"Tell Us What To Do..."

 

Here's a suggestion or three from WRSA.

Clever persons will detect a theme.

In case that's too subtle for some:

Monday Briefing

 

And remember two immutable truths:

Sunday Music: El Deguello

 Played repetitively for days by Generalissimo Santa Anna at the siege of the Alamo.

Signifying "No quarter shall be given." Neither at that time, nor this.

Play it a few hundred times, over and over. It grows on you, I swear.

a) the firing range is hot
b) no quarter given nor expected
c) ALL OF THE ABOVE

Live From The Kung Flu Lounge

Not my place, but close enough as makes no difference.

Just FTR, I wanted to give you an idea of what this is like:

Here's the computer monitor Big Board for where I am, within HIPPA constraints (i.e. I will be revealing no specific info identifiable to any specific patient, and have jumbled up order of rooms, etc.):

A) COVID Respiratory failure

B) CVA (stroke), COVID +

C) COVID, SOB(shortness of breath), hypoxia

D) COVID PNA (pneumonia), hypoxia

E) COVID hypoxia

F) Respiratory failure

G) COVID hypoxia

H) COVID PNA

I) COVID hypoxia, respiratory distress

J) COVID PNA

K) something else

L) PNA, respiratory distress

M) COVID PNA, hypoxia, respiratory failure

N) something else

3 of those (you'll never know which) are mine, and I have one empty bed.

There are a couple of other beds empty now, but staffing is also at the lowest for the night, and we have a full cardiac arrest inbound. So it's about to get busy. BusiER, actually. And I'm sneaking this post in, between my hourly tasks for my three relatively stable patients.

 1 of the 3 trauma patients we have is also COVID+, and unlike all the other rooms, we can't isolate them. Not physically possible.

We have furthermore put beds in every foot of hallway in the ED.

They're half-full now, but earlier there were patients in every bed.

We have turned the waiting room lobby into a new ward.

During peak hours, it was 80% occupied with non COVID patients, because it's the only place left to see regular patients..

Our cath lab and our surgery recovery unit are now holding areas for ER overflow, and they're full, which is another 10-15 patients who'd still be in the ER, because the ICU and the rest of the hospital are full, have been for days, and are now all virtually ICU, because when patients get worse, and get intubated, there's no room for them in ICU, so nurses who've never handled patients on a ventilator (normally an automatic ICU admission) are now HOCUS POCUS! POOF! Instant ICU nurses.

Really.

Our only remaining steps after this are to try and turn the hospital cafeteria into a ward, and/or to clear cars out of adjacent parking, and have the county or Notional Guard put in a pop-up hospital, except we have no staff for either plan.

The step after that is the doctors start deciding who comes inside and gets treated, and who stays outside with no treatment and takes their chances. No one wants to talk about that,  but the Christmas/New Year's peak still hasn't hit yet. Probably in a week or two, it will.

You're not dealing with that, wherever you are?

Splendiferous!

But nota bene, your day is probably coming.

Hopefully not, but hope ain't a plan.

Gotta go.

First Aid: Food Storage and Food Poisoning

 

Prepmeister sensei Commander Zero relates a recent experience (or rather, refusal to experience same) with a ten-years-past-its-"Best By"-date can of chicken soup. You should RTWT.

And now you get this post, by way of follow-up, and piling on.

Historical background: Canning food in tin cans was the genius idea of Nicolas Appert, arrived at in pursuit of a Napoleonic prize, to invent rations that an emperor's army could tote to their campaigns throughout Europe, indefinitely, securely, and without having them all go bad. (Refutation #4,000,087 on the Hit Parade of answers to the historically retarded idiots who spout "War never solves anything.") Which spoilage happened to casks of salted beef and pork with a tedious regularity. Not just for soldiers, but for everyone. Starving soldiers won't fight, because, as the same emperor noted, "An army marches on its stomach". Not literally, of course, that would be silly. But this is why amateurs discuss tactics, and professionals discuss logistics. No beans, no battles. True for Napoleonic legions, true for Roman legions, true in Iraq and Afghanistan, and true for you and your little tribe, same-same.

The early processes have, obviously, changed over the years. How isn't as important as what it means for you, if you're deep-stocking to get you and yours through...Whatever Happens.

So first, a few pointers.

1) Canned foods have a "Best By" date. If this is news to you, you're already too far behind the curve to be in this class. Log off, and come back when you're caught up.

2) "Best By -" dates, exactly like most expiration dates on medicine, are a scam. Exactly like the iconic "Lather. Rinse. Repeat." They were placed there primarily for PR and marketing purposes, because printing "Please consume all of this, even waste some of it in overuse, and then rush back to the store and buy more of Our Stuff" was considered a bit too spot-on. Part of it is also CYA legal boilerplate, because some jackhole will put his canned goods in a corrugated tin shack in the sun in the tropics, paint the whole thing black, located below the water table in a  swamp, and then bitch to high heaven when all his stuff explodes, is rusted and rotted, and smells like a Kardashian's nether bits (we hear). And then sue the company for his own jackassery.

3) For people who understand the concept of "Store in a cool, dry place.", it's a handy guideline for optimum freshness, appearance, smell, taste, and nutritional value. Not to mention safety. It is not, however, the last word, and many products will be just fine long beyond those dates. Who determines what those actual dates are? By the following formula:

4) Caveat emptor. (Common Core grads: google it.)

5) Certain foods (tomatoes, citrus items) have shorter lifespans. Acid: it's a physics and chemistry thing.

6) Oxygen is not your friend. Neither is a lack of it for shoddy or improper canning. There are both aerobic and anaerobic bacteria. This is why bulging cans get tossed. Always. Your ancestors who didn't do that? They're probably not your ancestors, but in any case they usually died for ignoring that rule.

7) As we told you, they don't can foods presently the way it was done in 1970, 1940, or 1870.

The cans and lids are not tin anymore, they're steel and aluminum, lighter now than they were a few decades hence, and they frequently utilize a plastic membrane. See for yourself. 

(Someone with high-functioning Asperger's can share the exact chemical composition of the liner; IDGAF.) The point is, this is why it's unsafe, and untasty, to heat foods in those new-fangled plastic-lined cans, unlike we could do when I was growing up, and most TV came in both black, and white. Because to do so will either ruin the food, and/or expose you to a chemical stew that doesn't go well in your insides. The first aid for that, is to not be a jackass, by not doing it. Put it in a proper cooking container, and rock on.

(That's also why, before you make Hobo Stoves and such, you'd better burn or scrape out that liner, unless you enjoy the aroma of burnt plastic with your meals.)

8) If you open something that doesn't look right, smell right, or taste right, wave goodbye, and toss it. Problem solved. You have five senses for a reason: heed them.

But somebody was too stupid to do that? Now what?

A) Botulism.

Botulism is nasty stuff. Like your cat, somebody who gets a dose of this is either going to crawl under the porch and die, or not. All you're going to do for them is supportive care, and treating the symptoms, and hope for the best.

It's caused by spores, and the kind that remain viable despite sunlight, like anthrax spores, for centuries, and which are highly resistant to most forms of sterilization. The toxin the spores produce (which is the problem) can be inactivated by heating at 185 F. for 5 minutes. IOW, boiling or hotter. But the spores that made the toxin are still in the food. Hence, throw it out if there's any suspicion.

We quote:

Food-borne botulism: The classic form of botulism is caused by the ingestion of preformed toxin in contaminated food. Symptoms include double vision, drooping eyelids (ptosis), slurred speech, difficulty swallowing and muscle weakness that is symmetric and descends through the body (first shoulders are affected, then upper arms, lower arms, thighs, calves, etc.). Death is usually due to respiratory failure and may occur as soon as 24 hours after onset of symptoms.

"Supportive care" may include months of treatment, and multiple courses of appropriate antibiotics. IF you have those. 

Quoting again:Foodborne botulism: Within 1 hour of ingestion of suspected food, the recommended course of action is a gastric lavage, or enemas, and the administration of a cathartic (sorbitol). In some cases intravenous administration of AB or ABE botulinum antitoxin is required, and assisted ventilation if respiratory failure occurs. Treatment may be required for weeks or months.

FTR, you ain't got and aren't getting AB or ABE antitoxin, unless you're far more advanced than the scope of this essay. And you probably don't have any sorbitol either. So that means ingestion will almost certainly prove fatal. We repeat, any suspicion of toxin, throw the food out. This isn't something you risk under any circumstances (unless you're a moron).

B) Everything else.

Most (99.99999%, for a SWAG) "food poisoning" is no such thing. People who are poisoned get sick, and depending on the toxin administered, die. What you've probably got is simply gastroenteritis (GE).

GE is usually caused by spoiled food, and/or lousy sanitation/preparation/food handling.

In most cases, it's caused either by air or insect vectors depositing bacterium on your food (like leaving your aunt's potato salad uncovered on a fly-infested hot day at the family picnic or BBQ), or the cook/server failing to lave los manos before, during, and after preparing, cooking, or serving you your food, including on dirty dishes, or after visiting the porcelain thinking room. It can also be caused by poor water purification, unfamiliar pathogens, etc., but frequently this is the same route, just with a bad water supply in between someone's fecal, and your oral. It is, thus, usually a fecal-oral transmission pathway, meaning someone got their chocolate in your peanut butter. In short, you ate shit.

There are two general stages to GE.

In Stage I, you think you're going to die.

In Stage II, you're afraid you won't.

This is because your body, whether you consider it a miracle of creation, or evolution, has a brilliantly simple feedback loop for letting you know you have unauthorized houseguests in your digestive tract.

It launches all torpedoes, fore and aft, from both ends of your alimentary canal, to repel all boarders.

Repeatedly.

You will now spend at least the next 12-24 hours with one end, or the other, pointed at the porcelain thinking chair, as you pass from Stage I to Stage II. You may, at times, require a bucket, when both ends are actively offloading. In between, having a few crackers and some ginger ale or lemon-lime soda handy for tiny nibbles and sips may help keep you alive, in between laying on that oh-so-cool tile floor, because it feels so good.

If you can, by hook or crook, lay in a supply of Rx Zofran ODT, you should do so. (Usual caveats about allergies, medical conditions, etc. apply. I.e. : Don 't be stupid.) Zofran is one of the currently best anti-vomiting/nausea meds available, Rx only, and ODT means "orally dissolving tablet" meaning if you can but shove the tiny tab under your parched tongue, and let it dissolve there, it will automagically absorb sublingually, to curb the load-launch-fire sequence from your forward torpedo hatch. By not having to swallow it, you can't barf it out before it kicks in.

For your other end, there's Immodium. Read and follow all label directions; it's an OTC. It's function is to turn your aft torpedo tube load-launch-fire circuit into rush hour traffic on the 405 freeway; i.e. total standstill. Use per directions until respite is achieved, then re-hydrate. You should have stocks of this laid in by, you should pardon the pun, the metric buttload. It should travel with you any and everywhere, when you travel away from home. Period.

Vomiting and diarrhea isn't serious for a few hours, until it is. It both dehydrates you, and jacks up your body's electrolytes, and if you have other conditions, you can't take your meds nor process them, so cardiac conditions, high blood pressure, diabetes, thyroid problems, and all sorts of other complications can take this from bad to worse if untreated.

In extreme cases (dysentery, cholera, etc.) you will literally crap your guts out.

Thus fulfilling the second half of "eat shit and die". It's actually a thing.

If you have the ability to properly administer intravenous (IV) fluids, do so. It bypasses the alimentary canal, and can rehydrate someone rapidly and effectively, if you know what you're doing, and can do so correctly. Bone up extensively; this is not a skill or therapy to attempt on the fly, in the moment. You can exacerbate a number of life-threatening conditions if you overdo it without knowing WTF you're about, and you can cause infection and death in a host of ways if you attempt it half-assed. Killing your patient with CHF or hepatitis instead of dehydration is a poor way to say you care, and a waste of resources if you don't know what you're up to. I cannot stress this enough for the untrained. If you don't KNOW WTF you're doing, leave this for those who do. 

But if you have Zofran and immodium, and a bare minimum of common sense, you can begin cautious hydration and nutrition.

Start simple: clear liquids. Clear means CLEAR. Water. Juice. Gatorade. Clear soups. Jello. Avoid all alcohols and caffeine-containing drinks; they're diuretics, and they'll only further dehydrate your patient. If you can't see through it, it isn't clear. Clear?

Then soft foods, easily tolerated. Parents should know this as the BRAT diet: Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast.

Then regular foods. As tolerated.

If symptoms return, or any level is not tolerated, return to the previous level, and advance as able.

And nobody who's nauseous gets ANYTHING else to eat or drink. EVER.

You feed or water that person, and you're just loading the catapult for the next launch, and you're the one who's going to get a faceful. Don't Do It! 

A couple, by which I mean TWO, pieces of small crushed ice, to wet the mouth that's bone-dry, won't matter. A bowlful of ice and a spoon, however, is asking for trouble.

Throughout the process: 

Monitor vital signs. Pulses should be below 100/min, or they're still dehydrated. Check temperature, to make sure there isn't a fever, and hence this is infection/viral, not GE.

Hydration, elimination, nutrition, in that order.

How much fluid are they taking in?

How much have they put out as pee? (and vomit?)

Bowel movements: watery, runny, loose, solid? How many? How frequent?

And then, nutrition? Diet, and toleration, then quantity, and back to output.

If they don't have a normal pulse, no fever (101F. or greater) and they aren't peeing clear and copious urine, they're not done yet.

GE comes on fast. But it goes away fast too. One to two days, tops.

If this lasts longer, there is something else at play here. Consult your medical people at that point. Your doctor, in normal times. Whatever you've got if you haven't got access to normal care (wilderness, disaster, worse).

Most GE goes away quickly, and leaves nothing but sore abdominal and rectal muscles behind (you should pardon the pun) afterwards. You can minimize it, but generally, the person has to literally gut it out. You can, however, mitigate the symptom duration and severity with proper treatment.

{And if you f**k up proper treatment, you can spread it around to yourself and everyone else. Wash your hands, clean the patient, clean and sanitize linen, bedding, clothing, dishes and utensils, et cetera, or after you die, Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton will kick your ass around the block for eternity for being a dumbshit.}

And if it isn't going away, you've got a bigger problem.

The best way to prevent GE is prevention: proper personal sanitation and cleanliness, proper food storage, handling, preparation, cooking, and serving, followed by proper clean-up afterwards, from dishwashing to sewage and garbage disposal. 

Proper public health measures save more people worldwide than medicines, antibiotics, and surgery combined, since ever. By the billions. The reverse is also true.

See to as much of that as you can, and your experience with it will generally not be firsthand, up-close.

Thus endeth the lesson.

They Think It's Over

 

"Everything's on the table" cuts both ways, youngsters.

The Democommunists have now brazenly stolen two elections, the presidency, the Senate, and the entire republic, and they think there's no penalty for that.

They keep thinking that the courts they have on speed dial will always be the only ones in session.

Government, at every level, has been lawfully petitioned for a redress of grievances, and the response from each one has been unswervingly the same:

"Go fuck yourselves, peasants."

Fair enough, public disservants, and flaming assholes. We tried it your way. Now we know who the assholes are, and it's about time for a high colonic. The antics of our would-be overlords have now identified exactly where to insert the enema hose, and boy, howdy, this one's coming straight outta the hot tap, at scalding temperature.

You're all going to find out just how ungovernable an army of Deplorables is, when they revoke consent to be governed by such lawless bastards as what is about to be inflicted upon the entire body politic.

Everything is in bounds now.

EVERYTHING.

You. Your family. Your home. Your entire life. Everything you count on. Every miracle of modern life you take for granted. All. Of. It.

Sweet Baby Jesus, jackholes, Shia La Bonehead tried to play hide and seek with a gorram flag, with the entire planet to hide it in, and weaponized autists played Capture the Flag crossed with Whack-A-Mole, and crushed him so hard he finally cried and quit the game. In mere days.

And you think we're afraid of you?!?!?

Pffft. You're going to be the first through seventeenth courses, with your own asses on the platter, until we decide it's time for dessert.

Two weeks. Or, maybe not. Maybe the hunting license has already been issued. It's hard to say.

Spoiler Alert: Unlike the cinematic Warriors, you won't be making it home.

But we're going to to be the Riffs of your nightmares. Because the whole country is our turf. Can you dig it?

Clue in, here. You're not dealing with your short-bus mental retards. You're dealing with the entire Basket Of Deplorables.

The people who work for a living, rather than vote for one. Scientists, engineers, medical professionals, welders, electricians, mechanics, and a thousand other occupations that make daily life in the modern world possible. Or,...not. People who know what piece takes forever to get, costs the most, cripples the Machine with one laser-focused blow.

And not to put too fine a point on it, the people from flyover country who always fight the wars that you and your cronies start, for your own benefit. The guys (and women, let's remember) who've served one/two/eight/eleventy tours in every Shitholia and Trashcanistan we've been to as a nation since Kennedy's assassination. Even the ones you don't know about, or would rather forget. But they know about them, and haven't forgotten any of it. They're the ones who can undermine, overthrow, and subvert a country a hundred different ways, and kill you forty-two ways, including with their brains.

You're in for an awfully interesting next four years of the coming Fraudulency.

You really have no idea.

But don't take my word for it. Listen to someone who knows whereof he speaks.

"A little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look for them, they shall not be found."  - Psalms 37:10 NIV

Pearls before swine, but you deserved fair notice to be properly served.

A Few Notes

 

Do we condemn anything that happened yesterday by those who marched on and took control of the Capitol?

Not one damned thing.

And we note that the only homicide occurred by the hands of Capitol Police, on an unarmed woman and military veteran protesting non-violently. Window-breaking, when last we looked, even in the federal code, is not a capital offense meriting the death penalty, let alone summary execution, and the mostly empty Senate Chamber is neither the President's occupied bedroom, nor the SAC NORAD Command HQ.

Dear law enforcement, from dog catchers to Attorneys general,

If you're not with us, you're with the Terrorists. The People, just like the Marines, are "no better friends, and no worse enemies". Your actions every day will mark you as one or the other of those to The People, whose Constitution you swore an oath to defend, from here on out, and there will be consequences to your choices. Harsh and permanent ones. We won't be locking you up, nor holding trials (except the drumhead variety), and we won't be taking prisoners, from here on out. You have now been properly negotiated with. You got away with "Just following orders" when you looked the other way for Leftard riots. Unlike them, we came in peace, but we're pleading with you, with tears in our eyes: Fuck with us, and we'll kill you all, and people will write about what happens for hundreds of years. You'll get one chance, and the consequences to you will be swift, eternal, and irrevocable. You want to try policing an entire hostile nation in the service of jackbooted thuggery and a banana republic oligarchy, and think you'll ever live to see a dime of your pension, think again. Choose wisely.

P.S. To the Capitol cop thug who fired that fatal shot: Go home and eat your gun, as a service to humanity. No, really. Just do it. You're already dead to us, so why not make it official by your own hand?

But permit, please, now that the bodies have cooled, a few brief observations on what didn't happen.

1) Non-violent protests assume a rational and reasonable foe.

You have neither. Non-violent protests get people shot by those willing to use violence. Imagine Gandhi in the PRC. Wait, you don't have to: Tiananmen Square ring any bells? Stop playing by Marquess of Queensbury Rules. This is war to the knife, knife to the hilt, and then gouging eyes and biting off ears. If you aren't ready for that, you're not tall enough for this ride.

2) A group with plans and leadership is an army.

You had neither. It was just a mob. Pointed by those unwilling and/or unable to step to the fore, sent into whatever awaited, blind, stupid, clueless, like sheep to a slaughter. All it ultimately did, besides showing the other side how pissed off we are, is provide a photo op and put a face to the baseless claims about Right Wing Extremism that you'll be beaten over the head with for months and years to come. (Unless we win, and get to write the history ourselves.)

3) "Everybody has a plan, until they get hit in the face."

Well, clearly not everyone has a plan. You didn't get hit in the face, and you still had no plan, other than presence. No plan for agents provacateur. No plan to exploit a runaway victory (because no one had thought even one step beyond anything). No media plan, no logistic plan, no medical plan, nothing. This was planned about as well as a trip to Disneyland. ("So we get off the freeway, park, and go inside. Okay. Then what? What d'ya mean???") So, yet again, despite half a dozen recent examples, no planning, at any level, about what to do if. If ANYTHING. No plan, for ANYTHING. Good, bad, indifferent. This was about as planned as a herd of sheep grazing in a meadow, and with as much forethought. So don't act surprised it turned into a modern-day Boston Massacre. That was what happened when patriots brought snowballs to a gunfight. You lot didn't even have snowballs. Huzzah! Or, as countless NCOs have told people, "Good initiative. Bad judgement." It doesn't make you less motivated, less brave, or less committed. Just stupid and thoughtless. Own that. For the umpteenth time. And knock that crap off, FFS.

4) Playing in the street is for stupid children. Stop being that.

Demonstrations are for optics. They accomplish nothing else. Even less with the monumental shortcomings in planning and leadership demonstrable in every event since anybody thought this dumbassery was a good idea. A few pointers:

a) You don't own the media outlets. In fact, they are entirely unsympathetic to everything you are, and represent.

b) You had no media plan.

c) You didn't have anyone, or any 500 people, expressly designated to document what you wanted to do, nor what you didn't want to do, nor what was done by people not you. So you handed the entire narrative, start to finish, over to your Enemy, before you even started out.

d) You had no plan on how to disseminate a message, before, during, nor after, nor even any wild idea what message you were trying to make, besides being an angry mob.

e) Stumble and bumble into being used as a photo op poster child for the Enemy in haste, repent at leisure.

You became a herd of brave and dedicated people on pogo sticks, clearing a minefield. How's that working out for you now?

5) "They'll see a lot of us, and see our anger, and then they'll suddenly start doing what we want them to do."

Um,...no.

That has happened exactly never. You either kill people and break things, and dictate terms with swords to throats, or you march into machineguns and die gloriously, stupidly, and pointlessly, but for a good cause. As if anyone ever respects suicidal fanaticism, beyond resolving to gun it down on sight. Achievement unlocked: Went full retard.

6) You're not the Leftards. Stop using their game plan.

The Media doesn't care about what you want. Hollywood doesn't care about what you want. The other side's politicians don't care about what you want. And your own (nominally) politicians don't care about what you want. Those last are fleeing you and your ilk at warp speed, and they can smell blood in the water 10,000 times better than any shark. Protest reindeer games only work when there's someone out there who sympathizes with you, or is at least uncommitted, but open to hearing you out. It's not 1967 any more. The country has stratified. Anything you say to yourselves is preaching to the choir. Anything you say to the other side is falling on deaf ears. Period. Full stop.

7) Stop pissing into the wind. You look stupid, you smell worse, and you're just annoying everyone.

You want to get 100,000 people together to do something? Fine. If you're going to go, go big, or get back on the porch. Bring your rifles, surround the Capitol, (which means plan out all the exits, and blockade them too, starting with the subway tunnels they'd use to escape you) and tell all comers that you want the traitors handed over at once, and start trying and executing them on the porticoes, on national television. Shoot any motherfuckers who resist you, and any motherfuckers, inside or out, who point guns at you. In the face. Be prepared for a lot of casualties, on both sides. But if you're not willing to do that, because it's massively against the law, (and believe me, it is, yuuuugely), you're not patriots, you're just pussies. 

Storing guns, arming militias, and fortifying the heights around Boston harbor in 1775 were also criminal acts. Hanging offenses, treason, and insurrection, according to no less than the King of England and all the colonies at the time, which was not mere idle boasting on his part. But you haven't got the courage of your convictions colonial townspeople and farmers had, or you wouldn't have tried to win this thing by waving teddy bears at cameras. Own that, too.

8) You pissed your pants yesterday, for all the good you did, or might have done. And now you look foolish, clueless, and naive. Which you were. And your pants are wet.

Sh*t happens. Get back up, change your pants, and don't f**k things up next time. There will be a next time. Probably the first of hundreds, if not thousands, of such skirmishes. Yesterday was a start, not an end. Learn the lessons you keep booting out your asses, and stop doing that. Photo ops and "statements" are for impotent @$$clowns. Don't be that. If you thought you were going to win a bloodless coup by holding your breath, turning blue, and stomping your feet like toddlers throwing a tantrum at the supermarket, it's past fucking time you grew up, including a spine and a set of functional balls.

This is going to be hard. People died yesterday, and all on our side. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!: Even in the movies, Robin Hood had to kill half a dozen @$$holes on Prince John's side to make the point that he was serious, and wasn't to be trifled with. If you haven't wrapped your head around that reality, and come to grips with what's got to be done to get your country back, STFU, chop your dicks off, turn in your weapons, and either learn to sing Leftist love songs and eat soyburgers, or line up for the boxcars right fucking now, and stop wasting the time and goodwill of better men than yourselves.

No one, least of all this blogger, is mad at you or blames you for yesterday's events. But the Amateur Hour silly-ass b.s. has to stop, now. The time for impotent gestures and photo ops is over. You're either in the fight of your lives to win, including the killing and dying that course necessarily entails, or you're just a bunch of LARPing jackholes.

Decide. Stop pissing yourselves while you dither, and try and take the moral high ground without inflicting or taking casualties. This isn't the playground, and what's to come requires the resolve that took Hamburger Hill, not the kind that wins in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese, or plays childish games where no one's keeping score.

Grow the fuck up, and get on with it. Be adults, and do manly things.

Get busy winning, or learn to love losing.

You aren't going to regroup, and out-vote them harder next time; that option is closed off forever now. Come to grips with that harsh reality.

What are you going to do about that...??

And nota bene that any whiny bitching, pissing, and moaning in Comments will be regarded as the poster saying "Cuck! Cuck! Cuck-a-doodle-do!" Suck it up, Buttercup.

Mr. President, Cross That Rubicon

 

There isn't one man in this entire misbegotten tribe of political
animals of government who will right the electoral wrong
done to the United States last November. So either the President
himself steps in to see justice done, or else 74M citizens
will be left with the task. The choice is now "who", not "if".

Aside from the crushing socialism, the overweening global warmist religious fanaticism, the stench of tens of thousands of homeless insaniac drunkards and dopeheads shipped here from every other state, and the tidal wave of illegal immigrants from 20 other nations, there are a bare few advantages to living here in Calestine (which name is stolen shamelessly from yesterday's comments).

Things like any climate and geography within 2 hours by car, even in traffic, year around, and shorts and t-shirt weather 300 days a year. But also not to be overlooked, is seeing the ABCNNBCBS narrative fully formed and wholly thought out, complete with proper editorial handiwork to tighten and focus the audio and visuals for the best impact.

Media on the other coast is always by-guess-and-by-God (though with the MSM, it's a toss-up whether that god is Beelzebub, Moloch, or Cthulhu, or an alternating triumvirate of all of the above on alternate days), because when news breaks, they're always caught legs akimbo and pants athwart their ankles, sitting in their porcelain thinking rooms, or half-pickled in some publican's establishment across the street from the newsroom. Thus they haven't had time to plot how best to omit and embellish the actual facts to spin them to their own ends, and occasionally, actual news escapes captivity, before they can strangle it.

No such worry about that here. With the benefit of hours across time zones, they've crafted a tight narrative, sorted of chaff and facts, and generally distilled down to the bare minimums of 

Government=Good, Republinazis=Bad, and Common Sense=Evil.

So it is tonight, when I see on my 11PM bedtime news the information that Trump supporters, who've spent 4 years holding peaceful rallies and picking things up neater than they found them, are totally responsible - entirely at the incitement and active connivance of POTUS hisownself - for the fact that the Capitol Police let protesters inside the barricades around the capitol, and killed 4 people, with bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, choke holds, and other mischief.

Then all was slathered with a thick covering sauce of gaslighting the legitimate and well-documented claims of election fraud, and pointing out the entirely reasonable shutdown of every social media outlet to a sitting US President because he keeps reiterating what at least 75M Americans, and over 70% of all political affiliations of citizens polled know was a totally banana republic election fraud of biblical proportions.

In short, the right are terrorists, Trump is their chieftain and warlord, and he's also insane, and cowering in his bunker for the last two weeks of his failed term of electoral accidency. They're already drawing up specifications of criminal charges for Star Chamber trials, starting with him, and working down to mail theft, sedition, and treason for anyone who set foot inside the Capitol Building today, and desecrated the seat of government so beloved of normal, decent Americans, who apparently think of their Congressweasels more highly than their own sons and daughters.

Pardon me while I get a bucket into which I may vomit.

Truth be told, about 90% of America is sorry that the entire lot of elected traitors wasn't strung from the railings of the porticoes yesterday, and left to kick at the air on live national TV, if only for the instructive nature of such entertainment for future generations of would-be scoundrels and ne'er-do-wells.

So let us turn to new business:

@Claire Wolfe: It's no longer the awkward stage; it's time to start shooting the bastards.

It's therefore time, Mr. President, to take action to save this country, while you still have the wherewithal to do so. Or else, as Vox Populi noted yesterday on his blog, 

"The dude should just declare martial law and clean up. If he just leaves on the 20th he's the biggest "all talk no action" pussy on the planet."

I would suggest that "all talk no action pussy" is not the legacy this, or any, President should leave behind them after they scuttle off and into darkness, and consign the entire nation to national suicide.

Swoop in, and clean house. Once and for all, like the wrath of God Almighty, like we've been waiting for in vain, for four interminable years of dithering by your co-opted Deep State minions. Seize the officials and their minions - corrupt, conniving, criminals, and coup-masters, one and all - and the voting machines and records, and lay the case out to the American people, on live TV, just like during the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

1) The Democommunists are scared as hell about anything like that kind of spotlight. Well, that and the double-digit prison sentences afterwards, and no chance to flee to Cuba.

2) Cuckservatives like Veep Pence and Bitch McConjob took yesterday's events as carte blanche cover to jump ship, and slip their knives into your back already. Cut ballast, and turn loose of them; they serve no further purpose at this point except as negative life examples. The strong suggestion that both retire immediately "for health reasons" would not go amiss. Them choosing to retire to someplace sunny and many thousands of miles away, for life, would be even better.

3) The courts punted. Let them stew in that sauce until they're well-done. They have nothing to say about elections, by their own choices, except to rubber-stamp fraudulent ones. I'm sure a heathy number of early retirements, or proctological prosecutions, will thin that herd in short order.

4) The people already spoke in November, before their votes were thrown out, and shuffled to the other column. Restore the scales to even, with no bricks on them, and let them get back to work dealing with this damned Chinky Pox, and jump-starting a stalled economy that was literally red-hot right up until last February.

5) Carve into stone unbreakable election laws that prevent this sort of thing from ever being possible again. Then go back to the status quo ante, and see what hand the electorate deals itself going forward, while you finish out the term you were lawfully elected to serve.

6) It's the right thing to do, for yourself, for the electoral process, and for the good of the republic.

Your energy belies your age, Mr. President, but Time itself will see to it that you're not going to grab the reins of power endlessly, and we don't do dynasties and royalty here. Gut the stinking fish everyone can see and smell, and throw it into the fire once and for all, to end this burgeoning scourge of socialism that threatens this country's very foundations, and has already proven there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to which it will not stoop to do what they accuse you of wanting to do.

Federalize the guard, call up the troops, besiege the Capitol, round up the traitors, suspend habeas corpus, and shut down the media wholesale and outright, until you round up and try every goddamned last one of the anti-American bastards who've vexxed, sabotaged, and undermined this republic for most of their adult lives. They won't be missed.

Lance this festering boil now, and in haste, before its dreadful poison spreads generally and becomes gangrenous, necessitating far more painful and bloody surgery, with scythes and meat axes, on the entire nation, and our streets run with rivers of blood.

Because, sir, if you don't do this now, when you still can, we're going to have to do it later on, from a worse position in every way, and at a far costlier price, in every measure, than anything you do will accrue.

A sharp scalpel heals the cleanest and quickest, and does the least damage.

You can't wait forever, if you're anything like the man you've seemed to be. Step up and do the job you were hired to do. Everyone else has shrugged, averted their eyes, passed the buck, kicked the can down the road, or covered their eyes and pretended there's nothing to see here. That cannot stand, and it WILL NOT. But if you won't do this, now, it's still going to need doing, and soon.

The time is now.

UDATE: Apparently, POTUS has opted for "all talk, no-action pussy".

In the on deck circle, The Deplorables.

MSM Statement About Trump Supporters "Storming" The Capitol

 

"Deutschland wird keine weiteren provokationen
der Polnischen Armee tolerieren."

Never mind that one of the most secure locations in the free world, with all of its members assembled, was was supposedly breached by unarmed polite groups of middle-aged people.

Never mind that the Capitol Police are the ones who themselves opened the barricades and doors.

Never mind that they shot an unarmed woman with 14 years in the USAF and killed her.

Never mind that the hooligans who made it to the House Chamber have been identified as BLM and Antifa protesters from previous demonstrations, in about 30 seconds.

Never mind that there was no QRF in place closer than Virginia, despite the obvious knowledge that this was coming, for two weeks.

We're supposed to believe it all "just happened" because those darned "right wing mobs" got out of control.

Pence and Bitch McConjob have, predictably, totally cucked. Shocking, right?

Media already has a narrative, and Twatter and @$$book have deplatformed m*****f***ing POTUS, because reasons.

Fraudlent-Elect Gropey Joe stumbled out of his coma long enough to declare that the people having a say in things is "the greatest threat to our democracy ever". Which is too many lies in one sentence to bother fisking, (starting with the fact that the United States has never been a democracy, and never will be, nor was ever intended to be). But if His Fraudulency wants to start talking about "one man, one vote", we've got about 200,000 bones to pick with him in Georgia alone.

Which failed state stopped counting last night, then resumed as soon as they had added enough ballots to safely claim victory in the runoff, after running off Republican poll watchers, AGAIN, and with everyone watching them do it. The media has issued a tape recording of crickets chirping, despite the Atlanta polling tabulation employees standing over the dead body of democracy in Georgia with smoking pistols in their hands.

No, really, I totally believe that the white Christian racists the media assures us infest Georgia unhesitatingly elected a communist black radical and a Jew to represent them in the senate, like they always have before.

People are getting eviction and power shutoff notices in the deep of winter, and we're sending billions to every country but our own, but there's no reason to be upset with the Congress.

Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.

Leviathan has made it abundantly clear, they're not listening, they don't have to, and they don't give a damn who sees, nor who cares.

The only answer to that isn't going to be pleasant or easy.

But it will be absolutely justified, utterly necessary, and fearfully overdue.

The phrase that pays ends with "...and let God sort them out."

Amen.

Repeated For Emphasis

 

Dear Democommunists: Dinner Is Served.

And you're going to eat every bite, until you're done.

"Whose streets? Whose country??"

What A Surprise

 

After subjecting GA, and the U.S., to a runoff that was wholly unnecessary, the state of Jowja, run by the most quisling of governors and AGs, has now pulled out a plum, and elected the most openly radical communist in US history to the US Senate. Senator AOC is only limited by age from becoming the next one.

After the spectacle of the last electoral fraud, the Dems, last seen pulling trunkloads of ballots out from under tables to count after they'd shooed all Republican poll-watchers off the premises, fine-tuned their algorithms, and squeaked out at least one, and possibly soon a second, senate victory.

"I'm shocked! Shocked, I say!"

Any idiots out there still yapping about "getting 'em next time" in 2022 or 2024 should STFU and start loading weapon magazines, or start packing for the reeducation camps.

There will be no third option.

If I hear one more So-Last-Century buffoon yammering about "next time" within reach, I'm punching them right in the throat.

BFYTW.

99:1 the $hitshow of confirming electors in Congress will be about as comforting as the GA runoff, and for the same quisling reasons.

The Tree Of Liberty is getting parched, kids.

But there's a storm brewing.

Exhibit A: Capitol Police Flee Scene, Capitol overrun by unarmed protesters.

h/t Irish

The sequel, sung to the tune of The Empire Strikes Back , as Notional Guard units occupy D.C. (happening as we type this), will not be as fun.

Bear well in mind: this noise is merely the orchestra tuning up in the wings. But if you listen closely, and check your programs, you can tell the tune they're going to be playing at full volume, sooner than later.

Once More, With Feeling

 

Kenny, over at Knuckledraggin' , used to reside in Califrutopia, and makes no secret of the fact that he's happy to have decamped to Tennessee. Hey, that's great for you, man. Really.

But he also seems to take perverse delight in whipping up the Usual Idiots and their "Fuck California" mouth-breathing kneejerk responses. In this case, because of the re-institution of lockdowns and other restrictions as Kung Flu here in Idiotville now seeks, at last, to surpass the idiocy of former Kung Flu world death leader NYFS.

Now, to the fisking.

1) Most of the idiots in CA that aren't from Mexico came here from somewhere else: your states. Own that. Native Californians kept this state solid red for over a century. Sorry if that reality is inconvenient for anyone, but there it is. 

[You can pick up your toothless, banjo-playing kinfolk any time you want them. Just know that when they destroy this state, and inevitably decamp from here as well, they'll return home, and they'll be bringing their illegal alien gardener, housekeeper, and their eleventy relatives and 20 anchor baby chillins, with them. Hope that works out for all y'all. You've got it coming.]

2) The Mexicans who're here (in the millions), along with the other illegal aliens, are here because the representatives from everywhere else - that'd be your states again - keep letting them come, and have for over 70 years. Ask Florida, Texas, and Arizona how that's working out for them, too. Hey, how about that president-elect Biden, huh? Not building The Wall got you His Fraudulency.

3)There are more hispanics in L.A. county hospitals (as opposed to private ones) because it's last-ditch care, they have no insurance, so that's where they go. And because they have too little education in general, or scientific savvy specifically, and live in large, extended family groups, with 6-8-10-more people from age 1-84 all in the same apartment or small house. It's one big multi-generational COVID party. And they wait until the last second before they'll risk going to the hospital, because someone in the family is usually illegal. QED.

4) The lockdowns ended here for the most part in June, when things were small, and tapering off, Which is what prompted people to be idiots, and blow it up again. The lockdowns weren't re-instituted until about Halloween, but by then it was too late, and stupid people playing stupid games win stupid prizes.

5) Kenny's county, in TN, probably only has about a 1% or less penetration of virus.

SoCal, OTOH, has 10-20%, based on actual results from testing millions and millions of people in this state. If/when TN, or anywhere, gets that many people sick, you're going to be dealing with CA levels of COVID. It's just math, not politics.

6) We aren't having problems because of the lockdowns as much as we're having lockdowns because of stupidity: People thought this was over when things were eased up, and stopped doing common-sense things like they were before, and gravity works.

If you wear a snot-mask, wash your hands, and keep your distance as much as possible, you won't get Kung Flu, and you won't spread Kung Flu. (That's why seasonal flu nationwide is a non-issue: handwashing, masks, and distancing kill a lot of communicable disease spread, just like every actual medical expert - Pasteur, Lister, Semmelweis, Nightingale, Barton, etc. - 100-150 years ago figured out.)

7) CA is paying for, now, the idiots who thought those rules were no longer operative from 4th of July to Thanksgiving. Just like the @$$holes in NYFS who did that from New Year's to Easter. As bad as it is now - and trust me, it's bad, here - we're still bracing for the biggest coming peak, which will be the bigger @$$holes from Christmas and New Year's. About 1-3 weeks from now, most likely. LA and Orange County are completely full, most days, with no capacity to deal with ordinary problems like car accidents, heart attacks, strokes, shootings, stabbings, or any other serious medical issues. So now, people we used to save will die too, and not from COVID. But even more fun: now our traumas are coming in with COVID, to a trauma area that has no ability to function in MOPP Level IV, or decon quickly, nor isolate patients with COVID from the other trauma patients. So if you come in after a car accident without COVID, you're probably going to leave with it anyway. We already have half our trauma docs out with it, and they're no spring chickens. We may lose any or all of them.

At that point, you have no one who can save you from anything that happens, and we're about a hot minute or a bad day from beginning to put patients outside, into "Don't Bother" and "Maybe Worth Trying" piles.

Like Italy did, 11 months ago.

Good luck and best wishes when - not so much if - you or your hometowns have to deal with that someplace with a lot less medical capacity than what we have here. (That'd be 120 hospitals in just 2 counties serving 14M people, BTW, which is twice as many people as live in the entire state of TN, Kenny.) I really hope you don't have to find out about this firsthand, but some people everywhere only learn about hot stoves after pressing their hands on one, instead of learning from other people's mistakes.

That's why I call them Gilligans.

Every place has them.

And yours are going to get you here, given half a chance, just like always.

We're all at the mercy, in any pandemic, of the stupidest 10% of the population.

That's just how it works, everywhere, since ever.

Believe me, we'd stop talking about this if some people would start listening.

We can tell you common sense, and preach cold hard Reality, but we can't make you think and believe.

Apparently, neither can anyone else.

So here we all are.

And for those of you who've escaped this far: your day is coming. The wise prepare for that, and the foolish stick their fingers in their ears and go "La! La! La! I can't hear you!"

Suture self.

See if you can guess how long I feel empathy for you - for any value of that term - when that happens, before my epicaricacy kicks in, and without bounds. We tried warning people jumping off cliffs was bad. Now the crashes and screams afterwards just warm our heart, because that's more oxygen and food left for the rest of us.

Sunday Music: Stuck Like Glue

 

Great music video of Sugarland's US Top 20 and #1 Country monster hit from 2010.

If you can't like this one, there's probably something wrong with you, and I could listen to Jennifer Nettles sing the labels on toothpaste. But this is way better than that.

Herd Immunity

 

Now with appropriate sound effects.

The main difference between the federal DoJ and the Keystone Kops is that Mack Sennett was the better screenwriter, who wrote much more plausible scripts and plots.

The 2021 Quincy Adams Wagstaff Lecture

 

"You asked for this lecture, and you're going to get it, good and hard.
These are my principles.
If you don't like them, I have other ones."

In what's become a more or less annual tradition here*, we present to you this year's Q.A.W. Lecture. If you haven't read earlier ones, we heartily encourage it.

The earlier ones are located  here and here.

You should read them, firstly, because they're that good. No, really.

Secondly, because they were spot-on then, and they remain so now.

So, without further ruffles or flourishes, we present this year's offering:

Ladies and Gentlemen, faculty, students, and friends of Huxley College,

We warned you. We told you things would go from bad to worse. 

And they did. And they are. And they will.

Some particularly bright students of history could only see this coming from about a decade away. A few of them are already dead, and happily so for them. Because they won't have to live through what you may not live through either.

War, Death, and Hell are well and truly coming to this land.

Maybe in days. Maybe farther down the road. But come they will.

Nothing's carved in stone, but that this people will not sit still and allow usurpers and frauds a free hand to tear down the land our forefathers built. Those whom a certain witch named "Deplorables" took that heritage as a badge of honor, and they're about to show TPTB what happens when Deplorable becomes Ungovernable.

Some people are wondering about how much those charged with enforcing law and protecting the nation will go along with the New Bosses. Be in no confusion: Winners write the laws and enforce them, and then edit and summarize the history. So knowing that, Don't lose.

Short answer on who will do what: some will, and some won't. And by the time you find out which is which, it'll probably already be too late for one of you.

The LEO enthusiasm for "just following orders" for a notable number will be no less than it was for any reichspolizei in the fatherland from 1933-1945, but their early enthusiasm may diminish somewhat markedly when their chances of returning home safe and warm each night starts to become merely a fond wish, and they are felled with all the impersonality of random fiat.

As the guys on the little end of the government's pointed stick, they're going to feel the brunt of both giving and receiving firsthand. After the first few get facefuls of backlash from  community policing from those less than cheerfully obedient to the distant diktats of our would-be overlords, and with no similar downward pressure from the top limiting their life expectancy, enforcement will quickly devolve to a series of Monday-morning "Gotcha!" moves against the unlucky and the unwary, after the shooting stops, while beat cops turn into 2M Sgt. Schulzes 24/7/365.

The clever ones will start to monkeywrench the system from within, while keeping their official place firmly in place during duty hours.

"Round up the usual Suspects!" is ever the wise Vichy Way of doing business in such times.

What happens from the streets won't be vigilantism, either. It will be street justice in a dirty war, until Leviathan collapses from the Death Of A Thousand Cuts. Some folks think the population isn't built for that, but they're about to find out firsthand how poorly the organs of government aren't built for it either.

How do you tax someone when there's no mail delivery, in either direction? When the internet is perennially down? How do you patrol the streets when your police cars spontaneously combust? When the lesser minions of bureaucracy go out, and never come back? And worse.

We don't have, and never will, the legions of convoy escort troops and heavy MRAPs they're going to need when merely having government license plates is a death sentence. And the minions of bureaucracy are going to find out about a week after that starts that where they live it isn't anything like as secure as the Green Zone was in Baghdad, ever, nor ever could be. The sick call-outs a minute after that epiphany will be biblical, and permanent. The alternative will be finding their own heads on pikes in their front yards in 3, 2, ...

Government here has spent 240 years ensconced in a cocoon of their utter inarguable invincibility, because they've never had to operate in enemy territory for so much as five minutes, since the British burned D.C. in 1814.

The American people, conversely, have been operating in occupied enemy territory non-stop since at least 1912, if not far longer, and their ingenuity and perseverance in the enterprise knows no bounds.

My money is on hangings and guillotines for the guilty before this ends, rather than camps, and collateral damage will be overwhelmingly in one direction. Anything contrary will merely hasten the fall of the illegitimate regime. A fate devoutly to be wished.

Those of you there, or near there, from rubbing shoulders with The Machine: How are they going to cope when the murder rate skyrockets, and the entire population is potentially The Enemy? How did that work in Vietnam? Haiti? Somalia? Iraq? Afghanistan?

I'm betting they hand us TPTB's heads on platters by way of apology, and with dispatch, rather than face the music that their side has cued up on the jukebox.

Picture Saddam's Iraq regime, doing what they do.

But this time, trying it in Texas. Times 50.

They're going to flee the seats of power like scalded baboons, and rue the day they ever sought to gain them by fraud.

At least, the survivors will.

How many of those we allow will depend to a large degree on how much of a sense of humor the average American maintains, when this is all over.

Their side is in full-court press gloatation mode. Challenge accepted, @$$wipes.

Average folks, OTOH, seem to be quietly seething.

That's usually the point in civilization where you get 75M people that act like Col. Tibbets and General Lemay, IMHO, in terms of dogged determination, and the finality of ending the argument.

Whether that happens or not, we're about to get the government we deserve, good and hard.

Make yourself ready, and do your part.

*(How Curious: The last lecture was on the last day of 2019. This one is on the first day of 2021. No lecture at all during TYWSNBN. Fate is serendipitous like that.)