For Sale; Decommissioned Wrangell Alaska Hospital

 For the price of a used home a 36,000 sq foot former city hospital with a great location just a mile from the airport and a half mile from a salt-water port may be had for purchase (if the price agreed to with the last developer who wanted additional properties free and let it fall through when he didn't get them still holds). I would think a non-profit could refurbish the building with a great metal roof and not pay property taxes. An estimate of the cost to build a new one like it is 14 million dollars U.S.

Apparently the city wants to sell the building in order not to pay for utilities annually. It is not a bad looking building at all though the city has let the grass go un-mowed and the exterior needs to be maintained. The inside could be gutted and just lad bearing elements retained so one could make numerous small condo units and a few stores within it, and outside on the grounds. There is adequate parking space and garages for storage.

Instead of heating the building while empty several quality dehumidifiers might have been place to keep the humid environment dry for less cost. I specialized at repainting buildings so I am completely amazed at the unwillingness to maintain it or convert it into some other purposed public structure.

https://www.wrangell.com/community/sale-old-wrangell-medical-center-and-property-over-counter

Od hospital buyers might not see the throughput of customer volume sufficient to support commercial purposes. Wrangell has fewer than 2000 people although the cruise ship industry is rising annually while fisheries are in decline. The site might be a good place for a remote small resource based technical college annex, executive retreat two hours from Seattle etc. A Large wind generator could supply off grid power occasionally (it should turn slow enough to not bother common bald eagles and ravens flying past.

The former Wrangell Hospital is at any rate an excellent place for a retirement project to make a few stores and condo spaces. With the passing on of the boomer generation there will be millions of existing buildings that will become vacant that need be refurbished rather than destroyed so new homes can be built. Getting rid of perfectly fine structures to build new ones is quite a bit costlier and wasteful of human and material resources.

On Ukraine-If You are in a Hole Stop Digging it Deeper

The Biden administration has proven the truth of the axiom of the First Law of Holes that says; “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging it deeper.” Digging a vast economic and political hole in Ukraine through several Democrat administration in order to conquer land historically belonging to Russia was a feat of historically illiterate, bureaucratically minded union leadership quality personal egoist sociopaths.

The pathetic cost in human lives physically, injuries of war physically and psychologically is vast and the numbers keep compiling. There never was a reasonable chance of the west defeating Russia militarily to keep all of Ukraine for itself. Russians tend to be tough fighting on their home turf, and if they were actually to have lost the conflict would probably swiftly escalate to battlefield nukes to defrappe western military forces. The west would have to accept that or upgrade to M.A.D. retaliation basically.

President Biden is the worst reasoning war mongering President in U.S. history. He again moved to provide Ukraine’s government with up to 72,000 artillery shells per month for the rest of 2024 assuring more deaths, more property destruction and more impossibility of developing or investing in peace for the remainder of his term of office. A Harris or Trump administration would have hard choices to make about where to go with that conflict. Trump has said he would move toward peace and Harris has said she would go for the Biden approach she has supported for several years. Voters would be happier if she would just stipulate that she would accept President Putin’s reasonable peace plan or just go for the Russia gets the east bank of the Dnepr River and West Ukraine the western side.

The costs of rebuilding Ukraine will be great- in the trillions, and Ukraine will probable expect Europe and the U.S. to pay for it. I am somewhat offended by the idea of paying trillions to rebuild a nation that could have had war avoided with a practical peace plan a priori to adjust the wrong settlement of the Cold War boundary of Russia and Ukraine.

The Biden-Harris war lunacy has done great harm to world opinion about the United States since many perceive it as the school yard bully that could intimidate small nations and overstepped its power with Russian Ukraine. Democrat leadership about Ukraine is like maladroit engineering that mistakes its estimates of how easy it would be to build a dam across the Bering Strait bud decided to invest a trillion dollars to get something started anyway just to discover that tide and currents wash away the work.

The Biden-Harris war plan has restored the unity of the remaining communist block and strengthened it by forcing Russia to turn to a much closer relationship with that mixed economy state and neglect developing free enterprise capitalism. The negative effects of the conflict for the United States are great and will contribute to future economic issues for Americans. The astounding stupidity of the approach is what is breathtaking. How did the United States fall to such a low level of leadership after Ronald Reagan for twenty years of Democrats?

I should make a disclaimer here concerning Ayn Rand Republicans. Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ followers don’t recognize that she wrote in favor of the 1% CEO and shareholder people and was in a sense against the 99% of the public that aren’t CEO and owners of big businesses. She should have written a sequel for labor that isn’t union and demonstrated why hard individual work counts, or should count if there was an actual meritocracy in the U.S.A. Piece work of an objective nature is the only way to have real meritocratic labor and that doesn’t form the primary structure of what labor works on.

In the U.S.A. the six guys leaning on their shovels chatting will go farther and get better pay than the individual who thinks working better than others competitively will win out. Life does not recognize that kind of individual effort. That kind of worker burns out while being ignored.

There are so many unfair labor values empirically that union labor does have a way of getting a substantial chunk of change for numerous workers, although obviously union labor does have an element of a pyramid scheme structure to it- not all workers could be in unions without the wages paid becoming nonsensical and uniform while business would be inflexible and maladaptive. One would develop a Soviet Union or sovereign union sort of structure with the main difference being that government leaders might be CEOs instead of Union executives. In short a Hitler-Mussolini corporatism rather than a Soviet corporatism.

Is $40 Billion XM-30 A Priori Obsolete?

 The Army plans to spend $40 billion to replace the Bradly with a next generation fighting vehicle yet in light of drone developments one must wonder if the entire concept of blocky, chunky armored vehicles will soon be obsolete.

Mechanized infantry combat vehicles are solid targets for a plethora of new drone designs that can fly at ground contour proximity routes and get under or attach to tanks with a lot of plastic explosives at reasonably high speed. The entire paradigm seems slow. Helicopters are another easy target for next gen mobile missile platforms. One could even put tow missiles type anti-tank weapons on drone flying platforms to hunt from camouflaged hides chunky opposition forces sacrifices.

  War is just to clever to avoid. Next generation Hatsfields and McCoys need better toys to kill one another with plainly. How can that be accomplished so both are satisfied?

Donald Trump's Trouble at the Arlington National Cemetery

Donald Trump on a Presidential campaign visited the Arlington national cemetery with family members of servicemen buried there. The media have made much ado about that. I suppose the visit made family members of the fallen with him feel a little better.

Trump Visits Arlington National Cemetery

Visiting the cemetery was somewhat inappropriate, yet Trump is the peace candidate rather than a Democrat on the side of adding hundreds of thousands to graves in Europe from Ukraine and Russia. In fact that conflict could lead to millions of Americans losing their lives in nuclear war. These are extraordinary times.

Arlington is something of a gated community that Donald Trump probably couldn't be buried in because he wasn't in the military. Since he was commander-in-chief perhaps that would be his way in. Democrats probably would protest if he took up residence there when he passes some day as he nearly did last month. In the American political wars he earned a purple heart.

Homeless people that aren't veterans don't get to be buried in a national cemetery. Getting off a Greyhound bus years ago across the street from the National Cemetery at Arlington I got locked into a bathroom stall briefly when the door wouldn't let me out. For a few seconds I thought my stay at Arlington might be longer than I intended in case the bus left when the rest break time elapsed shortly. At last the door opened and I ran to the bus. Many homeless Americans are buried at public expense and cremated. One can honor the military dead best by not adding to their numbers in the U.S.A. or foreign troops too for that matter.

Democrats Don't Perceive Dangers of Nuclear War

 I throw leftovers to birds and squirrels in order not to leave anything that a brown bear would find interesting. Yet the squirrels and birds become trusting after a while and throw the birds are wild they act as if they were pets. That is they lose a sense of risk and danger. democrats are like that these days in regard to the risk of war with Russia and China, maybe Pakistan and North Korea as well (who might decide to toss a few our way when the going gets going). I wanted to comment about this phenomena.

Maybe its because of the copious dope used and quasi-legalized by the boomer generations and the quietude of gen x'ers that grew up in the long shadow of their more numerous and confused parent's generation. They too easily accepted a neo decadent whirlpool with conflicting and paradoxical, ineffective values where morality could be said to exist. Is it possible that during the collapse of the meaning of marriage and its expropriation by homosexuals in order to reallocate health care benefits unto themselves following the H.I.V. epidemic and with the post-Darwinian loss of faith in God and rise of nihilistic and hypocritical political values that an existential resignation to being, and even a tiredness to existing developed an unconcern or uncaring about the very real prospect for nuclear war?

President Reagan's agenda- a personal one like that of Donald Trump, was peace with the Soviet Union. In some miraculous way that mission was accomplished, yet President Clinton bungled the peace and with irrational exuberance took advantage of the Russian state's weakness and expropriated all of the Ukraine from it. That doomed the world to the present conflict where Europe and N.A.T.O. are the Spanish fascists seeking to takeover all of Russia with the United States as the blaster with England being something like the national master (Master-Blaster Beyond Thunderdome).

Russia is not Vietnam, Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada, Syria, Libya or some other country the U.S.A. has invaded or sponsored a war with. Russian's will fight to retake their Ukraine lands lost to the west during the transition from Soviet Communism. Making peace with Russia with a negotiated settlement excluding the present unelected Ukrainian administration was always the rational and true policy for the U.S.A. to take, and one eschewed soundly in reference for continuous escalation of war with Russia.

There is no good end through war economically or empirically. If Russia were very pressed by conventional weapons it could use tactical battlefield nukes to offset the disadvantage. It could provide suitcase nukes for terrorists to smuggle into the U.S.A. via porous borders transparent to combat terrorist egression. If a stalemate or armistice is reached the U.S.A. has a divided economic world with reduced trading partners, prolific public debt (33 trillion) and challenged by a raising Asian economic power that could easily surpass that of the U.S.A.. European partners n the crime of Ukraine war on Russia have forgotten the problems of the Second World War after decades of prosperity and ease. They support the ancient European tradition of war on Russia in order to expand Eastward although of course they require false political consciousness (ref Sartre) from the broadcast media to feel down with it.

I won't feel particularly satisfied if the Ukraine war expands to a nuclear level. It could further escalate and cause inflation, or for Alaska temperatures to drop to -80 f year around for a half a decade from nuclear winter if Americans survive the fallout. I would think that at some point Democrat party leadership should have more concern and a sense of danger than do somewhat tame squirrels. Misery from poverty caused by war and little or no medical while being injured can be a painful experience that one should avoid a priori rather than to feel contrition about later.

For the Good of It (poem)

 

Words that twist and turn dark spin
day’s lost ways where shadows begin
sparks, ice of luminous fires sin
party elite prize porky grins

  Core math loops subside poor paths
quixotic clocks echo rich rath
clutch clear political cloth
reason more to just niche truth

  Add up patterns and designs
structure built units of good times
rhythmic reps zeitgeist consign
seek for the good that you would find.

No Complaints (a poem)

 

   Things that go bump in the surf
ignore how uncomfortable it was
memories are dimensional lumber
dorsal fins swimming your way in neck deep estuarine water
flowing tides today
a sense of sogginess pervading dreams
a sleeping bag soaking up water
drips down and saturating a field
fire ant mud mounds above the water level
of a flooded field
a place to think about lightening flashes
driving rain and tornado roof-ripping
comparisons to hurricanes
riding a bike through the eye
one with bearings not yet broken
gears immersed in mud and lake puddles
miraculous suspended sediment
rinse off sweat with alligators
sharing the stream
warm and wet  compared to the frozen
places far from crowds
without doorways for overnight
thunderclap symphonies
unlike darkest winters in deep snow

  A sense of sogginess and heat exhaustion
superimposed like a portrait of memory
walking over the trestle
beside a resting line of box cars
disposable as dreaming of tomorrow
prior to awakening today
thousands of cars driving the freeway
one sees today
patching the goat head flattened inner tube
of a bike with a rusty chain
dry  desert contemplative solitude of broke
heat providing the wilderness opportunity
sign up for a Army vacation
mortar rounds for all
a boomerang flies and the Earth quakes
an atomic war won’t happen immediately
with hot engines and metal
racing homeward
to better places with good paint, rocky lawns and global warming

  Mountains of aspiration and hope
snow beautiful and distant
bear ripped up the tent again
duck tape without vigilant drones
not yet a blanket of zero degrees
the visitor of winter darkness in nightfall
lasting longer than city lights on the waterfront
paper plates and dumpster menus lacking health labels
doors frozen shut with tax credits
targeted by public broadcasting
dressing with union retirement planning
union police and social studies sergeants
walking on water half the year
Wall Street hits parade iof pocketbooks

  Complaining of criminals, spiders and bear
spaces where impact, frostbite and starvation
are empty coke cans
and exhaust from idling autos  is the new normal
the chat trained monkey pox
employer lists of numbers to confer unemployment
continuing interstate job insecurity
more out of work than in
returning to the heat lamp and freezer
returning to the destitution
where a legendary buffalo roamed
western movies on location
with decades of social evolution
rusting spikes and running Nikes
jettisoned boom box circuit plates on shoulders
convenient stores, people in uniforms
the last bite, a good night
fueling cars under kleig lights
El Caminos driven to the past.