Hope y’all had a nice Valentine’s Day. Mine went exactly as I’d hoped and a little better when I received a very nice writing instrument. Thanks, Banjos 🙂
Olympics are still too boring to note, although America has already captured the first of the alpine events (where the score is actually the time and a winner is determined by objective measurements rather than the opinions of a few people. So…go USA!
Providence might have played their way into the tournament with a win over Villanova. Elsewhere, Xavier (OH) Won. Auburn beat Kentucky, who is starting to fall outside the bubble, in my opinion.Florida State took down Clemson, to the delight of Brett L. Duke drilled Va Tech. Michigan rolled up Iowa. And Nevada topped Boise State. This year is absolutely wide open. The tournament should be a blast.
On the ice, just three games. The Avalanche blanked Les Canadiens. The Florida Panthers beat the Vancouver Canucks. And the Maple Leafs continue to impress, doubling up the Columbus Bluie Jackets 6-3. This season has been a roller coaster. I can’t wait to see how it ends in five months. Or how the playoffs work out 9 months from now.
Lastly, in European Champions League, I’m getting word that Liverpool have scored again while on the flight back from Portugal. I mean…wow. What a beatdown. And Real Madrid got a pair of late goals to top PSG 3-1. The JV Euro tournament plays today. And Arsene Wenger is probably already complaining about something.
That’s all for the sports update. Now back to…the links!
More details are coming out about the horrible piece of shit who shot up a Florida high school, killing 17 and injuring scores more. Apparently everyone know he was a dangerous piece of shit and many suspected he’d try and do something like this, based on his actual threats to do something like this. No police were injured, however, as they’re probably still huddled behind their APC outside the place where he lived.
Elizabeth Warren doubles down on her claims of Indian ancestry. and accuses Trump and others of being meanies. You know, 23 and Me don’t cost that much, Lieawatha Lizzie. I’m sure your opponents would even be willing to crowdfund you getting it done to settle the matter once and for all. Also, its convenient that her story now includes “facts” she has completely omitted up until today. And the principals involved are dead and unable to corroborate her claims. Also, I bet the open bar reception after that meeting is a fucking BLAST!
Oh look! Its a Republican actually talking about balancing a budget! Too bad he’s relying on cutting pensions for Illinois government employees and raising taxes. Because saying those two things together in that state all but ensure he will not be re-elected.
I don’t know the answer to the mystery, but if I had to guess, I’d say roofies, booze and lot lizards played a role.
And while I hate linking two pieces from the same place, I just couldn’t avoid this piece of low-hanging fruit. That kid is gonna be fine, I’m sure. Right?
A group of Senators have reached a deal on immigration. But there’s no way in hell it gets a consensus until it addresses chain immigration, curbing future illegal immigration and the border wall Trump is insisting be funded or he will veto it.
Wait, so its ok for him to do blackface but not me? Actually, I’m sincerely proud of this guy. I’m glad he’s doing what he can to continue living his dream. The world needs more of this kind of persistence and less of the HRC variety.
Parts of this song could apply to many of the people in the links today. Choose for yourself.
That’s it for me. Have a great day, friends!
Comments
524 responses to “Thursday Morning Links”
Oh, sorry, we were testing our teleporter. We were going to beam downstate out of state.
Or we just snagged him for conditioning but the return location listed on the Work Order was screwed up.
Every so often I debate genetic testing. I am, however, the sort of person who doesn’t want to share any information from such a test. So I go and read up on how many people the company might blithely hand it off to. I found this odd little tidbit in there.
That substring made me nope right out of there. Having someone I didn’t expressly share with know something about me is annoying, but managable. Having that same party use that information to pester me is unacceptable.
Alternatively, it means they sell your e-mail to spammers. Either way it was a deal-breaker. Especially for a service I’d have to pay for in the first place.
Assume that they will do what every other company does, which is sell your information to marketers and scammers…
You’re being redundant.
anything worth buying really doesn’t need to be marketed. people know about it, they want it, and as soon as they can afford it, they get it.
If they were honest, I wouldn’t call them scammers.
are you disagreeing with me agreeing with you? I’m lost.
Wife and I did 23 and me. Not really that happy about sharing my saliva around.
I’m wondering if you could do it using a pseudonym, and use a prepaid gift card for the payment.
I’d totally do it if I could be sure it wouldn’t end up in Uncle Sam’s Filing System, indexed against all my other indicia.
Actually, one of the other campaigns has already sent her the kit. She has thusfar declined to make use of it. Maybe the prospect of marketing e-mails scared her off?
The important thing is she feels Native American.
Liz Warren is another Groper?! #ThemToo
It would be great if she would just say, ” The heck with all of you, I identify as Native American, case closed!”
HOW DARE YOU QUESTION HER LIVED EXPERIENCE, SHITLORD!!!
So if she does use the kit, is it a one drop sort of thing? Or is there a minimum percentage required? like 12.5 or something
23andMe will get down into 1/10th if percents. It’s almost worse to me if she is .1 percent Native American. If she can claim that status, I can claim I’m black.
I drew the short straw and have to break it to you. 0.1% is more than one drop. I’m afraid you’re going to have to use the other fountain.
*grumbles*
*shuffles to the back of the bus*
99.3 European
0.6 African
0.1 Native American
Read it and weep suckers! I’m a double minority, which makes me untouchable in this country!
Ah, but “African” could be Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria…
.5 West Africa
.1 sub Saharan
Ah, but “West Africa” could be the Azores, The Canary Islands, The Carribe….ok, nevermind
I saw some really crazy shit about future genetic manipulation and the hope of eliminating African genes out of the body or something.
Genetically manipulating sickle-cell anemia out of an ethnic group would constitute a social good, I’d say.
As long as they don’t get rid of the frizzy hair and facial features, ‘cos that’d be baaad.
#metoo!
/blue-eyed,pale-faced devil
I’m still distraught that I’m 17% Scandi. The shame of it all.
I took a shit in Norway once.
-Scandi
“I took a shit in Norway once.
-Scandi”
Scandalous!
*Sandi-lous
You’re officially oppressed. Congrats!!
/South Park – season 21 episode 3
Let’s parse her statement (emphasis mine):
“My mother’s family was part Native American. And my daddy’s parents were bitterly opposed to their relationship. So, in 1932, when Mother was 19 and Daddy had just turned 20, they eloped.”
“The story they lived will always be a part of me,” she said, as tears came to her eyes. “And no one — not even the president of the United States — will ever take that part of me away.”
Basically, one drop substantiates her story. Notice she also never says why his family were “bitterly opposed”. Maybe her mom was a slut. Maybe she was a nagging bitch. Maybe she was a redskin, who knows. And last, the “story they lived” pretty much means that even if they were lying, she gets to claim it as part of her heritage because its now a part of her. Sure, maybe its a part of her based on a. lie, but its a part of her just the same (much in the way Clayton Bigsby’s “story he lived” was that he was white and that black people were beneath him).
She pulled a Clinton here. Although I don’t think she realizes Trump doesn’t give a fuck and will still beat her over the head until she offers up a little verifiable proof as to the ancestry she used to get a minority hire position at Harvard.
Which will hurt her on the national stage, so she won’t get anywhere beyond being US Senator for Massachusetts, unless some future president appoints her to something.
Trump attacking her just makes her more popular in Massachusetts.
Massholes must asshole it up, I guess…
the ancestry she used to get a minority hire position at Harvard.
That’s the really offensive shit she needs to be hammered on.
The mere existance of a minrity hire position at an institution which accepts millions in federal funding each year is an abomination that violates equal protection.
If we keep paying them, they need to cut that shit out. If they want to keep it, they can live off their bloated endowment funds.
Also note her pandering to the feminist crowd so subtly? “Mother” and “Daddy”. She is either subconsciously making her father more familiar to her while making her relationship with her mother more formal and cold. Or she’s consciously infantilizing him with “daddy” while empowering his spouse by giving her the more formal “mother”.
This woman is a calculating, political animal. That was no accident. I’m going with the latter.
You know, if we’re picking stories to be our personal history, I remember being called Wart as a small child. It didn’t really change until I lost my brother’s sword, and needed to find a replacement…
Who elected you king?!? I’m an anarchist!
(I think she’s from Oklahoma, so my comment following is close enough…)
My whole ancestry since at least the early 1800s is plain Southern white folks, except for one Yankee who evidently got run out of Martha’s Vineyard and ended up selling swampland in you-know-where. Well, amongst folks like me, EVERYBODY has older relatives who say something like “you know great-great-grandmother was half-Cherokee.” They like the idea A LOT, because otherwise they (we) are descended from plain old poor farmers like everybody else. And they say it without the slightest bit of anti-Native-American bias; they’re proud of the little claim to distinction.
Anyway, nobody is less interested in defending Fauxcahontas than I am, but I’m saying this because I’d bet you a Coke that some of her older relatives really, really did believe it, and said things like that casually.
She oughta have enough sense not to believe it, though, and especially not to hawk it.
Or to use it to get a job at Harvard.
The thing is, to qualify for AffAc, you can’t just have oppressed ancestors, you have to be a member of the oppressed community.
At one point, I toyed with parlaying my ethnic past (at least a quarter “Latino” with a goodly does of Amerind in there) into, wait for it, a law professor position, but when I read the rules I decided I didn’t qualify because I was raised lily-white.
It doesn’t matter if you have some ancestors if you don’t have any real connections to the community. That’s her real fraud.
Other than ‘well of course she did.” What’s the proof she actually used it. Was her position always held by a injun? was she paid from some ‘only for injuns’ fund. I haven’t seen any specifics, and read somewhere that the people who hired her have said it wasn’t an issue.
read somewhere that the people who hired her have said it wasn’t an issue
Wasn’t an issue that she obviously didn’t qualify for affirmative action but they desperately wanted to pump their numbers and didn’t care? Because they touted her as an American Indian professor.
I can tell you based purely on her credentials/accomplishments, she would not have been a serious candidate for a Harvard Law position at all. I have no doubt, having seen who is on their faculty and who teaches there but doesn’t get tenure, that she’s not in the same league. Not. Even. Close.
Harvard taking advantage of her ‘ancestry’ is not her using it to get a job. The way some people act it would seem there was a spot reserved for a native american and she lied to get it. Did her hiring keep an actual cherokee from getting the job, or did she get the job. Or did Harvard, in touting here indian-ness, get some special monies,grants,endowments,…
The benefit to Harvard is that they can claim they have embraced ‘diversity’. It’s not necessary that they benefited financially as a direct result of hiring her, but it enhances their reputation and protects them from governmental retribution.
To that extent, a ‘minority hire’ who is a good ‘fit’ for Harvard (i.e. passes for white, but actually an ‘oppressed minority’) is an excellent idea. Maybe she was best qualified under those criteria, bit let’s be honest, those criteria have nothing to do with her academic credentials, and hence, her value to an educational establishment.
Harvard taking advantage of her ‘ancestry’ is not her using it to get a job
She used it in her application. She definitely used it to get a job. Hell, she even joined some AmerInd law association, never actively participated, and then dropped her membership not long after she was hired.
Harvard operates under the institutional/legal incentive to puff up their minority hires. They boasted that they had an AmerInd professor.
When I add 2 + 2, I get 4. If she hadn’t lied about being a minority, she wouldn’t have been a Harvard professor. Harvard was happy to believe her lie, but I don’t think there’s a serious argument to be made that she didn’t lie, successfully, to get the job.
Can confirm. Two Cherokee princesses spawned the entire white population of Oklahoma.
Pics or it didn’t happen.
Maybe she was a nagging bitch.
Most likely.
Elizabeth sees the story about the Fox reporter and gets an idea.
Am I the only one who finds making bad names, like Lieawatha, a poor form of political satire?
Yes. You’re abnormal and should feel shame.
No one here is “normal”, or they wouldn’t be here
You don’t think I think we should all be ashamed of ourselves? For shame.
To quote a modern philisopher “I am what I am and that’s what I am.”
Now enact some labor and bring me spinach!
Reminds of that silly line from an otherwise great KELLY’S HEROES, “We’re all crazy, or we wouldn’t be here.”
I understand the sentiment. That line just stands out like a sore thumb. Thankfully it’s a short scene.
No, you are not alone.
But you don’t like anything, so it doesn’t count.
I love it. They deserve to be mocked at the basest level possible.
I think it actually ends up mocking the speaker more than the intended target.
It may, but it’s very effective. Marketing has long relied on repetition. It’s obnoxious, but it’s proven to work.
Humanity disappoints me a little more every day.
To admit, in Romania they are particularly bad, with maybe the exception being former prime minister Ponta being called Mickey Mao
I just funning. I rarely to never use pun names and find it lazy if used alone.
Probably not the only one, but I believe you’re in a small minority. People have been making up bad nicknames of political opponents since forever. Its always been done and always will be done, because it plays to our base instinct of making fun of people any way we can. We made fun of kids in elementary school with nicknames based on appearance or their own name. We do it to politicians, actors, athletes, basically any celebrities or people that are targets.
+1 Block Insane Yo Mamma!
ZING!
LOL
Furthermore, when you hear those people demanding a return to more civility in political campaigning, it’s worth remembering that insulting names for presidential candidates such as Lincoln (Honest Ape), Rutherford (Rutherfraud) and Jefferson (Mad Tom) have been around for a while.
Despite what UnCivil says, yes, you are alone. Scum are fair game for pejorative nicknames.
Scum are fair game for pejorative nicknames.
Its actually written “scUM”. And we don’t feel the need to use the pejorative as much anymore since they’ve only beaten Ohio State twice in the 21st century (once with our interim coach and a lot of players taking off early to the NFL thanks to the tattoo-gate bullshit). We mostly just call then TTUN nowadays since they aren’t even worth taking note of.
I mean, when its been this long since scUM’s last win, they’re not even worth mocking anymore.
What do you have against Miami?
You can’t spell “scum” without UM.
And you can’t spell “Duke sucks” without Duke.
Fuck dook. *ahem*. Please to be noting the correct spelling.
Valerie Solanas takes issue with your misspelling.
I’m with UCS and Pie, One or two clever twists on a few names would be one thing but this has gotten too common nowadays, I blame Rush, he had nicknames for everyone and everything. His success led everyone else to start and now it’s the norm rather than an exception, and using tired wrung out pejoratives reflects more on the laziness and intellect of the users than the target.
I liked Treacher’s “Stands With a Writ” better than Lieawatha or Fauxcahontas.
My rule is that they have to actually be a little funny. “Block Insane Yomamma” is retarded, inane, and slightly racist, whereas Fauxcahontas, Lieawatha, or Chief Shitting Bull are somewhat clever and amusing, and actually on-topic.
If I had to guess, Trump is going to with “Paleface Lizzy”.
Personally, I like “Fauxcahontas”.
“Goddam fraudulent commie-loving bitch” works for me.
Using funds from an income tax hike he vetoed, Gov. Bruce Rauner on Wednesday said he’d help balance the budget through a change in health insurance benefits for retired teachers and state employees — and a cut to Chicago Public Schools teacher pensions.
I’m saddened he didn’t say “Fuck You, I am Cutting Spending!”
Let’s try that again.
Using funds from an income tax hike he vetoed, Gov. Bruce Rauner on Wednesday said he’d help balance the budget through a change in health insurance benefits for retired teachers and state employees — and a cut to Chicago Public Schools teacher pensions.
I’m saddened he didn’t say “Fuck You, I am Cutting Spending!”
Why do republicans hate children so much? Are they just greedy or evil?
We are trying to reduce Childhood Unemployment!
I hate children because they are money holes and disease factories.
Its not even functional spending. Its paying outlandish pensions that politicians before him signed on to pay in exchange for campaign cash and endorsements from the pubsec unions.
If functional spending is like functional fitness it is mostly nonsense
*drops medicine ball*
WHAT?!?
Well, it IS Illinois.
More details are coming out about the horrible piece of shit who shot up a Florida high school, killing 17 and injuring scores more. – this is exactly the kind of things that makes all Europeans smug about banning guns more and more (not saying they are correct but there is little though beyond this is what guns do)
I wonder how many of these smug Europeans (and American liberals) know the biggest school massacre in America did not use guns and was perpetuated by a single person. I’m also still waiting for France to ban trucks and automatic firearms.
France already prohibits private ownership of automatic weapons.
It was a joke.
Well more of point about how banning guns do not keep them out of the hands of criminals, as Paris found out.
“Sure, but that rag poked fun at Muslims in addition to Jews and Catholics, so they kinda had it coming.”
How Many More Shootings Before We Question Compulsive Schooling Itself?. Also, Bryan Caplan was on Tom Woods today hawking his new book The Case Against Education. Many angles to attack the gun grabbers on.
He was on econtalk this week too. I am way behind so only about 25% thru it. Although I have been reading his posts on econlog for a while.
My favorite part of the podcast was Kaplan telling the story about how people used to think of child labor. “Kids should be out playing and having fun, not slaving away.” A century later and that argument addresses the schools in the same way.
Banning guns in the U.S. is simply impossible for lots of reasons. That’s okay by me and most people on this site.
What’s stupid is the laws making schools “gun-free” zones that which turn them easy targets. The logical precaution would be to have some school staff (properly trained and licensed) allowed to carry a concealed weapon. My son went to a military school for a year – half the teachers there were armed.
Instead, we’ll do the whole rending of clothes routine with the left calling for gun bans that have no chance of passing and wouldn’t matter if they were passed.
What’s stupid is the laws making schools “gun-free” zones that which turn them easy targets.
That’s the point I always try to get across to people. There’s a reason mass-shootings never occur at gun shops/shows/ranges and virtually all happen in places that are explicitly “gun-free” by law or are functioning as “gun-free” at the desire of the property owner.
In Israel, ex-IDF members are all expected to stay current and conceal carry in their schools. How many school shootings have their been in Israel again?
I bet you if the US mandated ex military personnel that are now part of the school to conceal carry, a lot of these fucking mentally deranged assholes looking for easy targets would quit going to schools to go get their 15 minutes of infamy.
I don’t think mandating it is the way to go.
I think that (despite the stereotypes) there are more than enough staff in schools that are receptive to the idea of carrying a concealed firearm without any kind of coercion.
Allow?
Hell yeah. Encourage, even.
Give a bump in pay to anyone who qualifies to carry in school and actually does. They are providing an additional service, and should get paid for it.
I bet you if the US mandated ex military personnel that are now part of the school to conceal carry
I had two teachers in high school that I am certain would be all over that.
Also, as an afterthought, I now know a few veterans who (a) haven’t had any interest in firearms since they left the military and (b) I’d be concerned if I had to be anywhere near them when they were using a firearm.
Given the abysmal services of the VA, and the current (genuine) concerns about mental health screening in general, I think it would be bad policy to require vets to be armed on campus.
Here is the guardian on the subject cause you were dying to read some good old G
Don’t look to Trump for leadership after the Florida school shooting
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/15/dont-look-to-trump-for-leadership-after-the-florida-school-shooting
there’s no point in raising your hopes with the man who watches Fox News all day inside the White House.
Is that worse than the man that only found out what he was while president from watching CNN?
He must have forgotten to mention school shootings with assault weapons, like the AR-15 used at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida.
No such thing. Well, there is, but an AR is not one, at least according to the military. And even if it was, that’s irrelevant.
There have been many attempts to tackle assault weapons like the AR-15.
It’s literally illegal to ban any particular firearm in the US. Try reading the Constitution of the federal gov’t and those of the several States.
What the hell would “leadership on school shootings” look like?
Propose a program to license teachers to carry? And order the Federal agencies to make it happen.
Easy. A call for “common sense gun control” is what leadership would look like to these people.
You know who else send up a virtue signal then has cocktails?
Disarm the plebes and then pretend the problem has gone away when the criminals (both the careerists and the agents of the state) are the only ones able to use violence/force to get their way!
See Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Washington D.C., and so on…
CNN is on the full court press on this. They are reporting LIVE from Parkland, full-time, all shows.
Cuomo was on and on about how evil the Republicans are for being too afraid to do something about these shootings. They went to a live standup at the White House where they reported that they were pressing the President to Do Something and Say Something! They reported that he issued a statement – which the reporter derisively referred to as “this piece of paper” and flopped it around as she said that “All he did was put out a paragraph of the same stuff we always here in these situations. He still has yet to speak on the subject. We keep asking, when will he speak!?”
They spent the next 5 minutes bantering back and forth about how the President and the Republicans were too afraid to do anything. EVEN NOW! On his watch…. and he is too afraid to do anything to stop these shootings.
(apparently the irony of Obama also not having done anything to top these shootings on his watch was lost on him. Or not. Maybe it is just stupid, cold, calculated political hackery. )
Oh, and they’ve managed to peel off one former Republican lawmaker who is calling for the taking of the House because “Republicans will never do anything on guns”. And CNN is so far in the partisan weeds that they are trying the “what are you afraid of” gambit, calling out Republicans like Rubio and Cruz who have declined invitations to appear on CNN – calling them cowards for going on FOX but not CNN.
They have gone full propaganda machine. Not even a fig leaf toward objective reporting any more. I didn’t check out MSNBC, but if CNN is that far over the top, one can only imagine.
“CNN is on the full court press on this. They are reporting LIVE from Parkland, full-time, all shows.”
Looks like this tragedy gave them an out so they can take a brake from peddling fake shit about the whole made up Russia-gate fiasco they hoped would somehow keep people from discovering how the Obama administration actually did far worse than what Nixon wished he could get away with in his wildest dreams.
Thanks for that. I didn’t even turn on a television today and I’m fucking angry already.
And as good as your imagination is, the reality is even worse.
I was just over at our school and several parents picked up their kids today.
One close friend of ours was in tears, worried because there have been copycat threats called in. She’s been watching CNN all day. Nice job, dickheads. They’ve taken an almost nonexistent threat (the odds of being killed in a mass shooting in the US are on the same order of magnitude of winning the powerball lottery) and turned it into a “I have to get my kid home so he will be safe” fear. But it is OK, because you are scoring political point! Huzzah for team Blue!!
My understanding is that the school had two armed Resource Officers who were already assigned there full time.
So far I have not heard a word about what they were doing while this was going on.
I know it’s Buzzfeed, but if this is true the FBI budget needs cut by 10% a year, year over year, until they become more effective and deterring these known wolves.
Yep – I posted from another source below. The guy who reported it to the FBI just put his story on Youtube.
They were too busy making up bullshit Russian collusion dossiers
Sad…
har dee har har. You don’t have the first clue how much effort it takes to invent timetravel so you can go back and un-drop the ball on preventing 9/11. Until you do, I suggest giving the FBI a break. Like we did when they failed to prevent 9/11.
9/11, also, fried chicken. and 9/11
And, like clockwork, so many of my FB friends are filling the site with dishonest, gun control derp. None of them want to admit what they propose won’t save one life, and what they really want is to ban guns. These same idiots want to have guns confiscated by the same police they (often rightfully) criticize for abuse of power.
This guy knows how to sell a rifle.
He claims more pictures are coming, so maybe the eye catching picture of boobs and a dinosaur will be gone later today.
Well… that was funny, but unless I’m getting what’s in the picture, I wouldn’t bid on the gun.
All animals want to live. Where do you draw the line?
https://twitter.com/ChrisHay1299/status/963983400897056768
Everything on that billboard is food somewhere.
I like the guy that added a human to the list for apocalypse situation.
“Trying to bang a hot vegan chick”? I never gave up meat and managed to get a few vegetarians in bed with me. I never tried for a vegan.
And UnCivilServant is right, all of those animals are food someplace. Horse is a common food in parts of Europe.
Rules for getting a vegan woman into bed:
1. Be attractive
2. Don’t be unattractive
The problem is how to get them back out again.
Ordering chicken mcnuggets for 2 and when she protests, saying “I don’t think this even counts as real chicken… It’s more sawdust than anything”
“Chickens are too stupid to be animals, they must be ambulatory vegetables”
I mean, they fucking COME FROM SEEDS.
Useful for any woman.
And while I hate linking two pieces from the same place, I just couldn’t avoid this piece of low-hanging fruit. That kid is gonna be fine, I’m sure. Right?
This isn’t about the kid. It’s about ME, dammit
Exactly. Narcissistic nutjob puts self-image ahead of kid’s welfare. I wish the kid luck, he’s going to need it.
My wife is taking this shooting pretty hard since it was her HS. She is a counselor so she is planning to go down and do some grief groups if her job will give her the time off. The worst part is having to tolerate her watching CNN and keep my mouth shut. F’ing scum bag coward.
Sorry to hear that. She’s doing a good thing. Such an awful event. RIP.
Sorry.
Things at where I work kind of stopped yesterday afternoon. Several people here have kids at that school. Thankfully they’re all okay.
Your wife is doing a good thing here.
She has two cousins who go to that school, thankfully they are both okay. I think it would be good for her to do something tangible. Let her feel like she has some control in this crazy world. Hopefully, good for the kids too.
God bless her. I’ll be praying for her and the others heading down to help those people. I know they’re going to experience some severe emotional trauma helping the friends and families of the victims. They are to be commended.
Thank you. I’ll let her know the Glibs send their good wishes/ prayers.
Praying for her.
My wife and her friends have gone into full-on Mommy panic. They were texting furiously this morning about how hard it was to drop the kids off today. Tears in her eyes, she actually used the phrase “17 moms dropped off their kids yesterday too…”
Being a good libertarian type, I helpfully pointed out that another 60 million parents dropped off their kids yesterday too. Yeah… pointing out the vanishingly small odds didn’t really help that much. But she’s volunteering at the school all day today, so maybe that will help get the fears behind her.
While nobody wants to minimize the tragedy here, keeping a real and grounded perspective, is key. Doing things or making decisions based on the emotional surge caused by a tragedy is far more likely to backfire and create another tragedy.
How a transgender woman breast-fed her baby
Just visualized Pelosi suckling on Schumer’s moobz.
Thanks for that, Straff – you just gave me the last little bit of help I needed to keep my fasting for Lent going today.
*turns green, clutches stomach*
You asshole.
My eyes! My eyes! It burns!
It ends with crying Italians?
They do tend to get emotional.
Mamma mia!
And fall down when untouched. Of course, we won’t have to see that in Russia this summer.
Uh-oh. Tundra’s gonna lose it
*narrows gaze*
Here Come the Hawks, the mighty Blackhawks!
Take the attack, yeah, and we’ll back you Blackhawks.
You’re flyin’ high now, so let’s wrap it up-
Let’s go you Hawks, move off!
Now all look out, Here Come the Hawks!
(opponents team’s fans burst into derisive laughter and catcalls)
*sob*
An because everyone wants to know the opinions of Slavoj Zizek
Why do people find Jordan Peterson so convincing? Because the left doesn’t have its own house in order
The Canadian clinical psychologist and university professor has become hugely popular for his ‘anti-PC’ views and is beloved of many on the alt-right. He’s appealing for a number of reasons, most of them connected to the left-wing people he opposes
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jordan-peterson-clinical-psychologist-canada-popularity-convincing-why-left-wing-alt-right-cathy-a8208301.html
Zizek has made a career out of being inscrutable. This article is no different. Lots of hand-waving going on.
Only three uses of the word “Nazi”. Progress.
And Zizek proves himself no better than any of the other commentators on Peterson. Everything he references is out of context and treated as “crazy”.
They really, really hate him.
At least he hit all the usual bull shit jargon.
Obscure? That’s a new one.
Yep, Peterson’s hardly ‘obscure’. I’d seen him in Canadian TV a few times before the compelled speech issue came up. He seemed to be like a go-to guy if the CBC wanted an articulate, wonky shrink to talk for 5 minutes.
That’s Zizek’s envy talking. He wishes he were as well known as Peterson. As it is, he’ll have to settle for the adulation of the Euro-prog academic left.
Zizek is a Marxist that makes 30 or 40k per speech
I’m well aware. Peterson has grabbed the spotlight from him and I think that is what sticks in Zizek’s craw. I’m willing to bet that 12 Rules For Life will outsell all of Zizek’s voluminous writings combined, if it hasn’t already.
I’m about halfway thru’ 12 Rules, and it’s a great book to maybe give to a callow yoof who seems to have little direction in life, no religion (but not rampantly atheist) but would like to change their life for the better.
There are a couple of eye-roll-worthy digressions in there, but I’d say it’s probably one of the best and most accessible self-help books I’ve seen in a while.
I’ve got it, but haven’t started it yet. I’m pre-reading it before I hand it over to the teenager.
CLEAN YOUR LOBSTER
By our household standards, the ‘soft christianity’ that’s embedded in it is no big deal, but if you’re a reader who’s uncomfortable with connecting Judeo-Christian ethics with actual religion it might seem a bit preachy in places.
“CLEAN YOUR LOBSTER” is a keeper. I’m totes stealin’ that.
Got it as an audible and it is awesome… Half way through as well as I usually only listen to these audible books when I hike on weekends and am bored because it is an easy hike.
Thinking of getting it for my 16 year old stepson. He’s already a good kid (and hates SJW BS). But, I think he’ll get a lot out of it.
Why do people find Jordan Peterson so convincing?
Because he talks like an adult, makes an actual argument rather than emoting, and does not mince words?
It helps that he directs his ire at amoral people with power, such as disciplinary boards in government and academia, rather than the powerless and inconsequential, like religious bakers or Twitter eggs. Taking on censorious bureaucrats is a lot more persuasive a starting position than, say, fishing for accolades at the Golden Globes, or invading a coffee shop to take a stand on imperialism, or ferrying a mattress around on campus, or shouting down invitees at open forums. Of course sane people take the former more seriously than the latter. How do lefties not recognize how much progressive Marxism has damaged their brand?
Indeed. Right now, the people demanding respect are not acting in a respectable manor. Not to mention the fact that he’s operating in an environment where Things Everyone Knows are defined by ideology instead of empirical observation.
He’s mastered the skills that were, 40 years ago, the minimum level to even have a seat at the public-intellectual table. But today it turns in into an unstoppable juggernaut in a target rich environment.
“If you have to demand respect, there’s a good chance you don’t deserve it.”
But ‘respeck’ is totes different.
+1 Respeck Knuckles
How do lefties not recognize how much progressive Marxism has damaged their brand?
They have zero self-awareness. And they are the ones that are “smart” and “noble”. You are just a shitlord that does not recognize that they are on the right side of history.
I think you seem to be making a mistake blaming this on self awareness. I think they truly believe that there are no ills from marxism, and they somehow will be the ones to make that tripe work. Omelets, busted eggs and all.
they somehow will be the ones to make that tripe work
Their inability to mold human nature to their whims isn’t a lack of self-awareness?
… they think all they need is a bigger hammer.
again, is that not a lack of self-awareness?
Starts out with the insult “obscure.”
is a proof that the liberal-conservative “silent majority” finally found its voice
“liberal-conservative” makes no sense
Zizek is the perfect idol for lefties. A complete hypocrite/liar who speaks esoterically and jargon-y enough so as to sound smart without actually contributing anything to the world.
And his QUIRKY! factor blows Neil deGrasse Tyson out of the water. If he spoke better English and was on American TV more, your average brain dead college freshman would use Bill Nye’s corpse to bludgeon Noam Chomsky to death just to make it to one of his lectures.
Can we do that anyway?
Define “Alt Right,” Zizek.
Fuck, you idiots have called every warhawk on the right (and many beside) a “neocon,” knowing nothing about the provenance of the term. You lump together anyone who advocates for marriage before children with Bible-thumping Evangelicals under the “socon” tag. And now you’re awfully liberal with words like Nazi and Fascist, which, coincidentally, is the last liberal thing about you people. So forgive me if I don’t take on faith that you have any idea what “alt right” means, besides being an update on other epithets you’ve used.
Chomsky has actually given the world something of value in linguistics.
Listening to 12 Rules, which is narrated by Peterson himself.
I think he’s popular for the reasons Rebel Scum describes, plus the fact that his voice sounds like he’s trying to talk while being choked by Darth Vader. He’s kind of shrimpy, the average male probably has 50 pounds on him and despite all that he manages to sound authoritative and any live show I’ve seen of him, calm in the face of outright verbal abuse.
So people listen to him, listen to his schtick, take all this in, and think to themselves, “if this guy can be successful at life, why can’t I?” and they start listening to him more and more.
It helps that the content is pretty accessible.
Well, he wasn’t always that shrimpy. It’s my understanding he’s climbing out of a major health problem, but in all other respects, I think you’re pretty much correct.
Why can’t these companies just keep the Chat pithy, like text messages?
“You overcharged me”
“Hi, So Sorry. I understand you are saying you’re overcharged? I can totally help you with that!”
*closes chat*
What happens if the customer is correct about the charge being wrong? You just hung up on them.
You have that backwards…
*sigh* That was supposed to be the joke.
Work on it.
Illustrator or Comedian, he can’t afford both guys.
I am the customer.
Don’t get me started. I just had a row with Comcast. Stop using the word “guaranteed” and constantly not delivering! It makes it worse when you promise and don’t deliver, than just not delivering.
‘Is the bill going to be credited?”
“yes”
“Ok, I’m logging out and logging back in”
“Fantastic!”
Credit is not there…*headdesk*
Jerry: I don’t understand. Do you have my reservation?
Rental Car Agent: We have your reservation, we just ran out of cars.
Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That’s why you have the reservation.
Rental Car Agent: I think I know why we have reservations.
Jerry: I don’t think you do. You see, you know how to *take* the reservation, you just don’t know how to *hold* the reservation. And that’s really the most important part of the reservation: the holding. Anybody can just take them.
This guy gets it.
I know I’m late to respond, but I can’t resist.
You described one of my pet peeves from working in retail. After calmly explaining something three or four times to someone, I tend to snap at someone when he refuses to understand. Their response is inevitably some variation of ‘Well, you didn’t have to get shitty about it.’ Apparently I DID have to get that way, because you weren’t listening the FOUR TIMES I explained it calmly.
I don’t know if they’re stupid, or deliberately trying to get away with something, but I wasn’t putting up with it.
deliberately trying to get away with something
that something being Their Way. they heard you, they understood, but they’re just going to keep repeating themselves till they get what they want or you tell them in no uncertain terms that they wont.
“So let’s combine your internet with a tv package”
“Don’t want it, I don’t watch TV with commercials”
“It’s a great value sir”
“Let me be very clear. I wouldn’t watch cable tv if you offered it free. You could pay me to take it and I still wouldn’t use it. Do not mention it again”
“So what shows do you like to watch?”
*hangs up*
“You could save money by bundling in home phone services”
“Save over what I pay for Internet alone?”
“The bundle is 15% less than the services separately!”
“But more than what I’m paying now. An I already have a phone, we’re talking on it.”
I hate that shit. I have a internet/landline bundle that’s cheaper than just internet. Technically I have a home phone. I don’t even know the number.
That’s what Comcast told me, but the internet speed that I see in the bundles is much slower than what I currently have.
I am considering Comcast Mobile, which would cost me around $20/month for 2 lines of cell service. I’m extremely reluctant to place my cell service in their hands, which I consider pure evil. I think I’ll still keep spending 4x as much with Verizon.
Go to Walmart, get the StraightTalk. If you have a CDMA phone, you’ll be on the Verizon network for $45/month/phone.
I’m waiting for the spectrum guy now. Hopefully he’ll fix the cable. *wink wink* I had good customer service with ATT but their products suck. I’m now using Verizon for phone and only kept Directv because they gave it to me for less than the cancellation fee.
When TW became Spectrum, I decided to buy my own modem to get rid of the nagging “Equipment Rental Fee” because eight months of not paying it would cover the cost of the modem. When I was turning in their hardware, I refactored my plan. My bill dropped 40%, and with the new plan caps plus new modem, I’ve got better transfer rates than ever.
That’s actually more than I pay Verizon at $74/month for 2 lines. I get a big discount with them for not upgrading my phones.
The Comcast Mobile is intriguing because it’s only $10/month per gig of shared data (talk/text are free). My wife and I use less than half a gig/month combined. But it’s Comcast, so there’s that.
Semi-Spartan Dad, if you have 2 lines, and already have Verizon Phones, Total Wireless (owned and operated by the same people who do Straight Talk) is a better deal. They can port your numbers over, and it’s 2 lines for $60/ month with 15 GB of data.
That sounds like a good deal, thanks spqr.
Only catch Spartan Dad, is that to port, they have to do one one day, then the next 24 hours after to establish the account.
Me as well. No phone has ever been hooked up to that number.
I got a call with a new offering where for only $20 I could get the local channels plus 10 a la carte (non-premium) channels. I told them it would have to be cheaper than Netflix for me to take them up on it, and they seemed confused as to why I didn’t want to overpay (less money) for their lesser service.
Commiserations to our Canadian friends on their heartbreaking loss in the World Cup qualifier: http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/8786/report/1133941/
/crickets.
I had guessed Soccer, not Cricket.
It’s just a potato race. But it shows a familiar pattern of gender inequality
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/15/its-just-a-potato-race-but-it-shows-a-familiar-pattern-of-gender-inequality
This year, the prize money for the men was posted at $1,000. For the women, it was $200
Seriously this is one case where they should stop having separate races.
How much you want to bet the women’s race was started because someone complained that in the open race the women never won. so they started a segregated race just for them. We should reintegrate and instead of $200, they’ll end up with $0.
I don’t mind separate sports, but I hate the whining about them not being supported equally. Half the population is women, so if women supported women’s sports, they would get equal funding, but women don’t want to support other women. They want to bitch and if you solve the problem they won’t have anything to bitch about and that’s what they really want to do, is bitch.
The long read
Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand
How an extreme libertarian tract predicting the collapse of liberal democracies – written by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father – inspired the likes of Peter Thiel to buy up property across the Pacific
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand
To be fair, New Zealand has always sounded good to me if it were no so damn far away. Good climate, nice scenery, probably good food due to successful agriculture
I bought a used edition online, the musty pages of which were here and there smeared with the desiccated snot of whatever nose-picking libertarian preceded me.
That wasn’t snot and I want it back when you’re done.
Once the apocalypse arrives and we take control….we’ll need to get back to driving on the right side of the road.
Fun to watch Google get pinched for being unethical assholes.
“Google abused its market dominance,” meh…
Google was guilty. The European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, made that brutally clear. “Google abused its market dominance,” Vestager declared as she announced her judgement in Brussels on June 27, 2017. She handed Google a £2.1 billion fine – the largest antitrust penalty ever handed to a single company, and gave it 90 days to change its ways.
As much as I dislike Google, I don’t like the start to this piece.
Good job FBI. Great job school administration. Everything we have come to expect from all of you.
They just need to disarm 100 million Americans and then they can do their job.
Remember the 48 hour rule. IF its too good to check, wait 2 days and see if its still true.
You don’t get to be a Hero First Responder until something bad actually happens. Doing the job properly in the first place takes all the accolades out of it.
Apparently everyone know he was a dangerous piece of shit
This, I found irritating. The guy was making actual and relatively detailed threats and no one did anything.
The other thing I find irritating is that these kids were “locked down”. All that means is they sit around and wait to be shot. There’s video of the guy shooting into a room and the most frustrating and disgusting thing is that no one was able to shoot back. When will we learn that “gun-free zones” are only “gun-free” with regard to people who are not intent on committing violence against others?
My kid is a linebacker. We’ve had that talk. If the shooter is close, beat him to death. If not, ignore everybody else, get out of the building and run like hell.
Don’t leave your friends behind, but don’t wait for them either.
Hell, in high school, I had several metal pens in my backpack at all times, because I’ve never been physically strong enough to be sure to put a shooter down, but I’d damned well be able to hit groin or throat with a metal pen.
I had several metal pens in my backpack,
I, at the very least, am always carrying one of these.
I tried that, had one confiscated, then left it in my viola case. But the viola case was in instrument lockers on the other side of school from all classes except for Orchestra and my lunch time.
And the cops didn’t search my viola case, because (and I think I’ve told this story before here) the locker next to mine was for two years, one sister, the other two, the younger sister, who had a Stradivarius that came to school on concert days, and so, it false alarmed the dogs all the damned time. And the school board (and my mom, who ran 1/3rd of the school board’s campaigns) got a huge earful about it from the girls’ mom and dad, and was also sympathetic, since my viola wasn’t exactly cheap either ($2700 at purchase, $500 bow as well). That’s why I told the cops they should not search that locker, even though they had the right to, when I was a senior. I just told them I have nothing to hide, but you really should call someone’s parents before you handle that instrument, or let the girl handle it, since it’s worth at least $25K.
Who gives a high-schooler a Stradivarius?
Elder daughter is a doctor now, but had ambitions in music in high school, younger one is performing professionally (punk and jazz scenes, as odd as that sounds), using the Strad for it. Their mom is pretty much the definition of Tiger Mom (and a really nice lady to other kids) but I can completely understand why the younger one doesn’t do much classical performance, as a method of rebellion.
This. My kids told me about a drill they did at school where they’re supposed to hide. I told them that is an absolute last resort only when there is no way to escape. If there’s any way to get out the building, do it, and then run till you can’t run anymore.
Same here. Both my kids’ schools are within 1/2 of the police dept and both border wooded areas. They are to get out and then head to police station (I know, I know) if there is any type of shooting at school.
1/2 mile.
No police station near theirs but there are woods on one side and subdivisions on the other. Either run far away through the woods or run to that development and bang on doors until someone takes you in.
And then keeps you in for the next couple of years until you’re no longer ‘fun’…
Out of the fire and into the frying pan.
For an(other) “unspeakable” tragedy there sure are a lot of people spilling a lot of ink over it.
Joe Rogan goes off on the whole Seth Rich story suppression.
Elizabeth Warren doubles down on her claims of Indian ancestry. and accuses Trump and others of being meanies.
I’d say she’s angling for a run to be Big Wampum in Chief now that Her Shrillness is (hopefully*) out of the way.
*That said, if Hilldawg proves as vain and entitled as I think, she may run again. That could also have high entertainment value. But I’d rather not have to listen to her speak ever again.
Crank up the outrage machine!
A Barstool Sports radio host apologized Wednesday for calling the 17-year-old US Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim a “hot piece of ass” following her gold medal performance at the Winter Olympics.
After Kim won the gold medal in women’s halfpipe on Tuesday, Barstool Sports commentator Patrick Connor, who also appears on San Francisco-based KNBR, appeared on the “Dialed-In with Dallas Braden” show on Barstool Radio’s SiriusXM channel and made a series of inappropriate comments about Kim.
“She’s fine as hell,” Connor said. “If she was 18, you wouldn’t be ashamed to say that she’s a little hot piece of ass. And she is. She is adorable. I’m a huge Chloe Kim fan.”
“Her 18th birthday is April 23, and the countdown is on baby, ’cause I got my Wooderson going. ‘That’s what I like about them high school girls,’” Connor said, referencing Matthew McConaughey’s character in the film “Dazed and Confused,” who pursues high school-aged girls.
Connor apologized Wednesday after he drew criticism for his comments, which a Deadspin story called out on Tuesday.
Finally, an honest man. Purge him.
Pretty sure the SF station he contributes to fired him already.
Chloe Kim a “hot piece of ass” – are the bikini pics around, front and back, so we can decide for ourselves? Them winter clothing conceal a bit much
And now I am reminded of an oddity of law. In most states of the union, 17 is of legal age, so there is no penalty for an unconnected stranger to sleep with someone of that age. But if they merely took pictures of them in a state of undress – that’s jail time and a sex offender registration.
So this program is called Barstool Sports, but people are outraged?
What do they think gets said on barstools, dissertation defenses?
In January, Barstool CEO Erika Nardini countered calls of sexism against her company in an episode of the “Success! How I Did It” podcast with Business Insider’s US editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell.
“This is a company that intentionally is not PC,” Nardini said. “At our core, our guys just want to do things that are funny and that’s what I’m focused on and that’s what I believe in.”
“If I came into Barstool apologizing for every time Barstool offended someone over the last 14 years, I basically would not do anything else in my job,” she continued. “But I don’t believe in that.”
What’s worse than a misogynist woman?
Clarence Thomas?
She’s a genital traitor
– Frederick Douglass.
“Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It’s the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel. ”
– Loki, the Avengers
i would say of a majority of those they oppress. If you pass the endurance of 5% of population you can still oppress a while.
Apparently getting divorced is genetic
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617734864?journalCode=pssa
Maybe, but unless they can tell me which gene (or genes) in the map are responsible, I will remain skeptical.
Although I am totally willing to believe their are genes responsible for the actions that lead to stronger bonds, so not that skeptical.
Objective measurements are a social construct.
“Logic is white male patriarchy”, said a feminist studying to be a lawyer to me.
“Pull that shit on a jury and you lose the case.”
Years of police procedurals blurring the lines between intuition and provable evidence probably hasn’t helped.
How did she pass the lsat? Isn’t it basically just a series of logic puzzles?
Being a lawyer isn’t the ticket to a good life quite like it used to be. Law schools outside of the top tier are pretty much taking anybody these days.
This… the $150k+ entry level jobs are drying up, and the costs of school are still trending exponentially. I’ve told everybody who has asked to avoid law school like the plague. So many of my classmates (at a top 25-50 school) are well and truly fucked. A quarter mil in student loans and struggling to find a job making more than $50k a year.
Unless you have a niche picked out and a resume that fits the niche, law school is roughly a 50/50 gamble at everything by the top 10 or 15 schools. 50% of students get a job that will out earn their debt. 50% are hoping that the loan forgiveness programs last for another decade.
I forgot the punchline. This shitty context means that applications have plummeted. My school got rid of their night program because there werent enough low performing students applying to bolster the ranks (the admission requirements were lower for the night program). The last night class was 15 or 20 students (mine was almost 60).
for the edification of those unaware of what lawyers make first year out of school
(keep in mind that most just finished paying $50k a year in tuition plus more in cost of living)
What’s that spike on the right from?
The top law firms (biglaw) all pay a “market” rate for the top students. That graph is a couple years old, because the new market rate is $180k. Many smaller firms try to lure in top talent by offering that salary, too.
Their “Market” rate is higher than the actual market rate for recent law grads if it creates a spike rather than sitting at the middle of the bell curve.
With a charitable interpretation, it’s the “market” rate for top tier law grads employed at biglaw firms.
Yes, it’s a misnomer… Lawyers tend to be progs and don’t understand the first thing about economics or economic terms.
FFS, that spike on the right! Is the data collection method they are using the “self reporting” correspondent method?
Yeah it’s a self reported survey. I doubt that 10% of all law grads are making $160k+, but I know for a fact that a whole bunch of law firms “mysteriously” offer the exact same salary as one another. Tone down that 160k spike a little bit and put a huge spike at $0, and it’s about right.
I’d bet that there’s no small component of the hiring choices for that spike that involve hiring up the spawn of the highly influential and politically connected, and less to do with skill or acumen. But I could be wrong.
By and large, it’s for top 40% students from top 15 schools (prethtige ith important to thome), and a decreasing number of students as the school ranking goes down. My school was ranked in the 30s/40s and somewhere around 15% were offered jobs at that salary. Of course, you’re expected to work 60-100 hours per week for that money.
Once you drop below 60 or 70 ranked school, it’s exceedingly rare to make that much.
Yeah, that insane debt is what convinced me to change from Econ to accounting,so I could avoid law school, even having to spend a year and a half on the bachelors, and another year on the masters, I still will spend barely a fraction of the cost of law school.
I know several complete fuck-tards who are lawyers. There used to be standards.
I met some of the dumbest human beings to ever grace my presence while at law school. There are three types of idiots I met. 1) oblivious spoiled children who have been in perpetual school since age 5 with mommy and daddy paying the way. 2) true believers there to stick it to the man in the name of their identity group of choice. 3) relatively unintelligent people who had some sort of suck happen in their life and decided to chase the $$$ of big law without looking at the relevant stats first.
Way too many people go to law school because they don’t want to have to stop going to school and get a job.
Joke’s on them. Law school is no fun.
Law school was the most fun part of the entire process for me. Of course, the other parts were working a full-time job in a stuffy big law firm and going home to a strained marriage, so fun is a relative term.
Granted, I was rewarded with a great job for the trouble.
Thank heaven for year round female sexual availability!
http://archive.is/B9A7m
1, 2, 10, 15, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 46.
13. 10 is pretty but kinda ruined by the excessively large breasts
Orgy.
Who would a man breastfeed by a man pretending to be a woman select?
Paging ZARDOZ to the white courtesy telephone…
https://www.salon.com/2006/03/06/suicide_23/
Holy fucking shit. I can’t even.
Oh FFS, this is who Peterson is talking to. GROW THE FUCK UP.
Or lock yourself in a home theater and fill bottles with your own piss, I don’t care.
I can see why these people support a punitive death tax.
I’m so phobic, I want to talk about my problems with your entire readership, so that I can reluctantly tell my all of my very restricted social group that yes, it was *my* Cry for Help.
There’s a reason that suicide lines like Samaritans don’t publish “Best Phone Calls Ever” anthologies.
“Or lock yourself in a home theater and fill bottles with your own piss, I don’t care.”
Hey, at least that guy delved into airplane guff.
Perhaps they should relinquish their life and dedicate it to helping others. Who knows, they may find some meaning in their life. If not, I here drowning is pretty painless. Jump off a moving boat far out in the ocean.
Helium.
Nitrous would probably be a better asphyxiant wouldn’t it?
(also, cheaper?)
A hoax. A flimflam.
**EDIT FAIRY CLOSED TAG**
Forget modernizing America’s infrastructure; this number is deeply inadequate to the task of even doing basic maintenance on bridges, highways and roads. And it is light years away from closing the almost $5 trillion shortfall in infrastructure investment.
The most fanciful part of the plan is that it looks for increased contributions from cash-strapped cities and states, which, unlike the federal government, don’t have the ability to borrow what’s needed to fund multidecade infrastructure projects. Many states also will be wary of raising taxes, since the Trump administration’s new tax plan limits the ability to deduct local and a state taxes from federal tax bills.
The other part of Trump’s plan that’s problematic is letting the private sector take over building, maintaining and collecting revenue, an area that is traditionally the province of government.
———-
Underfunding infrastructure in the way the U.S. has isn’t an accident; it reflects a debate about the role of government, and how much of its traditional duties should be given to the private sector. Experiments have been run in other sectors, such as private prisons. Rarely do these initiatives produce the low-cost, high-quality outcomes that were promised.
Infrastructure privatization is no different. As my Bloomberg View colleague Stephen Mihm wrote: “Building and rebuilding America’s infrastructure is an unfathomably large task without easy solutions. But privatization is a dead end as long as it relies on investors who expect to make a steady profit.”
The White House had an opportunity to create a robust, economically sound plan to modernized America. Instead, the administration seems ready to give private investors a gift at the expense of the taxpaying public. About the last thing this will do is make America great again.
Pffft. A mere twenty billion? Not even worth getting off the co9uch for. And taking the sacred responsibility of ROADZbuilding away from the government? You may as well bring back slavery and covered wagons.
goddammit
Oh, LPB, never change. We love you JUST the way you are ….
When he responds to a thread, we’ll know his account was hacked.
LOL
Our browsers can’t repel a link of that magnitude!
hope y’all didn’t miss my links too much – server issue kept me away this morning.
Salon won’t let me in, because ad blocker. Bummer.
They want to use your computer to mine cryptocurrency.
a followup story:
Duke students rebuke prof for saying libertarians are autistic
Well in all fairness…
What kind of intersectional recognition would we get if we WERE on the spectrum?
Well, libertarians, along with being autistic, are all white, male, and rich (flush with fat stacks of cash from our Koch brothers payouts). So not much.
Sweet sweet Koch brother cash. How’s your caviar?
*Koch Kash
get with the program, noob.
Yeah, we’re still marked for special camps… where we can concentrate… on becoming better citizens of the great progress-topia… by being dead citizens.
And ‘bike locks’.
Rather be on the spectrum than emotionally emetic.
The worst is when you’re around a 19 year old CS major who can’t control the volume of his voice and wants to tell you all about libertarianism. It’s like, thank you for your enthusiasm, kid, but can you please stop accurately representing the brand?
Hey, I am not 19!
Michielson decided that calling for institutional intervention to silence the professor’s free speech would be hypocritical for him as a libertarian
Utterly ridiculous. Free speech means that the government can’t criminalize the words you speak, not that you can’t be held accountable for dumbassery in the private sector.
There’s value to making unfettered free speech an aspirational as well as a legal concept. Consistent defenders will always uphold technically legal if not moral or intellectually defensible abrogations of speech by private actors, but there’s room for suggesting that even if you can legally delimit someone’s speech, sometimes you really shouldn’t. That’s a door that swings both ways: No, I don’t want to see a professor punished by a private university for voicing an opinion, because I don’t want private universities bowing to the heckler’s veto and disinviting speakers.
There’s room for arguing that the professor shouldn’t be punished (I have no opinion), but that has nothing to do with free speech. It weakens the concept of free speech whenever it is dragged out as disagreement for a person being punished in the private sector as consequences for their actions.
I don’t see any libertarian argument that people shouldn’t be punished for voicing opinions on the job contrary to the expectations of their employer or the customers. If my employee said “fuck you” to a customer, he’s going to be fired. Free speech protects him from going to jail for saying such to one of the King’s Men. I don’t think there’s any aspirational value in letting an employee piss off my customers and destroy my business.
I do grant that perhaps making statements that upset customers (students) is a part of the job description for a professor.
Sorry if I came a little harsh in that CS. I would agree with you more about the values of free speech in general (such letting people speak you disagree with during a townhall, etc). I just see a very clear divide between voicing opinions on your own time and when you are being paid to represent an employer.
Sure. I don’t disagree. I’m talking less about a hard principle and more of a general policy that, hopefully, takes us a few steps back from the precipice. Less brinkmanship, maybe less extremism. In the case of militant identitarian professors advocating violence, yes, by all means, can their candy asses. In this case, with an academic making a half-assed case for explaining why not everyone is a lockstep progressive nutjob, there’s room for indulgence.
Obama’s plan, on the other hand, was tickity-boo (note – it’s a stupid idea either way)
Trump’s plan does nothing for America’s real infrastructure problem
TW: Vox
“”Infrastructure is a big, complicated subject that defies easy summary.””
No, its extraordinarily simple and vox idiots literally fall over themselves trying to obfuscate and mislead and keep your readers ignorant and in the dark.
The reason you want “Maintenance spending” is because “infrastructure” is really just a code-word for huge transfers of federal money to states.
And the states use that money as political Baksheesh to grease their various real-estate and public-sector union constituents. It guarantees that the pols able to rally support can reward their support with make-work.
Depending on how these funds are structured – e.g. as “new projects” vs. “flexibly used on whatever upkeep states determine”… it can be used to cover for expenses which states normally incur, allowing them to use their regular money to pay off union-pension funds which have been woefully under-contributed to.
This is all this idiot is really saying: “We don’t really want infrastructure spending on infrastructure! we want it to be used to cover general expenses which states should already have budgeted for”…
…which in turn allows govts to redirect other funds to union-constituencies without being noticed.
Yglacias is scum and this sort of argument is literally the sort of stuff he writes hoping to one day work on someone’s political campaign, because they see he knows the right things to lie about.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DWDH30KV4AAnlf7.jpg:large
“We must ban MS-13s. We can’t allow the NRA to stop us”
The “Sport” on the end made that even more splendid.
Dear dog, King is a po-faced, nasty shitstain.
I like how he’s drawing an equivalency between murders by gang members and the well-known effects of taking drugs. Hint: only one of those things is something that just happens to you as you’re going about your business.
Once again, the “progressive” worldview gives human beings no will or volition whatsoever; they’re just dumb turkeys staring up at the rain.
Why don’t you want to ban MS-13 guns?
Isn’t that the next Windows release?
Windows just shoots you now instead of rebooting without your assent.
…you know, someone needs to sit Steve down for a talk about not hitting the submit button until you’ve re-read what you’ve typed and really thought about it.
Bitcoin rich kids in Puerto Rico: crypto utopia or crypto-colonialism?
“This behaviour reeks of disaster capitalism”
Stop reading once I see made-up buzz phrases
* faints *
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-luminary-peter-thiel-parts-ways-with-silicon-valley-1518696120
Remember when we all thought Silicon Valley would be a hotbed of libertarianism? Haha- that was funny. Now a gay conservative (?) is calling it quits because he can’t escape the progressive group think
Is this the libertarian *moment?
*that was one of the dumber moments of ToS.
I think a lot of people thought Silicon Valley would develop into Libertopia. I remember reading early 2000 Liberty articles that were foretelling the same thing
I don’t get why one would come to that conclusion.
In the year 2000, you have a lot of companies popping up like mushrooms based on flimflam, a well-worded pitch to venture capitalists, a hokey idea and no implementation plan. These people were flush with cash they didn’t have to earn, and spent in ways that would make drunken sailors go “whoah now.” Nothing about that says “individualism and personal responsibility”, or even “limited government”.
In the 90s it was clear that a larger than normal percent of internet users where of a libertarian bent.
And, while not as large, it was true for silicon valley companies too. However, as growth continued, the 2nd movers into the industry were less so and the newer management even much less so.
that would make drunken sailors go “whoah now.”
Doesn’t sound right. Either “Yeeeeaaarrrggghh!” or “Sir, I do believe that is beyond the pale.”
“When you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.”
Hell, I remember when Slashdot had a libertarian bend in the comments. That time is long gone.
At least 15 years gone. Turns out it wasn’t a “community” CmdrTaco was the only guy who made it decent.
I started reading shortly after he sold out.
stopped.
Hell, I remember when TOS had a libertarian bend in the comments. Up til’ about a year ago.
Well played good sir.
FARK went the same way.
Did you not hear me, peasants? I said, NOTHING TO SEE HERE!!!!
Minorities more likely to be denied mortgage loans.
Already I can tell they look at the outcome and impune intent.
Fact: Minorities are over-represented in the lower socio-economic bands in this country.
Fact: Poor people have trouble repaying loans.
Fact: People who have trouble repaying loans are more likely to be rejected for mortgages.
It has jack shit to do with the race of the borrower, and everything to do with their credit.
Credit is just an artificial construct of white supremacy.
Ironically, credit scores were first introduced as a way to prevent discrimination in lending. And it still functions that way
The article even mentions several times that the bulk of the decisions in lending are made by algorithms based on your income, savings, and debt. I don’t know how much more non-racist it can get than that, but that’s not good enough, apparently.
Take a look at the ethnicity of the people who wrote all the software, shitlord.
Southeast Asians most likely
Who’s higher on the Victimology Ladder, huh? Those Southeast Asians have JOBS. Hence, privilege.
It’s like people who make these claims have never met a businessperson before. Big corporate entities don’t give a shit who their customers are, they are just scrambling after the green.
Banksters are avaricious, amoral, and cruel, and will do anything to get people on the hook with deceptive lending practices.
Banksters are also bigots who will deny loans to certain people based on ethnicity or sex or religion or sexual preference, even if it means losing money.
Squaring the circle!
Man, you guys are working damn hard trying to make me commit suicide out of despair for the human race.
Don’t do that. You got a lot to live for. Think of your orphans
My cousin and her husband are white. They had horrible credit, and took out a subprime mortgage, which they ended up having to default on. No mortgage company worth a shit would offer them a loan, based on their credit history.
Oh god, the derp is too strong…
In the United States, “wealth and financial stability are inextricably linked to housing opportunity and homeownership,” said Lisa Rice, executive vice president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, an advocacy group. “For a typical family, the largest share of their wealth emanates from homeownership and home equity.”
No dipshit, home ownership is something to get into when you can afford it on your own. It’s not something that will magically lift poor people into the middle class. There are a lot of hidden costs in home ownership (take it from me) and it actually makes it very difficult to “downsize” in case you get laid off and have to take a lower paying job. This is the kind of cargo cult thinking that fucked up the housing market: “rich people own their own homes, therefore, pushing poor people into home ownership will make them rich!” You might as well just start a federal program to distribute cognac and cigars to poor people since that’s what rich people do. It’s just a ploy to create the superficial appearance of wealth.
Ah yes, that evil wealth gap. The mathematical inequality is the reason that some people can’t afford homes, not the fact that some people are poor. If you just executed the evil 1 percent, everyone would be able to afford houses. Flawless logic.
So you can make lending completely algorithmic, but it’s still racist. The only way to expiate yourself of this sin is to give loans to people who are not qualified. What could possibly go wrong with that?
I like the Dave Ramsey view:
Done right, home ownership is a blessing.
Done wrong, it is a curse.
There is nothing wrong with renting until you can do it right.
This
*flashes back to when plumber needed to be called 3x in first weekend of home ownership*
This morning, I would say home ownership is a blursing. We haven’t had a drop of rain in five months. Two days ago, a crew comes out and strips the topcoat off of our roof (we have a flat membrane roof) because its due for a new coat. Then they tell us they can’t apply the new coat right away because it needs 48 hours to cure and its going to rain tomorrow (as of today, that would be yesterday). Sure enough, its raining and I wake up this morning to a pretty massive leak that is staining the plaster walls and ceiling on one of our bedrooms.
Even though we aren’t going to pay for it because the fucking idiots from the roofing company damn sure are, fixing that plaster is going to be a major pain in our ass.
*clessing
“wealth and financial stability are inextricably linked to housing opportunity and homeownership”
It’s like this dipshit never heard of Detroit or the South Side of Chicago.
I think he has the direction of causality backwards.
The behaviours that permit successfull home ownership and financial stability are not magically injected into the brain at closing on the house.
Its a variation on the “magic dirt” theory of immigration, really.
Of course. But I was taking it a step further – two areas where people who actually could afford to purchase homes wound up abandoning many square miles of homes because their governments targeted them for extreme milking.
“Having money is inextricably linked to being able to buy things.”
Frikkin’ Nobel Prize material, right there.
I mention it again and again, but I think the Realtors ads summarize it best: Homeownership makes your kids do better in school, ensures happier marriages, keeps down property crimes, and on and on… but no, those are all knock-on effects to being the sort of people who commit to being homeowners. They save, defer gratification, borrow sparingly, and end up in a comfortable position because they already sacrificed. It’s silly to sell the benefits without reference to the sacrifice. You end up with a housing bubble and mass dislocation.
It’s the same idiocy that sells kids on taking out $60k for a worthless lib arts degree. Just get the degree, any degree, all you need is a degree, all employers care about is the degree, borrow whatever you can because the degree ensures you’ll make it all back in spades. No, the reason degrees were seen as a ticket into the middle class or beyond is because they once represented, again, foresight and personal commitment. Just like you had minimum wage-earners borrowing out half a million dollars for a two-bedroom in LA on the premise that the housing market is unfailingly lucrative, you have naive children mortgaging their futures to study grievance lit. But people can’t seem to see how these are both the same phenomenon, the same cargo cult mentality that dissociates sacrifice from benefits. It makes me want to scream.
The CFPB is what all government agencies should be
By design, the bureau writes its own budget and draws funds from the Federal Reserve, thereby shielding it from congressional oversight. The legislature should control its funding. The single director for-cause tenure protection defies the president’s constitutional authority as head of the executive branch. Ideally, the CFPB would be overseen by a bipartisan board including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
While administrative agency staff skews Democrat, under Cordray, the hiring process at the bureau systematically screened out Republicans. In a column in the National Review, former CFPB enforcement attorney Ronald Rubin described hiring committees using cues like “I don’t think he believes in the mission” as code for “he might not be a Democrat.”
Politics belongs in Congress, not in agencies charged with impartially enforcing the law. Rubin also recalled the bureau prioritized targeting large firms it could shake bigger fines out of over more egregious wrongdoers. Its civil penalty fund has served as a slush fund to reward friends. It has forced financial institutions it prosecuted to donate to third-party community organizers. Fines collected and not disbursed to wronged consumers should be remitted to the Treasury.
I couldn’t give a fuck less how much injun blood Elizabeth Warren has.
She played a huge role in creating this monster, and she should be subjected to the most severe censure and penalties the Congress can impose. Impeachment would be a good starting point.
The mission is apparently to funnel money to Democratic Party boosters.
Those SOBs who cut the Bank of America deal should be in federal PMITA prison for corruption, including Obama.
Listen, it’s called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You are anti-consumer!
By design, the bureau writes its own budget and draws funds from the Federal Reserve, thereby shielding it from congressional oversight.
I believe the mechanism is that the director requests funds, and the Fed writes a check. If the director doesn’t request funds, I don’t know how the agency gets funded. The great thing about this mechanism is that, by evading Congressional accountability, it also means there is no statutory appropriation for the agency which must, by law, be spent. I’m pretty sure the new director could gut the agency by simply not requesting funds. And the great thing is, he can’t be fired if he does so.
As ever, the proggies fail to recognize an Iron Law (Me today, you tomorrow.).
Ideally, the CFPB would be
overseen by a bipartisan boardabolishedhttps://twitter.com/UN_Women/status/962334128430567424
De-fund the UN
e.g.: Instead of saying “mankind”, you can say “humankind”
They don’t really pay attention to their own bs, do they?
I don’t understand why men have to share our unique and empowering label with women in the first place. It’s watered down by overuse. That’s OUR word, not theirs.
huhumankind.
No wait, huhuhumankind.
No wait…
Thanks, edit fairy!
I read it in Blue, it was a good find P!
“BuzzFeed Suing DNC For Proof They Were Hacked
As part of their defense, BuzzFeed issued a subpoena to the DNC for information which might help them defend against Gubarev’s lawsuit by verifying claims in the dossier – including “digital remnants left by the Russian state operatives,” as well as a full version of the hacking report prepared by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
Since the DNC wouldn’t let the FBI look at the server and instead relied on the report prepared by CrowdStrike (founded by Russian expat Dimitri Alperovitch – who sits on the very Anti-Russian Atlantic Council along with Evelyn “oops!” Farkas. The AC is funded by the US State Department, NATO, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukranian Oligarch Victor Pinchuk, who apparently owns the Ukrainian gas company Joe Biden’s son is on the board of).
“As part of the discovery process, BuzzFeed is attempting to verify claims in the dossier that relate to the hacking of the DNC,” said BuzzFeed spokesman Matt Mittenhal in a statement. “We’re asking a federal court to force the DNC to follow the law and allow BuzzFeed to fully defend its First Amendment rights.”
“If these documents were disclosed, the DNC’s internal operations, as well as its ability to effectively achieve its political goals, would be harmed,” said DNC lawyers.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-14/buzzfeed-suing-dnc-proof-they-were-hacked
TW: Zerohedge
Previously posted, but probably worth repeating.
That is delicious. The DNC is fucked (assuming even a minimally honest judge). “We don’ wanna” is generally an insufficient basis for quashing a subpoena. Even the most sensitive info can and will be ordered disclosed, even if it is only initially “in camera” to the judge. I am quite sure that a minimally honest judge would look at this stuff and say “your internal operations and ability to achieve your political goals are not sufficiently impaired by badly outdated documents on your formerly failed security procedures and breaches from years ago.”
Note: odds that this is heard by a minimally judge are not available at this time.
odds that this is heard by a minimally judge are not available at this time
Has the universe existed long enough for the amount of time needed to type out all the decimal places in that number?
Sue, baby, sue. I hope it bankrupts them both.
“Roses are red Violets are blue Subscribe to black creators.”
https://twitter.com/YouTube/status/963900837570469888
“.., or we’ll doxx you”
Response from a black creator
“Its been confirmed that the Florida school shooter was white identity extremist Nicolas Cruz”
https://twitter.com/tariqnasheed/status/963919103801962496
“White”?
I’m going to guess some form of paranoia-intensifying mental illness. But, of course, his idiotic racialism will get the spotlight.
Hey, you know what’s probably a good idea if we’ve decided we can’t institutionalize headcases “just ‘cuz”? Not promoting the sort of polarizing racialism that all but affirms the demented worldviews of paranoiacs like this.
But we’ll see.
There are pics of him wearing shirts with Lenin and all that mess, and apparently he had some association with Antifa, or wanted to associate himself with Antifa at least. It sounds like he was a loser who wanted to glom on to some “revolutionary” group or ideology so that he could steal some relevance. There are any number of people who are unsuccessful in life who try to blame the rest of the world for just not being smart enough to understand their rare talents and deep thoughts.
He was a Laguna Beach Antifa member apparently
https://twitter.com/search?q=laguna%20beach%20antifa&src=typd
If it is ultimately true that he is a nut-job, Marxist, Anti-Fa hanger-onner, this story will die right quick.
Many are claiming it has been “proven” fake” and that it’s not him but some picture from 4chan 3 days ago. I don’t care to dig into Twitter or 4chan to figure it out for sure.
that’s a parody site and its not a picture of the actual shooter
“laguna beach” is like Beverly Hills (with surfers). anyone claiming their antifa chapter is located some super-rich community is mocking Antifa
Ahh. Thanks Gilmore. The more you know…
So, a little like the nutjob White Supremacist who converted to Islam. Lunatics adrift.
Wasn’t there some Muslim/ISIS garble mixed in there, too?
Expect the unimpeachable ADL to be sourced for the upcoming news cycle.
https://www.adl.org/blog/florida-white-supremacist-group-admits-ties-to-alleged-parkland-school-shooter-nikolas-cruz
https://twitter.com/renoomokri/status/963280461647659008
That’s some illustration.
That’s a rather graphic Tweet.
Also, I’m not an expert on female anatomy (my health class at a Catholic High School was watching the NFL’s greatest hits), but I’ve been acquainted with a few ladies. I…I…don’t think….this is how it works
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DWCKJsBX4AA3SSS.jpg
LOL
Awesome. Thanks
$50 says Trump calls for some version of gun control or says he is willing to entertain the idea
I’ll take that bet just out of speculation that he didn’t flip in the aftermath of shit like Las Vegas and that Texas church shooting, and the fact that a lot of prestige media outlets are going bananas and cannot resist going hysterical. Plus he’s one of the few people that was allowed the privilege of NYC concealed carry permit.
Let’s do it.
Although the presser seems to be over with, few preconditions to avoid a Palin’s Buttplug type of situation:
(1) The wager shall be in Canadian Dollars or Zimbabwe Dollars, your choice.
(2) We have to establish a cutoff time for the wager.
(1) We could forgo outside currency and instead use the Glib currency of the cat butt. Whoever loses must forgo a thorough cat butting by Swiss
(2) The cutoff should be one month from today
(1) So the loser gets to decline a cat-butt? Since we’re not even talk sweet cash (or pocket change), what about the winner chooses the loser’s avatar for a week? Boy we’re drifting pretty far away from the original scope of the wager at this point!
(2) I’d take a 2 week timeframe.
OT: I’m sick to fucking death of hearing the term “anti-science” used to refer to someone who disagrees with mainstream scientific opinion (or what politicians tell us is mainstream scientific opinion). Science is a mode of thought based on observations and evidence; science is NOT a specific group of human beings.
Even in cases where someone is obviously wrong, that doesn’t mean they’re against the whole idea of collecting evidence and doing studies. For example, the anti-vaccine crowd is not “anti-science”, they’re just reaching different conclusions based on the data. It’s a fact that there’s a risk of a severe and deadly allergic reaction to vaccines, and these people may be giving undue significance to that risk, but that doesn’t mean that they literally don’t believe in science.
There seems to be an idea that disproven theories of the past like phrenology were “not based on science”. While these are incorrect To Be Sure™, it’s not accurate to say that they’re not based on science – they’re just the best explanations that people could devise based on the incomplete information they had. They didn’t have the means of measuring hormones and brainwaves in the 1830s, so they made the best educated guess they could: that functions of the brain are carried out by its various organs which vary in size, and you can determine the characteristics of someone’s brain (and thus their personality) by measuring the size of those organs through the cranial bumpage.
In addition, countless scientific discoveries were rejected and shouted down by the most prominent scientists at the time (scientists are still humans; they’re not immune to conventional wisdom and groupthink). But these things came to be proven right by and by. I’m sure we believe all kinds of things today that people in the future will look back on and think, “wow, what a crock of shit – I can’t believe they actually thought that was true!”
When you insist that everyone must believe what this group of elites are telling you regardless of the logical problems, that’s not science – that’s dogma.
Well said.
Imo, they’re more interested in promoting the scientific clerisy than science as such. “Science” as an institution has gravitas and influence… so it’s the usual kill it, wear its skin routine.
So you are saying, you want to grab fistfuls of Neil Degrasse Tyson’s chest hair and smush your nuts together?
Here here.
Science is a process.
Trivia is a statement of fact.
Skeptics (of anything) are doing better science than people appealing to (any) authority.
DENIER!!!
Outrage unlimited
The head of one of the nation’s largest fish conservation groups says Fiat Chrysler’s Super Bowl ads “glorified” the destruction of aquatic habitat in an apparent attempt to appeal to off-road thrill-seekers.
It’s the second time ads by the automaker have drawn complaints since the Feb. 4 game.
Trout Unlimited President and CEO Chris Wood said Wednesday that one ad gave the impression a Jeep Cherokee was splashing down the middle of a wild streambed.
Fiat Chrysler is defending the ads but says there are no plans to run them again. It says the spot with the Cherokee was shot on a flooded county road and another with a Jeep Wrangler was filmed in a man-made lake with a man-made waterfall on private land.
Wood said many of his group’s 300,000 members and supporters own Jeeps, but the images were upsetting.
“Fish are tough and resilient critters, but they don’t do well with several-thousand-pound vehicles driving over their spawning grounds, tearing up the gravel where they lay eggs,” he said. “Why someone would want to put out the idea that you should buy a Jeep so you could drive it up a creek is incomprehensible to me.”
No matter what you do, somebody will be aggrieved by it.
As a great man of my acquaintance used to say, “If you can’t take a joke, stick it up your ass.”
Anyone watching Trump’s address to see if he’s going to roll over for the gun grabbers?
I’m genuinely worried about it. He may have done some libertarian-ish things so far, but let’s face it: he’s inconsistent. He was a Democrat for most of his life and has spoken favorably of gun control in the past. I seem to recall him advocating the “no fly, no buy” idea.
We’ll see.
I’d hope that self-preservation, at least, will keep him on the straight and narrow.
“If these documents were disclosed, the DNC’s internal operations, as well as its ability to effectively achieve its political goals, would be harmed,” said DNC lawyers.”
“As my old Grandfather Litvak said (just before they sprung the trap), “You can’t cheat an honest man. Never give a sucker an even break, and never smarten up a chump.”
From the Wikipedia article about the shooting by the shit-faced twerp yesterday:
How much you want to bet that we’ll hear proposals for “universal” background checks anyway?
Look, shitlord, what do you have against COMMON SENSE????
“”MeToo” will ignore this (#120db)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS7E0kRxeug
https://twitter.com/mombot/status/964083071585628160
WTF, Japan?
It’s Japan. That’s all the explaination needed. Like “It’s Florida” or “It’s California”.
Wut? No sweater puppies?
Hawt
I hardly even notice until they get to large raccoons.
Japan managed to make bras unattractive. And we wonder why they are facing a population crisis
Hey, baby. Lemme see your hedgehogs.
Winner!
My daughter is home sick today. God the voice actor/actress for Caillou is sooooooooo irritiating.
Chemo kid?
That show’s still running? I still have nightmares about when he joins the workforce.
You know, PBS gets a lot of mileage out of reruns. They are still running old early-2000s episodes of a show called Cyberchase which has voice acting from the fantastic Christopher Lloyd and Gilbert Gottfried. Every time I hear either of those guys blaring out of PBS Kids, my heart warms.
I always remembered the Rare Chocolate Donut episode of Cyberchase. And so do my kids, who learned from it.
Caillou is soooo nyeh, nyeh. Thank God my daughter wasn’t that into it. More Dora and her cocaine escapades.
My daughter is almost 7 and just watched her second Caillou episode today. Completely uninterested in it as a toddler, thank goodness.
I have a high tolerance for garbage children’s programs but I absolutely loathe Caillou’s voice.
Wanton destruction
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is pressing ahead with a massive overhaul of his department, despite growing opposition to his proposal to move hundreds of public employees out of Washington and create a new organizational map that largely ignores state boundaries.
Zinke wants to divide most of the department’s 70,000 employees and their responsibilities into 13 regions based on rivers and ecosystems, instead of the current map based mostly on state lines.
The proposal would relocate many of the Interior Department’s top decision-makers from Washington to still-undisclosed cities in the West. The headquarters of some of its major bureaus also would move to the West.
————
Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Natural Resources, suspects the plan is an attempt to undercut the department by pressuring senior employees to quit rather than relocating, leaving positions unfilled and creating confusion about who regulates what.
“I think it’s a very thinly disguised attempt to gut the Department of Interior and its bureaus,” he said.
I’m starting to like this Zinke guy. He pisses everybody off.
He’s the Jordan Peterson of the Alphabet Agencies!
He’s an obscure conspiracy theorist peddling in half-truths and enabling Nazis?
Zinke wants to divide most of the department’s 70,000 employees and their responsibilities into 13 regions based on rivers and ecosystems, instead of the current map based mostly on state lines.
Honestly, though, doesn’t this actually make more sense? I’m disinclined to think that there should be an EPA. But, if I were in charge of organizing one, I’d think you’d want it organized based on some actual set of ecosystems and habitats, rather than arbitrary political boundaries. Policies could then at least have some sort of natural coherence. From a rational or scientific view, I don’t think opponents of the move have a leg to stand on.
It does make more sense, and I eagerly await all the left-wing environmental historians I know writing editorials lauding Zinke for taking an approach to environmental management that they have promoted in their books for the last forty years or more.
I think this is an awesome idea that should be applied to all departments.
What they need to do to steamroll the opposition is release their plan for how many employees will be relocated where, and the economic impact on their new home cities and states.
At that point, the politicos who see that their constituents will benefit will immediately become supporters of the plan, or risk explaining why they are trying to keep good jobs out of their home city/state.
I especially want to see Raul Grijalva sweating in front of TV cameras justifying why he opposes something that will help his district.
Especially when you then dissolve the agency offices and saddle the city with the unemployed former bureaucrats!
MUHAHAHAHA!
“‘Violence, hatred and evil’: Trump condemns Florida rifle massacre as he says he’ll visit the school – but makes NO mention of gun control and blames ‘mental health’”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5396017/Trump-addressing-nation-high-school-gun-massacre.html
So, yay for not calling for gun control, but I’m a little concerned that the alternative is going to be “mental health checks”. So if you’re an alcoholic in recovery, or you voluntarily admitted yourself to a hospital because of depression, or you were temporarily committed because you climbed a water tower on a dare ( a variant of that happened in my town a few years back ), you lose the right to own firearms in perpetuity.
Is the shooter confirmed certifiable?
BTW, in case you’ve never seen this, Ace linked an actual Cherokee genealogy expert who destroyed Warren’s claim to Indian ancestry using actual facts.
Wow.
Note the representation she made on her application:
That’s the standard language to access privileged affirmative action status as a minority.
She dropped all claims to minority status the moment she got a tenured position at Harvard Law, because she knew that she illegally claimed minority status, regardless of any family lore about a Cherokee in the woodpile.
Note the pressure Harvard Law was under to increase minority faculty, and their publicity about her as a minority faculty member. She lied, and she knew they wouldn’t care because it was in both their interests to pretend she was a minority.
“Stormy Daniels kept a Monica Lewinsky dress from alleged hotel tryst with Trump, she claims – and plans to test it for DNA”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5395975/Stormy-kept-Lewinsky-dress-alleged-Trump-affair.html
That would be sad.
I’d like to think that a business deal is a business deal and such chicanery would be off the table in a mutually-beneficial exchange of value.
“Son, always remember to clean your splooge off. It’s what gentlemen do.”
Donald Trump is no gentleman
What? I thought she denied anything ever happened? Or is this a different Adult Film Star?
The Federalist Party: America’s saviors?
Irresistible tug of self-interest? Sounds like a load of wank to me.
But you’ve got to admit: a party that truly stands up for Constitutional principles would be a stroke of luck.
For a guy who makes Mitch McConnell look handsome that’s not a bad score. She must have lost a bet with the devil or something.
And threading fail.
I can get behind the fact that Congress is jerking us around.
OK Trump, fire this fucker.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/02/15/mnuchin-calls-on-congress-to-look-into-gun-violence-issue-after-school-shooting-breaking-with-rest-of-white-house/?utm_term=.31911dad4dfa
Why the hell is the Sec of the Treasury weighing in on this anyway?
That doesn’t make much sense. But have you seen his wife? It’s the day after Valentine’s so maybe he’s a bit drained.
“From straight As to XXX: Student who put herself through Duke by becoming a porn star is now off to law school with a Lifetime movie to boot
Porn actress Belle Knox, now 22, is currently enrolled in New York Law School”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5394393/Student-paid-tuition-porn-law-school.html
Seems like a well adjusted girl minus the having sex on camera for money and the cutting.
MMmmm, well, I’m (in general) a supporter of women and men entering the sex industry provided they’re well-informed and not coerced, but “Ms. Knox” is a bit of a challenge to that belief.
Aside from the obvious self-proclaimed suicidal/self-harm tendencies, I’m not completely convinced she’s going to come thru’ this particularly well. Some of her life-choices don’t seem to be particularly well-considered and the odds really are against her in the long run.
I’m speaking – of course – about her newfound interest in attending Law School.
law school?
/shudder
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
E-mail from my kid’s school:
(emphasis in original)
Well that’s kinda stupid.
What’s the fucking point? But hey, the District can’t look complacent can they? They’ve massaged some feelz.
“Your baby is fine. If anything happens to your baby, I will phone you immediately.”
I’m speaking – of course – about her newfound interest in attending Law School.
It’s a shame to see her demean herself that way.
Can you imagine if an agent with obvious Republican sympathies pulled a stunt like this? Civil charges would have been the presumption, not a mere demotion.
But who am I kidding, like a high-level agent would have Republican sympathies.
I’m sure CNN will jump right on it. “It was an innocent mistake, like conducting agency business on a private email server to shield it from FOIA access. Nobody would have guessed that this huge conflict of interest and subsequent omission might look unethical in hindsight.”
You’re pretty wordy for a Russian bot.
The article goes to great lengths to talk about how the agency can’t act on information it doesn’t know – that there is a conflict of interest. But based on the – totality of the circumstances (yeah, I went there) it is pretty easy to guess that they knew of his wife’s work and affiliations and at least a couple of guys over there helped him couch his answers in such a way as to protect the anonymity of the “make sure Trump doesn’t win” project. Everyone around him had to know he had an agenda to push on this topic, and it would be hard to imagine none of this ever coming up around the office…. as in “Hey Bruce, do you think there’s anything to this?….. Oh, yeah there is! My wife just so happens to….”
What is the point of asking the question if there’s no followup, and very little punishment when it comes to light that your major conflict of interest potentially imperils a national security probe, let alone criminal investigations?
Not only no followup, but no apparent interest when he failed to denote just who his wife advises. Maybe that sort of thing wouldn’t matter for a rank-and-file agent, but someone with Ohr’s clearance and responsibilities? These people were either asleep at the switch, or, as you suggest, deliberately uninterested.
Plus, the disclosure itself is an obvious attempt to obfuscate, and one that was accepted by the FBI. No conflict of interest disclosure should ever be accepted without the name of the company. Conflicts are about both what you do, and more importantly, who you do it for. Saying “Oh, my wife has a job” isn’t even close to an adequate disclosure and nobody honest or competent would accept it. I run our conflict of interest disclosure system, and the kind of “disclosure” he made wouldn’t make me go away, it would be a giant, throbbing red flag that he was trying to hide something.
They knew. They all knew.
lunch links
Venezuela’s economy is so bad, parents are leaving their children at orphanages
Venezuela’s govt still refuses offers of international aid, because it’s better for kids to starve than for politicians to be embarrassed.
To be fair, once the aid comes in, it never leaves and your country never recovers. Not saying it will recover until it frees up its market anyway, but still, I wouldn’t let aid into my country either.
Could you provide the corrected link please? I’d like to read it.
link
my bad
ty
Sturm und Drang; Höp und Döp
Do we love our guns more than our children?
***
Not everywhere is like this. Last year, my family and I left the US to spend time in Northern Ireland, a place not historically known for its peace. As we enrolled my son for school in downtown Belfast, he asked the school principal to describe the school drills. She looked a bit puzzled. She told him about the fire drill. And he asked her “do you have unsafe person drills”?
As he asked us, all of our faces crumpled. “No, love,” she said. “No, we do not.” And: they don’t. Like other developed countries, like most other countries, period, they don’t now expect that people might come into their schools and shoot their children.
Living in Europe I could sense how other countries are baffled by the fact that we put up with this.
…
Of the 23 richest nations in the world, according to a 2011 study, we now have 87% of the gun violence, and according to the Journal of TRAUMA Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, 87% of children killed by guns are killed here. Think of it: across the world, 87% of the children killed by guns are killed here, in our country. Breathe into that fact. Imagine all those bright bodies, all the bodies you can, the noses, the eyelashes, the hopes.
…
We live in a country where we do not even allow the CDC to study gun violence as the epidemic it is; where we cannot pass the simplest ban on automatic rifles; or where the Air Force fails to keep guns out of the hands of someone it itself noticed was abusive; where men with a history of abusive behavior again and again go on public rampages.
***
I’ll take false dillemas for 500, Alex.
False. An epidemic is the rapid spread of a contagious disease – ya know, the kind caused by pathogens.
Gunviolence is a law enforcement issue.I’m not sure where this particular figure came from, but the study that claimed that “a child dies of gun violence every 5 seconds” was actually criticized for including justifiable self-defense shootings and suicides by people as old as 24.
Boko Haram use machetes on their kids. It’s probably true of lots of other slayings of kids too.
87% of children killed by guns are killed here.
Well, the CDC says that around 1,300 children under the age of 17 die from gunshot wounds every year.
That would mean that the total number of children killed by guns worldwide is around 1,500. Which doesn’t even pass the laugh test. I can’t even be arsed to try to find decent statistics worldwide, but the idea that less than 200 children were killed by guns last year in Syria alone is absurd.
but the idea that less than 200 children were killed by guns last year in Syria alone is absurd
“Explosives aren’t guns.”
/Moran
Not all epidemics are diseases, Tess.
We have simple and complex bans on automatic rifles, Tess.
Maybe the Solons who implement policy within the armed forces should do their jobs, Tess.
Maybe the Solons who lead our state and federal agencies are clueless, incompetent dolts, Tess.
Shorter Tess:
“All these rules I never knew we had – they don’t work!”
“across the world, 87% of the children killed by guns are killed here”
That has got to be complete and total bullshit. I’m pretty sure most children killed by guns are probably living in the middle east, africa, or south america.
Oh and don’t even get me started on how stupid it is that a 16 year old gang member shooting another 16 year old gang member counts the same as little five year old Jimmy getting into his father’s gun cabinet.
Here’s another problem: They’ve limited this “analysis” to the 23 richest nations in the world for some arbitrary reason. Here’s a list of the 15 wealthiest nations in the world:
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-richest-countries-in-the-world.html
Notice that with the exception of the United States, they’re all tiny countries with small populations (Norway is on there, but they have a relatively small population for the huge landmass that the occupy). This anti-gun dipshit has lumped in a large, populous country – the US – in with a bunch of small countries, some of which are virtually microstates.
A textbook case of lying with statistics.
Well caught. If you by GDP per capita, the top 23 still includes a lot of small countries.
I can’t be arsed to calculate the percentage of population that the US has of the top 23, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was at around 70%.
so you’re saying we should be an Arab autocracy?
Imagine all those bright bodies, all the bodies you can, the noses, the eyelashes, the hopes.
Totally unforseeable pedophilia arrest in 5…4…3…
I missed this gem on the first go:
***
Personally, I’ve begun to feel that my Second Amendment rights are being violated. I was promised the right to a well-regulated militia, and instead I see a nation that falls victim, week after week, body after body, to a series of unstable people with elaborately hoarded arsenals. I am absolutely sure our founders would be appalled. I am absolutely sure that our founders would not wish that we run out and buy even more guns because of it.
***
OK, my gun grabber bingo card is officially full. I
Do we love our guns more than our children?
I love my guns more than I love your children.
There- I said it.
Of the 23 richest nations in the world, according to a 2011 study, we now have 87% of the gun violence, and according to the Journal of TRAUMA Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, 87% of children killed by guns are killed here. Think of it: across the world, 87% of the children killed by guns are killed here, in our country. Breathe into that fact. Imagine all those bright bodies, all the bodies you can, the noses, the eyelashes, the hopes.
*throws flag, blows whistle*
Illegal shift. Fifteen yard penalty and loss of down.
Nice intercept!
Of the 23 richest nations in the world, according to a 2011 study, we now have 87% of the gun violence,
I also note the use of the undefined term “gun violence”. What goes into that bucket? Suicides? Accidental shootings? Justified shootings? Shootings by law enforcement? Hell, shootings by the military?
Yes
Why 23 richest? That just seems like it was pulled out of thin air.
Nobody wants to visit the rest of the shitholes to do the tallies.
where we cannot pass the simplest ban on automatic rifles
Wheeeeee!
Is the conflation of semi and automatic out of ignorance or dishonesty?
Probably both.