The hottest political battle right now is the anti vaxers versus those that believe in the vaccines. It pays to  remain open minded and  look into credible information but not Youtube videos done by some  naturopathic or chiropractor.  Most of those are just  spreading B.S.. 

Here is what I found convincing: "More than 380 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through September 13, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 7,653 reports of death (0.0020%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine." 

 VAERS is the reporting organization set up in the 90's to report vaccine injuries or death.  And anyone can submit a report so the number of reports aren't really an indication of actual harm, it could be a bunch of anti vaccine folks staying busy spreading propaganda.  And this isn't about seventy vaccines for a kid before they turn 15 years of age, I understand that isn't a good thing at all, this is about the Trump vaccines done to attempt to stop a pandemic and allow us to go about a normal life and maybe travel some day.

Frequent readers know about the scurrilous attacks I have endured from some of the radical religious fanatics that are involved in running the GOP lately and many have asked why I have not done something about it.

For a good reason, we needed to wait until cracks had appeared and indeed they have.  Some folks have figured out they laid down with dogs and have offered to cut a deal if it saves them from bankruptcy.   There were other issues, but you learn to be patient and let the bad guys hang themselves as they usually do.

There was a recent case down in Garvin County, Grimmett v. Mitchell, and after about a year Grimmett walked away with a $4,000,000 judgement, half for actual damages and half for punitive damages.   Mitchell called Grimmett a wife beater, said he was slapping around his wife and adultery to boot.  Which pales in comparison to what the radical religious fanatics accused me of doing.  Although they did accuse me of battering women they left out the adultery and added child sex trafficking, all with zero proof or even serious suspicion, just the desire to libel and slander and diminish another human being on the other side of the political fence.  These are big Christians don't you know?

The latest Covid info from the Oklahoma Department of Health is out and it is fairly encouraging.  

95% of the deaths are in those over 50 years of age despite these folks being only one third of the cases, meaning the Delta variant is contagious but as the info will show below, Covid is basically affecting the elderly and perhaps taking out those that would likely die soon anyway.

The new cases are down 4.5% which is great and around 66% of all people are vaccinated with both doses or the single dose version of the vaccine.

The breakthrough cases, where vaccinated people come down with a case of covid,  are low, only two tenths of a percent for the Moderna vaccine, three tenths of a percent for the Pfizer, and four tenths of a percent for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.   There are a lot of crazy people on Facebook claiming that the vaccine doesn't work, I would say less than one percent failure rate is pretty low for such a rushed vaccine.    Yet this new faction of anti Trump/anti vaccine zealots is facing a headwind of condemnation and ridicule.

Compared to the unvaccinated, the breakthrough cases are under 5% of all cases, meaning around 95% of all cases are in the unvaccinated.   Among the unvaccinated 83% of the hospitalized cases are between 36 years of age and 65 or older.  Among the vaccinated  73% of the hospitalized cases are over 65 years of age.

If you catch Covid right now you have a 1.5% chance  of dying from it.  If you die from Covid there is a 56% chance you had one or more co morbidity.

And here is where it gets interesting, at the top of page 28 you see a graph comparing the estimated deaths that Oklahoma would have experienced regardless of any pandemic with the Covid deaths overlaid.  The blue columns that project over the orange line are the actual Covid excess deaths, starting around May of 2020 and dropping off around March of 2021 when the vaccines started being freely available.  There have been a few weeks where the actual Covid deaths dropped below what would have been expected or inevitable deaths, something I would think is due to people traveling less, practicing better sanitation, and simply being hyper vigilant of health issues.

Covid in Oklahoma continues to be a disease that is 95% in the unvaccinated population and we as a society have learned to treat it effectively to the point where Covid is taking the elderly that are in poor health, little different than a regular flue epidemic would do.

There is no need for shut down or masks nor should our schools subject the kids to extreme measures.  The teachers ought to be encouraged to be vaccinated and the rest of us ought to go on about our lives at this point.

 Oh the fun on Facebook where anyone with an opinion gets to mislead others who are too lazy or too full of confirmation bias to bother to read the actual study that was posted.

So the covidiots are lathered up about a British study done on the death rates of the dozen or so Covid variants and one knucklehead finds a couple of cells in a chart that put her panties in a twist.

"Maggie Hartsfield

FULLY Vaccinated Group 679 Deaths out of 73,372 Positive cases while the Unvaccinated group has 390 deaths out of 183,133 Positive Cases “

But there is a problem, Maggie is either lying or she is too ignorant to understand the charts in the study showing the results. Now there is nothing wrong with being ignorant unless you are so arrogant that you don't know you are ignorant. Most of us are ignorant of many things in life but we do not pretend we are knowledgeable and speak on things we do not understand.

Man, nothing is worse than a liar because no one trusts a word out of their mouth once they have been caught.  Well organizers at the weekend Freedom Rally at the Capitol got caught telling one hell of  a lie this weekend, claiming that 5500 people showed up.

What you are looking at to the right is the 4th floor of the Capitol.  There is a 60' x 60' square that runs from those pillars in the center holding up the fifth floor hallway back to the camera side of the picture and from Senate lobby to House lobby.   That 60' square block has 3600 square feet.  But you have a big honking circle in the center that removes around 855 square feet, assuming a radius of 16.5 feet (pie are square, no, cake and cornbread is square, pie is round),. Then see those big blocks on the left and right with columns and a dark arch?  Those are small rooms that are not quite square, kind of chopped off, 255 square feet each in floor space x 4 units, around 1755 square feet of space taken out of the 60' x 60' area, leaving 1845 square feet.  

Now there is more space but let's do a spot check on that picture which by the way has 255 people in it if you blow it up and use paint to mark the heads and count each one.

Now picture a normal crowd with people a half arms length from each other, around 10 square feet per person.  A very crowded crowd might be 4.5 square feet per person.  Now think of a mosh pit, people packed like sardines, 2.5 square feet per person.

Loose crowd, might be 92 people there in that picture of  half of the area , way short.   At 4.5 square foot per person, 205 people, that is close considering that some of the crowd is under the columns that are in the North hall.  I would say that 4.5 square feet per person is a good estimate.

So you have the 3600 square feet of the 60' x 60' square that makes up the central part of the building minus the 1755 square feet for the big circle and the four triangular rooms, 1845 square feet.  And if the North hall on the 4th floor was full all the way back to the end wall that is another 540 square feet, then IF the House and Senate lobby was similarly full including the areas that are blocked by the outer walls, add another 648 square feet.  In reality maybe people would stand in the doorways, around one third of that space.  But let's be generous.  In all 3033 square feet are available if every square foot was filled, which it wasn't.  That would be around 674 people to fill the center of the capitol from Senate chamber to house chamber, and from North wall to the staircase on the South wall. Including behind the four big triangular columns and the House side where it seems they kept clear for the speakers and groupies.

674 maximum on the 4th floor.  You can see maybe fifty on both areas on the fifth floor.   But counting the empty space on the speakers side, around 650 people would be a generous count.  That balances well with the 255 people counted in that picture above.

Were there some outside?  Probably but not many.  A few hundred perhaps.

And below is a color coded floor plan, yellow is the area covered by the picture at the top with 255 people in the picture. The red lines are all the available area on the 4th floor.  Saying there were 650 people attending is extremely generous.

So why would the organizers lie about the numbers?  This was an abolitionist event with most of the attendees being abolitionists.   As always these folks inflate their numbers by a magnitude of ten trying to hide the fact of how few there truly are.  And multiple TV stories mentioned the 5500 count by the organizers while saying "hundreds" attended the rally inside and out.

These people are no better than the liberals when it comes to being honest.   Anymore when I see a preacher in politics I assume they are no better than the worst liberal tyrant and about as believable.

And most of these  bills were signed into law by Governor Stitt.  Most of them actually.... 

As always we look at Trump's positions on the issues and grade the votes accordingly.  Trump was always tough on crime but willing to give a hand up once the criminal paid his debt to society.  We did include two 2nd Amendment bills that were scrubbed from the House version, we thought that Trump wouldn't have thought they were bad law whereas we thought they were, but we had a lot more bills to use in scoring the House so these two bills were left in the Senate version.  The bills limited the places where Open Carry could be done and extended rights to government employees that were restricted to taxpayers.  Both of these bills were pushed by Dollar Don's OK2A group despite the fact that they restricted the 2nd Amendment.

One of the biggest disappointments was how many of these feces festooned bills were signed into law by Governor Stitt.  Most of them actually.... 

As always we look at Trump's positions on the issues and grade the votes accordingly.  Trump was always tough on crime but willing to give a hand up once the criminal paid his debt to society.  There were two very important 2nd Amendment bills that were scrubbed simply because we thought that Trump wouldn't have thought they were bad law whereas we thought they were.  The bills limited the places where Open Carry could be done and extended rights to government employees that were restricted to taxpayers.

Those that have read this blog this summer know the depth of the dysfunction in the Oklahoma GOP. The straw that broke the camel's back was the lock down of the State Committee meeting, an illegal and ill advised act that served no purpose other than to exclude a few people in a vain attempt to silence criticism.

So on Friday the 23^rd I sent a certified letter to the GOP headquarters along with four copies of the letter to the four members of the Central Committee of the Oklahoma GOP. The letter was a demand letter, giving ten days from the postmark for the Chairman of the GOP to set a hearing for Rule 3A violations or face the possibility that a lawsuit would follow to enforce the rules of the GOP and enforce my rights.

It must be frustrating for some of the old RINOs to watch the new administration flounder and struggle and see the Party suffer. New blood is sometimes needed for an older system but sometimes there is a lot of wasted blood in the process as the newcomers are ignorant and even arrogant, not understanding the rules and legalities, not respecting the traditions of the Party. Tearing down fences without asking why a fence was put up in the first place.

This last week's PR nightmare for the Bennett administration has gone nationwide, even international. Part of it is deserved; you don't compare minor distractions to the Holocaust. You just don't disrespect what the Jews went through especially when what you are calling for is to restrict private property rights and force new “rights” protection upon employers without regard for the consequences. The GOP ought to be about minimizing the role of government in our lives and businesses, not enlarging it.

We have written about the Tyler Paulsen case for several years now. Now the case has taken an interesting turn with an allegedly stolen gun winding up in the custody of the Adair Police Department, a Mayes County town, but the gun initially wasn't an issue in the traffic stop for speeding and suspended license until months after the initial traffic stop/arrest/

The saga started off simple enough, a mentally unstable person named Vannessa Edwards calls the Broken Arrow police on her boyfriend who is passed out after a argument. We can say she is unstable because the man that eventually prosecuted the case later said she was crazy and if he had to spend ten minutes with her they would have to call a SWAT team on him too. But her view appears to be to get her boyfriend out of his home so she could clean out the place as she left and to ensure custody of their child.