Twenty eight year old Tampa Bay Rays catcher Jean Ramirez died unexpectedly on Monday. I’m sure that this unexpected, unexplained death had nothing whatsoever to do with the vaccination. 28 year old athlete millionaires are always dying under mysterious circumstances.
In other not COVID vaccine news, the Army is now desperate for recruits and paying $50k sign on bonuses because they didn’t just kick out a bunch of trained soldiers for not being vaccinated. But hey, the ones they get now will be loyal little lefty bots, so there is that.
How are they paying for housing? Food? Utilities? I understand wanting to quit your job and lie about with no job. What I don’t understand is how they can afford to. Can anyone explain this? Are the government handouts really that great?
When I first reported to the fleet, everyone who was E4 and below had to report for 90 days of “coop cleaning.” The coop was the compartment where about 200 of the sailors in the engineering department lived. There was one E4 and three sailors E3 and below who were assigned as coop cleaners. It was their job to clean the berthing compartment and its attached head.
Inside of that compartment were two laundry receptacles: one for dark clothes, one for whites. Twice a week, the coop cleaners would put the clothes into 60 pound bags and take those 5 or 6 bags down to the laundry to be washed. When those clothes came back clean, the coop cleaners would place them on each person’s rack (bunk). It was rather nasty. Imagine what 300 pounds of laundry that was worn in a hot, humid environment by 200 sweaty guys for a 16 hour workday smelled like after fermenting for three days in a common laundry locker. Yeah, it smelled like a mixture of ammonia, grilled onions, cheese, and farts.
One of the funniest traditions we had was to pin the skivvies with the largest skid mark to the bulletin board that was located next to the laundry bin. Since your name was on the skivvies, you were subject to ridicule. We had one guy, his name was Crenshaw, who regularly had skidmarks that were 6 inches long and two or three inches wide. He didn’t care one whit about the ridicule he was subjected to. Every laundry day, his underwear and its large skidmarks would go on display.
As regular readers know, I recently completed project Gaston– an 80 percent Glock compatible pistol frame. Today was the day that I finally got to take it out to turn some money into noise.
I got to put a single magazine through it. Accuracy was fine. Here is the target from 10 yards, rapid fire.
The problem was reliability. Out of 16 rounds, there was one stove pipe, three failures to feed, one round with a dented primer but no PEW!, and one where the fire control group didn’t reset.
I didn’t even get a chance to troubleshoot before the RSO came over and forced me to stop shooting because my ammo was steel cased.
I am wondering if the problems were caused by too heavy of a recoil spring. The slide is a lightweight one, and perhaps changing out the standard 15 pound spring with a 13 pound one will work.
In the meantime, I need to buy some brass cased ammo and save the steel cased stuff for the outdoor range. More on this later.
A proposed bill in Florida will change the law concerning rape. Now in Florida, a man and a woman can have couple of drinks followed by a sexual romp, and if one of them later decides that sex was a bad idea, have the other charged with rape.
Why? Because the old law required that the victim had been drugged without their consent. Now the law will be changed so if one or both of them are intoxicated of their own free will, they are considered mentally incapacitated, and the other is guilty of rape.
The only way to get laid is to have any potential paramour sign a legal release with at least two witnesses certifying that the signatories do not appear to be impaired by any intoxicating substances.
When my wife got home from work, I told her the story about my aborted range trip, and her first response was “That ammo can still shoot someone in the face if you need it to, right?”
North Korea launched a missile early Tuesday morning local time that apparently spooked NORAD, which caused more of a stir than government sources are willing to admit. The missile itself appears to have had a different signature than earlier test launches, probably caused by the fact that it appeared to have hit Mach 10, causing the missile to reach a high enough altitude that the hypersonic glide vehicle could have reached the west coast.
As a result, the FAA issued a pair of ground stops for aircraft on the west coast that lasted a total of 17 minutes. NORAD initially denied issuing an alert message before later admitting to it. (Actual ATC ground stop slips pictured)
Now let me tell you that I am part of a hobbyist group that monitors the US radio network that is used to issue messages to nuclear capable units, among other things. Called an EAM (Emergency Action Message) they are encoded, but you still get a sense that something is happening when radio traffic increases. The messages sound like this:
So last night, I was repeatedly awakened as no fewer than 22 EAMs between 2100 and midnight. I wondered what was going on, then discovered the textgroup had been alive with aircraft reports.
Some of the members of the group are HAM radio enthusiasts like myself, others are air traffic controllers, some just radio nerds. Here is what was reported to me:
Two B-1B bombers were scrambled out of Joint base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, callsigns Javelin 71 and 72. They were accompanied by 4 KC-135 tankers, callsigns Pearl 71, 72, 73, and 74. They were diverted and landed at Misawa AFB in Japan. I don’t think that these were armed with nuclear weapons, both because the B-1B has reportedly had its nuclear capabilities removed, and I doubt Japan wants nuclear weapons stored on its soil.
Note: Reader Wolfgang Gullich posted a comment (see below) that there were never any B-1’s at Elmendorf on the day in question. Don’t know what this means, since the callsigns and flight paths have been verified by flight tracking software.
B-52 out of Barksdale over LouisianaRuff 07 from Tinker
The B-52 is of course a nuclear capable bomber, but there is no way of knowing if any of the aircraft launched had actual nuclear weapons loaded, but that would be the safe bet. I mean, why draw an unloaded firearm from the holster, right?
The E-6 Mercury is a “doomsday” plane that has the capability to both launch the nation’s land based nuclear missiles and order the Navy’s Trident submarines to launch their weapons. It is staffed by a flag officer (either an Air Force general or Navy Admiral) with access to the country’s nuclear codes, so that they can order a nuclear retaliatory strike in the event that other levels of the command structure are destroyed in an attack. They used to be airborne 24/7, until 1990. Since that time, they are kept on ground alert with the capability of being launched on short notice. The Navy (who owns the aircraft) only bought 16 of these aircraft, so it is a big deal to have two of them airborne at any one time, for any length of time.
The VC-32 is used by the Vice President under the callsign Air Force-2, and by cabinet level officers in the chain of succession using the SAM callsigns.
As I write this on Tuesday afternoon, there is still at least one E-6B over the country. One of them (RUFF01) is currently airborne over Nebraska.
Here is what I think happened:
NORAD detected the missile launch and noted that its speed and maximum altitude fit the profile for a possible CONUS impact. This caused NORAD to issue a ground stop for the west coast, as well as flushing some nuclear capable forces off of ground alert and headed towards Korea, while also getting a Presidential successor and the generals in charge of any possible nuclear response into their airborne command posts.
I arrived at the range and paid my $20 (plus tax) range fee. I used to have an annual pass (cost $650 for both the wife and I) but we let it expire during 2020 because the COVID shutdown made it silly to pay for a range pass we weren’t using. Once they reopened, we didn’t renew it because ammo had gotten so expensive that we couldn’t go shooting enough to make it worthwhile.
Why? At $20 an hour per shooting lane, we need to go to the range at least three times per month to make it worthwhile to have a membership. Even if the wife and I each took a lane, that still means a range visit every three weeks. Ammo has gotten to be so expensive that we just couldn’t pull that off.
In January of 2020, I bought a 1,000 round case of 9mm for $150. So 15 cents a round for 9mm. Then the ammo supply dried up. When I finally DID get a ‘good’ deal on 9mm, it cost me $150 for 500 rounds of 9mm. That’s right- 30 cents per round, for this stuff:
I took it to the range this morning. That was a disaster. After firing one magazine of it, the RSO came over and told me that I couldn’t shoot steel case ammo, because they were unable to sell the casings to their scrap dealer. He invited me to buy some ammo in the store to continue shooting. Here is a cross section of what they were selling:
Norma .22LR for $10 a box?
Remington .38 Special for $1 a round.
Winchester 9mm for 50 cents a round. I can get the same stuff from 2A warehouse for 37 cents a round.
This means that shooting 2 boxes of ammo at this range using their ammo is going to cost me:
A $10 annual “membership fee”
$20 for the range fee
$13 in extra ammo costs.
Over the course of a year, a monthly trip to the range using their ammo will cost me $406 in range fees and extra ammo costs. Also, I don’t reload, but if I did, this would bug me: They won’t let you take your brass with you.
So I will make sure that I have brass cased ammo next time.
Several days ago, I posted about an active cell of Antifa operating in and around the Tampa Bay area of Florida. I have been doing some research and as much of a threat assessment of this as I can. I would have posted sooner on this, but I had several employees get COVID and have just worked a pair of 16 hour days covering their shifts. This is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and write this all out.
When the guy was caught, he had a checklist in his possession. The list itself shows that someone is training these guys to be good little insurgents. Read it for yourself, and you can see that they are being taught how to do this.
This also gives you an idea of the basic load carried by these guys. Note that they do not (yet) have firearms on the list, but as you will see below, many people in this group DO carry weapons as well as firearms.
Using this list and news articles on the arrestee, I was able to find quite a bit of information.
Here is the intel that I have on the cell he was operating with:
Command, Control, Communications
The particular unit he seems to have been affiliated with is the Florida Youth Liberation Front. The Front claims to have chapters in Oregon, Washington, California, Florida, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, New York, and Washington, DC, as well as in Canada. The Washington state version of the Front is known to have been around since 2018. The Florida chapter was formed in 2020.
They appear to be centrally controlled at the national level, and the different chapters coordinate their actions. The Portland chapter provides training for members of other chapters.
Their online presence is hosted by noblogs.org. This webpage is set up for insurgent groups. This platform caters to far-left causes, stating that it exists for the purpose of “connecting radical people.”
Their Twitter feed is not open to the public, but Twitter seems to have no problem allowing a group that advocates for violence, as long as that group is on the left.
One common theme I found on every site is the desire for the violent overthrow of government. I don’t understand how these guys’ meetings aren’t attended by a dozen cops. Every other criminal enterprise in the nation has been infiltrated to the point where they have more cops than real members, but these guys? This HAS to indicate some kind of government support. Reading the group’s website, and especially their “ezine” is fairly instructive.
Organization
The Front is broken down into smaller “affinity groups,” who operate at the local level. These groups participate in sabotage, vandalism, and other violent acts, which they call “direct actions.” This is a classic cell structure that has proven to be quite effective.
Other Antifa-affiliated groups claim they are not connected to YLF, but other left-wing extremist groups have shared the Front’s propaganda on social media, and YLF shares their propaganda and event announcements. The wording, images, and tactics are similar enough to indicate a common controlling entity at some level.
Violent Actions
The Front explicitly discourages peaceful protest. In June 2020, the Front advised protesters that they “can never be peaceful” if it means complying with police demands. Journalist Andy Ngo says that the Front “openly advocate[s] for violent uprisings.” In his testimony to Congress in August 2020, he identified YLF as the organizers of riots in Portland and other cities during the summer of 2020.
Their members are known to frequently carry loaded firearms, as well as use destructive devices such as Molotov cocktails, as well as commercial fireworks, which they sometimes modify into antipersonnel IEDs by wrapping them in duct tape and nails.
The Front is known to have carried out several violent acts:
The Front recently sued Andy Ngo for “stealing” their comments and photos. They dropped the suit when it was pointed out that Ngo was covered by “fair use.”
What is the threat?
It would be fairly easy to dismiss this group as a bunch of 20 something soyboy cucks who are cosplaying the revolutionary role while still living at home with mom and dad. That would be a mistake. While it is accurate that they are a bunch of man-children who still live at home and have no real career, this group is much more than that.
They have organization, a decent command and control network, funding enough for travel, attorneys, equipment, and an extensive propaganda network. Their members are motivated and becoming better equipped and trained by the minute.
Judge them by the fact that they are brazen and have no problem breaking the law. They have little to lose, and are out there carrying out violent attacks while the government sits on its hands, and those of us on the right largely sit around and complain on the Internet. Those on the right who DO stand up and say something are declared to be the terrorists and wind up being tortured for over a year in Federal prison, without trial and without bail.
They are dangerous and effective by the only metric that matters: they are succeeding, especially in Democrat controlled areas.
What can you do?
The best thing that we have going for us in Florida is our governor and our legal climate. So, the best thing we can do is stay right here in Florida.
COVID has again begun running amok at work. In less than a week, we went from no COVID patients to about 100. Even worse, this variant seems to be more contagious to younger people than the previous versions, so many hospital employees are getting it.
We still have about 100 COVID patients admitted, enough for an entire wing of one floor. So far, that is less than what we had back in August and September with the Delta variant. We had one COVID patient die on Sunday, and none on Monday that I am aware of. Our hardest hit patients are the elderly. Nearly every seriously ill patient is over the age of 80. Most have serious underlying conditions like COPD or end stage renal disease. The one who died on Sunday was 92 years old and had COPD.
This Omicron variant seems to be a lot milder than previous strains, but MUCH more contagious. There are over 100 hospital employees out with COVID as we speak, but the symptoms appear to be somewhat similar to a bad cold for most people.
The problem for me is that I have two employees out with it, one of whom had to be sent home an hour into her shift. She had mild symptoms (cough, fatigue, runny nose) but there is no way she can stay at work with a positive test, so I went in to cover part of her shift on Sunday and on Monday. That means I worked my normal 12 hour shift plus four hours of hers. Two days in a row.
Hence, blogging had to take a back burner. Don’t feel too bad. I get a weekend shift differential plus a cash bonus to work extra shifts. Plus, as soon as I hit 40 hours, I get time and a half. It’s only the second day of the week, and I already have over 35 hours on the clock. It will be a good paycheck, at least.
