Mitch Albom on The Notion of "Quiet Quitting"

I really hate this trendy new phrase, and the whole idea!  Unlike these quitters, I gave each job my all and felt satisfaction in doing it, so I resent this "doing the bare minimum" thing. Why even work at all? 

But I love how Mitch Albom sums it up in his column at Jewish World Review:

"I'll tell you who doesn't believe in quiet quitting. People who have their own businesses. Those folks routinely work nights AND weekends. They think about work even when they are nowhere near it. Why aren't those people complaining, slacking or slowing down?

Because they are the beneficiaries of their own hard work. And if there's anything to lament about quiet quitting, this is it. We've become so self-centered — sorry young folks, this applies to you — that the idea of doing great if someone else is the boss has lost its appeal. We all want to be the star. The subject of the selfie. The focus of the post.

Short of that, we're less motivated. When Huffington suggested people should find 'joy' at their jobs, she was mocked on the internet. But there are many jobs that can be extremely rewarding without you being the boss, the profit center or the main focus. You just have to find them. And believe that doing a job well is its own reward.

Quiet quitters often say they are just trying to put work in its proper perspective. Maybe. Or, it may be more like Peter in 'Office Space' said: 'It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.'"

 

Hopefully, the bosses will start doing some "quiet firing" soon!

Biden's Record

Here's a perfect cartoon by Gary Varvel! 

Spectacular Apollo Space Photos!

 

Here are some breathtaking photos, from the UK Guardian: 

"'Look closely and there’s a tear in Armstrong’s eye’: the Apollo space missions as you’ve never seen them before"

"Nasa’s original moon mission photographs, kept locked in a freezer in Houston, are some of the most vital artefacts of human endeavour. Now, they have been remastered for a new century. Introduction by Tim Peake. Photographs restored by Andy Saunders"

Seeing Red, on "Green"

I'm seeing red, on "green"! Here's a headline I hoped I'd never see:

'Green' California Finalizes Ban on Sale of Gas-Powered Cars, Third of US Auto Market Likely to Follow

"California regulators, on Thursday, will vote to put in place a sweeping plan to restrict and ultimately ban the sale of gas-powered cars, a move that Newsom described as the beginning of the end for the internal combustion engine, as reported by the New York Times. To put the 'green' insanity into perspective, only 12 percent of passenger vehicles currently sold in California are electric-powered vehicles. (EVs)

"Even worse — for tens of millions of American fortunate not to live in California — the ban, scheduled to take effect by 2035, will likely speed a wider transition to electric vehicles as multiple states are expected to follow the lead and pass similar bans. Given that 12 states already follow California’s emission 'standards,' if just those 12 states follow the ban — and most if not all are expected to, per The Times — gas-powered passenger vehicles would likely be banned in about a third of the U.S. auto market."

These people are crazy! Their "green" anti-oil obsession is destroying the country.

CDC Satire

Here's a piece of satire by the Washington Post's columnist Alexandra Petri: CDC’s updated guidelines for living with the zombie apocalypse

I bet some people took this more seriously than they take COVID!

The Continuing Insanity of the Iran Nuclear Deal

This excerpt from Melanie Phillips' Substack column is a definite must-read -- especially by Joe Biden!

"The hellish ruins of American leadership."

"If reports of Biden's latest concessions to Iran are true, this comes close to treason"

"One shouldn’t be surprised, of course; but it’s hard not to be astounded, horrified, shocked to the very core by the lengths to which the Biden administration is reportedly going to surrender America and the free world to the Islamic revolutionary regime of Iran. 

Two weeks ago, an attempt was made to murder the author Sir Salman Rushdie, who has been living since 1989 under an Iranian regime fatwa ordering his killing, by a Muslim devotee of the regime who repeatedly stabbed Rushdie on a New York stage where he was about to deliver a talk.

Two days previously, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) terror network was charged with soliciting the assassination in Washington DC of the former US National Security Advisor, John Bolton. The same man also reportedly offered $1 million for the murder of the former US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.  

Now it appears that Iran is moving towards accepting the terms of the nuclear deal laid down by the European Union acting in effect as a proxy for the United States, which has bent every sinew to secure such a deal ever since President Joe Biden arrived in the White House.

On Gatestone, Khaled abu Toameh reports the extreme alarm in the Arab world about this deal. He quotes  Sayed Zahra, deputy editor of the Gulf's Akhbar Al-Khaleej newspaper, who accuses Biden of being in collusion with Iran and says that the alleged breakthrough appears to have occurred after Biden decided to waive two pre-conditions:

    'First, Biden decided to waive the demand to include Iran's terrorist role in the region in the talks [in Vienna],' Zahra wrote. 'Biden decided not to address this issue at all, nor the role of terrorist militias affiliated with Iran in the Arab countries.' The second demand Biden gave up, according to Zahra, includes the issue of Iran's ballistic missile program and the threat it poses to the security and stability of the region and the US itself and its interests.

Good grief. Last month, the IRGC said Iran had ballistic missiles capable of turning New York into 'hellish ruins'. If this account of Biden’s concession is true, then it really does begin to look like the Biden administration is committing something very close to treason."

Skeptical of the CDC's COVID Reporting

Dr Eric Topol writes that "‘Living with Covid’ should be countered by containing the virus once and for all" and that the "CDC’s position should be countered by exploiting the science and our clear capabilities of fully containing the virus."

He says, "With the revised guidelines, the CDC continue to push a contrived metric which they call 'community level' to 'know your risk for serious illness'. As defined by the CDC website, this 'is determined by the higher of the new admissions and inpatient beds metrics, based on the current level of new cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days'. This is not appropriate guidance since Americans would be rightfully concerned about getting infected, not stressing hospital resources in their community. The right United States map, is the 'community transmission' which simply reflects the number of confirmed cases in the past seven days per region. That map currently shows that 94% of the country’s population is at high-risk of transmitting Covid whereas the community level map is only 39.7%.

It is a deceptive way for CDC to present a rose-colored-glasses semblance of lower risk. That, too, is unnecessarily promoting spread of Covid to others, especially including the vulnerable, that it purports to want to protect. No less, this is further exacerbating the toll of long Covid, a condition that millions of Americans are suffering from, due to the virus’s massive, unbridled spread throughout the pandemic."

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Above is the CDC's Community Transmission Map for today; this is the map they'd prefer you not see.

David McCullough

The great author and historian David McCullough passed away last week. He was one of my favorite nonfiction authors along with Robert A. Caro, and I enjoyed such books as "Truman", "The Greater Journey" (Famous Americans in Paris), "Mornings on Horseback" (Theodore Roosevelt), and "The Pioneers". His voice provided the narration for the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War, and it made that film even better.

Author Candice Millard writes that "From David McCullough we learned that it is never enough to simply describe the past. To read one of his books is not just to understand the people who populate its pages, but to feel like you know them. As a reader, the only way to achieve that kind of intimacy is to find a writer like McCullough, whose own fascination with his subjects is palpable in every word he wrote."

It's The Fatwa, Stupid!

From the NY Times Breaking News e-newsletter: "Investigators Hunt for Motivation and Movements of Man Accused in Rushdie Attack. The writer was gravely wounded and on a ventilator. Neither the hospital treating him nor his agent had updates on his condition early Saturday." 

"Hunting for motivation"? Are you kidding? As soon as I heard about the attack I thought, "They finally got him". Doesn't everyone remember the death sentence imposed on Salman Rushdie by Iran after "The Satanic Verses"?

And here's Biden still working to make a nuclear deal with Iran. Read Melanie Phillips, who asks, "Just Whose Side is the Biden Team On?"

COVID Warnings

From USA Today 8/4 Coronavirus Watch:

"'COVID is over' might trend within social media circles, but weekly U.S. death tolls tell a different story.

In July, more than 12,500 Americans died of COVID-19, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. 

'We’re sitting on this horrible plateau,' said Dr. Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease specialist with Pro Health Care in New York. 'It’s been this way for the past couple of months, and we’re getting used to it.'"

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This is from CNBC:

"If you aren’t up-to-date on your Covid vaccines or booster shots, Dr. Anthony Fauci has a stark warning for you: Get those doses now, or prepare for a harsh Covid fall and winter.

'If they don’t get vaccinated or they don’t get boosted, they’re going to get into trouble,' Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, told Los Angeles radio station KNX News 97.1′s 'KNX In Depth' on Tuesday.

That applies to a clear majority of Americans. Nearly 228 million, or roughly 70%, of Americans were unvaccinated, hadn’t completed their primary vaccine series or hadn’t gotten their first booster dose as of July 21, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation."

 

Americans continue to ignore these warnings at their own peril.

A Pox on This Pandemic!

Just when you thought our COVID pandemic couldn't get any worse, now the U.S. is experiencing thousands of cases of monkeypox.  This disease can be spread in the air, like COVID; but unlike COVID, it is primarily spread by men having sex with men. But because this is a politically correct group, public health officials have not been more emphatic about stopping the disease and seem to be more concerned about the word "monkeypox".  And so you have headlines like this:

"San Francisco holds "kink festival" despite fears it'll become monkeypox superspreader event".

You have to read Allahpundit's column for yourself. So much for lockdowns and cancellations!

Practice Makes Perfect for this Jewish Doctor

Isn't this marvelous?  

From Jewish Telegraphic Agency: "The day after his 100th birthday on July 10, Dr. Howard Tucker headed downtown to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Cleveland Guardians baseball game.

'I just hope I can get the ball to the plate,' Tucker said beforehand with a laugh. 'I’ve been practicing.'

Tucker has a solid track record around practicing — certainly when it comes to medicine. Last year, the Guinness Book of World Records verified the Cleveland Heights, Ohio, resident as the world’s oldest practicing doctor. He still teaches medical residents at St. Vincent Charity Medical Center in Cleveland and takes on medical-legal expert witness work in his spare time. One of his 10 grandchildren, Austin Tucker, is currently producing a documentary about his life titled, “What’s Next?”

'I have to keep doing things because I can’t stand being at home,' Tucker said.  'As long as people accept me, I’m going to continue to practice. I enjoy myself.'"