It's Almost Like Magic

Only decades ago, magazines printed ads where physicians touted the benefits of smoking cigarettes.  The cigarette testimonials are gone, but medical dumb-assery never went away.  Just an observation from somebody who once witnessed medical dumb-assery here and there.  But maybe I digress. . .

Vaccines can be wonderful things when you take a few years to see how your target group's auto-immune systems accept them.  Unfortunately, despite considerable laboratory experience with the new Covid vaccination delivery system, not a human on Earth can predict whether human immunological abilities may change for the better, worse or remain neutral in the distant future.

That's why we found it so miraculous last week when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) somehow waved a magic wand and proclaimed the standard Covid-19 vaccines safe and appropriate for children.  All of a sudden.

How does that happen, exactly?  I mean, of course we were hardly surprised to watch the complicit corporate media applaud and gasp in wonder at this "breakthrough" pronouncement.  But really, isn't it rather convenient that this marvel of medical science leaps forth via enthusiastic FDA lips just in time for school?

Based upon other miracles performed by Biden government agencies lately -- yes, you bet'cha, Afghanistan -- I'm thinking it's more likely that a gaggle of lab scientists under extreme pressure sat in a room and reached agreement on approving the unknown for the sake of school opening expediency.

The way things work, what with scientists working interchangeably with government and corporations, certain political agendas must be satisfied now and then, and here you go.

Isn't it kind of like that new Alzheimer's drug, the one tested and rejected by several scientists because apparently it did little more then remove a little plaque from brain tissue -- and then was nevertheless stubbornly certified for administration by the U.S. government at a per-patient cost exceeding $50,000 a year while ultimately performing no useful function?

We also continue to shake our head at the uproar over whether cheapity cheap, cheap cheap veterinarian drug ivermectin successfully treats Covid.  You can bet your ass that the loudest critics work for corporate pharma and "corporate government" entities.  By the way, we still wonder why the government isn't going all out to introduce the Novavax Covid immunizations, looking good, few side-effects and delivering vaccines in a fashion akin to the way we already receive standard immunizations.

Whether big corporate payoff vaccines, or the questionable necessity to wear masks, or the American Medical Association caving in to critical race theory, we have before us one giant dog pile of "expert" advice changing every day, and we aren't really quite sure where to place our trust anymore.

Thoughts From an Irrelevant American, 8-26-2021

Afghanistan, today.  Chaos, American military personnel dead and injured and. . .well, you watch the news, too.

Critics with the most meager of minds were correct:  This did not need to happen.  Yes, Donald Trump would have made certain this unfolding crisis never reached a juncture of incompetence and heartbreak.

We have no leadership in the USA, as our allies are now painfully aware, even as some factions of the corporate American media still continue to spin blood and bodies into something heroic on the part of the Joe Biden syndicate.

I'm an Air Force serviceman of the Vietnam Era, a medical airman fortunate enough to serve all of my time in stateside hospitals, but still I saw and helped care for enough returning military personnel missing pieces of themselves to have a pretty good idea of how badly things can go wrong.  

On a basic level, oh, how I despise the Democrats' LBJ for keeping the Vietnam War in force for reasons based in no small way upon his goals for political popularity. In later years, his own former defense secretary would break down in tears before the TV cameras, lamenting the scope of that administration's actions in Southeast Asia.

And now this, today, the result not only of terrorism, but of terrorism by invitation, the sort of thing even a sixth-grader might have been able to sort out, realizing that when you don't get good people -- your people -- out of the way before letting the bad sector in, nothing will go well.  Bonus:  Billions of dollars in military hardware left behind.

Whatever they were thinking, or not, Democrats last year voted for the worst of all worlds, save perhaps for some banana republic dictator.  Biden is a hardcore leftist and today he is drenched in the blood of death, lies and betrayal.  I don't look forward to some phony impeachment process like his fellow lefties administered to Trump twice -- no, I want criminal charges aplenty for the Biden bunch with generous prison time.  Unfortunately, sang Mick, you can't always get what you want.  But did we get what we need? Hell no.

One cannot oversee a democratic republic (not the pure "democracy" the Democrats squawk about) by drumming racist education into young heads and extending it into the military and universities, all the while ignoring national security while simultaneously grabbing as much power from the people as possible.  The plantation is alive and well, and its slaves come in all colors, kept there by people such as Biden, the kindly old grandfatherly type.

Thanks to this bumbling, mentally compromised mannequin whose long political career is significant for nothing exceptional until today, the Middle East will likely burn all the faster, this time with the help -- already -- of Russia, China and a peculiar new alliance of those two with Saudi Arabia.  Oh shit.

I voted for Trump twice and I'm sorry that, apparently, a number of folk refused to do so simply and only because they disliked or hated him.  The list of his accomplishments was superb, but obviously the ramped-up social media worship crowd did not care to have a look.  The "woke" preferred instead a very visible empty suit. Just look.

And to think we're not even through the first year of this "woke" travesty.

Attention Covid-19 Vaccine Zombies -- Biden Needs Brains

Rumors and utter falsehoods, they say.  

Surely, you're familiar with social network warnings, enthusiastically removed by Internet censors, claiming that some people who received Covid-19 immunizations have turned into flesh-eating zombies.

Should there be any truth to these rumors, may we suggest that patriotic vaccine-spawned zombies forgo eating brains reluctantly given up by community members, and instead send them to the Biden White House, where the slightest trace of functioning brain tissue is apparently in high demand?

In addition to extraordinarily bad decisions perpetrated by a diminishing president and, perhaps, a stable of elitist, snot-nosed college graduation products left over from the Obama years -- a cadre of sissy virgins who know nothing about war because they were never exposed to its un-pleasantries and thus cowered in corners because war wasn't their thing -- there are the lies.  Damned lies by a president who can't lie his way out of the cake he has been baking since day one of this long, long exercise in fascist rule-by-mask.

Damned lies.  Like Biden's assurances that world leaders were all comfy and warm as they snuggled restfully while Afghanistan exploded. Or, in his own words, he experienced no problems with world leaders.  Then again, when you rely on the U.S. corporate press to comfort and fib their asses off to a perpetually gullible public while the rest of the world's press (e.g. Great Britain and France) tells the real truth about Biden's day-to-day idiocy as allies retreat from America in disgust publicly, maybe things are at least manageable.

No problem.  Just go on TV and concentrate on Covid vaccinations, the only tools we currently possess, also unknown regarding future effects on human auto-immune systems or major organs.  Afghanistan?  What of it? Oops, time for a vacation at Camp David or someplace way far away from responsibility.  The brain stops here.

Can White House confabulations be cured with brains supplied by Covid-vac zombies?  Could they use a few brains at the Dept. of State, as official instructions make the rounds in Afghanistan for Americans and America's helpers to both leave home for the airport and stay home at the same time?

We know who the victims are in Afghanistan, but there exist victims of another sort -- the U.S. military at ground zero.  As their efforts and billions of dollars of equipment go bye-bye, what of their morale?  What becomes of one's extensive and costly military training when leadership's dysfunction and treachery attempts to destroy what diversity training, critical race theory classes and the 1619 Project in Armed Forces classrooms haven't quite finished off?  When one watches Gen. Mark Milley responding to a question about critical race theory education in the ranks and he replies basically that he is okay with it BUT doesn't know much about it, that's already one hole popping through the dam.

Who the hell is in charge in this country?  I'm afraid we know:  The same people who knowingly orchestrated two phony impeachments of Donald Trump.  Treasonous one and all, devoid only of enough uncorrupted legal system elements to hold them prison-accountable.

Funny thing about zombies.  Maybe there aren't enough of 'em to supply the Biden & Co. political syndicate with enough brains, but the very idea of watching mindless zombies run the government instead of this bunch seems well worth exploring.

Cuomo Departs: Bon voyage, Andrew Cuomo.  Truly, the man who once announced that there was no place in New York for conservatives resigns as NY's governor tonight, finding himself lonely for a spot on the shelf.  Now, if Californians will look unkindly upon their governor and try on a new candidate, the country might get closer to re-discovering its long-cluttered roots of freedom.

High school and college athletes can sell their images:  Okay, but wouldn't it be so much better if the faces appearing on cereal boxes and milk cartons were those of students who excelled academically, instead of people who train and perform like trained seals as they direct a ball from here to there?  We humans engage in some very misdirected hero worship ceremonies, in my opinion.

Tales From Rochester

Rochester Encounter No. 1:  Far as I can recall, I've only had two specific encounters with Rochester, New York in years past.  One occurred in 1980, when I discovered an evening radio talk show on the somewhat distant (from my base in Central New York) WHAM-AM Radio.  Having learned that WHAM's "Jack Kinnicutt Show" was promoting a UFO-themed Close Encounters Week featuring live in-person and telephone interviews with an assortment of the best known UFO researchers, investigators and scientists in the USA and abroad, I put local radio aside and searched the dial for WHAM.  Like many stations, during the day WHAM had to restrain its broadcast power output per FCC regulations, but when evening arrived its boosted signal could reach far and strong -- at least intermittently.

Therefore, it wasn't a stretch to locate WHAM in the evening, and as the fateful week of April 14-19, 1980 approached, I was ready, having stocked up on audiocassettes in hope of recording the entire series.  This was not unusual, because beginning in the 1960s I had attempted to record as many UFO-themed TV and radio shows as I could, realizing even as a kid that doing this was historically important -- and indeed, decades later this is how it became my pleasure to donate a considerable amount of audio to UFO researcher Wendy Connors for her gigantic "Faded Discs" project, which saved and subjected UFO audio and video going back at least to the forties (some of it gleaned from old wire recordings, and some time-worn recorded media literally needed to be washed and cleaned - carefully, of course) to high-tech digitalization and preservation for future generations.

April 14 arrived at last and popular WHAM talk show host Jack Kinnicutt and a co-host (a nationally known psychic -- whatever you think about psychics, she was a great co-host and interviewer, very rational and appropriate for the occasion) commenced a six-evening series (Monday through Saturday) comprising several hours each night of UFO talk.  Yes, I got everything on tape, but atmospheric conditions did not always cooperate and there were garbled or suppressed portions which could not faithfully right themselves for radio reception at my end.

Nevertheless, the cassette collection proved worthwhile and Wendy Connors also included these in her collection, an historical archive not only of radio and TV programs, but of actual officially reported UFO reports recorded throughout the years (some of her work can be located and heard on the Internet).  At some point in the weeks that followed Kinnicutt's well-received series, I also recorded a great interview he conducted with famous author John G. Fuller, but my cassette is all screwed up on side B, and despite my efforts (last one was years ago) I don't really want to organize anything until and unless the tape cooperates so a full session can result.  On the bright side, it wasn't recorded on an 8-track cartridge, one of the worst and most instantaneously self-destructive media ever invented.  

Many years later, long after Kinnicutt departed WHAM, I e-mailed him and via a brief correspondence exchange thanked him for the UFO series, which actually turned out to be something of a minor radio cult classic among loyal listeners both near and far. Jack Kinnicutt instinctively knew, as Close Encounters Week had unfolded, that this particular six-day broadcast assemblage of shows was destined to be special. 

Maybe the production staff had a premonition regarding the series' success when initially involved in inviting guests and assigning time slots:  Why else would a Saturday evening span of several hours be added to a program characteristically broadcast only Monday through Friday?  (Picture: John -- Jack -- Kinnicutt)

Rochester Encounter No. 2:  Prior to the WHAM radio UFO special, I was working for a public relations firm, and in 1979 assigned to travel to Rochester to assist in researching the history of Eastman Kodak for what would be its 100th anniversary and printing of the centennial edition of the corporation's popular photography publication, Studio Light (see photo of the eventual cover).  At that time Rochester literally was Kodak and Kodak was Rochester, enjoying a fine mutual relationship.  During my time in the city, I was allowed almost carte blanche permission (see letter, sorry about my heavy redactions) to explore historical Kodak files, completing the task with time spent at the famous George Eastman House.  Incorporated within all of this was a museum of photography, including beautiful old cameras, and the Eastman House itself hosted sections left pretty much as they were when Eastman died at his own hand decades ago -- right down to book shelves stocked with the same volumes the inventor had owned during his extraordinary life. 

Since my visit there in the seventies, Rochester has evolved, and as is the case for a number of Northeastern cities, not always for the better.  Kodak, to be honest, slipped and fell in the eighties as the digital age advanced faster than the Taliban in Afghanistan and corporate officials appeared blind-sided, stubbornly committed to the production of better films and videotapes instead of digital versatility. It didn't take long for Kodak to play catch-up, but precious time lost in such matters can be monumentally problematic for a company's future.  Anyway, I'm not writing today to claim insight into or second-guessing at Kodak.  Instead. . .

What's up, Kodak?  Did you, too, fall in with corporations dedicated to licking China's boots?  Sadly, the answer appears affirmative.

Back in July, the New York Times reported that Eastman Kodak deleted an Instagram post showing photos of Xinjiang in western China, allegedly a location of brutality and extreme human rights violations.  The Instagram posting had been an attempt to promote the work of French photographer  Patrick Wack, who assembled his images into a book.  Initially, Kodak had given Wack a tremendous boost by uploading 10 of his images, all accomplished on Kodak film, to its own account featuring a little less than one million Instagram followers.  

Apparently, however, China erupted into full-blown offended mode when, on Kodak's same Instagram account, Patrick Wack introduced his photos as a visual chronicle of Xinjiang's "abrupt descent into an Orwellian dystopia" over recent years.

Unfortunately, Kodak, once the take-no-prisoners photographic gem of the USA (remember early NASA photos which helped us understand the universe in superb color and detail?) seems to have melted in reaction to the growl of the Chinese dog.  Kodak immediately deleted the post and then, perhaps taking a tip from President Obama's consistent apology tour, apologized for "any misunderstanding or offense" the whole affair may have caused.

The NY Times article continues in some depth, but from a personal standpoint I can only admit how sorry I am, not for Chinese communist monsters, but for the social media spoilage of a once-major Rochester corporation which can't even bother to stand up for human rights in the year 2021.  Obviously, Kodak has plenty of corporate company as the current president mixes critical race theory into the mix of treating China and its hideous excesses with kid gloves.  Of some solace is the fact that Kodak received considerable blow-back from customers and fans who don't cater to deleting posts based upon offending China - or any other entity.  How long will Kodak and other companies continue to be politically correct at the peril of our own society?  As somebody who once briefly basked within the corporate and historical structure of Eastman Kodak to assist in getting a magnificent story right, I fear for the integrity of research documented in the future.
 

One wonders how old George Eastman himself would take to this situation, were he alive today.  

(Insider's information:  Before visiting Kodak in 1979, I was firmly instructed NOT to inquire whether George Eastman had actually been a homosexual, because I might offend staffers and, in any event, would receive no helpful response.  The gay rumors had swirled about for years and, at least at that time, the subject was apparently taboo within the context of a very sensitive corporate image.  In the current day, had Eastman been outed as gay, his story would likely be announced with glee on the cover of every tabloid in America.  I don't know if anybody ever determined the truth about these rumors, but it is true that as an old man Eastman killed himself with a gun in his bedroom, leaving behind a brief note stating words to the effect that his work was finished, so "Why wait?")

Rochester Encounter  No. 3:  There is no such encounter, but I was reminded of comedian Jack Benny's black sidekick Eddie Anderson, whose stage name of "Rochester" probably kept the city in the public eye for quite some time.  And he was always funny as Benny's seldom-accommodating "employee," too.

Build Back Debtor, Build Back Deader

If we had a Department of Justice headed up by somebody who isn't drooling with partisanship toward the left, directing an institution not as corrupt as the day is long, this entire Biden operation might be floundering in serious jeopardy.  While Schumer, Pelosi and, not to forget, other extremely progressive, vocal and lunatic members of the House and Senate strive to put your children and your children's heirs into prison-style debt for years to come while whispering sweet trillions into our ears now, the number one obligation of the Chief Executive reposes under a carpet -- swept there by the Nothing To See Here folks responsible for the care and feeding of an extraordinarily large elephant sitting in the living room.

National security is the obligation, a President's necessity, but President Biden's primary attention-getter elephant worth ignoring at all costs is the dangerous Southern border.   As criminal immigrants from all over the world, bringing along their horn of plenty filled with diseases, poverty, illiteracy and more than enough influence to destroy American culture for all time, invade by the hundreds of thousands, Biden and Harris have little to say.  That Biden's budgetary wish list accomplishes deep and resounding cuts to border security efforts raises nary a hackle among mainstream media jackals.

Beyond galling it is to watch Biden and his adoring minions condemn Florida, Texas and other states for the rise in Covid infections, when any infant would realize that open borders are sucking in and casting out sick immigrants faster than sewers can empty waste products into holding tanks.  Our holding tanks are known as states and little more, as far as the Biden bunch is concerned.

Rather than staging a national post-election tantrum over President Donald Trump's extremely efficient wall-construction project and his agreement with Mexico to hold immigrants there, the Biden syndicate should have cast their hatred aside and continued to build the wall -- especially knowing how Covid was sure to spread without it.

Like Andrew Cuomo, whose actions resulted essentially in the Covid-weaponized murders of thousands of NY State nursing home residents, Biden, too, has signed a death sentence for many Americans by failing to protect the border.  Whether with Covid spread, violence, killings, theft and property damage inflicted by border-crossers, or all the other consequences attached to a mass-invasion, the whole fetid mess continues to blossom and the Biden administration won't lift a finger to do its sworn duty, choosing instead to bus infected adults and kids all over the country to, by intent or stupidity, sicken the American spirit.  To say the least.

Biden and his accommodating political partners/thugs are a danger to the country and should be arrested.  Trouble is, what institutions remain to do so in a country besieged by woke fantasies, critical race theory and large populations of voters who seem either unaware or uncaring that the Democrat Party as it has evolved is building the biggest, best and most dispiriting slave plantation outside of China, Russia and North Korea that one might imagine?  To whom does the citizen turn these days to see about taking down bad people?  The FBI?  CIA? NSA?  Defunded police?  Your congressional rep or senator, mainly desirous of getting a cushy job lobbying for Chinese communists in the future?  Who's on your side?  Maybe the SPCA, but I don't think they have much more than puppy power.  Beyond those kind folk, good luck.

If Schumer, Bernie Sanders and their cozy associates get away with adding yet another 3.5 to as much as 5.5 trillion dollars to the deficit, bathing us forever and inescapably in socialism favored by the "Great Reset," United Nations and financial concerns poised to gain fabulous amounts of wealth as the American middle class falters, we may as well have been ruled by insane King Ludwig of Bavaria.

Speaking of. . .maybe it's about time for NY's embattled govern-not Andrew Cuomo to start shuffling through the streets of Albany in a bathrobe, muttering incoherently to himself.  Of course, that's been done before, just once I think.

Andrew Cuomo -- how proud and confident he sounded a few years ago when he proclaimed there was no room in New York for conservatives.  Now, fate has decided there is no room in the governor's mansion for Andrew Cuomo, as investigations proceed and his slimy minions abandon him.  His future seems assured:  He will leave his position willingly or by force, politically neutered and desired only as a guest for his brother Chris to interview on CNN on impossibly slow news days.  Maybe he will be found sleeping on his bro's sofa, as he apparently has no house not known as The Executive Mansion of New York.

Meanwhile, NYC mayor Deblasio's "pot calling the kettle black" sense of fairness prevails as he says Cuomo should get out of the way.  We kinda hoped for a 2-for-1 deal in this respect, tossing both out on the streets.  Trouble here is, anybody replacing the governor and mayor will probably be even more extreme.  That is not what NY needs, but enough voters still unrelenting in their foolish choices remain to vote perpetually for this political poison.

Now, getting on to that infrastructure deal -- you do know, right, about the proposed mileage tax for everybody who dares drive on those shiny new highways, roads and bridges (wasn't Obama's shovel-ready thingie supposed to do this construction stuff?)?  The taxation fun is just beginning, like a slasher horror movie where everybody dies (even the ones who aren't having sex on screen).  Those who can least afford it may well pay the most.

Antifa fascists must be destroyed:  They ARE the fascists and they cause extensive damage and injuries in Seattle and elsewhere.  Antifa is a gang-like entity and must be addressed as such by law enforcement agencies.  A masked cowardly thug is no better than the unmasked.  Too bad the infamously left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center can't bother to simply include real terrorists on their pages, opting instead to focus negatively upon conservatives and others who honor constitutional freedoms and American law.  The SPLC name sounds innocent enough, but they really belong at the top of their own list of naughties.  (And. . .an SPLC founder was allegedly a child WHAT?  He did what. . .?)

Colleges and universities are on fire, or perhaps should be in a number of cases, save for the ones which actually teach students useful things.  Teaching, for example, that a man can become a real woman and a woman a genuine man is not a useful thing.  Math, science and history might be better options for the "woke" who currently journey on the path to an absolute fantasy existence.

Biden Elected by Twisties?

 

Now that gymnast Simone Biles has related her fateful encounter with "twisties" while practicing, the head-scratcher advancement of Joseph Biden to a Presidency doomed to fail from the start may no longer be a mystery.

As we understand "twisties" from Ms. Biles' and news correspondents' descriptions, these occur when gymnasts maneuver so fast and in so many directions while performing that simply knowing up from down becomes impossible, thereby sending the gymnast so affected into a tailspin and crashing to the floor.

Setting aside tidbits claiming rampant election fraud, perhaps twisties provide an additional clue to the reason why the nation's, and indeed the world's favorite political mind in obvious decline somehow doddered his way into the White House:  His supporters and voters simply don't know up from down, in from out or left from. . .um, from even more left.  Essentially, when they accepted all the bull crap pumped into their heads by the TV networks, social(ist) media and political literature from hell, their thought processes went twisty-ish.

True, "twisty" as applied here does not actually meet the older dictionary definition of the word, but we suppose that if the American Medical Association can turn pro for critical race theory (it did) and suggest that birth certificates no longer include a child's gender (they do), then submitting twisties as a reason for an unlikely Biden win seems no big deal at all.

Building vaccine prostitutes back better:  Let us sex you up with the mysterious stuff in our needles, alluded the Biden administration, as if in a romance novel to anybody who cared, and after the best immunological orgasm you've ever had, according to us, we'll pay you $100.  Thank you for being our tart, our harlot, our whore, and thank you for your obedient compliance now and forever.

Just a thought -- Wouldn't it be more beneficial for the country to offer those $100 payments as a sort of bounty to U.S. citizens for each illegal alien they bring in?  Of course, we might have to tweak a Biden decision here and there, such as the ones that won't allow us to kick them out.  Biden has crafted our immigration system into something like a roach motel where you can get in, but you can never leave.  Damn.

"Trust the science," insist politicians determined to get everybody but the cat immunized with these Frankensteinian injectables.  Hmm.  Do they mean like. . .like trust herds of scientists who spent decades telling us the UFO issue was nonsense, nothing to see here but balloons, bolides and bull crap?  The thing about science, thankfully, is its need to change and alter traditional views based upon new evidence.  Unfortunately, some of science's practitioners and fans overlook or omit certain things in order to foster a tenuous consistency.

January 6 and "domestic terrorism:"  Democrats seem to have conveniently forgotten that Trump impeachment #1 was all lies, they knew it and proceeded anyway.  Now everybody's favorite congressional "investigators" have returned to do whatever they can to blame Trump for everything possible.  Among them, Rep. S. Schiff, deja vu to you.  The antics of these clowns is the best definition currently of domestic terrorism.

But as always, there's more to see.  Leftists know that Donald Trump continues to amass millions of dollars toward an election challenge, should be wish to be involved in 2024.

Not to be considered separately, but a shower of books is beginning to flourish like mushrooms in the cellar, tell-alls about the evil Trump and his terrible past -- OBVIOUSLY disqualifying him from another White House run.  ABC-TV's John Karl is just releasing a book about bad-boy Trump, and as he and other journo-activists produce cookie-cutter volumes condemning Trump over the next several months, we should remember all the good things Trump did for the country.  We contend he'll look absolutely extraordinary once the Biden syndicate (just how much IS that family into China business dealings anyway?) and friends suck the USA almost dry of its finest structures of personal freedom and freedom from obscene taxation.

The takeaway?  The left fears Trump more than ever, driving themselves almost over the edge of what they consider political sanity.  The Republican Party, for all of its faults (adding up primarily to a lack of courage in fighting Democrat wish lists advanced by bullies, socialist monsters and probably more than one certifiably crazy source), may have little choice but to kiss up to Trump or a family member in 2024 (or 2022, depending upon names and faces out in front) because they possess few options once they pay homage to Florida's indefatigable DeSantis and a handful of others.

My wish list hopes for a time in the near future when our elitist senators, House representatives, governors and others responsible for unleashing hell upon this country as soon as Trump departed Office face real American justice in courts AT LAST populated by judges who won't be deterred by buy-offs, political party attachments, clubhouse relationships or any agendas contrary to long-established U.S. laws and human equality (no, not a misprint, not equity. . .sigh. . .). Can we please put the "grit" back in inteGRITy?