Yup…just like there are these drugs that are effective against a broad spectrum of bacteria…stupidity knows bounds as to political persuasion, age, race, gender, or pretty much anything else. Today’s examples all came from the various news media sites today. It’s not all stupid today though…there are actually a couple of feel good stories in here.

First up…Representative Jayapal (D-WA) has a new plan for Medicare for All. She’s going to offer…copying right out of her plan here…ban employer health plans, no payments for anything but prescriptions, 2 year transition period, reverses Hyde amendment on federal ban on abortion funding, she says it’s not clear how it would be paid for but surely a wealth tax, mandatory employer contributions, and savings from reducing costs will cover it. Nothing in there about how much it would cost…no evaluation by the OMB or congressional cost estimation bodies, no evaluation of how much money the wealth tax would bring in or how much wealth would flee the country if it was enacted, no specification about the “mandatory employer contributions” which is essentially another tax that will be passed along to their customers, and no evaluation of how this plan will reduce costs. Has the government ever…I mean ever…taken over anything and made it more efficient. There’s an example of this further down the page in the SpaceX note.

Following right up on that…according to the headline…”California school called police on a 5 year old”. Then you get into reading the article and it turns out that this 5 year disadvantaged youth in Upland CA started his week off by initiating a fight with another kid in his class. Then the next day…something again sets him off and he proceeds to have a 45 minute tirade where he basically trashes the classroom including tossing chairs through windows, dumping file drawers and pretty much everything else on the floor. So the school resource officer…who granted is a policeman but is stationed in the school permanently to maintain order and protect the kids and staff therein…anyway he gets the report of a disturbance so naturally he goes to the scene…ya know it is his job after all. He watches while the teacher attempts to control the kid…can’t touch him of course in today’s litigious society and ya know how easy it is to reason with a 5 year old…anyway finally the cop escorts the kid to the office…he’s never spoken to the kid through all of this…and they sit there while the office staff calls his mother…her name is Chiquita or Chiniqua or something along that vein…to come and take him home. On the way out with his mother…the resource officer says “you be good now, ok?”. Now maybe it’s me…but that doesn’t sound like “calling the police on a 5 year old” at all…but ya know how the media will say anything to get clicks and make authorities, police, or school staff look bad.

Next up…the brawl in the legislature in West Virginia. Apparently some right wing member or staff…it wasn’t clear who posted it from the article…anyway they put up a poster that was…well, let’s call it politically incorrect. I won’t give the idiot who did it the web hits by posting the poster…but it essentially had a photo of the Twin Towers in NYC right as the second plane hit them…with wording to the effect of “you said you would never forget”. The second half of the poster had a photo of the Muslim congresswoman from Minnesota…she of the blatantly anti-Semitic remarks a couple weeks back…and wording that basically says “this is proof you’ve forgotten”. What kind of an idiot does this. Sure…there are Muslim terrorists in the world…but even if the number is 50,000 (probably a high estimate IMO) that’s a minute fraction of a percent of the 1.6 billion muslims in the world. The vast, vast, overwhelmingly vast majority of muslims…including both US citizens, immigrants, and citizens of other countries…are peaceful minded people and their religion specifically decries the violence and hate the bad ones espouse. Just like any other social, racial, religious, ethnic, or any other category you want to name…they all have good people and they all have bad people. I’ve never seen any evidence…although admittedly I haven’t really looked for it either…that any group has a significantly higher percentage of terrorists, criminals, drug dealers than any other group…the only real exception I can think of is suicide bombers. Whoever posted this in the legislature there is a complete loon…and I say this even though her politics, actions, demands, and policies are 100% opposite of what I believe.

This is Isaac (Ike) Fabella…he’s a WWII vet who lives in a nursing home in Michigan…he posted on Twitter last week that he would like to get 100 cards for his upcoming 100th birthday. So far…he’s up to 16,000. Goodonya Ike.

Next in today’s hit parade…idiot millennials. Now I’ve blocked out their faces in the two images below and won’t mention their names so they will get zero publicity for this stunt from me. Anyway…according to the article…these two 20something Portuguese “social media influencers”…I’ve got no idea how you become one of those or even what it means…but apparently posting photos of yourself doing stupid things on Instagram is all part of it in the competition to see who can get more likes or followers or whatever Instagram calls them. Anyway…they were on this moving train in Sri Lanka recently and decided it would be a good place to do some of the aforementioned stupid things…I think the images speak for themselves.

Does this look like something anyone with more than 10 working brain cells would do? She claimed it “wasn’t dangerous at all” and encourages her followers to create similar “moments” in their Instagram feed. Morons I tell ya…

Joe Biden…well he’s apparently gotten himself in trouble with some of the alleged leaders in the Democratic presidential field…there are 14 of them running so far…and each one is trying to out-socialist the rest and make demands that are farther to the left than anybody else. Apparently…Uncle Joe is thinking about running again…and despite being considered pretty liberal when he was in the Senate…he’s not being described as “mainstream” compared to the rest of the candidates. So what was his crime against socialism and progressive mores…why he said that Vice President Spence was a good guy and he could work with him. Apparently Democrats aren’t allowed to say anything nice about the other side. I wonder if the “boss” AOC gave him permission to speak…after all last week she said she was the boss.

Bernie Sanders…well he says that “no action too drastic for the government to take to address climate change.” No mentions of how to pay for it or even achieve the advances it demands…but we should do it anyway…right along with enacting Medicare for all, free college, and a partridge in a pear tree.

In the “what were they thinking category”…in Kentucky…the legislature has actually passed and sent to the governor for signature a law that authorizes concealed carry of firearms with no permit, no license, no training, and no background check. Now the 2nd amendment guarantees…and has been upheld by the Supreme Court…the right to keep and bear arms…things like permits, background checks, and training strike me as a good thing…that will help keep guns out of the hands of crazies and make sure that owners understand basic safety items like safeties and making sure the cop that pulls you over for a traffic violation is aware you’re carrying. Nuts Ima tellin’ ya.

What does all this mean? Well…as my friend Randy Cunningham of This is True fame says…there are obliviots in every population no matter how you slice it.

Johnny Manzel…ya know “Mr. Football”…he of the failed NFL career who went on to get signed by the CFL up in Canuckistan…he got canned this week from his team for violating the terms of his agreement with the CFL that allowed him to play…and told that no other team in the league could sign him. Nothing surprising in there given that he’s never grown up past the age of 11 or so…but the article went on to talk about his wife Bre Tiesi-Manziel who took part in a half marathon race for charity in Temecula CA last weekend. She posted photos of her finishing the race in 1:58:22…which is about a nine minute pace and put her in the top 30 female finishers…and is certainly achievable for a first time half marathon participant who’s properly trained. However…some folks at the finish line thought she looked entirely too good to have just finished the race…and Neil’s run enough races for me to know that you never look good at the end of a race…makeup not smeared, not out of breath, not all sweaty…so they went back and looked at her mile times through the race. Turns out she passed the halfway point (6.4 miles) in 1:31:00 or about 14:15 per mile pace This means that in order to have actually finished the race in 1:58 she ran the second half of the race in 27 minutes and change. For those of you who aren’t runners…let me tell you a bit about this. This means that she ran the last second half of the race with every mile right around the 4 minute mark…ya know the one that Roger Bannister first broke back in the 50s. The woman’s world record for a mile as of today is 4:12…and that was obviously run with having first run the first half of the half marathon and the record holder only had to run a mile…and we’re supposed to believe she…a first time half marathoner…broke the woman’s world record for a mile by 12 seconds…not once but 6 times? Turns out that there was a loop in the course you were supposed to go around twice and a race pace person…that is a guy who was deliberately running a pace so he would finish in exactly 2 hours…saw her turn back to the finish line and skip the second loop. When you account for the reduced distance…she finished the whole race in just about a 14:15 pace…exactly like she had at the halfway mark. Once exposed in the media…she posted a photo of the 11 mile marker…that she would have passed if she did the second loop…and that’s supposed to “prove” that she ran the whole race. No mention by her of how she managed to break the woman’s mile record 6 times over. More millennial stupidity I guess.

In the “how the heck does that even happen” vein…the nation’s largest Neo-Nazi group…named the National Socialist Movement…short aside here on socialist…I’m a bit confused by the name as socialists usually believe in taking from the rich, giving to the poor, and giving advantages to every last “disadvantaged” group in the population…and that’s typically not what Neo-Nazi groups want…but maybe it’s just me. Anyways…they’ve got a new director now…his name is James Hart Stern…and his policy is to dissolve the group. The corporate filings don’t say how he got the job or why the last director left the position…but that’s not the most interesting part. Despite this being a Neo-Nazi group…the new director is a black activist.

Saw an article also about Bill Gates house. Ya know…Bill Gates who founded Microsoft, became a pretty much self made $100 billionaire, largely was at the forefront of the personal computer and high tech industry…yeah, that Bill Gates…the noted liberal, philanthropist, and believer in trying to lower carbon emissions. Anyway…he tells in the article about how being a billionaire makes his life easier because he has doesn’t have to worry about money. His house…and I”m not sure why he needs all of this…has 66,000 square feet, 18 and 3/4 bathrooms, a 60 foot indoor pool, an indoor trampoline room, an in house theater and a library. It was built out of 500 year old Douglas fir trees…wait, I thought he was supposed to be an environmentalist…I’m not sure why anybody needs a house with all of that…but hey, he’s got $100 billion so he can buy whatever he wants without worrying about medical or college costs. The article then went on into some questions about the Green New Deal…and despite being a liberal who believes in getting to zero carbon emissions…well he basically said it’s nuts. He said “It’s not realistic to think the entire economy and infrastructure could be transformed in a few years.” and “For example, for many people in low- and middle-income countries, cattle are an essential source of income and nutrients,” he wrote, adding that the best approach would be to “invest in innovation” so that things could continue “without destroying the climate”. He also stated that to solve the problem would require breakthrough inventions in many fields…but I guess AOC will just order those breakthrough inventions since she’s the boss.

Victoria’s Secret announced it is closing 53 more stores in addition to the 30 they closed in 2018. I guess millennial women don’t believe in buying sexy lingerie to entice their men (or woman) partners. Call me crazy…but I would much rather see a woman in a bustier, garter belt, stockings, and heels than in combat boots and stained/torn tightey whities…but mebbe Ima old fashioned.

Last one…let’s talk about Elon Musk. I don’t understand how somebody who’s obviously a gifted entrepreneur and forward thinker can simultaneously run SpaceX…which is doing spectacularly…while also running Tesla…which is doing spectacularly bad. SpaceX has a series of NASA contracts totaling $2.4 billion to develop a rocket and capsule that can deliver both cargo and up to 7 passengers to low earth orbit…that funding covers both development and launch of 10 cargo missions and 6 manned missions. It was founded in 2002 and launched their first rocket to orbit in 2008 and launched the flight demo test vehicle today…it will dock autonomously in a day or so, spend a week there, and return to earth again autonomously. They’ve achieved more than NASA in fewer years at less cost. Their current heavy launch vehicle Falcon 9 Heavy can lift 140,000 pounds to low earth orbit or 60,000 pounds to a geosynchronous transfer orbit for a cost of $90 million ($150 million if the flight profile prevents recovery of the first stage). This compares to 61,000 and 8400 pounds respectively for a space shuttle launch…which cost $400 million just for the launch without considering the development cost of the system. So as you can see…SpaceX is doing pretty well. Tesla…on the other hand…well they have a pretty decent electrical vehicle…but it costs $60,000 and they’ve built about 500,000 of them since 2015. It’s clearly not a vehicle for the masses…and he has been fine by the SEC for stock manipulation recently. Production dates keep slipping and they announced this week that they’re closing all their stores, shifting to online only sales, and providing no test drives to anybody. Their solution if you want a test drive is to buy one…you can then drive it for a week and if you don’t like it bring it back for a full refund less $1,000. Oh yeah…they also announced a new cheaper version of the Model 3…which only costs $35,000 but to get that they stripped all the cool technology stuff out of it and reduced the range. Probably has only an AM radio too. So how can a guy who’s smart enough to hire good enough engineers to do what SpaceX has done be such a miserable failure at building cars? I dunno.

OK…last one. You probably heard about the jogger that was attacked by a mountain lion out in Colorado a couple weeks back…he ended up bashing the cat in the head with a rock and strangling it to survive. Instead of congratulating him on his ability to improvise, adapt, and overcome…and survive the encounter…the media appears to be trying to generate sympathy for the poor innocent victim (the mountain lion). To wit…the local game warden people competed a necropsy…that’s an autopsy on an animal…this week and announced that it was a male “kitten” weighing about 40 pounds and about 4-5 months old…in the first place it’s a cub and not a kitten but the report makes it sound like it’s a house cat. Mind you…it’s 3 or 4 times heavier than even a big house cat, has sharp teeth and claws, is pretty quick, and is one of the apex predators in the west. Despite it’s size…it clearly considered the jogger to be lunch…so why does the media insist on portraying it as the victim and try to drum up sympathy for it? Anybody that’s ever gotten in a disagreement with a house or feral cat knows that even a 10 pound wild feral cat can do some serious damage to your person…so we’re supposed to be sympathetic about an animal 4 times that size who decided to eat a jogger? Nuts I tellya. 

On to other interesting things found on the net.

Stealth aircraft.

This is a 21 year old Red Knot bird named B95 or Moonbird. He’ a shore bird that goes to the far north…like Baffin Bay in Canuckistan, the shores of the Northwest Passage north other, and northern Greenland and Alaska in the summer…then migrates to South America in the winter. Anyways…Moonbird has flown far enough in his lifetime during migration to have covered the distance from earth to the moon and back.

This one is certainly apropos for Florida…since we have all the old people down here. I’ve been saying for years that old is a state of mind and doesn’t have anything to do with the mileage on your body…but let’s just say that a considerable percentage of the population down here easily fits into the old category.

Lego men…ya know those little figurines that come in your Lego set…they were introduced in 1978 and as shown by the chart below…the population of Lego men will surpass the population of humans by the end of 2019.

Interesting mannequin choice for a table saw display advertisement.

And finally…here’s a really cool looking mushroom. It’s a Mycena interrupta, commonly known as the pixie’s parasol. It’s pretty small…ranging from 0.8 to 2 centimeters in size…but it’s pretty cool, eh?