What Boulder Shooting?

 

Much Honest. No Doubtings.

 

The word for that? Freedumb.

So, you've got the Top 10 slots on your local accountability list all filled in, right? 

And the Next 10?

Rest assured they do.

Just Saying

 

{cf.: Amelia Earhart}.

Sunday Music: Somewhere Over The Rainbow

 

Big as a luau, with a talent to match, no way Iz was ever going to live to collect Social Security. But man, could this guy sing a song. And when you can start with an old standard that's been around for decades, take it over, update it, and own it this way, that takes something you'll seldom see in one lifetime.

Vaxx PSA

Anecdotally, I am on the outer border, agewise, of concern for getting Kung Flu.

I am one of the oldest nurses working in my ER (multiple doctors are older than I am), but by no means a senior citizen. But I've worked in sealed iso rooms for a year with dozens to hundreds of severely sick COVID+ patients, and bagged and tagged more than I'd care to number.

Which, praise a merciful Deity, tapered off rather precipitously just about exactly 3 weeks after the last of the jackassical New Year's Eve parties among the Gilligans hereabouts, amidst peak COVID locally: from Halloween to New Year's. Coinciding almost perfectly with incubation, maturity, and death/recovery observed all year long from this. We've probably only seen a handful of cases since February started. Remember that when someplace re-opens: it's what happens 3 weeks after that, that matters. I'm crossing my fingers no one's home turf anywhere finds that out the hard way from here on out, but some people have to grab the hot stove with both hands before the cluebat drops right between their eyebrows.

Throughout that time, gloves, some seriously deficient splatter gowns, and an N95, plus handwashing, have been my only protection.

On forays to the local bazaars, a snotcatcher mask, hand sanitizer - and washing my hands before any contact with my face, food, etc. - and appropriate distancing has been it.

I've gone through three waves of this without so much as a sniffle, in the state with the highest population, highest number of cases (though in the middle third of cases per 100K), and greatest number of deaths from Kung Flu. All of those are purely functions of population, since the #2 state in those categories is also the #2 state in terms of population: Texas, (despite lacking anything like the Chinatowns present in SF, LA, NYFC, Bahstun, Hongcouver, etc., to jumpstart the initial outbreaks).

Take that FWIW.

I haven't exhaustively researched the vaxx types available, but based purely on reported problems, I'm not getting the Pfizer vaxx, ever. Too much bad juju, IMHO, despite a fairly low incidence of problems after 90M or so recipients. Unless you're one of those who's dead from a "poor outcome". Moderna has been less problematic, but still doesn't fill me with warm fuzzies. I'm considering the J and J version, not least of which because just one shot.

However, you might want to note the following link, and think carefully on your choices:

Voxday: Unlikely to end well

TL;DR: An experimental injection similar to the vaxxes available now produced diminished symptomology to COVID. But also hypersensitivity, leading to a possible hyper-immune response, for future exposures to SARS-Covid mutations and other variants.

I have said all along that unless you're at high risk, due to occupational exposure or other variables, that if you're under 40, you probably ought to think about skipping the vaxx for Kung Flu, for now. 10-20 years down the road, when the current iterations have been refined and improved, let alone made safe in the same protocols we formerly followed outside a pandemic emergency, definitely re-think your earlier choices. If you're older than that, realities are a bit different.

I'm not a fan of mandatory vaccination with experimental vaccines, which are altogether different than things like polio or mumps vaccines. But the minions of Covidiocy with their booger hooks on the levers of power may not take "I'm good; BFYTW" for an answer indefinitely.

For that reason, exactly as I observed on Big Country's blog comments, I mention the following:

The state of Wyoming (one of several such, btw) has a site where you can access a pdf and print out a certified official Kung Flu blank vaxx card. Or, come to it, any number of them.

Right here.

Bright lights on their keyboards might notice that a diligent search of Gulag Images will produce no end of pictures, of startling clarity, of filled out cards, all with official stamps, stickers, lot numbers, and whatnot, for the Pfizer, Moderna, and J and J vaccines.

Just saying.

By midsummer, the current vaccines will be available to anyone who wants one.

How many don't want one, as an exercise of freedom, seems to be pissing off the same people that did all the wrong things on purpose last year, because commies gonna commie. That doesn't undo the fact that this is a real pandemic, that really killed between 1-3% of those in the 10% of the country that contracted it. If it spreads to the other 90%, you can expect 9X more dead bodies. That's gravity, working, exactly as you were warned, in a worst case.

TANSTAAFL. You pays your nickel, and you takes your chances.

PAY ATTENTION (especially the low comprehension readers who drop in occasionally):

What you do is your choice, and no one here is telling anyone to get the shots, or not to get them, nor fake a vaxx card. Just to think before you jump. Those are your own choices, which should be made by you, in your own best interest, after careful consideration of all possible outcomes. On your own head be it. Klar?

We're merely informing you of what's possible, should you decide to undertake certain paths.

Like all choices, liberty requires one be appropriately informed beforehand.

That is all.

Scenes From The Fun Show

 

So finally, after dead people in the tens of thousands have tapered off enough, our would-be overlords have consented to let the local Fun Show hereabouts take place again.

O frabjous day! Callou! Callay!

I'd been to the last one, back before the last wave of Kung Flu cancelled everything, and it was ponderously well-attended, but this one has put Disneyland lines to shame. 

I live maybe 15-20 minutes away. Normally parking takes 2 minutes, and the wait to get in is 5-10 more.

Today, it took half an hour just to get parked, on a weekday (which they normally don't do), followed by a line stretching solid every bit of half a mile around the entire fairgrounds just to get in the gate.

For those foolishly convinced this state is all liberal kooks: 33% of 40M people is still more conservatives than voted for Trump in Texas in either of the last two elections. And apparently half of them showed up today. We normally get vendors from OR, UT, NV, and AZ, but this time around, people were driving here to shop from those states as well, judging by the plates in the parking lot. I spoke with three people in line who were attending after flying here from WA. (They also announced they were moving soon to Texas, and were from "the Midwest". Add that data point to your memory bank every time you start yakking out your @$$ about "people from CA/WA/OR coming in and f**king up your state". I've told you times beyond counting, they're not from here now, and they won't be when they move to your red purple states in 3, 2. ...). Stop blaming my state for being first base on their trip around the basepaths when they get to you second, third, or whatever. A non-zero number are your own idiots exported here, just moving back home. But I digress.

Even with the entire thing being under pop-ups out in the sunshine, instead of the wide-open barns normally used, the throngs were out in full force. I haven't gotten this much Vitamin D at one time since last September, and it was glorious.

Evidently large herds were there mainly for ammunition, which they had, but I wouldn't bet on the supplies holding through the whole 3-day run. That line was like Indiana Jones, on the 4th of July. The main ammo seller usually goes through two semi-trailers of product in under two days. Whatever they brought this time, it'll be mostly gone by noon tomorrow, if today was anything by which to judge.

While I, like any man, could always use more ammunition, I'm not deficient there currently, at least not enough to stand in line for a couple of more hours, and was in search of other bits and bobs instead. Including the fabled partially-constructed lowers of certain sub-species of firearms.

Whereupon, hand to God, the following exchange occurred at one such seller:

Bubba Dumbshit: "What's the waiting period on that?"

Booth owner: "There's no waiting period, sir, it's an 80% lower."

Bubba: "So what's inside won't look like that one sitting on top that's all completed?"

Booth owner: "It looks EXACTLY like the one on top, that's an incomplete 80% lower. Hence the term '80% lower'."

Bubba: "So I have to fill out the paperwork, and pick it up later, after it's built?"

Booth owner: "NO."

Bubba: "So I can put the other parts on, and it'll shoot already?"

Me (eyes glazing over): "It's not a gun."

Bubba: "I was talking to him."

Booth owner: "It's not a gun."

Me: "You have to build it."

Booth Owner: "You have to build it."

Bubba: "Oh!"

(Turns to me snottily): "Some people explain it better than you."

Me: "Clearly. Have a happy day, sir."

Bubba wanders off mumbling and muttering. 

Booth owner rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

The purchase I made from them afterwards more than made up for watching Bubba Dumbshit wander off thoroughly baffled by such simple concepts as "not a gun" and "have to build out".

I know the Founders, in their genius, decreed that everyone could own a gun, with no nonsense like a basic intelligence test to purchase, because that would be abused all to hell, but praise a merciful Deity that not everyone does own a gun. The weekly stories of general armed jackassery we read about are what happens whenever another Bubba Dumbshit buys one anyway, and sets both Darwin and the Grim Reaper to salivating, and wise men to seek bulletproof cover. It's just a hunch, but I'm pretty sure whenever another Bubba passes a NICS check, another mortician gets his wings.

And FTR, I swear to Buddha that the best training I ever received for dealing with deranged mental patients and general drunks and retards in the ER was not delivered in nursing school, it was the two years I worked behind a retail gun store counter dealing with some of the stupidest and craziest people on the planet.

But if I'd been behind the counter instead, I'm pretty sure I'd have sold him the lower, and then told him to come pick it up in 10 days.

An Inconvenient Truth

 

Srsly, if he makes it to Christmas without a visit from Scalia's Pillow, it's a certifiable miracle.

How'd That Cunning Plan Work Out For King George?

 h/t Phil

Read it and weep.

As I noted on Phil's site:

Had the 2020 election not been brazenly stolen with visibility from satellites in space, by Stevie Wonder, Trump was two judge appointments from tipping the 9th Circus from majority whacktard to majority constitutionalist.

It appears they want to test their legal theories by assuming that they themselves are actually bulletproof, and in perpetuity.
I don’t think all the tens of millions of citizens in their jurisdiction will allow that theory to stand untested for very much longer.

Thus spiciness approacheth for all. Conduct and prepare yourselves accordingly.

It isn't just establishment Republicans who thirst for death, apparently.

Warning: Cape Does Not Enable User To Fly

h/t WRSA 

CA brings to your attention a post at American Partisan, referencing the utility of Dakin's Solution for wound cleansing.

As far as it goes, good stuff. Go read it.

We take the opportunity to amplify some under-emphasized points from that information.

1) Note the recommendation for making up over 2 gallons for "large or dirty wounds". This is not something you will be whipping up in a canteen cup over a campfire. You're going to need a dedicated facility adequate to the task.

2) The recipe for saline is adding 9 grams of salt to 1 Liter of boiled (and cooled) water. (For countries that have landed on the moon, that would be 1.2 ounces of salt per gallon.) All Dakin's adds is diluted hypochlorous acid, formed by the chlorine in the bleach, which does the actual business of germ-killing, plus a tad of baking soda to buffer the solution.

3) Anyone using isopropyl alcohol for wound cleansing is going to be rewarded by getting punched in the face by the patient. Hydrogen peroxide isn't much better. This is because both hurt like hell, because they're killing healthy, vital tissue. Wound debridement is trying to remove dead tissue and kill the germs growing on it from a wound. Creating more dead cells isn't going to help. And it will get you socked. (Moonshine, etc.: See above. The same is true for using just about anything not intended to clean and disinfect wounds.) Alcohol and peroxide are for cleaning fabrics, surfaces, and instruments, not the inside of patients. While they're better than rubbing dog crap into the wound, they're not better than nothing, or plain clean water. They're just better than dog crap. Don't use them for things you shouldn't be.

4) The average wound will require redressing at minimum of once daily (more frequently if dressings become saturated, dirty, etc.), for 7-21 days. Note that's per wound. So that box of 12, or even 100 4x4s isn't going to go very far. Start thinking of supplies in terms of case lots, not boxes.

5) Read the comments. Particularly illuminating is one by retired orthopedic surgeon Dr. "Hubbs". Read it all, to get an idea of what was required for him to repair one single hand laceration with a severed tendon. That's coming from a guy with four years of specific medical training after college, than another four or more years of orthopedic and surgical residency in that field, then a lifetime's worth of practical experience. You will not be doing that without that c.v. At least, not successfully. And note that he required things you can't get at Target, WallyMart, or on Amazon. Most of them are getable, but only with some diligent effort. That's before you ever learn how to use those supplies and tools. Followed by 5 weeks to recuperate. We repeat: Five. Weeks.

TL;DR answer: make friends with someone(s) with professional licensure, and a handy DEA control number.

Pro tools require pro skills and pro levels of supply.

Amateur Hour is a yuuuuuugely distant second choice.

Either option can result in death.

Which is going to cut into your tribe's talent pool rather harshly.

If you're going to do medical care, you have to do it correctly every single time.

Do, or do not; there is no try.

Your alternative is to half-ass it, and get the results one would expect from that COA.

Suture self.

And It's...

 

Media identified "White male" now ID'ed 20 hours later as
Ahmad Imawannajihad, Syrian ISIS sympathizer, seen here in custody
in Boulder yesterday immediately after gunning down nine private
citizens aged between 20 and 65, and one responding police officer.

No doubt US AG Merritt Garland will round up the usual suspects, which will be Southern Baptist deacons and Carmelite nuns, along with AR-15s, because 10,000,000 of them nationwide were not used in this incident nor any other.

It would be truly unfortunate if every time one of these events happened, someone gunned down 50 people at a mosque until the "moderate" muslims started handing over the radicals proactively to authorities, starting with their heads on platters, by way of apology.

I'd also like world peace, and a pony.

Sunday Music: Mexican Radio

 

Sure, it's quirky, but I like it. 

Not from the day, because I was never much of a KROQ fan. 

Could be because we used to blast it on endless loop from a few base stations when we may have accidentally sort of jammed the local FRS/GMRS freqs every time we heard cartel coyotes coordinating their smuggling runs and checking in with lookouts on the border, and we could hear them all p.o.'ed afterwards. And then we may have played it again as their groups were rounded up by Border Patrol, after we rolled in on them. Almost like they were afraid whenever they heard it. I suppose if you can't blast Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyries from an inbound Huey gunship, it's the next best thing. Still makes me laugh.

Ant: Yes. Grasshopper: No.

 

Three seconds without Safety;

Three minutes without Air;

Three hours without Shelter;

Three days without Water;

Three weeks without Food.

Then add Three More Things: Medical; Power; Communications.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat: What about the next month?

And next year?

KISS: Knowledge. Insight. Skills. Stuff. In that order.

Two is One, and One Is None.

Skills and Systems beat Supplies. Supplies beat Starvation.

Enjoy your weekend. Time is money. Spend yours wisely.

Today's the first day of Spring. A good day to check the batteries in smoke detectors and CO alarms. Take stock of your earthquake (me)/tornado/hurricane/flood/et cetera supplies. Change out the emergency bag in your car(s) from winter stuff to summer stuff, if appropriate (if you're going to be in snow until May, my condolences.). Rotate out anything that's getting old. Eat it, donate it, whatever. (Maybe make a gift of it to someone you know in harder times because of the COVIDification of the economy, or just to jumpstart their preps with a kindly kick in the pants. Something is better than nothing.) Replace with fresh stock. Change batteries in anything else too. And chem lightsticks, flares, and whatnot. Rotate out oldest RX meds, and any meds expired (on paper) in med kits. Swap in fresh ammunition for ready weapons, and put the older stuff in the range bag for practice. Do change of season PMs on your vehicles; tires, fluids, rubber parts, and any other needful maintenance. Either put in or service a cache or two, if your worst case plans include a bug out. Upgrade where possible, deepen larders, and lessen the odds against you for all manner of things.

Oh, and you have written hard-copy lists of all this, where you can put your hands on them, right? Right?

So you know what you need, and what to keep an eye out for.

And spend some time after supper doing some new "What If?"s, then start thinking about how you'd deal with not just A or B, but also LMNOPQRST. You'll get tired eventually, but it's work that will increase the number of Zs you get at night. And the number of days before something comes up that you really have to worry about.

This message brought to you by People Who Thought Everything Would Always Be Fine.

AOTUS Has The Con

(For naval types: No, that wasn't a typo in the title. Ships have conns. The Oval Office has a con. In every sense of that word. QED.)

Much has been made of the video purporting to be Gropey Dopey taking an off-the-cuff question in the White House driveway, to show how with-it and competent he is.

Find it, watch it, and draw your own conclusions.

I observe for the record, with a paltry 200+ motion picture and television production credits under my belt, and the pay stubs to prove it, that directors and lighting directors universally adore the perfect diffusion of overcast daylight, because you can't screw up a shot. 

So when someone's hands waft through supposedly solid objects, his head disappears because someone's editing program can't tell a head from the sky, his suit edges look like he's walking through water because it's been ripped from the background and re-pasted in, and there's a faint green fuzzline along the shoulders of their suitcoat that only comes from a  greenscreen overhead that wasn't on the White House lawn, wherever Mr. Fraudulent was or wasn't when answering questions, the video has undeniably been f**ked with.

Handwaving, mumbo-jumbo imprecations, and comments about not believing my lying eyes are not explanatory, at that point.

And even granting that the verbal exchange occurred, it begs the question: So why f**k with the video...?

Feel free to conjure an appropriate answer, but in a bunch that has plumbed new depths with lying as a profession and art form, clearly anything, conceivable or even inconceivable, is within the realm of the possible.

Personally, I do not think Gropey Dopey is deceased.

That would bring about President Kneepads, which is something for which no one but Kneepads longs. I put it to you: Token Diversity Hires never ascend to being CEOs. It's simply not done.

But Gropey Dopey drooling his pudding and wetting his Depends, which has probably been every day for months anyways, is perfect.

Carte blanche for Edith Wilson Biden and The Committee Of Wakanda Wokeness to get every bit of looney Leftist whacktardery they can imagine in their most fevered ecstasy, and no one to stop them. It also explains no press conferences, at least until they can drug him up and program him to give enough answers for the verisimilitude of competence, and get another six months of soft coup.

Behold, your new leader:

It cannot uphold the Constitution, but at least it can reproduce it with exquisite fidelity.

Cue the band to strike up Hail To The Thief.

BONUS: OddJob has obtained a copy of Gropey Dopey's weekly schedule for every week since Jan 25th, inclusive. You should go look at it.

Front Sight Picture

 

National Socialists: International Socialists. Same-same.

How are your local accountability lists coming for the nascent boogaloo?

If you like your Chiquitastan, you can keep your Chiquitastan.

Ghoul Pool 2021

One more pick for the pool, and I've got this thing sewn up:

1) Gropey Dopey 2) the Duchess Of Wakanda and 3) _____________?

Decisions, decisions...

Bonus: Like Epstein, none of them will kill themselves.

Sunday Music: You're So Vain

 

Singer-songwriter Carly Simon's monster hit from 1972, the quintessential 70s song, with uncredited background vocals from Mick Jagger, about Warren Beatty and two as-yet unnamed other self-obsessed people, and about which speculation has swirled for forty years. And not coincidentally, one helluva great tune.

Kung Flu: One Year Retrospective

 

We were going to use an exchange between ourself and some online Three Stooges to illustrate where we are and why, but in what's sure to be a disappointment to Larry and the two Darryls,

pity has stayed our hand, and we have elected not to beat the retarded kids here, and to skip their nonsense, as it's become apparent they don't know what they don't know about what they're opining, speaking as they do from a bottomless abyss of total ignorance about the entire subject matter. But if you would see the state of the average cretin's grasp of science, medicine, and mathematics, let alone basic logic, you can head over to Mike's Cold Fury blog, and read the comments in this thread. I warn you, it's 10 minutes you'll never get back, and reading their twaddle will probably lower your IQ almost enough to vote Democrat, but I don't want them deprived of the attention their trolling and idiocy richly deserves. Reason #27 why I moderate comments here is to keep house trolls like this out of the pool. Because they can't read the signs that say "Don't sh*t in the pool." So they do that.

Instead, let's look at what I told you then, and see where we are now.

First Take

The funny part for me is comparing that, which I actually said, and comparing it to what uninformed jackasses think I'm saying when I explain in blistering detail that masks work, but people are idiots.

Zero defects, save one.

At the time, I looked at the then-unpolluted numbers for coronavirus fatality, which ranged from 1% up to 5%, so I went with the worst-case numbers rather than downplay things.

Later, I settled on 3%, as it split the difference between the published extremes of 1% and 5%, which seemed reasonable with an hitherto unknown virus, and quite possibly one genetically engineered by ChiCom biowar labs.

It turns out, it's closer to 2% than 3%, most places (though a couple of them have come pretty close to 3%, even now). To be as precise as I'm going to be, 1.775%, on average, in the U.S., is the average CFR - Case Fatality Rate. I.e. how many people who get it will die as a direct consequence. 

And, as I frequently require of others, I'll show my work.

I took Johns Hopkins' numbers for COVID cases and deaths, primarily because of ease of access, and because they're not @$$clown Fauci, nor the politically-compromised jackholes at the CDC. They're by actual medical and statistical professionals, rather than dipshits who've failed upwards for an entire career, and thus a bit more beholden on their accuracy and reputations when they put data out there. You got a better idea, lay it on me.

So, I took the 14 worst-hit states, and the ten least hit ones.

I then took their guesstimated populations (because the 2020 census isn't completely processed, nor, likely as accurate as years past). I divided their total cases in that population to get the actual rate of COVID infection. Some will bitch that those number have been polluted by false positives. Fair enough. However, I would point out they're also polluted by the lack of asymptomatic carriers never added to those numbers, who never got tested because they never got symptoms. And I'm going on the theory that one cancels out the other, leaving the status quo.

That gets us the following rates of infection and rates of fatality, by state (plus D.C.) from most (numerically) infected states (Top 14) to least (Bottom 10):

We're smart, but lazy. So if your state is somewhere in the middle 27 we didn't bother with (which we figure won't deviate notably from what we found with the 24 we did do), and not listed above, do it yourself. 'tain't that hard.

Also, that overall is an average of only the 24 listed, above. 

Full mathemagical disclosure: I didn't population-weight CA's 1.5% at being worth 39 times what MT's 1.4% is. If you want moon landing precision, do it your own damned self. I doubt the actual, dead-on balls accurate percentage will vary enough to make a difference in the grand scheme of things, but any weaponized autists are free to work it out to the last decimal place, and correct me in Comments.

This table tells us several things.

First and foremost, Kung Flu has not, by and large, penetrated anywhere beyond about 10% of the populace in the U.S. (ND, TN, and AZ are the notable over-achievers there.) Early on, with a lack of tests, there was concern that some places were oversampled, undersampled, etc. When CA, for but one example, with nearly 40M people, has had 50M tests, that's not an issue at this point.

So if you still want ten times as many people dead, by all means, spread it to the other 90% of the country who hasn't gotten it yet, before vaccinations are widely distributed. (That'd be 5M dead total instead of 500K, for Common Core math grads.) As just the 10% numbers nearly crashed at least two major metro areas completely in medical terms, we do not advise that.

And also, because we're not a selfish Gilligan, nor a ghoul. YMMV.

FTR, once again, a baaaaaaaaad  flu year any time for the last century is 80,000 dead *(SWAGuesstimated by the CDC), and annual flu has a CFR of 0.1%, since ever, other than the Spanish Flu of 1918. So that makes the lethality of Kung Flu between 5 and 29 times worse than annual flu. Period.

We have comfortably eclipsed anyone tongue-swabbing the notion that this is "just the flu, bro." Well, except for irremediably total retards.

Secondly, the biggest fuck-ups in terms of how much this spread are actually North Dakota, Tennessee, and Arizona. By a country mile. Sorry campers, but it ain't mainly Dumbocrats that're the biggest problem when it comes to pressure-washing the vomit. And FL and TX did worse than NYFS and CA, in terms of seeing that a greater percentage of people get infected. Bullshitters with an agenda lie. The numbers don't. The best states (of those I examined) at containing it were Hawaii, Vermont, and Maine. I think that has more to do with sunshine killing the virus, or cold weather keeping people apart, more than anything else, coupled with low exposure to it to begin with. But the idea that North Dakota did six times worse than Hawaii should duly embarrass the clowns nominally running things in Bismarck, and despite the low pop. density, waiting until November to institute public masking and other measures was demonstrably asinine. The only good news there is they were stupid in one of the least-populated states in the country, so the total damage was contained by happenstance, rather than design.

Thirdly, where it comes down to killing people most of all, NJ, NYFS, and PA lead the dumbass parade of highest percentage of victims killed. Partly, that has to do with shoving the sick in amongst the most vulnerable by forcing nursing homes to accept known COVID+ patients, and partly it has to do with healthcare resources in those states being overwhelmed in those high-population states at the height of the crisis, which always leads to poor outcomes.

Exactly as we dun tole 'ya it would.

And AK's current CFR of 0.5% is downright phenomenal. How'd they do it? Low numbers overall, coupled with enough hospital capacity for those cases, and some generally hardier and healthier people, if I had to guess.

Which is why not letting the outbreak overwhelm that capacity is still a thing, and will be until vaccinations are widespread in the population, for anyone who wants one.

And nota bene: the seriously ill who haven't died, have a host of sequellae that result from weeks of double pneumonia, intubation, disseminated coagulopathy in major organs, etc., so the number of people killed by Kung Flu is going to be like a strike in a bowling game: i.e. it's going to be counted for the next several frames, and this year's pandemic is going to kill people over the next several years, because of damage to their body, and inability to cope with more minor things they would have otherwise survived, had COVID 19 not torn them a new one this year. It's going to be the Agent Orange of viruses, and people have only begun dying from it, not finished, even if we vaccinated 100% of the population tomorrow.

But, as warned, the follow-on effects have been hugely more troubling that this virus, per se.

Unemployment. Lack of anything in the bank account. Death of entire industries and economic sectors, with no end in sight. The prospect of skyrocketing inflation any minute. And/or the collapse of the dollar, the stock market, and pretty much anything that needs money to make it run.

That's before COVID served as the pretext for rolling out the shenanigans that outright stole the re-election of the most popular president in a century while everyone was watching it happen, then doing the same thing again with the Senate, turning the now-dead republic into a banana republic, and slamming the reins of government so hard to the Left it has nearly killed the horse. And they're just warming up!

Then an imperial presidency by a fraudulently installed poser, fortifying the capitol lest the peasants revolt, a diarrhea stream of executive orders, setting military readiness on fire, churning out fiatbux backed by airballs three shifts a day at warp speed, and setting the country up for the greatest financial collapse the world has ever seen.

All while greasing the skids for total gun control, thought policing, and a Final Solution to the Conservative problem, complete with trains and re-education camps, after painting half the country as would-be terrorists in great need of rounding up.

Yeah, we sure missed warning you about all of that.

Wait...not so much. Pretty much been beating that drum all year long.

And now we know why smart people told us to familiarize ourselves with The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich , because watching the @$$clown PTB do a massive scripted do-over of the whole thing reminds one of Yogi Berra's brilliant observation: "It's like deja vu all over again."

As CA says at WRSA: "This is where we are. Imagine where we'll be."

Best wishes to you as you deal with each fresh hell this coming year. These are "the Good Old Days". It only gets worse from here on out, and anything to the contrary will be a simulacrum of normalcy, and the deep breath before the plunge.

Unconventional Warfare: Hearts And Minds

 

I post the above axiom for all the budding Chés and Ho Chi Minhs out there who want to be  G-strategists without understanding the first principles.

And the first principle is you'd better learn how to be a private before you think you're going to be a general.

And the first job of being a private is going to be shooting at the other side's privates. (Before anyone mentions it, yes, that sentence can be taken a couple of ways, and I applaud either one.) On the topic of shooting at private soldiers, I defer to the expertise of no less a practitioner than Sam Watkins:

"I always shot at privates. It was they who did the shooting and killing, and if I could kill or wound a private, why, my chances were so much the better. I always looked upon officers as harmless personages." 

Nota bene Sam said "shoot". Not "persuade". Not "frighten". Not "tenderly woo and court, with soft words and gentle caresses".

The time to be worried about blowing sunshine up the skirts of the vacuously unconvinced and uncommitted is rapidly drawing to a close, and there aren't going to be many chances for do-overs.

And, exactly as Sam Watkins noted to himself mentally in 1861, it's a zero-sum game: every one less of them is one less of them, forever, which improves your odds by that much, going forward. The recidivism of communists, left to their own devices, is 100%. Commies gonna commie. The recidivism of corpses is 0%. Do the math. 

If, at this stage in the late-game death throes of the republic, anyone(s) can't wrap their heads around wanting liberty rather than slavery, I really don't give two wet farts about their hearts and minds. Except as a potential impact area and bullet sponge.

On that concept, you have only two remaining choices:

Get right, or get left.

Some will argue that we shouldn't be so drastic. "We need to try X, and Y, and Z. For the children." (As if we haven't already gone through the alphabet three or ten times in the last 60-80 years already, and been finally and totally painted into a corner, and out of other options, beyond any shadow of a doubt, just this year.) Allow me to summarize that argument:

Hate Mildly amused to spoil things for the budding Mayor Vaughns of BlueAnon out there, but in this remake, he gets taken on the trip with Brody, Quint, and Hooper, and they use him as bait. Not so much to catch the shark - though it helps a wee bit - as much as to laugh and enjoy the sight of him bitten off in pieces, screaming the whole time, because he had it coming.

Even the GOPe and RINO diehards are starting to grasp this coming turn of events.

Conduct your future efforts accordingly.

Secession II

 

Secession? No. Brain surgery: talented amateur variety.

First, the preliminaries:

I analyzed (and rejected) an idea on a blog post a couple of posts back, yesterday. I freely and frankly confess I had no idea it was T.L. Davis' blog, but had I known it, I would probably have simply moved on to other business, rather than be caught walking on Clint Eastwood's lawn in Gran Torino. I simply don't need the aggravation, but I withdraw nothing said, then nor now.

However, that said, I have no personal animus towards T.L., then nor now, and wish it noted that it's the idea of secession that was ridiculed, not the man offering it. If, despite that, he feels personally insulted or slighted, I offer my sincere apologies for giving that impression, and I alone am to blame.

Furthermore, without offering examples, rest assured I've had a stupid idea or two in my lifetime, and have the scars, both psychological and physical, to give proof. So please believe me that I can see where anyone, self included, can do or say something which later becomes rather obviously a damned fool undertaking, and would generally prefer neither to repeat those endeavors, not have them recounted on a regular basis. No one is perfect, but wise men don't commit the same foolishness twice. Not least of which, because some mistakes in life you don't get to make twice.

Which brings us to T.L.'s response to my take on his original post.

If you're expecting tit for tat, forget it. After his initial fit of pique in yesterday's comments, T.L. wishes to flesh out a few things, on the merits. Fair enough. Let iron sharpen iron, and see where the sparks fly.

This will be long, and lest I misquote anything (or be accused of it), we'll take on the whole of his post, and see where we agree, and where we part company.

I don't usually respond to comments around the web on the things written in this space. Largely, they are by communists who don't like to be criticized, but something written by a person I have respect for (and I am giving him a lot more credit than he gave me) writes something that while it criticizes the concept of secession, it also raises larger issues in the overall discussion, so I thought that I would break with that tradition. 

Aesop in the Raconteur Report posted something highly critical of the idea of secession, without really fleshing out the machinery of secession. Now, this is not an attack on Aesop. As I have said, I have respect for him, but it shows where a lot of people might be misunderstanding the situation and I am using his post as a method of walking through it. 

Aesop says, "This is 2021. Not 1861. Not 1776." First of all, how does he know?

Well, I looked at a calendar. 

Will future generations look back on 2021 or more likely 2025, and add them into some future post in 2150? The point he makes is that there is not a dividing line, an us vs them or solidification of sentiment as there was in those olden times. Not all secessions begin and end the same way.

History tells us that 1776 was as convoluted and politically charged within households as 2021. There was the British and the Colonists, but not all British felt themselves loyal to the crown and, conversely, many colonists did. Just as not all fedgov feel loyal to Joe Biden, or conservatives to Donald Trump.

Point of order: all the colonists were British. That some of them no longer wished to remain so was rather the whole point of the exercise. That the split was roughly 1/3 Tory (pro-King), 1/3 Patriot (pro independence), and 1/3 Leave Us The Hell Out Of This (pro Leave Us The Hell Out Of This) was not only well attested from primary sources, but noted in every treatment of the Revolution, including such cinematic flag waving efforts as 1776 and The Patriot. Given that both sit on my shelf, and I watch 1776 somewhere north of 2-3 times a year, and refer to it any dozen more times in various contexts, suffice it to say I am well aware that it wasn't all a group of any one thing or another.

I give George Washington as an example, who traded in his commission in the British Army to stand with the colonists at a time when I'm sure he felt that he would lose the war. That the war was unwinnable, but saw it as a means to appeal to the international community, mostly France, to intercede against Britain long enough to establish the new nation. Washington had foresight and didn't charge off to attack the British at their strength. Aesop seems to only want to a fight a battle he is sure to win, or that losing is somehow stupid.

T.L., please. No battle is sure. Losing is a tragedy. But inasmuch as one has a choice, they fight a battle only when the odds are in their favor. Vegas has a name for those who take on long odds: losers. That's not a tragedy. It's a form of mental retardation or insanity; perhaps both, in various measures.

Both options suggest a person who does not act out of principle, but only if assured of success. This suggests a willingness to live on one's knees rather than to die on one's feet.

As to the former, we will let someone else speak for us:

"Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory." - Sun Tzu

I never met Sun Tzu (or T.L. for that matter), but being that Sun Tzu's studied by every serious student of the military arts on every continent, and that I've read that magnificent bastard's book, I'm going to go with the idea that the old guy from China may have a bit more insight into military arts than T.L.

As to the latter aspersion (and let's be clear, that's what it is), I offer the following:

You may have seen that meme. Perhaps here, perhaps on WRSA; perhaps both places. Emiliano Zapata (the lad in that pic) said it, but I made that meme, which is why you've seen it recently. I posted it first here, on January 6th. Some of you maaaaay recall that day, for some reason or other. Read what I wrote that day (or, hell, any day since about five seconds after I started blogging), and tell me I'm a big fan of living on your knees.

Suggesting it is risible on the face, and frankly beyond the pale.

Second, the idea of Texas breaking off from the republic to stand alone as one nation seems ridiculous to Aesop.

Not ridiculous. Just "about as likely as monkeys flying outta my butt." Let's be clear on that.

This shows lack of understanding of secession. Did South Carolina remain alone, just because it was first? If 38 or 40 of the states (Republican legislatures) decided to secede, the question then becomes, are the 10 or 12 left really the formidable force he seems to think it is?

Call me when you get one. Unless I miss my guess, I'm pretty sure even schoolkids in Texas can tell you what happened the last time they tried that, and how it worked out in the long run.

And, at that point who is choosing secession and who is choosing the Union? I suggest it is the one that wants to follow the Constitution that has legitimacy.

Never argued they didn't. So, when SCOTUS told Texas and 19 or so other states to pound sand on suing the states that held unconstitutional elections last November, which ones seceded? I'll wait while you look that one up. 

The longer run, political leverage and maneuverings seem lost on him.

As the cold, hard political realities seem lost on you, sir. 

Even then, a lot of people have moved to Texas from blue states, because they felt themselves no longer able to take the communist pounding and complicit government actions of those blue governors.

How's that working out for Texas along the border from El Paso to Brownsville? So, is Texas now more conservative, or less , than it was in, say, 1980? Again, I'll wait while you check the tape.  

Florida has felt the same surge, for the same reasons. Is this not a form of breaking off? Is there only one line? Only one action?

Florida is dangling by a thread. Another little nudge, and it's blue. And even had Trump been inaugurated this year (he already won, which doesn't seem to have mattered), the day that happened, you would have seen the last Republican president in your lifetime once Florida flips sides.

People moving from one state to another isn't "a form of breaking off". It's called people moving where the jobs and opportunities are. Yet somehow, despite all that relocation, Alzheimer's Nancy and ChuckU Schumer still sit atop the political pyramid, almost like "voting with your feet", or any other election, just doesn't matter. Another form of secession bites the dust. Bummer for the theory.

Yes, we are a purple nation, as Aesop says, in purple states. Does he envision it has ever been anything else?

Since you asked: see if this rings a bell:

 That's from waaaay back in...1984. Kindly point out the purple states, at your leisure.

Again, history goes wanting in his analysis. Kentucky straddled that fence of Union and Confederate, taking neither side, Kentuckians from each side volunteering for either the Union or Confederacy.

How many Kentucky Confederates emerged victorious in 1865? 

Perhaps the feud of the Hatfields and McCoys slipped the mind. Does he imagine that everyone in South Carolina felt the same?

I needn't, and it's immaterial. South Carolina fielded no Union regiments, it started the war, it lost the war, and it was subjugated in response to its loss.Even had the entirety of the Confederacy been 100% inclined in favor of secession, it wouldn't have changed the final outcome of the war, only perhaps the date of their ultimate defeat, and the final tally of the total dead on both sides.

That no South Carolinian thought the actions of the government were unwise and dangerous?

See above. 

What we learn from history is that there are no sides in any civil war that only reside in one household, much less a county or state, solidly among all the people. Never has and never will. Aesop is right about that, but he doesn't see the similarities, I do. I moved to a 90% red area of a red state to put myself more solidly among people who would more likely be on my side in Aesop's "cagematch", whom I could fight with, rather than against.

You've improved your odds locally. So, what will you do about that 10%? Slaughter them? Round them up and exile them? And what if they resist? What are your odds if 10% of any society disagrees with you violently? (Before you answer, consult manuals on guerrilla warfare, and then look up the prison incarceration rate of the U.S., and let me know how bad society would be with 10% solidly violently criminal. Or even 5%.) 

I do agree with Aesop in the understanding of the battle as a "cagematch." Yes, I believe it will devolve to that, even if a state like Texas announces the desire to secede, which it already has on a couple of different levels, there is no one people of one mind in Texas. Who knows, Mexicans in Texas might be willing to support it, if for no other reason than to deliver Texas into the hands of Mexico. But, in his zeal to denounce forever some fantasy of a civil war like the Revolutionary War or the Civil War, he fails to recognize that the civil war already rages in the minds of both communists and patriots. The question is: how does it transition from mask wearers and mask deniers to fisticuffs, then stabbings, then shootings?

I don't give a damn how. I'm far more interested in whether, where, and when. If, however, you can muster a whit of evidence to show why how matters, I'm open to hearing it.

Without ridiculing Aesop, as he ridiculed me, personally,

No, T.L.; I ridiculed the idea of secession as a workable model with any chance in the real world. I repeat, if you feel personally slighted, I accept that, and I apologize.

I will lay out my understanding of the coming secession. It begins as it already has, with certain counties instituting Second Amendment sanctuaries.

Cost-free jibber jabber, with no teeth. 

With Sheriffs, as we have already seen, promising to arrest federal agents who intend to enforce unconstitutional laws (laws that are in and being passed by Congress right now) within the county, with states like North Dakota refusing to enforce any of the Executive Orders Biden issues.

Call with news the day so much as one fed is arrested for that, anywhere.  

The Pandemic they used to cow and terrify the nation has already shown us the direction they intend to drive all of America. States like South Dakota, Georgia and Florida have proven that the communist impulse to shut everything down and lock people away is problematic. Any future lockdowns will be met with stronger resistance, but only in certain states. Gun confiscation will be more successful in those blue states than it will be in red states.

FTR, the compliance with such hogwash, in both Califrutopia, and NYFS, has been, to date, under 2%. 98% of both populations, IOW, have said "BFYTW". Gun confiscation in blue states will go about as well as arresting Dorner in blue states. Except most folks, not being certifiable, won't helpfully mail in a manifesto and self-identify from the get-go; they'll just start racking up a box score, and let TPTB figure things out their ownselves.

Over time, and I don't expect this to kick off in 2021, there is a coalescing of sentiment in certain areas both blue and red. Not anywhere near the 90% Aesop seems to think is necessary for one state to break from the federal government, especially when that declaration is not made.

Feel free to go to my post, and excerpt the quote from which you extracted that wholly imaginary "90%" number you claim I think is necessary. I'll just wait over here with the table salt for your crow. And then, ever so gently, suggest that you respond to what I actually wrote, and not what you imagined I wrote. 

Secession is not so much a political act as a determination of one group of people to disassociate from another.

Then kindly title your post "Imaginary Secession", and I'll leave that where it belongs, and trouble you about what you would imagine no further. 

Nowhere in the idea of secession that I proffered did it include an official declaration, at least not initially. It arrives rather as resistance to unconstitutional laws, H.R. 1 for example, where the methods of conducting elections nationwide is abhorrent to most of the red states, who will not comply and the initial gunshots are in the form of lawsuits and outright refusal to obey by one political entity or another.

Lawsuits? Like suing over voting irregularities? In federal courts? Or before SCOTUS? A picture would seem to be worth 1000 words here.

I'm sorry, I'm dunking on you, while you were sticking to words and all serious, but c'mon, T.L. If lawsuits were secession, we could have just retained Philadelphia lawyers, and settled the entire Civil War out of court for a 33% fee.

Even in the concept of TEXIT, it is a vote rendering a sentiment and the proponents of it recognize that, if successful, it only starts the negotiation with  the federal government.

The federal government doesn't negotiate with terrorists. One either complies, or rebels. Ask George Wallace and Bull Connor (let alone Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee) what rebelling gets you. 

Certain states and legislatures of others will see the successful actions of the few and replicate them.

Right. The successful lawsuits. Refer to the meme above.

It is still a long way from the "cagematch" but the sides are being chosen, at least in the hearts and minds of the people, each becoming more red or more blue. Aesop overlooks the vast unaffiliated middle, who normally avoid politics, who feel themselves being drawn closer to one side or another, despite their reluctance to say so publicly.

Au contraire. But undecideds have only potential value, and they cancel themselves out. They are neutrons in a molecule. They provide mass, but wholly without serious influence. 

There is a whole soup of issues swirling about that push these individuals one way or another: abortion; gun rights; election laws; lockdowns; masks; sports viewing; work; loss of job or business, on and on.

Their only value is once they pick a side. Thus the only thing to do with them is to give them a host of reasons in favor of one way, and another set not to go the other way. But until they come down one way or the other, they are as unimportant as green shoots in a field: only when they are obviously wheat or tares can they be sorted and used, or removed and burned.

He is right, it never comes down to lining up on one side or another leveling our AR-15's shouting "Texas Independence or Death!." The big blue areas of Houston, Austin, Dallas, etc., seem to be a big problem in Aesop's mind. There's no need to go in and clean these areas out, door to door. If the red areas surrounding them, all of them, put up resistance to allowing power to flow from distant power generating stations to the cities, interdict the travel of trucks on the highway, trains on the rails, wind turbines in the rural areas, etc, etc, they destroy themselves from want, heat/cold and lack of goods.

Right. Because 

a) those cities, and every last person in them, are all 100% evil, and deserve what they get

b) And they'll just sit there and take it, and like it

c) And they have no relatives elsewhere who'll get a vote

d) And no one, including Fedgov, will have a vote in that clever plan

e) And because no one you didn't know was on your side there will decide "BFYTW", and flip sides, because your clever plan forced them to chose the lesser of two evils

f) there aren't any people outside those cities in your non-100% red areas who'll happily pay you back 10-fold for that sort of silliness, right in your own patch, and in the back

I could go on to z), or maybe even zz) but we'll just 

cf.: #cuttingoffyournosetospiteyourface, and

#theEnemyalwaysgetsavote

Less Genghis Khan and dummkopf, and more Sun Tzu and Schwarzkopf, if you please.

But thanks a pantload for kicking off exactly the house-to-house and block to block civil war, in 254 Texas counties, you said you were seceding to prevent.

They might want to band up and go out into those rural areas causing their distress and murder those backward hillbillies. I wonder how successful that would be. That is how nasty it can and probably will get. That is Aesop's "cagematch," but it starts somewhere, has some initial impetus. The consideration of secession, not the overt act, is the beginning of drawing more like minds together, in the same towns or counties. It is strategic and determined. Just being a smartass doesn't get us any closer to that coalescence.

And having made that point, you'll understand when I reply that just being a dumbass won't help much either.

Nobody serious is seriously considering secession. It's like talking about winning the next election. They're considering insurgency, revolution, and overthrow. I don't want a piece of what used to be known as the U.S. of A.

For about the tenth time I've said it and posted it here:

I am so enamored of the republic that was, that I'll not willingly part with a square foot of it to the communists. I want the whole damned thing back. Whether any of them survive the transition is a matter to me ranging from complete indifference, to active revulsion at the thought.

That isn't secession. It's cleansing.

I ask him, though, what is the alternative? Roll over and let the communists rule? Are the big red areas not just as big a problem to them as the blue areas would be to us? It could be something as simply put as "in the absence of orders, find something communist and destroy it."

That would be an insurgency, and an underground. Not a secession. France didn't secede from Nazi Germany. America didn't secede from Britain. And no place is seceding from the U.S. They'll either win their independence, again, or roll over, give it all up, and wind up in the gulags featured in every communist state since ever. There's no third option. And there won't be any safe space unless it's called Everything, because the other side has proven beyond all doubt that the one thing of which they are wholly incapable is to leave everyone else alone. Couldn't do it in Korea. Couldn't do it in Vietnam. And only brinksmanship and the threat of global thermonuclear war stopped it in Germany. Communists, like muslims, are the world's original pugnacious busybodies, and the only successful remedy is removal in toto.

If they could have pulled off minding their own business once in the last 60-100 years, we need never have reached the state we're in now, one which is only going to get worse, day after endless day.

To secede is something one does in their own mind first and foremost. I already have.

Good for you. But the rest of the country doesn't live in your mind, they live in the real world. And if they want their freedom and liberties back, they're going to wrap their minds around the idea that to get it, and keep it, they're going to have to slit throats, and shoot m*****f*****s in the face.

Trying to use some Zen mental visualization technique will come in a distant second to going all stabby and shooty on those who would cheerfully enslave them and kill them as soon as swat a fly.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

― C. S. Lewis

One doesn't "secede" from a metastasizing cancer. Ones carves it out wholesale, burns it, poisons it, and literally nukes it, until no trace of it, not one single cell, remains. 

The same is true of tyrannies. We didn't do a 70:30 deal with George the III, nor Jeff Davis.

Anything less than the complete eradication of the problem is a recipe for long, agonizing, and unspeakably painful death. I'll pass.

So please, be in no confusion: The only time I'll be facing that on my knees is when I have one of them firmly astride someone's windpipe until his legs stop thrashing, or I feel a satisfying cervical cracking sound underneath.

There's no substitute for victory, and nothing less will suffice nor avail.

If you can figure out any easier way, give a holler. I'll always entertain the blueprint for a better mousetrap.