Happy Thursday! Well the parents made it into town safe and sound. And I’m already down $20 to my dad on the golf course. But that’s fine. I’ve got a chance to get it back tomorrow. But we can worry about tomorrow tomorrow. This is today. But first let’s talk about yesterday. Then we can talk about today. And speaking of yesterday, you baseball winners were: New York (NL), Texas, Pittsburgh, Arizona, Anaheim, Atlanta, BALTIMORE!!!!!!!!!!, Boston, Cleveland, St Louis, New York (AL), Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Oakland. The world champion Houston Astros had the day off.
The last golf major of the year starts today, as the best players in the game tee off in St Louis. My expected contenders: Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler (until he starts to realize he has a chance and then he will fold up like a lawn chair) and Brooks Koepka. They’re all high ball hitters, and with a soft course taking some of the roll out, they’re the guys most likely to be hitting shorter irons into the greens.
Happy Birthday, mustache man
Let’s see who was born on this date, shall we: molecular scientist Amedo Avogadro, Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, actor Robert Shaw who did a scene not even OMWC can deny as brilliant, basketball star Bob Cousy, tennis great Rod Laver, rocker Billy Henderson, boxer Ken Norton, another genius actor Sam Elliott, Trivial Pursuit creator Chris Haney, once-attractive Melanie Griffith, early rapper Kurtis Blow, designer Michael Kors, singer and crack aficionado Whitney Houston, expectation-missing Brett Hull, bassist Kyle Kyle, Neon Deion Sanders, prostitute and fan of Hugh Grant Divine Brown, asshole Chris Cuomo and NFL flop JaMarcus Russell.
Its also the date on which Caesar routed Pompey at Pharsalus, the Sistine Chapel was opened, Cromwell divided England into 11 districts, Robert Fulton tested his first steam paddle boat (it sank), Napoleon annexed Westphalia, five years later on this date he set sail for exile on St Helena, Thoreau published Walden, Rudolhp Diesel was granted a pretty important patent, “Betty Boop” made her debut, Jesse Owens (arguably the greatest athlete of all time) won his fourth gold medal of the 1936 Olympic Games, Fat Man arrived in Nagasaki, Singapore became an independent nation, Nixon resigned from office as Gerald Ford assumes the position, and in a day all Canadians will remember as their darkest, Wayne Gretzky was traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles.
Ok, that was better than yesterday. Now on to…the links!
Get this man a Xanax!
Rudy Guiliani goes off the rails in an interview. I’m pretty sure he’s right in that he thinks the entire reason for interviewing Trump is to catch him in a perjury trap. Not so sure the rest isn’t all bluster, although its becoming pretty widely known that the FBI was using the unsubstantiated info from a foreign agent (who was paid by a political party to collect info from Russian spies) to obtain warrants to spy on a presidential campaign and that was not disclosed to the secret court they used to obtain them.
I guess Hamas forgot that when you shoot rockets indiscriminately into the country that provides all of your water and electricity, there will possibly be a reckoning. What a bunch of dumbasses.
YouTube continues their crusade against wrongthink. But let’s give them credit: at least they aren’t planning on unpersoning* everyone who doesn’t think as they do, which we’ve seen them do recently. (*And yes, I do mean “unperson”. Because literally memory-holing content that they don’t like but in no way can substantiate how it violates their terms of service is a deliberate attempt to quash those views, no matter how idiotic or unhinged they are.)
Please, Trump, pardon this man!
Wikileaks is saying Julian Assange has been asked to testify for the Senate Intelligence Committee. That would be an interesting, and relevant, development. I wonder if Diane Feinstein’s driver has volunteered to pick him up and take him to the Chinese Embassy in London for the interview. You know, since she was employing a spy for over 20 years as her driver.
If you’re single and suffer from a form of yellow fever, then you may want to read this. What a sad state of affairs this is. 300 million members on a singles dating site. That’s more than there were SoCons on Ashley Madison!
Convicted rapist in California who got off a lot easier than he should have has lost his appeal. He was sentenced to 6 months in jail for the conviction, the judge was recalled and a raft of new rape laws in California were enacted in the wake of the original case.
And you’re in a gang, and you’re in a gang, and you’re in a gang. You too. There’s another one! And he’s stealing a football!!!
-Chicago cops
I’m shocked! Shocked to find out that Chicago police pretty much named every single kid they came in contact with as a gang member from certain neighborhoods over a 10 year period. 30,000 of them, to be exact. Including almost 400 that were 12 and under. I’m sure it was a deliberate decision and in no way just their default position in order to fuck with people. That’s not like them. They’re professionals, goddammit! And if you don’t believe them, they’ll crack your skull until you do…or until you’re dead. What do they care?
What kind of asshole uses a stun gun on an 11-year old girl that’s caught shoplifting? A Cincinnati cop does, apparently. The cop charged her with theft and obstruction of justice, but the mayor has intervened and the charges dropped. “An investigation is underway”, which means a sweet vacation followed by additional training (while receiving overtime pay) for the idiot who thought this was a good exercise of judgment.
And the Army has suspended the discharge of immigrant recruits. For now, anyway. Because we should let people in our military (all the stories I read were for people being discharged before they even attended basic training) from foreign nations who can’t pass a background check in order to kowtow to political opposition.
Slim pickings today. But I dedicate this song to all the Glibs out there.
Now go out there and have a great day!
I guess Hamas forgot that when you shoot rockets indiscriminately into the country that provides all of your water and electricity, there will possibly be a reckoning.
Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?
Why do I always get the impression that these Hamas idiots really are alike to that super low IQ kid that all the other mean kids talked into do real dangerous and stupid shit they then got punished for, but never learned the lesson not to get goaded into doing shit that would hurt them?
Getting Palestine Arabs killed is the primary mission of Hamas.
Look everybody knows the Jews are supposed to politely sit back and comply with being exterminated because sonething
THEY CALL IT PROPORTIONAL RETALIATION!
“Convicted rapist in California who got off a lot easier than he should have has lost his appeal. He was sentenced to 6 months in jail for the conviction, the judge was recalled and a raft of new rape laws in California were enacted in the wake of the original case.”
Smashing people in the head with bike locks is A-OK, though
He got probation! Isn’t that enough?
You know similar to what folks get for a non-violent petty theft.
I don’t really recall that case when it first came up. Is the deal basically that he’s saying that they were already going at it and she passed out in mid-thrust, but she’s saying that she passed out at his place and he raped her while she was out cold?
From what I’ve read he didn’t even have his dick out of his pants, so it wasn’t rape rape. Though if some bystanders hadn’t stopped him it probably would have been.
Forget it Slammer – it’s Berkeley-town.
Man does the left love to rewrite history. All i kept hearing for months has been how Trump-Putin/Hitler has energized the “BLUE WAVE, BLUE WAVE”, and yet, after they lose yet another cycle of elections that was supposed to herald the blue wave, we get shit like this. It was not a clear win, but we are still gonna get a blue wave. First off, there was nothing to really call a win on for team blue, but then again, considering the insanity since orangeman won the election they had rigged for Hillary, reality has not really been something that team blue people have been friendly with.
My favorite was that Idiot going on about how the Votes for the Green Party must be Russian hacked election interference. That’s how deranged the left has gotten that they ACTUALLY believe that russians have access to voting tallies. When you look at the real objective evidence, Russians have access to Facebook pages. Also If russia was so interested in getting someone elected, wouldn’t i make sense to cast fake votes for… that person?
Casting votes for that person would leave a trail and incriminate the Russians, so they 5D chess-ed it.
Ahh yes, so they strategically cast votes for someone who won’t win…. Therefore not affecting the outcome of the race at all…
The wave has been upgraded to Tsunami Status in Seattle. Because some Dem in McMorris’ district did decently in a primary.
It was a dull scene in a dull movie. Although I’ll allow that for the target demographic, which is people who had been repeatedly dropped on their heads as babies, it might be enjoyable.
Huh?
Birthday link
Betty Boop?
Gotta agree with the old man. There’s is literally nothing enjoyable about Jaws. The whole movie is a massive bore.
We’re gonna need a bigger comment section.
I saw the movie when it came out in 1975, when I was 16. I enjoyed it then, but haven’t seen it since.
You bastard.
You are a monster, sir!
at least they aren’t planning on unpersoning* everyone who doesn’t think as they do, which we’ve seen them do recently.
Unpersoned
Unsung?
This link went where I hoped it was going. NICE!!
What a sad state of affairs this is. 300 million members on a singles dating site.
Who could have guessed that a one child policy in a patriarchal culture might lead to a huge female to male population imbalance.
That is the shit wars are fought over… When young men can’t get pussy…
China is going to mass-producing some awesome sex robots in the near future.
Visited a college last week with my son. 2/3 of the students are women, I had some very mixed feelings.
I went to a school that was more than 3:1 M:F at the time. Don’t discourage him.
I am sending him there to learn, not just produce grandkids…
He shouldn’t be making grand kids, just practicing on how to make them…
Until he’s caught up in a Title IX Kafka trap.
That’s another worry of mine.
Cpl. Ray Person: “Look at this shit, how come we can’t ever invade a cool country, like chicks in bikinis, you know, how come counties like that don’t ever need Marines, I’ll tell you why, it’s lack of pussy that fucks countries up, lack of pussy is the root fucking cause of all global instability, if more hajis were getting quality pussy, there’d be no reason for us to come over and fuck em up like this, cause a nutbusting haji, is a happy haji.”
–Generation Kill
You might post this as a joke, but it is closer to the truth than most people are comfortable with. Repressed people – especially when they can’t find a goat, camel, or young male relative to take it out on – are gonna want to kill people. Especially people getting it..
Also, there’s the stabilizing effect of having a family. If you’re a young man with a wife and children you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to make ends meet, raise your children properly, etc.; you don’t have time to plan the Great Proletarian Uprising or Holy Jihad or whatever. Besides which, ideally you feel some kind of affection and kinship with your wife and kids, and aren’t in a big hurry to risk leaving them behind when you blow yourself up setting an IED. On the other hand, societies with “excess” men who have a lot of time on their hands and can’t pursue the usual distractions of booze and hoorin’ don’t have a ton to live for and are looking for some meaning, which makes them perfect foot soldiers. I’ve even heard that there’s a theory positing that violent conflict is sort of a natural mechanism by which excess males of social species are removed from the population.
I like the theory. Kinda like locusts.
I’ve even heard that there’s a theory positing that violent conflict is sort of a natural mechanism by which excess males of social species are removed from the population.
I think it is more likely the reverse: social species have excess males (the natural birth rate for humans is more males than females) so that they can excel at violent conflict. Successful violent conflict produces more resources for the victors, increasing that group’s chance of survival, and having excess males that can be thrown into the conflict both increases the chance of victory and decreases the social disruption caused by the inevitable losses.
That quote is some funny Marine Corps ranting but I was agreeing with you. I was over there and saw their lives first hand. The dudes are seriously frustrated, pissed off, envious of the west, have nothing to lose, etc. I’m reminded of the story Gilgamesh, and how the first walled-city kings knew the value of booze and brothels and how useful they are in keeping men sedentary (to stick around and be used for labor).
Japanese men better up their game or their chicks are gonna wind up with those dudes. Get rid of those vending machines, man up and start courting.
Do not stick in clazy.
I think the regional racism will keep those urges in check.
Reposting in case Richard doesn’t see from the last thread:
Hi Richard, I know this is late after you posted, but i think i found a lead for you.
When i look at the emboss what i see is an H (lowercase) followed by Co. all of his is interlaced with the number 8 (What you see as a G or C).
With the information about your Great-Grand Father being in the Illinois National Guard i looked up what units were active during the 1880’s. I found one: The 8th Infantry, and it did have an H company. You can find the roster here: https://www.ilsos.gov/isaveterans/spanAmericanSearch.do.
Something to note is that the 8th was an All African American Regiment, mostly drawn from the Chicago area, though H company appears to be mostly from the Springfield area.
Hope this guides you along, but let me know if it’s way off.
Thanks! You inspired me to do some digging. I discovered that in 1885 my great-grandfather was in the 1st Infantry. 2nd Lieutenant F Company and then 1st Lieutenant B Company. The handgun was manufactured in 1889 so perhaps the flattened ‘8’ in the background is a stylized B?
Not sure if you guys mulled this idiocy yet, but I was flabbergasted that anyone in this day and age could make an unsubstantiated ridiculous claim like this and not have their ass handed to them unless the people that should be calling him out on this bullshit were nothing more than volunteer propagandists for the same criminal organization the idiot spouting the bullshit was a member off.
Not condoning Trump’s erratic misstatements and grandiose falsehoods, but it’s funny that the reaction of the press when someone else does the same thing is “But state officials said they haven’t received any information about Nelson’s claims.”
If Trump makes a false statement, the headline is about the statement being false.
If a Dem make a false statement, the statement is the headline.
Ummm…ok
Cuba’s communist ice cream cathedral
So quaint. So romantic.
Two Scoops, bitches
KULAK!
Or maybe the commie shitweasels that run the country could be hanged, replaced by decent human beings and electricity and air conditioning installed over the whole island.
WTF is that supposed to be? An endorsement for Cuban communism? It is perverse. Who the fuck thinks like that?
Leftists do. To them a system is only good if everyone (and yeah, lets ignore this never applies to the leadership cast) is given the same treatment. If everyone gets a shit treatment and lives in third world conditions, they consider that shithole to be a better place than a country where there is massive prosperity and some have more than others. It’s all predicated on envy. Start there and everything the left peddles, no matter how fucking stupid/insane/evil makes total sense.
Fairness for the win.
Huge pet peeve of mine here. Fairness =/= equality in outcome. In fact fairness absolutely mandates against equality in outcome. Lazy, stupid, bad actors should have worse outcomes than diligent, intelligent good actors.
(I know you aren’t disagreeing)
You want to see a marxist douche’s head explode? Argue with them that fairness never should mean equality of outcome. One thing you will get is that your average leftist resents that anyone that works harder than them gets more. Point out that they should not be getting anything more than the laziest fuck out there, and then suddenly they tell you that you are an ass and evil for not seeing their point.
Fairness is getting what you’ve earned; equality has nothing to do with it.
It’s very hard to make that look attractive to people who are rational actors taking something offered.
Especially when you are in a situation where getting shamed because you are being greedy/envious is never going to happen in the first place.
“Inured to waits of one hour (longer on hot weekends)”
so hip, they hang out for an hour to get some ice cream.
No, thanks. I’ll go to Kwik Trip, Culvers, Wal Mart, or three other places in town and have my ice cream in 2 minutes.
WRECKER!
It’s good when there are lines for ice cream.
-Bernie
And only 2 flavors to choose from too, cause who needs 31 flavors of ice cream?
Nothing says prosperous Utopia like someone takimg home a doggy bag of melted ice cream. The wonderous free-shit of socialism.
To me that read as, “An elderly woman, desperate for food, binges on ice cream as the only alternative to starvation, taking the sweet, melted milk home in a bowl rather than waste a drop.”
Translated from the BBC’s fawning socialist tourism: The ice cream place serves what they decide to serve, and it’s Hobson’s Choice for the customers. However, people are so desperate for something to relieve the tedium and desperation of their lives that they’re willing to stand in line for hours to bring as much melted ice-cream of whatever flavor happens to be offered at the time home for their families, in serving sizes that make me think there might not be too much other dairy available.
It’s a bread line in a Communist hellhole that serves ice cream instead, so the effete leftist idiots at the BBC think it’s adorably quirky.
Meanwhile, in the poorest state in the union you can go to an ice cream place and pick from dozens of flavors that get stocked because people want them. Or you can go to the grocery store and buy gallons of whatever ice cream you want. Without waiting in a line for hours.
Per Bernie Sanders having to choose between two flavors is torturous.
And if you’ll notice, the quality is way down as well. Lack of “creamyness” is due to a reduction in fat. In the US, we call that “ice milk,” and I haven’t had that since I was a kid and we were on assistance. I wouldn’t even know where to find it if I was looking any more, as Aldi’s and Walmart both have ice cream and frozen yogurt for dirt cheap prices.
Yeah, I can run into Giant and get actual ice cream with plenty of fat at like $3/gallon. I’d have to make ice milk at home, but I don’t believe in doing a thing halfway, so that’s not going to happen.
So five scoops means a salad?
It really sounds like there was nothing to eat anywhere else so they stood in line to eat a week’s worth of calories from ice cream.
Putting Rudy Giuliani out there as your spokesman is a clear demonstration of poor judgement.
The goals of yappy attorneys elude me: few cases are actually tried on Fox and Friends or Joe and Mika.
Agreed. He must either:
A. Really have damning information and is goading Mueller into a misstep
Or B. Worked with Russians directly in order to get info on his political opponent, which is somehow a crime if you do it for the wrong team
Working with an ex- British spy to get dirt on your political opponent is just a sign of good leadership, though.
Smoke and mirrors. More fuel to keep the TDS truckin.
Do you know who else assumed the position?
Euclid?
The users of Fisto?
Kevin Bacon in Animal House?
Mrs Ford?
STEVE SMITH HAS POSITION FOR YOU.
Marcellus Wallace?
Taxpayers?
^ This is the correct answer
Melanie Griffith looked mighty fine in the movie Night Moves, which is a good Gene Hackman as a detective flick.
http://actionagogo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/nightmovesgriffith.jpg
I recently saw some add about how I could find out what had destroyed her career on some news site. Knowing better – these links are always phishing scams of one type or another – I avoided it, but I did realize she had disappeared from the movie scene a while back.
Bonfire of the vanities was peak Melanie
I have to admit that Melanie made this-then 13yo take notice the first time I saw the move Body Double
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRMjP0J6isI – obviously NSFW
One of my faves..
Ah yes, I think I wore that VHS tape out.
I loved that book.
I liked a movie she was in. Born Yesterday. Not a great movie, but had a scene that really hit me (in a good way).
The original Born Yesterday is really good.
I got that from the library and never got around to watching it, but it’s on my list.
I delivered a room full of funiture to the Griffith/Banderas household back in 1999. Beautiful Spanish style in Hancock Park, built circa 1928. Very old-school Hollywood Glamour. The centerpiece was a wonderful ballroom, with an amazing parquet floor. The wood work on the columns which supported a balcony around the room was very intricate, just magnificent. I would guess the ceiling may have been imported from some grand Castilian castle or estate. The plaster work and murals and gilding were the finest I’ve seen, next to maybe Hearst Castle or the Getty residence. Overall just a wonderful home.
We delivered the furniture at, oh say 10:30 AM. Melanie was already pretty drunk. Not a goid look.
We delivered the furniture at, oh say 10:30 AM. Melanie was already pretty drunk.
Go on…….
Did you consider making your “move’?
No. But one time we delivered a very large Persian rug to the Gretzky household. We get to the front door, and Janet is wearing this sheer negligee…
No, I’m just fucking with you. The maid let us in and no one else was at home.
But one time, we delivered a custom upholstered sofa to Cyndy Garvey…
Janet is wearing this sheer negligee…
I stopped reading right there.
Needed to take a break so you wouldn’t need to type with one hand??
You should have gone to fix the cable.
Sloop gets it..
Was Melanie drunk because she was practicing for her role in that movie “When a man loves a woman” she did with Andy Gracia?
Meh. I could maybe see it. I really don’t understand how her daughter gets any roles. Dakota Johnson is not my cup of tea.
I finally got around to watching 50 Shades of Grey. I was surprised, because I had no idea it was a comedy.
I had an ex-girlfriend label it as mommy porn.
Ah-ha!
‘Hitler Did Nothing Wrong’—Spalding County Jailers Fired for Neo-Nazi Beliefs
Well, they are people. Typically pretty terrible people, but then again that doesn’t disqualify them from the “normal, everyday” category
+1 Hannah Arendt
Interesting situation, as it seems the county has punished them for expressing political beliefs, which I would assume are protected under the 1st amendment. Would employees also get fired for expressing communist beliefs?
This is one of those “Its complicated, but be prepared to buy your attorney a new boat either way,” areas, I believe (i’m not an attorney.)
This twerp was.
Not sure that counts as he volunteered to operate under a different set of rules.
Kicking him out likely saved his life. I think being the “Commie Lt.” makes you a hell of a fragging target.
I expect Uncle Sam to demand he repay them for his stint at a tax payer funded military academy. As a tax payer I seriously object to the fact that we spent over a quarter of a million dollars (and probably something close to half a million) to give this douchebag an education.
to fail to give this douchebag an education.
While we’re at it, Occasional-Cortex should petition Boston U for her tuition back.
She probably should demand her money back considering how much idiotic, useless, and downright dangerous shit they filled her head with, but since I didn’t pay for most of it (I am assuming she didn’t get some special privilege as an illegal getting not just in state tuition but also grants and scholarships that tax payers pay for), I could care less. That is as long as she doesn’t get power to act out on the shit they filled her head with.
They were fired after the leftist group published a blog post which detailed online comments allegedly made by the pair expressing far-right views.
Um, racism is the province of leftists.
So is fascism and Nazism, since that was another collectivist/socialist movement. I get fucking furious when the marxist douches get to pretend fascism/Nazism are right wing anything. Right of Marx/Lenin/Stalin/Mao/Kim/Castro, but still collectivist and totalitarian, does not make things far right. Far right would be a capitalist system where the crony beliefs of the collectivist nanny staters would be squashed while they are ridiculed.
So it looks like Mueller’s big Manafort win will be because the asshole didn’t render onto Caesar what was his. My big take away is that I never see this shit done to democrats. In fact, I clearly remember at least three – if not more, and that we heard of, considering the media’s main job has always been to kill stories that are bad for democrats – early days Obama admin appointees that all had to scramble to pay back taxes when they were scrutinized for their jobs and were found to be criminals. Note that not a single one of these people was disqualified, and they simply paid up (avoiding penalties and what not even from what I recall) and presto, they were not just avoiding the criminal charges, but reborn and baptized as wholesome and good to go in the Obama admin according to the people that told me this shit was no big deal back when. Come to think of it, with so many criminals in that administration, it is a wonder that – even with the dnc operatives with bylines going all out to provide team blue cover from its crime syndicate activities – the whole lot of these bastards isn’t wearing orange jump suits and making my license plates. Fuck, we are doomed.
Yeah, and one of them was Obama’s pick to head the IRS, IIRC.
Let’s not forget another person that “forgot” to pay taxes on her trading until called on it years later- Herself.
WHATABOUTISM!!11!!!!!! ARGLEBARGLEBARGLE!!
I love cries about Whataboutisim. Beacause in reality those of us who say “What about….” are really saying, “I might agree with you now, but i will not reach out to help you, because you are not principled, and i don’t want my stance and views to be stained by the mark of hypocrisy and faithlessness”.
Who had the freezer full of cash wrapped in tinfoil? That is the last Dem I can think of…
I seem to recall that Dems are more into stamp-trading, check-kiting, campaign fund abuse….public sector stunts. Maybe Republicans are more entrepreneurial and spend more time on the perimeter of business, so when they get their beaks wet it’s “income?”
William J Jefferson. In an odd twist, the judge who overturned several of his convictions (after the SC ruled on McDonnell) was none other than TS Ellis III, who is currently presiding over the Manafort case.
I clearly remember at least three – if not more, and that we heard of, considering the media’s main job has always been to kill stories that are bad for democrats – early days Obama admin appointees that all had to scramble to pay back taxes when they were scrutinized for their jobs and were found to be criminals.
To be fair, it was only the secretary of the treasury. You can’t expect a guy like that who has spent his entire career in banking and sat on the NY Federal Reserve Board to be able to compute complex tax formulae.
Al Fraken 2.0? Oh hey, we just happened to find some uncounted votes and hey, what do you know, they’re mostly for the Dem.
It’s just one of those wild coincidences that just happens to favor the Democrats every time.
10% of the time, it’s 100% coincidental.
“The early results were considered a major win by Republicans who insist November’s “blue wave” will turn out to be a ripple.”
You mean the results that were not just “found” lying around. I mean how does that happen? No matter who i was, i’d be challenging those ballots.
This is typical Democrat procedure. The Republican only wins if the margin of victory is outside the margin of fraud.
Interviewer – “Why do you think the democrats want to have policies that make voter fraud easier?”
Dan Bongino (I think) – “Because they want to commit voter fraud”
After seeing this happen over and over I just cant understand how the voters could accept this as legitimate.
What are they gonna do about it?
Don’t worry, soon they won’t have to find ballots. I’m curious how many more times the random cache of votes can be pulled off without completely destroying the public’s faith in fair elections.
I called this yesterday. This is an SOP for the left when setting up to make sure they can steal close elections.
I hate to do this to you… Everyone I see your username I think of the Tosh.0 web redemption he did for the more-flaming-than-the-sun group of “dancers” called the Prancing Elite. What’s the actual origin, so I can have a different mental association?
Sorry for the late reply, hopefully you see this. I made up this name back in ’04 when I first started getting into the Halo series. Named after the enemy Elites.
It would be a cool thread if everyone would explain their screen names. I am, of course, the son of Ferdinand Stupidity.
Mine is obvious. I work for the state of New York (a civil ‘servant’) but am not particularly inclined to be ‘civil’ in dealing with other human beings.
I can’t decide which is more boring, golf or soccer. I guess golf, since at least soccer is over isn’t an all day waste of time.
But you can’t (as easily) drink beer while playing soccer. And you don’t get to drive miniature cars when you play soccer either, so golf is obviously the winner in this boring sport contest.
Golf is fun to PLAY, so either you cant strike a Ball, or you’re a Euro, or you never tried golf….
Golf is the most miserable ,voluntary way to spend 4 hours I’ve ever experienced.
Hit a ball 200 yards, go look for it, hit it far again, look for ball, then spend 3 shots hitting it 10 feet into a hole. And god forbid you make a sound or omg walk in some hacks path like he has any clue how to putt anyway
Hit a ball 200 yards, go look for it, hit it far again, look for ball,
I’m confused. You didn’t hit it far the first time.
Booyah!
But seriously, it sounds like you need different playing partners and some time on the practice green.
We played in just under 3 hours yesterday. And there’s no pretense about making noise. Just don’t be a dick. As for walking in someone’s line, nobody really cares about that in the age of softspikes or spikeless shoes being the norm.
Find better playing partners. Yours are shitty.
At least there’s the cart girl.
I tried it because my ex-father-in-law was an avid player, was good at it, and always felt it was about as stupid and boring as watching paint fucking dry on a wall. You won’t get me to play or watch golf unless you tell me that if I don’t do so I will be forced to take showers in a pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
I used to watch golf on TV when I was a kid. My parents probably should have done something about it.
It was child abuse that they made you watch that shit.
Alex, I think it’s worse then that. I think Pat means he watched golf on TV by choice. Isn’t that one of the indicators of a sociopath?
I think Pat means he watched golf on TV by choice.
This. I eventually took it up in my late teens. I still have a set of clubs out in my shed, but I haven’t played in years.
Next you are gonna tell my your hobby is to put 6 inch nails through your scrote…
For a lot of years my hobby was getting pelted with 68 caliber gelatin balls filled with polyethylene glycol and watercolors, so you’re not too far off. Maybe I’m a little, how you say, “special”.
+1 Real Genius
Heh, I got pelted by real bullets and grenade fragments (have some still stuck in me, (and no, I have no arc reactor powering a magnet to keep them from going to my heart and killing me) so that stuff never appealed to me, but my kid loved that paintball and airsoft stuff. As a kid we did chew paper and shoot it at each other with our air guns and have a not so fun story about breaking both legs and learning how to walk at 12, but then again I did a lot of real crazy shit to account for the close to 100 broken bones I have.
That is 100 more broken bones than I have had. (not that I didn’t do stupid shit, I just managed to not get hurt)
Heh, most people that know me wonder how I am still alive, and why I can still be as active as I am considering some of the grind I have gone through. I admit that while this was all a case of mind over matter when I was younger – If you don’t mind it it won’t matter – now that I am closer to 60 than I am to 50, I am feeling some of these items.
I had to recently quit running because the pain caused by long runs according to my doctor is because I need to redo the knee reconstruction work I needed because of the damage to my knee had but worn out (not gonna do that again if I can) and now only hike, but my hips are hurting because I do 10 miles a day and 40 on weekends. Not to mention that with the broken ribs I had puncturing my left lung I now only have one and a third working lung. And now my dock says that since my sleeping disorder of the last 40 plus years (I do 3 hrs a night when I am lucky) has put enormous stress on my organs I need to worry that my liver came back with serious signs of degeneration (don’t tell him it is likely the amount of alcohol I drink that is causing that) in my most recent checkup.
I made sure my kid didn’t do the stuff I did, cause in hindsight it was not worth it.
I’m not an athlete, so I don’t know what people with hand-eye coordination think about this.
But golf feeds the hunting urge: you walk four miles with weapons weighing a target and terrain; each stroke is a spear or net thrown….maybe you kill something every four or five attempts. That sort of irregular reinforcement is particularly addictive.
The pure ballistic side of golf is what feeds me as an engineer: what’s the smart route to the goal, the smart place to land this shot? How will my lie affect the shot, so what changes should I make in club selection, stance, and swing to give me the best odds?
The wind messes with you. Especially when you hit into the wind, your swing flaws are amplified, so you’ve got to figure not only normal windage but also extra performance variation. I prefer to tee off early, so I tend to start with fairways and greens slow that are speeding up with each hole.
I also have a few quirks that add to the mental masturbation. I much prefer to putt uphill, and I hate it when my shadow falls across the line of my putt, so I’m picking a certain side of the green and shooting/chipping to that spot.
My handicap is down eight strokes over the past two years; measuring and improving things has been my reason for being for three decades, and I’ll probably always see life through that lenses.
Don also hears tribal drum sounds in his head while hunting (shopping) for socks at Walmart. Stalking the aisles, seeking his prey, moving in for the kill, and using his debit card to demonstrate his ability as a provider to the female in the blue vest at the checkout.
So what are you interested in then?
I like pool and poker. When I was young I also liked playing football and hockey. Manly sports.
Pocket pool?
Okay, well, as someone who might like to play golf but can’t, this is how I see men who play golf regularly:
As rich, powerful men who are doing business deals without being stuck at a conference room table with the uppity, incompetent middle managers who think they Are Somebody.
Golf looks a whole lot like success to me, and I find that manly.
I flunked golf in college, and have hated it since.
It’s one of my pet envies. I’m trying to work through all that envy business.
I went from being a libertarian Conservative to more Authoritarian.
A well-worn path, to be sure.
The imaginary libertarian Republican divide over Trump
You mean the media takes a few unpopular, but principled stances of Paul and makes it look like he is bending the libertarian knee to Trumps Authority? You don’t say.
The media’s job is to protect the democratic party and team blue’s evil marxist agenda.
He then claimed the ex-FBI director ‘had no case’ and only wants the president to answer questions under oath so he could be tricked into a ‘perjury trap’.
Perjury traps, entrapment, sounds like SOP for the FBI.
The astonishing thing about these “lying to the FBI” convictions, is that the FBI does not record the interviews, they simply have an agent writing notes, and if in his notes he writes that you said “X” when someone else had contradictory information, you get charged. I just can’t fathom how stupid juries must be to convict someone on such bullshit.
Sure – Peter Strzok is literally the only witness in the Michael Flynn case. Flynn allegedly lied to Strzok in an unrecorded conversation without any legal representation present,
It’s like nobody understands the concept of reasonable doubt.
“I just can’t fathom how stupid juries must be to convict someone on such bullshit.”
When you are led to believe you are getting evidence from an agency that isn’t just competent but above reproach, people tend to accept even clear bullshit as evidence. If anything, this whole debacle has finally (I hope) caused enough people to come to the realization of, is that the FBI, like practically every single other government bureaucracy staffed by career credentialed leftist nanny staters, should not be trusted at all. I hope the left realizes that it is not just the media that has lost their credibility, but the government bureaucracy Obama spent weaponizing during his administration, because of their shenanigans, and that this is justly so. I sure hope that at a minimum this damage will serve the public well, as confidence in these unaccountable and big government peddling and protecting entities, is drastically and permanently erroded.
Oh hey, we just happened to find some uncounted votes and hey, what do you know, they’re mostly for the Dem.
Those crazy ballot-box-stuffing Rooskeez are at it again.
It is starting to look like the D’s are just abandoning the electoral process entirely. Why should they trust deplorables to be persuaded by their arguments and vote correctly?
How long before they are openly suggesting we abandon ‘our democracy’?
Marxists do believe that what counts is the vote counting anyway, and yes, many team blue people have argued recently that the people can’t be trusted to vote because that would threaten our “democracy”.
And they’ll keep referring to it as democracy as they implement the dictatorship necessary to implement socialism.
Serious question – has there ever been an election where these “found” ballots result in the Democrat losing ground? I can’t think of one.
Nope, the “found” ballots are always overwhelmingly Democrat votes. Odd coincidence, I’m sure.
I am sure that if someone does a count and finds the vote count after these suddenly discovered extra team blue favoring ballots are tallied that the new number exceeds turnout or even eligible voter counts, that they will scream bloody murder and turn the argument to people that are basically crying foul and pointing out voter fraud are doing voter suppression.
Not that I buy it, but I can play devil’s advocate here.
The ballots are usually from poor areas with even more inept government than usual. As such the inept government here managed to mess up the vote process.
In most cases such poor areas are generally reliably Team D.
Sounds convenient…
And we should point out that they would freak out if we told them since these people cant do the job, they should bring in independent supervisors to prevent the loss in the first place…
Yes, this passes the sniff test because there are no poor counties out in the sticks that vote blood red.
But are those the areas that usually “find” the ballots?
No, and that’s the point. If it was an honest function of the inputs, it would happen in those poor blood-red counties as well.
The 12th district is short on “poor areas”
That just goes to show how sneaky those Republicans are for hiding those votes in the first place. Good thing those plucky Democrats are on the case to find those hidden ballots.
Richard Dawkins is a racist Islamophobe! TW: Al Jazeera.
“I don’t think Richard Dawkins can help himself. He is afflicted with two incurable diseases: He is a racist Islamophobe and he is an exhibitionist. He cannot keep his racism to himself – he must exhibit, stage, and flaunt it.”
I don’t think he limits his hate to Islam….
Dawkins is more often than not a colossal asshole, but that’s funny and I don’t care who you are.
Since we apparently have a few chubby chasers (or John has infected the Tulpa borg) I thought this GIF was appropriate.
Would.
*raises hand*
That black guy in the background tho…
She’s a sturdy gal. Gets a wide stance before she tosses that dude.
Stay down man, stay down.
Holy Cow! Times Two!
Son! Did she just drop a yama arashi on that dude!? I mean, looks aside, I think that gets her to at least a six in my book. Any woman who’s huckin’ bros around a restaurant like she’s teaching a class is at least getting a drink bought for her.
That’s awesome.
RE: Youtube Fact checks
Are they adding Fact checks to videos that greatly overstate the case for Global Warming/ Climate Change? Because in my time of looking through climate change rhetoric, its the “Deniers” who are much more calm and accepting of critical views of their positions. Anyone even deviates from the idea that it is CO2 from our cars that are causing Climate Change, well they are a denier.
I’m just curious to see if that were the case. Cause it would seem like they are selectively trying to push their opinion as “Fact” without having to go through the rigor of actually showing how it stands up to criticism.
Sounds like we have an alt right white supremacist here
Is it possible YouTube might be the first to feel the sting? Is it possible BitChute might do what Gab has thus far failed to do? /musing
I hope so, I’d much prefer to use BitChute much more but content there is currently a bit on the thin side. Hopefully it’ll get fleshed out more as YT kicks off creators and pisses off the user base.
Youtube is becoming intolerable. I don’t even watch political stuff, just stream music at my current job. Every song is interrupted by commercials. Or Youtube just decides to ditch the album I’m listening to and start some shitty playlist I’m not interested in. I’m busy all day helping customers, so I can’t babysit Youtube all day, and it will start to run some 45 minute infomercial on investing, or some TEDTalk bullshit.
God I love my premium Spotify.
Mozilla has one or two Youtube adblocker add-ons. It won’t stop the shitty playlists, but it does stop the commercial spots.
Work computers. I ain’t gonna install anything, even a browser add-on. I’m only there for another week, anyway.
Then it’s just me, my earbuds, my Spotify. Sitting in some corporate conference room, poring over a company’s financial statements, and setting up inventory test counts.
Their autoplay algorithms are terrible. I listen to political stuff there, some it pretty fringe, and the autoplay will direct me to CNN and Fox if I’m not careful.
The first damn thing I do when a youtube page finishes loading (it always takes forever because they optimized to depricated code used in chrome rather than real browsers) is to turn off the autoplay. I don’t care what it is, I don’t want it to move on to a different video I didn’t tell it to play.
That, too.
The condom of the future: Extra-slippery ‘hydrogel’ contraceptive that feels like you’re wearing nothing at all wins $1million in government backing
Should have called his company Youdaman!
“The Wollongong-based company will use the money from the grant to further refine the prototype, which will include testing the product on humans.”
Legitimately using government grant money on Hookers and blow?
Heh hehe heh.. You said Wollongong..
/Butthead
Good thing they got that grant. There’s no way that a better condom could possibly have attracted private capital or anything.
in no way can substantiate how it violates their terms of service
I still say this is violation of contract on the part of the provider. That said, I haven’t actually read it. I assume it is written to be so broad as to be completely subjective in favor of the service provider eliminating content at will with no consistent parameters.
Fun fact: Singapore is one of the few (I’ve read only, but I don’t know about that) countries that wanted to STAY with their old country but were forced to take independence. Lee Kuan Yew actively wanted to stay with Malaysia but they just wouldn’t let them. And look how different those two countries have proceeded.
Also fun fact: The biggest British surrender during WWII was Singapore. The Japanese invaded with….bicycles! The Brits thought that the swampy north could’t be invaded with heavy artillery. They were right, but in the worst way.
I’m very conflicted about Singapore. So many crazy rules and one-party state and brutal punishments….but so insanely free economically. Very mixed opinion of that place. Was a very interesting time in my life. I think I kinda miss it. Not sure.
Lee Kuan Yew died when I was there—his funeral procession went right by my building.
*wistful, unblinking stare into the distance*
It sounds like a dystopian nightmare but there are certainly far worse places to be in this world.
Singapore is actually very wicked cool.
Granted, I lived there as an ex-pat and couldn’t vote and didn’t have to deal with most of the bullshit. A popular tactic was that districts that didn’t vote for the party line would have their garbage service and their schools defunded. Shit like that.
Great food, great shows, museums and entertainment. Clean. Monkeys hanging out at bus stops right next to my place. Great community that we had there at that time, from 2014-2016.
Egh. I’m drinking and I still get really painful/bittersweet memories from my time there and how I/we likely squandered the best thing that I’ll ever have. I’ll get over it.
Fun fact: Singapore is one of the few (I’ve read only, but I don’t know about that) countries that wanted to STAY with their old country but were forced to take independence.
Some of the princely states of India were like this – they (well, their kings at least) wanted to stay with the British Empire (where they enjoyed semi-autonomy) but were forced to join either India or Pakistan, or were conquered if they went independent.
Singapore was a lot like Corregidor during WWII. No guns pointing towards the mainland – always expecting traditional attack from open sea.
Just to be contrarian, I might argue Jim Thorpe over Jesse Owens.
I put Bo Jackson and Wilt Chamberlain up there with them as the best ever from this country.
Wilt is on that list because of all the poon-tang he bagged, right?
Wilt was a physical freak beyond anyone else ever to play basketball.
My favorite story is when he a Jim Brown had an argument over who was faster – they settled it with 2 footraces, Wilt won both.
I believed in Bo and saw him in both Knoxville and Chicago.
Along that line, Deion Sanders?
Nah, Deion was a hall of fame cornerback and a good but not great baseball player but he was nowhere near the all around athlete that Bo Jackson was
Dave Winfield was a ridiculous athlete
I saw him talk then met with him last year. Didn’t realize he was drafted in 3 sports.
I think we can all agree that the greatest female athlete of all time was Caitlyn Jenner. I mean, she won the men’s Olympic decathlon. That’s something incredible that I doubt we will ever see again.
There’s certainly a debate. Thorpe was an amazing athlete.
I would put Jim Brown (as mentioned above) in the argument too.
He is supposedly the greatest collegiate Lacrosse player of all time.
Endorsed!
These “greatest athlete” debates usually break down to elite single-sport specialist vs. versatile multi-sport athlete. But then you have guys like Thorpe, Brown and Bo who are elite at one sport but still versatile enough to hold their own in others. You could even look at somebody like Renaldo Nehemiah, who held the 110 hurdles world record for 10 years and played long enough in the NFL to pick up a Super Bowl ring.
OK, more track record talk. That long Jump world record Jesse Owens set at the 1935 Big Ten Championships lasted over 25 years, even longer than the Beamon record did. Also, earlier this week was the anniversary of the oldest world record on the track; today is the 6 year anniversary of one of the newest. It’s possibly the best race I ever saw live. At the London Olympics, David Rudisha won wire-to-wire, running the 800 meters in 1:40.91, pacing 6 of the other 7 runners to their personal bests. It also marked the fastest ever time for every single place in any 800 meter race, 1st through 8th.
Rod Woodson.
Qualified for the Olympics in 84 but turned it down to focus on football. Ran 110 hurdles in 13.29 in 1987. That time would be a silver in ’88. Ran 100 meter in 10.26. That would have been 7th at the ’88 Olympics.
Ironically, not clearly the best in franchise safety for either the Steelers *or* the Ravens. Rod, Troy, and Ed Reed are the three best safeties of my lifetime, and I wouldn’t argue if you said they are the three best to ever play the game.
Online dating: Aim high, keep it brief, and be patient
That is just the modern version of the “It only has to work 1 time in 100” concept.
Ocasio-Cortez Gives Strangest Reason Ever Why Socialized Medicine Is Cheaper
“Medicare for all, college tuition, maybe even housing, that the green new deal that you have, it is all very expensive,” host Chris Cuomo said to Ocasio-Cortez. “Even in Bernie’s home state they got sticker shock. They couldn’t get it done in his state because of how expensive it is … that was too much for people. How do you pay? How do you sell it?”
“Well, first of all, the thing that we need to realize is people talk about the sticker shock of Medicare for All,” Ocasio-Cortez responded.
“They do not talk about the sticker shock of the cost of our existing system,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “You know, in a Koch brothers-funded study, if any study is going to try to be a little bit slanted it would be one funded by the Koch Brothers. It shows that Medicare for All is actually much more— is actually much cheaper than the current system that we pay right now,” Ocasio-Cortez continued.
“And we’re also not talking about why aren’t we incorporating the cost of all the funeral expenses of those who die because they can’t afford access to health care,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “That is part of the cost of our system.”
I remain unconvinced that she is not a Trump plant.
Doesn’t she have a degree in economics or something similar?
I think Ted Kennedy literally fucked her brains out.
Well the , she got off lighter than some of the Lion of the Senate’s girls.
Speaks rather poorly of Boston University.
^^^THIS^^^
Actually the cost of medical care is exactly the same under any system. We just have to decide how much we are going to spend and on what and how.
Jeebus, this girl is an idiot.
She’ll totally streamline the costs of a funeral.
https://www.ntd.tv/assets/uploads/2017/01/50_article-1333394-0028038800000258-593_468x618.jpg
Gods damn I’m sick of hearing about the Koch study supporting Medicare for all. The study they funded said it would be cheaper IFF all doctors accepted the current Medicare pay rates (which IIRC is about 40% of insurance rates). So, yes, healthcare would be cheaper if everyone kept working while taking a 60% pay cut (yes, it would really be more then that due to static operating expenses and such).
Damn, teach me to try to get fancy linking and bolding something. Link went:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_and_only_if
” So, yes, healthcare would be cheaper if everyone kept working while taking a 60% pay cut (yes, it would really be more then that due to static operating expenses and such).”
Yeah and if the darkies would get back in the fields and work under the lash for 20 pounds of salt pork and a 50 pound sack of rice a month, then we could really see the price of cotton fall.
That’s the left’s premise, isn’t it? Your labor isn’t worth anything outside of whatever the state dictates it is, because we all are supposed to be equal. So why should a anyone in the medical profession make so much more than a fucking ex-barista with a cum laude degree from BU in economics & international something or other? For that matter, why isn’t everyone paid the same shit? That guy shining turds in the factory for 40 hrs a week is doing just as much work as the plumber, carpenter, bricklayer, or doctor! Well everyone but the elite. We all know the elite deserve more because they are the elite…
Oh my god. I had this conversation with a friend, pointing on that the Koch funded author was accepting at face value all of the bill’s sponsors’ assumptions, rather than predicting what the author thought would actually occur, and he accused me of “shooting the messenger” and “cherry picking” from the study.
I think he must have been high.
Yeah, force doctors and hospitals to accept only the Medicare pay rates, watch all the doctors quit and hospitals close up shop. Win! Free Health care!
Two of my wife’s doctors quit after the ACA came into force. I’m sure more would follow suit if they implemented this stupidity.
Hospitals simply can not and will not operate at current Medicare pay rates for all. It’s not possible.
Rationing care makes all things possible. Except providing care.
The people demanding free healthcare are not interested in providing any sort of care, let alone quality care, but in making sure everyone gets the same outcome. Hence shitty healthcare is the norm when you get that enacted.
IFF all doctors accepted the current Medicare pay rates…taking a 60% pay cut…it would really be more then that due to static operating expenses
You think socialist ideologues are capable of nuance?
That’s why the easy take down is saying all health care personal take a 60% pay cut. The two largest employers in the Cleveland area are both hospitals. Nearly everyone knows at least a couple of people who work there. So when they start bringing up the Medicare for All, just point out that all of those health care workers need to take a 60% pay cut. All of a sudden, those nurses, phlebotomists, help desk, and support staff aren’t as interested in pushing for it.
In addition, fuck that cockweasel Sanders for trying to claim this report proves any point of his ideology.
The original study even heavily emphasized that particular caveat, but damned if the left didn’t decide to just run with it anyway. They’re well aware that the overwhelming majority of their sycophants won’t bother researching any further than whatever dumb, all-caps memes get posted to Facebook, so it doesn’t really even matter.
One thing that is usually not clear about Medicare for all is, does it replace Medicaid as well? Because Medicaid pays/costs less than Medicare, so if you are moving Medicaid beneficiaries to Medicare payment rates, you are going to pick up a huge cost.
Democratic Socialism comes to affordable housing; YIMBYS hardest hit.
In fact, Forbes – which used to use “Capitalist Tool” as an ad slogan – now reports on a recent study by the Division of Research and Statistics and Monetary Affairs of the Federal Reserve Board, which is hardly a socialist organization, and its conclusion is clear:
The private market isn’t going to solve this problem. The notion that more supply will automatically decrease costs
relies on the most elementary and simplistic of teachings from economics, which, as anything in engineering or science, must radically simplify constraints and conditions to address any question. Too much complexity prevents manageable solutions
————-
Part of this, the academics note, is due to the basic contradiction in the theory of how housing markets work. If you assume more supply means lower prices, you ignore the fact that supply is driven not by demand but by the availability of investment capital, which is now entirely international and speculative.
If prices come down, the return on investment declines – and the capital for new housing starts to dry up as that money finds other, more profitable, places to go.
That’s why there are researchers who are talking about fundamentally changing housing markets in this country, and shifting the discussion away from market-based solutions and toward “social housing.”
This paper is a fascinating example. It argues that “large scale municipal housing, built and owned by the state, is by far the best option for solving the affordability crisis.”
It’s complicated. Only government planners can figure it out. Capitalists just ruin everything they touch. They especially hate fairness.
Maybe we should have giant People’s Dormitories, for the workers to live in. Then, we can provide continuing education and other valuable social benefits and services in our quest to form a more perfect citizen.
Math is Hard!
Just appropriate the larger houses and house poor people there a la Dr. Zhivago. Those rich people that payed for them don’t need all that space.
“f you assume more supply means lower prices, you ignore the fact that supply is driven not by demand but by the availability of investment capital,”
You could say this about any industry. Also, it’s not true. Availability of capital would impact the cost, but the investment is driven by demand. More capital would make it cheaper to build (lower interest rates on loans etc. ) so the rates of return would be higher even at some lower end prices.
Government: “Lets break more legs so we can hand out crutches”
So, full-on communism. I keep hearing them described as soft socialists. Bullshit. They are straight up commie shitweasles.
Should I order my Trabant now?
No, just spend the money on more ammo and field rations.
Order your Trabant now, and perhaps your grandchild will be able to go to the factory and take possession of it, when it is ready. Unfortunately, it will probably fall apart on the drive back to the workers dormitory.
Should I order my Trabant now?
Depends. Is Elon Musk producing it?
FTFY
It argues that “large scale municipal housing, built and owned by the state, is by far the best option for solving the affordability crisis.”
Nothing says “affordable” like putting government bureaucracy between a person and a product…
I remember all that affordable government housing along the Dan Ryan expressway. Back when there were no homeless people.
It’s taken a little longer but with all the scandals at NYCHA lately (such as: lying about maintenance and leaving a $35B+ backlog of repairs) it’s only a matter of time before a lot of those towers come down too.
And this is what they want for everybody?
JHTFC, let’s just do 2008 all over again, why don’t we. WE MUST HAVE INFLATION. THERE CAN BE NO LOSERS.
That is exactly what they have in mind.
Worked in China during the Great Leap forward.
“The private market isn’t going to solve this problem.”
There is no private market — there’s already too much government interference in housing.
Scientists say the secrets to success in online dating are to aim high, keep your message brief, and be patient.
So my “I’m not Prince Charming, and I have neither a fairytale castle nor a flying unicorn” approach is a mistake?
“No actresses, models, or other drama queens” is a better approach.
Forget dating
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_marriage_market
A couple from my Chinese class happened upon this, or a similar place. Despite the inclusive “parents” of Wiki, it was, unsurprisingly, mothers there. Apparently if you liked the pitch sheet, they usually have more material in their bags to whip out to seal the deal.
Gods damn I’m sick of hearing about the Koch study supporting Medicare for all. The study they funded said it would be cheaper IFF all doctors accepted the current Medicare pay rates (which IIRC is about 40% of insurance rates).
I’d have more beer money if the government forced McDonald’s to go back to selling hamburgers for $.19. That will totally work.
In the interest of fairness, as I’ve been bitching about the various internet purges lately, I post this link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-08/43-republicans-want-give-trump-power-shut-down-news-outlets-poll
43 percent of Republicans think Trump should be given the power to shutter news outlets is the takeaway, which is nuts.
I simply dont believe that. I am calling bullshit on that.
I checked the poll items over at Ipsos and they appear to be pretty solid. It’d be disappointing if I expected any better.
I find it hard to believe that people who complain about the left’s rejection of the first amendment would be in favor of overt, egregious violations of the first amendment.
I would like to see the specific questions used by this poll and the methodology to reach that conclusion. Not a set of massaged result stats. I know there are nanny staters on team red’s side as well that only differ with team blue on what totalitarian applications they are for or against, but that 43% seems far, far too high for me to accept. In general you can bet your ass this poll could have simply been rigged with question that make you answer one way, and they can then tally it, and I can guarantee you most conservatives would say they see very little value from the media today considering the blatant bias and the completely transparent attempt to undermine and destroy the enemies of the democratic crime syndicate.
Every cobbler thinks he should be king, and why should the others have any say? it’s a disease that affects red and blue: a pox on both their houses
The most broken idea in the US is that rights come from winning elections so that your guy can force the world to spin the right way. The notion that we are free to do pretty much anything and should spend most of the day building better mousetraps instead of deciding how our neighbors live is just lost to the masses.
My people are toothless truckdrivers; they would hang everyone posting on this site if the yapper at the top of their adopted collective so indicated…they are beasts.
Big if true. I think it’s down to frustration at the lack of any alternatives. I hate to use the term, but the media landscape almost seems like a legitimate market failure. In the case of legacy TV networks there barriers to entry caused by regulation, but there was no reason that the entire internet had to coalesce around an oligopoly of fringe left wing demagoguery.
I lost a friend because I pointed out that she and her Team Red evangelism were just as authoritarian as the left. She just wanted different rules.
She honestly did not see her preferred lifestyles as rules she wanted everyone to follow. She thought it was the Way Things Ought To Be. Self-evident.
Authoritarians gonna authoritate.
“She thought it was the Way Things Ought To Be. Self-evident.”
There is a lot of that going around.
yup…..Socrates stumbled into it in his search for wisdom and wise men:
“Finally I went to the craftsmen , for I was conscious of knowing practically nothing, and I knew that I would find that they had knowledge of many fine things. In this I was not mistaken; they knew things I did not know, and to that extent they were wiser than I. But, gentlemen of the jury, the good craftsmen seemed to me to have the same fault as the poets: each of them, because of his success at his craft, thought himself very wise in other most important pursuits, and this error of theirs overshadowed the wisdom they had, so that I asked myself, on behalf of the oracle, whether I should prefer to be as I am, with neither their wisdom nor their ignorance, or to have both. The answer I gave myself and the oracle was that it was to my advantage to be as I am.”
Thats… not exactly how it happened.
“She thought it was the Way Things Ought To Be. Self-evident.”
I forgot to add:
“And be happy with it.”
I mostly agree but I don’t think the Reps are quite as bad as the leftists as a whole. They’re still far from ideal though.
As I said above, without seeing the questions and methodology, I am going to call out the number they provide. I know there are team red totalitarians, but I can’t believe the number is that high (43%) considering the whole battle with the media (and the deep state) today is about them not being proponents of the constitution or any amendments of the bill of rights unless it helps push the marxist agenda of team blue.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/americans-views-media-2018-08-07
The actual items and their order are downloadable at the bottom of the article.
It is easy to tell what they’re getting at though and maybe they were just being fucked with.
The media has been characterizing Republicans as anti-woman, anti-gay, pro-assault weapon murder, etc. for decades. Is it not understandable that some of them would want this bullshit stopped?
It’s perfectly understandable but that doesn’t mean it’s the right, or the smart, thing to do.
One thing I always ask both team blue and team red people peddling totalitarian shit is how comfortable they will be with their totalitarian edict when the other side has taken over power and can use it against them. My experience has been that with very few exceptions, team red people usually stop in their tracks and do some serious soul searching (not saying why, as it simply could be because despite totalitarian tendencies they are playing defense). I have not ever had a team blue person even look bothered by this question, and when I dig, I find out that they are not worried because they expect the media and their side to prevent the other side from abusing something they certainly will.
Me today, you tomorrow.
I’d rather they give Me the power to shutter news outlets. I don’t trust anyone else to make the right choices.
Food Network hardest hit.
*golf clap*
Hey out of interest, has anybody else noticed a stratospheric increase in real estate prices the last couple months? Anxious as I am to find a new state of residence, I keep my eye on the listings for several different markets in the southwest. They’ve been ticking up gradually as one might expect the last couple years, but this past 2 months or so it’s gone fucking berserk. Actual example: I just got an email notification about a listing for a 3/2 on a standard lot for 248k and it’s already got a contingent offer. The exact same property sold in May for 178k. I’ve seen at least a dozen other houses in the same market that have been flipped in the same manner. And they’re not getting major renovations done, we’re talking paint and carpet at the most here.
There’s a similar rate of increase across several different markets, but it could be regional since I’m looking mainly in the southwest. If it’s national, it really makes me wonder what’s driving it this time. I know with 4% GDP growth it’s basically the roaring ’20s all over again and all, but a 25-40% increase from April to July is a little wacky.
We have been in an extremely hot real estate market for the past year. There are starting to be signs it has topped out (local conditions always trump trends so take this with a grain of salt) and we may see a slow down. The number to look at is days on the market. Prices tend to lag behind that indicator at transition points.
It’s been crazy in my suburb – bidding wars, houses selling for waay more than they are worth, and a few houses that just sit on the market because the sellers wildly overestimate the value.
Some neighbors were moving out – their house sold in less than two days with eleven offers on it. It went for $405k – I would say it’s closer to $300-$350k.
The area I live in has always been high – best schools in the area (and the highest taxes) – but it’s gotten to the point where trying to move up into a bigger house in the area wouldn’t be economically feasible.
It’s also been crazy in other areas. A decade ago one of my po’ friends bought a $60k house in a seedy part of town. Now the area has become gentrified. The house next door went for $300k after a renovation.
Been looking for a condo for my recently widowed MiL – everything seems to be in the $200k range, which is way more than she thinks she can pay. Even though she is in a house that’s worth more than that, she can’t fathom the house they bought for $18k in 1960-something has gone up in value.
Same in my area. But government imposed costs- land use restrictions on new property, code and development fees, greatly limit supply of new homes that would dampen some of the bubble.
Not seeing that up in my neck of the woods, but there aren’t that many people rushing to move to Cleveland. Although Zillow says the house I bought 5 years ago has gone up ~20% in value.
Same for the People’s Republic of Connecticut…
If anything the prices in some areas keep going down…
I agree with Jar.
Another thing is seasonality: most national price charts won’t show that. The short-run increase in demand while school is out and people can move easily will tend to create an increase in price.
That said, the overall trend is the dead-cat-bounce I love to talk about after the Great Recession: pent-up demand versus modest inventory.
Yes. I have a few clients who are in real estate who tell me the bubble has to burst soon, because everything appraises at where it should, then bidding wars happen, then buyers have to cover the difference between appraisal and sale price. . . . we shall see. I am sure my taxes will never go down, even if the house price does.
I want to unload this money pit while the market’s hot and downgrade until we can get out of this debt hole we dug, but Mr. Mojeaux is highly allergic to change.
Not knowing any more than that first sentence, I would probably concur: I despise debt.
Have you read Dave Ramsey? His approach and answers are correct for 90% of the people 90% of the time.
He’s better than Sex Panther?!?
I like that last sentence. There are nits to pick with him, but his advice is not a bad start for anyone.
It’s the investing advice that gets him into trouble, but even then he always qualifies it with do not invest in anything unless you understand it.
I think his investing advice fits the 90/90 rule above. I am only surprised he doesn’t push index funds.
He doesn’t push hard for index funds, overhypes roth accounts, and throws too much weight behind a 12% return.
But yeah, buy term life insurance and save 15% for retirement is overall great advice.
I have two problems with Roth accounts:
1. Assuming your tax rates stay the same, the math on them vs traditional IRA is a wash. And if you can guess what the tax rates are going to be 20 years from now, good for you.
2. I don’t trust the Feds to keep their hands off the gains in a Roth. Its a big pile of untaxed money just waiting to be taxed. I will take my tax breaks up front.
See: Cyprus
There is also the state income tax piece that is always left out of the equation. He lives in TN so I guess it doesn’t matter, but for someone working in CA who plans to retire in a no income tax state, why would you do a roth?
Also an outside possibility that your state repeals the income tax before you retire (lol).
It’s hard to create a suitable and credible example in this space, but a way to think about it is: 100% sure I’ll double my money by it might take longer than six months.
I’m just debating: if Ramsay would ever stipulate that such a situation might ever arise, ever, even once, he still wouldn’t green-light it. So the shape and likelihood of my hypothetical is moot.
ugh: my reply along this line was gobbled by the squirrels
Right: the problem with Ramsey is that he doesn’t believe that returns and risks can every be assessed well enough to justify debt. I hate debt, but if I’ve got a 99% change of doubling my money in six months, I’d borrow $20k for that. I’m zero debt aside from a mortgage I might ought pay off, but I wouldn’t pass on a deal as good as that.
If I understand Ramsay’s schtick correctly (having never listened to him), he is not talking to people who can do a risk-benefit analysis of borrowing to invest.
I can do that. I’ve just never had the seed money (or credit) (when I was single) to start.
If I understand correctly, people who can do the risk analysis with regards to investment borrowing are not going to need general savings advice anyway.
Mostly, but he also says that professionals can’t do it properly.
Considering the banking industry fiascoes of the past few decades, he isn’t entirely wrong.
With that though, I find his pushing managed mutual funds over index funds odd.
Ramsay has listeners across the spectrum, but at least a firm plurality fit into the uninformed class.
What he does note repeatedly (I’m not gunning for you, be sure) is that the folks who think they have all the answers and analyses are broke. They don’t own their home, they have credit card debt, they don’t carry adequate insurance, they have no vector to financing their kids’ college, and they have no hope of retiring with dignity. I’d submit that is clearly the majority of Americans. So, like I said, Dave’s about 90% right.
I’ve got a 99% change of doubling my money in six months
That’s pretty much what a lot of people who go broke borrowing to invest believe going in. The time frame and gains may change, but the trick about debt is that its still there when the high return/high risk market goes through one of its inevitable contractions. Debt leverages returns, but also leverages risk.
And of course, deals like that are vanishingly rare, and also rarely exist for significant sums of money.
I don’t borrow to invest, and would very strongly urge anyone who isn’t an investment professional from doing so. I would be willing to bet that it is the main route to bankruptcy for people who aren’t in the lower couple of quintiles.
I am not sure the caveat is needed.
And part of the reason Ramsey pushed this is this is exactly how he went bankrupt.
No, but we did make a decision for my husband to stop telecommuting for a job he hated to “upgrade” to a job he loved where he could go and be social, which cut his salary (he was on night shift and weekends and got differential) and added to our gasoline and insurance budget. So there was a loss of income. His old job was going to go away, so he was kind of wedged into a corner anyway. And I will admit that having him as a (very social) office mate was not ideal.
We also made a bad decision in whom to hire to rehab a bathroom since I couldn’t do it because my rotator cuff is torn. (Also, I don’t play with water or electricity.)
As Matt Paxton from HOARDERS says all the time, “We’re all just 5 bad decisions away from shitting in a bucket.”
The only thing Dave Ramsey says (about finances, I exclude his religious comments) that I even question is “Don’t borrow money to invest.” I question that because leverage is pretty potent in real estate if used carefully. I don’t completely disagree with him, because the vast majority of investors I watch using leverage over borrow, and end up in a hole.
Not a fan of debt, but I looked at my mortgage rate (under 4%), looked at average investment returns (long term over 4%), and decided to pay the mortgage payment while building savings and investment.
This kind of thinking doesn’t bother me if the returns are adjusted for risk
and so long as there are liquid reserves that can cover the mortgage even after severe reversals in investment value. It’s amazing how many plans personal and business that work on balance in the long run are undone by something as simple as cashflow.
You gotta have a place to live, so equating the mortgage to investment returns can lead to some messy thinking.
Well, this is currently Mr. Mojeaux’s thinking: We’re better off staying put because it’s possible we’ll stumble into an even worse situation. I can’t argue that.
You can also stumble onto a better situation.
Change in and of itself is not good or bad.
He also doesn’t seem to grasp high property taxes. He keeps pushing for folks to pay off mortgages so that should something happen they have a place to live with no payments.
Here in the people’s republic of NJ my property taxes on my 1920s nothing special 3 bedroom 1.5 bath home on a 50×100 lot is over $14k.
I can’t wait to pull the ripcord on both this property and state.
Same here. It’s why I told my wife we can’t afford to retire in New Jersey.
Trouble with getting out at the top of the market is you also have to buy at the top of the market. I was hoping to possibly parlay the appreciation on the place I’m in now into a parallel upgrade somewhere else, but that’s definitely not happening the way the market’s going right now.
When I say “downgrade” I mean REALLY REALLY downgrade.
Tiny house?
Not that far, but not much better.
There is a simple answer to this: Rent, rather than buy.
If you rent and things change, you have more freedom to adapt to those changes. If the market takes a tumble in the next few years, you will have the opportunity to buy in cheap. I thought this was going to happen a year ago and sold my house 3 years ago and started renting. Now I’m buying a house from a guy in bankruptcy for cheap and getting ready to flip it. You can really pick your spots and wait for sweet deals when you don’t already have a big mortgage weighing you down.
I’ve thought about it. Then I stop thinking about it as soon as I see the rent prices.
Rent for a worse place than mine is far more than my mortgage.
To be sure™, my place is not BAD. We have poured most of our money into infrastructure, but now the cosmetics are getting to me, and I can’t do anything about it.
It varies by location. In Northern Va, rents are generally cheaper than mortgages, with notable exceptions. A lot of this is because homes bought 10-15 years ago for half what they are worth now have low mortgages relative to current sale prices. For example, the house I’m renting has a rent payment that is only 75% of what a mortgage payment on a similar house would be, if I put 20% down.
Everyone moving into my neighborhood is selling their previous home in under 24 hours.
Things aren’t moving as fast in my neighborhood though. It seems the 150-200k price point is instant sell. But its a bit slower higher up. I have seen some properties in my neighborhood sell in a week or two and some others that have sat empty for a year. We are in the 250-350k price point.
Ours has been soaring for about 8 years.
It is impossible to know the actual price of a house until it is sold. You can get appraisal guesstimates, but without the actual transaction between a willing buyer and willing seller, those are just “how much are we going to steal in taxes” numbers.
What, you don’t think zestimates are accurate?
It is pretty clear that we entered an inflationary bubble in the housing market about a year to 18 months ago. I didn’t see it in housing prices, it was self evident in the mortgage lenders advertisments
43 percent of Republicans think Trump should be given the power to shutter news outlets is the takeaway, which is nuts.
The overwhelming majority of people have no problem with the whip, as long as it’s in the right dictator’s hand.
Do you know who else shuttered news outlets unfavorable to the administration?
John Adams?
I bitch about how we are witnessing the death of the Republic, but honestly this kind of shit has a long history.
John Adams?
fuck
Facebook
Apple
Google
Spotify
Lincoln
Correct!
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.?
TW: NYT
War Without End
The Pentagon’s failed campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan left a generation of soldiers with little to fight for but one another.
I was hoping that DT was going to pull the plug on this… *sigh*
Too many people are getting rich off of it.
Parody but pretty close to the truth:
Revolutionary new bomb can destroy $3 million of taxpayer money in a single strike
If we are going to have to fight wars, can we fight to win and end it quickly?
No – that might require killing a lot of people and hurting feelings.
And put all of the defense contractors, private security, plywood manufacturers and cement companies out of work? What kind of monster are you?
One that worries more about waste in human life and tax payer blood than in keeping those fucks rolling in cash?
No way. That’s okay, I want to thank everyone in the country for their service. Plus, pay every single person a check for their PTSD.
That’s all soldiers fight for in most wars.
I don’t think I’d pin the blame on the Pentagon (and not just because it’s a building). How exactly did Bush expect the military to succeed at anything beyond a punitive raid in Afghanistan?
The war in Afghanistan has been going on for almost exactly half my life. I’m pretty certain not one damn thing in my life has been better as a result.
What kind of asshole uses a stun gun on an 11-year old girl that’s caught shoplifting?
The kind that went home safely. That’s who. That little girl could have poked him with a hairpin. Not to mention she was already in violation of the law. It’s a thin blue line out there. ///PoliceOne
There’s a similar rate of increase across several different markets, but it could be regional since I’m looking mainly in the southwest.
It’s booming out here. It seems to mostly be driven by a steady influx of new residents. And, of course, there are constraints on new building (“Oh, no! We’re losing our Wide Open Spaces!”) due to NIMBYism, “preservationism”, perverse government incentives, and simple math.
Every idiot with an opinion thinks his preferences should be adopted as the standard.
The American Dream is dead.
TW: CBS, autoplay video, raging stupidity
“The idea that anyone can get a basic level of security if they work hard and follow the rules…we’ve never been able to achieve that,” said Levitz.
After World War II, many white Americans were much closer to attaining the goal of the “American Dream” than they are now, with more access to good-paying jobs and heavily subsidized college education back then.
That deal started falling apart in the 1980s, but the generally expanding economy of the 1990s masked the underlying trend. By the time the 2000s came around, Americans’ wages had been flat for some time, although rising home values and easy access to credit made many feel more secure.
The financial crisis killed off that illusion. Today, the thought of stability — let alone riches — feels unattainable for many Americans, Levitz said. “This is called the ‘American dream’ and not the ‘American reality’ for a reason.”
Mixing the foundation for Democratic Socialism: one part pessimism, one part wealth envy, one part imaginary injustice, one part “UNFAIR!”. Mix thoroughly, adding class hatred until desired consistency has been attained. Smear liberally over everything. Stand back, and watch the show.
Don’t forget to act surprised when the genie won’t get back in that bottle.
The only thing collectivism can promise and deliver is misery.
If equality of outcome is the desired goal it works pretty well though, excepting the very few at the top of course.
That is why people risk everything to get into this country, because the American dream is dead and this racist system offers only poverty and struggle.
Unfortunately most of the people “risking” everything to come here (doing so illegally) are not coming here for the dream anymore, unless the dream is a big welfare state giving you free shit.
Eh, they have a point. It’s not that the “American dream” is dead per se, just that the post-war period that they use for the benchmark was an extremely unique point in history and it’s come and gone. When a third of the industrialized world was literally bombed to rubble and the United States was the only superpower to survive without any damage to its industrial capacity, naturally there were conditions that put us at a unique advantage. Things are a lot different today. Worse in a lot of ways, at least for working stiffs. You aren’t going to graduate high school, join a union, work for 5 years, and have enough money to buy a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs that your stay-at-home wife looks after. It wasn’t that easy for everyone back then either, but that was a pretty realistically attainable goal. We live in a global economy now, and the genie ain’t going back in the bottle. You need at least one and usually several educational credentials just to enter the work force (certs and trade school included). Over half of us need licenses to do our jobs. Business formation is more difficult. Substantially fewer young people own business equity (despite well over half of them claiming they want to own their own business). The median home price to median income ratio is substantially higher now than it used to be. Single-income households are a pipe dream unless you are at the upper echelons of the professional class. Household debt is higher in both real and nominal terms than it’s been at any point since they started keeping track. It’s very difficult to get ahead if you’re just a regular schmoe. There is certainly less stability and security, which can be quite scary when you’re nearer to the lower end of the economic curve. It’s not difficult to understand why some people are dissatisfied that the “old way” is gone. But for better or worse, it’s not coming back. Unfortunately, markets seem rather cold and ruthless in that regard, while “Hey, remember how your granddad used to make $85k with health insurance and a 75% pension stamping steel panels in Detroit?” sounds pretty good to the guy making 12 bucks an hour doing a construction who hasn’t got the aptitude to become a programmer or nurse. Free Shit is always marketable.
Not to worry, we’ll flood the labor market with millions of unskilled, fourth-grade-educated workers to cut the legs out from under low-income domestic workers, and after we work out step two, we’ll grow our way to prosperity. Medicaid for all!
Pretty much globalism in a nutshell..
All correct, I just want to throw a few more things in:
– “The median home price to median income ratio is substantially higher now than it used to be.” Housing, healthcare, and education are the three sectors with the fastest growth in prices, much much faster than the pace of inflation. They are also three that most consumers are the least elastic in their demand. If they had only kept pace with inflation (let alone drop in real terms like clothing, automobiles, or heaven forbid appliances), we would all be lighting cigars with $100 bills.
– “There is certainly less stability and security, which can be quite scary when you’re nearer to the lower end of the economic curve.” In the past, our population would cope with less stability and security via mobility. This is still true of those who are well off – how many people with a (useful) graduate degree do you know who live within 100 miles of their parents? But for the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, mobility is way, way down so they are generally more stuck in their shitty situation. Or at least feel that way and don’t move (I don’t know why mobility is down) instead of moving to whatever the hot job market of the day is.
-“Business formation is more difficult. Substantially fewer young people own business equity (despite well over half of them claiming they want to own their own business).” The real factors impacting business development have never been better, as Tundra recently reminded me. You can run 100% pay as you go on so much more capital than you used to. This is 100% regulation driven, and it hurts those most who are most in need of it. If you have the skills to navigate the bull-shit, you can get a job working for the man if you want. Also, young black urban men with an entrepreneurial spirit have got to be disproportionately represented in the drug dealing population, because that’s the only business you can start without that kind of regulatory overhead. So we are locking up the most entrepreneurial young black men right now because the only outlet for their entrepreneurial spirit is illegal. Good job government.
But for the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, mobility is way, way down so they are generally more stuck in their shitty situation. Or at least feel that way and don’t move (I don’t know why mobility is down) instead of moving to whatever the hot job market of the day is.
I think a big part of that is the credentialism bullshit and just the differences in today’s labor market. Once upon a time, you were an Appalachian hillbilly and bettering yourself was as simple as scraping together bus fare to the nearest mining or steel town and putting your back into it. Today, you’re an Appalachian hillbilly and you head to the city without a college degree or any type of technical education and you’re going to be doing maintenance work with the illegal Hondurans if you’re lucky, which is going to afford you pretty much the same lifestyle you were living selling meth in Appalachia, just with 10 million people breathing down your neck.
It’s the same story with most of these modern economic complications. In the absence of all the ostensibly pro-worker interventions in the market, it would be a lot easier to adapt to changing conditions must more quickly.
This feels right to me, not the only thing going on. I think. I was a poor Apalachian kid, and I know plenty of people that got out. The ones that weren’t college material weren’t any dumber than the ones who stayed, but they were hustlers or the went into the military.
I know plenty of college bound kids that moved back home after college even though they could have done much better by moving out to another place that wasn’t so economically depressed (this was before the shale boom.)
I couldn’t tell you what makes someone a hustler and what make someone move back to be with their dysfunctional family in a dysfunctional economy even when they have a valuable degree and enough life skills to make it through four years at college away from their family.
But it sure feels like we have fewer hustlers these days, doesn’t it?
Fair point. What I’ll counter with, though, is that it was precisely the sort of people insisting “the American Dream is dead” who did the most to kill it. Fewer new businesses? Gee, you think that might have something to do with the tax and regulatory environment? Need a lot of credentials to get a job? It wasn’t the free marketeers who created that situation. Housing prices out of control? Hmmmm…maybe we should take a look at all of those zoning and environmental regulations that limit construction.
But, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the situation the working man finds himself in. Honestly, I think he’s been forced to live in rough-and-tumble competition while the more educated classes shield themselves with increasing layers of government protection. This, he’s told, is the free market.
Yep, nailed it completely. That’s the really sad part, is that the desperation bred by those policies makes the desperate more susceptible to eat the rich rhetoric and further market interventions that only end up making them worse off.
that only end up making them worse off
But the people using the rhetoric much better off.
Someone is always profiting from other people’s angst & gullibility…
Stop buying into that “bombed to rubble bullshit.” Factory production can get rebuilt pretty damn quickly when government gets out of the way.
The post Ww2 advantage the us had was that half the planet chose to be commies and couldn’t build Jack shit because if it. You aren’t a moral genius just because your competitors choose to commit suicide.
^^^^THIS^^^^
Even the Western Europeans had issues with this shit considering the popularity of collectivism there. If they were not marxists they where fascists, and in both cases government was who decided who the winners and losers were.
True enough, they didn’t do themselves any favors, but the reconstruction efforts would have taken years to achieve pre-war output regardless. We were very uniquely poised economically at the end of the war having participated as fully as we did without sustaining a single strike on the mainland and coming off of wartime production with a lot of idle hands returning home. Europe was more lucky for it even than we were.
Bullshit. Post WWII, West Germany went from a US Command with a heterodox faith in free markets to a government full of Ordoliberals. Its a nation full of Germans. And it still took a decade to recover.
On the other hand, we had a primed pump of excess capacity that in normal times would have been a dead weight loss and would have had to have been decommissioned and liquidated. But because of a very specific set of circumstances, we were able to leverage that otherwise excess capacity.
The Brits went socialists after the war and it showed. It didn’t get better until Thatcher.
The American Dream is the movie villain that keeps sitting up after every fatal headshot.
Taxpayers of NY are about to get fucked by Cuomo’s unconstitutional crusade against the NRA.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/new-york-nra-second-amendment-first-amendment-attack/
David French quotes from the decision in Hammerhead Enterprises Inc v. Brezenoff:
We agree that, under certain circumstances, oral or written statements made by public officials will require courts to draw fine lines between permissible expressions of personal opinion and implied threats to employ coercive state power to stifle protected speech.6 Where comments of a government official can reasonably be interpreted as intimating that some form of punishment or adverse regulatory action will follow the failure to accede to the official’s request, a valid claim can be stated.
Cuomo’s also jumped onto the free college bandwagon with both feet.
He is not gonna have to pay for it, but he sure as hell is hoping to capitalize on the votes of the freeloaders…
Cuomo would have made a fine mob boss.
What do you mean with “could have”? The guy is a mob boss.
here’s the NRA’s complaint:
https://www.politico.com/states/f/?id=00000165-101e-da87-a377-7e9f22a90001
At Cuomo’s behest, Vullo and DFS have threatened, and continue to threaten, regulated institutions with costly investigations and penalties should they fail to “discontinue[]…their arrangements with the NRA.”17 And Defendants have already carried out some of these threats. Within a single week, DFS levied multi-million dollar fines against two insurance-industry firms that dared to do business with the NRA.
The funny part is that the NRA blundered into the impossible to navigate labyrinth of New York insurance regulations. Most big insurers won’t set foot in the state without setting up an independent NY-only subsidiary in order to firewall the stupidity.
i find that easy to believe.
Yeah, that goes a lot further than stating a personal opinion. They actually levied fines.
they issued guidance too.
this was no mere finger-wagging or brow-beating.
KDW had a few choice words for Cuomo.
Flashing underboob as if it’s going out of style.
http://archive.is/YtGl5
2 for the bonus cameltoe.
22, if for no other reason than to goad you.
#smalltitsmatter
#morethanahandfullisawaste
Everyone is entitled to their (wrong, completely irrational and extra-chromosome level stupid) opinion.
With regard to social media, I think we’re arriving at the point where they can no longer claim it’s neutral algorithms making these editorial decision. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m a free speech absolutist and the social media are private companies. So, if they want to take an editorial stance, that is their God-given right. But, the claim that they’re still content-neutral open forums is a joke that I don’t see holding up in court. To my mind, that means they’ve made the case for no longer being eligible for Communications Decency Act section 320 protections. If they want to be publishers pushing an editorial stance, more power to them. But, it’s absurd to exempt them from the legal liability for libel, fraud, harassment, etc. that any other publisher faces for the material they publish. Craigslist was bullied into submission and Ross Ulbricht is in jail for a less active role in participating in web content. It’s time companies like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter had to live by the same terms as their brick-and-mortar publishing counterparts.
Agreed. Their claims of not editorializing are pretty damn thin. Not that it matters. See my link below; the courts are just as rotten as the FBI and the DoJ. They’ll judge-shop until they find a fellow traveler who agrees that “hate speech” (defined as whatever they decide they don’t like) is not protected by 1A and those who speak it have no recourse.
They’ll judge-shop until they find a fellow traveler who agrees that “hate speech” (defined as whatever they decide they don’t like) is not protected by 1A and those who speak it have no recourse.
I don’t know about that for sure. The plaintiffs’ bar is a pretty damned powerful and aggressive lobby. The judge is going to have to decide between pushing his progressive agenda and becoming an enemy of the largest group of judicial election donors you have out there. Sure, the plaintiffs’ bar might want to ban hate speech, but not at the expense of the billions of dollars they could pick from the carcasses of the social media giants.
the plaintiffs’ bar might want to ban hate speech, but not at the expense of the billions of dollars they could pick from the carcasses of the social media giants
now that is a very good point.
Youtube is fucked.
Afreakingmen!
they can no longer claim it’s neutral algorithms making these editorial decision
I don’t think it matters how or why they limit content (outside of the rather narrow categories of illegal speech). If you are limiting content because its offensive, what difference does it make if your employees make the decision, you outsource to an “independent” group or based on complaints, or you use an algorithm. Its all limiting content because its offensive, which is an editorial decision and makes you a publisher.
I think the difference is the extent to which someone can claim they’re exercising editorial control. If I have some set of rules that applies to all content, I’m not really making any editorial decision. On the other hand, if I’m basing what is published and what isn’t based on my opinion of the content, I’m making an editorial decision. My work as curator, in that case, makes me part of the item produced.
If I have some set of rules that applies to all content, I’m not really making any editorial decision.
If those rules include “no offensive content”, which is inherently subjective and not based on any outside standard (unlike illegal speech), then I don’t think it matters that you apply it to all content. Hell, every publisher applies their editorial standards to all content proposed for publication. And I don’t think it matters whether you are even-handed in applying the standard. What matters is that you are applying an inherently editorial standard. Not a legal standard, but a discretionary one.
Its still editorial control, because an editorial decision is being made somehow (and I don’t think it matters how) that some content is offensive and some is not.
I think you do get some leeway to exert some control while still being content-neutral. Saying you can’t use foul language is something I think we can distinguish from saying that only certain viewpoints are permissible.
content-neutral
“Offensive” isn’t content-neutral. It is inherently discretionary. The idea that the government banning offensive content wouldn’t be prior restraint because doing so is content neutral would never pass muster.
I’m not saying there aren’t fuzzy edges, and you might or even ought to be able to get away with banning “offensive words” words on your platform. But banning an offensive message cannot be anything but editorial discretion. The uneven application of the standard is just pounding more and more nails into the coffin.
Remember (I think; I could be wrong about this), the exception for conduits/platforms was drafted back in the day when people were worried about email providers getting sued, and/or blog hosting services getting sued, for the content travelling through their conduit. That isn’t the situation at all with the current deplatforming; it takes those platforms out of the conduit model and into the publisher model.
But banning an offensive message cannot be anything but editorial discretion.
I think that gets to the heart of the matter. If you’re making decisions on what to include or not based on the message, then there’s no possible way you can get around the position that you’re engaged in editorializing. I think, once they cross that threshold, they’re hard-pressed to claim they’re not publishers.
Applicable: Twitter Plans ‘Hate Speech’ Crackdown After Backlash From Upset Employees
Layoffs?
/hopelessly optimistic.
Let them get have to live with a potential liabilities of a publisher. With a billion contributors, they’ll be looking at layoffs soon enough.
All the more reason why it’s necessary to conclude that section 230 exceptions don’t apply. These sort of eruptions make clear that the bans and removals aren’t just a consequence of a neutral applicaiton of universal standards. They’re content driven based on their sensibilities. Fine. That’s totally their right. But, they shouldn’t get a section 230 exemption while making those editorial decisions. If you want to pick and choose what gets said on your platform, you’re responsible for what you pick and choose to let be said on your platform.
Must be nice when the prosecutor and the judge both sympathize with your politics.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/antifa-prof-who-bashed-trump-supporter-in-head-with-bike-lock-at-berkeley-given-slap-on-wrist/
This smacks of “well, we know we have to convict you of *something* since we have you on video, found mountains of evidence in your apartment, have witnesses that say you were bragging about the attack”.
How long do they think this game will last? The lesson anyone who might be be an Antifa target should take from this is that they can’t rely on the government to protect them. That, to my thinking, suggests that they should take responsibility for their own armed self-defense.
Something, something “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”
How long do they think this game will last?
Until The Right People (preferably but not necessarily Democrats) are fully back in charge. And if Antifa doesn’t quieten down, laws will be dusted off and applied in full.
Hitting someone on the head with a bike lock is assault with a deadly weapon/attempted murder. People die from getting punched in the face. It would have been absolutely justified for someone to blow that dude away.
It would have been absolutely justified for someone to blow that dude away.
Completely agreed. And, if you keep seeing rulings like this, it’ll only be a matter of time before someone actually does blow one of these bastards away. And the judge and prosecutor, I’m sure, will be aghast at the escalation of political violence. But, the truth is that they’re the ones laying the groundwork for just that.
“it’ll only be a matter of time before someone actually does blow one of these bastards away”
In my weaker moments, I actually find myself hoping for this. I’m like “enough foreplay, let’s get to the fucking”. Then I think about how shitty it would be to live through a Guerilla Civil War and what effect it would have on what liberty we have left and I come to my senses.
I don’t wish for it either (at least in my saner moments). No one should. That’s why these sorts of decisions are a danger. They inch us closer to just that sort of outcome.
This is how the Civil War II: Guerilla Boogaleu could get started.
We’ve talked before that right now people have too much to lose, but when it gets to the point where anyone to the right of Pol Twat is a target of opportunity, that goes away. People will start resorting to vigilante violence, and then it’s all Sean Connery in the Untouchables and “They put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue”.
They put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue
One in the morgue. Ten in the morgue. Let’s not quibble over details.
Yeah, this is a recipe for violence. They just told Antifa and related groups that they’re not going to aggressively prosecute violence against non-leftists, and they just told groups like Patriot Prayer not to expect any assistance from the authorities when Antifa starts attacking them. This is how you get street-fighting mobs. It’s also how you get people shooting into crowds.
But it feelz so good to let somebody off the hook for taking it to the deplorables and the irredeemables.
Exactly. And it tells you that groups like Patriot Prayer that abstain from violence are nothing more than suckers. If you want to take a stand, you wind up with no choice but to take a stand with the sorts that don’t mind “getting their hands dirty”.
People talk about Weimar Germany as if the problem was that no one would stand up to the Nazis. But, even a cursory review of the period tells you a different story. A lot of people saw the Nazis as one of the few groups that would stand up to the communists. And both sides were precisely the sorts who’d bash someone over the head with a bike lock. “Respectable” people on either side wouldn’t take a clear stand against the thugs and, eventually, the thugs were the only people you could rely on to protect you from the other thugs.
The historic parallel is particularly apropos when you realize that antifa consciously models themselves after the commies in Germany during Weimar. And not just their shared political views; they have adopted the black shirt uniform of the German commies.
People also forget that Nazism was, as you note, largely a reaction to the aggressive German communist movement (supported by the Soviets). There was a reason why Hitler and the Nazis hated the Soviets, and why both sides knew their pact to divvy up Eastern Europe was very temporary. Once they had a shared border, they were going to go to war with each other. The Germans just threw the first punch.
This guys should have gone away or over a year for this shit. Fucking pathetic! Makes me not want to leave the house.
True story:
Friend of a friend in grad school got into a bar brawl and drunkenly smashed a beer bottle over someone’s head. Similar level of danger to smashing someone with a bike lock, but not premeditated or politically motivated. He got pinched for felony assault (among other charges) and took a plea deal just like this guy. The big difference is that he had to cop to the felony, spend 6 months in the county jail and had 5 years probation. The felony on the record is by far the worst thing and has rendered him unemployable. He now works at Jiffy Lube in spite of having a petroleum engineering degree.
Well, there’s the problem. If he’d shouted BASH THE FASH he’d have been excused with a demure apology for having wasted his time.
Similar level of danger to smashing someone with a bike lock,
Actually, a beer bottle is a lot less dangerous than a bike lock.
I wouldn’t say so. Worked a case where bottle broke over the victim’s head and sliced open the jugular. Agg assault to a murder wrap in 10 seconds or less.
He now works at Jiffy Lube in spite of having a petroleum engineering degree.
That’s sick, really.
He jokes that at least he still gets to work with oil.
Amazing. I’d be bitter as fuck about that.
Jeebus. I was going to make a joke along those lines but refrained because his situation is so fucking sad/infuriating.
plead to battery makes me think the 4Chan sleuthing evidence and other evidence was so-so. i don’t think the prosecutors are going to be on his side. at least now he’s on probation with a prior conviction if he gets caught again. or if he dies pulling this shit, then the defense can use his prior criminal history to prove he was a legitimate threat.
i don’t think the prosecutors are going to be on his side.
I do. Their buddies the cops have a history of being on antifa’s side (to the extent of allowing them to riot). Why not the prosecutors?
I have to agree. Remember, this is Berkeley. You probably aren’t going to get re-elected DA by throwing the book at leftists.
The cops may need to start rethinking the way they’ve been allowing the violence to escalate though:
9th Circuit took away cops qualified immunity for a rally in San Jose, CA
When even the 9th circuit keeps shooting you down, you should know you’ve overreached.
Thought experiment:
A similar conflagration of events occurs but instead of fists and rocks, both sides have AR-15s and start taking each other out like they’re in the streets of Fallujah. Police have no duty to protect or serve, they’re (ostensibly) not trained or equipped to operate in what is a de facto warzone. What happens next? SWAT teams? National Guard? Air strikes?
Eventually they’ll run out of ammo and then the cops will arrive and inventory the bodies.
National Guard.
And vigorous prosecution of deplorables and irredeemables.
Your second point is then exactly how you get to a real Civil War. The Deploranazis eventually have splinter factions like antifa who are explicitly dedicated to violent action and they start carrying out targeted assassinations of Federal judges and prosecutors. We can imagine where things might go from there. G-d help us if it ever comes to that.
If forced to choose between Communists and Nazis I’ll pick Nazis.
Nuking from orbit?
My guess is that you’d have cops in riot gear setting up perimeter to keep the chaos from spreading. The next stop is the National Guard. Like I said, that’s why you have to nip this crap in the bud before it gets to that point.
And instead of nipping it in the bud, the left keeps the train a rollin’
Yep. And, as much as I don’t want that outcome, (Do you understand, Preet, I don’t want to see that outcome happen!) keeping the train a-rollin’ is precisely how you get the breakdown of a society that doesn’t give rise to extremists.
“i don’t think the prosecutors are going to be on his side”
I don’t believe this. Like Dean said, the “authorities” (such as they are) have, in these cobalt blue jurisdictions, shown themselves to be sympathetic if not complicit in the Far Left’s actions. From what I understand, they had a lot more on this guy than 4Chan doing amateur CSI, otherwise they wouldn’t have arrested or charged him in the first place. I don’t know the exact details, so take this with a pile of salt, but I read that his apartment was a cornucopia of evidence and they also had witnesses willing to testify that he had bragged about the attacks to them.
A regular prole would have gone away for a couple of years for this.
If he was a politician or connected family, then I’d agree but he’s not.
It doesn’t need to be the case of a politician or connected family. It could simply be the logic of the political situation. After all, DAs are politicians. Do you think throwing the book at Antifa is going to be something you’d want to put on your campaign literature? In Berkeley, California?
i guess i’m starting to come around to the idea that antifa isn’t too insane or destructive for Democrats.
The problem I have is that in the deep blue jurisdictions antifa selects for its riots, the police, the municipal government, have been, as Q notes, sympathetic if not complicit in antifa’s doings. Hell, Berkeley has people on its city council who belong to BAMN, an antifa ally/affiliate.
And here we have somebody who isn’t a politician or from a connected family being treated exactly the way you’d expect a prosecutor who is sympathetic or complicit to treat them. One strike against the complicit prosecutor is that they charged him, true. But charges can be PR, to keep the public at bay until everything dies down and they can administer their slap on the wrist.
My default is that the prosecutor in Berkeley is a member of Team Berkeley, which is pro-antifa. If they want me to believe otherwise, then they need to tell me how they fucked up this case so that time served and six months probation is a good result.
i think it was 3 years probation.
You’re right; it was three years.
Has this been addressed here?
West Virginia impeaches their entire Supreme Court for misusing funds:
https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2018/08/07/state-impeaching-entire-supreme-court-maybe-theyre-onto-something/
Now that’s the way bullshit like this should be handled.
Wow. I have no idea what, if anything alleged is out of line (having your employer kit out your home office doesn’t sound like a problem, for example, if you are doing work there, and I assume a high-level judge is), but that’s still crazy that they actually went through with it.
What are WV politics like these days? Does one party have a firm grasp on the legislature?
Looks like the Reps hold both houses or whatever they’re called. The judges are split 2 Dem, 2 Rep, and one who resigned and is being charged (not sure of his affiliation).
News to me. I haven’t read the entire story yet, but honestly at this point I default to celebrating any time a judge gets shitcanned.
One of the items they renovated their quarters with is a $32,000 blue suede couch. Celebrations are in order.
That’s awesome. Balls to the wall.
The article claims Holder and Rice should have been impeached. I would like to know for what.
Holder, at least, for lying to Congress and thwarting Congressional oversight, for starters.
Eh, they have a point. It’s not that the “American dream” is dead per se, just that the post-war period that they use for the benchmark was an extremely unique point in history and it’s come and gone.
You make some excellent points, and I agree.
That CBS thing I linked to was a response to New York Magazine’s “special edition” about looking back at the Great Recession. Much of what’s in it is about increasing wealth inequality and how the oligarchs done stole our future.
I’m not going to link to it, but WaPo has an “economic analysis” piece about how the blue wave will wash those rat bastard Republikkkins out of town because economic growth is spotty, and that tax cut didn’t raise wages, and job growth is better in urban/suburban Democratic regions, and blah blah blah.
Basically, it boils down to, “Time’s up, Trump. You have failed to achieve perfect success, so you will be swept out of office.” Because, as we all know, every election everywhere, from the United States Senate to your local county tax assessor is a referendum on TRUMPUTIN and his Nazi racist agenda. So long, Trump. Better luck next time.
Next stop, Democratic Socialism, and Utopia.
“Don’t believe your lying paycheck stub, you aren’t making more money.”
CRUMBS!
economic growth is spotty,
True, but as far as I know its still stronger in Repub states than Dem states.
and that tax cut didn’t raise wages,
Not gross wages, which nobody cares about compared to their take-home wages. Which did increase.
job growth is better in urban/suburban Democratic regions,
Why disproportionate job growth under a Republican Congress and President will lead people to vote for Democrats is an exercise for the reader, I suppose.
If its a deep Blue district that had high job growth, then the outcome won’t change – its a Dem no matter what.
If its a swing district that had high job growth, why would it swing Democrat?
Maybe they are thinking that relatively low job growth in Repub districts will lead them to swing Dem? I suspect the people in those districts care less about what happens in other cities and towns, and are comparing their prospects before Trump to their prospects with Trump. If they improved at all (even if other districts improved more), I don’t see them switching sides.
I’ve become convinced over the last decade or so that political prognosticating should be afforded the same level of respect and seriousness of palm reading.
Horoscopes are more accurate than any of the politically motivated prognostications: especially the economic ones.
“True, but as far as I know its still stronger in Repub states than Dem states.”
Actually it is the first time in 8 years that my state is seeing growth of any kind, but the assholes here are all claiming it is coming not from the tax breaks, the reduction of regulation, or more business friendly attitudes in general, but from the belated woke Obama bullshit quantitative easing fed economic policies. Many of the people not part of team blue insanity snicker at this shit and the people saying it, but there are a whole lot of leftards believing that is exactly what is happening…
One thing that we might get some insight to in this election is just how balkanized people’s sources of information are. Put another way, how much influence does the Legacy/DemOp Media have over people who aren’t already bought in to their side? Leftards continuing to guzzle DemOp propaganda isn’t going to change any outcomes. If the increasingly strident and one-sided DemOp propaganda still has much traction outside of the True Believers, it could change outcomes.
from the belated woke Obama bullshit quantitative easing fed economic policies
oh man that is funny
But I thought the Fed was independent. Why should Obama get credit for what an independent Fed did?
Especially since Yellen started tightening last September and the fed has continued the policy, with Trump actually complaining about the tightening!
OBAMA WAS A VISIONARY LEADING INDICATOR!
If Rufus says it in caps then I have to believe it…
Only if he ran around flailing his muppet arms at the same time.
I’ve become convinced over the last decade or so that political prognosticating should be afforded the same level of respect and seriousness of palm reading.
Headless-chicken bingo.
The Pitiful Roots of Anti-Americanism
Some gold in the comments, too.
Anti-Americanism has the same psychological dynamic as anti-Semitism.
Hmmm…what are the normal anti-American stereotypes?
* Americans are loud and crass.
* Americans are greedy and materialistic.
* Americans show off by throwing their money around.
* Americans are overly opinionated.
Yep. I think he might be onto something.
“Americans work really hard.”
I’ve heard that more than a few times by ex-pats. It’s always said in wonder, with a little bit of pity, and a good dose of admiration.
I’ve heard that line but dripping with scorn. I’m like “how is that possibly a bad quality”? Anti-Americanism, I believe, comes in different flavors.
– From Latin America I think it’s as you stated above: envy as well as the perception (not completely unfounded) that the US has meddled in their countries’ politics and economies
– From Europe I think it’s smugness that their culture is “superior” and more evolved because it’s older and “more refined”. That’s also mixed with a heavy dose of envy because, how can these uncivilized savages have so much more than us?
– Internally, a-la progs, I think is due to their irrational Europhilia; Europe thinks we’re unsophisticated rubes so they must be right. There’s also just plain old indoctrination since much of primary, secondary and higher education is populated by Marxists who hate capitalism and everything America stands for. So they teach their charges that America is the root of evil.
There’s one issue with #2 and #3, I suspect there are a lot of people in those groups who don’t realize that Euro standards of living are lower than the US and operate under the misconception that the Euro societies are also doing better economically.
When I was in Dublin, there was one local couple I met at a pub and we spent a couple of hours talking back and forth about the differences in culture between Ireland and the US. The girl had been over in the US and worked as a bartender in the Virginia area, so had some idea of what America was like. One of the comments she made that stuck with me was, “They’ve got so much fecking room in their houses, they have separate rooms for the laundry.”
Correct. It is always good for a jaw dropper if you point out that if those Germans would just work really, really, really hard maybe some day they can have a per-capita GPD like out poorest state.
You have to remember that their schools are filled with retarded indoctrination just like ours. And 100 years ago the US standard of living probably was lower than Western Europe’s. Then they went socialist and they simply will never admit that their standard of living stagnated or fell because of it.
That’s one of those insults, like saying Bush is a cowboy, that tells you more about the mud slinger than it does a target.
I’ve never heard, for example, an immigrant from India say something like that.
Cowboys do honest work getting beef to the slaughterhouse… which might not go over so well with some Indian immigrants.
Most Indians I interacted with were Catholic.
I said some, because I’ve met Indians of several faiths.
Though I did hear an anecdotal remark about one impious sould answering queries about his hamburger by saying “American Cows aren’t sacred” (nevermind the fact that ground beef isn’t very vegitarian either…)
Their sophistication comes with a twist of cantaloupe.
I can’t remember who it was, might have been James Delingpole, but someone I read regularly complained about his vacation in New York. He and his Brit buddies would be woken up at the outrageous hour of nine in the morning after a sodden night out by their American friends, who’d been up since six playing tennis and whatnot.
Another European cultural thing that Americans don;t have to nearly the same extent – the over class structure carried over from centuries of feudalism.
It’s interesting that baseball is a US working-class evolved version of cricket. New York had plenty of cricket fields, which the settlers would naturally desire. But as time went on the players found they didn’t have the time to play cricket but still wanted to play from 5-7 am (before going to work). So they adjusted some of the rules, for a shorter game allowing everyone batting and fielding. Then as the city filled up, the fields were sold in whole or in part, so they had to make further adjustments for playing on a smaller field. The elite, leisure class simply didn’t exist in large enough numbers in New York to support cricket fields.