Dave: "We've been through this, Phil. The Mongols are still outside. We can't open the gates yet."
Phil: "But...freedom! I gotta get out. I can't take it. I gotta...I gotta weed the turnips! I left the lights on in the cow byre! I gotta buy another dozen swords!"
Dave:...
Dave: "Mongols, Phil."
Phil: "Uuuugh. I can't staaand it. We've been in here for...weeks!"
Dave: "That's how sieges work, Phil."
Phil: "But...the Mongols have barely killed anyone for days!"
Dave: "That's because of the walls."
Phil: "Are you sure? Maybe the Mongols aren't as dangerous as you said they were!"
Dave:
Phil: "I'm just saying, how bad could it be? They can't kill all of us!"
Dave: "That is literally the thing they do, Phil."
Phil: "Aaarrrggh! My turnips!"
https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a1RzyvP_460swp.webp
ReplyDeleteMongols used battering rams to try to break in.
ReplyDeleteCalifornia rail engineers use trains to . . . well . . . defeat guvmnt conspiracies . . . ?! https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/train-operator-port-los-angeles-charged-derailing-locomotive-near-us-navy-s-hospital
Yeah, was that weird AF, or what?
DeleteThe comment I read about that that made me laugh was "It's foolish to fight a ship with a train. You bot get wet, but the ship likes it."
With more than 32800 US deaths from covid-19, that is almost five times the US KIA in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria over the last 20 years.
ReplyDeleteMy bride is liking this siege as I am finally catching up on projects that have been on her honey-do list for years.
This was posted on Huffington Post, which sometimes has the reliability of Fox News, but still I think is on point:
ReplyDeleteThe coronavirus pandemic is not even close to being over, an associate professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases at Harvard cautioned in a new editorial published by The Guardian this week.
In fact, it is “quite the reverse,” wrote William Hanage.
“The pandemic is only just getting started,” said Hanage, who explained why “talk of the ‘peak’” of the spread of the contagion “can be misleading” as “it’s not clear whether you are talking about the Matterhorn or Table Mountain — both have a summit, but the peak is far more pronounced in one than the other.”
Hanage also warned “there may be a mountain range.”
“In other words, what is happening right now could be just one peak — not the peak.” he said. “And the reason for this is that despite all those positive signs from antibody testing, the huge majority of the population is not immune.”
Hanage acknowledged a vaccine to combat the virus is “still a long way off” but said improved testing and contact tracing could greatly slow the pace of its spread.
“Governments around the world are attempting ways to keep jobs and businesses afloat while lockdowns are in place — but the pressure remains to swiftly end such shutdowns,” he added. “I get that this is going to be a mammoth strain on the economy. But the deaths of many thousands of people would be too: it is simply not possible to thoroughly insulate an economy from the impact of a pandemic of this kind.”
Olin
What strikes me about this "OMFG OPEN THE ECONOMY!!!" is how silly and shortsighted it is.
DeleteFirst, because the Russian-roulette nature of forcing people to congregate in the midst of a pandemic will be the civilian equivalent of marching your battalion through the minefield because you don't want to take the time and effort to get the engineers to clear lanes. You CAN do it, if you're the Red Army and you have batches of NKVD assassins posted behind the grunts and they know that while they're likely to die on a mine if they DON'T rush forward they're sure to die from a Cheka Nagan bullet.
And, second, you've basically destroyed the unit to get your short-term mission accomplished...and there's no guarantee that the mission WILL be accomplished. It totally depends on how dense and deep the minefield is, how many of the guys will panic as they see the guys around them shredded, how long it will take before the accumulated casualties simply rip the unit's morale apart and they go to ground.
Second, because there's a very obvious and simple alternative - do what the various nations did in WW2: divert a significant chunk of the national treasure into paying for what are, in effect, the "war efforts". Only instead of paying people to charge through minefields or build bombers you pay for them to stay home. And instead of paying businesses to convert their assembly lines to tanks and trucks, you pay restaurants and yoga studios and tattoo parlors to stay shut and pay their rent and their employees.
And, unlike the Good War, this isn't for three or four years; it's until there's a safe and effective vaccine and treatments - we're talking probably 18-24 months.
AND - The People KNOW this. So they know that they don't HAVE to charge out into the minefield. They know that with engineers - that is, vastly widespread testing and tracing - we can cut lanes that will allow SOME reopening.
It would be one thing if there was no alternative; either isolation or Depression. But there ARE alternatives, many people who are paying attention (meaning not the FOX "News" droogs, but actual people with functional hindbrains) know that, and so to be asked - or ordered - to rush the minefield?
As we used to remind officers who would come up with ideas like that:
"You first, motherfucker."
And Peter Frankopan, in "Silk Roads", makes the argument that the Mongols, after coming in and knocking out the top management people, actually ran a pretty good ship. Over a vast area, and for a long time.
ReplyDeleteOlin
These are the OTHER Mongols, the ones that kill everyone.
DeleteMake that ~40,000 covid-19 deaths in the US as of Sunday the 19th. That is more than Korean War KIA. And it appears to be on a wave to soon surpass Americans killed in Viet Nam.
ReplyDeleteIt's not terribly much in comparison to other regular flu seasons.
DeleteThe issue isn't so much the actual death toll, but the potential one.
The U.S. federal government sure has botched its response almost completely and comically (which damaged the country's reputation even more than the damage already done). It isn't a much worse failure than the British, Italian, Spanish or French governments, though.
I do preliminarily not add the German federal government to the list despite its extremely sluggish action because it appears that our medical and scientific community is doing a really good job.
It's in the middle of an insanely unusual response, however, wherein much of an entire nation is under house arrest. So while it's "not much" compared to normal flu it's exceptional in comparison to regular flu if everyone was locked in their houses.
DeleteApples, oranges.
"I do preliminarily not add the German federal government to the list despite its extremely sluggish action because it appears that our medical and scientific community is doing a really good job."
ReplyDeleteThat comment does not make sense. Most of the desease stuff is Ländersache (job of the federal states), the government has supported an in time developement of tests and their destribution.
What should the government have done earlier without infection cases? The lack of infrastructure in comparison the South Korea is again not the job of the governemnt, but of the Länder.
Ulenspiegel
They were extremely timid in regard to cancel/outlaw conferences, music concerts, football games with audience and so on.
DeleteThe 16 states don't have the expertise available that the federal government had. The RKI is federal-level. I expected the federal government to behave responsibly and push for measures more energetically - regardless of whether it's about commanding or asking.
The conservatives were timid and not motivated to action as usual (=real conservatives). I was telling friends and relatives that I expect drastic measures to be unavoidable weeks before they were finally enacted.
The best I could say about the federal response in Germany is that they delayed the onset of strict measures to reduce the economic damage. That does not explain why they didn't give proper advance warning to the economy or why they didn't mobilize production of protective equipment and other pandemic-specific supplies earlier.
My judgment is that they were too slow despite having superior access to information compared to us. Moreover, the federal cabinet swore an oath. Have a look at it.
It seems almost pedantic to insist on strict federalism in the middle of a global pandemic, as though if a nation was invaded by aliens it would be up to the individual subregions to respond. How is this NOT primarily the job of the federal governments to coordinate and direct a response?
DeleteRule of law and capacity issues
DeleteBesides, the division of labour between federal and state level in Germany is such that usually the not officially responsible level simply lacks the capacity.
The infectious diseases competence centre RKI is under federal control. (And I am exasperated at their worse than amateurish behaviour in regard to statistics.) Yet the states have the authority in other areas, such as decision to close education institutions.
Besides, the chancellor is a powermonger in party politics, but she does yield the power in a very moderating, team-leading way. She's unsuited for strong leadership or growing beyond the nominal power of the office. Her entire party is better-suited to inaction and refusal to accept the existence of problems rather than to energetic response to problems.
They win elections to enjoy the power, but their agenda seems limited to very few gifts to favoured demographics shortly after the election. Whatever other major efforts they announce tends to dilute and either slowly whither away or end in embarrassing scandals. The German conservatives are administrators, not reformers.
I get "federalism"; my surprise was at Uhlenspiegel's comment: "Most of the disease stuff is Ländersache What should the government have done earlier without infection cases? The lack of infrastructure in comparison the South Korea is again not the job of the government, but of the Länder."
DeleteCoordination of things like developing infrastructure for, among other things, dealing with public health emergencies seems like preeminently a federal-level sort of thing. If the Lander aren't doing their jobs, the feds are supposed to step in and rap them on the nuts, right? And then, when the infrastructure is needed, the feds coordinate and cross-level and make sure that everything is going where it needs to go - y'know, what the Trumplefucks AREN'T doing, but what a competent government does...
"If the Lander aren't doing their jobs, the feds are supposed to step in and rap them on the nuts, right?"
ReplyDeleteResponsibilities are fixed in the constitution. The federal government is trying to play in some fields it should not (there shouldn't be a federal ministry of education and our MP is still not called MP because policing was set to be a state-level authority), but generally the division of labour is fixated so much that they cannot be changed in a crisis.
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html#p0161
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html#p0338
LOL, he found something so stupid that the cultists don't defend it on the internet (or at least not anywhere close to the volume of spamming they usually produce).
ReplyDeleteThey are. Their delusions range from "He was kidding!" to "He never did say that!" to "He was just trying out an idea, there's no harm in that!".
DeleteThe simple reality is that somewhere between three and four out of ten Americans are fully invested in this guy, no matter how insane. They are the Ugandans who were Idi Amin partisans regardless of how many looney stories or freakish allegations (cannibalism! murder! torture!) surround the guy.
I honestly have no idea how the fuck you run a supposed democratic republic with that level of delusion.
If Phil and Dave would just inhale a couple of jiggers of vaporized bleach then all their troubles with turnips and mongols would be long gone.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see that CNO Admiral Gilday is recommending Captin Crozier be reinstated to command. SecDef is stalling. He probably is waiting to see which way President Lysol tweets.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for ship and crew their skipper is himself being treated for Covid19. So no telling if and when reinstatement will happen.
Precedents? Little Mac McClellan was reluctantly reinstated by Lincoln after Pope's disaster. Although many claim that it was Mac's inaction by staying anchored in Alexandria that led to Pope's debacle
I updated the "Naval Gazing" post to reflect this.
DeleteAnd the notion of comparing this guy Crozier - who, regardless of what your opinion of his judgement is, was at least stand-up enough to be willing to fall on his sword for his guys - to Little Mac? Ugh. Makes me feel dirty all over.