Putting the "Anal" In Analysis

You are a NO GO at the Tall Enough
 For The Internet station, bumpkin.

If you're going to take a whack at derpsplaining things on the Internet that are clearly beyond your basic grasp, maybe - just spitballing, mind you - some folks should pull back on their heads first until they hear a loud popping noise, and it suddenly gets brighter and easier to breathe.

Case in point:

This soopergenius codswallop from some halfwit who knows Jack and Shit about what he opines upon.

"Crooks’ canted his rifle to the left — which means the ejection port was facing to the left at about an 11 o’clock position — for the first three shots."

For the three non-gun-inclined folks reading that, and thus not falling about themselves on the ground in paroxysms of laughter, we post a reminder pic of a typical AR-15-style weapon: 

From this one pic, we can state authoritatively that this Internet Soopergenius has clearly cracked the case on how Rooftop Retard could miss anything as large as Trump from within Wrist-Rocket range:

That's because to "cant the rifle to the left" and get the ejection port to face 11 o'clock, Crooks would have to hold the rifle almost upside down.

Nice analysis, Dipshit.

(Unless he was holding the rifle assbackwards, and pointing it at himself. But were that the case, we don't think he'd have managed to fire 8 shots into himself, as the first one would have done the job it took the authorities several seconds to accomplish. So yeah, no, you're still an ignorant idiot for making this entire suggestion.)

Let's help Dr. Derpalot out, since he's obviously never fired anything resembling an AR-15/M-16 rifle in his life, and we'll use bright colors to point out reality:

So to eject cases to the left, by canting the rifle, Crooks would be holding that pistol grip at or beyond the 2 o'clock position, 2/3rds of the way (120° out of 180°) to completely inverted.

Odds that's what really happened: a gajillion to one, against. Duh. As GED dropouts in any ten basic training platoons could have told you in 0.2 seconds, going back only 50+ years to about 1966.

Maybe Dr. Derpalot should bone up on physics and common effing sense, not to mention basic riflery. Just a thought. In his dictionary, the word "beclowned" just has a mirror mounted in the column.

Just saying...

Don't quit your day job, Homer.

And maybe don't talk about things you're totally unfamiliar with, because then you won't be putting an ice pack on your wedding tackle every day, after you trample it with cleats on.

And if you're linking or excerpting this kind of ass-tastic analysis on your blog for anything but comedy relief, you probably need an ice pack for your own junk too, on a regular basis.

But thanks for a lay-up post for today. Those fish in the barrel weren't going to shoot themselves.

Blogging: Much easier if these are not your default footwear.

Demographics Is Destiny

This is why the "We'll Just Kill The Cities" Posse isn't your friend, they're the guys whacking the dragon on the snout with an axe handle.

It's from the same mentality that came up with "We'll Just Shoot The Wounded".

Their "solutions" aren't simple, they're simplistic.

Which is what you get with simpletons.

They know just enough to be dangerous (mostly to anyone standing close to them), but not quite enough to be really bright.

So, you're going to bottle up the cities?

Let's try that with just one example.

The population of the metro area of Kansas City MO is 2.3M.

The population of the metro area of St. Louis MO is 2.8M.

That's 5.1M people, right there.

The entire population of the state of Missouri is only 6.2M.

Which means the population of just the two largest cities in the state, the ones you're going to "bottle up" (on flat land, mind you!) is the exact 82:18 ratio we mentioned.

Those two cities outnumber every swinging Richard in the entire rest of the state by over 4:1.

I think they might have something to say about being "bottled up".

I think they might even be inclined to say it with guns. (And ropes. And so on.)

Let's be generous, and spot you the farcically optimistic killing ratio of 2:1.

So a week later, there are only 2.9M of them.

And there are exactly 0 of YOU. 

You've been removed from the gene pool forever, down to your grandkids, to the last toddler.

Long before they're even getting hungry, let alone starving.

Well played, Checker Champions.

40% of the population now has 100% of the resources. Including what used to be yours.

But you won't care, because you're all dead.

Recruiting converts to your cause is going to be quite the uphill slog there.

So perhaps you might consider ways to get potential allies onboard with a brighter campaign strategy (which would be Any One But Your Plan A), instead of becoming The Assholes That Everyone Else Wants To Kill Off By Day Two.

Just a suggestion, mind you.

Word To Your Mother: As we just pointed out in Comments to the prior post, there are more Trump supporters in the L.A. metro area than the population of any one of 36 entire states.

There are more actual Trump voters in NYFC than the total number of troops in the U.S. Army: active, reserve, and Nasty Guard, combined.

So there aren't any "blue hives."

That nonsense is for idiots who think the maps made by your enemies are the actual terrain.

The reality is that the entire country is different shades of purple.

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." - The Usual Suspects

Uh huh.

And the greatest trick the Leftards ever pulled was to make you think our side doesn't exist.

Using maps that wipe out the existence of 25-49% of entire cities and states.

The Truth is, there are one helluva lot more people out there who think like you do than they're comfortable with. If it weren't true, they wouldn't be so pants-wettingly obsessed with trying to derail another election.

Don't be the thousands of morons obediently getting on the train boxcars under the watchful eyes of a paltry half-dozen armed troops.

Do. The. Math.

Can You Dig It?!?

We Told You So Dept.

 h/t WRSA

We have long since discussed exactly this scenario, plus several more, and how easy it would be for anyone with a weekend and about $2K to weaponize COTS* drones with simple, even homemade, thermite grenades, to take out aircraft, oil tank farms, LNG terminals, and countless other bits of infrastructure, and laid it out in detail over six years ago on Peter's Bayou Renaissance Man blog, over and over again (we beseech you one and all, read the comments back and forth), joined by the host there, and numerous other contributors, using nothing but average common sense.

(IOW, if you didn't put your shoes and socks on in that order, you could probably figure it out yourself, let alone grasp that drone science isn't rocket science. Which tells you a lot more about the likely sartorial habits of naysayers than anything else.)

We were earnestly and loudly derided by the World's Foremost Self-Anointed Drone Expert, stating that what we suggested was categorically impossible, despite posted links to multiple incidents of Mexican drug cartels already having done exactly what we proposed.

The flatulence in opposition only increased.

We have now all watched only dozens to a few hundred videos of Ukrainian homemade drone bombers taking out Russian tanks, APCs, and individual squaddies in trenches in Donetsk and Luhansk for the last two years, demonstrating proof of concept with repurposed simple Russian grenades, mortar rounds, and RPG warheads.

The flatulence in reply turned to a simian fury of solid fecal flinging. In point of fact, the harder Reality kicked our favorite gross ignoramus right in the arse, the more furiously he mined his underpants to tell us this was all "Unpossible!", and the literal reams of actual available information was simply Not So.

We take this opportunity to welcome Matt Bracken to the ranks of those like ourselves, who clearly don't know what we're talking about, and thus find ourselves dumber than the World's Foremost Self-Anointed Drone Expert (at least among those north of the 45th parallel, and left of the 4th quintile on an IQ bell curve).

You're in good company, Matt.

*(MILSPEAK: Commercial, Off-The-Shelf)

81 Million Votes

 h/t Odd Job

Suck on that one for awhile.

Olly Olly Oxen Free

We notice with complete lack of surprise that any number of bloggers who stepped all over their wedding tackle with football cleats times without counting over the Baldwin case, who gave us endless rations of shit and bile over our concisely and exhaustively pointing out the actual facts of the case, and who got served a Jurassic park-sized portion of shitburger with yesterday's announcement that all criminal charges have been dropped against Baldwin, and have since then owned up to their errors with even a fraction of the diligence they displayed in making them, can be counted, to date, on our thumbs. And that the story is about as well-covered by the right side of the blogosphere since it broke with almost as much diligence as the MSM has covered Hunter Biden's laptop.

[Pro Tip: If you're just as bad as the Leftards, don't stare off into space wondering how on earth you always manage to get represented in politics by people just as bad as the Leftards. It's not that much of a mystery, is it...?]

Take your lumps and own them, kids. We all know who you are. Everyone knows who you are. Don't be chickenshits about it, or get dug out of your pillboxes with flamethrowers and pitchforks. Just issue your mea culpas and Page B87 retractions, resolve to think with your big head instead of your little one next time, and move on with your lives with a slight stinging sensation in the back of your neck to remind you why thinks are better than feelz as a system of jurisprudence.

Instead of silent butthurt, you should be rejoicing that the criminal justice system, at least in Santa Fe, has at least one prosecutor who can tell their ass from a hole in the ground, can read the cards of a recockulous indictment without having to play that hand, riding their retarded boss' flaming trainwreck over the cliff, and railroading an innocent man in the process. And relax; Baldwin's still just as much of a flaming asshole today as he was two years ago, so you don't have to like him to admit reality. Delusion is the last refuge of a psychotic. C'mon back over to the side of sanity. The water's fine.

This is especially true when you consider that some D.A.'s posse may be coming for one of you next time something goes down. At that point, the rule of law is a better option than the Two Minutes' Hate, don'tcha think?

"Any Day Now...": Delusional Psychosis, Part 313

 

Pro Tip: "delusional" ≠ "people smarter than you
with better analysis and more accurate sources"

Case in point:

19th Ward chicago: "Today there is propaganda, some of it so absurd that it is laughable."

He's absolutely right about laughable propaganda, but not in the way he thinks.

E.g.:

"Until recently, Putin left the Ukraine alone except for the Donbass area."

And the guy who wrote that, sourced at the OP, is calling those who disagree with his crackpot analysis "delusional"? It is to laugh.

Other than illegally seizing Crimea outright in 2014 (because he could) amidst the chaos of the Ukrainian uprising, and then immediately afterwards doubling down, and sending Spetsnaz and airborne troops into the Donbas in wholesale batches, minimally camouflaged in civilian clothes, and then claiming they were "popular uprisings" against Kiev, Putin left Ukraine alone.

Which would be like saying that "Except for seizing California and Texas, and annexing them back into Mexico, Mexico has left the United States alone."

Anyone who can support that level of psychosis can rationalize anything.

"the newspaper's delusional writers claim that Russian attacks are no longer effective as Ukraine's Western allies have shored up Ukraine's air defenses. Why then is half of Ukraine without electric power?"

This is like me saying I have a credit card, and then you asking me why my tires are flat.

One statement has nothing to do with the other, and ignores the obvious.

For the terminally clueless, I'd go out on a limb and say it's because before Ukraine's Western allies shored up their air defenses, Russian saturation missile attacks, with only 25% effectiveness at the height of the bombardments, still managed to knock out a lot of Ukrainian power grid infrastructure. In other news for the criminally stupid, water is wet, and fire burns.

Thus half of Ukraine is without power because prior Russian strikes hit electrical infrastructure that's hard to replace (the fragility of the world's power grids has only been covered in Ukraine's specific case, and for the U.S., about a million times in the last ten years, from Hell to breakfast by everyone in creation), and necessary replacement parts are available from a very limited number of sources. Much of which is Russian itself. Gee, let me think why it's still dark in the areas of the Ukraine where Russia has landed drone and missile strikes...

Meanwhile, that effort has affected Ukraine's battlefield campaigns...how, exactly?

Talk turkey, not b.s.: Is the front moving towards Kiev, or towards Moscow?

And in which direction has it been moving, inexorably, since late August?

Get back to us, and tell us who's really being delusional.

How it ends remains an open question (Retards, Pay Attention: Russia nominally has 10 times the military and resources of Ukraine, and yet, they continue to flail endlessly to no good result), but failure to acknowledge the currently obvious situation is the textbook definition of outright insanity.

You want to argue Russia will make a comeback? That's fine. 

First, explain why they need to, and on the way there, own up to their serial failures to date.

Then explain how they've learned from their colossal blunders thus far, and made needed reforms, and from what bodily orifice they're suddenly going to pull a military that's powerful, competent, motivated, and intelligently led, rather than a bunch of drunken buffoons led by prevaricating nitwits who keep falling out of windows, or shooting themselves in the head six or seven times, back at HQ.

That would be a fascinating read, if it's not all fairytales running on pure hopeium.

Russia's going to win? Already won?? Show your work.

Buuuuut, that necessarily requires an explanation of why they're still they're if they've already won, why they're moving towards Moscow and not Kiev if they're "winning", or barely breaking even, why they keep scraping the bottom of the barrel for more conscripts and convicts if they're slaughtering the Ukrainians in job lots, and owning up to everything that's gotten them where they are, which is back-pedalling towards the Rodina in haste, leaving their dead and wounded behind in droves, and how they're going to pull off this hitherto impossible military triumph in order to get where you think they're going to get.

I repeat: Show. Your. Work.

I get that Emperor Poopypants egged this on to cover his clan's criminal corruption there. I get that you think Zelensky's just as crooked. (But undeniably, whatever else he is, he isn't Putin's bitch, unlike every prior Ukrainian leader since 1990, and that's what rankled Putin the most.) I'll even give you a pass on your delusion that Putin's anything but a jumped up KGB thug and mass-murderer with delusions of grandeur. That's nice, but I don't give a fuck about any of that in this context, and it has no bearing on the topic under discussion. IDGAS about what you fondly wish would happen, I care about objective reality. If thinking is hard for you, this is where you're going to trip on your dick, and step all over it with sharp cleated spikes.

Bluff and bluster in service of your narrative is just so much bullshit and spin. Try facts. Verifiable sources. Actual data. If only for the novelty. Hyperbole and horseshit in equal measure is selling in Moscow at ₱2/metric fuckton. Actual evidence is pretty thin on the ground, largely because it's non-existent. Bring us a Bigfoot carcass, or a unicorn skull, and we can talk this out like grownups.

Can't do that? (And that would be the entire Rootin' For Putin contingent, web-wide, since March of last year to date, just to be accurate.) Letter grade of F. Obviously.

The narrative from the Rootin' For Putin side since August has been "Any day now, Russia is going to do...something!"

It's January. It's been 300+ days already. In seven weeks, this will be a full year of military debacle for Russia. 

For a war Putin was going to win in three days.

And for nearly half of which, Russia's military has been in full-scale retreat. And still no "something".

Russia's been the Black Knight to Ukraine's King Arthur in this conflict for ten months. Sorry, but there it is. Suck on it.

Please explain how you can be "winning", and yet take 10,000% longer than initial expectations. The rough equivalent would be WW II lasting until the year 2345. I'll wait while you work that out.

Just saying.

FTR, We'll leave this topic alone when people stop spewing bullshit with snowblowers.

If The Shoe Fits

 

Corollary: the plural of "sketchy websites" is not "data".

When You're Stupider Than A Bag Of Bidens...

 

When you report, breathlessly and cluelessly, that the Army is conducting Robin Sage, simulating a notional conflict between the troops of an oppressive government and "freedom fighters", like that hasn't happened multiple times every year since the 1950s, FFS.

And then, someone who should know better repeats it, jumping on their own junk with both feet and golf cleats, and trying to paint it - exactly 180° out from reality - as an exercise in the Army training to hunt down freedom fighters, rather than training SF on how to overthrow tyrannical socialist regimes, by working with the homegrown insurgents, which has been a core mission of SF since ever.

For the fucktards out there who don't get out much:

 Robin Sage (the official exercise name since 1974), is Phase V of Special Forces Assessment and Selection training, which even Wikipedia has heard of. The exercise, per se, has been conducted since 1952, when Army Special Forces were newly born, a paltry seventy years (that would be back when Betty White was pushing 30, and still something close to "hot", m'kay?). Per comments elsewhere, this would be the 338th such exercise. IOW, it happens almost as frequently as Nancy Pelosi being drunk and stupid on national television.

The fact that Army Special Forces are once again training a new batch of earnest would-be insurgency instructors to overthrow tyrannical governments does not presage that the entire U.S. Army is going to low-crawl up your driveway and butt-rape you. So stop eating the paste, running with scissors, and re-posting every jackassical thing some shit-for-brains know-nothing moron puts up on the internet as if it was hot off the news teletype.

It shouldn't need to be said, but apparently still does, that anyone too fucktarded to have some inkling of that without being told with a 2x4 applied to the head isn't tall enough to be talking about it on the Internet without adult supervision.

Just saying.

The Derp Isn't All That Burns

Spermjack Block: Activated

 

If you hadn't read this story yet, head over to the back-open-for-business Cold Fury, and RTWT.

Keyboard Class II Beverage Alert: Swallow all beverages before opening.

I never listening to anything rap besides Blondie, once, but Drake is my new hero.

COVIDiocy Strikes Again

Since this comment probably won't last long at the site:

You don't wear an ear loop snot mask to protect yourself.

You wear it to protect everyone else from you.

That's why one jackhole not wearing one in a crowd f**ks it up for everyone.

This is only news for people who flunked eighth grade science.

In other breaking news, you don't need one by yourself, outside in the sunshine; nor all alone in your car.

COVID has mainly served to illustrate how scientifically stupid most Americans are, and how thick their skulls are, when such basic information hasn't penetrated after a year.

If you want protection for yourself, you wear an N95 or better (if you can find one).

O, if only someone, somewhere, had covered this simple information and much more, and posted it on the internet, nearly a year ago, to help out the people not bright enough to figure this out on their own.

Pro Tip: If this level of information is too hard for you, lick handrails and stripper poles, and pee on electric fences.

Now, see if you can guess why I'm busy doing projects instead of reading the 'net or posting anything most days.

Remember: If you like your pandemic, you can keep your pandemic.

Anecdotally: Keeping It Real, Yo

 

About that pandemic you might think we're not having:

Nameless SoCal Hospital is full, bottom to top, wall to wall.

Because elective surgeries are cancelled, those nurses normally doing anesthesia recovery are now caring for overflow patients.

Nurses on floors normally holding stable telemetry patients are caring instead for ICU patients, because the ICU is full, wall-to-wall, and has been for days, so when someone gets worse, they can't be moved to higher care, and the floors are stuck with them.

ER is holding ICU patients, now for multiple days. Entire ER is now set up for COVID isolation, which is running 75-90% of patients seen, 24/7. And those are only the ones too sick to send home.

Morgue overflow conex cold storage is now full of corpses. Who died from COVID, not just with COVID. We ran out of body bags day before yesterday, so until we got more, deceased patients had to stay in occupied rooms. Even with getting decedents out, new dead are piling up faster than we're getting old ones off to coroner or mortuaries.

In the only state out of 50 with mandatory safe nursing:patient staffing ratios, those ratios have been thrown out indefinitely because of the current emergency. Because apparently an international emergency means we can use magic to do what we can't do when we're not redlined, at 110% of capacity and ability. (Roll two D6 to cast Spell Of Magical Healing.) I haven't asked, but I'm pretty sure the Official Answer to overcrowded hospitals will be: Bunk beds! No, really.

Nearby hospitals have gotten so bad, some nurses have walked off the job. No small part of that is the ongoing insufficient supplies of PPE necessary to do the job without getting sick. We're not there yet here, but morale is low, and the troops are pissed. And if someone calls in and says "I have a fever", there's not much anyone can say. It's coming, in 3, 2,...

Between staff shortages and actual sick staff, we're starting the day with 50% staffing in some units, and it's virtually impossible to get hired guns to come in. Everyone is over this, and all they get by picking up registry work or extra shifts where they work, is more sh*t sandwich, every day, into infinity. And you can't spend bonuses if you're dead.

And in L.A. County, everything I just wrote? Worse. Squared.

Oh, and we're still weeks away from the peak of the current surge, which is simply the sum total of people who decided Halloween and Thanksgiving get-togethers were more important than silly COVID restrictions, with predictable results.

We're all dreading what happens when we get the Christmas/New Year's Stupidity Surge, 3-5 weeks from now, but it's definitely coming.

Things are spiffy where you are? Outstanding. Goody for you. No, really. Hope your luck holds.

Meanwhile, I'm hearing from nurses who blog in other states, e.g. Texas, that they're getting, now, what we had here in Apr-July, and hospital manglement (not a typo. -A.) there learned nothing from what happened in NYFS, NJ, Atlanta, Nawlins, or CA, and accordingly planned for no such thing.

No points for guessing how that's paying dividends for them now. (Two of the reasons I'm lifetime-banned from hospital administration is because I tested with an IQ over 80, and my parents were married, to each other.)

The next phase beyond this is when the healthcare system starts to collapse. That is already nibbling around the edges of things now. When we get to full collapse, we'll be Italy: we're going to have to start to decide who we see, and save, and who we move over to the "It was a good life, and best wishes" area for no further treatment. No one has broached the topic openly, so the docs haven't decided whether they'll sort out the oldest, the sickest, or just throw darts at the Big Board when they're forced to actually decide who lives, and who dies. Mainly, they're just hoping real hard we don't get to that phase, ever. If we do, the word "unprecedented" is hardly going to cover our New Normal.

Of course, all this is just like we've done in every seasonal flu season for the last 90 years. (/sarc) NOT.

Keep pushing horsesh*t theories and crackpot stayed-in-a-Holiday-Inn-Express-once medical mail-order diploma explanations of what's REALLY happening. We need the comedy relief.

Those of us holding the shitty end of the stick with gloved hands are too busy to give a wet fart for such prognostications, but to a person, everyone of them has expressed that the Internet jet-fuel geniuses who think this is a scam should STFU, and pull a shift here, any day of the week, with their eyes and ears open, and their pieholes shut.

Most of you would last about half an hour before you left skidmarks out the back door.

We don't want thanks, or Starbucks gift cards, or hazard pay raises (though we wouldn't turn any of those down). We knew the job was tough when we took it. We just wish the Gilligans driving this day in, day out, would stop being such overachieving jackholes, and use some common goddam sense, just for the novelty, if for no other reason. It stopped being cute to be blisteringly stupid about nine months ago.

And if you think there isn't going to be a reckoning down the road that grabs you by the short curlies for the jackassery we're seeing and dealing with now, once this is over with, I'm here to tell you, you've got another think coming.Think long and hard about that. TPTB in the medical field have memories like elephants, and you aren't going to like what you get, nor get what you like. And health insurers will once again be driving the No Sense Of Humor bus, regarding future lifestyle choices. Mark my words.

The brighter lights among you, which has thankfully been a majority, had best make plans accordingly.

You will see this material again, and probably sooner rather than later, but even if not, being prepared for anything even roughly similar means you don't have nearly as much to worry about, no matter what rolls down the pipe at you the next time Fate pulls the chain on the Flush Bowl of Life.

UPDATE: For those who aren't trolls or retards, and able to read and comprehend, here's a link to a yuuuuge amount of collected data on COVID 19 from L.A. County.

A couple of points to note from that pdf, (beyond the fact that hospital capacity for 10M people is going down the shitter at warp speed just now): 

Page 6: ethnicity of hospitalizations in the LA County public hospitals, 3/1/20-present: 

72% Hispanic. 2% white.

Go back and read that again. Yes, it said what you thought it said.

Pg 7: 

Age of hospitalized in county DHS hospitals. Highest percentage, every week since this started.

Generally 50% or more Age 18-49

Next highest Age 50-64.

65+ is almost always in third place, until very recently.

So if you think 18 is elderly, keep thinking this only kicks old peoples' @$$#$. 

Suture self.

Our profound apologies if facts and Reality have yet again left hoofprints on your ass.

This Is Why You Have A Pandemic

I was bored today, and not really looking hard for blog fodder, and yet it just washes up right onto my virtual doorstep, whether I want it or not. It's also why I hate to post any more knowledge or information on Kung Flu, because the bright people already get it, while for the monkeys, it just gives them another excuse to fling their poo. 

Anyone who reads or comments here has de facto access to most of the collected actual knowledge of humanity, literally keystrokes or mouseclicks away from their beady little eyes, on the entire worldwide web of Everything.

Given that standard of knowledge availability, I apologize in advance to anyone who accuses me of kicking retarded kids, just because they write in to tell us what flavor the windows are on the short bus.

Which brings us to this gem, in commentary to our post yesterday, from someone who probably thought we'd never post it:

"https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/24/map-where-are-the-intensive-care-beds-in-california-the-u-s/ This article indicates approximately 7500 ICU beds in California. https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/ This article indicates there are about 3200 ICU patients suspected of having Covid. "The number of hospitalizations due to confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases in California reached a total of 15,198, an increase of 620 from the prior day total. The number of ICU patients due to confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases in California reached a total of 3,193, an increase of 115 from the prior day total." In the entire state of California. 3200 ICU patients. This is not a pandemic."

Au contraire: As our drill instructor informed us once, "There are no stupid comments, only stupid people." Welcome to a Teaching Moment.

If you wish, you can read the comment and match it with the owner, but for ease today, we'll make the author He Who Shall Not Be Named, abbreviated HWSNBN, which we will use before the fisking (and flogging) begins.

1) Actually, CA has about 7800 ICU beds. This has nothing to do with anything, except as a bare fact.

2) What percentage of ICU patients have COVID is irrelevant to anything either. If you think otherwise, you're trying to fly an airplane in clouds, in the mountains, using a thermometer.

3) The salient point about ICU beds was, as stated, the point that they're almost all full hereabouts. That means if you get shot, stabbed, have a heart attack, or a stroke, or a serious automobile accident, or simply a raging ordinary infection, or need any form of 300 types of intensive care, which cannot be competently handled by lesser-trained nurses, with lesser facilities, you're going to die. Brighter lights among the readership and commentariat will recognize that people dying of things we normally could keep alive is a bad thing. And those people aren't imaginary: they're going to happen, they aren't going to get ICU beds, and they're going to die. I personally bagged and tagged one just the other night.

4) As we warned those same brighter lights months and months ago ad infinitum, hospitals in general, and the ICU in particular, are like airline flights: if they aren't at 90% or better occupancy, 24/7/365, they're losing money. So we run - every goddam day since ever - at 95% of capacity or better. In short, the lifeboat is already damned near full, before we even add the stormy seas of a raging pandemic.

5) For Common Core grads, 3200 ICU patients, statewide, because of COVID, isn't the other 5% of ICU capacity. In a state with 7800 ICU beds, that's 41%. So what HWSNBN has just Gilligan-logicked into oblivion is that he thinks hospital ICUs (usually chronically short-handed at the best of times) can handle running at 136% of design capacity, in a system where 25% of staff or more are already MIA, because they're stressed out, under investigation for COVID infection, actually sick, or just DGAF about picking up the extra shifts and staffing openings we have, at any price.

6) Merriam-Webster cleverly defines pandemic, for the ignorant, and/or illiterate:

"Occuring over a wide geographic area (such as multiple countries or continents) and typically affecting a significant proportion of the population."

According to the Johns-Hopkins Kung Flu infographic map, COVID cases have been reported in every country on the planet, and damn near every BFEgypt inhabited island on every speck of the map. 73.8M cases, and 1.6M deaths, to date, and over 305K US deaths, which is only 4 times worse - so far - than the worst annual flu season that ever was. (And this dance ain't over yet by a damned sight. Not even close to it.)

That's a PANDEMIC, fucktard.

Kids, this is what happens to society when you give high school diplomas to dipshits who can't tie their own shoes.

And worse, why you have a pandemic that won't quit, because you were depending on kids who should have been flunked out of 7th grade eight or nine years running, because they couldn't pass a science class that was any harder than watching a PBS episode of Sesame Street, and yet still expect them to do something as complicated as remembering to wash their hands regularly, and wearing a sneeze guard mask, for longer than the lifespan of a fruit fly.

The one inarguable silver lining amidst the Kung Flu coal-black cloudbank that's washing its storm over the country, is its infallible utility in churning the Gilligan chunks right to the top of the foam in the septic tank of civilization, so they can be seen. The crushing pity, conversely, is that it doesn't kill them deader than canned tuna for their failings, but instead leaves the younger, healthier ones free to kill older and usually wiser heads, like the No-So-Smart Bombs they are.

We close with the sage advice of Will Rogers to those who don't know what they're talking about:

Yeah, About That "Hoax" Pandemic...

Apparently some people are still trying to sell the line that COVID isn't real.
Probably with a barn shovel, but still...

It's not like it would be hard to, y'know, call around to boards of health, or hospitals, and ask them how it's going, but apparently it's too hard for The People That Know Everything Without Checking Sources.

Drop by the shop, and I’ll be happy to show you the bodies.

Our SoCal hospital has been full all week for two weeks running.

Main hospital: full.
COVID cohort isolation beds: full.
ICU: full.
100% occupancy, all week-plus, and running.

We only get beds when someone gets better, or dies.
See if you can guess how that impacts treating regular emergencies, heart attacks, strokes, traumas when there’s no place to go, and the ER is full too.
Or how morale goes when every shift you’re just taking a beating.

Just like we told you would happen, back when this was just a storm front on the distant horizon.

Anybody thought you were out of this, or that it was over, or that it never was…?
Good luck with that mythos.

I’ve got a bridge to sell you too, cheap.

And in L.A. County just north of here, it’s twice as bad: all COVID, all the time.
Houston is at 100% ICU-full now.
Texas-wide, they’re running 97% occupancy.
So much for that “this only happens in blue states” crapola.

The same story in 10-15 other states. Few if any run by Democommunists.

So once again, hopeium futures are taking a beating in the market of Actual Reality.

“You can ignore Reality. But you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring Reality.”

I figure when we’re stacking bodies in freezer vans in 10 states just like they did in NYFC, maybe it’ll start to dawn on the brighter retards that maybe throwing the baby out with the bathwater was a bit premature, and that masks, hand-washing, and keeping your distance aren’t such a bad idea.
Depends on how much Gilligan DNA they have mixed in with Neanderthal.

And that’s with the caveat that deaths from this rather minor disease are still about #99 on the list of Top 100 Things To Worry About in this pandemic.

You’ve all still got your food and cash preps ready though, right?
Right…?
I hate being the I Told You So guy.
But most of society, and the beefiest part of the bell curve, is filled with slow learners.
The No Learners over on the left little end will take care of themselves; Darwin will always have his due.

Heal Thyself

h/t Wirecutter

From Kenny's blog Tuesday,

California continues to proudly lead the charge toward a disarmed citizenry. In the latest attack on the Second Amendment, Santa Clara County is forming what they call a “county gun team” – a unit of lawyers, analysts, and prosecutors authorized to seek out and confiscate firearms from those the state feels shouldn’t have them.

Great. More fuckwittery from the leftist bastions of NorCal, and the tofu-slurping Birkenstock wearing hippie-spawn bastards that live there.

As one commenter noted

"Treasonous behavior should be dealt with accordingly JUST LIKE the forefathers did."

So far, so good. But then, there's always one lippy jackass who has to take things over the top:

"You would think, but one of CA’s most noted supposedly pro-2A bloggers who goes by some greek philosopher’s name, has told us over and over again that gun-larping and openly standing up for your rights and protesting and getting noisy is just hurting the 2nd Amendment. 

Want to lose your 2nd Amendment rights? Then go ahead and act like that aforementioned supposedly 2A blogger. 

“Oh noes, don’t rock the boat, you’ll sink it! Your rights are less important than my feelings. Muh butthurtsssss.”

Methinks he doth protest too much.

(And BTW, Aesop was a storyteller, not a philosopher. But for some people's kids, any five words coherently arranged appears to be philosophy. But I digress.)

Nota bene I was nowhere involved in the discussion prior to that point. But since you brought me into it, and Kenny may or may not post my reply there:

No, I didn't tell you it hurts the 2A, I told you idiocy like Richmond's Gun Woodstock  accomplishes nothing.
Like it didn't.
Just like all the stupid hippie shit accomplished nothing in the '60s, for those Common Core grads too young to remember it firsthand.

It isn't "standing up for your rights", it is, exactly as you noted, gun-larping.
Maybe tell the class how the citizens of Massachusetts marched on the governor's mansion in 1775, demanding their "rights". Oh, wait, that never happened.

When people assembled with rifles on Lexington Common, they weren't protesting. And when the British marched back to Boston, they weren't met with sharply-worded letters of complaint. Just musket balls, inbound.

If you're going to go into the streets armed, in a group, you shouldn't be protesting. Unless by "protesting" you mean stringing up tyrants from street lights.

If Santa Clara county citizens start doing that, I'm in. But at last look, it's a solid Blue Hive. Best wishes turning that around, especially all the people that took to their heels. It's still a (mostly) free country, but actions like that have consequences.

There are much better ways to spend your time, for most states, and we covered that long since:

https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2020/02/this-is-how-you-do-it.html

Counties like Santa Communist don't have sheriffs that will sanction a militia (in fact, IIRC, they've long since made "paramilitary" training of any type in this state a punishable crime).

As long as the option remains, this crap should be fought in the courts. While you were busy ignoring it, Pres. Trump's gotten within a judge or two of flipping the 9th Circus to majority conservative, which brings 11 Western states back into being part of a free republic, for the next 25 years. He's also appointed one helluva lot of conservative judges at the district level as well.

But if they come a-knocking, the answer to the SC gun-grab mob is short and simple:

Shoot the motherfuckers in the face.

Then go after the people that sent them.
Continue until you either run out of ammo, or targets.

If you've got a problem with that position, or it was too subtly expressed for you to grasp, let's hear it.

Otherwise, maybe worry less about me, and more about where you live. They have the same plan for you, times 49 other states, they just don't have the votes in most of them to pull it off.
Yet.

And while you're up, maybe pull your cleats out of your wedding tackle, Herr Scheisskopf, and slap a trauma dressing on your junk before you bleed out.

But sincere thanks for solving my post topic problem right off the bat today, and pitching such a slow hanging softball for me.

 

UPDATE:

Herr Scheisskopf apparently couldn't find his tongue. Yet, anyway.

But bloghost Kenny had a reply:

Quit. Just quit. At least they’re doing something – the only thing you’re doing is criticizing.
And as far as Trump appointing conservative judges, you’re assuming that they’re all going to be pro-gun and will automatically rule in favor of the Second Amendment every time. That’s not going to happen. Look at the US Supreme Court with 5 conservative and 4 liberal justices, yet they refused to even hear a case on the Federal bumpstock ban.

 

To which I respond:

 

"Something" ╪ something effective. I have no time in my life for futile efforts and wasted energy.

And criticizing isn't the "only" thing I'm doing, then nor now. I offered multiple positive suggestions then. I'm cheering the counties in VA that are going the citizen militia route now. MOAR, please. If they're serious, it will work - one way or the other. It may be the only thing that gets Gov Blackface Babykiller and his associated idiots' attention. (It'll damned sure get the attention of the commander of the VA State Police.)  If pushed, it'll get everyone's attention the same as it did in 1775. Dealer's choice.

 

Gun Woodstock as a tactic, not so much. It was pointless, and they're still not only laughing about it, but doing so in the face of everyone who participated.

 

And I assume no such thing about judges, either.

Use that option as long as it works.

 

As for bumpstocks, if anyone is that invested in them, keep pounding on the door. How long did it take for SCOTUS to hear a case like Heller? Only something like 70 years, last I looked. Get a better case, and try again.

 

But any hope in that route may ultimately bottom out as well. At that point, as suggested, you're going to have to handle things personally, and probably 1:1.

 

It's a course of action of Last Resort.

 

If anybody here has done it once, and can comment accordingly on how it worked out for them afterwards, I'm all ears.

 

If not, dragging me into a discussion I stayed out of is just gratuitous trolling. But kudos and thanks to the bloghost for allowing my reply here.

Ouch

Might wanna put some ice on that.

The beauty salon called. They said they'll have enough lipstick for your pig when the truck comes in next Thursday.

Cool Your Jets and Try Thinking

The Tard Army recruits like crazy, but their sum total IQ is a constant.

Behold, the poster child for the Tard Army.

"Set gun rights back to 1970? Sure why not."

Read the whole sorry thing. Bonus points for finding any actual rationale for doing something stupid and futile besides "I can't help whipping my dick out, and charging headfirst at that brick wall over there beyond the mine field."

Left unstated is the underlying premise:

"We need to do this, because thinking of smart things to do is too hard, and we're just everyday simpletons."

Camouflaged in silly rhetoric about taking a stand against the redcoats.
>Yawn.<
Call me when the redcoats trundle up to Lexington Green.

I'm unfamiliar with the time and place when a mob accomplished anything by marching up to the royal governor's door and thumbing their noses at him.
But they did manage to get 5 men killed by being idiots, and were then soundly thrashed and damned for all time for that, by no less a patriot than John Adams.
Perhaps you've heard of him?

Mob revolts have a track record.
They always end at the guillotines. For everyone.
You could look it up.

So maybe the greater lesson is less mob idiocy, and more sense and forethought, in one's undertakings.

No one's going to stupid their way to freedom.

Doing nothing stupid isn't the same thing as doing nothing at all.
Unless you're too stupid to come up with anything else.

So, just maybe, try thinking instead. If only for the sheer novelty of it.

Sophomoronic

Earlier mid-month, I recounted the absolutely true-as-described tale of a sales clerk too simple-minded and uneducated to grasp that "half a dozen = six". (I still get shivers when I contemplate the future of a society that she and 50M of her idiot cousins inhabit.)

Now, the other end of the spectrum.

A physician wondered aloud whether there weren't too many people, planet-wide, because there wasn't enough water. (Posited, exactly, as if one day we'd wake up to 20B or 50B people, and all of us thirstily eyeing the last glass of drinking water. I Schiff you not.)

So, clearly, it's possible to take literal years of basic science, starting with chemistry, the building blocks of life, the universe and everything, and biology, moving to anatomy and physiology, and still remain wholly ignorant that 2/3rds of the planet is covered with water, and that all the water everywhere comes from this, and is deposited by clouds hither and yon by the whims of climate. Since forever.



For those who passed an MCAT, but struggled with 4th grade science.
Yardstick across the knuckles optional, but strongly recommended.

I noted that there was no shortage of water, only a shortage of potable or otherwise-useful water in a given locale, owing to the misfortune of misdistribution. Folks in the Midwest about now, or those in the Amazon Basin or the vicinity of the Everglades or Louisiana bayous would take about a New York minute to assent to this obvious nugget of truth.

We don't have too little water, just too little we can drink, or with which to irrigate, when and where we want it, and horrific surpluses in other places.

Living in California, subject to wet years and dry years, this has been obvious since my youth, and to anyone anywhere with the merest capacity to observe and correlate bog-simple facts.

To a physician musing about his probably recockulous socio-political agenda, not so much.

No matter how many times I had recourse to the historical facts about the entire expansive history of this state in particular, and the American West in general, being the quest and fights over water, and the herculean efforts that have allowed the thriving settlement of the American Desert by moving the resources from where they are to where we want them, and the reliance of this state on Sierra snowpack far more than imported resources, he continued to deploy the deflector screen of blockheaded "I don't believe that."

I see, Doctor. So this is to be rather a religious discussion of your unsubstantiated dogma, and not one of independently verifiable historical and scientific facts? Well played, sir.

I like my job, so I tried (and mostly succeeded) to not stoop to explaining to the doc, like an errant child, that the problem isn't too little water, it's one of mere distribution, abetted hereabouts by the idiot son of another governor, which patriarch had made plans for Califrutopia, for example, sufficient to water and feed and move 50M or even (God forbid!) 80M Califrutopians, until his simple-witted son, after two separate cracks at destroying the Golden State, undid all that by adherence to the same Ehrlich-driven Malthusian pessimism about the carrying capacity of their Mother Gaia, and cancelled aqueducts, reservoirs, power grid expansion, and highway projects with wild abandon, in order to make life here so miserable that people would kill themselves (and, nota bene, their unborn children, QED) rather than birth burgeoning generations of happy, healthy, well-fed children in such a beautiful and hospitable homeland. And who, to date, has succeeded beyond the dreams any sane man would have dared hope.

To be sure, there is an absolute carrying capacity limit on the planet. Probably in the hundreds of billions, provided we were to approach the problem rationally and sanely, which hurdle has felled most civilizations going back only to the Tower of Babel.

But the entire earth's population at present could live quite comfortably and contentedly inside merely the area of Texas, with a population density that wouldn't cause any more stress than most modern cities (provided we didn't put Democrats in charge of city hall nor the public utilities thereof).

Leaving, in that example, all of humanity only 6 and 9/10ths remaining uninhabited continents upon which to raise food, recreate, and frolic, with little further distress, and far more natural harmony to the lesser members of the biosphere.

The twin pitchforks of this dilemma are an over-estimation of humanity's importance and influence, coupled with a self-loathing that rises to a suicidal wish for self-destruction.

This is, inevitably, what happens to anyone, a nominally educated doctor, a society, a civilization, when they decide that Man is the measure of all things.

It can, indeed, be corrected, provided the allowance to use a big enough hammer.

Like Archimedes with his lever, I can fix all stupidity,
if you'll only let me use the right hammer.

The Horror

Mafz: Still Hard, Bro

Some sorry-ass tropes need taking out for a good beating with a lead pipe.
Here are four overdue for another thumping into toothless oblivion.

"CA and NFY run the country."
"TINVOWOOT."
"The Constitooshun is a dead letter."
"Trump is a fraud."

CA has nearly 40M people, NYFS has about 20M.
NYC has only about 8.5M people.

And for reference, both states combined had about 10M 13M Democrat votes in 2016 (2018 was even less than that), barely 20% of the vote total for Shrillary, and fewer than 8% of the total votes cast, despite being home to nearly 20% of the total US population. IOW, CA and NY are under-represented in voting tallies. So much for that meme.

As Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up.”

You can have your own opinions, but not your own facts.

Uncomfortable Reality #1 is that another 50M of your friends and neighbors in Flyover Fucktardia nearly elected Felonia von Pantsuit to the presidency. (Don't like it? Tough shit. Own it.)
The illegals voting hereabouts in Califrutopia merely provided the margin of the totally irrelevant popular victory, while adding nothing to the electoral trouncing she actually got. Thanks for playing, and we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

Uncomfortable Reality #2 is that we can and did “vote our way out of this”, even by such a relative squeaker of fate, with a fractional and abysmal turnout, and as lackluster as the subsequent results have been. TINVOWOOT becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy only for people who insist on floating over the falls in a raft, and throwing the paddles overboard. The actual problem is not that TINVOWOOT, but that electing RINOs doesn’t get you anything more than voting for outright Ds.
WTF, didn’t you people pay attention to GHWB, Dole, Dubbya, McCrazy, and Romney? WTF is this still news to anyone??
And sitting at home with your head up your ass never wins elections. (30% Election Day no-shows, call your office).
(File that under : Duh!)

Uncomfortable Reality #3 is that that pesky old “worthless” Constitution, those idiot Founding Fathers, and their prescient wisdom, saved our collective asses yet again, but no one has the wit to note the obvious on that point. Sorry if anyone’s dogma got run over by reality’s karma. The yappy little mutt had it coming.

Uncomfortable Reality #4 is that unless a lot of jackholes who sit around the one day out of 1461 that it matters pull their tiny heads out of their fat asses, I would not expect a similar electoral miracle in 2020. (If they do wake the hell up, and concurrently send about 50 more small-g government Republicans to the Congress in 2020, instead of more big-government D-lite RINOs, along with re-electing Trump, and we start imprisoning people federally for election-stealing among other high crimes, we can talk. I’m not holding my breath.)

You have about 700 days to deal with what happens after that, assuming the likelier outcome.

Choose wisely.
Best Wishes.

And mind the molars scattered on the pavement.