Skip to main content

Winning and a New Blogger

The convoys have continued and caught on. In the middle of winter in Canada, droves are driving to be in conga lines, carry jerry cans, bounce in bouncy castles, and blockade the border. If many more crossings are blocked, the US-Canada border will be closed. As an American, I feel slightly rejected. 

But the protestors are winning. Alberta and Saskatchewan have dropped, or will drop, their mandates and Quebec dropped its plans for a unvaxxed tax. Crowds carrying jerry cans (fuel cans) showed up in Ottawa after police threatened to arrest anyone bringing fuel. GiveSendGo, the protestors' crowd funding platform, thumbed their nose at a Canadian court order to block payments to the protestors.


More convoys are happening around the world and there is supposed to be one scheduled for Washington, DC. I won't be going. I support the convoys, but it's not my fight: life is normal here at Cafe Americain and it's hopping at work. Dropping everything to go to Detroit to sit in your car and help block the Ambassador Bridge is for desperate people. As it is, it's busy at work (where they've finally given up on enforcing masks) and there are more people out and about than I've seen in two years. We have jobs here and we don't have the time or inclination for protesting. If Canada said that it's time for everybody--vaxxed, unvaxxed, half-vaxxed, boosted, recovered or never ill--to get back to work and school (i.e., ditch the mandates), the protests would be over tomorrow.

Blogger Bad Cattitude thinks they're drunk on emergency powers. He observes that it doesn't matter what the majority in a republic thinks:

if 90% vote 10% into slavery, that is democracy.

in fact, many “democracies” used to do just this.

we now (justly) revile it.

Exactly, we live in a republic with democratic elements. 

they will try to hide behind slippery claims of “democracy” to use appeals to the fact they are in office to justify increasing the power of their office.

but this constitutes invalid reasoning.

democracy is not freedom.

democracy is one of the more pernicious forms of tyranny ever devised: the tyranny of the majority.

even a king must fear the mob for he is one and they are many; but the mob need fear nothing when its proportions sufficiently swell.

such a mob is not moral, nor just, nor fair.

its numbers bestow no special wisdom or ethical high ground.

it is simply force, applied by the many upon the few.

If you want to read more takes like this on COVID and political science from Bad Cattitude, his(?) blog is now in the blogroll. 

Comments

Anonymous said…
I've been wondering who pointed me to bad cattitude. Thanks Lori.

Popular posts from this blog

Cigna is Making Progress

Yesterday as I put my lunch in the refrigerator at work, I noticed a bunch of unfamiliar people in the break room. One of them, Pepe, started in: they were there for the health fair, they would check your cholesterol, the sugar in your blood, your height, your weight, and it would just take six minutes. A coworker asked him if he'd ever considered a career in sales. Just for blog fodder, I participated. They really were fast, and one even found me at my desk (in an office nearly half the size of a city block) after the tests were finished. My HDL cholesterol was 65--up from 42 from a year and a half ago, and up from 57, where it was last year when I'd been three months a low-carb diet . A level over 60 is considered good. I haven't taken any medication to make this happen. I went on a low-carb diet and eliminated wheat. I also take vitamin and mineral supplements in addition to a high-nutrient diet. What impressed me more, though, was that the nurse (and Cigna) said that bl...

Thanksgiving recipes for Pumpkin Pie & Cranberries--printable!

If you'd rather read a printed recipe than watch a video, here are my recent recipes for Better than Grandma's Pumpkin Pie and Probiotic Cranberry-Apple Relish.  Hat tip to Dana Carpender, whose pumpkin pie recipe inspired this one. The cranberry-apple ferment is entirely my own creation.  Pumpkin Pie--no grains, sugar or emulsifiers Crust 2 cups shelled raw pecans 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon monk fruit powder* (or 3 tablespoons sugar substitute) 4 tablespoons butter, melted 2 tablespoons water Pumpkin Pie Filling 1 pie pumpkin 1-1/2 cups half and half (with no thickeners) 3 eggs 3-4 teaspoons monk fruit powder* (or 3/4 cup sugar substitute) 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice Preheat the oven to 350F. Stab the top of the pumpkin all the way through the flesh in a few places at the top. Place the pumpkin on a cookie sheet and bake for 1 hour. Let cool. While the pumpkin is baking, put the pecans in a food processor with the S blade and run until they are finely...

Fly with Reuteri

If you're planning to travel by plane and you want to keep enjoying the benefits of l. reuteri yogurt, you might have gotten sticker shock from the price of l. reuteri probiotics. MyReuteri * costs $46 to $83 for 30 capsules, depending on the CFUs (colony-forming units, or the number of viable microorganisms). If you're thinking about economizing by putting some yogurt in a sturdy container and taking it with you, you can do that. I'll break down the pros and cons and look at some alternatives.  Photo from Unsplash . Cost Yogurt might be less expensive than probiotics, but it isn't free. A half-cup serving costs about 70¢ to make if you start with a previous batch. It contains about 90 billion CFUs if fermented for 36 hours.  This is a lot less than $5.56 for two capsules of 50 billion CFU MyReuteri, but for a one-week vacation, you'd only save $34 by eating yogurt instead. (You can freeze any unused capsules for later.)  Furthermore, the yogurt would have to go in ...

30-second Fix for a Cracked Stick Blender

Use Mighty Fixit (if you still have some from 2012) or Rescue Tape (which looks like a similar product) to fix a cracked stick blender. After I fixed the attachment, I washed it in the sink and the tape held up. I also wrapped a knife handle several years ago, and it's been through thousands of washings.

No Dairy BiotiQuest Ferment in Apples + Cranberries + Celery

Can you have too much l. reuteri or SIBO yogurt? Yes--more than 1/2 cup of yogurt a day can raise your insulin or, in some people, cause sinus congestion or an upset stomach. Luckily, there are other foods you can ferment.  One of my favorites is apples, cranberries and celery fermented with BiotiQuest Ideal Immunity probiotics. This recipe is slightly different from the one I posted before--I've left out the brown sugar and maple syrup since the apples provide plenty of sugar.  Here's my four-minute video showing how to make it: You can buy the seedling mat here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IDQD32Y/ref=dp_iou_view_item?ie=UTF8&th=1