I Have No Idea What Could Be Happening...

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Blog readers, or happy serendipitous coincidence?
IDGAF.

Visit WalMart, and vote frequently.

Quod sit circuit, fit circuitu.

Another Day Of Whatever

Employment requirements the past week have had me recertifying the skills to save lives and tie down crazy people, among other things.

And the usual parade of human silliness continues, but it's simply broader this week, not deeper. Certainly not funnier.

I'm sure I'll find a thing or three to give a damn about eventually, but right now feels like what it must be like to watch the 3000 auditions too horrible to get on the air for America's Got Talent, including all the people who can't carry a tune in a bucket, and the comedians who, in vaudevillian times would have got the hook in about 5 seconds.

Is it just me, or are other people wishing they'd re-boot Dexter, except this time, bring him back as the guy in charge of whacking everyone who'd exceeded their Warholian fifteen minutes of fame? The Kardashians: lock stock and barrel. Joy Behar. That whiny twit from Florida who wasn't at the school shooting, but is still trying to profit from not being there. And on and on.

If life's annoying twits starting falling in front of busses and subway trains as if they were people with dirt on the Clinton Family Crime Syndicate™, I think the trend would catch on.

Proposed theme song:

Blaring over shots of safes falling on people, a lead pipe crashing down on their heads, getting pushed under a bus, drop-kicked off a cliff, plowed in a crosswalk on a yellow light by a dark sedan, etc.

Remember, it's not really misanthropy if they've got it coming.

Sunday Music: Rough Justice

British Invasion v2.0, Girl; group edition.
They were never going to change the world, but easy on the ears, and easy on the eyes, along with some interesting arrangements and great harmony.

Plenty Of Room On This Bus For New Riders

On the 1MC: "Liberty's Torch, arriving."

" These are the times that try a commentator’s soul...and his patience...and his ever-shrinking time for reading the news. The politicization of everything continues apace. The Left is straining to ensure that every imaginable aspect of human activity is seen first and foremost through a political filter. Consider this list of things the various Democrat candidates for president want to ban. Never fear: anything they’ve left out, they’ll get to once the federal government is once more securely in their hands.

You’d think this would be the perfect grist for a commentator’s mill, wouldn’t you? And from one perspective you’d be quite correct: he who writes about politics, political contests, and public policy is normally delighted by a profusion of such things. But for me at least, it’s gotten to be too much. Yes, I can keep up; I read rapidly, comprehend easily, and have a nearly perfect memory. My problem is that I don’t want to keep up any longer. I want it all to go away and leave me in peace.  

I can’t help wondering whether, in 1775, a majority of the American colonists felt the same. "

 RTWT

The trouble isn't that more and more people are getting on this bus.
In fact, trouble won't come until we get to our stop, and we all decide it's time to get off the bus, and go to work.

About Biden's Bleeding Eye...

Don't cross the Hildebeast.
She's tan. She's fit. She's rested.
And after six months of seeing the asstards running for the nomination this time out, she's got the inside track on winning when Leftard voters finally get to the point of prayer:

"Please, God, anyone but that Clowncarnucopia of Fruitcakes and losers!"

And if Dopey Joe doesn't catch a clue after the pin in the eye, wait until she uses a nail gun on his crotch.

Corporate Invertebrate Hermaphrodites

NASCAR rejects gun ads.

Fuck them, and the horse they rode into town on. They're over.
Next season might as well be broadcast on Lifetime and Bravo for all the viewers and attendees they're going to lose.

WalMart drops ARs, ammunition for them and pistols

Fuck them too. Sideways, with a rusty chainsaw.

So, corporate geniusii, how's that plan worked out for the NFL, Dick's, and the pussies at P&G's pussyhat soybois hawking Jilette:Razors For Little Bitches??
Haven't been reading the newspaper much, have you?
Not even the financial pages, evidently.

Only world-class fools piss off the people who buy their product and fill their coffers, to court favor from folks who'll never do either.

Your shareholders should sue you all for fraud and malfeasance. Be funny to watch you try to defend that.

But hey, TrailerParkTrashMart, thanks for opening the market up for every other brick-and-mortar firearms retailer in the country, and eliminating your loss-leader negotiating position to sell firearms below cost just to drive littler guys out of business. Firearms makers can now tell you to kiss their ass when you want their product cheaper year-over-year. That just ended too, whether you figured it out or not. Sam is probably spinning in his grave, and his half-wit kinfolk heirs clearly haven't the wits to run a roadside chicken stand. If he were alive, he'd kick their asses, then disown them all.

We notice that you still don't have a problem with selling alcohol, even though drunk driving kills more people than rifles every year since Sam opened your entire sorry-ass chain of fail.

Hypocritical fuckwad bullshit merchants.

I'll still visit your stores though.
Just to use the bathroom.
80-20 my turds land in the middle of the floor though, or in the sink bowl, every time.
Have fun with that. I sure will.
Be a real shame if something that simple caught on nationwide.

Remember, guys, the enemy always gets a vote. ;)
And I'll be eating a lot more ethnic foods, and voting often.
Got a hankerin' for some Panda Express broccoli beef today...

"Cleanup on Aisle 2..."

Bring Back Flogging

h/t Kenny

The video author is incorrect. This has Jack and Squat to do with violating the Hatch Act.
It has to do with violating black-letter military regulations.
Deliberately, consciously, and flagrantly.

Department Of Defense Directive 1344.10 (2008) pdf:

4.1.2. A member of the Armed Forces on active duty shall not:

4.1.2.1. Participate in partisan political fundraising activities (except as permitted in subparagraph 4.1.1.7.), rallies, conventions (including making speeches in the course thereof), management of campaigns, or debates, either on one’s own behalf or on that of another, without respect to uniform or inference or appearance of official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement. Participation includes more than mere attendance as a spectator. (See subparagraph 4.1.1.9.)

4.1.2.2. Use official authority or influence to interfere with an election, affect the course or outcome of an election, solicit votes for a particular candidate or issue, or require or solicit political contributions from others.

4.6.4. This is a lawful general regulation. Violations of paragraphs 4.1. through 4.5. of this Directive by persons subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice are punishable under Article 92, "Failure to Obey Order or Regulation," Chapter 47 of Reference (b).

 

UCMJ Article 92: Failure to obey order or regulation (10 U.S.Code §892)

Any person subject to this chapter who—

(1) violates or fails to obey any lawful general order or regulation;

(2) having knowledge of any other lawful order issued by a member of the armed forces, which it is his duty to obey, fails to obey the order; or

(3) is derelict in the performance of his duties;

shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

By Major Fucktard now having become a national embarrassment to the Army and DoD, she is also a violator of

UCMJ Aricle 133: Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman (10 U.S. Code §933)

Any commissioned officer, cadet, or midshipman who is convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

 and also, if they really want to pile on, of violation of

UCMJ Article 134: General Article (10 U.S. Code §934)

Though not specifically mentioned in this chapter, all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses not capital, of which persons subject to this chapter may be guilty, shall be taken cognizance of by a general, special, or summary court-martial, according to the nature and degree of the offense, and shall be punished at the discretion of that court. As used in the preceding sentence, the term “crimes and offenses not capital” includes any conduct engaged in outside the United States, as defined in section 5 of title 18, that would constitute a crime or offense not capital if the conduct had been engaged in within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, as defined in section 7 of title 18.

Of course, being that's she's a magical bulletproof triple-dipper Diversity hire, being a black female lesbian, the odds of Big Green giving her the Big Green Weiner (along with reduction in rank to civilian, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, a dishonorable discharge, and a pension of $0 for life, all of which she richly deserves), is just slightly north of the chances they'll invade and seize Greenland next week.

I doubt the gutless pussies at DoD or SecArmy, let alone the Chief of Staff, even under President Trump, have the nutsack and spine required to send this bitch to a year in Leavenworth and all of the above, as she so richly deserves, just to drive the point home.

Sleep tight, America.
The U.S. Army passed over 20% of their captains to give this Extra Super Special Snowflake a field-grade commission. And despite over 8 years of commissioned service, she still  hasn't figured out that the regulations apply to her.

Probably because in her entire military career, that concept is a complete novelty to her.

Well done, Army.

You continue to do everything in your power to make the military of banana republics the world over look like sound and expertly-led military organizations by comparison.



And while we're telling you about the Army...
(h/t Angus)

Sunday Music: Take Me To Heart

They soared higher on their debut, but this was the top hit (#14 on the Hot 100) for Quarterflash ("...Three quarters foolish, and one quarter flash...") on their second album (of eventually four), before they faded away, just about the time vinyl turned into CDs. It was also about a thirty-year ear worm for me, and was one of a couple of songs that got me to stop three decades of playing air drums, buy a high-quality electronic kit, and teach myself to play them for real. (It worked. If Marv & Rindy Ross - still together after all these years - ever need someone to fill in on drums, I've got most of their catalogue memorized, and I can make the time for the tour.)

I had help. Mainly from a good ear, and people on YouTube posting things like their live concert at the Hollywood Palace in '84, at the height of their power, so I could see what their drummer was doing from time to time, to make sure I'd picked it up correctly by ear. (I did.) But the '80s are over, and I won't be doing the spandex jumpsuit thing. Fad is not fashion, and must needs die after its day in the sun. Thankfully.

Quarterflash is just a memory though, and lead singer Rindy's a psychologist in Portland now. Which means job security long after she loses her lip and the voice fades, given the average sanity level there.The tune still works though. Doubly so with a lead singer in her prime with that voice, and a ringing hook from lead guitar.

If You're A Certain Kind Of Stupid, This Post Is For You



If you see this face in the mirror every morning, pay attention.

Apparently, the genetic coding for intelligence, reading comprehension, and humility are all on the same gene, and separate from the one that grants facility with tools.

I say this must be so, because of the two screeds deposited in response to yesterday's autobiographical essay, which posters evidently think they have one thing down, but they've apparently come up short on some other chromosomes.

For the twenty soopergeniuses out there who thought what two posters took the time to write, the following:

Nota bene:

I don't live in Hooterville, nor have a shop (nor room for one). Not even a garage.
I nonetheless have quite an assortment of hand and power tools, great facility with both, and zero days lost due to accident at my own hand. Ever. (The fact that so few of those who do such work for a living can say the same is what earns me mine. Think about that.)

If the point of yesterday's description got by you, a few more salient points for the reading impaired:

My troubles yesterday (other than too much stuff for the space I possess) were wholly and solely the result of Fortune 500 companies (who should damned well know better) either substituting cheap-ass parts for spec quality hardware, or not bothering to include it at all.
And with 50 year old wiring doing what 50 year old wiring does, unassisted.

Unassisted, BTW, being the exact same way I diagnosed and repaired my electrical problem, despite not working in that field, nor having consulted anything written on the subject for some couple of decades.

In my time, I have dug holes; filled holes; filled sandbags; dug foundations; dug wells; trenched irrigation; milked cows; slopped hogs; wrangled steers; worked on horseback and helped smiths shoe the critters; slaughtered rabbits; fed chickens; picked fruit; plowed fields; planted crops and gardens; post-holed; shifted rocks by hand; poured concrete; strung some miles of fencing: wood, chain link, and barbed wire; repaired same; demo'ed houses; built houses; de-roofed and roofed them; painted them inside and out; remodeled; built additions; built furniture; felled trees; chopped them into firewood by hand; landscaped; brush-whacked acreage; welded; shade-tree mechanic'ed; built, torn apart, and rebuilt bicycles; performed emergency repairs on cars and powerboats; restored actual tanks and half tracks; maintained trucks, howitzers, and actual haze gray men-o'-war; and even constructed and torn down entire villages, to beyond code, even though they were coming down in a couple of months. Some of this was for pay, some of it wasn't. I don't feel any inadequacy when it comes to hard work, hot days, blisters, sore muscles, or using any tool known to man. If I won the lottery, I'd be buying machine tools large enough to need bolting down, and heavy equipment big enough to pick them up, not Ferraris and such. My next appliance, likely as not, will be a blacksmith forge. My man-card is well-punched, and like Quigley and Army .44s, just because I don't like doing something every day doesn't mean I don't know how to do it.

Confuse that reality at your peril.

There are plenty of wrench-benders who could get Ph.Ds. And plenty of Ph.Ds. who can drop a transmission and rebuild it, should they choose to do so. Like Mike Rowe, I have nothing but respect for people, paid or not, who can and do perform dirty, hard, and/or dangerous work, and do so with professionalism and skill. College degrees mean little if you don't have the brains and ability to put them to use.

I've had my share of greasy fingernails, and I chose to work in a licensed profession where there's more poop, puke, and blood than grease and dirt, because it's indoors, it pays much better, and it's air-conditioned. Which helps the layer of sweat I work in pretty much non-stop 12 hours a day.

But if you missed the above parts of the previous essay, and all you bring to the discussion is a knee-jerk excuse to trot out your low-IQ Working Class Hero autobiographical moment, to be the hero of your own story, or try playing city mouse/country mouse bullshit games, rather than reading and grasping what I wrote, save yourself the electrons, and leave off beating the molecules of that particular deceased equine critter.
The horse never did you any harm.

You, like the other two knuckleheads, will only embarrass yourselves.

And I've really got better things to do than hang signs on jackasses.
That's what their braying is for.

So please: don't be one. Life's too short for that sh*t.

Four Trips

This one's dedicated to Phil and Angus , who can probably relate.

As legend and lore have it, no DIY project can be completed in anything less than three trips to the store. Yesterday and today, I improved on that.

About a month ago, the local merchants were flogging perfectly spiffy UHD TVs at ridiculous prices, so they could get the newest models in with even more features I don't want, at prices I won't pay. So a big screen for less than half price for a NIB set was worth the trip.

Where, due to work schedules, it sat on the floor for about a month.
So with a few days off, it was time to upgrade my movie viewing (I have not watched broadcast TV since Fat Bill was president, and miss it not a bit).

Having assembled most of what I needed, it was time to get to work.
I've got three cordless drills, and two chargers.
I could find one drill, the battery was dead, and that manufacturer has planned obsolesenced that voltage out of stock forever. I'll deal with the hunt for the drill, batteries, and chargers another time, but I need to install the wall mount for Big TV today, as planned.

So Trip One:

I needed a couple of odds and ends, and some coax and HDMI, and to get around cordless stupidity games, I wanted an old-fashioned hard-wired simple drill for light work. Went to Lowe's (who thoughtfully killed my go-to OSH harware store chain with malice aforethought, after rescuing them briefly from oblivion). Lowe's has the HDMI and coax. And they have the perfect hand drill.
Except they're out of the one I want.
They have plenty of the bigger ones, starting at from 2-3X the price of the simple one that's perfect for my needs.
Well-played.

So, gritting my teeth, I go to Big Orange Hell, where they have the exact same drill, for a buck less than Lowe's. And five of them sitting right where they should be, on the shelf, unopened.

Mirabile dictu!

Chalk up one for Homeless Depot.

I dodge the 200 migras shilling for day labor in the parking lot, and return home to put up a stupid simple wall mount that's perfect for the TV I have, and the space intended for it.

Except, goddamn them, GE has selected hardware made from Chinesium (an amalgam alloy of zinc, recycled beer cans, Prius body panels, and seagull shit, apparently), which strip, while simultaneously destroying the Phillips bit used, at both ends, while only going halfway in.

And the size hole their instructions say to pre-drill for the anchor screws turns out to be laughably optimistic.

F#&%.

Trip Two:

Homeless Depot winning by a nose, and being a wee bit closer, I return thence on Thursday afternoon, this time for actual hardware.
I selected a double complement of marine-grade stainless steel wood screws equivalent in size and length to one of the cheap-ass Chinesium pieces of $#!^ I managed to hand unscrew from the wall, with pliers, where it had lodged hallway in, totally striped. Because I needed a bicep workout anyways.

Then, not trusting things, I also secured large deck scews, heavy-duty common nails, and fender washers, in case it became necessary to explain the facts of life to GE's wall mount.

And a bit 1/32 larger than GE's recockulous instruction specified.

Thus supplied, I returned home for the next round of battle.

With the larger holes, the actual steel screws fly into the holes, and seat firmly.
The mount is nominally rated for 50#. The TV is maybe 10#. But I was putting it into mature seasoned studs, in a wall I'd added myself. And I weigh a bit more than 50#.

So after hanging on the mount myself, it didn't budge a millimeter.
That sumbitch isn't going to be dropping the TV on me this century.

Now the easy part: putting the TV on the mount.
I've done this with smaller monitors, and the mount itself is simplicity.
Line up the holes, and screw it down.
Easy peasey.

Flag on the play.

In their wisdom, the makers of a $400+ (sale price) wall mount television, have elected not to include the $2 of hardware for wall mounting.
That would be 4 screws, and 4 plastic adapter plugs.

What The Actual FUCK?!?!?

Maybe they thought I'd just carry it around on my shoulder like a ghetto blaster boombox?

I don't know.

But this is, bar none, the stupidest effing thing I've seen someone do.
And I live in Califrutopia, and lived in L.A. for most of my life, so that's saying something.
But they have a handy 800 number, for me to order the Wall Mount Kit for the giant flatscreen TV, it's lack being mentioned no-fucking-where on the package exterior when I purchased it. (I'm going to use that 800 number next week alright, but not to order the kit in question. I'm wondering how many times they'll hang up on me before I finish what I'm going to tell them.)

Who would do such a fucktarded thing?
That would be Samsung.
Samsung, you (insert the most vile racist anti-Korean slur you can imagine here, then triple it), as my old man used to say when he was alive, "the sonofabitch who thought that up should have the TV shoved up his ass, sideways." No, really, and actually.

At this point, I am this:[] close to taking the set to the range, and experimenting on it with 12 ga. slugs. But the mount is already installed, and I want my damn video.

So Trip Three:

But, I know the Three-Trip Rule, so I am only half surprised. So, I trot down to Best Buy, since they have a Geek Squad that does installations, where maybe I can buy, beg, or steal the celebrated un-included mythical legendary Wall Mount Kit that the (insert the most vile racist anti-Korean slur you can imagine here, then triple it) idiot f**kers at Samsung didn't include, to save themselves $2 cost.

But no, Best Buy has never heard of it.
Neither has Le Boutique Targét.
Nor WallyWorld.
I tried them first, this trip.
Don't even think about Sears; their aisles look like Florida after a hurricane, every day, as they lurch towards bankruptcy in a death spiral. They make K-Mart Big Lots! look good, neat, and well-run by comparison.

But the sales chick at BestBuy calls their Samsung rep (but diplomatically, doesn't tell them what I called their company, from CEO to janitorial staff) who used to be one of their Geek Squad installers, who is sure that my wall mount or TV must have the right adapters and screws to clamp the TV in place.
(He's as wrong as he can be about that.)

But, he suggests checking Homeless Depot, because that's what they used at Geek Squad, because their TV mount kits always have everything.

Ready to defecate kittens at this point, I've got no pride left, and nothing to lose, so I swing by Orange Hardware Hell yet a third time, as the sun sinks into the horizon.

So I go to their home electronics aisle, pry open a similar wall mount kit, and there inside, are the very screws and adapters needed.
Along with screws and adapters for every TV set known to man, in all likelihood.
Sold.
And for the helluvit, an HDTV antenna.

I return home again, this time long after the last Julio or Pedro has departed the lot, to undertake Round Three of hand-to-hand combat with a simple TV installation.

The screws and adapters fit like a glove.

The set is now anchored and perfectly aligned.

I plug it in, screw in the broadcast TV antenna, and the set works like a dream. (At least Samsung got that right.)

So, on a roll, I put in a couple of other thingamajigs for another pair of projects, plugging into the nearest outlet, in the bathroom.

I get them finished, and settle down to check online, satisfied with accomplishing (finally) what I set out to do that day.

After taking a bloody day to get it done.

Except...the computer has re-booted.
Funny, since I didn't turn it off.

Try to re-start it.

Then everything in the room goes deader than canned tuna.

And the microwave clock is out. Looking around, I find scoring on the bathroom outlet.
It's old, and not GFCI, predating that requirement handily, but it's never given me any trouble.

The kitchen light is flickering, like the bulb is going to fail. Then it comes on full.
But the demand heater is dead in the bathroom. And so is one side of the kitchen.
And everything downstream from there, including the Blog Command Central room.

And the front room A/C?!?
Now this is serious. No A/C in August?

And the breaker won't reset.
Despite multiple tries.

This now officially sucks. And it's too late to do anything, because everyone is closed.

So Trip Four:

Back to the store again, this time for the multimeter I never had, some wire strippers, and a new commercial-grade outlet.

Get home, turn off the outlet breaker, confirm it's cold with the new multimeter, and open 'er up.

And find 2" of white neutral wire charred and burned away (it dates from the 1970s), which has cooked off all the insulation, and the neutral is touching the bare copper ground wire.

Which shorted out the breaker as intended, and killed 1/3 of the house circuits.

Happy to have tracked down the problem without needing to get a new bus for the panel, I chop all the wire back, re-strip and feed them into an outlet 50 years newer, wire it in, throw the breaker, the multimeter confirms 120V, no smoke issues from the wall, and the breaker resets.

I have spent every penny I saved on the big screen TV on toys and supplies to plug it in.
And rewire a bathroom plug that was about to burn the house down.

Without burning the house down.

Or paying an electrician a couple hundred more $$ for a service call.

IANAElectricain by any means, but I rewired my first switch when I was a teenager (I wanted a dimmer in my bedroom, so I read how to do it, and did it). I generally don't play around with anything electrical more complicated than plugging something in, on principal, because gas (octane and natural) and electricity send more people to the emergency room every week than I want to be. (It's also embarrassing to be treated by your co-workers for Stupid.) And my primary use for electricity is to defibrillate dead people, and let me tell you, they jump when you yell "Clear!" and hit the button. I don't want to do the home version, especially accidentally. I can still remember the experiment at age 3 with the table knife and the wall outlet, and as I recollect, it stung a bit.

But I had the book learning, and most of the toys, so I'm happy about doing the repair myself, and getting the TV ready to rock. But I'm happiest that some union electrician 50 years ago did his frickin' job right when he ground wired my outlet properly, so I could save it and not burn the house down last night, or today.

For an encore, I'ma get me a GFCI outlet next week, and re-do that job one more time.
The skills will come in handy when I start building the Castle Anthrax and Camp Snoopy, probably next year.

Which is my explanation for why my homework is late.

And I think I've earned a nice dinner out.
Followed by Zulu or Lord Of the Rings on a wall-wide TV in UHD, as God intended.

And I've got an extra TV mount now.

Technical Difficulties

Helluva Thursday/Friday, but all's well that ends well. Details upcoming.

More Taxation Via Ski Mask

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.

RTWT.

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.

Fiat Anarchy

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.

Half-witted, and Half-@$$ed

h/t SiG and Kenny

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.

J&J is Getting Railroaded By Morons, And Why You Care

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.

In detail, from Fox Business News on Yahoo:

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.

Survival Tools

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.
GoToobs hold 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."

Sunday Music: Salt In My Tears

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.

 

Preach the gospel, brother Sam.

OMFG

h/t Silicon Graybeard



Just kidding. It has no chance in hell.

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.

Go to SiG's place, and RTWT.

WARNING: Level III Beverage Alert!!

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.