Bear, Step Aside, Make Way for Cocaine Sharknado

 Boing Boing, Sharks test positive for cocaine

Cocaine Shark isn't the title of an exciting sequel to B-movie hit Cocaine Bear: it's science. 13 Brazilian sharpnoses tested positive for the drug after being fished out the sea just offshore.

The concentrations were as much as 100 times higher than previously reported for other aquatic creatures. The research, carried out by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, is the first to find the presence of cocaine in sharks. Experts believe the cocaine is making its way into the waters via illegal labs where the drug is manufactured or through excrement of drug users. Packs of cocaine lost or dumped by traffickers at sea could also be a source, though this is less likely, researchers say.

 

Sharks with performance enhancing drugs, a delightful combination. Now, about that B-Movie sequel…

The script practically writes itself, and the standards aren't too high. I mean, what could go wrong! 

The Wombat makes up time with Rule 5 Sunday: Hangar Queen Double-Scoop Sunday!

Taking Military Preparedness to a New Level

The U.S. military has a detailed plan to save the living, or at least outlast the dead.

On the website of the U.S. Strategic Command, you can find CONPLAN 8888-11, a detailed plan for “counter-zombie dominance” prepared by a group of junior officers as part of a training exercise. The document, which came to public attention a few years ago, is festooned with disclaimers, including a large red box on the first page informing readers that the assignment was based on a “completely fictitious scenario” — but presumably the disclaimers would themselves be disclaimed in any congressional hearing attempting to fix blame in the event of an actual zombie invasion. So let’s spend a few minutes taking CONPLAN 8888-11 more or less seriously.

Once we take the plan seriously, it makes interesting reading. Were its advice followed during the zombie disasters portrayed so regularly on small screen and large, we wouldn’t see the U.S. military so easily swept aside in the opening hours of the invasion.

One of the guys on my last fishing trips with Pete worked in the Pentagon in preparedness. I wonder if he had a hand in this.

That’s the term used again and again in the document — “invasion” — and surely it’s the most accurate way to conceptualize the disaster that would follow a zombie infection. Undead hordes shambling through the streets should be treated the way one would treat any other invaders. This means the goals must be to protect the uninfected population and to eliminate the invaders.

Zombies can’t be deterred or bargained with, so they must be destroyed. The immediate difficulty is the same one that worries their television and film counterparts: “Zombie forces will become stronger with each human casualty,” because “each human casualty will become a zombie.”

 That assumes that the zombies are Romero style zombies, which spread by something akin to a disease infection, and not the original Haitian style zombie, who is actually reputed to be a living person person enslaved by the bokor.

Therefore it’s important to create hardened protected sites and to guard critical infrastructure. Because zombies will be drawn to human population centers and can’t swim (or can they?), roads should be barricaded and blocked at checkpoints. Local authorities will be tasked with maintaining potable uncontaminated food supplies. If none of this works, evacuation will be ordered. Law enforcement and military personnel are warned not to allow survivors to “go back for” family, friends, and loved ones. Any who do must be left behind.

Of course, fighting the Haitian style zombie invasion would be much different. All you would need to do with the Haitian zombies would be to identify and take out the bokors and then mop up the zombies. An alternative might be to waterboard a bokor, and discover how to control the zombies for your own purposes.

The plan anticipates that human survivors would raid police stations, sporting-goods stores and armories for weapons. This is apparently seen as a feature, not a bug. All official transmissions would be sent uncoded, so that survivors might intercept them and know where to link up with military forces.

The planners accept the popular view that zombies are not alive, a proposition that widens the choice of potential strategies. Ordinarily, the measures that may be taken in armed conflict are legally and ethically restricted, but “U.S. and international law regulate military operations only insofar as human and animal life are concerned.” Small wonder, therefore, that the plan envisions the use of nuclear weapons within U.S. territory as necessary.

Again, making the decision to prepare for Romero zombies. Haitian zombies are living purposes, who could potentially recover after the drugs used to create them wear off, or are counter acted.

The idea is to use enough force to destroy large concentrations of zombies, then conduct reconnaissance to hunt down the rest. Finally, when the emergency ends, government will be turned back over to civil authorities. It all sounds good — good enough for us to wonder why “The Walking Dead” features no surviving military forces. (They can’t all have been ambushed by the governor.) But as CONPLAN 8888-11 freely admits, there are potential problems.

For one thing, determining where to deploy forces requires accurate intelligence, which likely would not be forthcoming. The document advises assuming “worst-case scenarios derived from popular culture references.” For another, deployed military forces will be expected to carry sufficient supplies to operate for 40 days, after which the planners believe most of the zombies will have died from decay or lack of food. (Although this assumption seems to be the consensus of various sources, it may be overly optimistic.) The difficulty, as the planners confess, is that the U.S. military may not possess enough food and water for the necessary forces to deploy for so long without resupply.

Can zombies be made edible by cooking, or possibly treating with chemicals? Asking for a friend.

Moreover, the document notes, not enough military facilities are actually hardened against zombie attack. Command-and-control aircraft would be safe, but after a few days refueling operations would likely break down. The planners suggest that surviving aircraft try for Hawaii or various other Pacific islands, but seem pessimistic that many would make it. (In “World War Z” — the novel, not the film — many of the world’s leaders, including the president of the United States, successfully take to the sea.)

If Great White Sharks eat zombies, do they become zombie Great White sharks? Zombie Sharknado!

And course there’s the risk that the invaders will turn out to be Evil Magic Zombies, or EMZs, in which case there will be little that conventional military force can achieve. Still, the planners have a suggestion: “The Chaplain Corps may provide the only viable means of combating EMZs.” They document adds, ominously: “Atheists could be particularly vulnerable to EMZ threats.”

But put all of these concerns aside. At least somebody’s trying. You want the government to plan for low-probability disasters? Here’s a plan for a low-probability disaster. Sure, the chances of a zombie apocalypse are infinitesimal. But should it ever happen, the last few survivors (those who beat the 0.0088 probability of surviving 100 days) will likely behave just like the journalists who seemed surprised to discover that snowstorms are occasionally worse than predicted. They’ll want to know who’s to blame.

It's all fun and games until the zombies actually show up. And then it's even more fun and games!

Wombat-socho has Rule 5 Sunday: Roll Tide! ready for your enjoyment.

Nurse Sharks Continue War on Models

A couple of weeks ago, we had the opening salvo in Down Under Damsel Finds Out About Sharks the Hard Way when Melissa Bruenning was attacked by a Nurse Shark while swimming with them in Australia; now this week, another attack! Instagram model attacked by shark while posing for photos.

An Instagram model from California had a “Jaws”-worthy moment in the Bahamas, where she was bitten by a shark and dragged underwater after deciding to swim with the predators, according to reports.

Katarina Zarutskie, 19, was vacationing in the Exuma islands with her boyfriend and his family when she heard from locals that swimming with nurse sharks was fun and safe, NBC News reported.

As we've seen in the previous attack, Nurse Sharks aren't commonly aggressive, and have many small sharp teeth not well suited for tearing away huge chunks of flesh like some of the better known man-eating sharks. But any shark may decide to take a trial bite to see if something is suitable food.

“My boyfriend’s family was freaking out when I went to swim with the sharks and I was like, ‘It’s fine,'” Zarutskie, a nursing student at the University of Miami, told the news outlet.

She said that after a few minutes posing, someone on the pier encouraged her to lie back and float in the water.
“At this point people were starting to take photos and right as I lay back,” Zarutskie said, according to the BBC.

Her beau’s dad, who was snapping pictures, captured the frightening moment the 5-foot-long shark decided to give her a taste.

 See?

“He had my wrist in his mouth and I could feel his teeth sinking into my arm,” Zarutskie told NBC News. “I was pulled underwater for a few seconds and then ripped my wrist out of the shark’s mouth as fast as I could.”
The photographs show her covering her wound and raising her arm in an effort to stop the blood spreading in the water.

“At that point your body has so much adrenaline going and you just have to get out of the situation, but I stayed extremely calm,” she said, the BBC reported.

“I think if someone was screaming and flailing around it definitely could have changed the situation,” she added. Zarutskie swam to some steps and scampered out of the ocean to get stitched up.

Are we getting ready for the next Sharknado?

She was given antibiotics but decided to fly back to Florida the next day for further treatment.

“[The doctors] now believe that I still have pieces of the shark teeth in my arm and I will forever have a scar,” Zarutskie told NBC News, adding that she is worried the injury will affect her modeling career.

Just part of the game.

Clearly not the chivalrous man-eating shark of song:



Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: The Bikini Invitational" ready and waiting.

Too Good Not To Steal

From Ace's ONT:

Obamacare Schadenfreude Grubnado Edition

New Word: “Grubado”

Instapundit was noting that ‘gruber‘ is now a verb. Surely, though, the pile of hooey that is ObamaCare has room for a little more coinage as the ooze flows about, engulfing Progressive dreams in fetid sludge.

Grubado: noun. A portmanteau of ‘Gruber’ and ‘bravado’, this is that special panache with which a sociopath politician suddenly disavows a formerly prominent advisor.

I was thinking more along the lines of a portanteau of 'Gruber' and "Sharknado', a swirling storm of lies, two handed economists, and politicians and lawyers with sharp teeth and small brains.

All we need  for a good cheesy Sci-Fi movie is a washed-up actress with moderate sized tits to help the hero chainsaw their way to safety. Maybe Amanda Bynes.

Obama On Gruber – Just Some Guy That Wasn’t On Our Staff

This is now officially a scandal. Obama just played the “I didn’t know anything about this until I saw media reports” standard BS line.

If Gruber was just some advisor, not on your staff, why did you pay him almost a half million dollars, and loan him to Congressional staff?

Gruber-gate gets to Obama: ‘No, I did not’ mislead Americans

When asked directly if he or his administration had, as Gruber insisted, intentionally misled the public and oversight organizations like the Congressional Budget Office when they crafted the Accordable Care Act, Obama’s reply was terse and direct. “No,” he said. “I did not.”

Obama was joined on Sunday by Health and Human Services Sec. Sylvia Burwell who appeared on Meet the Press to distance herself and the administration from Gruber.

“I have to start with how fundamentally I disagree with his comments about the bill and about the American people,” she began emphatically.

Burwell was, however, not asked to respond to those comments. She was asked by moderator Chuck Todd about whether what Gruber said about “mislabeling” new taxes on health insurance plans as fees was true.

Dear Democrats, Don’t Even Think about Running from Jonathan Gruber

Ian Tuttle has a nice piece up over on the homepage about the Democrats’ many efforts to distance themselves from Jonathan “stupidity of the American voter” Gruber. He used to be known as the “architect” of Obamacare and now, according to CBS News, the Democrats are trying to “turn Gruber into a stranger.”
Not so fast.

In a 2010 piece, the Daily Kos outlined Gruber’s deep ties to the White House and to HHS, providing even links to his HHS contracts and the stated justifications for his contracts. The language from the presolicitation notice is particularly interesting (note highlighted portions):

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), intends to negotiate with Jonathan Gruber, Ph.D. on a sole sources basis for technical assistance in evaluating options for national healthcare reform. The basis for restricting competition is the authority of 41 USC 253(c)(1) 106-1(b) because there is only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy DHHS requirements.The anticipated contract period will be eight months. [Emphasis added].

. . .
That’s not all. Daily Kos also helpfully links to five White House blog posts citing Gruber. One of them, by Nancy-Ann DeParle (then assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff for policy) demonstrates how much the administration relied on his expertise in public debate. Titled, “MIT Economist Confirms Senate Health Reform Bill Reduces Costs and Improves Coverage,”  . . .

From the Washington Post: What was Jonathan Gruber’s role in putting together the Affordable Care Act?

While it is probably overstating things to describe Gruber as an “architect” of the law, as so many recent reports have, he was also no ordinary adviser — as evidenced by the fact that he was paid nearly $400,000 by the administration for his work.

And his advice was important at critical moments when the bill’s survival was in jeopardy.

One of those times was July 20, 2009.

Four days before, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf had declared that the bills that were going through the legislative process in the House and Senate would fail to bring the “fundamental change” necessary to bring down health costs over the long run. Elmendorf’s pronouncement struck at one of the basic rationales for the whole endeavor of overhauling the nation’s health-care system, even as opposition was building on the right. . .

Grubergate shines spotlight on Obamacare profiteers

. . .But there is no doubt that Obamacare created a lot of work for at least one American -- MIT professor Jonathan Gruber. Gruber's frank admissions that he and others deceived the public about Obamacare have drawn a lot of attention in recent days. But the money that Gruber made from Obamacare raises yet another issue about his involvement in the project. Throughout 2009 and 2010, he energetically advocated a bill from which he stood to profit. And when it became law, the money rolled in.

In 2009, as Obamacare was moving its way through Senate committees, Gruber, who had achieved a measure of fame as the architect of Romneycare in Massachusetts, was a paid consultant to the Department of Health and Human Services. In March of that year, he received a contract for $95,000 to work on the project, and in June he received a second contract to continue that work; it was worth $297,600. Together, they comprise the "nearly $400,000" that critics have said Gruber received to work on Obamacare.

But after the bill became law, Gruber made a good deal more from it. The Affordable Care Act provided for states to set up exchanges to sell taxpayer-subsidized insurance coverage. For those states that chose to do so, exchanges would have to be built from the ground up. Studies would have to be done. Contracts would be let.

In 2010, the state of Wisconsin, under Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, paid Gruber $400,000 to do a study of the impact of healthcare reform. By the time Gruber finished his report, Republican Scott Walker had been elected governor and wasn't much interested in using Gruber's study. "State officials did not invite Gruber to Wisconsin for the release of his study nor did they set up a conference call with him for reporters or even provide them with his contact information," the Madison, Wis., Capital Times reported. "That is unusual for an important report like this, which cost $400,000."

A list of other states that paid Gruber: Minnesota,  $329,000;West Virginia, $121,500; Vermont, $91,875, Michigan to Gruber and others, $481,050.

Of course others profited from Obamacare, too, and still are. Republican Mike Leavitt, a former governor of Utah and Mitt Romney adviser, has a consulting firm that has made millions off the exchanges. But Gruber's recent admissions might put him in a special category. He is, by his own account, a man who intentionally deceived the public in order to pass a measure from which he stood to profit handsomely.

Sounds like Bolgia 8 material to me.

There is even some talk of sanctioning Gruber in Colorado for taking a contract as a supposedly unbiased analyst of health care costs: Grubergate hists Colorado

The Colorado Consumer Health Initiative paid Obamacare advocate and administration analyst Jonathan Gruber to produce an “independent” report in support of Colorado’s Health Insurance Exchange in 2011. This work came after the analyst’s failure to disclose his paid work to editors at newspapers which published his columns advocating for the law. The Colorado Consumer Health Initiative describes itself as “active supporters” of Obamacare and its implementation here in Colorado.

Gruber is currently under scrutiny for a series of video clips in which he 1) acknowledges having lied about the content Obamacare in order to help get it passed, 2) refers to the “stupidity” and “economic illiteracy” of the American public as assets in passing the law, and 3) admits that the plaintiffs’ argument in pending litigation is correct—enrollees on the federal exchange were specifically and intentionally excluded from receiving subsidies.

Forgotten, however, is that in January 2010, Gruber was penning op-ed pieces in the Washington Post and New York Times advocating for Obamacare, without having disclosed to his editors that he received nearly $400,000 from the administration to produce an “objective analysis,” that would be used in promoting the legislation.

And by way of Wombat-socho's "Live at Five: 11.17.14" a number of Grubernado and Obamacare Schadenfreude blog posts:

Crashr: Obamacare – Brought To Us By Forrest Gruber

American Thinker: Smug Filled Rooms

Jammie Wearing Fools: Clueless Obama On Gruber Videos – “I Just Heard About This”

JustOneMinute: Not The Headline Team Obama Was Looking For

STUMP: Obamacare Watch – Get Ready For Tax Season 2015
The Gateway Pundit: Hitler Finds Out Gruber’s Been Spilling The Obamacare Beans 

The Lonely Conservative: Obama Denies Misleading Public On Obamacare

More Sharks in the Bay

It appears that another couple of Bull Sharks have been caught in pound nets down in Southern Maryland.  These photos come from Buzz's Marina, where I've debarked twice recently for fishing trips:

Now all we need is the tornado...

Squirrelnado!

Seen at Althouse.

Skarknado! Deniers

Of course, if "climate change" has already occurred, hurricane, tropical storm and tornado frequency and intensity are all down, and sea level is rising no faster than before...

...but Tara Reid sightings have increased dramatically.

Sharknado! Live Blog

Sumiko Braun

9:00 EST Sharknado just began on SciFi!

9:05 Evil shark finning Captain of small vessel overwhelmed by storm.  Completely devoured by sharks as they are swept in the air by a water spout.

9:13 Sharks stage mass attack on Los Angeles beach ahead of storm. Deanna (Sumiko Braun) devoured.

9:22 Tara Reid introduced as April.

Cassie Scerbo

9:24.  Shark flies in through bar room window.  Nova (Cassie Scerbo) dispatches it with a harpoon to the head.  Fin sets off (with Nova) to rescue April.




9:38  Sharks invade city via storm drains and LA River.  Havoc ensues (of course).

9:43  Shark comes pouring out of culvert in Beverly Hills.  Shark flies out of man hole to be dispatched by Nova's shotgun.  As Joe Biden says "Always keep a loaded shotgun handy in the even that a shark flies up out of a nearby manhole." 

9:45  Ah, a commercial break; relief from the strain of wondering who will get et next...

Audrey Peeples

9:50 Shark invades Beverly Hills mansion, threatening Claudia (Audrey Peeples).  Eats somebody not important.  Bloody water get menstrual joke.


9:53 Back in the SUV, mansion crumbles in the distance as sharky water overwhelms it.Hot chick all together now.

10:00 Back from break.  School bus will requisite children stranded in shark filled flood waters.  Fin rappels down to the bus to take the kids off by rope.

10:04 Shark jumps on bus as bus driver is lifted off.  Fin kicks it off  the bus.

10:06 Shark jumps at Fin, entangles self in rope as Fin is last off the bus.  Break in the storm.


10:07. Oh noes!  Here it comes again!  Bus driver killed by flying debris in with mildly amusing line: "Mom always told me Hollywood will kill me."

10:11 Commercial break.  Is this the hokiest plot ever or what?

10:14  Shark lands on moving SUV, head punches through.  Nova eventually blows it back out with the shotgun.  Hey, Joe Biden is onto something.

10:16  April stops for a few bottles of booze.  Liquor store owner blames government for sharky weather.

10:19  SUV breaks through police line; brief and disappointing chase scene ensues.

10:22 Giant twister, full of swirling sharks seen to be approaching.

10:23 Yet another commercial break; an advertisement for "Pacific Rim" and Axeron and more.

10:30  Twister nearly tears door off airplane hanger, leaves helicopter nearby untouched.  Nova blows door in to look for helicopter key.  Chainsaws discovered.  The possibilities are amusing.  Plan to bomb tornado from helicopter hatched.

10:36 A tender moment as we find out why Nova has a thing against sharks. Fighting off the urge to take a nap.

10:39  More commercials wake me up.

10:43 Nova hands trust shotgun to Fin as she and Fin and April's son set off in helicopter to bomb sharknado.

10:44 Helicopter approaches Sharknado!

10:45 First bomb appears to work... But no! A second Sharknado forms!  Sharks rain on airfield, more people killed in gruesome manners.  That's what we came for!

10:48  Second bomb disrupts Sharknado II!, more raining sharks, more havoc!  Great White lands in swimming pool, appears hungry for old people.

10:50 Sharknado III!  Another bomb!  Shark latches onto helicopter skid. Nova lost to shark!  Sharknado III (or is IV) continues.

10:55 Fin drives bomb laden SUV into Sharknado whatever number it is, and bails at the last second.

10:56  Fin jumps into mouth of falling Great White like Jonas with a chainsaw, saws himself free to save Claudia, and rescues Nova from the belly of the shark! She looks good in blood.

10: 58  Violin music, sunset, shark guts, kisses.  What romance!

10:59 Ends with bad pun.



Linked at Proof Positive's weekly "Best of the Web Linkaround."  Wombat-Socho has the giant, original Rule 5 post up at The Other McCain "Rule 5 Monday" in plain brown wrapper.

Sharknado!

Another post courtesy of Watts Up With That, the news of a fine new Sci-Fi film in production, (and no I can't say that with a straight face), Sharknado!  What could be worse than sharks or tornadoes?  Sharks and tornadoes combined!

Anthony Watt is concerned that they might invoke global warming climate change as the excuse to combine sharks and tornadoes:

No, really, after the week we’ve had where every opportunist out there is trying to blame global warming for the Moore Oklahoma tornado, I’m not kidding. Sharknadoes are the new EF10. The brief description:

I can only hope they invoke global warming caused weather extremes as the excuse for the swirling mass of dust, debris and sharks, as it makes the notion seem even sillier than it already does.

I just noted the cast.  Tara Reid, of course, was Amanda Bynes before Amanda thought up stole the role of the perky nosed little bad girl:

I look forward to watching it some gloomy winter day when it's too cold and windy to fish, or even go outside.