Two to four years for this job? Admirable idea, unlikely to work, or happen.
EMS Artifact has a thought or two on requiring paramedics to get years of training instead of the current months.
My thoughts on that:
My hazy (from 30-years ago, when I looked at it) understanding is that paramedic certification is closer to 6 months training full-time, not anything close to a 2-year Associate's degree. Clinical rotations may almost approach a year total from start to finish, but I doubt it, at least anywhere hereabouts. (Obviously, individual companies/agencies my have other requirements.)
You might could expand paramedic to the level of LVN training, which is a solid year.
Two years is frankly overkill, on so many levels, and a bachelor's degree, while admirable, is ridiculous to even suggest. (I'm biased there: I was told twenty-five years ago that in 10 years, all RNs would be BA/BS degrees. Over 25 years later, and I'm still working as many shifts a week as I want with my humble associate's degree, including at the magnet hospitals that require most staff to hold a BSN, and there are only three of those out of about 40, locally. Double Bonus: they all pay less than the hospitals that accept anyone even without a BSN, even with the BSN pay bump. And they can't figure out why they're always short-handed. Hmm. I wonder...)
If you have 2 or 4 years to work for your paramedic degree, which was suddenly required, why on God's green earth wouldn't you either get a nursing degree at either ADN or BSN level, tripling your pay and expanding your work opportunities a thousand-fold, or just gut it out a few more years after a bachelor's, to become a P.A. or M.D.?
Is more training a good idea? Sure. For anyone, from EMT to board-certified neurosurgeon. Is it necessary for paramedics? Probably not. At least not initially, for entry-level. (What you do as CE is your business, but smarter and more trained is better, certainly.) Is it cost-effective, or sensible, to turn a 6-month (or 9-month) cert into one that takes a year, or two, or four, just to ante in? Highly unlikely, unless someone else (other than the paramedic) is paying for it, and even then, every year you're in school, you're not working to feed yourself and keep a roof over your head.
And non-governmental agencies (which is most of them outside Megopolis) will go the other way: they'd rather have cheaper, less-qualified workers, and if they have to pay more, they'll just upgrade to LVNs/ RNs/etc., and paramedic will become a dinosaur profession, except for firefighters on the civil payroll.
Exactly like live-in indentured servitude diplomate-nursing has all but disappeared. (That will also exacerbate the perennial nursing shortage, and/or provide a new pipeline from LVN to RN, LVN being a similarly limited-end job category.)
And as a subtle hint, there's not a lot of crossover between guys who want to put out fires, and guys who'll sit still for an ADN/BSN. They are pretty fundamentally different groups, overall. I like what I do in the ER, but slinging ladders and hosepacks, and chopping cars open, wasn't the sort of thing I was into, then or now. I got my fill of heavy lifting in the Marines, thanks, and if I were in a firehouse, I'd be a captain or higher royalty by now, or retired, as my back and knees remind me daily.
FWIW, the three biggest limits on nurses now is lack of qualified instructors, lack of program seats to train more, and lack of places for them to train. All of those things cost even more money, by the metric buttload. If you see the J.C.s and state colleges firing their Victim Studies programs to expand their faculty in nursing, EMS, and the pre-reqs for either, or anything else worthwhile, give a holler. Out here, it's hard enough to get them to even teach college-level English and math, and find students who can pass the pre-test to enter the courses, let alone successfully get a degree.
How anyone's going to leap all three of those hurdles by significantly ramping up paramedic training is probably ten more thoughts than anyone inside EMS has thought through, IMHO.
In honor of the secret of her political rise, Sen. Kamala Stalin Harris (D-Bukkake) will henceforth be referred to by the handy and accurate appellations "Kneepads", or on formal occasions, "Sen. Deepthroat."
It's good to commemorate where people came from, and remind folks what they're voting for. And 2020 promises to be twice the political @$$clown show 2016 was.
It started just like any other day. I was at the station, watching President Ocortez on TV as she sentenced a criminal to death for denying that women experience erectile dysfunction, when the call came through. 10-37, Triggering In Progress at the memorial! I dropped my tofu and latte, sprinted to my patrol Prius, and blazed out of the parking lot at my max speed of 22 miles per hour."
"Conan: What boots are best in life?"
Location, location, location!
Where are you using those boots? For what? When in the year? What's the weather like?
Answer that, first.
Make triple-damned sure you got them in the correct size, and get fitted by someone who knows WTF they're doing, if you can't work it out for yourself. Assume resupply will be a fond dream of happier days. Then, buy six pairs. Per person. Yes, REALLY.
Because in SHTF times, a man with one gun probably knows how to use it, and a man with one pair of boots is going to be barefoot in short order.
You have no idea how fast boots wear out until you blow up a pair. Let alone your last pair.
Then break each pair in, in rotation, one day at a time.
And replace the laces for all of them with actual multi-line-stranded 550 cord, in the appropriate color.
Boots with the wrong socks are a disaster waiting to happen. You're buying a walking system, not "a pair of boots".
Socks in layers. Enough to change multiple times per day. (Minimum 3x). Cotton kills. It also blisters. Wool is king. Good wicking synthetics are queen.
And with 6 pairs of boots, you should have about 20 pairs of socks, of any and all types.
A full care, clean, and polish kit.
Both boots and socks need blow-out kits:
Shoe Goo is worth its weight in gold. Spare 550 lacing (buy bulk reels). Leather awls and heavy upholstery lacing for repairs.
Sewing kit for socks.
And your boots aren't broken in until your feet are broken in, and your body, especially muscles and tendons from your quads down.
And Moleskin. Not "molefoam".
(Get the industrial-sized 4-yd. tube roll, not the overpriced little pussy squares they sell at Le Boutique Targét and WallyWorld, if you have any ability to do so.)
And small, sharp, precise set of scissors or two to trim the moleskin. New Skin.
Foot powder or corn starch.
And yes, even duct tape. Works on boots. Works on feet.
Anything else that works for you to treat your feet properly, such as:
Footwash basin Lotion Bag balm Epsom salts etc.
If your feet, socks, and boots aren't working together, you're screwed. And if you can't maintain them and care for them, you're going to be.
You can no more get by with "just boots" than you can get by with "just a rifle", without any magazines, sling, optics, cleaning gear, lubricants, spare parts, tool roll, and ammunition.
Systems, not items.
Advanced Class:
How to put a lot of your EDC survival items into your footwear, including hidden or custom pockets. Things like a button compass. A razor or other very small blade. A few fish hooks and line. Snare wire. Flint/steel. Handcuff key or lockpick(s) or shim(s). Short length of hacksaw blade A gold or silver coin or two, and/or a couple of greenbacks rolled into a section of drinking straw. Etc.
I'm not talking about turning your boots into a fireman's turnout coat cargo pocket with a 77-pc. Craftsman tool kit and getting ankle and knee injuries from the weight, but a few, small, nearly weightless items that might save your life is always a great idea.
Nobody gets the story right in the first 36 hours.
I wouldn't be quite so hasty to bet the farm that this shutdown was Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg...yet.
As Michael Caine said in A Shock To The System:
"Let's not all panic. You, you and you, panic. Everyone else, remain calm."
Least of all at a purported unilateral cave-in from the same guy that hilariously cancelled Queen Alzheimers' junket less than a week ago.
The Democrats have promised all along to "negotiate in good faith" once the government was reopened.
That bluff has been called.
If they don't do exactly that now, they have no leg to stand on if Trump simply declares an emergency next month, noting they got everything they asked for and still refused to deal, and starts building the wall they said they wanted time and time again, before he was president, by going right over their heads, when they turn out to be the same lying sacks of shit they've always been.
But don't believe any of that. Revel in the presumed joint victory of the Deep State and NeverTrumpers, who've been your friends since, oh, wait...never in recorded history.
And just for giggles, take a minute or two and list for the class all the times the media and the Democrats have gotten the best of Trump since 2016, alongside the list of all the times CNN and MSNBC have gotten anything important correct over the same timespan.
But what if, contrary to all historical evidence, Trump ultimately folds?
(And if he does, he does; I won't be the last guy looking for the pony under the mountain of horsesh*t. I've noted multiple times the President Trump is "not my guy". He's just governed more conservatively than anyone since Coolidge, and played harder hardball than anyone since Andrew Jackson shot a guy for insulting him.)
This was his "Read my lips..." moment, and you can start planning for him to get ousted in the primaries, if he doesn't simply resign and hand the whole shitball to Pence sooner. Or get impeached, tossed out, followed by cuffed and stuffed by the FBI Obama Holdout Brigade. Because I don't see them letting him pull a Nixon and retiring to a quiet life of writing books and playing golf. They want his head on a pole.
Which means you have, at best, about 700 days before President Shrillary/Biden/Kamala Harris gets sworn in, to get all your crap in one bag.
Either way, by the end of February, you should know beyond any doubt whether shit just got real.
Never bet on the bluff by the guy with "All...red!" against the guy who owns casinos.
We noted recently that amongst his multiple military accomplishments, Nathan Phillips achieved the bottom-most rung of the military rank structure on multiple occasions, after going UA (AWOL) three times in 1975, before finally being separated for good.
But wait! There's more!
It turns out that during the exact period of his USMCR reserve enlistment, he was also a serial f**k-up jailbird with civilian authorities too. In fact, the reason he may have been AWOL from Marine Corps duty several times may be because he was already locked up by civilian authorities. (And yes, Gentle Readers, Uncle can screw you for missing military formations because you were in civvie jail, because civilian law and military law don't constitute double jeopardy! If you were thinking of enlisting, write that factoid on your hand in Sharpie, lest ye forget.)
(MORDOR ON THE POTOMAC) Phillips, who was 19 at the time, was “charged with escaping from the Nebraska Penal Complex where he was confined May 3,” according to a May 9, 1974, article in the Lincoln Star. The court approved a bond of $500 and set a preliminary hearing for May 14.
He pleaded guilty to assault on June 19, 1974, and was fined $200. In addition, he was charged with underage possession of alcohol in 1972, 1973, and 1975, as well as negligent driving. A destruction of property charge against him was dropped in August 1973, but Phillips was sentenced to one year probation for a related charge of alcohol possession by a minor.
For reference, his reservist enlistment was from 1972-1976, the exact time he was lighting up every court calendar in Nebraska.
One wonders how his reserve chain of command could have not noticed all this unsavory behavior, and given him the boot much earlier.
You'd think missing reserve meetings because you were in the state pen or county jail would have raised a red flag or three, even in the military scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel year of 1974.
We repeat this classic bit of military wisdom for emphasis:
"What kind of bird doesn't fly?" "A shitbird, sir!" Shitbirds. Democrat SJW activists. A Venn diagram composed of a single circle.
Since apparently everyone at Jillette Pussy Products™ was asleep the day the business econ 101 professor was teaching about Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of the marketplace, he may have mentioned somewhat that it frequently comes in the form of a bitchslap from your competitors.
Barbasol's brilliant ad, above, and old but newly current, just left stinging red hand prints on Jillette™'s face. On both sides. Jillette™ will shortly rank behind Lady Schick in men's razor sales, in all likelihood. They may as well sponsor revivals of RuPaul's Drag Race and Queer Eye For The Straight Guy over on Bravo!, because they're done as a men's product company, unless they walk this disaster back, with cleats, over their own bleeding manginas. And while we're giving GOC props, here's some more payback come a'calling:
Go read McThag's crayon-on-napkin simple and clear explanation of why minimum wage laws are both wrong, and stupid, based on bog-simple cause and effect. This time from the Florida perspective.
Seriously, even Democrats should be able to follow such a blisteringly simple exposition.
(They'll still fail the pop quiz on it in a week, but that's from short attention span problems, not a deficit in their basic ability to grasp something, however fleetingly.)
When you ratchet the price of labor up, you drive the cost of the product up. This drives demand for it down. And it doesn't force businesses to sell things for less, it forces them to fire more workers, until they reach the nirvana of no employees, or as nearly as they can come to achieving that goal, to bring costs back down and recapture the lost demand of higher wages for a zero-value entry-level McJob.
$15/hr x 0 hours/wk = $0/wk.
Well-played, SJW retards. Good luck finding a $15/hr job with zero marketable skills.
And btw, this is true for all entry-level employment.
I've run into 100-hr EMT wunderkinds who cannot grasp their location on the medical employment totem pole hierarchy, and haven't figured that when the demand is $15/hr, the response will be to make EMT-Paramedic the entry level training required standard just to get into the field, and/or push all those jobs over to the public sector, as the only entity that can afford them, which will screen out white males at a 100% ratio in preference for box-checking diversity hires.
And if you don't think your jobs driving an ambulance will be replaced by guys driving for Lyft and Uber, neither you nor the cab drivers' local have been paying attention.
Some guy named Habib or Julio will get the same EMT card, and undercut you and your wages, and there'll be fuck-all you'll be able to do to stop it.
(Except apply at Lyft or Uber for their soon-to-be-announced medical transport category, which $15/hr wages and the consequent caterpillar motion of the entire wage chain will drive, exactly like all rising tides do.)
The days of walking in and getting a job will be over forever, and apprenticeship, tools, and actual skills will be required for everything.
What's that look like?
Google the unemployment rate in France.
Then look at their productivity per capita.
This sort of socialistic happy-gas is how you strangle an economy.
And when there's less actual workers, the gravy train of unemployment dries up faster and faster, like a drought in a desert.
On a macro scale?
You're about to learn the lessons your grandparents tried to teach you.
Big Chief Fullashit: busted. Just a reservist Brig Rat.
Color us shocked:
Nathan Phillips, SJW busybody, and self-proclaimed "Marine Recon Ranger" (no such thing having ever existed) who started all the shit with a bunch of well-behaved Catholic high school kids minding their own business not only lied about the incident, as the last several days' videos have documented, but he's also not a Vietnam vet.
Just a shitbird. Seems Don Shipley, a retired Navy SEAL BMC and Stolen Valor hunter, has FOIA'ed Phillips' DD214, and the truth now comes to light:
Wow. Like nobody could've seen that coming. This guy was a career E-1 REMF, and the closest he ever got to Vietnam was looking at a map of it in National Geographic. While under military confinement.
There's nothing wrong with serving in peacetime, or in the reserves, or even as a refrigerator mechanic. Just not while claiming to be a war veteran with special operations combat arms creds.
The Marines were out of Nam for good when Phillips was just 16, and when he did get in, he was not only a reservist maintenance pogue rather than any kind of combat arms, but he was a fuck up even at that. Hence being discharged after 4 years at the same grade as a basic recruit.
Well-played, Leftard sociopath.
We haven't seen anything like this from the Leftards since...well...since John Kerry shot himself in the face with his own grenade, awarded himself another Purple Heart, etc., and then applied to GTFO of Nam too.
There's something about being shitbags in uniform, and then going Democrat, almost like being a douchebag was a lifelong sentence.
We're waiting to hear that, exactly like Elizabeth Warren, he's also 1/1024th American Indian.
Once a Fauxhawk, always a faux hawk.
And the lunatard Left eats this stuff up and swallows it whole, because they haven't got the common sense God gave a jackass, nor two brain cells to track it back before running with it.
Just checking in, nothing really major. TL;DR: Same-same, trending to really bad eventually. But it's been 21 days since my last update, so here's where it stands:
They've now vaccinated over 60,000 people in the area of DRC overrun with Ebola. That, and that alone, is the only reason the outbreak there is still "only" into triple digits, instead of being the West Africa Ebola Outbreak of 2014, and racking up tens of thousands. Those vaccinated represent the 60,000 victims who would have probably been in the infected and dead tally now, except the experimental vaccine appears to work pretty flawlessly, AFAWK.
Despite that one small sliver of hope, per the latest (14 January 2019) WHO report, they've had an additional 100+ cases (a 20% total increase in 3 weeks), the suspected cases now become confirmed with near 100% certainty in a week or two, the actual kill ratio (dead now versus infected 21 days ago) is still running at 75%, not the happy-gas 60% number which they (WHO and Wikistupidia) keep putting out, despite knowing that the disease doesn't kill people instantly, but takes 2-3 weeks or so to do the job, and the areas that are listed as the longest number of days with the fewest new reported cases are also the ones where the health workers have been chased out by armed militias, no one's tracking contacts there because they cannot, the treatment centers have been burned, and bodies of victims have been stolen back from quarantine by relatives for the traditional let's-rub-our-hands-on-Grandpa's-Ebola-festered-corpse funeral preparations.
In short, the data is best there because it's missing entirely. Africa wins again.
Meanwhile, the newest case is in an area 50 miles west of the furthest spread before now, IOW their half-assed Congolese quarantine and travel checkpoint scheme is working about like you'd expect (i.e. not at all), and so this is spreading towards the megapolii in the interior of the country, and should pop up in a major international city any time in the next couple of months, unless the universe shows a level of concern for our species hitherto absent for several billion years.
The only other happy news is that the bordering countries, under no illusions how bad Ebola would be, have instituted pretty draconian restrictions where they can, and the outbreak is slackening in the eastern border regions somewhat. Unfortunately, that temporary slackening could be undone by even one infected person from the hotter zones hopping in a cab, or driving a truck there, or taking a walk through the jungle off the paved roads, and starting the fire anew overnight, which no one will know about for 10-21 days, when the new case finally hits the tracker map.
In short, the whole central African clown show continues to keep festering along, until it hits some target-rich environment, and gets out of the bottle again. Like it does.
At current course and speed, we hit a Level 10 on the 34-Level Ebola Panic Meter by end of February. Concerning (still) but not really a big deal.
I remain confident that WHO and DRC can manage to royally f**k humanity yet, and turn this into another true pandemic catastrophe, but clearly the vaccine is hampering their usual incompetence to a very small degree.
Enjoy that while it lasts.
If we assume the people getting vaccinated are definitionally the luckier/smarter percentage, perhaps Ebola can cull the stupid 10%, and burn itself out, before it takes ahold in even more populous teeming slums in the bigger cities. Those would be the ones with international airports.
President Trump is a few days away from being able to lay off hundreds of thousands of "non-essential" government workers permanently, at a penstroke.
Which is a fine start.
And at that point, there's no longer any shutdown. Just the Trump administration saving millions of tax dollars daily, going forward.
If the Dems cave, Trump wins. If they don't cave, Trump wins.
The Dumbocrats have slugged this tar baby with both fists and both feet, and now they don't know what to do. And even their own side knows they're idiots.
Stock up on popcorn and refreshments.
The day Trump tells 800,000 "non-essential" government workers "You're fired!", he cements the 2020 GOP nomination. {Google: Reagan/PATCO if you're unclear on this.}
No Republican president back to Coolidge ever dared do as much.
The day the Dems cave and give him any funding for a wall, he locks up the 2020 general election.
Dear Queen Alzheimer's: Don't like more President Trump? This shutdown is how you get more President Trump.
Looks like your boondoggle trip isn't the only thing shot down and grounded by the President. This is what happens when the Speaker of the House tries to play high-stakes poker with a deuce-level mind against the King of Diamonds.
And as this drags on, he's as likely to say "No, sorry, $5B was the offer last month. But with layoffs, I've freed up tons of government money going forward. Now the offer is $10B for the Wall, or nothing. Next month, it's $20B. Your move. -click-"
I haven't seen anyone do anything as gloriously stupid as this shutdown standoff since 30M illegals decided to show us "A Day Without A Mexican", and the freeway traffic was the lightest it's been here in 20 years.
From Dick's stepping on theirs, to twenty other companies, we've seen business after business crap on themselves and blow off all their toes to join the SJW jackhole crusade.
I've been shaving with Gillette razors since...ever.
I'm still rocking a pair of Atra handles I've had since Carter was president, and I can still find the 2-blade refills for them, without needing the newest 87-blade contraption. (If anybody wants them, they're now in the dumpster out back.)
Then the infamous recent Gillette "F**k Men" ad came out.
Because nothing wows your customer base like crapping on their heads and scolding them for something they didn't do.
I just got home with two new Harry's Razors, and two boxes of refill blades. And the guy at the knife shop has a fine selection of single-bladed straight razors.
Gillette is dead to me. I need them like fish need bicycles.
All y'all can do whatever you want. I hope the corporate ninnies who okayed this nonsense take some Procter & Gamble pussypants corporate SJW VP out behind Wall Street, and shoot him in the face.
It'll still be too late.
And since I'm not watching the NFL the last couple of years, I don't have to worry about seeing these sorts of jackassical ads either.
How's that for cutting close to the skin, @$$holes?
Sgt. Pathological liar. Soon to be E-1 in the stockade.
Looks like somebody was paying attention in Buddy Aid training periods. Looks like somebody is going to the stockade under Article 134 of the UCMJ:
(F Troop) Sgt. Trey Troney was making his way home to Raleigh, Mississippi, from Fort Bliss, Texas, for a holiday break when he happened upon a crashed truck on the side of the highway in Sweetwater, according to a Wednesday release from the Army.
He imagined he found Jeff Udger slumped over the steering wheel, and upon returning to his command, came up with a monstrous whopper of a tale, claiming to have reacted immediately to save a life, using his military training. In fact, local rescue teams arrived, and transported the victim, without any help or further intervention by Sgt. Pinocchio.
Army officials have retracted the whole ball of bullshit, and apologized to all concerned. Apparently, the idea of checking and verifying that barracks room bullshit tales of derring-do ever occurred never dawned on the Ft.Bliss Army PIO officers (there's a bunch of no-loads begging for reassignment to something like burning shitters, after letters of reprimand and career-ending spot OERs), nor to the short-bus staff at the Army Times, which is to actual journalism what military music is to actual music.
In all likelihood, no copies of Basic Journalism will be handed out for a crash refresher course, and none of these incompetent bozos will be fired, but with any luck, Sgt. Troney-Baloney will, in short order, become Pvt. E-1 Troney, followed by a few months of confinement to contemplate the error of his ways, and a Bad Conduct Discharge to remember his Army service with shame. What a fucking douchebag.
This is the sort of thing for which the Army routinely awards the Big Chicken Dinner, i.e. a BCD: Bad Conduct Discharge, which is one step above "Dishonorable".
There shouldn't be anyone in Troney-Baloney's chain of command who shouldn't be happy to endorse this case to a general court martial, with all haste.
So, ignoring this douchebaggery by a pathetic little fuck...how are yourfirst aid skills? And what kind of med kit is riding shotgun in your vehicle right now? The basic point of this post was to remind folks to be prepared, and one little shit's pathological Walter Mitty fantasies notwithstanding, the greater point remains in full effect.
It's a new year. Maybe time to go over any deficiencies in either area, and get that squared away today.
Once again proving that getting your information on what's going on at the actual border from Ann Coulter, living in NYFC, or the MSM, HQ'ed in NYFC, probably isn't the best way to keep up with what's actually happening on the border with effing Mexico.
So much for idiotic and jackassical "0 miles built" tweets.
We told you this months ago, but apparently the RNC has suddenly realized there was an information gap.
So as usual, you can believe ABCNNBCBS, and Ann Coulter's inaccurate whinging; or your lying eyes.
Dear Mr. President:
Please keep the non-essential parts of government shut down until Queen Alzheimers and Chuck U cough up another $5-10B for this wall. Even if it takes until 2021.
Having a border is what makes us a country, instead of the world's sucker.
God, how we miss this man. And this level of clarity about reality.
We posted someone else's brilliant rejoinder to the usual Boomer bashing that suffices for rational thought around the 'net, and you would have thought that the bare naked facts of historical reality would be enough to quell the usual Slacker rants about Boomers pretty conclusively.
We even remonstratedat length to the commenter in question, hoping against hope that the metaphorical light of truth would somehow eventually dawn in the darkened recesses yet unlit by wisdom or knowledge.
But there is nothing so unquenchable as the exact whiny sense of entitlement of the generation(s) who were raised thinking they were Special Snowflakes, and had even their soiled baby diapers hung on the refrigerator as art, because everything they did was magnificent.
The children of Lake Wobegone , "all of them above average", described by Garrison Keillor live on, as in this magnificent example:
"Aesop:
"it's not my fault, I'm just taking the payments I'm owed from my childrens' taxes" has the same moral validity as "I was only following orders". You may recall how well that defense flew in a certain military tribunal. I know I'm just a dumb soft-headed millenial, but boomers went to school back when they taught math, and the problem of boomers not having enough kids to prop the system up should have been blindingly obvious all the way back when - even BEFORE Boomers decided to pillage the economy for their own benefit. Or was that back in the "greco-roman myth era" before YOU started paying attention?
When I held my firstborn for the first time I was overwhelmed with the gravitas of having complete responsibility for the future of my child. It was a gut punch like I've never had in my life before. I would willingly eat cat food - or go hungry - for the rest of my life to better the lives of my children. If you wouldn't that's a sad commentary on you as a human being. I'm making plans and investments right now to guarantee (as best as possible... the best laid plans and all that) a secure future for my children and the other children of my community, at the explicit cost of my "toy and luxury" fund. Meanwhile Boomers are reverse-mortgaging their houses to fund another lavish cruise or bigger RV so when they finally shuffle off this mortal coil there is nothing left for their kids. It makes me sick.
I know very well who built the transcontinental railway. Coolies from the west, Irish from the east. "For bad food, hard liquor, and a dollar a day" as the song goes. I've been to Promontory Point, seen the replica golden spike, and one of the live steam model locomotives I've built is a 4-4-0 in the style of the Jupiter although in the livery of my business.
None of that changes how manufacturing and tech jobs were shipped overseas starting in the 1990s, by Boomers. The resurgence of US manufacturing is due to guys like me and by God I will pass it to my children intact or die trying.
Those underwater basket weaving degrees? Taught by Boomers, to the children of Boomers, who were told (by Boomers) throughout their entire lives by everyone they trusted that not only was it a good investment, it was a requirement to have a decent life. Good work pulling a con job on your own naive children - very impressive. "Let them flip burgers" is the new "let them eat cake", and you may recall the events which followed. There will be no executions, unfortunately. We're too busy cleaning up your mess and plugging holes in the dyke to bother with retribution. You'll die, alone and unloved, in whatever nursing home you can afford while we keep the flame of Western Civilization lit so our children will be armed to start reversing the damage you've allowed to happen." - kill all boomers
1) Why yes, I rub my hands in glee at seeing todays X-ers, Slackers, and Millenials skewered and twisting over the fire, as I contemplate all those Social Security payments which I'll never see a dime of either. But some of those at the early end of the generational pig-in-a-python who are the Boomers might actually collect a check or two. The nerve of those bastards!
And the fact that their average life expectancy for the first Boomers is about 71, so for their forty-plus years' contributions, they'll earn payments for a blazing six years, ought to give you pause.
The fact that the last Boomers turn 71 in 2036, two years after the whole Social Security Ponzi scheme explodes (if illegals who never paid anything into it don't suck it dry even faster!) should probably have been a major clue to slither off, and STFU with that sagging pantload of your economic brilliance. Did the Boomers hide math from you too? Were there no calculators in Slacker-land when you grew up? Did they burn all the books as well?
And while we're on it, I suppose you were also sick the day they covered that Social Security payments to you, even if the program was miraculously fiscally viable forever, would only cover a few hundred $$/month, but that you'd probably need 2-5X that amount just to live on by the time you retire, so that if you were expecting it to be much more than a supplement to your retirement income, exactly like it was always intended to be, you're already a World-Class Financial Fucktard, who should be laying in a supply of long-shelf-life dog food for your declining years, and saving one bullet to off yourself when you're too physically decrepit to pry open the cans any longer. What's that? You didn't get that memo either??
But I've got it. By taking payments for a few years from a system they've paid into all their lives, Boomers are ACTUALLY NAZI DEATH CAMP GUARDS, because it inconveniences you.
Mike Godwin 1, kab 0.
2) Accepting those payments is "pillaging the economy for their own benefit." In Bizarro World.
I mean, it isn't like perhaps the Congress tapping the Social Security funds the minute they're contributed, like they've been doing since about ever has anything to do with the bulk of the problem.
Other than because it was a giant con from Day One in 1934, and could never work, no matter what.
So, you're now crying because
A) Socialism steals
B) Socialism lies
C) Socialism never works
If this is news to you just now, life for you is going to stay very hard and uncomfortable.
Did the Boomers hide the Soviet Union from you too?
East Germany?
North Korea?
Cuba?
Venezuela?
New York F###ing City?
3) Since you asked, I'm conversant in most of history back to about 4000 B.C. Before that, it runs to speculation, so unless it matters and I have to look up the details, I'm a little hazy on placing the geologic periods in the proper order without a refresher.
Curiously, in none of the times since 4000 B.C., accepting repayment of government's promised payments, made since decades before you were born, and guaranteed with the force of law, and which you forcibly paid into in good faith for upwards of 50 years, is cashing the promised checks seen as "pillaging the economy for your own benefit".
The fact that the whole thing was always a Ponzi scheme, and never going to last, however, has been well-known since at least the 1970s, if not actually the 1930s. Not having read all the financial pages from the era of its origin, I'm spitballing it was probably clearly identified as such from the get-go. Yet again, sorry this wasn't stapled to your forehead facing you back around high school, when you first started getting paychecks with withholding pre-removed.
4) What you'll do for your children when they're helpless and you're not is commendable, on a doing-your-fucking-parenting-job level.
What you'll do when you're helpless and they're not, not so much.
Imagining that your elders should willingly be turned into Soylent Green protein crackers to fill your belly long after you hit adulthood is the rankest flight of delusional dystopian fantasy.
And what people who are not you chose to do with their money, including not leaving you any inheritance, is frankly none of your damned business, regardless of how sick it makes you. But it does couple the whininess and sense of entitlement to other people's money rather conveniently for the stereotype of your generation. Maybe you should make some bare attempt not to live up to the caricature so faithfully. Just saying.
Also, a short primer on how the estate belongs to the owners, who actually earned it, and not to their children, might be in order, as this has been common law everywhere since, o, sh*t!, about 4000 B.C. There's that whole history-before-you-started-paying-attention thing, kicking your ass. Again. Like it does.
But please, turn the story on its head and tell us the parable of The Prodigal Parent, rather than learning the actual one about the Prodigal Son.
5) Then explain to the class how Boomers, then ranging from age 25 to 45, "shipped manufacturing and tech jobs overseas" in the 1990s. Which 25-45 year olds were those CEOs and executive board members who made those decisions? Not generalities, but actual names. Name the companies, and tell me the Boomers responsible, for which fantasy you're cheerfully tarring 76,000,000(!) others, the vast overwhelmingly huge majority of them just making a living.
But I'm sporting about this: I'll give you $1 for every one who fits the Boomer demographic, if you'll give me $1 for every one of them who doesn't. Do we have a deal, or will you welch out on that bullshit statement when reality dawns on your poorly-constructed scapegoating fantasies? I could get odds on how that'll go, but in case you beat the odds, I'll happily take your money.
6) Those underwater basketweaving degrees? Taught by con-artists, to gullible morons, who never paid attention to anything worthwhile, were of legal age, and sold the family cow for Magic Beans. (Look, if you never figured out your high school guidance counselor, making about $35k/yr. with a degree in Underwater Basketweaving, was full of more shit than a Christmas Goose about college solving everything long before you got out of 10th grade, that's frankly your problem, not all of society's.) I don't know about you, but I heard the tale of Jack and The Beanstalk in grade school, and probably grasped the moral significance before 5th grade. Buddha On A Pogo Stick, Walt Disney even made a cartoon about it - in 1947. When Boomers were at most 2 years old. It was also an episode of Gilligan's Island, broadcast in the late 1960s, and in syndication continuously worldwide for the last 50 years. Sorry if Sesame Street didn't fill in the cavernous gaps in your education, and you never got that memo, because it wasn't in a video game. Noted.
Boo frickin' hoo.
And hey, great work infantilizing your entire generation as "children" past the age of moral and legal responsibility. You've made all my arguments for repealing the XXVIth Amendment without any further help from me. And when the college tuition bubble doesn't just pop, but rather, explodes, like it will, that'll be Boomer's fault too, in your fever-swamp delusions. You just couldn't help yourselves, because that worm looked so inviting, you couldn't see the hook, line, or sinker, and multiple generations couldn't figure it out until you were all landed in the net.
Another cartoon tip-off you obviously didn't see, nor grasp.
7) Let them flip burgers isn't "Let them eat cake", it's called "let Reality slap you in the back of the head, real hard." Religion is quite out of vogue in your generation, looking at actual demographics on the topic, but read the The Gospel of Luke, chapter 11, verses 11 through 32, and then tell the class how Jesus was really the same as Marie Antoinette. I'll wait while you formulate that rejoinder. This will be exegesis on the level of economic wisdom from Evita Guevara-Castro.
8) Your powerless threat is worthless to me, because seeing who and what your generation (and mine, and every other one before and since) was decades ago, I made my own provisions, and can rely on the love of family, rather than the reliability of slacker strangers spending twice the work to shift blame onto everyone but themselves for falling flat on their faces, as it would've taken to just suck up that life is life for everybody, and moving on. I stopped believing government was going to do anything good for me before high school, about the time I learned to do higher math.
But please, do tell me where those born from 1965 to (anytime you can name) have miraculously turned the country around, ended Social Security, and choked off the entire monstrous Leviathan that is the U.S. Welfare State. Wait, you mean that hasn't happened? How unfortunate for your mythos.
I've seen no such evidence of any such thing here in real life, but it sounds like a fascinating work of fiction, and I'm a sucker for a good novel about imaginary worlds.
The Welfare State will die off all right, but neither you nor anyone else will have Jack and Shit to do with doing it, or fixing it. You will "fix" it the same way flotsam "fixes" a tsunami.
It's going to crash because of mathematics applied to economics, and sheer demographic gravity: that which cannot continue, won't. And once again, just as you weren't responsible for your predicament, you won't be responsible for your salvation.
But the 2x4 Of Knowledge upside the back of your heads at that point is absolutely going to be a cast-iron bitch. And your misplaced misanthropy towards your elders won't help you out, feed you, or keep you warm. But it will amuse the hell out of me and everyone who watches your impotent tantrums until the end of our days, and yours. Well-played.
So congratulations, you got a post.
Because you're special.
And for the benefit of those who never got them, here are a salient few of Life's Basic Realities in case your parents didn't pass them along to you by writing them backwards on your foreheads with a woodburning stylus, as they clearly should have in some cases:
Life is hard. Life isn’t fair. Nothing is free. Nothing worthwhile is easy. No one cares if your pussy hurts. You don't have to like it, you just have to do it.
Addendum - To All Hands on the 1MC:
Word to your mother:
Maybe I was too soft, and tender, and gentle above.
Maybe some of you have never had someone, anyone, raise their voices at you, or point out your malfunctions in depth and detail, and you couldn't hear me through the wet feeling in your underpants when your bladder spontaneously evacuated, and not having mommy here to change your wet pampers, you don't know what to do next but lay there and cry. For some of you, for your entire wasted life.
So hug your teddy bear, and take this to heart.
If all you've got to come back with is another butt-hurt rant about how Boomers got to the trough before you could get your snouts in, and Wah! Waah! Waaaaahhhhh! It's all their fault you're cold and wet, expect your anonymous shitposting BMW (Bitch, Moan, and Whine) comment to experience the life expectancy of a fruit fly in a terrarium full of insecticide.
Take that sorry sh*t over to Oprah. Or Ellen. Or The View Spew. Where it belongs.
No. One. Cares. If. Your. Pussy. Hurts.
For all possible values of "no one".
Suck it up, buttercup. If you think a prior generation - any prior generation - that you don't like, has or ever had some magical ability you don't have yourselves, you're too stupid to be posting on anyone's blog. Ditto if you think it's anyone else's job to wipe your nose and ass for your entire life. If you're over 18, the shit's on you. Act accordingly, and if necessary, unf##k yourselves. If this is news to you, "Welcome to life. Since ever." You have agency, and responsibility. Save the drama for your momma, and stop suckin' on her teat and hiding in her apron. Or wishing you could.
When I hear anyone say "I'm going to stop bellyaching, which accomplishes nothing except showing the world what a whiny little crybaby bitch I am, and fix this all by myself, for myself, because it's no one else's JOB to save me" you've arrived at Step One of the solution.
This evolution is a Go/No Go station.
Pink pussyhats will be issued to the No-Gos as you leave. Some of you should probably staple them to your heads for life. Maybe you think they're bulletproof or something. Good luck, and keep working that plan.
In the meantime, Life put you here, now. In the landing craft. Headed for a really shitty day.
What you do after that is your problem. I'll see the rest of you on the beach.
In reply on another blog to the usual witless wonder Boomer-hater screeds, I present the following nominee for Comment Of The Year:
...to the “Boomer Haters” out there it is important that you understand the following.
Everything that hit that generation was a product of social engineering, just like yours regardless of whether you are an X’er, Millenial or from “Z.” Virtually everything that influenced them was set in place by the “Greatest” and “Silent” generations – socially, academically, culturally, economically. For that matter, the two seemingly worshipped generations that preceeded the Boomers had certain circumstances set in place for them by generations that never were given identifying monikers. After all, when was The Federal Reserve and the Income Tax put in place?
1913, when the so-called “Greatests” were kids and the “Silents” were not even yet born.
The Frankfurt School and it’s destructive effects on social science academia? In the 1930’s. So-called “Equal Rights”, the deracination of this country and the onset of “Second Wave Feminism?” 1950’s. The 1965 Hart-Cellar Immigration Act? 1965. All done by Greatests and Silents, well before Boomers could vote on a damn thing. The oldest of the Boomers couldn’t vote until 1967 (the voting age was 21 back then) and even if they knew anything besides what they had been taught (ringing a bell here?) by the “teachers” from the Greatests and Silents, what difference does the vote of a single year of a demographic cohort mean?
Nothing.
Who was importing the drugs back then? Greatests and Silents. Are you so stupid you think teenagers were international drug smugglers? Who introduced The Pill in 1960? Greatests/Silents. Who legalized abortion in 1973? Greatests and Silents. Rock and Roll? Greatests and Silents (Google up Dave McGowan’s series “Inside the L.C.” for a mind-blower on that topic, folks). Who led the “Counter-Culture” of the 1960’s? Not Boomers. It was Greatests and Silents. Check the ages of “The Chicago Seven” for a wake-up call, not to mention those running the SDS and The Black Panthers back then. Acid-Guru Timothy Leary was born in 1920, people. The folks who created the underground cells in 12 different major cities to to spread and begin the move to “normalize” and then legalize homosexuality set that up network up in the 1950’s and one of them was good old “Grandpa Walton” from “The Walton’s” television series.
Not Boomers.
And who owned those movie studios and the television networks that introduced the filth on the screen? And the radio stations which played that “Rock and Roll?” Profit-seeking, cultural “Change Agents” form the “Greatest” and “Silent” generations. Who started to mainstream “Porn?” Hugh Hefner was born in 1926 and the first “Playboy Magazine” hit the stands “unnamed” in December of 1953. It sold so well to Greatests and Silents during the ’53 “Christmas Season” that the January of 1954 issue came out with the name “Playboy” emblazoned on its cover. I wasn’t even born yet and the rest is history.
During all of this the Boomers were literally nothing but kids, most not even a part of the late ’60’s “cultural revolution”, itself the peak of a wave created “by others” quite deliberately built to crash the edifice of this civilization hard onto shore.
(P.S. Note that there were a mere three television networks plus perhaps PBS during that era, depending on where you lived. There was no “cable” or satellite television. There was no “internet” and no way to communicate viewpoints and/or observations contrary to what the gods of the media, academia and government wanted you to know/think. Use your tools and do so wisely.)
In short, suck it, whiny Millenial bitchez. You've been barking at the moon, because you can't read, and you won't learn without having The 2x4 Of Knowledge applied to the back of your head.
You've had your opinions pre-formed and pre-digested into pablum by the same counter-culture hippie idiots (look and see which Silent Gen Weather Underground terrorists were programming Obozo) who fucked things up royally in this country before the first Boomer was even old enough to vote. And they're still doing it, and you're still falling for it, because you never learned to think, or study, or crack a friggin' book. And for the most part, you still can't.
But soon, you're going to get that 2x4 applied, with gusto.
Middle age (thirty-three to fifty three, cupcakes) is a helluva time to finally get your education, but maybe better late than never.
Not counting the news outlets or websites along the full range of accuracy and veracity, I follow multiple actual individuals' handwritten blogs. (Bot news aggregators don't thrill me.) Looking them over, many are current serving or former military and a couple are some variation of high-speed low-drag elite forces ninjas. Or just funny as all. Because life without humor is just despair. So in other words, the same folks I trusted in the military not to wet the bed, sh*t themselves, or otherwise run around like headless Nancys, are the same folks I trust on the interwebz, for demonstrating pretty much the same trustworthiness and circumspectly responsible behavior. Color me shocked.
Comments are fully moderated, due to idiots and trolls. Grown up discussion here will appear just as soon as I have the time to push it through. ANONYMOUS UNSIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE AUTO-DELETED WITHOUT MERCY, and the url added to the spam filter, or mercilessly mocked at the bloghost's sole discretion. If you're too chickensh*t to come up with an alias for online purposes, you're not tall enough for this blog. Pick a name, and stick with it, and you're good. Get cute, and you're wasting your time and my electrons, and your masterpiece will never see the light of day. No warning shots will be fired. If you can't maintain decorum and polite behavior, I won't toy with you, I'll squash you. If one of your comments disappears, YOU f**ked up. If all of them do, it's time for you to go. Disagree with the points made, on the merits, and you're good. Go after me personally, or other commenters, and your comment will never see daylight here. My tolerance for skirting the line is at absolute zero, and will remain there. Don't f**k up.
