Month: February 2020

WaPo:  “Mike Pence was criticized for his handling of Indiana’s HIV outbreak. He will lead the U.S. coronavirus response.”

With all due respect — which is to say, zero — fuck the Washington Post.

First of all, let’s get something straight:  HIV is not coronavirus, or vice versa.  HIV is not an airborne-spread disease, or even a surface-contact-spread disease.  You actually have to work at getting HIV.  Wearing a P95 mask and washing your hands after you go to the lavatory will not protect you from HIV.  But not engaging in stupid behavior will, 9 times out of 10, prevent you from getting HIV.

Once contracted, HIV is generally something you’ll live with the rest of your life and unless you have big bucks to pay for exotic treatments, it will likely end up killing you, whereas coronavirus can be treated comparatively easily and death is very unlikely (the fatality rate (percentage) is in single digits at this point (3.4%; by way of comparison, SARS had a fatality rate of 9.6%); the vast majority of people who contract coronovirus will apparently recover from it. Indeed the recovery curve is trending sharply higher than the new cases curve. See here for example, and ignore the “hockey stick” one-day surge in new cases where China changed their reporting methodology — note that the number of new cases almost immediately leveled off to effectively the same rate as before, and has since almost flatlined).

The only point of congruence between HIV and coronavirus that I can see is that they are both viruses.

The problem is, too many people engage in the stupid behaviors that promote transmission of HIV.  Unprotected sex with multiple partners, and sharing of needles amongst drug addicts, are probably the most common ways to get HIV.

Sure, you can get HIV from a blood transfusion (vanishingly rare these days) or from a partner who is either cheating on you, or knew they had the virus and didn’t tell you.  That’s mostly how otherwise monogamous and non-drug-addicted straights get it, and such has always been the case.  People who are in monogamous lifetime relationships (whether married or not) are unlikely to contract HIV, regardless of what the LGBT community would like you to think.

But the WaPo beats on Pence for voting to cut funding for Planned Parenthood in 2011, when he was in Congress, which allegedly led to the 2013 closing of a PP clinic that was “the only HIV-testing center in Scott County, Ind.” due to spending cuts in public health.  Whether or not the one led directly to the other, and again with zero due respect to the WaPo, this seems to suggest that there was no other clinic or blood-testing center anywhere near Scott County that could do blood work and test for HIV.  This seems specious.  Scott County covers only 200 square miles in southern Indiana. For those playing along at home, 200 square miles is a square about 14 miles on a side — Scott County isn’t square, but bottom line, it’s just not that big of a place.  By comparison, Marion County, Indiana (Indianapolis), is 400 square miles, 20 miles square.  My point here is that the Louisville metro area is right down a major interstate highway (I-65) from Scott County, just 20 miles from the southern border of Scott County to the Ohio River.  And I’m sure there are plenty of places in New Albany, Clarksville, and Jeffersonville to handle HIV testing.  To make an isolated statement that there is no clinic in all of Scott County to do HIV testing completely ignores the fact that Scott County is just not all that isolated.  Hell, Indianapolis is only 60 miles or so north, and that ignores Columbus which is only about 30 miles north.

Pence as governor waited a whole two months from the start of an HIV outbreak in 2015 to declare a public state of emergency.

But what caused the outbreak?  It was “attributed to people injecting Opana, an addictive painkiller, with shared needles.  But Pence didn’t agree with federal health experts that distributing clean needles was a good idea.”

Well, of course not, you blithering fools.  That just encourages the addicts to keep on abusing their drug of choice.  And Pence got that:  “I don’t believe effective anti-drug policy involves handing out drug paraphernalia” is what he told the Indianapolis Star.

The rest of the article is just more stupid shit bashing Pence for his response to the HIV epidemic by advocating that he should have made it easier for addicts to get their fix.  And a non-sequitur tossed in near the end about his comment (taken out of context) when he was a congressman that smoking doesn’t kill.*  But the problem was not so much the HIV epidemic than the addiction problem itself.  The HIV epidemic was a secondary effect to the primary cause of addicts shooting up with shared needles.

ADDICTS.  Addicts by definition are sick people who need treatment.  That’s why we call them addicts, and there is a medical term for their problem:  Addiction.

Isn’t the actual best treatment for drug addiction getting people into treatment programs and off the damn drugs in the first place?  Why in hell would we want to tell an addict, “It’s OK, you can keep shooting up without fear of contracting HIV, here are clean needles for you to keep illegally abusing drugs”?

As far as dealing with a potential coronavirus outbreak in the US (15 cases in the US plus 40-odd cases among Americans on a cruise ship who have now been repatriated to the US and are being counted as US cases) are not a US outbreak), the solution from the point of view of the Federal Government should be pretty simple, and this is the nuts and bolts of Pence’s job:

• Ensure that there is a large supply, preferably locally-sourced in the US, of P95 masks.  This won’t happen, the swamp won’t allow it, but:  Don’t hoard them at the government level, make sure they’re available to local retailers, Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc.  I notice this morning that P95 masks are all but gone from Amazon.  (Most of them are made in China, so…)
• Close porous borders (build the fucking wall!) and quarantine anyone entering the country from a problem area.
• Immediately block inbound non-stop flights from problem areas.  We shouldn’t be accepting any flights from Asia, at this point.
• Push like hell to find a vaccine.
• Be prepared to take even more drastic measures if things really get bad.  Read John Ringo’s The Last Centurion as a case study in what not to do at the FedGov level.  (Thank God we didn’t elect Hillary, is all I have to say.)

If an outbreak really does start up and look like it’s going to spread, then people need to avoid social contact and stay home for a couple of weeks.  Schools need to put together plans to teach online, or by television/telephone if families aren’t able to afford internet connections, businesses that can need to let their people telecommute.

I’m lucky — I’m a telecommuter, and the company I work for isn’t likely to shut down, because in a pinch, we can all telecommute.  My wife, on the other hand, isn’t a telecommuter, and her job is such that it can’t be done remotely.  So people in that sort of situation need also to figure out how they are going to live for a couple of weeks if one or both spouses can’t work and aren’t being paid.  That means put money aside if at all possible, and stock up on bottled water and canned goods and dry staples so you have food in the house.  The likelihood is that utilities will keep running, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to ensure that you have a way to generate power and heat, just in case.

Bottom line:  Don’t panic, and don’t bother reading the WaPo or other proggy media for real news about coronavirus.

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* What he actually wrote on his congressional website was this (the part the WaPo took out of context is bolded):

In the coming weeks, Americans are going to be treated with the worst kind of Washington-speak regarding the tobacco legislation currently being considered by the Congress and Attorney Generals from forty different states. We will hear about the scourge of tobacco and the resultant premature deaths. We will hear about how this phalanx of government elates has suddenly grown a conscience after decades of subsidizing the product which, we are now told, “kills millions of Americans each year”.

Time for a quick reality check. Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill. In fact, 2 out of every three smokers does not die from a smoking related illness and 9 out of ten smokers do not contract lung cancer. This is not to say that smoking is good for you…. news flash: smoking is not good for you. If you are reading this article through the blue haze of cigarette smoke you should quit. The relevant question is, what is more harmful to the nation, second hand smoke or back handed big government disguised in do-gooder healthcare rhetoric.

The tobacco settlement is not only about big taxes it’s about big government. Under the current Senate version, the deal would require the creation of 17 new government bureaucracies to manage the tax windfall described above. But it is also about big government on a much more profound scale, namely, government big enough to protect us from ourselves. Even a conservative like me would support government big enough to protect us from foreign threats and threats to our domestic tranquility but the tobacco deal goes to the next level. Government big enough to protect us from our own stubborn wills. And a government of such plenary power, once conceived will hardly stop at tobacco. Surely the scourge of fatty foods and their attendant cost to the health care economy bears some consideration. How about the role of caffeine in fomenting greater stress in the lives of working Americans? Don’t get me started about the dangers of sports utility vehicles!

Those of you who find the tobacco deal acceptable should be warned as you sit, reading this magazine, sipping a cup of hot coffee with a hamburger on your mind for lunch. A government big enough to go after smokers is big enough to go after you.

Frankly, I don’t see a hell of a lot wrong with this.  I’d have to assume he got his statistics from the CDC or NIH or similar; I doubt he pulled them out of his ass, because Pence doesn’t work that way (and he had access to government statistics, so why not use them?).  Pence had no particular reason to back Big Tobacco, Indiana is not a tobacco state, but as a conservative from a conservative state, he did have a reason to oppose more federal government interference in our lives.  I don’t read anywhere in the Constitution where the FedGov has a duty or the right to tell me I can’t smoke.  (I don’t smoke, because as I’ve probably written multiple times on this blog, ever since my wife quit cold turkey in 2006, I haven’t been able to so much as walk into a smoky room (or even sit next to someone whose clothing is infused with smoke, which memorably happened once when I was out of town) without contracting bronchitis.  I had to put my pipes away and haven’t touched them for well over a decade.  But that’s between me and my doctor, not me and the FedGov.)

Comes now the FAA with a comment period on new regulations for drones, which would require licensing and position reporting and blah de blah de blah.  Drone owners and libertarians are pounding the table angrily over the idea that they might have to kowtow to the Federal Government in order to fly their expensive drones.

As a non-drone owner, I’m like, eh…but that’s probably because I’m a federally-licensed amateur radio operator, required by the FCC to be licensed and be subject to federal regulations in order to exercise my First Amendment rights on the public airwaves.  (In fact, I worked my way up to Amateur Extra Class — which ain’t easy — so I didn’t have to deal with the nitpicky regs that define what frequencies I can use within the amateur bands.  As an Extra, I can use all of them without worrying about getting some officious functionary upset.)

As such, I don’t see how it’s so onerous to have to license and provide location data for a drone flying in public airspace. You’re a lot more likely to injure or kill someone with your drone than I am with my dual-band handy-talkie, or my HF radio and long wire at 35′ in my trees.

But if you want to complain and whinge to the FAA about drone licensing, which by the way only applies to drones that weigh more than .55 pounds, and wa wa wa:

Under the proposed rule, the vast majority of UAS would be required to have remote identification capability, however as discussed in section X. A. 3, a limited number of UAS would continue to not have remote identification. The FAA envisions that upon full implementation of this rule, no unmanned aircraft weighing more than 0.55 pounds will be commercially available that is not either a standard remote identification UAS or a limited remote identification UAS. However, there will be certain UAS including amateur built aircraft and previously manufactured UAS that might not have remote identification capability. A person operating a UAS without remote identification equipment would always be required to operate within visual line of sight [6] and within an FAA-recognized identification area. Under the proposed rule, an FAA-recognized identification area is a defined geographic area where UAS without remote identification can operate. An area would be eligible for establishment as an FAA-recognized identification area if it is a flying site that has been established within the programming of a community based organization recognized by the Administrator. The FAA would maintain a list of FAA-recognized identification areas at https://www.faa.gov. FAA-recognized identification areas are discussed further in section XV of this preamble.

(Emphasis mine.)  So what I think this means is that people like my buddy Geoff, who has a pretty good-sized professional-style drone, would still be able to fly his drone even though it doesn’t have remote identification capability, and even though it weighs more than half a pound.  All he has to do is keep it in visual line of sight and fly it in an area designated for such flight, which is probably going to be a lot more places than the complainers are whinging about.  And when the FAA mentions “a limited number of UAS”, what they really mean is, there will be a shitload of old drones out there that people will keep running regardless.  You can do a lot in line of sight, after all.

To make another point that’s similar to my FCC licensing point above, there’s a whole hobby full of radio-controlled model aircraft hobbyists out there that have to register their models and fly under restrictions that keep them out of controlled airspace.  So what makes drones different?  They cost less?  Ease of purchase of a ready-to-fly drone?  They hover instead of have to maintain level flight?  Come on.  Drones already have to stay below 400 feet and away from airports and other designated areas.  (Geoff’s drone has, I think, GPS and a database of the prohibited flight areas, and the drone will actually refuse to fly into them.  If his doesn’t have that feature, most if not all of the commercial drones in use today do.)  Technically speaking, there’s already a registration requirement for many drones.  So what in actuality are people complaining about?

Yeah, I know.  I know exactly what they’re complaining about.  Fuckin’ fascist government a-holes screwing up their fun and games by insisting on registration and tracking.

Well, guess what, boys and girls.  Sometimes you have to regulate that shit.  You like driving, for instance?  Unless you’re one of those “sovereign citizen” idiots like I saw driving up I-75 down in Georgia last summer (and even if you are), you need a driver’s license.  And insurance.  And a license plate and registration for your car(s).  But almost nobody bitches about that, per se; mostly they bitch about the cost, not the fact that these things are required.  Hell, I bitch about the cost (I just paid the bill for our license plates, eeesh, and ours aren’t really all that expensive compared to other states’ fees).  But it’s sure nice to know the other driver is supposed to have all that, too, especially if you get into an accident with him — it’s an accountability thing.

So let’s think about this for a moment.  Consider flying.  Do you think it’s OK for someone to hop in a plane, taxi it down the runway, and take off for Poughkeepsie or Alberquerque without so much as a by-your-leave (or training or a license)?  I’ll bet you don’t!  I sure as hell don’t.

So what makes flying your fucking drone any different?  Fill the sky up with them, and they’ll be just as dangerous as anything else in the air.  It’s time to accept the fact that you’re engaging in an activity that could get people hurt and property destroyed, come in from the Wild West of drone flying, and get your drone registered so you can fly it legally.

I mean, WTF?  Do you seriously think the FAA is going to come and confiscate your drones?  Dude, get over yourself.  Your drone isn’t a gun, for crying out loud.

(By the way, if you want to comment on the proposed rule, you can do that here until March 2.)

A friend on Facebook indicated that he had recently acquired three new books, one of them being the first volume of Shelby Foote’s three-volume magnum opus, The Civil War: A Narrative.  A mutual friend implied that it wasn’t worth reading.  Of course I disagreed:

Foote remains controversial due to what the modern world considers his patriarchal attitudes about the South, slavery, and the Lost Cause. I’ve always thought he spent too much time idolizing Jefferson Davis and too little time analyzing Davis’s descent into madness, although it wasn’t really possible to hide it; Davis’s own actions spoke loudly for a diagnosis of “the King is nuts, but he’s the King, so we can’t contradict him”, even right up to the end when he was captured trying to escape the invading Union troops. I just can’t take away any other opinion of Davis, especially (and paradoxically) after reading Foote.

But I also think the work is important, and needs to be read alongside the other giants of 20th Century Civil War history. I have long subscribed to Paul Fussell’s dictum that “Understanding the past requires pretending that you don’t know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.”

Plus, his prose in and of itself is simply delightful.

And then I was going to add, but decided to let it go:

My one main annoyance with Foote is right in the middle of volume two, where he implies that Lew Armistead died on Cemetery Ridge with his hand on a Union cannon. It is at any rate the last we hear of Armistead, one of the great tragic figures of the war. That may have been Foote’s idea of artistic license, and perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to write candidly about Armistead’s death, but leaving it there did the man a great disservice; Armistead did get past the wall, did lay his hand on a Union gun (and was calling for his men to turn the guns around when he was shot), was carried from the field alive as a prisoner, and died in a Union field hospital two days later. His great friend and Masonic brother Winfield Scott Hancock had been on the other side of the battle, and was also wounded, completing the tragic circle repeated so many times during that war of brother fighting brother.

A hundred and fifty-five years later, we’re still talking and arguing about the whole thing.  Amazing.

Frankly, I don’t care so much what Pelosi did to her copy of the SOTU as why and when she did it.

Because I don’t care who you are, that was Grade A immature pre-school shit right there. And it speaks volumes about why the Democrats can’t stop throwing tantrums about Trump.

Dems, you want to know why Trump keeps beating you like a rented mule?

Look in the mirror. Read what you write. Pay attention to what you do. And all will be revealed unto you.

The longer you continue to venerate the Big Book of Alinsky, the longer your opponent is going to keep throwing what you said (or wrote, or did) back into your face. Because he LOVES to fight. And you’re not used to that. You’re used to Republicans backing down and compromising. This guy is not built that way. He is literally goading you into fighting him. And as soon as you try something you’re sure is going to work this time, he pulls some Trumpian jiu-jitsu move in return and you end up on the mat, flat on your back, going, “Wha’hoppen?”

As the great philosopher Rocket J. Squirrel often noted, “Aw, Bullwinkle, that trick never works.” The Democrats could learn a lot from that.

But they won’t. And a rabbit will never actually come out of that hat. It’ll be more like a spring-loaded boxing glove filled with bricks.

“Wha’hoppen?”

Donald John Trump. That’s what happened. And eventually you’ll give in and accept it.

Nah.  Maybe you just need to get another hat.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Schiff: Trump Will Sell Alaska To Russia If We Don’t Impeach Him

(H/T: Instapundit.)

“Trump could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election, or decide to move to Mar-A-Lago permanently and leave Jared Kushner to run the country, delegating to him the decision whether they go to war.”

Under what possible legal theory would any of that pass muster in the Senate? Remember the Senate? If this is even possible, they’d have to approve it.  Supreme Court would probably get involved, too, and I’m pretty sure they’d be a big fat no on this one.  Constitution is pretty clear on the fact that the Senate, not the President, declares war (although there’s that pesky War Powers Resolution that lets him punch troops for 60 days and ask forgiveness later, of course).  Plus, we fought a big war back between 1861-1865 — maybe you’ve heard of it — that pretty much put paid to the idea that we’d let states get away from the Union.  The latter, of course, may no longer be taught in California schools, so you may have an excuse, there.

Even so, Schiffy, you’ve been lying, er, making stuff up all along, of course, but my goodness, this right here takes the proverbial cake. Keep troweling on the pancake, buddy, you’ll make senior clown yet.

The bottom line is you’re a fucking moron. You should be ejected from the House so hard, the splashdown would be in the Chesapeake.

And your little dog Nadler, too.