The Missing Rider...

"And I glanced back over mine shoulder, and behold, another rider appeared, and sat him upon an Ass, and he that sat upon the Ass was called Stupidity. He sat backwards, wearing pointed fool's cap. 
And power was given unto him to work the enstupidation of all mankind, as all did stare at his jingly toys, and did gaze into his mirror of error, and drink from his cup of folly, and listen to his silliness.
And great was the mischief he worked, to make men consider themselves wiser than serpents, on account of the lies he whispered, and coarse jests and blasphemies he spake, that they who heard them should laugh as men taken with strong drink. And they did all account themselves as Solomon's teacher, the founts of all Earthly Wisdom, that all who followed him might wander to the precipice, and tumble over it, giddy, gibbering, and unseeing."

I can't find the exact reference, but I'm pretty sure this is the original pony celebrated in the story, that was eventually found under that mound of horsesh...er, rose fertilizer.
Stupidity continues to slay more people, with the jawbone of an ass, than Samson ever did on his best day.

This Is Why I Blog

This kind of insightful, rational commentary response to a post warms my heart. It really does. It's like when I'm working, and someone comes to the ER, and then wants to tell me and the doctor and everyone else how to do our jobs. Except here I don't have to worry about a low Press-Ganey score from the snotty drug seeker we wouldn't give any Norco to, or a shitty rating card from the psych patient we shipped out to the whack-job ward in hard restraints and a spit mask.

"Wow. Alarmist much?

The key things that will contain an Ebola outbreak in Europe, North America, etc., is communications.

Where rural level Africans are very hard to convince about the dangers of spreading disease, there won't be much such issue in Europe, North American, Most of Asia, Most of South America. People are educated (enough) to know what is right and wrong. (Recall the SARS and H1N1 outbreaks - hygiene went up 4 notches).

Get the word out, and people will avoid people. People will up their hygiene game. Etc. Can't spread w/o bodily fluid contact.

So there will possibly be other Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital events. That did not result in a pandemic. At all.

Of course it's not the CDC saying "we got this". It's people with information who will say, "Stay the f--- away from me, dude!" that will burn out a pandemic quickly. (Indeed, the CDC will probably say, "Tell people to stay away.").

In that sense, planning and preparing now (true prepping, not the arm myself to the rafters with AR-15 prepping) is a much better tool than alarmist articles as above. (And you don't need to repeat "bleeding from the (orifice of choice)" so often to make a point).

Oops, left out a detail.

Vaccinations are now available for Ebola and one is in use in Africa following the "ring vaccination" protocol (vaccinate highest risk people). It is (apparently) effective (if not 100%) even on patients who have contracted Ebola."
 

When the house is on fire, perhaps pulling an alarm is what's called for.

But hey, thanks for letting us know that life will go on fine, once everyone realizes they can't go to work, school, church, the mall, the grocery store, the gas station, the pharmacy, the bank, the ATM, or anywhere else, nor touch anything they haven't disinfected with bleach and sunlight for 10 minutes, after gowning up in the equivalent of MOPP IV, including N95 respirator, head to toe disposable overgarments including hood, goggles, and face covering, rubber booties, and two pairs of gloves, and following a strict series of decontamination again when they remove the garments, any time they venture outside their perimeter (God knows why they would, other than oh, I dunno, the exact food, water, medicine, money, and all those other luxuries we can skip for a few months/years). Or else stay locked up in their homes with food, water, medicine, and such, for at least 40+ days after the last reported case, nor come closer than 20' to anyone coughing or sneezing until 10 or more minutes have passed to let the droplets settle, if they're crazy enough to go out at all, for any reason whatsoever, because that won't affect the largest economy in the world in the SLIGHTEST, will it, jackass?

Do you have a spare two years' income handy? In cash?
Do you have twenty-four months' food at home?
The 2013 outbreak wasn't over until 2016 in West Africa.(But, you knew that, right?)

And you've also got a 40' ISO container full of limitless supplies of HazMat gear, and an incinerator and fuel to dispose of used gear properly?
And hundreds of gallons of bleach? And a sprayer for it?
Who's going to spot for you putting it on and taking it off?
Or were you just going to wing it?

Who's going to run the water plant when everyone stays home?
How will water get pumped when no one comes to work at the power plant either?
Who's going to fill up barrels and distribute water door to door when there's no gas, no water supply, and no power? You?

How many cops and firemen will come to work at all, let alone when they have to work in gear so hot you can't do it for more than a couple of hours?

Who's going to be giving those vaccinations when no one comes to work at the hospital, for all the reasons outlined above?
(Oh, BTW, as the name would imply, "ring vaccination" isn't vaccinating "those at highest risk" - that would be medical relief  workers, primarily, and probably be called "highest risk vaccination" - it means vaccinating those proximately closest to those already infected, i.e. family, neighbors, friends, and other closest contacts, and putting a literal ring of immunized people around the outbreak. Plain English is funny like that: it tends to mean what it says. If you're going to be the smartest guy in the room, and sling the terms around, it's probably a good idea to get them right. Just saying.)

What happens if it doesn't work so well? If your weasel-worded ("apparently") morphs into "Whoops, my bad, not so much..."

What are you going to do with the 25% idiots who won't even get vaccinated now?
Shoot them?
Round them up?
Ignore them and let them die?
And merrily spread the outbreak in the meantime?
What about their minor children?
Do we just let mommy and daddy give them Mr. Jones' nice cup of kool-aid? Because father knows best?

As a certifiable jet-fuel genius technocrat with all the answers, tell us how to deal with that.

And then you're going to do...what, exactly, about those 75M dead bodies, from Ebola, in some cases, but also from heart attacks, dehydration, heatstroke or freezing to death, running out of their meds, not to mention what happens when any semblance of civil government breaks down and blows away in the wind?
Who's going out on body pick up and disposal?

What are you going to do about the 20% of America on anti-depressants and other psych meds when they run out?

Who you gonna call when there's no power for that information grid, TV, radio, cell towers, or the internet, about three days after this hits any place, and the lights start going out?

Oh, say, your buddy Chip Diller called.

In 2014, with exactly that sort of "We can do this!" thinking, Texas Health managed, despite the CDC's sub-standard "protocols", to infect 2 ICU nurses, despite more information, protective gear, and better training than you've got right now, and exactly doubled the US outbreak in less than 21 days, while exposing thousands more to the potential to become the next wave, shutting down schools, completely closing that entire 968-bed major hospital in our 9th largest city for one patient, and spreading the exact amount of fear and panic totally justified when TPTB turn out to be so stupid, incompetent, and recklessly dismissive of the public's safety and best interests.

So, wow.
Totally fucking ignorant of reality much there?

And just to help your reading comprehension along, notice where I said that this Congo outbreak now isn't nearly as bad now as it was in West Africa 2014. Yet.

But the post was in reply to someone, a trained medical professional, in fact, who - exactly like you - didn't think this was that big a deal at all.
So I'm guessing the return fire landed inside your perimeter, and you're running critically low on butthurt creme, right?

Yes, this outbreak can be dealt with.
Even if it gets here.
A good start would definitely be getting a better grip on reality than what you've got.
And certainly not by the pig-headed arrogance displayed in 2014, which was the exact point of the whole post, not alarmism.
I wasn't throwing a hand grenade in the outhouse just to watch the shit fly.

In fact, far from anything alarmist, all I did was recount what happened last time, and suggest a number of ways to not be that fucktarded the next time. I didn't advise napalming Africa, forting up and heading for the hills, establishing a colony on the Moon, nor anything else as silly-assed as your disdainful reply would engender.
I spoke simple common sense on both the past, and looking forward, and that somehow roils your inner child's clueless disconnection with reality.

Well, pardon me all to hell.
I'm sorry for dragging you to this site, and forcing to read common sense at gunpoint.
Oh, wait.
That didn't happen, did it?

Hunkering down at home may indeed be the best option, if it gets here this time.
Frankly, I'm far more interested in making it much less likely to ever get here again.
But hey, you go on perfecting your pedal-powered water bailing machine, and I'll just focus on us maybe not running the ship into a fucking iceberg, m'kay?

Acting like hunkering down would be simple, or just an extended Superbowl weekend is the height of jackassical ignorance.
Ignoring the actual second-, third- and fourth-order follow on results is just plain head-up-the-ass full recto-cranial impaction.

So thanks for dropping by. (And obligingly putting that big "Kick Me!" sign on your back!)
Maybe if you read another post here someday, you could try next time with your eyes open, the batteries for your brain fully charged, and your mouth in neutral.
Just for the novelty.

This was yours, I believe...

The Silence From The Left Is Deafening

Training For Defeat

h/t My Daily Kona

Excellent essay posted over at MDK today, lifted from a powerpoint  piece by Angry Staff Officer:

"We’re far more comfortable talking about potential victory than we are discussing the possibility and – let’s be honest – very strong likelihood of loss. And even when we are discussing loss, we spend more time talking about mitigating risks than we do how to react should the adverse occur. This means that we have a generation of young leaders who learn about loss only when it actually happens. This is decisively the opposite of how we treat everything else in the Army as regards training. We don’t send soldiers into battle without ever having fired their weapon; why should we send commanders to war without at least having some training on how to deal with loss and defeat?
And yes, we do train for some loss: vehicle recovery, casualty evacuation, and breaking contact come to mind. But how well do those test a unit for a full and total breakdown? Or is it perhaps better to not even put that idea into soldiers’ heads? These are the questions we should at least be asking, as leaders."

RTWT.

If you haven't war-gamed every eventuality in your head beforehand, you'll lose yours when Reality happens to your Cunning Plan.

Like it will.

"Plans are worthless, but the planning process is invaluable." - Eisenhower

Said the guy who launched the Normandy invasion, liberated half of Europe, and beat the Wermacht and Luftwaffe all the way back across the Rhine.

Failure to plan is planning to fail.
And if you failed to plan to fail, you'll turn a setback into a rout, possibly in a Darwin Award-winning manner.

Go read the essay, learn the lesson, and take it to heart.

You say you want a revolution...
Okay.

What's your Plan B?
Plan C?
Plan D
(P-A-C-E. Not just a thing. Everything.)

What will it take to regroup and counter-attack?
What provisions have you made for that? Not then, but now?
(Two is one, and one is none. But seven to seventeen is options. - Aesop)
What tactics will you use to become the inflictor of grand strategy on your enemies, instead of the inflictee??

If you have no bench, and no fallback, you have no resiliency, no longevity, and ultimately, no future. Might as well kill yourself now, and save a lot of needless suffering.

Or else, crack the books, think the thoughts, and start planning for how to rebound from not just the enemy's Most Likely Course of Action, but also from his Most Disastrous Course Of Action, for you.

You will not pull this out of your hip pocket, nor from between your butt cheeks, on the day.
Telling yourself "The dog ate my homework, and my head is up my @$$" will not get you a pass, or any sympathy when tragedy befalls you. If you're lucky, you'll just die a quick death, instead of suffering slow, lingering torture. Like watching all your people go first, slowly, and screaming at your epic failure.
And resolving merely to taste bad when they turn the lions loose on you is no way to die.

Some names and campaigns you'd better get damned familiar with:

Washington: New Jersey campaigns
Lee: post-Gettysburg
Fertig: after the fall of Corregidor
Hackworth: Steel My Soldiers' Hearts

Being an insurgent is as easy as being the prop master on a movie:
"You just have to have everything!"

You want easy, get a Che t-shirt, loath yourself, cut off your testicles, pull on a pink pussy hat, and flagellate yourself in public, with a barbed wire cat o' nine tails, you hetero-cis-white patriarchal toxic male mouth-breathing evil bitter bible-clinging and gun-toting fascist pig.

Otherwise, assuming that doesn't sound fun to you, you've got some work to do.
And if you're the guy (or gal) who's too old, beat up, beat down, and broke-dick to kick ass and take names any more, or never could, but you can be One Shot Paddy, or can spy, move contraband supplies, squirrel away food for others, acquire and launder funds (hint: armies don't march on their bellies; even Corporal Nappy got that one wrong. They march on their wallets), run a guerrilla hospital or clinic, or hide people in plain sight, to rest, refit, and regroup, you may be the most vital link in the entire chain.

Do you really think the enemy cares if their battalion gets wiped out in one go by Audie Murphy in an hour, or at 5 guys a day by Simo Häyhä over 100 days??
Those guys are just as dead either way. Don't believe me, ask the victims.

"Welcome to Pineland.
Tag! You're the new Guerrilla Chieftain.
So...whaddya got?"

Nobody ever found out from Giap how many people pushing 300# bicycles it took to win at Dien Bien Phu, or what the ratio was between handlebar-pushers and trigger-pullers (and to be fair, a lot of them played both ways), but the fact is, those guys on the handlebars won that 34-year-long war, from 1941-1975.

"America won on every battlefield in Vietnam from 1965-1973."
"Yes, you did. But that is irrelevant." - press interview with NVA general post-1975

And if you can't learn from other people's victories, and turn that around to help yourself, you'll just be another brief chapter in their exploits. Your tale will end on a headstone.
Or in a ditch.

 

 

Surrender is not an option. Ask Solzhenitsyn how that works out for you.

But retreat damned well better be.

Because if you can't learn to rebound, you're never going to get to dunk.

Lest We Forget



Call me anything, but not late for a party.

We note today the news from multiple sources that, after a long and brave struggle, the brain cancer in his head will finally succeed in removing from office the man the torpid and disgraceful voters of Arizona would not for over three decades in office, Sen. John Sidney McCain III. We salute the brain cancer in this long, valiant, and hard-won effort, and thank it for belatedly doing what mere voting should have done for AZ and the nation at least two decades prior.

We would be remiss in failing to note that at a time when most of his generation shirked, shrunk, and sabotaged their nation, McCain stood up. Whether from lack of imagination, the press of family duty to two prior generations of family service as four-star admirals, or, one can but hope, from some later-suppressed spring of actual patriotism and unmitigated love of country that has long-since run dry, John McCain did the Lord's own work in serving in the military at a time when such service was literally spat upon, and delivered to America's enemies, actual red-flag waving godless murdering communist bastards, exactly what they deserve: 500 pound bundles of flaming jagged steel shrapnel and TNT, exploding right on top of their asses. Anyone doing that deserves recognition and full military honors for the facts, without exception.

Unhappily for him, on exactly one such mission, his jet was blown out of the sky, he was injured and wounded, and he became a guest at one of the most notorious prison torture camps known to living men, the infamous "Hanoi Hilton", where he suffered unspeakable and endless cruelties at the hands of his captors for six years until being repatriated at war's end.

While there may be some varying accounts, and his own admission of finally breaking under the ceaseless torture, there is no doubt that he suffered and bore upon himself such pain and agony of body and soul as killed lesser men at the same place and time. From that day to the present, he's been unable to lift his arms above his shoulders due to the abuse he suffered at the hands of such reprehensible captors. And for this exemplary service and more, the nation owes him and countless others, living, dead, or missing in perpetual limbo, an unspeakably large debt of gratitude. That much is beyond discussion.

Were we there when his casket passed us by, we'd render the hand salute, crisply and with military precision, to honor the flag on his coffin, that sacrifice he gave, and the sort of man who could and did undertake such service to his then-ungrateful and indifferent country.

But we did not undertake this to praise him, but to bury him. (We beseech the fates, please, soon.) So one fine day, his well-filled caisson shall pass, and he'd be laid to rest, and should we have the opportunity, we doubt we'd forego the chance to leave something on his grave site afterwards. A deposit that would not pass for flowers, nor from our heart, but rather from somewhere a foot or two lower down, to betoken what he spent the last 32 years on this earth doing: undercutting and backstabbing his constituents, and crapping on the state of Arizona, his party, his military record, the fallen shipmates who never made it home, his multiple oaths of office, and his country itself, in becoming one of the most petty, vindictive, backstabbing and cruel little pricks ever to befoul the halls of the United States Senate. Which, given the competition, is really saying something.

Everyone will remember with clarity the spiteful remarks, the gratuitously antagonistic and pugnacious demeanor, the outright duplicity, the barely concealed rage, the disloyalty to people who served him and were discard like used Charmin - the former governor of Alaska comes to mind - once he could get nothing more from them. The dictionary entry for "misanthrope" should bear his photographic likeness, and were he to pick up a cat in the dark, we have no doubt he'd pet it the wrong way out of sheer force of habit. We doubt even dogs liked him. Humans, however, will remember too the half-hearted, half-assed, and half-witted bumble for the presidency, inflicting by force of his own lacking humanity and manifest unfitness for the office, the last disastrous regime upon America, such that it could not be dislodged until the 22nd Amendment came to the rescue, just in the nick of time.

And most of all, they will remember the snarl of undisguised contempt he wore perpetually, and the demeanor and personality that gave it to him, and preventing even the most kind-hearted person from ever regarding him with well-deserved pity, rather than the justly earned disgust he's finally enjoyed. That he is the sort of man who would drag himself to cast the deciding vote to thwart the will of the vast majority of Americans in ending the disastrous experiment in full socialism that was ObamaCare, contrary to his party, president, and simple mathematics, amidst the ravages of brain cancer, really tells you more about the man than anything that two thousand days of beating and torture at the hands of inhuman communist bastards ever could. He'll probably enter eternity still more proud of that petty, vindictive, and traitorous act than he will of any day he ever spent in uniform.

And any obituary, come the happy day, cannot but note that the latter more than dwarfs the former.

We will not speak ill of the dead right after the funeral, if only to let the unfortunate family (unfortunate because they are family, and not due to the actual temporal circumstance) grieve in peace for a respectful interval. That's but humanity, and simple common courtesy.

We are not of the tradition that believes in penance and purgatory, yet we cannot but hope that when his earthly days finish, he is accorded an interval in the afterlife replicating to the last maggot-infested ricebowl and last tendon-snapping morning re-education session the days and years he spent in Hòa Lò to repay him for his conduct after his release. How long that would be is not for earthly minds to say, were it to happen, but we are within the realm of reasonableness to say that happen it should.

If some backstory inevitably surfaces days or years hence, trying to pin most of his later years on PTSD, we understand, and even sympathize, but that argues for getting the hell out of the Senate, and seeking treatment, rather than punishing the entire nation for one's own inner demons. Otherwise one is no better than children who murder their parents, and then beg for mercy because they are orphans.

Most people die never knowing how folks really feel about them, because they're not at their memorial service, just the husk. As Hognose's father (Hogfather?) observed at his memorial service last summer, being dead is like being stupid: your friends and family all know about it, but you don't. I would not wish such agnosticism on the subject of today's epistle. So in anticipation of the hastening happy date when the world is finally freed from the actions of Senator McCain (aka Sen. McCrazy) we note for the record that while we cannot hope to attend his impending funeral, rest assured we shall, with the utmost gratitude, heartily approve of it.

Whatever you think of the soon-to-be-departed senator, please learn a lesson from him, and try to live your life so that your passing makes your contemporaries weep and angels sing, and not the other way around.

You don't LIKE a Fustercluck? This is how you GET a fustercluck.

One of our most thoughtful and respected commenters, in response to the last post, wrote the following:

"My thought is that Ebola kills too quickly to ever be a major problem in a country where the medical system is advanced past the 19th century.

Once the symptoms of Ebola take effect, the infected are as easily spotted as an extra on The Walking Dead, and just as easy to avoid.

We in the first world also understand quaratine, and we tend to follow those guidlines.

No one in America is going to be raiding hospitals to grab bloody Ebola laden bandages like the tribal folks did in Africa last time there was a major outbreak.

Healthcare workers in the first world have access to real PPE and they know how to use it.

My level of concern about Ebola is minimal at this point.

That said, it couldn't happen to a better continent."

Let's be clear: Ebola in Kivu, right now, is nowhere near as bad as it was in West Africa in 2014.

Yet.

Now, that said, and with all due respect to the commenter, my reply to that:

I was like that once, too. Right up until I started digging, out of curiosity, in early 2014.
Springtime, IIRC. Then Reality, with a predictability like sunrise, did its thing.

You ought to know better than that, and I refer you to the very articles I wrote on the topic at the time.

TL;DR? Let me help you out with a quick summary.

CDC: We understand this disease and everything about how to deal with it.
Aesop: You know so little about this disease, even the most basic info, that it would be comical if it wasn't life and death tragedy.
Aesop 1, CDC 0.

CDC: Ebola will never get here.
Aesop: Ebola's gonna get here. 
Aesop 2, CDC 0.

CDC: Our screenings will stop it before it gets here.
Aesop: Our screenings are kabuki theatre and boob bait for the Bubbas.
Aesop 3, CDC 0.

CDC:We have protocols in place in case there is a case.
Aesop: We have Jack and Shit, and Jack left town.
Aesop 4, CDC 0.

CDC: We have first-world healthcare.
Aesop: We have our collective pants around our ankles.
Aesop 5, CDC 0.

CDC: We know how to handle this.
Aesop: We haven't the first clue about any of this.
Aesop 6, CDC 0.

CDC: We'll nip it in the bud, and overwhelm it with our superior capabilities.
Aesop: It will be a total fustercluck, and it will spread around the country before you've got your pants on the correct legs, once you get you head out of your tailpipe.
Aesop 7, CDC 0.

Clever readers will spot a trend there.

Multiply that times about four-five months, multiple times daily, and you get the idea.

1) The modern system is exactly the problem with Ebola. One infected reference patient, Patient Zero, walks into your ER lobby with what looks like just another set of flu symptoms.  During flu season. (How helpful for you.) After an hour (or as little as ten minutes, as numerous dead former cab drivers in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone could attest, if only we could dig up their ashes and re-animate them before their former owners died of Ebola infections from giving patients rides to the hospital) in the same lobby as ten other people, you have eight more Ebola patients, and you won't know it for 5-21 days. And they'll infect the triage nurse, the doctor, and the treating RN, unless you have everyone in Ebola-proof gear 24/7/365 pro-actively...
What? Of course neither you nor anyone else does that? Ever? Sux to be you, man.

Then, if you're really lucky, and Triage is on that, they ask the magic questions:
"Have you been exposed to Ebola?" "Oh, no sir."
"Have you been to Africa recently?" "Oh, no sir."

Why do they do that? Because patients lie. I've gotten a knowing laugh from more than a few cops, by pointing out to them that the only places history changes before your eyes is in the ER, and on the witness stand. Why do they lie? Because the enemy gets a vote. Because Ebola in Africa is a death sentence. It means exclusions, quarantines, and slow, agonizing death. So of course they don't have that. Doesn't everybody with the flu bleed out their ass and eyeballs?? And why are they lying little shits at the precise moment the truth matters most to you (and the ER staff, and everybody in the waiting room, and 300M of all your closest friends and neighbors)?

Sorry if letting that cat out of the bag shattered your illusions. It's one of my Super Powers.

2) Once the symptoms of Ebola pop up, they've already exposed people for 1-3 weeks, so it's the 500 contacts you didn't know about that are going to be the next casualties. And they expose 50,000 more contacts you don't know about. And they expose 5,000,000 contacts you didn't know about. And they expose virtually everyone in the continent, and you're still waiting for the first patient's diagnosis to come back from the lab. How does America with a few million to a few hundred million dead sound to you? Another 10% of that crippled for life, and carrying the disease in their own bodies? Wildlife becoming a native virus reservoir on this continent, forever? Coyotes, rats, skunks, bats, whatever.
We still don't even know where in hell it lives in Africa, after looking for decades.

3) Quarantine? You're kidding me, right?
Look up Kaci Hickox.
Then Dr. Craig Spencer.
Then Dr. Nancy Snyderman.

4) Look up how Ebola was handled at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
One case infected two nurses (for life, it appears) despite them scrupulously following the CDC "guidelines" (instead of the actual field-tested MSF/DWB protective gear guidelines), they generated tons of medical waste, lost their ICU and ER wholesale for months, and nearly bankrupted the hospital.
For one case. Then three cases.
Then, they shipped the two surviving nurses to Emory in Atlanta ricky-tick, one of the actual BL-IV hospitals, and virtually shuttered their hospital for months, until the stigma and the story finally went away. Think about that: a cornerstone regional acute care hospital, 968-beds, turned into a virtual ghost town for three people. (Oh, and about a gazillion dollars in indefensible liability suits.)
Their entire ER staff basically told management, "Either close the ER, now, or we all walk forever." The hospital closed that week. They had to; their patient census that week dropped literally to single digits. It was costing them more to turn the lights and AC on for a day than they were making in a month of that.

5) Hospitals here, outside the four BL-IV hospitals actually trained and sort-of staffed to care for a grand continent-wide total of - wait for it - eleven Ebola patients, maximum, are utterly, completely, and massively unprepared to deal with this , as the Dallas example proved in about 21 days, and neither they nor the CDC wants to talk honestly about this.

Neither you, I, nor 2M other RNs nor 1M doctors has the slightest effing CLUE about dealing with this (unless they volunteered in West Africa in 2014) and come the day, they're going to make simple mistakes that'll get them dead, along with thousands to millions of their patients.
The suiting up and decon process takes half an hour each coming and going, requires scrupulous attention to detail at every step, unless you want to die, the gear is hot, a lot hotter than most people can work in for more than a couple of hours, and a "simple" pee break requires the entire 30 minute decon, then another 30 minutes to re-suit. It takes two people who do nothing but suit you up, and another who does nothing but monitor you peeling out of it without effing up and killing yourself. So imagine with me a staffing ratio of four people for every one person who can actually render bedside treatment. And you think the nursing shortage is bad now?
Bear in mind the age of the average nurse in the US is something like 50 years old, not 21 or 22. So you'll have people old enough to be retirees in the military, in the equivalent of MOPP Level IV, which is hotter than hell even in an air-conditioned room,  sweating like a pigs, and doing everything through a fogged up facepiece and two layers of gloves, in a rubber suit, with a virus that only has to get lucky once, with delirious feverish patients oozing blood from every orifice onto everything, and coughing a miasma of bloody sputum into the air. Yeah, that should work.

And then, tell me how many CNAs, EMTs, and PCTs are going to risk their lives for $10-15/hr.?
In someone's effing dreams, baby; hospitals will become ghost towns, just like Texas Health in Dallas did. In minutes and hours, not days. You'll have patients and staff going out the fire escapes and jumping down laundry chutes, mark my words.
In Africa, they make Ebola survivors unpaid help with patient care. They have to help anyways, since they get stoned and shunned in town when they come out afterwards, and it's the only place they can get fed. And anyways, most of the victims are the very people they infected, and who infected them: family, friends, and neighbors. Good luck pulling that off here.

And it requires literal fuck-tons of gear, that your hospital and mine don't have and never will, dedicated facilities that they don't have, HEPA-filtered air- and waste-handling facilities they've never had, and generates even more fuck-tons of BL-IV HazMat waste that no one on the entire continent knows how to or is willing to deal with. The pyres burning it are going to look like Kuwait in 1991, people downwind fleeing the ashes are going to look like villagers fleeing Mongol hordes, and if you try to ship it across state lines, the trucks and trains will be met by smiling national guardsmen, with bayonet-mounted locked-and-loaded rifles and battle-ready tanks, and a serious dose of the ass with you for trying to transship it.

You might get the idea that this is wee bit more important to me.
I repeat, go back to about August 2014, and read through the Ebola posts chronologically through the end of the year. The real liftoff was late September/early October, once Deadly Duncan from Liberia staggered into a Dallas ER. Hilarity ensued. If you think almost jumpstarting a pandemic is funny.

6) Canada has zero BL-IV beds, AFAIK. But hey, free health care! Just like in Ebola clinics in the African bush. Should work out great for them.
Mexico has...wait, you're shitting me, right? Mexico has what you'd expect Mexico to have: a corrupt government, and an overabundance of expendable and illiterate peones. No points for guessing who'll handle clean-up there. Then take the disease home to papi y los niños, Tío Juan and Tía Julietta, y los viejos. Who will cheerfully and unknowingly spread it to all their friends, and pretty soon, you solved the immigration problem by erasing everyone from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego, except maybe some lucky isolated Indians in the deep Amazon rainforest. ¡Viva!

So, in between those two, there are actually 23 BL-IV hospital beds, but cleverly, only 11 are actually staffed to operate anytime, and you can't just call Joe's Nursing Registry in Missoula or Baltimore or Omaha or Atlanta and whistle up more BL-IV-qualified nurses to pick up the open shifts. Bummer.

Oh, and one to three of those 11 beds are reserved by law for the potential military casualties at their neighboring state-of-the-art Infectious Disease (and chem-bio warfare, which of course we swear we don't do ;)  military research center(s) in UT and MT, so there are really, actually only 8 beds.
We have 8 beds for 453,000,000 people (those poor Caribbean islanders from Cuba around to Trinidad can just suck it, like they always do).

Bermuda is looking pretty good, but only if they shoot down incoming aircraft, and sink cruise liners off the continental shelf at the merest suspicion of a pandemic.

So Twelve Ebola cases flood and overflow every available BL-IV treatment bed extant in North America.
Twenty actual Ebola cases will shut down any city in America. Overnight. For months.
Fifty cases, and the USA is Liberia in 2014. Times 1,000.
That's not a guesstimate, those are the hard numbers.

There are 52 active cases in Congo right now, who haven't died. Yet. 80% of them will.
And the survivors will carry virus reservoirs in their bodies functionally forever.
And probably go blind from retinal damage due to disease-related coagulopathy.
(That includes the two nurses from Dallas who contracted it, BTW. You'll notice a deafening silence on that, since 2014.)
God help those people, every one of them.
IMHO, it's a dice roll whether living with Ebola or dying from it are worse.
This disease is from Hell.

In 2014, we had TEN cases here.
We were two Ebola patients away from swamping the lifeboats, and turning any other hospital into Texas Health Presbyterian, which was Tier One disasterpiece theater. They exposed thousands of people, unwittingly. They had the infected guy in once, misdiagnosed it totally, and sent him home. They didn't catch on until he was brought in again in total collapse, and after throwing the entire best the first world had to offer at him, he died anyways. And infected a perfect R-naught of 2 additional victims. Only fate, or a benevolent deity, kept that incident from turning Dallas into Freetown, Liberia in about two weeks, and wiping out their whole ER shift staff that night. Poorly protected clean-up crews in Dallas were pressure-washing the guy's vomit - live, active virus - onto everything within yards of his apartment in suburban Dallas, the day after it happened. Because illegal aliens with a fourth-grade education are the front line in that clean-up, hired by companies with no more sense than God gave a jackass about Hazmat gear, or proper Ebola precautions. In NYFC, they were handling stuff with no PPE whatsoever. Hand to God on that.
Sleep tight, America.

Anyone in health care who isn't concerned whenever Ebola crops up, simply and respectfully doesn't know what the hell they're talking about.

Let's talk turkey on my streetcorner: At the time, in 2014, a busy day on this site was maybe 1K hits/day. (It's now closer to 5-6K. Thanks, folks, sincerely. That and $5 and I can get iced coffee at Starbuck's).
When I warned, after looking at what was happening, that Ebola was going to hit us, I was getting maybe 1500.
The heads of the CDC and Infectious Disease, with five more degrees than I have, nine more letters after their titles, and 87 research papers between them, assured us all most sincerely that that could never happen.
Then the late Mr. Duncan showed up, almost on cue.
After it did get here, I was suddenly getting 5K hits an hour.
I yell because I care.

I want a head of the CDC who's a goddam DOCTOR, not an idiot with a medical license giving the retarded president and his fucktarded staff of sycophants a tongue bath every day.

I want the liaison and advisory person at the White House to be someone who groks hard science, not a damage control PR flak who couldn't find his ass with both hands, a map, and a rearview mirror.

I want a president with the wits to order a halt on all flights and travelers in and out of any country with an active outbreak, except mercy shipments and returns to an affected area, and I want them to innundate that affected area with every possible resource, early, when it will work and do some good, not half-ass this until it fails and Ebola gets here. And I want him arm-twisting every other first-world country for the same damned thing until they either yield, or their shoulders pop out of joint, if necessary. (In Trump's case, I think he'd literally do that, and relish the screams. Whereas Obozo was actually rooting for a pandemic, to kill Whitey.)

I want anyone returning from such an area to expect a mandatory medical quarantine, enforceable at gunpoint if necessary, in actual total isolation, until they're medically cleared. That's an actual 40 days with Ebola, just like the meaning of the historical root of the word, not just 7 days, or 14, or 21. And sure as hell not a mere ear-temp check by a fat stupid TSA bastard who dropped out in the 4th grade. That rule is written in the blood of dead medical people in Spain. It's been around since the Middle Ages and bubonic plague, and anyone waving their civil rights about that reality should be not just smacked in the mouth, they should be taken out and shot as a danger to civilization and for crimes against humanity.

And that's not hyperbole for grins, I mean that absolutely literally, and the execution should be televised worldwide, on live TV, mandatorily carried on every broadcast and cable channel we can compel including Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel. This is THAT fucking serious.

I want guidelines based on what actually works, drawing on MSF's work in fighting the disease there, not on some asshole bureaucrat's ideas in a D.C. swivel chair here, and without one single minute in hazmat gear.

I want hospitals to not just paper this over with a page in their bullshit contingency manual for JCAHO certification, but to designate, by mutual agreement, which hospital will be the one, sole receiving facility in a given major county or state. That would be one hospital in each state, and one more hospital in any city with over 1M inhabitants. I don't think that's asking for too much.

I want no-bullshit, come-to-Jesus full dress rehearsals in full gear, for 72 hours non-stop, annually at every one of those designated hospitals, and the primary EMS agencies, including every ward and floor from the ER to the hospital morgue, so that when they get a real Ebola victim, they don't all loose their collective shit, kill half their staff and the surrounding city, and slaughter millions of people because this was all "too hard". I want those procedures vetted and supervised initially and audited annually by the experts at CDC and the four actual BL-IV hospitals who actually do it right, 24/7/365, because they have to do so if they want to stay alive. Disseminate that expertise to where it will save lives, instead of just look good on a resume.
That's the difference between medicine, and marketing.

And while it's happening at the designated hospitals, I want mandatory screening at every other hospital in the country required to be doing it too, by triaging every patient and every visitor in full gear, and segregating anyone who would meet Ebola criteria outside, in dedicated quarantine tents, so as not to unwittingly infect and expose the entire staff, hospital, and every visitor before they know whether you've got Ebola or the flu.

If that's too hard, I'd tell them that a license to operate a hospital is a grant, not a guarantee, and they can always go into the hotel business instead. Dealer's choice: they either staff it, fund it, and practice it out of their own pocket, every damned year, or they can close and completely shut down for those three days, and eat the loss of revenue. I'd also tell them they won't be reimbursed for any federally insured patients ever again, like veterans or Medicare, just to drive the point well home. Welcome to capitalism, baby. Play ball with us, or get the bat up your back end.

I'm hoping maybe this time people will pull their collective heads out of their asses, step it up, and we won't have to deal with it in Dallas, because we wiped it out in Kivu.

Otherwise, just like in 2014, Ebola walks in the ER door hereabouts, and I walk out.
Same effing day. (See if I'm not the only one, either.)
I like my job, and I'm damned good at it, but it's not a suicide pact with Florence Nightengale, and I can't spend the money if I'm dead, or infected for life, or left blind, or twenty other side effects.
Fuck. That.
I'll take my chances behind barbed wire that I control, at that point.

I know what we can handle, and how we can handle it.
And what we cannot.
And Ebola, here, frankly scares the shit out of me.

Because we can't handle it.
Not in 2014, and not now.
And Hope ain't a plan.
But that, and the soapbox, is all I've got at the moment.

I hope not having an incompetent America-hating illegal alien muslim in the White House will be enough this time to turn the rudder before we hit the iceberg.

We can stop 2014 from happening again, or God forbid, happening worse this time around.
But the first step to doing that, is wanting to.
It's four years later, and apart from a few government staff changes, the only difference now is it's four years later.

I repeat for emphasis, 2018 isn't 2014, yet.
I hope it never gets there, or anywhere close. ("Hear me, God!")
I said then, and repeated recently, I don't want to be doing the sportscast blog on the end of humanity, or even "only" a few million dead people in a "small" pandemic. I really, really, don't.

But if we can't face the truth, we can't begin to deal with it.
So now you know different.
What you do with that knowledge is your business.

This is what won me the Fucking Ray Of Sunshine Award for 2014.
I'd really rather not add a cluster to that ribbon.




And hey, score one for Serendipity:
Look who made the papers today! JUSTICE!!!!!!!!!!!
This I take as proof that God listens, and watches. He almost never answers back, but every so often, He gives the world a little surreptitious wink.

Ebola Meter

Just checking in on this one a week further on: nothing earth-shattering.
The Wiki site tally was last updated four days ago.
Things to note:

Bad News:

It's still a thing.

From outbreak onset on 8/1, there were 20 deaths originally (which is how they cleverly deduced it was Ebola).
It took another 14 days to get to 40 deaths.
It's only taken another 6 days to get to 20 more.
IOW, it's tracking with exponential spread quite nicely.

The contacts have gone from 900 on 8/3, to over 2400 now as of 8/20.
This, in a rural war-torn area teeming with 1M displaced refugees in sprawling camps, doesn't bode well for getting a handle on this anytime soon.

And as usual, it's killing the critically short ranks of health care workers there disproportionately, which means they haven't got precautions and sufficient protective apparel anywhere near in place yet.

And the 45 new confirmed cases mainly came from among those in the "suspected" category.

The case tally and lethality is bouncing around, partly because some people are being ruled out, partly because you're always dealing with people who take their shoes off to count above ten, and partly because increasing numbers of victims makes some governmental ministries there look bad. It is what it is.
Reported Ebola-attributed deaths, however, have just about exactly tripled in three weeks.

This isn't new, it's just exactly as gloomy as it looked on first glance.

Good News:

It hasn't jumped to someplace disastrous, like Kinshasa (pop. 13M), Luanda (pop. 6M), or Nairobi (pop. 3.5M). 
Yet.

Also, the number of "suspected" cases tally has actually diminished, exactly as "confirmed" cases have ballooned, so either they're getting testing done more rapidly (very good), or more likely, the probables simply died, changing their status via pathology exams (very bad). You can get odds on which is likelier.

And at 111 cases, it's at Level 7 (out of 34) on the Pandemic Meter.

Better News:

No one with Ebola has hopped onto a flight to Cairo, Riyadh, Rome, London, Rio, NYFC, or Atlanta.
That we know of.

He's Alive?! FIRE THE SONOFABITCH!

Apparently not sitting in a black hood in some non-descript warehouse since January 2017, and swinging back at his boss' spot-on observations of his feckless dithering non-management and malfeasance in office, Jeffie Sessions has finally been firebombed out of hiding by the White House:

(THE SWAMP)“While I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,” Sessions said. “I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action. However, no nation has a more talented, more dedicated group of law enforcement investigators and prosecutors than the United States.” Sessions said.

"While I'm Attorney General..."? That's easily fixed, Jeffie, and it must needs be, and right quickly.

For the AG to spew that sort of puerile pablum in response to the blisteringly accurate critique of his non-presence as AG for nearly two years is to show that Sessions hasn't so much as read one newspaper, let alone noted the multiple, serial, institutional levels of treason going on in his department, 24/7/365, after he was sworn in, let alone for years beforehand.

Anyone so cluelessly unaware of what even the NYSlimes has cheerfully printed on the front page for two years is incompetent, senile, and manifestly unfit for office.

Fire the sonofabitch, Mr. President.
He's insubordinate, incompetent, and criminally stupid.

Don't do it at some cut-rate half-assed Saturday Night Massacre, either.
Do it on Monday morning, at 9AM, in the Press Briefing Room, tell the press he's been fired for inaction, incompetence, and insubordination to the Chief Executive, explain that such underperformance in a time of ongoing treason will not be tolerated another minute longer, introduce his replacement as AG, drop the mic, and walk out of the room like a m*****f*****g boss.

It's the D.C. alternative to taking Fredo Sessions out for solo boat ride, and it's long overdue.

Then fire Obozo-holdover Rosenswine.
Terminate the employment of everyone else hired at the agency from January 20, 2009 until January 20, 2017, and anyone hired by those hires during that period or afterwards.
Give them 2 minutes to surrender their credentials, and GTFO of the building, escorted by security officers. If there's anyone who you want to keep, subject them to a brand new proctological background examination before returning them to their posts.

Tell them their offices, computers, etc, are locked, and will be inventoried, and any personal mementos shipped to them via USPS after the IG's office goes through them.
Revoke the security clearances of everyone not actively employed and serving, subject to re-issuance as necessary for any call-back consulting, and anyone holding one after leaving office will be subject to annual audit and review, otherwise when you go, the clearance goes too. No exceptions, no problems. A clearance is for the government's convenience, not your private sinecure to peddle on K Street.

Tell Gormless Jeffie's replacement he has fifteen minutes to unplug the Mueller Special Counsel as the illegal and inherently biased witchhunt it's always been, and if he balks, fire that sonofabitch too. Keep firing people until someone with their head out of their ass buckles into the chair, and starts running the Justice Department with the focus on JUSTICE, rather than giving a daily tongue bath to the Obozo legacy, and the Clinton Family Crime Syndicate.

There was no place for that in America even in  2009, and there's sure as hell no place for it now.

Then conference call the US Attorney for Washington D.C., and Director Wray at FBI, tell them to open up a real investigation into the former Secretary of State's corruption, mishandling of classified information, destruction of evidence, and lying under oath, or the coroner's wagons and moving vans will be showing up at the Hoover Building by lunchtime, with a list of suddenly former employees, and the grand prize for any further footdragging will be a trip in leg irons and an orange jumpsuit to federal prison in custody of the U.S. Marshals not later than close of business.

It's time to settle all outstanding business, and let the country get on with itself.


When you're filling positions, just a suggestion, but I hear Jason Chaffetz and Trey Gowdy have been stuck in pretty toothless congressional jobs with no power to enforce the law (funny how that whole separation-of-powers thing works, huh guys?), but I understand they're both becoming available in the very near future. And last I looked, nobody who's anybody tells the President "No" when they're told the country needs them. Call it the Patriot's $#!^ Test.

Hell, I'll bet something could be found that would even get Alan Dershowitz to take a DoJ post. Good luck to the Left trying to gainsay that nomination; they'd be laughed out of town in tar and feathers, on railroad rails.

Oh, and F**K Congress, and any of those sonsabitches who want to try and make political hay out of getting rid of the political animals at DoJ.

Pretty it up any way you like, but send word to Bitch McConjob and Quisling Ryan that anyone opening their yaps about this can count on the president making weekly trips to their state or district to publicly endorse their opponents, and that any survivors of that will get the full Kiss Of Death from him, in public, right on the lips, at the next State Of The Union, on live TV, and that anything they want, they can stand on a street corner with a tin cup to raise funds for, for the next six years.

Grahamnesty is a nobody on steroids; cancer is finally winning a heroic and long-overdue battle with McCrazy; and Senate Judiciary Chairman Grassley has all but said Sessions' replacement would be rapidly confirmed and sworn in. He, at least, can tell which way the winds are blowing in DC for the next six years, even if he should have gotten to that conclusion via direction from an inner moral compass, and not a windvane.

The Democrats will shriek and howl, but that's different from their two-year-long garment-rending, bedwetting, and feces flinging non-stop antics since 8PM EST November the 8th, 2016...how, exactly?

They howl, because they know what happens five seconds after doddering swamp salamander Prince Jeffie the Incompetent is deposed: subpoenas, indictments, grand juries, and jail terms, for pretty much everyone from Obozo to every guy who emptied the wastebaskets at DoJ and FBI since 2009, along with the entire Borgia Clinton Clan.

Maybe we can finally, at long last, end the tragic string of 17 38 53 197 suspicious but entirely coincidental and circumstantial deaths attributed to anyone who's ever crossed Fat Bill and Lying Shrillary, going back 40 years, and stop the dreaded Arkansas Flu from ever taking another innocent life.

And that prospect, followed by long prison terms - even in ClubFed minimum security lockups for the best and brightest - scares the living hell out of all of them.

"If that asshole wins, it means all our necks are in nooses!" -Shrillary, 2016 campaign trail

Let it be so, by all that's just and right in the universe.

Because they know that it will undo, in a season, twenty-five years of effort to subvert the Pentagon, DoD, DoJ, FBI, CIA, NSA, the IRS, and countless other governmental bastions, and sweep their minions onto the street and into prison, and they'll become the Republicans in 1974, if not the Nazi Party in Germany in 1946.

It strikes at the core motivation, and the driving ambition of their petty, pathetic little existences:

It will take them out of power, and make it impossible for them to re-acquire it, for decades, and for some, forever.

On that basis alone, it's a lemon worth the squeeze, no matter what predictions of dire consequences and how much panty-twisting it wrings upon the unhinged Leftardian hordes of frothing-mad moonbats. It's totally worth it: just do it. Grab them by the pussy.

Don't stop the bloodletting until it's running bridle-deep from Lafayette Park to Langley.

DRAIN.
THE.
SWAMP.

A Few Not-So-Random Thoughts

Like ants at a picnic, when I write a thoughtful post, oh, the derp.
(Not naming names or pointing fingers; just check to make sure you didn't roll in it, or wipe yourself off, if it applies. If not, drive on.)

There are doubtless an uncounted number of well meaning folks (along with some not-so-bright), who want to "get on" with "getting it on", despite some rather conspicuous lack of necessities on Team Freedom's side of the ledger.


So for the two hundredth time, a few reminders:

I) It ain't time to switch from ballots to bullets. Yet.

II) When it is time, you won't need me (or anyone else) to clue you in to that reality.
(If someone does need that, come the day, they're too many decks below the hole in the hull to save. Walk away with a clear conscience. If anyone floats to the surface afterwards, you can circle back and pick them out of the water.)

III) If you're not in combat, you're improving your position.
Dig, wire, mine, train.
This is why the indispensable personal sidearm for 3000 years of military history has been the personal shovel.

Too metaphorical for some folks?
Let's break it down for you then.

1) Are your teeth all fixed?
2) What's your best time for a three mile run? How many push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups can you do? Could you max a military PFT/PRT? Why TF not?
3) How much can you ruck?
4) How far?
5) How fast?
6) What's the BZO on your primary weapon?
7) How many pairs of broken-in boots do you have? And how many pairs of extra socks?
8) Got your spare eyeglasses and prescription meds sorted out?
9) Are your will, finances, and legal affairs in pristine order? Got a cash stash? Work may be scarce for a few years...
10) How much medical training do you have in your head (the only place it'll do you any good), and how much equipment and expendable supplies do you have handy to support your potential needs? E.g.: you have four limbs and two lungs, and bullets frequently both enter and exit in different places: so how many tourniquets do you have, and how many chest seals, and how many battle dressings?
11) Got a real no-$#!^ gas mask handy (not some relic from the flea market)?
12) Got Kevlar? Plates? Phone books and floor tiles duct-taped together? Something??
13) We've talked about bandaids. What's the status on your beans?
14) Bullets?
15) Got comms?
16) Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency?
17)  How's your Tier One gear plan looking?
18) Tier Two?
19) Tier Three?
20) What's the status on Fort Apache?
21) What's your actual Convoy Plan to get from wherever you are, to there, if you need to?
22) What IPB (look it up - wait, let me help you out) have you done?
23) Who's the enemy in your area? Not generically, I want names, Order of Battle, organization, maps, plans, the whole effing enchilada, or else you don't know.
{Hint: it's probably enemies, as in multi-focal free-for-all, not a binary Us/Them game. Got Area Study?. [Second Hint: You want Appendix G there.] WTF not?? You can't tell the players without a program.}
24) Okay troop, you're barely deployable at this point, but tell me, what are those above twenty-three answers for the rest of your people? Do you have them locked-on too??
25) You do have people, plural, underlined, right? You didn't think you were going to be An Army Of One??

And that's a bare-bones skeletonized pre-inspection deployment checklist.
The detailed version looks like twenty seven company-grade officers and SNCOs crawling in your mouth and walking through all the way to the other end of your alimentary canal, to literally make sure you've got your $#!^ squared away.

Everything from your extra socks and underwear, to no holes in your sleeping bag, spare parts for the armory and cleaning kits for every rifle, a f**kton of spare batteries, and heaven knows how many cans of gas, tubes of toothpaste, and rolls of toilet paper, the supplies for the first re-supply wave, the second, the third, who to call when the tire's flat, where the spare is, and how many extra spark plugs and radiator caps you'll bring in case you lose one. And that's the most cursory glimpse of what we're talking about.

Hence the phrase, written in blood,

Amateurs talk tactics; professionals talk logistics.

The master plan for D-Day looked like the 2016 Federal register stacked in a pile.
the sub-unit plans were another pile, each.

And even with all that, it damned near turned into a total $#!^-show, and Ike was ready to cancel it, then ready to accept responsibility for it failing, then it worked anyways and a million and one things STILL went wrong.

What...you thought you were just going to grab a rifle and a bandolier and head out the front door?

Sh'yeah, when monkeys fly outta your butt, that might work.

It's nice if, after nailing that down, you can manage a coherent four-man patrol, because you know the Five Paragraph Order format cold. (It might help, at that point, to have three other guys. Just saying.)
But what are they going to eat on Day Two?
Where will they crap on the first night?
And if you forgot that, who's going to treat their dysentery on Day Three?
Where's your log train, your medical evac, and twenty-seven million other things you didn't think about, plan for, or lock down cold, as if this stuff hadn't been a thing since before the Babylonians, except you never learned that, because you never served, or never made it (mentally) above PFC, and you're just a literal babe in the woods?

If, God forbid - and I mean that sincerely and literally - things go from grim to actually Sporty, in your lifetime, on your home turf, exactly what army are you planning to pull whole right out of your fourth point of contact to deal with things then?

I get around, I talk to people, and the internet is everywhere.
I not only haven't seen anyone with the 101st effing Airborne Division anyplace, I haven't even seen Easy Company. I doubt most folks could scrape up even a fully-manned two-man foxhole, most days.

A thousand, even a million, or even (in your wildest fantasies) ten million individuals are not an army.
They're not even a coherent flash mob.

Now see if you can figure out why, along with PT, weapons skills, and tactics, some of those good folks in the upper right column are constantly on about reconnaissance, intelligence, organization, auxiliary, underground, and logistics, Logistics, LOGISTICS!!

If you can't shoot and move and communicate, in coherent groups, you can't operate, and you won't be a mobility kill, you'll be a stupidity kill.

"The Defense Department regrets to inform you that

your sons are dead because they were STUPID!"

 

Have that classic movie line put on a dogtag, and carry it on your neck chain with the real one, so when they nail together the little cross to mark your final resting space, you have an epitaph all ready for the occasion.

 

If we're anywhere like as close to things getting serious as some people evidently lust for, isn't it time for you to get serious about getting ready for that day?

 

Or did you just figure you'll just order a bucket of Dehydrated Airborne Division from Wise Company after the balloon goes up? Y'know, like you can now.

 

yeah, that'll work...NOT!

A little less enthusiasm, and a helluva lot more preparation, might be indicated at this point in the discussion.

 

I went through a CG inspection, two floats, and three deployments - two of them intercontinental, and four major training exercises with stone-cold professionals, who've been doing this stuff for eighty friggin' years, and it was still an unmitigated clusterf**k much of the time, every time.

 

And you think you're just going to free-lance that on the fly, and out of your tailpipe?

A line frequently uttered by those who were there in reference to A-stan and the Sandbox comes to mind:

 

"Yeah, we saw a lot of that at the beginning. The stupid ones died early, and fast."

 

Try not to let that be the summation of your life at the wake.

Meet The Pro-Death Party

Which party wants the government to pay for your mother to kill you in the womb?
And isn't happy until every woman has an abortion, and shrieks at the possibility that anyone might make that more rare?

Which party has, under that same banner, sponsored a genocide of millions that would make the lightweight socialists of history, from Berlin, Moscow, and Beijing, blush at their own comparatively half-hearted efforts?

Which party used that mechanism to wipe out an entire generation of minority children, by express design, going back a century and more?

If you survive that gamut, which party engineered it so that as a child, you'll be in the only place in America where no good guys there have guns, or hardly ever, and every whackjob who knows this, and takes a shot at you advances the anti-gun agenda of that same party?

When that happens, again and again and again, which party will have their PR Department (that would be ABCNNBCBS) cover their deathsploits in an orgy of excess, and fame beyond the dreams of rock stars, 24/7/forever, while the political operatives of that party caper a jig in your still-warm blood?

If they still haven't knocked you off after that, which party wants you to take your life in your hands every time you leave your house, to visit the big city, or even go jogging in a quiet Iowa neighborhood, because they let in 30M illegal aliens?

Which party went into full apoplexy when the opposition candidate correctly pointed out that we were being inundated by a generation-long flood of exactly those same murdering illegal aliens?

Which party tried to boost the importation of terrorist cells from the most disreputable Turd-World Shitholias and Trashcanistans extant, so they could jihad you into dhimmitude?

And when those attempts to whack you fail, which party wants to see to it that "no American, anywhere, has a semi-automatic firearm in their possession", despite history, common sense, and the Bill of Rights standing squarely in their way to block that?

Which party wants cops dead, while ignoring and obfuscating the identity of the perpetrators of open warfare in Chicago that literally dwarfs the body count of Iraq and Afghanistan during a full-on war?

Which party demonizes people who defend themselves against thugs like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, knowing that those kinds of criminals prey overwhelmingly on the residents of ghetto  and barrio, while they themselves sit safely behind the walls of gated communities, with private armed bodyguards, frequently at taxpayer expense?

Which party went full batsh*t crazy, and has done nothing but amplify their feces-flinging frenzy for nearly two solid years, because they lost an election, and immediately, repetitively, and reflexively speaks openly and seriously about murdering the victor of that election?

Which party has organized riots, and threatens forthrightly to kill the supporters of that president, time and time and time again?

Which party has an outright deranged lunatic hired by the national Birdcage Liner Of Record, who not only has done but continues to unashamedly muse about killing white people, despite the fact that if not for almost overwhelmingly white American men, she'd be a slave under one of the most repressive regimes on the planet?

Which party  has nearly every mass murderer in recent history belonged to?

Which party had one of their most rabid supporters try to gun down an entire baseball field full of congressmen from the opposition?

Which party got amnesia about that incident so fast it gave you whiplash to watch it?

And if they still haven't succeeded in knocking you off by that point, which party rammed through the most blatantly totalitarian grab of private industry in modern history, complete with death panels, to make sure you didn't live to a ripe old age if they had their way?

The answer, in every case, is the Death Party.

If you're under the age of 45, they've been gunning for you your entire life.
If you're black, yellow, or brown, they've been gunning for you since 1775.
They protected slavery, imprisoned Japanese American citizens, destroyed the black family, devastated multiple cities - Chicongo, Detroitistan, Baltimore, Newark, and many, many more - and they want to bring that experience to you wherever you are in America.

And they want to make sure that only the military and the police have guns.
Stop me if you've heard this one:

But that little Austrian guy only whacked 11,000,000 people.
Uncle Joe probably only accounted for 30,000,000.
The Chairman knocked off 80,000,000.

But the party I'm talking about wants to improve on the tally of those previous pikers.

Tell them to go to hell.

Because the day may come when you have to punch that ticket yourself.

Don't worry though: that's been done before too.

It worked as easy as falling out of a helicopter.