You're Still Doing It Wrong

We have covered the indefensible asininity of drug legalization, and arguments against prohibition, before. Here.

And now, post-legalization follies, Borepatch takes note of the fact that taxed and legal weederies are being undercut by criminal cartel pricing, exactly as we predicted two years ago. As we noted in comments to his post, "Almost like Adam Smith was onto something in 1776."

We had moved on, but the commentary discussion from one contributor went on to note:

"My thoughts on pot are similar to my thoughts on guns and liquor. Passing laws and creating an illegal subculture is the problem. Would it be better if people did not smoke pot? Yes. Would it be better if people didn't drink alcohol? Yes. However, prohibition fails. It failed with booze the same way it has failed again. It creates an artificial market, high prices, organized crime, etc. How many murders happened during Prohibition, for money or alcohol? Untaxed alcohol, moonshine, is still a problem where I live. Why? Because hight taxes create a market for the homemade stuff. And we all could go on all day about the effects of gun laws."

We replied to that:

 "ASM826 has pegged the meter and will win the 2018 Unintended Irony Award in a walkaway, just about the time he realizes he has made the perfect rational and logical argument for getting rid of laws against murder.
Because prohibition never works.

Well-played, sir!
That's quite a Brave New World for which you've inadvertently advocated.

The crowd will now watch as you extricate yourself from this predicament."

Borepatch then suggests the answer to that conundrum lies in differentiating between malum prohibitum and malum in se.

Sorry, but no sale.
Drug laws are malum in se laws, whether we recognize them as such or not, because drugs themselves are bad, humans being human and all.

We assume, at the outset, that anarchy is not a desired situation.
That necessitates that society has the right to pass and enforce laws for itself.
And that whatever rights you possess end when they transgress someone else's rights, or impinge on the society, because at that point, you're no longer operating solely on yourself, "in private" and thus no longer committing "victimless" crimes.

Anyone who seriously posits that drug use is or ever can be a victimless crime is living in Fantasyland. The police do not kick down doors on the suspicion that you're minding your own business and getting high while harming no one.

That would require firstly, omniscience on their part just to know you were doing something which, by definition, you're claiming affects no one, and secondly, a degree of maleficence on their part far beyond what we routinely observe (and trust me, they manage to screw the pooch hard and regularly, as we've noted times beyond counting on this blog, but not in that way).

They home in on you because, in 99.98% of situations, you're fucking up egregiously, and doing so in public, which was why somebody/everybody else noticed, and they dropped a dime on you. You were simply too stoned to notice all that.

The fact is that nearly all drug use is in fact harmful, and very nearly if not actually no one keeps their habit concealed, under control, or consequence-free.

The argument that they ever could if only drugs were legal beggars credulity, and makes Nigerian banking e-mails from Solomon Odonkoh look legitimate by comparison.

I've spent nearly a quarter-century working in emergency medicine, and an honest 25% of my patients any given night are there because of chronic alcohol abuse, and the sequellae.
That's 6-years-plus, I've got quite a ways yet to go until retirement, and I'm only one nurse. Pile other drug abuse on - all of it flat-out illegal for most of that period - and we're at between 1/3 and 1/2 my professional career just dealing with life's fuck-ups and their substance problems.

And you want to make all that sh*t legal, because it's a "victimless" crime???

You're. Fucking. High.

Cases in point, from all the way back to both nights this past weekend.

Case one:
Two guys, stoned off their asses on opiates, necessitating an entire light task force (six firefighters, two paramedics), four EMTs, two ambulances, four cops, six nurses, two doctors, two radiology techs, three lab techs, and the administration workers  to deal with for most of four hours. Saving the lives of two total @$$holes, higher than kites, stoned out of their mind to the point of near respiratory arrest and hypothermia, who then proceeded to sign out against medical advice as soon as they were competent and able to do so, and will, in fact, pay for exactly not one fucking cent of the $20,000 of emergency response and medical care that saved their lives, to include any of the taxes that made it possible in the first place.

Every minute I and my colleagues are dealing with their bullshit, we're not working on your grandmother's stroke, or your child's asthma or septic fever. And they brought part of their dope bindle with them, which along with any needles are a hazmat exposure nightmare to every one of twenty people who handled and cared for them. When a firefighter ends up in ICU from carfentanil exposure, or some minimum-wage EMT has to deal with HepC and liver failure in his 30s because of those wastrels, define for me what part of that crime is "victimless".

And considering that a fine in court of $1000 in this state is a felony-level crime, these two pieces of human feces will see not so much as a ticket, let alone prosecution, because they aren't worth the trouble.

For starters, because both were homeless, at least one of them almost certainly here illegally, and neither of them owned any private space to enjoy their dope, even were it legalized.

So let's get serious here: you'd be talking about legalization only for people who had a private domicile in which to partake of their drug(s) of choice; anyone homeless, by definition, lacking that, would be violating the victimless user rules the minute they shot up, because they're ALWAYS "in public".

Case Two:
Couple wasted off their ass in someone's apartment parking lot, bugging out on the ground.
So we've got a tenant complaint they you're violating their right to quietly enjoy their own place of residence.

Stoned in public.
As in completely freaking out, puking everywhere, crawling on all fours, and requiring the whole circus, for the second night in a row in a small, busy ER.
Again, two cops, 6 firefighters, two paramedics, an ambulance, two medics, and the whole ER kit and caboodle, because you thought someone else's residence you were visiting was okay to get stoned off your ass on Ecstasy or or meth or bath salts or whatever shit you ingested, wasting everyone's time for a seven hour process, and for which you will probably skip paying one thin dime.

Had I been the tenant/complainant, it'd have been 50/50 whether I called 9-1-1, or just retrieved a stout pipe, and beat your fucking skulls in, and let cats and possums clean up the mess. Society would be the richer for it.

What should happen?

Let's start with six months at hard labor, in a chain gang, shoveling snow in the winter with a child's sand castle plastic beach shovel, or six months slinging hot tar in the desert sun all summer. Cold nasty gruel breakfast and dinner, protein only if you can catch bugs or rodents in your cell at night, and a daily beating of ten stripes, delivered by the former NFL linebacker kicked out for being too aggressive and violent, every day of that six months. That's for a first offense.

Pass that law, and legalize any damned thing you want, as long as they never impact anyone but themselves.

DUI? Same penalty.
Impaired in public? Same penalty.
Any other crime under the influence? Same penalty.
Too stoned to pay alimony or child support? Same penalty.
Bounced a check? Missed a tax payment? Same penalty.
Not feeding, sheltering, and/or adequately parenting a minor child? Same penalty.
So effed up in public or private that someone had to have your ass dragged to the ER? Same penalty.
Because when you're that fucking addicted, you're going to let it affect your entire life, and quickly, and it will. You've just violated every argument in favor of legalization.

And the minute it does, you're not committing a victimless crime.
So, you pass laws that punish those that can't keep that addiction in their pants, and we can talk. Make sure the judicial daily beatings are included without fail, and I'll even pay you $1 for every second offender you can find. I suspect at the end of six months of that, I'd still have change from a $5 bill.

Third offence: LWOP. Chain gang for life.
We're going to have the cleanest roads and beaches in the country five minutes after that day, and the smallest drug problems.

Harm anyone, anytime, in any way while under the influence:
A short drop and a quick stop. No appeal, no commutation, no parole.
Executed, same day you're sentenced. That's a victimless crime, because you're a societal liability, not an asset.

Not willing to do that?
Fuck you, and your legalization arguments.
You're just a pothead who wants to get high, or someone too lazy to give a shit about what you're doing to blast civilization with caustic acid until you destroy it.

The problem with the so-called "War" on Drugs, is that it's been a forty-year slap-fight on drugs.

You start killing people and bombing cities like we did when we fought a by-God war, and this b.s. would have been over 39 years, 11 months, and 5 days ago. Stop mollycoddling dopers and dealers, period.

We fire-bombed Dresden for lesser offences than Medellin.
Mexico should look like the charred aftermath of a brushfire, all the way to the Guatemalan border, and Panama should be inhabited by nothing but crocodiles and jaguars.

The problem isn't a War On Drugs.
It's the total lack of one.

And the correct solution isn't doing even less, and multiplying the problems.

Oh, and exactly as I suggested in 2016, you can't just legalize; you're going to have to give the shit away free, otherwise the cartels get a vote.

Which means spending my taxes to pay for giving dope to dopers.
O Hell No.

Predictable as sunrise every morning, what was the next suggestion made by the original commenter?

"It would make more sense to legalize it and give it away to anyone that wanted it."

Almost like I knew what I was predicting way back when.

So, to be absolutely clear, you're against government going after Al Capone or Pablo Escobar for wantonly violating laws enacted by the directly-elected representatives of the people in a republic, including murder, because that militarizes the police, but you're in favor of using the IRS to demand, at gunpoint if necessary, and on pain of prison or death, that I pay taxes to provide unlimited drugs to whomever should wish them, from out of the fruits of my labor?

You've simply swapped one criminal enterprise for another, waved your magic wand over it, and called it "better".

Best wishes defending that plan.

Dear 2019: Bring It.

h/t Daily Timewaster

The future is always a foreign country, and nobody so far has come back to tell us what it looks like in any great detail.

Anything may happen, but as far as the choice lies in my hands, I'm doing my level best to go out in one of two ways:

I'm either going to die of old age, in a brass bed, surrounded by the living remnants of my tribe;
Or in a bed of hot brass, of old ideals, surrounded by the former members of someone else's.

I'm getting less picky about which, with each passing day.

Year End Ebola Update

As multiple commenters have observed, we've brought an M.D. exposed to Ebola in DRC, but asymptomatic and not contagious, back to Nebraska for observation.

Ok, fine, so far.

This is how it's supposed to work for everyone exposed, even TV spokeshole doctors and whiny Mimi Crybabypants "nurses" who think they should have the right to run hither and yon and hopefully not start infecting people when they pop a fever. Or not. Because they're special, and the sun shines out of their anuses, apparently. Contrary to quarantine policy and black-letter health laws going back 700 years.

Sending the guy to quarantine at Nebraska Medical Center is fine too, as it's home of one of the four BL-IV treatment centers with the 11 actual BL-IV beds extant in North America, should that become necessary, and their patient becomes symptomatic.

The gaping flaw in what they're doing is that they plan to observe Doctor Oopsie for two weeks - fourteen days.

But Ebola Virus Disease incubates for between 1 and 25+ days, NOT JUST 14 DAYS(!), and while 99% of cases appear in 25 days or less, 1% of cases don't show up until after 25 days.
(Another very small but non-zero percentage of persons exposed are asymptomatic, but may still carry the disease and be infectious without symptoms. Nobody is talking about that last part, either, because if you pretend it doesn't exist, you don't have to deal with it. Until you do.)

Geniuses in action, right there.

It will be cold comfort to anyone subsequently infected if they stop checking Dr. Oopsie on Day 15, and he doesn't become symptomatic, and thus infectious, until Day 18, or 23. Especially if he celebrates the end of his quarantine at the mall or movie theater, coughing out virus onto random passersby.

If you're going to half-ass a quarantine (and clearly, they ARE doing exactly that in this case), better to not do one at all, and just tell people to kiss their asses goodbye, because - EXACTLY LIKE IN 2014 - TPTB are playing roulette with the entire populace, because for them, that's more convenient.

Sleep tight.
And cross your fingers.

 

Oh, and that Congo outbreak itself?

 

As we warned, it's accelerating out of control, growing from 503 cases on 11/30 to 692 cases as of 12/21, a week ago. IOW, more new cases in the last 21 days than the total number of cases for the first ten weeks from August to mid-October.

The experimental vaccine is still, AFAIK, 100% effective, but the outbreak has blown through every containment ring like a brushfire in a gasoline-soaked forest.

 

Buckle up. 2019 is looking seriously fugly.

 

And that doctor is just the first case we're watching.

He won't be the last.

UPDATE:
And for those unwilling to follow this closely, bringing him here is not the problem.
Bringing back 12 or more symptomatic patients is the problem - because we don't have that 12th Ebola bed - as is cessation of his/their infection monitoring before the likelihood of infection gets to at least a 99% chance of safety.

And if you bring 100 exposed people back, that statistically guarantees that one of them will be the 1% long period incubation that you'll release into the wild here, and we're off to the races.

A quarantine has traditionally meant 40 days ("You could look it up." - Casey Stengel), and that standard should apply yet again, in this case. Six weeks' surveillance, not two.
Anything less is rolling the dice, and we're all the chips in that wager.

No, We Don't Need Death Squads.

From Comments:

"to EFFECTIVELY protect the border you MUST use deadly force. Something we are NOT doing currently as evidenced by the THOUSANDS who succeed in entering America every month. The UGLY TRUTH no body wants to admit is that as long as the benefits outweigh the risks they will KEEP COMING. And when the only real risk is merely being sent back to TRY AGAIN there is no incentive to not keep trying. People denigrate the Berlin Wall but he truth is IT WORKED....and it worked because it was enforced by DEADLY FORCE. So YES!!!!! Want to end ilegals invading America? Kill a bunch trying. Don't have the balls to do that? Then say goodbye to your culture and country. THAT is reality."

Um, no.
Not even close.

When they can't come here because it's too hard, too expensive, and they get caught 99.999% of the time, they'll stop trying. Most people stop trying to beat their heads bloody against a wall long before they suffer skull fractures.

Somebody may die falling off the fence onto their head; if that happens, tough luck, Pedro, that's Darwinism in action.

But we don't need death squads patrolling No Man's Land and gunning down strays. That's quite simply fantastical bullshit. I could be wrong, I was only on the border directly for about ten years, and personally apprehended a couple of thousand or so illegals in that time, without needing to kill any of them.

A couple of our apprehended OTMs from DirkaDirkastan somewhere were whisked away one dark night by MIB in black SUVs, and all knowledge of their final destination disclaimed, but otherwise, the rest were just tossed back over. (I'd have preferred working them to the bone for six months on bread and water, and I'd have walked them under shotgun guard chained at the ankle from our location to San Diego proper, some 80-100 miles on foot, but I wasn't the sheriff of that patch.)

But once we got the Monster Wall put in, they stopped trying there, for 10 miles. Do that X 200, and that party is over for good. The only way in at that point is the front door. The bare few hundred Olympic athletes who could cross annually, instead of 1M+, wouldn't raise a fuss at that point even if they all worked across the street from Nancy Pelosi's house.

And if anyone is asinine and foolish enough to think shooting them out of hand is the answer, there are 7 BILLION of them. You don't have that many bullets, nor anyone who'd fire them, and anyone willing to try is certifiably psychotically sociopathically insane.

Just a hunch, but I suspect the rest of the world, including our nominal allies and friends, might have a say if we decided to unilaterally begin a genocide of brown people.

If you didn't take away that lesson on why the Berlin Wall failed, you weren't paying attention.

There are also ten other things we can do that don't involve bullets, and vastly more effective at ending the flood. Starting with closing the border and taxing remittances at 50%. Mexico's economy would crash in a month, and they'd start shooting attempted crossers from their side, without any further impetus from us at that point.

This isn't going to be solved by guns, nor need it be.

Suggesting otherwise is akin to saying that in order to stop burglaries, you need to slaughter you neighborhood, and man machinegun pits at the corners of your front yard.

People serious like that get hauled away in a rubber truck.

All this takes is a few things, which impact actual Americans minimally to not at all, other than those criminal lawbreakers exacerbating the situation:

1) Build the wall.

2) Deport the illegals already here.

On Monday, DHS raids all the companies in each town starting with "A" to audit and arrest illegal employees. On Tuesday, do the "B"s. And so on. By Wednesday, the wait to cross south at I-5, I-19, and I-35 would stretch north to the 36th Parallel, and that would be the end of that problem. When you finish with businesses, do the schools next. Watch grades and test scores climb like a moon shot when 98% of the country speaks English again. Bummer about having to arrest and prosecute all those harboring illegals in violation of federal law. Lather, rinse, repeat.

3) Tell Mexico that all legal entry is closed until illegals stop trying to get here from there.

One attempt, anywhere from Brownsville to San Diego: one day closure. Ten attempts, ten day closure. Etc. Group punishment worked in kindergarten and boot camp. Take Mexico to kindergarten boot camp. Another problem solved. I'm betting at 300:1 odds, after the third or fourth such disruption, the locals on the entire border will behead the attempters, and present their severed heads to border guards as a goodwill peace offering.

4) Prosecute everyone helping or hiring illegal aliens. Start with US governors and mayors.

"Sanctuary" city or state? Your mayor, city council, and chief of police, or governor, AG, and the entire legislature, get arrested by feds tomorrow. The president may need to appoint territorial governors in the interim. For any such entire states, declare martial law. Good luck with your case in DC Military Tribunals, and enjoy your time in federal prison. 50/50 the Congress declares your city or state's reversion to permanent territory status as "in rebellion". You can re-apply for admission to the US in a couple years, if you can manage to convince Congress you'll faithfully execute and enforce the laws of the land. (Bonus: US territories don't get to seat voting representatives or senators in Congress!) Or remain Washington D.C.'s chew toy in perpetuity. I don't care which. Starting with my home state of Califrutopia. Actions have consequences, and words mean things. Especially in federal court.

5) Seize businesses under RICO for any number >5 illegals employed.

More than 5 is clearly a criminal conspiracy, not an accident. CEOs, CFOs, and HR management being frogmarched to prison by feds on national TV, and seizure of the company, will nip that in the bud after Arrest #2. Less than 5? Only arrest the head of HR. And start in Silicon Valley, with the custodial and food service staffs of those SJW companies that want to fix America for its own good. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, WalMart, etc.: auctioned off to the highest bidders. Auction buyers must be 100% US citizens/corporations. Proceeds to the US Treasury. Say goodbye to the tax deficit for the next 50 years. (And personally, I'd rename "Amazon" to "Mississippi". F**k that rainforest worshiping BS.)

6) Tax remittances at the top US tax rate, in perpetuity.

Require real ID and an SSN (not a TIDN) with InstantCheck, and report the transaction to the IRS, by law.

7) No social security number? Impound the transfer 100%. Require notification of INS of the sender on the spot. Failure to do so: See Item 5 above.

8) Stop all legal immigration cold for the next 50 years.

No exceptions. No waivers. No entry. Have a nice demi-century. Unf**k your own country. (You want a humanitarian exception for SAfricans? Hell no. They had a half century to see that coming. They should've asked the Chinese formerly in Macao and Hong Kong how to deal with that. Ship them all the AK-47s we grabbed in Grenada they need, drop off metric fucktons of ammo spam cans, and tell them to deal with things, or run somewhere else. If they take the AK-47s, send them any SF advisory teams if they ask for them. If they turn down the AK-47s, wish them best of luck wherever they land. The US as not the world's tampon means Not The World's Tampon.) Want to marry a foreign national? OK. Usual hoops, then they can be permanent legal residents until 2070. If you divorce before then, they go back, same day. Possibly with half your stuff. Pick your mates wisely.

Those eight things would stop this whole problem in about an hour.
Total bullets required? Zero.

If someone's trigger finger is still itchy? :
Weapons free on boats and planes entering or attempting entry illegally. Zero fucks given.
Same deal as Mexico, with a twist: After cutting off any U.S. aid in perpetuity, we'll start bombing the airports and harbors of any country from which those craft are embarking. No apologies, no reparations, no payouts. Just bombs. Then tell them to have a nice day.

Under international law, piracy and banditry are crimes against humanity, and to this day, pirates can be hung on the spot by any navy that chooses to so do, consequence free.

And that won't start a war, but regarding drugs, it'll end one. Once again, in about an hour.

Problems solved while you wait.

$116 Billion A Year

h/t 100% F'ed Up

$116B per year.

That's how much money we set on fire annually to pay for illegal aliens in this country.
Enough to build, arm, crew, and deploy 6 new supercarrier task forces every year, forever.
(Hint: That would have doubled the current number deployed, in just the two years since Trump has been president.)

Or, enough to keep the Social Security/Medicare Ponzi schemes solvent for another century.
Or to hand out nearly $7000@ in grants to every one of the 16.9M college students in the U.S., every year. (As 1/3 of them are at 2 year J.C.s, that would virtually make college attendance free, for all but the students at the most expensive institutions.)

Half the entire budget for the state of CA. Nearly the entire annual state budget for TX.

Or, a $400 annual tax refund to every man, woman, and child in the U.S. Actually $800, if we limited that refund to those among the 49% who actually pay taxes.
(It isn't like that money is earned by government workers actually producing anything, or getting a paper route.)

Cost of Trump's Great Big Beautiful Wall:
$30B, first year.
$0, every year after that.
America makes a profit of $84B/yr, forever, the moment we start tossing the 30-40M illegals over it after it's built.

Rule One of Boats: First you plug the holes; then you bail them out.

Build. The. Wall.!!!

And leave those excess federal employees furloughed until it's built.
If necessary, until Hell freezes over.

Merry Christmas

To all who drop by occasionally or regularly, and/or have wished your bloghost a Merry Christmas in comments recently: Right Back At Ya!

I hope you and yours enjoy all the blessings of the season, safe, warm, happy, and at peace.

And They Still Can't Figure Out Why "A" Led To "B"

Sultan Knish connects the dots:

Los Angeles had doubled its homeless budget to $450 million. Despite that its homeless population had only dropped to 39,826, a reduction of only 256 people. The only surprise in those statistics is that the population dropped at all. Homeless spending has the notorious effect of increasing homeless populations rather than diminishing them as vagrants swarm in and agencies inflate their numbers.

But while doubling its homeless budget didn’t significantly diminish the homeless population in Los Angeles, it did have another spectacular statistical effect on the wellbeing of city residents.

LAPD statistics showed that homeless crime actually increased by nearly 50%, jumping from 5,976 crime reports of homeless perpetrators in most of 2017 to 8,906 crime reports in most of 2018.

RTWT.

When they start handing them PR-24 shampoos and letting them drink from a firehose, instead of giving them motel vouchers and turkey dinners, they'll solve their homeless problem.

When you feed pigeons, you get a lot more of two things:
More pigeons.
More pigeon shit.

Put another way:
If we simply locked those 40,000 deranged whackjobs up for life, like we used to do, we could cut crimes in just L.A. by 10,000 crimes/year, forever.
(And that's just the ones that someone bothered to drop by the police station and report.)

Either the leadership of L.A. figures this one out, or people are going to stop dialing 9-1-1, and start cleaning up the streets with 3-5-7.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and right now, there's an absolute dearth of any enforcing the law against the homeless wastrels and refuse with legs infesting major cities.
The cops can't stand the smell, and because they're crazy, the D.A. and city attorneys won't prosecute, because defense counsel will just plead insanity, and they'll walk, which makes D.A.'s records look bad. (And to hell with protecting the taxpaying citizenry, which never enters into the calculus of enforcement or prosecution. Ever.)

There are limits to what folks will tolerate, and when someone decides randomly shooting batshit crazy homeless people (which, anecdotally, is 95% of them) is a better, more efficient, and more permanent solution than letting government deal with them, it's going to become a thing. Mark my words.

And then the money the city wasted pampering them will be diverted to Potter's Field, to bury them.
A few million BTUs of gas, and a plastic bag to bury them will be a lot cheaper than $450M/yr.
With a 0% recidivism rate. (Shame about all those homeless advocacy make-work SJW jobs.)

This prospect will make politicians itchy, because once The People figure out that most problems can be solved with 150 grains or so of copper-jacketed lead, they tend to reach for that solution for a lot of other problems as well.

Like the problem of the politicians who created and fed that problem to begin with.

And yes, these are macabre prospects to be discussing on December 24th.

Merry Christmas.

Can't STFU To Save Her Life

 

Poor Ann Coulter. After another epic pointless rant about how President Trump is "gutless" and "cares nothing about a wall", then the "gutless" President bends Congress over, refuses to sign a stop-gap spending bill without funding for a wall, and squeezes a $5B last-minute concession out of the House of Representatives.

 

Y'know, like presidents who are serious about something do.

 

It must suck to be nothing but a shrill harpie with no clue about how the government actually works, and then go on the biggest bitchfest of this administration, to the delight of only the liberal Trump-hating media (but I repeat myself), and then be shown to be 180 degrees out from reality in less than 48 hours.

 

If only President Trump had vowed to shut down the government over this issue, berated the Democrat leadership about it publicly, on camera, and finally wrung concessions out of the legislative branch, and outgoing House Speaker Quisling.

 

And then there's the small matter of whose job it is to get a wall built.

 

Ann Coulter, former law clerk in the Eighth Circuit, and Michigan Law School grad, yet total constitutional blithering idiot:

“Article I, Sec. 7: All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur on Amendments, as on other bills.”

ZOMG! It’s almost as if there were some sort of separation of powers, or some such shit. WhoTF knew???

Maybe Ann was sick the day they covered the US Constitution in law school…?

If Ann Coulter voted for Trump because she thought he could seize the government, and rule as Caesar, god-like, from the Oval Office, or thought he was going to pay for the wall out of petty cash and poker winnings himself, she’s a world-class fucktard.

Meanwhile, find me her scathing rejoinders to Paul Quisling Ryan and Bitch McConjob’s dithering on a wall, non-stop, any time in the last two years.

Go ahead, post them all.

I’ll wait.

Wait, what?
Nothing?
You're sure about that?
How can that be...?

Wow, it's almost like she's the one who claims to be conservative, but can't seem to get her foot out of her mouth when there's a whole do-nothing GOP Congress who voted for wall funding twelve times - until they had a president who'd actually build a wall.
And then all took early retirement rather than facing the wrath of the voters.

Say, wait a minute, wasn't that what happened with repealing ObozoCare??
And wasn't the mantra then just "Repeal"??
Not "Repeal - and Replace (With More Socialism)"???

Quick, get me Lexis-Nexis...there must be dozens of Ann Coulter's shrill ranting pieces giving Quisling Ryan and Bitch McConjob rhetorical hell for that one, week in and week out, for the last two years.

What??
Crickets chirping again??
Gosh, it's almost like Ann is shrilly shilling for the George Will chair on ABC's This Week With Clinton's Former Toady, (from back when Fat Bill was raping women and molesting interns in the Oval Office).

This is Ann, giving a tongue bath to the Never-Trump crowd, because she’s going to need them for a gig when Trump’s gone.

Apparently, when your ovaries dry up, insanity sets in with a vengeance, regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum. It’s going to hit cat-lady Coulter particularly hard. Ask her how rampant senility has worked out for George Will’s career.

And we’re hosed because the GOPe retired en masse after doing nothing, and is sitting perplexed, with its collective head up its ass, while the Democrats steal entire counties from them in the weeks-long election of 2018, just like they’re going to do in 2020 nationwide.

Quick, get me the Coulter columns attacking the House and Senate for ignoring the ballot-box stuffing going on nationwide just last month, since the Constitution explicitly states that those bodies are the sole arbiters of whom they seat, and could refuse the shadily-elected members in a heartbeat, right now, with full legal authority, and the Dems couldn't do shit about that.

Oh, c-mon now, you're kidding me?
She hasn't said anything about that either?

Geez, it's almost like she was...a Democrat stooge.
Naaaaah, can't be, they'd be harping on Trump for not doing things outside the scope of his office, and focusing on witch hunt investigations run by corrupt crooks with iron-clad conflicts of interest and partisan hack staffs, and if that happened, Ann would certainly have written reams of column ink about...wait, what?

Nothing?

Not a single column drawing upon her stellar legal expertise, by pointing out that the prior AG, and the current acting AG, could both fire Mueller tomorrow, then follow up with shit-canning  undercover  hiding-in-plain-sight Obozo holdout deputy AG Rosenswine, which should have been her mantra 24/7/365 since the day Mueller was hired?

You're kidding me, right?
No scathing calls about the endless ongoing slow coup since before Trump was even elected?
Are we sure she's even registered to vote Republican?

Well, with friends like this clueless banshee, her prediction about 2020 is prescient.
Pay close attention to the D nominee in 2020: that’s your next president, short of ropes and nooses for the guilty.

You’ve got about 22 months – maybe – to unfuck your preps before we begin the reign of HopeyDopey/Clinton v3.0.

And the next Great Depression could be any time.

If anybody’s hosed, it’s from electing jackholes, and their own apathy and lethargy for not even showing up, at any level, and not because of anything done or not done in the White House since January 2017.

I'm sure next week's column will be another apology for jumping the gun and getting it wrong, just like she's done the last ten times she's been wrong about Trump.

Wait, WTF??
She's never done that once either?
Color me shocked.

So, anyone: tell me how it worked out dumping Bush (41) for that other guy over his "Read My Lips: No New taxes" blunder?
1993-2001 worked out so well for her then too, I suppose?

Then explain to me the faux-outrage over Trump signing away bump stocks, when five minutes ago anyone with an opinion was busy pointing out bump stocks are worthless for doing anything but converting ammunition to noise, without any accuracy, and oh, BTW, can be replicated with a rubber band?

This horsesh*t is just trolling for the actual Never-Trumpers to come out and self-identify.

Coulter, meanwhile, seems to have sold a lot of books, including one totally drawing on Trump's election, without helping the political debate much.

Trump is simply a the guy with his finger in the dam.
And loudmouth twat Ann, once again, is the Wrong Way Corrigan idiot with both feet shoved way down her own throat, as the last two days have proven.

Big Green Finally Unf**ks Their Uniforms

h/t Borepatch

After only about 60 years of wearing cabbie and bellboy attire (a black Lt. Gen. was once famously mistaken for an airport skycap, for example), the US Army has finally gone back to uniforms that actually look rather military and squared away. Nice work at doggie leadership finally admitting the obvious. Kind of like that ACU couch camouflage problem finally being replaced by Multicam, which actually works.

No word on how long before they set to unf**king the soldiers they put into those uniforms, by shitcanning the Obozo-era PC bullshit to which they currently subject everyone from E-1 to O-10, and stop recruiting fruitcakes, gender benders, and other mentally defective snowflakes, and start manning the line with actual, y'know, men.

But this is a start.

Random Annoyances, And Why I Need More Chainsaw Bar Oil

I've been interested in technology since discovering the second generation of Tom Swift books, reading Popular Science and Popular Mechanics in the barber shop while waiting my turn, and since visiting the Museum Of Science and Industry, back when L.A. was a world-class city and not yet a world-class third-world sh*thole.

That would be a very, very long time ago.

So on the whole, for my edification, instruction, and entertainment, I adore it when someone comes along and explains anything they're Subject-Matter Experts on, in language anyone can grasp, and with suitable illustration of major concepts and particular details. Bonus: for free!

And if Thomas Edison hadn't invented motion pictures in the 1890s, talkies hadn't come along in the 1920s, television in the 1930s, and YouTube hadn't been around since 2005, I wouldn't be so quick to bring this up. But it's not like anything I'm about to say should be news to anyone. Yet, it is.

But the two worst things on the internet, bar none, are amateurs on YouTube etc. who don't know WTF they're doing, and professionals on YouTube etc. who don't know WTF they're doing.

Whether you can't help whipping out your idiotPhone 27 and filming the grandkid's birthday like you were having a seizure during DTs, some idiot savant backyard wizard with the production values of Ed Wood and the plot coherence of Robert Altman, or just some BBC fucktard with way too much caffeine and a raging logorrhea syndrome, trust me when I tell you This book is for YOU.

Read it, learn it, live it, love it. Or else die. Of dick cancer. In a pool of hungry crocodiles. With frickin' laser beams on their heads.

For the short-attention-span TL;DR crowd, a brief summary.

1) Shakespeare died in 1616. It's a f**king VIDEO. So don't tell me, SHOW me.

If you don't get this, and TV looks easy to you, trust me when I tell you: it's because you're a retard. GTFO of the Internet forever.

When Peter Falk tells pre-pubescent Fred Savage in The Princess Bride "Back when I was your age, television was called books", it's witheringly funny. But nota bene, Gentle Reader, that neither consummate director Rob Reiner, nor maestro screenplay author William Goldman then proceeded to give us nothing but Peter Falk droning on from the book for the next two hours. Because it's a frickin' MOVIE!!

Today's f*cktard-fail case in point (and the reason for my rash today about the topic):

Stop. Do not watch!

*I* wanted to watch this. I wanted to hear the information, and more importantly, see the story. Not attend an endless lecture with some insane effing blabbermouth. Otherwise, I could have tuned it in on a podcast, or read the damned book. Don't bother watching this, let me summarize it in nine words, and a much briefer video clip:

"Insane homeless guy breaks into museum to explain history." - best comment under this video at the site

Here's the entire 25 minute video summarized , in only 24 seconds:

 

World of Warships insanely sponsored the content in question, and I'm here to tell those guys: you were ripped off, and you're mega-idiots for paying money for this. That video is an enthusiastic moron in love with the sound of his own voice, and a sadistic glee in torturing a trapped audience, with no more idea of how to use the camera to tell a story than he has of how to build a warp drive with household tools. He needs a beating with heavy pipes and a sock full of rocks. If he wants to lecture to mopes in person who're free to walk away or throw rotten fruit, fine, but he should GTFO YouTube for life, before he has an accident. Involving a dull rusty chainsaw.

There's one YouTuber, a former USAF ATC, on ATC flightSims who responds to that much blather without any purpose succinctly:

"That's great; blog it."
This is dumbass code for STFU already.

You want to see how to combine a story with visuals?
Here's your guys:

Anything with James Burke. 40 years old and more, and still brilliant exposition.

2) Yes, it's a video. No, the video isn't the most important thing.

Learn a lesson:
People will watch sh*t video with great sound forever:
Blair Witch Project - $140.5M profit on a production budget of $60K.

People will drop sh*t sound in 0.3 seconds:
you, every time your friend calls you on his cheap ass cell phone from the bottom of a well.

If you can't get flawless audio on your video (unless it's man-in-the-street action, like a car crash or a gunfight in progress), shitcan that audio recorded from up your @$$, and dub over that.
There are only 1000 sound editing programs, and any microphone at RadioShack or WalMart is better that the p.o.s. in your cell phone, or even on the video cam you bought. Guaranteed.

Put a wind sock on that mike outside. No one wants to hear the hurricane, or you puffing and panting. Not even on your own sex tape.
Tie the dog to the car bumper, and drive it away. No, really.
Don't shoot under the airport landing pattern, next to the freight train yard, or anywhere else bystanders are wearing earmuffs because of OSHA requirements.
Otherwise, the above comment regarding dick cancer and crocodiles applies to you too.

3) But it's still a video. Get a tripod.

No shaky video unless you're recreating a Saturn V moon launch.
And every time you get the urge to whip-pan while the video is rolling (unless the Blue Angels are flying right overhead at Mach 0.8 and 200'AGL), stick your tongue in a live light socket. Repeat until that urge passes.
If a tripod is illegal, get a monopod.
If a monopod is illegal, get a sandbag or a square of wood with a 1/4"x20 threaded bolt (the size of every tripod socket since about ever), and put it on a stable surface.
If those won't work, take your buddy, the one who wanted to do all those puke-your-lunch whip-pan shots, and once the tongue-in-the-socket electric shocks render him unconscious, duct tape the camera to his torso. And get your shot, with no seizure-shakey cam.

4) Pencil and paper have been around for centuries.

a) Write a script. Shakespeare died, but the idea of knowing what you're going to say before you say it hasn't.
Every time you say "Um"? Tongue. Light socket. Repeat until the problem resolves.
Won't resolve? Dick cancer. Crocodiles. Frickin' laser beams.

b) Make a shot list.
What shots do you need to have for the script? Get them.
Telling us about a tiny detail (By which I mean showing us a tiny detail)? Insert shot: a super close-up shot of the exact detail in question. (E.g., guy defusing a bomb, someone setting their watch, etc.)
Watch the James Burke video at 5:21ff above, and compare that clip with the lack of anything like that in the perfectly awful Turbinia video, at least in the 90 seconds I could stand to watch it before my blogging fingers started twitching. Worse than a crime, it's a tragedy.

c) You can use online tools like Sketch-Up, or even a crayon, and draw out a stickman storyboard just like a comic book and combine the shot you want with the dialogue/voice-over for that shot, and then go out and shoot it. Check them off when you get them. (That's how you know you got what you came for.)
Just like they do in Hollywood on multi-hundred-million-dollar movies.

Now see if you can figure out why Marvel Comics is making the most and best franchise movies in the last 20 years, bar none, and Stan Lee is and will remain the most successful movie writer in history.

5) EDIT!!!!!

Take out every boring second. Every bungled attempt. Random noise. Cars honking, dogs barking, dumbasses screaming into the microphone. Every last flaming thing that isn't 5-star flawless, or 4 stars and salvageable with some editing magic. Like Hollywood does because they're pros, and you don't because you're a lazy bastard.

Accept one-take magic if it happens. That Tiger Woods Nike commercial back in the day, bouncing a golf ball on the club head for 28 seconds, and then whacking the ball to Antarctica?

One take. Screwing around during an all-day shoot. Which became the commercial.

I was working on Just Shoot Me once, in an episode where George Segal's character had bet Donald Trump he could beat him at golf, in a dress. (No, I didn't get to meet pre-presidential Trumpster.) But we went on location to a local golf course. In the script, Segal had to sink a putt that was at least 30'. In a dress.
We had a golf pro. A coach. Ten dozen brand new golf balls. Entire crew, and truck load of film. Segal showed up, walked over to wardrobe, came out in the dress over his regular wardrobe, walked over to the green, took a few air swings, and we settled in for what was to be a long afternoon trying to get the shot.
So for the take, Segal walked up to the first ball, lines up the shot, tapped it perfectly, and it rolled straight to the hole like it was on a rail, and dropped in with a sound-perfect plunk in one take. "Do you want another one?" he asked.
Director says, "Nope. We're done. That's a wrap." Everyone home early, for a shot that was 2 seconds of TV on a minor sitcom.

A friend of mine worked on a beer commercial, with a Professional Pourer. (Yes, it's a thing, apparently.) Take One, the guy pours the product into the pilsner glass, it swirls in a perfect amber-colored maelstrom of hoppy wonderfulness, the foam head gets to just over the lip, and one absolutely perfect drop of foam overflows, and dribbles right down across the logo. Absolute artistic orgasm of a shot.(Which is why there are Professional Pourers.)
Director says, "Let's get one more good take, just in case the client wants another version."
Seven cases of beer and fourteen hours of filming later, they hadn't replicated the first one, nor even come close. Guess which take they used in the final cut...?

Bottom line, know what you want, and chop out everything that isn't that. First take, eightieth take, doesn't matter. But if it is take 80, get rid of the other 79 before you post the thing.
Nobody cares about all the extraneous crap, and they'll appreciate not wasting half their day waiting for your video to get to the point. More importantly, they might stick around long enough to see the whole thing.

(I just saved you $200K for the most important 95% of things you'll learn at film school. You're welcome. Now buy the book above for the other 5%. Mine was shorter and cheaper, but that one is definitely better.)



Those five weird tricks will move you from the ranks of the 99% of people on YouTube, Vimeo, etc. who deserve dick cancer and a bloody, laser-scorched end, and move you to the top tier of production, whether it's a 5 second gif shot, or a garage-band feature film.

And I won't have to hunt you down and kill you, slowly, with a dull chainsaw, starting at the toes.


{Aesop has worked in Hollywood for over twenty-five years on everything from feature films to Top 40 TV shows to commercials to low-budget award-winning short films to homemade music videos, and has produced, directed, shot, miked, lit, gripped, propped, wardrobed, EFX'ed and more, times beyond counting. And has a growing list of people on his To-Be-Chainsawed List, while the grains of his life ebb away one by one. Please, he yells because he cares, but he's not above thinning out the gene pool.)

Math: Still A Thing

The J-school jackholes are running around like headless chickens because "ZOMG! Stocks Reeling: Dow PLUMMETS 500 points!"

(And this, in no small part, is pure TDS, to try any means possible to get people to de-couple from Trump, after 500 failed schemes to date, while the economy chugs along at pre-Obama heights undreamed of since 2007, mainly by the merest throttling of government interference.)

IANAEconomist, I just blitzed my math SATs, and learned long division back when there were right answers and wrong answers, and the math test didn't care how I "felt" about that.

The Dow is bouncing around 24,000: stocks "plummeting" 500 points is the equivalent to you or me of gasoline or milk prices going up - a nickel.

Shut the fuck up about that, journalism retards.

When the DJIA plummets to 10,000, or 2,000, give a holler.

The idiots invested deep into that rigged bullshit scam should probably pay attention then.

When stocks cease to be wild speculation and manipulation, and return to being an investment managed over time, I'll give a wet fart again.

Meanwhile, your dollar today buys what 2¢ bought in 1932.
About that calamity: not a peep.

Journalists: the SJW students too stupid to get into sociology or victim studies departments.

This One Year, At Re-Education Camp...

"Did someone say 'Nose pencils?
Captain Blackadder reporting for duty. Wooble. Papaaaa!"

College Socialist Re-Education Camp, deconstructed by Wilder, i.e 4th Generation Warfare, Part Deux:

the essence of 4^th Generation warfare is about removing the willingness of your opponent to fight – to making them see their own position as an immoral one, to winning ideologically. 

What’s the easiest way to win ideologically?  Education.

Go hither. RTWT.

Long-term?
All tulipomania bubbles burst, eventually.
And Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" is going to break this one with a hard right cross to the jaw. Economics is merely the gravity of money, not the sociology of unicorns, and the inviolable rules are "TANSTAAFL", and "What cannot continue, won't."
Mind the backsplatter when this one goes off.

¡Socialismo!

h/t OddJob

And the answer to Number One is "Because the answer to Number Two is 'No!'"

Down. Forward. Up. PULL. Repeat.

What makes Christmas presents happen, bigly?
This. Since ever.

Currently, the timekeeper is pounding out "Battle Speed!"
But so is the Paymaster.

Practicing capitalism the fun way is never having to say "insufficient funds".

And I'm frankly too busy to go panning through tons of the daily gravel of life for a paltry few gold flakes of outrage. Life's too short for that, anyways. Go play in the snow, walk in the woods, spend some time in an art museum, catch a flick, or work your way through the DVD pile or the stack of to-be-read books. Charge up your spiritual batteries with friends and family. You're gonna need that, as long as you're on this side of the grass.

FWIW, I think you're all getting a Christmas Season of relative nothingburgers, because come January, when the would-be generals of the Free Shit Army take over half of Congress, things are going to get non-stop crappy, in ways beyond counting. At least on the Idiot Box, if not so much in real life.

And then the season of outrage nuggets will be upon us, just laying on the ground ripe for the taking.

Just a hunch.
We'll soon see about that IRL.

Enjoy the holidays as much as you can.
The really bleak part of winter will be upon us soon, with nothing to look forward to after that but Spring.

Take a thought to your long-term plans, and take a personal inventory of the places where you're relying more on wishful thinking and not so much on actually having.
Nobody's strong always and everywhere. If you're feeling cranky, go drill some holes in paper targets. Or save a few bucks, get some snap caps, and do a few hundred rounds of dry firing every week. Or day. It only costs time. Or find that thin spot in your just-in-case lists, and fatten it up a layer or two, while it isn't critical nor expensive. Especially if that involves getting rid of a layer or two of winter fat around your middle. Humans are one species where it's always better to store your winter fat in the pantry, rather than in the pants.

Life's pop quizzes are coming.
Strong, skinny people are always harder to kill.

Sock It To Me? Here Come Da Judge...

It had to happen:

(HOLLYWOOD - Aessociated Press) Comedienne Ruth Buzzi is suing Arte Johnson for 140 counts of sexual battery, committed weekly from 1967-1973 on NBC network primetime television.  The suit is alleging stalking, harassment, criminal conduct, and is also suing hosts Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, and NBC Television for conspiracy to commit all of the above.

Exhibit A:

Buzzi's attorney, Gloria Allwet, is asking for $140M in damages, a public apology, 50% ownership of NBC, Lakers courtside tickets, and they also want Rowan, dead since 1985, and Martin, dead since 2008, dug up and evicted from their current resting places because of #Me2,000,002.

"Ruth is 82, and she's maintained her silence and shame for far too long. She has deep mental scars from the show's rape culture, sexism, and rampant misogyny, and she's tired of living with the damage of all those years of abuse, when she only won a Golden Globe, five Emmy nominations, and helped establish groundbreaking comedic roles for women in television like co-stars Goldie Hawn, Lily Tomlin, and Joanne Worley. That's not enough anymore. This isn't really about the money, so we feel a paltry sum like $140M, a mere $1M per assault, is simply a reasonable amount to ask NBC to cough up after Ruth was forced to live with the shame of a decade of unbridled comedic success and worldwide fame, at the expense of her self respect.

And if we wait much longer, she may die, and then I can't collect my piece of the pork, er, settlement. The case is expected to go to trial as soon as judge-shopping discovers a judge amenable to burning up the rule of law up with a flamethrower, in favor of undermining jurisprudence to achieve victory for a ridiculous agenda."

The Horror

Last Thoughts For Now: The Nightmare



Imagine Team Mo has sent 1 (or 19, or 50, or 200) guys infected with Ebola here.
They'll be asymptomatic for 7-20 days, on average, including at any cursory
intake screening. They could come from 40+ countries before arrival.
So, pick them out of the above crowd. You have a 1
(or 19, or 50, or 200) in 300M chance. Good luck, Jim.

From conversation at dinner last night (and I owe you one next trip), and a comment elsewhere today:

"This is still not Africa’s century. When, not if this virus becomes weaponized, it will be brought here to the Blue Hives first. Then it will spread and Hell will be upon us."

My last thoughts on the Ebola topic, until this gets to the next stage (arrival in a major international city, and/or inter-continental travel and spread documented):

I expected Team Mo to take that approach last time.

Sooner or later, that penny will drop.

Clancy's template for that was in print worldwide 22 years ago, so it's not like I'm giving anyone any ideas.

He novelized aerosol delivery, which even in the book failed to fully work.

But taking things the next step and doing it would be easier without that bit of literary cleverness. If they simply infected people and sent them here while freshly infected and asymptomatic, with orders to burn their papers, hide their identities, and circulate until unable, a dozen such not-so-smart bombs who subsequently founded outbreak clusters solely at malls and amusement parks would completely overwhelm any ability to deal with the disease short of bringing all of American society to a grinding halt for months. They could do this indefinitely, and vector it in from 40 countries tomorrow, and we wouldn't even know we were under attack for a month or more.

Getting a handle on the disease - anywhere - depends absolutely on the idea that people want to help track their contacts. People committed to hide and lie about where they've been and where they've merrily sown microbial Hell screw that pooch in a gang-bang. In about 0.2 seconds.

And also noted by Clancy last century, "You can't expect them to stay stupid forever."

What some of the geniusii hereabouts fail to comprehend is not the direct problem of Ebola outbreak(s) here, horrific as that alone would be.

The true problem is the secondary and tertiary effects when a growing and absolutely non-zero portion of Americans, notably truck and rail delivery chains, and first responders from police, fire, EMS and medical personnel, decide "Fuck that, I'm staying home starting tomorrow, until further notice, because my paycheck isn't a death pact." Like. They. WILL.

Three days later we start running out of things like gasoline and food resupply (not everywhere, but it doesn't take much to much to go from concern to stupid to panic), and it snowballs from there.
Perception is reality, and America closed for months is 9/11 to the tenth power. They got 19 hijackers here, no problem.

19 @$$holes infected with Ebola and set loose would probably top that tally eventually, but financially, they could crash the Western world, with 19 injections, 19 one-way plane tickets, and a few weeks' spending money and tourist itineraries, and whilst breaking exactly no US laws other than the original conspiracy.

There's also no reason to stop at 19. Doing 50 or 200 would be little more complicated, and they could come in waves, a week apart.

Pleasant dreams.

Generations Of War, And Where We Are

You want a master's thesis précis on warfare from ever to right now, but written to understand at the middle-school level?
Here's your guy:

Von Clausewitz talked about war being waged on three levels:

• Physical – Breaking stuff and killing people and taking land.
• Mental – Making the enemy think what you want them to think. Confusing them.
• Moral – You have to believe that what you’re fighting for is right, just and correct.

Oh, and the "right now" part of that equation?
Glad you asked:

 In order to win this war:

• The aliens must be gently, firmly, and quickly be sent home.
• We must stop supporting them with cash if they are here.
• We must make life here so unhelpful that they voluntarily deport themselves.
• We must not give their nations cash if they keep coming here.
• We must stop cash flowing from individuals to their home country.
• We can help their home countries to build industries and meaningful jobs.
• If the people like, heck, we could come in and run the country for them since they seem to suck at running countries and we seem to be good at it. Is illegal immigration really the best argument for colonization ever?
• We must win at the mental and moral levels.

We are in a war.  Are we ready to fight?  Because I don’t think that the 5^th Generation of war will be quite as nice as the 4^th . . . .

Read the whole thing, certainly.
Better yet, bookmark his site.
Then take a day and work your way back as far as you can go.

Somebody who can think well, write clearly, and gets it right. On everything under the sun.
If his site isn't on your daily reads, fix that. Today.
And if P.J. O'Rourke dies, relax.
We've found his replacement.