I am not a fan of Michael Jackson, but I bumped into the video and I my memory bank reminded me that it was used in a 1971 movie that kinda still makes my skin crawl.

Have you heard “death by thousand cuts”? Welcome to death by thousand rat bites.

I promise a nicer song next Sunday.

I keep getting flashbacks to the damned book.

‘Thirty to forty group!’ yapped a piercing female voice.
‘Thirty to forty group! Take your places, please. Thirties to
forties!’
Winston sprang to attention in front of the telescreen,
upon which the image of a youngish woman, scrawny but
muscular, dressed in tunic and gym-shoes, had already appeared.
‘Arms bending and stretching!’ she rapped out. ‘Take
your time by me. ONE, two, three, four! ONE, two, three,
four! Come on, comrades, put a bit of life into it! ONE, two,
three four! ONE two, three, four!…’

And people are paying $1,500 for the privilege of re-enact a chapter of 1984.

Sweet Jesus.

Update: Mobiouswolf mentioned that nobody is watching with those things. Unfortunately yes, they are. This is a bad copy of the latest ad I saw on TV today

I have joked in the past about finding bundles of firewood at our local Big Discount Box Stores and figured they got shipped from HQ because that is what every store gets come Winter.

Today the missus actually saw somebody who bought the damned thing and recorded it for posterity

And you can tell they are cold because they are not wearing shorts or flipflops.

Unfortunately, the Gun Culture has it share of entitled little whinners who complain when things are not instantly available upon their wishes and have no idea of the complications and hardships that tens of millions of customers demanding product can exert of the manufacturers.

Remember, the companies are producing lately up to nine billion rounds a year just for the civilian market. I believe we can give them a little slack, I don’t think many companies can do those amounts in so many different variations.

Via Of Arms and the Law.

The lawsuit was initially dismissed and the Eleventh confirmed the lawsuit was a bust from the get go. IANAL, but it reads the plaintiff’s lawyers filed more on feelings that the actual law. No Duty to Protect is a hard wall to conquer on just wants. I posted a couple of years back an excellent paper titled Police Protection and the “Special Relationship” Exception by Karen M. Richards which explains the few narrow cases in which Duty to protect does not apply and what are the legal conditions.

The students sued Broward County and five public officials on the theory that their response to the school shooting was so incompetent that it violated the students’ substantive rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The district court dismissed this claim with prejudice because it was an impermissible shotgun pleading and, in the alternative, because it failed to state a claim and leave to amend it would be futile. On the merits, the district court reasoned that because the students were not in a custodial relationship with the officials and failed to allege conduct by the officials that is “arbitrary” or “shocks the conscience,” the students could not maintain a claim that the officials violated their substantive right to due process of law. The students appeal this decision, but settled caselaw makes clear that official acts of negligence or even incompetence in this setting do not violate the right to due process of law.
Because we agree with the district court that the students failed to state a claim of a constitutional violation and that leave to amend would be futile, we affirm.

And as usual, here is the whole text for you to read.

Black Lives Matter goons are currently at Candy Cane Lane in the Milwaukee area and are terrorizing people who have come to look at the lights in a child cancer fundraiser. Yes, Black Lives Matter goons are actually terrorizing a child cancer fundraiser. pic.twitter.com/ZZgrIa6lmk

— Dan O’Donnell (@DanODonnellShow) December 19, 2020

If some of this assholes were found thawing in a far field coming next March, I reckon not a lot of people would shed a tear.

Yes, it’s been difficult.

There is learning loss.

There are social-emotional challenges.

In some cases, there is sickness, economic hardship, or trauma.

But students are extremely resilient.https://t.co/K8y7JZvDzU

— NEA (@NEAToday) December 18, 2020

Learning loss?

In Los Angeles,  the Bay Area, Cleveland, Fairfax, everywhere.

Remote learning was a fucking failure.  The number of failures are “off the rails.”

Our kids have fallen more than a year behind.

Our kids are regressing. It’s driving teenagers to record rates of suicide.

I don’t think kids killing themselves or going back to diapers are resilient.  Kids don’t just bounce back from forgetting how to read or use the toilet.

But as long as the unionized teachers are safe and only having to work remotely for one hour a day three days a week at full pay, I guess the platitude is enough to soothe their souls.

Every teacher that refuses to go back into a classroom full time come the start of the new semester in January needs to be passed through the wood chipper to make room for people who will serve the students.

Union officers and administrators can get tossed into a vat of acid.  The wood chipper is too quick for them.