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Strange Daze


Our eternal theme song for Strange Daze

You don’t even have to click to know, do you?: Two people are stabbed in brawl at California hotel near Disneyland that involved 100 people

Fussel on the Bomb PDF When the atom bomb ended the war, I was in the Forty-fifth Infantry Division, which had been through the European war so thoroughly that it had needed to be reconstituted two or three times.

We were in a staging area near Rheims, ready to be shipped back across the United States for refresher training at Fort Lewis, Washington, and then sent on for final preparation in the Philippines. My division, like most of the ones transferred from Europe, was to take part in the invasion of Honshu. (The earlier landing on Kyushu was to be carried out by the 700,000 infantry already in the Pacific, those with whom James Jones has sympathized.) I was a twenty-one-year-old second lieutenant of infantry leading a rifle platoon. Although still officially fit for combat, in the German war I had already been wounded in the back and the leg badly enough to be adjudged, after the war, 40 percent disabled. But even if my leg buckled and I fell to the ground whenever I jumped out of the back of a truck, and even if the very idea of more combat made me breathe in gasps and shake all over, my condition was held to be adequate for the next act. When the atom bombs were dropped and news began to circulate that “Operation Olympic” would not, after all, be necessary, when we learned -9- to our astonishment that we would not be obliged in a few months to rush up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being machine-gunned, mortared, and shelled, for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live. We were going to grow to adulthood after all. The killing was all going to be over, and peace was actually going to be the state of things.

When the Enola Gay dropped its package, “There were cheers,” says John Toland, “over the intercom; it meant the end of the war.” Down on the ground the reaction of Sledge’s marine buddies when they heard the news was more solemn and complicated. They heard about the end of the war with quiet disbelief coupled with an indescribable sense of relief. We thought the Japanese would never surrender. Many refused to believe it. . . . Sitting in stunned silence, we remembered our dead. So many dead. So many maimed. So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past. So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us. Except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy, the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war.

 

Who Killed George Floyd? | In the death of George Floyd, the State of Minnesota has charged former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin with second-degree murder and former officers Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao with aiding and abetting that murder. But, as will be shown in detail below, the physical, scientific, and electronically recorded evidence in the case overwhelmingly and conclusively proves that these defendants are not guilty of the charges and, in fact, played no material role in bringing about Floyd’s death.

Instead, the evidence proves that, when he first encountered the police, George Floyd was well on his way to dying from a self-administered drug overdose. Moreover, far from publicly, brazenly, and against their own self-interest slowly and sadistically killing Floyd in broad daylight before civilian witnesses with video cameras, the evidence proves that the defendants exhibited concern for Floyd’s condition and twice called for emergency medical services to render aid to him. Strange behavior, indeed, for supposedly brutal law officers allegedly intent on causing him harm.

Similarly, the evidence recorded by the body cameras worn by the police conclusively establishes that Floyd repeatedly complained that he couldn’t breathebeforethe police restrained him on the ground. As documented by Floyd’s autopsy and toxicology reports, his breathing difficulty was caused not by a knee on his neck or pressure on his back, but by the fact that he had in his bloodstream overthree timesthe potentially lethal limit of fentanyl, a powerful and dangerous pain medication known to shut down the respiratory system and cause coma and death. He also had in his system a lesser dose of methamphetamine, which can cause paranoia, respiratory distress, coma, and death.

Beyond those findings, his autopsy disclosed no physical injuries that could in any way account for his demise.

PIERS MORGAN: Hollywood’s self-censorship to appease the Beijing is shameful  I don’t want to hear any more actors bang on about the importance of ‘speaking truth to power’, ‘free speech’ and ‘tolerance’ if they’re not prepared to say it about China with the same enthusiasm that they say it about Trump.

And I particularly don’t want to hear their whining about Trump’s damage to democracy if they’ve appeared in any of the movies censored by Beijing’s bullies. Let’s be very clear: China makes Trump look woke. It is time woke Hollywood hypocrites woke up, stopped grovelling to censoring communists, and put free speech above commercial greed.

Oprah Selling White Guilt And Pushing White Privilege. Yes, she be. White privilege ain’t got nuthin’ on black privilege. Black privilege means blacks can hate whites out loud. Call for their babies to be killed. Blame whites for every stupid thing the blacks do that harm themselves. It’s a great and profitable time in America to be black. That battered white child whose white parents beat and starve him? Moneybags Winfrey says, “You still got your white skin.” Yeah. Cold comfort, that is.

Ancient Ceremonial Ruins of Mysterious “Cloud People” Found on Mexican Mountaintop

Archaeologists Locate Earliest Known North American Settlement

SURPRISE SURPRISE! A Queer Indigenous Professor Who Died of COVID-19 Didn’t Actually Exist

Libertarian candidate scraps rally appearance after being bitten by bat   “I will not be able to attend the campaign rally tomorrow morning. I will be getting a rabies vaccine as a precaution after having been bitten by a bat near the start of this campaign tour,” Jorgensen tweeted Friday.

Don Surber: Veepstakes show Biden is too weak to be elected If Biden is 10 points (or whatever) ahead, why would the veep matter? I mean other than he is too decrepit to actually serve as president. And that is the reason the veep matters. And that is trouble with a capital T, which rhymes with D, which stands for dementia.

Portland Police Chief Slams Violence At Riots “Last night’s violence by rioters at our east precinct was incomprehensible,” Lovell said at a virtual press conference on Thursday. “We have people who are intentionally planning to go out and attack precincts, trap people inside, [and] set fires to these buildings.” Lovell continued, “We have nightly violence where officers get mortars thrown at them, rocks, commercial grade fireworks, and these senseless attempts to injure officers and destroy police facilities [are] reprehensible and [they] need to stop.”

NYC moms fleeing Upper West Side amid crime and chaos Crimes committed over the past several days would’ve been unheard of a year ago in the quiet neighborhood that’s home to Lincoln Center and restaurants by Daniel Boulud. A 40-year-old woman was randomly stabbed in the 72nd Street subway station at noon on Thursday; a 56-year-old man was sucker-punched while dining outdoors with his wife Wednesday night; photos were posted online of a man masturbating on the steps of the New York Historical Society; and onlookers witnessed an apparent overdose in the aisle of a Duane Reade across the street from the Lucerne Hotel.

The Lucerne, on 79th Street and Amsterdam, and Hotel Belleclaire, on 76th Street and Broadway, were recently converted into homeless shelters, with nearly 300 vagrants between them. Ten of the men are registered sex offenders, including convicted rapists, child molesters and child-porn possessors — all living a block away from a school playground.

Bloody brawl breaks out after woman throws coffee in man’s face for not wearing mask “She decided to slam her coffee into my head and that’s when I decided to get up and beat up her boyfriend,” Roy said.

Never has a virus been so oversold | Boris’s ‘nuclear option’ of another total national lockdown remains on the table. Why on earth? The one constructive conclusion to draw from this debacle is that long, indiscriminate national lockdowns to suppress infectious disease are a catastrophe. Yet the most horrifying consequence of COVID-19 could be that lockdown — which once applied only to prisons — becomes officialdom’s established knee-jerk response to any new contagion.

There will be a new contagion, too, and a new one after that. How many times can you send the national debt soaring, devastate small business, paralyze government services — including healthcare — and cancel for months on end the civil liberties of an erstwhile ‘free people’? In preference to this repeated carpet-bombing, a literal nuclear option might at least get the agony over with fast.

Naturally, I’ve also contracted flu and colds throughout my life, and I’ve been resigned to the fact that these disagreeable ailments were due to contact with other people. Abstractly, I’ve known that other people could also infect me with more deadly pathogens: whooping cough, meningitis and TB to name but a few. Yet hitherto it’s never occurred to me that I should therefore wrap myself in cling film, tie a sanitary towel across my face and lock myself in a cupboard.

In a recent Kekst CNC poll, British respondents estimated that nearly 7 percent of the UK population has died from the coronavirus. That would be 4.5 million people. Scots supposed that more than 10 percent of the UK population has died. That would be seven million people. Astonishingly, Americans believed that COVID has killed nine percent of their compatriots, or almost 30 million people! The real US total has indeed crossed the milestone of 150,000, but for pity’s sake, ‘only’ 20 million people died in World War One.

True, your average everyman and woman are not dab hands at statistics. Nevertheless, broadcast news has bludgeoned audiences daily with COVID death totals. And a citizenry ought to have some vague notion of their country’s population. So folks convinced that in five meagre months they’ve lost a tenth of their fellows — the literal meaning of the word ‘decimate’ — need only drop a digit to realize how absurdly their bloated estimate compares with familiar figures on the news. But then, the public is never good with zeroes — a failing which treasuries in deficit count on.

Donald Trump to Suspend Payroll Tax Until End of 2020 President Trump said Friday he would defer the payroll tax until the end of the year, using an executive order.

Thoughts from the ammo line |Linda Ronstadt, once a pop singer of some talent, opined that President Trump was not only Hitler, but that it’s the Mexicans who are the “new Jews.” No matter how many “new” Jews appear on the scene, Ye Boring Olde Jews seem never to drop off the bottom of the “OK to Hate” List. If thousands of leftists see no difference between rounding up your own citizens, stealing everything they own, putting them in cattle cars bound for extermination, or PREVENTING people from invading your country, sending them back alive and well to where they came from, well, then I can’t help you. You have neither brains nor a moral center.

COVID and the Death of Common Sense | Throughout human history, people’s opinions have been based mostly on their own observations and experience. If someone tried to sell a line of BS, a normal person would check the claim against his own experience and, if it didn’t add up, reject the claim. This was known as common sense. Somehow, that basic reality check seems to have stopped operating. Many millions of Americans apparently believe that their compatriots are dropping like flies from COVID, when their own experience, if consulted, would belie that assertion. But in our world, media hype, the assurances of “experts,” and social media group-think seem to trump lived experience–that is, common sense.

An Evening with Charles Bukowski | Like a lot of young men in the 1980s, I fell in love with Bukowski at one point. His lifestyle no longer holds any appeal, but many of his poems are still wonderful and his advice in How to Be a Great Writer  is still solid:

get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window
hit that thing
hit it hard
make it a heavyweight fight
make it the bull when he first charges in
and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
If you think they didn’t go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you’re doing now
without women
without food
without hope
then you’re not ready.

And then we frame it on the squirrels, Mwahahaha! from r/aww

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Gordon Scott August 8, 2020, 6:20 PM

    A key piece of information is still not public in the George Floyd investigation. When the EMTs arrived (after Floyd had gone still) they checked Floyd’s pulse. They then did not show any sense of urgency in getting him into the ambulance and down the street (the hospital is 13 blocks north of the incident site). Did the EMT detect a pulse, and did Floyd go into arrest after he entered the ambulance?

    See, I was told by someone that the cops beat the crap out of Floyd while he was in the police car. We now know that didn’t happen. It’s fairly amazing that the cops never really showed any hostility toward Floyd at all.

    Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is not a good lawyer. He would burn all four cops at the stake if he thought he might get a senate seat or a cabinet appointment. Derek Chauvin is not going to be convicted of second degree murder, and the other three will not be convicted of anything.

  • Kevin in PA August 8, 2020, 6:43 PM

    Gordon said;
    “Derek Chauvin is not going to be convicted of second degree murder, and the other three will not be convicted of anything.”
    And if you think these most recent riots were bad, just wait until a Not Guilty verdict hits the street!

  • ghostsniper August 8, 2020, 7:23 PM

    Read something the other day that the dood, Floyd, was already walking dead because of his actions shortly before. I don’t remember the term now, and yes there’s a term for the act of shoving chemical drugs up your ass to get a more powerful surge. That surge was a little more than he anticipated and he was in the throes of shutting down. If the jackboots had been a few minutes late they would have found a dead floyd in that ride.

    No, the boots won’t burn.
    Yes, the cities will.
    I don’t live in a city so I don’t really care.

  • Stargazer August 9, 2020, 6:44 AM

    Common sense ain’t so common anymore.

  • vin ngyuen August 9, 2020, 7:02 AM

    the term for shoving drugs up your ass is “hooping” (i read).

    Floyd might have swallowed the drugs he was holding, in anticipation of being arrested. There is footage of him dropping a little bag of powder while handcuffed and sitting on the ground. Those four cops are set for life, because they are going to sue the shit out of that city.

  • Jack August 9, 2020, 8:01 AM

    Maybe, just maybe, black self-hatred will actually turn into something from which we can all derive benefit. I think they got a good thing going and I really do hate to see them slack up or stop.

    The DisneyLand pool party for instance. With a little attention to arming everyone and leaving the rioters unattended that thing could have morphed into a first class riot. If the rioters had been handed a few knives and guns, these people could have racked ’em and stacked ’em until they just ran out of bodies. Done right, the popo and amalance crews could work for days hauling corpses out of that pool.

    Same-same for DC. They had a sho’nuff gunfight erupt at a street party. Only trouble is, it just didn’t last long enough, the body count was far too low and no one set any homes on fire. They slippin’ and shit; that entire hood should have been lit up.

    https://www.foxnews.com/us/washington-dc-shooting-neighborhood-dead

  • John The River August 9, 2020, 8:04 AM

    The Portland Police Chief thinks it’s wrong that people are attacking the police officers and trying to burn down police stations and is “reprehensible and [they] need to stop”.

    Well he should call the police…no wait. This sounds like the terminal frustration of a man being prevented by his political masters from using the police to stop anarchy and rioting.
    So either take the gloves off and unleash the police, or quit.

  • Rob De Witt August 9, 2020, 8:21 AM

    “She decided to slam her coffee into my head and that’s when I decided to get up and beat up her boyfriend,” Roy said…..

    Hit the wrong one, Roy. All you accomplished was to reinforce her already robust sense of “No consequences for women.”

  • ghostsniper August 9, 2020, 8:33 AM

    You’re half right Rob.
    For at least 30 years now wimminz have been “equal” so no more of that “boys don’t hit gurlz” stuff.
    Do the crime, do the time.
    She hit the dood so he should have knocked her ass the fuk out.
    Boyfriend? Pleez.
    Did SHE say the dood was her boyfriend?
    Just look at the boyfriend crosseyed and he’ll be pissin all over hisself.

  • Kevin in PA August 9, 2020, 8:45 AM

    Vin,
    “Those four cops are set for life, because they are going to sue the shit out of that city.”

    Interesting point. Let’s analyze.

    Taxpayers pay salaries of city employees. Among them are administrators, judges/attorneys, and cops. Most of these employees are immune from prosecution for any wrongdoing unless a violation of criminal law can be proven. The act of making bad policy doesn’t count as a violation of criminal code, though the result of bad policy can be an increase in crime.

    City executives and administrators manipulate use of law enforcement, or the lack of enforcement for political purposes. ie; Protests are permitted to give cover for violence, looting, rioting, and other crimes.

    Mayhem ensues and is minimized by news reporters and government officials as, “mostly peaceful”. Resulting in damage to infrastructure, businesses, and private property.

    Citizen taxpayers witness the destruction of their community and all that it represents; order, jobs, security, normalcy, prosperity, etc.
    Media and politicos use the chaos to misinform the citizens for their own political and corporate gain.

    Misinformation and outright lies stoke racial disharmony. Ignorance breeds contempt.

    Racial tensions fester due to a lack of truth and fairness in news reporting and political hucksters selling victimhood.

    The cops will likely skate and then, win big against the city, you are correct, but, read that as – taxpayers will be forced to pay-out and not the city officials that cooked up the biased prosecution scheme. All the political players still get paid. The citizens pick up the tab for all the damage and the cops retire with fat pensions and large payouts from the lawsuits.

    Nothing has been fixed. The fucking cops will go and kneel on some other suspect’s neck. It doesn’t matter what color the dude is. The cops are largely unaccountable. The news media will withhold crucial details to enrage one segment of the populous against another. The politicians will play it like they are the holy ones anointed to issue decrees of right, wrong, and all in the name of social justice.

    I think the country has reached a point in which simply voting them out isn’t enough. The political class needs to suffer more than losing the next election where they walk away with a fat pension and list of connections to lobbyists that enable them to remain working within the system.

    I think a key is to start by allowing for government actors of every stripe to be held individually accountable (their personal assets are at risk) for laws, edicts, policies they implement and that result in loss, damage, or injury.

    Case in point, Portland mayor has permitted the damage to property, loss of business, devaluation of real property, etc. His willingness to permit this politically inspired shit-show should cost him more than his job…hit him in the wallet. Same for Mayor of Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis…..and on and on. These fucking parasites have gained enormous wealth from government. Let the citizens, through a proper legal action, take it away. The message to any aspiring future parasites would be that no one, not even .gov employees are immune from the consequences of their bad ideas put into action for selfish personal or political gain.

  • Vanderleun August 9, 2020, 9:19 AM

    I’m down with that. Without direct fist in the face corrections lessons will not be learned.

  • Anonymous August 9, 2020, 9:35 AM

    Keith Ellison has had access to these bodycam videos from Day 1, and sat on them. Mr. Ellison knows that the behavior of the cops during the arrest present no real problem – everything they did was by the procedural book, including the neck hold. There was no animus towards Floyd shown, quite the contrary. And remember from the autopsy, the George Floyd’s neck showed no signs of any physical trauma.

    So why then did Elllison elevate the charges against Derek Chauvin after a day or two, to a much more serious charge? There was legal commentary at the time signalling that these charges would be very difficult to prove on a LEO. And that was before the autopsy results came out, where Floyd was also shown to have potentially lethal amounts of fentanyl in his system.

    Why would a prosecutor, knowing there is significant exculpatory evidence against a LEO, then elevate the charges making it more likely for them to be dismissed at trial under
    ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ criteria?

    Setting up for the Riots Phase II?

  • Charles R Harris August 9, 2020, 9:40 AM

    Fussel’s essay is always worth another read. This bit stuck with me this time around:
    “Understanding the past requires pretending that you don’t know the present.
    It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto
    illumination. That’s a harder thing to do than Joravsky seems to think.”

  • James ONeil August 9, 2020, 1:19 PM

    Who killed George Floyd? The cop has already been tried and convicted via twitter etc. All he awaits is the show trial wherein, of course, he’ll be found guilty and sentenced.

    As happened with a kid named Jimmy Fields following the Charlottesville thingy.

    My memory might be faulty but I recall reading the police directed to boy to drive down the street through the protesters, wouldn’t allow him to go any other way.

    My memory might be faulty but I recall a Youtube video of his driving the gauntlet, his rig being pounded by fists, signs and baseball bats before he belligerently and with malice and forethought rammed those innocent bystanders at the horrific speed of 0.5 miles and hour, singling out that girl to kill.

    He did plea bargain guilty and got two life sentences instead of the death penalty, but justice was served up on a platter.

    I’m sure the cop can expect the same fairness and mercy.

    As noted, my memory my be faulty. Jimmy and the cop may both be fools and assholes (Such not being a criminal offence.), but, I don’t think Jimmy ever had a chance of a fair trial, nor does the cop.

  • azlibertarian August 9, 2020, 2:49 PM

    What a surprise. In the same week, I hear of a near riot in which 2 people are stabbed, at a Disneyland hotel no less, and it turns out that most of the participants are from a “vibrant” community. Further, Oprah, yes, The Oprah, tells me that the poorest white person has advantages over every black.

    Oprah can piss right off.

  • Ulysses Toole August 9, 2020, 8:16 PM

    Just a reminder: I’m closing on my house in SD by end of August! Oh, moving from Saint Paul. Not waiting for this overnight violence to get a boost.

  • pbird August 10, 2020, 6:31 AM

    That old video isn’t weird enough.