Ace of Spades Pet Thread

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Hi. Thanks for stopping by. Take a little time out from your busy schedule and enjoy a thing or two about animals.

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A Little of This. A Little of That.

Pet smugglers. In this case, Snake smuggler.

My! What a long tongue you have. The longer you lick you with. Plus I'm a champion.

If animals could talk. This cat would have an awesome story to tell.

As we see more and more service dogs (I love the emotional rescue dog syndrome myself) The right and wrong way to greet a service dog.

Doesn't seem like much of a commitment. Of course your pet can be replaced by a robot.

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Meet The PetMorons

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Unfortunately, I don't have a petmoron of my own, so I have to live vicariously through everyone else's puppehs and kittehs. So here is Max and Molly, schnauzers who belong to one of my business partners. They're two of the office dogs we had in the shop back in SoCal, before I moved out to Texas 2 years ago. Haven't seen them since the move, and I miss the little rascals. But I still get to hear them bark when we do conference calls every week. :)

Max is here in his usual place in the shop...... under my desk, begging for treats. It went like this:

*paws my shin*

Gimme a treat.

I SAID, gimme a treat

*growls*

Gimme a treat.

*smiles and hangs out tongue*

C'mon, this is me being adorable. This is hard work, gimme a treat.

*growls*

As for Molly, she had a bad habit of jumping the gate in the office door. She didn't like it when I was out in the shop working, and not paying attention to her. So we had to put the gate up a little higher. Which just meant that she'd try to snake her way underneath. - IllTemperedCur

If you ever did get a pet, we are betting you would be a great Master.

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Gracie, my Maine Coon Cat.

We had a particularly scary invader that was eating butter (if left out) and soap and my wife's friends kept suggesting she get a Maine Coon Cat, and we joked a lot about that so I got her Gracie for her birthday.

Maine Coon Cats are wonderful cats. Very intelligent and friendly. Thay also are very talkative and love to play. I highly recommend them as pets.

Gracie is uncooperative and particularly hard to photograph but after hundreds of attempts I was able to cull a few good ones.

Astute morons will notice that some of the pictures are taken in my pool room with a putting surface as the floor. It stemps out at 10. Gracie likes to intercept the log puts and particularly from ambush.

The pets are among my favorite posts, thanks,

Bob

You're welcome Bob. But no thanks are necessary. Quite the kitty-kat you have there.

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My 90 year old dad's protector. - Suzanne.

We wish you would have told us a little bit more about this doggeh.

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Here's my baby Ekolu. He is 2 now and a raving maniac but that's why we love him, birds of a feather and all. - Suzanne.

He looks pretty angelic to us Morons :)

Thanks for the submission.

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Long-time Lurker, Mega submitted this photo of his cat, Annie. Quite the sense of humor displayed by Annie and Mega. Thank you!

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MisHum, Well, not exactly a pet, but certainly a critter. Over 12 ft long, big around as a beer can. With a head big as your fist. What we call a Texas Rat Snake. June 2014 was keeping my eye on right front wheel of tractor while mowing when I almost kissed this big bastard. Yeah, I let him go. Maybe he’ll eat some coyote pups. Eromero

Well, it is a thread about pets and critters. Glad you didn't kiss that thing. Look what happened to Adam & Eve.

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Here are Sammy (top) and Einstein (bottom). Sammy is Bassador (lab/basset mix), and Einstein is all corgi.

We got Sammy on the morning of the very first AoSHQ Pet Thread. He's about a year and a half, Einstein is about three.

Note Einstein sticks his head through the fence so as to smell you better.

Mr. Peebles

Dammit Mr. Peebles they are too cute to be in Puppeh Prison.

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&

Hi. I’d like to introduce you to two of our three houseguests. The third, Scout is a black half Persian and is extraordinarily hard to photograph. Picture two pale yellow eyes balefully staring out of the cold Abyss. She’s a sweetie though, but she talks. A lot. The first pic is Bug, our 16 year old calico. We brought her home the day after 9-11. She has always been a very affectionate critter, and watching her slow down is difficult. She is still in relatively good health, for the most part; she’s simply growing old. But I know it won’t be too long before we have to say goodbye to her. Second pic is Mischa. She is even older, 18. She was born in 1999 under a sheet of plywood leaning against a barn in Bellevue Colorado. Despite being two years older, she is in better health than Buggy. She is also cuddly. Wish I had a better pic of her. Love the Horde. Been a part of this place for almost 15 years(!) Mostly lurked at first. Now I gleefully post idiocy that is (thankfully) mostly ignored. Pug Mahon

Thanks for the submission Pug. With that kind of nic I was expecting a herd of Pugs. The herd of cats is a surprise. Thanks for sharing today.

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Thanks for stopping by today and sharing your Saturday with us. We appreciate that.

If you have something you wish to share with us you can reach us at petmorons at gmail dot com. If you sent something in please be patient while we get to it. Thanks. And have a great week!!!!

Close it up

Saturday Gardening Thread: The harvest is on now! [KT]

—Open Blogger

Hello, gardeners and friends of gardeners. It was the Harvest Moon last night. Harvesting is on! Planting is also on in a few places. Desert denizens, now is YOUR big season! Planting anything now? Got any planting planned?

As you can see above, Gordon has been busy pickling beets. From last week's comment thread, JQ had some great recommendations for gardening and food preservation information from extension agencies. Pat* and Shanks for the memory had great reports. Scroll down.

Last week, Gordon noted that he still had "a few beers left, plus some onions and beans." And beets. I think I see some dill in there, too. Some of those heads look like they are at about the right stage for making pickles. Dilly beans? The heads that still have flowers attached should be ready shortly. Best for pickling while the seeds are kind of mature, but still green.

Cosmos and Cleome

Continuing our "cutting flowers from seed, inspired by Illiniwek" series, Cosmos bipinnatus and Cleome hasslerana top someone's list of nine unsung beauties for bouquets. They come in similar colors. I have always thought they made a natural pair. Both are drought-tolerant. This is probably the strain of C. bipinnatus growing in Iliniwek's border:

Cosmos Sensation Mixed

They come in separate colors, too. If you choose the white ones, you could creat a tall all-white border with Cleome, Cosmos, Datura and some shorter fillers. Nicotiana alata and Queen Anne's Lace could also be added. The flowers shooting up above everything else in this photo are Cleome.

Cleome is adaptable to many climates. But it is less familiar than the Cosmos. Maybe because it has spines. There is at least one spineless hybrid, a short one called Clio.

There are now pale yellow cultivars of Cosmos bipinnatus, too. Not to be confused with Sulfur Cosmos.

Illiniwek has Indian Corn:

Remember the wild Helenium bordering his pond? It's blooming again. I like the way it reflects on the water.

Attracting lots of Painted Ladies. Or a related species. Their caterpillars are much less fussy than Monarch caterpillars. They will eat lots of plants. And they will even eat artificial caterpillar food in butterfly-growing kits.

Bet there's some planting or harvesting going on at CaliGirl's ranch. But she has sent in a different kind of photo. Fun.

I put an old tractor near my road as a decoration. It's a 1943 farmall. It doesn't run but I think it's kind of cool.

Gardens of The Horde

Anything going on in your garden? If not, I ran across this piece, which may save you some grief next year if you pick up on an idea or two from it: Eight gardening mistakes you probably make every autumn

Have a great weekend. Hope you get to spend some time outside.

If you would like to send information and/or photos for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:

ktinthegarden
at g mail dot com

Include your nic unless you want to be a lurker.

Close it up

Back in the USSR [KT]

—Open Blogger

Hello, Horde. Hope your Saturday is going well. I have some sad news from afar. The man who saved the world has died. I likely owe my life to a split-second decision by a man named Stanislav Petrov. The Economist is the source of this obituary:

"The base" was the secret Serpukhov-15 early-warning facility, near Moscow. He had worked there--since graduation, with top honours, from the Radio-Technical College in Kiev--monitoring surveillance by Oko satellites of the missile launch areas of the United States. Its core was a room of 200 computer operators over which, when he was on duty, he would preside from a glassed-in mezzanine office. On one wall of the computer room, an electronic world map lit up the American launch areas: six of them, with a total of 1,000 missiles aimed at the USSR. Just above his eye level, a wall's-width screen glowed a dull red. If nothing appeared on it, all was well. . .

Saturday Morning Weird News Dump

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Good Saturday morning. Not sure where this past week has gone. But Woot-Woot it's the weekend. Here are just a few news items that didn't get their due here at the AoSHQ.

EMT 10/07/17

—krakatoa

DIY week starts now.

Replacing the aluminum floor (don't ask) in the sunroom. New subfloor, insulation, and waterproof laminate suitable for a playroom for the tyke.

Then, fixing my mom's roof.

Love that I get to use vacation time for relaxing.

Yay?

Friday Night Ont: Sunshine and Happiness Edition

—WeirdDave

Friday Night. End of the week and you know what? I'm not going to cover anything serious. This ONT is to other AoS posts as USA Today is to serious news. Unicorns and rainbows and puppy gifs are the order of the day. In fact, lets start with a doggie infographic:

Right click and select “open in a new window” for full size version. Source.

Doggos!

Did you know that dogs have a turbo button? I did not.

Kitty accidentally pressed the turbo button �� pic.twitter.com/zJ9BtMgGUr

— Nature is Amazing �� (@AMAZlNGNATURE) October 6, 2017

More Bears

Well, last night's bear pron segment was wildly popular, so how about another clip of a bear?

Meanwhile in Russia �� pic.twitter.com/IODLfhzr4q

— Nature is Amazing �� (@AMAZlNGNATURE) October 2, 2017

Bear's just going “S'up?”

Vive la Différence!

Bath Time!

He loves bath night. pic.twitter.com/cBqvm7yAtl

— D Attenborough (@Attenboroughs_D) September 30, 2017

Cool Trip

So, next week I'm going to be in Dallas most of the week. If anyone wants to grab a drink after 9 some evening (or give me a ride from DFW to downtown (near Parkland Memorial Hospital) Monday afternoon), let me know. Most of the trip is going to be boring insurance stuff, but the company always schedules fun things to do in the evenings. One night we'll be eating at the zoo, which will be cool, but another we're going to spend the evening at The Cavanaugh Flight Museum . This place looks pretty cool. From there website they have an awesome collection of planes (no Jug or Schwalbe though :( ). Has anyone been there before?

Maybe I'll wear the Sugar's Blues T-shirt I got at the Bomber Command Museum of Canada in Nanton, Albarta. That's another really cool museum dedicated to the men who fought and died flying Lancs for Canada in WWII. It's small, but it has a real live Lancaster, one that I believe is fully functional. They don't fly it, but they do start the engines several times a year. Its small size works to its advantage, I believe. You can get up close an personal to all of the exhibits, walking in, on and around many of the planes.

Cockpit of a Lancaster bomber

There is a museum attached to the hanger with all kinds of stories about Canadian pilots and the missions they flew (like the famous damnbusters mission), dedications,

And tons of pictures of heroic men.

Awesome, awesome place, I highly recommend it if you find yourself anywhere in the Calgary area.

Windows Startup Sound

Here's a neat bit from an interview with Brian Eno, the guy who came up with the Windows 95 startup sound.

But what's really cool is what happens if you slow it down 4000%. That's some freaky shit, it would be great music to listen to while getting a massage-or getting high.

The slowed down version still blows my mind. https://t.co/NszAQOvsYM

— Alex Ingram (@nuttyxander) October 5, 2017

Handy Primer

Get to Know Your Japanese Bathroom Ghosts

Bathroom ghosts? Just a walk in the park, Kazanski. Compared to this:

Good News

Lets end this ONT with a reminder. Why can’t we see that we’re living in a golden age?

And we are. There has never been a better time to be alive than right now, at least in the west, and probably worldwide. What concerns those of us who are concerned is that what we have now is NOT typical. We're the aberration in human history, the exception to the norm of life being “nasty, brutish, and short”. If we forget why we're exceptional, and destroy the pillars of our society that made us exceptional, than a reversion to the mean is not just probably, but likely. Try telling this to one of our enlightened liberal betters, however:

Man Argues With Spitting Goat pic.twitter.com/f2UJCAjN1O

— Nature is Amazing �� (@AMAZlNGNATURE) October 6, 2017

But that's a story for another day.

Tonight's ONT brought to you by the perfect picture:

Photo Credit

Close it up

Hillary Clinton: I Screamed Into a Pillow Over the Shock of Losing

—Ace

Excellent.

In other news:

Gay coffee shop owner demands Christians, who had been dropping anti-gay pamphlets near his shop, but not in it, leave his store. Also says that he'll "F*** some guy in the a**" in front of them and make them watch.

Serve the coffee, bigot.

The ratings for late-night clowns keep falling, with alleged Consciences of the Nation now crowing about having ratings pretty much the same as Sean Hannity's. And yet I don't see Politico and other "news" outlets dutifully running Hannity's clips as "news."

Robert Tracinzsky says that they might not be losing viewers because they've gotten too political, but rather, might have gotten too political because they've lost so many viewers.

I've speculated about this myself in the past -- if you're losing customers, one possibly play is to narrowcast just to a small subset of customers and make them as fanatically loyal as possible. If you can't deliver entertainment to the masses, try selling religion to a cult.

It's a smaller market, but prior cult leaders have proven that you can bleed a lot of cash and sexual favors out of cultists.

The NFL shows continued loss of viewers throughout almost every single demographic in week 4.

Again, as their ratings fall, they might find that it makes more sense to get out of the sports entertainment business and more into a hybrid sports/political religion business.

If you missed it, Mike Rowe's words about what you can find comfort in in the aftermath of depraved evil are worth reading.

Gloria Allred is very disappointed to see her daughter whoring herself out for Hollywood favors.

And, Matthew Continetti has a good piece on the media's end of all pretense.

They, too, have given up on attempting to deliver news to the general public, and now content themselves to publish deranged, conspiracy-filled cult newsletters.

Open thread. Have a great three day (maybe) weekend!

The White Male Consciences of the Nation: Nation's Beloved Leftwing Late Night Clowns Somehow Omit Any Commentary on the Story of the Day, Harvey Weinstein

—Ace

John Sexton notes that the Hollywood Reporter actually reports on Harvey Weinstein's massive donations and bundling for Democrats like Schumer, Hillary, and Obama.

Good on them.

Yet, the nation's all-white male crew of Consciences of the Nation didn't see fit to even mention their Hollywood buddy's adventures in sexual harassment.

Larry O'Connor recalls Nina Burleigh's offer to give Bill Clinton a blowjob, and her suggestion that all American women ought to similarly get out their "presidential kneepads" to thank Clinton for keeping abortion legal, and notes that rich government and media liberals simply have more rights than the proles.

He also suggests that lunatic progressive feminists like Ashley Judd maybe can't bring themselves to condemn a fellow liberal, so they transfer their hatred to a less career-threatening target, namely, Republicans:

Ashley Judd, the most famous victim of Weinstein’s predatory behavior, is an ardent pro-choice feminist activist who led the rally of the “resistance” pink hat march on Washington in January by proclaiming she was a “Naaaaaaaaaasty woman” and went on to speculate about the president’s nocturnal emissions while fantasizing about his own daughter. It was some sick stuff that left many wondering to themselves “Wow, what happened to Ashley Judd?”

Now we know what happened to her. Harvey Weinstein happened to her. And at the time, according to the Times report, as she was being preyed upon by a bathrobe-clad Weinstein begging for a massage or for her to watch him shower (talk about Sophie’s Choice) Judd’s over-riding concern was not “alienating Harvey Weinstein” while escaping his Cosby-esque advances.

Has she channeled that anger and humiliation and fear at the industry that allowed it? Or at the man and his multi-million dollar corporation that enabled it? No. Her real enemies are Republicans. Don’t you get it?

Investigators Wonder if Vegas Psychopath Had Visitors to His Sniper Suite

—Ace

The investigators are puzzled by two discoveries: First, a charger was found that does not match any of the cellphones that belonged to the gunman, Stephen Paddock.

And second, garage records show that during a period when Paddock's car left the hotel garage, one of his key cards was used to get into his room.

...

They are also examining his finances. IRS records show that Paddock was a successful gambler, earning at least $5 million in 2015. Some of that could be from other investments, but most of it was from gambling, officials say.

I wonder if that claim of $5 million in gambling revenue comes from just his IRS filings or from casino filings. Maybe the latter, certainly; I know above a certain level of winnings, the casino has to report the payout.

But if one claimed a series of sub-threshold winnings... well, one could claim that illegal money from some unknown source was just "gambling winnings."

Maybe something; probably nothing.

Harvey Weinstein Didn't Just Buy and Own the Official Democrat Party -- He Also Bought and Owned the Unofficial One, the Media

—Ace

The High Priests of Truth. And shabby bribery and graft.

I have been having conversations about Harvey Weinstein's history of sexual harassment for more than 17 years.

The conversations started when I was a young editorial assistant at Talk, the magazine he financed, in 1999; back then it was with young people, friends -- women and men -- who worked for him, at Miramax, and told tales of hotel rooms, nudity, suggestion, and coercion, and then of whispered payoffs, former assistants who seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth.

...

In my mid-20s, I became a reporter and fact checker at the New York Observer, and part of my beat was covering the film business in New York. The night before the 2000 election, I was working on a story -- perhaps my first seriously reported story -- about O, the violent reimagining of Othello that Miramax's Dimension division was then sitting on, perhaps out of deference to the cringey clean-media message of the Al Gore–Joe Lieberman campaign, which Weinstein was publicly supporting; already there was talk of Weinstein's ambitions in Democratic politics. After Weinstein failed to respond to my calls for comment, I was sent, on Election Eve 2000, to cover a book party he was hosting, along with my colleague Andrew Goldman.

Weinstein didn’t like my question about O, there was an altercation; though the recording has alas been lost to time, I recall that he called me a cunt and declared that he was glad he was the "fucking sheriff of this fucking lawless piece-of-shit town." When my colleague Andrew (who was also then my boyfriend) intervened, first calming him down and then trying to extract an apology, Weinstein went nuclear, pushing Andrew down a set of steps inside the Tribeca Grand -- knocking him over with such force that his tape recorder hit a woman, who suffered long-term injury -- and dragging Andrew, in a headlock, onto Sixth Avenue.

Such was the power of Harvey Weinstein in 2000 that despite the dozens of camera flashes that went off on that sidewalk that night, capturing the sight of an enormously famous film executive trying to pound in the head of a young newspaper reporter, I have never once seen a photo. Back then, Harvey could spin -- or suppress-- anything; there were so many journalists on his payroll, working as consultants on movie projects, or as screenwriters, or for his magazine.

Right now the media is trying to pretend sugar wouldn't melt in its mouth.

Be highly suspicious of their sudden Pin the Scandal on the Democrats positioning -- they wouldn't do that unless they had to sacrifice the official Democrat Party to deflect blame from the unofficial Democrat Party, themselves.

Hurricane Harvey Makes Landfall in Democrat Party

—Ace

Former Obama Adviser Anita Dunn helped Harvey Weinstein strategize his response to the sexual harassment exposee.

Anita Dunn, a top Obama campaign staffer and former White House communications director, helped offer damage control advice for the Hollywood mogul....

Dunn was not paid by Weinstein for her help, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. But she did offer her PR advice, including in regards to a Sept. 23 Times story written by Megan Twohey. The story, about a controversy over Weinstein's work with AIDS charity amfAR, was thought to be a precursor to the big investigation posted on Thursday.

Sources said that Lanny Davis, former special counsel to Bill Clinton, has been central to the PR effort for Weinstein, who is a major Democratic donor. Dunn, for her part, is the managing director of SKDKnickerbocker, a Washington public affairs firm with deep ties to Democratic politics. She was communications director for Obama’s 2008 campaign and served briefly in his administration.

Harvey Weinstein's lawyer gave $10,000 to Manhattan DA after the DA failed to file sexual harassment charges against him. Oh. How cozy.

Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer delivered $10,000 to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. in 2015, in the months after Vance’s office decided not to prosecute Weinstein over sexual assault allegations, according to an International Business Times review of campaign finance documents. That contribution from attorney David Boies --- who previously headlined a fundraiser for Vance — was a fraction of the more than $182,000 that Boies, his son and his law partners have delivered to the Democrat during his political career.

Boies has done legal work for Weinstein since at least 2005, and his website at his law firm says his clients include The Weinstein Company.

David Boies was Gore's recount lawyer. Apparently he's been a big cash-money bestest friend of the DA who presides over the jurisdiction where a lot of his other Democrat friends live. That must all work out nicely for them.

Even CNN's partisan retard Chris Cillizza grasps that this is all a problem for Democrats. Not even a "Republicans pounce" headline. (Yet.)

And it's hard to see how Obama and the Clintons -- Weinstein is a long time pal of Bill and Hillary -- can avoid putting out statements condemning him for his behavior. That's especially true since Weinstein isn't really denying the Times story; he's threatening a lawsuit simply saying the news organization didn't give him enough time to respond.

But there's more to this story than simply issuing statements condemning Weinstein or returning his now-tainted money. These paragraphs from the Times story gets to that broader point:

"In interviews, some of the former employees who said they had troubling experiences with Mr. Weinstein asked a common question: How could allegations repeating the same pattern — young women, a powerful male producer, even some of the same hotels — have accumulated for almost three decades?

"'It wasn't a secret to the inner circle,' said Kathy DeClesis, Bob Weinstein's assistant in the early 1990s. She supervised a young woman who left the company abruptly after an encounter with Harvey Weinstein and who later received a settlement, according to several former employees."

Then there's this from New York magazine's Rebecca Traister: "I have been having conversations about Harvey Weinstein's history of sexual harassment for more than 17 years."

It seems like Weinstein's boorish behavior -- to put it mildly -- was an open secret in the circles he ran in. The prevailing sentiment when the New York Times published its piece was not "WOW!" but rather "Finally!"

That's important. If everyone around Weinstein knew about his inappropriate conduct around women, why were so many Democratic politicians willing to pal around with him and/or accept his money?

The Morning Rant

—OregonMuse

"Do you know what stupid is? Stupid is continually telling a large portion of the population that they're the cause of all social problems, you hate them, they're Literally Hitler and you wish them dead. And then telling them oh by the way, please give up your guns."

"I'll take 'Bad Ideas' for $600, Alex."

Oops:

Bill Clinton, making America great again:

Bill Clinton 2016 vs Bill Clinton 1991 pic.twitter.com/5RIdx2ZY13

— Nick Short ???? (@PoliticalShort) October 4, 2017

At Legal Insurrection, there's a pretty good summary, including recent developments, of the "John Doe" cases in Wisconsin where supporters and donors to Scott Walker's campaign had their doors kicked in at 4am by SWAT teams looking for evidence of campaign finance law violations. If you're suffering from low blood pressure, click on the link.

Oh, FFS:

Every time I think "NOW we've reached Peak Stupid", something like this comes along.

Conservatives Don't Know What's Good For Them, Part CXLVIII:

Michelle Obama:

Quite frankly we saw this in this election. As far as I’m concerned, any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice in a way. To me, it doesn’t say as much about Hillary — and everybody’s trying to wonder. Well, what does it mean for Hillary? No, no, no. What does it mean for us as women? That we look at those two candidates, as women, and many of us said, ‘That guy. He’s better for me. His voice is more true to me.’ Well, to me that just says you don’t like your voice. You like the thing we’re told to like.

Heh. Michelle Obama must want MOAR TRUMP.

You should read the entire article. Not because the issue is noteworthy but because I think it's an example of what journalism ought to be. It's from a site named "The Lily" whose existence was unknown to me before today. But the article is fair, balanced, and presents voices both pro and con in an unbiased manner. 'The Lily' may be run by a bunch of rabid SJWs for all I know, but I'd never know it from this article.

Quiz: Shiba or Toasted Marshmallow?

(click for larger version)

Close it up

Mid-Morning Open Thread

—CBD

Well, I'm cheating...a little. Anyone know why? I sure didn't until I looked into it a bit.

Coincidentally, last night I ate at a nice restaurant just a few blocks from this building. Great booze list...it must have had 100 different Scotch Whisky choices.

It's in a part of NYC that is still quite appealing. Bloomberg's Disneyland fetish didn't extend quite this far.

The Morning Report 10/6/17

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. The end of an absolutely horrific week. Still in the lead is the Las Vegas massacre, both the investigation as well as the political fallout. Judging from only the released information from the authorities about what the girlfriend has said, we have at best an incomplete picture and some very troubling circumstantial evidence. He possessed the same explosive that was used in the jihadist bombing in NYC last year, he had targeted mass events in both Chicago and Boston and ISIS is still claiming he converted to Islam and is one of their own. Amazing how almost one year after the 2016 election, the Left and its Deep State operatives are still investigating Russian collusion but within seconds of the Vegas shooter being taken out had ruled out any involvement with Islamist or Anti-Trump Leftist terrorism.

Politically, the Left is dancing on the still warm corpses of the victims, who while they were alive were vilified as bitter-clinger Nazi Jesus freaks who want to turn America into the Handmaid's Tale. They were oddly silent after the Durbin-linked, Democrat-inspired assassin mowed down Steve Scalise and others at a GOP softball practice. Now, of course, we must do something because, as usual, the GOP and NRA have blood on their hands! The Left knows that to call for the abolishing of the Second Amendment is political suicide, so like the sneaky cancerous Alinskyite vermin they are, they go after it bit by bit, incrementally. That is why the bump-stock ban should be opposed tooth and nail. Sadly, it seems that PDT is signaling a cave on this when in fact, as I raved yesterday, logic, facts and reason should be used to shut this crap down once and for all, especially considering that the overwhelming majority of gun owners in this country have the President's back. As you ponder that, I will leave you with excellent monologues from Limbaugh and Levin. If anyone in the GOP would speak even one scintilla as cutting and sarcastic as Limbaugh and as fiery as Levin, this crap would not even get started. But, GOP-e.

In other news, Harvey "Pervey" Weinstein is in some deep doo-doo. And because politics is always downstream from culture, the who's-who of major Democrats are scrambling like mad to distance themselves from him and are giving back the tens of thousands of dollars he has donated to them. As of now, Obama's daughter is still working for Weinstein but I expect she will be ankling there quickly and quietly if she has not done so already. Meh, the Propaganda Media will provide air cover, for sure. A dear friend of mine who has done business with Weinstein (and who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons) joked with me and said, "if Harvey had any kind of balls, he'd offer the Times $5 million to buy the rights to the story and then cast Anthony Hopkins or Geoffrey Rush to play him!"

Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.

• Explosive Compound Found with Vegas Shooter Identical in Composition to One Used in 2016 NYC Bombing
  
• Infographic from ISIS Claims Shooter Converted to Religion of Peace Six Months Ago
  
• Shooter Scouted Chicago Lollapalooza and Fenway Park
  
• Pervey Weinstein Visited Obama at White House 13 Times, Malia Working as Intern (I bet not for long)
  
• ...Donated Upwards of $600,000 to Democrat Party Elite
  
• Report: Mueller Team Met with MI-6 Agent Who Wrote Fictional Pee-Pee-Gate Dossier
  
• PDT Drops Ominous "Calm Before the Storm" Line While Posing with Top Military Brass
  
• With PDT Set to Scrap Iran Nuke Sellout, Senate Advances Iran Hostage Resolution
  
• NFL Players' Union Teamed Up with Soros to Fund Leftist Advocacy Groups
  
• Limbaugh Destroys Schemer, Too Bad No GOP Senator Will Ever Use the Same Words
  
• Levin Dares Leftists to Introduce Bill to Abolish Second Amendment
  
• 2nd Amendment Caucus Leader Massie Blasts NRA's "Horrible" Bump Stock Cave
  
• Severe Conservative Bret Stephens Sez Abolish the Second Amendment
  
• Mideast "Refugee" Resettlements in USA Plummet Under PDT
  
• Berkeley Conservative Students (Where?) "Stalked, Chased, Harassed" by Antifa Terrorists
  
• How the State Steals Seniors' Rights and Calls It "Compassion"
  
• Why Are Mainstream Charities Funding the Anti-Trump "Resistance?"
  
• The Pornographic War Against Brazil's Children
  
• Greenfield: France's Islamic WWIII - Afghanistan Is Safer Than Paris
  
• Pitino "Pocketed 98%" of Louisville's $39 Million Dollar Adidas Bribe
  
• The Big Fix: Looking Back at College Hoops' First Big Scandal
  
• Tropical Storm Nate Threatens Gulf Coast After Pummeling Central America

Thank You Sir, Can I Have Another ONT?

—WeirdDave

Howdy everybody, welcome to the Thursday ONT. This one may be shorter than usual, my youngest son got his first rank in Scouts and the ceremony was tonight. I hope he sticks with it to Eagle, one of my big regrets is that I didn't. I had completed every single requirement for the rank except for my service project. I was going to do that in the fall, but that summer I got interested in girls and dropped scouting. * sigh * I'm probably the only man in history to fail to achieve something due to the overwhelming power of boobs.

Fun With Anagrams

R. M. Huffman, who is at various times a doctor, an author (his Sweet Tooth omnibus is a hoot. It's like $3, go buy it), a slayer of evangelical atheists on Twitter and an AoS Moron, pointed out that the following are anagrams.

“Progressive author, political commentator, and Twitter enthusiast Kurt Alexander Eichenwald”

And

“So, true, I must like to watch hardcore hentai, wild X-rated Asian smut, revolting tentacle-rape porn!"

Who did he point it out to? Why, Kurt Eichenwald, of course. I like his style

Good Advice

Don't Follow Your Passion

Link goes to a Prager U video featuring Mike Rowe. Mike reports on his Facebook page that YouTube has shadowbanned this video from their site.

But, But, But....Australia!

Incredible footage shows armed fugitives open fire at cops on busy motorway https://t.co/Dt2V5pa3Nv pic.twitter.com/3EOR0kVrCh

— Daily Mirror (@DailyMirror) October 5, 2017

Following Las Vegas, the gun grabbers have been in full cry, often citing the Australian gun confiscation law as the model to follow. It's working great, eh?

Hazing

Death at a Penn State Fraternity

Article recounts the horrific details of a new brother who got so drunk at his initiation ceremony that he fell down the basement stairs. His brothers waited 12 hours to call 911 and he died. Inexcusable, and many of them are being prosecuted for it. Good. The thing is, I'm of two minds about hazing.

First of all, as far as I can tell, “hazing”, using the broad definition that commonly applied today, is a human constant. Every group that I can think of “hazes” new members. Fraternities “haze”. Sports teams “haze”. Boy Scouts “haze”. Military organizations “haze”. The reason is simple: “Hazing” creates an in-group bond. The problem is the nature of the hazing, and when it crosses the boundary into physical or mental harm. I was “hazed” when I joined my fraternity. Pledges had to run up and down a steep hill multiple times. A couple threw up. Roadblock tripped and rolled all the way down, yelling “I'm dead! I quit!” over and over. It was pretty damn funny. One night we had to stay up all night doing silly stuff, like going into the drainage tunnels under the campus without lights and killing Pennywise painting our letters on the wall at a certain spot. We were individually told one of our pledge class had failed, and asked if we wanted to move forward without him or stay back and pledge for another semester (test of group loyalty). There was no forced alcohol consumption (plenty of voluntary), no beatings or physical abuse, no psychological torture. All in all, utterly harmless.

But where is the line? The traditional black fraternities, man, they hazed the shit out of their pledges. Some of them branded them. I knew several brothers in one of them, and they were hugely proud of those brands, but I don't think that anyone could say that's not “physical harm”. Forced consumption of hard liquor can and does have deadly consequences. Physical and mental abuse can have lifelong effects.

How can this be solved? I don't know. But one of the most interesting things in the linked article, to me, is that one of the reason the brothers waited so long to summon help is that they were afraid of falling afoul of no tolerance anti-hazing rules. As I said, I believe that hazing is a human constant (like sex. Groups of men and women together are going to have sex. You can't prevent it). I don't believe that a solution will be found until that solution revolves around managing hazing rather than eliminating it.

Winning the Culture War

Jimmy Kimmel has been targeted by the conservative street artists Unsavory Agents:

As someone said, the amazing thing about Kimmel is that you can't even see Schumer's hand up his butt.

Timothy Tredwell Unavailable for Comment

Oh those wacky Canucks:

Edit mine, to avoid offending the more sensitive types, or those with any taste at all (what are you doing on the ONT anyway?) with lurid prose. Source is Instagram, but I don't have a link.

Real Communism Has Never Been Tried!

Bullshit. Our own Political Hat (and a professor) debunk the favorite talking point of the far left.

Yes, It Was Real Communism

Fevered Swamps

One of the worst things about the internet is that it allows delusional people to connect with others who share their delusions. One of the best things about the internet is that it allows them to display those fevered delusions for our amusement.

Proof FEMA Is Killing People Who Come to Them for “Disaster Relief”

And that about what an hour to write the ONT gets you. Tonight's ONT brought to you by birds:

Not so fast, says Drudge. Tonight's ONT brought to you by butterflies:

The Yahoo Group is singing “99 Luftballons”

Close it up

Millennial Invention: A Safe Space Where Pajama Boys Can Nap and Mediate at Work

—Ace

As one wag noted: "This is a tent. You invented a fucking tent."

Okay, now that is definitely dumb.

But can you answer me this -- why am I so mesmerized by the idea of a Zen Booth, which is just a phone booth with some sound insulation, which costs a fortune?

I dunno. But I want one.

I think it's just the name. Sometimes all you need is a good title.

Okay, so let's say I build a sound-insulated booth with, get this, some oxygen tanks on the back so you can oversaturate the oxygen in it.

And let's say I call it the OxyPod. Wait, no -- the OxyBox. No -- BOXYEGEN!!!

The thing would cost a bloody fortune (plus refilling oxygen tanks is expensive), but you think I could trick Silicon Valley WorkSpace Designers (or whatever they call themselves) into buying a few dozen?

Also, Boobs are in fashion as far as cable news controversy again.

They're never out of fashion, though, are they?

Also:

Open thread! Happy Thursday night!

Harvey Weinstein, Continued

—Ace

I've been delaying this because there's a lot of stuff coming out and I had wanted to put it into some kind of coherent narrative.

But I can't think of a coherent narrative, and I need to put this up, so I'm just going to link stuff.

The Allegations

Ashley Judd in 2015 complained of a major studio exec making various "grooming" attempts on her and then asking her if she would watch him shower.

This article dates from before any public accusations were made against Weinstein.

The ultimate thing when I was weaseling out of everything else was, "Will you watch me take a shower?" And all the other women, sitting around this table with me, said, "Oh my god--that's what he said to me too."

The New York Times says several women complained of similar maneuverings:

In interviews, eight women described varying behavior by Mr. Weinstein: appearing nearly or fully naked in front of them, requiring them to be present while he bathed or repeatedly asking for a massage or initiating one himself. The women, typically in their early or middle 20s and hoping to get a toehold in the film industry, said he could switch course quickly -- meetings and clipboards one moment, intimate comments the next. One woman advised a peer to wear a parka when summoned for duty as a layer of protection against unwelcome advances.

Rose McGowan reached an out-of-court settlement with Weinstein for $100,000. She declined to comment for the Times story. I imagine the settlement requires silence on her part.

Today, though, she tweeted this:

The Media Cover-Up and Liberal Bias

From the New York Times piece, Weinstein was untouchable partly because of his Nice Guy Greg liberal posturing:

During that time, after being confronted with allegations including sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact, Mr. Weinstein has reached at least eight settlements with women, according to two company officials speaking on the condition of anonymity. Among the recipients, The Times found, were a young assistant in New York in 1990, an actress in 1997, an assistant in London in 1998, an Italian model in 2015 and Ms. O’Connor shortly after, according to records and those familiar with the agreements....

In 2015, the year Ms. O'Connor wrote her memo [describing a "toxic atmosphere" for women in the company[, his company distributed “The Hunting Ground,” a documentary about campus sexual assault. A longtime Democratic donor, he hosted a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton in his Manhattan home last year. He employed Malia Obama, the oldest daughter of former President Barack Obama, as an intern this year, and recently helped endow a faculty chair at Rutgers University in Gloria Steinem’s name. During the Sundance Film Festival in January, when Park City, Utah, held its version of nationwide women’s marches, Mr. Weinstein joined the parade.

Didn't people in the media know, given that Weinstein was, you know, a notorious figure in the media?

CNN really rakes him over the coals by declaring... "it's complicated"??!!

And let's not forget -- this is being described as an ages-old "open secret" that everyone knew about.

So what's with all the Democrats sucking him off for donations?

Remember Lisa Bloom? Well, she was shootin'-mad about Trump's pussy-grabbing comments and the various accusers who suddenly accused him in peak election cycle.

So I guess it's no surprise that she's representing some of Harvey Weinstein's accusers.

Wait a minute -- I mean she's representing Harvey Weinstein himself and defending him, offering up the same "dinosaur in an age of mammals" bullshit he did.

See, she talked with him. Had a real good "rap session" with him, as the kids said back in 1994:

I wonder if this has anything to do with anything else:

The Possiblity of Collateral Damage:

Did Harvey Weinstein do this while his company was owned by Disney? And will they now be on the hook for additional lawsuits?

The unsubstantiated rumors of Weinstein pawing women have swirled for decades. What will be worth watching now is whether this story starts an avalanche of other women telling similar stories after long swallowing shameful approaches. That is what happened in the cases of Ailes, Bill Cosby, O’Reilly and most recently the geek film blogger Harry Knowles. All were banished. Since the sexual harassment allegations listed by The New York Times go back decades, that covers the period when Miramax was owned by Disney under Michael Eisner. There might also be scrutiny of what that corporation did, whether Disney was aware of this pattern of behavior and how it was handled.

The Denial, the Defense, the Lawsuits, and the PR Pushback

Harvey Weinstein plays the Liberal in Good Standing Card, aka The Joss Whedon Chewbacca Defense, and says that he's stepping aside from his company, but will appease liberals by working full-time against The Real Villains Here, the NRA:

Well, he won't quite be working full-time against the NRA -- he'll also be suing the New York Times. But don't worry, he's playing the Nice Guy Greg Defense there too -- he says that should he prevail in his lawsuit, he'll donate all monies awarded to "women's organizations."

He's suing for $50 million, according to "sources."

Weinstein has hired Charles J. Harder — the LA attorney who brought down Gawker after winning a $140 million verdict for Hulk Hogan after the site posted a sex tape — to go after the Times, which posted its blistering exposé on the Oscar-winning Hollywood mogul Thursday.

Harder said in a statement on behalf of Weinstein, exclusively given to Page Six, “The New York Times published today a story that is saturated with false and defamatory statements about Harvey Weinstein. It relies on mostly hearsay accounts and a faulty report, apparently stolen from an employee personnel file, which has been debunked by 9 different eyewitnesses. We sent the Times the facts and evidence, but they ignored it and rushed to publish. We are preparing the lawsuit now. All proceeds will be donated to women’s organizations.”

$50 million buys almost 100 Hillary Clinton speeches, so that's real money.

West Point Was Warned About Its Marxist Infiltrator's Anti-America Bile Before Graduation; Graduated Him Anyway

—Ace

Obama's Army.

Here's one senior officer's report on him, expressing his vehement objection to permitting this Marxist infiltrator to lead American troops.

Link Fixed.

NRA Calls for ATF To Consider New Regulation on Bump Stocks

—Ace

Kinda predictable.

The National Rifle Association, in its first statement on the Las Vegas shooting and in a rare break from its traditional opposition to gun-related regulations, called Thursday for a federal review of so-called bump stocks and suggested new rules might be needed for the device apparently used by the shooter in Sunday’s massacre.

"The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations," the NRA said in a written statement....

The Obama administration’s ATF gave its seal of approval to selling the devices in 2010 after concluding that they did not violate federal law. On Thursday, the NRA called on the ATF to review that assessment.

"In Las Vegas, reports indicate that certain devices were used to modify the firearms involved," the NRA said. "Despite the fact that the Obama administration approved the sale of bump fire stocks on at least two occasions, the National Rifle Association is calling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law."

Interestingly, they don't call for a new law to ban or regulate these items, and it has to be remembered that Obama's ATF examined whether existing federal law gave them the power to regulate bump stocks, and they decided it didn't.

If the ATF under Obama found that its pen and phone authority did not reach that far, well then, by golly, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say their authority actually does not reach that far.

I don't see what principled reason could cause a deviation from that first finding -- either the law empowered the federal agency to make a rule in this area, or it didn't. A new fact (There was a massacre) and a new political input (the NRA's okay with it) should not change the more important fact that the law does not grant the administrative agency rule-making power in this area.

So is this a fake-out? Or does the NRA fear a new rule less than a new law (which, presumably, could be read to grant other powers of regulation, by unscrupulous progressive bureaucrats (which is to say, almost all of them))?

Awans' Lawyer: Our Clients Were Ordered to Falsify Records by Democratic Congressmen

—Ace

How does Luke Rozniak keep scooping the MSM on these stories?

Oh right, he's actually covering them instead of covering them up.

House Democrats ordered the systematic falsification of records showing how they spend their taxpayer-provided office budgets, according to lawyers for two former House information technology (IT) aides.

It's a remarkable accusation that pits sitting lawmakers against the former aides, Imran Awan, his brothers Abid and Jamal, and his wife Hina Alvi....

One of Imran’s lawyers, Aaron Page, acknowledged the invoicing discrepancy Aug. 21, telling The Daily Caller News Foundation, "This is just how things have been done for forever. This is what experienced members of Congress expect: to expedite things, they adjust the pricing."

If members or senior staff instructed IT aides to misrepresent how budgets were spent, that could potentially explain why officials have not charged the Awans with crimes related to procurement, even a full year after House authorities gathered documentation showing invoices that claimed expensive technological items cost $499 instead of their true price: potentially an open-and-shut violation.

"The only reason you’re not seeing charges is because the Democrats who employed him are not cooperating," a senior Republican congressional official with direct knowledge of the probe told TheDCNF last month.

Harvey Weinstein About to be Socked With Sexual Harassment Claims

—Ace

This guy? A sexual harasser?

I just don't see it.

Story at Variety.

Harvey Weinstein has hired a high-powered team of attorneys to push back on soon-to-be-published bombshell stories from the New York Times and the New Yorker detailing sexual allegations and improper workplace behavior against him. Some women making the charges are believed to be on-the-record.

Weinstein has retained star litigator David Boies, as well as attorneys Lisa Bloom and Charles Harder in an effort to rebut the claims. Jodi Kantor, an investigative reporter who wrote about harsh working conditions at Amazon, is working on the story for the Times, along with Megan Twohey. Ronan Farrow, the former MSNBC host, is doing the story for the New Yorker, according to multiple individuals with knowledge of the situation. One individual said Farrow had shopped the story for awhile including to NBC.

In a brief interview on Wednesday, Weinstein declined to comment on the charges.

He's also said to be hiring Lanny Davis to craft a PR defense. David Boies was Gore's lawyer in the 2000 recount.

They stick together, don't they?

The Morning Rant

—OregonMuse

"Why is the FBI always so quick to say there's 'no evidence' that a shooter had connections to Islamic terrorism? And why is there never 'no evidence' that he was a right wing Tea Party militia guy wearing a MAGA hat? That's a question that they always seem to leave open."

Good point, often overlooked:

Well, yeah.

Conservative media: I'd rather be free than safe. https://t.co/3ebA4wDMoo pic.twitter.com/9CrFrZ0ejW

— Slate (@Slate) October 4, 2017

I think this illustrates one of the basic divides between progressives and conservatives, and actually serves as a good litmus test, to wit: if you believe safety ought to be valued more than freedom, you're either a progressive or you will, over time, slowly gravitate toward the progressive end of the political spectrum. If you favor freedom over safety, you're a conservative, or you will trend in that direction. And oh, by the way, you can't have both, not at the same time. I have to say this because I know there are difference-splitters who think they can dodge the dilemma by claiming to value both. But both can't be equally important. Ultimately, the more you have of the one, the less you must necessarily have of the other.

Let's check in with Matthew Dowd (Finalist: Dumbest Man on the Internet, 2015, 2016, 2017) and see if he's taken any basic history lessons:

2nd amendment was all about having a militia available to protect the government from threat foreign or domestic w/out a standing army.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) October 4, 2017

Apparently not. He still remains as pig-ignorant as ever. He has got everything as twisted-around backwards as Hillary Clinton, who thinks the novel '1984' is about how we need to believe what the government tells us.

Remember yesterday when I said that pro-abortion extremists were sounding increasingly shrill and hysterical?

The expression on her face is a combination of unhinged fanaticism and despair. Her side is losing, and she knows it.

So this is what Keith Olbermann is doing now. He's vandalizing other people's tweets like a grubby little a 5-year-old boy with a crayon:

Good heavenly days, is there a more pathetic media figure than Keith Olbermann?

Close it up

Mid-Morning Open Thread

—CBD

He was a minor artist, but this piece stood out. It's not particularly subtle, but there is something quite appealing about it.

I had a conversation (with a Moron!) yesterday that echoed in my mind. As a free people, what can we do to minimize the chaos inherent in freedom? The answer is: not much. The concept of the perfectibility of Man is laughable, so the only thing left is the iron fist of government, and that was rejected 240 years ago by some very smart people.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

The Morning Report 10/5/17

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. As we head into Thursday, bits and pieces of the motive for the Las Vegas massacre are starting to trickle out. The sheriff has openly suggested that there may have been more than just one shooter, the girlfriend has claimed she has no idea that he was going to do what he did and supposedly he targeted the aviation fuel tanks that were adjacent to the concert grounds. You'll be happy to know that our fearless media has uncovered the motive: the shooter was white.

Of course, the grandstanding hacks and moral midgets in DC are going for the guns; most shockingly (or not, really, when you think about it) some in the GOP are going wobbly as well. What-the-actual-F**K; I mean, here we are, with majorities in both houses and holding the Oval Office, a political third rail to end all third rails, science, statistics, reason, history, the friggin' US Constitution and 200 million legal, responsible gun owners to back us up and McYertle meat-puppet John Cornyn is stuttering and muttering about a possible bump-stock ban. For the love of all that is righteous and good, will no one who is putatively on our side in the Senate or Congress rise and shut these tyrants up once and for all? You've sold us out on healthcare, the budget, prosecuting the IRS and other bureaucratic tyrants and laughing at us while you do it. But on the Second Amendment, is it too much to ask to reject the propaganda and fight?! I guess it is.

There is other news. In brief, and just as maddening, some sea-slug with the intellectual agility of a soap dish named Richard Burr, who heads the Senate committee investigating the Russia collusion hoax declared that despite the lack of any sort of evidence, they're still going to investigate Russian collusion. Senator, please understand that the entire investigation is based on a fabricated dossier. Spurious, phony, fake, fraudulent, made up. And still, you persisted.

Well at least we have Lindsay Graham and Dick Durbin cuddling and cooing together and ready to push for the return of the full DREAM Act. And we can also cheer on our betters in Congress because for the 60th straight year, the national debt has increased!

On a sad note, we also note the deaths of three special forces soldiers who were ambushed while on ops in Niger. Sadly, your lives were sacrificed for the likes of Colin Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter who would have no qualms about defecating on your graves.

Lastly, this is a few days old but I felt compelled to include it; two hideous degenerates from Massachusetts, disguised as Congressmen, Katherine Clark and Seth Moulton did not respect the moment of silence in the House for the victims of the Las Vegas massacre. Instead of trying to describe the flavor of my bile as it rises in my throat, it will be noted that this Moulton bastard has aspirations for the Democrat nomination in 2020. The ads will write themselves, and let's just leave it at that before I have to ban-hammer myself.

Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.

• Vegas Sheriff: Shooter Did Not Act Alone, May Have Planned Massacre Over Long Period...
  
• ...May Have Targeted Aviation Fuel Storage Tanks Adjacent to Festival Grounds
  
• PDT Comforts Survivors, America "A Nation In Mourning"
  
• Greenfield: "Truck Control," "It Only Happens Here" and Other Gun Control Myths
  
• Cornyn Caving? Wants Hearing on Bump Stocks...
  
• ...Gun Shops Brace for Run on Bump Stocks
  
• US Special Forces Killed, Wounded in Niger Ambush
  
• Whoa: West Point Knew All About Commie Cadet Two Years Ago, Reported for Anti-American Posts
  
• Of Course: Grahamaphrodite, Durtbin Renew Push for DREAM Act
  
• Richard-Burr-Is-An-Asshole Dept.: "Issue of Collusion Still Open"
  
• Thank You, Leviathan! U.S. Debt Increases for 60th Straight Fiscal Year
  
• Cruz, Lee Warn PDT Not to Tap Hillary Aide Tied to Benghazi as Next Ambassador to Colombia
  
• Cruz Calls on Senate to Take Up 20-Week Abortion Ban
  
• Reap-the-Whirlwind Dept.: BLM Shuts Down ACLU Event at William & Mary
  
• Getting Set to Nuke the Iran Nuke Deal
  
• Snoozy McSnoozerson's DoJ Still Hell Bent on Helping Mosques
  
• Don't Tell the Left: More Guns Means Fewer Homicides
  
• Vile: Two Democrats Boycott Moment of Silence for Vegas Victims

Wednesday Overnight Open Thread (10/4/17)

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Quote I

No bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man: as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy and hatred, and hence there cannot be a society which does not have to employ coercive restraint. Leo Strauss

Quote II

The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed. Robert A. Heinlein

Quote III

Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

We have some special people in the Armed Forces. Amputee plans on rejoining the Air Force.

When August O’Niell, a member of an elite special forces group, woke up from routine surgery, it only took one look at his mother’s face to tell something went horribly wrong.

She was with the doctor. “Are you awake? Are you able to talk now?” the doctor asked. “I have woken you up halfway through the surgery. There was so much scar tissue …”

O’Niell had already endured 19 grueling surgeries in the three-and-a-half years since a rifle round mangled his leg while he was on deployment in Afghanistan. He woke up hoping this 20th surgery would finally allow him to have a functional knee. But he quickly learned his left leg would never fully function again.

*****

And the winner of the "You got to be shitting me" award goes to: The IRS!

The IRS will pay Equifax $7.25 million to verify taxpayer identities and help prevent fraud under a no-bid contract issued last week, even as lawmakers lash the embattled company about a massive security breach that exposed personal information of as many as 145.5 million Americans.

A contract award for Equifax's data services was posted to the Federal Business Opportunities database Sept. 30 — the final day of the fiscal year. The credit agency will "verify taxpayer identity" and "assist in ongoing identity verification and validations" at the IRS, according to the award.

Good grief!!

*****

Not quite the Thrilla In Manila The Geezers at Caesars.

Fresh on the heels of Mayweather vs. McGregor, there could be another superfight on the horizon. You asked for it (probably not) but it's coming (probably not) ...I hope you all are ready for George Foreman vs. Steven Seagal.
Foreman -- the former two-time heavyweight championship boxer and guy responsible for the grill that burned Michael Scott's foot -- took to Twitter on Monday to challenge Seagal, the martial arts movie star, to a fight.

*****

Remember when the NFL Players Association sued the NFL for player concussion and related brain injuries?

Given a chance to do the right thing and take his punishment like a man, Chicago Bear Danny Trevathan appeals his cheap shot to the head of an opponent.

Bears linebacker Danny Trevathan had his suspension for an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit reduced to one game through an appeal Tuesday, the NFL announced on Twitter.

Trevathan originally was suspended two games by the NFL on Saturday for his hit on Packers wide receiver Davante Adams, which the league said violated a rule against unnecessary roughness, including “using any part of a player’s helmet or facemask to butt, spear, or ram an opponent violently or unnecessarily.”

Kneel during the National Anthem. Appeal the punishment for a shot to the head after you have sued for shots to the head.

*****

Kurt Schlichter looks at our Military. It is in poor shape thanks to President JEF President Faily McWorsethancarter

After nearly a decade under President Faily McWorsethancarter, can our military win a fight with North Korea? Because if it is unable to perform the basic task of ensuring that the people commissioned to lead our troops in the defense of the United States are actually loyal to the United States, how the hell can we reasonably expect it to be able to conduct high-intensity combat operations against a Nork Army that prioritizes fighting over political correctness?

We can’t.

*****

The Left, worse than a flock of vultures.

The dead weren’t even finished dying in Las Vegas before the left swooped down to feed on gun control politics.

So rather than allow even one day to reflect and mourn, rather than allow us to consider the heroism of the survivors and first responders in that Las Vegas nightmare, politics saw an opportunity and took it immediately.

..................

Yet even when the preliminary count of the dead was still in the 20s, as loved ones desperately tried to find the missing, listening to the terrible sound of cellphones ringing with no answer, the politicians made their moves.

Hillary Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, pundits by the deplorable basketful and others seized the moment to press for advantage.

An interesting and excellent article by John Kass of The Chicago Tribune.

*****

He's too f*cking stupid to be a senator. Just think, he came damn close to be being the Vice President.

Senator Tim Kaine repeats his former running mate Hillary Clinton’s post-Mandaly Bay shooting anti-silencer rhetoric. According to the Virginia Democrat, silencer deregulation should be spiked because killer Stephen Paddock “was only stopped because he didn’t have a silencer on his firearm, and the sound drew people to the place where he was ultimately stopped.”

*****

IFAK (Individual First Aid Kit) Can you save your life let alone a loved one's life.

This is in no way a tutorial or a substitute for professional medical instruction. As such you will only find recommended items. It is up to you to decide what items you choose to place in your IFAK/FAK and attaining the proper training in their use. This is merely an intro into basic first aid and basic trauma first aid items one would find in an IFAK/FAK.

*****

The ONT Musical Interlude

October 4, 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival started a four week run at No.1 on the US album chart with 'Green River', the group's first US chart topper. via thisdayinmusic.com

***

October 4, 1978, Country singer Tammy Wynette was abducted, beaten and held in her car for two hours by a kidnapper wearing a ski mask. He held a gun on her and forced her to drive 90 miles from Nashville, Tennessee. She was later released and the kidnapper escaped. via thisdayinmusic.com

*****

Government run health control. It's all about control of the patient.

The bad news just keeps coming out of England with respect to the state of the National Health Service (NHS) and its rapidly eroding quality of care. Most recently, Professor Ted Baker-- the new chief hospital inspector-- declared it was “not fit for the 21st century.”

His first interview revealed his sense of urgency regarding the need to reverse the so-called “normalization” of “wholly unsatisfactory” treatment that endangers patients and guard against unacceptable and unsafe practices of “piling patients into corridors” that lack staffing for sufficient oversight as well as undermine patient privacy and dignity. He further cites a lack of proper monitoring and basic oxygen or requisite supplies.

Continuing along the lines of Single Payer, Majority of doctors support single payer. Wonder if they will agree when the Feds control and set their wages.

Every Democrat president since FDR (except JFK and possibly Jimmy Carter) has spoken in favor of or introduced a plan for socialized medicine. Now, it finally appears that a critical mass has been achieved and the Rubicon has been crossed.

A Quinnipiac University national poll on August 3, 2017 reported “Replacing the current health care system with a single payer system in which Medicare covers every American citizen is a good idea, voters say 51-38 percent.” This reported majority support for single-payer reflects recent samplings of public opinion by Pew Research and other polling organizations. Citing a September 28, 2017 Quinnipiac survey, a CNN article on September 30, “Majority of Democratic voters are all-in on single-payer,”

*****

Camille Paglia on the life and times of Hugh Hefner.

Have you ever been to a party at the Playboy Mansion?

No, I'm not a partygoer! (Laughs.)

So let me just ask: Was Hugh Hefner a misogynist?

Absolutely not! The central theme of my wing of pro-sex feminism is that all celebrations of the sexual human body are positive. Second-wave feminism went off the rails when it was totally unable to deal with erotic imagery, which has been a central feature of the entire history of Western art ever since Greek nudes.

*****

Obviously, Rapper Lil B doesn't live in "The Hood". White people to blame for gun violence.

On Monday, only hours after the horrific massacre in Las Vegas, Rapper Lil B decided to execute a racist hit-and-run on Twitter, slamming whites in a race-based series of tweets, accusing “white people” of being the “reason why guns are a problem.”

Talking about dangerous neighborhoods, The 15 most dangerous neighborhoods in America.

*****

As they take a knee, perhaps they should stop taking loans from us oppressors.

A pair of student groups at Kent State University, the Student Power Coalition (S.P.C.) and World of Kolored Empowerment (W.O.K.E.), staged a protest Thursday to support NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem.

The S.P.C is an umbrella coalition group for multiple student organizations that claims to “express and practically demonstrate our solidarity with students across the country and across the world who struggle for a better future and against oppression of all kinds."

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As a child, did your Mom ever use Vick's VapoRub on you? Eleven weird uses for Vicks.

Vicks VapoRub is a medicine cabinet staple in just about everyone’s home. It’s designed to be used on the chest to relieve congestion caused by cold and flu symptoms, but there’s more to it than that.

Once your chest cold is gone, there’s actually a whole host of things you can do with that leftover VapoRub. From bug repellant to muscle pain, that handy gel can help you with all sorts of common issues!

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Dirty humor There might be a photo or two that will make you smirk.

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Shit happens. And it's costly to the tune of almost a $1,000,000 per day. Utah 911 for the hearing impaired down for a few days.

For nearly three days, deaf people and residents with vocal disabilities in Utah were unable to place 911 video calls in the event of an emergency. That’s because a Utah telecommunications firm didn’t renew a domain name.

According to the Federal Communications Commission, Sorenson Communications neglected to renew the domain connected to its video relay service, which provides individuals with hearing and vocal disabilities an accessible way to reach 911 through sign language. The service shut down on June 6th, 2016 because of the screw-up. It was brought back on June 8th.

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Asplundh, large tree trimming company fined big bucks. Seems they hired and rehired illegal immigrants.

The tree-trimming company Asplundh Tree Expert has been hit with a $95 million fine for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and for bringing on some under different names who used documents it knew were fraudulent.

It is the largest fine ever in an immigration case in the U.S.

Asplundh pleaded guilty to criminal charges in federal court in Pennsylvania, where it is headquartered, admitting that its managers restructured the company's hiring specifically to evade normal human resources processes and hire illegal aliens, many by word-of-mouth, while giving top-level managers deniability.

If you want to stop illegal immigration, this is a start.

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If this Pontiac Grand Am is a rockin' don't come a knockin' unless you give us a Genius Award.

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Marine proud. Tonight's Feel Good Story of The Day.

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Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by The Obvious.

Notice: Posted with permission by AceCorp, LLC. Warning: Keep away from small children and pets.

Close it up

538 Statistician: "I Used to Think Gun Control Was the Answer. My Research Told Me Otherwise."

—Ace

America's Garbage Pile newspaper, the Washington Post, only lets you view a few of their dreck stories every month. Which is fine, because there are so few worth reading.

However, this is a new month, and you probably have a few free reads to your credit. If so, use one to read the only worthwhile story they're likely to publish this month.

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America's policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.

When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an "assault weapon." It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.

As for silencers -- they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.

As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference.

She talks about some "interventions" she think could work. For example: 2/3rds of all gun deaths are actually suicides; if you want to reduce suicide by guns, you should just increase suicide prevention efforts.

Another large swath of gun deaths are to young males involved in street crime. If you want to reduce that, you beef up programs to reduce street crime and intervene with at-risk youth and you identify gangsters and you target them for gun-checks. Or that kind of thing.

What progressives mean when they talk about "common sense gun safety laws" is simple widespread gun confiscation. They claim they don't want that, and yet, every time this issue comes up, they point to Australian and Britain as models of what we should do -- countries in which there was a state-enforced near-complete involuntary disarmament of the population.

So which is it, progs? Do you want full-on confiscation or not?

Marco Rubio: The West Point Communist Infiltrator Should Pay the US Government Back His Tuition

—Ace

This is not, I think, any kind of extraordinary demand -- a West Point education is an expensive one, a top-level Ivy-equivalent one, and you get it (and room and board and books and even a stipend, I think) for free, well, free with one big caveat:

You have to serve your country as an officer for a number of years to pay back the elite-level education you just got.

Now, if you voluntarily make yourself ineligible to perform that duty -- by, say, violating army rules by making political statement in uniform, like announcing "Communism Will Win" and wearing t-shirts celebrating communist terrorist killer Che Guevera, and by promoting armed domestic terrorist groups like antifa -- then, my friend, you owe the United States government the money it spent to (fail to) educate your communist ass.

So Rubio's not making an outrageous demand here -- I believe this is standard for those cadets who choose to make themselves unavailable to repay their college debt.

"I respectfully request the United States Army immediately nullify Rapone's commission and pursue all available disciplinary options under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Rapone should be required to pay back in full the cost of his education and the United States Military Academy should consider revoking his degree," Rubio wrote.

The senator referenced Rapone's robust social media presence posting photos of communist propaganda while in his Academy uniform, and other posts expressing his desire to foment a communist revolution.

Rapone at different points on social media denigrated Secretary of Defense James Mattis as an "evil, vile f***," and called convicted leaker Army Pfc. Chelsea Manning an inspiration.

"This clearly violates multiple Army regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice," Rubio's letter noted.

On that, I also have to link Colonel Schlicher's thoughts about this infiltrator -- and the hideous state of the armed forces after eight years of remorseless Obamization.

After nearly a decade under President Faily McWorsethancarter, can our military win a fight with North Korea? Because if it is unable to perform the basic task of ensuring that the people commissioned to lead our troops in the defense of the United States are actually loyal to the United States, how the hell can we reasonably expect it to be able to conduct high-intensity combat operations against a Nork Army that prioritizes fighting over political correctness?

We can't.

I don’t enjoy saying that -- it gives me no pleasure to have to wonder whether the Army I served in both in active and reserve status for close to 28 years is broken. And it's not just the Army. The Marines and the Special Ops community, well, they seem to be holding on to the standards the rest have forgotten, but the Navy and the Air Force -- they're broken too. Our military -- in terms of strategy, equipment, and leadership, is in crisis. American troops will die if we don't fix it.

Hell, they already have.

We have a Navy that can’t even sail its few remaining ships without running into giant cargo vessels. I come from a Navy family. You should call my dad, the retired lieutenant commander, and ask him what he thinks about the Navy’s current level of seamanship. It will not be a happy chat.

It is, in fact, a disgrace. Our sailors, the precious young men and women we commissioned officers are charged with leading and protecting, are dying because our officer corps tolerates incompetence. One collision is an accident. Two is a lifestyle.

And yeah, they’ve fired some admirals, and that’s a good start, but the problem is a cultural rot, not just one 'ed-up command. The Navy focused on things besides its mission -- "to maintain, train and equip combat-ready Naval forces capable of winning wars, deterring aggression and maintaining freedom of the seas" -- and in the last few months that misplaced focus has killed 17 sailors and taken two major vessels out of action in the Western Pacific at the very moment we are on the edge of war.

Did you know several senior Navy officers are being or have been charged for corruption? Corruption. Graft. Bribes. Hookers. Senior leaders, and they’re scumbugs -- criminal scumbags. But hey, the Army has its problems too. General Petraeus…sheesh, what a punch in the gut it was to see him use the Army values as a latrine. Then there was the 82nd Airborne general court martialed for using his billet to build himself a sex harem. And how about the colonel who played games with contracts and ditched his wife to marry an Iraqi chick -- the Army was so upset he got a reprimand and to keep his pension. No jail time.

Let me say that again. No jail time. Yeah, that would totally have happened to a sergeant who did the same thing, according to several high-ranking unicorns in the Judge Advocate Office.

Want to know what [else] generals and admirals don’t get in trouble for? Failing to win wars.

The military senior leadership has turned into a fraternity, where they cover up for each other and make sure everyone graduates with a gentleman’s "C". And it’s not even a fun fraternity -- the senior leadership is painfully politically correct, parroting all the right buzzwords and receive wisdom of our failed ruling caste.

I'm sure it's dawned on you, as it's also probably dawned on Colonel Schlichter, that this was always the plan.