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It is ROBUSTLY UNUSUAL.

The post Schiaparelli Follows Its Inaugural Moment With a Wacky Couture Week first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.

In a great act of public service journalism on the final Thursday of the Trump administration, the Washington Post brings us the story we didn't know we needed to know about the Secret Service detail assigned to protect Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Namely, the agents tasked with protecting their lives aren't allowed to use any of the approximately 478 toilets in the Kushner-Trump manse in the posh Kalorama neighborhood of Washington DC:

Instructed not to use any of the half-dozen bathrooms inside the couple's house, the Secret Service detail assigned to President Trump's daughter and son-in-law spent months searching for a reliable restroom to use on the job, according to neighbors and law enforcement officials. After resorting to a porta-potty, as well as bathrooms at the nearby home of former president Barack Obama and the not-so-nearby residence of Vice President Pence, the agents finally found a toilet to call their own.

Eventually, the agency was able to find a terlet to let, in a basement studio in a house right across the street from Caca Casa de Kushner, at the price of $3,000 a month, which is all you need to know the house isn't owned by anyone in the Trump family. The space not occupied by the bathroom also serves as a command post and break room for the Secret Service detail, so that works out pretty well for all, particularly the agents who may need to work some things out themselves. What a relief!

---

The Post does note that not being allowed to poop in the house isn't all that unusual:

Arrangements that allow for some distance between Secret Service agents and those they guard are not unusual, particularly when the agency's "means, methods or resources" involve indoor plumbing. The people who qualify for such protection often occupy expensive, sprawling properties where a detail can use a garage, pool house or other outbuilding as a command post, break room and bathroom.

Problem is, the Kushner maison didn't have anything that would work for the Secret Service detail's particular set of spills.

And speaking of Secret Service details, the WaPo story positively strains to get out the full truth about the great toilet search. We learn that after neighbors complained about the porta-potty out on the sidewalk in front of Shits Chez Kushner, the agents went over to use the loo at the command post in the Obamas' garage. Everything was just swell at first, but soon the arrangement went right into the shitter when

a Secret Service supervisor from the Trump/Kushner detail left an unpleasant mess in the Obama bathroom at some point before the fall of 2017, according to a person briefed on the event.

The supervisor left such a huge, filthy, positively agricultural load that the Kushner team was flushed, not by the Obamas, but by the leaders of the Obamas' security detail. Talk about your internal rivalry!

Also, if you've never read Vice's saga of the time Someone Did a Shit So Bad On a British Airways Plane That It Had to Turn Around and Come Back Again, you should probably treat yourself, if that's the word. Did he work for the Secret Service?

After the Obama Shitsplosion Incident, agents guarding the Kushners were welcome to use a "bathroom in a stand-alone guard station" at the Naval Observatory, where the Pences live, but that doody station is a mile away from the Kushners, so agents pressed for time or urgency "relied on the hospitality of nearby restaurants."

Well goddamn it, Washington Post, you didn't tell us if that one supervisor got banned from any of those places for another humongous mondo turd.

Eventually the Secret Service found the basement studio and all has worked out well; the $3,000 a month isn't especially outrageous for the kinds of rentals the agency does for other protectees, either. Joe Biden charged the Secret Service $2,200 for a guest house it used as a command center, and that was in 2011, so adjusted for inflation ($2,500), it's not a bad deal. [Rebecca always thought it was unseemly that Old Handsome Joe charged for the Secret Service to protect him, and the past four years of Trumpist moneymaking off the Secret Service's captive audience has not changed her mind.]

Also, not surprisingly, the White House says this is all a load of doodoo:

A White House spokesperson denied that Trump and Kushner restricted agents from their 5,000-square-foot home, with its six bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms, and asserted that it was the Secret Service's decision not to allow the protective detail inside. That account is disputed by a law enforcement official familiar with the situation, who said the agents were kept out at the family's request.

We may never know. It's just one of those classic "She said, 'Pee shed'" situations.

In any case, we assume that after Joe Biden is sworn in, the Kushners will be shooting out of DC faster than a little deuce poop after a big dinner at the White House, so the Secret Service can keep on doing its job as needed for new clients. We don't begrudge the cost of a fairly modest basement space for the good of the agents. After all, Secret Service agents are the last people you'd want just going through the motions.

OPEN THREAD.

[WaPo / Terrible photoshop from Business Insider]

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Descendents have released a lyric video for their new single “That’s The Breaks”. The video was created by Jason Link. The song is available digitally through Epitaph Records. The band released their two-song single Suffrage in 2020 and released their album Hypercaffium Spazzinate in 2016. Check out the video below.

AWESOME!

Happy Halloween! Check out our past Halloween posts here: #960 Strategic trick-or-treating, #645 Hilarious last-minute Halloween costumes, #385 That one house on your street that gets really, really into Halloween, and #384 Intense-post Halloween candy trades!

Photos from: My friends Mike and Jes, Tony and Sharon, Trudie and Keith, here, and here

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This is a video that has been going around since Thursday. It features a sheriff's deputy in Clackamas County, Oregon — where many rightwing militia members attempted to set up illegal "checkpoints" at which they held journalists at gunpoint, due to the imaginary threat of "antifa" activists either setting fires or looting houses — chatting up militia members about how he needs the public's help to deal with "antifa motherfuckers," and generally encouraging what they were doing and giving them advice on how to avoid running afoul of the law.

Antifa Arsonist Warning from Clackamas County Sheriff - MUST SEE! youtu.be

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That would be bad enough. In fact, it was bad enough that Mark Nikolai, the deputy offering this advice, was placed on "leave." Sheriff's departments all over the west have had to issue statements explaining that no, the fires are not being set by antifa activists. This has been deeply disappointing news to rightwing zealots who were really hoping for a scenario in which they could murder some liberals and still not be the bad guys.

Via Oregon Live:

"As soon as I was made aware of this incident, I moved swiftly to place this deputy on leave while we investigate," Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said in the release. "The Sheriff's Office mission is to provide calm and safety especially during unprecedented times such as these. I expect nothing less of our deputies, and apologize to all in our community."

The video, in which deputy Mark Nikolai is aware he was being filmed, has a timestamp indicating it was filmed on Thursday.

"Antifa motherf-----s are out causing hell," the deputy says. "There's a lot of lives at stake and there's a lot of people's property at stake because these guys got some vendetta."

The deputy is heard on the video telling the person filming that deputies "need the public's help," in regard to anti-fascists. Numerous reports and photos of people being stopped by armed vigilantes in Clackamas County have been circulating on social media.

But it is much, much worse than just spreading terrible rumors. Because at about 1:14 in this other video below, Nikolai also tells the militia members that if they kill someone, they should leave a knife on the body in order to give themselves a way to claim self-defense.

Clackamas County Sheriff and Militia youtu.be

It should come as a huge surprise that Nikolai has been accused of fabricating evidence before.

Now, Nikolai has already been placed on leave, but given this, it seems unlikely he's going to get to continue having any kind of career in law enforcement at all, if only because the lawyers of anyone he arrests would be able to play this video and get the case thrown out, easy peasy. Also because literally everyone he's ever put in jail is now going to have some pretty solid grounds for an appeal.

Shockingly enough, there's actually no "but they were LIBERALS" defense in these kinds of scenarios.

[Reddit]

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Sadly, news broke today that reggae icon Toots Hibbert, singer of Toots and the Maytals, passed away. He was 77. Recently, he had been placed in a medically induced coma due to complications from Covid-19. Hibbert's family released a statement: "It is with the heaviest of hearts to announce that Frederick Nathaniel ‘Toots’ Hibbert passed away peacefully tonight, surrounded by his family at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. The family and his management team would like to thank the medical teams and professionals for their care and diligence, and ask that you respect their privacy during their time of grief. Mr. Hibbert is survived by his wife of 39 years, Miss D, and his seven of eight children.” The group just released their first LP in about 10 years, Got to be Tough. We send our condolences to Hibberts' family, friends, and fans.

Not everyone is lucky enough to be physically or emotionally close to their family. Whether death, distance, or dysfunction prevents a connection with our family of origin, many, like me, rely instead on our chosen family for security, comfort, and protection. Mine just happens to be the horde of highly trained crows I use to attack my enemies.

 

To me, the most important aspects of family are empathy and caring. Of course, a flock of murderous crows, some of the smartest birds, would have both of those in spades. You see, murder is not just a word that can be used to describe a group of crows, it is also something they’re capable of if you give them enough love. It took no time before the ones that crept close during my lunches in the park learned to recognize my moods. Usually sorrow or bloodthirst. Throw in a few months employing a training system based on B.F. Skinner’s reward/punishment theory of animal learning, and you’ve got yourself some killers. Now I have confidants as close to me as any blood-relative could ever be.

 

My crows are always there for me and never express judgment if I’m cranky or whatever. They’re never too busy to listen to my troubles before descending on those responsible in a black hurricane of beaks and talons. I’m sure experiencing a living storm cloud of avian carnage would make someone imagine it’s the end of the world as we know it. But me? I see that dark cloud with the warmth of knowing I am loved and cared for.

 

 

There’s real solace in knowing I always have someone to watch my back. That emotional safety (which I was never granted from my birth mother) allows me to be my true, authentic self in the world. I don’t think I could ever scream at a coworker that they’ll rue the without the confidence that comes from acceptance, and revenge.

 

It’s hard to put into words just what it means to have this chosen family. For so long I fantasized about belonging to a group who accepted me for me, in addition to the peanuts I fed them. I don’t know what I’d do without the connection that we’ve forged. Probably send threatening all- caps emails from anonymous accounts. But I don’t have to engage in any of that pettiness anymore!

 

I’ll be the first to say that this family isn’t traditional, but that shouldn’t matter and you know what? If you have an issue you can take it up with my crows. As long as my crows are by my side, nothing can stop me.

President Donald Trump is not currently scheduled to meet with the family of Jacob Blake while visiting Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, after demonstrations were sparked in the city in August when Blake, a Black man, was shot in the back by a White police officer seven times.

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When it comes to fitness trackers, consumers are spoiled for choice. Between devices from Fitbit, Garmin and now even Amazon, there's probably a device out there suited for everyone, no matter their specific needs. But that same amount of choice can...