Astonishing

It's unbelievable to note that the entire presidential election outcome could hinge on one leaky Weiner.

Anything can happen in a week. Stay frosty.

About as randomly chancey as Beethoven's Sixth Symphony filmed live, and played on Blu-Ray

Another h/t to Solomon over at SNAFU

from Oracles Of Norway Tumblr

Your body is an incredibly bizarre machine.
“What you see is a myosin protein dragging an endorphin along a filament to the inner part of the brain’s parietal cortex which creates happiness. Happiness. You’re looking at happiness.”

For those of you who derive personal comfort explaining away this one-in-a-trillion unlikelyhood of a self-assembling mousetrap with the complexity of a jet engine, as something that evolved as the result of random chance X millions of years of Darwinian Evolution, ROWYBS.

If you can't help proseletyzing your black helicopter version of reality in comments, show your work on how this particular single function, among tens of thousands inside you every day, came to be so. Focus on the evidence of the millions of catalogued defective attempts before this exemplar happened into being.

Otherwise, behold Proof #4,687,317 on why anybody postulating anything other than the work of a creative genius in designing Everything is full of metric buttloads of crap.

For those with IQs above room temperature and a sense of wonder, simply enjoy the fact that we have the technology to create this explanation and appreciate it now. Unlike what was available to certain small-minded cranky old fools on a ship sailing the Galapagos in the mid 1800s. If you bitter clingers had described this biological marvel to someone like that back then, you'd have been locked up in an insane asylum.

Special treat: a better, cleverer, funnier, and more acerbic exposition of the insanity that masquerades as science than any I could concoct in a week's fervent effort: Darwin Unhinged: The bugs in evolution.

Bonus: for anyone who felt betrayed by bait-and-switch in the title, with a spare 45 minutes and the processing power to multitask, here is Beethoven's Sixth Symphony:

When you feel the world in general, or life itself, is too petty, mean, gloomy, and doomed you ought to listen to it, to remind you of just the opposite.

Silver Linings

                                              Comrade Hayden, R.I.H.

With all the bad news recently, I could not help but affirm my belief in a benevolent deity with the receipt of the happy news yesterday of the passing of anti-American traitor and all-around communist douchebag Tom Hayden. It's just a pity he didn't catch a 750 pounder from a B-52 fifty years ago while giving aid and comfort to North Vietnam, but we'll settle for yesterday's ticket-punching as better late than never.

One of the original Chicago Eight, manifesto writer for the SDS, former state representative of the People's Republic of Santa Monica, and one of the former spouses of Queen Douchebagette Jane Fonda, the loss to civilization of this leftist festering carbuncle on the ass of humanity is so negligible that it cannot be measured with existing instrumentation.

But the unexpected arrival of his final departure is hopefully a harbinger of the eventual (and imminent, with any luck at all) demise of Hanoi Jane herself. As we have already set aside funds sufficient to visit Comrade Fonda's final resting place, with a view to leaving something memorable on that future site that won't be mistaken for flowers, we think it only fitting to help water the grass on Hayden's gravesite at the next opportunity as well, if only out of fair play and equality. After all, there's a drought hereabouts, and anything we can do to help settle the soil and keep Zombie Tom from breaking out of his dirt napping site seems a worthy cause.

Alas, we will be unable to attend the funeral for Comrade Hayden, but rest assured that a note will be sent along expressing our entire approval of it coming to pass.

And I'll raise a glass to the old bastard, certainly roasting in brimstone, if only to load my bladder for a future visit to his final earthly address. Like most giant turds, his passing ought to leave people with nothing so much as relief and contentment.

For Solomon, over at SNAFU!

Regarding his bemusement at finding that Polish winged hussars were really a thing.
(And because for me, comments there are broken on Disqus.):

The guy in this recent pic not only has an award-winning period-correct costume, IIRC, he is in fact Polish.
This is not just a comic book thing, it's how they rolled.
If you search Google images in Photobucket, you'll find him atop the obligatory horse, as well.

Great (and probably inducing some soiled armor) against 16th century landesknects, Swedish pikemen, and such;

not so bitchin' against Pzkw Is circa 1939, despite a momentary success:

The Poles, whether Uhlans or ordinary citizens, were never lacking in bravery, just in weaponry and support. Far more currently germane is this illustration of what they were about after October of 1939:

Click on that last pic to embiggen.
And pay attention to the details, lads and ladies, you may see this material again, and in a far-too-close-to-home sort of way.

Wait, what?

h/t to Ushanka blog

 

Except you

or you

or especially you, bitch:

Unless any of you has some far-fetched fairytale about being groped by Trump sometime before I ever met Bill.
Then, of course, I'm all ears!
Because character matters.

 

 

Got it, thanks ABCNNBCBS.

Soundtrack For The Apocalypse

Miami 2017

Life During Wartime

Silent Running

                                     

TEOTWAWKI

                                     

A Country Boy Can Survive

                                     

For What it's Worth

                                     

Bad Moon Rising

                                     

Gimme Shelter

                                     

99 Luftballoons

                                     

Future's So Bright

                                     

The Reaper

                                     

American Pie

                                     

 

 

 

 

Medical Links: YouTube Medicine - Basic First Aid

One thing the Army gets right, in making training easy (since it's most of what they do, day in and day out) is breaking big things, like medical care for an entire Army, down into the smallest tasks. It's easier to eat the elephant one bite at a time, and it ensures that everyone is on the same note in the symphony, every time they play.

So here's your first YouTube time hole collection of medical care:
How To Open An Airway:

Direct Pressure For Wounds

Apply A Pressure Dressing

If you stuck with those two videos, and get a CPR card, and know how to dial 9-1-1, you've just eliminated the need for the all day Red Cross class on Idiot First Aid.
Higher tech?
Tourniquet Application:

Israeli Pressure Bandage Application:

Cleaning and Disinfecting An Open Wound:

Why cleaning after direct pressure and tourniquets?
If a wound is small and oozing, clean it before you dress and bandage it. But serious wounds need the bleeding stopped FIRST. (You can probably figure out why this is so.) Stop the bleeding first if you need to, and play with it later. If you can clean it up front, it's relatively minor. You should be treating the most serious wounds first anyways, then doing the minor stuff after serious bleeding is stopped.

Burn First Aid Care:

How To Use A First Aid Kit:

Less than an hours' worth of videos, and you've already got as much or more training, for the cost of time and electrons, as you'd get in a paid all day first aid class.

Go over this stuff until you know it cold. And could do it blindfolded, in the dark. Assault or injury may not always take place at noon on a sunny day.

And BTW, this is only the beginning of this series of posts, not an end in itself.

Pull The Other One, It Has Bells On It

Donald Trump officially announced he was running for president in 2016 on Jun 16, 2015:

For the calendrically challenged, that was some 65 weeks ago. (He was the sixteenth candidate, of seventeen, to make that announcement.) Since that time, he ran in primaries in 50 states, 6 territories, and the District of Columbia, followed by his acceptance of the nomination at the Republican National Convention in July, some 10 weeks ago. Throughout almost every one of the intervening 455 or so days, Donald Trump has been front-page headline, magazine cover story, and top story television news fodder.

Before that, he was only a billionaire celebrity on a top-rated show, and surrounded by thousands of the most beautiful women in the world for decades, in an era when Tiger Woods and Wilt Chamberlain were doinking 5 women a week, if not per day, without even breaking a sweat. And throughout this, not so much as one peep from anyone that they'd been put upon by Hairpiece in any way in the slightest. Not. One. Word.

And yet, we're supposed to believe that shortly after he handed one of the worst debate ass-whipping schlongings ever recorded in US history to Shrillary, not even a week after some off-color comments from 10 years ago - when he was a registered DEMOCRAT -  were dredged up to hamstring him going into that debate, that four women, to whom Trump's candidacy all this time was apparently a complete and utter shock(!), have suddenly recollected NOW - less than a month before the presidential election itself - that Donald Trump supposedly did terrible things to them at some point in their murky pasts years ago, pulling tales from their memory holes (or simply out of their asses) going back to the 1970s.

Sh'yeah, RIGHT! Nothing politically motivated there at all. And AG Lynch and Fat Bill just talked about golf on the airport tarmac in Phoenix, right before Hillary wasn't indicted. And Hillary had Magical Disappearing Pneumonia in NYFC on 9/11. And the Benghazi consulate was attacked because of a video. And on, and on, and on, ad infinitum.

I will say it again: Donald Trump is not my candidate.
That being said, we're voting for a president, not a plaster saint.

But Shrillary is unmitigated and incarnate malicious and malignant evil, personified. Her every act, from getting thrown off the Democrat Watergate Committee legal counsel bench - for lying, repeatedly, and in the direct scope and practice of her job as a lawyer, 43 years ago - up to whatever she said 5 seconds ago, has proven time and time again her utter and abject unfitness for any job requiring personal honesty, accountability, or the slightest shred of personal morals or ethics, on the grounds that she lacks any whatsoever.

If the Shrillary campaign now wants to start parading bimbos making sexual allegations for America to listen to, they should start with the ones whose character and truthfulness Shrillary spent decades assassinating and gainsaying in the service of covering for her nominal husband, the serial rapist and former president.

Because let's face it, the last time a bunch of women came forward to make allegations against a candidate was
a) 1992
b)1992
c) 1992, or
d) all of the above?

And if they want to trot out allegations against Trump at this point, there's already an established bar they'll have to hurdle:

produce a DNA-stained dress, or STFU, and go home.

 

But full props to ABCNNBCBS, for pulling out absolutely all the stops and throwing a whale on the scale to try and tilt the election to Shrillary. Congratulations, you herd of mendacious megadouches, you've outdone yourself beyond all previous efforts this time around.

Stay classy, bitches!

 

Hillary's Tells

 

So, from the debate, we have her involuntary hand tremors caught on camera

plus a play-by-play from the doc who originally came out with the Parkinson's diagnosis

And there's also this pic, by way of explaining all those giant quilted bathrobes she's been wearing since forever:

You strap on a catheter because nerve dysfunction would make you wet yourself--like from advanced Parkinson's Disease.

She had to be drugged to the gills on levodopa to get through the event. And while it's mildly touching to see Bill trying top prop her up, it just underlines how broken she must be to need to be assisted and clutching at the stair handrail just to get down 4 steps.

Medical Text Linkapalooza

As promised:

FM 21-11 First Aid For Soldiers 1989
The Ship's Medicine Chest USCG 2003
FM 8-50 Bandaging and Splinting 1957
FM 8-230 Medical Specialist 1984
USMC Field Medical Service Student Manual 2008 (multiple lesson links)
Operational Medicine 2001 (multiple sub-lessons and links)
FM 21-20 Physical Fitness Training 1998
FM 8-10-6 Medical Evacuation In A Theatre of Operations 2000
FM 21-76-1 Survival Evasion and Recovery 1999
FM 3-5 NBC Decontamination 2002
FM 21-10 Field Hygiene and Sanitation 1970 (more comprehensive version)
FM 21-10 Field Hygiene and Sanitation 2000
FM 21-10-1 Unit Field Sanitation Team 2002
FM 8-10-4 Medical Platoon Leader's Handbook 2001
TC 21-3 Soldiers Handbook For Individual Operations and Survival In Cold Weather Areas 1986
ATP 4-25.13 Casualty Evacuation 2013
USN Nutrition and Exercise Manual 1999
FM 8-284 Treatment of Biological Warfare Agent Casualties 2000
FM 4-02.17 Preventive Medicine Services 2000
FM 21-18 Foot Marches 1962
FM 8-10-1 The Medical Company 2002
SOF Combat Casualty Care-TCCC 2007
Where There Is No Doctor...Dentist (multiple chapter downloads)
Online TCCC course (individual Powerpoint lessons)
NAEMT TCCC course modules
Johnson & Johnson Ethicon Wound Closure Manual 2005
Emergency War Surgery 2000
USMC Mountain Warfare Wilderness Medical Course 2002 (Windows doc)
Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders Reference Guides - multiple resources h/t WRSA

Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list. Missing, e.g., is any functional pdf link to the
Special Operations Forces Medical Handbook 2d ed., 2008 which I highly recommend.
(and I deliberately left off any link to the hugely obsolete text
ST 31-91B Special Forces Medical Handbook 1982 which I do not recommend, other than purely as historical reference.)
And there are all sorts of other references out there (some of which I'll cover in the future at some point), but those above are a great place to get started.

Do I want you to become a combat lifesaver, special forces medic, or regimental surgeon with those resources? No. (Of course, if you aim to, the above is your homework; get cracking.) But this list will give you a great perspective on what can (and should) be done, from people who've already done it, under all sorts of adverse circumstances and in multiple environments, and by digging in you'll at least get some perspective on how much you didn't know you didn't know. And not to belabor the point, but most of the other resource texts that you should have are copyrighted material, which you should buy in order to support those authors; the link to get them is called Amazon. Meanwhile, the stuff ginned up by and for the .mil is public domain, by law, and you already paid for it when it was deducted from your paychecks as federal withholding.

The above resources would be sufficient to do a great job in many cases, if you had nothing else available, and would keep you busy for 1-3 years just getting the info into your head.

The links are all current, as of today, but one thing I found in checking sites was that links on the 'Net are an ephemeral thing. Download all of these today, or ASAP, and print them in hard copy at your leisure, after you've flipped through them on your computer.

All of them, together, would fit on a thumb drive. And should go on one, or several.
Pass such a drive/drives along to your group's medic(s), and/or any paramedics, nurses, doctors, etc. you count among your friends. It'll cost you a couple of bucks and some time, but you may equip someone to save your life someday after things get sporty, and possibly even make a better friend.

Enjoy.

Monday Tease - Free Stuff Inbound

Tomorrow, I'll post current pdf links to a plethora (not all of them, but a veritable metric f***ton, at least) of medical resource texts you can get from the 'Net, for the price of mouseclicks, and which should be on your must-have list, for both thumb drive and printed out hard copy archival library possession.

Tonight, I'll probably be compiling same. You're welcome!

Special Sunday Bonus PSA

         How To Tell If You're A Hysterical F*cktard

Here is a link to the Model Penal Code: Model Penal Code
Here is a link to find your state's actual penal code: FindLaw.com

Nota bene, a careful perusal of all crimes from Arson to Violation of Privacy, and everything else conceivable to the finest legal minds in America, is contained in one or both places. Also laid out are all the elements necessary to demonstrate a crime has been committed, or would be hypothetically.
Notable by omission in every case is the specific action "wearing a clown costume".
It isn't a necessary element; it isn't a separate criminal act per se; it is not an additional criminal enhancement to any other crime.
Neither is wearing a business suit, tuxedo, bunny rabbit pajamas, a pink ballet tutu, a Dracula outfit, or zombie makeup.

That's because wearing a clown costume, in and of itself, is - wait for it - LEGAL just about everywhere. If that reality kicked your ass, stop reading, put your head between your knees, take some deep breaths, perhaps splash some water on your face, and wait until the dizziness passes, before continuing.

In fact, the only outfit you can be wearing that offers criminal sanctions, or additional enhancements for other crimes, is being (falsely) dressed as a police officer.
(Just ask world-class drama queen Kim Kardashian.) This is because, like Kim, over time, while virtually nobody has actually been victimized by clowns, ballerinas, vampires, or the undead, literally hundreds to thousands of people are regularly victimized by fake (and real, for that matter) police. As Casey Stengel said, "You could look it up."

So strictly speaking, you'd have better legal standing for attacking a police officer on the grounds you thought they were fakers than you ever would for so much as reporting someone guilty of no more than wearing a clown costume.

What this all means for the brick-stupid, is that if, at any point in alleging a crime has been committed and explaining your subsequent actions, you pull out the specific descriptor "and he was wearing a clown costume", you are
a) a Hysterical F*cktard, and
b) about to spend some time as a guest of the state, in an orange jumpsuit and no shoelaces sort of way.

If, in recourse to describing some allegation of hypothetical or actual criminal conduct, by anyone, at any point in time, you refer to "and wearing a clown costume" as though it had added any forensic or intellectual weight to your argument, you are
a) a Hysterical F*cktard, and
b) in serious need of psychological intervention.

Here is the website to get help:
Online Help Center of the American Psychological Association

Don't be a Hysterical F*cktard. Get help.
And stop persecuting people in costumes that scare you.

You Got Your Wish. Now Stop Embarassing Yourself.

Because it's Sunday, this is an easy post, and I'm off to the Fun Show.

                                                                  Boo!

Some people are not only hysterical, but could give granite hammers lessons in hard-headedness. So here, from comments to the previous post, we present the frontiers of hysteria in America, by one of the foremost practitioners, self-identified as "Anonymous".

What you (sic) doing is like apologizing for someone shouting fire in a crowded theatre.
If you're running around in a disguise menacing children, that's certainly violating several laws.

Here's a good example:
http://www.syracuse.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/09/clowns_approach_boy_walking_to_school_in_syracuse_police_say.html

I predict more clowns will be hurt. As the saying goes:
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Again, you have zero right to run around in a disguise intimidating people, let alone children. You sure as hell don't want me on the jury if you try it.

Well, I heartily concede that last point.
I remonstrated thusly:

Brilliant! Way to extrapolate all examples from the shaky evidence of only one!
You win the internetz for the day!!

Kindly define the crime(s) committed; refer to the laws of the state of NY and municipality of Syracuse, and demonstrate for the class the elements of the crimes you allege.

I'll wait, as you attempt to articulate so much as one criminal act from the description you cited:

"A boy was walking to school Thursday morning on Syracuse's North Side when he saw three clowns.

The people wearing clown costumes faced the 10-year-old boy as he walked in the 1200 block of Spring Street toward Grant Middle School, said Syracuse Police Lt. Geno Turo. When they gave him a thumbs-up and started to walk toward him, the terrified boy bolted.

The boy told police he ran "as fast as he could" to get away from the clowns, Turo said. The boy then called 911.

Officers Charlie Lester and Shannon Einbeck arrived at Spring and Court streets around 7 a.m. and saw the boy hiding between two houses, Turo said. When he realized police had arrived, the boy ran to the police vehicle and told the officers he was "extremely afraid." "


That is your entire case, Clarence Darrow?
If you brought that to trial, you'd be the only clown in evidence, I assure you.

What crossed the line, in your head?

Giving him the "thumbs up"??
Or the walking towards him...??
Feel free to cite the exact NY criminal statute(s) on which you base your ridiculous conclusions.
Or are you one of the sad little people that think dressing as a clown is malum in se?

Had the police contacted any such three clowns, they would be hard-pressed to drum up probable cause to even question them, as no criminal act has occurred, unless beyond all likelihood Syracuse has enacted sweeping and wholly unconstitutional anti-clown ordinances.

As I said, these incidents say more about the tenuous grasp on psychological reality most people have, than they do about any documented criminal activity.

And people who can't figure that out without a shovel upside the head is why anyone with the wit avoids jury duty with them like they would the bubonic plague.

But they're the exact reason Orson Welles became a household name after a little radio story about Grover's Mill, NJ.

All I've done by fisking their (and your) hysteria is apologize for someone yelling "Movie!" in a crowded firehouse.

Imagine my bemused surprise, when against all the mental filters that prevent normal sane people from doubling down on hysteria, "Anonymous" had done his homework. At least, before the dog ate it.

 Stalking
Penal Code § 120.45. Stalking in the fourth degree. 1999.
A person is guilty of stalking in the fourth degree when he or she intentionally, and for no legitimate purpose, engages in a course of conduct directed at a specific person, and
knows or reasonably should know that such conduct:
1. is likely to cause reasonable fear of material harm to the physical health, safety or
property of such person, a member of such person's immediate family or a third party
with whom such person is acquainted;

You could probably also pick: disorderly conduct, endangering the welfare of a child and loitering
And that's assuming the clowns run into cops that won't invent extra charges.

What we're seeing are actions that are deliberately calculated to cause a public alarm.
It might not be illegal to run. It might not be illegal to wear a ski mask. It might not be illegal to introduce yourself to a stranger.
However, when you combine all 3 of those things to run up to a girl in a parking lot all by herself at 2AM, you don't get the benefit of the doubt. Those are actions deliberately chosen to frighten another person. Go ahead and tell the jury that you just wanted to ask if she had found Jesus as part of a "prank", but expect that they may just decide to lock your ass up.

In the Syracuse case we have a small child, by himself, being approached by three weirdos in a rough neighbourhood.
Even a 10 year old knows enough to bug out in those circumstances.
Take a look at the 1 month crime map in the vicinity of that school.
https://www.spotcrime.com/ny/syracuse

I think it's hilarious how you think that in this particular instance the same police and DA who brought the following case:
http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2016/08/06/new-york-da-accuses-citizen-journalist-of-stalking-syracuse-cop-by-recording-him-in-public/
just somehow aren't going to be able to come up with ANYTHING to charge these people with.

It's amusing how you think there's some jedi mind trick you're going to play where all of a sudden the same legal system that says "established by the states" doesn't mean "established by the states" is suddenly going stop broadly interpreting laws just for some jackass in a clown outfit. All of a sudden they're going to completely forget about all those extremely broad laws that exist and say "well we couldn't find a specific law against clown outfits, so feel free to disguise yourself and chase that kid tomorrow". 

Fair enough, let me get out the Whack-A-Mole cluebat:

 And which "specific person" were these people dressed as clowns knowingly targeting, Clarence?
The stalker has to be targeting a "specific person" as the stalkee, not "some random kid at an intersection". Otherwise anyone out in public walking towards you - which is your jackassical standard here - is guilty of a crime.
And you've leapt to the assumption they had no legitimate purpose. Maybe they wanted to give him a balloon animal. Or congratulate him for staying in school. Or three million other legitimate purposes. You're assuming - let's be serious here, you're hysterically imagining, and not for the first time - facts not in evidence.
There is no basis for assuming, or for anyone to reasonably know, that dressing like a clown would give ANYONE (except you, and certain 10 year olds) reasonable fear "of material harm to the physical health, safety or property of such person, a member of such person's immediate family or a third party with whom such person is acquainted".
(That's the difference between people dressed as clowns, and people in keffiyehs, with explosive vests and wielding AK-47s at the mall yelling "Aloha Snackbar!". One has the weight of historical precedent behind it, and the other has nothing but the fevered delusions of substandard mental health to back it up.)
What's never been in question is that it may cause unreasonable fear in the mentally deficient, but that's why we try not to let delusional paranoids write the penal codes. So thanks for playing, and we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

Describe their disorderly actions. I'll wait.
Then try to explain how they endangered the welfare of a child.
Then explain how people moving could be charged with loitering.

Pinning your wishers for a clown-free world on the hope of cops who will testi-lie and "invent" (your word) extra charges, is the last refuge of a jackbooted fanboy. Best wishes with your society, though I'm sure at least the trains will run on time.

What we're seeing here is YOU, solely in the fevered imaginings of a suspect mind, IMAGINING "actions deliberately calculated to cause public alarm".

In a rational world, putting on a clown suit is not, anywhere covered by the actual Constitution and Bill of Rights, tantamount to waving an AK-47 at a mall and screaming "Aloha Snackbar!" though given your limited grasp of such concepts as the elements of a crime, understanding of mens rea, and your lack of total clairvoyance regarding someone else's state of mind, it's not hard to see why this is kicking your ass. 

And hey, thanks for trying to bootstrap another totally irrelevant hypothetical into the discussion, as though it had any bearing on the facts of this case.
Award yourself the Strawman Fallacy Ribbon as well.

We have nowhere in evidence that these people are "wierdos". Point Dismissed.
We have nowhere in evidence that this is a "rough neighborhood". In point of fact, It's so safe that young children routinely walk to school there unattended. Point dismissed.
Your attempt to drag in a 1-month crime map is irrelevant, unless those are only the crimes that took place at 7AM on a school day (read the story), not what goes on blocks away, at night, at 3AM. Point dismissed.

Bonus for trying to dragoon the cops into this, on the grounds that they've done unconstitutionally jackassical things before, and therefore should follow your Imaginary Penal Code now. But nonetheless, point dismissed.
The case law that says recording people in public, including law enforcement, is legal, and delivered from every court in the land all the way to SCOTUS, is legion, BTW.

It's hilarious how you think that just because you were frightened at 4 years old at the circus and dropped your ice cream cone, everyone wearing a clownsuit is de facto an axe murderer or child molester, absent a single case of such ever actually happening in the real world. Pardon, your irrational hysteria and phobias are showing.

But it's sad that you'd try to bootstrap "walked toward", at a public intersection, as being equivalent to "chasing a child", purely on the evidence of the wild hysteria of a 10 year old child with an overactive imagination, who evidently shares your hysteria and phobias.

Both of you should seek serious professional psychological help, or at least, STFU about your hysterical clownphobia, and suffer on in silence.

Case dismissed.
Don't quit your day job Homer.
And for the love of sweet suffering Shiva, stay the hell off of any jury pool you're ever called to, on the grounds of mental incompetence.
I'll leave your rants here, in case you ever need to point a judge to them for substantiation of your claim.

Please, Anonymous, stop hitting yourself in the face with the pies I was holding. Once was funny. Twice is tedious. Three times is just egregious clowning in public, and you'd have to turn yourself in to the authorities for that in your world, right?

Insane Clown Posse

 

 

So today, comes word from all over that because a bunch of douchenozzles have been popping up in 50 states, just like crop circles, dressed as evil clowns,

the Jackasses In Charge Of Everything (In Their Own Mind)

 have decided that Something Must Be Done.

Consequently school districts (usually monumental repositories of ninnies practicing  egregious assclownery in their own right), as well as some of the local law enforcement agencies, with a tenuous grasp of both the Constitution and their own state's penal code, have issued fatwas against people, particularly on any campus, from kindergarten to grad school, and dressed as clowns.

This has occasioned local students on college campuses, armed with numbers, flashlights, pepper spray, and the IQ of a mob, to set out on clown-hunting posses at the drop of so much as a whisper of someone with a large red nose in the same zip code.

This would be funny if it were a Hanna-Barbera cartoon production, and we were all still in grade school

but once we're talking about nominal (i.e. over the age of 18 years) adults, carrying weapons in public with a purpose, and on the prowl looking for people who have violated no criminal statutes, we have graduated past the stage of this being any kind of funny.

So, for the benefit of the legally-challenged, both in general, and in law enforcement, a few pointers:

IANAL, but
1) last I looked, there is nothing in either my state's penal code, local municipal ordinances, nor most schools' governing precepts, that prohibits dressing up like a clown in public.
2) You'd have to prove criminal intent, like trespassing or criminal mischief, to even have probable cause to apprehend any such.
3) The technical legal term in my state (CA) for carrying pepper spray and hunting for any such is assault.
Actually spraying a clown with it graduates to the more serious offense of battery.
Apprehending anyone for the offense of dressing like a clown in public is false imprisonment.
Moving them afterwards, so much as a whit, against their will, is kidnapping, and it is punishable as a federal criminal offense.
That's all before we get to such esoterica as vigilantism, and acting under false pretense or imaginary color of authority.

If someone, as a prank, is dressed as an evil clown, complete with plastic machete, you might, in some universe, be able to get as far as proving criminal mischief. If they're trespassing on private property, that would be actionable as well.

But some silly bastard is going to get beaten up, injured, or killed, by some group of self-appointed fucktards, or the local badged and sworn dimwits - to include the mall campus cops at Whattsamatta U., and then someone else is going to civil court, the hospital, the jail, and/or prison.

The definition of a prank (and this is a lifetime of class clownery talking here) is that
a) no one gets hurt, and
b) no actual damage is done.
So, yes, anyone dressing thusly at the moment is probably a jackass of the first order.
That being said, it's not a license to apprehend, harm, maim, or kill them for public stupidity.

What the current hysteria demonstrates says a lot more about people's mental deficiencies than it does about criminal conduct, and the last time I checked, the number of actual criminal acts committed by people dressed as clowns, was somewhere between zero, and single digits, throughout recorded history (excepting to the psyches of 4 year-olds at circuses).

If, OTOH, we're going to start pouncing on people acting like clowns, we'd have to haul off the entire government, from President to dog-catcher, 50% of law enforcement itself anytime since about 1980, and more than half of every campus, especially the nominal adult supervision of same, judging strictly by the evening news since Walter Cronkite was on it.

So cool your jets, folks. All you would-be clown hunters have fucked it up for everyone; everybody get out of the pool, now, before someone really gets hurt!

Special Snowflake Alert

h/t to WRSA

Apparently, the submission bar to get published in The Hill has been lowered to include those who flunked out of grade school (which, for most liberal rags, probably puts them in the top 10% of their own bell curve).

But you don't have to take my word for it. Go check out this frightful piece, from one Jeremy Streich (my suspicion is that is was supposed to be Jeremy St. Reich, purely based on the editorial point of view espoused, but I digress) wherein the author supposes that we can collapse the Second Amendment with some clever legerdemain, and all will be right and happy in Wonkland again.

The theme is flatly ridiculous, and I would happily fisk the piece on its demerits, like the wee fact that even repealing the Second Amendment would do nothing to revoke the natural right it assumes as a given since the dawn of history, thus doing nothing to advance his asinine quest to de-weaponize society, but it doesn't even get far enough intellectually to even deserve that.

Little Jeremy is clearly a Special Snowflake, whose mommie hung his dirty diapers on the refrigerator and told everyone they were art, but clearly he can’t even pass a Common Core math class. One salient excerpt of the wit and wisdom on parade:

“Here’s a harrowing fact: a recent poll unveiled that the
citizen to firearm ratio in the United States has reached
nearly 1:1. What’s worse? These weapons fall within the
grasp of merely one-tenth of the population – that is roughly
30 weapons per owner.”

Uh, no, lumpkin. That would be roughly 10 weapons per owner. That’s what the clever mathematical fraction “one-tenth” multiplied by a 1:1 ratio means. Maybe you were sick that year in math school, but trust me, that’s how it works.

The facts are that somewhere around half of all households in the US have a firearm (assuming, generously, that the other half didn’t lie when surveyed), the ratio is vastly beyond 1:1, and some of us are unbelievable over-achievers with regards to firearms ownership from what is probably more like a 20:1 or 50:1 actual numerical ratio of guns:citizens.

If that’s the best argument the f*cktards editing The Hill can grunt out, maybe they should firstly, wipe themselves up behind, and secondly, change their masthead to The Litterbox. And then promptly scrape some sand over this particular nugget, before the smell gets noticed.

And then send the author to bed in his footie jammies, with no hot cocoa. At least until he can pass a fifth grade math lesson.

This is Obama's Pentagon

First up, SecNav Ray Mabus.

Accomplishments: Eliminating naval ratings that have been traditional since before 1775.
First naval dependent born onboard a deployed aircraft carrier, by crewmember of same.
Pushing "alternate" transports like the HSV-2:

Ignoring the problems with type-classifying a ship with the abbreviation for a genital disease (which is about what you could expect from an absolutely fabulous service secretary), here's what this "alternative transport" looks like a couple of days after some ragtag ragheads light one up with an anti-ship missile:

Bravo Zulu thinking there, Ray.

Then there's SecDef himself Ash Carter:

Accomplishments:
Smallest Navy since 1916. Army on course for 1938 status, if not 1838 status.
Military morale, readiness, and veteran retention and re-enlistment at all-time lows.
Gays, transgenders, and 56 assorted different genders now (you'll pardon the double entendre) forced down the military's throat - or shoved up somewhere else.
All jobs, including combat arms, opened to women, and all performance standards lowered to accommodate this demand.
Riding the demand for a single-service attack aircraft, the F-35, all the way into the ground, while watching it effortlessly destroy the budgets of the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps more effectively than an alpha strike of inbound Russian ICBMs.

Fortunately, this level of leadership comes at a peaceful time for the US, when we're only seeing developments like the Chinese developing a blue water navy, and laying military claim to half the western Pacific, backed by new military bases there:

while the Russians, under Putin's direction, are busy assiduously re-assembling the entire Soviet Empire, first in Georgia

then in Ukraine

and next...? As well as standing toe to toe with us in Syria, and declaring that "WWIII has already begun", while bombing our nominal allies under the guise of bombing ISIS

Fortunately, the rest of the world is entirely peaceful, except for North Korea testing ICBMs and SLBMs now that they have nuclear weapons, the Iranians getting massive cash payoffs without halting their nuclear arms race, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS all continuing to thrive as we retreat, putting thousands of lives and millions of dollars over a decade-plus of SWAsia war there to utter and absolute waste, while our ability to do anything about anything, anywhere, anytime, has reached the lowest nadirs of military readiness since the 1930s.

Meanwhile both we and Europe are busily importing jihadis by the gross like there was a shortage of them or something, despite the fact that 99.9998% of them are neither Syrians, nor refugees, but merely financial opportunists seeking to suck the benefits from sucker countries while burning them down and blowing up their inhabitants from within.

None of this is news to anybody but the so-called commander-in chief, who can't seem to link the words "Muslim" and "terrorist" in the same time zone any day in 7 1/2 years.

It's just the way it's been, non-stop, for the last 8 years, and no end in sight.
And historically, that portends poorly for us, based purely on the evidence of history going back 100 years and more.

If this had happened on a Republican president's watch, they would have skipped calls for impeachment, and gone straight to public hangings.
In any one of 150 other countries, there'd have been a military coup by now.

As it is, we're not far short of third-world Trashcanistan levels of function already, in ways beyond counting.

And the police are worse than worthless, as the only time they don't roll up in tanks and start shooting everyone in sight are the very times they most should, while the times they aren't being threatened are the ones they get all tacced up, to the point of asininity

while shredding the last identifiable scraps of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution to molecules, and doing about the same thing to what public support they can still lay claim.

Just saying.
Does any of this look right to anybody?
Beuller? Beuller? Ferris Beuller...?

Do what you like. I'm cleaning out my disposable income, and investing it on a few more things at the Fun Show this weekend.

Because whoever you are, you don't have enough ammo for whatever is coming next.