Comey-tose

James Comey has been found guilty of violating FBI policy, violating his terms of employment, misuse of confidential official records, and violating pretty much every standard of professional ethics known to man.

So of course, the lanky sumbitch is apparently not going to be charged with anything because, as Jeffrey Epstein so recently reminded us, it pays to be on Hillary's good side. Or, considering what Comey spent much of his career covering, her backside.

This lack of justice, and our desire to start Happy Hour a little early, is why you're getting this Earwigs cartoon today...

DISCUSSION TOPIC: GOOD MOVIES?

We recently discussed our dissatisfaction with movie theaters, but now we want to address a problem with watching movies at home: too many of them stink.

Mrs. Jarlsberg's favorite movie is "Die Hard" (it's also her favorite Christmas movie), but there just aren't many slam-bang, good guys versus bad guys, high stakes actioners for us to watch. Or are there?

That's where you come in: in the comments section, give us some suggestions of "Die Hard" type movies that we've been missing (or might just want to see again). We've enjoyed things like "Cliffhanger" with Sylvester Stallone, "Breakdown" with Kurt Russell (excellent film!), and "Air Force One" with Harrison Ford.

The movies don't have to be particularly current nor high budget, but they do need to be emotionally engaging and eventually show good triumphing over evil.

In other words, NOT a movie about James Comey.

Bomb-y Weather

It is being reported that President Trump has, on more than one occasion, told his staffers to look into the possibility of dropping nuclear bombs on hurricanes to break them apart before reaching American shores. Trump, on the other hand, tweets: "This is so ridiculous, never happened. Fake news!"

Granted, the story is pretty suspicious, and bolstered only by statements like "there's reportedly a White House memo that proves it." On the other hand, can we imagine that Trump might have suggested bombing the living hell out of a weather phenomenon? Absolutely! And even though it would be a terrible, terrible idea, the 8-year-old that lives in our brain says: "yeah, but it would be so cool!"

Frankly, we don't think Trump ever really planned to bomb hurricanes. Rather, he was simply taking a tough position in order to bring hurricanes to the bargaining table.

BONUS: MEIN FUROR

We got an interesting email from a well-intended reader recently, who asked: "Just out of curiosity, who IS this guy that appears in your blog's background?"

Wait, what?! We'd never noticed that before, but sure enough if you open your browser window really wide and squint at the margin, there he is...

And it looks like our special mystery guest is...Hitler! Holy crap!

Okay, it isn't really Hitler. It's just a little stain spot on a grunge design which Blogger/Google offers free to users. But still...that's not exactly a good look for a conservative blog at a time when we're all being called Nazis. And what if Google deliberately inserted the subtle image in their most patriotic template knowing that conservatives would use it, and they could later be accused of spreading subliminal fascism and get a lifetime ban from the Internet?

Not willing to take the risk (and to distract from our attack of paranoia), we opened the HTML of the website to change the background and give Little Adolf the boot (or jackboot). This was, technically speaking, a huge mistake. Because we don't actually know doodly-squat about HTML and had soon managed to completely screw up the whole look of "Stilton's Place."

Every link we've included for the past few years disappeared. Text was suddenly an almost-invisible grey. Post Titles were bright blue. And the background color for posts was "blinding white." Not to mention that every alternative graphic background we tried (to replace the offending one) made us want to gouge our eyes out.

Happily, after about two hours of work (and by "work" we mean hundreds of random mouse clicks), we managed to put the site back together again. And we made an important journalistic decision: rather than try to remove a meaningless smudge that might offend someone or might be construed as dog whistle Nazism, we are leaving it on the page while formally and officially stating IT ISN'T FREAKING HITLER. Although the little spot next to it does look a little like Eva Braun.

By the way, that spot is actually a pretty interesting example of pareidolia, the fascinating tendency of the mind to take a vague stimulus and try to make it into something recognizable (and frequently a face). It's why we can take the completely random and meaningless and imagine we see spooky faces in wallpaper, animals in clouds, or - in the case of Democrats - presidential potential in any of their candidates.

UPDATE: BETWEEN A REICH AND A HARD PLACE

Hooray! Thanks to the help of an anonymous reader (hey, stand up and take a bow!) we were able to change the background image enough to send Mr. H back to Argentina! Now if we could just do something to take all of those filthy, disturbing images out of the Rorshach inkblots...

Koch Knocker

There's no way we can actually make this funny today, but some things are so appalling that we just can't let them go by without comment.

In this case, we're talking about Bill "world's unfunniest man" Maher's remarks regarding billionaire philanthropist David Koch's death from cancer. Koch, a Libertarian who took a liberal stance on many social issues, also held many conservative beliefs and made financial contributions to people and causes (like legitimate climate studies) that Bill Maher hates passionately.

Which is why on "Real Time with Bill Maher," the obnoxious comic celebrated David Koch's passing with the following monologue (repeated here verbatim):

Fuck him...I'm glad he's dead!
(pause for laughs)
He was 79, but his family says they wish it could be longer. But at least he lived long enough to see the Amazon catch fire.
(pause for laughs)
Condolences poured in from all the politicians he owned, and mourners are being asked in lieu of flowers to just leave their car engine running.
(pause for laughs)
As for his remains, he has asked to be cremated and have his ashes blown into a child's lungs.
(pause for laughs - then it's time to get serious)
He and his brother have done more than anybody to fund climate science deniers for decades, so fuck him. The Amazon is burning up. I'm glad he's dead and I hope the end was painful.

It's not rare to hear Leftists like Maher puke up naked hate speech, but to actually celebrate the pain that someone felt while dying of cancer is a new low.

We would never wish for the death or illness of anyone, and certainly not take pleasure from the pain someone experienced during an agonizing death. But if and when such a fate befalls Bill Maher personally, we're willing to make an exception to our rule.

This humorless bastard needs to start worrying a lot less about climate change, and a lot more about Karma.

FOR THE RECORD

David Koch once told the Wall Street Journal that he'd rather donate money to a good cause rather than "use it on buying a bigger house or a $150 million painting." Unlike the Obama family, clearly.

So to whom did David Koch donate?

$185 Million - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for cancer research, childcare center, biology building, and school of chemical engineering.

$150 Million - Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The biggest gift the center ever received.

$128 Million - New York Presbyterian Hospital

$100 Million - New York State Theater at Lincoln Center

$66.7 Million - Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

$65 Million - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

$35 Million - Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History

$26.5 Million - M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

$26.2 Million - The Hospital for Special Surgery in New York

$20 Million - American Museum of Natural History

$20 Million - Johns Hopkins University, for a cancer research center.

None of this remarkable and selfless generosity matters, of course, to those on the Left who defined David Koch as one of the worst of the "evil rich," and someone who "doesn't pay his fair share."

We look at it differently, and with the utmost in respect and gratitude. Rest In Peace, Mr. Koch, and thank you.

The Old Man and the CNN

CNN (which might do well to change its name to "C Inane" and just admit to being a satire site) just launched a devastating new attack on Donald Trump. Oh, not devastating to Trump - but rather devastating to journalism in general and on-air news annihilist Chris "Call me Fredo and I'll break your legs!" Cuomo.

Cuomo launched a serious broadside on the air claiming that Donald Trump "doesn't care the way other (presidents) have." As proof, he showed before-and-after photos of Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama. Before the presidency, they were all young, energetic, and fresh faced. After the presidency, all three were indistinguishable from Ruth Bader Ginsburg "because of the stress they carry with them."

But pictures of Donald Trump taken two years apart damningly showed that the President looks "exactly the same," which enraged Cuomo. "Maybe this President could use a sleepless night or two," Fredo fumed. "Maybe he should focus on fixing things, carrying that burden. Because that's the job and it should get hard!"

Cuomo may have had more to say on the subject, but after so much vigorous shouting he had to be rushed back into the CNN makeup room to be re-spackled.

HOT BETWEEN THE SHEETS

It turns out that if you've been ignorantly setting your air conditioner's thermostat to a comfortable temperature, you're a planet destroying, energy wasting, menace to society. But happily (drum roll, please!) the government is here to help!

"Energy Star," working in coordination with the EPA and Energy Department, just released easy-peasy directions on setting your thermostat throughout the day!

At 6 am, set your air conditioner to 78 degrees (or higher). At 8 am, bump the temperature up to 85 degrees (and perhaps peel off any clothing you were wearing) and just leave it there until 6 pm.

At 6 pm, you can turn your A/C back down to 78 (Brrrr!) until 10 pm.

Then from 10 pm until 6 am, set the thermostat at 82 degrees in order to enjoy a perfect night of sweat-soaked sleep which will prepare you for a bright new day of changing the freaking thermostat every few hours.

For those people who don't want to spend the rest of their lives fiddling with the temperature, Energy Star recommends getting a programmable thermostat with wifi. This will not only automate all of those myriad temperature changes, but will also conveniently give the government (ours and the Chinese) yet another easy wifi access point to spy on you and steal your personal data.

Sure, that's a chilling thought...but your home will be so hot, you'll appreciate it.

Behind the Scenes at Stilton's Place

Today, I'm pulling back the curtains to share what a day of writing Stilton's Place is sometimes like. To begin with, absolutely nothing in the news really spoke to me, so in desperation I decided I'd try to fill space by writing about my first visit to a movie theater in years...

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEE

I'm very, very particular about where I sit in a theater. I basically believe there is only one "right" seat in any theater, and if I don't get it I'll be annoyed for the entire movie. So imagine my horror upon discovering that the theater I hadn't gone to in years had converted to recliner seats (which cut seating down by two thirds) AND required you to reserve assigned seats in advance (for an additional fee), unless you're willing to take your chances at the box office in hopes that some lazy bastard with a smart phone hadn't already reserved The Only Good Seat.

I decided to reserve my seats online...but the seating chart made no sense with the resized seats and aisles. So I finally picked some likely looking seats, then tried to reserve them. But no - first I'd have to create an account with the theater chain and give them my name, address, phone number, email, and credit card information. Choosing not to, I then tried to do a "guest check out" using a virtual credit card number (to prevent identity theft)...but the theater website claimed that my credit card provider rejected the transaction.

Fine. Mrs. J and I went to the theater early (for the first showing of the day), and requested our chosen seats at the box office. And they were open! Huzzah! So we hurried into the entirely empty theater and tried to find our seats. We were in row "E" but couldn't find any markings to tell us which row was which. We eventually discovered that the designating letters were subtly woven into the design of the rug and tastefully unlit.  After this squinting discovery, we hurried to our seats in the exact center of the row.

Aaaand, the seats were horrible. WAY too far from the screen. We might as well have been at home watching TV. So we found the seats we really, really wanted and I had to trot my happy ass all the way through the mega-multiplex and outside to the box office again to beg for an exchange. This was granted, and I huffed and puffed my way back to our seats. At which point Mrs. J perfectly reasonably wanted some popcorn and a soda. So off I went to the concession stand, where exactly one person was behind the counter filling the orders - slowly - for a multiplex with 17 freaking auditoriums. I eventually got a medium popcorn ($9) and large coke ($6) and headed back to my seat to reflect on the fact that I was already out $30 for a matinee performance of a movie.

We played with the recliner seats a bit, which required a button control to electronically raise and lower your legs, and tilt your seat backwards so that your eyes would focus naturally on a spot about 10 feet above the top of the movie screen. Mrs. J liked the leg support of the recliner because she has short legs and her feet don't touch the floor when using regular movie seats. I, on the other hand, quickly decided that recliner seats in a movie theater are an offense against God and the natural order of things. So I sat bolt upright the entire time.

To kill time, the theater showed us a variety of commercials in which kids and adults communicated via Rap, followed by "entertainment" tidbits - one of which was "movie trivia." They then showed clips of a recent-ish movie in which Sandra Bullock plays a wealthy white woman who adopts an absolutely giant black teenager and makes his dream of playing football come true. No, really. "You're making his life better," smarmed a woman on screen. "No, he's making my life better," Sandra Bullock replied with the predictability of every sunrise ever. The movie was "The Blind Side" although my guess of "Liberal Wet Dream" didn't seem far off.

Then the trailers began. The first depicted a charming young black couple in a car, going on a date, cute as a couple of buttons. A classic romcom, right? Well, no - they're soon pulled over for a turn signal violation by a racist white cop who pulls his gun on the clean cut young man. A scuffle ensues, the cop gets shot by accident, and the rest of the movie is about two sweet black kids running for their lives from despicable, murderous white policemen. "Wow," thought I, "we really must come back and drop another 30 bucks to see that!" Not.

Next up was a trailer for a movie in which four attractive young women of color (not "The Squad" - we said "attractive," remember?) are bumping, grinding, and doing pole dances in a strip joint as dollar bills are thrown at them. The women then team up to use their sexual skills to skim thousands of dollars from evil white bastard Wall Street types who, after all, are the "real" thieves in this world. The movie is called "Hustlers," and we'll be rushing out to see it right after Hell freezes over.

At long last, the feature film started: Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." The film was "meh" at best, had no discernible story, lacked Tarantino's usually witty dialogue, and had only one good twist which Tarantino stole from one of his own movies. It's not a horrible film, and its technical aspects are good, but its main virtue is being instantly forgettable. I'll give it a "C" because if I rate it lower, I'll feel like even more of a dope for laying out so much money.

So, that was my curmudgeonly reintroduction to moviegoing and popular SJW culture. Whee.

And have I mentioned that the reason I even went is that a psychiatric professional had encouraged me to start attending movies as a means of reducing my constant state of anxiety? Spoiler alert: I'm going to stick with therapeutic doses of Clan MacGregor - $30 worth of which would kill a man outright.

I AM JOE'S BRAIN

After writing all of the above, I decided "who the heck wants to read that much crap about me being a sourpuss and cheapskate with an obsessive-compulsive fixation on theater seats?" After which I tried desperately to find some news item suitable for a cartoon and commentary.

Eventually I found a story in which Joe Biden's brain surgeon (from decades ago) was coming forward to attest that Joe doesn't have brain damage, despite all the  appearances to the contrary...

Yeah... that's lame.  Not really up to the high professional standards people expect from Stilton's Place. So I decided to redouble my efforts and really, really, really find a good idea to write about and...BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!

Penny (the official dog of Hope n' Change) was yapping like an absolute maniac. Oh, she frequently loses her mind over pedestrians, bicyclists, Amazon deliveries, UPS trucks, and suspicious looking clouds...but this was different and more urgent. Curious, I looked out my office window to check what sort of apocalypse was coming and saw...

BUSTED (NOT BUSTY)

Oh. A police cruiser parked in front of my house. Well, I certainly had nothing to fear and should just go back to work. Unless...someone was "swatting" me and had reported that I was a violent maniac with a weapon, and this was just the first cop car on the scene before the guys with flak vests and automatic weapons knocked my door down. And although I love the police, I had just seen a movie trailer that stated rather categorically that they shoot people for all kinds of bad reasons.

But no - it was almost certainly none of my business. I should just ignore the distraction. It was probably just something to do with one of the neighbors. But...what if one of them was a violent maniac with a weapon?!

Try though I might, I couldn't really refocus on writing because it's so damn distracting to have a police cruiser sitting mysteriously at the end of your walkway. Which it did for most of an hour.

Eventually the policeman left, and I learned it was a friendly visit to assist one of my neighbors (who is not a violent maniac). But by then my brain was absolutely shot, which is why you've just had to suffer through my endless bitching about going to a movie, a lame Joe Biden cartoon, and a rambling dialogue about my nascent paranoia.

If only there was some way I could make it up to you. Maybe I can ask a friend for a favor...

Better luck to all of us on Friday!

Monday Melange

WEST BANK ON IT

After being given permission to enter Israel and visit her aging grandmother (who had, no kidding, promised to kill a goat for the occasion), Rep Rashida Tlaib cancelled the trip after being told that while in Israel, she couldn't shoot her mouth off about anti-Israel causes and sentiments.

For which the nation of Israel, and one lucky goat, can give thanks.

THE CHOKE'S ON YOU

It's almost disturbingly easy for us to imagine an angry Hillary Clinton shrieking into a phone: "What part of 'make it look like suicide' didn't you effing understand?!"

But let's be charitable. Nobody is perfect and mistakes happen, even for well-practiced professional killers. Although we doubt that this particular killer will live long enough to make another mistake.

GET MUELLER ON LINE TWO

Sorry, but it had to be said.

FROM THE VAULT: SLEAZY WRITER

Over the weekend, actor Peter Fonda died at age 79. He died from lung cancer, and we wouldn't wish that kind of pain and suffering on anyone.

But that being said, owing to a spate of tweets in his final years, we have little choice other than to remember him as a complete asshole...

(From Friday, June 22, 2018)
Alleged actor Peter Fonda took to Twitter recently to voice his hatred for the First Family, and to encourage kidnapping and pederasty as useful tools for the Left to demonstrate their moral superiority to the Deplorables in our nation.

Here's what he tweeted:

The First Lady has subsequently asked the Secret Service to investigate Mr. Fonda, not only because of the appalling nature of his threats, but because most movie fans have been convinced that the actor died years ago, along with his career.

Not that he didn't have one good scene in the only memorable movie he was ever in. Specifically, this scene:

Even more enjoyable when viewed on a continuous loop!

Seriously (which we aren't very often), Fonda's rhetoric - which he has since apologized for - goes way too far and should not fall under the province of protected speech. He is calling for violence against the First Family and, specifically, the violent rape of a child. Because he's so sensitive and enlightened, you see.

Even worse, he's making this call to action to his thousands of followers, any one of whom might decide to implement it. Especially since Peter Fonda likely has followers who are, as we say in the psychological field, "not right in the head."

How could they be, when exposed to a regular diet of Fonda's other sociopathic tweets like this one about our nation's Director of Homeland Security:

For those blissfully unfamiliar with the term, "gash" is an obscene reference to female genitalia, and is considered to be even uglier, more unacceptable, and more sexually demeaning than Samantha Bee's "c-word" description of our First Lady.

It is a word so foul, fetid, and unforgivable that we would personally never use it about any woman.

Except, of course, Jane Fonda.

The Land of the Free and the Home of Depraved

These are hard times for satire. After all, the whole idea is to take something and exaggerate it to humorous extremes in order to make a point. But some things just can't be made more extreme or ludicrous than they already are.

Case in point: we have now learned that in the 56 million dollar mansion of pedophile (and likely murder victim) Jeffrey Epstein, there was a large painting of Bill Clinton seductively reclining in a blue dress and red high heels, while pointing his stink finger directly at the viewer.

To say this is troubling is a considerable understatement. Is the painting mocking Clinton and, if so, why? Or is the painting a straight up representation of Clinton's perversion behind closed doors, and a celebration of some weird psycho-sexual bond between the two men?

We may not know art, but we know what makes us want to throw up.

SQUEEZE PLAY

Autopsy results are in for Jeffrey Epstein, and they aren't going to do anything to reduce the conspiracy theories surrounding the abrupt death of this odious pimp to the powerful. Specifically, the autopsy showed that a number of bones were broken in Epstein's neck, a condition which is more consistent with death by strangulation than by hanging.

As damning as this sounds, doctors say it's theoretically possible Epstein could have broken the bones in his neck with a makeshift noose if he threw himself off the prison cell's top bunk with enough force. Assuming, of course, that the top bunk was about 12 feet off the ground. And had a diving board.

Happily, Epstein's mysterious death is being thoroughly investigated, and we'll eventually learn more when the broken bones in Epstein's neck can be forensically compared with the broken bones soon to be found in the investigators' necks.

Corn Chip On His Shoulder

Maybe he didn't hear you. Try asking louder a few dozen times.

Considering the gravity of the news in recent days, it's good to sit back and simply enjoy a back-to-basics story in which a self-centered liberal makes a complete asshole of himself in public.

In this instance, we're referring to CNN Anchor (side note: why would a sinking ship need an anchor?) Chris Cuomo, who is the brother of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and the grandson of mellow voiced, coma-inducing singer Perry Cuomo.

Captured on a now-viral cellphone video, Cuomo completely lost his marbles and started screaming obscenities at a man who called him "Fredo." For those unfamiliar with the term, it was apparently the name of a disappointingly weak character who let everyone down in one of the most famous and critically acclaimed movie trilogies of all time.

We refer, of course, to Fredo Baggins, who lost his nerve and failed to throw the One Ring into the fire of Mount Doom after Sauron made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

In any event, Cuomo howled that the name "Fredo" when applied to an Italian-American is every bit as offensive as using the n-word ("nutjob"). With veins protruding from his neck, the alleged newsman then proceeded to roar "no punk ass bitches from the right call me Fredo!" and added that he was going to "fuck up the shit" of the offender, and then "fucking throw you down the stairs like a fucking punk."

Clearly, "eloquence" isn't Chris Cuomo's middle name. Not that it would matter, because from now on this douchebag's middle name is "Fredo."

LUCAS HEMBREE UPDATE

I'm gratified to say that the fundraising effort to help the family of Lucas Hembree has gone very well. Thanks to the generosity of many people, it only took 24 hours to reach the immediate goal of $10,000 to pay for medical bills and hospice care for this remarkable boy. More importantly, the Hembree family has received an overwhelming outpouring of love and support at this unimaginably difficult time.

Although the goal for immediate needs has been met, donations are still accepted and encouraged. I've updated the contact information in my previous post: you can now donate at the GoFundMe page, or click a link to donate through Paypal, or send a check (or a card or letter of support) by mail.

On a personal note, let me say how humbled and gratified I am to see the response this campaign has gotten. I write "Stilton's Place" as a labor of love - not because I love the news or working for free, but because I love the way all of you constantly remind an old cynic that there is a lot of good in this world. And for that, I very sincerely thank you.   -Stilton

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Here's How To Contribute:

Click on this link to go to Lucas's GoFundMe page.  Note that GoFundMe automatically adds a "tip/service fee" but you can change the amount. I generally give them a dollar for being the intermediary.

If you'd prefer to send a check rather than doing an online transaction, it can go to Chester or Jennifer Hembree, 1454 Mimosa Drive, Louisville, TN 37777.

If you'd like to have the convenience and security of paying online with Paypal, you can do that by clicking this link. (Note: the page at this link will show how much money has been raised on Paypal, but does not show the total from the GoFundMe page. It's still 100% legit!)

And here's a message from the Hembree family to all of us here at Stilton's Place: "Thank you so much for supporting our sweet boy!! It means the world to us and we will forever be grateful!!"

Big Brother is Suicide Watching You

OH MY GOD! Pedophile billionaire (and pimp to the powerful) Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his jail cell of apparent "suicide!" Who could have possibly predicted this?!

Well, pretty much everyone. Since the day Epstein was tossed in the hoosegow, his impending "suicide" has been the source of endless jokes and memes. After all, the guy had damning information about a lot of very powerful people...people who didn't want Epstein to start naming names in an effort to reduce his prison sentence.

Topping the list of those who could conceivably be harmed by Epstein's testimony were the Clintons, who have so much experience at cleaning up unwanted messes that the term "Arkancide" is widely accepted by medical examiners as an official cause of death. Bill Clinton is said to have repeatedly flown on Epstein's private jet, the "Lolita Express," to what the locals called "Orgy Island" or "Pedophile Island." In some instances, Bill Clinton gave the Secret Service the slip before boarding the jet so he could spend time on the island without witnesses. Which, in retrospect, may be fortunate for those Secret Service agents.

Of course, it's possible that a despondent Jeffrey Epstein really did decide to take his own life, and managed to do so using makeshift materials which shouldn't have been in his possession only days after being taken off of suicide watch. And it's possible that it was only a coincidence that he was assigned to a cell with no cellmate despite it being a violation of standard procedure. And that, by greater coincidence, the 24 hour security cameras weren't pointed into Epstein's cell, but only aimed at the hallway outside. And, by really wild coincidence, that Epstein chose to make his move at the exact time that the two guards who were supposed to be regularly checking on him decided not to.

Attorney General William Barr has announced that there will be a full and rigorous investigation of the circumstances surrounding Epstein's death which (and you read it here first) will not reveal diddly squat. Either because money and power have covered the trail, or because the investigators don't want to find themselves inside chalk outlines.

A REQUEST FOR HELP

I try not to ask readers for anything except in rare circumstances, and this is one of those times.

For years, I've been personally moved and inspired by young Lucas Hembree, his dog Juno, and his wonderful family. Sadly, Lucas is now in the final days of an incurable illness, he's in hospice, and Medicaid has chosen this spectacularly bad moment to cut off funds for his remaining medical expenses.

The family's needs are modest, and I hope some of you can send a few dollars to his GoFundMe campaign to help out. And for those who can't, please keep Lucas and his family in your thoughts and prayers.    -Stilton

UPDATE - ADDITIONAL WAYS TO GIVE

The fundraising is going great and there are now more options for giving.

If you'd prefer to send a check rather than doing an online transaction, it can go to Chester or Jennifer Hembree, 1454 Mimosa Drive, Louisville, TN 37777.

If you'd like to have the convenience and security of paying online with Paypal, you can do that by clicking this link. (Note: the page at this link will show how much money has been raised on Paypal, but does not show the total from the GoFundMe page. It's still 100% legit!)

And here's a message from the Hembree family to all of us here at Stilton's Place: "Thank you so much for supporting our sweet boy!! It means the world to us and we will forever be grateful!!"

Round The Clock Noose

Yes, this was an actual MSNBC segment...except for the logical punchline.

We're playing a dangerous game here, but we're going to go on record as saying that the Democrats and liberal media actually can not stoop lower than they have this week, short of explicitly calling for Civil War and white genocide. And of course, the week's not over.

We've all heard the narrative for the past couple of years: Trump is a racist, his supporters are deplorables, and blah, blah, blah. But there has been a seismic shift in the scope and seriousness of these accusations. Following the actions of a trio of mass shooters, whose motives remain unknown but whose political footprints seem to indicate Leftward leanings (*), all liberal pretense at tact, logic, and human decency have gone out the window.

The new narrative from the Left, being pounded into soft Leftist skulls, is that Donald Trump is the evil leader of a massive army of murderous white supremacists, all of whom - including you - should be rounded up and "eradicated."

We wish we were exaggerating, but we're not. The tortured and preposterous argument that Trump is using American flag protocol to send secret messages to neo-Nazis was a real exchange on MSNBC, as was a news anchorette's solemn statement to viewers that President Trump is "talking about exterminating Latinos." Which, we should mention as a small point of clarification, he effing isn't.

According to pretty much every Democrat running for president, Trump is the worst kind of racist, sexist, genocidal white supremacist...as is every single person who cast a vote for Trump, even if that vote was cast solely to keep Hillary's thoroughly corrupt keister out of the Oval Office. We all pulled the triggers at the mass shootings, we're all drenched in blood and, to hear the Left tell it, nothing could make us happier. There are no gradations or extenuating circumstances in the Left's rhetoric: every Trump supporter embodies ultimate evil, and none of us will deserve mercy when Civil War II breaks out. When

This isn't the kind of garden variety nonsense we're used to hearing from the Left. This is dangerous and inflammatory, quite literally the sort of insane rhetoric that Adolf Hitler used to inspire an epidemic of madness and murder that tore the world apart. Now, half of our population is being force fed lies around the clock to foment the kind of hate and division which will result in more, not fewer, deaths of innocents.

The threat from the social arsonists on the Left is real, deliberate, and growing.

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(*) Update: In a previous commentary, we said that the political leanings of mass shooters aren't nearly as important as the sociological forces which turn them to violence and we stand by that opinion. But here, we've cited the "Leftward leanings" of at least two of the most recent shooters not to explain their actions (which would be hypocritical on our part), but simply to factually refute the untrue narrative from those on the Left that the shooters were Right wingers or Trump supporters.

According to the El Paso shooter's online manifesto (if, indeed, he authored it) he wanted Medicare for all, a universal basic income, to protect the environment, and to take power out of the hands of corporations  - a progressive wishlist which he insanely believed could be attained by killing Mexicans.

The Dayton shooter was a vocal supporter of antifa, and made social media posts saying "I want socialism," "Kill every fascist," and "Nazis deserve death and nothing else." Not the hardest tea leaves to read.

Again, it's a mistake and a distraction to focus on the shooters' politics...but that's no reason for us to remain silent when those politics are deliberately and irresponsibly misrepresented by liars on the Left.

Area Fifty Fun

Although we've been treating the story as a joke, no one is laughing now that the stakes have been raised dramatically in the upcoming attempt to storm Area 51 and, perhaps, "see them aliens."

We refer, of course, to the news that Nevada's largest adult entertainment operation is sending a contingent of strippers to help breach the defenses of the top secret military site. Granted, we're not exactly sure how that's supposed to work, but we suspect that some of the brave young women will attempt to distract the guards, while others use their well-honed pole skills to vault over the barbed wire fences.

The exotic dancers will be arriving at the staging area in The Strippermobile, which frankly sounds like the most awesome superhero vehicle ever. Although we don't even want to think about what might happen if it got too close to the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile.

The US Air Force, which is taking the possibility of a mass assault very seriously, has plans in place to repel potential intruders. Still, allowing for the slim possibility that civilians - including the curvaceous corps of adult entertainers - may indeed penetrate the top secret area, contingency plans are being made to provide the aliens with Earth dollar bills.

MORE SCIENCE NEWS...

A Japanese scientist has been given the go-ahead to breed a rat-human hybrid, apparently unaware that the United States accomplished this decades ago.

Francis "Rato" O'Rourke, a hyperkinetic race-baiting hatemonger, was conceived via gene splicing between a common rat, and what we assume was a common (perhaps very common if not outright whorish) Irish woman. At birth, this unappealing chimera was determined to be principally a rat and, by virtue of the fact that his "parents" weren't married, was technically labeled a rat bastard.

Unable to find social acceptance or gainful employment owing to his disturbing appearance, freakishly large incisors, and an unpredictable tendency to poop oversized raisinets, Rato O'Rourke has earned a meager salary as an experimental lab rat.

Notably, he has been engaged in a study funded by Starbucks to discover what constitutes a lethal dose of caffeine. So far, he's only become extremely jittery, but we have hope that the research will eventually have a successful conclusion.

Unintended Consequences

The recent rash of mass shootings has left the nation stunned but, sadly, not speechless. The usual media and political suspects are saying the usual things, using the bodies of the innocent as a sickening ideological soapbox.

We're not going to do that here. These gruesome murders are not about, nor caused by, politics. Rather, they are the unavoidable and perhaps unstoppable product of a deeply diseased culture. A culture which has become the perfect growth medium for psychopathy.

"Loners" are no longer alone when in their online worlds. They can communicate without actual human contact. They can find reinforcement for their darkest and most twisted thoughts and fantasies. They can give the worst demons of their psyches an artificial, external life in cyberspace - free to express hatred and anger anonymously and without consequence. And on the Internet, madness can hide in plain sight.

After all, who's going to notice or care about garden variety insanity in a world which routinely describes everyone as murderous: baby killers on one side, Earth-destroying Nazis on the other. The stakes are absolute, the "other" is the enemy, and words are just words...until they become actions.

The social mechanisms which formerly prevented these massacres have crumbled. The bonds of family, friendship, and faith. A shared sense of community. Optimism about the future. Moral certainty and personal responsibility.

Instead, we now live in a crowded world of communal loners, all staring at their phones instead of the world and people around them. Politicians and media figures preach an unsubtle and dangerously divisive message of absolutes: you are either on this side or that, either all good or all evil. There is no middle ground - only calls for action. Calls that the wrong people are hearing.

We live in a culture in which too many feel they have no meaning or importance, but believe that one spectacular act of madness can give them the instant celebrity which defines success in a sick society. And so they kill to feel alive. To experience an illusion of power at the expense of the powerless. And even knowing the likelihood that they will be killed during their heinous act, they believe they will live eternally in the electronic ether, washed in the blood of the sacrificed.

Gun control can not and will not change any of this. The phenomena of mass shootings is, in fact, unstoppable absent a wholesale change in our culture, our way of life, and our society's unhealthy obsession with an inhuman and inhumane electronic world.

The good news is that the vast majority of people still retain values strong enough to keep them morally centered in our crumbling culture. The bad news is that unless those values can regain cultural dominance, and unless we can replace combativeness and angry confrontation with honest conversation, mass murder will continue to be our inescapable new normal.

Bitter Lemon

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

As there's no Pulitzer Prize offered for "Subtlety in Editorial Cartooning," we see no particular downside to taking a direct approach in our criticism of CNN's Don Lemon and his wildly biased questions while moderating the most recent Democrat debate.

Lemon's declaration of Trump's bigotry as a "fact" is the sort of drip-drip-drip Chinese water torture of constant misinformation that has convinced half the country that Trump and his supporters (even his reluctant supporters) are racist bastards who always keep a noose in the glove compartment "just in case."

As journalistic standards don't really mean anything anymore, there's no point in our suggesting that Lemon and his ilk "live up" to rules which no longer apply. But entirely apart from that, there should be repercussions for those in public positions who deliberately use untruthful hate speech to divide and incite the American public.

And when we say "repercussions," we're not talking about the restriction of free speech. We're talking repercussions in the sense of marketplace pressures, or even condemnation of this kind of nonsense from any remaining journalists who aren't complete whores.

And it's a pity that Lemon's sleazy lack of professionalism is a distraction from the many interesting, accurate, and logical statements made by the Democrat candidates on Wednesday night. Oh, not regarding policies - but rather in their attacks on each other. Blood was drawn, and we enjoyed every drop of it!

Happily, we'll be spared any new debates for at least a few weeks. Perhaps during that time, Don Lemon can learn to prioritize journalistic integrity over his hate-filled ignorance.

BONUS: WEIGHTY DECISION

Michael "Wearing a Black Hole Would Make Me Look Slimmer" Moore is trying to promote the idea of Michelle Obama running for President, saying that while there are a number of Democrats who could beat Trump, only Michelle could crush him.

As genuinely nightmarish as the idea is, Moore might not be wrong. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a completely unqualified, politically radical, self-invented facade of a person named "Obama" was put in the Oval Office.