Month: March 2020

The people who hate Cheeto Hitler want him to act more like Hitler

Holy shit, Democrats stupid and ignorant.

I know, I know, that’s nothing new.  But the level of stupidity and ignorance that has come out because of the Coronavirus is blowing my mind.

First, from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.  The favorite Cuomo son.  Although after this Tweet, Don Lemon’s fluffer might take the lead.

The Defense Production Act does NOT nationalize any industry in the United States.

According to the Military Times:

The Act gives the federal government broad authority to direct private companies to meet the needs of the national defense.

The act authorizes the president to require companies to prioritize government contracts and orders seen as necessary for the national defense, with the goal of ensuring that the private sector is producing enough goods needed to meet a war effort or other national emergency.

It also authorizes the president to use loans, direct purchases and other incentives to boost the production of critical goods and essential materials.

Other provisions authorize the federal government to establish voluntary agreements with private industry and to block foreign mergers and acquisitions seen as harmful to national security.

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

It is historically a more recent development than, and differs in motive and degree from, expropriation, or eminent domain, which is the right of government to take property, sometimes without compensation, for particular public purposes (such as the construction of roads, reservoirs, or hospitals).

Nationalization has accompanied the implementation of communist or socialist theories of government, as was the case in the transfer of industrial, banking, and insurance enterprises to the state in Russia after 1918, the nationalization of the oil industries in Mexico in 1938 and in Iran in 1951, and the nationalization of foreign businesses in Cuba in 1960.

Under the DPA, Trump could mandate companies that make medical supplies necessary to fight the Coronavirus sign contracts for the production of said supplies and prioritize their delivery over other products to other customers.

That is nothing like Trump seizing a privately owned or publically traded company and making it a public asset and having some bureaucrat run it.  Under the US Constitution, the only way Trump could remotely do that is to buy the company, at its current valuation under eminent domain.

Andrew Cuomo went to law school and passed the NY bar exam.  He was the Attorney General of New York.  He should know this.

He’s not the only one.

Chirs Murphy is a sitting United States Senator and a graduate of the University of Connecticut law school and is a member of the Connecticut Bar Association.  He too should know better.

Also, there is no bidding against one another for medical supplies.  3M announced that it was prioritizing shipping 500,000 respirators to the areas hardest hit by Coronavirus.  They’ve also announced round-the-clock increased production and are set to make 35 Million respirators per month in the United States.

So that inefficiency that Senator Murphy was talking about is just a bullshit straw man.

But wait, there’s more.

Bill DeBlasio, perhaps the single most universally hated politician in America, wants to send in the military to nationalize our industry and CNN’s talking potato, Brian Stelter, is amplifying this message.

Stelter isn’t even good enough to fluff Don Lemon’s fluffer.  Surpinsgly he is younger than me even though he looks to be in his mid 40’s.

“Why won’t the president give the order to mobilize our military to guarantee that these products are being produced?”

How in the fuck is that supposed to work exactly?

Like I’ve said, I was a production engineer for five years.  Assembly of items takes skill.  New hires are slow, experienced workers are faster.

Is the plan to put soldiers on the assembly line?  Who will train them?  What will be the fallout rate when they as new hires make mistakes?  Will they fix machines or perform preventative maintenance?

Maybe the military will just ship the products in the backs of military transport trucks driving the private trucking industry out of business?

Maybe they will just do what the Soviets and Chinese did and point guns at workers threatening to shoot those who don’t work quickly enough?

As a production engineer, I figure the best way for Trump to guarantee peak production is to tell the manufacturers “we will pay for all the overtime you have  to pay to keep production up.”  Let 3M employees cash out on huge overtime and production bonuses.  I’ve seen what happens in a factory when you do that.  People bust their asses.

This is America.  If you want Americans to work faster and do a good job of it, just throw bonus money at them.

But the most amazing thing about this is that it is the same people who have spent the last three years telling us that Bad Orange Man was Cheeto Hitler and a tyrant and a despot, now want him to do what Hitler and Lennin did and nationalize the medical supply industry and send the military into private companies to force them to do the governments bidding.

I just think that because they are panicked over the Coronavirus, they are letting their inner tyrant out, not really caring about who the President is.  It’s a crisis and they want to take control.  When they get freaked out, they only want to do that more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wired backs me up, a follow up to my factory experience

Let it never be said that when it comes to engineering, I do not know what I am talking about.

On the same day that I wrote my post Am I the only one who as ever worked in a factory?  Wired published this article:

How does a car company make a ventilator?
The government wants an army of manufacturers to assemble thousands of ventilators in the war against the coronavirus. But you can’t just swap cars for medical devices

The answer to their titular question is: they can’t, not easily at least.

Designing and manufacturing a ventilator is in no way a simple process, and some ventilator manufacturers are sceptical that car manufacturers will be able to make them at all. Jens Hallek, CEO at leading ventilator manufacturer Hamilton Medical, explains that the materials and the components needed to build a ventilator are “highly specific” and require “specialised know-how.”

“These are extremely sensitive machines with not only a lot of hardware, but also a lot of software. If one of the components does not work correctly, the whole machine shuts down and cannot be used anymore,” Hallek adds.

“I think the idea of automotive manufacturers or indeed any manufacturer that is not well-versed in the production of medical devices somehow quickly retooling and making an alternative product is very naïve,” says Nick Oliver, automotive industry expert and management professor at the University of Edinburgh.

“There is no product that I can think of in the automotive industry that has to move air and oxygen around in a similar way to a ventilator.”

It typically takes around three years to develop and launch a ventilator. After it’s been tested, the ventilator then needs to be signed off by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. Non-medical device manufacturers won’t already have a license to engineer a ventilator currently, so they would be focusing on existing designs.

“It could not be something that a manufacturer who was not a specialist in the area could look after right away,” says Connolly. “The way that this could be done is if a current manufacturer in the UK who has the proper certification for their device was to subcontract to another production line, then that manufacturer could take responsibility for the production of the device.”

This article quoted a manufacturer in the UK, but the same principles apply here.  Even if the FDA fast-tracked the approval process, testing still needs to be done.

As I said, the fastest way a car company could help is to make parts and be part of the supply chain.

Wired has another article that cover this:

Ventilator Makers Race to Prevent a Possible Shortage
Manufacturers are producing as many as they can to care for Covid-19 patients with breathing problems. Now the federal government is asking for even more.

Retooling a complex supply chain to build more machines quickly will be difficult. Airon relies on suppliers across the Midwest to make the valves and tubing, while another supplier in Washington makes each machine’s casing. A few parts come from China. Gjerde’s looking into whether he can get the circuit boards he needs produced locally.

If Ford or Tesla has in-house circuit board production, that would probably be the best approach to attack the ventilator shortage.

There is no reason to jump in and interrupt functioning supply chains.

If the circuit boards are the bottleneck, it’s not Ford or Tesla that will be the most help, but Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and the rest of our defense agencies.  The circuit boards that go into our nuclear subs and laser-guided missiles are not made in China.  Those are protected technologies.

I bet Lockheed could get a bunch of dumbed-down circuit boards out to an American ventilator supplier faster than Tesla could retool for another one of Musk’s ego-driven pipe dreams.

 

One to watch: Amazon’s ZeroZeroZero.

The missus and yours truly finished watching the mini series last night and I give it 4.75 stars just because some crappy gun mistakes. Besides that, it is done with great production values, great acting and great script.

The story revolves about a major shipment of cocaine from  Mexico to Italy and the internal strifes that  the players are having. There are no good guys here and there is a trail of bodies left behind. Not an action series but there is plenty of it so be aware.

So, very well done and you will enjoy the heck out of it.

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: The Miami Stupid Version

Miami Dade County is not under lock-down. People have been given the chance to behave like adults and for the most part, it has been happening that way.
But never underestimate the stupid.

I get it, you are non-essential, you were sent home, the county closed the bars and night clubs so you need to paaaartay!

MIAMI – Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez didn’t like what he was seeing on social media and when he caught wind of a flier circulating inviting boaters to a “sandbar party” at Haulover Inlet that was the last straw.

Late Saturday evening, he issued a statement announcing a shutdown of boat ramps and marinas.

Gimenez is closing all boat ramps at Miami-Dade County parks immediately until further notice. Commercial fisherman who provide food for restaurants and markets will be allowed, but pleasure boaters will not.

WATCH: Drone video captures hundreds of boaters partying in midst of coronavirus crisis (Video)

Not everybody in Miami has a boat for getting drunk and stupid. In fact I know that a good share of people have boats, not very luxurious at all, which they use to go out and  obtain extra source of very fresh protein for their families. Probably one or two residents of our sunny county were ready to set out to sea to legally catch fishies to stock their freezers for the upcoming days in case of a mandatory quarantine.

Now and thanks to the assholes that need to suck a bottle of Bacardi amongst a bunch of equally idiots, the regular guy is condemned to stay tied to the marina unless he spends the big bucks to get a commercial fishing license and the crap it comes with.

Generation Participation Trophy strikes again.

Ammo Report from Lakeland Florida

Another reader (please send me your nickname/Comment section name) sent me this one:

Here is the ammunition aisle at the WalMart a friend in Lakeland sent me this morning. There is still ammo at my LGS, but it is picked over. They have a 2 box limit per caliber for each customer. I got 2 boxes each of 9mm, .45ACP, .40S&W, .357Sig, 12 gauge 00 buck, and .380ACP.

I have plenty, but could always have more.

HOARDERS!!!! 😀 😀 😀