Yearly Archives: 2020

Working a war economy

Hall of Shame, Photography

Use the army.



Wanted: 1.25 million delivery drivers.

The US Army comprises 1.3 million workers on the taxpayer’s tab. It costs $1 trillion (yes, that’s $1,000,000,000,000) annually and has not won a conflict in 75 years. Let’s get some value out of this otherwise useless labor.

Problem: Supermarkets are disease pits and the primary area for virus transmission. Unfortunately, they are essential to life and health. Most provide no protective clothing for employees and fail to even provide simple, inexpensive Lexan partitions between shopper and cashier. They must be closed and the model rethought.

Solution: Close all supermarkets, prohibit in-person shopping and require a ‘delivery only’ model for all US households.

Here are the statistics:

Households and available driver labor:
Households in US: 128mm
Soldiers in army: 1.3mm
Unemployed retail store workers: 500,000
Total available labor – using 80% of Army and all retail: 1,540,000

Vehicles available:
GM vehicle production 2019: 2,900,000
Ford vehicle production: 1,200,000
US army vehicles: 225,000
Conscript 3m of Ford and GM vehicle production: 1,025,000 available
Add US Army for a total of: 1,250,000 available vehicles

Unit data:
Workers per vehicle: 1.23

Put all supermarkets on a delivery only model, no customer visits to these disease pits permitted.

# of supermarkets in USA: 28,000

Drivers (army + retail) available to each supermarket: 55 drivers

Households per US supermarket: 4,570

Permitted weekly grocery orders per household: 1

Trips per driver per day: (4570/55/7) = 12

Conclusion:

By conscripting 80% of otherwise useless army labor (no cost increase – already paid for) and all laid off retail workers (to be paid by supermarkets – no cost to taxpayer) and dedicating these workers to driving delivery vehicles, the labor load per driver computes to just 12 deliveries per day to supply every household in the USA.

Interpersonal shopper:grocery store worker contact falls to zero. Drivers are tested for virus weekly, being the sole source of contact with shelf stackers, with body temperature checks daily. Drivers have zero contact with shoppers – ‘leave at door’.

Fire all cashiers, as stores are closed, and add them to the labor force too.

As for national defense, the last 75 years prove that the sole purpose of the US Army is offense, not defense, and it has had no successes in its offensive rôle. Under my model we still have 300,000 Army personnel left (not sure what they do, exactly) and the Navy and Air Force to deliver nukes if needed. And let’s recall that a nuclear submarine parked at the bottom of the Black Sea on Moscow’s doorstep is impregnable, and it carries 16 long range nukes.

T.

The source of all ills

Photographs

Pandemics all originate in the same place.

H2N2 – 1957 – Singapore and Hong Kong. 116,000 Americans dead.
H3N2 – 1968 – Hong Kong. 100,000 Americans dead.
H1N1 – 2009 – Asian pigs – 12,469 Americans dead.
Covid-19 – 2020 – Wuhan, China. 11,816 Americans dead. Total impossible to project.

CDC data.

I visited Hong Kong in 1995 on business, and our generous hosts saw to it that I took in their open air ‘wet’ markets which are the source of all the above pandemics. Live animals are stored in stacked wire cages where they defecate on one another, prior to being served up on a plate. The fellows showing me around took me to a high-end Chinese restaurant where, amongst the delicacies on the menu, there were three kinds of bird’s nest soup at $10, $100 and $1,000 a bowl. I kid you not. $1,000. The ‘IPO special’, I suppose. When you learn how this guano-infested delicacy is made you too would do what I did. Pass.

Here are some snaps from that visit:




Chinese artefacts awaiting illegal export.


Fans galore.


Last days of British rule which ended in 1997.


High end apartments.


More of the same.


Labor.


The clean end of town.


Goodness, but did I need a burger and coke on return to California.

The fix? Simple. A travel ban to and from these nations until verifiable permanent closure of the ‘wet’ markets is in effect. Otherwise, pandemics from these sources will recur with increasing frequency as travel rises.

All snaps on a Rollei 35, Kodachrome film.

Pete Souza

Photographers

A fine White House photographer.

Pete Souza was the White House photographer before the Gangster and his crew of grifters took over. It should be added that over 60 million American morons voted for Pig, not to mention several million Russkies. (In deference to his Slovenian Slut spouse, I have dropped the preposition). Those morons are unavailable for comment as they are busy praying the virus away.

The link will take you to a video where Souza explains his gear choices, but it’s the pictures he shows which really matter:



Click to go to the article.
You do not need an Instagram account.

As for Pig, it gives me zero pleasure to say “I told you so”.

Luminous Hockneys

Paintings

Britain’s finest contemporary artist.

One of the most memorable exhibitions I attended in recent years with my son was the Hockney show in San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum. The show highlighted the artist’s iPad and iPhone works, and they were a delight to see.



Hockney’s latest.

Now, by way of relief to the horrors the world is experiencing right now, this modern master had released a new series of spring paintings from his home in Normandy. Enjoy.