Bear – Page 166 – Bear Bussjaeger

Tempted Fate

Just yesterday, writing about the Biden emails found on a hard drive by a computer tech, I said, “And this is why I do my own computer repairs.”

-sigh-

Last night I was watching streaming TV, and Firefox started acting up. Didn’t think too much about it, but I turned off the TV and went back to a book.

This morning, all programs started crashing. I immediately decided to start making another set of backups just in case. While doing the last part, the computer froze solid.

Spent too much time on Cheerful Charlie wishful thinking-type troubleshooting, but finally was forced to admit the hard drive was gone. It won’t work even in another computer.

What with all the backups I do routinely, and what I managed this morning, I lost almost nothing. And nothing at all critical. Restored all my data to a backup laptop, which is actually an upgrade (which is another computer scrounge and repair story in itself). And I’m back to work.

Said work being convincing TTAG that yes, I did give them seven columns last month, and yes, they did publish them, so yes, I should be paid for them. You can see them all for yourself.

Actually I sent eight, but one they held until October.

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Steve Scully Lied

Show of hands: Is anyone surprised?

BREAKING: C-SPAN suspends political editor Steve Scully indefinitely after he lied about his Twitter being hacked
‘Out of frustration, I sent a brief tweet addressed to Anthony Scaramucci. The next morning when I saw that this tweet had created a new controversy, I falsely claimed that my Twitter account had been hacked.”

I guess someone explained to him how easy that would be to check, and he wasn’t confident Twitter would lie for him.

Frankly, I doubt he had much to worry about.

Twitter Makes Unreported In Kind Contribution, Worth Millions, To Biden Campaign

Twitter is locking users out of their accounts for sharing links to the New York Post’s story reporting emails which appear to show that Presidential candidate Gropin’ Joe Biden and his son Hunter broke federal laws to interfere in a Ukrainian criminal investigation. Locked users include the New York Post itself, and at least one government official, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

Twitter alleges these users violated its policy against sharing “hacked” material that reveals personal or proprietary data.

The New York Post reports that the material was not hacked, but was found by a computer technician on an abandoned hard drive.

The computer was dropped off at a repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware in April 2019, according to the store’s owner.
[…]
The customer who brought in the water-damaged MacBook Pro for repair never paid for the service or retrieved it or a hard drive on which its contents were stored, according to the shop owner, who said he tried repeatedly to contact the client.

Twitter has not offered any alternate explanation of the data origin, much less evidence that a hack was used to obtain the data, rather than simply reading a drive the shop was given.

Suppressing information, on a mass scale, on apparent wrongdoing by a Presidential candidate with the election less than three weeks away is an incredibly valuable public relations service for the Biden Campaign.

Added: Whoopsie. Now Twitter locked out the Trump Campaign account. I see another FEC complaint coming.

(Aside: And this is why I do my own computer repairs.)

I think they would be better off addressing nun violence

Nuns again ask Smith & Wesson, shareholders to consider impact of gun violence

What can I say? I attended a Catholic school, and those nuns were scary violent. And they had toned it down some by then.

Tell me again how masks save lives.

The CDC released an interesting study, Community and Close Contact Exposures Associated with COVID-19 Among Symptomatic Adults ≥18 Years in 11 Outpatient Health Care Facilities — United States, July 2020. This part in particular got my attention:

Reported use of cloth face covering or mask 14 days before illness onset
Never: 3.9%
Rarely: 3.9%
Sometimes: 7.2%
Often: 14.4%
Always: 70.6%

So much for masks. I’m in the “rarely” category and if I got ChinCOVID, I never even noticed.

Here’s a question for Kamala Harris

The Barrett SCOTUS confirmation hearings have begun. On the Dem side, 87 year-old Dianne Feinstein and 75 year-old Dick Durbin are among those in attendance.

55 year-old (32 years younger than Feinstein) Kamala Harris is refusing to attend except “remotely” because she thinks CHinCOVID makes it too dangerous to be there. Which is a bit odd since the CDC says for her age, the CHinCOVID Infection Fatality Rate is just 0.005. For comparison the seasonal flu averages 0.1. Frankly, unless you have a pretty serious underlying medical condition that ChinCOVID can aggravate, Harris’ odds of serious illness — much less death — from SARS-CoV-2 are pretty damned low.

Now, I figure she’s most likely just grandstanding, but…

Does she have an undisclosed medical condition?

In recent days, I’ve seen Democrats, Republicans, and independents pushing idea that, if the Biden/Harris ticket wins, they’re going to swear the pair in, then remove Biden using the 25th Amendment. The fact that both of them have publicly referred to the “Harris administration” certainly supports such speculation.

We hear talk about Trump’s health, and Biden’s health. I think it’s fair for Harris to release the results of a medical checkup.

“U07.1”

U07.1 is the ICD-10 code for death by SARS-CoV-2; ChinCOVID. Or maybe ChimCOVID. Or, “Well, it could’ve been ChinCOVID.”

Through an interesting coincidental confluence of news reports on COVID deaths in my area, an obituary, and DPH ChinCOVID reports, I discovered an odd little detail. One of our recent deaths was in a area nursing home…

…where he was on hospice. You know: end of life care. Because he was already dying of something else.

But… COVID.

TZP: A New White Paper on the ATF

The Zelman Partisans have added a new document to their Resources page. It’s a nine page white paper, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (PDF, 65KB)

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has long been known by the firearms industry and owners as arbitrary, capricious, and full of enough uncertainty to make Werner Heisenberg jealous. And just as Schrödinger had to peer into that box to discover whether cat had perished or lived on, gun owners must wait on the ATF to randomly determine the state of our implements; whether they be guns or piles of ore, and what sort of gun. Even the caliber can change from the ATF’s act of observation.

Check it out.

Quote of the Day: NYPD Bust

I actually feel less safe knowing it took 60 police officers to wrestle one old cowboy to ground on his way to show-and-tell at the retirement home.
— Kara Wynona

In reference to this.

NYPD 60th Precinct — 60[!] Field Intelligence Officers apprehend an individual with this illegal firearm!

I can’t view the original on Facebook, so I have no idea how many bystanders the NYPD took out with friendly fire in the process.

ChinCOVID Kills The Most Vulnerable

Let’s lead with the good news. This is what the new daily cases graph (by date of onset) looks like in Georgia.

That peak is July 6; three months ago. As you can see, new cases are dropping like a flamed out F-4 Phantom.* The state lifted its lockdown May 1st. Around here, the only people you ever saw wearing masks were folks with co-morbidities obvious to the average eye, those in stores requiring masks, and damned near no one else.

To date, I personally know exactly one person who who tested positive. That person recovered months ago, and no else in that household ever popped positive.

The bad news is unconfirmed rumors I’ve heard about a long term care facility in my county. Most of the details can’t be confirmed without — probably — violating HIPAA, so I won’t repeat the shocking claims. But the state’s Long-Term Care Facility COVID-19 Report is certainly suggestive.

Residents: 44
COVID-positive Residents: 32
Resident COVID Deaths: 7
Residents Recovered: 27
COVID-positive Staff: 39

Whatever the truth of the rumors, ChinCOVID is clearly out of control in there. I didn’t log the numbers before, but the last time I looked at the report, I think deaths were at four.

The fact is, my entire county has logged 16 ChinCOVID deaths, and seven of them came out of one single 44-resident facility. I strongly suspect the state DPH is watching this facility very closely now; an investigation is certainly warranted, in my view. From the beginning of this “pandemic” until late September, the county had kept deaths down to ten. Suddenly we surged with seven more. Cross referencing the COVID-19 Status Report with the LTCF Report, I think those seven were this facility (again suggestive, not conclusive).

Another suggestive data point is that only people people under the age of sixty have died of ChinCOVID in my county (as of 10/3/2020). Nine deaths were 80+ years-old. Suppose seven of those were in a nrsing home?

* Those were still in service when I was in the Air Force, and the morbid observation/joke was that they had the glide ratio of an aerodynamic brick without the engines. But… damn; watching them take off at dusk with afterburners was cool.