Friday Generic Links

“One can of links, please. Oh, and a box of off topic comments.”

 

Links.  Generic Links. You get them, on special today, because it is Friday…and frankly, the “use by” date is getting close.

 

Sports

BaseballBaseball happened – I really don’t want to talk about it (#@$% White Sox bullpen). Golf – Masters underway, Spieth leading. NHL – Yeah, playoffs. Soon…for most of you.

 

Birthdays

Raphael Sanzio (1483), Anthony Fokker (1890), Lowell Thomas (1892), James Watson (1928), Billy Dee Williams (1937), Merle Haggard (1937), Zamfir (1941 – shout out to Pie), Udo Dirkshneider (1952), Janet Lynn (1953), Keith Hunter Jesperson (1955 – “Canadian-born serial killer”), Oliver Miller (1970),

 

Links

  • This guy is lucky he didn’t end up full of bullets, and instead gets a long prison stretch.
  • If you read why this camel may have escaped, I can believe it. I used to get the stink eye from a camel our local Kuchi representative would bring to our base in NE Afghanistan. One day I gave it a Strawberry Nutri-Grain bar, and I had a friend for life. Thing was like an eager puppy when it saw me walking up.
  • Test flight. I hope every swingin’ one of these new rockets, spacecraft, hypersonic planes, whatnot… work, and work well. We might at least get some private sector competition in space…if we cannot get enough of it down here on terra firma.
  • Somehow I missed this story. Bombing…Sam’s Club? I mean, did they run out of the 5 gallon jars of dill pickle slices or something? At least nobody got hurt.

OK, that’s all folks. On to commenting.

Comments

540 responses to “Friday Generic Links”

  1. Bombing…Sam’s Club?

    You stole my reaction.

    1. Mad Scientist

      Doesn’t sound like much of a bomb.

      “Ontario Bomb Squad personnel have determined that the suspect had detonated two similar devices in the store,” the police department said. “Each device had ignited small fires to products within close proximity. Sam’s Club employees acted quickly and used fire extinguishers to put out the flames.”

  2. CPRM

    My Glibstarter was a success! Thank you to those who donated. Now I can start working on getting you guys some content!

    1. Uh oh…I mean, yea!

    2. What animation software did you get?

      1. CPRM

        Crazy Talk Animator, simple to use cause I ain’t got many animation skills.

    3. straffinrun

      Good to hear. ?

    4. Festus

      I didn’t help because I am Charley Bucket’s lamer Grandpa but I hope you go forth and prosper!

  3. AlexinCT

    Somehow I missed this story. Bombing…Sam’s Club? I mean, did they run out of the 5 gallon jars of dill pickle slices or something? At least nobody got hurt.

    Death to capitalism!

    1. Is that like ‘Shop til you drop’?

      /clueless 90’s stereotype

      1. AlexinCT

        Ayup…

    2. Slammer

      “You just don’t know where you’re safe or your children are safe,” Jared Gonzalez, who was shopping at the store, told CBS Los Angeles. “It’s scary to leave the house, just to do a regular grocery store run.”

      There’s this magic place called Amazon, Jared. Check it out.

      1. But doesn’t Brazil have one of the highest murder rates in the world?

        /deliberately missing the point.

        1. WTF

          But doesn’t Brazil have one of the highest murder rates in the world?

          Unpossible! They have strict gun control in Brazil!!

          1. leonadasiv

            Does California even have bomb control? I hear getting a bomb is easier than finding a homeless person in SF.

    1. Well, they are trying to create the New Soviet Man. Maybe there’s a gene for subservience to the collective.

      1. AlexinCT

        You joke about this, but that is precisely what this new purity test seems to imply is the criteria for acceptance…

        1. Who says I’m joking?

          1. Festus

            Seeing that everything is devolving to outward appearance and science has been left behind like that one kid that nobody liked anyway this seems like a fine plan, Cap’n! Lead on!

    2. Chafed

      Chinese Lysenkoism?

  4. I’ve heard that camels are basically like cynical, sarcastic horses. Like if they could roll their eyes they’d do it all the time.

      1. AlexinCT

        I heard they were turned into these angry beasts because over there, when sex ed and drivers ed classes fall on the same day, the poor camels are overworked…

    1. WTF

      They spit on you. Huge gobs of spit.

      1. They might try to take a bite out of ya too, given the opportunity.

        1. Pan Zagloba

          We have to make your camel the mascot animal of glibertarians.com!

          (it might teach me to scan threads first, for example)

    2. straffinrun

      I’d make little bikini flip flops for my feet if I was one.

    3. Pan Zagloba

      I love dogs, but can we make Swiss’s camel the mascot animal of glibertarians.com ?

      1. We made it an ID, since it came on base so much…

        1. That’s effin’ hilarious!

    4. Mad Scientist

      They do have sexy toes though.

      1. Yeah, they remind me of something…

  5. The Late P Brooks

    A “box”of off-topic comments”?

    You misspelled “pallet”.

    So- was yesterday auction day? Or did I misinterpret what I saw? Fingers crossed, anyway.

    1. It was. STEVE SMITH rescued sloopy just in time for him to make the big sales day.

      1. WTF

        AND BY RESCUE MEAN……

        1. AlexinCT

          DOH!

      2. Festus

        I wanna know what became of the “Throne”. I think it would be awesome if the Glibs started sending it to each other like a Christmas fruitcake, COD!

        1. Festus

          It could be like those memes wherein someone steals the garden gnome and then sends back photos from his travels.

  6. The Late P Brooks

    Bombing…Sam’s Club?

    Race to the bottom!

  7. CPRM

    No no, you loot the Sam’s Club and bomb the Wal-Mart. Get it together criminals!

  8. RegicidalManiac

    Terry Pratchett’s books have made me believe that camels exist in a low baseline of frustration and irritation, so escaping to look for crackers makes perfect sense to me.

    1. And they’re capable of solving incredibly complex equations on the fly.

      1. RegicidalManiac

        Which is why they’re so accurate when they spit at you.

  9. AlexinCT

    I say we call these fucks out on this. I am a huge proponent of free trade, but China is a fucking criminal enterprise pretending to be something else. Their efforts to steal intellectual property alone, especially the high end commercial and military stuff, has had a devastating effect on everyone around them. Nobody has fought back because they were more interested in having China finance our out of control spending. The problem China has now is that their economic reports have been pure fiction for over a decade now – things for them are real bad and going to worse because of the corruption and mismanagement inherent in a totalitarian system – and, like the old saying about you being in trouble when you owe the small bank $5K, while the small bank is the one in trouble when you owe them $5 million, China is between a rock and a hard place if they decide to play hardball because of the debt load they carry from us. The US defaulting and not paying them a few hundred billion would not really be a big crisis, but when the default is heading towards the loss of $10 trillion, that makes for some scary numbers. Anyway, it is high time everyone decided China had to be stopped from bullying its way to whatever world dominating entity the new president for life over there feels is their manifest destiny, or we will all rue the day.

    1. Slammer

      What Our Economists Say…
      The Trump threat “raises the possibility of an alarming escalation in the trade conflict between the world’s two biggest economies,” Tom Orlik, Bloomberg Economics chief economist, wrote in a note. “It’s difficult to tell the difference between a rhetorical flourish from a president known for bombastic remarks and a meaningful shift in policy.”

      Unlike China, those straight-shooters

      1. WTF

        The Trump Roosevelt threat “raises the possibility of an alarming escalation in the trade conflict between the world’s two biggest economies militaries.

        They really bend over backwards to paint Trump as the initiator of all conflict, completely ignoring the behavior of actors such as China and the Norks.

        *EDIT FAIRY HELPS*

        1. WTF

          Oops, forgot to close italics. Edit Faery helpz?

          1. WTF

            Ooh, Edit Fairy likes coffee, too!

        2. AlexinCT

          Shit, remember when they couldn’t stop sucking Obama’s dick for bombing every country with brown people in it?

          1. WTF

            That was different, because Smart Diplomacy!

    2. Rufus the Monocled

      China is a paper tiger. The USA doesn’t realize how much leverage it has over it.

      I’ve been saying this for years.

      Plus I use a simple rule of thumb: Japan was supposed to take over America according to America haters.

      Now they beat the China drum.

      They’re wrong.

      Call the bluff I say.

      1. WTF

        China is counting on help from the Democrats and their media allies.

      2. AlexinCT

        Plus I use a simple rule of thumb: Japan was supposed to take over America according to America haters.

        Now they beat the China drum.

        So much this Rufus. China has gotten away with murder because we have had a bunch of cunts in charge that went along with some horrible abuse by the Chinese since some of them and their friends were making money off all that noise. In reality China’s economy – because of the corruption inherent to the system and the marxist top down ideology trying to define reality – is not even close to what they have been telling everyone. People forget that there are about 300 million people in a country of over 1.2 billion that have a semi-decent standard of living, and these people along with those left behind are starting to demand things get better for them. China’s totalitarian leadership is siting on a massive demographic and economic ticking bomb, and that thing is going to go off soon. Why do you think we are seeing all this nationalistic and confrontational behavior from China? The top men are hoping to bank on the same old principle of nationalism and jingoism others have gone to when bad times are coming to keep people distracted from that fact. My prediction is that this shit will work just as well as it did for the Argentinian junta that decided to invade some shit islands worth nothing in order to distract the angry populous being ass fucked.

        1. Rufus the Monocled

          You would think its human rights abuses and terrible environmental record would raise the ire of progressives.

          Then again, they have no principles or balls when it matters most.

          Instead, they focus on how ‘China can destroy America by calling in its debts’. Yeh, good luck with that. No such thing will happen and if they do that, they will be hurt. It will be a hiccup for the most dynamic, innovative and transparent economy on the planet.

          Americans can sometimes be so annoying. I feel like Don Corleone wanting to shake America telling them, ‘you can act like a man!’

          1. AlexinCT

            You would think its human rights abuses and terrible environmental record would raise the ire of progressives.

            Usually what I hear from them is how much they wish their leaders could follow the totalitarian behavior of those dreamy totalitarian assholes in China. Top down marxist mandates backed by violence if resisted always gives these fucks boners.

    3. Count Potato

      China is also an environmental disaster. It’s difficult for companies with massive regulatory burdens to compete against companies that can get away almost anything.

      1. AlexinCT

        The only thing is that eventually the people will end up paying the price. I don’t think the top men – like our own top men – give a fuck about the plebes, and when you have 1.2 billion serfs losing a couple of hundred million isn’t that big of a deal for these types if you go by people like Mao, Stalin, Lenin, the Kim and Castro dynasty, and these days all the various shitholes that went with marxism of one form or another.

    4. Pope Jimbo

      China is to manufacturing what India is to software development.

      So many people look at it as a giant pool of dirt cheap labor that can build their new gizmos for so much less than they can here. Companies decide they are going to move all their manufacturing to China and rake the money in.

      Then they discover that you have to constantly monitor the manufacturing process. You end up sending your people over there a LOT to keep an eye on things. You have to pay a lot of bribes. And finally, you discover that mysteriously some Chinese company becomes your competitor selling a gizmo that is 99.999999% the same as yours (it would be 100% but they will cut a few quality corners).

      I have had several clients demand that the firmware/software for IoT devices be loaded here in the states because they are tired of having their shit ripped off in China.

      1. Michael

        My dad did some business in China for his manufacturing company. This was in the mid-aughts when everybody was tripping over themselves to move operations there to remain competitive. He quickly found out that the tours they’d give to execs of smaller Western firms of their state-of-the-art plants were all smoke and mirrors, and manufacturing would regularly be sent to some shithole facility staffed by what was basically slave labor as soon as the Westerners were boarding their flights home. In the end my dad’s company decided it wasn’t worth the trouble because without policing their Chinese “partners” constantly they’d be risking ISO 9002 compliance.

        1. AlexinCT

          Not to mention the intellectual theft that results in a competing Chinese entity, set up by the state, which then finds all sorts of nifty ways to undermine your enterprise to favor theirs, that pops up a while after….

    5. Not an Economist

      That is related to a question I’ve had about free trade. The normal spiel about how free trade works when somebody is cheating is eventually the market will correct itself when the person/company can no longer cheat (whether they run out of money or run afoul of some authority). But what happens if the cheater never runs out of money or afoul of some authority? China is the perfect example. The rules only matter when they benefit China. China steals IP, very little if anything happens. Environmental and safety rules, same thing. Lose money, the Chinese government will bail you out.

      How does free trade handle a situation like that?

      1. Lachowsky

        U.S. companies wizen up and quit sending their tech to China to be stolen and U.S. consumers continue to reap the benefits of the Chinese governments screwing their citizens.

        1. AlexinCT

          Unfortunately, for the longest time they didn’t do shit, and we even had a president that sold them military rocket tech for campaign money only to watch them improve the capabilities of the ICBMs they pointed at us, to name but one example. And when people realized that their intellectual property was being stolen and their businesses where basically now competing against state sponsored industries undercutting them and moved things back, what happened was that the Chinese used tech to hack and keep stealing shit.

          China, especially in the industrial, high tech, and military sectors, was able to leapfrog 5 or more decades of R&D time, and trillions of dollars in costs doing this shit on their own, and we let them, all so our political class could keep borrowing money to peddle to the people that vote for a living. The only thing playing in our favor is the fact that we now owe them so much money that if we default even they with their record of horrific cheating & lying about their economic situation, can’t survive the hit.

      2. Heroic Mulatto

        The United States was built on IP theft from Great Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries.

        1. Yusef drives a Kia

          It was part of the job as an American Abroad to steal trade secrets and bring em Home

        2. AlexinCT

          You mean because the people left GB and came here to do their thing?

    6. Drake

      TOS can’t shit themselves enough over this issue. The other day one them was arguing that we shouldn’t try because they don’t have elections – so we just endure whatever shit a dictatorship throws our way.

      1. AlexinCT

        Proggies love dictators and dictatorial behavior..

        Remember how they wished Obama could do what his counterpart in China could do?

  10. straffinrun

    After a two-day trial, Thomas Gamelin, 38, was convicted of stealing $5,228 worth of electronics and tobacco products from a Houston Walmart on Aug.

    Super shitty thing the guy did. 20 years, though?

    1. leonadasiv

      Yeah… Seems really excessive.

      1. straffinrun

        Making an example type punishment and he was on probation already. The “making an example” type of punishment is flat out immoral. The punishment should fit the crime.

        1. leonadasiv

          In a sense, it’s a form of human sacrifice. Being sacrificed as an example at the alter of the collective.

          1. Festus

            Jean ValJean DID steal that loaf of bread, to be sure.

          2. pistoffnick

            24601

          3. Amonate, Virginia?

          4. pistoffnick

            I am

        2. Viking1865

          A stroke of the cane for every 50 dollars worth of stolen property, and then a day in the pillory.

          The taxpayer is going to spend 5000 dollars on this guy his first week serving his sentence. They’ve already spent 5000 processing him through the system.

          Prison is just one more big government boondoggle employment scheme and crony enrichment program.

          Whip thieves, place them in the stocks, and brand them on the third offense.

    2. Lachowsky

      If it was applied evenly across the board, I’d be okay with very harsh penalties for theft. The ability to own private property is the cornerstone of a free society.

      This particular incident seems overly harsh, however, if all thieves got 20 years I’d be okay with that.

      1. I’d let the victim have the option of accepting restitution instead of requiring imprisonment, and leave the choice to the person wronged once a conviction is garnered.

      2. AlexinCT

        I wish that 20 year sentence for thievery was applied to all the members of our vaunted political class…

        1. Lachowsky

          I almost added this.

      3. Festus

        This is where my right/left brain get all twitter-pated. As an example, I was working in a remote area and living in a motor home. They started stealing everything not bolted down so I started escalating my security measures. Have you ever seen that Bugs Bunny cartoon wherein he and Elmer Fudd start chasing one another with larger and larger weapons (Rabbit of Seville!)? I finally got to the point that I kept nothing out of my sight and had to haul every bit of kit around with me. Aside from cutting some thieving fucker’s hand off with a machete I had no other option because I wasn’t quite ready to go there and they would have murdered me in revenge and taken my shit, anyway. Yikes, sounds a little like South Africa!

        1. spqr2008

          Twitterpated. What a fantastic word. My brother had that in a Sporcle quiz the other day, about Disney movies, and phrases from them. Take a guess which one used Twitterpated.

    3. Looting can easily result in being shot on sight. This is pour encourager les autres.

      1. straffinrun

        To be honest, I wouldn’t have a problem with shooting looters.

        1. Lachowsky

          +1 Korean rooftop gunner.

        2. Michael

          I want to agree with you, but I think civility requires recognizing the difference between looting a grocery store in an emergency situation versus using said emergency situation to stock up on luxury goods.

    4. Brett L

      If you don’t start handing down the maximum when they loot during the largest natural disaster in recent history, they start looting at Championship parades, and there’s decent odds that there will be another one of those this year, maybe two, in Houston.

  11. The Late P Brooks

    “You just don’t know where you’re safe or your children are safe,” Jared Gonzalez, who was shopping at the store, told CBS Los Angeles. “It’s scary to leave the house, just to do a regular grocery store run.”

    The terrorists are winning. Soon, Amazon will supply your every need, directly to your safe place beneath your bed.

    Hey, wait a minnit…

  12. gbob

    One of my favorite reviews of Sean Penn’s new book;

    It emerges as an emotionally evocative evolution of the emblazing engagment embodied in the escheatment enlivened in the eschaton, engaging and rife with the ectopic ecstasy of expectant enjoyment.

    It has a foundational funness that fulfills itself in the formation of the firmament of fantasy, full of the phantasmagoric and fundamental fjord of familiar funditry formed in the fuel of fire.

    I highly recommend it to the reader reduced to the resounding redundancy resplendent in the ripe repositories of the restful repose of reason and recognizance and ready to reach and wrangle among the ranks of ridiculous rascals and rakes.

    1. All about alliteration?

      1. gbob

        Why wouldn’t we?

        1. Grumbletarian

          really regretting reading

  13. Festus

    Camels, Llamas, Alpacas can’t be trusted. I went up to an alpaca one time and started petting him and the fucker bit my finger! Fuck all camelids and toss in some sheep and goats too because what’s a party if everyone isn’t invited?

      1. AlexinCT

        According to this Saudi guy I once new, they were more fun to “ride” than your average goat or sheep..

        And ride is in quotations there, because they were not using them as transportation vehicles but as.. ah… never mind.

        1. Pope Jimbo

          Don’t throw too many stones. There is a reason that sheep are known as “Montana blondes” here in the US.

          1. AlexinCT

            Jimbo, in my part of the country – the N.E. blue states – that honor goes to the productive workers, whom get, erm, “serviced” by the high taxation element…

      2. Pope Jimbo

        So you told the guy to hold the “special sauce”?

    1. Pope Jimbo

      Like horses don’t bite.

      As a kid our neighbors had a horse that was plain old mean. I got bit by that fucker several times.

      My old room mate in the Marines was a real life cowboy and he had an awesome scar from where a horse had bit his pectoral muscle and shook him so hard it tore loose (while he was out in the back country).

      1. Lachowsky

        I had my back to a barb wire fence talking to my dad when I was 11 or so. While I was talking to him, a mule stuck his head through the fence and bit my tricep. It hurt like hell and turned my whole upper arm a nasty shade of black and yellow. I learned to not turn by back on ungulates.

        1. Pope Jimbo

          Well now that Trump is president, you shouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. He’ll keep those filthy bastards back in ungulatistan where they belong.

  14. gbob

    Colorado Democratic politician sits when he pees. He’s a dem. He should have just used the excuse that he identifies as non binary or something.

    1. leonadasiv

      “”I confronted him in the bathroom itself and said, ‘What are you doing in here?’” Martinez Humenik told KUNC, a public radio station. “Then, as we were walking out, I said, ‘It’s not OK for you to be here. I don’t want to see you here again.’””
      ***

      Seems unwoke

    2. Tonio

      Finally, a real world example of what critics have been claiming all along, that once you start letting some men in then you have to start letting all men in. Bonus that it was an elected representative of the party of modernity making the complaint.

    3. I sometimes sit when I pee. Why?

      Have you seen the pool of misguided urine under almost every urinal?

      1. Having paid attention I’ve discovered that a lot of urinals are not well designed, and splashback occurs for more or less every possible target, so even with people who don’t miss, you end up with a puddle under a heavily used urinal. It’s a flaw in the system, not the users.

        1. Psycho Effer

          Work in a government building like UCS and I do and you are going to see a lot of piss puddles. I don’t think toilet design is the biggest problem. Of course, I have seen instances here where people smear shit on the mirror in order to get a promotion. I swear that’s a true story.

          1. Who would give such a person a promotion?

          2. Grumbletarian

            Someone who knows it’s tougher to fire a government employee but still wants that person out of their hair.

            “Congratulations! You’re moving up!” under one’s breath “and to a totally different department, fuckhead.”

          3. The manager who’d be able to sign off on such a move would be the one in the new unit. Current management can’t “pawn upwards” a problem employee.

          4. Psycho Effer

            I guess this is the difference between State and Federal Government. Failing upwards is huge in the federal sphere. You wouldn’t believe how stupid the upper management tends to be. None of the young staffers I know that are competent want to go into management; they just want to write code and develop systems. All the fuck-tards go into management, and the worst ones move up the chain fastest.

          5. Michael

            Public bathrooms at larger organizations can be such rich tapestries of mental illness.

        2. Festus

          *Janitor nods solemnly* This is Known.

      2. JaimeRoberto

        When I see the mess that some people leave in the bathroom it’s hard to believe that I’m working with adults.

      3. The Last American Hero

        That water is cold.

    4. The German term “sitzpinkler” applies.

  15. AlexinCT

    Which one of you was this,/a>?

    1. AlexinCT

      Let’s try that again..

      Which one of you was this?

      1. As he lit the barbecue outside his home, his polyester shirt caught fire.

        The1970’s claim another victim.

        1. Lachowsky

          Polyester anything is a big no-no where I work.

      2. straffinrun

        Umm, what’s a “Spanish Fork Man”?

        1. A spokesperson for Iberian Tableware.

          1. LJW

            The cousin of this guy?

            https://youtu.be/T0_zzCLLRvE

        2. leonadasiv

          Hey my sister-in law is from there! Not her husband tho.

          1. Gustave Lytton

            He’s from American Fork?

          2. straffinrun

            Visiforks and Ostroforks. I can’t tell them apart.

        3. Slammer

          Other side of the wall for that cutlery, it has to go back

    2. Spanish Fork Man

    3. Chipwooder

      um…..

      “Grandpa passed away at 2:32 p.m. today. He was surrounded by his loved ones and the experience was extremely peaceful. He did not suffer.”

      He was burned over half his body, a third of which were third-degree. Not sure if “He did not suffer” is entirely accurate.

    4. Brett L

      Now he knows why welders wear all natural fiber clothing

      1. Jarflax

        Cause we banned asbestos?

        1. Hey! Asbestos is a natural (mineral) fiber

          1. Sean

            Asbestos is a natural (mineral) fiber

            And it’s gluten free!

          2. C. Anacreon

            And it protects you asbestos it can.

  16. Rufus the Monocled

    “One day I gave it a Strawberry Nutri-Grain bar, and I had a friend for life. Thing was like an eager puppy when it saw me walking up.”

    DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS!

  17. Rufus the Monocled

    Owen Benjamin banned by Twitter for good.

    1. WTF

      Who is Owen Benjamin?

      1. A piano player.

        1. straffinrun

          A giant pianist. He’s 6 foot 7 (?). *His joke*

      2. Slammer

        Unwoke comedian

        1. leonadasiv

          Did an interview with Tom Woods yesterday. Nice guy.

          1. Rufus the Monocled

            That’s the troubling aspect of this all.

            If he gets banned, no one is safe.

    2. Count Potato

      Wasn’t that for insulting your PM?

      1. leonadasiv

        Wish for white genocide, and nobody bats an eye. At this point Twitter is a prog echo chamber.

        1. AlexinCT

          What do you mean “at this point”?

        2. WTF

          Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are just begging to be regulated as public utilities.

      2. Rufus the Monocled

        We don’t do it enough.

        What a bunch of smug pricks the liberal party of Canada really are.

  18. LJW

    Menendez brothers reunited in Otay Mesa prison unit

    Am I the only one the gets a incestual vibe from these two. Maybe it’s the way the media portrays them.

  19. Derpetologist

    never change, alternet
    https://www.alternet.org/gender/men-who-exercise-food-control-over-women-could-be-sign-misogyny

    ***
    In January, at the tail end of a storm of accusations of sexual misconduct by powerful men in Hollywood, Babe.net published an account by “Grace,” a woman who went on a date with actor and comedian Aziz Ansari and later described it as the “worst date of her life.” Many critics of the article derided one detail in the article that must have seemed important enough to the writer to include: “After arriving at his apartment in Manhattan on Monday evening, they exchanged small talk and drank wine. ‘It was white,’ she said. ‘I didn’t get to choose and I prefer red, but it was white wine.’”

    To suggest that Grace’s lack of control over the wine they drank foreshadowed Ansari’s later abusive behavior indeed seems a bit trivial. But on closer inspection, and amidst #MeToo conversations about how so many men get away with exercising control over women, maybe this detail deserves more serious examination.
    ***

    Never in the history of mankind has a woman bought a man clothes without asking his permission.

    1. leonadasiv

      ‘It was white,’ she said. ‘I didn’t get to choose and I prefer red, but it was white wine.’”

      Ohh fuck off! Talk about people living in a bubble. If that’s something you have to drum up to tell a bad date story, you need some perspective.

      1. Grumbletarian

        She didn’t get to choose her wine then, so we’ll join her in a good whine now.

        1. The bigger crime was that it was wine.

        2. AlexinCT

          If she was that desperate for red, she should have brought her own and skipped his offer of white, thus showing she was in control.

          1. Did she even speak up and ask if there was anything else available? The account summary provided makes it sound like she just passively accepted the glass and expected him to be a mindreader.

          2. Akira

            This is the same woman who said Ansari “assaulted” her because he “ignored all of [my] cues”. I remember her original narrative, and at no point did she do what any normal woman would do – get up and leave.

          3. AlexinCT

            She ended up gobbling his meat. I don’t know, but if I was a chick and I didn’t want to gobble meat, I am not doing any of that…

          4. AlexinCT

            In my experience a lot of these hyper-feminist women feel a man should not only cater to their every whim, but read their minds to do it. They then get bored and go hang with the bad boys which they complain about, especially after the fact, when the bad boy dumps them and moves on. Jaded they then get pissed even at beta males like Aziz and basically accuse them of being misogynists or rapists because of a date that was sub par in their estimation.

    2. Count Potato

      Babe.net is a raging dumpster fire.

    3. Festus

      Jesus Christ. When I was a walking erection I’d have stomped the grapes myself and decantered the product all whilst performing hand-springs of surpassing agility AND yodeling the Mauritanian National Anthem just to get a sniff! Fucking amateurs…

  20. Rebel Scum

    lucky he didn’t end up full of bullets, and instead gets a long prison stretch

    20 years does seem a bit excessive though.

    1. straffinrun

      Bet he’d rather have his hand cut off.

      1. Psycho Effer

        It would definitely limit the size of the TV he could loot next time there is a disaster.

    2. Looting is a shoot on sight offense. 20 years beats dyin’.

  21. Slammer

    Epic speech from a Greensboro citizen about gun control

    1. straffinrun

      “Any body that would go into combat with an AR 15 is a fool!”

      I got chills.

      1. Does he mean fighting using or up against?

        1. straffinrun

          You should work for justice Roberts. That’s quite the possible interpretation.

          1. I was hoping for a seat on the court. Maybe when Ginsberg finally crumbles to dust.

          2. Grumbletarian

            Someone has to find her phylactery first.

          3. Festus

            It should be like “Highlander”.

      2. leonadasiv

        Any one who would go into combat is a fool, but fools aren’t allowed to serve /catch-22

    2. Rebel Scum

      That was good, but even he still betrays the fact that the point of 2A is to have “military weapons” in the hands of the citizenry.

    3. Evan from Evansville

      That was fucking dope.

    4. Mojeaux

      I got chills. The good kind.

    5. Chipwooder

      It’s fun to listen to righteous outrage, but some of the things he said were kind of silly.

      1. Chipwooder

        Let me add, though, that I’m glad he said it. The good greatly outweighed the silly.

        1. Akira

          And it’s always good when ethnic minorities take a bold stand against “progressive” principles. It chips away at this illusion that all non-wypipo are the property of the Democrat Party.

    6. Raston Bot

      DAYAM

      that was a smackdown

    7. Yusef drives a Kia

      Bad ass!

    8. Mad Scientist

      Delightful!

    9. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

      Interesting to note the speech to text is cut out as soon as he gets into disagreeing with the legislators.

  22. Rebel Scum

    Escaped camel found wandering Louisiana streets

    What’s Chuck Schumer doing in Louisiana?

  23. Mojeaux

    Because this thread popped up in my timeline after having discussed it yesterday: TERF war.

    1. Count Potato

      I’m seeing lots of crazy there, but nothing about transsexuals or radical feminism.

      1. Mojeaux

        TERF = transexclusionary radical feminist, which is an “evil thing to be.”. The whole thread with screenshots is about a 13yo being called a transphobic bigot because she’s a lesbian who doesn’t want to have sex with a person with a penis. In this alternate universe, being attracted to women is lesbianism and being not attracted to penis is genital fetishization, which is a kink, not an orientation, and therefore the girl is being bullied.

        1. Count Potato

          Maybe you posted the wrong link? Unless it’s way at the bottom of the thread, I’m not seeing screenshots of anything like that.

          “If you are a MAGA or a 2A enthusiast, I legitimately do not care about your life/well-being or the lives/well-being of your family. I don’t care if you can’t defend yourselves against intruders or whatever. I just don’t care if you live or die.”

          1. Mojeaux

            My bad. I did post the wrong link. Totally SF’d that.

            Never mind. The moment has passed.

        2. Psycho Effer

          I would ask you to repeat that in English but I really don’t think that would help.

          1. TK

            Yeah I couldn’t follow it either.

          2. Mojeaux

            I posted the wrong link.

  24. The Late P Brooks

    Not a fishing expedition

    Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors revealed Thursday night that they’re using information related to the searches of Paul Manafort’s belongings for their ongoing investigation, according to documents they filed with the court in his case.
    The office even used a warrant from March 9 to get information related to five AT&T phone numbers — and that search involves information related to “ongoing investigations that are not the subject of either of the current prosecutions involving Manafort,” according to the new special counsel filings.
    Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, faces criminal indictments in Virginia and DC federal courts related to his foreign lobbying business from before the campaign. He’s pleaded not guilty in both.
    But that may not be the extent of the legal trouble for Manafort — and potentially those around him. His lawyer has suggested in court that prosecutors may be continuing to investigate him. The special counsel’s office said earlier this week that the Justice Department has allowed for an investigation into Manafort allegedly colluding with Russians to interfere in the 2016 election, alongside several other unconfirmed investigations.

    How in the fuck can this go on? Don’t just fire the guy, bring criminal charges against him. You could start with gross misuse of resources, and move on to malicious prosecution and extortion.

    1. WTF

      Manafort allegedly colluding with Russians to interfere in the 2016 election

      What criminal statute prohibits seeking aid from foreign entities to help win an election? Is there one, or is this all just made-up bullshit?

      1. Lachowsky

        I think it’s illegal to accept donations to your campaign from foreign governments.

        1. But if it’s donations to your ‘charitable’ foundation that’s merely paying everybody on your campaign staff, that’s allright.

        2. Count Potato

          Unless you launder it through the Clinton foundation?

          1. Lachowsky

            I suppose. It seems to have worked out just fine for her.

        3. WTF

          Unless you turn off the verification like Obama did?

          1. Chipwooder

            I was just about to say that. God only knows how much foreign money Chocolate Nixon took in, but that doesn’t matter because shut up.

    2. Count Potato

      It’s seems very unusual that criminal investigation can’t announce what crime they are investigating. I’m no lawyer, but shouldn’t it at least start with some predicate?

      1. Lachowsky

        “and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

        Seems relevant.

        1. WTF

          Superceded by the FYTW clause.

        2. Festus

          This is the Santa Clause investigation. “He sees you when you’re sleeping, He knows when you’re awake!”

      2. Grumbletarian

        It’s seems very unusual that criminal investigation can’t announce what crime they are investigating.

        The crime of defeating The Most Qualified Presidential Candidate Ever, of course.

    3. Rebel Scum

      from before the campaign

      We aren’t in Kansas anymore. Keep digging. I’m sure put a booger on his desk in grade-school or something. The truth will come out.

  25. cyto

    I just got back from taking that group of elementary kids to the VEX robotics national championships in Council Bluffs Iowa. I can report that you future is in better hands than you might have expected.

    They were a great group of kids – very polite, friendly and quite smart and creative. There were a couple of thousand kids from all around the country (and a few from around the world). A great time was had by all. Our team finished in the top 20 in all categories, so we were pretty happy. Our girl who did the autonomous programming finished 9th… but since 6 of the teams ahead of her were from China, I’m counting that as 3rd. You can’t compete for the US national championship if you are from China.

    Omaha is a really nice city. Wow, do they have a lot of money for a city that size. As was recommended by several here, the zoo was amazing. We only had time to get through half of it (in the freezing weather), but it was pretty great. We had dinner at the Spaghetti Works, which was a nicely themed restaurant with mediocre but passable food. Kids ate free on Tuesday, and since we had mostly kids, we were happy. And the pasta is “all you care to eat” and drinks were relatively cheap at the bar, so the adults were happy.

    So to sum up… kids are still great, and Omaha Nebraska is a surprisingly good destination for a convention, even if the wind chill did dip into the single digits.

    1. Scruffy Nerfherder

      It’s nice to hear good news. Congratulations to your programmer.

    2. Lachowsky

      That sounds like fun. I’m hoping to make a trip to Omaha this June.

    3. Tundra

      I agree with you. I’ve volunteered for our HS robotics team the last few years. The kids are astonishingly talented and motivated.

    4. I’ve heard from co-workers who’ve gone there for conferences that Omaha is surprisingly nice. Surprising to people who’ve never left the coasts, I should say.

    5. TK

      For a moment I thought I was going to be headed to Omaha, but then I found out that the conference was exclusively for women. Sounds like I missed out on a great city.

    6. Gadfly

      Omaha is a really nice city. Wow, do they have a lot of money for a city that size.

      Probably because they are the headquarters of several large companies: Berkshire Hathaway, Kiewit Corporation, Mutual of Omaha, and the Union Pacific Railroad. When you are home to millionaires and billionaires, your town is going to have nice things.

  26. Rufus the Monocled

    For you hockey people….#22 Daniel Sedin scored his 22nd on an assist from his twin brother #33 Henrik 33 seconds into the second period in their last game in Vancouver.

    Do you believe in ghosts?

    1. Tundra

      I’m just glad to see the last of those fuckers.

      1. Rufus the Monocled

        Were they Wild killers or something?

        1. Tundra

          Big time.

      2. *shakes fist toward Vancouver*

        @#$%!!!!

        1. Festus

          Oh come on. The dudes have been nothing less than stellar citizens, even donating millions of dollars and countless hours to the Childrens hospital! And then there is THIS! https://youtu.be/Z6tBr6PMkBY

  27. Rebel Scum

    Somehow I missed this story.

    I have Identified the reason: Hugo Gonzalez, 49, was identified by a witness as Thursday’s suspected bomber, Ontario police said.

  28. The Late P Brooks

    After a two-day trial, Thomas Gamelin, 38, was convicted of stealing $5,228 worth of electronics and tobacco products from a Houston Walmart on Aug.

    During Katrina, my ultra-liberal uncle was making the case for looting. Because those looters were only taking Pampers and and bottled water, and that milk and ice cream was just going to spoil anyway with no power. All they were doing was trying to care for their little babies and their most basic humanitarian needs. Yeah. That’s it.

    1. Looters rarely go after perishables. The bulk of them are after high-value goods that are undefended during the emergency.

      1. Lachowsky

        If I was looting a Sam’s club, I’d be out of there with all the frozen beef I could get.

    2. If he had tried it himself, I might have shot him.

      /National Guard

  29. The Late P Brooks

    I can report that you future is in better hands than you might have expected.

    My expectations are pretty fucking low.

  30. gbob

    How to screw up a kids life in one easy step.

    And so he told hospital staff, “ ‘At minimum, do not describe the anatomy, or what you think the anatomy means, when this baby’s born.’ We definitely wanted to prevent them being gendered in any intense moment. And everybody was aware of that.”

    Fleishman sent an email saying, “The greatest gift you could give me would be practicing the pronouns.” How could she say whether the fetus growing inside her was a boy or a girl (or neither or both)? It was clear to her that sex (which is medically assigned) and gender (which is how someone identifies) were two different things. “We wouldn’t tell somebody else how they should identify or who they should be or what they are,” McCullough points out. The baby stirs, and he pats their tiny back. “I’ve definitely had thoughts like, Why isn’t everybody doing this?”

    this means redefining behavior that others might think of as gendered, especially since, “in terms of the activities they like, my child is what people would consider boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, and so I sometimes worry that, like, my mom is looking at that and thinking, Well, why won’t they just accept that that child wants to be a boy? And I guess my answer to that is that those behaviors don’t have to be associated with boys.”

    And now I’m checking out of this world.

    1. Rufus the Monocled

      That poor child,

      IT never had a chance.

      1. This sort of behaviour is child abuse.

        1. Rufus the Monocled

          Oops. REFRESH!

    2. Rufus the Monocled

      By the way, how is this NOT child abuse?

    3. Lachowsky

      How far up your own ass can you get?

      1. The current record is the triple oroboros, where they have reached their own tail three times over.

        1. Festus

          It’s like a salchow but you have to suck your own dick.

    4. Rufus the Monocled

      Wouldn’t it be ironic the government puts its foot down and considers this to be child abuse at some point? I say ironic because these are the sort of people who always go the legislation route to cram their hideous and deranged ideas on the rest of a healthy and normal (relatively, ahem, speaking) society.

      It would come full circle.

      /make air circle with finger tips. Touches heart.

    5. Count Potato

      “Then, just a few days later, an article showed up in McCullough’s Facebook feed about a Canadian baby who had been issued a health card without a gender designation — perhaps the first instance in the world of a government entity not assigning a gender at birth.”

      No, governments do not assign gender. What birth certificates do is recognize sex.

      1. Rufus the Monocled

        No shit. Trudeau is opening the door to this madness being the little shnott head he is.

        I’m going to look forward to the unintended consequences of this insanity.

    6. Raven Nation

      I’ve noticed a bunch of admins and advisors here are starting to include pronouns underneath their e-mail signature lines. So far most of them are orthodox i.e. women have she|her| etc. But at least one person I work wants to be referred to as they|them|theirs.

      Now, if you’re born one gender and want to identify as another or as xe or whatever, fine. But if you’re one person, you can’t have a plural pronoun.

      1. But if you’re one person, you can’t have a plural pronoun

        We disagree.

        1. AlexinCT

          I want to be refereed to as your ultra-powerful dragonbeast!

      2. Chipwooder

        Unless you’re Queen Victoria

        1. Jarflax

          Wait I thought the queens had picked she/her as their pronouns?

          1. Festus

            Not Freddy! Never Freddy!

      3. TK

        I’ve run into one of these “they/them” people and she asked me to refer to her like this. I just stopped talking to her altogether – too much of a hassle trying to adjust the instinct to refer to women as “she/her”.

        1. Raven Nation

          Yeah, I tend to call this person by their name. My objection is based on grammar not gender.

          1. TK

            I have a problem with anyone that demands that the world shift around them and their needs. In fact, I don’t like people that think they are special or deserve special treatment. Demanding people change such an integral part of their speech patterns just to make sure that a very rare subset of the population doesn’t get their feelz hurt? Yeah, no I’m not doing that – and I’ll not do it specifically to piss that person off. That makes me an asshole, I know, I just don’t care.

            If I’m at work I’ll modify my behavior so I don’t piss off my employer, since its their house, their rules.

      4. Rhywun

        starting to include pronouns underneath their e-mail signature lines

        Really?! Where do you work, a university?

        1. Raven Nation

          Yep.

          1. Rhywun

            My thoughts and prayers are with you.

      5. Michael

        But if you’re one person, you can’t have a plural pronoun.

        Why not? It’s the most effective way to cover all of their distinct personalities.

    7. Chipwooder

      “Medically assigned“? God assigns sex, or Mother Gaia, or whatever you choose to believe in. The doctor merely recognizes it.

      This is what happens when no one need fear starvation – human beings come up with ridiculous things to concern themselves with.

    8. Rebel Scum

      “We wouldn’t tell somebody else how they should identify or who they should be or what they are,”

      I’m inspired. I’m going to go make some AA missiles out of cardboard, strap them to my arms and run around the house making woosh sounds because I now identify as an F-15 Eagle. If you say that I am not a fighter plane and/or the fighter pane of my choosing then you are a bigot.

    9. Count Potato

      “Storm, who is now 7, identifies as a girl.”

      Considering how rare transsexuals are, the odds that their “theyby” turned out to be trans — at age seven — are astronomical.

      It can argued that it’s not a libertarian position, but this one reason why medically transitioning children should not be legal.

      1. Jarflax

        I think you have to stretch libertarian principles quite a bit to argue that a child under 7 has any significant autonomy. Any person who has responsibility for a child, and abuses that responsibility to deliberately warp the kid into suffering a crippling mental disease, all to virtue signal their ‘wokeness’, can burn in hell as far as I am concerned.

        1. Count Potato

          But their parents have autonomy, same as any other medical intervention.

          1. Jarflax

            True, and I guess I missed your point, which is valid. But the parents can still burn in hell.

      2. Michael

        …but this one reason why medically transitioning children should not be legal.

        Right along with naming your kids after weather events.

    10. RegicidalManiac

      Sweet fancy Moses, that is utterly psychotic. If that kid’s lucky, it’ll grow up to just hate those idiot parents and be otherwise broadly undamaged. The unlucky possibility involves skinsuits and a crawlspace full of corpses.

    11. Grumbletarian

      I identify as Tom Brady, but the Patriots still won’t let me on the field, and Gisele won’t let me in her bed. BIGOTS!

      1. gbob

        Can you kiss his son on the mouth?

      2. Pope Jimbo

        But did they agree to direct deposit those game checks to your account?

        If they did that, I’m pretty sure Gisele will soon come to see you as the real Tom Brady. (please stand up)

    12. Pope Jimbo

      I like it. Not enough people realize the opportunity that you have as a parent to truly create whatever sort of weirdo you want in a kid. Everyone is too worried that their kid isn’t learning how to cope with the world.

      NO. The world needs to learn how to cope with your snowflake! Don’t give in.

      *I figure if all the kids are fucked up, my kids will become billionaires and support me in my dotage.

      1. Brett L

        I figure mine will tell me when I’m 76 the same thing I’m gonna tell them when they’re 16: “Get a job”

      2. TK

        If this is your kid’s competition, life will be easy.

    13. Drake

      This has to be the result of self-loathing. This kid wasn’t a test-tube baby. He was born from a mother with a vagina and father with a penis. And they pounded them together until she got good and pregnant. Yet somehow, they think it awful if their kids grow up and eventually do the same thing.

    1. Tundra

      What a cool story! I have fond memories of my first couple cell phones. Anyone ever have the Motorola MicroTac or StarTac? Awesome phones.

      1. Gustave Lytton

        Yes, I had a Microtac from work. Later I had a bag phone in a car (but long after those were obsolete). I’ve tossed out Dynatacs that were in the junk electronics box.

  31. Lachowsky

    http://5newsonline.com/2018/04/05/panama-eighth-grader-addresses-oklahoma-lawmakers-at-capitol/

    I guess using teenagers to push a political agenda is the new rage.

    “I have something to say as a student,” Gregory told the lawmakers at the capitol.

    As she held back tears, Gregory delivered a speech to Oklahoma Senator Mark Allen.

    “We are the future of Oklahoma,” Gregory said. “Don’t you care?”

    1. Rebel Scum

      “Don’t you care?”

      Not really. I’m the one being held at gunpoint to fund the education of brats that are not mine. So I ask, don’t YOU care?

      Take up the funding issue with the bloated school administration.

    2. Tundra

      “Don’t you care?”

      Nope.

    3. “I guess using teenagers to push a political agenda is the new rage.”

      Since an appeal to emotion is all they’ve got, might as well turn it up to 11.

    4. Juvenile Bluster

      No, that’s been going on forever.

      I got detention in 8th grade, and the Vice Principal let us go home early, but only after, from his office, we called our state representative and senator and made a statement about not cutting school funding.

      1. Lachowsky

        You’re probably right. I find it very off putting for adults to get children to parrot their talking points in order to try and gain the moral high ground. None of these kids have any clue what they are talking about.

      2. RegicidalManiac

        That is fucking disgusting. How do people like that even sleep at night?

        “Yes, I’m holding you hostage until you make a political statement I approve of.”

      3. spqr2008

        Damn. If I had been asked to do that after getting in trouble, I would have refused, just to be a shit, even though I liked most of my principals and Vice Principals throughout my K12.

        1. Juvenile Bluster

          I just wanted to go home, so I didn’t care.

          Plus I was pretty liberal as a kid anyways (ended up doing the teen rebellion thing against my parents by becoming a super socon Rush Limbaugh listener in High School, before becoming the shithead libertarian I am today).

  32. Rebel Scum

    I ask, sir, who are the militia?

    Imagine that the 2nd Amendment is about something other than firearms. Suppose the amendment said, “A well-educated electorate being necessary for the functioning of a free republic, the right of the people to read and write books shall not be infringed.”

    Does that mean only registered voters may read books? Of course not. The right is guaranteed not to voters, but to people, from whom the electorate is drawn. Does this imaginary amendment mean that only trained librarians may read books? Does it mean that only college graduates may write books? Does it mean that the government gets to decide who may read books, and which books they may read? Of course not. Does it mean that one can read but not write books? Nope. Both are guaranteed activities.

    Most important of all, notice that the right to read and write is not dependent on the well educated electorate. The reverse is true: the educated electorate depends on the right. The origin and reason for the right are not mentioned at all. It exists independent of the electorate. The introductory phrase, which does not limit the right, is simply the reason why the right “shall not be infringed.”

    It’s almost like the rules of the English language matter when determining what clauses in the Constitution mean.

    1. Raston Bot

      The ACLU, for example, in its hallucinatory interpretation, claims that “the people” in the amendment refers not to persons, but to state governments and their power to establish militias. The left-wingers there do not explain how a description of state powers ended up in a list of things called the “Bill of Rights.”

    2. The sort-of-simple problem to fixing the 2A issues is just for states to establish militias and enroll gun owners.

      1. I’d rather have a solution which made the blue shitholes respect the rights of the citizenry instead of relying on their largesse and leave.

      2. R C Dean

        The militia is already established and defined by federal law. It consists of the organized militia (National Guard) and the organized militia (males of military age).

        I keep waiting for somebody to point out that the current definition of unorganized militia is discriminatory, and needs to be expanded to all adults.

    1. R C Dean

      I would think one would clean one’s tank with a pressure washer. In my experience, getting all the crap out of the tracks and guide wheels is the hardest part.

  33. The Late P Brooks

    Teen Vogue brings you the narcissistic exhibitionism you crave

    She and I continued to hang out and began sending good morning texts. Then we made dinner and watched Orange Is the New Black. Then we vented and supported each other. Then cuddled. Then kissed and kissed some more. OK, we were in a relationship. I fell in love with a woman.

    “I fell in love with a woman, and you should, too. Grab you some otherkin. Give the patriarchy a poke in the eye.”

    1. “Then cuddled. Then kissed and kissed some more.”

      Keep going, don’t cut it off right when things are getting good!

    2. Video or GTFO.

    3. “Then her stepdad came in from the pool, water dripping off his chiseled shoulders. ‘You don’t want your mom to find out about this, do you,’ he asked, a sly grin spreading across his face.’”

    4. *Paging MLW, MLW to the red courtesy phone please*

      1. Psycho Effer

        They are going to put MLW out of business. How do you parody this level of derp?

    5. Brochettaward

      I can’t help but notice how the media types go on and on about how brave this behavior is, and how time and again people involved state they were told not to do it. It would hurt their careers. That ABC guy who made a big to do about announcing he was gay stated that his colleagues warned him not to along those lines. Then we have the whole “me too” thing.

      It’s enough to make you wonder if all the hatred of America’s supposed bigotry, misogyny and homophobia isn’t just the result of projection by the self-anointed urban elites. They don’t know dick about actual Americans. But they know themselves, and they know how they react. If they’re the enlightened rulers, how could the rubes in middle America not be far worse?

      The only way to get actual attention from normal people here is to make it something they want to masturbate to. And she didn’t even give enough details for that.

  34. I honor of Rockies opening day, I give you hot babes in ball caps.

    http://archive.is/DNxOS

    One of the best days of the year for gawking at eye-candy downtown.

    Of course the tickets are 200 dollars and it’s supposed to snow, so I shan’t be going.

    1. Count Potato

      I’m going to have to call the fashion police on #27.

    2. B.P.

      And now it’s pounding snow in Denver. Just so long as the folks on either coasts find out that the Rockies game snowed out and continue to assume that it snows nonstop in Denver for 10 months out of the year.

  35. The Late P Brooks

    “I’ve definitely had thoughts like, Why isn’t everybody doing this?”

    Probably because they’re not insane. Unlike you.

  36. When flipping burgers in Argentina is preferable to being a doctor in Venezuela, you know socialism is working.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/05/it-feels-like-were-all-dying-slowly-venezuelas-doctors-losing-hope

    1. Psycho Effer

      The most entertaining thing about this article is looking at the links to other articles about Venezuela. They are mostly old articles by leftists talking about how all the doom and gloom about Venezuela’s economy is fake news. Hilarious.

  37. commodious spittoon

    “One can of links, please. Oh, and a box of off topic comments.”

    Joke’s on you, I get my OT comments from the rejects bin for cheap.

  38. The Late P Brooks

    It can argued that it’s not a libertarian position, but this one reason why medically transitioning children should not be legal.

    In the world as it exists, you can be arrested for letting your younger-than-18 son ride on the back of your motorcycle without a helmet. Chopping his balls off seems to me to qualify as a heinous crime.

    1. Chipwooder

      Hell, you can be arrested for letting your child walk down the street alone.

  39. “Anthony Fokker (1890)”

    There’s an old apocryphal (and therefore probably bullshit) story about an old British fighter pilot giving a talk to a bunch of schoolkids. He’s describing one air battle, and says “…and I couldn’t get that Fokker off my tail.”

    The teacher, cringing at the homonym, hurriedly explains “The Fokker was a type of German airplane.”

    The old pilot goes on, “Yes, but this fokker was flying a Messerschmidt.”

    1. Lachowsky

      My grandpa told me that joke when I was a wee lad. I like it.

  40. The Atlantic is a true thought leader.

    http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/05/in-honor-of-kevin-williamsons-firing-the-atlantics-worst-takes/

    Only the Smart Set can truly appreciate the depth of their analyses.

      1. “Do cats control my mind?”

        Yours, Atlantic writer? Yeah, probably. It’s not exactly a precision instrument.

    1. Chipwooder

      Ah yes, the racist eclipse. That was a classic.

  41. Pope Jimbo

    If Sloopy had posted sportsball links, I’m sure he would have talked this item up big time.

    Baseball is cool if you allow the home team to attack the visiting pitchers with eagles (only effeminite north easterners would use a hawk).

    I’m sure Brian Dozier will complain soon about the opposing pitcher trying to get away.

    1. straffinrun

      That dude took it calmly. Another sports item missed is Connor McGregor being arrested. Insane story.

      1. He’s still upset about getting embarrassed by Mayweather.

        1. straffinrun

          He’s just a douche bag that lost touch with reality. In retrospect, I’m glad both Mayweather and Diaz kicked his ass.

  42. Rufus the Monocled

    Delivery room. Nurse examines baby.

    Doctor: So?
    Nurse: It has a penis.
    Doctor: So, boy?

    Nurse examines baby unsure. Gives frustrating look.

    Doctor (writes in Red Commie Book): Unsure.

    Parent barges in.

    Parent: HOW DARE YOU MISGENDER URGOBUBABO?!

    Doctor: What?

    Parent: THIS here is an Urgobubabo. UNDERSTAND? I can’t take this. I’m calling the Human Rights Tribunal. They’ll show you.

    Leaves room angrily.

    Returns sticks head through door way.

    Which way to the cafeteria?

    Doctor: To your….right.

    Woman leaves quietly backwards makes ‘watching gesture’ with her fingers to her eyes.

    1. If Republicans had even half of one testicle, they could crucify the Dems for this gender nonsense.

      1. commodious spittoon

        They’re hoping to finally exchange all those woke tokens they won playing by the left’s rules. They’re going to buy the eraser shaped like an airplane.

    2. R C Dean

      I would bet a lot of jurisdictions would take your kids if you were raising them as a Nazi. We know they have taken kids because they were being raised as religious fundamentalists. No indication of physical or emotional abuse necessary.

      If that’s child abuse, then I fail to see how raising a male to be a woman isn’t child abuse.

  43. The Late P Brooks

    China is to manufacturing what India is to software development.

    So many people look at it as a giant pool of dirt cheap labor that can build their new gizmos for so much less than they can here. Companies decide they are going to move all their manufacturing to China and rake the money in.

    Then they discover that you have to constantly monitor the manufacturing process. You end up sending your people over there a LOT to keep an eye on things. You have to pay a lot of bribes. And finally, you discover that mysteriously some Chinese company becomes your competitor selling a gizmo that is 99.999999% the same as yours (it would be 100% but they will cut a few quality corners).

    There were stories thirty years ago about how Chinese contract manufacturers would fill their production orders and keep right on churning product out, to be re-branded and sold as their own.

    1. Pope Jimbo

      Yeah, it has been known for a long time that the Chicoms were doing this. Apparel was the granddaddy of them all. Most of the “counterfeit” clothing you see out there is the exact same stuff. It just has a different label.

      One of the reasons I can’t ever figure out why people pay so much for certain brands of clothing. If you know someone in the industry you can get the same stuff for half the price. And you don’t have to give money to that asshole ceo from Patagonia.

      1. The Last American Hero

        Some people got tired of getting punched in the arm for wearing Toughskins pants. That’s why you pay for the label.

  44. Drake

    Some kids at Carleton read about Gandhi, realized he wasn’t perfect in every way, and now want his statue removed from campus.

    1. Heroic Mulatto

      Ghandi was an asshole.

        1. SugarFree

          I love that song, but I am 100% sure that it is 100% incorrect.

          1. Chipwooder

            Of course it is! I always thought that made the song amusing.

          2. Hey now….did girls ever turn the color of the avocado, when YOU drove down their street in your El Dorado?

            Humph!

      1. Drake

        Sure – so is every Carleton grad I’ve ever met.

        1. Heroic Mulatto

          Well, they shouldn’t have statues either!

    2. straffinrun

      He liked to just sleep in beds with those girls.

      1. commodious spittoon

        The trick is whiskey dick.

  45. The Late P Brooks

    Danger, Wilhelmina Robinson!

    Artificial intelligence isn’t necessarily good for women, but we can make it better.

    Because we build and train AI, it reflects our biases and assumptions — and our racism and sexism. That’s problematic as AI can be used everywhere: it controls driverless cars and powers voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa, but also helps HR departments sift through resumes, decides who gets parole, and examines medical images. As its uses get more widespread and important, AI missteps and abuses become more dangerous.

    If we don’t get it right, sexism, racism, and other biases will be literally encoded into our lives, trained on incorrect data that continues to leave women and people of color out of decision making. “We’re ending up coding into our society even more bias, and more misogyny and less opportunity for women,” says Tabitha Goldstaub, cofounder of AI startup CognitionX. “We could get transported back to the dark ages, pre-women’s lib, if we don’t get this right.”

    The world is a scary, scary place.

    1. Akira

      Translation: AI systems don’t give a shit about race or gender, and that produces a Disparate Impact™, therefore, this totally race- and gender-blind system is totally racist and sexist.

  46. Count Potato

    “Kristen Stewart and girlfriend Stella Maxwell dress down for sushi date ahead of her 28th birthday”

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5583605/Kristen-Stewart-girlfriend-Stella-Maxwell-dress-sushi-date-ahead-28th-birthday.html

    Phrasing?

  47. The Late P Brooks

    There’s one obvious way to encourage better systems, says Richardson: “we need more women in robots and AI.”

    Right now that’s not happening. According to the AAUW, only 26% of computing professionals in the U.S. are women — and there used to be more. Back in the 1990s, more than a third of those working in tech were female. According to Google’s own diversity figures in 2017, 31 percent of its workforce is women, but only 20 percent of its technical roles are filled by women. And, only 1 percent of all their tech employees (of any gender) are black; 3 percent are hispanic. For AI in particular, Goldstaub suggests about 13 percent of those working in AI are women.

    “I believe as a feminist the more women we can get into roles, the more diverse the output will be — and fewer shockers will get through,” Goldstaub says.

    I wonder if AI bots can distinguish between correlation and causation any more efficiently than the average Teen Vogue “reporter”.

    1. R C Dean

      Back in the 1990s, more than a third of those working in tech were female.

      If you were to run these number looking only at native-born computing professionals, I wonder what they would look like. Put another way, there are a significant number of immigrants working in tech, and my anecdotal impression is that they are overwhelmingly male.

      If it turns out that it is our relatively open border for tech professionals that is exacerbating the “gender gap”, what will the proggies do?

      1. The Last American Hero

        If you removed the sales and marketing people, reception and administrative assistants, and HR positions from the tech firms, the percentage would drop like a rock.

    2. Akira

      And, only 1 percent of all their tech employees (of any gender) are black; 3 percent are hispanic.

      Why did they pick out those two races? Isn’t there a huge percentage (maybe even a majority) of Indians and East Asians in the IT field?

      1. Because those races fit the narrative.

        The fact that half the people in any given meeting here are citizens of the subcontinent and white people are the minority doesn’t mean the race-baiters want to admit it.

        1. Rhywun

          Indians are a kind of white anyway. Which goes to show you that this is all really about culture.

          1. They’re all darker than any of the hispanics.

          2. Rhywun

            Not all of them. My boss is a northern Injun – pale, pale, pale. And Hispanic isn’t a race either.

          3. By all, I was referncing the population set around me.

            As for the ‘hispanic’ census designation, it’s funny to watch the confusion in some circles as more and more ‘identify as’ white on the official records.

  48. Lachowsky

    It’s going to be a lovely weekend here in arkansas.

    Strong storms today with a risk of hail and tornadoes, Cold front blows in tonight with a chance of snow and ice, back up to the mid eighties mid week.

    1. “he still has an obsession of touching my breasts”

      Welcome to the rest of your life kid.

    2. commodious spittoon

      Speaking of kids and eggs, I saw Kinder Eggs at the grocery store last week. “Surprise toy in every one!” or somesuch. I guess after the tide pods debacle, who cares?

      1. KibbledKristen

        They have TV commercials now, too! I’m tempted to try one, but I’m not into that sickly sweet Creme Egg stuff.

        1. R C Dean

          The Cadbury caramel eggs are superior, IMO. And that means, they are (still) freakin’ awesome.

          1. Pan Zagloba

            The decline in quality of the included toy is the downfall of the Kinder experience. Those things used to be pretty neat and interesting to put together. Now, total lameness.

      2. Pan Zagloba

        Mark Steyn got a lot of mileage from his kids getting their Kinder Eggs confiscated at the border some years ago.

        And yes, they fell afoul of “you can’t put toys into food” regulation, despite it being nigh-impossible to swallow on purpose.

    3. SugarFree

      “I Was Sexually Harrassed By My Toddler!” #metoo

      “He’ll never work in the toddler industry again!” vows Boob Lives Matter founder.

      “Gropey Baby Put On Blast At Oscars”

      “Male Assigned At Birth Toddler molests Female Assigned By Birth Mother, refuses hormone shots to correct behavior”

      “GROPE GROPE BABY” -NY Post

      1. Heroic Mulatto

        Boob Lives Matter is going in the merch store, stat!

        1. Put me down for a dozen.

    1. TK

      Wow, that is scary stuff going on in France.

    2. Rhywun

      Totally shocked that Reporters Without Borders is full of it!

      OK, no I’m not.

    3. invisible finger

      When do US sanctions or tariffs begin?

  49. The Late P Brooks

    Simply having women in the room isn’t enough; they need to be heard — and often enough, that means we need to stand up and make people listen. “You have to be brave and courageous to come in and challenge people with authority and power,” Richardson says.

    Yup. That’ll help. And then, while you’re on unemployment, waiting for the sex-discrimination lawsuit to pay off, you can write “think pieces” about why women have such a hard time getting their foot in the door.

    1. commodious spittoon

      Finding the line between “brave, empowered woman taking a stand” and “that shrill new hire who can’t code for shit but has to say something at every meeting” is bound to be fraught.

  50. Count Potato

    “Home deliveries of knives bought online to be banned in UK

    Buyers will have to collect in person and retailers must verify they are over 18, in one of series of anti-knife crime measures”

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/18/plans-to-make-delivery-of-knives-sold-online-to-private-addresses-illegal-knife-crime

    1. KibbledKristen

      Remember when we used to joke about “common sense knife control”?

      *sigh*

      1. AlexinCT

        Some of us saw shit like this coming..

        Next up? Big cars…

    2. TK

      Can we just seal the UK in bubble wrap and call it a day?

    3. Gustave Lytton

      “Airshit One”

    4. RegicidalManiac

      The UK has just become a goddamn parody. They’ve lost their minds over there. If the package requires age verification and the delivery service doesn’t verify it, that’s not a problem with the seller!

      So of course their solution is to ban the home delivery of anything pointy over the internet. Brilliant move. This is why I couldn’t find a single sharp sgian dubh anywhere in Scotland.

    5. invisible finger

      Sounds like a toothless society.

    6. invisible finger

      When is Britain going to enact common sense 16 ton weight control?

  51. Drake

    Off Duty French Soldiers Arrested After Defending Woman From Robbery

    While in custody, one of the soldiers is said to have remarked: “If we have to be in custody, next time, we will not intervene to defend a victim.”

    1. Private Chipperbot

      Ah. The old ‘youth’ description.

    2. R C Dean

      This is just profoundly contradictory not only to what I believe is innate human nature, it is contradictory to millenia of social and cultural norms and development. I cannot believe that a society that far out of line with human realities is going to survive long. If they don’t ashcan the governments trying to re-engineer them into New Soviet Woke Man, and pronto, then I believe these societies will vanish from the face of the Earth.

      1. WTF

        Vanishing Western society from the face of the earth is the ultimate goal of the left.

        1. AlexinCT

          Can’t tell people this time they will make totalitarian marxism or fascism work if there is any competition or history to prove otherwise…

  52. Raven Nation

    More sportsball, an update on my new favorite sports team, Fort William FC who play in the Scottish Highland League (Tier 5 for those interested). Updating their season record:

    Played 27, won 0, drawn 2, goals for 22, goals against 148 (-126 GD). On March 31, they suffered their 24th loss of the season which was noteworthy for two reasons. First, it was their biggest loss so far, losing 12-2 at home. But, second, they were averaging less than a goal a game prior to that game but scored two.

    On the plus side, the setting for their “Stadium” is nice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_William_F.C.#/media/File:Clagganpark.jpg

    1. KibbledKristen

      Errrr…?

    2. commodious spittoon

      Wow. I figured those spots are like Publisher’s Clearinghouse letters.

    3. Lachowsky

      Re: mesothelioma. They have been running those ads on TV since I was a kid and asbestos hasn’t been used in construction since the 70s?

      That must be one hell of a racket for it to be worth still trying to find people.

      1. Latency period for meso is 10-150 years.

        It is quite a lucrative field. I used to do defense work for a small manufacturer….they were under constant attack, not because their products were dangerous or widespread…but because they were solvent and had insurance.

      2. Rhywun

        Same thing with lead paint. I have to assert every year to my landlord that I don’t have small children eating paint in my home. Lead paint has been banned for how many decades now and apparently it’s still found in some public housing projects because the billions of dollars the city spends on that shit every year just isn’t enough.

      3. Yusef drives a Kia

        They found me 20 years ago, but through my Employer, not TV, the Johns Manville class action to be precise, I get 250,000$ in med bills paid when i get lung Cancer

        1. The Last American Hero

          That’s like 5 lifetime’s supply of Kia’s!

    4. TK

      I am now making a good salary online from home as last month I have received $25346 by doing simple and easy work online from home.. I am now making great income every month from home. This job is just awesome and its earnings are massive. .Any Body can now get this job and start earning online easily by just follow this look here more

      1. robc

        I like the ones on TOS where when you divided the money by the hours work, it was a crappy wage.

        1. TK

          I actually pulled this one from TOS just now (I took the link out), but I remember the ones you’re talking about. Good shit

          1. You could not believe the cheque, earning $12,107 since being unemployed and work on laptop from home 4 months ago? Now you drive new Miata.

          2. $$$$I CURED PANCREATIC CANCER USING THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK$$$$

            **Now I work in home make $3,871,380,547,727 in one day***

      2. “Any Body”

        Does the separation of these two words imply that prostitution is the simple and easy work?

        1. Bobarian LMD

          simple and easy work?

          Not if you’re hoping for repeat customers.

  53. Count Potato

    “Reading books is now alt-right.”

    https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/982008995278802944

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      Also, love the list of “alt-right” books.

      1. Lachowsky

        Without looking, I’m guessing

        Atlas shrugged
        The road to serfdom
        economics is one lesson
        a concise history of th russian revolution
        the law

        1. Juvenile Bluster

          Even worse. Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and 12 Rules for Life.

          1. robc

            Well F-451 is critical of abortion.

          2. The Left doesn’t want anyone stepping on their toes while they’re busy trying to burn books.

        2. commodious spittoon

          Anything by Rothbard.

          Anything by that Sad Puppies guy.

      2. Infinite Jest, if you can slog your way through it, is one of the most vicious takedowns of postmodernism I can think of.

        It’s probably alt-right.

        1. Still listening to the audiobook.

    2. Count Potato

      “What’s up PewdiePie? The troubling content of YouTube’s biggest star

      Childish, offensive and immensely popular, the YouTube star – whose real name is Felix Kjellberg – continues to command a huge audience. But what is he really saying?

      PewdiePie has started a book club. Once a month, the YouTuber sits in his box room studio, bathed in soft pink light, and critiques a set of texts for his audience. The choices so far have tended towards sci-fi – I Am Legend, Brave New World – but also included The Picture of Dorian Gray and American Psycho. “For me to discover how much joy you can get through reading”, the 28-year-old Swede said, “It’s been so much fun.” This month, he wants his viewers to join him in ploughing through Moby Dick.

      Felix “PewdiePie” Kjellberg is funny, intelligent, innovative and highly charismatic. He also has one of the world’s biggest public platforms and a remit restricted only by YouTube’s terms of service. To call him an alt-right agitator would perhaps be unfair as he has never publicly identified with the proto-fascist movement. But he shares much of their culture and amplifies it across the world. People should pay PewdiePie more attention.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/apr/05/whats-up-pewdiepie-the-troubling-content-of-youtubes-biggest-star

      1. TK

        To call him an alt-right agitator would perhaps be unfair as he has never publicly identified with the proto-fascist movement. But he shares much of their culture and amplifies it across the world. People should pay PewdiePie more attention.”

        That’s such an underhanded and sneaky way to smear him. “I’m not saying the Guardian is staffed by Nazi. It would be perhaps unfair to call them Nazis, seeing as how they’ve never publically identified themselves as Nazis. But the Guardian’s staff do share much of Nazi culture and amplify Nazi culture across the world. People should pay more attention to the not-totally-confirmed-Nazis-but-might-totally-be-Nazis at the Guardian.”

        Keep digging yourself that hole, Guardian, you aren’t getting any more popular with the kids that watch PewDiePie. Gasps of a dying publication.

        1. Pan Zagloba

          Keep digging yourself that hole, Guardian, you aren’t getting any more popular with the kids that watch PewDiePie. Gasps of a dying publication.

          They don’t care about those kids. What they want is YouTube to take PDP down. Because he brings the kids to YouTube, he’s the enemy of traditional media.

          End game, of course, is to kill YouTube (optimally) or reform it to be a distributor of approved content for traditional media structures (acceptable).

          Sargon made a series of videos a year ago on the subject, when the hue and cry started. This one probably serves as an intro.

          As for Guardian dying, that will happen about thirty minutes after Her/His Majesty’s Government is overthrown and replaced with something else. Until then, the state will keep it alive by means direct and indirect.

          1. TK

            They don’t care about those kids. What they want is YouTube to take PDP down. Because he brings the kids to YouTube, he’s the enemy of traditional media.

            I see what you’re saying, but I think that will just cement the MSM as being full of lies and propaganda to the younger generation. We already hate establishment media as it is. We don’t buy broadcast television or subscribe to pay wall news sites – and the MSM just adds more evidence that it shouldn’t be trusted. When the WSJ or The Guardian does these hit pieces, its not just PDP’s members that hear about it – the entire YouTube news community reports it and the tens of millions of teenagers and young adults remember the smear campaigns and the outright lies.

            This is a losing battle for The Guardian and the MSM as a whole – even if they one day succeed at getting PDP off of YouTube, he doesn’t go away – and there are thousands of others that will take his place.

      2. commodious spittoon

        But he shares much of their culture and amplifies it across the world.

        Perhaps the problem isn’t with PewdiePie or the “culture” he projects, it’s with the canard perpetuated by lefty outfits like The Guardian that makes memelord edgetards the moral and political equivalents of Richard Spencer. They have some crossover appeal in the “lulzy edginess” portion of their Venn diagram because it pisses off joyless SJWs. And… what else?

      3. “But he shares much of their culture and amplifies it across the world.”

        Reading books is alt-right culture? The Left are the “smart ones”.

        1. R C Dean

          Western Civilization is alt-right. The progs and SJWs want to eradicate Western Civilization. Ergo, a discussion of any text that is part of the Western canon is alt-right, and anyone engaging in this discussion must be cast out of society.

    3. straffinrun

      Neato. I reread or read for the first time all the books he mentioned within the past month and a half.

    4. TK

      List of Approved books:

      Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
      Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
      Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
      Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
      Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
      Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
      Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

    5. straffinrun

      I know HM wrote his undergrad thesis (?) on it, but I just finished Zamyatin’s We. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on it in relation to other dystopian novels. Considering it came out before many of the others, I tend to give it a lot of leeway despite how weird it is.

      1. I liked it. As you said, it came out before the others so I give it credit for being pioneering. The themes of lack of privacy, lack of familial relationships and lack of free choice all align pretty well with totalitarian regimes. It’s definitely more on the Sci-Fi side of dystopian novels but it gets the points across.

        1. straffinrun

          It’s sooo far into the future that it makes it hard to connect the dots.

      2. Rhywun

        “Weird” covers it. I didn’t actually finish it. I found it very difficult to follow WTF was going on.

      3. commodious spittoon

        Is this the one with glass apartment/cellblock walls?

        1. Rhywun

          Yes.

          1. straffinrun

            And the creepiest rape scene I’ve ever read.

  54. KibbledKristen

    Just for the mug shot

    1. Heroic Mulatto

      Worst Harley Quinn cosplay ever.

    2. KibbledKristen

      (who is going to be the first to say “would”?)

      1. straffinrun

        It’s a sting boys. KK is trying to get us busted for a plot to blow up a seven eleven.

      2. RegicidalManiac

        Oof. Not I.

    3. Are those tattoos ore merely face paint?

      1. Jarflax

        looks like a mix of tats and open sores

    4. Chipwooder

      Why are they assuming xir gender?

    1. Lachowsky

      That’s pretty infuriating, but is common. When there are laws against everything, everyone is guilty of something.

      Shiw me the man and I’ll show you the crime- laventri Beria

      1. R C Dean

        Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime – laventri Beria Robert Mueller

        1. AlexinCT

          In this case he intends to keep collecting a pay check for as long as possible, and if he has to manufacture a crime to keep doing that, he will..

          1. R C Dean

            I don’t think its the paycheck. I think Mueller realizes that the FBI and DOJ are basically in a fight to the death with the President. Given the utterly astonishing and appalling (and illegal) misconduct of those agencies, up to and including his investigation, its Trump or them at this point. If they don’t take him down, I think Trump will purge the leadership (including the civil service types) of both agencies.

            This is a no-kidding coup attempt, IMO. The Praetorian Guard has decided they want Caeser deposed. They are in a race with the IG and possible criminal referrals from his investigation. Their disadvantage is that he has a lot on them, and they have very little on their enemies in the Trump camp.

          2. WTF

            Their disadvantage is that he has a lot on them, and they have very little on their enemies in the Trump camp.

            But their advantage is that they have the support of the Democrats and the Media, while the Republicans are feeble and worthless at fighting back.

    2. Chipwooder

      “Was that wrong? Should we not have done that? I tell ya, I gotta plead ignorance on this one because if anyone had said anything to me when I started here that this sort of thing was frowned upon….y’know, cause I’ve worked in a lot of police departments and I tell ya, people do that all the time”

      1. Drake

        * Sheriff George Costanza

    1. straffinrun

      Didn’t see it coming.

    2. Tundra

      Hah! Excellent.

  55. straffinrun

    Maybe covered, but…Town Bypasses Constitution, US Citizens Given 60 Days to Turn in Guns Or Become Criminals

    As the state promises gun rights activists they’re not coming for their guns, behind the scences they’re pleading for it to happen. And now the feared gun grab is occurring. Residents in Deerfield, Illinois have 60 days to surrender their “assault weapons” or face fines of $1000 per day per gun.

      1. straffinrun

        Good on them. We need a Churchill figure to step up. “We will fight them (the gun grabbers) on the beaches…”

    1. commodious spittoon

      Deerfield, AKA the civil suit pinata of Illinois.

      1. Rich and proggy.

    2. Rebel Scum

      Sounds highly illegal, constitutionally speaking.

        1. Grumbletarian

          Arooo!

        2. Rebel Scum

          Nice. Forgot about that show.

    3. R C Dean

      If I was a single man and had no familial duties, I would be strongly tempted to take out an ad in the paper – a picture of me with my M1A in scary flat dark earth furniture, 20 round mag inserted. It would include a simple message: “Come and Take It“.

      Taxes, millions of nitpicky laws, whatev. I think gun confiscation is where I would draw the line.

      1. Viking1865

        “Taxes, millions of nitpicky laws, whatev. I think gun confiscation is where I would draw the line.”

        As long as we’re armed, there’s a chance at reversing things through peaceful action, education, the political process, etc. Not a good chance, but still a chance.

        If they try to disarm us, that’s the prelude to camps and mass graves, and it’s best to nip that shit in the bud while you actually have the tools to do the nipping.

    4. KibbledKristen

      SAF is one of the good gun orgs that actually does shit with its donor $$. Rather than hoarding it and paying its executives a shitton, and not standing by actual gun owners.

      1. Gustave Lytton

        BS. They run the fundraiser racket like everyone else and Alan Gottlieb is a POS past common sense gun control supporter. Fuck him and SAF. I still think Heller was an attempt to bury the 2A once and for all that ended up with abbot as expected result.

  56. Count Potato

    “TIL that Tic Tacs are allowed to say they contain zero sugar even though they’re almost entirely pure sugar — because a single Tic Tac is 0.49 g and technically if a serving of a food contains < 0.5 g sugar you are allowed to round down to zero"

    https://twitter.com/juliagalef/status/982122525202108421

    1. commodious spittoon

      And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint.

    1. I love his tagline:

      “Husband, father, social scientist, writer, Madisonian. Or maybe right-wing ideologue, pseudoscientist, evil. Opinions differ.”

      1. straffinrun

        Depends on which end of the bell curve you’re on.

  57. Juvenile Bluster

    Well, this is nuts

    tl;dr: When the Portland (Oregon) jails get too full, they use a computer algorithm to decide who to release to make room. The computer keeps telling them to release people arrested for violent crimes, and to keep people arrested for bullshit non-violent low level offenses in jail. And the computer isn’t being overruled.

    “There’s no way to override the lists,” says Matt Ingram, a board member of the Multnomah County Corrections Deputy Association. “We’re letting out people charged with sex abuse and attempted murder—really atrocious crimes. It’s not a guy who broke into a car today.”

    1. Count Potato

      That makes no sense, unless they also replaced all the CO’s with robots.

    2. straffinrun

      That computer makes perfect sense. What are the odds that a violent offender would do it again?

    3. Public sector coders suck; as evidenced by Zero-care’s website rollout.

      1. Wasn’t that done by an outside crony contractor?

        1. Probably. They suck too. I suck. Everybody sucks.

    4. Lachowsky

      Several years ago my little brother was in jail sitting out a fine he refused to pay on a bullshit charge. He had to sit 21 days in lieu of paying the fine. About day 12, the Wakarusa music festival came to town. About 20000 hippies were camped out on the mountain north of town. Naturally, the began to quickly fill up the jail. When my brother was asked to leave in order to make room for the hippies, he refused until he was put before a judge that waived his remaining fines.

      1. Damn, that’s standing up to the Man.

        1. Lachowsky

          My theory is that if everybody would fight tooth and nail against the bullshit fines and tickets, and if they lost refused to pay and sat in jail instead, then the financial incentives for the police would quickly change and they would be forced to quit.

          Let it be known that my brothers and I are doing our part.

          1. Bobarian LMD

            So how long you been in jail?

      2. Drake

        When I was in school in LA, I had a friend who piled up parking and traffic tickets he had no ability (or willingness to pay). So he surrendered himself to the court on a Friday to do jail time over the weekend. By late Friday evening actual criminals were arriving and the cops sent him home.

    5. Chipwooder

      There’s no way to override the list? They can’t just say “No, we’re not letting the rapist out and keeping the shoplifter in”?

      1. Drake

        Actual lowlife criminals are less likely to post bail and / or pay fines.

    6. Grumbletarian

      Of course it makes sense. Getting all those violent people out of jail will make it safer for the remaining nonviolent inmates.

      1. R C Dean

        That’s it, right there. The list is created in order to make the jail easier to run and have better stats. Fuck the public, we have jobs we don’t want to put any effort into doing, and we don’t to look bad for being fat, lazy, stupid fucks.

    7. R C Dean

      There’s no way to override the lists,

      Bullshit. What a pathetic excuse for a board member and human being this is.

    8. JaimeRoberto

      Lemme guess, the algorithm ensures that they keep the right amount of diversity in prison.

      1. WTF

        You may not be far off. I could see how minorities might make up more of the violent offenders and fewer of the non-violent offenders, so letting out the non-violent offenders would result in a “racist” disparity.

    9. Gustave Lytton

      It’s a Multnomah County jail, not a municipal one.

      Missing from the story is that the County built another jail 15 years ago that has never been opened due to ‘budget reasons’. Something like $60M of taxpayer money wasted on that thing but because it’s capital money, it came out of a different bucket.

  58. Count Potato

    “Virginia woman arrested for allegedly threatening to blow up a 7-Eleven”

    http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/04/05/virginia-woman-arrested-for-allegedly-threatening-to-blow-up-7-eleven.html

    Florida needs to step up their game.

    1. Count Potato

      woops! See #62

    2. straffinrun

      This potato has no eyes. Upthread, friend.

    3. commodious spittoon

      You know who else was behind the curve…

      1. Pedro Cerrano?

      2. straffinrun

        James Dean?

      3. Trigger Hippie

        The Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy?

    4. Rebel Scum

      Crystal Mostek, 33, walked into the store in Virginia Beach and allegedly placed a device on the counter and told a store employee it was a bomb, WAVY reported.

      With a mug like that, definitely a grenade

  59. The Late P Brooks

    As the state promises gun rights activists they’re not coming for their guns, behind the scences they’re pleading for it to happen. And now the feared gun grab is occurring. Residents in Deerfield, Illinois have 60 days to surrender their “assault weapons” or face fines of $1000 per day per gun.

    I can’t remember if it’s in the state constitution, or a statute, but Montana specifically forbids local governments from imposing laws more strict than state law. Gun rights are explicit in the state constitution.

    Missoula got slapped down a few years ago for trying to restrict guns and ammo.

    1. Colorado has the same law; of course Denver weaseled its way out of it somehow. Some bullshit about being a “home rule municipality” or some such nonsense.

    2. straffinrun

      The state can override the city’s wishes and that is oppressive. The Feds can override the state and that’s progress. This is so confusing.

      1. TK

        Depends on what the state/locality is doing. Local government promoting lefty agenda? Federalism is working! Local government promoting conservative or libertarian agenda? OMG, we need the feds to DO SOMETHING!

        1. R C Dean

          Local government promoting lefty agenda violating Constitutional rights? Federalism is working! Local government promoting conservative or libertarian agenda protecting Constitutional rights? OMG, we need the feds to DO SOMETHING!

          1. TK

            Can’t disagree with that re-wording.

  60. The Late P Brooks

    “There’s no way to override the lists,” says Matt Ingram, a board member of the Multnomah County Corrections Deputy Association.

    Hands were tied.

    1. Gustave Lytton

      They were handcuffed by the computer.

  61. Rebel Scum

    So it’s apparently supposed to snow in the VA Richmond metro area tomorrow evening/night. VA weather is consistently inconsistent, but come on. It’s April. Global Warming is weird.

    1. kinnath

      Uh, warmer temperatures ==> more moisture in the air ==> more extreme weather events ==> any weather anomaly proves global warming ==> warmer temperatures . . . . . . . . .

      Get with the program dude.

      1. Akira

        Weather is not climate (except when it is).

        1. Bobarian LMD

          Weather is climate when I say it is.

          /Climate scientist (which probably means a biology degree)

    2. Tundra

      Twins have a game tomorrow. First pitch temp is projected at 12 degrees.

    3. Chipwooder

      We’re getting snow tomorrow night? For crying out loud…..it was 60s-70s for weeks in Jan and Feb, now we’re going to get snow on April 7?

    4. I’m a couple hours north of you and we’ve got a few inches supposedly tomorrow and possibly Monday. I don’t remember getting snow this late before, but it’s been a funky winter.

  62. The Late P Brooks

    Squatters

    It may also be illegal. Fire codes aside, squatters benefit from free utilities, cable TV and internet access, and cleaning services. This may violate congressional ethics rules, which prohibit members from using official resources for anything other than incidental personal needs. At the least, lodging on government premises should be treated as a taxable fringe benefit — in the same way that congressional parking spaces are.

    Aside from the legal considerations, there are other issues. The risk of elected representatives appearing in various states of undress is more than awkward — it is unacceptable, especially given revelations about the prevalence of sexual harassment in the Capitol. Aides are often obliged to clean up their bosses’ living quarters, which only adds to the dysfunction and abuse that characterizes office environments on the Hill.

    Put them in FEMA trailers on the Mall.

    1. Yusef drives a Kia

      Send them to the Slabs for the Summer

    2. Gilmore

      The impression i get from this … is that the objections being mounted to it have nothing to do with the reasons given.

      Democrats are making a stink about it a) because they think it makes good press, and b) i suspect they think that if they can get congresspeople to leave town more often, they’ll be better able to control votes.

  63. KibbledKristen
      1. Raston Bot

        that bartender is definitely crapping his diaper.

  64. Gilmore

    April 5 (UPI) — A Texas man was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Wednesday for looting a Walmart

    20 years for petty-larceny?

    Who was his lawyer: John?

    1. R C Dean

      Looting during a disaster. I’m down with draconian sentences for that. Looting is the first stage of a total breakdown in social order, and as such needs to be slapped down very hard indeed, IMO. Its a form of rioting, and similar to arson (often associated with looting), which carries outsize penalties for a property crime because of the extreme risk of death or serious injury to innocents.

      1. straffinrun

        Looting is certainly worse than your run of the mill theft for exactly the reasons you mention. The guy was on probation, too, so that must’ve enhanced the sentence. All that being said, it seems excessive. How many years does it take to punish the guy? Make the sentence double what normally would be the penalty and I’m fine with that. Even triple, maybe. 20 years means the dude’s life is basically forfeit if he’s, say, 35 or older.

      2. Gilmore

        Looting during a disaster. I’m down with draconian sentences for that.

        Strictly speaking, the specific law has to exist first.

        From what i can see in the story, he was simply charged with burglary, and the principal reason for the aggravated sentencing was because he was on probation for another crime (drug related), not because of some clause in the law that says, “crime x when committed under conditions Y = 10X the normal penalty”

        the post-facto rationalization of an extreme and unusual penalty as “fitting” because it appeals to popular feeling is bullshit. Whether it feels appropriate or not is besides the point: courts simply shouldn’t have that sort of discretion unless they’ve been gives specific statutes allowing it.

        and perhaps they do – its just not clear from the story that is the case.

        1. R C Dean

          Fair points, G. Although I have no doubt this sentence is allowed by statute, I think that what allows it is probably his criminal history, not his looting during a disaster. He shouldn’t get 20 years for being a repeat offender, but 20 years for looting is at least defensible. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a separate statute or sentence for looting during a disaster.

          Whether they hammered him because of popular feeling, I have no idea. Its possible there wasn’t much popular feeling on this, and the judge just agrees with me that looting deserves a harsh penalty, one that he was statutorily authorized to mete out (although not for the reason it was justified in this case).

          As far as judicial discretion goes, mandatory sentencing stripped much of that discretion away, and has resulted in untold injustices.

          1. Gilmore

            “”a repeat offender”

            my objection to the ‘repeat offender’ clauses in sentencing is that, because of the drug war and the criminalization of almost everything related to drugs (possession, transport, etc), almost everyone who is ever charged with drug crimes becomes a ‘repeat offender’ overnight, and – if they’re also a drug user – it tends to be a black hole of endlessly increasing penalties for the same otherwise-non-crimes

            and then you throw a single felony burglary into the mix, and they get 20 years. it effectively turns drug-defendants into a specially-persecuted class who never get anything remotely like equal treatment under the law.

  65. The Late P Brooks

    Send them to the Slabs for the Summer

    And to Frostbite Falls in the winter.

    1. Yusef drives a Kia

      Leave them in DC and rip out the HVAC systems, then see hoe much law makin’ gets done come Summer

      1. Chipwooder

        And have them read WaPo’s annual column explaining why you don’t actually need air conditioning.

        1. Akira

          I’m actually very proud of myself (for purely financial reasons) for going all of last summer without using the central air conditioning. I usually lounged around the house in Thai fisherman pants and a wifebeater, and I’d spray myself with water while sitting in front of a fan to stay cool. If it got absolutely unbearable, I’d go take a cold shower.

          I did have a window unit in the bedroom that I would turn on one hour before going to bed, however. My house has no attic, so my bedroom ceiling IS the roof, and it gets horribly hot up there without A/C.

        2. To be fair to WaPo, in the DC area you can get by in the summer with open windows if you’ve got good ventilation and coat yourself in DEET. The humidity’s a bitch, but you can acclimate. That said, the first summer my east Texas in-laws came to visit they went out and bought a massive window unit for us within an hour of being here.

          Growing up, my dad absolutely hated runnin’ the AC, so we’d be a windows-only house until like maybe mid-August. Wasn’t too bad, but we had a brick rancher with lots of windows and a finished basement to hang out in when it got really hot, so that made a difference.

          1. Bobarian LMD

            They build homes now to be ventilated thru the ventilation system. Old homes in hot climates were built to breath (big windows, shutters, etc)

            You turn off your AC in your double paned, small windowed, heavily insulated new home and pretty soon you are fucking miserable.

            But running AC in that old home will make you go broke for the same reason.

          2. Our place is a Cape Cod, an old Sears kit house built in the 30s. We’ve got a floor furnace and window units, and that’s it. It’s definitely more like being outside than not. It’s barely insulated, there are drafts everywhere, the crawlspace is a nightmare and there are so many little gaps in the floor where someone ran a cord or a pipe used to come up, etc., that you’re basically outside with a roof.

            And you’re right; our electric bill is like $350-$400 for two adults and a toddler in a 1100 sq.ft. house. It’s bonkers. We’re talking about replacing our current “system” with a ductless mini-split but I’m half-tempted to spend that money on new windows instead, to try to improve the insulation.

  66. The Late P Brooks

    Hobgoblins, off the port bow!

    When coffee beans are roasted, a chemical reaction occurs, producing a chemical, called acrylamide, which California has long listed as causing cancer. Acrylamide dissolves in water, which means that it can be found in brewed coffee.

    With these simple facts in mind, the Council for Education and Research on Toxics brought suit against a large number of companies, including Starbucks, arguing that they were obliged to give the appropriate warning to their customers.

    ———

    But let’s step back a bit. There are good reasons to object to cancer warnings for coffee.

    For one thing, such warnings would mislead and frighten a lot of people. When we see a cancer warning, many of us greatly exaggerate the size of the risk. It’s not in the public interest to produce unjustified fear.

    It’s not in the public interest to produce unjustified fear.

    Haha, good one, Sunstein.

    1. NOW you tell me!

    2. R C Dean

      Oh, allofasudden Cass “Nudge” Sunstein sees a downside to his pervasive nanny state.

      Fuck you. You’ve been cheerleading for exactly this all along. You have exactly zero principled ground left to stand on to oppose this.

      1. Gilmore

        Cass Sunstein and Sam Power are possibly my most-loathed personalities on earth.

        I’m dead serious when i say i think they’re worse than Vlad Putin or Kin Jong Un. They’re exactly the sort of “Benevolent tyrants” that CS Lewis described.

        The worst people on earth are never more dangerous than when they’re convinced they have YOUR interests in mind better than you do. i’d vastly prefer some self-interested monster who raped the planet to serve their own ends than the fucking Do-Gooder slavers like Cass and Sam.

        Sam Power is quite literally responsible for billions in US arms helping to exacerbate the Syrian civil war, and directly responsible for aiding Saudi bombers to attack refugee camps. And almost no one on the left – tho there are a few – even bothers to note the hypocrisy. they still take her at her Do-gooding face-value and ignore the misery and death she’s been directly responsible for.

        1. R C Dean

          Power is also responsible for the debacle in Libya – “responsibility to protect” being a shibboleth for killing people for feelz, not to protect our national interests. And look how that turned out.

  67. straffinrun

    A few MMA fans here, right? What a motherf**king week. All this happens within a week of the big event on Saturday. Starts out with the super fight between Ferguson and Khabib being cancelled when Ferguson blows his knee out in a PR event. Then we have Connor McGregor and a couple dozen of his thug Irish entourage busting up the bus and knocking two more fighters out, cancelling two more fights. They replace Ferguson with Max Halloway on just six days notice. Now, unbelievably, the day before the fight, Max is deemed medically unfit to fight. Dana White must be on suicide watch.

    1. straffinrun

      Or maybe there aren’t any MMA fans out here because Max getting yanked would’ve freaked them out. Go back to talking about pizzas. *Mutters and walks away*

      1. Hudson

        I used to love hosting fights with a bunch of friends. We’d split the PPV and I’d fire up the grill. But the group kind of evaporated – a lot of people moved away and lost touch. Now trying to justify $65 for what adds up to maybe an hour of entertainment (not counting the fluff between fights) is pretty hard to do. So I’ve drifted away from UFC. Still catch some of the free prelims though.

        1. straffinrun

          The skill level in the UFC is much, much higher than it was just ten years ago. I don’t go for the PPV, either. Just wait for it to come out on the net. The heavy weight champ today, Stipe Miocic, is a beast that is fun to watch because he has all aspects of the game covered and is a cool dude to boot.

          1. Hudson

            Agreed. I remember when the muay thai/BJJ combo seemed unstoppable. One-trick fighters were quickly overcome when a well rounded fighter found the shortcomings of their opponent. Now it seems like everybody gets well rounded training and a fighter that excels at striking will at least have decent takedown/ground defense.

    2. Rhywun

      Then we have Connor McGregor and a couple dozen of his thug Irish entourage busting up the bus and knocking two more fighters out, cancelling two more fights.

      I just thought this was more of that “strutting” and “smack talk” that supposedly makes the sport popular.

      1. straffinrun

        Not at all. This is more like the Pacers climbing into the stands and beating the hell out of fans. Nobody wanted this.

        1. Rhywun

          Yeah, I didn’t really read the details – it was just my immediate thought when I skimmed the headline somewhere.

      2. TK

        Dude threw a dolly through a bus window…

  68. The Late P Brooks

    Fuck you. You’ve been cheerleading for exactly this all along. You have exactly zero principled ground left to stand on to oppose this.

    I suspect Cass is a coffee drinker.

    This reminds me of something i saw a long, long time ago. Johnny Carson was interviewing Tony Randall (early anti-smoking fanatic). Carson asks him, “Well what about alcohol? Alcohol is bad for you, right?”

    Randall (who probably had three or four fingers of scotch in his coffee mug), says, unabashedly, “But I like to drink.”

    1. Rhywun

      early anti-smoking fanatic

      Didn’t know that. No wonder he was such an asshole to Oscar.

  69. The Late P Brooks

    the post-facto rationalization of an extreme and unusual penalty as “fitting” because it appeals to popular feeling is bullshit.

    see, also: onerous restrictions and conditions imposed on sex offenders post-release.

    If they are still a danger to society, keep them locked up. If they have served their time, let them attempt to get on with their lives.

    1. Akira

      This.

      It can’t be good for recidivism rates to put so many restrictions on them that they have nothing to live for.

  70. TK

    I don’t know who this Morrissey guy is, but he hates The Independent and has thoughts on British society as a whole

    The Independent has an almost breathless capacity for misinformation and deception. Its uncontested rules of hate are like a fully drawn bow aiming its arrow at 42 targets, yet hitting none; bitter at the core, yet taking a stab, as its writer moves with one-way-or-another-you-will-remember-my-name outrage.

    1. Rhywun

      A man who once fantasized about chopping off Thatcher’s head is a Brexit supporter and the MSM haz a confuse.