Organ harvest

I take a couple of enforced days off while my computer is repaired and I come back to widespread chaos.  Can I not leave you people alone for a few hours?

Justin Shilling was making plans for the holidays that probably did not involve giving away parts of his body, but things happen.  On Tuesday he was there when Ethan Crumbley brought his Christmas present to school and yesterday his parents took him off life-support.  His 17-year-old organs have already been transplanted into other people.  May they enjoy many years of health.

Under Michigan law the parents of underage killers are considered to be culpable, and yesterday the Crumbleys-- I have to stop thinking about Edward Lear -- were indicted for involuntary manslaughter.  Although their lawyer assured everyone their surrender was imminent, they apparently drew $4,000 from an ATM and were ultimately found in a warehouse in Detroit, a circuitous route to the Oakland County sheriff's office.  (It seems they parked out front, so not criminal masterminds.)  Maybe they should have made for Wisconsin, where murder is no big deal.  If you're tempted to give a wet slap about these two, read the letter mama wrote to Trump in 2016 praising him (not James Madison et al.) for "allowing my right to bear arms."  Which she needs as "a female and a Realtor."  Why are so many scumbags involved in real estate?

Ghislaine Maxwell, after months of complaining about the conditions in the federal lockup, finally went on trial in New York.  If you're tempted to give a wet slap about her, the Guardian covers the middle-schoolers madam and her pension-looting father right here.  Enjoy.

Religion is the greatest grift of them all, and nobody does it better than Houston's megapastor Joel Osteen.   A plumber working at his Lakewood Church last month broke through a wall and found a trove of envelopes containing thousands of dollars in cash and checks.  By a strange coincidence, the church reported $600,000 in cash and checks stolen back in March 2014.  Of course, the stolen funds were fully insured.  I'm sure the church has already made arrangements to repay the insurance company.  Aren't you?

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's directive would bar from pay or further training National Guard members who refuse vaccination.  Ron DeSantis's response is to propose a private army to protect Florida against foreign incursion (and given the Miami demographic I don't think he means Cubans).    No vax, no mask, no problem!  Also no federal supervision.

But New York has bigger problems than Omicron or fascism -- the schmear crisis.  Breakdowns in the supply chain have left the city facing a critical shortage of cream cheese in the middle of Chanukah.  This is the worst thing to happen since the potato blight made latkes all but unobtainable.

Republiclown Thomas Massie wasn't about to let a mass shooting in Michigan, or a subsequent one in Atlanta where a police officer died, keep him from sharing his family Christmas card.  The "PS Santa bring ammo" says it all.  The truly appalling thing is that he has spawned five times.

How about this cafone in Biella, Italy, who needed a vaccine so he invested several hundred Euros in a fake arm?  Very lifelike but it didn't fool the nurse.  He's a dentist, apparently.

I should laugh.  Americans are consuming, rubbing themselves and bathing in Black Oxygen Organics, BOO for short.  Harvested from a Canadian bog abutting a landfill, it is promised as a cure for covid and practically everything else, only $110 a bag.  Back in the nineteenth century when the medicine show came to town, you got a spiel for some useless elixir but you also got a show -- comedians, music, dancing.  Now all you get in mud in your teeth.

People, please.

Justin Shilling