Borepatch takes a walk down memory lane regarding the Tobacco Settlement.
Governments love to tax. It's one of the few things they do well. Taxing cigarettes and booze is a historical specialty of governments local, state, and federal.
Those taxes are collected for doing nothing. The government doesn't grow anything. It doesn't have a factory. It takes no business risks. It just collects money from the sale of tobacco on a state and federal average of $2.70 a pack. I know the tobacco companies are making a lot of money. I think smoking is terrible. It's the governments that are profiting the most off tobacco sales.
And now OK and others want to transfer that model to Big Pharma, because reasons.
Again, this isn't The War On (Some) Drugs. They never even used that as a pretext.
It's a War On Business, with the real aim being solely to fund bigger government. Any pubic benefit is and was no part of either equation, except by way of excuse-making and straw-grasping.
Nota bene the aim of Okiehoma statists is to use the J&J settlement to fund government treatment programs, and local government entities, from the state down, not to actually compensate or make whole the alleged victims, let alone not being addressed from any rationale that the effect was caused by the defendants.
It's a naked tax grab from innocent parties, being shaken down solely because they had a fat wallet. This differs from daylight armed robbery...how, exactly?
This is simply taxation (in fact, a bill of attainder specifically against J&J via judiciary, which is doubly illegal) without requiring a bill for it to go through the state legislature. Instead of requiring a bill that garnered the support of 99 members of the OK legislature (67 reps and 32 senators) and was then signed by the governor, all of them responsible directly to the people, they only had to bamboozle one lackwit judge (with which clearly Okiehoma, like every state, is oversupplied) and presto! they get a windfall with none of that icky public accountability.
It should be overturned for a host of reasons, but on that ground alone would be sufficient cause to do so.
The Clinton administration and 50 states' legislature did the same thing with tobacco, and got away with it because every hog had his nose in that trough. But cigarettes aren't the same thing at all, morally or financially, as prescription medication, except that costs for the latter will be passed on directly, and forever, exactly as cigarette taxes are, but this time on everyone.
And BTW, if you don't think those cigarette taxes got tacked on to your Chips Ahoy and Oreos from RJR/Nabisco too back then (eventually forcing the conglomerate to break apart because of that tobacco settlement), just like J&J's hit will go onto the price of every box of Band-Aids forever, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Frequent commenter A.B. Prosper responds to our essay this morning regarding the plight of Johnson & Johnson:
"I wouldn't worry about J&J, the medical companies can simply refuse to sell in the US if they like.
This kind of leverage is why the vaccine injury compensation trust fund exists, the companies that make them basically said 'we get protection or you do without.'"
J&J isn't the issue here, A.B.
The issue is fiat anarchy under color of authority.
Setting the precedent that uninvolved innocent parties can be rounded up, sued, and financially ruined for the unrelated actions of evil people using not-their-product, as if apples were elephants and horseflies were horses, because the defendants happen to be minding their own business legally and above board, undoes all trade and commerce in anything, in about a minute.
That's a civilizational death sentence.
It's Kafka-esque and surreal, and the only answer is rivers of blood and heads on poles. If that starts tomorrow, just for this reason, I'm all in. It's that bad.
This is the kind of thing that justifies slaughtering the entire judiciary and executive organs that uphold or enforces it, as quintessential casus belli. It stands the law and common sense itself on its own head, and endangers society itself, intrinsically and explicitly. This is one of those things that authorizes marching people to Madame Guillotine in wholesale batches.
What happens to J&J is something to which I'm relatively indifferent. In the end, they'll make out okay.
This judge and OK's AG, OTOH, need a fine public lynching about five minutes ago, as outlined in the OP.
This is the Dred Scott case of the 21st century, and if upheld, it's sufficient grounds for another civil war/revolution, with all the trimmings.
A sitting judge has ruled that the innocent must be fleeced because evil exists, somewhere else.
J&J is merely standing in the dock in your stead.
If they can be judicially ass-raped without a shred of legal rationale merely on some lunatic judge's say-so, nothing and no one is safe.
That's sufficient grounds for lopping off heads and burning down legislatures, just for openers. And if the dullards amongst TPTB don't see that, and nip it in the bud, good and hard, that's exactly what's going to follow, and it will be wholly justified.
What comes after that is the real problem.
You don't want a civil war? This is how you get a civil war. Ask King George how that worked out for him.
If we had actual justice, court houses would all have a spiffy
show-and-tell display on the front lawn most days.
Much has been made on right-leaning websites of the recent roll-back of the Obozo-era EPA ruling that anything up to and including your child's wading pool was "waters of the United States" subject to federal jurisdiction.
Folks are celebrating because a half-bright judge recognized this went a wee bit too far.
Natzsofast, Guido.
This is merely the verisimilitude of justice.
It's also as stupid as taking your car back to the same jackwagons who didn't fix it right the first time, as if they'd eventually get it right after trying all other options.
The correct ruling would have been to abrogate the entire Act as a violation of the takings clause in the Bill of Rights, and refer the entire EPA SES from then until now to twenty US Attorneys in the specific jurisdictions for prosecution, for violation of civil rights under color of authority, and conspiracy to commit same.
The people that issue such rulings should be at risk of prison for overstepping their bounds.
Anything less is merely a bastardized monarchy without the handy option of direct popular regicide.
The Founding Fathers would have hung the entire EPA in Lafayette Park, and sold tickets to the event, followed by a bonfire on the site where their former offices were converted to charcoal and rubble.
"BYOB" on the invitations would refer to a wine bottle of high-octane.
BBQ, fireworks and a social dance afterwards, around maypoles decorated with the severed heads of former administrators.
Sending the EPA and Corps Of Engineers to their room, to rethink the "waters of America" statue, is like assigning a convicted child molester to community service by having them run a day care center.
If you were paying close attention yesterday, you might have heard that some inbred robed fuckwit (and his mental incapacity and jurisprudential shortcomings with that appellation should be considered an extremely light sentence) yesterday awarded plaintiffs against Johnson & Johnson some $572M in damages (out of the $17Billion they asked for), due to opiate overdose deaths in the state of OK.
TL;DR: This is childish magical thinking and judicial bullshit that should get the judge impeached, disbarred, and stoned at the city gates immediately. Then they should go after his family, the plaintiffs, and plaintiff's shyster lawyers. And then their families.
And OK's state Attorney General and his combined staff of dipshits (who pushed this nonsense) should be lynched, and dragged naked by the heels behind horses over rocks, metal shards, and broken glass for about 200 miles. Then they should turn the horses around, and return those AG @$$holes to the point of origin the same way. After that, and only after that, I'm okay with a full pardon of whatever meatsacks remain.
If you live in OK, walk tall. You've officially surpassed CA and NFY for actual jackassery, by several orders of magnitude, as of right now. Which is saying something. They've really raised the fucktard bar with this one to heights normally only attainable with orbital rocketry.
The next 5000 attempts at this sort of horsesh*t should lead to mass roundups, and conga lines to the gas chambers. For the same group of idiots.
An Oklahoma judge found Johnson & Johnson and Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies liable for stoking the opioid crisis in the state and said the company must pay $572 million, far less the $17 billion that the state was seeking.
Judge Thad Balkman, of Cleveland County District Court in Norman, Oklahoma, is the first judge to rule in the opioid cases brought to trial by thousands of state and local governments against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
His precedent-setting ruling was being closely watched as 2,000 other pending suits await to be heard before a federal judge in Ohio in October.
J&J said it plans to appeal Balkman's ruling and that the decision was "flawed."
“Janssen did not cause the opioid crisis in Oklahoma, and neither the facts nor the law support this outcome,” said Michael Ullmann, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Johnson & Johnson.
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter brought the case to trial for seven weeks, arguing the pharmaceutical company executed an intensive marketing campaign that overwhelmed the market and mislead consumers about the addictive risks of the drug.
Hunter seeks $17 billion to cover all costs related to the state addressing the epidemic for the next 30 years, including treatment and prevention programs.
Oklahoma lawyers dubbed J&J an opioid “kingpin” and alluded to its marketing tactics as a public health nuisance, under law. However, J&J absolves itself of any misconduct and presented research that said its painkillers, Duragesic and Nucynta, comprised a fraction of opioids prescribed in the state.
Oklahoma escalated the trial after resolving claims against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP in March for $270 million and against Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd in May for $85 million, with only J&J remaining as a defendant.
So, in short, OK went looking for someone wholly uninvolved, with deep pockets. And found a judge with an IQ on a par with potted plants (but let's be fair, judges come from lawyers, and the morons don't fall far from the tree there), who looked at the contrary facts and legal doctrine, and decided none of that mattered, then spun his Magic 8-Ball and concluded half a billion dollars of shakedown cash sounded like a good round number.
So first, a little background.
1) Opiate deaths are overwhelmingly caused by heroin and carfentanil (street-cooked synthetic fentanyl, i.e. acetyl fentanyl), - typically the two in combination courtesy of street level pharmaceutical distributors - not by prescription opiates of any kind. I'd spitball it's at a ratio of about 99 to 1, but I may be low-balling the actual numbers for the true percentage of overdoses by street opiates (i.e. it may be 999 to 1 or 9999 to 1).
2) The LD50 of RX-grade fentanyl being unknown, using the Janssen-made Durgesic patches above would require you to slap eighty of them on full-strength, just to get to the highest dosage of Rx tablet. And even then, that still wouldn't kill you.
(We report anecdotally the dumbass we saw in the ER once for possible stroke, upon whom while changing into a gown we found twenty or so of his daily pain patches, each of which are supposed to be removed before putting the new one on the next day. He was wobbly, and seemed impaired/intoxicated, but was alert and with stable vital signs, and once we removed his old patches, his symptoms disappeared in about 15 minutes, and he was released home with no further intervention than a headslap and a serious Dumbass Education Lecture.) In short, Rx fentanyl is responsible for probably roughly zero overdose deaths ever, inclusive, since it was invented. Unless you tried to eat the box, whole, and choked. You'd have to be drinking the stuff in gallon jugs. It's potent but short-acting, and we routinely deliver IV doses 20x the strength of Duragesic patches for simple broken bones, and it wears off in less than an hour, providing nothing but relief of moderate to severe pain with minimal side effects. That's WHY it's used. 3) I don't care if J&J blanketed the airwaves and beamed their ads into your head from space, and gave away multiple truckloads of free samples to every MD in the Okie State, and sold every RX pill they ever got: They are marketing a legal product for legal usage, and the actions of others are not their fault, in reality, or morally, ethically, nor legally, since ever.
Blaming the makers of a legal product, in an excruciatingly highly-regulated trade, for the misdeeds of others using completely different items, whose only similarity is a chemical class, is simply utter horseshit. Such jurisprudence is the hallmark of mental retardation and absolute professional incapacity.
Why you give a fuck:
This case is the equivalent of a judge finding Oneida culpable for forks causing obesity. It's finding Ticonderoga pencils responsible for causing mistakes on SATs. And if I haven't made the point blisteringly clear yet, It's finding Colt, Winchester, Remington, and Ruger guilty for murders and robberies. It throws all moral agency and legal culpability since Hammurabi on its head, and undoes civilization itself with a penstroke. And Judge Fucktard thought (and I use that term loosely) that was okay.
His law school should revoke his degree tomorrow, and failing that, treating it like Carthage after the Third Punic War should be a baseline recompense for them, too. If this sort of illegal horseshit is allowed to stand, it's the end of everything since fire and the wheel. I am not exaggerating.
It will start with J&J ceasing all opiate sales to Oklahoma, in perpetuity. (Hint: they should institute that policy tomorrow. Then refer the howling from hundreds of thousands of agonized senior citizens to Judge Fucktard, and post his home phone number and that of the OK AG on the J&J website for complaints.) Then every other drug company should follow suit, and will.
It will end with nobody producing anything anywhere, because someone might misuse it, and then sue the guy who made a legal product, just because they have money.
The only difference between this verdict and armed robbery, is that the jackass Judge Fucktard wasn't (as far as we know) wearing a ski mask and doing it with a pistol when he issued his retarded ruling. Otherwise, the difference between this and actual armed robbery is only that.
Judge Fucktard should literally be stripped of office, prosecuted for criminal fuckwittery of a civilizational level, and then taken out back of the courthouse and shot. And the mentally retarded AG of OKiehoma and all his little fuckwit minions in that office, down to secretarial and janitorial staff, should be next to him, sharing the same fate. Pour encourger les autres, dulce et decorum est. Idiot AG Hunter has just highlighted that he needs to be kicked right the fuck out of office, and that the AG is an office the people of OK can do without, until further notice.
And failing this case getting reversed at some level, if and when jurisprudential sanity kicks in, I hope that's exactly what happens to them all.
When you out-Okie entire generations of all Sooner stupidity in one fell swoop, it should leave a mark, and serve as a cautionary tale told around campfire for centuries. If it unleashes pitchfork- and torch-wielding mobs hunting down lawyers for sport from coast to coast, it probably would not go too far, and would be instead a very good start.
For the benefit of the youngsters in the crowd, back when photographs required actual film, rather than bytes of digital media, the film came in virtually bomb proof and actually waterproof little plastic film cans (or cannisters), with pop-off lids. Anyone who shot pictures had dozens of them, more often than not. And if you're older than dinosaur teeth (call it late 1960s back to the 1930s or so), they came in aluminum film cans, with screw-on lids.
What good are they?
Watertight leakproof storage for: treasure maps *important ID or papers *stash of paper currency, coins, gold, silver, gemstones, etc. a buriable cache (pronounced cash, not cashay , unless you're a Common Core moron) of any kind *tinder *fuel tabs or firestarter *matches *spices (Coghlans still makes snap on spice shaker lids for plastic cans) *a mini-survival fishing kit (hooks, line, weights) anything else you can think of.
None of that requires the film cans, and seldom seen film doesn't matter. You can buy 10-12 of the cans, empty, new, for $5 on Amazon.
And really, it's not just film cans, it's any sealed waterproof container. Film cans just used to be as ubiquitous as phone booths. Unfortunately, they still are now. But while phone booths and film cans have gone out of style, the utility of the latter remains unsurpassed, and for prices from free, to cheap as dirt, brand new.
You can also go to The Container Store website, and find a yuuuuuge selection of other cans and containers of food-safe waterproof sealable plastic cans, tubes, etc. for similar purposes. And you should.
I found a flatter round one the perfect size for medical tape, to keep it from drying into a ball of congealed unusable goo in a car first aid kit. A longer thinner one that holds IV and chest decompression needles visible, without letting them poke holes in everything, or lose sterility. GoToobshold all sorts of things without burping the contents all over your gear, from Betadine to sunscreen, and everything in between.
All of the above are highly recommended. Dropped in water, they'll usually float. Buried for months to years, they remain intact, with no metal parts to rust and fail.
Take advantage of the multitude of uses to store items safely, and have them as fresh and useful when you need them as they were the day you loaded them up.
*The Sergeant Major notes "You will see this material again."
Today's pick s from uber-talented but under-successful solo artist Martin Briley, with what was, sadly, his one big hit. Every decent songwriter probably has at least on Billboard Top 100 hit in him (this one hit #36), but we would have (and did) wished for more from this guy.
He's still writing for other artists, but he faded fast when he couldn't repeat the debut effort. There are better audio versions of this cut floating around on youTube, but I grabbed this music video version from this 1983 hit, which matched the song (and the album cover) perfectly, giving more legs to the tune, and which remains a go-to anthem for everyone ever screwed over by the Flying Fickle Finger Of fate, Cupid Edition.
For anyone who finds and keeps the love of their life on the first try, I have nothing but admiration. But remember kids, for at least 50% of us, divorce will be expensive for one reason: because it's worth it.
And I just used that pic as an excuse to post this clip, for the giggles:
No, Gene, not John.
So Imagine you're an idiot, and imagine you have an impeccable Ph.D. and no common sense.
But I repeat myself.
As proposed in a recent scientific paper, the new airships would be 10 times bigger than the 800-foot Hindenburg — more than five times as long as the Empire State Building is tall — and soar high in the atmosphere. They’d do the work of traditional oceangoing cargo ships but would take less time and generate only a fraction of the pollution.
“We are trying to reduce as much as possible emissions of carbon dioxide because of global warming,” said Julian Hunt, a postdoctoral fellow at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, and the paper’s lead author.
And the fucktards who came up with this were serious.
No, really.
Waitwaitwait...
1) they want to make a dirigible filled with highly flammable hydrogen gas (which worked out so well in 1937).
2) They want to make it four times longer than the World Trade Center towers were tall (which worked out so well in 2001).
3) They want it to carry 21000 tons of cargo (which worked out so well on Lake Superior in 1975).
4) Then they want to take it up into the jet stream, dirigibles historically being notably so agile, nimble, and structurally sound (the Hindenburg maxxed out at 84 MPH, btw) in winds from 60-200 MPH (which also worked out so well with dirigibles like Akron and Shenandoah).
5) then they want them piloted by AI (two lies for the price of one, it being neither thing), computer hardware and software being so well-written, and impermeable by attempts to hack it and maliciously use it (as everything computerized has demonstrably worked so well from 1970-five seconds ago, and onwards to infinity).
And what could possibly go wrong with flying the Megahindenburg fleet, each one multiple times the size of the World Trade Center, and carrying a payload the size of the Edmund Fitzgerald hurtling along wrapped in flammable gas at altitude, where each payload consists of 625 containers grossing at 33.6 tons@, roughly the same payload of nine B-52H models?!?!?!? (And I'm being sportingly generous, and only going by number of projectiles, noting that the Megahindenburgs' cargo will be non-explosive, albeit still coming down in 33 ton blivets from 40,000'.)
I'm going to be lenient and sentimental here:
Whatever fucktard(s) burped out this idea seriously should have a sack thrown over him/them NLT sunup Monday, be institutionalized for criminal clinical insanity, and locked in a pit deeper than the national nuclear waste repository, such that food and daylight would have to be pumped into their subterranean crypt(s) for life, some mile or more beneath the earth's surface, until they have expired in oblivion some decades hence.
We should lock them in, and throw away the prison.
Anyone who repeats the idea should be skinned alive, and then dipped 12 times an hour into a vat of salt water and rubbing alcohol, until the urge passes, or the screaming stops. If the urge continues, switch the dunk tank to gasoline, and set it alight.
Then they should hunt down and exterminate their combined families, to three generations, and fifth cousins. Just to be sure.
That's unquestionably Fucktard Of the Year material, right there.
I'm going to guess there's an Ivy League Ph.D behind this, somewhere.
Nothing less would do unless dealer-quantities of hallucinogenic narcotics are involved.
I am willing to compromise, though. Track down all the schools beyond high school level that granted those authors their credentials, burn them all to the ground, slaughter their combined faculties, and graze cattle and goats there, by law, for at least 200 years.
And whoever wrote the proposal that got those soopergeniuses a monetary grant should be treated with the same hospitality given William Wallace in the final minutes of Braveheart. But only if they sterilize the implements first this time, and use them while they're still red hot.
This nonsense should have been in a Chuck Jones flick starring Wile E. Coyote. And it's almost as well-thought-out.
Climastrology is a death cult, and it's going to have to be purged from the earth with fire.
And with that final nail pounded home, the prosecution rests, Your Honor.
Satan's gotten rooked on his deal with her, and I'm pretty sure
she's giving protection money to the vultures too.
Don't get the wrong idea. We wouldn't wish a death from cancer on anyone, not even Ruth Vader Ginsburg.
But we heartily wish she'd see the futility in trying to cling to the post until she keels over in her pudding one morning, and take retirement, to enjoy her few remaining years giving libtarded lectures to future cat ladies at such reliable lunitariums as Barnhard, Wellesley, and Smith colleges. We still have two female progtard fruitcakes (but I repeat myself) for her to hand the torch to on the court, and after all, how can anyone ever miss her if she won't leave?
Not for nothing is there never a mirror in the room with her; rumor has it she casts no reflection in one.
And if you live in NYFS, remember that Congressweasel Peter King volunteered to help row that boat. If you live in his district, please retire that faithless backstabbing fucker in 2020, for the good of the republic. Let the entire parliament of whores know that supporting gun bans is a career-ender.
For those of you needing your Olbinski fix, this year's project, Vorticity 2, went up last month.
If you have the time (and bandwidth), go to Vimeo, and watch it in 4K, as it was shot. FULL screen, if you please. Unless you have a 75" TV you can see it on. It's worth the trouble.
This guy is a time-lapse artist, and he paints with God's own brush. This will be the best 7 1/2 minutes you spend today with your clothes on, in all likelihood. Like one of the YouTube commenters, I'm hoping for the extended 10 hour version.
Just to see what the Almighty sees when he looks out the window every day.
So, a 23-y.o. kid selling software in Nashville hasn't played organized baseball since JV in high school, but he finds out accidently he's got a 90MPH fastball. So he gets a trainer, works on it, tightens up his fastball (96MPH), and learns an 80+MPH slider, and then a smartphone video at a Rockies game goes viral, a scout sees it, and he gets signed by the Oakland A's.
Then gets the call to move from minor league single-A to The Show, and puts up three Ks in his first inning in MLB.
What a country. Kids, eat your Wheaties, and never give up on your dreams.
We wish Nathan Patterson all the best, on what we hope will be a long career in MLB, even though he's playing for the farkin' Oakland A's. And hey, if it doesn't work out, he can always go back to selling software.
A good quality glass magnifying glass is versatile. It will let you read a topo map, fine-printed instructions, or labels and books when your glasses are broken. It will help you find that last nettle or bee stinger, and scrape it out. But what it really excels at, is setting things on fire, any time the sun is out.
Every young boy worth his salt figured out this last use, which is by far the most important, while visiting the wrath of the sun on ants in the playground. If you have a magnifying glass and sunlight, you have a match that will last forever, half of most every day.
I've used and carried all kinds. My go-to choice is a simple 3x pocket magnifier. My latest is a 16X jeweler's loupe. I've used the former to set someone's boots on fire on a May afternoon; the latter on a clear day will make a solar point so hot I can melt laboratory glass. And have.
Just imagine what it does for making a campfire, esp. if you added fuel-soaked tinder*, or magnesium shavings*. For all those reasons, you should have one.
But if you didn't bring a dedicated glass in your fire-making gear, you have options.
The flimsy plastic ones may suffice. Eyeglasses will definitely do a good job. So will a camera lens removed from its mount. In a bind, any clear water bottle* full of water may even suffice.
And if you lack paper* and pencil*, you can use all of the above methods to burn a message into any piece of wood you can find.
Small. Lightweight. Multiple uses.
The very acme of a survival implement. Nothing fancy. Just something a lot of people never thought about.
*The Sergeant Major notes "You will see this material again."
Boston Tattler circa 1775 - by special correspondent:
"(BOSTON - April 18 - Final) Correspondents to this journal have learned that owing to complaints from numerous loyal Tory subjects in Boston, Charleston, and vicinity, regarding their extreme unease and fearfulness about the steadfastness and mental soundness of their friends and neighbors in Middlesex County, General Thomas Gage, His Majesty's Military Governor of Massachusetts Colony, has issued an extreme risk protective order, ordering the surrender of all armaments by the inhabitants of that district, they being alleged to be no longer trustworthy with such devices, by royal decree. Sources report that Lieut. Colonel Francis Smith will depart westward with a detachment from the 5th Northumberland Regiment of Foot sufficient to serve this writ on the unhinged and aggressive inhabitants of the area, and compel them to surrender their weapons. As always, should any rebellious colonials wish to contest this seizure by due process in His Majesty's Courts afterwards, the customary pace of His Majesty's justice can be expected. One unnamed officer at Genl. Gage's headquarters is said to have remarked, "No subject of His Majesty needs such fearsome weapons of war as a cannon, nor a Brown Bess musket and bayonet. Ordinary fowling pieces for sustenance and defence of their homes from highwaymen and savages should suffice. If they need anything else beyond that, that's why His Majesty's troops are present here in the colony. And as ever, we are only a few hours distant by dispatch rider, should any serious trouble occur."
The Tattler looks forward to a full report on the expedition upon their return to Boston, expected at last report to be sometime tomorrow afternoon."
I'm shocked! Shocked I say, to hear that the state that gave us deputies too cowardly to protect schoolkids has now turned their efforts to violating the rights of the wrong people as a matter of course:
This story didn't make the two local papers or any other local source I see, so we go to the AmmoLand newsletter today. A St. Cloud (Florida) man had his firearms confiscated and his rights revoked because he has the same name as someone else.
Carpenter was shocked and confused. What seems to have happened next is he dove right into the hornet's nest. An innocent man who believes in the goodness and fairness of the system would do that.
Figuring it was a mistake, Carpenter called the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to clear things up since he has never committed domestic violence against anyone. The representative told him he had to get a form from the Clerk of the Courts saying that there weren't any actions against him.
Of course they did. When he went to the Clerk of the Courts, he was told there was an injunction against a Jonathon Edward Carpenter - a resident of a different address. Carpenter told the agent he was not that person, had never lived at that address and had never been accused of any domestic violence. That person directed him to the Osceola County Sheriff's office to clear things up. Still thinking the state was just confused rather than malevolent, he went to the Sheriff's office. He thought he could clear things up.
This is just one of the first such instances. It's nowhere near the last.
There's a fair and simple solution to this sort of nonsense:
Such "good faith" mistakes (which actually show nothing but contempt and malice towards the accused) should subject the clerk of any court and any sheriff responsible for enforcing same so implicated to full civil liability and penalties.
If any injury to defendant results, they should all be subject to criminal penalties as felony conspirators to the deprivation of civil rights, and that criminal prosecution should be automatic and mandatory, or else the district attorney deficient be added to the list of defendants.
In any case where resistance is offered because TPTB are in the wrong, full immunity from prosecution should be guaranteed. If anyone dies, the police responsible should face mandatory trial for murder.
When they have skin in the game, it will be a fair contest.
And when you see cops and legal apparatchiks wearing barrels and living in cardboard boxes when they screw it up like this, they might, y'know, pull their heads out of their asses long enough to check their info before they go swinging their executive branch dicks around, and end up getting them chopped off.
A moot law is no law at all, and one's original, natural rights take full precedence, and it's going to need to start costing them cops' lives to find this out. Since that's the only way they pay attention, I say "Game on".
They dealt the cards, let them play that hand, and see how long before their officers getting shot simply for getting out of the car at the wrong house is a commonplace occurrence, and they decide that lemon ain't worth the squeezin'.
"Just following orders", as a legal strategy, pretty much ran out of gas in 1946 at Nuremburg.
Red flag laws violate pretty much every tenet of common law in place since Magna Carta, and anyone killed for enforcing them deserves the full faceful of buckshot they've got coming.
Unfortunately, it's going to be the only thing to give them pause to engage their brains before enforcing such medieval Trial By Ordeal.
As guessed in comments last week, the other Elvis tribute song. And I never saw the original music video for this when it came out, but in it, Allanah Myles looks exactly like one would imagine, based on the vocals on the radio. If you're going to be a one-hit wonder, do it like this. If you please.
Conspicuous by its absence: Any mention of who commits crime disproportionately, who's soft on crime, or which party has run Philly (into the ground) for years.
Turns out we have been building one, for some time, and the 57 miles constructed just adjacent to San Diego (for the long-term retarded out there, just one of numerous similar builds underway, not the sole effort) is already helping there. Like you'd expect.
That's 57 miles where you can't just walk in. Where 1 guy watching miles has time, if you try, to call in back up to pounce on you. Where you can't cut through. Where you can't bring in 80# backpacks full of dope. Where a herd of 100 doesn't get through, including 10 guys who don't quite look like wetbacks, and are carrying Korans and prayer rugs.
For reference, the entire CA border with Mexico is only around 200 miles.
Imagine how much it's going to suck for Mexico, and their cartels, when there's 2200 miles of it, from the Gulf to the Pacific.
They might have to attempt the novel (for them, since ever) approach of unf**king their own hosed up country, instead of using the U.S as an economic tampon for their failed socialism, and then importing their misery here out of desperation.
And every time you shovel another load of illegals formerly here back over, they won't be able to just return the next day anymore.
What a concept:
Plug the leaks, then bail out the boat.
Almost like the people (including this blog) who tell you "Walls work" know what they're talking about or something.
Snare wire rolls. Nota bene, Gentle Reader, I did not say "a snare". Or even two snares.
Germane-to-the-topic exchange at Mountain Warfare Training Center:
"I put out a snare, Sergeant!"
"Well, gee sir, that's really nice. Now go put out 20 more, and you might get one scraggly squirrel or rock marmot to eat before next Christmas. Your choice. It's a long evolution out here. Carry on, sir."
I mention that because it happens all the time. The dotMil, in all incarnations, even packs one or two snares, steel, in their aircrew survival kits. With a spiffy soft metal locking link, in case you get some action. Dumbasses who've never used them think two is enough.
Not hardly. Try 20-50. If you actually want to eat. Consider the number required for a single squirrel pole, of which you should try 3-4, or maybe 9 or 10, if that sort of game is on the menu:
If you live in suburbia, I highly recommend practicing with this.
Just not if you have cats. And NOT in the front yard, m'kay?
Check local laws and requirements for a hunting/trapping license too.
So you need a lot of snare wire, just for one proper pole. A snare, singular, isn't going to get it done. Ever.
Second problem. Those spiffy issue snares are made of steel. In the white. Wanna know what their lifespan is in a survival kit, even in a dry climate? Fifteen years, at which point they'll be a rusty circle of worthless shit. (Ask me how I know.) Don't even ask about in a near-ocean salt air or high-humidity climate, in which it's probably measured in months. You can oil them, which spooks game. You can use animal oils and grease. Which stinks like sh*t in your gear. Or you can use things other than the issue white steel. Things that don't rust out.
Stainless is always a good choice. You can find (and I have them) 2-3' stainless leaders in the BassPro angling aisles, that make great snares for anything up to probably raccoon and beaver-sized prey.
You can even buy some really splendiferous pre-made snares from the few remaining trapping companies that PETA hasn't driven out of existence.
Both options are rather spendy, however. And you should know how to make your own snares, with no hardware, or fancy catches, from scratch. You may be working from salvaged wire from any number of sources (vehicles, etc.), which likelihood is much higher than having a survival kit with two dozen game snares of all sizes with pre-made locking links.
A brighter choice, therefore, is to go to the hardware store, and get spools of wire that won't rust: Brass. Copper. Aluminum. Or green coated floral garden wire. Which last is the cheapest thing you'll find, and the most bang for the buck. Strength and durability is always a function of price and your desire.
Unless you're thinking of trying for deer and such, you're aiming at squirrel to rabbit sized prey. So 20-26 gauge wire will suffice. If you want more strength, braid it, like any other line. Or buy stronger wire. Generally, thicker gauge equals shorter amount on spool. So read the labels.
More strength, fewer snares. Buy more wire, make more snares.
Need a bomb-proof tightening wire?
Take one end. Roll the wire around a small diameter roundish piece of wood (twig, pencil, etc.) two times, leaving several inches left over. Take it off the stick. Take the additional length, and twist it around the wire before the double loop. Don't crush or tighten the double loop. Put the running end through the double loop. That's your won't-loosen locking loop. Make the loop the correct size for the game you seek. Anchor the other end appropriately.
When Bre'r Rabbit or Bre'r Squirrel goes in, it tightens on itself, locks up the snare loop, and won't let go. If you anchored the other end securely, and found your catch before some other predator, dinner is served.
The spool above will get you plenty of snares. A few such spools, minimum, is the correct amount. They also make, or can make, leaders for toothier prey on fishing line. And trip wires for deadfalls, spring snares, etc. You can also use military trip wire spools, which come in green and yellow.
The mil-surp stuff can be had usually for about $1/roll, in endless quantities. And it's not just for flares and land mines, okay?
(You can always paint your brass, copper, or aluminum wires, but it has to be done unrolled, then allowed to dry thoroughly before re-rolling. I would rather get blackened anodized aluminum, or other pre-coated options, but I may not have as much time to watch paint dry as you do.)
You can catch anything with a head or feet with a big and strong enough snare. But only if you have enough. (And then, a way to dispatch the prey from a distance that isn't strangled, without becoming a meal yourself.)
Snare wire rolls, kids. Not *a* snare or two. Survival is hungry work.
You irrepressible commie halfwits think you've got the cards. You're the idiot talking tough with the shotgun in your hand, and you're about to get comeuppance. In Louis L'Amour's memorable phrase, you're about to have your meathouse torn down. With a mere couple of nutbags (mainly your own nutbags, nota bene) doing what nutbags do, you imagine you've got enough pull now to leverage your way into more asinine abridgments of the Constitution.
You haven't, you won't, and you really, really need to knock it off.
I remind you of this while you've got your limbs and most of your teeth all still attached.
We're really not kidding.
You've had all the slices of our cake you're ever getting.
Step. AWAY. From the table.
STFU, keep your hands in plain sight, and walk away, and you might live through this.
And for the cynical timid souls on the other side suffering from Stockholm Syndrome and normalcy bias, desist.
Re-think.
Heller and McDonald, and the appellate decisions that set that table, are now settled black-letter law, and everyone who cares knows that. In their bones.
You cannot unring that bell.
And ammo is as much a part of "arms" in the 2nd A. as the guns themselves, so that dog won't hunt either.
People in CA watched one lone lunatic, Dorner, tie this state up from Oregon to Mexico, for a week...for one rogue ex-cop.
The CHP wasn't writing any tickets, because every cruiser was sitting on a freeway onramp, looking for him to show up. The paper-tiger LAPD was shooting at anything that moved, they were so fearful of the wrath of just one guy, and not a very bright one at that. (Which made it a fair fight, in the end.)
So the limits of your actual power are now common knowledge, even in the bluest states.
A lot of people thought we'd be facing ramped up anti-gun legislation long before now, because Shrillary and the Clinton Family Crime Syndicate looked like a shoe-in...until she wasn't.
And serious people were ready, then, to open the ball you're itching for now.
If TPTB were to decide they could set the last vestiges of the Constitution on fire, there's more than a few that would take it upon themselves as a point of honor, not to wait cowering inside their homes, but to go out hunting OPFOR, 24/7/365. And they'd get more than one scalp apiece.
Two lunkhead "snipers" in D.C. tied the District up for a month, and none of their shots over 100 yards. What do you suppose will happen when the people involved can hit their targets at 600 yards all the live long day?
Twenty such would turn this country on its head.
A hundred would mean guerrilla war and martial law.
A thousand such, and it's a war that Team Oppression will never win.
(Afghanistan ring a bell? Vietnam? Stop me if you've heard this one...)
And the conservative odds are that once it started, it wouldn't stay twenty, a hundred, or a thousand. It would be a million. Maybe several.
We barely have that many full-time military troops in the Army and Marines combined, right now, and were those troops to join in, they'd be attrited to nothing in a season or two, at the outside. And if they ever opened fire on anyone, they'd just swell the ranks of the insurgency a thousandfold, with every volley.
Not to mention a non-zero number who would switch sides at the first opportunity.
The military you think you'll use wouldn't be a force, it would be a resupply point.
Public officials would be in hiding.
And at that point, government ceases to function, or exist, in any real sense.
Once you have open warfare, you don't have any America to save any more.
All you Leftards have is B.S. and bluster, and that never even won a playground fight, let alone a shooting war.
And most of the people you'd be facing have seen the elephant already, and been in shooting wars, real ones, not Antifa airsoft cosplay slapfights, nor the likes of Pete Williams and Shrillary remembering that time they parachuted into combat on a flying unicorn under sniper fire with the 82nd Airborne.
They already know what they're doing, they have their logistics on their closet shelf, and they'll take Leviathan apart with millions of bites, the same way ants eat an elephant.
This is not a zipper you ought to pull, but if you do, what falls on you after is going to be so awesomely terrible that you'll stare in wonderment, right up until it smacks the ever-loving shit right out of your heads, and kills you with as much compassion as a bulldozer running over maggots.
All it needs is a single match, and your side is the one flicking lighters in a room full of gasoline and gunpowder.
Now is not the time to bet on things going like they always went.
It's not headed that way, and the physics of what will ensue guarantee the pieces won't even come back after the explosions in the same time zone.
In short, minions of Leftardia and Stupidia, you have blundered into a minefield, on a pogo stick.
Stop what you're doing, tiptoe out, and pray to whatever deity you think appropriate that you get away with your skins.
Because if you insist on pushing your revolution, you're going to get the war of which you cannot grasp, and the results of which you cannot even conjure in your wildest fever-swamp nightmares.
And your opponents, who've been stacking in supplies and loading magazines, are shifting from backing away, and hoping the fight you long for doesn't come, and instead coming to a feeling of thinking it's about time to roll up their sleeves, and end you.
Not your party.
Not your progressive communist utopia. You. For all values of that word.
Every goddamned traitorous last one of you. Followed by your spouses, your children, your pets, your semi-domesticated illegal alien hordes, your schemes, your putrescent institutions, your metastasizing socialist programs, and every festering vestige of pustulence you've spewed onto a country you do not understand, didn't build, and over which you and yours will never rule.
Your pendulum is out of gas (and had you the wit, you might have noticed that in 2016, and gone home to pout quietly until you could function in polite society), and the pushback if you dare it, is going to be measured in megadeaths, if not actually megatons. Stalin, Mao, Fidel, and Pol Pot all had it your way. Look for those scales to be balanced, at your expense, in the upcoming sportiness you really do not want, and cannot comprehend.
And if the Deplorables you misunderestimated ever set out to do that, in earnest, people will talk about you and your fate for millennia, the way they talk about Carthage after the Third Punic War now.
You are running out of chances, and your continued efforts in the service of igniting that fuse are rapidly transitioning, in saner minds, from being a bug in the system, to being a feature of it, and a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
But we aren't in a democracy, and never have been. A fact of which your Common Core miseducation has left you blissfully clueless.
We are and always have been a constitutional republic, which notes that the sheep hereabouts may be armed, lest the wolves forget the limits of their franchise.
And lest you misunderstand that reality, what's going on the menu if you continue to agitate beyond your bounds, is you.
I'm not an Elvis fan, in pretty much any way whatsoever. Dated music, from before my time, and the only recollection I have of him was a fat slob far beyond overweight in a jumpsuit, long past his prime, trying to resurrect a career now distantly in his own rear view mirror; and then checking out while grunting out the mother of all opiate constipation turds, while high on pretty much every drug know to man. Not my idea of any sort of idol. More of a punchline than anything else.
But a couple of songs about him long after he passed, like Marc Cohn's tribute to him, absolutely rings, and I love ever bar of it. Much like Don Mclean's American Pie, I suspect this song will outlast and outshine its nominal subject.
"Tell me, are you a Christian, child?" "Ma'am, I am tonight!"
Not counting the news outlets or websites along the full range of accuracy and veracity, I follow multiple actual individuals' handwritten blogs. (Bot news aggregators don't thrill me.) Looking them over, many are current serving or former military and a couple are some variation of high-speed low-drag elite forces ninjas. Or just funny as all. Because life without humor is just despair. So in other words, the same folks I trusted in the military not to wet the bed, sh*t themselves, or otherwise run around like headless Nancys, are the same folks I trust on the interwebz, for demonstrating pretty much the same trustworthiness and circumspectly responsible behavior. Color me shocked.
Comments are fully moderated, due to idiots and trolls. Grown up discussion here will appear just as soon as I have the time to push it through. ANONYMOUS UNSIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE AUTO-DELETED WITHOUT MERCY, and the url added to the spam filter, or mercilessly mocked at the bloghost's sole discretion. If you're too chickensh*t to come up with an alias for online purposes, you're not tall enough for this blog. Pick a name, and stick with it, and you're good. Get cute, and you're wasting your time and my electrons, and your masterpiece will never see the light of day. No warning shots will be fired. If you can't maintain decorum and polite behavior, I won't toy with you, I'll squash you. If one of your comments disappears, YOU f**ked up. If all of them do, it's time for you to go. Disagree with the points made, on the merits, and you're good. Go after me personally, or other commenters, and your comment will never see daylight here. My tolerance for skirting the line is at absolute zero, and will remain there. Don't f**k up.
