Mindconnection eNL, 2020-09-20

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Item 1. For As of the first week of September, six Democratic mayors in Minnesota have formally announced their support for Donald Trump. Among the reasons cited, Biden has shown no interest in the needs of the working class. These mayors are not anomalous, many elected Democrats see the Democratic Party they believed in no longer exists and they are supporting Donald Trump. Polls that are conducted honestly are tending to show in formerly "solid Democrat" states this pattern of disgusted Democrats rejecting socialism, confiscatory taxes, racism, violence, rank hypocrisy, and about 16 dozen other objectionable aspects of what pretends to be the Democratic Party.

Item 2. Inexplicably, Barry Soetoro (aka, "Obama") was given the Nobel Peace Prize and the considerable prize money merely for winning the 2008 election--before he took office. This was an illegal immigrant with sealed records, no significant accomplishments, a poor academic record, and an overtly Marxist world view. Every Marxist regime has brought death and misery, most famously Hitler's National Socialist Party (NAZI) and Stalin's Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. So on what basis did the committee give him that award? Nothing based in reality, that is for sure.

Soetoro proved to be among the most war-mongering Presidents in all USA history. In his four years as POTUS, Donald Trump has neither started a war nor brought the USA into an international conflict. Trump is the first POTUS in four decades to do that. To go backward to the next peaceful POTUS, you have to go back to 1953 (Ike ended the Korean War) and then 1933 (Hoover did not get us into war). You have to excuse FDR's getting us into WWII, that was necessary because of what Wilson did to botch up WWI and its conclusion. While FDR was the third worst POTUS of all time due to his domestic policies, his handling of WWII was nothing less than brilliant. It's too bad his cousin TR lost to Woodrow Wilson, who subsequently gave us the IRS, WWI, and WWII.

The good news here is that President Trump has (rightfully) been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. While Soetoro should not have been nominated for it, should not have been awarded for it, should not have accepted it, and should not have been allowed to keep it, perhaps now the Nobel Prize Committee has come to its senses. That would be good news, indeed.

Item 3. Remember "Neutron Jack" Welch? He headed up GE for quite some time and was a darling of the business press. He was a celebrity for a while, and touted for being some kind of business wizard. He groomed executives under him, and when he picked from that group his successor he fired all of them except his successor (to ensure no rival to his successor within the firm). These "Welch alumni" went on to destroy every company that hired them. An example is JC Penney. As was usual for a Welch Alumni, this guy ignored what made Penny work and basically assumed all existing employees there were morons. He implemented changes that only a moron would implement, and JC Penny began a slide into bankruptcy. The good news for Penny is they got a reprieve recently. Read the full story here: https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2020/09/10/bankrupt-j-c-penney-gets-a-lifeline-while-another-department-store-files/

Prior to Jack Welch, it was the domain of Harvard Business School graduates to destroy the companies that hired them. Due to the perceived stupidity shortage, Welch provided a second source.

Item 4. Actual Democrats (commonly called "moderate Democrats" because they are not blatantly socialist or America-hating) are standing up to the America-hating socialists who took over their party. They are pressuring Nutcase Nancy to quit obstructing the process of stimulus package development. This is good news, but what would be fantastic news is if Nutcase is ousted this fall by the retards who have so far approved of her destructive insanity by voting her back into office. Failing that, there may be enough Democrats to remove her as Speaker if the "Democrats" retain the House. The socialists have done such a horrible job under the leadership of Nutcase these past two years, voters will probably not want the "Democrats" in charge again. And that would also be a good news outcome.

Item 5. It's inexplicable, but for decades American Jews typically voted Democrat. That sad fact is rapidly changing. Read the full story here: https://www.conservativehq.org/post/why-jews-are-switching-to-trump. The voting decision of an individual should never be based on identity politics. It should be based on that person's own informed judgment. I have Jewish friends in both camps. The conservative ones can tell me why they vote the way they do. The liberals have yet to give me a rational explanation, it's just an identity thing for them as far as I can tell. One of my Democrat Jewish friends is even a certified genius. I hope he will soon be among the converts to "Never Democrat".

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How can you know when something is true or not?

There are some mostly reliable online sources, such as these:

• snopes.com

• factcheck.org

• leadstories.com

I say mostly reliable, because they are not always correct. They do make a good first stop however, because they often provide some explanation. You can also do an online search using a keyword related to a topic. Many people say they "google it", which shows they are not discerning about the search tools they use. Google provides the worst search experience of all the major search engines (the reason has to do with their greed and lack of a moral compass). I use Bing, but Yahoo and Duck Duck Go are also popular among people who want a good search experience and know how to get it.

But as is often noted, "You can't always believe what you read online". Let's take two questions that have been "resolved" incorrectly by the lamestream media and the online fact checkers:

1. Was Barrack Obama born in the United States?

2. Is Michelle Obama a man or a woman?

To answer Question 1, we can ask more questions, such as:

• Why did the divorce papers of Obama's biological parents say "One child, born in Kenya"?
• Why was there no record his mother was in Hawaii at the time of his birth? She was a minor, so who paid for her plane ticket there and back? Why no record of a hotel stay or hospital admission?
• Why is there no newspaper "baby announcement" from the paper in the hospital where he was allegedly born?
• Why does he use the same social security number as a deceased person?
• Why was Team Obama unable to obtain a birth certificate for him? This is issued by the state, not the hospital. If you've ever applied for one, you understand that anybody in the USA can get one.
• How did he get into not just one, but two, Ivy League schools despite being only a C student? (Foreign exchange program).

To answer Question 2, we can make some observations, such as:

• Michelle has a male brow. Women do not have this, it exists because of the XY chromosome. That chromosomal pattern is what defines a male; females are XX.
• There is a high school yearbook picture of Michael Robinson, but Michelle Robinson Obama has produced no such thing.
• Michelle has a male shoulders to hip ratio. This normally results from testosterone (from male testicles) instead of estrogen during puberty.
• Michelle's eyes are the same size. In women, one eye is smaller than the other. This also is a function of XY versus YY.
• Michelle has a prominent Adam's apple, also a male feature. However, unlike the brow and eyes, it is sometimes present in females.
• The presence of children in their family can be explained by adoption.
• These two people might very well qualify for being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most sealed records. It's not that they are hiding something, it's that they are hiding quite a bit.
• Libtards say that at 5'11", Michelle's size 12 shoe size is normal. But Melania Trump is also 5'11" and wears a size 9.5.
• Barrack's own brother says Michelle is a man. Not conclusive in itself, but it sure helps paint the picture.

So you see, you can use your own mind to determine whether some statement is true or false or to answer a question of the either/or type. The trap here is if you are merely trying to confirm your existing idea you will suffer from confirmation bias.

To prevent that, try this same process for the other side of the question. In these two examples, you can try all day long and still not come up with much.

Question 1:

• Why is he so articulate? Answer: Coaching and practice.
• Wouldn't the Democratic Party have vetted him? Answer: Obviously, not.

Question 2:

• Michelle wears dresses. Yes, and those fashion choices come across like a man trying to pass as a woman. Really "original" you might say.
• Michelle is a female name. Any man can use a feminine name, that's what crossd-dressers and transsexuals do all the time.

Asking questions or making observations does not always produce a clear answer. But use these two tools, and you will seldom be fooled.

I am talking about masks. Here is what is typically happening:

• Joe buys a disposable mask, wears it for days. Finally replaces it when his wife complains that it stinks.
• Joe throws old mask in trash, flushes it down the toilet, or tosses it out the car window.
• Millions of people doing this means mountains of used masks, most of which are biohazards, enter the environment each week.
• The masks do not really protect anyone, as a virus can easily go through the fibers. They do reduce aerosols.
• Masks still leak out the bottom and sides, they merely reduce how much is ejected from the front.
• The masks also do nothing about the fact that most people don't wash their hands after crapping, and studies have shown that more than 70% of Americans have fecal matter under their cuticles.

What is the solution? A rewashable face covering. To solve the penultimate problem from the list above, make that a cloth gaiter. A gaiter:

• Still doesn't fix the fecal matter problem, but perhaps the act of washing the gaiter will trigger the idea of washing your hands if yours are "fecally enhanced"?
• Does not stink, if you treat it the same way you treat underpants (assuming you are normal).
• Goes in the wash, not the trash.
• Does not protect anyone any more than a mask does, but a patterned gaiter can look cool. You can get them with Captain America's shield on them, you can get various skull patterns, you can get them in camo, and you can even get custom ones with whatever you want on them.
• They cover sides and bottom, no side-blow onto another person.

Plus, you can wear the gaiters long after the Covid Scare has passed. They are great for helping to protect your lungs from cold air in the winter. Or if you ski or ride a motorcycle, they are entirely appropriate.

While masks are not particularly expensive, you have to buy a large quantity of them because you will probably go through half a dozen a day unless you enjoy walking around with a breeding ground for mold, bacteria, and fungus strapped across your face. You can buy a dozen gaiters for the cost of two weeks of masks and wear them for several years.  You can keep a spare gaiter in your car, desk, gym bag, briefcase, etc., so you always have a clean one available.

Going with gaiters is not the correct solution in all cases. Here is a different scenario. Jill is an RN, and she works in a hospital:

• She needs something the virus can't go through, not just a cloth covering. Regardless of how strong her immune system is, it can produce only so many antibodies per hour. She needs to limit her exposure.
• Jill wears a hospital-grade (N95) mask, and she goes through several per day. She washes her hands all the way to the elbows each time she changes her mask.
• A gaiter won't work for her in the hospital, it's just a cloth covering.
• Jill may choose to wear a gaiter when going to the gym (that demographic is unlikely to be vulnerable due to lifestyle choices) or when shopping.
• Jill is refinishing her basement, and she's doing drywall work. She uses a fiber respirator designed specifically for that purpose.
• Jill will be varnishing some wooden furniture and she recently bought a charcoal canister respirator for that purpose.

With socialist mayors and governors in the USA defunding police and letting violent offenders out of prison while hate groups incite violence by jawjacking about non-existent "systemic racism", it has become unsafe for anybody of any color in socialist-controlled cities and states. In many of these same jurisdictions, citizens have been deprived of their Second Amendment rights and that compounds the problem.

Being adept at the three self-defense techniques I am about to describe will allow you to safely exit most violent confrontations even if your opponent is twice your size. But for these to be effective, you must practice them so you can execute automatically without having to think. Practice does not make perfect, it makes permanent. So find a partner you can practice with and make it a regular thing. For example, you agree to meet to practice for 55 minutes every Tuesday and every Thursday. Without that level of commitment, you will fail to integrate these tools and they won't be available when you need them.

Let me first establish a point of reference. In the late 1980s, I ran a Kung Fu school from my home in Ft Worth, TX. One of my students wanted to compete in the annual Dallas Citywide Freestyle Martial Arts Tournament. He'd never take a martial arts class before and he'd been training with me for only a few months when he told me this. We were still drilling basics, and he was at about the yellow belt level. So he was a novice.

Typically, it takes about a year to move through the novice ranks. And these stress basic movements rather than fighting. The next level, intermediate, takes about two years to move through. The truly dedicated student, after three years of training, can reach black belt status. Another year of training, and she or he might be ready to compete in a tournament. We had two months, not four years, to prepare him.

So what I did was teach him one technique. In class, that's all we did. He would use that against other students in sparring, and they would use what they knew to counter him. He had to master all sorts of basics quickly to make his execution flawless. Stance, foot angle, hip angle, initial launch, sliding of feet and twisting of body, chambering the arms, etc. Many little pieces. He practiced in class, practiced on his own, and practiced with his wife. Every day, he put in at least an hour. He got to be very good with this one technique. At the tournament, he defeated every opponent until he was finally defeated by the previous year's grand champion. He took the second place trophy. After only six months of martial arts training.

Throat punch

This devastating technique ends any confrontation, but only if executed correctly. If they see it coming, you are likely not to hit your target. So first, you must turn your body sideways and point your dominant hip toward your opponent. You need to be less than an arm's length away. Now jab hard and fast with your lead hand. When practicing with a partner (required), you must learn the proper distance and how to get there from various starting positions. Have your partner hold his hand in front of his throat and hit his open palm. Practice this move in air, as well; only when doing this snap your hand back at the moment you imagine striking the throat. Remember, it's a punch not a push. Very fast out, very fast back.

Finger demolition

Some attackers like to grab. They may grab your hair or your shirt, or they may put you in a bear hug or a half-nelson. The nice thing about this is they have already put you in the correct position for a devastating counter attack. There are three variations, practice all three:

1. Grab his wrist to hold his hand in place, then smash his fingers with the fist of your other hand. Simply striking without the wrist grab will allow his hand to bounce away. You want to break fingers.

2. Grab any finger with one hand, then grab another finger with the other. Quickly and violently pull them in opposite directions.

3. Grab his wrist to hold his hand in place, then with your other hand grab any finger or the thumb and sharply snap it back to break it.

Shin smash

This is incredibly painful. Without looking away from your opponent's eyes, bring your rear foot forward with toes pointing outward and heel inward. Violently kick the shin, then set your foot down upon completion of the kick. A variation is to use your lead foot, facing the other direction. Practice both variations. You can use one, then the other, to quickly disable two attackers.

Combining all three into a single attack makes sure this person can't hurt you. Practice various combinations. Try closing the distance between you with a rear foot shin smash, which puts you in a great position for a throat punch from the other side of your body. Then drop your hands to grab one of his and break a finger. Finish by violently twisting your hip that is facing him and bring him around as you throw him to the ground. The momentum from this move means he will strike the ground hard.

Weapons

What if the attacker has a weapon?

• Knife. Disable the knife hand with a finger demolition move. Practice with a partner who is using a butter knife and instruct that person to try to "cut" you with it. Can your partner pull the knife through your gripping hand? If so, you are too slow with the finger attack. Try also pushing that knife hand into the attacker, using your body weight and forward momentum to push the person back at the same time.

• Club. Let them swing it, and then move in to execute all three moves. When you're done, pick up the club and sharply strike a knee with it.

• Gun. Law-abiding gun owners typically receive training and typically practice using the weapon. Criminals just have the weapon and tend not to be very good with it. This works to your advantage. Again, you will have to practice with a partner and don't try this in real life until you are an expert at it. Practice jamming the wrist of the attacker's gun holding hand. So you step to the outside of the gun holding hand and then thrust both of your hands hard against the gun holding forearm and drive into the attacker. This puts the muzzle about 90 degrees away from the line of fire needed to hit you. Once in that position, press with one hand and use the other to rapidly strike the closest eye and then the throat. Smash down hard on the collar bone repeatedly until you hear it snap.

A variation on that last situation is to grab the arm at the wrist with one hand and grab his hand with the other while twisting hard to break the finger that is in the trigger guard. Twist up, so the gun points to his face instead of at your feet.

Cops

Suppose you see a cop in trouble. Can you save him or her with these techniques? Maybe, but these are frontal assault methods. You can take out the perp from behind. For example, come up from behind and do one or more of these moves:

• Punch him in the kidneys, hard. Hit at least six times in succession. Practice doing this, so you feel what a hard punch should be.

• Stomp on his heel. This should make him scream in pain.

• Kick him hard in the calf, just below his knee.

• Punch him in the neck hard, just below his head.

Photo taken a couple of weeks after my 59th birthday.

Note that the information provided here will likely conflict with the "fad of the moment" and other unsustainable, unproductive ways of looking at health and fitness.

Article appears below.

During the early days of the shutdown, I was climbing on a wall I built in my backyard. I still use it (recent climb is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C40Sca-qu_s), but once the gyms re-opened, I returned to them. It's important to support those climbing gyms. If all of them make it through this period, I will be surprised.

See all of my climbing videos here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCyb67uKOxW_TsG6BVPbBIQ/videos

What is exercise?

When most people go to the gym, take a run, or work out at home this is their goal. They just want to exercise. Get the blood flowing. Burn off some calories. Work up a sweat Use those muscles a bit to prevent atrophy. Many "experts" advise this, and those who should know better say it's all people are willing to do.

What is training?

Training is a systematic means of challenging your body one muscle group at a time, challenging it hard enough to stimulate the adaptive response. You do specific exercises at a specific time, and you do them a specific way. Everything is planned and then executed largely to plan. Merely exercising does not trigger the adaptive response, but training does. This response elevates testosterone, among other things. When testosterone is elevated, your body stores calcium in your bones. During that time, it also burns off fat and builds muscle; this combo is how a training individual achieves the ripped look.

What is performance?

Many people confuse training with performance. They think of their workouts in terms of how heavy their weights are and how many reps they can do. Such people often ask questions like, "How much can you bench?" When I climb, that's performing. I am not trying to stimulate the adaptive response, I am trying to use the results of it to achieve an athletic purpose. I may do specific training for climbing technique, but I do not climb as a means of building muscle. When I train muscle groups with a combination of weights, bands, bars, and bodyweight exercises, I do not focus on numbers. I focus on muscle tension. Squeezing the target muscles makes it harder to do the exercise, but it makes the exercise more productive. Working the muscles through their full range of motion at proper tempo is harder than swinging them through partial reps. But it is orders of magnitude more productive.

Go systemic

If you do not have a systematic training program, you are not optimizing the frequency or magnitude of the response that produces the muscular development and fat control (or loss, as the case may be) so critical to good health and good physical appearance. You can exercise in addition to such a program, but you cannot exercise in lieu of it and expect good results. It just does not happen.

What is the point of it?

Let's look at this for men, noting for women it's similar.

Most men (in the USA) give up athletics in their 40s, because they lack the physical prowess of their youth. Blow number one. In their 50s, most of them suffer from chronic back pain or at least episodes that happen too often. In their 60s, they find it difficult to do physical things that young men easily do. For example, move a dresser or mow the lawn. At age 65, the average American male cannot life a 10lb vacuum cleaner. In their early 70s, they become increasingly isolated from the world around them because walking is difficult. By their mid-70s, most of them have lost their mobility. They spend the next few years dying in a humiliating fashion.

That's most guys. The guys who exercise, maybe by (for example) walking three miles each day forestall the problems that we start seeing in the 50s among the sedentary. And the problems are less severe until they force the man to reduce or stop his walks.

What about the guys who train? They start feeling a slowdown in their early 60s, and when they hit 70 they don't have the physique they had at 60. But they still look strong. Sylvester Stallone is an example of this. There's some visible decline in muscularity, as the years go by. But they don't lose their mobility. They get progressively weaker, but not "dependency" kind of weak. They can still move that dresser, mow that lawn, and lift that vacuum cleaner. Then either they get an illness and die from that after a fairly short time or they just die peacefully with little notice. But until that happens, they are active and mobile. No humiliating final years for them, they are good until the very end. That is the point of it.

How can I find the time to train?

You already have that time. Do the math, here.

• If you spend 45 minutes training for 6 days per week, add up the hours you'd spend between this point in your life and age 90 (14,040 per year or 421,200 for a 60 year old). You can pick any point at which to start and end, it need not be 60 and 90. Start with how old you are now and end with how old you expect to be when you die. Or just use 30 years to keep it simple. You could just assume half a million hours of training, it doesn't matter.
• Now in another column, add up the missing years due to premature death (12 years times 8760 hours or 105,120 hours), hours spent seeking and getting medical care (maybe 5,000 hours), hours lost due to inefficiencies resulting from muscular atrophy (another 5,000), and hours consumed during three to four years of being immobile in a nursing home (call it 30,700).

Gee, at first glance it looks like the winner is going the death and despair route. But wait. This is not an apples to oranges comparison. When you invest in training, you get so much gain in physical capacity and performance (part of which includes a gain in mental capacity and performance), you can not only zero out the hours you spend as a cost you can add hours of productive time gained. When you don't train, you give those up. So to simplify, when you train you gain.

And it's not just about the time saved, you have to look at life quality, pain/suffering, and financial costs. Even if you didn't apply the payback in terms of time gained, training is a clear winner. As for anyone who can't fit it into their schedule, cancelling all television watching is the usual remedy. Or some other time-waster, such as arguing with strangers on anti-social media or having conversations about how bad things are.

Train on!

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.

Actor James Woods has an IQ of 184. That is about 100 points higher than Joe Biden's estimated IQ. The average IQ is 100, and you need an IQ of 130 or higher to get into Mensa. Donald Trump's IQ, at 156, would qualify him for Mensa with room to spare. He would actually qualify for membership in the Triple Nine Society.

Evening news is where they begin with "Good Evening," and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.