Bigger Fish To Fry

We've been far less concerned with the internetz the last couple of months, because we've been working on Castle Anthrax. IOW, our personal arrangements for when the threat of spicy times becomes an actuality, as well as being our retirement fortress of MYOB when we've had enough of indentured servitude for our final employer.

Where is it, you may ask?

NDBBM.

It is far from our front porch, well away from the 10% of America that lives in the surrounding area, and conveniently far from the beaten path to make us happy with the arrangement.

The last few weeks have been spent securing things to a reasonable degree, and working on plumbing and other infrastructure.

So as much fun as we have here, it doesn't hold a candle to weightier things at the moment. We do not expect a horrific turn of events tomorrow, or this year, but want to be in a better position for whatever comes, whenever it happens, with a view towards when we wish to put out the following unwelcome mats, bolted to the step,

then chain-locking the front gate, and set about minding our own business to a far greater degree.

Posting will continue to be therefore rather light. We have frequently advised people to make the most of the good times to prepare for bad times. That's exactly what we're doing the most of at the moment. We hope you are too, or have already done so. Anyone who doesn't realize Trump and Vance are a seredipitous but temporary respite hasn't been paying close attention.

And FTR, this is probably just about all we're going to specify on this particular activity until a friend or relative comes on here, and tells you we won't be posting anything at all, since there's no internet in the afterlife. We earnestly hope that day is looong in the future, but for the time being, we quite literally have much better things to do than deal with the minutiae in the wider world. We expect to still log on and visit our own favorite stops and drop comments, but overall, this place has been moved temporarily to about twenty-seventh on our list of daily Top Ten Things To Get Done.

While we're otherwise occupied, feel free to frequent the other bloggers on the Blog List, or cruise through our greatest hits from the last seventeen years we've been at this. When Castle Anthrax provides some object lessons, we shall be only too happy to share those, consistent with our personal privacy. When things are a lot farther along than now, we expect to return to more regular posting.

In our absence, you have our sincere best wishes for your efforts to make similar arrangements.

Sunday Music: Too Late For Goodbyes

 

1984 saw this cut from Julian Lennon's debut album reach #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, teasing hopes of a belated Beatles' reformation, with son Julian sitting in for his recently assassinated father John. But it was all tease, and nothing ever materialized, except this track showing everyone what might have been.

Sunday Music: Just My Imagination

Classic Motown soft soul, this platinum single was the third time the Temptations hit #1, this time in 1971, recalling their signature 1960s glory.

No, By All Means, Move

h/t WRSA

Suck It, Bitchez

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I've never said Ukraine could win. I have said Russia, Ukraine, or even both could lose.

But DJT? What does he think, 1309 days into Putin's idiotic and blood-soaked quest to reassemble the former Soviet Union?

I'ma just leave this right here.

There was a mix of astonishment and reservation in Kyiv on Wednesday — contrasted with bitter dismissal and some mocking defiance in Moscow — after President Donald Trump said Ukraine could reclaim all of its territory, a dramatic change in rhetoric on the war. 

Trump had long maintained that an end to the war would require Ukraine ceding territory, but months of failed diplomacy have seemingly fueled frustrations with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

We earnestly commend the Rootin' For Putin crowd still waving their "Any Day Now™" banners to flood the White House website, and explain to 47 how he's got it all wrong now that he's finally grown tired of the taste of Putin's ass. Let the UDS flow through you.

Can Ukraine "win"? Define winning.

Can either side, or both sides, lose? Absolutely.

But at least Trump's stopped trying to outdo Dementia Joe in throwing a country whom we promised to support under the bus for naked political expediency, thereby imperiling every treaty and alliance we've signed since 1787.

Personally, we only have one thing to say to DJT, finally pulling up in his Secret Service limo:

Cue a caravan of poo-flinging monkeys and ass-slapping baboons in 3, 2, ...

Second Encore: Tomorrow

This was first posted in February of 2017. And then encored in 2020. Both times, it was one of the most-read posts I put up in either year. And it still strikes a chord with a lot of people. Which makes me wonder: is it the Ghost Of Christmas Past, or Christmas Future? Only time will tell. - A.

 

"Seven".
The earpiece crackled in Jake's ear from one of the handheld radios they were each tuned to. They'd picked up a couple of dozen surplused Motorola LE-only encrypted radios on eBay, and after a lot of work, Gene had programmed them all to use a normally unused simplex channel reserved for the authorities for tonight. All anyone else would hear was a brief bit of static with the factory encryption, but they still stuck to brevity codes.
Jake calmed himself. He knew the signs of buck fever, and he took a few moments to stretch his whole body, starting with his toes, and ending with his fingers. It wouldn't be long now, and he didn't want to be fighting adrenaline when the moment came.
The van he was in was non-descript. It was the twin of one belonging to a local business the next city over, and the plates on it would be back in the morning, with any luck at all. Inside was dark and quiet, but he could already hear the noise of the protesters as they moved down the main street, closing at the speed of a 6000-footed caterpillar, fueled by youthful exuberance, and a healthy amount of stupidity. Well, they were about to get a lot more education than what they'd gotten at U Cal, and he was happy to be a teaching assistant tonight.
He focused on the intersection, and checked over his gear one last time inside the darkened vehicle, as the sounds of yet another leftist temper tantrum grew louder by the moment.

"Six."
Jim, hunkered down behind a load of cardboard boxes in a van much like Jake's, sat at right angles to the intersection.
His weapon too was identical to Jake's: the ubiquitous Ruger 10/22, modified for tonight.
It had a frame optimized for grown-ups, with one of those evil pistol grips that gave the state legislature hissy fits, going back to the late 1980s. Also a high-cap magazine, which torqued them out even worse. In this case, picked up out of state on a visit to relatives, and driven back across state lines into what Jim referred generally to as "Occupied Territory". He had several more loaded and waiting next to the stock. Also present was a heavy barrel, making the thing a tack-driver out to the limits of the relatively weak cartridge. And under the heading of "in for a penny, in for a pound", both rifles had custom home-made suppressors screwed on at the business end. They wouldn't be truly silent, but inside a can, inside a van, a couple of hundred yards away from a herd of screaming protesters, would be as near as. Just to be on the safe side, Jim screwed an earplug into the other ear, the one without the earbud.
Jim hadn't been in the military, and he wasn't the shooter Jake, who'd been a designated marksman when he served, was. But a lot of patient practice and range time had made him plenty good enough. And using the little pop-guns tonight wouldn't tax anyone's abilities at all. He checked the bipod legs to make sure they were securely locked. If they had failed, he had a beanbag rest for backup.
And when they returned, the barrels used tonight would come off, replaced by factory barrels again, and the heavys would go on a fishing trip, after being reamed out with a hardened bit. No evidence, no traces.

"Five".
Gene spoke in a monotone voice familiar to anyone with long hours in a ham shack. He was the geek in the bunch. He'd found and programmed their radios, made sure everyone understood how to use them, and how to communicate.
There wasn't a leader as such, but he was older than the others by a decade or so, and after raising three teenagers to adulthood, there wasn't much that fazed him or ruffled his feathers, so he made, if not a Daddy to the group, a good Friar Tuck: a bit more mature, thoughtful, and worldly-wise, when it was needed.
He focused on his screen, and his fingers moved the controls to guide the drone slowly and deliberately. It was unregistered (of course), blacked out, and over the din of the demonstration, almost as silent as Jim and Jake would be, on the moment.
He followed the mob's progress as they moved towards the intersection where all their flyers and internet blather had helpfully pinpointed they would end their rally.
The police scanners indicated that, exactly as before, the town cops would be studiously ignoring the protest except for a token presence, and the campus cops were half a mile behind, doing about the same thing.
No roadblocks, so he and the others, in separate vehicles, would take separate, easy, and rehearsed routes out of Moscow-Near-The-Bay, and back to the quiet semi-rural small community they lived in an hour or so back up California's lush Central Valley.
Not so lush now, with dumping the agricultural water formerly set aside to feeding the world now going to a Sacto Delta baitfish to appease the whims of the idiots Gene was watching, and their elected Foole, long known as Governor Moonbeam.
Gene focused his attention on the drone's power supply. He had four of them, and had alternated them in series, swapping  hot batteries for the depleted ones, so he wouldn't lose visual on the herd. Other than a minute or two between coverage, it had worked flawlessly, until one of his drones had a hiccup, and had to be retired from the relay. The others picked up the slack, but he was glad he was able to recover it without losing one of his numerous toys. The mob was now crossing the fourth street from the target intersection.

"Four."
Pete could barely hear his earpiece, turned up all the way, but he had the most dangerous job. He'd infiltrated one of the local bunches of miscreants some weeks prior, after the first riot. He wasn't one of their anarchists per se, just one of the multitudinous black-clad folks giving them cover.
He had several jobs.
First, on his way to the rally, he'd carefully dumped a couple of hundred pieces of wiped .22LR brass around the intersection; some in each direction, where later investigators would find it, for all the good it would do them. It had been collected off the ground and floor at half a dozen shooting ranges, separated by brand, and location. The consensus was it would look like between 4 and 8 close-in shooters, rather than just the two.
Second, he was the one with an interest in historical sabotage. Careful research on real manuals (not the tripe in The Anarchist's Cookbook, which he was sure had been written by BATFE to get amateur bomb makers to blow themselves up) and practice with real materials had taught him several time-honored ways of getting something to go up in flames or explosion, reliably timed, and without him being there to get the full effect in the face. Most, but not all of the materials would be consumed, making things that much harder for anyone looking into it afterwards, as he was sure they would. That's why after tonight, he wouldn't use that particular set-up again for some time, so as not to create a signature. And just for fun, the night before, he'd left enough parts and exemplars inside the garage of the witch organizing this event to see her off to a long odyssey through the federal courts and prison system, after one anonymous phone call. Life's a bitch, especially when you are one, he chuckled to himself as he salted the items among her possessions the night before.
Third, as the mob moved along, he would place his devices underneath several likely cars about a block behind the festivities, on both sides of the street. That mainly entailed tying his shoes a lot at the bumpers, and surreptitiously sliding his items under their gas tanks. Time and physics would do the rest, in about three minutes, once he set them in place.
Lastly, once he'd done that job, he was artillery.
He had a water balloon cannon ready to attach to poles on the sides of his pickup truck. Practice had taught him that he could hurl small-bottle Molotov cocktails a couple of city blocks with minimal effort, and hit minute of mob, in about thirty seconds. Three shots in 10 seconds, break it down, and then be gone in half a minute.
He was wearing the mob uniform black, head-to-toe: black combat boots, black baggy military-style cargo trousers, black long-sleeved t-shirt and black hoodie, with a black balaclava over his face, and black leather gloves with hard knuckles. On his back, a generic but sturdy nylon black backpack.
Underneath, hard soccer shin guards, knee pads, a cup, hard elbow pads, soft body armor, and lightweight HDPE Level III plates in a plate carrier. A homemade hard helmet shell under the balaclava. He would not be playing victim in the knockout game if he got confronted.
He also had OC spray, a stun gun, a cheap but sturdy full-tang knife, and a Glock 19 with several extra mags, as well as the CCW permit (from a more enlightened sheriff in the nearby county where he lived, but good statewide), to make him almost 100% legal. Well, except for the incendiaries in the backpack.
Like the others, he also had a generic camelback, a small IFAK, and a personal E&E kit, including colorful regular shirt and pants, maps and routes on a removable cell phone thumb drive that led to an alternate and contingency rendezvous, a burner cell phone with the battery removed, paper cash and change, energy bar, and a good plausible and backstopped cover story.
He was young enough to pass for a grad student, and a bit of an adrenaline junkie, hence his choice of assignment, but he was nobody's fool, and they all planned to get home quietly and safely, and had taken every precaution to make it so.

"Three."
Gene noted everything on the scanners normal, mob moving into position.

"Two."
Jake and Jim chambered the first rounds in their rifles, and stayed on their scopes.

"One."
Now it got hairiest for Pete, and as he entered the last block, he started dropping off his packages, pushing them well under gas tanks, and making sure to trip the chemical chain to start the ball.
The first two were easy, then he had to work his way quickly through the mob as it congealed, to get to the other side of the packed street, and his alley exit. The front end was in the target zone already.
"Target 1. Target 1."
"Target 2. Target 2."
"Confirm Target 1. Confirm target 2."
Jake and Jim both had eyes on the front of the herd in their crosshairs.
Pete pulled out his last timer, and shoved his package delicately along the asphalt under an SUV.
As he hit the alley and made his way along it, he gave the all clear.
"Thunder. Thunder."
"Confirm Thunder."
"Waiting for ignition."
As Pete jogged towards his truck, the chemical chain ignited his first package. A fire blossomed underneath a sedan on the far side of the intersection.
The drone confirmed it as the orange blossom grew.
"Ignition."
"Weapons close. Weapons close."
Two safeties were snapped off, and two pairs of eyes searched for targets.
A second package ignited, as flames from the first began to engulf the first car.
Pete got to his truck, jumped into the bed, and limbered the poles into place.
"Drone's off. Drone's off."
Gene guided his drone back towards his vehicle. When it was well away from the zone of interest, he dropped it to 100 feet, set it on homing, and turned on his burner phone.
He punched in a number, and a previously selected landline rang.
It was connected to a timer, and the timer to an Israeli-made cell phone jammer sitting in a phony generic utility box as camouflage, on the roof of a building on the near side of the intersection.
For the next 10 minutes, no one would be connecting any calls within 100 yards of the site. All streaming video from the riot stopped. Texts bounced to nowhere. No 911 calls would be going out.

The crowd pushed into the intersection, some of them cheering the fires they thought their own thugs had started.
"Shot out. Shot out."
Pete called the first of three launches of lit molotovs now arcing towards their target, labeled "to whom it may concern."
The first bottle bloomed into fire amidst the mob. There were screams; they weren't expecting this.
"Splash. Splash."
"Splash. Splash."
Both shooters confirmed the impacts.

Gene was recovering his drone; he closed the sliding side door as he made the call.
"Weapons free. Weapons free."
Inside the two vans, the shooters began plinking through their 25-round magazines. The rounds might kill, maim, or just leave a painful but survivable wound, but in less than half a minute, they were all on their way. Inside the vans, the rounds tick-tick-ticked off, and the brass went into catch-pouches.

The mob was careening around the intersection now. Panic set in with a vengeance as people started to go down. The herd started to stampede back the way they'd come when the first vehicle's gas tank went up with a "Whoompph!", and sent them in new directions. The third package ignited across the street, just as the last of three molotovs landed in the confusion and screaming terror, amplifying it.

"Rounds complete. Rounds complete."
Both shooters changed magazines, and began to send the second batch of 25 shots into the fleeing mob. They both aimed low; a lot of knees and legs were hit.
"Three, Tally Ho."
Gene was already on the road and outbound.
"Four, Tally ho."
Pete had dropped his poles, and was on his way out too.

"Winchester 1."
"Winchester 2."
Jake and Jim had gone through their second magazine apiece. They each dropped the hinged windows back into place and secured them there. The rifles were dropped into hide boxes, then covered with a couple of heavy crates.
"Two, Tally Ho."
Everyone waited breathlessly for Jake to announce he was rolling as well.
"One, Tally Ho."
Three other hearts started to slow down to normal.

NOW the idiots would know what a "WAR" was. None of the men driving away thought they'd like it very much in reality. And the authorities were still trying to figure out WTF had already happened. They wouldn't learn anything useful, though the anonymous call the next day that snitched out the organizer of the violence for cooking her own people "for the greater good" would come as a great PR boost, rather than their usual "we're investigating all leads" B.S.

The cards on their steering wheels led them to separate freeway entrances. After that, the routes were in their heads. Cruise control kept them driving at the speed limit. Radios were switched off. Each drove silently into the night. Behind, the screaming continued, and the nightmare for the protesters, and TPTB, was just beginning.

One hour later, the radios came back on.
They each checked in by number, and verified from different directions their primary rendezvous site was clear and uncompromised.
There, the rifle barrels would come off, the brass would be policed, and they'd switch to the cold license plates. 
The rifles were put back to original configuration. Jake took the weapons. Jim took the silencers, and the custom stocks.
Gene got the hot barrels. Pete got the brass.
Everyone changed clothes. Gene took these to an all-night laundromat.
The other three, in sweat clothes, hit the 24-hour gym next door, and took long showers, scrubbing every trace of residue from their bodies. Then they changed into their normal attire.
Pete took the hot plates back to the lot where the delivery vans they'd borrowed them from were parked, and put them back on without incident.

They drove home individually, at intervals, and by separate routes. Gene drilled out the barrels; next deep sea trip, they'd fall off the boat at night on the ride out. Jim cleaned and stashed the other parts, and Jake cleaned the weapons thoroughly. Pete took the brass home, where he pounded it into lumps of scrap with a sledgehammer, then shot off a bridge into the tule marshes with a slingshot.

And they all slept like babies.




This is entirely a piece of fiction. And a cautionary tale. Hopefully it stays that way, but I wouldn't put chips on that square. If it gets your panties all twisted, too fucking bad. Get over it.
It took about twenty minutes to type out, and I haven't even been thinking about this much.
If I can come up with this off the cuff, so can five hundred thousand other people. Some already have.
Bet your ass on that.
And if you're one of the erstwhile protesters, many of them wouldn't be as merciful towards you and yours as I was in this little tale. You ARE betting your ass on that, every time you show up for another piece of street theatre. And when it actually happens, 100:1 they'll see that YOU get the blame for it. Win-win.

So, contrary to all experience thus far, you all could grow the fuck up, knock your silly shit off, and just suck it.
Or keep pushing your luck.
Call the toss in the air, kids.
-A.

Sunday Music: Mas Que Nada

 

The only way you get more 1960s than this instrumental classic is if you're listening to it on your 500-pound combination AM/FM/turntable/stereo speaker cabinet. Don Draper, Matt Helm, and Sean Connery's 007 would all approve. The band for this track included session musicians like Doc Severinsen, before he became Johnny Carson's paisley-coated music maestro. This cover by Warren Kime and Brass Impact followed Sergio Mendes' version featuring Herb Alpert, which version hit #47 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966, and was done yet again with Sergio and the Black Eyed Peas, and included on the soundtrack for the animated feature Rio in 2011.

A Reminder To Communist Pigs

Ask the Viet Cong how Tet worked out for them.

Since They Keep Losing The National Debate...

Leftards shot up Republican congressmen. They targeted Supreme Court justices. That wasn't enough, so they tried to assassinate Trump. At least twice. That we know of.

Now they've killed someone who did nothing but clean the floor with them, rhetorically. As civil a civilian as there could ever be. So now, the Left is killing ordinary citizens. Or in this case, extraordinary ones.

Evidently, they got tired of losing the arguments, and decided the time for talking is done.

They have sown the wind, and they shall now reap the whirlwind.

Be still, my beating heart. This ends the debate on having a debate. Shooting people for their politics is now, beyond any argument, on the table. The range is now hot in both directions. Best wishes with that plan, Leftards. When one of yours goes down from here on out (and believe me, a ten-fold or hundred-fold recompense for this assassination is well within reasonable speculation), the only response forthcoming will be "Good riddance. Moar, please." You will not hear "Enough!" unless it was your last guy. And that last guy will be the only one that hears it, as his lifeblood drains out. Sympathy for you will only be found in the dictionary, somewhere between "shit" and "syphilis". You are now the dog who caught a car, and is about to find out how that works out for the dog in real life. As Matt Bracken once warned, the people who don't know what "minute of angle" is shouldn't pick a fight with the side that does. That ship has now sailed.

Open season, and screw the bag limits.

This isn't the beginning of the end. But it's the end of the beginning. May God have mercy on the Left's souls. Because no one I can think of on this planet will.

Sunday Music: Heart Of Glass

Blondie's breakout #1 hit took them out of cult status at the end of 1978 and took them and new wave into mainstream, fronted by Debby Harry's breathtaking classic bombshell blonde looks and unmistakable vocals. This song is as timeless now as it was then, and it never gets old.

Barriers To Entry

This is your world with no barriers to entry.

 

Angus and I are still going back and forth on professional licensure, barriers to entry, etc. His points are worth noting, and merit proper consideration.

As my latest reply is really too long for a comment there (or anywhere else), I post it here:

I absolutely understand barriers to entry, including both intended and unintended consequences to same.

In the original example you've cited, that's exactly what was in play. It was also gross stupidity to no intelligent purpose whatsoever. It demonstrably encouraged fraud, by creating an attractive nuisance in letting someone completely untrained, unlicensed, and uncertified demonstrate excellence in a position where obviously no professionalism (nor basic morality) was in any way needful to meet and surpass the employer's needs or expectations. 

In 90% or more (if not 99+%) of registered nursing jobs, that barrier to entry is both necessary and prudent.

You've cited an outlier where it was neither. I can generally count those on my thumbs.

The tip-off to that is anyone doing a job so well despite a total lack of training or education, they were being considered for a "charge nurse" position after mere months. (That's granting that the media report(s) we're relying on for the example was anything close to accurate and correct. The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect says that's pure hopeium in play, but that's another issue.)

I wasn't citing the shortage of nurses as refutation that a barrier exists, I cited it to point out that erecting that barrier over positions that don't need it is immensely stupid and clearly makes no sense. It's like requiring an electrical engineering degree for a job changing common 60W light bulbs - asinine and pointless, to no discernible benefit to anyone: not the end user, the employer, the employee, nor to any person or reason articulable or imagined.

It's quite simply stupidity in action.

IOW, most of what bad HR does pretty much every day of the week.

There's barriers to entry for brain surgery too, and we generally don't consider them a drawback.

When someone requires the same level of barriers to entry for the person who cuts and combs your hair as they do for neurosurgery, however, it's obviously become asinine.

Your example was the latter, by a country mile.

That example is so narrow in the field specified as to require measurement with an electron microscope.

What it's not, is proof that that's either the trend, nor even common practice.

There was once a time when anyone could claim the title "nurse". It was generally either nuns, or hookers too old to pull clients.

This was back when "doctors" had less medical expertise than that currently possessed by a reasonably intelligent paramedic, and the death rate from "medical practice" of all types was commensurately horrible.

Current barriers to entry in the entire medical field, be it licensure, education, etc. is a net plus, otherwise the hue and cry to get rid of them would be deafening.

While there are endless examples of times and places where barriers to entry to any field may be flat-out idiotic (as the original one you cited), in the medical field in general, including nursing, it's a positive boon to all concerned.

The alternative is hiring African witch doctors off the street, and according them co-equal status, which is like  letting retards who can't grasp grade-school math hang out a CPA shingle.

Was there a barrier to entry for a position in the original example? Yes.

Was it needless, pointless, and egregiously stupid? Also yes.

Does it therefore prove that barriers to entry are therefore always pointless and stupid? Absolutely anything but. I don't think you were or are arguing that.

And that example is so breathtakingly stupid and rare anywhere in the medical arts that calling it "remarkable" is where using that word falls far short of accuracy.

The only thing I can see is that it also beggars the word "moronic" when describing the employment entity and management of same precisely for requiring licensure for a position far in excess of requirements, as well as in violation of basic common sense and napkin-math economics.

But that's really about all it does.

FTR in anything medical, the rule is generally the exact opposite, to wit letting people far less than competent do things far beyond their abilities or preparation, whether it's letting techs perform procedures without anything but a brief OJT, or state medical boards letting anyone practice plastic surgery with nothing more than having graduated medical school, both of which examples are the exact opposite of barriers to entry. And with predictable outcomes.

For another example of the problem with lack of barriers to entry, currently, the only barrier to entry to riding an e-bike hereabouts is someone (or someone's parents) having the means to purchase one. No age limits, no license required, no training regimen prescribed, nothing. Consequently, anyone who can reach the handlebars can ride one, and in a year or two, e-bikes have moved into the Top Five causes for trauma visits to local ERs, and we see 1-5 cases a day, nearly every day, since e-bikes first hit the stores.

They're like handing out live hand grenades to toddlers, and wondering what will happen.

In both cases, carnage.

It's a situation absolutely begging for barriers to entry, where the item in question should require no less training, licensure, and safety equipment (i.e. a helmet) than that required to legally ride a motorcycle on city streets. Just to keep the accident toll down to single digit percentages.

Until that happens, letting anyone ride e-bikes is simply the unwritten Orthopedic And Trauma Surgeon's Full Employment Act of 2005.

In a fair world, they'd also require that anyone injured by riding one recklessly be cared for only by "doctors" and "nurses" with no licensure or certification to practice as such.

Sauce for the gander, and turnabout is fair play.

FTR, I'm also fine with only caring for drug overdoses and drunks with specific specialty hospitals staffed solely by personnel absolutely working while high as f**k, and/or with a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit.

It would be hilarious on pay-per-view, and give us something to do with all the doctors and nurses with revoked licenses for substance use, while having Darwin's acolytes rolling on the floor in fits of laughter.

Just like comedian Gallagher's plan for giving all those houses under the airport's flight path to deaf people.

(Safety Tip: No flying monkeys need respond at Angus' site, nor are they invited by either of us. Like most blogs, he has posting guidelines. Ignore them at your own peril, and on your own head be it.)

Sunday Music: Rock & Roll Fantasy

 

If ever a rock song should have been brought to life word for word and then immortalized in animated form, it's Bad Company's Top 13 hit from 1979, but when Heavy Metal came out in 1981, they totally missed the bus on that. (Pro Tip: Anyone looking to make a name as an animated director, the song is still right there, waiting and ripe for this to happen.)

Gone Fishing

Dupont spinners. 100% success rate.

Multiple out-of-town trips last week and this one. Posting sporadic. Making up for using less than 3 weeks of PTO in the last quarter century. Starting with a number of new toys, and the time to play with them. (Pro tip: thermal sights are awesome.) And I may do it again next week too. Visit the blogs and sites on the right-->.

Sunday Music: Lovergirl

Today's choice is from the funkiest white girl singing R&B in the '80s, at 28 years old here, and already on her sixth studio album. She wrote this, played it, danced it, and sang it, taking it all the way to #4 in 1984.

Choices Have Consequences

h/t OddJob

Nota bene Warsaw is not on that list.

Demographics is destiny.

Either Europe throws them out en masse, and without pity.

Or they become the Turd World.

There's no middle.

(No points for guessing how that works out for the 50M overbreeding invaders, from all points of the compass, already here in the U.S. DHS reports that over 2M have self-deported since January 2025. So only 48M to go...)

Sunday Music: A Little More Love

Between her movie success coming from Grease, and the blockbuster album Physical, ONJ put out Totally Hot, and this sultry single from it, which peaked at #3 in 1978, hinted at the shift from soft pop to a harder rocking image, and the volcanic explosion that was to come on her next solo album, which kicked the doors open on the 1980s. She wasn't accidentally one of the best-selling artists of all time.

Just A Small Reminder...

Sunday Music: Nobody Does It Better

 

This masterwork was a classic in 1977 just by being a Marvin Hamlisch work performed by Carly Simon. Dropping it in as the title piece to a James Bond flick, after the single-most awesome opening stunt in Bond history, just added booster rockets to the launch. It peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts that year, and was Simon's longest-charting song.

Um, Sorry, But No. Not Even Close.

 

This is one potential question on the NCLEX, the national licensure exam for RNs.
Asking this to a CNA is like asking your dog to do calculus.
With an abacus. Blindfolded.
It's as wrong as two boys f**king.
For any RN, it's a lay-up. An easy shot.
Follow up questions:
Why is this rhythm important?
What should the (actual) nurse do next?
Answers at the bottom.

For whatever reason, Angus is under the severely-misled misimpression that a CNA with a one-month classroom and clinical certificate (total, all-in) is functionally identical to an RN with two to four years of upper-division college education and a nationally recognized license.

He states the difference between a CNA and an RN is "Not much."

A CNA is a 60 hour course, and less than 3 weeks' supervised clinical training. In CA.

Florida CNAs need even less than that. (Color me shocked.)

An RN, by contrast, is a two- to four year degree program leading to national licensure, including more clinical hands-on hours in any month than CNAs require for their entire certificate. (Florida RN licensure may be less rigorous, IDK, but that's why an RN from CA, NY, or IL can work in all 50 states, and nurses from the Gulf Coast belt can generally not get hired anywhere else without extensive testing and additional classes unless they go to similarly low-educated states. Mississippi nurses right out of school, for example, can generally not go out-of-state to anywhere else. That's not for nothing.)

Apparently we really have to go into why one of these things is not like the other one.

Starting with CNA's having a state-specific certificate, not a professional license recognized in 50 states and seven territories.

This is the difference between a vet tech, and an actual vet.

One of those cleans animal cages, and the other one diagnoses animal illness.

That's why a CNA (an expired-certificate CNA to boot) passing herself off as an RN is committing criminal malpractice.

A CNA has exactly zero training, experience, or competence in assessing patients, absolutely none in pharmacology, nor in pathophysiology, gerontology, obstetrics, pre- and post-op surgical care, pediatrics, psychology, critical care, or about a million other things large and small that even a new grad RN walks out the door with from school before they can pass their boards. 

A CNA literally lacks the knowledge of about a dozen 800-page nursing textbooks, whereas to get a CNA certificate, if you don't put your shoes and socks on in that order, you'll likely pass the class. The number of CNAs anywhere who could take and pass the NCLEX without years of study is going to be 0.000%, nationwide, since ever, even one with 25 years of floor experience behind them.

A CNA literally doesn't know what she/he doesn't know, any more than the guy who sweeps out the hangars at Boeing is a qualified aeronautical engineer. (As recent unqualified DIE hires at Boeing have demonstrated, in case anyone was watching.)

It's that big a difference, and anyone - family or not - telling someone otherwise with a straight face is talking out their other end.

And by "early on", apparently Angus is referring to 150 years ago, when even doctors had less actual medical knowledge than a modern EMT possesses. Yeah, things have changed a wee bit in nursing since Florence Nightingale got the ball rolling in the Crimea. Which is why CNA is a few weeks of night school, and not a college degree plus 3-12 months of directly-supervised clinical hands-on experience that an RN license requires. (CA requires 500 hours, minimum. My program was closer to 1300 hours.)

Putting it gently, Angus kind of stepped in it with both feet.

A CNA takes vital signs (with a machine that does 90% of the work), helps change dirty diapers and linens, and walks patients to the bathroom. That about exhausts their entire clinical skill set, and many of them are hard-pressed to be barely competent at any of that. Like I-didn't-realize-that-a-pulse-of-180-should-be-immediately-flagged-to-the-nurse/doctor barely competent. I've only seen that one - or one like it - about a thousand times in 25 years.

That skill set was covered my first week of nursing school, and they expanded on that to quite a degree over several years. Almost like one was a dead-end entry-level cert, and the other was a bona fide medical profession.

I don't know why anyone would lead someone to believe it was otherwise, but anyone so informed has been rather egregiously misled.

In Angus' experience wheelhouse, on the skillset continuum, it's the difference between a tank loader 5 minutes out of school at Ft. Benning (it still makes me shudder that it's not at Ft. Knox any more), and a SFC with 16 years in Armor who's the Tank Commander. (In point of fact, that loader got more - and better - training at his 19K MOS in 8 weeks at Ft. Benning than most CNAs get in school. EVER.)

*(Answer: C. V-tach. It's important because if it's pulseless V-tach, the patient is in cardiac arrest, and the nurse should get the defibrillator and zap that patient pronto while calling "CODE BLUE" loud enough for everyone within earshot to hear and respond to. Total amount of time CNAs get educated and trained to know and do this: Never. Period. 

Whereas for an RN, any RN, it should be automatic. Anyone who sincerely thinks the difference between a CNA and an RN is "not much" should let their grade-school-aged kids take out their appendix or gallbladder with kitchen utensils, and get back to us on how well that worked out. That's what expecting a CNA to be an RN is like.)

*** ADDENDUM ***:

If you came here, read this, and then ran over to dogpile Angus at his blog, please stop. (If anyone this applies to didn't read follow-ups there, that speaks for itself.)

1) Like most blogs (including this one) comments are moderated, meaning rude and obnoxious rejoinders disappear into the ether. Just like here.

2) Take the time to note Angus' multiple replies and amplifications on the original topic (and a couple of spicy ripostes for people doing it wrong. It's clear that what came out in his first post wasn't precisely what he meant to say, i.e. that CNAs doing CNA tasks do them as well as RNs. (We have no argument whatsoever with that contention, though we do wish it had been phrased better originally.) And that some jobs require far more licensure than the tasks that make up the job entail. We absolutely agree with him on that point as well, and we have no doubt some idiot managers over-mandate licensure levels a given job at hand doesn't require, in a phenomenon not limited to the medical arts.

3) That doesn't mean that the wingnut deliberately perpetrating a professional fraud in the OP deserves a pass (she deserves to get hammered into the ground, in fact) but it does illustrate that whoever classified that job as one requiring an RN license grossly over-stated the necessary qualifications to excel at it. Why anyone running a business would be as stupid as to do that in the first place is beyond explanation, but then so is demanding an RN license, and then performing no due diligence to ensure that anyone considered for the position actually possessed one. Stupid is as stupid does.

I got the clarification of what he intended by his second post on the topic. There have been at least two more since that, for a total of four, not counting the pointed reminders that going to his blog (or anybody else's, in nearly every case) to storm in and crap on the carpet will never see the light of day. The list of blogs on the internet where even being right, if you're a right dick about it, will get your missives discarded, is long, and distinguished. This should not be news to anyone.

FFS, I agree with Angus on many important things (guns, the military, and most current events, to name but three) more than even he thinks, even if we're not carbon copies of each other. What a boring internet that would be. And if you're going to disagree with anyone online who's worth the trouble, do it within the bounds of decorum. You'll get more flies with sugar than with vinegar.

If that's too much to ask of anyone, I don't want to know you.

Still Can't Find Them Anywhere...

But hey, look! RUSSIA!
World's Biggest Nothingburger!

CDC Releases Updated List...

Sunday Music: Slip Slidin' Away

 

Today's pick is a Top Five hit from 1977 by quintessential American singer/songwriter Paul Simon. Dedicated to the patient with no quality of life, made a DNR, but kept alive by his family probably out of guilt, long past the time they should have just let go, told him they loved him, and whispered into his ear "Walk towards the light...". There's nothing less fun than watching your patient's blood pressure slide down and circle the drain, without quite bottoming out, and then the family panics, and decides at the last minute they want you to do everything short of actual CPR. For some reason, couldn't get this song out of my head all night.

Sydney Sweeney Replies

Word to your mother: Fat is the new fat.

Profound Retardation: Still A Thing

 h/t WRSA

Link to Ima Retard's site at the OP.

Life Is Hard.

It's Harder When You're A Fucking Retard.

Write that on your hand with a Sharpie, lest ye forget.

But let's grant the retarded premise, to illustrate the magnitude of retardation in play here, and the dearth of IQ points behind it.

So, for this to be anything but fever dreams of the insane, we'll just admit that literally millions of pilots have been in on this scheme since the first high-altitude aircraft, like for example the B-17, first flew. Every single one of them, who of course went on to become jet air transport pilots after WW2, along with millions of never-military civilian pilots, first officers, and flight engineers.

All in on the plot.

And all those millions of A&P mechanics, who never spilled the beans.

The engineers who snuck giant chemical tanks onto every aircraft. Hundreds of thousands of them, at companies like McDonnell, Douglas, Boeing, Lockheed, etc. All the people who built the tanks and installed them, along with the spray apparatus. In 100 other countries too.

Then there are the millions of people at hundreds of airports for decades and decades, dutifully filling those tanks at every airport all over the country. The guys who trucked in the chemtrail chemicals, every single day and night.

The guys who designed the chemtrail dispersal systems, and the guys who maintain them 24/7/365.

And not just the drivers who deliver the chemicals, but everyone at all the companies that make them, since ever, dear little retard.

Literally tens of millions of people who service this vast conspiracy, since the first contrails were discovered by flying at altitude, back in the 1930s.

And no one uttered a peep of confirmation, until our intrepid retard single-handedly cracked the case, aided and abetted by a second-grade dropout's misunderstanding of science, held by both the author of this piece of codswallop, and of course, ostensibly, by legendary scientific soopergenius RFKJr hisownself.

Yup, you cracked the case from your mom's basement, after legions of happy internet fucktards tried and failed.

In the words of Dr. Evil:

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Dear Internet Chemtrail Fucktards:

A little Science 101 for ya.

When you combust C(x)H(x)O(x), you get two byproducts, Every. Single. Time.

CO2, and H2O.

And by this barely-understood phenomenon, when H2O escapes as the byproduct of combustion, at altitude, where temperatures are less than 32° F., the water vapor makes this amazing and seldom-found item in nature called ICE.

Usually as crystals, blasted out by the ton, from any combustion engine on a high-flying airplane.

Which make condensation trails ("contrails", numbnuts, not "chemtrails").

Which even dumbfuck high-school dropout flight crew on B-17s could understand in the 1930s and 1940s, before Common Core became the norm for misleading gullible idiot children into thinking basic chemistry was a vast plot to poison the country.

So to anyone to whom this all is news, kindly grow another two or three dozen IQ points to get your chin above the "moron" line, and STFU until you do.

It's embarrassing to have to kick the retards, but sometimes, it's the only way to break the ground circuit when they're peeing on the electric fence. Again.

Word to your mother: Goddamned fetal-alcohol syndrome lead-paint-chip chewing retards on the internet are not a substitute for actual brains, to the same degree that shit is not either, for those who never knew that.

It's actually a slam on the entire species to have to point this out to some people. Please, stop living up to everyone's expectations of the internet.

And while we're up: throw away the tooth under your pillow. The Tooth Fairy isn't coming, since your mommy died, so no more quarters will be forthcoming. Someone had to tell you.

Hilarity Ensues

No, really.

Sunday Music: At The End Of The Line

 Number 63 hit from 1988 supergroup The Travelling Wilburys. Still a great cut nearly 40 years later, though sadly Roy Orbison, George Harrison, and Tom Petty have all reached the end of the line, and only Bob Dylan and Jeff Lynne remain with us.

Maybe You Two Could, Y'know...Talk?

I'm Just Gonna Put This Out There

Absolutely no points for guessing how I know this to be true.

When you either start reading stories about people on passing vessels (canoes, steamboats, etc.) getting nailed from shore, or boba fights erupting in food venues, and those food items suddenly disappear from the menu overnight, I want it known I have no involvement whatsoever in any aspect of that.

Rule 34, for example, says that if it exists, there's porn of it.

Rule 1 says that if you invent it, humanity will weaponize it in about 2 seconds.

(If you have any doubts about that, ask Abel about why his brother Cain was carrying that rock.)

I think Rule 1 is now in play.

You heard it here first.

YMMV.

Sunday Music - I'd Really Love To See You Tonight

 

England Dan (Dan Seals) and John Ford Coley's easy listening hit from May 1976 that went to #2 in the U.S.

Total Number Of Prosecutions Of Any Of Them To Date: ZERO

 h/t WRSA

What you ordered was a real DoJ.
What you got was the Fuckup Fairies.

Never Missing An Opportunity To Miss An Opportunity

In Bob Iger's continuing quest to completely assassinate any vestige of Walt Disney's original vision for the company which bears his name, comes this latest abortion, delivered like a turd on a platter on the 70th anniversary of Disneyland.

As you can see at a glance the animatronic that was supposed to blow people away was instead blown out of someone's ass. Frankly, we look more like Walt than this monstrosity.

It certainly looks like someone, in all fairness.

The leading online opinion at the moment is Mike Lindell, selling My Pillow.

Personally, we think it to be closest to the illegitimate love child of Tom Hanks, looking nothing like Walt either in Saving Mr. Banks,

and Martin Short after being stung by a bee in Pure Luck:

In any event, we're almost certain Disney Inc. hired Stevie Wonder to sculpt this head, and other than looking absolutely nothing like the man it's intended to portray, it's just great, as any sewage-swilling Disneycorp butt-smootcher's blog or vlog will confirm for you.

A test of their honesty in reviewing this disasterpiece, i.e. their willingness to tell you the Emperor's Invisible Clothes look terrific instead of bemoan his nakedness is the acid test of their reliability, or a confirmation of their utter toadie status.

Disney Inc. only had 59 years to get something like this right, and getting it this wrong is inexplicable, given the plethora of pictures of the actual man in the corporation going back to 100 years ago, other than assuming this bastardization was entirely deliberate, as everything the current company stands for literally hates everything Walt Disney stood for, to the point of foisting this horrible caricature of him on the public, even despite the strenuous objections of his immediate surviving family.

I can only say, having seen the monster, that the family knows when they're being shat upon by the current regime, and nothing else explains why, when they only had one job here, they screwed the pooch so hard, it will never walk straight again, and probably needs to be put down out of mercy.

The kindest honest thing I've read about this...thing...is an earnest thanks they didn't make him a black female lesbian. Celebrate Crappy.

No matter how much you hate the company that Disney Inc. has become, you simply don't hate them enough.

Blondi's On A Roll

Because The FBI Would Never Lie About A Thing Like That

"800 Pound Gorilla To The White Courtesy Phone..."

DOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH!!!

This Is How History Repeats Itself

Redacted White House press release:
"No one who's on Epstein's client list cares about Epstein."

Sunday Music: Criminal

 

One-hit wonder Fiona Apple's fifteen minutes of fame from 1997, providing her with a #21 hit and the first of three Grammys, along with her first and last moments of actual commercial success, boosted in no small part by this video that played in heavy MTV rotation, back when the channel actually played music videos. Dedicated today to the entire current Department of Justice, from the top down.

Getting History Right The Second Time Around

Dallas police officers rush Oswald to hospital moments after he swallowed poison.
Unfortunately, he died within minutes by his own hand.

Call The Pope - It's Another Miracle!

"It's the damnedest thing! Even the Autopen has an alibi."

 

Correction To The Clarification Of The Update To The Misquote

Apparently, his head just spontaneously exploded. How unlucky.

Product Announcement

h/t Angus McThag

Commit to the comedy.

SiG Arms: Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

If they don't pull it, hails of derisive laughter from the gun community.

If they do pull it, a legion of ambulance-chasing shysters with lawsuits in their hands.

I say they should simply admit to the obvious, and commit to the comedy.

Regardless, it's sad. I own some of their products, but not the 320 180.

It's always unfortunate when the best engineering minds drop an Edsel.

These Aren't The Droids You're Looking For

The Farce can have a strong impact on the weak-minded.

FIFY

h/t WRSA

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight...

"The greatest vexation with communism was not the intricate
cleverness of the lies, but rather their ham-fisted clumsiness,
 which would insult the intelligence of a child or a simpleton,
and their endless repetition coerced by those in charge."

Sunday Music: Watching The Wheels

 

Number 10 hit release from March 1981, released three months after John Lennon's death, and six months after he'd celebrated his 40th birthday.

"It's To Boost Productivity"

h/t daily timewaster

Another Myth-tery Solved

 h/t 19th Ward Chicago

So it wasn't until Evita Castro-Peron struck out on her own, after growing up in Upper Whitebread, and then graduating with an econ degree from Boston U., that she couldn't make a living as anything more than a bartender in the Bronx. She's from the Bronx like Obozo is from Hawaii. Another lying carpetbagger Democrat. Color me shocked!

Scratch an entitled rich brat with delusions of grandeur, and you'll find another communist.

Sunday Music: You Shook Me All Night Long

 

Dedicated to the pilots and ground crew of the 13th Bomb Squadron, in honor of their literally blockbusting magnum opus on their recent Southwest Asia field trip, comes this AC/DC Top 40 6x Platinum hit from 1980.

Sunny and Clear, With No Nukes Inbound

Ah, what a week.

Despite all the bad wishes and doom porn expended all over the blogosphere, no nukes are falling anywhere, and a lot of folks expecting the worst are really butthurt about that.

Even more folks got their white hoods and robes out of mothballs, and got them all wrinkled and dirty, for nothing.

Israel is satisfied Iran's nuke precursors are destroyed, to the point they agreed to stop bombing the Iranian f**ks back to the 6th century.

We're satisfied of that too, because we've seen the craters we put into their facilities.

Iran is convinced their nuke program is toast, to the point they agreed to stop dropping missile payloads on their favorite JOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooS!!!

People are so discombobulated by Trump ending a war with one phone call, they've forgotten to tell us that Russia's still winning after a mere 1219 days, and counting. Final Victory: Any Day Now™, just like for the previous 1218 days. At this rate, just imagine how much harder they'll be winning on Day 2000! Or 5000!

That's pretty conclusive evidence that 7 B-2s and a couple of SSNs with Tomahawks and a case of the ass, can end a war in about an hour, or your pizza is free.

But cheer up, pessimists: The Democommunists are only behind in either house of Congress by a few seats, and Dopey Joe still oversaw a few trillion dollars' worth of dollars printed three shifts a day, seven days a week, for pretty much four solid years.

So relax, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later, something huge will eventually shit the bed, and make all your apocalyptic fantasies come true, and you won't have all that stuff stocked up for nothing.

Things can always get worse.

Government's only happy when it's fucking things up massively, and our government is catering the biggest Happiness Party ever imagined, to a metaphysical certainty.

It's just not That Day. Yet.

That's Gonna Leave A Mark

h/t Conservative Treehouse

In a 6-3 ruling (of The Sane Ones vs. Three Crazy Cat Ladies On Crack), SCOTUS has issued a blanket nationwide injunction on local Crazy Cat Ladies on the federal bench issuing blanket nationwide injunctions.

It should be called the STFU And Sit Your Stupid Ass Down ruling, as that is the clear intent, and the main effect will be to force crazy Democommunist appointees with fulminant TDS to stop seeking the headlines, and go back to deciding those boring cases that have the federal docket backed up about three presidents' worth.

The only pity here is that SCOTUS' latest ruling didn't come with complimentary tazer shots to the neck, and a ceremonial ass-kicking all the way to 30 days in the public stocks for the transgressors.

But at least a judicial dick-punch from SCOTUS has career implications.