Sorry, Minnesodans. It was a good run, but that was a tough way for it to end. And sorry to the rest of the decent, God-fearing people out there in America that will likely end up seeing the Patriots win another Super Bowl on the heels of Bama winning another CFP Playoff. Just more proof that Satan does, in fact, exist and that he is ever-watchful and playing his fucked up games on mankind.
Djoker man got bounced down under, as Federer cruised and American Tennys (that’s not a typo, btw) Sandgren upset Dominic Thiem and Limey Kyle Edmund topped Italian Andreas Seppi. On the Women’s side, three of the top 4 are in the quarterfinals, joined by Madison Keys, who will face Angelique Kerber in that round.
Not much else happened in the sports world, really. Ah fuck it. We all know plenty happened. I’m just too depressed to go into it after the Jags collapse yesterday (with the help of some convenient PI calls one way and no-calls the other). So I’m done with sports for the day. And I’l throw my energies at…the links!
The homeless problem in America is getting out of control. Sad, really, that he didn’t think to install some doors he could use to lock himself into his house when he was installing the locks he could activate to keep women in his office.
After the Democrats killed the 1 am vote overnight, Senate GOP leaders have set a noon vote to reopen government. Team Blue leaders have said there’s no deal in place and will likely attempt to prevent from happening again. I breathlessly await the myriad news stories lamenting the shutdown that’s being caused by the Democrat Party’s refusal to allow the vote to get to the floor.
Many California Democrat lawmakers are not fans of the business tax breaks (that many, many companies are sharing with their employees and customers). And their solution is to take half of the money away from those companies…or convince them its time to leave the Golden State for a place that actually wants their businesses instead of the tax money they can loot from them.
Its good to be the king. Or even a mayor who, for some reason, needed to rack up $46,000 in airfares…just to run his city government. Don’t worry though. Its not just the airfares. He also makes sure to keep the hotel staff on its toes at the ritziest spots in the places he travels to, going so far as to stay at the W Hotel in San Francisco to the tune of $919 a night. Hey, I wonder what the odds are that he bitches and complains about the government shutdown sometime today? Because, you know, there is nothing left to cut in the bloated federal budget, or even the city budget he presides over that can’t even get companies to safely invest in the bonds issued to keep the pension plans afloat.
T. Boone Pickens calling it quits. I blame global warming.
And last but not least, and with a hat tip to commenter Chafed, I bring you what will be the most under-reported on political scandal of the year. And to accomplish that feat, that means it would merely have to not be plastered all over the front pages of every newspaper for weeks on end, which it definitely deserves. But I’m pretty sure this will fall well short of even that, and will be lucky to get so much as a mention on Fox News, let alone any other major outlets on tv or much of the print media. The fact that The Hill put it on their opinion pages, when the information being reported on is a matter of public record now, tells me everything I need to know about the seriousness of the dickheads reporting on the matter. The Obama Administration made the Nixon gang look like pikers. And unless those with oversight, and that includes the media in my opinion, treat their abuses with the seriousness they deserve, it will be to the everlasting detriment of our nation.
Sorry to end those links on such a downer. but This Damn Nation has me pissed off today.
::takes deep breath…repeats “serenity now” 100 times…exhales::
I’m ok now. And I hope you are too. Forget about the assholes I listed above and have a great start to your week.
Comments
524 responses to “Monday Morning Links”
The ” what will be the most under-reported on political scandal of the year.” link also points to the T. Boone Pickens story.
*EDIT FAIRY GOT COFFEE AND FIXED IT, BLESSES LH*
and speaking of that scandal, I guess *Glenn Reynolds had it right when he called Obama “The Chocolate Nixon”.
*Is that right? ::shrugs::
It’s looking more and more like “Chocolate Daley”.
Nixon wanted to do the shit Obama thinks he got away with..
Its been fixed by someone here who is much smarter than me. Sorry for the haste with which I tried to get my rant up this morning.
FYI, the shutdown story also links to the Lauer story. I’m assuming sloopy is still recovering from the weekend. Given the sports update, it sounds like he had reason to self medicate.
I fixed it.
I believe I’ve failed in my linking this morning. Failed spectacularly.
Silver lining: at least you know people actually read the links.
It’s because we’re cackling nitpickers looking for any error to harangue people over.
Mmmmmm fairy and coffee.
#covfefe
, joined my Madison Keys – you think you own a woman? that’s sexist. And only two days after the march. For shame
*EDIT FAIRY SEZ, WUT U MEAN, M8?*
Now we’re nitpicking.
“This study aimed to determine the bra–breast forces generated in women with large breasts while these women wore different levels of breast support during both upright standing and treadmill running. The mean bilateral vertical component of the bra–breast force in standing was 11.7 ± 4.6 N, whereas during treadmill running the mean unilateral bra–breast force was 8.7 ± 6.4 N and 14.7 ± 10.3 N in the high and low support conditions, respectively.”
“Bra–breast forces generated in women with large breasts while standing and during treadmill running: Implications for sports bra design”
-McGhee D., et. al., “Applied Ergonomics” (2013)
No wonder they have future lower back problems.
http://archive.is/AIqAs
2, 4, 7, 12, 13, 36, 38, 39.
To early Q.
To Q! Dilly dilly!
I’m feeling well today so I’ll just take two of #7 and call you in the morning.
Fuck. “NOT FEELING WELL”
I’d like to fly #5’s friendly skies.
I am confused. Why would a Mayor have cause to ever travel outside the city limits on the city dime?
I believe I addressed that in the caption to the accompanying photo.
Given voting patterns, I think it’s safe to say the majority of Chicago residents are masochists.
Government is just another word for the politicians we treat as royalty together.
I don’t have an issue with that if it’s happening once a month or less. But if everyone knowshe’s staying at posh hotels, he isn’t doing his city’s bond rating any good. Warren Buffet can stay at a posh hotel, but the CEO of a small business and the mayor of the brokest-city in the country ought to be a little more careful about spending money, or neither will be in charge of anything much longer.
Not that I expect this to be a controversial position here, but even if you’re the mayor of the wealthiest city in the country you should be traveling either on the cheap or on your own dime. That’s money you took from people at gunpoint. It was supposed to be because it was “necessary”, traveling first class ain’t “necessary”.
I know, I know, pissing into the wind.
A Mayor should have no travel outside his jurisdiction on the public dime.
With teleconferencing, he can communicate with whomever he needs to without getting out of his chair.
The homeless problem in America is getting out of control. – I blame female privileged
BTW, you won the bet. You get to choose Pope Jimbo’s avatar for a week. He usually comes around a little later.
huh?
You picked the Eagles to win 23-19. You were the closest.
how is 23-19 close to 38-7?
Looking back very few people chose the eagles. Odd.
Closest and close are not the same. Tells you how bad the rest of us were.
I was the farthest off?
Uffda. I guess I should have watched the second half.
Let me know what the form of my doom will be Pie.
STEVE SMITH GIVES YOU FORM OF DOOM.
AND BY FORM MEAN PENIS.
Hmmm I literally have no idea.
elmer fudd dressed as a viking with a silly expression comes to mind.
https://worldlitup.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/elmer-fudd.jpeg
Or maybe a turnip..
“Kill da Wabbit! Kil da Wabbit! Kill da Wabbit!”
You are probably the nicest person on this board. Can’t imagine what others would’ve come up with.
In my defense I was not aware I might have to do this and such had no time to think about it.
I think I want a video of Pope Jimbo singing Kill Da Wabbit in that getup.
Trust me, you don’t want me singing.
OK, I took a stab at it. Let me know if I need to enact more labor.
Looks actually good. Maybe straffinrun is right I was to nice. But I think it is sufficient.
Nah, that is nice. He even added the score. Minnesoda nice.
Maybe you would like something a bit more Glib?
Let me know if you want to switch.
You lost a bet, not your dignity, Man! Skol – 2019.
No worries Straffin. I have been a luke warm Vikes fan for the last 15 years or so. I finally realized that I can do so many other fun things on Sundays and not get frustrated if I stopped caring.
Now I’m happy if they win, but only semi-disgusted when they choke like last night.
Best thing? Now I don’t have to care about football for another 9 months or so.
My Packer fan buddies are pissed off at me. “I would’ve been happy if they won. They got spanked and I don’t care.” “You can’t do that! You have to be miserable.” “Nah, I don’t really care.”
I like it!
I wish I would’ve won.
And endanger our Family Friendly label?!
Wouldn’t that have been much more apropos for a golf bet? I mean that guy missed the hole by a mile.
Haven’t seen a group of Vikings beaten that badly since Hardrada v. Godwinson back in ’66
You must be named Hihn’s cat
I must say that Pie’s unexpected win and the New Year’s Eve drunken gush fest have been absolutely cheering; a real pleasure to watch.
And sorry to the rest of the decent, God-fearing people out there in America that will likely end up seeing the Patriots win another Super Bowl…
If it means the Eagles lose, that’s a price I’m willing to accept. Nothing is worse than the insufferable asses that are Philadelphia sports fans.
Oh? What do think Patriot fans are like now, and how bad if they win yet again?
ESPN might have half their on air talent die from autoerotic asphyxiation.
ESPN has on-air talent?
They don’t put them in front of the camera – that would be wasteful.
^^This^^
Its the national sports media gobbling Brady’s balls that I can’t stand. Nevermind that two huge calls (a bad PI call and a missed one) likely cost the Jags that game.
The Pats really did benefit from some timely refereeing.
It’s kayfabe. Goodell and his merry band of hacks know that 40-year old Brady and his amazing dynasty story will bring in many more eyes to the Super Bowl than the Jags would have, especially with the ratings and reputation implosion the NFL has suffered. I’m not saying it’s rigged in that if the Jags had been blowing out the Pats 56-0 the refs could throw the game; but as long as it was kept close, just keep your eyes out for a few key calls here and there. Match fixing happens all the time in every sport (IMO). It’s a business after all. You want the teams that will generate the most revenue. Hell, Juventus got busted down to the 3rd division after their fixing came to light; but Serie A had known about it for years. Only after it became public did they have to take some action to try and salvage any legitimacy of the competition.
Are you serious? The Jags could have been called for pass interference every play in that game.
Their game plan seemed to be – cheap-shot the best receiver out of the game, then interfere with the rest.
Whoa, hold on now. Are you calling that hit on gronkowski a cheap shot, he turned his body and lowered his head in a guy whose entire body was perpendicular to the ground when he made contact and whose head was well within his own footprint. Gronk’s Head, on the other hand, was about three feet or so out past his footprint in an out of control manner that led to the collision.
That targeting rule needs to be fixed pronto. It rewards out of control plays by receivers and continues to penalize textbook tackling when someone engages those receivers.
Sure it was cheap. And Gronk wasn’t lowering his head, he had leapt for the ball and was just coming down. Church came in standing straight up and and drilled him the head. That contact took place well over 6 feet up.
This play is also clearly interference on the guy covering Gronk – tackled him around the ankles well before the ball got there. One of many the refs didn’t bother calling.
I see we have a Patriots fan.
I’m with Drake. That was a cheap shot in my book.
I don’t see how that guy avoids a helmet-to-helmet. It wasn’t intentional, but they are both just standing up and the defender is, I agree with Sloopy, not leaning or leading with his head.
He avoids helmet to helmet by actually opening his arms and making a tackle. Or bending his body at the waste and hitting lower. He’s 6’2″ and makes that hit standing straight up – where did he think was going to him?
ONE penalty on the Pats. Go look up all the penalties called on the Pats in the box scores of Patriots playoff games.
I thought those refs were terrible but equally bad. In the first half they weren’t calling pass interference on either team. They finally found their flags when a Pats receiver got clothes-lined before the ball arrived.
So a man, in a normal upright position for a defensive back, is expected to lower his body or to raise and wrap his arms (which I still don’t know how that would stop the primary collision point from being his chest and head with someone whose chest and head are at the same level as his and moving rapidly in his direction) in probably 1/10th or 2/10ths of a second?
I suppose dislodging the ball by maintaining your perfectly normal posture and trajectory in a split-second is right out in this age of pussifying football, yeah? Instead, a lunging receiver is supposed to be allowed to catch a slightly overthrown ball and a defensive back playing game of defense is supposed to just allow him to catch it rather than make what is a normal defensive play on the body of the receiver.
The concept of targeting on a play like that is in conflict with the concept of good of defensive hitting and body position.
I dislike the Pats, mostly because of their fair weather New England douchebag fans with a passion, but that hit on Gronk was acheap shot and the Jag defenders interfered on every fucking play, sorry.
Fairest rule?
Any player who knocks out a player by the concussion protocol should be required to sit out same amount of playing time.
The Gronk hit wasn’t anything like the one Kelce took.
Yes – you really aren’t supposed to to drill your helmet into the head of your opponent. Doesn’t seem like too much to ask of a professional athlete.
(I’ve come around on these rules since my son just missed an entire season due to a concussion.)
Turning into Rashomon. What I saw in the clip you linked was Gronk stretching and off his feet with no control where he’d end up. The DB still had control of his body, but decided to go high and *Bonk* their helmets collide.
Perhaps. But, I don’t know any Patriots fans. My brother, on the other hand, is a loutish Eagles fan.
…a loutish Eagles fan
That’s redundant.
Old Patriots fans like me consider this the payoff for sitting in that old dump of a stadium freezing our asses off watching a 2-12 team get their asses kicked all over the field.
Agreed, I had Pats season tickets one year. Interestingly Bought them on the day of the first Preseason game and back them season ticket holders got the Preseason games for free and I decided to stick around and watch the Pats – Eagles in Randall Cunningham’s first NFL game. The seats back then were literally aluminum benches no different from those used at any high school stadium.
And oh lucky me, Randall Cunningham’s first year was also the scab season. decided back then, even long before HD TV’s Football was better on TV than in person
I went to some games that year – Flutie played great.
Swiss, there’s a term that Sloopy may be familiar with to describe a certain fanbase: AAAA Arrogant Assholes from Ann Arbor. Now, unfortunately, AMNE doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as nicely, but it is rather descriptive. Although I can’t decide between that and AMBW.
Man, I haven’t heard that term in 17 or 18 years now, lol.
Sloopy, I only use it because my brother works for a contractor for FCS, and lives on the Western edge of Ann Arbor. And is constantly driven nuts by Michigan people doing Michigan things…. therefore… AAAA.
Oh, and the best part: I went to the UC-TTUN game last fall, because I wanted to see a game in The Big House before I die, and not pay $600 for tickets (we had visitor’s side, row 8 tickets for $175, fantastic seats). Anyways, my brother’s Ulitimate Frisbee team tailgates before games (mostly TSUN grads), and the one lady admits that the AAAA stereotype is really really bad inside the school’s administration.
Go Eagles! Fly baby!
FLY, EAGLES FLY!!
I could hear “fireworks” from the city for at least 45 minutes after the game. Pandemonium has set in.
As a Giants fan, I sincerely hope a meteor hits the stadium so neither team can win.
Don’t forget the sand people or the Stormtroopers. The may get to Minneapolis before Feb. 4th.
+1. But frankly, as much as it galls me, I will be rooting for the Eagles.
I am an NFC guy, so even though they are a rival to my pathetic Skins, I will be rooting for them.
/tickles WTF’s stomach with an Eagles muppet.
You’re a monster.
Beg to differ
*former Boston resident*
Okay….maybe a tie.
Vox: Some libertarians cheer when the government shuts down. Here’s why they shouldn’t.
So one paycheck came a bit late and they were paid for the time they didn’t work. Yes, I remember it. Hell on Earth.
Considering how well government workers are paid in general, I find it highly unlikely that they’re unable to budget a week or so worth of expenses. Then again, they are government employees, so I guess foresight and fiscal responsibility are foreign concepts to them…
Given how expensive the DMV is (DC, Maryland, Va) you would be surprised
Fuck back pay, they all be dismissed permanently.
Do the government workers get unemployment during the shutdown?
Some people cheer when Ezra Klein shits his pants. Here’s why they’re right.
“A government shutdown does little to nothing to change minds.”
Also, citation needed fuckhole. I think it’s very effective when people see that this “shutdown” means fuckall to their lives and maybe, just maybe, begin to question why we are continuing to pay these hundreds of thousands of “non-essential” employees.
The solution, obviously, is to throw a tantrum and intentionally make the shutdown as painful as possible even if it means spending more money to stick it to the plebs.
Exactly why they all know that they can’t afford to let a shutdown go more than 3 or 4 weeks, the jig would be up.
The last Minnesoda state shutdown ended when Gov Mumbles caved on a lot of issues. One of the things that pushed him was a deadline for beer and cigarette licensing. If I remember correctly (and I’m too lazy to look it up) the manufacturers of booze and cigs have to get re-licensed ever year or so and since that dept was shut down, those products were going to have to be pulled from shelves.
I’m sure the grifters in govt didn’t want us suckers to realize that the only reason that we couldn’t get our hooch was because of a stupid piece of paper.
You know what would be fun? A law that said any time there is a shutdown, only 75% of the employees could be brought back.
Think of the backstabbing and infighting that would happen.
Or maybe just make the selection of the 25% be random. That would be cool too.
That’s how “real” corporate budgets actually operate, except you don’t shut down the company as an intermediate step. They just tell you that your budget is reduced by 10% and you get 2 weeks to tell them who you’re going to cut while still delivering everything that you promised to deliver before your budget was cut.
“Under principled small government,” you wouldn’t have to ask for permission / a passport.
A Passport is not so much for the country it’s issued by. It’s to tell all the other countries who you pay your protection money to and to let you flee back there when the shit hits the fan.
In my dream world those issuing countries would also have principled small government.
Now you’re just getting into Utopian fantasy.
uncertainty of not being paid for weeks likely caused short-term financial stress as well as decreased economic activity.
If you work for the government after the shutdown in 2013, and 2011, and all the others before, and you did not properly budget for such a possibility, you deserve whatever you have coming to you.
“Blah blah blah blah blah. Here’s why blah blah blah blah.”
Fun little interaction with a female relative on FB yesterday.
My post: Only in America can 50 Shades of Gray be a best seller one moment and MeToo become the hottest trend the next.
Middle aged female relative responds: I did NOT read 50 Shades of Gray or go to the movie. Sadly and unfortunately I can say me too. Your comment is deeply insensitive to those of us who have had to deal with the shame and pain for fear of not being believed or mocked. Not funny.
My response: Block it you don’t like it. If you think I was mocking you, I don’t know what to say besides, No, I wasn’t.
Her response: How about I’m sorry…
Me: You apology accepted.
Result? Unfriended. I wish I was able to make up conversations like that.
Jesus these people.
These days you can say almost anything and it’s likely to induce a demand for an apology from the perpetually outraged and offended class.
“perpetually outraged and offended class”
Membership limited to non-white cishetero shitlords.
Your response was perfect.
Actually, I have to give it to my brother. He came up with this doozy. Not that she’d understand.
Was she sexually assaulted? She wrote as if she was.
To be honest, I don’t know. We haven’t met for about 10 or 15 years. We’d all have sympathy for a victim of sexual assault, but when they do this kind of stuff…
Some of this stuff coming out doesn’t qualify as sexual assault. The definition has widened to the point of obfuscation. Like racist or Nazi.
Male gaze!
/#MeToo
So, your relative cites her misfortune as a means of evading the fundamental point you raised. Whatever her experience, what you cite is a real phenomenon. And, yes, there is a significant overlap in the two populations.
I’d say it was intellectually dishonest, but people today seem too unable to hold to a coherent line of reasoning to blame it on actual bad faith.
I agree. It wasn’t intellectually dishonest. No one white knighted for her, so at least that’s something.
1. It’s only the hot dudes you wanna fuck who can get away with that shit. Of course, if he doesn’t fall in love with you, then things can get nasty.
2. 50 Shades of Grey (which I did not read because it is an 89% ripoff of Twilight, which pisses me off to no end) is a fantasy, but those types won’t admit to having those fantasies.
3. #metoo invalidates assault victims who cope by having rape fantasies.
4. Rape fantasies (at least according to Nancy Friday in her studies in the 70s and 80s) are overwhelmingly popular sexual fantasies (like a consistent 60% over time, which stat I am not going to look up because I am lazy).
5. None of these people want to admit to reading it, much less enjoying it (or even, shall I say, get off on it).
6. I’m not sure the women who actually read romance voraciously (oh, and everything else they can get their hands on) care even a little bit about #metoo, and the ones who do are SJWs who feel guilty about it but can’t give up their drug. I don’t know what that population is, but I bet it’s tiny by comparison.
7. I have another rant about a) gay romance and the prevalence of male-on-male rape and wow, how hot that is and no, it’s not contradictory at all and STFU we don’t want to hear you complain about our hypocrisy because it’s not the same; and b) clamoring for more beta-male heroes who will not sell well and that is because too many romance readers are unenlightened rubes (I would say “committing wrongthink,” but the contempt trends to “rube”).
Sounds like an article submission to me.
No kidding. Jordan Peterson is the new Trump, making it ok for anti women to spew their vile beliefs.
Would it require me to actually READ said works in question? Because I cannot stand the OH NOEZ! GIRL COOTIES IN MAH BUTTSEX! books. Actually, I don’t like m/m at all, but the venomous hatred of any woman BY WOMEN who appears in HoYay! romance gets to me. The female secondary characters (if there are any) are always villains or faghags, and then there’s…
Bisexual romance. OMG. The politics bisexuals get caught up in are actually quite pathetic. I kinda feel sorry for them. I find that straight folks by and large don’t really have a problem with bisexuals. Get it where you can get it, amiright?! It’s gay folks who are bitter and hateful.
Probably no reading required. You already seem to be familiar enough with them, and personally I’m less interested in the works themselves than the politics and feelz surrounding them.
Also, I just realized that if m/m rape romance is so common and loved, there’s not only a market for STEVE SMITH books, that market is very likely already being served. And now I’m a bit ill.
Would read.
Why would a Mayor have cause to ever travel outside the city limits on the city dime?
Sometimes, it is necessary to strut and preen amongst one’s “peers”.
Idiots on Bloomberg are moaning and groaning about the “government shutdown”.
*looks around*
The government is still running.
“running”
I Don’t Care If Aziz Ansari is Sad
In a world where literally no government or private power structure is female equal, let alone female dominated
I take it this asshole has never participated in a PTA, visited a nurses station at a hospital or been involved in administering a HOA.
I like how he’s blissfully unaware that current American culture and society is all about catering to women’s sensibilities.
Some people live in a bizarro world where American society is violently misogynistic, Hollywood is racist, and the media is unfairly biased against Democrats. I’m serious.
I wonder if prioritizing catering to women’s sensibilities in a capitalist society is inevitable. Women still make/have veto power over 80% of purchasing decisions, and capitalism is all about catering to what the consumer wants.
or just about any HR department. And the top-level admin assistants here at my job.
. . . or dealt with the DHS, CPS, or other social work agency. . .
Or had his kids taken away by a (female) judge for no reason other than his ex-wife’s feelings were hurt.
/Haven’t seen my 3 teenage children for eleven months now. Because, you know, I wasn’t the husband my ex needed me to be. No abuse (verbal, emotional, physical). She just decided it was time to “move on” & that my shitty husbandry deserved a stint away from my 3 kids with whom I was extremely engaged & close.
Damn man, I’m sorry to hear that.
It would freaking break me if my wife ever did that.
Or family court.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
In a world where literally no government or private power structure is female equal, let alone female dominated, it is impossible for feminism to have gone “too far.”
It’s now common for progs to admit quite openly that they tolerate and encourage individual acts of injustice and double standards provided the victims, in their opinion, benefit from some sort of pre-existing power structure.
The suggestion that you can’t really be unfair to someone who has broadly similar chromosomes to Donald Trump, or the same melanin content as him, because structural power, is self-evidently the opposite of justice. But in the past year or so it’s gone from being an attitude that they would only imply to something that they will happily admit to.
Females only represent a tiny fraction of homicides, suicides, homelessness, workplace deaths, and incarcerations. There are federal programs specifically for female entrepreneurs. Females don’t have to register for the Selective Service. Divorce courts are basically a system of transfer payments from men to women.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. I’m very unsympathetic to the idea that women are oppressed in the Western world.
DYSFUNCTIONALITEEZ!
From the Lynch / Comey article
I have that problem to when I press “delete all messages”. so strange.
It’s sort of odd how every time Democrats are questioned over some apparently bad behavior, emails disappear, hard drives crash, even entire servers wind up in Hillary Clinton’s basement. I’m not sure how that happens. It’s a mystery we may never solve.
It amazes me that nobody seems to think this stuff is a big deal (outside of the Team R echo chamber). It isn’t like this is the first time they’ve run this play. Every time there’s something potentially incriminating out there, the backups and archive systems magically don’t work. The IRS one was fantastic…. everyone was keeping their own personal email archive in a .PST file on their laptop…. and the hard drives all just so happened to crash at the same time. And we accidentally destroyed them all rather than trying to recover the data.
That one didn’t pass the giggle test, but now that we are on round 3 or 4 of evidence not being preserved, you’d think that someone would start to take notice. And the fact that this only dates to the precise period of interest doesn’t seem to phase anyone.
There used to be a time when the fourth estate prided themselves on holding the powerful accountable. Now they are just partisan hacks. Nixon went down over 18 minutes of deleted tape. These guys have repeatedly erased months of data, and nobody seems to think it is important.
Also, why are we pretending that their little handheld devices are the only source for this data? Doesn’t the telco have copies of the texts? What about the NSA? I thought we were slurping up everything and holding it just in case the court needs it?
And more crazy talk: Why is it that every time this comes around, they wait for months to tell us that they don’t have the data. I mean, it just looks bad. If you came back right away and said “we are having trouble finding it… it might be lost” and then came back and said “it looks like there was a configuration problem with this type of phone”, maybe I’d believe it. But waiting around for months and then saying you don’t have it makes me think that you spent those months figuring out how to send all of the data down a black hole and make sure that there are no alternative paths to retrieving the data. It might all be innocent, but it sure does make it look a lot worse when they don’t immediately come up with “we may not have it”.
Democrats understand that a good percentage of their constituents are dumber than a proverbial bag of rocks. That’s how they were able to make the Clinton server fiasco all about using personal email. Because their typical dumb voter doesn’t know the difference between personal email and a server. Everyone uses personal email, right? Yeah, sure, but does everyone take the State Dept email server home and put it in a closet? You can actually try to explain this to them, but they don’t understand it.
Democrats also have the advantage of their supporters thinking that any and all opposition is literally Hitler.
It’s really hard, but you can corner them on this stuff and get them to admit that Democrat politicians are guilty of some serious misdeeds, but they’ll just throw up their hands and declare that the alternative is just sooooo terrible that the only ethical option is to let this slide and pull that blue lever again.
Don’t forget that they firmly believe that the end justifies the means, and the enemy needs too be defeated at any cost, so illegal or unfair is fine.
Case in point: Any of the fuck sticks that post on TOS. Also all of reddit.
Were they ever not partisan hacks? The biggest difference between Nixon and Clinton, Obama, and the current bureaucrats abusing their power is that Nixon had an (R) next to his name. Guys like Walter Duranty were less concerned on holding the powerful accountable and more concerned that the wrong Top Men got torn down and the right Top Men were able to build a more just society no matter how many corpses needed to be covered up.
And unless those with oversight, and that includes the media in my opinion, treat their abuses with the seriousness they deserve, it will be to the everlasting detriment of our nation.
Yes, but it also includes the Department of Justice. And where is Sessions on this? Oh, yeah, right, he’s too busy worrying about potheads in Colorado to worry about officials trying to bring down the very government he’s a part of.
Yeah, but don’t go poking him. If you get him all riled up, he might go on a campaign against online porn.
The greatest threat to America is pot heads serfing pr0n. Everyone knows this.
Given the abrupt personal and economic disruption shutdowns cause, they may actually hurt the cause of small government. During the last shutdown before the present one, in 2013, approximately 850,000 federal workers were furloughed for 17 days. For many of them, the uncertainty of not being paid for weeks likely caused short-term financial stress as well as decreased economic activity.
Boo
fucking
hoo.
850,000. Damn.
The feds apparently employ 2.7 million people, excluding the military.
Still, I’m shocked that they laid off that many, since they don’t touch military, social security, medicare, medicaid, homeland security … basically everything except for the last 10% or so of the budget.
For this (and the last) shut-down, they have told military that they might not be paid and furloughed a significant amount of the DOD civilian workforce.
50% of my branch was sent home, and we have a significantly higher % staying than others. We’re “operationally essential” to the mission.
I was declared essential today. I was looking forward to some unpaid leave.
It’s just so traumatizing waiting for political theater to play out so I can get my back pay from the “shutdown”.
So we should be worried that government workers might not like small government? Guess what, there are a lot of people who don’t work for government and don’t even know the shutdown occurred.
What I would give (checks my pockets and finds a dime and some lint) to see Trump publicly announce that in order to follow the “Anti Deficiency Act” and relevant portions of the USC that all furloughed Federal employees will not be receiving any backpay for the government shutdown. Once that sinks in to the 800,000+ democrat voters who’ll be impacted the calls into the Dems will change fast and hard. “End this now! Fuck the dreamers and pass a budget before my bills come due.”
The real question is, how will they ensure that registered non-citizen voters don’t cast votes in national elections?
I think we would need a new law (maybe just enforcing current law, don’t know) that the only voters eligible to vote in a national election are those who pass a federal screen (not registered in multiple jurisdictions, not a felon, confirmed citizenship, probably others). It would be a pretty major restructuring of our current election system, even if you could do it without passing a law. So it will never happen.
What if we collide with Bigfoot on I-80?
This guy writes “humor” about as well as I do. ::brushes tiny piece of dust off of tie::
How do you “barely” believe in something?
I barely believe in God. I believe that there is a is a higher power capable of creation, but He can only create a small moon, not the whole universe.
I barely believe that the Holocaust happened. I believe that Nazis tried to gas the Jews, but they only got 4 or 5 tops.
STEVE SMITH BARELY BELIEVE #METOO. HIM KNOW PEOPLE RAPED, BUT HIM NOT GET AROUND TO RAPE ALL THOSE PEOPLE YET.
what if Bigfoot carries her off and makes her his mate?
MATE? HA.
STEVE A LOVE EM AND LEAVE EM KIND OF GUY.
HIM NOT INTO COMMITMENT.
“unless those with oversight, and that includes the media in my opinion, treat their abuses with the seriousness they deserve, it will be to the everlasting detriment of our nation”
Since the media’s job is to decide which stories to suppress based on how favorable they are to Democrats, and Congress has voluntarily given up their oversight power (along with all the rest of their power), I foresee the Dems using police state tactics like this in perpetuity, and if the Pubs try to do the same, they will get flayed alive. It sure would be nice to have actual journalists and not just a bunch of political hacks; and it sure would be nice to have Congressional representatives that actually gave a damn about the health and well-being of the Nation. Since we have neither, I think we’ve crossed the Rubicon here. Captain Zero and his band of thugs were just testing the water to see what they could get away with. Now that they know the answer is “anything”, expect things to get a lot worse.
I keep hoping there’ll be some young gun out there who wants to become famous and goes digging. Not likely, but not impossible.
The revelation was included in 384 pages of text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and it significantly diminishes the credibility of Lynch’s earlier commitment to accept Comey’s recommendation
How do you diminish something that’s at zero already?
She was perfectly committed to accepting his recommendation. Right after she told him what to recommend.
Seriously, you don’t have to be a tinfoil hat wearing lunatic to believe with near certainty that they had coordinated with each other. The thing is, if Trump hadn’t won, most of this would’ve have easily been buried.
Trumps election is what you call a tragic irony for all these government officials who worked against them.
Kid Rock sends $122k made from fake Senate run to voter group.
With that attitude, its a shame he’s not running.
Or that he isn’t already elected.
The horror… the horror…
Ruth Bader Ginsburg reveals her own #MeToo experiences during Sundance sit-down
…And?
Exactly
I think what she meant is “Being a 20 year old woman and in reasonably good shape is a super-power. I was able to flirt my way into getting my professor to allow me to cheat on a chemistry exam simply by batting my eyelashes at him. This stupid guy probably never even realized why he helped me like that.”
I’d need to see pictures of young RBG to make a judgment*.
*wink wink.
The best you will get is a painting.
on a cave wall
She passed.
It’s all about reading cues and minds with these idiots. Nevermind that words making actual requests, demands or offering consent are ever considered viable options with them.
Words are just one facet in what we like to call ‘full spectrum’ consent. You better watch out, I’m sure you looked at a woman who didn’t give you consent.
I always hear that women are “more assertive”, yet there are these stories where they’re afraid to say “stop”, “don’t do that”, or “I’m going home”. I recall the phase “paralyzed with fear” in more than a few of these accounts.
It sort of damages the case for women being treated as independent human beings at all. I mean, if women are going to get paralyzed with fear because some guy is being too touchy-feely or making some sexual innuendo at work, wouldn’t it make logical sense for women to be controlled and chaperoned by a father, brother, or husband at all times? Also, if women are this timid, how is it acceptable at all for women to be in the military or police? Finally, if the female will is truly this weak, wouldn’t it make perfect sense for there to be some discrimination in employment, especially in high-pressure fields like corporate sales and legal practice?
Of course, I don’t believe that’s the case. I think most of these #metoo stories are just attention-seeking and civil rights LARPing. I’m just pointing out that once again, if you follow the “progressive” logic to its conclusion, you end up in a very bad place.
civil rights LARPing.
I believe they refer to themselves as AntiFa?
Unless she’s a fool, naïf, or hundreds of years old, this is a lie. “Getting fresh” is an old-timey term for sexual harassment, and the expected response on the part of a woman facing this was to slap the perpetrator to make it clear that such behavior was not acceptable.
I could believe this option,
Is that in doubt?
Fucking liches, man!
I had a dragon lady harridan for a supervisor once (I loved her so much) who was gorgeous in her day (1930s – 1950s). She said it only happened once and she threatened to put a broomhandle up his ass, and was perfectly capable of doing it. She didn’t bluff.
Me? I acted oblivious to my lecherous boss’s come-ons and enthusiastically told him about a stalker I had and that my way of dealing with him was a nine-millimeter pointed at his head. No more issues.
That’s feminism.
+1 Effective communication
+1 9mm and a broom-handle FTW.
Excellent.
There’s a good chance I’m about to be the next victim of this influenza. Low-grade fever, and reading that made me begin to design in my had a device that fires 9mm broom-handles ass-wards.
Otherwise known as a heat-seeking missile?
Here’s the best part of the gubmint shutdown.
“Thank you for calling the White House,” a cheerful-sounding woman’s voice says in the outgoing message. “Unfortunately, we cannot answer your call today. Congressional Democrats are holding government funding, including funding for our troops and other national security priorities, hostage to an unrelated immigration debate. Due to this obstruction, the government is shut down. In the meantime, you can leave a comment at http://www.whitehouse.gov, forward-slash contact. We look forward to taking your calls as soon as the government reopens.”
*golfclap*
… wait. Who calls the White House?
James Madison?
Well balanced, sane and very polite people?
/Bizzaro World
And Hyperion, apparently?
Putin?
(but he just giggles and hangs-up)
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Now they (Bloombergousie) have Larry Summers on.
“We don’t know why the economy is better, but we definitely shouodn’t give Trump any credit for it!”
Well, it can’t be that tax scam the GOP forced on us. I think it’s because Obama is doing something behind the scenes.
Indeed, he did do something to help the markets, he stopped being president.
Realistically no it can’t and to a large extent Summers is right, Trump should not be getting any credit for the hot economy right now. Where Summers is lying, no not just wrong I am pretty sure he is outright lying because I’ll bet he knows this is when he claims “we don’t know why the economy is hot right now”. Yes we do know why it is hot. It is plainly and obviously the impact of a growing inflationary bubble. All of the trillions of dollars the Fed created to keep the economy afloat at all during the Obama administration couldn’t stay locked up in assets forever and an inflationary bubble was an inflationary result.
Thing is if a guy like Summers admits that this is inflation and not real economic growth we are seeing then it means they can’t blame Trump for the inevitable crash in 1 – 3 years so he lies and says “we don’t know why it is happening”
They would still blame Trump.
I’m not really qualified to whine about those football games, because I kept falling asleep.
I heard there was a “big” game on… and then proceeded to work on building a tube amplifier, watching the first episode of a fairly bad BBC series called Musketeers, and playing an hour or two of Zelda.
Which one?
The new one on Switch – Breath of the Wild
Philly fans:
https://twitter.com/djhomicide/status/955273413630685184
After moving to Philly from Pittsburgh, my wife couldn’t believe Philly sports fans were actually more sedate than Stiller/Pirates/Penguin fans. Apparently the Yinzers are
quite a loony bunch.
As you go farther west to Columbus you get even loonier.
Going into day 2 of the government shutdown. The dead are piling up in the streets, victims of uncertain paychecks. Government employees with kids have sent them off to fend for themselves in the chaotic private sector, unable to feed them without a six page memo directing proper fork safety. I myself have been a victim of unspeakable horrors brought about by a chain of command with no direction (#metoo). My wife is threatening to leave me without a steady paycheck and I’m afraid I won’t last the night. Good bye cruel world. Damn you libertarians, you know not what you wreak.
Damn libertarians have shut down the world again?
First they ended the Internet by banning Net Neutrality, now this!
Roads are next I suppose.
::sends out rescue party along with a $10 check::
I wondered why there was quite a big line at my “Orphans Apply for Jobs Here” office this morning.
Most are probably still left over from all the people Net Neutrality killed.
The gubbermint shutdown has really slowed the body pick-up service.
Nobody to take em to the compost piles.
With the casualties from Net Neutrality, the tax cut, and now the government shutdown, I’m convinced I am an extra in a John Ringo novel. I’ve made preparations to raid the home if my former boss, victim of the tax cuts, for firearms before searching the local LDS church for a list of likely doomsday bunkers. I know this message will only reach the 37 instances of TulpaAI that comment here, but I felt the need to send out one last message.
::sends out rescue party along with a third party out-of-state check::
17-year-old killed in officer-involved shooting in Overland Park
Typical “he’s coming right at us!” justification. I can’t imagine the kid was that much of a threat coming out of the garage. Why not back off to safe grounds?
“Police were called to the area of 149th Terrace and England Street in Overland Park on Saturday evening to check on a person in distress who was threatening to harm himself.”
Well, if you want the person to succeed in harming their self, then call the cops.
Don’t call the cops unless you want someone dead, because the only tool in their kit is force.
JFC. The ad that plays before the video is for garage doors.
Is that intersectionality?
Do they mention if they’re bullet-resistant?
Yeah, how about stepping out of the way of the car. Be interesting to see how that plays out locally: that’s an upper-middle class part of the KC Metro area. But, judging by the comments, cop defenders are already out in force.
This seems to be my curse. I go to Olathe, and as soon as I leave, there’s a bar shooting of some Indians by an idiot who thought they were Arab. I go to Lenexa, and right after I leave, they find body parts in a storage facility. I just got back from Overland Park…
/looks innocent and whistles tunelessly
Dials 9-1 on phone…
I live down the street from where it happened. OP cops are typically the more laid back from my experiences with them. There was a swatting incident just a week ago and they handled very professionally.
Let’s beer next time I’m down there.
Definitely, just make sure we avoid Austin’s, or any storage facilities… Actually Austin’s a great bar. We ate there the Friday before the shooting. By no means a bad part of town, just some random nut bag.
That’s the thing with these incidents. Since the police have hundreds of thousands of interactions per year, most go perfectly fine. And even when they don’t go fine, they usually don’t end up with anybody dead, and it doesn’t make the papers. But every once in a while they really, really screw up.
So if you are the police, your lived experience is “these idiots are just out to get us. There’s nothing to see here, we do a great job!”
But if your brother gets executed because he’s walking in circles and talking to the voices in his head, maybe you have a little different opinion about what a failure rate of 0.001% means.
Had to check in with my sister. She’s right around the corner from there. My neices go to a similarly named but different high school.
Ya all the schools are directional. There is Blue Valley North, Northwest, West, Southwest and then just plain Blue Valley.
OMG How many KC’ers are here? We’re in Liberty.
I’m down there every few weeks or so. Nice town, which surprised me.
If you find yourself this way, give me a holler. esb10 at b10mediaworx dot com. Real name Elizabeth.
Will do with you and LJW. I spent last week down there, so likely to be back in about 3 weeks or so.
I thought I was the KC area loner, but I guess not.
Not me. I lived in JoCo in the 1990s and early oughts.
Close enough now that I get to Jack Stack’s a couple of times a year.
I lived in Lansing, when I was stationed at Leavenworth for 3 years.
Probably, overall, the best place the Army ever sent me, and I was at Monterey for two years.
::raises hand, goes back to sleep::
I hate hate hate the term “officer- involved shooting”.
What happened, did the officer’s weapon magically ‘discharge’ on it’s own again?
TW: Salon
When women have a union: What’s next for #MeToo in the workplace
Whoever wrote that needs to take an elementary course in writing. That’s all I’m saying. Not that properly constructed sentences and grammar would give that tripe any meaning.
It’s part of an interview – but yeah, not a concise speaker / thinker.
Celebrity Interview’s
SAG awards were last night. I imagine this is how some of the interviews went.
“SAG awards”
Is that the senior senior version of a Q link?
It’s what you would expect
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/21/entertainment/kristen-bell-2018-sag-awards-host/index.html
Don’t care what she thinks or says…
Absolutely would
Her sister Elsa had the better body.
An ominous prophecy for liberalism
http://theweek.com/articles/749378/ominous-prophecy-liberalism
In this American moment of political, cultural, and economic turbulence and anxiety, we do not lack for explanations of the cause. Rising inequality, persistent racism and xenophobia, technologically fueled ideological polarization — these and many other theories can be found in a slew of opinion columns, essays, academic studies, and books.
There’s some truth in most of them, no doubt. But none of them can match the power of the breathtakingly radical explanation contained in Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed, which is probably why the just-published book has already received so much attention in the pages of The New York Times. It’s the most electrifying book of cultural criticism published in some time, and it’s hard to imagine its radicalism being surpassed anytime soon
Meh …
Liberalism failed because it was hijacked by the far left. And what did that lead to? It led to things like the following in the twisted minds of so called liberals:
“In this American moment of political, cultural, and economic turbulence and anxiety”
Liberalism died, like um, over 100 years ago.
Critics are calling it “The next Democracy in Chains“
It’s all made up in the fever dreams of the author, then?
Economic turbulence ? Did I miss something?
Florida police search for suspect after two IEDs detonate at mall
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/22/florida-police-search-for-suspect-after-two-ieds-detonate-at-mall.html
***
Investigators said they are looking for a person of interest, described as a middle-aged white man with a heavy or stocky build who was wearing a grey shirt and grey hat. The man’s name was not released.
***
Was he intending to miss people? He set the devices in a service corridor.
I read that they were PVC pipes with a flare in them. They damaged some ceiling tiles.
So probably just intended to cause mischief. You could get hurt by such a device, but it isn’t really much of an anti-personal device. An upgrade from dry ice in a 2-liter bottle, but not really all that much more.
Not exactly what the term “IED” brings to mind.
Hey, coming across old 155 shells isn’t s as easy in Florida as it is in other places.
Hrmm…
*wonders if they have any at the Watervliet Arsenal*
With the government shutdown the arsenal is cash and carry, right?
From my recollection, Watervliet does gun tubes, but not explosives.
The bunkerbuster bombs they dropped on Saddam’s palaces were their gun tubes stuffed with explosives and tipped with delay fuses.
‘Serial stowaway’ arrested for 10th time after slipping past airport security in Chicago, police say
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2018/01/22/serial-stowaway-arrested-for-10th-time-after-slipping-past-airport-security-in-chicago-police-say.html
***
Sources told CBS Chicago that the most recent security footage shows Hartman wandering around O’Hare for two days last week before boarding a British Airways flight Monday. She managed to evade the gate attendant by “blending in with the passengers,” Chicago police told the Chicago Sun-Times. Sources did not address how she made it past TSA checkpoints to get to the gate.
Once on the aircraft, she hid in the bathroom, then found an empty seat. The airline warned Heathrow airport officials that they had a stowaway on the incoming flight. The pesky passenger was sent back to the US when she couldn’t produce a passport and was arrested Thursday upon arrival at O’Hare.
A TSA spokesman said Hartman was screened at the security checkpoint, but managed to get by without a ticket. It’s unclear how she evaded federal authorities.
***
I hope OFFICE MANAGER MOHAMMED doesn’t read this story and get any ideas.
10th time???
They should hire her as a security consultant.
+1 Ada Quonsett
Her is what I don’t get…
How exactly did she manage to find one of the 0.0001% of flights that weren’t overbooked?
Transatlantic between US an UK, I’ve only flown four times, but in at least one occassion, there was enough unoccupied space that both seats next to me were empty and the flight crew were nonchalant about letting people move to seats with more room because there was no one to occupy them.
Flying to somewhere worse than Chicago?
The case for ending Amazon’s dominance
What is it with people who want to “end things” as opposed to letting the market do it?
Amazon is not a monopoly in the classic sense.
Envy.
It’s the leverage by which the weaponized sloth that is Marxism gets its hooks in and breaks the established order.
That they’re ‘unfair to suppliers’ is weak sauce.
Even if it were a monopoly, as Thomas Sowell points out in Basic Economics, that’s not a real problem as long as the threat of competition still exists.
Yes, it is almost like the writer is unaware of the fact that Wal Mart is sitting there just waiting for Amazon to stumble just a little bit.
Hell if this guy had any clue how much of the internet Amazon controlled he’d probably shit himself
Fuck off slaver.
They’re a bigger juggernaut that Sears in the 70’s!
And they will face a similar fate if they slip up.
Funny how the laws of business work out sometimes.
But to people like this guy, they have to *intervene*.
Baidu and Alibaba will soon be tendering their buyout offers in cash. So we needn’t worry about the Amazon monopoly – they are just a middle man to suppliers on Alibaba anyway….
I mean look at Google, 5 years ago, they looked unstoppable. Now they are playing catch-up on many fronts, as well as seeing decreased revenue growth in their key space, search engine advertisment.
something something Microsoft
and Standard Oil
And before that, IBM
Woolworths.
I highly suspect the diersity initiatives might have had a hand in that.
*snark*Progressive Politics over ability? Now there’s a winning combination!*/snark*
Because Google decided to be SJW retards.
What do you expect from an outfit that calls themselves the statist times?
They said the same thing about Target, then Walmart, now Amazon. These fools never learn. Retail is not something that has ever tended towards monopoly.
Retail is an industry of niche roles.
California Democrats want some businesses to fork over half tax-cut savings to state
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/22/california-democrats-want-some-businesses-to-fork-over-half-tax-cut-savings-to-state.html
***
Calling the Trump administration’s tax reform plan a “middle-class tax increase,” two California lawmakers introduced a bill that would force large companies to fork over half of their expected savings to the state.
Assemblymen Kevin McCarty and Phil Ting, both Democrats, introduced Assembly Constitutional Amendment 22, which calls for a 10 percent surcharge on companies with a net earnings over $1 million. The plan could potentially raise billions for the state’s social services programs.
“It is unconscionable to force working families to pay the price for tax breaks and loopholes benefiting corporations and wealthy individuals,” Ting said in a statement, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. “This bill will help blunt the impact of the federal tax plan on everyday Californians by protecting funding for education, affordable health care and other core priorities.”
***
Pound. head. on. desk.
“It is unconscionable to force working families to pay the price for tax breaks and loopholes benefiting corporations and wealthy individuals”
What does that even mean?
“Who are you going to believe, us, or your lying eyes?”
“What does that even mean?”
It means: keep voting for us and we promise to take care of you with other people’s money
The SF Chronicle piece referred to in that Fox story was a pretty good one too.
The comments were brutal.
They also are working on a nice wrinkle to get around the maximum exemption for state and local taxes. They want to set up a charitable foundation and allow people to donate any amount of taxes owed above the $10k…. allowing them to write it off on their federal taxes. This charity would go directly to the state.
Somehow I think you’d go to jail for that sort of scheme if you were a person and not a government.
Also on this topic, the coverage indicates that the “average exemption claimed” in California is $22k.
I didn’t look into it, but I’m going to guess that this number is ” if you look at only the people who claim an itemized deduction on their federal taxes for California state and local taxes, the average claim is $22k. ” Because there is no way the average person in California pays $22k in State and local taxes.
This is dishonest reporting. If they were to report it accurately, they’d have to say “most Californians do not itemize their state taxes, and of those that do, most do not reach the $10k threshold. But of those who do, most pay way in excess of $10k and will experience a large hit on their tax bill”
Which is kinda the opposite of the “middle class tax hike” they are trying to portray it as. Looking at an online tax calculator, it looks like you’d have to earn about $150k to hit the $10k threshold as a single taxpayer….. that’s before any exemptions.
If you are married with a couple of kids and own a home, it is more than $200k.
Here’s what I found on this, because it didn’t sit well with me either. From the LA Times on Dec 19:
“A third of California taxpayers take an average state and local tax deduction of $22,000. ”
So that’s at least a little bit clearer, stating that this 22k average is only taking into account 1/3rd of taxpayers and ignoring the other 2/3rds in the calculation.
Story link: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-tax-bill-qa-20171219-htmlstory.html
Here’s what I don’t get. Well off Democrats have been saying for a long time that they want to pay more taxes. Here’s their change, what’s the problem? Were they lying?
‘chance’, not change.
They want OTHER PEOPLE to pay more in taxes…
They want to set up a charitable foundation and allow people to donate any amount of taxes owed above the $10k
First, they will have to set up a state tax credit, not a deduction, for that charitable donation. And I suspect it will be a tax credit only for a donation to that foundation, not any charitable donation. Having a tax credit for only that one foundation, sponsored by the state, makes it look like a pretext, not a genuine charity. Which might be survivable, except . . . .
Then, they will have to get around the fact that there is a fairly limited definition of “charitable” in the federal tax code that wouldn’t include money ultimately used for many government functions – regulatory agencies, cops, courts, etc. The foundation could really only support medical care and education, which are the biggest chunks of the state budget, but for municipalities probably not, since schools aren’t paid for out of the municipality’s budget but out of the separate school district budget.
Bottom line: not impossible, but I think it would be very difficult to make it work. They would have to keep the charitable donations outside of the general fund, I believe, which will cause all kinds of appropriations, budgeting, and spending problems.
And they wonder why the state is perceived as hostile to business.
Open question: SP and I decided to take a weekend vacation Feb 3 and 4. We thought about descending on SugarFree, but he’ll be elsewhere that weekend. Then we thought about MPS to meet some of our regulars, but Super Bowl weekend there might not be the best idea. So… suggestions? Restriction is that it needs to be within a day drive of Glibertarian Command Headquarters in northern IL.
A day’s drive for who? Are we talking Trucker regulatory driving day? Pushing it with a lead foot? Sedate crawl along the interstate the with left blinker on for eighty miles?
And how much candy do we get?
You get dried plums. In fancy packaging.
Assume I’m doing 50 in the left lane with my blinker going the whole time and shaking my fist at all those maniacs passing me on the right.
You must be an old man – that’s how my dad drives!
I am your father, Luke.
Or at least you banged his mom?
Damn, that won’t get you anywhere near things I can recommend.
Looking at a map go at that big lake thing there and take a boat to Canada.
or go to oshkosh. I like the sound of it
Oshkosh can be charitably described as an armpit.
Fina back to the map. Ok there is something called Lake Geneva. Go there. You can pretend to be in Europe
jesus there a lot of fucking lakes on that map
We have at least 12 lakes within a 10 km radius of our house. And one practically in our back yard. There’s a reason this is called Lake County.
The glaciers had to go somewhere when global warming melted them.
Until the airplanes show up.
That’s where I heard that name before. An airplane oriented webcomic called chicken wings
Oshkosh is great! I had a client there and spent many a night watching Wisconsians in their native habitat (dingy road houses).
Why not do a Lake Winnebago tour? Appleton, Oshkosh, and Fond du Lac. They were all named in the top 10 drunkest US cities at one time.
South. You could be in Nashville in a day. Not sure what’s happening there in February but should be warmer than Chicago.
I second that. Chicago’s damned cold. Nashville’s warmer and was a pretty good time last I went. Or shoot, go to Graceland.
Why but just get a nice suite somewhere nearby with lots of restaurants and bars around. Get one with a jacuzzi or 2 person shower. Go to an area that you normally don’t go to.
We’re trying to be gentle on our budget- my ex wife hasn’t had the good manners to die yet.
STEVE SMITH HAS ROOM AT THE INN.
My wife and I have been talking about going to Bay City, MI – supposed to be some good antique shopping there, along with a place that specializes in Mid Mod. I expect to be disappointed which is par for the course for a lot of smaller cities.
At one time there was a lot to do in Ann Arbor – a store specializing in Japanese kitsch, multiple record stores, a massive Borders book store, and a restuarant with great & inexpensive Middle Eastern food. Now a lot of it is gone.
That does look interesting. Maybe we can coordinate?
Sorry AA has gone downhill, though Zingerman’s alone might be worth a trip.
We’re planning on an Ann Arbor trip – a chance to get some Kallax shelves to record storage – so we probably won’t do Bay City until the Spring. But I would have to check with “She Who Must be Obeyed”.
Years ago wife and I did a staycation. And looked for a bunch of free or inexpensive things to do around town. Toured our Statehouse for free which came with a history lesson and some cool artifacts and paintings to look at. Free or optional donation art galleries. Inexpensive museums. Found some old mansions near town to tour cheap that also had some artifacts that tied in with our Statehouse tour. Went to restaurants we had never been to. Was a lot of fun really.
I used to be able to card into the state capitol.
I won’t go back unless I can skip the metal detectors again.
…my ex wife hasn’t had the good manners to die yet.
I’d have thought the proud owner of a windowless van would’ve come up with a solution for that.
/jk
Saugatuck Michigan is a touristy-but-quaint spot on Michigan’s left coast, right on the lake. Lots of VRBO options that are probably very reasonably priced this time of year. Nice place if you like places geared toward a more “low key” experience.
We’ve had GREAT experience with VRBO.
Depending on your views of Mr. Lincoln, you can learn all about him in Springfield, Il.
I’d hand Booth the bullets. And then show him where the Madigans live.
I thought about Harper’s Ferry, which is a place I love, but it’s just slightly too far.
Inequality gap widens as 42 people hold same wealth as 3.7bn poorest
Oxfam calls for action on gap as wealthiest people gather at World Economic Forum in Davos
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/jan/22/inequality-gap-widens-as-42-people-hold-same-wealth-as-37bn-poorest
Oxfam is still at their I don’t understand wealth schtick
Damn, that’s a lot of Money Bins. Does Oxfam have any idea (or do they even care) how many people are employed by the wealth of those 42 wealthy people?
you mean people brutally exploited don’t you?
I’m sure that once we redistribute this wealth those poor people living at subsistence levels will find receiving a few shares of stock to be very helpful in their day-to-day lives.
When they eat the rich I hope they’re not disappointed to find they taste of paper.
Brand-new US Navy warship trapped in Canada amid cold and ice
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/22/brand-new-us-navy-warship-trapped-in-canada-amid-cold-and-ice.html
***
A brand-new U.S. Navy warship has not moved from Montreal since Christmas Eve and will spend the winter stuck in Canada due to cold and ice.
The USS Little Rock – unveiled in a ceremony on Dec. 16 in Buffalo, New York and attended by nearly 9,000 people – has not moved far since due to adverse weather conditions that kept the warship trapped at bay in Canada, the Toronto Star reported.
The warship known as a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) cost $440 million to build and stretches 387 feet in length and weighs 15 tons more than the Statue of Liberty. It is capable of traveling more than 46 miles per hour.
***
What was it doing in Montreal?
Why was it unveiled in Buffalo?
Nothing about this story makes any sense.
It’s a Trojan horse, operation Moos Mountie begins at dawn.
Moose
Is that like Operation Infinite Walrus?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtDNZOWz-Qg
So, the size of the Canadian Navy has doubled overnight?
I’ve been discussing team diversity in one of my courses lately. This is supposed to be meant as cognitive diversity (e.g., a surgeon, a benchtop scientist, and a clinical scientist working together on a problem); however, it’s been warped by students complaining about the lack of POC and women. It’s actually rather hilarious to see all these posts whining about the lack of ethnic/gender diversity in a course of over 20 where I’m one of just 2 white males, no exaggeration. The narrative has been pounded into these poor fools’ heads so hard that they can’t even open their eyes to look around at reality.
I’ve been sorely tempted to ask how the lack of diversity has harmed trash collectors, miners, etc. and what we we can do to recruit females and POC to these heavily male dominated professions. I won’t risk my grade for it though.
There are three extant Matriarchies in the world I am aware of.
All three live in abject poverty.
Nature and reality are not forgiving or fair. Organizational forms undergo natrual selection too, and Patriarchy won out. There’s a better word for it (backed up by the Feminist academics) – Meritocracy.
Reality is sexist!
Organizational forms undergo natural selection too
That’s a pretty decent quip there, I expect I’ll be able to use that.
It’s the French Revolution without the charm.
The bigger question is: I hope you didn’t take that course by choice.
Nope, not by choice. Although a discussion on the benefits of specialist diversity would have been interesting. Some hospitals now have different specialties make their rounds together instead of separately. I should have the devolution to ethnic/gender diversity coming a mile away.
There aren’t enough female CEOs, but the number of female plumbers is just fine.
I once suggested to a feminist that she should be a mechanic- she would be a trailblazer and would make good money. She said she didn’t want to get her hands dirty and be around icky men.
You just gave me an idea. An all women mechanic auto shop. Instead of Hooters, call it Lubers.
Velocity channel has All Girls Garage
Would they be wearing vinyl jumpsuits? Asking for a friend.
I just heard about this on National Socialist Radio, but not quite in the format you just described. Couple of women who opened an all-female auto shop so that other ladies would be able to get their cars fixed without having everything mansplained to them. And of course, they combined it with a nail salon so the customers have something to do while they wait for their cars.
I don’t respect their politics or views on gender, but hat’s off to them for seeing the opportunity and grabbing it. They’re capitalists at heart even if they (probably) wouldn’t admit it.
But were they actually any good as mechanics? How were their prices relative to other establishments? 72%?
They just want to go to the top job where they get to tell everyone what to do like at their house. Why can’t the world just do what they say.
Seven ways … to lower your heart age
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jan/22/seven-ways-to-lower-your-heart-age
You can calculate your heart age using a simple online tool – bullshit
eat a low-cholesterol diet. – bullshit
Don’t take heart age too seriously; it’s just a guide – now they tell me
One interesting feature of past government shutdowns is that”essential” workers are ordered to report to work even though the government does not, at the moment that such orders are issued, have the funds to pay them.
Can you imagine you-know-who letting anyone else get away with this? This is also too close to involuntary servitude for my tastes.
For me, the more interesting part is that by calling some workers essential, they are implying that the rest are nonessential.
So why does the govt have nonessential workers?
So why does the govt have nonessential workers?
While they may be nonessential workers, they are essential voters.
France: Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” defaces church facade, given psychiatric examination
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/01/france-muslim-screaming-allahu-akbar-defaces-church-facade-given-psychiatric-examination
***
A psychiatric examination. Of course. If Western authorities are to be believed, there is a global outbreak of mentally ill Muslims screaming “Allahu akbar” and behaving violently. It simply must be mental illness, right? What else could it possibly be?
***
The guy throwing bacon at a mosque also gets away with just a pysch eval, right?
I mean this is France, they have an entire town that made it required to serve pork.
How does that psychological evaluation even go? Your belief in Allah is disillusional. No such being exist. There is no heaven. There are no 72 Virgins awaiting you after death. Just admit all of those things and you’re free to go.
*ululates, chops off psychologist’s head*
and here is an article title that would have elicited much debate on ye olde site several years ago …
Let’s call the pro-lifers what they are: pro-death
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/22/abortion-lets-call-the-pro-lifers-what-they-are-pro-death
Um, what?
It’s the Pro-“choice” people who advocate killing.
*looks at the article**laughs at the disingenuous fuckwits*
Can’t win on facts, so they laie their asses off. Medical necessity is A: Exceedingly rare as a cause for abortion, and B: Non-contentious. In most cases, if the mother dies, the baby dies too, which is why ‘life of the mother is at stake’ is one of the few valid exceptions to the ‘don’t kill your baby’ rule. And if you ask a pro-lifer 99 times out of 100 they’ll sya the same thing.
Barbara Ehrenreich. Now where have I heard that name? Oh yeah, she wrote a book I read a few years back called Nickel and Dimed where she tries being poor and work as blue collar person. In every interaction with a rich person, if the rich person was an a hole, they were conservatives. The people that helped her were other wymens and compassionate liberals. The whole book read like a massive lie.
Yep. That was the book where she worked minimum wage jobs, ate fast food all the time, and stayed and motel rooms. Shockingly, she became broke. Conclusion: the poor can’t make it.
Room mates? Cooking? What are those things?
wiki sez
***
Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander to Isabelle Oxley and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being “a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town.”[6] In an interview on C-SPAN, she characterized her parents as “strong union people” with two family rules: “never cross a picket line and never vote Republican.”[2] In a talk she gave in 1999, Ehrenreich called herself a “fourth-generation atheist.”[7]
***
Classy.
I hope, that of my daughters only learn two rules from me, that they are better than what this lady learned.
As someone who was actually poor, as I think many people are for at least some period of time between the teens and the thirties, you learn valuable lessons about conservation and making do. Or you don’t, and you move back in with your parents, or become homeless. Shit, who am I kidding? You go back to college and milk student loans until you can’t get any more.
Fun fact: if you take a bag of ramen and crunch it up, then sprinkle the seasoning packet on and give it a light shaking, it’s still nothing like a bag of Doritos.
I used to know exactly how long you had to microwave the water the noodles were submerged in to properly cook them.
Now I wandered past the Noodle aisle in the Asian Supermarket* and didn’t even look at any of the offerings.
*It’s the actual name of the damn business. I hate it because it makes me sound inattentive, but it’s what they have on their sign and are incorporated under.
I call eating dry Ramen “Commando Style”.
Isn’t that what Troutman was referring to when he said that Johnny Rambo could eat things that would make a billygoat puke?
Work-around for the missing button which takes you to the bottom of the comment thread here – do a “find in page” for the word “copyright.” That makes posting from a mobile device less painful.
Thanks for all your hard work, SP. I know it’s a labor of love.
Except you just stuck an additional instance of copyright into the text of the page.
Then search for GlibFit or Disclaimer. Those would work too.
Thanks for that, I got a good chuckle out of that one.
Dammit, UCS, you’re right.
I always just do a find on my name. That way I can track threads I’ve commented on and it also will stop at top and bottom of page provided you’re logged in.
How is everyone surviving the shutdown? Because all the public roads are closed, I had to be carried by litter over rough terrain all weekend. My back is a bit sore, and one of my orphans sprained an ankle on a rock so I had to put him down. Luckily I always keep two spares handy for such situations, but it did make me 10 minutes late for my tee time.
Well here in Bucharest it is snowing. I blame it on the US government shutdown. Putin is taking advantage of it to use his weather machine against Eastern Europe
We got 16cm today. First snowfall of the year and it’s a ghost town outside.
So… six inches?
What consistancy of snow?
Slushy. The office called and said to come in at 11 instead of 9 tomorrow morning. Having grown up in Northern Wisconsin, I had to laugh.
Well, I don’t know how quickly they get the roads cleared. So it might be prudent to keep the uncertain drivers out of the way of the plows until that’s at least partly dealt with.
Then make sure they’re all out of their parking spaces so those can be cleared.
I don’t recall ever seeing a plow in Tokyo. In my neighborhood they just wait until it melts off which usually only takes a day or two.
That is barbaric!
They had to tell me I’m essential when it’s 65 fucking degrees outside.
Two furlongs and 1 parsec worth of snow.
Actually it’s raining cats and dogs today. But will all freeze up by the middle of the week.
I’m locked and and loaded and waiting for the commies to attack.
A real conversation I heard between two EPA employees involved one remarking on how nice it was that she went to Gettysburg and was able to get in for free since nobody was there to charge her any money. Then they both expressed deep suspicion at the EPA claiming to be “forward-funded” through at least this week. I might have just heard two red pills get swallowed.
Help tickets set to “Pending – Waiting on Third Party” (LOL), out of office set on email. Waiting for boss to come in and say “Make like birds…”*
*”…and get the flock out of here”
20-something-year-old colleague: “You’d think the government would have the best & brightest working here! Why all the chaos?”
Bless her heart.
Government does not atract the best and brightest.
The unions won’t allow them to be paid more than the riff-raff. So you get a (labor) market for lemons.
The best and brightest get frustrated with the bureaucracy and leave to go into the private/nonprofit sectors. It isn’t even always about the money. Sometimes it’s just disgust with being held back from accomplishing the organization’s stated goals by the organization’s structure and processes.
At the prison, there was an administrator who actually was a very conscientious person who tried to do a good job. He found himself stymied by his direct supervisor’s unwillingness to give him what he needed to get his job done properly, so he went over her head and appealed to her superiors. In retribution, she gave him the choice of transferring to another prison with a demotion or retiring. He chose to retire.
So yea, good workers are not attracted to government work, and even those who are sometimes get pushed out for making the other people look bad.
In my neck of the woods there’s a sizable cadre of environmentalist/conservationist types who come here thinking they’ll fight the good fight as part of the government and quickly find that nonprofits get more traction and have more focus, so they leave to go join them. Then there’s folks who join up thinking they’ll be the good guys in government and enforce some accountability, and they quickly find that the swamp is a real thing.
That is the proper usage of the phrase “Bless her heart”
well done
Did you introduce her to Conquest’s Third Law?
Mel Brooks, prophet…
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/jan/21/fresh-air-for-sale
People are apparently buying bottled air now. I see an opening for some easy profit here.
“Let me assure both you and your viewers that there is absolutely no air shortage whatsoever. Yes of course, I’ve heard the same rumors myself! Thank you for calling, and not reversing the charges, yes bye. Shithead!”
I will not spend $5000 on a ticket to go to the Super Bowl. I will not spend $5000 on a ticket to go to the Super Bowl.
Not a wink of sleep last night. Need to switch from coffee for the morning and find some cocaine. Don’t care.
did you not get enough riot punch?
More derp from NJR
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/01/the-limits-of-loving-your-enemy
***
Nobody better tests one’s commitment to the “love your enemy” doctrine like Donald Trump. He is a man who is almost impossible to love, because he has almost no likable or relatable qualities whatsoever.
…
I am not a Christian, because I find the metaphysical aspects of religion too incoherent to believe, but I feel as if the people I most respect are the people who have managed to take the “bless those who curse you” doctrine most seriously, e.g. Martin Luther King. (I realize there is an argument that by subscribing to Christian moral tenets without believing the theological justifications for them I am being hopelessly irrational.)
…
Anger is a significant part of it: people who use their power to make others’ lives harder make me furious. I hate them and I want to see them vanquished. Not punished, mind you. Just vanquished. I don’t wish to see any harm come to Donald Trump, because I am not sadistic or vengeful. But hatred doesn’t feel as wrong as perhaps it ought to.
…
I would happily visit George W. Bush in prison and help him with his reading assignments, but before then I would never accept an invitation to go to Crawford to bond with him during an afternoon of brush-clearing.
***
When I passed the interstate sign for New Orleans, I was sorely tempted to drive down there and have a chat with him about his kidney confiscation scheme.
I think he has asshole and good person confused.
“Nobody better tests one’s commitment to the “love your enemy” doctrine like Donald Trump. ”
So true, I mean the guy who rapes and murders your daughter is way more likable than Trump.
His coffee buddy
http://nbc4i.com/2018/01/21/ohio-man-sentenced-to-life-for-killing-mother-with-hammer-attempting-to-kill-sister/
What is wrong with these people? There are politicians I couldn’t disagree with more, who I think advocate policies that are hypocritical and generally terrible, and I still wouldn’t call them “enemies”. You really have to ask yourself how important you think you are and what choices you’ve made in life if you have real, honest-to-God enemies.
British 15-year-old gained access to intelligence operations in Afghanistan and Iran by pretending to be head of CIA, court hears
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/19/british-15-year-old-gained-access-intelligence-operations-afghanistan/
I don’t know what’s more sad – that no proper verification of identity existed, or that no one offered this kid a job.
If they were smart, they’d give the kid the options of a) having the full weight of the law thrown against him, or b) dropping the charges in exchange for the kid working for them.
+1 Walter O’Brien on Scorpion*
*Real life Walter seems to be a pompous dick.
***
Gamble, who is now 18, later posted sensitive information on Twitter and Wikileaks and taunted officials about his access, sometimes using the tag #freePalestine and claiming it was because the US Government was “killing innocent people”.
***
I’m sure Gamble was absolutely outraged when Al Shabaab set off a truck bomb on a busy street and killed 500 people.
But only the Russian government has the technological skill to have gained access to the DNC servers.
ZARDOZ linked that story yesterday….stand by for Brutal Exterminators…
https://nypost.com/2018/01/21/police-union-slashes-number-of-get-out-of-jail-free-cards-issued/
Wow, that’s an actual thing? They’re not even hiding corruption anymore. I’m generally sympathetic to police, and I think firing the entire department for something like this would be letting them off lightly.
This is supposed to be meant as cognitive diversity (e.g., a surgeon, a benchtop scientist, and a clinical scientist working together on a problem); however, it’s been warped by students complaining about the lack of POC and women.
Listen, you mug: true diversity is a group of people with superficial cosmetic differences who engage in the rigorously focused groupthink promulgated by the SJW hive mind.
“You’d think the government would have the best & brightest working here! Why all the chaos?”
Yes, yes, of course. Is she an Ivy League grad, by any chance?
Hmm – the headhunter / consulting firm had no contact with me for eight days. And then try to reach me on Friday, at 4:45PM. Yeah – that must be “good news”. Needless to say I didn’t bother to pick up and the v-mail left was a generic “call me back”.
Natalie Portman, at 13, experienced ‘sexual terrorism’
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/20/us/women-march-natalie-portman-trnd/index.html
***
Portman remembered turning 12 on the set of “Léon: The Professional.” It was her first film. She played a young girl who befriended a hit man in hopes of avenging the murder of her parents, she said.
A year later, when the movie was released, she opened her first fan letter. It was a “rape fantasy” from a man.
“A countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday — euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with,” she said. “Movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts in reviews. I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort.”
***
Welcome to show biz.
Also, what she experienced is not terrorism. What a ridiculous choice of words.
That was a pretty messed up movie – at least the relationship between the girl and Léon.
Gary Oldman, however, was brilliant.
I liked it. TBH, there are pervs out there that love that movie just for that specific 12 year old girl.
I liked it too – but it’s been a few years since I’ve watched it. Some of the bad guy villains are in the grade-B acting category.
Yeah, great movie if you take out the whole scene where they are playing dress up which made no sense and just made it weird. The fact that she was pretending to be his adult lover when they were checking in was innocent enough I thought.
Wait. She’s complaining because if, at 13, she began to see herself as a sexual being and “express” that, men would go along with it? Well, yeah, dummy! If you get into a bumper car and start driving around, people assume you want to get bumped.
BUMP APOLOGIST!!!
#BUMPEDTOO
“I’m trying to make good time around the course, stop running into me!”
A year later, when the movie was released, she opened her first fan letter.
I’m struggling to believe she was opening her own fan mail. I mean, I guess its possible, but . . . .
You’re the co-star in a movie with a very definite barely-repressed ephebophilic subtext. What on earth would you expect? OK, she was 13, so she probably didn’t expect what happened, but the adults in the room damn sure should have.
Think of how messed up The Exorcist must have been for Linda Blair.
I think there’s a common thread with the…shall we say expansive criteria for sexual assault. She’s talking about men being creepy about a young teenage girl in a movie with a distinct Lolita vibe. Ok, I get it. Totally understandable. But the bit about feeling unsafe expressing herself sexually? Well, what do you think it means to express yourself sexually? To whom are you expressing yourself, and why do you think they wouldn’t react? You’re all cised because you’ve got knockers. Great! So is every other sexually aware person who’s attracted to women! You’re in a career that revolves around putting yourself on display for the entertainment of others. Part of the nature of that display will necessarily involve being viewed through the lens of sexual attraction. That’s why every new “it” girl is a young, pretty, lithe 20-something and not a haggard 60-year-old grandmother with a smoker’s cough.
I don’t know, it just smacks of a bit of having one’s cake and eating it too. She wants to be able to express herself sexually, whatever that means, presumably to other people directly or indirectly, without allowing them to have any response beyond what she wants. It’s of a kind with the idea that “manspreading”, i.e. sitting on a bench while being male, is somehow an assault against women, but there’s no equivalent sense that the gratuitous wearing of “yoga pants” in public is in any way an infringement on anyone.
Well said.
Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula:
“Coppola brought in acting coach Greta Seacat to coach Frost and Ryder for their erotic scenes as he felt uncomfortable discussing sexuality with the young actresses. However he did ask Oldman to speak seductively off camera to Frost while they were filming a scene in which she writhed alone in her bed in ecstasy. She later classified the things Oldman said to her as “very unrepeatable”.”
Any word from Sadie Frost and Winona Ryder?
Great song. That chord progression is as timeless and enduring as the Bo Diddley beat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUdIKdRuYc4
Flu season getting worse: 30 children dead as government shutdown affects CDC
People are going to die because a bureaucratic organization that has nothing to do with treating patients isn’t operating for a couple of days.
I’m getting over that damn shit, and it sucks. THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING! DAMN YOU, TRUMP!!!!
Did all those kids die this weekend?
I am not a Christian, because I find the metaphysical aspects of religion too incoherent to believe
The tenets of socialism, on the other hand, are ruthlessly logical and demonstrably true.
Aren’t all belief systems inherently incoherent? (minus my belief that I’m a porn star)
Umm, way to other the dragon sky-scrapers out there.
Dragon holes are just good sense.
Godel says, yes, all belief systems have a logical lacunae that must be taken on faith.
A hundred million dead in under a century seems like a pretty glaring lacuna to try to paper over with faith. “That wasn’t true socialism!” rings pretty hollow when everyone at the outset is cheering each new experiment as finally the workable socialism they’ve been looking for.
Mind boggling, isn’t it?
Its record is nothing but failure and misery, and yet it continues to attract new followers. They’re so sure their new, special form of central planning will avoid the problems of all the other flavors that have been tried.
It’s like a guy who makes fun of flat earthers but can’t find his own town on a map.
This Chain Migration thing drives me crazy . A good friend from K-12 days is Indian in origin (born here, but Parents immigrated to the U.S., Dad is a Research physician in biomedical at Ohio State, behind a lot of the heart advances OSU Wexner has made, is responsible for something like $50 Million in research grant allocations in the last 10 years), and his cousins, aunts, and uncles (some of whom are doctors and the one cousin is a very good engineer with the consulting company my brother works for in India) cannot immigrate because of the familial relationship, but we can allow completely unskilled people to come in and bring their whole families. That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense to me.
Wait, what? Why ar ethey blocked from chaining when the mexicans aren’t?
I honestly don’t understand it. They’ve had job offers, then the company gets turned down for the H1B for them. It’s freaking nuts. But who knows, it might be like my mom’s side, where I know I’ve got a few distant cousins (like 2nd cousins, 10th or 11th removed) that were active in ETA (the Basque separatist terrorist organization), and maybe they have distant Muslim relatives (they’re Hindu) that are in groups on a watchlist, so their last name triggers a denial.
Applying for H1Bs is very different from chaining. “Relatives already in country” is not a factor in H1B approval. They might actually get in if they were chaining (if they process were not revised)
The Mexicans do it the right way. They just walk in and wait their turn for amnesty. Also, Indians don’t vote too much and some of them are Republicans. What use are they?
“That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense to me.”
They are importing useful idiots. It is as simple as that. Why spend a generation creating dysfunctional morons when you can just import them and gum up society in a fraction of the time.
‘We loot or we die of hunger’: food shortages fuel unrest in Venezuela
As the country’s economic problems mount, towns and cities have been hit by an outbreak of looting and violence
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/21/venezuela-looting-violence-food-shortages
New rule: if you own a Che shirt, you are not allowed to complain about Confederate flags.
***
Amid desperate food shortages Venezuelans are picking up new survival skills.
On the night of 9 January, for example, a hungry mob took just 30 minutes to pick clean a grocery store in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz. By the time owner Luis Felipe Anatael arrived at the bodega he’d opened five months earlier, the looters had hauled away everything from cold cuts to ketchup to the cash registers.
“It makes you want to cry,” said Anatael in a telephone interview. “I think we are headed for chaos.”
Evidence for his prediction can be found in towns and cities across Venezuela that have been hit by an outbreak of looting and mob violence. Angry about empty supermarket shelves and soaring prices, some people are breaking into warehouses, ransacking food trucks and invading outlying farms.
During the first 11 days of January the Venezuelan Observatory for Social Conflict, a Caracas rights group, recorded 107 episodes of looting and several deaths in 19 of Venezuela’s 23 states.
But the figures don’t fully capture the level of desperation. Recent headlines from Venezuela read like notes from the apocalypse:
On Margarita Island dozens of people waded into the ocean and forced their way aboard a fishing boat, making off with its catch of sardines
In the city of Maracay, just west of Caracas, thieves broke into a veterinary school, stole two pregnant thoroughbred horses and slaughtered them for meat.
A recent video from the western state of Mérida shows a group of people cornering a cow before stoning it to death as bystanders yell: “The people are hungry!”
***
I think we all knew where this was headed
A recent video from the western state of Mérida
Mierda!
“I think we are headed for chaos.”
To be fair, who could have seen this coming.
Damn State Capitalism!!
No worries, as soon as they get rid of Maduro, they can hold new elections and vote in someone else exactly like him or even worse. I’m afraid there is no way out of this for the people of Venezuela. There will be no libertarian moment and the government will continue to run out of other people’s money.
How shocking!
I love that “his critics say” – a clever way of giving any readers so inclined an excuse for disregarding the obvious connection between stealing people’s shit, giving it to unqualified and corrupt cronies to run, and the drop in productivity.
Wreckers and kulaks
to the cash registers.
With inflation as bad as it is, you have any idea how many registers it takes to ring up one purchase?
I’ve been exploring – thanks to a winding thread on a music site a visit – forgotten female jazz singers of the 30s-1970s.
This ain’t bad – Mildred Bailey – Rockin` Chair
his cousins, aunts, and uncles (some of whom are doctors and the one cousin is a very good engineer with the consulting company my brother works for in India) cannot immigrate because of the familial relationship, but we can allow completely unskilled people to come in and bring their whole families. That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense to me.
Ostentatious hair shirt egalitarianism.
The best that Senate Republicans could do at this point is not make a big deal about the “shutdown.” Shutdown theater only works in one direction, favoring Democrats, even when Democrats are the instigators. They hold the media leash. Their partisans are much less sanguine, and much less informed, about the normal operation of federal governance. They try to sell federal shutdown as an extinction-level event, and their yuppy voters buy it. Republicans can only play it straight, bring a couple bloodless votes to the floor, let Dems punch themselves out, and criticize their hypocrisy–on such a trivial issue. The White House has already played this brilliantly, so maybe the GOP can follow their lead and, you know, look sane in the face of the left’s raving theatrics.
Good advice. Of course, media-whore Lindsey Graham already ignored it.
They hold the media leash.
And the Repubs don’t appear to comprehend that their base doesn’t care. They are still chasing pats on the head from their sworn enemies.
Democrats step on their own dicks and their media guardian angels hasten over to kiss it better. Republicans, rather than refraining from taking out their dicks in the first place, proceed to jump up and down on theirs in desperate competition. I think it goes beyond “stupid party,” the GOP is a party of deviant masochists.
The GOP has no shortage of members on board with the Dem agenda.
Meh. It’s a problem inherent with narrow wins in blue states. The party nominally wins the seat but the person who actually won it was always a moderate. The more interesting cases are those like Jeff Flake or Paul Ryan where they seem conservative at first but then drift leftward after being in office.
I think the GOP is operating out of self-interest. They, as individuals and as an institution, aren’t better off if they take principled positions against bigger and more intrusive government. That government is what gives them status, wealth, and power. Their voters have not shown any willingness at all to punish GOP representatives who support bigger, more intrusive government, so what should provide discipline and counter their self-interest simply isn’t (sufficiently) present.
The same election that brought Trump to the White House, that was a high-water mark for the abused Republican base, also saw such Team Purple notables as Murkowski, McCain, Rubio, and Grassley returned to the Senate. As long as the Team Purple types keep getting re-elected, the GOP will continue to be led around by the nose by the DemOp Media and the Dem party.
The problem, so to speak, is that the media’s loss of credibility lags behind their wanton abandonment of journalistic integrity. They should be viewed as carnival barkers, but instead they get the Walter Cronkite treatment.
Another day, another Supreme Court decision expanding “qualified immunity” for false arrests, likely under the FYTW clause (PDF warning)
No dissents. The Notorious RBG concurred with a “under our current precedent, the decision is right, but it’s complete bullshit” statement.
I don’t agree that qualified immunity was expanded in this case. This case reads to me like SCOTUS slapping down the District Court for not following precedent. That having been said, they cite plenty of cases that did expand qualified immunity,
So, how many times a day are CNN reporting on this?
Climate change doomsday scenarios debunked?
Is this for real? I mean considering the source, it’s probably not, but since it’s Cali, I’m not sure.
CA to register illegals to vote?
Actually, I seem to remember the same story from a few years back, maybe this is just a rehash of that one.
Seems like the sort of thing SF might post.
That goes back a few years. Basically, EZ voter registration (like when you get your driver’s license) opens the door to illegals voting. If you have a fake/stolen SocSec number (and what self-respecting illegal doesn’t?), you can register to vote. Every illegal who has a job with a paycheck (instead of just cash-only day labor) has forged identity documents, including most likely a SocSec card; its the only way to get around E-Verify.
” Every illegal who has a job with a paycheck (instead of just cash-only day labor) has forged identity documents, including most likely a SocSec card; its the only way to get around E-Verify.”
Most of them have more than 1 alias with fake documents to match, sometimes 3 or 4. I was just wondering if Cali is now openly admitting to let illegals vote.
Who would hold them responsible?
Oh yeah, the Republican obstructionists Sacramento.
I mean if they’re openly admitting they want to allow illegals to vote, then I believe that the feds would be obligated to do something. Like nullifying Cali’s right to vote in federal elections.
I doubt there’s an open admission. More like a wink and a nod.
Even if there was an open admission, I don’t trust the current DOJ civil rights staff (who I think would catch the enforcement action) to do shit about it, unless that staff has been changed out since Trump took over. Since it would take Sessions to make the changes, I’d be shocked if there were any.
No Hyperion, voter fraud never occurs. It’s non-existent. Anything that says otherwise is Fake News™.
Cali certainly has been resistant to opening their voter records. Trump may not be too far off-base regarding illegal voting. I have lived/voted in a number of states and many are pretty much “name – ok, vote.”
I wouldn’t be surprised. The real question is, how will they ensure that registered non-citizen voters don’t cast votes in national elections? If they indicate immigration status at time of registration, then that’s info the Feds can subpoena. If they wait until voting time to ask, then how do they verify? We have a bit of an odd system, whereby the Feds make the rules but the states enforce them.
Just boarded the flu soaked Tylenol with wings on my way to Vegas. Wish my immune system well.
I just wanted to tell you good luck. We’re all counting on you.
I just wanted to tell you good luck. We’re all counting on you.
+1 choice of steak or fish
Calm down, get ahold of yourself!
Well I could make a hat, or a brooch, or a pterodactyl…
I hope, for your sake, the Air Traffic Controllers don’t walk out, as non-essential, during this period of anarchy and chaos.
-11,000 controllers under Reagan
Air traffic controllers are considered essential.
The real question is why the fuck ATC is still run by the government. Canada has private ATC for Pete’s sake.
Here’s some more stuff on the fake investigation.
mysterious disappearing emails
having mueller’s investigation shut down before it actually has to present its findings, or having accusations ‘dismissed’ before they’ve released any arguments, would in the end be a Win for the people trying to use the special investigator as a means to discredit/undermine trump’s admin.
they’d be able to forever claim they were on the cusp of some slam dunk, smoking gun, while never having to substantiate anything. which is sort of the whole point of having the investigation in the first place: it enables this endless speculation and repetition of claims until they’ve beome conventional wisdom. then, if/when Mueller reveals he’s discovered Jack and Shit, they’ll cry as tho he’s somehow been ‘compromised’ and pressured to water down his charges.
its such a stupid shitshow. at least Clinton got a blowjob in the whitehouse.
Looks like the end for Slayer. One final world tour, then thats it.
https://www.slayer.net/
all rock bands should have an “end by” date printed on their first album.
Sad, but after Hanneman died I figured it was just a matter of time.
Meanwhile, price controls designed to make food more widely available to poorer people have had the opposite effect: many prices have been set below the cost of production, forcing food producers out of business.
Which do you want- fairness, or food?
Hey, sometimes “fair trade” means paying above-market prices, sometimes it means paying below cost.
It’s funny how in evil, capitalist America, death from starvation is virtually non-existent. In fact, many poor people are able to afford too many calories and become obese as a result.
I bet Venezuelans would kill to live in a country that is being ravaged by an “obesity epidemic”.
Mickey Kaus @kausmickey
11h11 hours ago
Dems on verge of disproving theory (which I bought) that only Republicans lose shutdown fights.
Also: This morning, the Politico/Morning Consult poll showed similar numbers. When asked whether it was worth shutting down the government to ensure passage of a bill “that grants young people who were brought to the United States illegally when they were children, often with their parents, protection from deportation,” the sample split evenly, 42 percent to 42 percent.
The numbers on blame aren’t that much of an advantage for Democrats, either: “more voters would blame Republicans in Congress for the government shutdown, 41 percent, than would blame Democrats, 36 percent. Democratic and Republican voters, by wide margins, held the other side responsible. But more independents said they would blame Republicans, 34 percent, than Democrats, 27 percent.”
That’s a scary number.
forgot the Linky
Remember how hysterical the Democrats were when the Republicans
shut down the governmenttemporarily dismissed employees classified as non-essential?