As Epic Systems continues with plans to return staff to its Verona campus amid the COVID-19 pandemic, employees there said the leaders of the medical record software company have largely dismissed their concerns, stifled dissent and retaliated against some managers, fostering an atmosphere of fear.
The Weed Worries the Heart
Huh. Who would have thought that lighting a plant on fire and inhaling the smoke might cause health problems? Where have we seen that before?
Cannabis is bad for the heart and may trigger heart attacks and strokes, doctors have warned.
The American Heart Association (AHA), who reviewed the available evidence, now recommend avoiding cannabis to protect the heart.
In a scientific statement, it said smoking cannabis has some of the same harms as tobacco, which is known to be a leading cause of death worldwide.
Research has shown the recreational drug may have health benefits — but smoking cannabis has been linked with a slew of damaging heart problems.
Chemicals inside the drug can cause heart rhythm abnormalities within an hour of smoking, studies show.
The toxins can alter blood pressure, heart rate and trigger inflammation, all of which are underlying culprits of heart disease and strokes.
The AHA warning applied to people who use the drug recreationally, as well as and for medicinal purposes.
Posted by Owen at 0850 hours
Michelle Obama is Sad
I have no doubt that she is. And many people who have had their lives disrupted feel the same way or worse. But this is yet another example of an American Elite who is utterly tone deaf. It reminds me of how the celebrities were putting out videos of how “we are all in this together” and how staying at home sucks… from their 24,000 sq. ft. mansions.
Former US First Lady Michelle Obama has said she is suffering from “low-grade depression” because of the pandemic, racial injustice and the “hypocrisy” of the Trump administration.
She said managing “emotional highs and lows” required “knowing yourself” and “the things that do bring you joy”.
Mrs Obama said she has had difficulties with her exercise routine and sleep.
“I’m waking up in the middle of the night because I’m worrying about something or there’s a heaviness.”
She made the comments during the second episode of her eponymous podcast, for which she was interviewing US journalist Michele Norris.
“These are not, they are not fulfilling times, spiritually,” Mrs Obama said. “I know that I am dealing with some form of low-grade depression.
“Not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife, and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting.”
Posted by Owen at 0838 hours
Push to Strip Police of Non-Lethal Tools Will End in Blood
And that’s the point. The Left is trying to keep police from using non-lethal tools because it leaves the police with two choices when the riot gets out of control: lethal force or retreat. More often than not, the police will retreat and our society will continue to be destabilized. If the police use lethal force, then all the better – in the minds of revolutionaries – more martyrs for the cause. This is all about tearing down society so that it can be rebuilt into something else.
The Charlotte protest was one of the dozens around the country during the past few months where police unleashed tear gas on peaceful protesters. Tear gas has commonly been used as a defensive tool by law enforcement to make rioters disperse.
But during the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies have sometimes been using it offensively, including against peaceful protesters, children, and pregnant women, without providing an escape route or piling on excessive amounts of gas, witnesses and human rights advocates say.
Law enforcement officials say tear gas, if used properly, is an effective tool for crowd control.
Without it, “the only thing left to do is physical force — shields and batons,” said Deputy Police Chief Jeff Estes of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. Estes said he’s been exposed to tear gas and pepper spray many times.
“So, I know the effects. I would rather have that than see what we’ve seen in other places where people who are violently assaulting other people have to get hit with sticks and shields,” Estes said.
Posted by Owen at 0801 hours
WNBA Campaigns For Team Owner’s Opponent
This would be more effective if anyone actually watched the WNBA.
WNBA players took a stance against the co-owner of the Atlanta Dream — who is against the league publicly supporting the Black Lives Matter movement — by showing support for an opponent she is facing in a special election for her Senate seat.
Players from the Dream, Seattle Storm, Chicago Sky and Phoenix Mercury walked into the IMG Academy arena in Bradenton, Florida, on Tuesday sporting black T-shirts with the words “VOTE WARNOCK” printed in white.
The shirts were in protest against Atlanta Dream co-owner Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., who submitted a letter in July expressing her disagreement with the league’s plan to promote Black Lives Matter.
Posted by Owen at 0753 hours
Twitter and Facebook Are Actively Campaigning
They have been for some time, but now they aren’t even pretending. Since these platforms have taken ownership of the content submitted by their users by actively curating it, I’m all in favor of removing their legal protections.
For the first time, Facebook has taken down a post from Donald Trump’s personal page on Wednesday for making false claims about the coronavirus.
Trump had uploaded a video of an interview he gave to Fox News earlier Wednesday, in which he falsely stated that children are ‘almost immune’ from COVID-19.
‘They have much stronger immune system than [adults],’ Trump said in the video, which the official account for his presidential campaign also tweeted.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Facebook said the president’s post was removed for violating the social media platform’s ‘policies around harmful COVID misinformation.’
Twitter followed suit a short while after, ordering Trump’s campaign account, @TeamTrump, to remove its ‘misleading’ post featuring the same video and banning it from tweeting again until it agreed to do so.
Posted by Owen at 2237 hours
Poetry of Joe Biden
If this man weren’t running for president, this would be funnier.
Posted by Owen at 1547 hours
Biden Dumps Wisconsin
Joe Biden is no longer planning to travel to the Democratic convention site of Milwaukee to accept the party’s presidential nomination, citing coronavirus concerns.
Convention organizers said in a statement Wednesday that Biden will instead accept the Democratic nomination and deliver a speech from his home state of Delaware, and other speakers also will not go to Milwaukee.
Posted by Owen at 1254 hours
New Yorkers Flee
Huh. Imagine that. If you crap all over the people who are paying the bills, they might just pick up and leave. It was one thing to pay the ridiculous taxes in the city when there was a vibrant social life and safe neighborhoods. But with everything shut down and crime skyrocketing, what’s the appeal?
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is begging wealthy New Yorkers to return to the city to save it from economic ruin while fighting off calls from other lawmakers to raise their taxes, a move he fears could permanently drive the top 1 percent out of the city.
Thousands of New York City residents fled Manhattan and Brooklyn earlier this year when the city was the COVID-19 epicenter of the world.
Many flocked to their second homes in the Hamptons or upstate, while others rented or bought new properties, abandoning their expensive city apartments.
Now, six months on with no end to the national nightmare in sight, many are laying down permanent roots. While New York has overcome its battle against the virus, the rest of the country – where lockdown rules have been far more relaxed – is seeing a resurgence.
It is preventing New York City from resuming its normal activity because Cuomo fears a second spike in cases will happen if just one person from a worse-affected state travels in and infects residents again.
At a press conference on Monday, he said of the wealthiest residents who have long left the city: ‘I literally talk to people all day long who are in their Hamptons house who also lived here, or in their Hudson Valley house or in their Connecticut weekend house, and I say, “You gotta come back, when are you coming back?”
“‘We’ll go to dinner, I’ll buy you a drink. “‘Come over, I’ll cook.”
‘They’re not coming back right now. And you know what else they’re thinking? If I stay there, I pay a lower income tax because they don’t pay the New York City surcharge,’ he said.
Posted by Owen at 1246 hours
DQ Returning to West Bend
Excellent! Congrats and thank you to Kevin for investing in West Bend. From the Washington County Insider.
August 5, 2020 – West Bend, WI – Neighbors in West Bend will soon be welcoming back a Dairy Queen franchise as Kevin Scheunemann confirmed the purchase this week of the former Mutual Mall, 1043 S. Main Street, in West Bend.“Yes. The property became available after we talked on July 9,” said Scheunemann.On July 9, 2020, WashingtonCountyInsider.com confirmed Scheunemann, owner of the DQ’s in Kewaskum and Jackson, was actively looking to open a DQ in West Bend.
Scheunemann said, “I signed the paperwork yesterday to authorize the American Dairy Queen engineer to evaluate the property and begin putting together the concept plan layout for approval by the City of West Bend.“I will have a timelime update once we receive concept plan approval from the City.“I will confirm the existing building on the site is going to be entirely demolished once City has approved the new concept plan.”
“We are excited, as a locally-owned family business, and as the local franchisee of the DQ brand, to be working with the City of West Bend to re-vitalize this property next to City Hall. I am especially excited we were able to take this very important first step toward bringing, and restoring, the DQ brand back to West Bend. West Bend has had a long tradition of DQ in the community, and we will be bringing that iconic tradition back with a new, exciting, prototype G&C “3.0 style” building.”
Posted by Owen at 0952 hours
Epic Battle
The Cap Times corresponded with 26 employees Tuesday, at least 13 of whom said they have knowledge of managers being demoted for expressing concern about the company’s plans to bring its nearly 10,000 workers back to its 1,000-acre campus starting next week. Every employee who spoke with the Cap Times requested anonymity for fear of retribution, some specifically citing the demotions.
The retaliation, several employees said, is a part of an ongoing effort to control and monitor staff dissent and responses to management decisions, including removing critical posts from an internal company web page and failing to provide data or details about what is driving decisions.
Company leaders have defended the plans, saying that having employees working in-person on campus is integral to cultivating the culture necessary to produce software. They are requiring employees to return in phases, starting next week and continuing through September, with some employees allowed to delay their return until Nov. 2. Employees who do not comply have been told they must take an unpaid leave of absence or could be fired.
Epic is owned by one of the biggest leftists in the state and her company’s culture enforces a rigid liberal orthodoxy. Now that Epic’s employees are pushing back against going to work, Faulkner appears to be using retaliatory and bully tactics to silence dissent and force the workers back to their desks. And most of Wisconsin’s liberal politicians will stay silent on the abuse because Faulkner is a major Democratic insider.
Posted by Owen at 0733 hours
Evers Says He Won’t Try to Close Schools
MADISON, Wis. (CBS 58) – Governor Tony Evers said he is not planning on ordering schools to start the year virtually, saying individual school districts are doing a good job thus far forming plans.
“I am extremely pleased with the conversations that school districts across the state are having,” Evers told reporters during a media briefing. “Not only with their teachers and faculty members but making sure that the community’s involved.”
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R – Juneau) said he appreciated the governor affirming his position on schools but is concerned Evers may change positions.
This from the same man who said for weeks that he didn’t have the power to pass a mask mandate, then he did it. He’s the same guy who is hiding a likely felon on his staff. He’s the same guy who said he wasn’t going to issue a lockdown order days before he did. Governor Evers is not an honest man and has earned a healthy level of skepticism.
Expect Evers to try to close the schools in a couple of weeks under the fig leaf that “something changed.”
Posted by Owen at 0722 hours
2nd Amendment advances as 1st Amendment retreats
My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:
I am reminded of a comment by Jim Croce: “I don’t care, as long as they don’t be putting their hands on me. I don’t mind people talking and saying different things. Everybody gotta say something.” That pretty well sums up what our attitude used to be about people speaking their minds. Now we are seeing the onset of outrage mobs that seek out people who express opinions with which they disagree and try to destroy them personally and professionally. This is the so-called “cancel culture” where we no longer meet objectionable speech with more speech. Instead, these mobs consider contrary opinions to be so fundamentally immoral that they must not be spoken, and the people speaking them must be ruined to force adherence to the current, if fluid, orthodoxy.
What is even more chilling is that the opinions being canceled are views that were mainstream as recently as a few months ago. Support for law enforcement, standing for the National Anthem, celebrating Independence Day, honoring George Washington, etc. are things that were commonplace and integral parts of the national psyche. Now such views are just as likely to attract an online or physical mob to your doorstep. There has been a very rapid and scary retreat of our collective support for free speech.
Meanwhile, support for the right to keep and bear arms is exploding. I recently witnessed a couple of protest marches in suburban communities. In both cases, firearms were plentiful and visible in the hands of both protesters and counter-protesters. Furthermore, as the mobs and the elected Democrats who support them defund the police and force law enforcement into a defensive crouch, The People are taking the hint and arming themselves for personal protection.
Posted by Owen at 0653 hours
West Bend School District Releases Flexible Opening Plan
WEST BEND — The West Bend School District Board of Education shared their plan for the 2020-21 school year with district families and community members on Monday.
[…]
The plan details three educational options for students: fulltime in-person learning, full-time virtual learning through the West Bend Virtual Academy and a hybrid education model combining both in-person and virtual learning.
[…]
Of the survey participants who responded to the question, 3,125 families (69 percent) preferred in-person instruction, 482 families (11 percent) preferred enrolling in WBVA and 850 families (19 percent) preferred the hybrid model.
88% was some form of in-person instruction with 69% wanting normal education – with mitigation, of course.
Posted by Owen at 0649 hours
Illinois Rep Wants to Stop Teaching History
Destroy history so that they can write a new one. I’m all for teaching all kinds of history. I’m a history junkie and read constantly. But those old white guys did some pretty neat things too.
In a press release received by the outlet before Sunday’s event, the state representative called for the “abolishment of history classes” and demanded that the Illinois State Board of Education “take immediate action by removing current history books and curriculum practices that unfairly communicate our history” until “appropriate alternatives are developed.”
Posted by Owen at 2204 hours
Sturgis is On
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Sturgis is on. The message has been broadcast across social media as South Dakota, which has seen an uptick in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, braces to host hundreds of thousands of bikers for the 80th edition of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
More than 250,000 people are expected to rumble through western South Dakota, seeking the freedom of cruising the boundless landscapes in a state that has skipped lockdowns. The Aug. 7 to 16 event, which could be the biggest anywhere so far during the pandemic, will offer businesses that depend on the rally a chance to make up for losses caused by the coronavirus. But for many in Sturgis, a city of about 7,000, the brimming bars and bacchanalia will not be welcome during a pandemic.
Though only about half the usual number of people are expected at this year’s event, residents were split as the city weighed its options. Many worried that the rally would cause an unmanageable outbreak of COVID-19.
Posted by Owen at 2139 hours
Extortionists in Louisville
That’s just straight up extortion.
A Cuban restaurant owner in Louisville is slamming Black Lives Matter activists for sending him and other small business owners a list of diversity demands that they were told to meet or risk repercussions like ‘having their store fronts ‘f****d with’.
The letter went out to business owners in East Market District in Louisville, also known as NuLu, during a protest on July 24 that forced some of the businesses in the area to close.
It demanded that businesses employ at least 23 percent black staff, bought at least 23 percent of their inventory from black retailers or make a recurring donation of 1.5 percent of their net sales to a local black charity, and that they should display a sign showing their support for the movement.
It also listed a series of ‘repercussions’ if the businesses didn’t comply which included a boycott, social media shaming, and an ‘invasive reclamation’ whereby black owned businesses with competing goods of services would set up ‘booths and tables’ outside the store fronts.
[…]
Fernando Martinez, who owns La Bodeguita de Mima, claims that one of the activists warned him: ‘You better put the letter on the door so your business is not f*cked with.’
Posted by Owen at 2018 hours
Coronavirus Spending Bill Hits Impasse
Good. May it never see the President’s signature. Let the economy open and we won’t need another flood of borrowed money.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on Sunday he was not optimistic on reaching agreement soon on a deal for the next round of legislation to provide relief to Americans hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
“I’m not optimistic that there will be a solution in the very near term,” Meadows said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” as staff members from both sides were meeting to try to iron out differences over the bill.
Democrats were standing in the way of a separate agreement to extend some federal unemployment benefits in the short-term while negotiations continue on an overall relief package, he said.
“We continue to see really a stonewalling of any piecemeal type of legislation that happens on Capitol Hill,” Meadows said. “Hopefully that will change in the coming days.”
Posted by Owen at 0738 hours
Don’t Play Politics With Masks
Have you noticed that it is the people who support using the police power of the State to enforce a mask mandate who whine about “don’t make it political?” Using government to enforce something is, by definition, a political act. The people who want to be left alone are only making it political in opposition to the people who have already made it political.
“I’ve been governor. You can’t play politics. You’ve got to be thinking about the health of the people of the state,” Doyle said.
And it’s particularly rich coming from Jim Doyle. He had no qualms whatsoever about using the power of his office for political gains.
Posted by Owen at 0729 hours
The Tyrant Evers Returns
Boy howdy… I step away from the computer for 36 hours or so and all hell breaks loose. Let’s hope that the legislature will reign in our banal tyrant.
Less than 24 hours after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers announced a statewide mask order for Wisconsin, Republicans in the state Senate have signaled they have the votes to begin the process of striking it down.
In a statement Friday, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said Senate Republicans “stand ready to convene the body to end the Governor’s order, which includes the mask mandate.”
“The Governor has caved to the pressure of liberal groups on this,” Fitzgerald said. “How can we trust that the he won’t cave again and stop schools that choose in-person instruction this fall? There are bigger issues at play here, and my caucus members stand ready to fight back.”
[…]
Announced Thursday, the state mask order goes into effect Saturday.
Under the new order, which expires Sept. 28, everyone age 5 and older must wear a face covering when indoors or in any enclosed space open to the public including outdoor bars and restaurants, public transit and outdoor park structures. The order does not apply to people in their private residences.
Posted by Owen at 2152 hours
Hanson: Summer of Cultural Suicide
Victor Davis Hanson does it again. Our nation’s cultural stewards are committing suicide right before our eyes.
Take professional sports. Over the last century, professional football, basketball and baseball were racially integrated and adopted a uniform code of patriotic observance. The three leagues offered fans a pleasant respite from daily barroom politics. As a result, by the 21st century, the NFL, NBA and MLB had become global multibillion- dollar enterprises. Then hubris ensued. The owners, coaches and players weren’t always racially diverse. But that inconvenient truth did not stop the leagues from hectoring their fans about social activism — even as they no longer honored common patriotic rituals. All three leagues have suffered terribly during the viral lockdown, as American life mysteriously went on without them. And they have almost ensured that they won’t fully recover when the quarantine ends. Many of their oftenpampered multimillionaire players refuse to honor the national anthem. In the NFL they now will broadcast their politics on their helmets. They will virtue-signal their moral superiority to increasingly turned-off fans — as if to ensure that their sources of support flee.
[…]
Professional sports, universities and the motion picture industry all know that what they are doing is bad for business. But they still believe they are rich and powerful, and thus invulnerable. They also are ignorant of history and cannot be persuaded that they are destroying themselves.
At this late date, all that matters is that the country itself learns from these suicidal examples and heals itself. If the U.S. is not to become an extinct Easter Island, it must rediscover a respect for its past, honor for the dead who gave us so much, the desire to invest rather than spend, and a need for some sense of transcendence.
If we do not believe that what we do today has consequences for our children after we are gone, there are ancient existential forces in the world that will intervene.
And it won’t be nice.
Posted by Owen at 0738 hours
