Poll Cat

Yes, nothing says topical, post-election humor quite like a quantum theory joke! But considering the fact that we're writing this on Tuesday afternoon and don't know which way the elections are going to break, we couldn't help but think of Schrodinger's cat in a sealed box and its unresolved state of possibilities.

In much the same way, our immediate political future is in an unresolved state as these words are written...but by the time you read them, you'll know whehter Schrodinger's ballot box opened to reveal the electoral equivalent of a happy, purring, pampered kitty...or an appalling fly-infested mix of whiskers and rotting guts infested with feasting News maggots.

(Note: our sincere editorial apologies to any readers who read that last bit while still working on breakfast.)

Lacking the ability to expound further (we actually have a lot more to say about quantum theory, but have yet to meet anyone who was glad when we did), we're looking to you readers to help carry the conversational ball in the comments section today. Are we celebrating today or mourning? High-fiving or standing on ledges? Beats us...but in either case, it's not unlikely that we'll have a hangover today.

And speaking of confusing realities, we'll end this by noting our baffled reaction to alleged comedienne Amy Schumer's "get out the vote" tweet in which she showed an ultrasound of the child she's carrying in order to express the vital importance of people getting out and voting in order to keep unfettered abortion as available as drive-thru hamburgers.

Put another way, even Schrodinger's box isn't as confusing as Schumer's.

LATE NIGHT UPDATE

It would appear that the Dems have retaken the House, and will be even more annoying now. Idiots, socialists, and radicals will be committee heads, and specious congressional investigations into Trump, Kavanaugh, and probably everyone reading this blog will become a significant monkey wrench jammed into the machinery of America's recent successes.

Damn.

If Your Election Lasts More Than Four Hours...

Yes, we spelled "poling" that way on purpose.

Tomorrow is Election Day, and one way or another it's going to pack a wallop. We're either going to see the effective end of the Trump experiment as House Democrats begin two years of unending lawsuits, investigations, and impeachment attempts...or delicious agony and despair from Leftists as they're forced to endure ongoing gains in pretty much every measure of American success.

Actual logical discourse about which party should win has pretty much disappeared, as exemplified by the Democrats' ad in which a bunch of naked women stare dolefully at a camera while holding paper ballots over what is apparently the only important part of their anatomy.

Their message is clear enough: "we are ambulatory reproductive systems without enough sense to practice simple birth control or, God forbid, abstinence, and nothing matters to us other than the convenience of killing babies."

Seriously, shouldn't all women be offended by this campaign? Especially when they notice that there's no corollary in which men are being encouraged to vote with their schwanzstuckers?

The choices in this election are stark: mobs versus jobs, capitalism versus socialism, hate versus debate, division versus unity, logic versus emotion, and responsibility versus hedonistic chaos.

On Tuesday night, things are going to change. And sadly, the naked truth is that we don't know which way.

AND FROM THE VAULT

She'll be voting. Make sure you do, too!

Skinny Dips

With Halloween so recently in the rear view mirror, it's not surprising that some high-profile racists are allowing their masks to slip enough to show the more than skin-deep ugliness underneath.

CNN's Don Lemon, about whom it can truly be said "when Life gives you Lemon, take Life outside and beat it senseless," just declared that when it comes to terrorism, absolutely no group of people should be demonized. Except White men, of course, because they're "the biggest terror threat in this country."

To prove this, he cited statistics of killings by alleged White terrorists over the past 20 years or so, with the total number of victims being approximately the same as any 3-day weekend in the conspicuously non-White environs of Chicago.

Meanwhile, bitter clinger Hillary Clinton was being interviewed about civility in politics (because who could possibly be more of an expert?) when the program's host briefly confused Cory "Spartacus" Booker with Eric "Fast & Furious" Holder. Hillary helped the host over this embarrassing gaff by quipping of the Black men, "they all look alike."

The audience and usually volatile media outlets just laughed it off because, darn it, racist comments are funny when they come from screamingly liberal Democrats! Who can forget Senator (and former KKK member) Robert Byrd's heartwarming description of the working class poor as "White niggers?" Or Joe Biden's amazement that candidate Barack Obama was "articulate and clean," or Harry Reid's marveling at Obama's pleasingly "light skin" and ability to speak with "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted one."

Oddly, screaming Progressives can always get away with this kind of blatant racism, while those who show the least inclination to conservatism will be cast into the fires of Hell for saying anything, no matter how innocent or well intended, which can be construed as being racist.

As a case in point, Megyn Kelly has just been canned from a $69 million contract for mentioning casually on her morning show that it used to be okay for White kids to dress up as Black characters when she was a kid. When corrected, she apologized fully and sincerely and wanted to open a dialogue to help all sides express their views and perhaps find greater understanding between the races. But nooOOooo. Instead she's been thrown under Rosa Parks' bus and had her journalistic career ruined, not because of an act of hate speech, but because of an act of the far less acceptable honest speech.

Somehow, the word "hypocrisy" just isn't enough to describe the despicable double standards of the race-obsessed on the Left.

AND DON'T FORGET...

Speaking of things that make us feel like projectile vomiting...

Don't forget to turn your clocks back on Sunday so that you can screw up your sleep cycles, enjoy seeing midnight blackness outside at around 6 pm, and enjoy all of the gut-wrenching effects of jet lag without actually having to go somewhere potentially fun.

If Trump would promise an executive order ending Daylight Saving Time, we think he could pretty much lock up the midterm results he (and we) are hoping for.

Happy Halloween 2018

We take Halloween pretty seriously at Stilton's Place, as evidenced by these actual interior decorations we've been enjoying for most of the month...

We're also ready with a full contingent of outdoor decorations for the trick-or-treat crowd, including inflatables, video projectors, creepy music, and psychedelic lighting. Unfortunately, rain and wind are predicted tonight (damn you, global climate change!) so we may just end up watching storms with our noses pressed against the window while eating tiny candy bars instead of greeting costumed kids.

But hope springs eternal, and we'll be ready to make the outside of stately Jarlsberg manor suitably creepy if there's a break in the weather.

And speaking of hope springing eternally, we'd like to share the graphic below from our good friend Johnny Optimism. Every year on that site, we post a collage of decorated Halloween wheelchairs as a reminder that when Life gives you lemons, you should kick Life in the ass and throw your lemons at it, then do something totally awesome.

Considering the all-too-spooky news lately, we think it's a timely bit of advice. So enjoy Halloween, and take optimism and inspiration from these kids (and their wonderful parents)!

Illuminutty

Is insanity the new normal? We hope not, but we're starting to have serious concerns. No sooner do authorities collect a Trump-obsessed bomb maker than the story is blasted out of the spotlight by another hate-filled maniac who went on a killing spree in a quiet Jewish synagogue, leaving 11 dead and more wounded. This is tragic and unacceptable craziness.

Following hard on their heels, legions of "news" people and social media gadflies are weighing in on whether Trump's "rhetoric of violence" (which mostly seems to be an unfortunate appreciation of rough-housing and fist fights) caused one or both of the incidents cited above. Spoiler alert: no, it didn't - except to the extent that the mentally unstable can get inspiration from almost anyone or anything before acting out. Do we know for a fact that neither of the crazed individuals was inspired to action by Hillary Clinton's impassioned call to treat your political enemies with "incivility" when they "want to destroy everything you stand for?"

We'll happily concede a scintilla of nuttiness in Trump, but considering the fact that the Obama administration wrapped a thick fog of insanity around every aspect of government (thus normalizing it), and Hillary "Guilty of Literally Everything" Clinton was set to continue our straightjacketed march into Hades, conservatives' only "rational" choice in 2016 was to choose Clinton's irrational opponent. The fact that he's still been spectacularly successful only underscores that we're not in Kansas anymore.

News people and politicians regularly demonize their opponents now in more-or-less Biblical terms, and preach that if you're not against the "evil" and actively fighting it ("Get in their faces! Let them know they're not welcome anywhere!"), then you're evil yourself and damned to political perdition. Unless you do penance by repeating (or acting upon) slogans like "Punch the Nazis" and"Kill White People."

Is anyone sane on college campuses these days? Conservative speakers are physically attacked, fires are started, and windows smashed. Minority students falsify racist attacks by scrawling graffiti and hanging nooses. "Safe spaces" are needed for students to recover after experiencing "micro aggressions" like, presumably, gnat farts. And a recent study suggested that as many as 26% of all college students may now be experiencing PTSD symptoms left over from their candidate losing in 2016. Snowflakes, indeed.

And while we hate to say it, we've recently seen a disturbing amount of craziness offered up by people who are good friends, as they cite wild conspiracy theories denying the obvious realities surrounding both the pipe bombs and the steroid-fueled whacko living in a van which looked like a Trump parade float. "He's too stereotypical to be real," "His window stickers don't look faded enough," "Anonymous Internet sources say he was a Democrat right up until the day this happened," "How did he drive all those bombs to the mailboxes in one day," and on and on.

With love in our hearts, we encourage anyone with this mindset to take a deep cleansing breath, think of the mantra "Sh*t Happens" on your exhale, then rejoin the less dramatic world of the marginally sane.

Yes, there are real conspiracies (the whole Mueller Russian investigation is a fine example), but it's a bad idea to develop an entire cosmology based on the idea that nothing that we see is real, and nefarious puppet-masters like the Bilderbergs, Zionist Jews, Globalists, or the Illuminati are constantly pulling the invisible strings running from the 9/11 attacks to Sandy Hook to the crowded secret cemetery in Arkansas that holds the bodies of Clinton murder victims.

More than any time in living memory, we are being bombarded by nuttiness, conspiracies, and calls to violence. We are pressured around the clock to replace reasoned discourse with emotional actions. It is a contagious fever - and an exceedingly dangerous one.

For all of this, we have no answers. But we can at least point out that somehow all of this madness must end - and soon - if the American experiment is to outlive us all. Until then, "be sane" and encourage sanity in others.

Lip Bomb

In a nightmare scenario which seems in retrospect to have been almost inevitable, ten or more alleged pipe bombs were mailed to high profile Democrats, causing huge explosions of moral outrage and accusations from the Left, even though the "bombs" appear to have been about as dangerous as Tinker Toys.

In other words, the bombs functioned perfectly - because the likely intent was to disrupt the news cycles and throw the upcoming midterm elections into a state of chaos. Mission Accomplished, anonymous "bomber!"

At the time of this writing, we honestly don't know who is behind these devices, nor if the "bombs" were simply ineptly assembled or purposely designed to be photogenic and not to do any physical damage. Neither do we know the politics of the person or persons responsible. Whether they lean Right or Left barely matters; they represent neither group and are either off their rockers or guilty of having spectacularly inappropriate senses of humor which they will hopefully have a lot of time to reconsider while in the penitentiary.

The FBI is working hard on clearing up those points, and we expect answers and arrests soon. Unfortunately, that won't undo the very real damage which has already been done. Left-leaning "news" outlets which always caution us not to assume a terrorist is Islamic just because he shouts "Allahu Akbar" are declaring with absolute certainty that the Rube Goldberg bombs were sent by a Trump-loving racist hillbilly who has been inflamed by the President's many imaginary calls for violence.

These unsubstantiated stories are what was recently called, by those same sources, "interference in our elections." If Leftist media actually gave a rat's rear end about the sanctity of elections, they wouldn't be screaming their unfounded accusations to the electorate on a 24/7 basis. The impact of their mendacity wildly overshadows any insignificant influence which may or may not have been generated by a few thousand dollars worth of Russian ads on Facebook back in 2016..

What was contained in those manilla envelopes may well be the first actual "social media bombs," but they surely won't be the last. The mainstream media has made clear that a single individual, whether crazy or crafty, can change the national narrative - and perhaps the course of an election - with a wild enough stunt.

Sadly, the media's complicity in all of this has completed the transformation of our nation's Fourth Estate into a dangerous Fifth Column. Put that in your pipe bomb and smoke it.

The Miracle Jerker

There are times in our lives, times we're not particularly proud of, when we fantasize about being able to wallop someone with a Costco-sized banana cream pie with extra whipped cream. And one of those times was Monday, when Barack "the future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam" Obama spoke at a political rally in Las Vegas.

(A brief but important aside: the last time we recall Obama attending a political rally in Las Vegas was while the ruins of our embassy in Benghazi were literally still smoking. And there, he likened the "sacrifices" of political volunteers to those who sacrificed their lives in Libya. The rat bastard.)

But here in the present day, it wasn't our embassy on fire, but rather Barack Obama's pants for approximately the millionth time. And the whopper that particularly caught our attention was this one: "When you hear this talk about economic miracles, remember who started it!"

Well we do remember, and it sure as Shinola wasn't Barry. He further explained, "By the time I left office, wages were rising, the uninsurance rate was falling, poverty was falling, and that's what I handed off to the next guy."

But let's slip into our hip waders and parse this nonsense. Wages were "rising" from the grave at a nearly imperceptible rate owing to Obama's successful efforts to impede economic recovery as long as possible (indeed, it was the slowest economic recovery ever).  The rate of uninsurance declined only because people were ordered under penalty of law to get Obamacare, with taxpayers and the middle class getting stuck for the wildly unaffordable premiums. The claim that "poverty was falling" is absolutely unsubstantiated, and the notion that Barry handed off a nascent economic miracle to Trump is absurd on its face.

To that end, we'd like to take an opportunity to remind everyone of what Obama was actually handing off to his successor...

This is the man who spent hundreds of billions on fake "shovel ready jobs" that never materialized, but somehow managed to enrich the coffers of Democrats and radical liberal groups...

And this same economic genius actually proposed this as an idea to create a million new jobs (spoiler alert: it didn't create any)...

And he followed up that inspiration with this unintentional bit of "transparency"...

Yep, even with record unemployment and no hope on the horizon, Obama disbanded his advisory Jobs Council after not bothering to meet with them for over a year.

Make no mistake, Obama was an economic disaster for America and much of it was intentional on his part. The "economic miracle" is that we somehow managed to survive his eight year reign of error.

Branching Out

The story itself is tragic: a harmless 72-year-old man in India was innocently collecting a few pieces of dried wood when enraged monkeys in a nearby treetop started pelting him with actual bricks - sadly with deadly accuracy. The old gentleman died of multiple head and chest injuries, quite possibly with a look of horror on his face that this time more than monkey flop was being flung.

While it might not immediately seem that there is much for us to learn from this incident, other than that monkeys should have to go through background checks and a waiting period before getting their wiry little hands on bricks, we actually think the incident has strong parallels to what is currently happening in our own country.

Specifically, this angry mob of monkeys puts us in mind of the angry mobs of Leftists who are getting increasingly vocal, aggressive, and confrontational in streets, restaurants, and government buildings. Although fortunately, being basement dwellers, most Antifa types have no tree-climbing skills, and lack the upper body strength to actually lift a brick - let alone throw it farther than the toe of their Doc Martens.

Consider this: in India, the monkeys are considered sacred and are coddled for their entire worthless lives. Any mischief they get up to, apparently including murder, is quickly forgiven. Besides, how can you tell one monkey from another? Meanwhile in the United States, the Leftists promoting street violence are also products of privilege, raised with neither discipline nor a sense of responsibility. Like the monkeys, they gather in mobs and take efforts to make sure that they all look so much alike that no one can tell them apart.

Then there are the more obvious comparisons, the first of which is that both murderous monkey mobs and Antifa protesters are little assholes who want to raise Hell just for the fun of it, with no ability to actually communicate intelligibly what it is they actually want (other than mayhem). Another is that both groups choose victims who are essentially helpless; as a case in point, just look at the Antifa protester in Portland, Oregon who told a widow that her deceased husband, a police officer killed in the 9/11 attacks, was a "sodomizer" who should "rot in the grave."

Remarkably, this little feces-flinger's attitude changed completely when confronted by an actual alpha male - the widow's son. He turned tail and ran, shamed in front of the other anarchy monkeys, and thus unlikely to ever get an opportunity to breed.

There are surely other similarities between the simians and the simpletons, but we don't have enough Jane Goodall in us to bother sorting it all out. Suffice it to say that the potential danger from both kinds of pests will only diminish when people decide they've had enough.

BONUS: STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Later today, Donald Trump will be appearing in Houston, Texas to campaign for Ted Cruz, who is in a pitched senatorial battle with Democrat "Beto" O'Rourke - a full blooded Irishman who identifies as being Hispanic. Cruz is still enjoying a lead in the polls, despite unprecedented millions of dollars flowing into O'Rourke's campaign from sources outside Texas (and none of which sources want anything good to happen to Texas).

So it's a fine thing that Trump will be leading another pep rally, but we can't help but wonder if the atmosphere might be a little strained backstage, considering the brutal attacks Trump and Cruz exchanged when running for President. And in case you've forgotten, here's a little reminder from the vault...

"Dignity. Always dignity."

Russian to Judgment

Considering all of the sex, violence, and name-calling currently in the news, we thought it would be refreshing to present a story with a more spiritual side.

Specifically, Vladimir Putin has announced that in the event Russia suffers a nuclear attack, all of the Russians who are incinerated will go straight to Heaven. Yay!

Granted, we think his theology may be a little suspect on this particular point, as pretty much all faiths demand belief in their core tenets and require acts of redemption to get past Saint Peter (or in this case, Saint Petersburg) rather than simply dying in a spectacularly colorful way.

Still, Putin asserts that the glow-in-the-dark Russians would have been martyred, which is apparently akin to having a "Get Out of Hell Free" card. Mind you, we thought that only worked if you were martyred for your faith - but who are we to question a world leader who poisons journalists he doesn't like?

Gulp.

Then again, maybe Vlad got insights into a change in the eternal entrance requirements in a vision in which he was told, "After my resurrection, I have more flexibility."

Don't Say We Didn't Warren You

As always, you can click the cartoon for a larger view (and read the itty-bitty type above).

Well, the test results are in, and it seems that presidential wannabee Elizabeth "Princess Running Gag" Warren isn't quite the Cherokee warrior she claimed to be as a "woman of color."

Rather, her DNA showed that she might be 1/1024th Native American - which is less than most white Americans - but even that infinitesimal number might be wrong because there are no Native American DNA samples to compare hers with. So the DNA "specialist" compared those particular genes with ones found in other populations in Mexico and South America. Meaning that Warren may actually be Incan, Aztec, or Mayan and have a family history better suited to human sacrifice than running casinos.

But the important thing to take away from this DNA test is that Elizabeth Warren is so white that she makes Casper the ghost look like Kanye West.

Warren has made it clear that her presidential ambitions mean we'll be seeing a lot of her in the future, which makes us think that this is a good time to revisit the past. To that end, enjoy this short retrospective of cartoons...

BONUS: ERROR ON A G-STRING

We can't really resist commenting about a judge's decision to throw out Stormy Daniels' defamation case against President Trump...and his order that she pay all of his legal expenses in the case as a deterrent to frivolous suits brought by skeezy lawyers like Michael Avenatti. 

We still think he banged her, though.

Witch Way Did They Go

No, that isn't Hillary - though she gets that a lot.

While most things in America seem to be improving under the Tump administration, these are desperately hard times for satirists. How in the world are we supposed to come up with stories more ridiculous than those actually being presented as news?

As an October-appropriate example, the laughingly liberal Huffington Post is reporting that dozens of witches will gather in New York City a few days from now to put a hex on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The ceremony will include photos and effigies of Kavanaugh as well as graveyard dirt and coffin nails so everyone will know that the hex maniacs are taking this thing seriously.

The harpies see this as a "radical act of resistance," which they are doing entirely for the benefit of the "oppressed, downtrodden and marginalized." So it is merely coincidental that these politically woke witches have sold $10 tickets to as many as a thousand people to attend the ritual, even though their venue, "Catland," will only hold 60.

Not that the witches will keep all the money. They plan to give 25% of the take to an LGBTQ center for homeless youth, which probably isn't a bad thing, and another 25% to the cackling cauldron-stirrers at Planned Parenthood, a group which is more hellish than any coven could ever hope to be.

Brutality is in the Eye of E. Holder

And of course, Holder's armed New Black Panther pals will handle the polling places.

Enraged by the fact that Donald Trump is, in fact, "winning" on the national and international stages, and doing more for America's minority communities than Obama accomplished in 8 years, top Democrats have been hard pressed to come up with a rebuttal to this administration's remarkable success. But at last, they've found something: increasing calls for physical violence against anyone who opposes their racist, sexist, and socialist policies.

And the calls for violence aren't just coming from the meth-using, basement-dwelling, Antifa minions who get a weekly allowance from George Soros (and, probably, their long-suffering parents). No, the bloodlusting battle cries are coming from top Democrats.

Eric Holder, the sleazy law-breaking bag man for Barack Obama who helped destroy the credibility of the Department of Justice, just issued a statement in which he declared that "Michelle Obama says when (Republicans) go low, we go high. No! NO! When they go low we KICK them!"

Hillary Clinton, who once swore to accept the results of the election in which Donald Trump kicked her fanny, just declared "You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That's why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that's when civility can start again. But until then the only thing Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength."

Hang on - we're pretty sure that there's a word that distills that whole thought. "Strength" applied in a way that lacks "civility"...  Oh yeah, now we remember! That word is violence.

And let's not forget Mad Maxine Waters, who helped pour gasoline on this anti-American fire by saying "If you see anyone from the Cabinet in a restaurant, a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and create a crowd! And you push back on them! And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere!" Except, perhaps, the death camps that Maxine and her chums seemingly have in mind for citizens who won't do what they're told.

This is in no way amusing, because it's pushing our nation to a very dangerous place. Not that you'd know it from the mainstream media, which has now undertaken a concerted and coordinated effort to say that violent Leftist mobs aren't really "mobs" at all - they're just groups of concerned citizens who are expressing their first amendment rights by kicking people in their faces, beating cars with truncheons, harassing family homes, and - when things get a bit boring - setting things on fire.

It seems inevitable that blood will eventually be shed - and that's just what Holder, Hillary, Maxine, and the rest of their ilk want. In victimhood there is power...so why not push impressionable kids into acts so dangerous that a few may get shot while assaulting right wing Nazis?

That scenario is quite literally the Leftists' wet dream. And they're bothered not at all by whose blood will be providing the moisture.

Crawl of the Riled

The illustration above pretty neatly captures what we're dealing with today. Our hands are poised at the keyboard, but when it comes to tapping out some playful political musings, they're moving very, very slowly. Imperceptibly, even.

Truthfully, we've still got a bit of burnout from the ups and downs of the Kavanaugh confirmation debacle, though we were pleased to see today that Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh is on the bench and on the job, hearing arguments and raising questions. This is as it should be.

There's plenty of ongoing drama and rampant stupidity related to this that we could talk about (like the pierced, pink-haired, and suddenly jobless school teacher who thought it was a smart idea to tweet "Kill Kavanaugh") but we'd prefer to treat this as a time of relative silence and healing. There's only so much of this stuff we can expose ourselves to until something bursts in our noggin.

And that's not just hyperbole! A team of Italian researchers has been examining the remains of Romans who were killed when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, and discovered that the sudden exposure to superheated air actually caused brains to boil with such ferocity that skulls started exploding like small bombs.

We're not absolutely sure that the hot air produced by the Leftists and their media cohorts reaches quite those searing temperatures, but we're not in the mood to put our little grey cells at risk today.

But as long as we're all here anyway, how about an eye-pleasing farewell to the Kavanaugh saga...?

SURF BORED

Beer-drinking aliens who wanted to probe her hippocampus!