As Sultan Knish points out, France is in the midst of a hot civil war:
(PARISTAN) It’s not just rhetoric. Bombs turn up in a posh Parisian suburb. Two young women are butchered at a train station. And it’s just another week of an Islamic World War III being fought in France.
From the November attacks in 2015 that killed 130 people and wounded another 400+, to the Bastille Day truck ramming attack last year that killed 86 and wounded 458, the war is real.
French casualties in France are worse than in Afghanistan. The French lost 70 people to Islamic terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. And 239 to Islamic terrorist attacks in France.
The French losses in Afghanistan were suffered in over a decade of deployment in one of the most dangerous Islamic areas in the world. The French losses in France were suffered in less than two years.
There’s something very wrong when Afghanistan is safer than Paris.
But apparently, nobody in charge can do the math, and figure out that being merkeled by decades of Muslim immigration, now on steroids, got them to where they are now.
Nor to go one step beyond, and simply deport their Third World problems back where they belong, once and for all.
Apparently, that might require French women to start having babies, and French men to actually, y'know, get a job and go to work to support the new mouths to feed.
And the French can't be having any of that noise.
So, they'll continue to set what shreds of civil rights they still barely enjoy on fire, in order to usher in a draconian police state that would have made their 1940 occupiers blush to enact. And there won't be any "resistance" not even a fraction of a percent to give the other 99% collaborators any cover.
They should just cut to the chase, convert now, and put a muzzein atop the Eiffel Tower, and get it over with. National identity means nothing when faced with the prospect of actually defending it, yet another thing any of which the French can't be having.
Liberty! Equality! Stupidity!
Onward into slavery, froggies. No one's coming to save you from yourselves. It's 1789 all over again, and Robbespierre's new name is Mohamed.
Best of luck with that plan.
Bonus: Britistan, having watched its merchant fleet rust away, is now primarily dependent on truck and train traffic through the Chunnel for the imports that keep it, and its own burgeoning hordes of jihadi immigrants alive, healthy, and able to rape little girls and boys with impunity.
So you've already got a two-fer, and a bonus with Germany run by a mad cow, insanely cheering on the burning of all of Europe.
Scandinavia watches itself be consumed like a man being swallowed alive by a python, and does little, if anything, short of manifesting Stockholm Syndrome on a national scale.
Only the resurgent Catholic and Orthodox Eastern Europe, refined in the fires of forty years of communism's cold grasp, has decided to tell Islam to go to hell, and shut their gates firmly in its face.
Best wishes, Eurotards. You set your own house afire, and you can figure out how best to put it out. We'll be sitting this one out, while we strive to thwart things here, only two steps earlier in the process than you're at now.
Not nearly so funny after the first few hundred bodies pile up...
Western Civilization: it was fun while it lasted. But if it ever manages to bestir itself, the lesson is liable to resemble something best left undisturbed since the last time militant religious fanaticism well and truly pissed us off.
"I'll see your World Trade Center, and raise you one Kaaba. Call..."
The title comes from a well-worn phrase, which I first consciously took notice of while listening to a brilliant Dan Rather CBS radio essay from the early 1980s (which disappeared into the seam between old tech and the Internet-Is-Forever era) and for which, should anyone have a transcript or the actual recording form, I would pay real cash money.
The subject, at a time when Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff was a best-seller, and going to become a movie, was the American (and human) drive to reach out into space, versus the short-sighted drive of jackassically ignorant congressional (but I repeat myself) appropriators to slash funding for pure exploration. Hate on Dipshit Dan all you want for any number of Usual Suspect Liberal Retardation, but he came up as a local Texas newscaster in the era of Kennedy, NASA, Mercury/Gemini/Apollo, and in that one essay, from before the Challenger disaster, he beautifully encapsulated and expressed why we should always be reaching for the next milestone in space.
And he got, and expressed, in a way that I still mostly remember 40 years later, that cutting NASA (as the idjits in Congress were then doing, which led in a straight-line way to killing the astronauts on Challenger just a few years afterwards), was the equivalent of a tribe or civilization "eating the seed corn," consuming the grain now for a short-term gain and a quick meal, but condemning the future to starvation and extinction.
This is your space program when the bureaucrats take over.
Makes you really look forward to handing them your healthcare, huh?
I bring it up because over at his blog, Silicon Graybeard has a couple of recent posts, one on Amazon's Jeff Bezos and his latest engine test, and the prior one noting that from beyond the edge of the solar system, Voyager just keeps plugging away.
And my rantastic observation is simply: "Why in hell aren't we surpassing what we did 30-40-50 years ago?!?"
Voyager is great stuff from '70s tech.
Now 'splain why, with Moore's Law and a few hundred other things, no one's working on sending out a 4K camera to see the same things Voyager did, at a wee few orders better resolution.
We've proved it's doable, as Voyager flies out of the solar system.
Or sending similar packages to each planet, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, etc.
Instead of, I dunno, not spending one second of NASA budget on asstardian pseudoscience things like anthropo-fraudulent globull warming, or outreach to sixth century goat-humping superstitions.
Let alone abdicating completely more manned space travel.
I can get over no jet packs and flying cars, but going to the moon a few times, and then just...quitting?
When Matt friggin' Damon has a better grasp of what NASA's mission should be than NASA does, it's probably time to burn it down, and start over from scratch. (Or move the entire military side to Vandenburg, and lease Canaveral and Houston back to Space-X etc. The only thing NASA should be doing is running the museum and memorabilia concession sales.)
Stop screwing around. We need to science the $#!^ out of this.
I grew up a short bicycle ride from Rocketdyne (who built the Saturn V engines that sent us to the moon), and on Saturdays listened to them testing engines in the hills outside LA. Which you could hear from 30 miles away. Now half their facility is a strip mall. Two generations have been gypped out of their heritage.
Space is our wading pool. As Neil McDonough said in a viral 2014 Cadillac commercial "Were we nuts when we pointed to the moon? That's right, we went up there...and you know what we got? Bored. So we left. Got a car up there, left the keys in it. D'ya know why? 'Cause we're the only ones going back up there, that's why."
Boom. Mic drop.
SiG points out rightfully,
"Voyager was only possible because of the orbital lineup that gave them the 'grand tour', slingshotting from one planet to the next, and completing the tour."
I get the Grand Tour thing, but we should have progressed in launch vehicles to the point that we don't care about that lovely one-time window anymore. Send craft to all of them, regularly, instead of doing the Solar System In One Tour. For the time, it was genius economy, but now it's time to dig in for the long haul, not just hit-and-run tour bus tourism.
It took one president about 5 minutes to give both the pointy heads and the ignoratii in government a vision that propelled them forward for a decade.
All I'm asking for is that, from time to time, someone else come along and get them another push. Momentum and serendipity will take care of the rest. I'm sending this on a flatscreen bigger than my parents' color TV was in 1969, from a PC with more computing power than the sum total of the entire world's space programs in 1969. Because we went to the moon.
We don't starve now in the first World because we have entire supermarkets full of packaged and canned goods, because back 200+ years ago, Napoleon needed a better way to feed his armies on the march.
Originally invented to feed Napoleon's armies; now available everywhere near you.
Discovery drives technology, and technology changes the world.
It's long past time to give the fat kid on the swing another push.
Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, et al aren't our fiction, they're our future. Exploring, and eventually colonizing, everywhere we can go, isn't just what we can do, it's what we should do. Auto-opening doors are on every 7-11; pocket flip-open communicators are so 1990. It's time for transporters, and warp drive.
I'm fine with going forward one step at a time, even missing my generation's turn, as long as we're going forward.
And given what we spend, versus what they deliver, it's time for NASA to either lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.
How To Make Your Audience Disappear In One Season:
Well played, f**ktards. No Fans Left. This is what happens when players with IQs lower than their jersey numbers are put in charge of things. At this rate, a team next year made up entirely of quarterbacks will still be able to make the salary cap, and players can look forward to jobs selling cars and insurance in the off-season, just like they used to do.
Peter notes today this story, which describes the dire straits things are in down in Puerto Rico, a month after Hurricane Maria left them smashed and dazed.
(Third World, US territory) Melted medications. Surgical procedures conducted in sweltering 95-degree heat. Malfunctioning X-ray machines.
This is the reality doctors in Puerto Rico are facing almost four weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated the island.
"We're practicing disaster medicine in real life," said Dr. William Kotler, a senior resident in emergency medicine with Florida Hospital in Orlando, who spent two weeks volunteering on the island earlier this month. "We improvise if we have to, with very little resources."
Kotler and four other emergency physicians from Florida Hospital in Orlando, just wrapped up a two-week volunteer mission in Puerto Rico. Arriving one week after Hurricane Maria made landfall, they were the first medical relief team the hospital sent to the island. A second team arrived on Oct. 8 and will stay for two weeks.
Access to electricity was so shoddy that Trivino couldn't conduct a CT scan, but he was able to do an X-ray. To review the films, he had to go outside and hold the films up to the sunlight. Afterward, he used one of the team's two satellite phones to arrange for the patient to go to a trauma center.
I shouldn't wonder why.
Puerto Rico is in dire straits because for decades, - not years, but swaths of years - they ignored electricity infrastructure, preferring to funnel state money to social programs and cronyism rather than update a power grid cobbled together and jury-rigged since McKinley was president.
Now they're reaping the harvest of those decisions.
Color me jaded: boo frickin' hoo.
The last thing we should do is shelter them from feeling the consequences of their prior uninterrupted stupidity, because doing such is like covering hot stovetops with quilts, because the children are too stupid to learn not to touch them.
Nature/Creation put a perfectly functional nervous system in place to make stupid hurt, and what's actually cruel is to prevent it from teaching the lessons people should learn.
The people of Puerto Rico are going to learn there are some mistakes that hurt, and some of those you don't get to make twice in life, because they kill you. And as callous as it sounds, and heartbreaking as it is to hear of, the people you might otherwise pluck from the edge of the cliff moments from disaster are the exact ones who should be allowed to plunge off the cliff, or you'll just encourage the dumbest and most self-destructive of the lot to breed and multiply, which just means when you can't be there next time, even more will die. And you could have prevented it.
We cut into people, even though it hurts, because a little pain will save their lives. We force them to get their lazy, in-pain bodies out of bed rapidly, post-surgery, because it helps them heal better and faster. In short we, just like nature, use pain to teach, and to heal.
Stepping in now will only kill them with kindness.
Let them suffer, let them stress, let them get sick, and yes, even let some of them die, if they're to ever learn that the time to fix their problems was yesterday, not manana, or you're just pre-selecting an even greater number to die when you finally can't carry them any more, and even more of them die next time. Does anyone want "I saved twenty, so that 1000 could die later." on their tombstone?
Either the lesson will get painful enough to teach them, or the stupid will die off, and the smart will learn.
There is no other way for some people to learn, and it would be a greater cruelty to deny them the lesson that will save more lives in the future than will ever be lost now. And the soft racism of condescendingly low expectations is part and parcel of the entire wrong approach to deal with disasters like this. Send them all the tools they need to fix the problem, but let them fix it themselves, and do it right, so they don't need the same thing next year, and the year after that. Build a power grid that doesn't go down forever from one hurricane, or even two. Build storm drains that take into account the problem, and eliminate it the minute the clouds blow over. Instead of sending them food stamps, teach them to fish and raise food, so the entire island isn't a cargo cult dependent wholly on imported supplies 24/7/365. Teach them the hard way that they should have strategic stockpiles of medicine in storm-proof storage right there on the island, and not depend on immediate shipments because they never thought of that. And stop building things too flimsy to survive a Cat V hurricane, which they're going to get every decade or two.
I'll send you all the hose and buckets you want once, but you're going to man the pumps and put the fire out your own d*mned self.
"Stick to the Company Narrative, or wake up in a ditch in the desert, okay mojado?"
So despite Campos coming out on MGM mouthpiece Ellen's show, it was just one MGM employee telling another MGM employee that the company is great, and everything there is wonderful. It's pretty transparently a tissue of happygas to try and stave off 22,000 lawsuits against MGM for a bottomless payout for lax to non-existent security at the Mandalay Bay Resort when the shooting happened.
As published by Gateway Pundit, Wayne Allyn Root has the inside scoop on the problems from the horses' mouths, i.e. security personnel for MGM properties including Mandalay Bay:
*MGM security personnel are “undermanned, underpaid, under-trained.” That’s a quote direct from security supervisors.
*My sources say because MGM is heavily in debt and desperately trying to save money, and because executives see security as a department that “produces no profit,” MGM made decisions to savage the security budget.
*Most of MGM security is disarmed. Only supervisors have weapons. And they are in their offices, or the control room. If there’s trouble, they are far away, leaving unarmed guards unable to defend guests or themselves for long periods of time. Guards feel helpless.
*There is a petition at this very moment from MGM employees demanding guards be armed because employees do not feel safe at work.
*Security guards are so upset they are planning to unionize at every MGM property, all at once, in the coming days.
*My MGM security sources believe MGM security guard Jesus Campos is a key part of this mess. There are many questions that need to be answered about Campos.
He’s the only witness to the worst mass shooting in U.S. history and his only interview EVER was with a comedian (Ellen Degeneres) whose show is sponsored by MGM and who makes millions with her own slot machines at MGM casinos? MGM has just made things worse. They are digging the hole deeper.
*Media critics have asked why Campos was sent alone to the 32nd floor? Because of budget cuts and severe understaffing, MGM guards are almost always sent alone on calls.
*MGM has lots of guards on the casino floor, but often has only 3 guards on duty for thousands of guest rooms. Unarmed guards.
*Many critics have asked after Campos was shot, why were police not called quickly. My sources say calls to police are ALWAYS a last resort at any MGM property. They never want police involved. They want no public record of incidents at MGM properties.
*Secondly, they report MGM security has cheap, faulty equipment. Their radios are the worst problem. They often don’t work, or suffer “dead zones” all over the hotels. Campos may have been unable to reach his supervisors for crucial minutes. He may have been forced to use his personal cell phone.
*Contrary to public perception, there are no cameras in hallways. And none in the stairwells either- meaning a shooter could quickly escape to the street without video images.
*High Rollers like Paddock are treated like untouchables. Security personnel cannot question them for fear of being instantly fired.
*Paddock studied Mandalay Bay. He knew the shift change times. There is a shift change at 9:59 PM. That’s why the shooting took place around 10 PM. It’s a time of mass confusion.
*Incredibly, MGM security has never been trained for mass shooting, or terror attack scenarios. No one had any idea what to do. My sources say they still don’t.
*MGM has no TAC team. Wynn has a TAC team. Wynn has been training for a mass casualty scenario since 2015. MGM is just starting that training now.
*The timeline for the shooting is not easy to establish. Yes, traffic on MGM radios (when they work) is recorded. But it’s very hard to retrieve and piece together accurate timelines.
These aren’t my opinions or observations. MGM’s own security supervisors and employees painted this picture [in] vivid terms. It’s an eye-opener.
1) So, the guards are unarmed. So what? Off the casino floor, the last thing guests should have to contend with is Paul Blart, neo-Nazi mall cop, with an MP-5 on his shoulder. 2) That nothing but the elevator landings is camera-covered is a given; no casino wants to be fighting off divorce attorney subpoenas for cheating husbands and hookers coming and going from here to eternity. Duh. 3) That MGM cut security to save $ was stupid, but typical of corporate management. And it bit them in the ass. So gravity works. 4) That they have no active shooter response plan, despite months of warning that ISIS, etc. was targeting the Strip for an incident, is typical, but recockulous. But none of their plan would nor should involve anything in active response but calling the LVMPD ASAP. And those guys were so fuster-clucked it took them 20 minutes to find the right room, across the friggin' street. Somebody from the PD at the concert could have jogged it in under 3 minutes, if they'd had any clue which floor to go to. 5) Radios that don't work in a resort that size? That's a firing offense for whoever was in charge, after the obligatory well-earned flogging. Marconi invented the damned things decades ago, and getting good radios is mainly an exercise in ordering them, once. I'm pretty sure Motorola is in the phone book. 6) MGM is no more responsible for this shooting than the state highway commission was responsible for the guy that hit you. They were security-incompetent assclowns, but the onus for lack of timely response falls pretty squarely on LVMPD, and to be fair, initial crazy-ass reports had everything on them but aliens landing at Caesar's Palace, with Elvis doing a quick set from the spaceship door.
Key point: The bigger issue is that three weeks later, MGM, the LVMPD, the Sheriff, and the FBI together can't lay out one, single, coherent bombproof timeline of what happened from 9:45PM until 11:30PM, and account for who, what, when, where, and why everything happened that fits all the data points together without any glaring gaping holes in the narrative.
Either they're all severely mentally retarded, or a coherent factual accounting of events leads to revealing information and knowledge that TPTB don't want the peasants to possess, and would open them all to some screamingly huge counter-questions.
And whatever it is, is so big it's worth deliberately buggering the mass shooting of 197 and the deaths of 58 people to maintain and service that cover up.
Draw your own conclusions what could possibly worth that amount of fudging.
This'll end well for Ms. Pussyhat, U Penn history dept. TA:
(Gynocracy, PA) On October 16, 2017, McKellop posted on her @McKellogsTwitter account (which is now accessible only by her “confirmed followers”) that she employs a race- and gender-based preferential system for calling on her students, favoring black women first, then other people of color, then white women, and last of all, white men, but only if she has to.
If Kellop, as a teaching assistant, blatantly discriminates against white students, especially white men, in calling upon them to speak in class, then it is reasonable for us to suspect that Kellop also discriminates against her white students when it comes to grading their exams.
Fellowship Of The Minds' post includes contact info for her history (or should that be Herstory Dept.?) chairwench, and the uni president, but that rather misses the point:
This sort of discrimination is a federal civil rights violation, in which every male student at UPenn now has standing to sue in federal court. The EEOC, Department of Education, and Justice Department should all be taking a frankly proctological interest momentarily in uncovering this and any similar calculated policies of academic discrimination based on race and gender at UPenn, which blatantly violates federal law.
Not to mention a trial lawyer or two, once word gets out that every white male with the merest shred of a discrimination allegation now has a slam-dunk winnable case from deep pockets U Penn and the State of PA:
Scholarship? Dude, I can get you there for FREE, and they'll owe you money besides!
All told, after they fire this TA, kick her out of her Ph.D. program for cause, fire her advisor and department chair, and settle the 50,000 inevitable lawsuits, I'm figuring UPenn will be shifting to an online curriculum.
And, probably, taking the funds assessed in penalties from womyn's sports and programs.
Well played, SJW twits. Stop your male-rape and justice-rape culture, and get your laws off my crotch.
So, some douche who deserted 40 years ago found out there's no statute of limitations on the UCMJ:
(Frozen Hell, ND)An Airman who disappeared from an Air Force Base in North Dakota 40 years ago is in custody of the U.S. Air Force after he was discovered last week living in Florida.
Jeffrey Michels, 64, was arrested Thursday on charges of desertion after he failed to report for duty at North Dakota’s Minot Air Force Base on July 6, 1977,
I don't know how the Air Farce plays the game, but I can tell you how the Marines did it in the mid-1980s, and probably still do.
Back in the day, In Swamp Lejeune, the MPs marched in some $#!^bag who'd taken a powder 10 years earlier, after he'd been popped by the cops for a traffic violation, and he'd been ID'ed as somebody wanted for Unauthorized Absence 10 years prior.
They brought him back to us, because we were his former unit (in 1975), just long enough to get his paperwork stamped and signed by the current OIC, ran him by the barber shop to get him shaved back to bootcamp bald, then issued him a lovely set of cammies with huge white "P"s on them, and as he'd had 2 years and 3 months left on his enlistment when he'd decided to take a powder, he spent 2 years and 3 months shoveling mud and snow and picking up trash while he was prosecuted for UA, and then separated via a Bad Conduct Discharge. Rain or shine, six days a week, the MPs ran him everywhere on base on foot, with Sundays off, and he was still there when I was transferred out for my tour in Japan.
See if you can guess how long that little morality play affected UAs in the regiment and division for the next few months as the story spread.
When you sign on the line, you're gonna do the time. Even if you're 64 years old. Michaels might have known that in his head, but soon he's going to feel it in his bones. Especially this winter, when he's out cleaning up the base and the wind chill gets down to negative numbers.
If anything, I'm being too harsh on the far-cleaner streets of Santo Domingo's slums.
By request:
"Not to change the subject, but could our esteemed host do a post concerning the Hepatitis A outbreak in San Diego?"
Okay. File this under: Dealing With Other People's Sh*t. Literally.
A wise historian once said that the story of western civilization's progress boils down to the rise of sanitation, refuse removal, and achievement of running water and indoor plumbing. And that the most frequent reason for near-area migration was literally a village/town/city moving far enough away to escape the smell and pest problems from their burgeoning trash heaps and dung hills.
Herein, living proof of concept.
San Diego (indeed, all of CA, esp. the coastal regions) is overrun by homeless waste-of-skin douchebags. Frisco's been dealing with the problem for decades, and they even publish poop-avoidance maps in Shitistan By The Bay for the feces-averse:
(I call it Frisco because it pisses the natives off.
Pissed on, pissed off, in for a penny, in for a pound...of feces.
Maybe Bay Area folks could change the name to San Franshitsco?)
Then, there's the perennial problem of drug addicts carelessly leaving their discards where anyone can get punctured by them. (So, where are all the "Legalize everything!" folks now...anyone? Beuller? Ferris Beuller...?) This helpfully adds lifelong incurable Hep B and C to the treatable Hepatitis A problem. Any large-"L" Libertarians in the audience? Tell me how you deal with near-zero government solutions to this problem. Or does this sort of thing fall inside the lines of Things It's Okay-to-beat-folks-into-submission-to? Just curious.
Pssst! Someone tell the Sierra Club and EarthFirst! that junkies are polluting pigs.
When Antifa starts beating up homeless junkies, I'm buying popcorn.
Rather than run them in for lawlessness, or run them out of town, city governments full of jackholes (San Diego city council, call your office...) let them shoot up, piss, and shit everywhere, which has real-world public health consequences.
And Unintended Consequences Factor: Last November the Usual Leftarded Jackholes Reliable Demotard Voters in the coastal enclaves inflicted a ban on plastic bags as a free item, requiring retailers to begin charging customers starting the next day the princely sum of $0.10@ for every plastic bag everywhere, forever.
Which took a handy expedient crap receptacle out of the arsenal of the 17 homeless people who'd at least make the minimum effort. (Thanks, Governor Moonbeam!)
Thus, when shit and piss literally run down the streets and carpet the town from one end to the other, San Diego more resembles Santo Domingo. Or, the bottom of an outhouse sump.
Hepatitis A (invariably with a fecal-oral vector, meaning someone else's chocolate gets in your peanut butter) ensues. Unless you bleach your shoes after every foray outside your domicile, and surgically scrub your hands after removing them, or touching anything outside your safe space.
If you think it's funny, imagine you're eight or ten years old, and ride your bike past Joe the Wino's refrigerator-box castle, stop to fill you bike tire with air at the corner gas station where Mary MethFreak unloads whatever squirts out after she's salvaged half a burrito from behind Taco Bell or the rotten produce behind the QuickieMart, but poor eight year old you didn't wash your hands afterwards, and hastily consumed a chocolate and hepatitis-flavored candybar with your besplattered hands. Wait a day or three. Then ask mommy why your eyes are yellow where they should be white. Not nearly so funny now, is it mijo?
Or you walk from the car to the strip mall business door, not realizing that wasn't dew on the sidewalk or parking lot, but rather it was doodoo, and later on, took your (no, that isn't mud wedged under the heel) shoes off, and then pulled back the tab on a cold one. And now have N/V/D: nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, along with fatigue, and looking a shade of yellow you don't recall ever looking before.
In 1980, this was all good fun.
This is not. Ever.
They're trying to vaccinate everyone in jails, but that's a tail-wagging solution to a rabid dog problem: it only stops the inmates from getting Hepatitis A (for awhile) not Average Joe. Or his kids.
Public defecation/urination should get an automatic non-negotiable hefty cash fine and non-time-reducible six-month chain-gang sentence for the first offense (No money for the fine? not a problem, Leaky Pants: you will work off the fine at the prevailing prison wage rate, at something like $0.30/hr, after doing the six months, on the same chain gang), with summer months being served in the hotter-than-hell desert section of East SD County, filling potholes and cracks with asphalt and hot tar from can-see to can't-see each day, six days a week. On Sundays, they can rest, in their tents, in the same desert.
Winter should be spent shoveling sand and mud hip-deep in the S.D. harbor when water temps run right around 50 degrees. If Navy SEALs can handle it, so can pubic crappers, as overwhelmingly most of them are the toothless, banjo-playing kinfolk from the Other 49 States, here for the sunshine and welfare bennies. If they elect to GTFO of California after the first such sentence, boo frickin' hoo.
Repeat offense should garner a longer sentence, and a third strike and all subsequent should be a felony, where the penal system can administer to them the basic toilet training mommy and daddy neglected.
If they're adjudicated too crazy for that, establish a lovely colony for them on San Miguel Island, some 35 miles off the CA coast, and currently inhabited solely by goats, and let us airdrop food bundles to them weekly, where they can pee and crap themselves wherever they choose, but their free-in-society privileges are permanently revoked on the second offense. (If someone wants to rename it Shutter or Devil's Island, I'm fine with that too.)
Live by society's most basic rules, or lose your right to roam around in it freely.
Still not tired of winning, and running his limo on Leftist tears.
When Retards Have Webpages Dept:
(TARDVILLE)President Trump Admits He’s Trying to Kill Obamacare. That’s Illegal. by Abbe Gluck
The president has a legal obligation, under Article II of the US Constitution, to “take Care that the laws be faithfully executed.” That means he must make sure that our laws are implemented in good faith and that he uses his executive discretion reasonably toward that end.
Trump announced his plan to cut off important cost-sharing payments that the ACA promises to insurers to compensate them for reducing what individuals have to pay in premiums.
Dear Glucktard,
Uh, no.
You were apparently sick in school the day they taught American government, 1787-present, and again the day they explained that what Trump is doing is ceasing to expend non-allocated funds to illegally subsidize insurers, cushioning them from the real-world gravity-works consequences of the ObozoCare Unaffordable-By-Anyone Care Act.
President Trump did "take care that the laws be faithfully executed", in fact doing so in this exemplar for the first time in the history of the practice, by NOT illegally diverting funds not appropriated to a given activity in order to prop up the boondoggle, with neither proper, nor indeed any, congressional appropriation.
If Congress loves the ACA, they can budget the funds for that activity (and they alone), and direct they be spent thusly. Had they done that, anytime since 2008, then President Trump would, indeed be breaking the law now. They didn't pass that law, so he isn't breaking one. That following the law will also strangle the measure is for him a happy serendipitous result, and for you a consternation, but your feelings don't outweigh black-letter reality, Snowflake. How sad for you.
Just because the law was being broken every day by the last president and administration on something some people approved of, does not bind the current president to continue operating in such a lawless and reckless manner.
If you think the subsidies are a good idea, call your congresspersons, and get them to allocate the funds lawfully.
And maybe stop using words like Humpty Dumpty did in Alice In Wonderland.
"When I use a word, " Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
Stopping illegal payments that never should have started is not only legal, it goes to fulfilling a campaign promise:
Drain The Swamp.
Or, as another fellow put it: Elections have Consequences.
Challenge accepted.
Not so funny when the boot's up your ass, is it Smarmy McSmugpuss?
In response to any amount, type, and repetition of Earnest Mystical Hand-Waving Attempts to tell me the wizards of the YouTube/Internet Collective Brain have sorted out that the Vegas shooting had to be accomplished by a belt-fed .30 cal.MG, pulled from the same genius that brought the Warren Commission the Magic Bullet Theory, write this down on your hands with a laundry pen:
You (and the other people trying this game on YouTube, etc.) are taking a video (or any 50 of them, because if one bag of fertilizer doesn't avail, a truckload might?) from hundreds of yards from the source, coming from a source embedded in a multi-acre wall of glass, and passing over another multi-acre concrete open space, (ignoring the hundreds of barriers, structural walls, and, oh yeah - a wide-open concert-quality sound system with open mics, rebroadcasting the rounds and all those source sounds and echoes passing in proximity over amps and speakers stacked high enough to rebroadcast their sounds over that same multi-acre venue - let alone not just ricochets, but serial sonic cracks of rounds that haven't impacted yet passing on both sides, overhead, etc.) and telling me that there are no echoes?
Mirabile dictu.
From a notional 600RPM source flinging 10 supersonic projectiles per second in the direction of the exact crap microphones in question. Which may or may not have been pointed 180 degrees out from the source, being on the opposite side of the camera, which neither you nor I nor any number of notional angels dancing on the head of a pin know for sure, but whilst their owners clutch the cases in deathgrips, trip, fall, run, bounce off of pavement, barriers, etc. sufficient to soil 20,000 sets of underwear, and trample some 400 of their peers seriously enough to require hospitalization. (Silently, perhaps?)
If only I hadn't spent two decades watching boom guys on production sets levitate $1K+ microphones over actors at ranges of 2-25 feet with the skill of surgeons, just to capture simple spoken dialog cleanly and without any sound artifact, at a spoken word rate far lower than 600 wpm, and feed it to guys whose sound package alone would buy hundreds of cell phones, and likely more cell microphones than the total present at the entire venue in question, to know whereof I speak here...)
Were these magic gunshots? Perhaps the laws of physics ceased to exist on this video. Maybe the person using this cellphone purchased it from the same guy who sold Jack the magic beanstalk beans. And maybe grits on your stove cook faster than anywhere else in the entire grit-eating world.
The volume, pitch, fidelity, and fifty other medium-induced artifacts and variables are precisely the point at issue with an abysmal-quality microphone that consists, in most instances, of a single 1mm hole in a plastic case, with their low-fidelity pre-bastardized product digitized and compressed, then uncompressed, then uploaded, then transmitted, until played through your speakers or mine, with any nameable range of audio fidelity.
And compared with audio from similarly audio-crap videos on YouTube, under the same parameters.
Do this math for me:
Shit x shit x shit x shit, compared with shit, played over speakers ranging from quality ranging from 0 to infinity (where 0=shit, and infinity equals pristine clarity) = __________?
a) shit
b) diamonds
c) magic diamonds
d) I don't understand the question
(Caveat: I may even be understating the number of shit multiplications in the first part of the problem by a factor of 2 to 5 times. Cheers.)
I'll reduce the equation for you:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP = QRSTUV = WXYZ(infinity) =
belt-fed .30 cal machinegun
QED
Solve for all variables.
Show your work.
And you're convinced, because what you hear "sounds" right to you.
Because, for reference comparison, you have extensive experience with the sound of an actual belt-fed .30, fired at you from several hundred feet above you and hundreds of yards away, from a multi-echo location, to a multi-echo location, amidst screams, panic, chaos, etc., as you seek cover while in fear for your own life, and it sounds exactly like the shit squared squared crap audio on the clip, with epic levels of non-quantifiable changes before arriving at your eardrum.
From which you're going to extrapolate caliber, cyclic rate, and exact type of weapon, and simultaneously excluding every similar type of weapon of any other caliber (which would run to several hundreds of possible exemplars), based on yours/YouTube's extensive experience and sound catalog of every other weapon extant, since the year Gatling worked out the cranked multi-barrel carriage gun, and simultaneously rule out any possibility of it being any one of 20+ weapons in the room, with or without bump-fire stocks.
Because the audio quality of the video is so bad is doesn't capture any anomalies, just the exact phenomenon you're advocating.
And all this minor series of miracles absent any corroboration like expended links, piles of 7.62 brass, slugs, video or eyewitness testimony reporting seeing any given shooter firing this weapon (or weapons).
Let me sum up your case:
It's true, because biblical levels of reasonable doubt, times magic, and trust you, and lack of evidence proves the correctness of the original assertion.
Got it.
Thanks for playing.
See if you can guess my response, sitting in the jury box, as you give your closing argument.
Seriously, tell me you work in a call center in Mumbai, and don't do anything where your grasp of physics, science, math, technology, etc, might be responsible for anyone's life or livelihood. Let me attempt for you a small example from my world.
This is a standard hospital pulse oximeter:
When it's properly applied, working correctly and a number of potential error-inducing problems* corrected, it tells me and many other professionals
a) your pulse rate
b) how much oxygen is flying around your bloodstream.
*(Keep your finger in that spot. I'll be coming back there.)
But not, Gentle reader, by me reading that number on the remote screen, does the number on the screen = Truth.
How does it work? The probe shines a red light on one side through your fingertip (earlobe, neonate's foot, etc.) and a receiver on the opposite side sees the received light, counts the rate of the waves as it changes, and via analysis of the color of light received, calculates the amount of oxygenated hemoglobin racing through your veins and arteries, and derives (by way of more math and science than you need to know) your heart rate and what amount of oxygenation of your tissue that equals.
*Unless (I told you we'd be coming back here)
Someone is moving the probe - like you tapping your finger.
Or me tapping your finger.
Or someone doing CPR while bumping the hand it's on.
Or you're wearing nail polish of any of various shades.
(Ask me how I know all these are true.)
What happens when you don't correct for that?
You get a reading of a good pulse and normal oxygenation on a corpse. You get a reading of dead on a live person. Or anything in between. (I can tap on one with no patient, and get readings in the normal range from absolutely no patient at all. That does not, thereby, proves the existence of ghosts.)
How do you fix that?
You look at the monitor, and see if the pulse ox waves match the heartbeats.
You look at the patient, and see if they're pink, awake, and talking, versus blue-lipped with crossed eyes and not breathing.
You wipe off their nail polish.
You stop the probe from moving.
In short, you treat the patient, not the monitor, because you don't try to pull an elephant out of your ass based on A SINGLE PIECE OF POTENTIALLY CORRUPTED DATA.
You brighter folks, tell the less-bright why extrapolating a particular machinegun from one single datum, in this case one or more sound recordings, of hugely dubious accuracy, unknown and suspect fidelity, and therefore little utility, might therefore be slightly left of retarded on the IQ curve. If that doesn't work, try a bigger Wand Of Truthiness until the problem resolves.
Those of you with new lumps on your heads:
Your abacus fingers are not fast enough to do the calculus which answer you claim to be pulling, from parts of anatomy better left unnamed.
I'm sorry if logic annoys you, but I'm simply telling you, Orville and Wilbur, that no matter how many rubber bands you wind around the propeller, you will not ever get your pig to fly. And strapping rockets to the pig will not overcome the problems with aerodynamics, but you will splatter bacon much farther from the site of the inevitable smoking-hole failure of subsequent attempts.
Like trying to teach a pig to whistle, you're wasting your time, and annoying the pig.
Most depressing part of this post: knowing that now, another dozen jet-fueled geniuses will redouble their efforts on YouTube, and the Internetz.
British man tires of wife's nagging, goes and hides in woods for 10 years to escape:
(Solitary Bliss)A gardener got so fed up with his wife's nagging he ran away from home and lived in the woods for ten years.
Malcolm Applegate, 62, was married to his wife for three years before upping sticks after the relationship reached breaking point.
He then made his way from Birmingham, where they lived, to London - making half the three-week journey on foot after his bike was stolen.
Malcolm said: 'I was married to her for three years, but unfortunately it got too much.
'First of all I met her in Eastbourne and I married her in Birmingham.
'For three years it was alright, we got on with one another and the gardening got too much for her.
'I just upped and left, I got fed up with her because we used to get so many arguments.
Take a hint, womyn: When a guy would rather camp in Happy Woods for a decade than hang around minute in Camp Nagistan, you're the problem.
But while 10 years living in the woods is spectacular, the reigning gold medalist team continues to be folks like this guy:
Hiro Onoda: WWII Jaopanese officer
hid in Philippine jungles from 1945 until 1974
The man gazing from the forest fringe wore the remnants of an army uniform, and he carried a rifle. At the time of the encounter, he had been hiding in the interior of Lubang for almost 30 years, steadfastly continuing to wage a war that had ended with Japan’s surrender in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945.
The past’s name was Hiroo Onoda. He was an intelligence officer in the Imperial Japanese Army, he was then just shy of his fifty-second birthday, and he was about to become famous.
Onoda had been on Lubang since 1944, a few months before the Americans invaded and retook the Philippines. The last instructions he had received from his immediate superior ordered him to retreat to the interior of the island – which was small and in truth of minimal importance – and harass the Allied occupying forces until the IJA eventually returned.
1)Today started yesterday morning. 2) It won't be over until tomorrow morning. 3) Surprises can be good. 4) Or not. 5) "When angry, count to ten. When very angry, swear." - Mark Twain.
Everything about this case leads nowhere. Exactly as I suspect was intended from the outset.
We know Stephen Paddock was found dead at the scene. We know 197 people were shot, ostensibly from a suite comped to Paddock, from a pair of rooms he began staying in 6 and 1/2 days prior to the shooting. We know in it were found thousands of rounds of ammunition and 23 weapons, at least 20 of which were nothing but props, and which the carting to the premises was nothing but theatre, and not expediency. We know that Paddock acquired 33 of the nearly 50 weapons he owned in the last 12 months. We know he stayed at hotels overlooking several other concert sites recently. We know he had 10-20 or more 100-round Surefire magazines that fit all the .223 AR-type rifles found in Vista Suite 32-135. We know Paddock had virtually no online footprint, no political or religious affiliations, a far-beyond-comfortable nest-egg, and no discernible reason(s), neither personal, mental, or physical, to shoot 197 strangers and kill 58 of them, plus himself. We know cameras were placed to allow a shooter inside the suite to see the approach of police coming up a long corridor to the room. We know the emergency stairwell right outside his suite door was secured shut. We know that a hotel security person, and a maintenance worker, were summoned to the exact floor and wing in question mere minutes before the shooting, by an unsecured door alarm three doors down from Paddock's rooms. How convenient. We know someone inside the room fired several bursts at both of these men, at spitting distance, yet managed only one superficial injury to the guard, and none to the maintenance man. We know that hotel security was notified within seconds, several minutes before shooting began on the concert, but that it took the police 18-19 minutes to arrive on the 32d floor, and who waited another hour and change after that to enter the suspect suite. We know that over several minutes after that, hundreds to thousands of rounds were fired, ostensibly from the suite, at a concert site packed with attendees, at a range well within the effective range of an AR .223 rifle, and at a rate boosted to near full-auto cycling by the use of bump stocks. We know that target was nearly the size of a WWII aircraft carrier. We know no one on the ground immediately beneath the hotel reacted untoward after the initial bursts. We also know that the initial pounding or shooting out of the windows on the 32d floor also produced no alerts, alarms, or anything else below. We know that most of the exits from the concert venue were locked, trapping attendees in a large, stadium-lit killing zone for minutes during the onslaught, with a rat maze of obstacles to contend with to attempt to flee. We know that after the initial burst down the hall, and after finishing the 6-minute killing bursts on the concert, no further fire was placed on either venue, and that it was several minutes, perhaps as many as 10, between the end of firing from the suite, and the arrival of the first LVMPD officers at the hallway landing on the 32d floor.
And that's everything.
We don't know why Paddock (or whoever) did this. In fact, we don't know of any motive whatsoever, we have every circumstantial reason to suspect he did not, except for the fact that he was found dead in the room, with one bullet through his head. We don't know the estimated time of his death. We don't know how many rounds were fired. We don't know how many expended brass shell casings were recovered from the suite and adjoining rooms. We don't know how many shooters there were. We don't know who came and went from his suite in the days and hours before the shooting, nor who might have left in the minutes after it.
And then there are the questions. Why should any wealthy retiree decide to kill three-score strangers, just for the helluvit? Where did Paddock's money actually come from? (You don't win millions at video poker. But it's a great way to launder millions playing video poker, while losing a token amount; call that a laundry service fee.) Why would a guy with two planes, several houses, and no worries shoot hundreds of strangers? Why not just crash a plane into them, and vastly increase the tally of dead, assuming you were going to do that at all? Where did Paddock fly to and from, from the day he got his license to the day he died? Where did he regularly disappear to in the years before his death? Why is one of his planes now owned by a VA LLC whose profile screams "CIA cover company"? Why is there a number of discrepancies between federal records and registrations for his aircraft, and that of a private site that notably simply mirrors federal records? Who has the power to scrub flight plans, and fiddle registration numbers? What trips, and where, did Paddock take to and from anywhere since, say, 9/11/2001, when federal records-keeping should have notably become more comprehensive? Where did Paddock - if he did it - sight in his weapons and practice with them? (I'm good, but no one just wakes up one day and opens fire on a crowd at optimum sniping ranges and hits center of mass, at night, with cold shots, from never-fired weapons, on bump-fire. No fucking way.) Where did Paddock learn to shoot? Not from family, military, or any other discernible sources, yet everything about the act, including the paper calculations found on the paper near the body, bespeaks of training and education in the gentle art of killing people with a sniper's meticulous precision that he shows no evidence of ever having received, save by osmosis from gun oil. I could go on, as I have only a hundred more, because so far, every fact revealed about this case produces five necessary new questions for every one it answers.
The official narrative is plainly bullshit. A security guard with no guard papers. A killer with no motive. A sniper with no training. "Mental illness" pulled out of the hat with much hand-waving, but only to explain the final 72 minutes of a case that demonstrates anything but that. (If you go there, you're a retarded jackhole building castles in the sky with cotton candy. Quote me.) Dozens of weapons with no purpose. A convenient alarm right by the suite, just before the attack. (Pull the other leg, it's got bells on it.) An ear-witness, miraculously not killed by hundreds of rounds fired at him in a straight hallway at mere yards, who then disappears the minute scrutiny turns to him. All potentially corroborating video and electronic evidence of the Official Narrative hoovered up (you should forgive the unintentional pun) immediately afterwards by the FBI, and unreleased two weeks later, conspicuous by its total absence, and which would shut down further speculation in three seconds if the narrative were anything close to the truth. A sheriff who can't get the most basic facts of the case assembled coherently, despite two weeks and multiple attempts. (And with the Bureau's vulture sitting on his shoulder and looking shark-eyes at him for every word of every press conference since Hour One.) A total official stonewall until all further information is squelched and pinched off.
Nearly two weeks later, there are still stories full of metric fucktons of derp; and others full of well-informed clarity, but even the best of them only add questions far more than answers.
(And sorry boys and girls, but wild flights of "the belt-fed .30 cal", pseudo-scientific analysis of shitty audio and shakycam cellphone vids, and tales of multiple shooters from hysterical victims fleeing for their lives, all the way to "The One-Armed Man On The Grassy Knoll" theories, aren't helping anything along. Corroborated evidence beyond hearsay, or it didn't happen, capice?)
This is all - everything we've been told to "just accept" - so much horseshit. Fifty eight people were killed, and 197 shot, in service of nothing whatsoever but a bullshit narrative, which serves nothing, so far, except the agenda to overturn the Second Amendment, and restrict the liberty of millions of people who didn't do it.
And, just saying, but isn't it miraculous how there were no mass shootings for pretty much the entire last administration - oh, except for some "workplace violence" at Ft. Hood - but totes coincidentally, both of the last two Republican admins get, respectively, 9/11, and now Vegas, both at the end of their first summer in office? After being hamstrung in both cases by overweening, overwhelming, well-orchestrated astroturf campaigns and frothingly insane attempts to completely de-legitimize their elections? I'm sure that doesn't mean anything, and it's all pure random chancey happenstance. Move along. Nothing to see here.
If anything substantial comes to light, I'll come back to this. But nothing more seems to be forthcoming at this point.
By Official Design and Intent.
If they wished it were otherwise, they could be doing daily show-and-tell with bank records, flight records, travel records, a parade of the dozens to hundreds of corroborating witnesses, and hours of video from the Mandalay Bay Resort security cameras. They have not done so, deliberately, and probably because they don't have anything that would show that, and what they do have undermines it, wholesale and totally. Chew on that for awhile.
The only thing they produce by that is uncertainty, and widespread unease and distrust. Chew on that for awhile, too.
This entire case is a naked man with a rhinoceros in his armpit trying to do magic tricks and pull it out from under his handkerchief.
"Nice try, genius, but we can see the rhinoceros!"
For the benefit of those like a commentor to today's earlier post who are puzzled and/or annoyed about the Weinstein casting couch cause celebre, let me fill in some background.
Who is the guy, and who cares? Because until a week or two ago, you never heard of him?
No slam on the commentor who asked the question, but it deserves a full answer. And typically, if one guy brings it up, there's ten more who feel the same way, and didn't say anything.
Never heard of him? Go read his Wikipedia bio.The co-founder of one of the leading production companies in Hollywood, with a Best Picture Oscar for Shakespeare In Love, and 35 years of producing some of the biggest Hollywood movies?
A guy who, until two weeks ago, everyone in Hollywood and the Democrat Party would not only return his phone calls, but deem it a privilege to speak with?
You've been living under a rock then. It's anyone's prerogative to ignore the movers and shakers in both Hollywood and politics, but that says more about you than about the magnitude of the loathsome object of the current tizzy.
Rumors are one thing, but three dozen (and counting) substantiated and corroborated accounts are another.
Second, it's not "young starlets", it's a Who's Who of A-list Hollywood talent that he's bagged, molested, or tried to do both.
Third, it isn't just that a producer did it, but the list of other producers, ancillary people, and other A-list stars who knew about him, and covered for him.
Fourth, this is a guy who's given millions to the DNC, and hung out with presidents.
Fifth, this undoes completely the Leftist narrative about the "War On Women", from both Washington DC, and Hollywood. Some of the loudest whiners have turned out to be his victims, and their fellow celebutards, who all kept their mouths shut about Weinstein's predations, while decrying imaginary GOP assaults. The hypocrisy factor is registering on the Richter Scale.
It's like watching a bus drive by the red carpet and throw buckets of mud on everybody in the front twenty rows at the Oscars, in their gowns and tuxes, on live TV.
It's yuuuuuuuuuuge.
And it just keeps getting bigger.
The only way you could generate more ink than this would be if Disney turned out to be running a child prostitution ring under Disneyland, or if Trump kicked the UN out of NYFC and gave them 24 hours to evacuate, or somebody popped a nuke in anger somewhere in the world.
This thing has legs, and you're going to be hearing about it for months.
Allegations of possible underage talent being involved have the FBI and NYPD (and probably LAPD and INTERPOL, quietly) investigating him for potential criminal charges.
The list of prosecutors who would cuff and stuff someone like Weinstein to make their career and assure their rise to superstardom and potentially all the way to even the White House, would only be a line from Hollywood to DC, via NYFC.
And for bonus ink, the story was about to break in New Yorker magazine, and at the same time James O'Keefe and Project Veritas were unveiling their expose of duplicity at the NYTimes, and so rather than being scooped, while simultaneously crippled by Veritas' undercover videos, the Grey Lady went pro-active, which exposed half a dozen Big Media outlets that had squelched earlier Weinstein expose' stories. Had they known the Vegas shooting was about to happen, they might have hung back, but life is full of surprises, and unlike Vegas, this is a story where everyone knows the motive, the perpetrator is still available to kick around, and the information available, rather than shrinking, is growing exponentially day after day after day.
Ask a reporter or an editor how they feel about selling copy, for an answer to why this just keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny.
You have the publicity trifecta: Big Hollywood, Big Media, and Big Politics, all simultaneously exploding with guilt on this, and no end in sight as the ripples spread outward. Name anyone in those three worlds, and this touches them. It's literally just about the entire Left Wing of the country, outside academia. And anybody in media will leap at a chance to tar their competition for errors of this magnitude.
This isn't a food fight at a supermarket, it's a simultaneous food fight at every supermarket.
When anyone this mighty falls, buy stock in companies that sell newspaper ink.
Not counting the news outlets or websites along the full range of accuracy and veracity, I follow 10 or so actual individuals' handwritten blogs. Looking them over, 8 of the 10 are current serving or former military and 4 of those 8 are some variation of high-speed low-drag elite forces ninjas. And 2 are cops. So in other words, the same folks I trusted in the military not to wet the bed, sh*t themselves, or otherwise run around like headless Nancys, are the same folks I trust on the interwebz, for demonstrating pretty much the same trustworthiness and circumspectly responsible behavior. Color me shocked.
Comments are appreciated. They require neither prior ID nor screening for content. Anonymous abusive or rude comments will be either mocked mercilessly, or simply deleted into the internet ether, solely at the blog owner's discretion. (That would be me.) If you somehow labor under the misapprehension that free speech applies everywhere, try this experiment: go to your next door neighbor's house, urinate and defecate on his living room floor, and call him a m*****f****** @$$hole, then see whether you receive an award from the ACLU, or an ambulance and police car, who stop momentarily to help collect your teeth. If you don't get this, you're too stupid to be on the Internet, let alone posting comments on my blog. Disagreement is one thing, even ignorance can be understandable, but rude @$$holery will not be tolerated here. I have neither the time nor inclination to imbue what a public K-12 failed to instill in those folks bereft of the ability to reason intelligently or behave like well-adapted human beings in polite society.That's why for you there's a Skid Row.
