The Latest Larry Correia Rant

 DO I UNFAIRLY PAINT THE LEFT WITH A BROAD BRUSH?

 ...I’m talking about YOU. Regular people. Voters. The guy next door. The masses on the internet. Just average joes. Democrats. Libs. Whatever you call yourself. Anybody who identifies as being on the left.

When your leaders pick a narrative, you drink that Kool-Aid. Even if it’s shit flavored Kool-Aid, most of you smile and tell us it’s the best fucking Kool-Aid you’ve ever tasted. It’s milk from the teat of a magic cherry flavored Unicorn. Nope. It’s shit. You all know it’s shit. But you go along with the narrative anyway.

When the insane progs among you lie their asses off, I’m talking blatant, easily disproven, painfully ham-fisted, fucking LIES… Do you call them out? Do you say, “hang on guys, that’s a little nuts”. Because if you do, the rest of us sure as fuck don’t ever see it. Pick a topic, any topic. It’s always the same.

Read the whole thing. When I got to that part, though, I laughed out loud, woke Mrs. Drang up from her  migraine-induced snooze, and further disturbed her by reading the entire thing out loud. She hasn't objected, so I guess she agrees. Either that. or she has Plans for tonight while I'm sleeping. 

(Actually, i know she agrees because she started talking Seattle politics...)

LOL!

 Seen on Gab:

I'm on Gab as @DW_Drang, some imposter 😛 was already using "Drang".

A Boot, Stomping On A Human Face..

 So Twitter has initiated a purge against President Trump and anyone that doesn't want to see him die in  fire. 

Many of whom have jumped to the Twitter rival, Parler. 

Which is hosted on Amazon Web Services.

Which is shutting it down until Parler starts censoring speech in accordance with the wishes of the technocratic oligarchs. 

Who constitute a kakocracy.

So, fine, here we go to Gab. Which hosts it's own content. 

Might be worth reminding folks...

 ...if they can do it to Trump, they'll do it to you without even a first thought, let alone a second.

Mozilla, developers of Firefox: 'We need more than deplatforming'

News of the Obscure

 Just deleted my Twitter account.

Stopped using Facebook long ago, and the only reason I don't ditch Blogger is that I'm not quite ready to completely give up the blog, but the alternatives I know of all are all for pay. I see no reason to shell out $$$ for a non-monetized blog as, well, obscure as this one. (Or even ¢¢¢.)

Unfortunately, if you want a smart phone these days, you options are to get involved with one of two evil Commifornia Big Tech outfits. 

Somebody -- Kevin Baker at Gun Blogger Rendezvous, maybe -- had a t-shirt that was lamenting to the effect of having been a science fiction fan all his life, and getting the dark dystopian future of his teen aged years.

Heinlein's Crazy Years aren't even fully launched yet, and I'm already tired of them.

#MaidenGate

UPDATE: As of 1900 hours PST L's Twitter account @SomeBitchIKnow has been suspended for "violating the Twitter rules." Apparently, her quip about "Rumors of my death should be regarded as suspicious unless they involve a jet ski" were a cry for help.

 "L", (Twitter user @SomeBitchIKnow; homepage here. Her internet handle is some variation on that across platforms) has done some digging and learned that there was a concerted, organized effort across the nation to harvest votes by casting fraudulent second ballots in the maiden name of married women.

#MaidenGate is a viral hashtag uncovering a peculiar type of abuse in our elections. Some married women vote in one state, under their current name, while someone—a political predator—casts a vote in that same state or a state which the woman previously lived under a previous or maiden name. 

This same technique may affect adopted persons, the divorced, people who changed their names and/or transgendered persons. 

Here is L's #MaidenGate page. That page goes to a list of how to check your voter registration and ballot status in every state. (Note: Link is set to open in a new window. I am currently using the Brave browser, which does not like this page; it hangs up, and "runs out of memory." Works in Chrome, though.)

All those calls and texts Mrs. Drang was getting to check if  she was voting...? (By the way. the joke was on them: She is registered to vote under her maiden name...)

You can also use these to check voting status if you have moved a lot, but 

We are not looking for individuals who have registrations in multiple states. That’s a problem but not this problem. We are not even looking for individuals who are registered multiple times in the same state. Again, a problem but not the scope of this problem. We are looking for individuals who voted in this election (or chose not to) but also had another vote cast in a previous legal name of theirs at an address they previously occupied.

For this specific issue, if you determine that you have(or someone you know has) been a victim:

  ➡ What you must provide in order to file a complaint:

• Screenshot proof of where you currently are registered to vote and did you vote in this election
• Screenshot proof of your identity (be it under your name or a past name) registration in a place you no longer reside; and that a ballot was cast.
• You may be asked for a copy of your current identification or driver’s license 

If you are able to provide this evidence, you’ll be asked to sign an affidavit, under penalty of perjury, attesting that you believe someone committed a crime against you and that you, yourself, did not commit this voter fraud

IF YOU DISCOVER THAT YOU OR SOMEONE YOU LOVE IS A VICTIM: 

Please, email stopthesteal@protonmail.com 

 

 

Another Update, 09/17

 SO, now that we're sharing our smoke with the rest of the country...

...here's what it looks like in front of Schloss Drang right now:

©2020, D.W.Drang & The Cluemeter

So we thought it was going to clear by today. Turns out that what rain we got is not at high enough altitudes to do the trick, and more importantly, was not accompanied by winds strong enough to do it.

Despite that nearly "zero-zero" visibility at surface level, air quality as reported by WA Air Quality Monitoring and the Washington Smoke Blog has improved from "Hazardous" to "merely" "Unhealthy" or even "Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups" throughout much of the state. 

Huzzah, and all that.

The WA Smoke Blog has several blogposts over the past few days that review the data, and also reports that Seattle has had some of the worst air quality in the world the last week or so.

I believe that we need to emphasize that, yes, this is the worst air quality on record, but the record goes back a whopping 20 years, so several grains of salt may be in order.

Cliff Mass is a meteorologist, and professor of meteorology at the University of Washington*. He has a blog: Cliff Mass Weather Blog. The topic of his post for the day is The Extraordinary Longevity of Wildfire Smoke. Good one, accompanied by easy to understand maps.

Yesterday he had The End is in Sight which included charts and graphs that might be a little, um, esoteric. (And a satellite photo which predicted the least coast being smoky.)

By the way, in case the whole COVID issue hasn't convinced anyone that "the models" are problematic, several of Professor Mass' blog posts this week have discussed why "the models" have failed to predict exactly what the hell is going on with this wildfire smoke with anything that comes close to accuracy, so maybe it's time we all realized that "the models" require a large enough dose of salt to be hazardous to our blood pressure...

...Among other things, many or most weather forecasting models fail to take the fact that wildfire smoke will reflect solar radiation, resulting in temperatures that are 20-30 degrees cooler than the forecasts produce.

*You may have heard of Professor Mass because he posted a blog post about the antifa domestic terrorist's rampage in Seattle, comparing one particular night's activities to Kristallnacht. This got him "cancelled". Otherwise respectable local journalists have declared that one should "never use a Nazi comparison". No matter how apt. And, presumably, especially if the subject is activity approved by the left.

The cancellation was literal, BTW, as he had a show on the local NPR station talking about the science of weather. "Had" being the operative word. He was already on thin ice due to a tendency to explain how and why the topic of conversation is not, in fact, caused by anthropogenic climate change.

Pandemic Panic Ponders

Haven't posted as much as I might, for a variety of reasons.

For one thing Bobbi and the guys at Powerline are tracking my thoughts pretty closely, and probably more eloquently than I could.

When it comes to science, I have found Spin, Strangeness, Charm and Watts Up With That? to be excellent sources; the former, especially, posts daily (if not more often) on news reports put of Europe, translated into English, with clear explanations of the science and medicine involved, with a minimum of hysteria.


OldNFO published this meme yesterday:

There is a lot we still don't know about SARS-CoV2 and COVID19. A lot of that gets lost in the squabbling surrounding it.

How virulent is it? What simple countermeasures are effective? Are the asymptomatic contagious? are there risk factors beyond the obvious?

If you find yourself hoping people die because they identify it as coming from China, then you're an idiot and I don't care for your opinion. If you screeched because the president shut down air travel from China and then kept screeching that he was overreacting, and pivoted immediately to he wasn't doing enough then you're an idiot and I don't care what your opinion is.

It is my opinion that after a 2 or 3 week lockdown we could have started re-opening with precautions, and we would be a lot better off, because people would still be working, the economy wouldn't be tanking, and, based on the experience in certain places that did not go full "Stay in your homes or else" mode, the disease "profile" would look little different.

I am not an epidemiologist. I admit I could be wrong. But when you look into the backgrounds of the "experts", there's a lot to question there.

The Brit that claimed the USA would have 2,000,000 deaths  was not only grossly mistaken, but he was responsible for several past public health related over-reactions on the part of Her Majesty's Government. (Not to mention having his married lover visit him from across town after publicly scolding Brits to stay indoors...)

Several years ago Dr Fauci responded to legislation banning certain virological research by funneling money to... a Chinese lab in Wuhan China. (I can actually follow the reasoning here. The research involved testing certain mutations to viruses to study responses. and treatments, so the research was important. But...)

As for government reaction...

Releasing felons from prison and arresting law abiding citizens for going outside? No wonder they want 100% mail-in ballots!

I Feel Dumber

I haven't been blogging as much about Pandemic Panic as I might have been because I found that Bobbi has been doing a good job of explaining some issues that my own thoughts were, shall we say, less than fully developed.

F'r instance, in Week Two Of Taking It Seriously, fresh off the Intertubes, she discusses the supply chain.

Which was timely, because I happened to get up a little early today, and walked in on Mrs. Drang while she was waking up and feeding cats and watching morning TV.

Where the talking heads were interrogating the Surgeon General of the United States about why in the world the President's Phone and Pen cannot just magically make millions of surgical masks and nitrile gloves appear in hospitals and clinics. "But it's been days since the Defense Production Act was 'invoked', why are there still shortages of Personal Protective Equipment?"

Oy.

I am not a logisitician, I did not stay at a Holiday In express last night, I do not play a logistician on TV...

...But I spent 20 years on the Army, and, as a Marine General said "Amateurs talk about tactics, but Professionals study logistics." (Quotes on logistics on this page go back to the American Revolution.)

Just because the President has authorized the DPA, does not mean that suddenly the factories are cranking these things out 24/7.

Assuming that the factories aren't already running 24/7, they have to find trained staff to run three shifts. They have to find the material. The material has to get to the factory. Workers have to be paid among other Human Resources actions, they have to be fed, the facilities have to be maintained, and kept secure.

And the finished product has to get to warehouses, or in some cases directly to the consumer. Which means trucks, mostly, which have to be maintained and fueled, and the drivers fed and paid and...

You can surge some of that. If you have trained personnel, facilities, and materials available you can go to an emergency schedule while the bean counters and paper shufflers sort out the details.

(Did I ever mention that during college I worked a couple of summers on an assembly line at one of the Big 3?)

If you have a facility that can be repurposed -- you make widgets and now there's a need for framastans -- it takes time to retool, and to ensure your staff know how to make a framastan. The assembly lines at Big 3, Inc., used to shut down for one or two weeks in the summer tor retool for the new model year of the same car model the plant had been making for years!  (One year they all shut down all the plants at the same time. Glad I was in Korea by that time...)

Watching these idiots talk to people about things that may as well be magical to them makes me feel like my IQ has declined to their level.

Which may be unfair, they're just flailing around with concepts they haven't ever had to deal with, or knew existed.  Food just appears in the store. The mechanic mutters incantations and my car works.

Grasshoppers. Grasshoppers, all of them.

***

 About those shortages of PPE. Interesting article: Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg News: Federal stockpile of N95 masks was depleted under Obama and never restocked.

Now, that sort of implies that Obama just shrugged and said "Never mind", which is highly unlikely. I'm guessing that line items in budges for the re-stocking of mundane things like surgical masks and gloves got cut because no one involved really believed they would be necessary, and anyway, there were more important things to spend the money on.

Huh

I have no idea why only the previous post is showing up on the home page.

At least on my computer, with any browser I've tried, I have to click "older posts" to see any older post, but those posts are displayed 10 to a screen, per the Blog's settings.

UPDATE: This post and the previous post from today both display on the home page, no older ones.

In case you're interested in older blatherings of mine, click "Older Posts" below.

Stop The Bleed, Part 2

The Defense Health Agency maintains a web site called Deployed Medicine here: Deployed Medicine --  which includes includes links to their app on both the Apple and Android Stores.

Free.

The Deployed Medicine  website includes several sections, including Tactical Combat Casualty Care , curated by (not surprisingly) The Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care. Understandably, these folks are on the cutting edge of trauma care, so this can be considered the source.That page includes manuals, videos, and reference documents.

Also, Greg Ellefritz has an excellent post up (The Best Tourniquets- A Research Review | Active Response Training) on the latest release from the CoTCCC, regarding recommended procedures, practices, and equipment for trauma care


This includes ratings of several tourniquets recommended for use in trauma care. Link to that is here: CoTCCC Recommended Devices & Adjuncts, click on the "View Book" button to read and/or download it as a .pdf.


Again, better to have it and not need it, than to need it and be waiting for the paramedics or a passing  Combat Lifesaver...

Going and Coming

Sort of an NRAAM post, pics on the way there and on the way back...

All photographs © 2019 D.W. Drang and The Cluemeter.

On climb out from SEA

It got a bit hazy once we made altitude, but this gives you an idea of the local terrain.
(Click to embiggenate.)
I was on the wrong side of the plane for shots of Mt. Rainier.
Too far south for Mt. Adams, Mt. Baker, or Glacier Peak.

Somewhere over the Mississippi weather started to close in.
Last 45 minutes or so of the flight into IND was rough.

On final into SEA, sunset over the Olympics 1

On final into SEA, sunset over the Olympics 2

On final into SEA, sunset over the Olympics 3

SEA has airplanes hanging from the ceilings, so naturally, IND displays race cars...

Obligatory local color/architecture shots:

The buildings in that part of town are all connected by a series of skywalks.
Most of them are not this fancy.

Lafeyette, We Are Here!

Except Lafayette, IN, is a ways northwest of Indianapolis...

Flight was good, not a lot of turbulence, until about 10 minutes before we started final approach and it started to get bad. I've never heard cabin crew announce "The restrooms are locked" over the PA before...

OldNFO landed shortly before I did, and kindly offered to give me a lift in his rental; all the major hotels are clustered around the Indianapolis Convention Center, connected to it by a system of skybridges, so I didn't splurge on a rental of my own.

After checking in we met Kelly (Ambulance Driver) and Gary (EMS Artifact) for dinner at Dicks Last Resort, which seems to be a chain with an unusual schtick, but the fish and chips were good, and the beer was cold.

Back to the room to finish unpacking, some texting with Mrs Drang -- I was going to call, but she started texting, so... -- and then bed.

Now we're siting in the Media Room, drinking free coffee, and waiting for exhibits to open.

The problem in a nutshell

“It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is always for us to give the government more money and power, while we eat less meat.” 
Glenn Reynolds

"Sick of the NRA? Read this."

Breach/Bang/Clear: Sick of the NRA? Read this. | Duane Liptak with a reality check

...people bash the NRA a lot without understanding the reality of how the silly reindeer games get played on the hill. Try to at least understand the value that the organization provides because it is big and very real, and critically important. I want a live tank in my front yard and mail order Solothurn S-18/1000’s from Bannerman’s. But the path to get there isn’t exactly a clear one in the current legislative environment. Without the strength of the NRA helping to pack the courts, shape elections the best we can, fight off bad legislation wherever possible and pave the way to improve rights through the judiciary (we’ve confirmed 85 federal judges in addition to the 2 Supremes with 130 more to go), I fear we won’t have a path to it at all. That’s why I’m a member, and helping to make the organization as right as we can get it is why I got involved.

I get the frustration. I’m mad that we’re even in this situation. How could we, a republic, born from free men taking up arms against oppression, even be considering some of this nonsense? It baffles me. And, I used to be super frustrated with the NRA, also. Until…I was forced into being involved in politics and seeing how this whole mess works. Now I know what I have to do, and I hope everyone out there who cares about gun rights can get on board, too.

So, if you want to support GOA or FPC or FPC, or JPFO…that’s fantastic. Join your state organization, also. Be active locally. Let your elected representatives know how you feel on these issues regularly. But…be a member of the NRA, and be active. Vote. Let the board and the staff know where you stand on issues. Help to be a part of the solution. If we, as gun owners, can’t stick together and take advantage of the strengths of all of our organizations where they can do the most good, we will lose this fight. I’m not willing to lose.

 This is the last three paragraphs. Go read the whole thing.

Columbia County, OR, Sheriff; a Review of sorts

For those Not From Around Here, the state of Oregon is Shall Issue for concealed handgun licenses for residents, and says that counties "may issue licenses to residents of adjacent states", i.e., California, Idaho, Nevada, and Washington.

Most counties seem to take the position that this means "residents of states adjacent to them", which means that many counties that are inclined to be so generous, only do so for folks directly across the state line; this also means most counties say "there are no states adjacent to us, so we won't do it." For years Clatsop county, at the mouth of the Columbia River, was considered to be the best bet for a non-resident permit, to the point that they were inundated beyond their ability to handle the load (they said), and started restricting issue to residents of Washington counties on the Olympic peninsula; that is, counties that are adjacent (or close to) Clatsop County. (This is a shame, as Clatsop County is a convenient destination for a weekend getaway; Seaside is a rather typical tourist stop which happens to be on a beach that Lewis and Clark frolicked on, but Astoria has some legit attractions, like the Columbia River Maritime Museum.)

Several years ago, the Sheriff of Grant County, which is entirely surrounded by other Oregon counties, and which I am told is the poorest county in Oregon, struck upon a radical plan to raise funds for his department: He would take his concealed handgun licensing show on the road, visiting gun shows in adjacent states.

I believe he did one or two shows in California first, then did one in Washington, and by the third or fourth fun show he had raised enough money to purchase a portable digital fingerprinting system.

Other Sheriff's got into the act; I heard a claim (unsubstantiated) that the efforts were coordinated among the Sheriffs.

So last summer I got a calendar reminder that our OR permits would expire in 6 months. Our latest permits were issued by Columbia County, just west of Portland, east of Clatsop County, and across the Columbia River from Brigid's hometown. I reset the reminder to three months out...

While I had "use or lose" leave time, alas, various things prevented us making plans before the permits expired, so we wound up going one week late.

Here's the deal: Columbia County only issues non-resident permits to residents of Washington. You need your WA CPL. If you go during the week you make an appointment, online, for a half hour block. $60.00.
They process permits on some Saturdays, cash only, on a walk-in basis.

So I made our appointments for 2:00 and 2:30, we got a room in Seaside at the time share for a couple of days, drove over -- in the pouring rain -- showed up at 13:50...
...and we were both done including photographs by 14:00.

Now, a new permit requires fingerprinting, so I'm sure those appointments take longer, but I still regard that as pretty good.

Also, part of the reason we got delayed until after our OR permits expired was that Mrs. Drang had to renew her WA CPL first, and on our way there she realized she had left it sitting on the desk.

Lanie (I think I'm spelling her name correctly) said "no problem" and gave us an email address to send a scan of her CPL to, and said they would process it normally.

So, if you're from Washington State and want to get (or renew) an Oregon carry permit, we endorse the Concealed Handgun Licensing services of the Columbia County Sheriff's Office.

GDPR Statment

I keep getting told the Euro-Weenies say I have to make a statement about Euro-Weenie privacy. (The first syllable of which is probably supposed to rhyme with "privy.")

Randall Munroe of XKCD.com has done a masterful job of summing the situation up, I believe:

©2018 Randall Munroe, XKCD,com
"This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License."

Seriously, the only data I could be considered to be keeping is if you leave a comment here, and the fact is I delete most comments I get as spam.

What Google, Blogger, and/or Blogspot (assuming there's a difference, which I doubt) may do with incidental data they scoop up as you surf blogs, I can't say. Ask them.

Oh, By The Way...

...Brigid has made Home On The Range public again!

Go, read some of the most profound writing in the Blogosphere, laugh at doggie stories, steal some recipes...

QOTD, Blast From The Past Edition

Reviewing some more old posts, and found this one (The Clue Meter: Definition of the Day, 03/28/2010):

Sunday, March 28, 2010
 
Definition of the Day, 03/28/2010

So, there I was, trying to craft a really deep, profound, post on the nature of "human rights" and how to define what is, and is not, a human right.
Still struggling with it.
So I go to Google Reader and start reading... reading... Gun Blogger IV participant's blogs... reading... What's Chuck up to...?
Damn it, he summed it up better than I could.

A great litmus test is this:  Does this right have to be provided by someone or something?

If the answer is yes, then it isn't a right.

OK, so a "litmus test" is not a definition, but still.  

 The topic of  "The nature of human rights" came up recently in a Pistol-Forums thread a week or so ago, I may have to seek that thread out and post there...

QOTD, Blast From The Past Edition

Going back through old posts and saw that, on Tuesday, March 9, 2010, Tamara won the Internetz again with this:

The problem is that the .gov acts like there was strong encryption on the Constitution and they don't have the right key to read it.

 Really, it's been her Internetz all along and she just lets us use it, too.