When You're In A Hole...

STOP DIGGING!

From the NYPost: link

Hillary Clinton was headed to an emergency room following her frightening collapse at the Sept. 11 memorial ceremony — but detoured to daughter Chelsea Clinton’s apartment to keep details of her medical treatment under wraps, The Post has learned.

Secret Service protocol called for the Democratic presidential nominee to be rushed to a state-designated Level I Trauma Center in the wake of her Sunday-morning health crisis, sources said. In Manhattan, that would be Bellevue Hospital.
But a campaign operative, in a move that might have risked the candidate’s health, decided to change course to avoid having Clinton seen by doctors, nurses and other medical workers who could leak details to reporters, according to a source.
In addition, Clinton’s van was supposed to be escorted by an NYPD detail, but the Secret Service whisked her away from Ground Zero before cops could accompany her, another source said.

So the decision to
1) endanger Clinton's health
2) break Secret Service protection protocol
3) ditch the cops
4) duck an actual ER, with independent doctors, nurses, and staff
5) avoid at all costs an independently verified diagnosis of pneumonia, or any possible credible refutation of same

was made by a Clinton campaign staffer, as Shrillary lay lethargic in the van!?!

Of course, once that came out, the staff (that would be the same staff that already lied twice about her alleged condition, and concocted and disseminated the fraudulent narrative for an hour and a half past Sunday's unplanned disclosure to the known world) issued a contradiction immediately:

Campaign spokesman Glen Caplin said the Clinton team “disputed the account” and released a statement saying:
“As soon as she got into the vehicle, she was feeling fine. Her preference was to go to Chelsea’s. Based on an assessment of her condition and after having conferred with her physician, the staff and the Secret Service thought it was appropriate.”

Townhall goes on in commenting on the above:

Fallon also said that Clinton was running around Chelsea's apartment, playing with her grandchildren. Fallon, Clinton, and Robby Mook have tried to convey this notion that while Hillary is sick, she’s powering through it, as if to diffuse the notion that she’s old, decrepit, and is…low energy.

So let's get this straight:
In public, with the whole nation watching, Clinton collapsed, and had to be stuffed into her purpose-built handicap van by a small army of minders and manhandlers.

But miraculously, seconds after receiving a jolt of therapeutic air conditioning(!) inside the van, she made a miraculous recovery en prive, and was able all by her ownself to decide to override protocol and common sense, and purposefully and thoughtfully continue to deceive everyone, while avoiding any independent verification, because rampant paranoia.

And was then, out of sight of anyone not connected with the campaign, cavorting like a doe in spring, all verifiable solely by her campaign staff and "medical" minders the usual and already widely-acknowledged basket of deplorable recidivist pathological liars and frauds.

So we're back to believing and trusting a campaign in desperate need of fire extinguishers and asbestos pants to keep their underpants from going up in smoke, and getting third-degree burns on their asses, due to a reflexive, rehearsed, planned, and lovingly-executed campaign of total unmitigated mendacity.

Or, we can all believe our lying eyes.

Look, pull the other one guys, it has bells on it.

One trip to the Bellevue ER would have undone the pneumonia diagnosis in five seconds, with a CBC blood test and a simple chest x-ray, and put Shrillary's paid quack against board-certified MD's in emergency medicine, radiology, and pathology, in about the same amount of time it took (90 minutes) for the total blackout of coverage or information, coupled with no IV antibiotics, and no IV fluids, just air conditioning, her granddaughter, and a metric fuckton of spin, to produce manufacture the complete and utter bullshit of a sudden cure for her implausibly alleged "pneumonia".

If everything we've seen, culminating in Sunday's total collapse, really was nothing but a previously-diagnosed legitimate (but not permanently debilitating) case of pneumonia, why did it take 90 minutes, in secret, to decide to come clean with that story? And why not simply go get legitimate treatment at a world-class ER for an easily diagnosed and treated condition? (I know! I know! Because Cover Story 3.0 is yet another fabulist whopper!)

And now, comes word that the Clintonistas will release "additional medical information", which will confirm that there is "no other health condition".

1) What additional health information? Hastily manufactured Rx scrips from last Friday? Doctored chest x-rays documenting the imaginary pneumonia? Fake doctor's notes back-dated to confirm the imaginary Friday diagnosis?

2) You can't prove a negative. A mountain of information, if it doesn't account for the noted and well-documented incidents, episodes, and medically significant observed phenomena, is simply so much whitewash. And hogwash.

3) If there's nothing further to declare, another blizzard of bullshit won't help confirm that.

4) The sudden and diligent desire, to screamingly entreat 300M Americans to "pay no attention to that diagnosis behind the curtain",

is rampant paranoia, and epic punch-drunk swinging after the bell, once you've given what was supposed to be the first second third and final, 100% certified true version of what's really and truly going on. Police interrogation experts call that "consciousness of guilt". Centuries before forensic interrogation techniques, even Shakespeare noted sagely "The lady doth protest too much." I simply say it's a trainload of bullshit.

The more they talk (and they dare not shut up about it), the more the campaign, and Clinton herself, inadvertently reveal. To wit:

> She, and they, are pathologically afraid of independent diagnostics or examination, that would confirm or deny her actual condition beyond all doubt. Which is precisely what going to that ER on Sunday would have done, once and for all. And as proven, they are all loathe to let that cat out of the bag.

> To be so paranoid, whatever it is has to be so obviously damaging as to hopelessly derail her candidacy, and of such serious magnitude that none of them dare speak its name.

> Such paranoia on its own, even - or especially - absent any deeper secret, is sufficiently disqualifying to ever grant her the office she seeks. Arguing that the reason no one wanted to tell America nothing was seriously wrong was because they were pathologically afraid of the Boogeyman/Bigfoot/a chupacabra, is hardly a ringing endorsement of one's judgement under such notably minor pressure.

> They are willing to risk the candidate's health, and destroy the trust of every American voter, to gain the White House.

> Shrillary is therefore probably a very sick woman, either medically or psychologically, if not both; and both she and her campaign, including her husband, daughter, and the sitting President, First Lady, and VP, are willing perjure themselves, and to sacrifice her health and possibly her life rather than face the music, or ever tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and let the American people decide whether or not she's fit for the office. Such naked despotic grasping ambition should and must be rewarded, even absent the truth, by a negative vote at the polls.

> Anybody remember the last time the Democrats closed ranks, and got burned so thoroughly by it in the end, when the truth came out?

I can think of at least one person who does.

How To Make A Ball Of Yarn From A Sweater

Looking over the last three posts, I'd like to take one more bite at the apple, only this time being strictly clinical.

Arguendo, we will even assume that Cover Story 3.0, "pneumonia-induced dehydration", is exactly what it is claimed to be.
How well does that fit the facts here?

So:

1) I've had actual "walking" pneumonia, for real. In my twenties.
It absolutely kicked my 20-year old ass, around the block, and down the hill.
Forget about what it would do to a corpulent 68-year old woman.
I did not, for instance, simply go into an air-conditioned apartment for an hour, and come bouncing back to normalcy, same day.
Not just no, but HELL NO.
I was put on a course of antibiotics for a week. I dropped half my college classes for a semester, and it took two weeks at home, doing abso-effing-lutely nothing, to get to where I could come back and struggle through the half that I didn't drop.
And before and after I got to that point, I looked and felt like death warmed over, thinking I just had a bad chest cold. I did not, for example, look bright and perky in the morning, and then faint dead away in a matter of an hour and a half on a pleasant fall day.

Conclusion: Shrillary did not suffer a bout of pneumonia, and is not recovering from one now.

2) If you're the Secret Service protecting a principal, who suddenly has an acute case of falling flat out cold and damn near face-planting in Manhattan, you don't take them to an apartment; you take them to the nearest emergency room, stat (which is Latin for "right effing now"). This point is not open to discussion from the non-syncopal political hacks in the protectee's party.

Conclusion: This was not a syncopal episode from anything acute, like recently diagnosed pneumonia.

3) The actual medical treatment for acute dehydration, once again, is not air conditioning in an apartment.
It's 2 or more liters of IV fluids, bolused onboard as fast as the patient will tolerate, along with immediate laboratory bloodwork and a head CT, to rule out things like a stroke, a tumor, and a plethora of other medical possibilities, etc., and a 12-lead EKG to rule out anything cardiac-related.

Conclusion: This was not a case of dehydration, induced by pneumonia.

4) When the protected principal goes down, the Secret Service does not nonchalantly catch them, toss them into a van, and whisk them to an apartment in Manhattan. They spring into action like linebackers on crack, and would, as a rule, trample the living fuck out of any staff too slow in getting out of the way.
There are only any number of incidents and even National fricking Geographic specials on the Secret Service to document this, at your leisure, should you be inclined to doubt it.

Conclusion: This was not a sudden, unexpected event, like a case of dehydration and a fainting spell, but rather one of a long-playing series of events where this principal has totally lost consciousness, and the phalanx demonstrated here was all about hiding what was going on from prying eyes, rather than springing to aid a surprisingly stricken protectee.

5) When someone running for the presidency is diagnosed by a competent medical doctor with pneumonia on Friday, but said candidate is too hard-headedly stoopid to take a rest break, you don't wait until they publicly fall unconscious on Sunday to prescribe them antibiotics for that previously diagnosed pneumonia, and you hand them the goddam pills on schedule several times every day and watch them swallow them, until they're either well, or on a multi-day rest period.

Conclusion: This was not an actual diagnosed case of pneumonia on Friday, as both Clinton and her campaign hacks, as well as the doctor in question, have lied, and it probably isn't one now either.

6) When someone previously diagnosed with pneumonia needs a break, you don't walk them slowly away, for hundreds of yards, forcing them to expend energy and stamina they don't possess, and then prop them up while you wait for the Executive Waahmbulance to get to you. You get them to the nearest secluded place of rest and recovery you can, even if that's a VIP pop-up tent out of sight, and you get them off their feet, right effing now, and bring the Waahmbulance to Mohammed. Over barricades and pedestrians, if it comes to that. And you have a "poop-out" golf cart, or the like, handy and just out of sight, to expedite exactly the extraction that occurred, without forcing your boss to have an Asphalt Brunch on national television from being walked into catatonia and syncope.

Conclusion: The staff knew before the event that there was no pneumonia, nor was any such diagnosis made, and that's why no such precautions were taken nor were eventualities for dealing with it planned and war-gamed out ahead of time.

7) Incipient and/or latent pneumonia doesn't cause coughing fits weeks before felling the patient, nor cause uncontrollable head nodding 400 times in an hour, nor cause one to constantly position their hands in awkward places to keep them busy, and prevent such manifestations as "pill-rolling". Nor does pneumonia cause you to become startled easily, roll your head around like a bobblehead in an earthquake, nor cause you to go rigid, unable to ambulate, unable to move your legs, unable to maintain your balance, or unable to do anything but imitate a sack of potatoes headed for the ground.
Oh, but things like Parkinson's Disease cause all of that.

Conclusion: This was not a pneumonia manifestation, but rather it was a public outing of a long-concealed and very advanced case of Parkinson's Disease, a progressive, debilitating, and ultimately incapacitating neurological disorder.

8) Given Shrillary's past hardships in finding the truth with both hands, a map, and a search party, and the ongoing retinue of people who are plainly nothing but medical caregivers in her daily entourage, Shrillary didn't discover that she had Parkinson's Disease on Sunday, unlike the rest of America. She has to have known about it for months, if not years. Which means, knowing this to be so, a conscious, long thought-out, and deliberate plan was made to lie about this to everyone, long and hard, and even after any shred of pretense about the truth was any longer defensible (at least to anyone who doesn't wear a football helmet on outings to the store or ice cream shop).

Conclusion: The is a world-class fraud, perpetrated against first of all her supporters, then against the entire Democrat Party, and ultimately against the entire nation. Which, if you're a Clinton, is simply who you are, and what you do.
Sunday was the DNA-stained dress that finally revealed to the entire nation exactly what a ruthlessly dishonest, calculating, and conniving witch has garnered the Democrat nomination to the presidency, long beyond the time when anyone less venal and selfishly ambitious would have thrown in the towel, and retired from public life with some semblance of dignity.

9) If your cover story is overheating (on a 77-degree morning with a light breeze and mid-range humidity), and your fall-back medical facility is the daughter's apartment, it's probably best to go to the building your daughter lives in, and not the one she USED to live in, which "coincidentally" also not only doesn't feature your daughter's residence, but DOES have a home health care agency located inside instead. And you know this, because you realize everyone has Google and the internet, and will catch you lying about lying about lying within another day or three.

Conclusion: This lame-as-hell cover story, as lame as a dog with no legs, and already the third lame attempt to mis-explain something that's become painfully and inescapably obvious, was whipped up on the fly by people too effing incompetent to escape from a wet paper bag, nor pour piss out of a boot when the instructions to do so are written on the heel.

Q.: What do you call a dog with no legs?
A.: What difference does it make? He's never going to come to you anyways, nor do the tricks you want.

And neither is this latest Cover Story 3.0 going to suffice to cover for Shrillary's ongoing physical unfitness meltdown.

Q.: Where do you find a dog with no legs?
A.: Right where you left him.

Which is why, despite all the efforts to get people not to believe their lying eyes, both Shrillary and her campaign are metaphorically still lying face down on a Manhattan side street, and overwhelmingly, it's because they're all still lying.

QED
                                        

Reality Begins To Dawn On Somnolent Media, At Last

Why did Hillary lie about her health? link

From Damon Linker in The Week, this morning:

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign just made a massive error. We'll know within the next few weeks if the error will prove to be catastrophic.

On Sunday, Clinton abruptly left a Manhattan ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A video shows her shakily stumbling while trying to get into a van to leave. The candidate's physician later offered this explanation: Clinton has had an allergy-related cough for some time, and during an examination on Friday, the Democratic nominee was diagnosed with pneumonia, put on antibiotics, and told to take time out to rest. She became overheated and dehydrated during Sunday morning's event, which led her to collapse. She's now home in Chappaqua and on the road to recovery.

Compare this timeline to details from Hillary Clinton's public schedule and behavior over these same two days.

After Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia and put on antibiotics, she did not, as her physician recommended, take time out to rest. Instead, she attended a fundraiser featuring Barbra Streisand. Then on Sunday morning, she attended the 9/11 commemoration, became "overheated," and woozily wobbled rather dramatically. Ninety minutes later she exited her daughter Chelsea's apartment building to tell the press she was "feeling great." The Secret Service permitted a young girl to come over to give the candidate a hug.

It was only a few hours later when her campaign finally announced that she has pneumonia and is recovering.

The most charitable reading of this timeline is that her campaign — presumably with the blessing and perhaps insistence of the candidate — fully intended to keep her illness a secret from the public. Let's be clear about what this means: Her campaign intended to lie.

Hey, as John McLane said to Officer Al Powell:
"Welcome to the party, pal!"

Even though doing so would require her to keep up a public schedule that might well make her condition worse and require ever-more elaborate forms of concealment. Because, of course, to curtail her schedule would raise questions that might reveal the truth.
So even after she collapsed, the campaign decided the ruse would continue. It arranged for the candidate to make her curbside declaration of wellness, even bringing on the girl to give her a "spontaneous" hug. (Clinton's protection detail would never have permitted a genuinely spontaneous embrace on the street, even by a child.)

So yes, the campaign has now suborned a child to help shill the lie to the American people.
The last time we saw something this blatant in prime time, it was Saddam Hussein hugging hostage children in 1990.

It's easy to understand why the Clinton campaign would want to keep this kind of news a secret. The candidate doesn't trust the media. The right has been hitting her over supposed health issues for months (and even years), and the assault has picked up in intensity over the past week or so — since Clinton found herself in the midst of an extended coughing fit at a campaign event in Cleveland. Then there's the gender dynamic. Donald Trump presents himself as a hyper-masculine tough guy, while Clinton is the first female presidential nominee. The Clinton camp is probably twice as terrified of their candidate looking frail as a less path-breaking campaign would be.

        

So the campaign chose to lie. The potential reward was considerable: namely, an absence of politically damaging news stories about Clinton's medical condition. But the risk was enormous — and it's blown up in their faces.

Hey, Damon, that's a feature, not a bug.

 Because now the story isn't just that Clinton is ill. It's that, once again, she's untrustworthy — and this time about her own health.That's why the announcement that she has pneumonia will only fuel more speculation about Clinton's physical condition, with potentially no end in sight. The world saw her collapse, and 90 minutes later, the candidate looked America in the eye and proclaimed that she was feeling great. Except now we know that she wasn't.
Not long after this charade, someone on the campaign staff made the call to come clean. But it may well have been too late.
The best the campaign can hope for now is that Clinton recovers quickly and soon looks healthy in her public appearances. Then maybe the topic will recede into the background of the campaign. The candidate got sick, but then she got better. End of story.

But if she doesn't recover quickly? If she appears weak and frail for more than a few days? Then, yes, she'll face perfectly reasonable questions about whether she's physically up to serving as president. But worse, she'll confront lingering doubts about what, precisely, is ailing her. "It's pneumonia," the campaign will proclaim over and over again. To which a skeptical America will justifiably reply, "Yes, we can tell that you'd like us to think so. But we have no reason to trust that's true."

Too slow, Damon. We're there now.
And there is absolutely no reason not to assume, ab initio, that the "pneumonia" Cover Story 3.0 is any more honest and factual than were stories of "allergies" or "heat exhaustion".
Oh what a tangled web we weave, and all that.
Shrillary (and her entire staff) are lying criminals. Stop the presses.
("Conference call with the Benghazi consulate and the FBI on line 1, Mrs. Secretary...")

Political trust is a fragile thing. Once it's gone, it's exceedingly difficult to get back — and without it, there's no basis on which to dismiss conspiracy theories that even normally level-headed observers will begin, for perfectly understandable reasons, to entertain.
Like so many of the scandals and pseudo-scandals that have dogged Hillary Clinton and her husband through the years, this one needs to be recognized as entirely self-inflicted. The campaign now has to live with the consequences of having chosen to lie to get out of a problem.

Let's be honest: that particular ship sailed some decades earlier. This is news only to news people. Which begs the question of how y'all got those jobs, if you can't ( or rather, won't) tell the difference between sh*t and Shineola.

It doesn't require conspiracy theorists. Perfectly level-headed people already entertain the now and longtime wholly plausible explanation that Shrillary isn't just morally unfit to be president, she's also physically incapable of perfoming the job.

I expect the truth of that causes many Democrats a burning sensation in intimate places.
But a course of antibiotics should clear that up.

Proving, once again, that sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Honest Abe delivered those famous remarks at Clinton?
The Almighty truly has an unfathomably large sense of humor.







Bonus Ponder: What's the over/under, and likeliest option, on how long before FBI Director Comey realizes his previous error(s), and either
a) decides to belatedly recommend indictment of Clinton, after "new evidence" surfaces
b) announces his sudden retirement due to pressing family concerns, or
c) commits suicide in Fort Marcy Park, with a handgun made of disparate parts, after shooting himself in the back of the head three times
?

 

 

 

Lastly, a saner and more circumspect analysis of the event, from Karl Deninger's Market Ticker :

Hillary is done.

 

 

 

 





Driving Miss Dropsy

It's over, bitchez!

From the What Should Have Been Breathless 24/7 Front Page News Around The World For Days Depatment, we link the incontrovertible video proof.

Short version:

Longer version:

Shrillary was held up, propped on a bollard, visibly shaking uncontrollably, couldn't walk, went down to her knees, and was then unceremoniously manhandled into her rescue van just short of doing a face-plant onto the floorboards. This is not pneumonia, nor anything like.

This is someone completely debilitated for a notable period of time, and hence completely unfit to assume the duties of the presidency, now or ever.
Her condition is almost certainly chronic, and will only get progressively worse over time, and possibly quite rapidly, before we factor in the ponderous weight of the official duties of the office on the last 44 occupants thereof.

Watch it a few times, and focus in on details:
Couldn't stand up without the bollard prop, and an attendant holding her vertical.
Couldn't walk once removed from the prop.
Couldn't stand.
Fell almost to knees, caught by dual manhandlers.
Nearly face-planted.
Shoved into van by and under a protective shroud of surrounding minders.
Whisked away incommunicado, for an hour and a half.
Doctor pronounces "pneumonia", absent any chest x-ray for radiological confirmation.
This is nothing but bullshit, from start to finish.
And in broad daylight on a pleasant day, with no other provocation than arguably one of the easier parts of the campaign trail, she's a bag of jello, and totally incapacitated.
Also:
> No one - NO ONE - on her entire staff nor protective detail is the slightest bit alarmed by her condition, nor what to do; they've clearly done this many times before. The choreography is flawless. Therefore: This is SSDD, not an acute medical emergency.
> She's riding in A VAN?! WTF? Q. What prez (or candidate) rides in a van?
A. Someone who would otherwise be sporting "handicapped" plates.
> They took her to Chelsea's apartment. As opposed, for someone with an acute and unknown condition, to a hospital emergency room. Ergo, this is neither acute, nor is the actual diagnosis unknown to them.
And it ain't pneumonia.

She and her staff tried the "allergies" story, then "heat exhaustion", and now "pneumonia".
It's none of them. Even for such a pathological liar, already being on version 3.0 of "Today's Story", with the Truth nowhere in sight, is quite an accomplishment.

She almost certainly has advanced, debilitating Parkinson's Disease. Or worse.
She's a corpulent 68-year old, showing frequent, numerous, and increasingly incapacitating signs of a chronic debilitating neurological disease, like Parkinson's.

Not a future president.

This is not 1932. The media can therefore no longer wink, nod, and avert the cameras away from FDR's polio-stricken body being placed into and taken out of a wheelchair for 15 years.

The media is now anyone with a cellphone, 24/7/forever/everywhere.
As the appearance of this and multiple other versions of this  damning video, less than 24 hours after the incident, proves beyond question. It also establishes beyond question that she's physically unfit for office, and once again spotlights the untrustworthiness of Clinton, her campaign staff, and the national media, for being MIA on this for months to years.

Shrillary will certainly try to brazen this out (it's always worked for the family before), but the slightest (metaphorical) nudge from Trump, and/or one more such public "incident", and her campaign for the White House is toast.

She didn't wake up yesterday and find out she was ill, so her current run never should have started. She's been on campaign vacation for months, and yet the slightest event (like yesterday on 9/11), and she's literally falling on her ass, completely incapable of functioning, and very nearly on live international news.

Continuing to perpetrate the idea that she's either fit or in any sense capable to be President of the United States is a cruel hoax, a dangerous fraud, and a treasonous lie.

Her "come to Jesus" moment is still pending, long overdue, and guaranteed to make all prior Clinton scandals pale in comparison.

Best sooner, and before the election, and the then-inevitable constitutional crisis.
As it is, she's going to be a pariah with Democrats for perpetrating this hoax, leaving them unable to replace her on the ballot, and it will last for decades after she's dead and buried.

Dulce et decorum est.



But beware:
If you challenge Hillary's health, or speak ill of her, she might send her minions to have a word with you:

(h/t The Feral Irishman )

Oh, and a PSA on Parkinson's Disease here.
This wasn't a "seizure". It was almost certainly her PD acting up.

Falling Down

With yet another episode of "dropsy" today at the 9/11 anniversary, on a far from sweltering day in the low 80s in NYFC, Horking Hacking Hillary can no longer duck the health issue, despite the MSM's non-stop efforts to look the other way.

She's clearly covering up a serious health issue or issues, and stonewalling that conversation with 58 days to go until the election is going to be this election's equivalent of riding around in a tank in a too-big helmet.

Everything is proceeding exactly as we have foreseen.

 

Down side? Sure there is.

But this is what you get, when the media chooses the candidates for the 7th election in a row.

Maybe...

Okay, so maybe there's a reason the jihadis hate pigs.

Got Infrastructure?

Just doing some light reading the other day, and one particular phrase caught my attention:

Before a resistance organization can successfully engage in combat activities, its leadership must organize an infrastructure that can sustain itself in combat and withstand the anticipated hostile reaction to armed resistance. - FM 3-18 Special Forces Operations

In other words, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.

Ponder the import of the above sentence in light of whatever long-term preparations you are undertaking, or contemplating.

Think of it as just another way of noting: You don't have enough ammo.
Or, probably, enough of anything else.

Gene Wilder, R.I.P.

We sadly note and mourn the passing of comedic icon and quintessential gentle man (whether spelled in both two words or one), Gene Wilder, aged 83. Debutting in Bonnie and Clyde, and best-remembered in starring roles from Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein to iconic performances in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, he was a remarkable talent, a gifted comedic actor, as well as a writer, husband, and father, and both Hollywood specifically and the world in general are now the poorer for his departure. But what a phenomenal body of work did he leave us to enjoy for all time.

Fin Bin Serendipity

Imagine my delighted surprise:
Two unfindable movies, which have largely slipped into oblivion, are inexplicably both currently included in the same collection at one's local Wally-World, in the Five-Flicks-For-Five-Bucks rack.

One is Castle Keep, a typically quirky anti-war movie from Hollyweird from about the same time (late '60s-early 70's) as flicks like M*A*S*H* and Catch-22 were all the counter-cultural rage, without being as good as either of them. Directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Burt Lancaster and Peter Falk, among others, between them having 10 nominations and three wins of Oscars back when they meant something besides just a cookie for diversity beans. Still, the flick used to be a staple of late night TV movie fare, and then disappeared forever. Until now.

The other one is the wholly worthy Young Winston, starring a cast of unknown actors including Simon Ward as the titular young Winston Churchill, and including the likes of such other obscure talents as Anne Bancroft (at the pinnacle of her talent and beauty), Robert Shaw, Jack Hawkins, Anthony Hopkins, Ian Holm, Edward Woodward, an unspeaking role by Jane Seymour, and directed by Richard Attenborough. Mayhap you've heard of some of them by now. Being a largely British affair with such nameless featured players, it slipped into and languished in unrecoverable oblivion for decades under the studied ignorance of 20-somethings running studio archives until some wit at Columbia/Sony decided to mine the vaults and let WalMart include it on this $1/movie five pack.

It's definitely worthwhile, worth the price of the DVD by itself if you like a decent flick, and if you can spare forgoing a cup of Starbuck's boiled concoctions just one time, you can catch them both, and three other bits of (well-)forgotten film fare for less than the bargain rates at Netflix.

Enjoy. Get them while they last.

And if anyone ever spots The Secret War Of Harry Frigg loose in the wild, give a holler.

Just An Observation

You could tabulate the amount of time I spend watching broadcast or cable TV on-air most years with an egg timer sandglass. Even though (or more likely because of the fact that) I still work in the biz.

But seeing a few minutes of the Clinton News Network (a fully owned subsidiary of Time Warner/DNC) on in the break room last night, plus what I was hearing on the Radio Punditry channels to and from work, one thing is pretty damned obvious, the more so because I don't spend time absorbed in the Idiot Box:

Everybody, every last swinging Richard, is fangs out trying to take Trump down any and every way they can. In broad daylight, before a packed set of bleachers.

By everybody, I mean the entirety of the dinosaur media, including Fox, every registered Democrat (but I repeat myself), and damned near every member of the pedigreed country club Republican mainstream, to include Hairpiece's own campaign staff.

Clearly, to the lot of them, Trump is the Viagra they crave in the political world, and his effrontery at getting his nomination in a walkaway has given them all hard-ons to last for months. Something just over three of them, at the moment.

Mind you, Trump isn't my guy, and probably never will be - I've reached the point this year that I may skip the entire damned process as an utterly pointless waste of my valuable time - but such a concerted, shameless, widespread effort to take down a political candidate by firing an entire junkyard at him from low altitude, to see what might hit and damage his candidacy, is simply unparalleled in modern US history. Were they to suborn Trump's own Secret Service detail into stuffing kilo-sized bundles of dope into Trump's coat pockets while he works a rope line, it would not, this election season, be beyond belief.

If Shrillary and the combined anchors at ABCNNBCBS all dressed in picador and matador costumes and came at Trump bodily with darts and swords it wouldn't be any less subtle than what's going on right now, and it instills in me the desire to rebel, with the decisiveness of Charlie Brown tackling Lucy, and kicking the unattainable football right up her ass just once, to teach the lesson. And if not to do so myself, to at least hope that enough voters in swing states do, just to thwart the schemes and plans of our self-appointed betters.

Any self-selected group of ass-clowns panting so hard to elect the Criminal rather than Hairpiece really have a deep-seated need for a flamethrower enema.

Life During Wartime

Way too apropos, with every passing day...

Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons,
Packed up and ready to go
Heard of some grave sites, out by the highway,
A place where nobody knows

The sound of gunfire, off in the distance,
I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstone, lived in a ghetto,
I've lived all over this town

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
This ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain't got time for that now

Transmit the message, to the receiver,
Hope for an answer some day
I got three passports, a couple of visas,
You don't even know my real name

High on a hillside, the trucks are loading,
Everything's ready to roll
I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nighttime,
I might not ever get home

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
This ain't no fooling around
This ain't no Mudd Club, or C. B. G. B.,
I ain't got time for that now

Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit?
Heard about Pittsburgh, P. A.?
You oughta know not to stand by the window
Somebody see you up there

I got some groceries, some peanut butter,
To last a couple of days
But I ain't got no speakers, ain't got no headphones,
Ain't got no records to play

Why stay in college? Why go to night school?
Gonna be different this time
Can't write a letter, can't send no postcard,
I ain't got time for that now

Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock,
We blended in with the crowd
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines,
I know that that ain't allowed

We dress like students, we dress like housewives,
Or in a suit and a tie
I changed my hairstyle, so many times now,
I don't know what I look like!

You make me shiver, I feel so tender,
We make a pretty good team
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving,
You ought to get you some sleep

Burned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks?
They won't help me survive
My chest is aching, burns like a furnace,
The burning keeps me alive
© David Byrne

Time For You To Go, Officers

North Miami police shoot unarmed black therapist, with hands raised, unarmed, while he was trying to calm down an autistic patient, armed only with a small toy truck.

link

There is preliminary information that North Miami police officers were dispatched to the scene after a 911 call was received of an armed male suspect threatening suicide. Arriving officers attempted to negotiate with two men on the scene, one of whom was later identified as suffering from autism. The other man was later identified as an employee of an assisted living facility. At some point during the on-scene negotiation, one of the responding officers discharged his weapon, striking the employee.

Really, jackasses?!?!?

So finding instead two UNarmed males, attempting in point of fact no crime whatsoever, your Officer Fuckstick carefully and considerately shot the unarmed black man, in broad daylight, with a clear view, and while his hands were documentedly raised far away from his body, hands empty of anything.

Fucking geniuses with badges.

Let's try that again, only with another 70 IQ points applied:

 Officer Random Fuckstick has been fired for cause from the North Miami PD, arrested, and turned over to the Miami-Dade County district attorney, to be prosecuted for one count of attempted murder, which under FL law as attempted murder in the third degree is a second degree felony, and carries a possible sentence of life in prison. He is also being referred to the US Atty.'s office immediately for violation of civil rights under color of authority for further federal prosecution after the state trial. He will also be administratively stripped of all sovereign and qualified immunity for his actions, and plaintiff(s) will therefore be able to recover damages directly from him for his conduct and its consequences, as well as from the city.

 North Miami and their PD has zero tolerance for anyone, citizen or police officer, shooting unarmed innocents, and holds their police to a higher standard.

Absent reality and common sense breaking out, or multiple brain transplants to the Chief of Police in North Miami and his PIO minions, let alone the leadership of the North Miami police union and rank and file, who should be clamoring for this idiot's head to be delivered on a platter - but won't, because Team Blue - let me state for the record, ahead of the BLM useful idiots, that random crazy people clearly haven't gunned down enough police officers yet to fully get your attention, you bunch of cowardly incompetent murderous bastards.

This is only evidentiary item #3,217,723 that the police ARE the problem.

Not all of them, not everywhere, and not every time.
But this incident will doubtless fuel the fires of crazy, and more officers who didn't do this will be gunned down exactly like the last few batches, to punish vicariously the one(s) who do, have, and will continue to act this way, since time beyond accounting.

That this kind of crap continues to occur 25 years after Rodney King, at a time when widespread unrest is poised to explode, precisely when most we need a professional, circumspect, and well-trained police, only makes the continued failure to perform to any bare minimum standard of competence doubly damning.

The only thing that made this "just" a shooting, instead of another police murder execution, was the abysmal marksmanship of the PD's incompetent minions despite total tactical dominance over two unarmed and criminally innocent victims, at a range measured in feet, which is a thin reed for the average citizen to hang his survival on every time any one or more police are anywhere within 100 yards, fangs out, and dumber than a bag of hammers, time after time after time after mother-effing time. The video documents that the PD in this instance were approaching from cover, and that at least one of them was carrying (and pointing) an M-4gery style carbine at the unarmed men at the time of the shooting. If nothing else, fire the shooter and his partner for that: both inappropriate deployment and use of weapons, and lousy accuracy.

I'm henceforth all out of fucks to give for the victims and families of every police officer shot from here on out. You've played your last "one bad apple" card. Burn down the orchard. 
Perhaps it's time to either take all your guns away 24/7/365, and mandate any response will be solely by unarmed officials, or else simply disband entirely all armed and uniformed patrols, and take our chances without police running around armed and stupid, 24/7/365, once and for all. Word to all departments: Police Academy and the sequels were comedies, not training films. (We'll ignore, for the moment, the myriad reasons why feds with guns should be concurrently reduced somewhere between 90 and 99% as well.) Police collectively and individually have blown too many chances, and continue to, and no matter how harsh the blowback, no additional learning occurs. Ever.

This wasn't in some Podunk town with 3 officers averaging 300 pounds, and a weekend correspondence course for training. It was in friggin' North Miami, FL.

Maybe total unemployment, or when their chances in Anytown for making it through a shift alive are lower than for a guy riding shotgun on an Iraqi convoy in 2004, some small number of the police may elect to re-connect with the citizenry as equals, and return to maintaining law and order amongst the community, instead of over it from on untouchable high. In any event, it's probably going to take a Vietnam War-esque body count of officers every year before the light of reality dawns on most of your membership.

You, the police, have become a cancer on the society that hired you and a plague upon those you formerly served, for far too long to tolerate any further.
Hoping for collective change from you is like cheering at the Special Olympics, and ignoring the consequences was never an option.
Blame entirely yourselves.






(Entirely for bonus points, I'd love to hear the exact 911 call(s) in question, and how they were relayed, to determine if the dispatcher fucked up the information by the numbers, and helped create the situation in the first place. It doesn't absolve the officer on the scene, who is theoretically trained to employ the Mk I Mod 0 eyeball in all situations, which should have led to not falling back, and shooting from cover at an unarmed person, with zero appreciation of common sense or what was going on. 
But 3:1 odds some civil service Affirmative Action hire with D-level English skills contributed materially to misinformation to arriving officers, and should similarly be charged with gross incompetence, depraved indifference and reckless endangerment, and similarly terminated for cause and referred for further prosecution, should that turn out to be the case.
Whoever put it out as "armed man threatening suicide", someone else should fry on this.
And if the PIO made it up out of whole cloth, that would be your target, for accessory to attempted murder, after the fact.
100% certainty none of that will ever happen, and 9:1 against any of it coming out until the settlement phase of the inevitable civil suit.)

Stephen Loomis, Jack-Booted Thug

Concurrent with the latest targeted assassination of police officers occurring in Louisiana, Stephen Loomis ( stephenloomis@cppa.org ) - who (purely coincidentally, I'm sure) looks exactly like a giant penis - as head of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, has come out loud and clear in public against the rule of law, the constitution, and due process:

“We are sending a letter to Gov. Kasich requesting assistance from him. He could very easily do some kind of executive order or something — I don’t care if it’s constitutional or not at this point,” Stephen Loomis, president of Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, told CNN. “They can fight about it after the RNC or they can lift it after the RNC, but I want him to absolutely outlaw open-carry in Cuyahoga County until this RNC is over.” 

Loomis also told CNN that law enforcement would be stepping up inspections of anyone who is holstering a weapon in the downtown area.
 

“We are going to be looking very, very hard at anyone who has an open carry,” he said. “An AR-15, a shotgun, multiple handguns. It’s irresponsible of those folks — especially right now — to be coming downtown with open carry AR’s or anything else. I couldn’t care less if it’s legal or not. We are constitutional law enforcement, we love the Constitution, support it and defend it, but you can’t go into a crowded theater and scream fire. And that’s exactly what they’re doing by bringing those guns down there.”

Ohio allows licensed firearm owners to wear holstered firearms in public except in “secure zone” areas around the RNC Convention site at Quicken Loans Arena. Legal firearm owners can walk around the city within the 1.7 square mile regulated “event zone” with any firearm not banned by the state.

Link

Looking at this dispassionately and conservatively, I'd say that gives the CPPA until about sunup local time tomorrow to both
1) Fire Loomis, for cause
2) Rescind and distance themselves from his dictatorial and unconstitutional remarks.

Anyone who lends any support to Loomis should be investigated and prosecuted with him under federal statutes regarding conspiracy and civil rights, including any "extra scrutiny" of citizens found to be studiously obeying the law and presenting no probable cause for any additional "inspections" of their persons or property in Cleveland during the convention period.

As it is, none of that will happen, so any Cleveland cops who subsequently get killed or injured during the sure-to-follow Activist Follies scheduled to drown out the GOP Convention there can die or suffer while wounded happily, knowing that their blood is on the hands of the president of their own CPPA, the spiritual heir of Reichsfuhrer Himmler, Stalin, Castro, and Pol Pot. In word, if not deed.

Well played, shitbag.
Cleveland's Finest should sleep well, knowing what an unabashed kleine Nazi dictator they've elected to represent their interests. And yet they'll still probably sit there and wonder why everyday people are starting to root for the gunmen...
The rank and file ought to pray that citizens can tell the difference between cops on the beat, and their jackassical mouthpiece.

I just want to know why, O Why? such stacked piles of shit as Loomis never get capped in any one of the far-too-numerous shooting rampages by the Special Snowflakes. If only to leave open the question of the existence of a benevolent deity in the universe, if not pour encourager les autres.

In fairness, at least for his part, Gov. Kasich took about 0.2 seconds to issue a release in response to this idiocy, to the effect that the governor of Ohio is not empowered to arbitrarily suspend US or Ohio state law purely for the convenience of police union goobers with room temperature IQs, or the at-least 51% of their union members who voted them into their position. Which, whatever his other virtues and flaws, puts Kasich above the midline in understanding the Constitution and his official powers, in comparison to the governors of the other 49 states. Or at any rate, smart enough not to openly hoist a swastika flag over Ohio.

I could be wrong though: Loomis may simply be bucking for a job over at the US DOJ or the FBI. Shrillary's going to need a lot of gauleiters if she wins.

Turkey: Question du jour

Q: Does the overthrow of radical mainstream Islam lover Erdogan in Turkey, by that country's military and police forces, signal that the Turks have had enough of that shit, and are belatedly going to start rounding up and beheading their jihadi cousins, or that they will now embrace them even more boldly than Erdogan ever did, leading to all sorts of mischief, not least of which their pending expulsion from NATO?

So many questions, so little popcorn.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Never Mind.
It seems Erdogoof has managed to stave off being overthrown, while underlining that his regime is an unmitigated clown show on the way to full-on failed nation status, and advertising for clandestine support to homegrown dissidents from actual and potential enemies, which at this point include Russia, Greece, Israel, and ISIS.

At the very least, there are a couple of dozen new job openings in Ankara for Presidential Food Taster.

Color Me Shocked

Incredibly, not so much as a peep out of The Usual Suspects suggesting bans on either delivery trucks, nor muslims, after yesterday's incident of workplace rage by a blonde Swedish Lutheran nun in France.

And for the record, Nice was "merkeled"* yesterday.
Vidkun Quisling shouldn't be the only Youre-A-Peon toady bastard to have his own honorary word.

*(For any lexicographers in the audience, the synonym of merkeled involves the fate of any small boys left at either Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch at any point while the singer was alive, or any small boy left in the company of adherents of the Religion Of Pieces{tm} anytime since about 622 A.D. Dulce et decorum est.)

Nice

As word of the horrific tally of carnage comes in from the south of France, reaction in Washington D.C. has been forthcoming and clear.

Emperor For Life HopeyDopey I, hisownself, started out by decrying the tragedy of what he described as a clear case of road rage: "If only the French weren't killing the planet with carbon-belching global warming, that poor lost driver never would have accidentally blundered into those thoughtless pedestrians. It's long past time for the people of France to realize that if they don't like the way their Muslim citizens drive, they should stay the hell off of the sidewalks."

FBI Diretor Comey piled on, decrying the extreme carelessness of the driver in question.
Attorney General Lotretta Lynch, when asked about the incident, stated that a single driver running over and then gunning down 80 or more Frenchmen was puzzling, but that without the full specifics and a careful study of the relevant French laws, she couldn't say for certain whether anything actually illegal had occurred. Both offered the French any help they need in exonerating the poor innocent Muslim cruelly gunned down on the way to his daily prayers by racist and wicked French police, because black-robed-and-hooded lives matter.

Her ladyship and Duchess heir apparent Shrillary Peron Macbeth, returning from a campaign fundraising trip to the Five Families, when quizzed, was certain she had sent numerous memos regarding the dangerous situation in Nice to the French security services, at some point, but said that her staff had experienced some difficulty locating the e-mails in question. She was also pretty sure that she had landed in Nice (under enemy fire the entire time) at some point while serving as Secretary of State. "But what difference, at this point, does it make?" She pledged to have the usual video producers rounded up if elected Queen of Hearts.

White House Head Press Spokeshole Ernest Reifenstahl stated categorically that "the tragic events in France earlier today make keeping assault weapons out of the hands of law abiding Americans here that much more of an urgent priority, for the children."

Even overseas, condemnation of the events has been swift as well. Reichsfuhrer Merkel, when asked what she thought about the gory deaths of over 80 Frenchmen during a celebration commemorating opening doors and letting Algerians and other oppressed post-colonial refugees settle in Europe, replied "Today's incident was a good start. I wasn't able to attend the event in person, but I'll definitely send along a note saying I approve of it heartily."

The only response garnered thus far from French officials themselves was indecipherable. Marine Le Pen stated through a spokesperson that "John has a long moustache. Frexit in 3,2,1..."

Listening to the responses from American leaders to the incident, the editorial staff of The Onion have announced that they'll probably be forced to close their doors for good by the end of 2016. The printed statement from the editorial board stated simply
"We just can't compete with this sort of thing anymore."

Demographics Is Destiny

"You cannot invade the United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." - whoever

Demographics Is Destiny
Usually that's observed for Western democracies in terms of gloom, due to a declining birthrate, esp. vis-à-vis any given xenopopulation.
But if you take a peek at Robert Gore's Essay Bring It On over on Straight Line Logic, regarding the impending collapse of the current world system, it's far less doom-and-gloomy.

He gets to the meat-and-potatoes here:

But, never underestimate the stupidity of the aristocrats. Let’s say the US government descended into full-on totalitarianism. This is the same government that couldn’t subdue Vietnamese in Vietnam, Afghans in Afghanistan, Iraqis in Iraq, Syrians in Syria, Libyans in Libya, or Yemenis in Yemen. Nevertheless, it will attempt to subdue Americans in America, who collectively are far better armed (thank you, NRA) than any of the insurgencies in those other countries.
Of course, many Americans are sheep so the resistance would be a subset, but the daunting math of fighting insurgents on their own territory, according to military expert Richard Maybury, is about 20 military personnel for each domestic guerrilla fighter. So even if only a million US insurgents resist, probably a low estimate, it would require 20 million government personnel to suppress them, not to mention what would be necessary to maintain order should any collateral chaos and violence, including racial and ethnic animosities, erupt. Currently, there are a little over 2 million active and reserve personnel in the military, and about 1.1 million in law enforcement, and some of both are administrative personnel who would not participate in suppression or combat. The government is stockpiling weaponry, but where does it find at least 17 million recruits to pull the triggers and drive the MRAPS, and with what will it pay them?

The reality is that things are far simpler than that.

Team Oppression is never going to raise another 17M oppressors. In fact, they're highly likely to lose a significant subset of the 3.1M they're already counting on, either to indifference, desertion, or actively joining any resistance movement, if not actually forming one themselves.

And at Maybury's nominal 20:1 ratio to suppress insurgency, that means in the entire USA, a mere 150,000 active resistors places TPTB into a perpetual unyielding stalemate.
Any combination of insurgent recruitment above that number, and/or losses to Team Oppression, means a resistance inexorably gains ground.

You can also forget the likelihood of any blue-helmeted UN troops, or Chinese hordes descending on us here: both entities currently have far more on their plate at home than they can presently handle, and lack the time, troops, treasure, or trouble to go looking for foreign adventure here, unless they desired a repeat of both Little Big Horn and Gallipoli amalgamated into a fearsome Franken-battle of biblical proportions. With the locals playing the part of Home Team under both scenarios.

Also, let's bear in mind that current criminal elements far surpass that 150,000 number, and TPTB are hard-pressed to maintain order now with the forces at their immediate disposal. The crooks aren't going away anytime soon, and adding a resistance to more than offset the addition of the military, under any rule set besides nuking your entire country to glass, avails them a permanent losing battle, and an eventual prom date with a tumbrel cart and gibbet.

I'm not saying they won't try, or that there will never be foreign toadies willing to come here, but the unassailable facts are that for even the most minimal insurgency here,
they can never, ever win.
And even the dimmer bulbs on whatever side can parse that mathematical reality out, without much effort.

Which should lead you to recognize how stupid the leadership that would try must be to skirt the edge of that abyss, or think they have any chance of carrying it off. Like jihadis poking America, or Shrillary dodging indictment (so far), when the rules change suddenly, and the Marquis Of Queensbury gloves come off, the sudden appearance of a mob with torches and pitchforks headed for their house comes as the wildest and most unpleasant shock to the cores of their being.

All you need to do is concentrate on assembling and preparing your local slice of that 150k or so - even if you're any army of one, currently - and the outcome is largely a forgone conclusion.

Provided you actually make that effort, prior to the day.

Just saying.