The End Game of Covid is socialized health care

So what's driving all the insanity behind the Virus From Hell*?

I mean, "Two Weeks to Flatten The Curve and Save Our Health Care System" has turned into doctors and nurses being fired because they haven't been vaccinated.  This, when Covid deaths are down something like 75% from a year ago when NO health care workers were vaccinated (because there was no vaccine).

So what gives?  How can The Powers That Be be so, well, incompetent?

They're not.  None of this is by accident.  Let me expand on a comment I left over at OldNFO's place:

Doctors and nurses are being fired, leading to an unknown (more accurately: unreported) staffing shortage.  The New York National Guard is being called out to fill in.  Interestingly, you have two chances if a NatGuard doc kills your loved one: slim, and none.  You can't sue the NatGuard.  You might have a better lawsuit against a hospital who just fired 30% of their workers right before your Loved One died of neglect.  Call Morgan and Morgan**, who no doubt will be happy to take your case.

So you sue the hospital, and the hospital is run into bankruptcy.  After all, you are only one of many grieving families who lost loved ones to this reckless management decision, amirite?

So riddle me this, Healthcare Man: what happens when 40% of the hospitals in this Republic shut down?  I mean, it will be a crisis, amirite?  Someone with have to do something, amirite?  And who is ready to do something in a crisis?

Yup.  The Fed.Gov.

They'll take over all these "failed Hospitals", and the Fed.Gov will finally have the socialized healthcare that they've always wanted.  And all it will take is thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousand?  millions?) of dead Americans.

The ancient Romans were said to make a land into a desert, and then call it peace.  I mean, there were no more folks opposing their rule after they had killed most of the folks, amirite?

The Fed.Gov will make a desert and then call it "health".  This is the end game.  Don't let a crisis go to waste.

* It's not The Virus From Hell.  You want to see a disease from Hell?  Here you go.

** They are an ambulance chasing Law Firm who carpet bomb the Florida airwaves with their commercials.

The coolest business card of all time

 It was Billy Gibbons':

What's weird is that I can't find a video of him playing with Clapton - and Clapton played with everybody.  To try to make it up to you, here he is playing with Joe Bonamassa, Dusty Hill, and Derek Trucks.

Dad Joke CXVIIII

I'm thinking about getting a new haircut but I need to mullet over first. 

Deal Alert: Remington 9mm $400/1000

Academy Sports has it in stock for the best price I've seen in a while.  Online only. 

SIG P365 Bleg

The Queen Of The World went out shopping and one of these followed her home:

 It's a classy gun but hey - she's a classy lady, amirite?

So here's the question: any thoughts on a magazine extender?  The pinky finger just barely fits, and the palm is half hanging loose on the other side.  Having something that would drop down a bit would make it easier to grep.

Dad Joke CXVIII

Why are skeletons so calm?

Nothing gets under their skin.

80 years

The 1941 baseball season ended on this day, with Boston's Ted Williams closing the season with a .406 batting average.  It's the last time that a player batted .400 over a complete season.

A perennial question is which record is more unbreakable: Williams' .406 average or DiMagio's 56 game hitting streak.  Both are subject to Umpires expanding or contracting the strike zone; a hitting streak can be kept alive pretty easily via this.  Not so much the batting average.

There's an old story about this.  A young pitcher was facing Williams.  His first pitch was called a ball, even though he thought he had found the strike zone.  The second pitch fared no better.  Frustrated, the pitcher complained to the Umpire.  The Umpire replied, "Son when it's a strike, Mr. Williams will let you know."

So you teach High School kids to build Battlebots. What do you do for an encore?

Teach 'em cryptography.  Coolest. Teacher. Ever. 

For an encore, get some CNC machines and build an Enigma machine.

Dad Joke CXVII

Where can you buy chicken broth in bulk?

The stock market. 

Sunday, Puppy Sunday

Long time friend Libertyman emailed this:

 Wolfgang gave a bark of laughter at this.

Dad Joke CXVI

Golf is the only sport where sub-par performance is ideal. 

Randoms

Yargb has a bunch of paintings of battles.  I expect a bunch of all y'all will appreciate them.  I'd add the famous mosaic of Alexander the Great at Pompeii to it.

T-Bolt explains why we don't have passenger trains in this country, and why we have the world's best freight rail system.

Robert Graham on how not to get caught in the Fed's Geofence requests to the courts.  This is good info on how to reduce your susceptibility to cell phone tracking by the Fed.Gov.

It seems that the FBI had the decryption key to some pretty nasty ransomeware that hit a lot of companies, but kept it secret because they had some sort of "operation" going on.  Thanks a million, guys.

Dad Joke CXVI

What do you call a shy bee?

A mumblebee. 

Yeah, this about sums it up

 

(via)

Good on ya, Cobber

Interesting things are afoot down under.  The Oz.Gov is revealing itself to be even more incompetent than the US Fed.Gov.  Adam Piggott writes of the doings over the weekend:

Melbourne now holds the dubious distinction of being the most locked down city in the world. A condition that rests entirely with its rabid Marxist leader, known locally as Dictator Dan or Chairman Dan. But finally one group has stood up to the takeover. Construction industry workers, colloquially known as tradies in Australia, have today finally shown the backbone that has been missing down under for so long.

At 1159pm this Wednesday evening, all construction workers in Victoria need to be jabbed or they will be banned from traveling for their work. The largest of the construction unions in Victoria is the CFMEU. It is also the most powerful and militant union in the entire country. Today on the streets of Melbourne outside its large office, its members gathered to demand that the union boss, John Setka, stand up to the Victorian government on their behalf.

The Union management are, as you'd expect, as corrupt and incompetent as Dictator Dan, and blew them off.  When that happened, the tradies stormed their union HQ and trashed the place.  Well done, Mates!

Well, that was the cue for the Gov to dial the "Incompetent" meter up to 11.  They shut down all building construction for 14 days, "for public health" of course.  Now riddle me this, Big Gov Man: you have tens of thousands of really pissed off construction workers that you've just basically told to go sit quietly in the corner for a couple weeks.  What happens next?

What happens next is, well, what anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have seen coming from a mile away.  So yeah, the Oz.Gov was taken completely by surprise:

On Tuesday in Melbourne, authorities were forced to confront this blazing public anger as protesters executed an "extremely dangerous maneuver" by marching onto a busy freeway and blocking traffic in a tactic that some Americans might remember from last summer's BLM protests inspired by the killing of George Floyd.

Thousands converged on the city for a second consecutive day on Tuesday, with shocking footage capturing dozens moving onto the West Gate Freeway into the path of cars. Traffic on the freeway, which is the busiest stretch of highway in Australia, was forced to a standstill in both directions as police tried to disperse the crowd.

Footage circulating on social media showed protesters tossing glass bottles and flares toward police, while some approached officers with their hands up, chanting "you serve us".

Other chants that were reported included "Every day!"  Enjoy your lockdown, Dan.

One last thing: these are big, strong construction workers, not 70 year old grandmothers or 12 year old kids.  I expect that any of the Melbourne PoPo that try the same thing on them can expect a righteous beat down.

I look forward to an interesting fortnight down under.

Dad Joke CXV

A travel agent told me he could get me a free trip to Egypt if I could get five other people to sign up, too.  It sounded like a pyramid scheme. 

Dad Joke CXIV

What superpower do you get when you become a parent?

Supervision.

The wit and wisdom of Joe Biden

 

Seen on gab.ai.

Alternatives to College

Insty has been banging the drum lately on how young men are increasingly avoiding College.  You can't really blame them as it's a pretty hostile environment for men, and saddles most graduates with ruinous amounts of student debt.

But if you're bright, motivated, and hard working, there's a path to a six figure salary that will literally cost you only a few thousand dollars - plus a lot of self study time spent.  First, let's talk about the target and the opportunity.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics just published a study that highlights the fastest growing job fields through 2030:

That highlighted line?  Internet Security.  The good news?  Nobody cares where you went to school for your security degree, or even that you have a security degree.  What they care about are industry certifications.  You get the cert, you're in like flint.

Now there's a lot involved with getting the cert, 'natch.  I posted about this repeatedly over the years.  This is a good starting point, and from there you can click through to here which has a fairly detailed set of things to do, and here which is similar but different to the Borepatch Method.

In a nutshell, you can get a Cisco CCNA Exam Prep book for small money, read on your own in your evenings and spare time, take mock tests to make sure that you understand the material, and then take the real cert class for something like $1500.  This will qualify you for an entry level IT job, probably around $50k/year.  You continue with the next level higher certification, doing exactly the same as above.  When you get that you'll qualify for a higher paying job.

You'll get to the point where you're getting certified on ASA Firewall or the like, and then you're an Information Security Analysts.  With the cert, you apply for one of those BLS jobs.

They key, you have to spend a lot of your own time on this in self-study.  That's a pain, but you save all that dough you'd be spending on the Dirty Commies at the University.  Plus you don't have to put up with all the "Be less White and Male" nonsense that they'd make you take (and pay for).

I got an email recently from a reader who had read some of those old posts of mine (thanks, C.H.!).  He had found himself in a frustrating job and took this path.  How he's working in a Security Operations Center and pretty happy at where he got himself.

It's been a while since I'd posted this sort of thing, but this seems like a good time to remind our younger Gentlemen Readers (or our Old Fart readers who have sons or nephews) that there is an alternative to the College Mill.

Those cats were fast as lightening

Daily Time Waster posted this:

 It made me think of this:

But everything will be awesome when the Government runs your health care

 Biden orders HHS to cut of shipments of covid medicine to southern states.  But it's all good with socialized medicine, amirite?

Fed.Gov: Summer of 2021 was hotter than the Summer of 1936

This may seem like an innocuous statement, but this all actually encapsulates the Climate Bullshit perfectly.  First, the government's statement:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed in a new report that the average temperature during this summer for the contiguous U.S. was hotter than the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

The meteorological summer between June 1 to Sept. 1 averaged 74F for the U.S., or 2.6 degrees warmer than the long-term average. NOAA said, "this technically exceeds the record heat of the 1936 Dust Bowl Summer, but the difference is extremely small (less than 0.01 of a degree F)."

Remember the Dust Bowl?  John Steinbeck and Henry Fonda sort of made it memorable:

1936 is the year of record heat in the United States.  There's a reason that the midwest dried up and blew away that summer:

You want to see a real heat wave?  Look at July 1936.  Eleven States set high temperature records that stand to this day.  That Wikipedia page is a little shifty on this, trying to hide the decline in record temperatures.  You'll see an asterisk next to South Dakota, which the Wiki page says means Also on earlier date or dates in that state.  So what was that earlier date for South Dakota?  July 1936.

Oh, and three more States set high temperature records the next month, August 1936.  That makes 14 out of the 50 States suffered record high temperatures in the summer of 1936. That's almost 30% of the States.

NOAA (the Fed.Gov's weather bureau) said that this summer was hotter than that.  Oooooh kaaaaay.  So riddle me this, WeatherMan: how many States set temperature records this summer?  One.  Washington State set a record high on June 29.

Not fourteen.

So how does NOAA get off saying that 2021 was hotter than 1936?  Data adjustments:

The data have two components: the raw measurements themselves, and a set of adjustments.

Adjustments are made for a bunch of reasons: time of observation adjustments (you didn't take a reading at exactly the same time each day), environmental changes, weather station site relocations, urbanization, etc.

An interesting question is how much of the 20th century's temperature change is due to adjustments? As it turns out, the answer is all of it.

This chart shows the before-adjustment and after-adjustment temperatures for the 20th century, super imposed. All of the warming is due to adjustments, rather than raw data.  Almost all of the adjustments are for readings after 1970.

Take a look at the blue (unadjusted) line in the middle of the chart.  You know, at the peak.  That's the Dust Bowl heat wave of 1936.  Now look at the far right, how the data shift down (unadjusted) and up (adjusted).

How do you make 2021 hotter than 1936?  Change the data.  Older temperatures are adjusted downwards, and newer temperatures are adjusted upwards.  Presto - Global Warming Climate Change Climate Emergency!

Now all of this is no doubt full of Science® and all that, but if you get a whiff of bullshit, you're not the only one. You know what data don't get adjusted? Records. 1936 set 14 records, 2021 set only a single one.

That's some righteous Science®, right there. But hey, no doubt Climate Scientists are well compensated for their work, if they produce the Approved Results.

Security Smörgåsbord, vol. 13 no. 5

Report: Direct patient safety risk posed by infusion pump vulnerability exploit

A group of five vulnerabilities in the B. Braun Infusomat Space Large Volume Pump could allow an attacker to modify system configurations in standby mode and deliver an unexpected dose of medication to patients without any need for authentication, according to a new report from McAfee Enterprise Advanced Threat Research.

I've been posting about the security problems in medical devices for going on a decade now.  It's interesting to see major security research players start to issue advisories about these.  Hopefully the FDA expedites these sort of security updates.

DEFCON: Internet of Things random number generators stink

In a DEF CON talk officially released on Saturday (many of this year's talks were pre-recorded and available to stream before their scheduled time) Dan Petro and Allan Cecil, both of Bishop Fox, outline systemic problems with hardware random number generators. That creates systemic problems for the devices that obtain random numbers directly from hardware random number generators.

"One of our top-line takeaways is that this process of talking to hardware RNG [random number generators] directly is just untenable. It's far too complicated on so many levels, to the point where it should really be considered like writing cryptographic code, where it is just too unsafe to do on your own," Petro told SC Media.

You might wonder what the heck a random number generator is and why you need a good one.  Basically, all of the encryption in use today depends on cypher computations starting with as close to truly random numbers as possible.  If the "random number" used are not really random - or worse, if they are predictable - than a Bad Guy could decrypt your communications, masquerade as you (well, as your TV), and do all the bad things to you that encryption is supposed to prevent.  Home computers (and cell phones) don't have this problem because they invest in good random number generation circuitry.  IoT devices are so inexpensive that this isn't done.  Probably having unpatched high risk security vulnerabilities in these devices is worse, but this is just another reason why there isn't much security at all in these pieces of junk.

Firefox 91 has new privacy features

Firefox is still around?  Who knew?  They blew any credibility on user privacy when they ditched Brendan Eich to include RIAA tracking features.

The most secure browser is ... Microsoft?

Microsoft has announced that the Edge Vulnerability Research team is experimenting with a new feature dubbed "Super Duper Secure Mode" and designed to bring security improvements without significant performance losses.

When enabled, the new Microsoft Edge Super Duper Secure Mode will remove Just-In-Time Compilation (JIT) from the V8 processing pipeline, reducing the attack surface threat actors can use to hack into Edge users' systems.

...

Based on CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) data collected since 2019, around 45% of vulnerabilities found in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine were related to the JIT engine, more than half of all 'in the wild' Chrome exploits abusing JIT bugs.

"This reduction of attack surface has potential to significantly improve user security; it would remove roughly half of the V8 bugs that must be fixed," explained Johnathan Norman, Microsoft Edge Vulnerability Research Lead.

That's a neat piece of security work.  And I love "Super Duper Secure Mode".  It reminds me of Tesla's "Ludicrous Mode" which is shamelessly stolen from Spaceballs.

 Google to block old Android phones starting September 27

Google has started emailing users of very old Android devices to tell them it's time to say goodbye.

Starting September 27, devices running Android 2.3.7 and lower will no longer be able to log in to Google services, effectively killing a big portion of the on-rails Android experience. As Google puts it in an official community post, "If you sign in to your device after September 27, you may get username or password errors when you try to use Google products and services like Gmail, YouTube, and Maps."

Android is one of the most cloud-based operating systems ever. Especially in older versions, many included apps and services were tied to your Google login, and if that stops working, a large chunk of your phone is bricked. While Android can update many core components without shipping a full system update today, Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread, released around 10 years ago, was not so modular.

This is actually a Good Thing.  Android has a lot of security holes and there are no updates coming for these 10 year old systems.  If you got 10 years out of your phone, it's really in your best (security) interest to update.

US Government Agencies score low on cyber security

In the "Federal Cybersecurity: America's Data Still At Risk" report, the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs graded the departments of State, Transportation, Education, and the Social Security Administration a "D" for cybersecurity. The departments of Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services each received a "C." The highest grade for cybersecurity, a "B," went to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Among the major issues, several agencies, including the State Department, did not deactivate former employees' accounts, allowing access for extended periods of time after the workers left government service.

Maybe the Cloud will help.  These Agencies can't buy cloud services that are not security approved (FedRAMP).  Most of these issues are covered under that certification. 

Dad Joke CXIII

When I was a kid my neighbors hired me to clean up the leaves in their yard.  I was really raking it in. 

You got no stinking security

OldNFO posted a great video showing just how easy it is for someone to get your info.  The video is a live demo from Defcon, so you know it's good.

Yeah, he posted this a while back - I've been pretty busy.  And the video itself is from a few years ago, so it's not like you're any later.

And yes, I need to post more security stuff.

Dad Joke CXII

Did you hear about the three holes in the ground?

Well, well, well. 

Optimism on a solemn day

All the cool kids are posting uplifting things today, and so I'll jump in. 

I've posted repeatedly about America as Fall-Of-The-Roman-Empire/Republic before.  It's looked pretty bleak for a while, not being able to figure out how the Next Big American Thing will come into being.  It's looked like that process will be really blood soaked.

But maybe not.  I've also posted before about Curtis Yarvin, who blogged under the nom de blog Mencious Moldbug.  It was ten years ago that I wrote about him in an uberpost titled The Fifth American Republic.  It has perhaps the best opening paragraph I've ever written:

Barack Obama is a communist.  That's a low schoolyard insult, even though it's true, but it doesn't matter.  You see, Mitt Romney is also a commie.  No, this isn't yet another Mitt Romney rant.  All of our political establishment are commies, and have been for a long time.

Glen Filthie found a Tucker Carlson interview with Yarvin.  It's quite something - Tucker is a much better interviewer than I had known (I don't watch much - or any - political TV) and Tucker allows Yarvin great big huge uninterrupted blocks of time to explain his philosophy of how America is ruled by an oligarchy, why the oligarchy is decentralized, how the US Government has evolved over time (with a shout out to his original post that I blogged about ten years back), how the periodic evolutions come to be needed as the system slowly degrades, and how this explains why we lost in Afghanistan.

He ends with a discussion of the end of the Roman Republic and how that could plausibly happen here without the rivers of blood.  This is a very long and very thoughtful interview that left me feeling much better about this Republic's chances than I have in a long, long time.

Go watch this.  I cannot recommend this too highly.  You might want to read my old uberpost as an introduction first, because it will set the stage for much of what Yarvin describes.  Yarvin is a first rate intellect and you will end up smarter when you're done.

Quote of the Day - Everything They Have Told You Is A Lie edition

This post by Adam Piggott is simply unimprovable.  RTWT, but this is a taste:

And really, they’re just profiting off modern man’s shallow desire to live just one more day no matter what the cost. That’s why they’re trying to jab 12 year olds with this toxic crap so the old fucks can live just one more day, it’s all I’ve got, hey, did you see my boat and my Porsche and the ski lodge?

Everything they have told you is a lie. Don’t take their pills, don’t take their jabs, don’t follow their dietary recommendations, don’t do their exercise routines, don’t take 0.7 glasses of wine per day while you have your 1.2 kids, don’t listen to their music recommendations, or their reading material, or watch their evil films, don’t do any of it. Don’t be a boring shitless bastard that does just what he’s told and then has the sheer stupidity to try and lecture those of us who haven’t fallen for the crap and are trying with some very small success to wake you all the fuck up.

Awesome. 

Dad Joke CXI

Has it really been almost a month since I've posted one of these?

What's the most dangerous variety of cheese?  Sharp cheddar.

Good thing it's not fresh fruit ...

 

The Ghosts of Waco look down and smile

White House to withdraw Chipman nomination to lead ATF. 

The downfall of Czar Nicholas and the American Deep State

Big Country has a must-read post up.  Go read it now, then come back for my thoughts.  In it he lays out evidence that there is a three way power struggle going on between the Intelligence Community, the Pentagon, and the White House.  Peter adds some thoughts as well.

It reminds me of the last few years of Tsarist Russia: a war that was going poorly, indecisive leadership at the top that had no real idea what the citizens of the realm actually thought, and a fabulously corrupt and incompetent set of ministers who were more interested in looting the treasury than, you know, running their ministry.

And as to that last item, take a look at Joe Biden's cabinet (courtesy of J.Kb at Miguel's place).  It's deja vu all over again.  The last thing on any of these folk's mind is good governance.

And so, to BCE's post at the top.  The Biden Administration sure as shootin' ain't where the smart money is going to bet.  And so, on to the second of the three he calls out, the Dot Mil.  There are huge problems in our military, the biggest I've seen since the Vietnam days.  In a very disturbing way, the pathology is very similar: the senior officers give commands to a sullen and hostile enlisted force.  Back in the dark days of the '70s we had flag officers like Zumwalt (Navy) and Creech (TAC) who were able to reinstil discipline.  It sure doesn't look like the Perfumed Princes of the Pentagon are up to Zumwalt's (or Creech's) level.

And so I don't think that the smart money will bet on the Dot Mil, either.

So the Last Org Standing likely will be the Intel Community.  Heck, they already successfully overthrew a previous President, and guaranteed they have dirt on most of the players in Washington (Generals Petraeus and Flynn could not be reached for comment).

There really are only two questions.  First, how long will this take to play out?  The longer it goes on, the more damage the Republic takes (both externally and internally).  I can't say I'm optimistic that this will get sorted out soon.

Second, the Intel Community will want to rule from the shadows.  They are not Front Men - the acronym of one of the Three Letter Agencies was said to be "Never Say Anything".  Quite frankly, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the perfect empty suits for the Intel Community to stand up as "leaders" of the Republic - as they did last November.  The folks at Langley must be steaming mad that Biden isn't staying in his lane.  How this will play out is unknown, but unlikely to be pleasant for Joe, "Doctor" Jill, or Kamala.

Czar Nicholas came to a bad end in a basement in Yekaterinburg, along with his entire family.  Will our Checkists go this route to let the rest of Washington know they need to stay in their lanes, or will there still be more subtlety?  The nation wonders.