And you can speculate that we've gotten better at treating it, and yes, we have, but that still isn't the full story.  Those who are not vaccinated are now much more likely to get Covid, and much more likely to have a severe case of Covid when they do get it.  That tells me that the main driver of the lower death rate is vaccines.  Sure, there are other confounding factors, but based on the statistics, the vaccines appear to me to be quite effective.

I'm one of those people who, the more someone tells me to do something that I don't want to do, the less likely I am going to be to do it.  So when social media sites like Facebook are pounding the vaccination stuff down our throats (see the screen grab photo I used here, which probably has the standard link because the word shot was used in a sentence), and celebrities and other people who are generally idiots are parroting the line that "vaccines are safe and effective" and posting videos of themselves getting vaccines, without really knowing anything at all about science or statistics, I really don't want to get the vaccine.  Weren't these social media sites same people banning folks who mentioned facts and opinions they didn't like and removing "misinformation" that Covid leaked from a lab in Wuhan, only to later realize that very well may have been the case?  Yes.  But, as hard as it is to admit, it doesn't mean that they are always wrong, and could even be generally correct on vaccines.

President Biden and his administration are lying dog-faced pony soldiers (his words, not mine, and I'll do another post about all that sometime in the near future), but that doesn't mean that they're wrong about the vaccine either (though the mixed messaging has been a disaster, most notably with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine).  At first, I thought Dr. Fauci was doing the best he could, but now, like Senator Rand Paul, I don't trust a lot of what comes out of his mouth either, but that doesn't mean that he's wrong about the vaccine.  The Biden administration has picked up where the Trump administration left off and brought us to the point where the vaccine is available to every adult in the United States.  And good for them.  Those of us living in America are blessed by the "America First" policy, because we have something that many others in the world wish they had so quickly- the option and ability to get vaccinated (and with no money out-of-pocket, funded by the taxpayers).

Plenty of other things happening make no sense.  Show me the evidence that more mask mandates will help anything.  Seriously.  If you have it, I'm interested.  Yes, N95 masks will help stop the spread quite a bit, and the non-N95 masks that most people wear when they wear one will help a little bit in a controlled environment, but what good are a bunch of people reusing the same dirty non-N95 masks over and over to comply with mask mandates going to do?  Perhaps some, but I would estimate very little.  Have we actually done a study that attempts to mimic what happens in real life, where many people reuse dirty masks, touch their masks over and over, and wear them improperly?  Vaccines are way more effective than masks.

That isn't to say that you shouldn't wear a mask in a crowded indoor area if asked to.  I believe the government should stay out of it, but just as a baker can refuse to make a cake for a gay wedding, he can refuse to let unmasked people into his business.  Masking up outdoors, while alone in your car, or while waiting for the dentist to explore your mouth seems to be nothing more than theater though.  The same was the case when we had mask mandates for the vaccinated before those were lifted.  The statistics did not support it.  You can argue they were out of an abundance of caution, and that those bringing them back now are also acting out of an abundance of caution, but I don't see statistics that support it, and I don't put a lot of value in isolated outlier situations such as spread among vaccinated people in Provincetown.  That being said, if my local store asks that I wear a mask when I enter, whatever.  Not a big deal.  But I'm also not wearing one when I'm not asked to do so.

One of the most annoying things going on right now though is the masking of children in schools.  I don't have a child, but if I did, I would much rather my child got Covid than the flu.  I don't want my child to get sick at all, but again, the statistics show that Covid is not very dangerous for children.  For adults, it's certainly more dangerous than the flu, but we know that it isn't for children.  We don't need to take extreme precautions to protect children from Covid.  A few hundred children out of the tens of millions of children in the United States have died from Covid.  Every life is precious, but it's ridiculous to act like this is a grave threat to children.  You'd think it is based on the news coverage whenever a very young person dies from Covid (as opposed to the lack of news coverage when a very young person has a serious adverse effect from a Covid vaccine).  Statistics don't support this.  And children do not need to mask up in school (you know those things are germ traps anyway for kids, seriously).  If it's the teachers, parents, or any adults that you're worried about, as reasoning for masking up children, they have all had the opportunity to get the vaccine.  If they got it, they have a high level of protection against Covid.  If they didn't, you'd be hard-pressed to find any in that category who are asking for children to be masked up to protect the adults.

I don't trust the government.  I don't trust the media.  I don't trust big tech.  I don't trust big pharma.  I do trust science.  I do trust statistics.  I do trust my doctors.  I chose to get the Moderna vaccine.  I would recommend that you research what is best for you if you haven't yet gotten vaccinated.  My advice would be to especially consider the Moderna vaccine, but please do inform yourself from multiple sources across the political spectrum, and please seek the opinion of your doctor or doctors.  For many things in life, we must evaluate risk vs. reward, and the Covid vaccine is no different.  Also, the Federal government has done its job here as far as making vaccines widely available, so kudos to both the Trump and Biden administrations on that, but don't let this turn into authoritarianism now.

You get to decide what's best for you, but please base your decision in reality, statistics, and what you believe will be best for you and those around you.

How to Spend your Points at Chick-fil-A

Here's a short but useful post for all you Chick-fil-A fans.  If you have the Chick-fil-A App, you earn points for every purchase you make.  You can then use the points to get free food or drinks at Chick-fil-A.  But not all redemptions are created equal.  It took me a few minutes to put together a spreadsheet for the North Haven, CT Chick-fil-A, based on current availability and cost in dollars and points for each item.  You can make a customized spreadsheet for your favorite location, and all you have to do to find the best value is sort by how many points equal a dollar!

Previously, it was well-known that the best value for point redemption was the Medium Waffle Potato Fries, but the recent bump from 200 to 300 points for that item changed the math significantly.  The best point redemption value is now my favorite item on the menu, the Spicy Chicken Sandwich!  The worst value is a small fruit cup, which requires the same number of points to buy but costs a lot less in dollars.

Items in blue are the best values, and if you really want an item in green instead, it's an alright value to use points there as well.  For those in yellow, it's not ideal, but hey, if you really want it and you have a lot of points to redeem, they aren't your worst options.  However, I don't know why you would ever use points for any of the orange items, and the red items are the worst of all.

You're welcome!  And my apologies for posting this on a Sunday, because now you're hungry, but Chick-fil-A is closed.  Oh well.  There's always tomorrow.

Who Stole The Election?

There has been a lot of talk lately about the 2020 election being stolen.  Much of this talk has come from President Trump himself.  Before I get into all that, what did you think when you saw that headline and clicked on it?  If you're very far to the right, you probably thought, "Oh, Matt's finally come around and realized the truth.  Let's hear what he has to say."  Wrong.  Not true.  If you're very far to the left, you probably thought, "What the hell is this?  Matt's a Trump voter, so he's crazy anyway, but does he really think that happened?"  Nope, and not crazy, but I appreciate how often simple-minded Leftists resort to personal attacks.  Notice that the headline is simply a question.  I didn't state that the election was stolen, nor did I state that it was not.  It's a clickbait headline, like so much of the complete garbage you see from the media, yet you've actually landed on an opinion piece with some very important points.  As usual, these points are sure to anger people on both sides.  Also as usual, I don't care, because it's more important to tell the truth.

The election was stolen, but not illegally, and not by widespread voter fraud and some conspiracy involving Dominion and China and some ring of sexual predators or whatever the hell QAnon or Alex Jones is alleging now.  I really have no idea because I don't keep up with that much anymore, simply because I don't care what they have to say.  I don't care what mainstream media has to say either, but I need to get news from CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc. in conjunction with news consumption from The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Fox, The Daily Wire, The Blaze, etc.  My Facebook friends are actually a pretty good mix of Conservatives and Liberals, based on where I've grown up, where I've gone to church, and where I've gone to college.  This is quite helpful because of the constant links that are posted from both sides, both from reliable and unreliable news sources.  But I haven't seen evidence of voter fraud or Democratic conspiracies large enough to change the outcome of the Presidential election.  And yet I've concluded that it was stolen.  The Presidential election was stolen by mainstream media and big tech.  The Georgia Senate election?  The election rules there are bizarre to say the least, but you can thank the absolutely ASININE moves by President Trump and other Republicans for that one.

The Presidential election was tight.  Joe Biden won the popular vote, and the electoral college tally was not particularly close, but it hinged on several key battleground states where the margin of victory was extremely slim.  The four closest states were all won by Joe Biden, with three of them (Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin) under 1% of separation, and Pennsylvania just barely over 1%.  Put simply, this means that if roughly 1% of the voters in those states voted differently, Trump would have been re-elected.  But that didn't happen.  I mean, Trump says it did, but I remain unconvinced (we'll circle back to that shortly).

For the most part, the polls taken ahead of the election were atrocious.  They generally showed Biden winning those states, other states, and the election by MUCH wider margins than what actually took place.  There are plenty of different reasons for that, and pollsters will have to figure out how to account for the inherent problems going forward after they were clearly exposed, but what could have swung the votes in those key states by just one or two percent?  I mean, just about anything.  Like, if the media gave any negative coverage to Joe Biden.  If the same people who shouted and cried, "Believe all women!" when outlandish claims of gang rape were levied against Brett Kavanaugh actually believed that when it came to someone who aligned with them politically, such as Joe Biden, Donald Trump would be in office for a second term.  If the same media that gave around-the-clock coverage to all of Kavanaugh's accusers, many of whom recanted their claims soon after he was confirmed as a SCOTUS Justice, gave half as much coverage to Tara Reade's sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden, Donald Trump might have won.  Apparently at least one lesser news outlet in Australia interviewed her, but I didn't see a whole lot of mainstream coverage here in America.  I don't know whether or not Tara Reade is telling the truth, nor do I know whether or not Christine Blasey Ford is telling the truth.  As a default, I generally believe women who come forward with allegations like that, but both women have some serious holes in their stories here.  The point here isn't whether or not they're telling the truth, but how the media handled their stories differently (not to mention even more ridiculous and unsubstantiated stories regarding Kavanaugh that were indeed proven to be false).

There are plenty of other examples too.  The New York Post published a negative story about Hunter Biden before the election, which was ignored by most mainstream media outlets and banned by social media such as Twitter because, um, well Jack Dorsey couldn't exactly explain it.  He admitted it was a mistake, but that something or other about stolen information, which it wasn't, but somehow it was fine to share The New York Times article a few weeks before, which contained information from Trump's tax returns that someone had very likely acquired illegally and provided to The New York Times.  And I'm actually 100% in favor of that being published, as well as not banning it, but the same standard should have applied to Hunter Biden.  Joe Biden, unchecked, dismissed any negative stories about his son as Russian disinformation, despite ZERO evidence that was the case.  I mean, that's a Trumpian level of lying.  Maybe he is ready to be our next President.  And the mainstream media covered for him, calling a lot of valid and potentially valid stories about Hunter Biden debunked, but as we found out from some mainstream media sources after the election, there are actually some pretty serious questions about Hunter Biden's dealings.  Joe may or may not have been directly involved.  He's been under investigation for some time.  Amazing how that didn't leak out, right?  Like Bill Barr knew and decided to, you know, follow the law and not leak it.  That's integrity.  And somehow no mainstream media journalists investigated that.  They were probably too busy talking to their "anonymous" sources telling them President Trump was having pee parties with hookers and colluding with Russia while Hunter was doing blow, taking stacks of cash, and who knows what else.

In my opinion, the best post-election coverage has been from a source that itself admits it is on the right.  And there has been some GARBAGE post-election coverage from several right-leaning media organizations.  I mean complete trash, unverified conspiracy theory type stuff.  I think they feed it to Trump, who in turn feeds it to them, and it just becomes a giant part of our President and his favorite media sources regurgitating unverified crap all over each other, and no one can keep track of it all anymore.  There are claims that Trump won in a landslide, that various countries were hooked up via internet to the Dominion voting machines controlling the tallies, that there's all kinds of coordinated widespread voter fraud that gave the election to Biden, and a slew of other things for which I've seen little to no evidence.  It's exhausting.  The mainstream media isn't any better.  They deny that there was any voter fraud at all, or that there was ever voter fraud (after claiming Russia may have actually hacked the 2016 election for Trump).  The truth is that there was some voter fraud.  In any election where like 160 million people vote, there is definitely some amount of voter fraud.  I think the only voter fraud story mainstream media picked up was about one person they found who voted for Trump twice or something.  There were a handful of valid stories about fraud in one direction or the other, but you would only hear those where the fraud was in favor of Biden from alternative media sources, and then you had to check them in a bunch of different places to see what was true or not since so many outlets just ignored them, true or not, because they didn't like the narrative (including all those additional missed votes found in Georgia upon auditing, which was true, though it was not indicative of fraud).  But from what I've seen, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud anywhere near impactful enough to have changed the result of the Presidential election.

So my pick for the most consistently solid post election coverage that I've seen goes to The Daily Wire, though from that outlet, I've largely listened just to Ben Shapiro and Andrew Klavan, and they've said what no one from either extreme wants to say.  It's been remarkably down the center from an organization that is transparent about being on the right the majority of the time.  In a nutshell, yeah some questionable things happened with the election, and there was some fraud, but there isn't evidence of widespread fraud that was enough to overturn the election.  That message has been remarkably consistent, and if you're interested in a quick read on a poll showing that Trump may have won if not for mainstream media suppression of negative stories about Joe Biden, I'll leave the link here (https://www.dailywire.com/news/study-medias-suppression-of-8-issues-likely-swung-election-to-biden), and even if those numbers are a bit inflated to the right, just a fraction of those percentages could have swung the election to Trump.  But media dishonesty is not the type of fraud that Trump is alleging occurred.

By all means, feel free to send me evidence if you have it, or better yet, bring it to a courtroom.  While I like to think that sort of voter fraud isn't possible in the United States, part of me absolutely wants it to be true, because I don't want Biden and Kamala Harris to lead this nation.  As flawed and frustrating as Trump is, I'd still rather have him and Pence for the next four years, if only because I agree with their policies more and hate the Leftist agenda, but I simply have not seen any evidence that Joe Biden was not truly elected to be our next President.  If Trump has that evidence, why was it not presented to the courts?  He talked a big game like always, but when you saw what was actually presented to the courts, there wasn't a whole lot on fraud.  Sure, there were issues with the way states like Pennsylvania changed election rules, on those are real issues, but those were handled on a state level (as they should have been, even if you disagree with the verdict).  And sure there were some odd things statistically, but I've seen valid explanations for most of them.  And sure there was fraud, but we are lacking evidence that it was anywhere close to the level it would need to be to change the outcome.  Donald Trump is a sore loser and a liar.  Or hey, if we're going by the standard the Democrats set after the Mueller report, when they said that there may not have been evidence of criminal activity, but that the report did not exonerate Trump of Russian collusion, I'll say it this way instead: Maybe Trump really did win, and there was election fraud, because even though I haven't seen the evidence, it doesn't mean it didn't happen, right?  No?  Not on board with that approach here?

I did not have a problem with Trump challenging the results of the election in court.  That's part of our process, and it's been done before.  Fine.  I didn't like his tweets, but hey, I said that we should let the process play out in the courts.  He could claim to be the winner until the electors officially made Joe Biden President-Elect.  And claim he did.  But he lost in court.  Repeatedly.  Are we really to believe that Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and every other Supreme Court Justice (including three great justices Trump put there!) are part of the conspiracy to keep President Trump from a second term, because they refused to overturn the election?  Borrowing from Joe Biden twice here, come on man, you're a lying dog-faced pony soldier!

Even after the electors cast their ballots, Trump did not stop claiming that he won, that there was widespread fraud, and that he would not concede.  That became dangerous.  Yes, Hillary and the Democrats never stopped claiming that she only lost because of Russian interference, and many claimed that Trump was not a legitimate President, and even more that he's not their President.  And then many claimed that Stacey Abrams was really elected Governor of Georgia.  Twitter and Facebook didn't block any of those claims or attach fact checks or articles about election integrity to them.  Mainstream media even pushed them forward at times.  And this was all very dangerous stuff.  So Donald Trump followed suit.  And leave it to him to take it to the next level.  At least Hillary Clinton wasn't constantly running her mouth on Twitter and refusing to concede after the electors voted and when Congress was confirming Trump's election four years ago.  Sure, she never backed off her claim that she really won, but Trump has now taken it too far.  Thank God he doesn't drink, because the man knows no moderation.  Today it became very dangerous.  Violently storming the Capitol is not acceptable behavior.  That was shameful and antidemocratic, much like some similar events in 2020.

Quite frankly, it was an attempt at a coup, and a tiny and piss poor one at that, and it was stopped.  It never had a chance.  Suddenly, those on the far left who a few minutes ago were refusing to speak out against violent protests and riots against police, where rioters killed people and burned down buildings, sometimes with law enforcement standing down, even to the point of allowing autonomous zones to exist,  are against violent protests and riots, and glad when the police are there to stop them.  Amazing.  I'm so glad that the police, who were violently protested against, were still there to stop this riot and preserve Democracy.  I'm so glad that they weren't defunded by the D.C. mayor, who is also the main villain in Super Mario.  Sadly, it now sounds like there was one death, where an officer shot a woman who was apparently violently storming the Capitol.  This is quite sad, but also something that is bound to happen if you are violently storming the Capitol.  How about we just keep all protests peaceful and don't riot at all?  And maybe stop saying that all cops are bad because systemic racism rather than just a few bad apples (and then calling for them when you need them)?  Seriously, people on both sides are beyond ridiculous with hypocrisy if they are not condemning the bad actors on both sides.  And yes, while I condemn all the riots, I would say that riots where rioters kill people and burn down buildings are worse than those that don't have those end results, but none of them are in any way acceptable.

To his credit, President Trump immediately condemned the violence, which is more than can be said for many top Democrats in the wake of the protests against police brutality and systemic racism that turned violent.  I wonder if the left would still apply the "mostly peaceful" label to the riot in D.C.  I mean, most people there weren't actually acting violent from what I saw, so put that up as a headline like CNN did a few months ago while everything in the background was on fire.  To his detriment, President Trump mentioned that the election was rigged in the same breath, rendering his call for peace pretty fucking weak.  And no, I don't care if you're offended that I swore, because that is the best way I can think of to describe his comments, which basically amounted to "I love what you're trying to do, but stop the violence, even though the election was stolen!" the way I interpreted them.

Not only did President Trump royally screw that up, but it's largely his fault that the Democrats won both Senate seats in Georgia.  Republicans should still control the Senate, but with their quirky election laws (which Democrats have rightly criticized in the past, though it's certainly up to Georgia how they want to run their damn state), we ended up with a runoff instead.  And in the few months since the election, Trump has constantly bitched about how the electoral process in Georgia was unfair, the election was rigged and stolen, and also vetoed the stimulus bill, putting the two incumbent Republican Senators is really rough spots.  Not surprisingly, the Democrats were able to drum up enough support to eek out victories (one apparently by less than 1%, and the other by just over 1% as of now), but if the same people who showed up in November had showed up now, the Republicans would have 52 seats in the Senate.  Enough of them stayed home to hand the Senate to Kamala Harris and the Democrats.  Well done, President Trump.  I guess the Republicans are guilty of voter suppression in Georgia after all, but they're suppressing their own voters.  Brilliant.  I never would have expected that strategy.

As if I needed one more reason to disbelieve the claims of a massive Trump landslide victory in 2020 undone by widespread election fraud, there's one more interesting tidbit that occurred back in November.  What we actually saw, because of the sheer insanity of the Democrats, was a red wave!  The Republicans basically took every toss-up seat in the House, massively outperforming polls and expectations, leaving Democrats with a razor thin majority.  They took most of the toss-ups in the Senate, which the Democrats were expected to control handily.  Across the country, Republicans won victory after victory.  Why?  Because overall, though certainly not on every issue, their ideas are better than those of the Democrats who are being taken over by the far left.  Their principles are better.  Their policies are better.  In reality, the Democrats only gained the majority in the House because of the more moderate candidates.  And the 2020 election was a repudiation of two things: Leftism and Donald Trump.  Republicans did well, except Donald Trump.  You would think the House and Senate would be more blue if there was massive fraud.  But it wasn't.  Because people came out to vote against Donald Trump.  I voted for him because I agree with him on more issues than I do with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden has gone to the left, which is where Kamala Harris has always resided.  However, I hate a lot of what Trump has said on Twitter, as well as in person.  I don't like how he handled the riots and racial tensions, and even though I don't think there would have been major differences in results if Hillary Clinton was President, he still could have handled the pandemic better.

One thing Trump did well was getting the vaccine distribution started before the end of 2020, which the media constantly "fact" checked him on, saying it was not true "according to experts" or whatever that vaccine distribution could begin before the end of 2020.  More media lies.  The real conspiracy is one that no one is hiding anymore, and it's the lies and suppression of the mainstream media coupled with social media removing articles that don't fit the narrative, or that push the wrong narrative, even if they're true.  And on top of that, the fact checking is a joke.  Candace Owens had a post fact checked and deemed false in which she claimed (correctly, clearly) that Joe Biden isn't technically the President-Elect until after the electors vote.  After threatening to sue, the fact checkers finally reversed their own lie.  Yet no fact checkers went after anyone who called Joe Biden the President-Elect rather than the presumed President-Elect prior to the electors voting (nor should they have), because pettiness and absurd false fact checks are reserved only for conservatives who push narratives that mainstream media and the Left don't like.

Well, now Joe Biden is the President-Elect, and in two weeks, he'll be our President.  I don't like it, but the fact is that he will also be my President.  Joe is a likeable enough guy.  I don't hate him.  His personality is better than President Trump's personality.  He's less divisive.  But I hate what he now stands for, and that Kamala Harris will be the VP.  Whatever happened to the days of the person who got the second most votes for President becoming VP, or what would happen if we could split the ticket and have a Biden-Pence administration?  I mean, it won't happen, but I think we'd be less polarized.  The country is on the brink right now.  Joe Manchin must lead the way, and Joe Biden must follow his lead.  He may be the one to stop utter chaos from breaking out, much worse than what we saw in D.C. today.  Thank God for him.  It would be a very bad decision if we didn't opt for moderation and bipartisanship as a nation.  It would not be good if we got rid of the filibuster, but if the Democrats decided to pack the courts and add more states to hold on to power, tensions would continue to ramp up, and we could truly have a nation that breaks into two.  Now is not the time to ram the extreme leftist agenda down the throats of the country.  Joe Manchin needs to be a McCainian maverick for his party and for the good of our nation.

Also, to those of you who are saying that VP Pence betrayed our nation today by not stopping the certification, do you honestly think that it would somehow be a good idea for us to allow him or any VP (which Kamala Harris may be in four years if Biden can still stand and speak) the authority to overturn the votes and the will of the American people?  Like seriously?  Take a breath and think about that for a moment.  Maybe say a prayer for Joe Manchin.  End it with "Amen."  Or if you're an idiot with a stupid agenda and little to no understanding of language, end it with "Awomen."