Cohesion

My bestest boss was Dr. McElhone, who came into my life shortly after his leaving army intelligence (yeah, I know the joke). He had his Ph.D. in math stats from Iowa State; if you don't much about math stats, Iowa State was (mid 70s) near the top of the list (currently 19th which ain't cheap cheddar). Anyway, along with stat lingo came a good deal of au courant military jargon. He spent most of his time flying in Beech Air King and Air Queens festooned with a dozen or so antennas vacuuming up various signals.

A couple of concepts he talked about rather a lot: chain of command and unit cohesion. Most civilians, self included, are familiar with the former, but less so the latter. If the Radical Right Wingnuts get their way, it will be the more material.

Unit cohesion is a military concept, defined by one former United States Chief of staff in the early 1980s as "the bonding together of soldiers in such a way as to sustain their will and commitment to each other, the unit, and mission accomplishment, despite combat or mission stress".

Why does this matter today? It's been clear, and the attack on Paul Pelosi is blazing, that the RRW no longer care about democracy. If they get their way, we will have Civil War ver. 2.0. Will our military suppress the insurrectionists, or join them?

It's clear, at least to me, that the officer corps (likes of Flynn excepted, naturally) will obey the Constitution and their oath. But what about the enlisteds? Are they dumb enough to buy into white persecution and grievance? Well, listen up.

The service on June 23 [2022] began allowing people to enlist in the regular Army without a high school diploma or GED ... The change was short-lived. Army officials reinstated the education requirement one week later.

Gulp...

During the height of the unpopular Iraq War, recruitment was falling so fast, especially among some minority groups, that Army recruiters lowered required ASVAB scores and allowed waivers for some recruits with low scores or other demerits, including minor criminal offenses. "In 2006, nearly one in five incoming soldiers did not have high school diplomas," the Boston Globe reported in 2007.

What we already know about the RRW: they prey on the feeble minded, ill-educated, poor white boys and girls from Red States. They laugh at Paul Pelosi getting hammered. Whose side would they end up on?

If Bolsonaro pulls off a military sponsored coup, how long will wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 sit on his hands? Will Musk, a real billionaire, join in?

Thought For The Day - 31 October 2022

With Jair now history. At least for now. Batshit J. Moron must be feeling his sphincter squeezing his brains out. There's always the chance that Jair'll engineer a military coup just like, but better executed than, wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024's flaccid attempt. It's not as if it hasn't happened before.

Musk Ox

If you harbored any doubts that Musk is anything but a Radical Right Wingnut fascist, this'll disabuse you.

"There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye."

Yeah, and you're not a nutjob in disguise.

Delta Dawn - part the fourth

It's baaaaaaaack. Take a gander at the latest CDC report. A Covid-δ sub-variant has emerged, VBM so far. And, contrary to some, Covid-δ is not of the 'trade virulence for transmission' type. In its day Covid-δ was a tad more virulent than Covid-19; which it followed (well, there were a few other variants, but none ever got much of a foothold). Might be an interesting winter. And the 'experts' are, once again, speculating a trifecta: Covid, flu, and RSV. We know that RSV is hitting little kiddies, and flu is doing a number in Chile. As the (allegedly) Chinese proverb says, "may you live in interesting times". That's not a positive.

In a possible warning sign for the US and other Northern Hemisphere countries, Chile's 2022 flu season started much earlier than usual and brought more hospitalizations than during the pandemic, but the effectiveness of the vaccine against hospitalization was estimated to be almost 50%, according to a new study published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers look to the Southern Hemisphere when trying to forecast what the North American flu season might look like, and they've noted that the southern season has been particularly bad this year.

What we do know: the widely predicted bi-pandemic of flu/Covid never appeared the last two winters. The 'experts' chalked that up to the masking/distancing/vaccinating/stay-at-home regimens that were widely adopted. I've managed to avoid even a cold for the whole period. Knock on wood. Few have gotten the bi-valent Covid shot (earliest our MD can see us is the end of November; gulp), and I see lots of folks crowding into, and vewy, vewy few masks in, my local grocery store. Hmmm?

With Fauci nearly out the door, will anyone heed the lessons of Covids? Exponential growth starts with one case. China was lavished with attaBoys for its non-medicine approach to curbing Covid-19; (test, trace, isolate, lockdown) until Covid-ο showed up and blew that regime all to hell. And Xi continues to not vaccinate and to lockdown cities/regions, messing with the West's supply chain for goods.

I Told You So - 24 October 2022

OK, I've been screaming that the bout with inflation has been driven by the unusual suspects:
- Vlad
- Xi
- bin Salman

And, it turns out, climate change. You get it from the horse's mouth

"Every day there's a shortage of something," Patricio said. "It doesn't help [that] with the global warming that the crops have not been good. So there's lack of tomatoes in the world, there's lack of potatoes in the world, there's lack of beans in the world."

Not that the Radical Right Wingnuts have offered even a smidgen of plan to 'cure' the inflation bug. Well, killing Social Security and Medicare will help. Rich folks, of course. Here's the opinion of the MAGA crowd:

I can only hope that the Keep your goddamn government hands off my Medicare! people are exceptions and that a vast majority of Republican seniors understand that Medicare, Medicaid and the Veteran's Administration are all government-run health care systems. Put another way: they're actively and willingly participating in socialized medicine. So the seniors who understand the facts about the Medicare system and yet are screeching at town hall meetings about government-run health care are, well, insert your favorite colorful synonym for "freakishly colossal hypocrites" right about here.

They no cure for stupid.

Dee Feat is in Dee Flation - part the forty fourth

It likely comes as no surprise that I've a chary view of all things psych- related. While the various professions in that class have found many insights, most have then been exploited by manipulators, to suit their purposes rather than the benefit of the population. My earliest memory of learning of this situation was reading "The Hidden Persuaders" from 1957.

... Packard explored advertisers' use of consumer motivational research and other psychological techniques, including depth psychology and subliminal tactics, to manipulate expectations and induce desire for products, particularly in the American postwar era.

Kind of mind blowing, although I didn't read it in 1957; likely about a decade later.

Another insight from the psych professions is a wonderful term/phrase cognitive dissonance, which I've usually boiled down to: "believing/asserting that which is clearly non-rational". Let's see what the wiki calls it...

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information, and the mental toll of it.

Well, yeah.

So, why is this essay about things psych? Well... Within the econ cabal are two camps, nearly always warring: the Radical Right and the Lunatic Left. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out where I sit. Recent reporting brings these issues to the fore.

Along with, or subsumed by one of, these cabals are the Mad-as-a-Hatter Moneterists. They are of the Radical Right; money makes the world go round, even when we know that money is an artificial, human created, figment of the imagination. Gold, silver, jewels, and cowry shells have been 'stores of value' in various cultures for various periods of time. They have little utility.

The Moneterists mantra is that inflation is solely the result of too much moolah in the economy, and therefore the only cure is to 'take away the punch bowl'. As it happens, sometimes it is true that excess moolah has invaded the economy, and resulted in inflation. In my short lifetime, the most infamous devolved from LBJ's "guns and butter" speech and subsequent actions. Excess real demand exceeded available widgets.

Q. Mr. President, from what you have outlined as your program for now, it would seem that you feel that we can have guns and butter for the foreseeable future. Do you have any idea right now, though, that down the road a piece the American people may have to face the problem of guns or butter?

THE PRESIDENT. I have not the slightest doubt but whatever it is necessary to face, the American people will face. I think that all of us know that we are now in the 5 ad month of the prosperity that has been unequaled in this Nation, and I see no reason for declaring a national emergency and I rejected that course of action earlier today when I made my decision.

I cannot foresee what next year, or the following year, or the following year will hold. I only know that the Americans will do whatever is necessary. At the moment we enjoy the good fortune of having an unparalleled period of prosperity with us, and this Government is going to do all it can to see it continue.

Which then got us the Volker destruction. It took some time, abetted by Nixon of course.

So, how then is it possible that we have 'traditional' inflation at the same time as reporting tells us that consumer demand is falling? The answer, of course, is that this is not traditional inflation. It is curtailed supply, most evident in Vlad's work, moolah hoarding during the pandemic, and the failure of Xi's Covid policy.

Quote of the Day

Overheard at Mar-a-Lago as a result of the SS transmission dump recently reported:

Where's my Rose Mary Woods!!"

-- wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024

By The Numbers - part the twenty first

"It's unclear how many draft dodgers and deserters came to Canada during the Vietnam War, but estimates are that 125,000 Americans came to Canada between 1964 and 1977."

"At least 200,000 Russians have left the country in the week since President Vladimir V. Putin announced a partial military mobilization after a series of setbacks in the country's war with Ukraine, according to figures provided by Russia's neighbors."

Well, Vlad has exceeded in a week what it took Ike, JFK, LBJ, Tricky Dick, and Clumsy Gerry 13 (or 14, depending on how you count) years. Now, that's spectacular. Yes, we can quibble about Ike, Clumsy Gerry ('official' end of Vietnam was on Tricky Dick's watch, and the lottery continued until 1975), and Jimmy (he finally reinstituted registration) being at fault, and the year count, but still.

Registration was resumed in July 1980 for men born in 1960 and later, and is in effect to this present time. Men are required to register within 30 days of their 18th birthday.

If wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 does get in again, there'd be two reasons to secede to Canada. I mean, does some pimply 18 year old Redneck really, really want to be the latter day La Fayette Squadron in support of Vlad?? Well?

By The Numbers - part the twentieth

More storms hit Florida than any other U.S. state, and since 1851 only eighteen hurricane seasons passed without a known storm impacting the state.
-- the wiki

Oddly, at least to me, is that numbers of tropical storms aren't found on the innterTubes. After all, just one mile per hour lower than a Cat 1 is 'just a tropical storm'. Given that the highest point on the Florida penninsula is 295 feet, perhaps that's something worth knowing. If no other way, the insurance industry will de-populate Florida. Unless, of course, the Red States gang up on the rest of us and extort the funds to keep putting Humpty Dumpty back together again in the path of the next Ian.

If there is a God, Sleepy Joe told Gov. DeMented to shut the fuck up if he want's Uncle Sugar moolah.

By The Numbers - part the nineteenth

So, as you've likely read somewhere, Governor DeMented is demanding, Demanding I Say, that Sleepy Joe pay 100% of the bill for cleaning up the mess in his God forsaken state. Didn't have the same demand when Sandy devastated New York and environs. I recall, with some level of accuracy, a line from Hiaasen's "Stormy Weather" (can't find my copy, and the innterTubes various quote sites are lacking)

Those fucking flying aluminum ducks.

So, just how many mobile homes are in Fl.? Not the most, it turns out.
- 1 Texas 137,460
- 2 Florida 50,761

It would seem that Florida isn't so bad. But, wait, there's more!

Texas is so much larger than Florida, what's the measure on a density basis?
- Texas 268,596 sq. miles
- Florida 65,758 sq. miles

Therefore, we get
- Texas .51 per sq. mile
- Florida .77 per sq. mile

That's a might more. Let's see if we can find out whether those tin cans are concentrated lower on the pennisula where Ian and Andrew and most of their brethren call. From a few years ago, the #1 place to have a mobile home is Florida's Lakeland-Winter Haven metro area. Yes, the conveniently offered map shows that this area was right next to the the bull's eye for Ian. Until a day or two before Ian hit, it was the bull's eye.

I carry the legend that these are just flying aluminum ducks. Let's find out whether mobile homes can survive hurricanes. The videos from Fort Meyers, south of Winter Haven, showed a landscape that looked like it had been leveled by a bulldozer in places and nearly completely under water in others. Still not safe.