Well it looks like the cold is starting to move out of here. Its already 40 degrees! Apparently they’ve named the winter storm now, which is retarded as shit, but whatever. Good luck with Grayson, east-coasters. It doesn’t look pleasant. And remember, its all Donald Trump or the GOP in general to blame for not taking global warming seriously enough.
Have fun with that!
On America’s hardcourts, Wichita State won, Michigan State won, Arizona State lost, Arizona won, Cincinnati won, Ohio State won and Gonzaga won. On the fields of Europe, Spurs drew with lowly West Ham, Barca drew Celta Vigo, and Real Madrid won big. On the frozen ponds, Carolina, Philly, Montreal, St Louis, MINNNNEEEESSSSOOOOOOOOODA, Colorado, Edmonton, Calgary, Phoenix and Dallas were your winners.
No more sports, you say? OK, fine. Then here come…the links!
An accurate depiction of the Clinton Foundation accounting
Justice Dept launches new “pay-for-play” investigation of Hillary Clinton and Clinton Foundation from her days at the State Department. Let’s hope they actually do their job and make public what everybody knows anyway: that the Clinton’s entire enterprise was based on buying access and padding the pockets of the family who were “dead broke” when they left the White House but are rolling in dough just 16 years later.
Al Gore quoting Michael Mann about why these recent cold snaps are the fault of man-made global warming would be hilarious if it weren’t so terrifying to know that those two grifters have had more influence on the world, and have caused more money to be diverted from legitimate power production programs to “green energy” scams in the third world, resulting in continued poverty, than they ever should have. Thanks, assholes.
A man wants to get transferred to a women’s prison. Yeah, I bet he’s not alone and about every dude on his cell block wants to go with him. If he gets his transfer, I’m sure this will end well.
The writers at the LA Times will begin voting today on whether or not to form a union.
In their call to unionize, the LA Times Guild cited ballooning executive salaries, including a $15 million consulting contract that Tronc approved for one of Ferro’s other firms.
“There’s a reason they’ve been fighting so hard against us,” guild members wrote. “They want a free hand to give us less and less.”
So it looks like its as much about wealth envy as needing safeguards against mistreatment. Well good luck to them! I hope they succeed and the owners get rid of them all.
Kim looks to the south…and sees freedom
North Korea has agreed to meet with South Korea officially for peace talks. Kim says its not about nukes but I find it hard to believe that his willingness to sit down at the negotiating table is a coincidence with someone finally standing up to his bullshit threats rather than giving away the farm and funding his regime in exchange for false promises.
Iran protesters spotlight the nation’s shady dealings in the Syrian war. You know, the pallets of cash we sent them in order to buy the weapons Obama sent them through Libya. So I guess maybe we got some of that money back through some CIA front, but I doubt that happened either.
Take care and bundle up! And then have a good day and a great weekend!
Enjoy this.
Now that’s the way to get the blood going!
*rocks out*
Another excellent music choice. Great call Sloopy.
+ Salute
Al Gore quoting Michael Mann about why these recent cold snaps are the fault of man-made global warming – well if everything is caused by CO2 you can never be wrong
If Mann et. al is so good at explaining thins after they happen, why don’t their climate models predict this?
Well in their defense, how can they predict something that didn’t happen yet? It hasn’t happened yet, after all. After it happens it is easier to predict than before it happens.
That logic is irrefutable point to you sir
It’s simple.
There are two responses when data contradict your hypothesis.
If you adjust your hypothesis to account for the data, you’re performing science.
If you adjust the data to account for the hypothesis, you’re exercising faith.
Mann is a Priest, not a scientist.
Yep. I’ve noticed a lot of people don’t think the data is being adjusted though.
Oh I have heard a ton of bullshit about data being normalized to account for discrepancies and other biases. I pointed out that when normalization is always in one direction regardless of the data point (and to create the illusion there is warming), what you have is fraud. There is a reason that these cultists demand everyone bow to scientific consensus, and accuse anyone that points out either their bias or that the only solution they have ever provided to a problem that would require a technical solution was the same tired marxist wealth redistribution tropes, of being heretics.
Mann treated that data like Sandusky treated those kids, and the culture of the institution let the one molest boys, the other molest data.
This is why we need to do a GoFundMe for Mark Steyn.
I’ve contributed to his defense fund before. Probably will again.
And the part that really pisses me off about Mann is that he has another side research gig at Penn State, working on Gene Engineering Algae to produce petroleum products that would be hugely beneficial to mankind once we are living in space (because how inefficient is it to truck oil up to space to make plastic products when algae can both recycle air and provide petroleum for making plastics).
Because the variance in all climate models is indistinguishable from random walk. Which, interestingly enough, if you read his latest publication he argues the same phenomena explains why his prediction is off but still claims the underlying model is valid and predictive of a warming trend.
Doesn’t the scientific process demand that you adjust or drop your hypothesis if observations do not match expected results? How can you be so drastically wrong, yet still pretend that your hypothesis is valid in any way, shape, or form?
Yes, progress does. More specifically, the pursuit of knowledge does. Presuming your objective is to be less wrong about the observable (i.e. objective) world. As to ‘how’ I think that is a systemic issue with components including 1) insufficient gate keepers 2) it hurts to be wrong 3) goal orientation.
Unpacking a little bit – presume you got into climate science because of a subjectively true belief that the world is in danger due to climate issues. (Goal orientation away from knowledge for the sake of knowledge 3) You dedicate a good portion of your life to study just to enter the field, and contribute to various causes (large sunk costs, 2). Logically, you must produce proof there is in fact a problem in order to get people to act at a scale to correct the problem. Your goal was not to test your subjective belief against an objective standard (acquire and contribute to knowledge) but to validate belief. If your belief is invalid, your scientific ‘life’ is more or less wasted – finding a new area of research is not congruent with the prior established goal. Therefore, instead of abandoning the subjective truth (2, 3) you go look for more funding to keep working – the validating answer is there, the data must be bad… you can torture it a little more or maybe play with the coefficients to get the output to look right. You find in government and academia people with agendas that will continue to fund you (1, 3) and keep preaching the gospel of belief – in opposition to knowledge. The cycle continues.
I seem to recall that in the early 2000’s that one of the big warmists said that snow would be a thing of the past for most of the US. Wish I’d have saved that quote.
It was one of the big UK papers. Instapundit pulls it out every time it snows in England.
The Guardian. I looked for it yesterday and I think they’ve scrubbed it.
+1 “Right to be forgotten”
Can you prove it’s not?
That’s what I thought.
Boom.
Case closed.
I wish I could recall the source but I remember reading somewhere that a meaningful hypothesis must be falsifiable. In other words, it must contain a condition by which it can be proven or disproved, otherwise it’s meaningless. Claiming that CAGW causes extreme weather…sometimes, is meaningless. You may as well say that any weather trends or statistical outliers are caused by God.
Popper.
I’m Popper? That’s how it goes, right?
/checks Elite’s rack
Nope.
Falsifiability is an essential component of the scientific process and a hypothesis is not legitimate without it
The writers at the LA Times will begin voting today on whether or not to form a union. – the should demand raw water in the office
*applause*
Rainwater collected from downspouts is raw, right?
How about fresh from the LA River?
Yeah. I can’t imagine it being legal to collect rainwater in CA though. It’s technically illegal in AZ.
Not according to http://www.enlight-inc.com/blog/?p=1036 though that could be
out of date.
Not sure about CA or AZ, but CO has some weird laws about collecting rainwater.
On the frozen ponds, Carolina, Philly, Montreal, St Louis and Dallas were your winners.
Uh, and Minne wiped the ice with the Sabres.
Beating the Sabres…isn’t that assumed?
Not this year.
The 10-21-9 Sabres?
The Wild are perfectly capable of losing to a bad team.
Welcome to my world, Canucks fan from 1970-2011. Stopped caring after that.
Habs from 1979-2010. Then stopped because they’re political and run by clowns.
The Wild, Twins, and Vikings are perfectly capable of losing to a bad team.
FIFY
Don’t make me cry on a Friday.
This may be the most depressed I’ve been as a Sabres fan for the entire history of the team.
Thanks god for the Bills.
That might be the first time I’ve ever seen someone type that.
That’d sound like finger nails on a chalk board. Use the Zamboni next time.
North Korea has agreed to meet with South Korea officially for peace talks. Kim says its not about nukes but I find it hard to believe that his willingness to sit down at the negotiating table is a coincidence with someone finally standing up to his bullshit threats rather than giving away the farm and funding his regime in exchange for false promises. – here’s a deal NoKo gets rid of nukes and Kim gets 20 winter Olympic gold medals or however many needed to be a record.
Judging by the parasites we keep finding in the few who manage to get out of that hellhole maybe we could bribe them with a cargo ship full of Hartz dewormers.
I wonder what they’d make of the dogs depicted on the boxes. Is it food or is it medicine?
Both?
and sees food! Sweet disease free food.
As much as I’d like to see Hildog go to prison, I would much rather just never see those two hideous fucks ever again. Just go away already.
Not me. I want to see them and their entire disgusting criminal enterprise sent to prison and publicly shamed.
The only way to stop this kind of behavior, and it is pretty much SOP for most elected officials now, is for prosecutions of people that run the biggest ones.
Must Stop Chelsea!
Future Senator from New York Chelsea? Good luck.
*Breaks out walking cane, magical “knowing power” and hesitant speech mode* Starts hobbling to Manhattan, should be there before November.
It’s Chelski, thankyouverymuch.
Yeah, I’m good with letting politics slide from administration to administration, but actual law breaking should be heavily punished. Beheading the most recent president because they don’t think like you is not good long term policy, but neither is letting that president commit fraud on the people.
^This. The only thing that will make them go away is a conviction.
Agreed 100000%. It’s fine to expect that politicians and government will be corrupt to some degree, but when it becomes such a joke that it goes unpunished the rule of law is dangerously undermined. Today it’s pay-for-play, tomorrow it’s political enemies getting visits from the FBI in the middle of the night. You’ve got to establish the primacy of the law over individuals in government or else you wind up with a dictatorship of one kind or another.
I want to see them and their entire disgusting criminal enterprise sent to prison.
Me too but I’ll settle for never seeing them again.
A-fucking-men!
I haven’t been following this too closely, but didn’t their house JUST go up in flames? It’s like some insider tipped them off, “you’re gonna need to destroy some more evidence”.
Thought it was some Secret Service outbuilding?
Bill’s suck and fuck shed, you mean.
I want to see her in chains. For soooo many reasons.
Rule 34?
+1 Teenage Girl: “EWWWWWWWWWW!”
Man, I sure hope SugarFree doesn’t see this thread.
I’m sure he’s nowhere near here. Usually doesn’t turn up in the morning.
True. Lazy fuck.
Yuck Rufus
So Nassim Taleb which seems to hate Ayrabs with a passion keeps going on how Lebanese is not Arabic.
https://medium.com/east-med-project-history-philology-and-genetics/no-lebanese-is-not-a-dialect-of-arabic-e95320c164c
Any of more linguistically knowledgeable glibs care to comment cause I am awful curious.
Not at all knowledgeable but two anecdotes:
1. I dated a girl who had grown up in a small village in southern Lebanon. She was native fluent in Arabic, English, French, and her village’s dialect, which she spoke with her parents. She told me that dialect was obscure and I’d never be able to understand it. I asked her to say a few things in it, then I started laughing and said something back to her. She was floored. It was basically Aramaic, of which I have a sketchy-but-nonzero knowledge.
2. I had a co-worker with whom I was very close, who was raised in a Palestinian family, from right outside of Jerusalem. He told me that he had problems understanding North Africans when they spoke Arabic, but he had no issues at all in understanding people in Beirut.
So what is Aramaic for “Get in the van, I have candy?”
Candy stumped me- honey is דבשא.
What, semites have no strippers?
All I know is my Leb FIL learned to read and write Arabic because that’s what they wrote and spoke. I think my wife went as a child but she can only count to 10 in Arabic. Both were born here.
So that’s the extent of what I know about this. In short, Leb = Arabic. But could be wrong.
It’s an interesting article, but I think it’s a little disingenuous. At least when I was studying the language several years ago, it wasn’t under debate that formal, standard Arabic (FusHa) was an invented language, like Koine Greek. That was invented by the pan-Arabist intellectuals in the late 19th early 20th centuries to expunge the Turkish vocabulary that had made its way into the dialects of the Arab parts of the Ottoman Empire. All of the modern Arab dialects are heavily influenced by the languages that were native to the region before the Arab conquests – i.e. Moroccan is influenced by Berber dialects. Even the Gulf dialects, which the Gulf Arabs insist are closer to ‘true’ Arabic are pretty distinct from one another. So Lebanese isn’t an exception to this, and he’s not wrong to point that out. It’s a stretch to say it isn’t Arabic though, unless he’s arguing that formal Arabic is more influenced by Lebanese than the other way around – which could be true, considering that the guys who invented FusHa were largely Levantine intellectuals.
Maltese is an interesting case. It’s pretty clearly Arabic grammatically, but a majority of the vocabulary is taken from romance languages. It depends on where you draw the line between a proper language and a dialect.
Couldn’t the Michael Mann and the frozen pond links been merged?
Is that a threat?
Oh, no. We figured since Mann loved nature so much, we could put him in an ice-fishins shack on one of the frozen lakes and lock the door.
Until April.
I say we go to May at least.
Just to be sure
What is this, Wikipedia?
The pic….yeah, I like the pic.
I should know better by now, but I am looking forward to the Clinton slush fund investigation anyway.
Another for you.
Snow Bunnies! Outstanding work, Mr. Hansen!
Seven woods.
Iran protesters spotlight the nation’s shady dealings in the Syrian war. – shadowy dealings? Never. It was climate change what done it. That caused the war in Syria. I heard this from many a reliable AGW suporters
It’s the most imminent threat of the moment according to every “expert”.
Jeff Sessions is a ridiculous cunt.
Still trying to put that toothpaste back in the tube.
Fuck off, slaver.
Who is actually legislatively granted the authority to reschedule a drug?
If it’s not the AG, then his job would actually be to enforce the law as (badly) written.
3 Felonies a day, Bro.
There are times I think the only way we’re getting rid of some of the bad laws is to enforce them stringently and equally. Once people realize that the laws apply to them, they start pushing for changing them. Look at red light and speeding violation cameras as an example.
Then I realize that the laws will not be enforced equally, and look towards the liquor shelf.
You’d think that enforcing the bad laws equally would result in demands for them to be changed, but I’m guessing that you’re overestimating the general public as a whole. Seriously, don’t give people so much credit.
His primary job is to uphold the constitution. He should not be enforcing blatantly unconstitutional laws unless his oath meant nothing. And I’m convinced that the last is true for 99% of politicians.
I think a lot of people swear that oath the way a lot of users agree to Terms of Service.
Well said, sir..
After CA, legalization is here to stay. I think 8 states, including VA, are poised to allow medical or recreational for the first time this year. So I think Session’s move was either his solo last grasp at a propping up a dying prohibition, or a planned move by Trump to force Congress to act to finally end the prohibition. There will have to be a reaction to this move and I can’t believe it will go in the drug warrior/profiteer/slavers’ favor.
I hope you’re right about trying to force Congress’ hand but I think you’re giving Trump way too much credit here. Hopefully he’ll just fire Sessions the Recused.
Take any libertarian notions out of it. Trump isn’t a Socon so I doubt he sees any reason to push pot prohibition and take the resulting electoral hit. Don’t forget he’s essentially a 80/90s democrat.
Sessions could be acting alone. If Trump is involved though, I highly doubt his endgame is to preserve prohibition.
I agree, Trump’s not a pot prohibitionist but he might be throwing Sessions a bone here or adopting a bit of a hands off approach. My guess would be that Sessions is acting alone here and hopefully the political flack from this move stacked on top of the moronic recusal will lead to his firing. Of course if Sessions does get moved aside we’ll get God knows who who might actually be worse.
Congress’s hand should be forced: they write the laws, and if we allow the executive to ignore/invent laws at their whim we are firmly on the path to dictatorship. Sessions should enforce the law as written until Congress changes it, with the only exception being if he takes the stance that the law is unconstitutional, but that stance would destroy the foundation upon which so much federal law is built that it ain’t happening (drug prohibition is based on an expansive reading of the commerce clause, and so is most of the federal registry, so there will be no retreat to an original reading that merely empowers Congress to regulate interstate trade).
*drops gloves and pummels Jeffy’s hobbit head*
I’d like to think this could be the beginning of something good. Federal government comes in and starts disrupting blue state MJ tax dollars and now you’ve got them all screaming for State’s rights, bitching about Wickard and Gibbons, or fighting the laws through the courts. DOJ could simply not show up for the case or file saying “We agree these laws are unconstitutional judge.”
Deon “Strawberry” Hampton
A Cowboy Met a Bear in a bar…
The little collage at the top warms my heart.
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=373264
We aren’t the only ones who want Sessions out it seems.
I’ll be going through a slum to a rich club’: India’s upside-down rave scene
Magnetic Fields, a three-day festival in the Rajasthan desert, saw the country’s burgeoning dance scene go overground. But there are concerns that clubbing is a corporatised ‘rich person’s game’
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jan/05/indias-upside-down-rave-scene-magnetic-fields-festival-rajasthan
Ah yes India solved every other problem except the basic human right of equal clubbing. Also, I hate clubbing. To crowded to loud and the booze is low quality and very expensive.
“I’m gonna club a seal to make a better deal!”
Comcast fired 500 despite claiming tax cut would create thousands of jobs
So much derp! The comments section is even better.
Huge loss to society.
I just hate it when I run into a situation where, artistically the better move would be to kill a given character, but I just don’t want to kill them off.
The old Bannon dilemma, eh?
Have a rape instead? That’s what GoT would do
STEVE SMITH CAN DO CAMEO
STEVE SMITH RAPE CAMERA?
Would a good maiming be adequate?
I don’t know.
What happens to the grip of a trigger finger if the hand is severed at the wrist?
You might get one more involuntary pull out of it…
The muscles that contract the fingers are in the forearm I think.
I remember my Uncle chasing us around when we were wee with a grouse foot. He’d yank on the ligament and make it clutch. He also taught us the best way to defeather small game birds.
Go read as much Wheel of Time as you can stand, then kill the character.
Speaking of literary death scenes…
Iain M Banks’ death scenes stick with me, probably because they are so. Fucking. Long. I think the worst is the paralyzed guy thrown out of an airlock who is dying upset because the one time he’d be able to get a unfiltered look at the stars and his corneas have frozen.
except, the wrop in pressure would result in the tears boiling. When you get to the membrane itself you then find that vacuum is a damn good insulator for conductive heat, with little to no radiant cooling from the corneas, and a good deal of body heat behind them. He’d be dead before his corneas froze.
That’s all true, but there is definitely evaporative cooling. And considering the water content of the corneas, I’d imagine that blindness would be pretty rapid. And that’s not considering the distortions that might occur wrt vitreous fluid and the eyeball shape.
His characters take a long time to die because they are Culture citizens.
I knew there was a reason I didn’t like him.
I thought you disliked all commercially successful authors?
Don’t be silly. So far Agatha Christie and Lawrence Block are still on my positive list.
In Banks’ case, the whole idea of ‘the Culture’ is what I despise.
The Edward G. Robinson movie “Two Seconds” is about how the condemned, in the two seconds before it takes the electricity from the chair to kill them, see their life flash before their eyes.
North Korea has agreed to meet with South Korea officially for peace talks.
Just wait ’til he starts pounding his button on the table.
VT house just passed a bill legalizing pot.
For the second time, the gov sent it back on the last go around until some changes ($$$) were made.
I heard you guys were missing me! I’m doing well. work got busy as we are changing a lot during the semesters.
Welcome back!
Sessions wants you to go to jail, anyway.
It’s true. what’s his problem anyway? Did a girl dump him who liked smoking or something?
Stoners can’t help laughing at his ears.
We flicked them from the backseat of the school bus. (really happened)
what’s his problem anyway?
Holy roller, I reckon.
The douche needs something to prove he has added value since taking that job, and he figures this drug war nonsense is low hanging fruit.
I heard you guys were missing me!
We did, and I’m glad to “see” you back.
well I’m touched. I missed all of you as well.
“well I’m touched”
STEVE SMITH NOT INTO FOREPLAY LIKE THAT
Are we sure it is REALLY him, and not an alien replicant?!
*slams on foil hat*
It’s just Tulpa, not Mister Lizard.
I met a girl like this on new years
It’s me, but I’ve always been tulpa.
‘Like thunder in the ground’: Texans fear link between quakes and fracking waste
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/05/texas-earthquakes-fracking-wastewater-wells-envidence
The Texan glibs, being brave, manage not to show this fear in the comments
I live in the DFW area, and the earthquakes mentioned in the article are such minor things that even if they are caused by fracking it’s no big deal. I felt a bigger, more unsettling earthquake in DC than I’ve ever felt here, and it’s been a couple years since the quakes in this area have been big enough to feel, anyhow. I don’t think they’ve ever even done any damage, so I’d say the people complaining need to find something better to do with their time.
Don’t little quakes relieve the pressure and prevent big quakes?
It’s like nature jerking off.
I would think so. Plus, how much pressure can man-made devices even inject into the ground? I’d imagine it would be quite impossible for industrial processes to increase the pressure in the ground sufficiently to set off a damaging quake. Earthquakes are measured on a logarithmic scale, after all.
Hillbilly Weatherman
Probly NSFW language
Grayson?
Storm sounds kinda faggy.
I posted yesterday, but I feel I have to post again to show that Minnesoda has been on the cutting edge of weather reporting.
Dutch from Dude Weather lets Minnesodans know about a spring snow storm in 2013
Excellent!
I’ll try to keep my toe off the trigger.
I know that dude!
It’s So Stupid That Digital Assistants Are Women
My tasks are performed by Deon Strawberry Hampton.
‘tasks’
Bias all the way down
BTW, just shameful of you to be teaching these little angels your foul language. Shocked. *Secretly plans second five minute lesson*
Understanding hentai dialogue in 5 minutes?
That’s more Titor or HM’s field.
Is it true you can earn money in Japan just going with Japanese to dinner and talking to them in English?
Probably. If you’re a hot (not hideous) white chick.
I saw Rising Sun, it’s all true.
Wonder what you get in Romania for just going to dinner with them.
Yes, actually. They’re all women and we host them a few times a week.
I’m still sorting out the details…
Michigan State played a football game in Japan way back in my college days. My roommate’s sister was a cheerleader, and (according to her) they were told it was going to be an expensive trip and the Japanese hosts only wanted to pay for the blond cheerleaders to make the trip.
So how much of our innate preference is actual preference and how much of it is long held bias about what women do—bias formed from a lifetime of stereotypical roles for women?
I can’t think of a more boring question.
It is stupid because I often find myself unintentionally tuning out female chatter.
My tasks are performed by Big Man Tyrone.
HAL 9000 for me.
Why? He answers all your requests with “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Swiss.”
He gets shit done.
So having default female voices is “problematic”?
Of course there would be no problem if all the voices were male by default, right?
RIGHT?
“We expect them to be helpful and men to be bossy.”
Heh. They’ve never met any of the women who work in my office.
Yesterday the admin asst walked into the middle of a meeting and said “you’re going too long. Time’s up!”
In many of my meetings, that would be helpful.
The author gets roasted in the comments.
I turned Siri to the Australian woman. I love hearing her say “Tamper” when I’m driving to Tampa.
Changed! Thanks Brett L!
Did they assume our assistants gender?
I heard you guys were missing me! I’m doing well. work got busy as we are changing a lot during the semesters.
I thought you were being held captive in the girls’ dorm.
Girls dorm!
the new girlfriend on top of the holidays did take a bit out of me. the family seems busier around new years than christmas.
the new girlfriend on top… did take a bit out of me.
Mazeltov!
I could have phrased that worse.
Go ahead…
Airbnb guest throws New Years banger that leaves home trashed, prompts 5-police department response.
“The homeowner said damages will cost at least $10,000. He was cited for noise violations.” Reminder that we are nothing but revenue generators to the police. They don’t care about your safety.
*OKAY I HEP YA*
Edit fairy!
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2018/01/04/airbnb-guest-throws-new-years-banger-that-leaves-home-trashed-prompts-5-police-department-response.html
I want you
to be tax cattle
That must be a British fairy.
Aren’t all the limeys faeries?
Thanks edit fairy!… *Tries not to stare at teeth while ignoring the children running in fear.
In New Jersey everyone is having a sad because shithead former Governor Brendan Byrne croaked,
His big achievement – getting the state income tax passed in 1976. NJ had been a tax-haven from NY, he put it on the road to being the hellhole it is today.
Burn in Hell, Byrne
Ohio glibs! you all excited for the Browns parade?
I’m contemplating going, but single digit temperatures right off the lake (meaning some brutally cold winds are possible) take some of the excitement off. Although it would give me an excuse to check out the new Thirsty Dog that opened in the flats.
looks good. Beer will keep you warm!
Here’s their current tap list (oi, Mexican Sharpshooter, there’s another Baltic Porter for you).
I’ve been down to their main facility in Akron, which has one of the more… unique… tasting rooms I’ve been in. They built it out in the middle of the brewery. So you have rickety chairs and tables in what’s basically a hallway, with tow motors coming through every once in a while. News is that they’re going to open a new taproom this year, and close down the one in the brewery.
That Clinton story. I wish it weren’t the Daily Mail and unnamed sources from Arkansas.
The named sources all died in mysterious ways.
Lawnmower accident, slipped in the tub, cat bite, baby fingernails and Skylab.
“Botched mugging”
“Sky Anvil”
“shot in the back suicide”
“From 50 yards”
Twice..
“Waistband Failure”
“Overhugging”
“Explosive Flatulence”
An interesting 15 min documentary on booze regulations in VA.
That must be the abbreviated version.
Just the ABCs of ABCs
This morning it was 2F, at least according to the car’s thermometer. And as I drove out to my parent’s house, the temp continued to drop until it hit -5F. Oh yay.
And last night the furnace in the house decided to take a sabbatical. Luckily I noticed fairly quickly that it wasn’t keeping up with the set temperature. 24/7 furnace repair bill was $400 – 8:30PM visit – but at least the family got to sleep through the night without freezing.
My furnace was acting cunty earlier this year. It was that godforsaken pressure switch. It gets set off when the humidity rises and falls too quickly. Furnace won’t fire. I removed it and set it aside for a few minutes and it’s been running like a charm since. Yusef knows what he’s talking about so don’t take my advice, read the article that he’s gonna post.
Flame sensor is another common culprit. If the furnace fires up, but shuts off after a few seconds, a quick clean can get you back in action.
I just wish the flame sensor in my furnace was easier to reach. It was not easy to get to the last time I had to clean it.
Or your kids spraying the garden hose into the exhaust and filling up the blower such that it won’t turn and without a proper exhaust your furnace won’t turn on. Ask me how I know…
Is a flame sensor anything like a gaydar?
It’s been above 0 just twice in the last 7 days.
This is why you need a couple of OTLs. That’ll keep the place nice and toasty if the heater fails.
My ol’ Threshold S/500 got mighty warm driving Magnepans (a speaker that I learned to loathe).
What were the NYALs, like 16 EL509s per channel? That’s a fuckton of heater power even before the B+ is turned on. Nelson’s stuff is wimpy in that respect.
Some years ago at a CES, I went into the room where they were showing some SET amp that cost like $200k. When I opened the door to the room, it was like a massive fist of hot air punched me. I got out quickly. And it sounded like shit anyway.
Heh – two blokes I knew from the local audio scene were asked to leave the Infinity IRS V room at CES. The folks at Infinity didn’t care for the descriptions they were giving of the Infinity’s deficiencies.
One of the guys makes his own electrostat speakers that are driven by his own OTL amplifiers, DC coupled I believe. It’s too bad that he’s such a jerk as I would like to hear ’em; he used to rebuild Quad ESL-63s too but is a real bastard when it comes to the deal; like how he tried to raise the price after I agreed to buy his pair of UREI speakers.
Trying to change the deal after it’s been made? Really? That’s going to cost more money than it makes by driving away potential customers.
-9 when I woke up. -30 wind chill. Stupid garage door packed in and won’t open all the way.
Rufus I did not see your Wendy’s twitter comment until the thread was dead but I totally agree with you. I like rewarding companies with clever and funny marketing. That’s why I drink Black Rifle Coffee. Their YouTube videos are funny and their coffee is good. They are a bit too pro military and pro cop for my taste but still funny. Their Xmas video was especially funny.
My favorite brick and mortar coffee shop is the Sturgis Coffee Company in Sturgis SD. Super hipster place but they have signs on their doors that say “GUNS ARE WELCOME ON PREMISES. Please keep all weapons holstered until need arises. In such a case, judicious marksmanship is appreciated”. So they get my business.
Is Black Rifle Coffee any good? I’ve heard them advertised on Stapleton’s podcast.
I like it. Lots of different types of coffee. Almost everyone in my office drinks it now. I am in their subscription program and my coffee is fresh roasted right before they send it out.
I also am a fan. They served complimentary coffee at Area 1 USPSA nationals, and it was tasty enough that I went to their website and looked around some.
When we got back to Montana, I ordered some lul-tastic swag from their website.
Yeah I got some of their merchandise. Now I am trying to justify spending $45 on a grenade coffee mug.
Have you tried Montana Coffee Traders?
No but I will have to try them. Just looked at their website. “Coffee Traders is no longer able to sell or ship coffee to the state of California”. Website says its a Prop 65 issue and that Coffee Traders is to small a company fight it. Glad to see the California state government is looking out for small businesses.
I bought from their Kalispell store when I lived up there. Twenty years after leaving, I’m still using them via mail order.
Do they make espresso?
Me at the pharmacy.
/Picks up Old Spice. Reads back of ‘whatever’. Snickers. Takes it and goes pays for it. Smell shmell. It’s all Tahiti leaves to me at this point.
They have an AK-47 Espresso Blend.
I mean, sure, its got caffeine and will get the job done. But would you trust the quality? Now, a P210 single origin roast…
https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/collections/coffee/products/ak-47-espresso-blend
Chilly Florida Temperatures Cause Frozen Iguanas to Fall from Trees
*Paging Mr. Lizard, Mr. Lizard to the red courtesy phone please*
He could be dead, this is how we defeat the lizard people invasion. a nice cold snap.
Global warming as lizard people conspiracy confirmed.
Where is Charlie Sheen when you need him?
He’s still being thawed out.
I’m here you petulant biped. I just happened to be one time zone behind(and on the side of a mountain). Also since I discovered chemical warming packs, I am now able to go skiing. So if you hear any reports of giant reptiles on a chair lift you’ll know
Maybe this will take care of the Everglades python infestation.
Iguanas aren’t native but global warming is killing gaiaias creatures by freezing them. Hitler?
No, Trump!! I figured it out myself!
I’m enjoying all the snow bunnies in the article thumbnails. Keep up the good work!
That is some mighty fine IT work, Lou.
Minnesoda rolled out a new computer system to handle car licensing last July (after 10 years of planning and implementation). Since then, it has been nearly impossible to get a new title or plates. Everyone is really pissed off.
Surely heads were sent rolling for such a giant fuckup? HAH! It was government IT.
Uffda. The sad thing is that the govt IT toadies bring up “improvements” they have made in the last few months and it only damns them further: “They are also more responsive, she said, with her department responding to consumer e-mails about problems in a day, rather than a week.” Or that they whittled down the backlog of titles from 370K to 320K.
I also can’t even begin to fathom a system that has been in the works for 10 years ago. In technology, that is 2 or 3 generations.
How effing difficult is it to develop a database that can handle car licensing? It’s not like they were developing a MRP system from scratch.
Here’s how these things work.
Technical team produces a design. Presents design to management. Management says “no, we can’t use [platform] and it has to include [technology],” neither of which are the best solution, but these companies contributed to the campaigns of the people who appoint management. Technical team presents updated design, iterate several times until management signs off.
Then when it comes time to implement the management comes by and says “oh, yeah it’s going in [Datacenter Y] instead” “But there’s no network in [Datacenter Y] yet!” “It’s going in [Datacenter Y].” This delays implementation such that the vendor sells the last of their on-hand frames of the sort initially requested, prompting a hasty redesign able to handle the bare bones of the project requirements.
Then the budget guys pop by and say “oh, yeah, we’re not going to pay for that extravagantly overbuilt mess.” And only order half the hardware…
Exactly this.
I once had to do the due diligence on a system that was being run for the VA. All the servers were outdated Sun hardware running Solaris. The reason that they were using them was because the VA had not certified Linux as a secure OS, so it couldn’t be used.
In a similar vein, I once hired a developer from the Minnesoda DNR IT dept. According to him, it took 9 months from the time you requested a new server until it was in a rack and provisioned. Because of that, they would always be requesting new servers each month. They didn’t know what they would use them for, but they couldn’t afford to wait.
That fast? I’m envious.
Just finished working with a team that allows people to self provision servers in 2 hrs a few months ago…
This replaced a system that had a built in 2 month SLA and was horrible to interact with.
People are now complaining they need to wait a full 2 hours to get their servers..
FFS, it took our DBA’s three months to change a field type in a testing database. And this is at a private company.
/still job hunting.
It’s all good. I’m at a relatively fast acting private company, and our customer e-mails have been wrong since last June, when I improved them, but missed a critical error. Corporate has had a form on the internal network for 2 months that allows me to easily fix this issue, and I completely missed it until yesterday. Whoops.
Scruffy, they had a general notice out to all supervisors and salaried management that we are responsible for reading all changes on the intranet (which I do have time to do, once a month or so, on a really slow day, rather than help another department get their jobs done), but last month was Christmas, so I didn’t have a slow day until yesterday.
Unacceptable. I’d fire people for that.
Indeed, field types must not be changed.
Along those lines, I just found out my development ERP database was partially upgraded to the latest revision by my software provider. That resulted in some angry emails from me.
UCS: Tell that to Cisco. Their system would only work with a varchar field, not a nchar field. What really pissed me off about it was that I had my bosses asking me for an update about it weekly, with my response being the same every week. About every other week, they said they would talk to the DBA’s to move it along, then ask me for an update the next week. That finally got resolved at the beginning November, and now we’re waiting for the marketing department to give us the data for this “time sensitive” project.
If it’s a firewall change, I get the same response. With databases, I have a much better relationship with our DBAs, so I can convince them to act. I was only joking about field types being sacrosanct. Certain vendor products who shall remain nameless like to change type with each upgrade…
I deal with PCI compliance, so I know the pain of fighting over firewall changes.
“No, we cannot make every single field employee use two factor authentication to log into their phones.”
Hah, I once did a thirty minute “security test” for the VA. You’re being too kind.
Ask her to say “tampon”.
Wow. Where the fuck did you come from seemingly random comment?
Freudian typo?
I wish! It was supposed to go live in the Siri thread and now I have to support it and all the chain migration jokes in perpetuity.
<html><body>
<h2>Welcome to MN License Services</h2>
<form action=”get_plates.asp” method=”post”>
Enter your license number: <input type=”text” name=”license” size=”20″ />
<input type=”submit” value=”Submit” />
</form>
<p> Your plates will be ready in
<%
set conn = Server.CreateObject(“ADODB.Connection”)
conn.Provider = “Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0”
conn.Open(Server.Mappath(“/db/my_dmv_northwind.mdb”))
set rs = Server.CreateObject(“ADODB.recordset”)
set license = Request.Form(“license”)
set sql = “SELECT * FROM drivers WHERE license='” & license & “‘”
rs.Open sql, conn
Response.Write(rs.Fields(“estimated_delay”).Value)
%>
days.</p>
</body></html>
“The page just keeps throwing errors”
“That’s because some fool consultant thought we would ever allow microsoft products into the datacenter.”
Access, huh?
I believe that they would use Access, what is hard to believe is that the developer had enough ambition to rename the Northwind DB.
I might have bought “demo_northwind.mdb”, but “my_dmv_northwind.mdb”? No way.
You laugh, but my first real development work was modifying a VB IBM API to run in VBScript so we could screen scrape data from the company mainframe into an Access DB so my boss could track workflow. “Real” IT — ie the mf’ers would move fields around on the screen to try to keep us from doing that. Because they would only give us one data dump a day and we wanted realish time info. Being decent at that got me .Net and SQL training while in Costa Rica. I have a soft-spot for Access.
What was the root cause of the turf war over the workflow data?
Oooh, oooh, let me guess.
Real IT didn’t have the time, budget or resources to pay for it.
They also didn’t want to give Brett’s team the data because then there would be no pressure to get more budget and resources in the future because Brett’s team was taking care of business.
So they found the time, budget and resources to fuck with the data.
That story is as old as time. “We don’t want to do the work ourselves, but if we allowed you to proceed we would lose leverage.”
I’m having a little fun above, but the first programming I did was to hack the VBA/AutoLISP guts of an Auto-CAD add-in that we use (still do) to generate g-code for a CNC router. From there, I wrote my first “real” program (i.e. it was actually given to customers to use, rather than running only on-site), in VB.Net, which used an Access database for persistence. I used a 60-day trial of VS.Net 2003 from my VB.Net book (had no idea what a “class” was when I started), and worked like crazy to finish the application before the trial ran out.
My license plate is ‘;DROP TABLE drivers;–
Luckily the table name is tax_cattle.
Hi Bobby.
Everton and Liverpool kick off the FA Cup Rnd 3 today. For the first time in 67 years, no non-league clubs qualified. 10 from league 1 and ten from league 2.
Editor Mike Wilson reflects on Richard Spencer controversy. What a mess.
Yeah, that’s a lot of fuckin’ stupid to unpack. First, you make a rule that Texan of the Year can be positive or negative, then you write about a nobody loser in the first place, and then you decide to nominate him for Texan of the Year? I don’t think I’d feel any sympathy if the editor was tarred and feathered and run out of town.
I don’t get that, either. Why even create an award, acknowledgement, whatever where your paper gives attention to a guy like Spencer in the first place?
The correct answer is either Donald Trump or Hitler. Amateurs.
Administrators of Minnesota’s new, glitch-plagued vehicle licensing and registration computer system said Thursday they should have a road map by later this month to fix problems that continue to delay car title transfers, license plates and tabs.
“This mess will still be here tomorrow. Let’s go get a beer.”
My middle daughter is still waiting for some of her pay because the Gov went to a pay system that didn’t work. Thousands of government workers went without for months and if it weren’t my girl being affected I would have found the whole shit-show pretty funny. Disclaimer – I still think it is pretty funny.
Well, our health care exchange – MNSure – was just as poorly implemented as the licensing system. Next up is our Real ID implementation (we were the last state to resist that fucking law).
I’m sure that in a year, no one in Minnesoda will be able to get heath care, drive or fly.
I should addend – not thousands but hundreds of thousands of Gov workers were affected. I’m not sure if anyone actually lost a mortgage but it was pretty unpleasant for those involved. But Gov workers, so…
Some of us are people too. And can’t wait to get out…
You can use a passport to fly. That’s what I’m going to do. I was assured my entire life that we don’t require passports for internal travel here in the USA. Apparently now we do. But I’m not going to use some internal passport masquerading as a driver’s license. I’ll just use the real deal.
I also have my Hawaiian ID card. I got it years ago because we own a timeshare on Oahu that qualified me for it. I have used it to fly many times. (It also opens the door to a LOT of perks in Hawaii. Flash your card and you get free parking at a lot of parks and discounts at a lot of stores.)
I mean, it isn’t like they can go to Amazon and get a vehicle title. Right?
Italian model suspends nationwide oral sex tour after dog bite
https://www.rt.com/news/414995-oral-sex-tour-italian-model/
Wow… fuck that bitch.
/assumes the dog is female.
‘Mama! Meet Paola! She loves to slurp!’
‘Ah. Sit. I just made soup!’
/Rufus gives Magnum PI stare at camera.
I’m going to need Q Continuum’s take on this…for science…
I’m too despondent right now to comment. This is a grave, grave injustice and miserable day for all of humanity.
In the old days the dog would just have humped her leg. But with these new gals, the dog felt he had to throw some oral foreplay in first and shit went bad.
Couldn’t that count as election tampering?
It’s the kind of tempering I can get behind. Or in front of.
College protesting Trump by running onto highway, gets hit by car – now suing school for not properly babysitting her.
I maintain that many of the problems people are waking up to in the Obama nuclear deal were a feature, rather than a bug, from Obama’s perspective.
It’s hard for people to understand why the president did something that was so obviously against the security interests of the United States, but we should take Obama’s general outlook into consideration. It was the same thing with the Paris climate change accord, ObamaCare, etc., etc.
The purpose of the Paris climate change accord was not to benefit the United States. The purpose of the Paris climate change accord was to force Americans to make sacrifices for the benefit of other people in the developing world.
The purpose of ObamaCare was not to lower premiums and deductibles to make healthcare more affordable for average working Americans. The purpose of ObamaCare was to force working Americans to make sacrifices to expand the eligibility for Medicaid to tens of millions more poor people.
It was no different with the Iran deal. No one can look at that deal and come away with the impression that it was somehow in the best interests of American security–but that wasn’t what the deal was about. The purpose of the Iran deal was to tie the hands of future presidents and make war with Iran more difficult–by giving them a pass on enriching their own uranium. Obama was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to achieve that goal.
Obama cared more about LGBTQI+ in Moscow than he did about American security interests in destroying ISIS, too. Neither Obama nor Hillary would have worked with Putin to destroy ISIS the way Trump did because of that. It shouldn’t be surprising to see that the Iran nuclear deal had the same kind of “logic”. The goal was not to advance American security interests–it was to prevent Americans from pursuing their own destructive, racist, bigoted, and selfish security interests in the future.
In Obama’s world, pursuing the interests of the United States is what selfishness is all about, and forcing selfish Americans to make sacrifices is the truly righteous action of an American president. All that talk about him being Nigerian or Muslim was at its base probably a reaction to the sense that what he was doing didn’t seem to betray the interests of average Americans for someone else. How dare you look at questions like how to deal with Ebola or Syrian refugees from the perspective of American interests, you selfish, racist, redneck!
When you look at the Iran deal, it’s tempting to use the word “appeasement”, but “appeasement” isn’t the right word. We had Iran on its knees. They had burned through all their foreign reserves, inflation was approaching Weimer Republic style numbers, and the Iranian regime was desperate for access to world oil and credit markets. You don’t “appease” someone who comes begging you for relief.
The proper word is “martyrdom”. Obama martyred our intersts to the Iranians. Everything about that deal looks like corruption because of the martyrdom. Corruption makes more intuitive sense to people than martyrdom, but if you look at Obama’s mindset on other likewise absurd policies, that’s what it is. People around Obama may have been corrupt (looking at you, Hillary), but the problems we’re seeing were the intended outcome.
I will eagerly await the delivery of your next newsletter.
Also, needs moar Rand Paul!
That treasonous fucker should have been hung from the Jackson Magnolia before they needed cut it down. Roots, blood, tyrants.
It really was treasonous in the sense that it was about forcing Americans to make sacrifices for the benefit of people in other countries.
And, yet, there are still plenty of progressives who still believe that is perfectly appropriate–not just when sold as being anti-racist but just the bald faced belief that average Americans should be forced to make sacrifices for the benefit of other people.
When Trump says “America first”, it’s been in the context of these kinds of deals. It isn’t just an empty slogan.
I came up in life by identifying what my boss and later clients should do–and then persuading them to do that. It’s given me a tremendous edge in life. Don’t try to figure out how a client can benefit you, figure out what’s best for your client, figure out how you can profit by helping them achieve that–and then persuade them to do what’s in their own best interests.
That’s the way I approach politics, too. Here’s what’s in our best interests, America. Let’s do that!!!
I can’t have that conversation with a progressive who doesn’t believe that America should pursue its best interests.
I can convince you that free markets and respect for individual rights is in the best interests of both you and society–if you don’t care about your own best interests or society’s bests interests.
Trump is refreshing in that sense. I think he gets it wrong about what’s in our best interests on certain topics, but I think he really is concerned with pursuing America’s best interests as he sees them. In that way, at least he’s reachable. If you convince him that doing something is in our best interests, he’s going to take that into consideration.
It is treasonous for the President of the USA to put the interests of other people before those of the American people.
In that way, at least he’s reachable. If you convince him that doing something is in our best interests, he’s going to take that into consideration.
This is very true, and one of the ways he’s an improvement over Obama. An example: on the campaign trail he said he’d be willing to use torture on terrorists, and then when his SecDef Mattis advised against that he changed his mind. I can’t recall Obama ever changing his mind based on good advice.
Now, Trump won’t always change his mind (and really, who would want a leader who would), but he has demonstrated a willingness to be persuaded.
When they told him that switching sides on gay marriage would make him more popular?
I had forgotten about that. I guess he did listen to advice on occasion.
This is all true. Not exactly news to this crowd, but true nonetheless. I think it’s hard for the average, non-politically engage person to grasp that someone who hates the United States (or at least hates big parts of what the United States represents) could be president, but that’s exactly what happened. Almost every act he took internationally was to weaken the US’s position and almost every act he took domestically was to weaken the populace and make them more dependent on government. Sadly, he was just following a lefty playbook that’s been around for decades, just no one was paying attention (or cared) enough to notice it/do anything about it.
Hands and tongues were tied for obvious reasons. I knew it was gonna happen and there was nothing that I could do about it.
People were also mesmerized by his alleged speaking ability (which I think was an invention of media pundits).
His speeches are often the first thing that is mentioned whenever one of his supporters goes on a rant about how great he is. I once saw a young woman exclaim, “He’s such a great speaker! When I’d listen to his speeches, he would just take me away!!” while holding her hands to her chest and throwing her head back in ecstasy. It was one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen in my life, and it made me very cynical about this whole universal suffrage thing (no, that’s not a complaint about females voting, it’s a complaint about uninformed, gullible people voting).
Someone in this chatroom made the good point that Trump is actually getting some shit done in areas where Obama failed, and by doing this, he’s showing that actions matter a hell of a lot more than blustery, grandiose speeches. And “progressives” are scared to death of that.
“Aye, I remember the dark days. The Black days. Leif Garrett and The Bay City Rollers were on every wall and there were no escape…” So basically the same mudanity writ large.
People who think he is a good speaker need to go listen to Reagan. No matter what you think of his policies and politics, you would have to admit he was an incredible speaker. His speaking ability is not a surprise considering his entertainment background but he should still be the benchmark for a president’s speaking ability.
Obama’s public speaking style largely came from evangelical ministers.
People in the south who go to church every week weren’t as mesmerized by Obama’s speeches because they hear the same sort of thing every week in church.
Obama just used it for a political message.
Why not emulate the speaking style of someone who can make you get up out of your pew and give your heart to Jesus?
People who are mesmerized by his speaking are people who probably haven’t spent a lot of time in a fundamentalist or evangelical church.
This.
Please explain all those black women getting the vapors and fainting in the aisle. I was under the impression that most of them were church goers, and they probably weren’t Catholics.
That wasn’t about his speaking style. That may have been the Messiah thing.
Hell, women used to that over Tom Jones, as well.
Were people literally fainting in the aisles?
See also: Obama’s utterly feckless rapprochement with Cuba, without having secured or even suggested any concessions from the Castros.
The proper word is “enablement”.
With permission to enrich uranium and literally crates of cash, the mullahs could secure their position domestically and amp up their ability to cause trouble abroad.
“Level the playing field”, if you will.
None dare call it Treason.
Oh, I got this one! Hold my beer! https://youtu.be/5svltdMdorw
The purpose of ObamaCare was to force working Americans to make sacrifices to expand the eligibility for Medicaid to tens of millions more poor people.
While I agree with your thesis that Obama was all about forcing sacrifices, this is backwards. The purpose of OCare was to force working Americans to make sacrifices to buy rich health insurance policies to benefit insurance companies, drug companies, and misc. other health care industry sectors. The Medicaid expansion was a side effect, needed to plug the gap between Medicaid and the cohort of people who could actually afford health insurance (and to feed billions more federal dollars to state governments, much like his stimulus spending, which went mostly to states). ObamaCare insurance market changes do not fund or otherwise support Medicaid expansion.
Obama’s prime directive was to burn it down to the ground, subtly and with a modicum of charm. If he’d married better he might just have pulled it off.
I think you’re getting that backwards.
Almost everything about ObamaCare, from the individual mandate to the tax on medical devices to the Cadillac plan tax, was meant to reimburse insurers from the losses they were sure to suffer as a result of the ObamaCare expansion and force providers to provide more basic services to Medicaid patients.
I’ve already written plenty about the impact of Medicaid on the insurers–the purpose of the individual mandate was to make healthy, young people pay into the system specifically because they wouldn’t much in the way of resources. Yeah, the point was to help insulate insurers from the losses they would sustain because of the Medicaid expansion. When the Obama administration argued before the SC that ObamaCare wouldn’t survive without the individual mandate, they were telling the truth.
What was the point of the Cadillac plan tax if not to discourage employers to cover more expensive and more elective procedures? ‘Put in more hospital beds–because you’re going to have more Medicaid patients’ is what that was about. Helping wealthy older people play golf without pain is taking resources away from giving Medicaid patients free dentistry.
The tax on new medical devices was the same thing. The point was to stop providers from investing in new treatments and invest in more hospital beds and basic services instead. All because they were adding tens of millions of new people onto Medicaid.
This really shouldn’t be controversial. ObamaCare was an expansion of Medicaid with a preexisting conditions exclusion attached, along with a laundry list of things meant to keep the insurers engaged and solvent. That it failed to help the insurers to the extent that they wanted to stay in the exchanges doesn’t change the fact that ObamaCare succeeded in expanding Medicaid–and that was the goal: To force average working American to sacrifice their cost and quality and choice of care–in order to benefit the poor by way of an expansion of Medicaid.
That’s why repealing the Medicaid expansion/cutting Medicaid is the most important part of repealing ObamaCare, and anything that supposedly cuts ObamaCare down but doesn’t cut Medicaid spending isn’t really even addressing the root cause of our problems.
You cannot give free care away to tens of millions more people and not have somebody pay the price for it–and I’m talking about doing without resources, not just paying for it with taxes. TANSTAAFL. That’s why ObamaCare enlists the coercive power of government–because average Americans in their right minds would never willingly make these sacrifices in a free market for the benefit a Medicaid expansion. They might make sacrifices in taxes or charitable donations, but who wants to sacrifice their own quality of care or their care of their own children?
Almost everything about ObamaCare, from the individual mandate to the tax on medical devices to the Cadillac plan tax, was meant to reimburse insurers from the losses they were sure to suffer as a result of the ObamaCare expansion and force providers to provide more basic services to Medicaid patients.
I think we are talking past each other, mostly. I agree that OCare was written to protect insurers from losses while driving more business to them. However, Medicaid expansion was in there to prevent the application of the insurance mandate to people too poor to buy insurance without a 100% subsidy, a population that is also notoriously difficult to manage and provide care for. So they didn’t become the insurance company’s problem – that’s why MA expansion was put in place. OCare insurance reform wasn’t passed to create any kind of cross-subsidy or mandate or anything else to support MA expansion; MA expansion was passed to make insurance reform (with the mandate) “workable”.
There is nothing in OCare that changes what MA providers have to provide to MA patients. OCare just expanded the pool of MA patients.
I’ve already written plenty about the impact of Medicaid on the insurers–the purpose of the individual mandate was to make healthy, young people pay into the system specifically because they wouldn’t much in the way of resources.
You are crossing the streams here. You are right about the individual mandate, but the only impact that MA expansion had on insurers was keeping MA beneficiaries out of the insurance company’s pool of beneficiaries. It provides zero funding for the insurance companies, and they provide zero funding for MA expansion.
You cannot give free care away to tens of millions more people and not have somebody pay the price for it
True, but the cost of MA expansion is borne purely by the taxpayers. It could have been passed without any insurance market reform at all. MA expansion was necessary for the insurance market reforms they did, but the insurance market reforms were not necessary for MA expansion. You could repeal the insurance reform bits of Ocare and leave MA expansion in place. Its just another bloated entitlement program, after all. It wouldn’t “fail” if the rest of OCare were repealed. The converse is not true.
“True, but the cost of MA expansion is borne purely by the taxpayers.”
You’re missing the part about the resources.
It isn’t just about the taxpayers spending more money. It’s also about the providers building more hospital beds. There aren’t enough nurses to go around. When you suddenly dump 10 million more people on Medicaid, those people are using the resources that are already available. The amount of resources available (nurses, hospital beds, etc.) doesn’t suddenly expand to accommodate more patients.
The mew Medicaid patients are taking resources away from insured patients is one way to look at it.
Obama’s way of looking at it is that the people on Cadillac plans, the hospitals spending money on new medical machines and technology are taking resources away from Medicaid patients. The Obama administration didn’t want insurers to provide extraneous services. Rationing was the default assumption. It was just a different form of rationing the available resources.
They would not expressly ration care under the guise of ObamaCare. What ObamaCare did do was tax the hell out of devices and Cadillac plans that offer extraneous services–which has the same impact as rationing. It’s still rationing by way of government policy, but it’s really just that it makes those services and healthcare plans cost prohibitive. But it’s the same thing as rationing really. They restricting resources to one group to make more available to others.
And that’s without even talking about the cost to the taxpayers.
I don’t remember what is was called, but there was a theory floating around in 60’s and 70’s Marxist circles that went something like, “Western Civilization was built upon the ruthless exploitation of the developing world, so Westerners should be impoverished and miserable.”
Most normal people would read that and think, “No one could be insane enough to believe that shit.”. I like to think that we all know better.
This. Generational guilt. People are by and large very stupid and easily led.
Why do people have guilt over things they did not do?*
*speaking in terms of guilt for the action/inaction of other persons, not their own inaction leading to a negative outcome. Blarg! Brevity is hard.
Plight of ( ) makes me have the sads therefore I must atone in some way. It’s fucking insane but whenever I see or hear about some cunt abusing animals I’m always nicer to mine. Human nature?
Close relative of survivor’s guilt would be my guess.
Oreogon may have a point; I would be ok if these girls pumped my gas IYKWIM.
http://archive.is/QP4bI
3, 9, 21, 22, 36 and 32 squeaks by in spite of the ink and piercing.
i can go with 9 …
I hope demons are buying ice skates cause Pie and I just agreed on one…
8 looks fun.
28 might be the winner here, but also 5, 18, 19, 25, 32, and 35.
10 has a stern face that would go well with a leather outfits and high boots and a riding crop and ordering me around.
Mark Zuckerberg Resolves to ‘Fix’ Facebook in 2018
“My biggest challenge will be to strengthen the echo chamber without pissing off the yokels”
take it offline?
“Fix” = “become an even more censorious, propaganda filled derptopia”
“Fix” the problem like when Fluffy starts humping your guests’ leg or “fixed” as in repairing the pre-existing problem. Same-same.
Either works.
Feinstein was doing her grandstanding bit in Congress over this.
The Facebook rep should have retorted with “Clinton spent a billion dollars but somehow a couple hundred grand spent by the Russians changed the whole race. Maybe Hillary should hire the Russkies to run her campaign next time.”
And a fairly large percentage of that money was actually pro-Clinton.
Everything that I’ve read from reputable sources states that it was bi-partisan shit-disturbing, not aimed at one candidate at the expense of the other so basically Tuesday morning at every Foreign Office for the last hundred years.
Maybe Hillary should hire the Russkies to run her campaign next time.
She pretty much hired the Russkies (via her law firm and Fusion GPS) to do her oppo research, so its not like they would be new to the team.
Mark Steyn made the same joke a few days ago. “Why are any election analysts in this country still employed? Just follow Putin’s lead.”
If I ever develop a time machine. I am going to vaporize Mark Zuckerberg, or Woodrow Wilson. No, both?
All you have to do is tip off the twins about what he’s up to and let them deal with Mark.
Wilson, on the other hand…
I was just going to burn Princeton, NJ to the ground and keep going back until the desired target dies in a fire.. Would the twins still become billionaires by investing early in Bitcoin?
This is too much:
https://www.boredpanda.com/pump-your-own-gas-stations-laws-oregon/
Highlight: “I’m in Colorado where are forced to pump our own gas. Because I’m worried about my children being left in the car while I stand outside of it in my skirt, I just pay the transients to pump it for me. This way we’re all safe and the transients are distracted from bothering those who are pumping their own gas.”
hahaha
You’re back! Where ya been? Hopefully getting some oil on your dipstick IYKWIMAITYD.
Work got busy, lots to do while the students were away.
also, yes.
Oh yeah….
So Lachowsky ever try this?
https://twitter.com/FuggingBleb/status/948122015713710080
That reminds of the guys who used to put their cigarettes out in the open can of gasoline.
That’s insane. When we pour steel out of our furnaces it is a little over 3000 degrees. I don’t know how you could allow your skin to come into contact with a liquid that hot for any amount of time without getting seriously burned.
From the replies Leidenfrost effect
That makes sense. I’m still not doing it.
Ah c’mon Wha’dya got to lose? a hand? pfft, no biggie. They 3D print those things these days.
Also from the replies:
God I love the Internet.
I thought the end of net neutrality turned the Internet into a hyper-exclusive service only for extremely rich people and giant corporations?
weird, huh?
When I was a young MikeS, we had a lyceum once and a guy poured liquid N2 on his arm. Same principle applied.
I have experienced this first hand (pun not intended in this case)
When I was a kid my parents owned an electronics company and one of their contracts involved final assembly on the first generations of surge protectors. This required attaching a couple of heavy gague wires, a switch, and the power cord inside the “box” and then adding the back plate. Attaching the wires required them to be “tinned” (applying solder to the ends of the wires in advance). So a common job for my brother and our friends was to sit around a 900 degree pot of solder dipping wires in it. To make it interesting we always made it a competition to see who could do the most wires at a time.
So one day I have 17 different wires arranged in my hand to go for the record and I dip it in. What I did not notice was that my middle finger was actually lower than the ends of any of the wires and so was the first thing to enter the molten solder. I got it up to midway between the first and second knuckles before I noticed and yanked it back out.
Took no damage whatsoever, not even a mild burn
Phillip Tutor: A Southern myth debunked, again
None of ’em exist — then or now. Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth are marketing creations
Au contraire, Aunt jemima was a welsh woman who did exist.
https://mises.org/library/who-was-original-aunt-jemima-and-what-did-she-do
“Dr Pepper is a gawdawful drink that tastes like 5w30 Valvoline mixed with sugar, not an inventor or physician.”
THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS.
I hate Dr. Pepper, but this man need to go into hiding–now.
As soon as I saw that I knew if I didn’t already that the author is a stupid asshole who should be devoured by badgers.
http://walterewilliams.com/virginia's-black-confederates/
Also, Dr. Pepper is the best soda ever, and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong.
NASA rover spots strange ‘stick-like figures’ on Mars
NASA’s Curiosity rover is eyeing a group of angular formations on Mars that stand out from the usual rocks.
I’m not saying that its aliens, but…
Heresy
This is the untold story of tax reform: It’s a boon for freelancers, contractors, and the 24 million American workers who participate in the “gig economy.” Next year, Uber drivers, Web designers, and contract janitors will see large reductions in their taxable income, leaving them more money to spend taking care of their families or reinvest in their businesses. Contrary to the #resistance memes, these aren’t “big corporations” or “the rich” taking advantage of the new “pass-through loophole.” They are the smallest of small businesses — sole proprietors, married couples, and contractors — and they’re more than worthy of a little extra at the end of the month.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455140/tax-reform-helps-gig-economy-workers
————-
Whether they intended to or not, congressional Republicans have begun the critical work of adapting our legal and tax system to the “gig economy.” As more and more Americans work as freelancers, contractors, and sole proprietors, we’ll need to develop new rules that allow for maximum simplicity, flexibility, and opportunity for this quickly changing work force. The pass-through deduction and doubled standard deduction are a good start, but more work needs to be done to increase the portability of health insurance, retirement savings accounts, and individual insurance plans. If we lived in a perfectly rational world, we might have seen abstract painters and Uber drivers rallying for the tax bill. Beyond this, however, is the critical work of political persuasion. If we lived in a perfectly rational world, we might have seen abstract painters and Uber drivers rallying outside Mitch McConnell’s office during the tax-reform debate, shouting and waving homemade signs reading “Artists for Tax Reform!” and “Pass-Through Tax Cuts Now!” But we live in a distinctly irrational world. Politics is as much about cultural affiliation as about economic self-interest.
But RICH PLUTOCRATZ!
Death of the blue state model?
Interesting link.
*grumbles*
https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/20/good-riddance-to-the-blue-state-model/
New Jersey is about to swear-in the ultimate Blue-State Governor. He’s supposed to be smart although I’ve seen zero evidence of that so far.
Housing prices have started to recover as the economy in general picks up. We are planning on selling the house in 2019 – I sure how Mr. Murphy doesn’t fuck it up too badly.
High Taxes Should Be Paid by Those Who Vote for Them
How do the kids do it? High ? taxes ? should
Fuck it, thats too much work. (also notice how it’s a literal preschool tactic for indoctrination being used by grown adults)
But rich people are going to pay less, and that’s unacceptable… We have to milk them until they’re not rich anymore, and if we make some poor people poorer, that’s just collateral damage.
/what “progressives” actually believe
Except that rich people in blue states paying more taxes is also unacceptable, somehow.
I stand corrected! it is now 0 here.
In a Facebook post Thursday that highlights his company’s mounting difficulties, Mr. Zuckerberg said the social network has made “too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools.”
Commence the purge of the unbelievers.
If they want to murder their own business that’s fine with me. Someone else will be perfectly happy to make money off a site based on free speech and free association.
Have you checked out Minds.com?
(disclaimer – I have a small investment in that company and want it to pay out)
I’m familiar with them but I don’t partake, social media just seems to bring out the narcissistic worst in otherwise good people and I try to avoid it.
Fair enough.
LOL, the Moores’ continue to trip over their own feet.
The Moores are going to be the new Palins, aren’t they. We’ll be hearing about this guy’s grandkids in ten years, they’ll somehow still be emblematic of all Republicans, despite having been soundly rejected by them.
I’m pretty sure the term for a Jewish person who has accepted Christ is “Christian”, but that’s just me.
Messianic Jew = Military Intelligence = Jumbo Shrimp = Almost Pregnant = Mandatory Option etc.
Here’s one explanation, it’s pretty long: https://jewsforjesus.org/jewish-resources/community/messianic-jews-a-brief-history/
related: They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore
I’m pretty sure the term for a Jewish person who has accepted Christ is “Christian”, but that’s just me.
This logically makes sense, but if you can have atheist Jews I don’t see why you can’t have Christian Jews as well.
Also- that National Review ap[pears to confirm my original assumption that pretty much anybody filing a Schedule C was going to benefit from the pass through rate change, and not just the hedge fund partners of the world.
In better news, the rockabilly festival Viva Las Vegas has announced not only that they’re bringing back every Sun recording artist that’s willing to come, they’ve got the Stray Cats doing a reunion show.
Now that looks like a blast.
This will be me and the girlfriend’s third year going. Last year they had some issues with counterfeit tickets and long lines, but they owned up to it and changed the ticketing process. There was even an apology e-mail explaining what they were doing to rectify the situation for this year. Even with those issues, it was still a good time. The casino/hotel the event takes place in has even started expanding into doing a pre-party for the full week before it kicks off, and has a craft beer bar that has live bands playing almost 24 hours a day. If I get some time tonight to anonymize some of the pictures of the car show, I’ll link to them tonight.
“Elvis has left the theater…”
Tonight is Mr Hayek’s big 60th B-day. I am not saying he robbed the cradle, but I’m not denying I am still in my 40s.
We are going to Redstone Grill in Maple Grove, previously arranged for 6 PM, but we got a reservation for 5:15 so the Mr and I will be there early warming the seats for any 6 PM callers. Any and all Glibs local are welcome to attend.
Yesterday one of my coworkers turned 60, so a few of us went out for “a couple of beers” and we all ended up at our house, with bartender par excellence Mr Splosives overserving them to the point we took away their keys and made them stay overnight. I made breakfast and coffee and made them use the blood alcohol meter until they were legal. Finally got rid of them all. Yep, lonely single engineers. Whaddaya do?
Not going to work today.
Cool. I may sneak over a little earlier…
Have fun! Greetings to all you frozen bastards in Minnesoda.
Descendents: Iceman live https://youtu.be/7exvyRe_VRo
Thanks!
Here’s one for all you Sunshine Supermen.
Yeah. They picked the best songs to cover.
TOY: Frozen Atmosphere https://youtu.be/_ZRvWBFACGM
Modern shoegaze from England
I like that.
Some Aussies with a Place In the Sun
Good one! I always forgey sbout those guys. A staple of college rock in the 80s-90s. In fact, I’m gonna do some deeper listening this weekend. Thanks.
Here’s some Aussies I just stumbled across this week. Woollen Kits: So Cold https://youtu.be/x_StwogJqkM
Tasty. Added to my list.
Bob wrote this one for you.
Just a few more years before you can start getting those senior citizen discounts.
/kidding
Just going to leave this here…
http://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/2017/06/22/french-fitness-model-dies-in-freak-whipped-cream-accident.html
(50) 1st!
Well, crap. Now the joke won’t land.
Linky no good.
, they’ve got the Stray Cats doing a reunion show.
SWEET
Who’s missing from the comments this morning?
He banged [the chickens] on the ground
SIV , I believe, is the one to look for.
Those cluckers had it coming!
I blame Q!
You cannot tell me that there is no connection between his links and rampant chicken choking.
Keep the Jergens and Kleenex nearby.
Tulpa? Nope, he’s here.
but because it was the Daily Mail, i still expected to see candid bikini-shots somewhere in that article
seriously,DM makes ‘real news’ feel about 1000x less-real. although i did like the photo of hillary making the “i am an eagle swooping down to kill my foes” pose.
Paola Saulino the Italian blowjob princess from above:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8dCE0oU0AAWDAP.jpg
https://sportsport.ba/assets/pictures/gallery/8902/paola-saulino-3-784017.jpg
http://data1.ibtimes.co.in/en/full/638310/paola-saulino-napoli.jpg
http://static.dagospia.com/img/foto/03-2017/paola-saulino-878955.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/ff/93/37ff930238fe406c280e1ca84fbb89df.jpg
I like that Glibs links all open in a new tab. SP: you’re doing it right.
Every so often one of them doesn’t and I’m not sure what’s different. I do like the open in new tab feature.
Not a bad start, but HM does exist. In which case, what is really needed is for the html standard to be updated to support an “open in tor browser running on new virtual machine instance” hyperlink target.
“HM does exist”
The links that are permanently burned into my memory and the primary driver of my PTSD are a constant reminder of this fact.
*shudder*
^^^THIS
She’s about an 8, but any woman ready and willing to give a blowjob automatically gets +5. So adjusted, she’s 13/10.
I might drop her to a 7 on my personal scale. The eyebrows are tilting me, and in some of those pics she looks like she’s perilously close to Italian grandmother in the face. Definitely attractive, but I’m not changing any plans to last-minute Netflix and chill with her. Would ditch friends at bar to go home with her, wouldn’t cancel plans to meet same friends at bar to go out with her, if that makes sense.
Paul Sorvino sez he’s gonna kick Harvey Weinstein’s ass if ever they meet on the street! Blob fight! Mira Sorvino should have been in more movies, she always got my motor running!
Who’s gonna kick Roman Polanski’s ass?
Cancer, sooner
or later.I’d prefer slow and painfully.
Dick melanoma?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penectomy
NSFW and stomach churning. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Agree. SFW: http://images4.static-bluray.com/reviews/7866_1.jpg
When she was in “Romeo Must Die,” she might have been one of the most beautiful women ever.
Clearly you haven’t looked at His Holiness’ link down below.
Mira played some officer’s wife in a Civil War movie. Who’d go off to to fight the Rebs with her at home???
Italian blowjob princess
Go on…..
See comment 37. I had read about this chick before; she’s an instagram “model” who offered blowjobs to everyone who voted against some Italian referendum that would provide more centralized power to the President. And she’s actually following through on it.
So: 1) hot 2) likes giving head 3) wants decentralized government power
We need to get her on this site somehow…
“We need to get her on this site somehow…”
We’ll woo her with a potent combination of sarcasm, craft beer minutiae, and lengthy discussions about database architecture/programming!
When the girl gets here https://youtu.be/QvOVZjXIEwA
http://www.roanoke.com/opinion/letters/letter-we-re-living-in-the-wild-west/article_e1877b9b-59ea-508c-94f7-2aa7868236e9.html
Commonsense dictates
Now there is an Orwellian term.
I love appeals to common sense.
“Well, common sense says…”
Oh really? Because what I think you actually meant to say was “here is a thing that I believe, but which I cannot support rationally, and probably cannot even express, other than by means of various grunts, gestures, and repetitions of the phrase ‘you know what I mean?'”
I mean, if we’re really appealing to common sense and leaving our prejudices at the door, I’d say common sense would indicate that I’m safer having the means to defend myself than not. Common sense would also seem to indicate that while you can’t use laws to prevent violence you can use laws (or their absence) to not interfere with every individual’s ability to provide for his or her own defense.
Worst band name ever.
THEMS GUNS IS TEH PORBLM
Fuck off, slaver.
Oh, so you’re living in a place that’s pretty safe? Everyone with any knowledge of history would know that the daily shootouts were largely an invention of carnival story-tellers.
Cool story. Now do it for commonsense abortion control
Commonsense muffin top control.
Commonsense car control
Commonsense buttsex control
“Commonsense muffin top control”
I could get on board with this.
“Commonsense car control”
Stay away from my diesel.
“Commonsense buttsex control”
NOW YOU’RE JUST TALKING CRAZY *triggered*
Oh yea, if you ever want to see a “progressive” flip the fuck out, try saying that “no right is absolute” and argue for “common sense restrictions” in regards to gay marriage or abortion.
It’s funny how being an “extremist” is bad when it comes to rights that they don’t like (the rights of keeping your own paycheck, gun ownership, etc.)
My standard reply is: “let’s compromise, you stay away from my guns and I’ll stay away from your abortions; otherwise let’s start restricting them both in equal measure, each new gun law = new abortion law.”
Background checks, and only allowed to have abortions if you can show a need.
And the irritating thing is that all the first amendment rights have been expanded (correctly in my view) into areas that the framers didn’t even think of, the right to privacy was created from the “penumbra” but the 2nd amendment needs to be diminished.
I like that Glibs links all open in a new tab. SP: you’re doing it right.
Really? I do it as a habit, so I never noticed.
Dyslexia made me read it as “I like that Glibs drinks all open a new tab” and was confused. I’d love it if this site could deliver me drinks, but I would find it more convenient if I could put it all on one tab.
Probably more wishful thinking than dyslexia.
Like a pull tab?
http://d2ydh70d4b5xgv.cloudfront.net/images/e/b/vintage-1969-schlitz-pull-tab-beer-can-lot-of-3-6826ea306d8de3071b8b7af08a230e82.jpg
Invented in Dayton by Ermal Fraze. Remembered today in a beer made by Warped Wing.
Uffda.
No one did more for pull tabs than Pop-top Terp. The man was a genius.
Who else would have created an ensemble titled “Miniskirt or Gladiator Bathing Suit?
You know who else was from Dayton and liked beer?
NSFW lyrics
https://youtu.be/zBz8NXdCBcg
Maybe Sex Robots Will Make Men, Not Women, Obsolete
They might at least create some healthy competition.
I read that last night and the bitterness is strong with that woman. Unless she’s married to major cuck, no way that marriage lasts. Examples:
“Granted, there could be dangers. There is, for example, the possibility that hackers could turn sex robots into killers. But the statistician in me can’t help asking: Would that make them more of a threat than actual men? Given the baseline murder rate for human sexual partners, it’s hard to get too worried. Plus, if they can understand female anatomy — I mean, really understand it — maybe it’s worth the risk.”
“I’m not saying we should want to live in a militant feminist world without men. Far from it, I am suggesting that women and men can coexist, but possibly not cohabitate. Men will likely have trouble with things like household chores and remembering to go to the doctor regularly, but they’ll manage. Maybe Siri can make their appointments.”
And sorry lady, hardwired female hypergamy will pretty much preclude robots replacing men altogether. OTOH, men’s preference for the visual means that robots are a potential replacement for women.
Case in point:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982206019944
I think men just don’t care if the house is not immaculate. This doesn’t mean they “have trouble” with household chores.
When I want something clean, I’ll clean it.
When I’m not having company, a little clutter on the level surfaces does not bother me. Saves having to get it all back out again next time I use it.
clutter on the non-level surfaces solves itself.
Men will have trouble with household chores? I was raised to believe that depending on anyone for anything is a weakness, and so as a kid I was taught to be responsible for cleaning, fixing things around the house, cooking, doing things like sewing buttons and hemming slacks, yardwork, light auto repair, pretty much anything you’d need to do in and around a house to keep things going smoothly. In my house, if something needs to actually be cleaned, I’m the one who does it, because my wife has all the domestic skills of a horse. I cook, and cook well. If a power button is involved or if it’s mechanically more complicated than a screwdriver, I’m in charge of it. If it involves financial planning or management of any kind, that’s on me, too. If we’re talking only about relationships as business deals, the only thing I really need her for is makin’ babies. There is literally nothing I depend on her to do that I couldn’t do myself. And I’m sure that I’m not alone in that. So before the author starts making her case on the basis of who needs who to accomplish what, maybe she ought to reconsider just what it is she’s capable of bringing to the table.
Men do NOT have problems with household chores. That was blatantly sexist.
So basically she thinks the world is a stereotypical 50s sitcom.
Given the baseline murder rate for human sexual partners, it’s hard to get too worried.
It’s not, but not for the reason she purports to be thinking.
remembering to go to the doctor regularly
The fuck? For what? To run up my deductible? Who goes to their doctor “just ‘cuz”?
In fairness, I did that once: I went and saw a physician at 28 to get my bloodwork done, “just ‘cuz” I hadn’t been in ten or twelve years. And unless something catastrophic occurs, I’m not planning on going back for another ten or twelve.
Regular checkups my ass. Here’s a tip: have superior genes. You’re welcome.
Meh. I go every year. But basically the whole visit is covered by insurance and I’m in my mid-50s.
I actually got purged from my Dr’s list because I never visited for twenty years. “Do you have a family Physician?” “Nope.”
Superior
genesjeans Probably NSFW (but worth it)Lord have mercy.
Is it just me, or does she have a look of fear on her face? Hawt!
My favorite uncle just turned 87 Sunday. He did not see a doctor for over 40 years. Started again when he turned 80. He smokes, drinks, does small plumbing jobs and was on the dance floor on his birthday. So yeah good genes trumps everything even “bad” habits.
Women have had vibrators for decades yet men are not obsolete yet.
Vibrators can’t fix shit or carry heavy stuff.
Or pump gas in Oregon or change a tire if your nom de plume is Souave.
Spiders will multiply out of control and take over North America.
Or check the house for intruders when it is realized a door was left unlocked all day.
Or reassure them that their ass does not look fat in that dress.
Vibrator don’t care if the ass looks fat in the dress.
And you can’t compare your vibrator with your girlfriends’ vibrators. Show off how you have trained it to subjugate its will to yours.
We have several couples we hang out with where the wives completely run their husbands’ lives. I swear it is a competition for the gals to see what they can make their trained husbands do. Nice people but their relationships are completely different that my wife and I’s relationship.
Occasionally my wife will lose her mind and think she can get me to do something like the other wives. It never ends well. It is sort of like entering a cat in a dog show. All the other contestants are getting their dogs to jump through hoops and do other tricks. I just sort of sit there. If you push too hard for me to do a trick, I’ll bite or scratch you.
Or show her your butthole.
My bedazzled butthole? That is something that is private for just her and I.
You romantic, you.
what a cunt
Treating men as one uniform, undifferentiated blob of rapey intentions: that’s fine. I’m a good person because I do that.
Being sexually attracted to sexually attractive women: OMG shitlord, you’re a bad person for doing that.
Collectivists suck.
I don’t mind the bigotry women like this feel toward men. I find it funny, even a little endearing. There’s something cute in being so cowed by men that they respond with impotent hostility. Okay, sweetheart. You’re angry at your dad. Now where do you want to eat?
But no, you’re not a good person for being a bigot. You’re just as scummy and wrathful as everyone else. Sorry.
^good comment
“Make the men compete.”
Umm, they already are. Just not for you. Sorry.
My boss had a death in the family (sad) but that means she’s out for the next 2 weeks (woohoo!). I am a bad person…
We expect you to really step up your commenting game then.
I really have been phoning it in lately.
“Ahm Pushing The Tits To the Limit Captain! I Nae Can Push No Mair!”
If that makes you a bad person, then I’m pure evil. Mine is out (hopefully all day), and life is good. Granted, nobody died, but the thought of 2 bossless weeks sounds like heaven.
My biggest problem boss went on a 3 week vacation to Europe. She must be in transit today because I started getting emails again. I had really begun to enjoy the quiet.
So did Vyhrus’ columns help when you took out her family member? One shot, one kill?
Or did you punk out ? Just SWAT-ed the family member and let the cops do the dirty work?
Let’s not talk about my methods…
Two weeks seems like a long time. Is she from the Philippines or something?
She has to go back to Taxachusetts; not sure about details. I just got a cursory sounding email early this morning when I got to work. We had a conversation just yesterday afternoon about her driving her daughter to the airport to go back to college in AZ, she’s have a party this weekend, various small-talk minutia, no indication of any imminent mayhem. I’m guessing it was something sudden.
She’s gonna do a Jason Bourne and remember things.
Or a Samantha Caine.
Man accused of selling tainted body parts goes on trial.
I only stock the finest body parts for my dinner parties.
You can sell taints?
Why? What happened to your old taint that you need a new one? And how much do they cost? This sounds like the metrosexual version of designer vaginas if you ask me.
ManBearPig strikes again!
Cold is the warming… or something.
http://www.climatedepot.com/2018/01/04/al-gore-bitter-cold-is-exactly-what-we-should-expect-from-the-climate-crisis/
Gore is Old Thrashbarg from Mostly Harmless.
The “extreme weather” argument for global warming at least makes sense because the oceans have to release extra heat (note that the weather has — of yet — to get more extreme in any measurable way).
I’m at a loss as to how colder winters are causing by climate change.
The severity of Nor’easters should actually be reduced by global warming. This is because nor’easters are caused by temperature disparity between the poles and warmer air. Based on the models, global warming warms the poles more quickly and so the disparity that causes nor’easters should be reduced.
Finally, an excuse for me to continue acting like a 13 year old!
https://www.studyfinds.org/health-well-being-younger-childhood/
(Not that I was gonna stop anyway)
A moment of silence for more helpless victims of state capitalism.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article193044269.html
Mira Sorvino should have been in more movies, she always got my motor running!
The Replacement Killers, FTW!
Romy and Michelle…
In something that is totally unexpected and that nobody could possibly have seen coming, the bullshit “opiod epidemic” and the DEA scaring doctors into not prescribing pain medicine is forcing actual chronic pain sufferers to go to the black market to get their medicine.
http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/chronic-pain-sufferers-say-theyre-paying-the-price-for-opioid-epidemic-10211176
I wish nothing but unending pain and suffering for every police officer and politician allowing this.
Fuck them all.
PROHUBISHUN WURKZ!!!11!!11!ELEVEN!!!
I mean, it sort of does. It’s clearly making it harder for people to get opioids, even those who desperately need them. Prohibition works – the real question is: is it worth it?
Spoiler alert: the answer is no.
Notice how he conveniently ignores how doing something about the opiod “epidemic” was also a major platform of the Clinton campaign.
And the current crackdown began before Trump took office.
Dateline: October, 2016:
There are dozens of companies that are in the testing phases of cannabis based opioid alternatives, some with products already approved by the FDA. They can even solve this by easing up the FDA’s administrative burdens. Not that they will.
Proof that Kaepernick is being blackballed
Is it funny how they didn’t mention Garroppolo’s stat’s with the Patriots?
Or that Garoppolo is winning games while Kaepernick was losing games.
To quote the great Bill Parcells, you are what your record says you are.
Kaep’s last season or so was getting worse. Overall, his numbers are fairly good compared to NFL QB’s, but not great in comparison to the great QB’s, or even most starters. against most starting QB’s, he’s in the middle of the pack. combined with the fact that he refused to play backup, and his extra curricular activities, ‘blackballed’ seems like a huge stretch.
If there is any truth to the blackball theory, then why weren’t other vocal players blackballed? Like, say Michael Bennett?
Even if he was, it takes a lot of evidence to prove blackballing.
most teams don’t need a qb. the ones who do have some decent choices. they don’t want the risk.
it doesn’t mean they all got in a room and said “fuck that guy”
what about W-L over those last seven games? i’d argue that *when* a quarterback performs is important, e.g. 3rd-down conversions.
the Niners were 2-14 in Kaep’s last season.
the Niners were 5-0 with Garoppolo starting.
Kaep is a loser. Garoppolo is a winner.
Kaep’s performance under pressure was always overlooked by the fawning analysts. He was f’ing terrible. I’ve never seen so many delay of game calls, or time out to avoid one, while he was under center. I would be screaming at the TV every game and the damn announcers would act like every time it happened was a fluke.
As a Cardinals fan, I rather enjoyed his mental mistakes.
Yep. And he should be on a list of Seahawks fan’s favorite players.
They’d rather focus on these four stats to prove that he doesn’t suck. As Ray Lewis pointed out before, if he shut the hell up, he’d have a job.
pretty much
I do think he wasn’t bad, but he was getting worse as a player, and the protests and such didn’t help. Where he was in the middle of the pack shows exactly how much the protests hurt him. you lose about 10 qbr for nonsense. if his qbr was 114, maybe he’d still have a job.
but he didn’t want to play for backup money.
the combo of everything means he won’t play.
3rd down QB rating:
Kaep (2016) 86.9
Garoppolo (2017) 100.7
yeah sure, blackballed. okay.
So…
He’s about as good as Kaepernick.
He doesn’t come with all the drama.
Gee, whom should we go with again?
Even if that’s true, so what. So, the hell, what? Kaepernick decided being an activist was more important that being a quarterback. The NFL owners tend to want players who make football the #1 thing in their life.
urinating tree also has a good video on kap
Ask the teams that traded for Cassell and Flynn about small sample sizes and their meanings.
Kapernick definitely should have a job, he clearly is one of the top 40 or so QB’s around but he almost certainly is not one of the top 20. Problem is he expected to be paid as a starter, it was questionable whether he would even accept a job as a backup, and with his upside being a placeholder until you could get someone with a future there were only a handful of possible landing places for him. He was not passed on by 32 teams, he was passed on by about 4 to 6 teams. The other 26 – 28 teams wouldn’t have signed Kapernick even if he didn’t come with the controversy.
To make matters worse for Kapernick the fanbase of 2 of the teams who could have signed him are very right wing (Browns and Ravens) as is the ownership of a 3rd (Jets). He would have had to be Aaron Rogers in skill level to overcome the controversy and be signed by the Jets or Browns. The Ravens actually did come very close to signing Kapernick but then his girlfriend had to screw the deal up by calling Biscotti a racist and Ray Lewis an Uncle Tom in the middle of the process killing that deal.
On talent alone Kapernick deserves a job, maybe even as a starter for a bad team but there is simply no evidence to support the idea he was blackballed
How’s that nevertrump thing coming?
By far the silliest NeverTrump end-of-the-year column came from the New York Times’ housetrained “conservative,” Bret Stephens. Although he agrees with Goldberg on the myriad successful policy decisions Trump has overseen, he still wishes Hillary won in 2016. Why?
Because of the alleged “shortcomings” in Trump’s character: “lying, narcissism, bullying, bigotry, crassness, name calling, ignorance, paranoia, incompetence and pettiness.” Fact is, most voters didn’t vote for Trump because of his vices, real or imagined, but in spite of them.
But look: if you’re going to argue, on the one hand, that “character does count and virtue does matter,” and on the other hand confess you still wish Hillary Clinton were president, you don’t get to be taken seriously ever again.
——–
Although a hardened group of radical NeverTrumpers remains, most former fellow-travelers have moderated their stances and are at least willing to consider Trump on his merits. From R.R. Reno to Mollie Hemingway, former or more moderate critics of Trump are now undertaking important work in helping to smash the ruling class oligarchy.
As Trump’s successes continue to pile up in the New Year, the remaining few passengers on the sinking NeverTrump ship should ask themselves an important question: Does their hatred of one man matter more than the good of their country?
But he’s a short-fingered vulgarian, eating Big Macs in the State Dining Room!
Don’t forget all those Diet Cokes. Twelve of them! TWELVE!!
I love the obsession over his consumption of “regular people” food.
Naturally, if he ate five-star cuisine, these dipshits would be pummelling him over “dining like a king while ordinary Americans are just barely scraping by after his evil tax plan”.
Interestingly, all adjectives that would apply equally to any random NYT op-ed submission.
From that stupid Bloomberg sexbot column (My first assumption as, ‘MacArdle’):
And yes, I do think women could get spoiled by dashing menbots. Their standards might go up. They might even be lost to the dating pool altogether — like what’s already happened with some Japanese men.
Would that be such a bad thing? In the #MeToo age, I feel like raising standards is quite reasonable. It’s called for, in fact. Make the men compete. It’s the dating equivalent of having free state colleges lower tuition rates everywhere.
WTF is that even supposed to mean?
It means you will inadvertenly become more expensive?
I’m highly skeptical that women would ever be satisfied with a non-human device. Women seem to have a much greater need for an emotional connection, and you’re not going to get that from a robot (unless the technology gets to the point where you cannot tell the difference).
“Women seem to have a much greater need for an emotional connection, and you’re not going to get that from a robot (unless the technology gets to the point where you cannot tell the difference)”
I might suggest that once you reach that point, what you probably have, is a robot that can choose to reject you.
a robot that can choose to reject you
The blue screen of sex?
It’s the dating equivalent of having free state colleges lower tuition rates everywhere.
Actually this is probably exactly right, in the sense that, just as tuition has been skyrocketing at the in-demand schools, regardless of lower or no tuition charged in other schools, in-demand men will still be in demand no matter how many jumped up dildos are on the market, or how many nebbishy losers exit the market.
Left behind
But most of gains are going to the wealthy.
Nearly half of country has $0 invested in the market, according to the Federal Reserve and numerous surveys by groups such as Gallup and Bankrate. That means people have no money in pension funds, 401(k) retirement plans, IRAs, mutual funds or ETFs. They certainly don’t own individual stocks such as Facebook or Apple.
———-
Stock ownership before 2008 was 62 percent, Gallup found. Even after recent inflows, only 54 percent of Americans are invested now. More adults in the United States own homes than stocks.
“There’s been an enormous push to have people own their own homes. We need a similar push for families to own stocks,” says McMillan.
My gut reaction is to call bullshit on their claim that half of the country derives no benefit from the performance of the stock market, but it infuriates me that they completely gloss over the explicitly anti-savings policies pursued by the Fed and the government in general.
Did they make that claim in the linked article? They didn’t in your
quoted part.
ZIRP has unintended consequences?? heretic!
but it infuriates me that they completely gloss over the explicitly anti-savings policies pursued by the Fed and the government in general.
This. So much of the shitty financial status of people in this country is directly attributable to government and Fed policy. Fucking keynesians
Blasphemer….
That’s why I’m deep into Crypto.
And how did that work out in the long term, you fucking dumbass?? I seem to remember a bit of financial turmoil that had something to do with a housing bubble…
Yes, because it’s a great idea to push people into investments regardless of the potential drawbacks. It worked so well for housing and college degrees, right? The government already tells people that they’ll be rich and successful if they just purchase both of those things, so why not add stocks to the list? What could possibly go wrong?
The majority of Americans have ZERO saved for retirement and less than $1,000 in the bank. What are they counting on? The government.
This is why there will be no significant reform of s.s., medicare, the welfare state, or a libertarian moment.
“Grayson” was outta here last night. You’re a day late and a couple billion dollars short on your luck wish, bub!