Discuss in comments the odds that Hegseth already knows that answer.
And after that, the over/under odds he'll do anything to fix that longstanding boil on the military's ass, under the theory that victory in battle is their primary mission.
Step One: Anyone who can't perform their service branch's PRT/PFT to the current male standard is given the same number of weeks as they have years TIS to either meet the male standard, or be separated for the good of the service.
There's no Step Two necessary. Combat doesn't grade based on gender.
[Pro tip: I wouldn't be holding my breath for that small amount of obvious common sense, even from Hegseth. #Notevergonnahappen]
{Nota bene: We said "tits" rather than "a pussy", because if we started picking on people in the military packing that gear, it wouldn't just be the women we'd be talking about, and a quite large number of them would be in the O-7 and above ranks. #Fireallthegeneralsandadmiralsforopeners.}
We cut off and screened out the ownership bars on the meme we boxed in red above to spare calling individual names. Suffice it to say you've probably seen it recently. The implication is that it's used to fake (_fill-in-the-blank_) photo ops.
Um, no.
1) Hot tip for retards: The VC-25/747s converted into the current versions of Air Force One have the 747's distinctive nose-end hump. The 707, above, doesn't. The interior of the current model is also about eight feet wider than a 707 fuselage. So any faked photos, taken inside or out, would be obvious to even Stevie Wonder, from space, FFS.
2) The former Air Force One 707s (including the front fuselage section, above) are still classified for obvious national security concerns. The 707 at the Reagan Library is only there "on-loan", and security on it is still overseen by the Secret Service.
3) The staircases and entries on the current version look absolutely nothing like the old version's entry.
4) I can only think of 57 reasons military units and the Secret Service might want to retain that fuselage, inside an intensely secure location like Camp David for everyday protective detail training, hostage rescue/counter-terrorism training, planning and walking through medical emergency response, etc. ad infinitum.
We could continue ripping this dippy meme, but these points alone should suffice to show why someone would have to be snacking on leaded paint chips to come up with it.
If any of this was news to you, go ask your parents to explain why you're not tall enough for the internet.
And to the creator of this jackassical meme, as the most recent recipient, own your Biff Tannen "Make Like A Tree, And Go Away" Award, and walk tall among midwits.
Better luck next time.
If anyone's going to bitch about "fake and ghey", the actual fake has been the guy walking up the steps of the real presidential 747 for the last 4 years.
Newsflash for the Tactically and Strategically Retarded:
When the U.S. conducted the Normandy invasion in 1944, the U.S. Navy had already performed about two dozen successful amphibious assaults on three continents, just in WWII, and had been making opposed landings of troops on hostile shores on four continents going back to 1776.
Chicomia and the PLA Navy, to date, since ever, has performed precisely zero. The day you think they're going to get the first one they've ever done correct across a 75 mile strait, check your hole card.
The PLAN operates only two types of ships: submarines, and targets.
Ukraine -- Ukraine, FFS! -- with zero ships, and some homemade AS missiles, has swept the Russian Black Sea Fleet off the board, and is kicking the shit out of Russian ships tied up in port at ranges of 200 or more miles. China is about to learn a very expensive lesson in the limits of their infant navy's capabilities and limitations, with their homeports less than half that far from Taiwan.
And anyone to whom this is news doesn't know how much they don't know, and isn't tall enough to play on the internet without adult supervision.
source"Caitlin Clark couldn't play for a Division One NCAA men's team!" -Joel in IT, 5'8" 240lbs
Joel could be 5'1" and 340 pounds, and he'd still be right. Bummer. This is why we don't vote on Reality. It simply is.
When an argument defaults to ad hominem in the only line, you've already lost the discussion.
Clark is apparently a phenom in women's sports. (Personally, we couldn't say, studiously ignoring the lot of them for either sex as we do, by choice. But there are always leaks in the culture, so we hear scraps, here and there.) Which is why they're women's sports.
If leagues were coed, her starting position would be Left Out. Or tallest cheerleader. But we think it's neat that they have sports leagues for the weaker sex, so they don't feel left out any more. OTOH, men never had to sue to get money for themselves, because people actually, y'know, go to their games. Must be brainwashing, or shotgun patriarchy, or something.
This is why women don't compete against men at the Olympics, because they wouldn't even make the teams in most sports if that were the case, and certainly not in any of the ones where prowess was objectively based on fastest, strongest, etc. Because at those, women simply aren't any such thing. Even if they could dunk on Joel in IT.
Venus or Serena Williams could kick my fat ass on a tennis court six days a week and twice on Sunday. (Not least of which because I've never played a game of tennis in my life.) That isn't the point. If they competed against men, they wouldn't even make the quarter-finals. This isn't a discussion assertion, it's a historical fact.
Just as the fastest women marathon runners in the entire world, in all recorded history, would place behind most male competitors in high schools, from anywhere in the world. Biology FTW. Again.
But call us when Caitlin gets drafted into the NBA.
We'll just wait here for that day.
We don't call women "the weaker sex" just to get their panties in a twist. We say it because it's undeniably true, since ever. We also do it because the bigger the disconnect with reality, the tighter that twist becomes.
Frankly, we're mainly relieved that Clark isn't really a second-class male athlete, trying to pass as a woman "by identifying", just to get a participation trophy. Which mainly shows how far the culture has descended in the last 50 years or so.
You go, Big Dog. Like age, IQ is just a number, right?
Seems Michael hasn't learned his lesson yet, and took issue with the preceding post at the OP.
We replied.
Untroubled by any acquaintance with the facts publicly available, Michael asked for "sources".
So we obliged him. This particular cluebat may or may not have had some spikes pounded in the business end of it.
The host there may or may not tolerate seeing Michael educated so diligently (and we understand if that's the case), but since Mikey asked for this, we feel it dulce et decorum that his lesson be left on the chalkboard to remind him of the immortal words of Dean Wormer.
Don’t worry, General Aesop just posted two articles on this post for us.
The Poseidon doesn’t exist and nada, nada. Go read his military knowledge in full proud glory over there.
Is there anything Aesop’s not an expert on?
Well, we should be grateful HE’s keeping an eye on NC Renegade for us.
Need I add a sarc tag for the last sentence?
Green Hornet’s comment has it correct. Poseidon was created by Russia to keep America from getting nuke fever. Pity is that only works if your target audience is sane AND doesn’t think that AMERICA (Hooo Rahhh!!) is still THE SUPERPOWER of the world.
Odd how slinking out of Afghanistan and the FACT we’ve not won a war since WW2 simply rolls of their backs….
Between the idiots in District of Criminals, Think Tanks that say Ukraine is Winning and folks like Aesop, maybe the Russians are too rational to understand them.
Two articles, Buckwheat? Common Core grad, or just need a new prescription?
I never said this doesn’t exist, I said it can’t be what it’s bullsh*t-splained to be. So let’s look at the videotape, Captain Queeg:
As to the Poseidon, going strictly by that bastion of accuracy, Wikipedia, it’s a) not a torpedo by any stretch of that term b) not a “Doomsday bomb” on the order of Tsar Bomba c) could carry a nuclear warhead in the 2 MT range (U.S. Titan missiles in the 1960s and 70s carried 10MT warheads, for comparison) d) has an imaginary speed of 100kts (which would be about as tough to detect and track underwater as a Chinese New Year’s parade with fireworks e) has no “tsunami creation” function nor intent. We surface-tested a 15MT warhead in the Castle Bravo test (and had multiple other MT-range tests at Bikini Atoll), and no tsunami was created, anywhere, from any of them, period.
So “Radioactive tsunami-making torpedo” is three whoppers of total bullshit in just one line.
Speculation is that it uses a deep and very slow approach speed using satnav guidance (with no explanation of how they solved the physics problem of getting satellite signals down to 500 fathoms), only shifting to loud and stupid in terminal guidance mode, and that its warhead is deliberately dirtied up with cobalt. Which only works with surface detonation. It’s main purpose with such a relatively modest warhead (nowhere near a “Doomsday” device would be as a very dirty conventional nuke, intended to contaminate the target area long-term and render it unusable, beyond the expected damage of a 2MT explosion. So they’re intended to take out a port, particularly strategic naval bases like Norfolk, King’s Bay, Bangor, and Pearl Harbor.
Okay, great. Play that card. 20 minutes later, D-5 Trident IIs start popping and dropping like rain from half a dozen points at sea, and 95% of the Russian population is a distant memory for the next 100 years 30 minutes after that. Followed in short order by the US, and then most of the Northern Hemisphere. Game Over. Now Brazil and Australia get to fight for control of the world. Who does that help? What’s the point?
Some of us have been studying the details of nuclear war for decades, and when obvious vaporware bullshit of this magnitude pops up, it’s snort-worthy comedy.
At least when the Japanese hyperventilated about this, they came up with Godzilla, and made a buck.
The source article for this is stupidity marinated in rose fertilizer. Make better choices.
To be fair, Michael's standard m.o. is not to answer any direct questions that are too hard for him (which is most of them), but instead to generally gainsay the original points, wave his arms, and ask new questions. Today was no exception.
Aesop, kindly list the sources for your many assumptions and your CV of learning so much about Nuclear Weapons and apparently submarine actions.
Size of warhead, perhaps?
It’s been about 65 years since the Atol tests, maybe your information might be a bit off? Perhaps the shape of the undersea area is different? Example, deep sea vs Chesapeake Bay shallow? Distance of radioactive water movement of but a few dozen miles to important targets like Ah, DC?
AND for the record is there ANYTHING Aesop isn’t an expert about?
Asking for many.
Set and Spike
Remember, when you're putting the tourniquet on, that you asked for this, Michael:
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, man! Was telling you the info I referenced on Poseidon was straight from the Wikipedia page too hard to grasp?
Did the Nuke Fairy sneak in and leave bigger yields under someone's pillow in the last six decades?
Did the Underpants Gnome steal the craters left there??
It's not a question of the shape of the sea floor, it's basic physics: little bombs (and in oceanic and geologic terms, they're all little bombs) haven't the ability to create tsunamis.
FFS, the 2004 Sumatra Tsunami was a 9.2 earthquake that ripped the faultline 19 miles down below mean sea level, and ripped the faultline there for a distance of 810 miles. You figure the Russians have got a warhead that can do that? You could do stand-up comedy at CalTech with that joke!
Here, let's get you a booster chair at the elementary geologic physics classroom for the 20 seconds it'll take to clue you in:
" The amount of energy released by the Hiroshima nuclear bomb was about 1012 J, whereas one magnitude 8.9 earthquake released about 1018 J of seismic energy (Figure 9). This is a million times more energy (i.e. a factor of 106) than the Hiroshima bomb."
That would be 15 GIGATONS for Common Core grads, (15,000,000,000 tons: as 15 BILLION with a B), or a single warhead as powerful as 258 Tsar Bombas.
How sad you couldn't have pulled off two more mouseclicks before you jumped all over your junk.
And for the record, is there anything you are an expert about, or do you just latch on to everything you know nothing about and just dig in blind and start spouting off until you run facefirst into a brick wall of ignorance, over and over?
Nothing I told was anything you couldn't have confirmed all by yourself without having your hand held like a toddler, and you could have saved yourself from having your diaper changed publicly, for only about the 200th time.
Learn to do basic research, and educate yourself, instead of letting your mouth run away with you when your data bank is in deficit. Seriously, please try it, if only for the novelty of that approach.
And yet again, stirring crap with me on someone else's blog, without offering anything but the contents of your spleen. Color me shocked.
Why not go all in, and start your own, just so everyone can know which pronouncements to take the 180° opposite of?
And because I'm a nice guy, and hate to be rude to someone else on their own blog by having to educate you, if NC R decides this is just too painful to watch, (or post) I completely understand, so I'm archiving this answer and posting it on my blog, to memorialize this long-overdue moment in your education.
We repeat for your edification, Mikey,
Make. Better. Choices.
It's not that we know everything.
It's that we know so much more than you, with half our brain tied behind our back, because we look things up first, and you make it childishly easy to demonstrate it beyond any rational dispute when you just shoot from the lip, and fire blanks.
If you're going to keep whining and instigating like a little bitch, don't be too shocked when you get bitch-slapped.
It's a site that lets you drop a nuke of any size anywhere on the planet, and gives you predictive radii of effects.
A 2.3MT Russian nuke surface-burst in Pearl harbor does enough damage to take the harbor (and anything or anyone there at the time) out of play, such that squirting a UUV like Poseidon there confers only one (brief) advantage over missiles or gravity bombs: relative surprise. Which tapers off rapidly once one of them pops.
And, as I noted, play the Russian hand with that card, and see how fast all life north of the equator is bouncing in the rubble, with a faint radioactive glow, once the charred remains are consumed by the fires.
The weapon merely ensures you can strike first, about half an hour before all life in your country ceases to exist for a century or more.
The seismic moment (M0), which represents a physical size for the event, was calculated by the USGS at 3.9×1022 joules, slightly less than the 2004 Indian Ocean quake.
For reference, and to help out the Short Bus crowd on this, that was an energy release equivalent to roughly 100 million* Tsar Bombas. That would be a chain of 26'-long Tsar Bombas from Tokyo to the Moon and back.To get this:
From one Poseidon weapon? Sh'yeah, pull the other one, it's got bells on it.
*(Please, check my math, and see if I dropped or added any zeroes here. I don't have a 24-place calculator, and will happily slide the decimals if I got this wrong.)
The most implausible part of the story: that anyone in any country, including Russia, would be criminally and risibly stupid enough to waste money on a weapon that guarantees if you ever use it, all life in the Northern Hemisphere will probably be dead within the hour afterwards.
Genius, right there.
The smarter move would have been to promise them you could create actual Godzilla, and train him to attack your enemy's cities and stomp on their cardboard buildings and step on their plastic model tanks. With no heroic scientist to swim a nuke into his lair and pop the pin.
Pvt. Hudson was all over this long before you figured it out.
FTR, when you write an article today, that could (and should) have been penned in 2000, you are the guy explaining the vulnerabilities of the US Navy at Pearl Harbor to sneak attack in a memo to the President.
In 1964.
Thanks for waking up, but this isn't a will question, it's a have already retrospective history. Folks already grok this, and had it pretty well figured out by our assholes-and-elbows bug-out from A-stan.
The memo is 23 years late. Might as well have sent it in the US mail.
Anyone, anywhere, claiming for any reason because of this, that "Masks Don't Work" is simply an irredeemable fucktard. That's as nice as that can be put. Reality burns people's asses like that.
Tell these folks your genius epiphany that "Masks Don't Work":
Let us know how that goes for you.
What this does merit telling people, to a metaphysical certainty, is that
Masking As Public Policy Doesn't Work. And Never Will.
That, you should write on your palm with a Sharpie, lest ye forget.
O, If Only Someone Had Told Us This Years Ago, Before This Got All Pear-Shaped!
As we noted with another blogger, saying "Masks Won't Work" is as retarded as saying "Airplanes Won't Work".
Airplanes, since Orville and Wilbur Wright, obviously work.
Everyone knows this.
Masks have worked for as long, or longer.
But not everyone should have an airplane.
People get this, because they've seen people drive.
So pretty much everyone knows without a chalkboard lesson why everyone can't operate an airplane.
But the Utopians out there, particularly the fucktarded government variety, are now shocked to discover that, exactly as predicted, everyone can't operate a mask.
(Anyone who went through military basic knew why this is so, after going to the Gas Mask training course even one time in boot camp.)
Wait...People are total shitheads?!? Yes, we told you so. Most folks know that in their bones, but we tried to bring some of the slow learners along. In vain.
So, after an entire blistering pandemic of fail, even the most ardent fucktard utopian in evidence has to admit the obvious: people are too stupid, as a group, to use masks.
(Like centuries to millennia of folks drinking water they just shit in didn't reinforce the concept of human stupidity for all time.)
You may now adjust your expectations of society appropriately, for all intents and purposes.
Under those revised expectations, for The Usual Suspects:
If you ever decried the use - including citing beyond-fucktarded "surveys" - of simple surgical masks or face diapers, or wore one, to protect the wearer (including yourself*), here's your sign:
*{Triply so for anyone wearing one in the car alone, or while out walking or running by themselves in the sunshine. IQ is a constant; the world population is increasing.}
Mostly, we blog for entertainment (overwhelmingly our own; but most of you are twisted enough to share a similar outlook on life to our own, so it works out well for all of us), but occasionally, we blog to clarify our thoughts, and sometimes, learning occurs all around.
Today is that day for us.
As the Baldwin kerfluffle has illustrated, the shared malfunction by a host of persons reading and commenting hereabouts, and throughout the greater blogosphere, on this exact subject, is best described as thinking everything is YOUR job.
Well, you're wrong, it's not, and now we can all go back to whatever we were doing befo....Oh? What's that? Explain it to you?...heavy sigh
Look, we've already covered first aid for any butthurt, so let's talk turkey here, no offense, nothing personal, and we're all grown ups.
You, Jasper, and Billy Bob all going shooting at the abandoned quarry is not Alec Baldwin working on a movie set, not even when it's his production, on a low-budget p.o.s. being filmed in Bumfuck NM.
The lack of a prodigious number of otherwise intelligent people to discern this lies at the root of your problem.
When you, and Jasper, and BillyBob pile in the truck for a day of plinking green army men and blowing up punkins and watermelons, who's your boss? Nobody. Who's The boss? Nobody. thus, rightfully and common-sensically, you are your own boss. It's your job, on the day, to make sure your equipment is safe, and that you are safe, observe the Four Rules, and not impinge on anyone else's day by putting extra holes in them than what they brought with them from home. Fair enough?
But even in that circumstance, it's still not your job to be the range master, OSHA inspector, armorer, and eleventy other things. You do not get to stack Jasper and BillyBob up at Inspection Arms, and detail-inspect their weapons for cleanliness and function. You do not get to pull Jasper's ammo out, pull the bullets, weigh the powder charge, take out a caliper, and look it up in your Hornady/RCBS/Hodgdon/etc. powder and load manual to ascertain that it meets SAAMI specs. You do not get to run a set of Go/No-Go gauges on everyone else's weaponry, nor may they do same to you. And if you think otherwise, you're likely to go home with a bendier nose than you brung to the picnic.
If Jasper or BillyBob get a mite lax with muzzle discipline, or putting their booger hook on the bang switch, you may elect to call it an early day, or not invite them next time. But no one died and left you their Drill Sergeant smokey bear hat and gave you leave to have a boot camp flashback, and most people figure all this out without having it explained to them with a boot to the junkulus.
But somehow, you can't make the leap from that, to understanding why in hell it's not ever Baldwin's (or any other Swinging Richard's) job to do weapons checks on a movie set, with 40-140 people around.
Lemme help you out on that, just a smidge, and we can see if it sticks between your ears.
Most of you, presumably, have a job. Or had, at some point. Unless you were a one-man band, your job was what you were supposed to do. More to the point, hired and paid by somebody above you to do.
So when you're doing your job, how would your boss feel if you wandered into his office to supervise him? Then inspected the lunch line, to make sure the hot food was over 140°, and the cold food was all under 40°? Then headed up to HR to make sure they were fully in compliance with all county, state, and federal EEOC hiring practices? Then went over to the accounting department, to check their math on a few random accounts? Then explained to the legal department how what they were up to might be ethically "grey"? Tell the class, would you please, exactly how long you would continue in your employ, and if not, discuss with appropriate graphs and figures the apogee of the arc your ass would take as it flew from the front door to the curb, off the end of your boss's boot toe.
See if you can catch the subtle drift of what's being expressed, and let us know when the penny drops for you.
I said that, because for most people, a movie set makes about as much sense as watching elves make Santa's toys. They've never been to one, and all they know is there might be someone famous around, and they can smell the magical fairy dust in the air. I know this, because I've only seen that exact phenomenon about 2000 times (not exaggerating a bit there, btw).
Until they spend some time there.
Then, the comments start:
"You guys sit around and do nothing a lot."
"WTF are those people doing?"
"What's happening?"
"They pay you for this?"
"This is boring as f**k!"
"How the hell do you stay awake all day?"
"How long is your day?"
"WHAT? Sixteen hours?!? More??!!??"
"I'd rather kill myself than ever do this for a living!"
And then, after having hung around on set for maybe a hour or two, they never, ever, ever come back. Nor ever want to. Friends, family members, even people I've slept with, refuse to ever visit a second time, because they can't entertain themselves for twenty minutes, and once they find out the entertainment business is even less entertaining than they are to themselves, you'd need a gun and a whip just to get them to come by for the free lunch.
When they find out that if you're really lucky, you're shooting 5 pages of script/5 minutes of picture in a 14+ hour day (a little more for TV, a little less for movies, and a LOT less for commercials) they shit their pants, and run screaming for the exits.
Look, it's like this: a one hour TV show is maybe 48 minutes long, without commercials and credits. You've typically got 6 days to get it "in the can" (although now it's all loaded onto digital media, not film), and on the day after that, you're doing the next episode. So 8 minutes a day, less than 30 seconds of your favorite show per hour of work, if you're flying like lightning. Hence the industry saying "shooting Gone With The Wind" in the morning, and Dukes Of Hazzard in the afternoon". When you have that (rare)TV director who's done his homework, and knows WTH he's doing, or the star has immeasurable pull (say, Dick Van Dyke on Diagnosis: Murder - for reals) the day is run like clockwork, and you get everything done in 12 hours, and/or the star has a 5PM tee time, and at 5:01 can be seen leaving in his limo to get in 9 holes before bed, and if the director wasn't done with him, guess who doesn't care?
One a feature film, even worse. That's going to be between 80 and 200 minutes, with one page of dialog in script format being about 1 minute of screen time. In a schedule that runs between about 30 and 90 shooting days. Figure maybe three pages a day, for a 12+ hour day. You're getting maybe 15 seconds of usable movie per hour. That may mean two hours of nothing while you set up, and then shoot like hell for half an hour, then do it all over again the opposite direction, lather, rinse, repeat. Some days, you may get no pages for an entire day, because something like "Then Robert Deniro, Val Kilmer, and Tom Sizemore come out of the bank, Al Pacino sees them, and the big shootout begins" takes less than 1/8th of a page, but takes three full days to shoot, dawn to dusk. We'll get back to that presently.
Commercials? Fuggedaboudit. 5 days for a 30 second spot? Six seconds for a whole 14-hour day's work?!? Holee F*******ck! You're killin' me, Smalls!
Now, I told you that to tell you this:
Option I:
You're Michael Mann. You've got a 150-person crew on union rates. You've got 200 extras. Including 50 cop extras with working firearms props. Some of them are stuntmen. You've got seven cameras with full crews, and a 20-man special effects and pyrotechnician crew. You're going to be blowing out building windows, car windows, blowing out tires on police cars, you've got stunt drivers, 20 guys from LAPD on double holiday overtime to lock up traffic from four main streets, in downtown, on a weekend, and the sun is moving across the sky at 15° an hour no matter what you do. And no matter what, you're literally setting $500K/day on fire, whether you get the scene or not, before you think about location rentals, caterers, parking, and 300 other things. And suddenly, your ten lead actors all decide they're going to double-double check their weapons, because some Good Idea Fairies on the internet thought that was a cunning plan. Three of your guys, with no expertise, after the weapons were loaded and prepped by a team of the top weapons experts in Hollywood, which is to say, in the world, had them ready to rock, but your hamfisted actors managed to short-stroke a couple, and they jam; one guys' doesn't fire at all, because he can't get it back into battery. And by the time you've got your 200-piece orchestra all ready to try Take 2, you've just burned through an hour, plus 10% of your weapons budget for ammunition, glass, tires, and other special effects. And the Good Idea Fairy has become the Fuck-Up Fairy, and it's sitting on your face, and shitting right in your mouth. And this time, half the extras who're cops decide they should check THEIR weapons too. Now you're up to Take 3, and you're seriously wondering if it wouldn't be cheaper to hire retards for the extras, and just hand out live rounds to the principal actors, and get the whole scene in one take. By Take 4, you're spinning a revolver with 5 loaded bullets, and one empty cylinder, and you're ready to squeeze the trigger.
OR
Option II:
You're still Michael Mann. You decide to let the prop guys get props, the weapons handlers get the weapons ready, you let the wardrobe guys get everybody's costumes right, you let the makeup people do makeup, the special effects guys do special effects, the lighting guys do lighting, the camera guys run the cameras, the real cops block traffic, the sound guy rolls the sound, and you let the actors, who're costing you several million dollars, and who have multiple Academy Awards and nominations to their credit in their chosen craft, just show up and ACT.
EXACTY LIKE YOU FUCKING PAID FOR THEM ALL TO DO, EVERY M*****F*****G DAY SINCE THE SHOW STARTED, AND JUST LIKE EVERY DAY YOU'VE WORKED IN THIS INDUSTRY FOR TWENTY YEARS, BECAUSE YOU KNOW YOUR JOB, AND SO DOES EVERY MEMBER OF YOU CREW, DOWN TO THE GUY WHO PUTS OUT THE CONES FOR PARKING, WHICH IS WHY YOU BLOODY WELL HIRED THEM IN THE FIRST F*****G PLACE.
Quite the poser there, i'n'it?
That, boys and girls, is why it's not the actor's fucking job to be checking the weaponry before each and every take, because they're not competent at it, they could fuck up a crowbar in a sandpile all by themselves, and because as a general rule you're paying a whole bunch of people with specific expertise to do their jobs, so that the actors can, you know, ACT. I.E. do their jobs.
Which job includes pointing guns at people and pulling the trigger, on purpose including rehearsing same, using weapons that a competent and experienced armorer would have assured and doubly confirmed held no live rounds ever, which his assistant director mistakenly assured him was empty, and which shouldn't have even had blanks in it for a rehearsal.
But this low-budget clowncarnucopia of Fail had no such trained and competent armorer, but rather a stunning and brave ditz too stupid to know what she didn't know, and she got someone killed through her gross and reckless negligence. and hiring her is going to be what bites Baldwin-producer in the ass, long after Baldwin-actor walks on any charges, because it wasn't his fault nor responsibility to do the weapons handler's job for her. His job was to do his job, i.e. acting. Period.
Just like your boss hired you to do, which is why even on the bloody Titanic, if they hired you to tap dance or sling champagne for the first class passengers, you don't get a wild hair up your ass, race up the lookout tower like a monkey on crack, and "help" the lookout watch for icebergs, nor wander onto the bridge to give helpful suggestions to the captain of the ship.
Because, Gentle Reader, that's not your fucking job.
But don't take my word for it. Next time you're flying cross-country, wander up to the flight deck, and give the captain and first officer some tips on flying the plane, even better if it's based on your extensive experience with MS FlightSim2020, and report back on the experiment.
This is why it's never going to be Alec Baldwin's (nor any other actor's) job, responsibility, or moral duty to check firearms on set, never has been, never will be, not even if you hate them, not even if you're happy they killed someone, not even if you hold your breath until you turn blue, and tie yourself to a flagpole. Never, never, never never, never, ever.
Thus endeth the lesson.
BONUS Crotch kick, for the slow learners:
I loved the braintrust observation on yet another blog, that cleverly revealed that "he used a single action" so this had to be deliberate malice.
Because imagine! Someone using a single-action revolver on a western!
Whodathunkit?
(I won't link to that blog/comment out of pity for retards.)
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.
