Friday Morning Our Bad Links

Hi everyone, you’ll have to enact your own labor today. We screwed up the links. The internal discussion looked a lot like this.

 

Comments

573 responses to “Friday Morning Our Bad Links”

  1. Jarflax

    Wait there are supposed to be links?

    1. How are we supposed to sell chains without links?

    2. Brett L

      Sorry, just trying to get all the Wapner screechers back into their “high”-functioning autism zones.

    3. Jarflax

      Oh wow, my first and probably only first. And I got it on the day with no links. I feel so very special.

      1. Left Hand of Radar

        The feeling will pass.

  2. *Spends a half hour trying to figure out how to make sure a job stops adding itself to a schedule after another job finishes.*

    *realizes that the other job can call a cancel on the first*

    *sigh*

    1. *realizes there is an easier way by simply limiting last allowed run time*

      *slaps forehead*

    1. Pope Jimbo

      Please. Hold my barrel of crude…..

      Evacuation order lifted following Wisconsin refinery blast that injured 11

      A tank of crude oil or asphalt exploded about 10 a.m. Thursday at the refinery, prompting authorities to order the evacuation of a 3-mile (5-kilometer) radius around the refinery, as well as a 10-mile (16-kilometer) corridor south of it where the smoke was heading.

      I’m sure all the pipeline protesters have been masturbating furiously since this happened.

      1. Festus

        Dry, chafing masturbation.

        1. Pope Jimbo

          Do you not even artisanal mayonnaise dude?

          1. Festus

            Vegan.

  3. How young men are radicalized online against modernity

    There are still many questions about the attack. But the trend of angry young men committing acts of violence after being radicalized online is hard to ignore, and is part of a growing, broader phenomenon that has seen them push back against feminism, racial and sexual diversity, and postmodern society in general. Making matters worse is that while some of the communities driving this reactionary movement are niche, it’s increasingly finding a home in mainstream spaces too
    …snip…
    Peterson opposes what he calls postmodernism, but might better be termed poststructuralism, because that latter school of thought suggests that those deep truths are neither so deep nor so true. For example, instead of believing that gender norms are expressions of a natural order, poststructuralist feminism thinks of gender as a complex interplay between physiology, neurobiology, sociology, and history. It is ultimately a more difficult, hard-to-pin down version of reality — and now those whose status feels threatened by the promise of something of new are pushing back. Taken as a whole, everything from incel culture to Peterson’s many fans all represent a reactionary movement, a kind of pendulum swing away from late 20th century thought.

    1. Jarflax

      That is an interesting set of contortions to get Crazy people whining that they are unattractive and killing people linked up to a calm rational man preaching personal responsibility.

    2. Suthenboy

      “It is ultimately a more difficult, hard-to-pin down version of reality”

      A lot of words to say ‘horseshit’.

    3. DiegoF

      I read that “Hot young men are radicalized online against modernity!” This is what happens when you see enough targeted ads on a browsing history that analyzes as gay as mine; it becomes a self-fulfilling ascription.

      1. Blame Jesse.

    4. Any mention of Islamists?

    5. Scruffy Nerfherder

      modernity

      An empty and useless word.

      1. Hyperion

        modernity

        An empty and useless word.

        No, it actually has a real solid meaning:

        the quality or condition of being modern.
        “an aura of technological modernity”

        But then the left adopt the word and pervert it, just like they do with so many other words, like ‘liberal’.

        Ignore retards or laugh them to scorn.

        1. Scruffy Nerfherder

          Modern simply means a departure from the current tradition. Yes, it has meaning, but it has no value. Modern, for modernity’s sake, is an empty platitude that conveys no sense of ethical worth.

          You may as well argue that 1980’s punk mohawks were morally superior to 70’s bowl cuts simply because they were a newer fashion.

    6. DiegoF

      If they’re listening to Peterson, aren’t they being moderated online against postmodernity? I mean, you might say much against taking you back to political views that were mainstream in an era that even children can remember–perhaps that is not the right direction you wish the country to go–but “radical” is perhaps not the best word for such views.

    7. Not Adahn

      poststructuralist feminism thinks of gender as a complex interplay between physiology, neurobiology, sociology, and history. It is ultimately a more difficult, hard-to-pin down version of reality

      And yet the “problems” identified and the solutions proposed are always the same. If your “complex interplay” can be replaced by a dipping bird, it’s not really that complex.

      1. Scruffy Nerfherder

        All the solutions require experts in critical studies theory. These people are in the business of creating problems that only they can help you never solve.

      2. Festus

        Or you might just be a fucking loon. Hard to tell in this poststructuralist, madcap world!

    8. Hyperion

      Ah, I see, so someone refuses to embrace your twisted version of the meaning of the word ‘modernity’ and by doing so are ‘radicalized’. Cry me a fucking river.

    9. Wow, man, the knives are out for Peterson. Tellingly, a lot of the articles I’ve seen about him describe him as anti-transgender and say he came to fame because he refused to use the preferred pronoun for a trans person. This is utter bullshit, and he says so himself. He’s said multiple times that he has no issue with transgender people and is happy to use whatever pronoun a person would like him to use if asked. His issue was with the Canadian bill requiring it, partly because of the creepy Orwellian nature of the law but also because it created a legal situation where a person could inadvertently break the law simply by using the “wrong” pronoun in the absence of advice to the contrary.

      It’s kind of funny watching the radical left go after him. I mean, he’s a well-spoken, published clinical psychologist considered an expert in his field who mainly advocates for personal responsibility and a realistic appraisal of the world. He’s not especially political, but to the extent he is I believe he’s kind of center-left. But the left in Canada (and in the US) is so extreme that he has more in common with the so-called “alt-light” than with the left. That seems to be a pattern; the intersectionalists and Progressives are running left as fast as they can and leaving everyone to the right of Mao in the dust.

      1. Festus

        He’s a bit too “Charley Church” and some of his arguments seem sorta anodyne to me but overall I like most of his stuff mostly because he pokes those insufferable SJWs right where the doctor ordered.

        1. Yeah, I get the impression you’re not gonna find Peterson at happy hour tossin’ a few back and shootin’ the shit with the boys, but I find I agree with him more often than not even though he does sometimes come across a little prim. And I really like that he goes after a lot of the sacred cows of modern social justice from the perspective of a buttoned-up academic with a real degree. If he was on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour it would be easy to assassinate his character or just make him a joke, but there just doesn’t seem to be any dirt on the guy. People have to dig up pictures of him standing behind a Pepe frog once at a conference.

      2. Rasilio

        I’ve been watching his maps of meaning class videos. Pretty good and interesting stuff in there.

        One of the things I like about him is he is very very careful and precise in his claims. If something is supported by experimental evidence he states it as a fact, if not he very clearly states it is his opinion or that it is an open question

    10. Heroic Mulatto

      Christ, what an asshole!

      From now on, I’m going to use every tragedy, no matter how spurious the connection, to smear my bête noire thinkers.

      John McWhorter ignores all of the empirical evidence supporting Neo-Whorfian linguistic relativity and he did 9/11!

    11. Warty

      The weakness of the attacks against Jordan Peterson are amazing, aren’t they? It’s revealing.

      1. Heroic Mulatto

        John McWhorter invented Ugg boots.

        1. Warty

          *Puts John McWorter in a time machine and sends him to 1916 Waco*

  4. Brett L

    If only our donations paid for “motivation” persons (don’t want to other Jesse here), I think the Links would run on time.

    1. Gadfly

      FTA:

      Shen Yue, 25, has a degree in civil engineering from a university in Beijing and works as a programmer motivator.

      “They really need someone to talk to them from time to time and to organize activities for them to ease some of the pressure,” she told the Times.

      I’m guessing these jobs must pay pretty well to attract an engineer. Starbucks barista this ain’t.
      Also,

      Shen said she loves what she does and does not consider her job to be sexist.

      “Many feminist ideas are too extreme now,” she said. “I think women should be independent, self-reliant and have self-respect. And that’s enough.”

      1. Hyperion

        *lights outrage mob signal*

    2. Count Potato

      Pics or it didn’t happen.

    3. Rasilio

      I am not really certain that works out well. There is a very fine line between the presence of a pretty girl motivating an engineer and her completely distracting him

  5. DiegoF

    I forgot why Cusack never paid the scary tot his two bucks. Certainly didn’t look like resistance would be a particularly good gamble on his part.

    1. SugarFree

      It was his parent’s bill to pay and they never gave him the money. He needed his cash for the hot French chick across the street.

      1. Scruffy Nerfherder

        Alas, Little Ricky had his testicles all over her.

          1. Scruffy Nerfherder

            It was the pants, nobody can resist the pants.

          2. Left Hand of Radar

            Trip Shakespeare? You really are from Minnesoda.

    2. Rasilio

      Who cares, it was one of the best teen movies ever made

      1. Rasilio

        Strike that, the best teen movie ever made.

        Also, Monique was WAY hotter than the chick who ditched Cusack for Stalin

  6. SugarFree

    Second high school student suspended for going to a gun range with his father, the moderately memeable Ken Bone.

    https://hotair.com/archives/2018/04/26/ken-bone-son-suspended-school-police-investigating-went-gun-range/

    1. DiegoF

      Maybe he and Kashuv can organize a firing range outing with the “protect your right to bear arms” NRA muscle shirt (sadly not “can’t ban these guns”) WV junior-high kid from 2013.

    2. WTF

      Sounds like a clear cut civil rights violation.

    3. Warty

      Bullshit. The real reason they suspended him is the appalling stance he’s taking to shoot that SCAR. Feet shoulder width apart, you fucking kid.

  7. The Late P Brooks

    “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff….”

  8. But I like chocolate milk…

    How the alt-right uses milk to promote white supremacy

    After that night, milk quickly went viral, joining the ranks of Pepe the Frog and the “okay” emoji as symbols of 21st century, post-Obama white supremacy. Pro-Trump supporters began carrying cartons of it to rallies and Richard Spencer and other prominent figures of the “alt-right” movement added milk-bottle emojis to their Twitter profiles.

    The #SoyBoy hashtag followed a few months later, going viral in the spring of 2017 and remains popular today. For members of the alt-right, dairy milk symbolises strength of body and society; drinking it reinforces notions of white superiority and idealised visions of masculinity.

    Soy milk represents weakness, emasculation, and all things politically correct. The hashtags #MilkTwitter and #SoyBoy celebrate traditional gender norms and the “good old days” of white-dominated patriarchy, while ridiculing diversity and feminism.

    1. Yusef drives a Kia

      I want to return to the good old days, when people left each other alone….

      1. No such time ever existed.

        1. Yusef drives a Kia

          where I grew up it did

        2. Hyperion

          It did, and it still does in places, just not much of anywhere in the first world. Back when I was a kid, your worst threat to liberty and not being left alone was the church ladies. And their power to actually bother you was pretty much non-existent. I mean they could gossip about you at church among themselves. That was pretty much it. Today, they have been replaced by half the population, including your neighbors, the education system, the government, the media, etc, etc, all wielding vast political power.

    2. Evan from Evansville

      After that night, milk quickly went viral, joining the ranks of Pepe the Frog and the “okay” emoji as symbols of 21st century, post-Obama white supremacy.

      POST. OBAMA. WHITE. SUPREMACY.

      What in the fuck. This is one of the reasons that I don’t live in the States anymore and am reluctant to go back.

      I am correct in assuming that this literally is a thing for about 10,000 weirdos spread out over the country, and only about 200 hundred that are dumb enough extoll racist ideas publicly? This is them *actually* being delusional, literally seeing racist ghosts under every stairwell and behind every door, right?

      Where in the fuck is honest-to-god, open racism a thing in America? (inb4 affirmative action, etc)

      1. Where in the fuck is honest-to-god, open racism a thing in America? (inb4 affirmative action, etc)

        “Where da racism at – except the most racist institutional racism?”

      2. straffinrun

        I’m totally with you Evan. The US is so batshit insane from outside the fishbowl that I can’t imagine ever going back.

        1. Stinky Wizzleteats

          It’s getting to be a bit much even for me. I’ve always had a morbid interest in organized crime, do you think the Yakuza would take a middle aged white guy?

          1. straffinrun

            My wife’s cousin was into all that. Punch perm. Pimped out Crown. I could probably put in a word for you. Are you willing to shake down a ramen stall for 200 bucks?

          2. Stinky Wizzleteats

            If I can crash on your couch for a couple of months while I get my bearings I’m game.

          3. Pope Jimbo

            Don’t do it Straff!

            Look what happened to the poor Minnesoda pol who let someone crash on his couch.

          4. JaimeRoberto

            Dude, they’ll probably just sell you into white slavery. If that’s your thing, go for it. I won’t judge, but I recommend against it.

        2. Evan from Evansville

          *Raises glass to straff.* (Assuming your weekend has started, but I know you contract and I have regular hours.)

          I think that’s such a good point to make. I mean I was in the States for 3 months in late 2016, was there for the election, and I was there for two weeks this January. I’ve lived there for over 23 years. I know the place. This post-Obama white supremacy shit is baffling.

          I think it might be hard for people to realize just how bug-fuck all the squawking looks and sounds from the outside. This crowd definitely gets it more than probably any other, but it’s just absolutely insane. It really does feel like the whole nation has come undone…over absolutely nothing.

          1. straffinrun

            You know what it was that pushed me over the edge? It wasn’t the heavy handed centralized government, the soul crushing regulations, the wypipo shit. It was being told a cock and balls doesn’t make you a chick. Seriously. My god, can’t we agree on that at least?

          2. straffinrun

            That didn’t make sense. Oh well, I’m drunk.

          3. Jarflax

            Yeah straff, gotta disagree with you here. I think a cock and balls definitely doesn’t make you a chick.

          4. Evan from Evansville

            Haahahahaha….look at all these sober suckers, living in their *PRECIOUS* EST!

            *Laughs maniacally and falls down stairs*

          5. Actually, est is insane, not precious.

          6. Not Adahn

            Of course not. It makes you a newhalf. Or a futanari, I’m not up on your wiley Chinee preversions.

      3. Wouldn’t Obama get some of the blame on this? You know, not healing the racial divide or something ‘n’ other?

        1. Hyperion

          The first black president cannot be blamed for anything ever. He got a Noble fucking peace prize for doing nothing. Was he even in office yet before they awarded it to him? Just imagine if the Korea conflict had officially ended after he had been in office for only a few months. He would have claimed credit, just like Trump has, the difference being we would never hear the fucking end to it, they’d probably be erecting hundreds of statues around the US of the greatest diplomat and peace giver, ever, and literally thousands of book would be penned on the subject.

      4. Hyperion

        Well, there’s very little room left under their stairwell these days for ghosts, it’s full of Russians.

      5. Heroic Mulatto

        Where in the fuck is honest-to-god, open racism a thing in America?

        The South End of Boston.

        1. WTF

          Also pretty much any college campus.

        2. DiegoF

          You a Masshole HM?

          1. Heroic Mulatto

            Them’s fighting word, Diego.

        3. slumbrew

          The South End of Boston.

          Uh, no. Absolutely not. The South End is overrun with the gheys and yoga-milfs. You’re thinking of South Boston, a.k.a. Southie (it’s an easy mistake). And even Southie has been gentrified to hell and gone. You need to head further South for some quality racism, maybe Dorchester.

          1. DiegoF

            That should have been my clue. But I heard “South End” and thought, I always only hear about about Southie but maybe the South End is like that too even though it’s nowhere near. (And neither one is particularly southward in the modern city.)

            I always hear Southie, Dorcester, Roslindale, and maybe West Roxbury for some more upscale white-ethnic racist thuggery. But those are probably all yuppies or all Asians and Latinos now. Maybe you have to go to Revere or some shit for the new Southie.

          2. Rasilio

            Unless it has changed recently Revere was always more Italian, Summerville was the Irish burb and the likely landing spot for Micks driven out of Southie

          3. slumbrew

            Note my handle – Somerville is even more expensive than Southie now.

          4. grrizzly

            I moved from Southie to Somerville last year. It is more expensive.

            Southie has been thoroughly gentrified. Though I found it amusing that at the time when I moved there, about 7 years ago, somebody scribbled on a neighboring house “yuppies live here.”

            slumbrew, are we neighbors?

          5. slumbrew

            slumbrew, are we neighbors?

            Quite possibly – I’m in Davis, you?

            *sharpens sword while muttering, “There can be only one”*

          6. grrizzly

            Yes, we are. I’m in Teele Sq.

          7. slumbrew

            As noted Southie is rapidly gentrifying, though still home to large housing projects (filled with white pypo, no less) . Dot & Rozzi are pretty diverse these days – e.g., Dot is the place to go for really good, authentic Vietnamese. Note sure where your go-to spot for blatant racism is these days.

          8. DiegoF

            Most of the wypipo moved out of most other large cities’ PJs in the ’70s at latest. I remember being stunned to see entire projects full of them in Boston on the TV news into the early ’90s while growing up. I always figured it was because Boston was so racially unreformed that they weren’t letting other races into the white projects, which was probably true. But then I saw it was still true into the mid ’00s, and the only explanation I could partially fathom was that (I looked it up online, which you could do by this time) the income ceiling was rather higher than it was in NYCHA, and maybe a lot of these people were older tenants or their kids and grandfathered in or something. Could have been more like the middle-income developments in NYC, which tend to favor those who can work the system and navigate better. I don’t know. Most cities have had no problem for decades having black projects in the middle of white, even gentrified, neighborhoods.

            I am stunned to see that it’s still true. Explanation?

          9. slumbrew

            Eh,I assume the explanation is the same for anyone where multiple generations live in the projects, never getting out, regardless of skin tone; low expectations, broken families, the subtle lure of “free” money, etc.

          10. Heroic Mulatto

            Yeah, I meant South Boston.

            Need coffee.

          11. The Last American Hero

            I’ll need some pics of the yoga milfs to verify your claim.

          12. slumbrew

            I enacted your labor and did a google image search for ‘south end yoga milfs’ – I have to be honest, some of this pictures appear staged.

    3. Suthenboy

      I keep hearing people say ‘The left is losing it!’

      You cant lose something you never had.

      1. Hyperion

        They’d better rope in Kanye quickly and force him to apologize or get him in a metoo or more uppity niggas goan get off that plantation. That could be truly disastrous for the left, in fact, there’s no doubt it would be.

        1. Count Potato

          People are already calling him an “uncle tom”. Even more ridiculous, it seems most of those people are white.

          1. Hyperion

            Yeah, I know. White progs are the worst. Agree with me and your’re special, but if you don’t, I’ll call you racial slurs. Nice, so liberal and all.

    4. DiegoF

      I doubt milk can ever reach the toxicity level of the OK hand symbol and Pepe the Frog. But the alt-right, I think, has finally made its first PR mistake in all this soy-bashing. How are they going to attract their Asian wives that way?

    5. Chipwooder

      I’m no alt-right guy, but when you’re right, you’re right – soy milk fucking sucks. Smells like ass, too.

      1. Drake

        I have news for you. If you believe in the Bill of Rights, if you aren’t a soy-guzzling, self-hating feminist…

        You are an alt-right guy.

        1. Chipwooder

          *tears welling in eyes*

        2. Hyperion

          *beams with pride, puffs out chest… cough cough, ouch that hurt, I’m too old for this*

        3. Apparently if you aren’t left of Trotsky you’re alt-right these days.

      2. Hyperion

        Not to mention, it’s full of estrogen and the guys I see sippin their soy lattes, definitely should not be having any of that.

  9. Unless it’s about her husband…

    Hillary Clinton Urges Women To ‘Stand Up And Speak Out’

    She also illuminated the fact that in America right now, “press rights, journalism and free speech are under open assault,” in what she called “the most perilous position I’ve seen in my lifetime.” She went on to say, “According to Freedom House, an organization dedicated to protecting free speech and human rights around the world, 2016 was the lowest point for global press freedom in over a decade, and 2017 was one of the most dangerous years on record to be a journalist.”

    In these uncertain times where freedom of speech and a free press are being challenged (our current president has even called the media “the enemy of the American people”), and more and more awareness is being drawn to the harassment and inequities women (and other marginalized groups) face in all sectors of society, Clinton stressed that protecting these rights is more crucial now than ever and that we must all push to make sure we have “an open, inclusive, diverse society.”

    1. Scruffy Nerfherder

      2017 was one of the most dangerous years on record to be a journalist

      They’re getting tweet droned every day, it’s a massacre out there.

    2. Suthenboy

      Hillary would certainly know about the inequities of women in the workplace. I’d say she is an expert on the subject.

    3. Rasilio

      Or yourlesbian lover’s closest aide’s husbands preying on underage girls

    4. The Last American Hero

      More dangerous than when Obama tried to have one arrested?

  10. WTF

    Golden State Killer detectives used genealogical website to identify suspect

    Shaun Hampton, a spokesperson for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, said officials had struggled for years to figure out who that DNA belonged to. Recently, they tapped a genealogical database that the public uses to search for relatives and ancestors, he said.

    Law enforcement sources told the Los Angeles Times that information from that website dramatically reduced the size of their search. Eventually they narrowed the investigation to several families listed in the database, with a pool of about 100 men who fit the age profile of the killer, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

    Apparently the cops can search your DNA in a genealogical database without any warrant or evidence of probable cause.

    1. SugarFree

      It isn’t private information. It’s like all those “fingerprint your kids” drives. You think the police aren’t going to search freely surrendered biometric data? People are willingly building the DNA database that the British police only dream about.

      1. straffinrun

        Do they know about my porn surfing history? My next glib piece is going to be titled, Masturbating in the Matriarchy. Not enough people jerk off to Shakespeare or Japanese lessons.

        1. SugarFree

          The NSA has known about your porn habits for at least a decade now. Your searches scroll across huge video walls and get forwarded to all your elderly aunts.

          1. straffinrun

            I shouldn’t have searched for “elderly aunt fisters”. Awkward at the next family reunion.

          2. Jarflax

            Awkward or start of a home movie?

          3. DiegoF

            Call me odd if you want, but I actually could handle it until Elderly Aunt Fisters 6: Fistula Fisters.

          4. Festus

            Worse yet, they have set up a live stream to your dead Grandma’s watching from on high. Diabolical.

          5. Hyperion

            Geez, if all my elderly aunts weren’t already dead or too old to move, they’d probably be texting me right now for some gilf hookup.

          6. The Last American Hero

            That explains a very puzzling conversation I had during a family gathering last Christmas.

        2. Rasilio

          Given how much really raunchy sex is buried in Shakespeare’s plays it would not be hard to do a line of porno’s based on them

      2. DiegoF

        Yeah, and unfortunately there is little anyone can do about it as an individual. Because God is, all our natural law pontifications aside, a manifest socialist, He has failed to randomize our DNA and all it takes is our idiot extended families.

        Thank God I had the common sense to avoid the constant entreaties from every sperm bank in the Northeast (there are so few Latinos at top schools they ride your jock even if you’re as short as me, the only race they’ll even look at people anywhere near under average for) back when I desperately needed the cash. Some people idiotically thought “anonymity” would mean something. It was not hard to anticipate that it would not be so forever.

        1. Festus

          I don’t get the attraction but I have talked to my brother and my father once in the last ten years. My brother called me a nazi because I found Trump’s win amusing and my dad ripped me off for ten years and is askeert of dying and wanted to make peace with me before he shuffles off. Fuck them. Family is what you make of it.

    2. To what extent do you own your effects that you freely give to other people?

      (This isn’t a rhetorical question.)

      1. WTF

        I think just because I authorize party X to have my information, it doesn’t mean I have automatically authorized parties Y, Z, etc. to also have it. Unless of course I was stupid enough to agree that party X can do whatever they please with it.

    3. I’d wager those sites terms of service say other people can search against your DNA (typically for the “identified relatives” feature), so you agreed to the search when you gave them the DNA.

    4. Pope Jimbo

      I wonder if it was 23 and me, or Ancestry.com?

      You would think that a selling point of these services would be to assure clients that they would never share your data. There must be a way to anonymize your results so that even with a warrant the cops couldn’t figure out who you are.

      Do the current DNA sites get most of their revenue selling their data to 3rd parties?

      Lastly, it sucks if you can still be targeted by the cops even if you didn’t share your DNA but your idiot relatives did.

      1. Juvenile Bluster

        Apparently Ancestry, but both have the same abysmal privacy policies, so it doesn’t matter.

      2. SugarFree

        They said the site on the news this morning, but I can’t shake it out of my memory. It wasn’t one of the genealogy services that I recognized. (I have to deal with a lot of them at work.)

          1. Pope Jimbo

            So Florida Man can still commit crimes with impunity? Surely he hasn’t gotten his GED yet.

      3. Hyperion

        I really don’t know why people do DNA testing, because most of them absolutely do not understand the results, just from what I’ve heard from people I know who have done it. But it’s fairly obvious, I mean. I can tell you right now, my ancestors migrated out of Africa between 50-100 thousand years ago, probably hung around the middle east for a while then headed into Europe where they eventually wound up on the British Isles and then made it to Murika. What the fuck more is there to know? Do I need to know if I’m 1/32 Cherokee since that’s all the rage? For me, no, I don’t fucking care.

        1. Pope Jimbo

          Do I need to know if I’m 1/32 Cherokee since that’s all the rage?

          You’ll never be a Senator from MA with that attitude, buddy boy!

          1. Wouldn’t that require, well, living in Massataxes?

          2. Hyperion

            Yeah, but just think, I’d have to live in MA, and that would really suck. So I’m ok with this.

        2. Hyperion

          And I come to that conclusion because of the things that are most important.

          I’m in Murika, where I still have a smidgen of civil rights left, and the Constitution, although in tattered ruins, still exists to some degree. And I have bourbon, I have scotch, I have beer. Life isn’t so bad, probably a lot better than for most of my ancestors before me. Especially that one dude who was eaten by a cave bear, that’s harsh.

          1. pistoffnick

            And I have bourbon, I have scotch, I have beer.

            Bartender! What Time is it?

          2. Time to pay your tab, or we won’t pour you another drink.

          3. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

            The clock on the wall say three o’clock. Last call for alcohol, So what you need?

      4. Juvenile Bluster

        Broward Schools investigating after Parkland teacher allegedly compares Kyle Kashuv to Hitler

        (Kushuv is Jewish and his family is from Israel, by the way)

        The teacher was actually quoted in the Sun-Sentinel story about Kushuv being questioned by the police for going to a gun range.

        Greg Pittman, a history teacher at Stoneman Douglas, defended the district’s decision on Twitter, saying the photos raised concerns.

        “After a mass shooting at a school, you don’t have to be the sharpest tack in the box to understand when another student posts a photo of an assault weapon why school security personnel and police might ask questions,” tweeted Pittman, who said he owns two guns but no assault rifles.

        In another tweet, he said, “Do you have any idea what it is like for kids to go back or teachers in those classes? Kyle only did it for attention. Very very bad idea to do. Poor taste is being kind.’’

        Kashuv responded, “Greg, it’s not in poor taste to learn how to defend myself to ensure I’m not the next victim. I want others to do the same. We saw that the actual first responder to an active shooter is the potential victim(s). The fact that you’re too ignorant to see that is telling.”

        1. Heroic Mulatto

          But didn’t Hitler support gun confiscation?

          1. tarran

            “If the Social Democrats win a plurality, and their leader Otto Wells is installed as Chancellor, Germany will be plunged into ruin. Otto Wells holds many dangerous ideas, he could literally be the next Hitler.”

            – Adolf Hitler speaking at the Annual Rally of the German Association of Morris Dancers in Munich February 1933.

    5. Slammer

      Dindu Nuffin nucleic Acid

      1. Festus

        Brava!

    6. Juvenile Bluster

      Reading more, it doesn’t seem like they went in with/without a warrant and requested the DNA check.

      The sites allow you to pay more to search for family members; in other words, other people in the database with similar DNA.

      The police submitted the DNA sample they had from the dude and requested that service. Didn’t say they were cops. They found a family member, and then went from there.

    7. KibbledKristen

      I’m sure some of you are familiar with this case.

      DNA can be a blessing and a curse. And something for keystone kops to fuck up.

    1. Pope Jimbo

      What a nice story. It is nice to read about a woman who knows to quit while she’s a head.

      1. straffinrun

        Nice. I need some guy humor after having a ridiculous economics argument with the wife tonight.

        1. Pope Jimbo

          I fucked that up. Should have been “when” and not “while”.

          What economics theory were you arguing about? That you should be able to spend money on things you think are fun?

          1. straffinrun

            Sundays are valued more by the labor market than weekdays all other things being equal. What I learned is that women don’t understand the concept all other things being equal.

          2. I don’t get it – everything is closed on Sundays.

          3. straffinrun

            Similar quality workers. The market would have to pay more for one to work on Sundays given that people want Sundays off. IN GENERAL. Don’t turn into my wife.

          4. I understand the fact that it happens, I don’t get why people value a day they can do so little with.

          5. Pope Jimbo

            Don’t listen to him UCS.

            You go right ahead and turn into his wife.

            And Straffin, have you forgotten kin’yobi (aka Friday aka Gold day)? How can Sunday outclass Goldday?

          6. Not Adahn

            Because labor costs more on Sunday.

          7. straffinrun

            Thank you Adahn. Can you identify as a woman and marry me?

    1. Slammer

      Cool, thanks.

    2. Tundra

      Neat-o. Nice find, Ted!

  11. Pope Jimbo

    Uffda. The new rule is “Don’t even touch crazy”.

    A Bemidji woman who works as an advocate for a sexual violence center has filed a sex assault report with St. Paul police accusing state Rep. Rod Hamilton of touching her without her consent at his apartment.

    The St. Paul Police Department confirmed the report was filed last Friday against Hamilton, a Republican from Mountain Lake in southwestern Minnesota, and that an investigation is ongoing. A spokesman for the Ramsey County Attorney said the office spoke informally to a St. Paul police investigator regarding the allegations, and advised the investigator that more information was necessary before charges could be considered.

    “The case is still open and active, but based on the information we currently have we do not feel that there is enough for a criminal case,” St. Paul Police spokesman Sgt. Mike Ernster said.

    The woman also has a prior accusation of being assaulted at a party that was investigated twice without charges being filed.

    My guess is that the pol might have been trying to get a little strange, but soon realized it was real strange and not the strange he was looking for. However, he was alone with her and touched her, so now he is in trouble.

    1. How do we know she’s not simply making it up out of whole cloth?

      1. Evan from Evansville

        +1 pinkie toe.

      2. Pope Jimbo

        The dude admitted that he did touch her.

        Hamilton said he put his hand on Schlecht’s head, held her hands and kissed the top of her head, but he said it was not sexual.

        “I kissed her on the top of the head and said, ‘You’re strong.’ On the top of the head. On the top of her head,” Hamilton said. He said he offered her the apartment’s bedroom to herself, but said she responded that she preferred the couch.

        After denying Tuesday night that he asked Schlecht to lie down with him, Hamilton said on Wednesday that he did invite Schlecht to lie on the couch, but not with him.

        Like I said, I think that the guy took a flyer on her. There was a blizzard, he figured he’d ask a cute 23 year-old over to his crib and see what happened. Then nothing really did and he thought it was over. He knew he was in trouble when she started texting him about how his touching her caused her so much grief.

      3. WTF

        Oh, sure, like actual evidence matters!

        1. Michael

          +1 #believeher

  12. The Late P Brooks

    I won’t link, because a) it’s The Nation, and b) it’s a steaming pile of bullshit, but-

    A new study “proves” violent crime rises more than it otherwise would have in states which enact right to carry laws. More guns = more crime, because ultrasophisticated statistical analysis says so. You just have to know how to control the data, I guess.

    1. Jarflax

      ultrasophisticated statistical analysis

      In the long long ago we called this making shit up. I am so glad we have moved past those outmoded conventions of science. Evidence and reason are so biased.

    2. Suthenboy

      So, crime going down means it rose more than it would have otherwise? Isnt that the same as claiming that it didn’t drop as much as it would have otherwise?

      That is some spectacular twisting of logic.

      Remember, gun grabber lie. It’s what they do.

    3. ron73440

      I forget where I heard it, but if you torture the data enough, you can get it to say anything you want.

  13. Where’s Bigfoot?

    Actually, several New Jersey counties have multiple Bigfoot activity reports: Sussex (18), Burlington (13), and Ocean (8). In Oregon, the counties with the highest number are Clackamas (27), Josephine (21), Douglas (17) and Umatilla and Lane (16 each).

    In Clatsop County, there have been eight reports from the late 1970s to 2008: three in the Seaside area, one each in Jewell and Elsie, one near Fort Stevens, one in the Saddle Mountain watershed, and one near the South Jetty at Fort Stevens … which begs the question: What has Bigfoot been up to around here since 2008?

    1. I would have thought that was the Jersey Devil.

      1. Mr Lizard

        UNLIKE JERSEY DEVILS STEVE SMITH CAN LAST MORE THAN 5 GAMES

        1. Brett L

          You think Brad Marchand and the Bruins can lick the Lightning? Oh wait, the NHL specifically told Marchand not to lick anybody else.

          1. Mr Lizard

            I think the refs will do everything in their power to make it go 7 games. Then really turn it up in the 3rd period of game 7 for the Bruins.

            Also I predict all Tampa weekend home games will be at early non-peak times. Meanwhile all the Boston games will be in primetime.

          2. Brett L

            I think the refs will do everything in their power to make it go 7 games. Then really turn it up in the 3rd period of game 7 for the Bruins.

            I thought the NHL only did that to remind Canada this is our game now.

  14. The Late P Brooks

    For members of the alt-right, dairy milk symbolises strength of body and society; drinking it reinforces notions of white superiority and idealised visions of masculinity.

    Get

    a

    fucking

    life.

    1. Jarflax

      Do they have to call it ‘dairy milk’ to differentiate it from what the Soy Boys are drinking?

    2. Rebel Scum

      What if I’m a straight, white, male that is mildly lactose intolerant? Is almond milk also “problematic”?

      1. Heroic Mulatto

        What if I’m a straight, white, male that is mildly lactose intolerant?

        Well, obviously you’d be drummed out of the alt-Reich, as that is clearly a sign of negroid or Semitic heritage somewhere in your ancestry.

  15. Juvenile Bluster

    EVERYONE I DISAGREE WITH IS A RUSSIAN BOT.

    https://twitter.com/J_amesp/status/989434043111485440

    1. Scruffy Nerfherder

      Moonlit dreamer. Writer (Also under initials J.J). InfoSec Analyst. Goat to @RubiesB4Swine’s Goddess. Publisher at @CynefinRoad, where #bookmagic is made.

      He forgot “Notorious Neckbeard and Internet Superhero”

    2. Rebel Scum

      Can I just point out that a large amount of the tweets on the #AlfieEvans hashtag are coming known Russian troll networks pushing disinformation and preying on emotion.

      I’m sure the irony is lost on you.

      And even if they are russian troll networks, what matters is the accuracy of the info and the morality (or lack there of) the the actions by the participating actors in this situation.

      1. +1 Shoot the Messenger

    3. Stinky Wizzleteats

      Кроме меня

      1. I’m sorry, I don’t speak foreign.

      2. Ты — Тулпа!

        1. Stinky Wizzleteats

          Вы оскорбили мою честь, сэр! Я требую пистолетов в десяти шагах.

          1. У тебя некогда не был честь.

          2. grrizzly

            никогда не было чести.

  16. Pope Jimbo

    A ray of hope. Cop convicted of third degree sexual conduct.

    The officer was not on duty and was not in uniform on the night of Dec. 14, 2016 when he was out drinking at a northeast Minneapolis bar. There he met the woman and the woman’s friend. The women both knew Tichich. The woman used to date Tichich’s police partner.

    According to testimony in the trial, the woman was too drunk to drive home, so her friend invited her home to sleep on her couch. Tichich came along too.

    In closing arguments yesterday assistant Hennepin county Attorney Patrick Lofton said Tichich “made his intentions clear. He was going to have sex with someone.”

    Why even be a cop if your Brothers won’t cover up you fucking an unconscious woman?

    1. Brett L

      Because she was your partner’s ex? That’s not cool, bro. You’ve got to get a permission slip for that ahead of time.

      1. Pope Jimbo

        There was a mini-scandal in my hometown. Two cops were both fucking the other’s wife. They were pulling nooners on the clock. None of the four of them had any clue about their partners stepping out on them.

        According to my father (ex-Probation Officer) they were the only two in the cop shop who didn’t know what was going on. All the other cops knew because the morons would park their cruisers directly in front of the other guy’s house.

        When they finally figured it out, they got into an old school fight in the cop shop parking lot.

        1. Mr Lizard

          IDK sounds more like off-setting penalties with no loss of yards to me

          1. SugarFree

            They only got into a fight because they thought they were exclusive to each other.

          2. Brett L

            Cops, man. Each is immune to the rules everyone else should follow. Cops who like to beat the fuck out of “perps” will call shakedown cops “bad” and vice-versa. Each one of those guys thought it was okay to fuck his buddy’s partner, but wasn’t cool with it coming back.

        2. Were any of them named Bob, Carol, Ted, or Alice?

          1. SugarFree

            Imagine if they remade that movie today: Taylor & Tyler & Dakota & Cheyenne. No one has sex, they just read their phones in bed together and plan indoor pinterest picnics.

          2. Festus

            For all the forforall about that flick, 11 year-old Festus was very disappointed about the complete lack of boobage shown.

          3. Festus

            Dyan Cannon and (swoons a little) Natalie Wood? Free those nipples!

    2. The Last American Hero

      Funny. There was a local case here where a “bad apple” got shuffled between depts with complaints following him wherever he went. He eventually got canned. Why? Citizen complaints? City settlements?

      If you guessed “Because he was banging another officer’s SO”, then you get the prize.

      The dude in the link might be charged with 3rd degree sexual assault, but he’s really guilty of assaulting a woman connected to a fellow officer.

  17. Rebel Scum

    London Mayor haz a sad

    President Trump announced that he will officially be visiting the U.K. in July, which will be on Friday the 13th after a stop in Brussels for a summit of NATO leaders.
    London’s first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, issued a warning to the President on Twitter that he could face angry protests should he come to London.

    “If he comes to London, President Trump will experience an open and diverse city that has always chosen unity over division and hope over fear,” tweeted Khan.
    “He will also no doubt see that Londoners hold their liberal values of freedom of speech very dear.

    Right. If that were true, they would be giving you the 1776 treatment that you deserve.

    1. Tundra

      So dear they sic the cops on people who dare criticize the murderers at the NHS. Fuck off, Khan.

      1. DiegoF

        He also came here to explicitly denounce freedom of speech after reading a bunch of mean tweets he’d received. (Or “racist” tweets, as the media described them, even though only one rather silly one had anything whatsoever to do with race.) To a rapturous reception from the SXSW crowd (tech bros? I don’t know who the fuck goes to these things), I might add. A hero of the enlightened, civilized “every other industrialized nation” we hear about each year with ever more longing, instead of the global embarrassments we currently have running America.

        So my “1776” sneer is a bit more muted than I’d like it to be.

    2. Jarflax

      Sadiq Khan is actually a comedian right? This is all just a performance art piece or something?

    3. Considering that the police are monitoring social media for wrongthink on the Alfie Evans matter, I’d say that no, they don’t hold freedom of speech very dear.

    4. Chipwooder

      Free-hahahahahaha, freedom of-hahahahahahah…..whew, what I was trying to say was freedom of-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA*keels over, dies*

  18. The Late P Brooks

    A Bemidji woman who works as an advocate for a sexual violence center has filed a sex assault report with St. Paul police accusing state Rep. Rod Hamilton of touching her without her consent at his apartment.

    Self-inflicted wound.

    1. WTF

      Yeah, you don’t even make eye contact with someone like that.

    2. LJW

      “The woman told an investigator she had been at state Rep. Rod Hamilton’s apartment in St. Paul on April 13 and, while there, he had stroked her hair, traced the outline of her ear with his finger, kissed her on the cheek, touched her hands and hugged her “against her wishes,”

      That’s sexual assault?

      1. It is now! #metoo

      2. Pope Jimbo

        No. That is why no charges have been filed. And that really seems to piss that woman off.

        She accused some other poor bastard of rape back in 2015 and the cops declined to press charges. Then she squawked and they opened a second investigation and once again declined to press charges.

        Of course, the fact that no charges were filed made her a hero to the other crazies of the #MeToo movement.

  19. Evan from Evansville

    Weekend begins now, bitches. Gonna stay in, make chili, watch Death to Stalin and get my apartment in order. My birthday is tomorrow–friends are playing a show and letting me drum a song. I can’t possibly bring a young lass here in the state that it’s in, if I end up being so lucky.

    In Korea news, I didn’t know about Kim meeting Moon today. That’s how little people talk about this shit. Apparently they’re promising to formally end the war this year.

    Mark my words—if such a thing happens….the Left will absolutely explode. They will refuse to accept that it happened under the Trump admin. They’re gonna be forced to somehow say it’s a bad thing, because praising him for such an accomplishment is literally against their religion. Even if the talks don’t materialize, relations here are better than they’ve ever been.

    Much popcorn will be popped.

    1. Brett L

      Mark my words—if such a thing happens….the Left will absolutely explode.

      Repeat after me: “Hillary Clinton set this in motion while she was SecState, and Trump is trying to steal the credit from her.”

      1. Not Adahn

        ^this

      2. Chipwooder

        Nononononono, they won’t credit Hillary! All praise due to Chocolate Nixon, PBUH.

    2. AlexinCT

      Happy birthday for tomorrow man.

    3. robc

      If, down the road, a reconciliation was possible into a single Korea (under the South government), I assume the South Koreans are willing to shoulder the costs to make that happen? It will be way worse than East Germany.

      1. Evan from Evansville

        It’s very tricky. They are terrified of the economic and social issues that would occur if they reunified, but culturally they pine to be one nation again.

        I don’t think it can happen. If it did, it would have to be phased in over a decade+. The problem isn’t just the obvious problems of poverty, but the NoKos have missed out on 70 years of technology. I mean I know they have tech, but the SoKos economy is entirely based on tech. The Northerners would be second-class, possibly illiterate citizens.

        My guess is the South would have to set up (probably trade) schools in the north, agricultural changes would have to happen, and get used to the idea of making their own choices. Everything phased in. I’ve read heartbreaking stories of people who defected, and went BACK to the north….because they were so overwhelmed by the very concept of having to *choose.* They actually send defectors to schools when they get here where they have things like mock grocery stores to ease them into making decisions and what a grocery store is going to look like.

        So sad.

        1. Michael

          It sounds like the problems experienced during German reunification multiplied by a thousand.

        2. Michael

          Also, happy birthday!

        3. Pope Jimbo

          Naturally the north of Korea is rich in raw materials, hydro electric power and other stuff like that. They really don’t have any arable land.

          The south has all the agricultural land, but no real raw materials for heavy industry.

          If they were to reconcile their country would be much richer, but the people of the north are going to be a big problem. Trying to get them up to speed will be the biggest challenge.

        4. Gadfly

          Perhaps then the South could rule the North like a trust territory until a new generation arose that was adapted to the modern world and ease into reunification.

          1. Psycho Effer

            I think that it’s much more likely that the North assimilates the South politically, if things open up. Depends on the indoctrination. The South has too many equivalents of Pajama Boy, while if you have survived life in the North this far, you are a hard motherfucker.

          2. Tundra

            Juiced.

        5. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

          Other issues, unified Korea is a strategic threat to China.

    4. Slammer

      Have a great birthday!

    5. Rufus the Monocled

      Agreed.

    6. egould310

      Happy bday tomorrow.

      My weekend is starting right now. Just pulled out a steak to thaw on the counter. Serving with roasted acorn squash, and a shredded cabbage salad with julienned radish and parsley in a lemon vinaigrette.

      Finishing my coffee. Smoking this joint. 10 mile run. Hill sprints. Shower. Jam on guitar dor a couple hours. Today is a good day.

    7. mindyourbusiness

      Enjoy your birthday, man.

  20. Festus

    Damned if I wasn’t thinking about that scene at work not six hours ago. Serendipity.

    1. Tundra

      Serendipity

      Not one of his finest, but I’d watch Kate Beckinsale balance her checkbook.

      1. Chipwooder

        +infinity…..Kate Beckinsale is my dream girl

        1. Festus

          After much calculation and extensive field tests, hot Brunettes must be a thing for me. Exceptions for friendly Gingers.

  21. AlexinCT

    Remember the douches saying Trump acting like a fucking lunatic cowboy, instead of the even keeled professional deep state assholes that preceded him and kept paying Rocket Man his Dane geld whenever he started shooting off rockets and promising to nuke everyone and even the moon, telling us that Trump making fun of Rocket Man and standing up to him after drawing a line in the sand would lead to WW3? After all, Trump was not part of the global elite cadre that keeps lecturing everyone on how stupid the American electorate was for not electing one of them.

    Yeah, not looking like WW3 to me.

    1. straffinrun

      we virtually tried to bribe them into stopping and they’re continuing to do what they are doing. And they are laughing at us…

      Trump is Kevin Dillon from Platoon.

    2. Gadfly

      All the professional diplomats forgot that diplomacy is all about carrots and sticks. It took an amateur bringing the stick to get the ass to move in the direction of the person holding the carrot.

      1. Festus

        Diplomats don’t even “Diplomat” no more. Back in the day they had names like Molotov and Ribbentrop.

        1. commodious spittoon

          Diplomat? I thought he said “dipsomaniac.”

        2. Gadfly

          Diplomats don’t even “Diplomat” no more. Back in the day they had names like Molotov and Ribbentrop.

          And their idea of a proper cocktail party has changed dramatically as well. They’ve all gone soft.

      2. WTF

        Exactly. Diplomacy can only work if there is an “or else” involved.

  22. Speaking of DNA / 23 and Me:

    My brother got his DNA tested – and it turns out I’m not 100% German/Dutch extract – but only some 50%. The rest is a blend of British/Irish/ Danish, and even – ga! – French. Of course tribes shifted back and forth back then, plus a lot of Viking raping and pillaging going on.

    Also – and I have no idea how they know this – but the familly via my dad shares a common paternal lineage with King Louis the 16th. ie in the mists of time they shared a great-great-n-times-grandfather.

    Which means I’m flying over to France and declaring myself the King. Anyone with me?

    1. robc

      Why not claim the Mongol throne too? Isn’t something like 90% of the world descended from Genghis Khan?

      1. robc

        Okay, it is only .5%, I thought it was much higher than that.

        1. Gadfly

          0.5% =~ 35 million people. GK lived only 800 years ago. It’s still impressive.

      2. Sure, why not? *gets ready for the looting and the raping and the pillaging*

        Though we can cut down on the pillaging just a bit.

        1. Yusef drives a Kia

          Darn , I was looking forward to the pillaging……
          /drags sword home

        2. commodious spittoon

          *gets ready for the looting and the raping and the pillaging*

          Don’t forget the pudding pops.

      3. Pope Jimbo

        He won’t claim to be the new Khan because he is a shitlord.

        Mongols were the OG’s of Climate Change.

        The Mongol invasion of Asia in the 1200s took enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to offset a year’s worth of the world’s gasoline demand today, according to a new study. But even Genghis Khan couldn’t create more than a blip in atmospheric carbon compared to the overwhelming effect of agriculture.

        1. Jarflax

          But even Genghis Khan couldn’t create more than a blip in atmospheric carbon compared to the overwhelming effect of agriculture.

          This sentence manages to imply praise for genocide, vilify feeding people, and show pity for poor beleaguered Genghis Khan. This sentence is a contender for most evil thing said.

          1. Suthenboy

            The watermelons have been pushing that line from day one.

        2. Suthenboy

          That is some first rate bullshit. 24 karat.

          Anyone know how much CO2 is produced by burning an acre of grass? I am too lazy to look it up but I do remember it is a surprisingly large amount. The burned towns, fields….

          The warmistas and the gun grabbers seem to be having a liar’s contest.

          1. Not Adahn

            On a decade scale, burning a grass filed emits no carbon.

            Grass grows fast, and it rots fast. The only way that plants sequester carbon is if they are preserved after death.

    2. The British royals have you beat. They named their new kid Louis.

      1. Suthenboy

        Why? They are Germans.

        1. They claimed to be kings of France until 1800.

        2. Gadfly

          Technically, assuming no unknown bastards, they are descendants of William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, so a French name is not so out of place.

          1. Jarflax

            The current royals aren’t of Norman descent. They are imports brought in from Hannover.

          2. Gadfly

            They were imported precisely because they could trace their ancestry back to old Will. It is true they skipped a bunch of people who were more closely related when they brought in the House of Hannover, but those were Catholics and you can’t exactly have a Catholic as the head of the Anglican Church. The direct male line descent from the kings died out many times, but the current occupants of the throne are indeed descended from the daughters of the old English kings.

    3. Oh, and a higher than average amount of Neanderthal DNA. If you look at my brother’s brow ridge, you wouldn’t be surprised.

    4. Chipwooder

      Yeah, you find some oddities. My ancestors all came from either Italy, Ireland, or England, yet somehow I ended up with 17% Scandanavian. Apparently it’s a common thing in the UK – most people there have a decent amount of Scandi DNA due to all that Viking raping 1000+ years ago.

      1. The vikings also ruled a chunk of Italy for a while. So you have three Scanadnavian hunting grounds in your heritage.

        1. Chipwooder

          Wrong part of Italy, though. They held Sicily, Calabria, and other territory south of Rome. My family is from Liguria and Emilia-Romagna.

    5. Mr Lizard

      STEVE SMITH FIX DNA TEST IN 3 GENERATIONS

    6. Rebel Scum

      Anyone with me?

      You have my sword.

      1. An army of two! The conquest of the world begins.

        1. But, it’s France. Sure they’ll capitulate fast, but getting them to do anything will be impossible.

          1. True – I’ll just turn France into a daily Jean-Luc Godard film festival. And drink a lot of wine.

          2. Not Adahn

            Jean-Luc Picard film festival?

      2. Private Chipperbot
    7. The Last American Hero

      How does 23 and Me know what the mailman’s ancestry is?

  23. Slammer

    California Wants to Ban Books Written by Ex-Gays

    The California Legislature has proposed banning the sale of books written by ex-gay people and Christians who seek to help others who want to restrain or control their sexuality. Bill AB 2943 would ban the sale of goods and services that encourage one to change his or her sexual orientation or gender expression.

    1. Stinky Wizzleteats

      California delenda est.

    2. Suthenboy

      “We found out that the constitution doesnt allow us to ban certain kinds of music.” – Fiona Ma, LA city council

      1. Jarflax

        This reads like she means that it is ok to ban other kinds.

    3. WTF

      First amendment says no.

    4. AlexinCT

      How do they define an ex-gay? And can you be gayed up again after you became an ex-gay? Is there an exclusion for not so ex-gays? This stuff is very gay..

    5. Rufus the Monocled

      I’m gonna shift my thinking a little. While we can view this as a creeping tyranny sort of scenario, what if it’s a healthy by-product of living in a free society? People present their ideas – however grotesque as in this case – and it gets voted down and everyone moves on. Well, to the extent the 1A continues to keep everyone in check.

      The day one of these things becomes law is the day real trouble lies ahead I reckon. For now, it’s irritating to have to read about though.

    6. PieInTheSKy

      Hate books are not free speech

  24. AlexinCT

    Not sure if we did, but did this incredibly astute Gliberati crowd discuss Finland ending it’s universal income experiment? I mean, it is funny they do that right as our own communist cadre starts peddling it here in the US

    1. robc

      The Finland thing was discussed a few days ago.

    2. Suthenboy

      So it’s finally Finnish?

      1. Tundra

        That’s Suomi pun, Suthen!

  25. The Late P Brooks

    Speaking of N Korea, I think I heard somebody saying something about their underground nuclear test facility collapsing. Anybody? Bueller?

    1. AlexinCT

      Speaking of that, I also heard some proggies still struggling with the fact that giving in to bullies results in to more bullying while telling them off seems to force them to rethink their bullying ways, saying that we are all being played, because the new overtures from the Norks is coming in response to the loss of that facility. As they explained, Kim decided he lacked one of his critical saber rattling options of the past, and decided to play nice until he could build a new one. Everything but admit that our professional global elitist class is a bunch of morons that got outplayed by an orange boor.

      1. Festus

        ^^^ sigh. This.

    1. +1 Men of Harlech

    2. DiegoF

      Not their anthem but should be. Gives me chills and my only connection to the place is that my adopted country told them to go fuck themselves.

      Soviet anthem pretty awesome. French anthem too. I despise both their revolutions, of course, but credit where it’s due.

      Lots of other good ones out there but few that can compare to ours though–a damn fine one and not that hard to sing and fuck anyone who says otherwise.

      The greatest national anthem of all, though, is easily the Negro. Absolutely awesome; I’m getting pumped up just hearing it. We used to sing it in my school growing up.

      1. I thought this was the Negro anthem.

        1. Festus

          I hate you a little more now Ted S.

          1. Jarflax

            Il’l tell you the secret to getting you’re revenge on Ted’ S. Do’nt let anyone else in on the methods’ though.

          2. To paraphrase Karen Carpenter, your hate put me on the top of the world.

        2. DiegoF

          Whatever; the future Glibertarians seasteading National Anthem, reflecting our founding ideology, is all classy and shit. It’s got violins!

    3. Drake

      Maybe the Saxon will Awaken and begin to hate.
      It was not part of their blood,
      It came to them very late,
      With long arrears to make good,
      When the Saxon began to hate.

      They were not easily moved,
      They were icy — willing to wait
      Till every count should be proved,
      Ere the Saxon began to hate.

      Their voices were even and low.
      Their eyes were level and straight.
      There was neither sign nor show
      When the Saxon began to hate.

      It was not preached to the crowd.
      It was not taught by the state.
      No man spoke it aloud
      When the Saxon began to hate.

      It was not suddently bred.
      It will not swiftly abate.
      Through the chilled years ahead,
      When Time shall count from the date
      That the Saxon began to hate.

      by Rudyard Kipling

      1. Heroic Mulatto

        Kipling actually used the word “English”, not “Saxon”.

        For whatever reasons, internet Nazis felt it incumbent upon themselves to edit Kipling’s work, transforming a poem lamenting a loss of innocence and the hardening of the British character after WWI to basically just lyrics to one of their dumb White Power metal songs.

        1. Jarflax

          Gotta make it Saxon to avoid any connection to those damn Frenchies I guess? When your White Power movement has to edit a paean to the British spirit you may have reached peak derp.

          1. Heroic Mulatto

            But “English” is derived from “Angle”, as in Anglo-Saxon. (The Jutes always get the shaft, I feel. Why not Jutelo-Saxle?) Is it there some ancient pissing match between the Angles and the Saxons that still plays out in mouth-breatherland that I’m just not aware of?

          2. Jarflax

            I don’t know. I’m half Ashkenazi Jew they won’t let me in their clubhouse.

          3. WTF

            Why not Jutelo-Saxle?
            Because then we’d have two Jutlands, instead of a Jutland and an England.

        2. Warty

          Saxon sounds way more metal than English. Those fucking Angle cucks got themselves conquered by faggy French Viking cuckfags, didn’t they?

          1. Heroic Mulatto

            As did the Saxons when they faced Charlemagne.

          2. Warty

            And now I’m going to be calling all alt-righters KARL DURR GROSS from now on.

          3. Heroic Mulatto

            Again, evidence of Mulatto’s Conjecture: The more loudly one claims to “defend Western civilization,” the less one knows about it.

            Additionally, I find it amusing that some pea-brain altered Kipling’s poem, when Kipling wrote “With the Night Mail” and “Easy as A.B.C.”, which are sci-fi stories that are basically proto-Star Trek with a world government and a multi-racial airship crew working in harmony.

          4. DiegoF

            The more loudly one claims to “defend Western civilization”…

            Works best with Diego’s Corollary: You could say the exact same thing about “liberal democracy.”

          5. Heroic Mulatto

            “Not eating ass” also works.

    4. The Last American Hero

      I wonder if they sit around like V for Vendetta, watching TV and saying “bullocks!”?

  26. AlexinCT

    Anyone else watch this Comey interview?

    I was reminded of the Bill Clinton discussions about what the meaning of the word “is” is…

    1. Stinky Wizzleteats

      It just amazes me when people who likely have mountains of prosecutable shit in their closets that would otherwise be ignored don’t just shut up and go away.

      1. AlexinCT

        He expects the deep state to protect him and give him the same pass they gave crime syndicate bosses Obama and Clinton, but doesn’t realize that might very well not happen since he is considered expendable.

    2. straffinrun

      At this point, after making multiple interviews where he’s basically admitted to felonious activity, he’s just trolling us anymore. “Watch what I can say and nothing will happen to me.”

    3. Chipwooder

      I wonder if his extensive media fan club is going to go down with the ship, or whether they start studiously pretending he doesn’t exist.

      1. AlexinCT

        Let’s ask Cindy Sheehan…

  27. LJW

    Cinema Accidentally Plays ‘Hereditary’ Horror Trailer In Front Of ‘Peter Rabbit’

    Counselors will be on site to help those coping with the horror they witessed.

    1. Just Say’n

      That movie looks pretty good. I see it was made by the producer of “The Witch”. That was a decent movie, but never take your pregnant wife to see it. She won’t appreciate the beginning. I know from experience

    2. straffinrun

      I was a projectionist back in the day at a multiplex theater. We had to splice the spools together the night before when the film was delivered. Usually about five to a can. Used to get high as a kite in the projectionist booth and then sit in the back on opening night. Not Without My Daughter, the Sally Field movie, came in late and I had to splice it together last minute. Of course I didn’t skip the bowl and wound up splicing the second and third reel together backwards. I’m sitting in the back high as a kite munching popcorn. They’re speaking Arabic so I didn’t notice I had it put together backwards. Only tok me ten minutes to figure out when everyone the characters started moving oddly. Sold out there, to boot.

      1. PieInTheSKy

        We had to splice the spools together – sounds gay

      2. DiegoF

        You got high in an Arab country? I know it’s hardly unheard of, and they probably only really care about dealers, but I still marvel at all those who take the gamble.

        1. straffinrun

          I can’t make sense tonight. WTF is wrong with me? *Looks at pile of crushed Asahi Super Dry cans on desk* Oh….

    3. DiegoF

      I don’t know what the fuck is in this Hereditary, but if it is one-tenth as scary as that scene where Pinocchio and his friend get turned into donkeys and shipped to white slavers as punishment for having too much fun, then fuck anyone who would expose innocent little boys to that kind of trauma.

  28. Just Say’n

    Question: “Why don’t Americans have much respect for the media?”

    Answer: https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/989856188618690563

    “OMG- that mean old president won’t come to our nerd prom!”

    1. Chipwooder

      I’m not a violent man, but some people just inspire in me an uncontrollable urge to punch them in the face. That shitbird is a prime example.

    2. PieInTheSKy

      Macron was funnier when he said journos are not smart enough to understand his policies so he wont tell them

      1. Just Say’n

        Macron calling others stupid is funny

        1. Just Say’n

          Didn’t his mom teach him any manners or is she just sleeping with him?

    3. Scruffy Nerfherder

      “It’s to prove that the President can take a joke.”

      Forgive me for not being impressed that Obama took the occasional break from getting his ass rimmed by the major media.

    4. DiegoF

      There was a very brief, very limited moment after Trump refused his first WHCD invite, when a handful of journos reflected, “Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe in the Obama years we were getting a bit too chummy, a bit too comfortable as we buttoned up our tuxes, a bit too honored by being graced with the Great Man’s presence. Maybe it’s a good thing for journalism, for our republic, that we’ve elected a president whom we in the journalist class would never be tempted to adopt that kind of mentality with.” And I was actually kind of hopeful for a bit.

      That hope lasted all of a few minutes. Shortly, of course, came the “He’s endangering the First Amendment by undermining confidence in us with his bully pulpit” line, which still makes me want to vomit when I even think about it. To actually talk as though it is not their own job to promote public confidence in their journalism, but the job of the White House to do so with the things it says about them–that is so perverse I can’t even get my mind wrapped around it. And they actually shout with complete sincerity that this mentality represents the proper sacred role of the press in a free society, and that the other represents a mortal danger to it. Utterly clueless, and would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad and frightening.

      1. Scruffy Nerfherder

        Journalists suffer from a constant feeling that they get undeserved respect, and they have an incredible fear of getting found out for the fools that they mostly are.

        Obama understood this and stroked their egos. Trump represents an existential threat to them.

    5. Gadfly

      Question: “Why don’t Americans have much respect for the media?”

      Because respect is earned.

      “OMG- that mean old president won’t come to our nerd prom!”

      Yeah, he probably doesn’t have fond memories of it, although he did get the last laugh.

    6. WTF

      Hey, if the Girl Scout eggs your house you don’t buy cookies from her.

  29. Mr Lizard

    I sort of dropped this in the pm lynx. I shall spare you mammals my father pithy commentary

    https://www.local10.com/news/florida/broward/deputies-have-no-confidence-in-broward-county-sheriff-deputies-union-says-

    1. Michael

      That piece of shit deserves to be tarred, feathered and ran out of town on a rail.

    1. Just Say’n

      “Dancing Queen” is arguably one of the best songs of the 20th Century. I’m serious

      1. “The Winner Takes It All” is seriously underrated.

        1. Just Say’n

          The Bee Gees and ABBA are both underrated

          1. WTF

            I used to loathe the Bee Gees when I was younger, but a few years ago some radio station had a Bee Gees retrospective that I listened to, and I realized they were really good song writers, and younger me was an ass.

    2. I always enjoyed reading Tesco Vee’s, of The Meatmen, love of Agnetha Fältskog.

      Some folks worship GOD almighty and some worship that most vile Sugar Daddy, Lucifer, but me … I worship Agnetha Faltskog. That bombastic blonde bubble bottomed bimbo that used ta sing in Abba. The only way I can ever trick myself into rolling out of the sack in the morning is to gaze longingly upon her gleaming visage as it is displayed on a pin-up above my bed. As the rays of the seven o’clock sun caress her alpine features, the smoke from the day’s first Camel sensually wafts circlets of lust around her mellow boozum and I am transported from the sack to a land I hold dear … ahh.

      Beginning in 1968, I took an annual pilgrimage to Sweden and during these sojourns I’d track down the cunning vixen and snap a few photos. Sometimes it would take me weeks to sniff out the gash’s secret location, but by Don Knott’s boner I was not to be dissuaded. I only missed rendezvousing with her pillowy thighs the year that I mistakenly ingested some bad pilchard at the Stockholm Meatball Orgy. My nurses in the hospital had butt dimples big enough to fist-fuck, but they were lightweights compared to my beloved udder-horse.

      linky

      1. Count Potato

        That guy was hilarious. And the best showman in hardcore.

    3. Jarflax

      Sneak preview

    4. commodious spittoon

      Fine, but what do they have to say about Trump? The world must know!

  30. Just Say’n

    https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/989854486310113282

    And now a message from the president:

    “I like Kanye. He said nice things about me that many people have said are probably the best words that Kanye has ever said. Many people have said that. So vote for me black people”

    1. Just Say’n

      Alternatively:

      2016 MAGA: Who cares what celebrities think? They’re all idiots

      2018 MAGA: OMG- Kanye said nice things about Trump and the libs are triggered AF! Kanye is smart because of dragon blood or something

      1. Juvenile Bluster

        The Babylon Bee had a great dual article on this. One was titled “Conservatives Urge Nation Never To Listen To Rich, Out-Of-Touch Celebrities Unless They Say Conservative Things”, and the other “Liberals Urge Nation To Respect Minorities’ Opinions Until Those Opinions Contradict Them”.

      2. Hyperion

        Trump should make some memes of him and Kanye battling dragons as the Battleborn from Skyrim.

        1. Jarflax

          I prefer the Greymane clan

          1. Hyperion

            I joined the Stormcloaks and then after their retarded leader gave me a fucking glass sword after I pretty much killed all of his enemies and was like level 50, I tried to kill him and the game wouldn’t let me.

            Playing through again in VR.

          2. My biggest annoyance was that regardless of who I end up handing the throne to, neither one named me Jarl of anything.

          3. Gadfly

            The Elder Scrolls series (and Fallout, since they are the same developer/engine) should add an option to disable essential characters for those who don’t mind wrecking up the story.

          4. You mean I won’t have to get a mod to be able to execute Maven the overestimator of her own influence?

            “Ms. Blackbriar, I am the Dark Brotherhood *stab*”

          5. Gadfly

            Yeah, I liked how TES3:Morrowind did it where you just got a pop-up saying you’d broken the thread of fate or some such when you killed an important person, so you could decide whether to reload or forge ahead. On the other hand, I hated losing companions to stupid AI and unintentional splash damage, so invincible characters is a mixed bag in my book.

          6. Juvenile Bluster

            I’m having many Warcraft flashbacks now that Hearthstone added Genn/Tess Greymane cards in their latest expansion.

        2. SugarFree

          DRAGONBORN, you pink-eyed soy latte!

      3. The Last American Hero

        If Kanye has dragon blood, does that make Kim the Mother of Dragons?

    2. straffinrun

      Tell me he has a team of psychologists determining when he puts an exclamation mark on his tweets. I feel safer knowing that it’s all part of a bigger plan.

      1. Just Say’n

        32 dimensional punctuation chess

        1. straffinrun

          I! do! Whatever! He! Does!

          1. Just Say’n

            You have the dragon blood

      2. As long as he doesn’t abuse apostrophes.

        1. Hyperion

          When he starts putting 2 spaces after periods, that’s when I’m done.

          1. Jarflax

            Screw your modern Microsoft driven rule! 2 spaces for the win.

          2. straffinrun

            Abso. Fucken. Lutely.

          3. Hyperion

            What are you guys, like born in the 19th century?

          4. Two spaces indicate the end of a sentence. A period with one space just means you truncated the word.

          5. commodious spittoon

            We have a way to distinguish sentence breaks from abbreviations, viz. capitalization.

          6. Except when proper nouns get involved, then you’re shit out of luck with your capital letters.

            Besides, the lack of clear, unabiguous indicators leads the block of text to reed and feel like one gigantic run-on sentence with no end and no pauses because you don’t appreciate proper punctuation and pacing.

          7. Heroic Mulatto

            Two spaces indicate the end of a sentence. A period with one space just means you truncated the word.

            Have you worked with a professional editor yet? I only ask because I can’t imagine you submitting manuscripts for books with two-spaced periods and not having your throat slit yet.

            Two space periods are antiquated in a world of desktop publishing and automatic kerning. That having been said, APA style mandates two spaces, which is really annoying to me as most journals I submit to follow APA, but a minority follow MLA, which mandates one space.

          8. I have worked with professional editors. Not one has even noted my proper use of two spaces after each sentence.

          9. Adding a double-space goes against the type designer’s intentions as spacing between a period and the following sentence has already been taken into consideration.

            I don’t give a damn about the font designer’s intentions. they can’t tell the difference between a setence break and any other use of a period, just what the adjacent character is.

          10. kinnath

            Two spaces and the Oxford comma — until I die.

          11. Heroic Mulatto

            I have worked with professional editors. Not one has even noted my proper use of two spaces after each sentence.

            I have to say, I’m very surprised and envious.

    3. Chipwooder

      I never actually read Trump’s twits because it’s much more fun not to know which ones are real and which ones are jokes written by others.

  31. PieInTheSKy

    An exclusive report in National Geographic has found evidence for what is the largest incidence of mass child sacrifice in the Americas, and possibly the world, dating back about 550 years.

    The discovery, by an international team funded by the National Geographic Society, was made on Peru’s northern coast at a site called Huanchaquito-Las Llamas. In total, they found that more than 140 children – both boys and girls – and 200 young llamas had been sacrificed, thought to have occurred between 1400 and 1450.

    https://t.co/Tx41Z46z03?amp=1

    1. Just Say’n

      “We can top that. Come on, boys. Stiff upper lip and all that.”

      – UK

    2. Not the llamas!

    3. Jarflax

      That wasn’t a sacrifice. That was the site of the final battle between the Hobbits and the Llamas. The war was started by an obscure insult comparing Hobbit foot hair with Llama wool.

    4. The Last American Hero

      Unpossible. That predates the landing of Europeans in Central America.

  32. Everyone loves it when the ladies are moist.

    http://archive.is/u4MPJ

    There’s something appealing about 51 I can’t put my finger on… must be the sunglasses.

    1. PieInTheSKy

      28 looks nice

    1. straffinrun

      Sad tits. C’mon Q.

          1. Just Say’n

            Well now I can’t stand up from my desk. Thanks, Q

          2. The Last American Hero

            I say go ahead and stand up. Own it.

  33. ron73440

    Holger-da-Dane:

    I loved the article yesterday didn’t get to read it until now, but I thought it was very well done.

    1. Psycho Effer

      Same here. Great article and discussion.

    2. Sean

      I skipped it last night, because of bourbon. I read it this morning and liked it too.

  34. Juvenile Bluster

    Since I somehow fucked up above, I’ll post it again.

    Broward Schools investigating after Parkland teacher allegedly compares Kyle Kashuv to Hitler

    (Kushuv is Jewish and his family is from Israel, by the way)

    The teacher was actually quoted in the Sun-Sentinel story about Kushuv being questioned by the police for going to a gun range.

    Greg Pittman, a history teacher at Stoneman Douglas, defended the district’s decision on Twitter, saying the photos raised concerns.

    “After a mass shooting at a school, you don’t have to be the sharpest tack in the box to understand when another student posts a photo of an assault weapon why school security personnel and police might ask questions,” tweeted Pittman, who said he owns two guns but no assault rifles.

    In another tweet, he said, “Do you have any idea what it is like for kids to go back or teachers in those classes? Kyle only did it for attention. Very very bad idea to do. Poor taste is being kind.’’

    Kashuv responded, “Greg, it’s not in poor taste to learn how to defend myself to ensure I’m not the next victim. I want others to do the same. We saw that the actual first responder to an active shooter is the potential victim(s). The fact that you’re too ignorant to see that is telling.”

    1. Just Say’n

      That’s messed up. I don’t know why people think it’s perfectly reasonable discourse to call their political opponents “Hitler” or any other brutal dictator. The teacher should be fired for being an idiot. How can you call yourself a grown-up when you are calling kids “Hitler” for opposing your politics?

      1. Rebel Scum

        Especially given that Kushuv advocates that people be armed. Hitler, like every brutal dictator, did not allow his subjects to be armed. If any of these kids are acting like Hitler, it’s this guy.

    2. That’s some mighty projection to ignore David Hogg’s attention-whoring.

    3. Mr Lizard

      “I want others to do the same. We saw that the actual first responder to an active shooter is the potential victim(s). The fact that you’re too ignorant to see that is telling.”

      That’s how you bring it

    4. commodious spittoon

      The fact that you’re too ignorant to see that is telling.

      Mic. Fucking. Drop. Fuck you, Greg, you cunty twerp.

    5. I need to write a damn firearms style guide for these clowns (not that they’d use it).

      Assault weapon – doesn’t exist, fake class of firearm created by control groups to scare you
      Assault rifle – select fire weapon used by the military; technically legal for civilian ownership but prohibitively expensive with extremely cumbersome acquisition process (ie: you don’t own one and no one you know does)

      Call it an AR-15 or a Modern Sporting Rifle. Words matter you mendacious fucks.

        1. That they actually had a bastard child called “The Mutant” by its manufacturer.

      1. Dude, I own an AR-15, an SKS, and two pit bulls. Pretty much a day doesn’t go by where I don’t see some idiot in the media pen some breathless screed about something in my house they don’t know shit about. The rule is, any short-haired dog that bites someone is a pit bull, any gun that’s black is an assault rifle, and anything that isn’t a bolt-action rifle is an assault weapon.

        1. R C Dean

          any short-haired dog that bites someone is a pit bull

          Montreal banned pit bulls because a boxer killed somebody.

    6. Chipwooder

      Not only that, but Kyle mentioned that his grandfather was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. So, good call Greg Pittman, you fucking cunt and disgrace to the noble name of Gregory.

  35. Just Say’n

    It’s gonna be amazeballs when the Trump and Kim Kardashian sex tape is found out. That may ruin the Kanye/Trump bromance.

    1. Jarflax

      Trump has better taste than that.

      1. Hyperion

        I’m not sure, everyone forget about Stormy already?

        1. At least Kim’s tits are real.

      2. Heroic Mulatto

        Who do you think was the one who peed on Kim?

    2. commodious spittoon

      I mixed up Kims for a moment and went crosseyed.

      1. Hyperion

        Which Kim be more THICC?

        1. Jarflax

          Kim Dot Com

          1. Hyperion

            You have a point.

          2. Kim Jong Un?

            Is that how he convinced him to have a summit?

        2. Clijsters.

    3. straffinrun

      Meh. I’m holding out for Ivanka and Caitlyn.

      1. Just Say’n

        Ivanka and Hope Hicks would be better

        1. straffinrun

          Yours is totally unrealistic.

          1. Just Say’n

            You can say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one

          2. Scruffy Nerfherder

            *barf*

          3. “Ass to ass!”

          4. Festus

            I had the same thought, Brother! *added to yet another list*

    4. Stinky Wizzleteats

      You’re a sick man JS.

      1. Just Say’n

        We live in stupid times, Stinky. I’m just trying to keep up with the pace

        1. Gadfly

          We live in stupid times, Stinky. I’m just trying to keep up with the pace

          Sure you are. We all know you have a Haley/Palin 2020 fan art poster on your wall. Admit it: you love this stuff.

    5. Rebel Scum

      That may ruin the Kanye/Trump bromance.

      How do you know it would not be a 3-way?

      1. DiegoF

        If it is, you can be sure Ellen would be genially hosting.

  36. commodious spittoon

    How does an underground test site even work? Grandad’s work involved calculating yields and writing up test reports, but that mostly involved burying the suckers and observing from above ground.

  37. PieInTheSKy

    So the goddamn government is making me spend 300 of your us dollars to install gas sensors. Goddamnit

    1. Opening a Mexican restaurant?

    2. Drake

      The fart-police?

    3. Festus

      What are the repercussions if you flip them the long finger?

      1. PieInTheSKy

        my gas is cut off and I freeze in winter.

    4. You can’t use my dollars!

      Who gave you my account information?

    1. Stinky Wizzleteats

      Dank’s a good guy.

    2. Gustave Lytton

      John Bully, the symbol of Britain

    1. straffinrun

      I found the sign to be offensive in front of police headquarters as people are coming in and out,” Fontneau said. “I don’t think our day-to-day residents should have to put up with something like that.”

      I don’t give a shit and the law shouldn’t give a shit what I think.

      1. straffinrun

        OK. I give up. Still, fuck that guy.

    2. Suthenboy

      That is some first rate trolling.

    3. DiegoF

      Perhaps bigger question: How long will the DA keep his job after costing the city all that money for never learning a lesson most of us literally learned from Bugs Bunny?

      Actually, I know the answer if CT is anything like NY: until he dies or retires. Ours never lose re-election.

      So I guess the real question is: How much longer will there still be any such thing as an “open carry permit holder” in the state of Connecticut?

    4. R C Dean

      allegedly interfering with a distracted driving checkpoint

      It looks to me like he interfered with an illegal (because unconstitutional) activity by the police. He should get a freakin’ medal.

  38. Ouch.

    http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-sb-sheriff-no-confidence-results-20180425-story.html

    If 85% of your employees voted “no confidence” I think it’s time to cut your losses and bail. I guess not all the BCSO deputies are morons.

    1. Festus

      No, but at least four of them are proven, craven cowards.

    2. straffinrun

      The union is in the last year of a three-year contract. It hasn’t begun talks on a new one but has been negotiating in recent weeks for raises and been told there isn’t money for more than a 2.5 percent increase, Bell said.

      There isn’t anyone to root for in this battle.

  39. Rebel Scum

    Democrats don’t like democracy

    Progressive activists are furious with Democratic Party leaders who have boosted establishment Democrats over their left-wing opponents in primary races across the country…
    “Staying out of primaries sounds small-D democratic, very intellectual, and very interesting,” Hoyer said. “But it was clear that it was our policy and our hope that, early on, try to come to an agreement on a candidate that we thought could win the general, and to give that candidate all the help we could give them.”…

    Charles Chamberlain, executive director for left-wing group Democracy for America, slammed Hoyer in a scathing statement on Thursday and called on the veteran Democrat to resign.

    “We saw what happens when Democratic Party leaders put their fingers on the scale in primaries in 2006 through 2016, when we lost nearly 1,000 elected offices up and down the ballot,” Chamberlain said. …

    House Minority Leader Pelosi also defended Hoyer in her weekly press conference on Thursday.

    “In terms of candidates and campaigns, I don’t see anything inappropriate in what Mr. Hoyer was engaged in conversation about, the realities of life in a race as to who can win in a general election,” Pelosi said.

    Something tells me that the midterms may not go the way Team Blue thinks.

    1. Festus

      This is like letting your tween-aged daughter run the household finances of her wealthy, senile Grandparents. I see much lip-gloss and cat food in the Democratic party’s future.

      1. commodious spittoon

        in 2016 I’d have said this is a promising development, as it consigns Dems to well-deserved irrelevance. Now, I’m not so sure voters won’t go for it.

    2. straffinrun

      “We saw what happens when Democratic Party leaders put their fingers on the scale in primaries in 2006 through 2016, when we lost nearly 1,000 elected offices up and down the ballot,” Chamberlain said. …

      You might be right about Bernie, but the the establishment democrats are the only ones keeping you within a million miles of most Americans. At least I hope so.

      1. R C Dean

        They have half a point – most of the attrition was of “moderate” Dems.

        Of course, the reason they lost was they represented “moderate” districts who were unhappy with the leftward drift of the party itself. The had left districts elected hard left Dems who didn’t lose. This means the Dem party is getting more and more hard left. Whether this is a vicious or a virtuous cycle is left to the reader.

    1. Raston Bot

      only the wealthy millionaires so we’re looking at an exodus of capitalists.

  40. Just Say’n

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/04/watch-wealthy-white-manhattan-parents-angrily-rant-plan-bring-black-kids-schools/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

    “See, we like poor people in the abstract, but we’ll be damned if poor kids are going to go to the same school as our kids.” Tolerance.

    Someone needs to convince conservatives that a full on push for vouchers will troll the libs. We’ll have vouchers in about a month.

    1. Drake

      They aren’t really wealthy or else their kids would already be in a private school where there is no chance of them having to interact with poor people of any sort.

      1. Just Say’n

        Not necessarily. Wealthy urbanites typically have very good schools. I know some very wealthy people who use public schools

        1. Drake

          Sure… until the wrong sorts show up.

    2. straffinrun

      “There are kids that are tremendously disadvantaged,” he said. “And to compare these students and say, ‘My already advantaged kid needs more advantage, they need to be kept away from those kids,’ is tremendously offensive to me.”

      I loooooove this guy. Perfect fit for these parents.

    3. Chipwooder

      It’s also amusing to hear them use the same arguments that would make them scream “RAAAAAAAAAACISTS!” if said by, say, white people in South Boston against busing in 1975.

  41. commodious spittoon

    This Is The Real Reason Britain Won’t Release Alfie Evans To Italy

    Some years ago I watched a documentary on the design and building of the Berlin Wall between East Germany and West Germany. It included extremely rare clips of interviews with the architects (I was shocked to learn there was actually a deliberate design to that monstrosity).

    In one clip, an aging (former) East German Wall architect spoke briskly about the strategy of his designs. Although the interview was conducted during what must have been the last years of his life, he still seemed deeply resentful that he was being asked to defend the wall’s erection even after the fall of the Eastern Bloc. I’ll never forget what he said in that interview – it made the hair stand up on my arms.

    With great sincerity – almost pleading with the interviewer – he said, “We had to build the wall. Too many people were leaving for the West and you need people to make socialism work. We had to build the wall to keep them in so they could see how great socialism was, so they could see that it works.”

    1. commodious spittoon

      Commies stole my close tag.

      1. Nobody needs 23 kinds of closing tags.

    2. Rebel Scum

      you need people to make socialism work.

      You need slaves to make socialism.

    3. Suthenboy

      Oh, it worked alright.

  42. straffinrun

    What’s the next article on deck? I’ll stay up for some high quality ranting, but it’s beddy bye if it’s about property tax.

    1. It’s a question on whether the only moral tax is on the number of indentured servants someone holds.

    2. SugarFree

      What Are We Reading – April 2018

    3. It’s Friday night. Just get more drunk and hang in there.

  43. I just love when I try to get information out of a business unit regarding their process and what they send me is a document I wrote for them.

    1. Heroic Mulatto

      Well, consider it a compliment.

  44. straffinrun

    I like to listen to internet radio from time to time. Today I’m listening to a station on Streema and an ad comes on. They are pushing Native American kids to ride bicycles more often for their health. Brought to you by the ad council and the Treasury Department. The Treasury? WTF?

    1. DiegoF

      More waste of taxpayer money! Best to promote running or cross-training, because once you use sneaks nobody wants them; Dad can’t sell them for booze while you’re asleep.

      Probably more serious than it is a joke, sadly.

      1. straffinrun

        It must be some international thing like with armed forces radio. It’s all PSAs and anyone that can’t see it’s propaganda is nuts.

    2. Scruffy Nerfherder

      If the Treasury Department weren’t underwriting physical fitness promotion for Native Americans, society would collapse.

    3. Suthenboy

      They need to be promoting nothing. It’s not their place.

  45. Has anyone played the *free game World of Warships? It’s rather fun to pilot a WW1-era British cruiser against some online players. I’m not very good with the cruiser so I recently switched to a Japanese destroyer with better results. The increased speed and smaller target gives me a longer life. Plus torpedoes and the smoke screen. A few times I managed to skirt around the enemies main fleet and find their aircraft carrier hiding in the back. Much fun to shell and eventually torpedo.

    *paying gives you more slots for different ships and the chance to buy models that aren’t offered to free players. Like the Tirpitz (aka The Derptiz).

    1. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

      I played it years ago when it was built by Koreans and called Navy Field.

    2. Sukkoi19

      Yes I play WoWs. Username is Sukkoi20 hit me up if you want to Div.

  46. The Late P Brooks

    If A, then walrus.

    Over time, these changes generated some not-so-great consequences. With fee-hungry government officials out of the picture for campaign contributions, candidates turned increasingly to corporations and wealthy individuals. The professionalized government grew into a powerful administrative state that some argue is a threat to representative democracy. As for income taxes, by the mid-1950s, most Americans had become convinced they were too high.

    Still, the end to fee-based governance was surely a positive development. For most of the 20th century, government functioned better and Americans’ living standards improved faster than they did in the Gilded Age of the second half of the 19th century. The backsliding over the past few decades toward arrangements similar in spirit to those of the fee-based era is unhealthy. On the whole, it seems more efficient just to levy the taxes needed to support government and pay government employees enough to do their jobs than to rely on entrepreneurial incentives to get the public’s work done. And interestingly, the most recent Gallup Poll on federal income taxes, conducted earlier this month, found a smaller share of respondents (45 percent) saying their taxes are too high than at any time since Gallup began asking the question in 1956.

    Have some random claims and assertions. In the 19th century and before, American government was a small and largely fee-based enterprise. For some unspecified reason, it has been necessary to create a bloated colossus which cannot be funded by its legitimate operations, so shut up and pay your taxes. Bureaucrats have children who must be sent to prestigious private schools, you know.

    ps- Buy War Bonds

    1. commodious spittoon

      Evidently, the worst thing imaginable is that some tiny aspect of American life escapes the notice of Leviathan.

    2. Gustave Lytton

      I’m more and more convinced that prosperity in the post war era was largely due to the destruction of competing economies.

      1. Gustave Lytton

        And technological progress of moving from an agrarian driven economy.

        I smoked my rear brake the other day driving home. I was still able to drive 55MPH (unknowingly) and got home but the stuck brake is toast. Same with government acting on the economy and society.

      2. Gadfly

        That, plus the rollback of many New Deal regulations plus the contraction of government following the war (the “Do Nothing” Republican Congress cut expenditures significantly and were promptly rewarded by being tossed out at the next election).

    3. Suthenboy

      “…a bloated colossus which cannot be funded by its legitimate operations…”

      If it has to be subsidized then it should die a natural death because it is either completely useless, a really bad idea or both.

  47. The Late P Brooks

    They are pushing Native American kids to ride bicycles more often for their health. Brought to you by the ad council and the Treasury Department. The Treasury? WTF?

    Lend America $50k, and get a free bike!

  48. wdalasio

    My morning musing:

    DerpBook is lit up with the talking point that men aren’t owed sex. Okay. I’m fine with that and agree. But, if you accept that argument and consider the underlying premises, there are some profound implications, implications I’m not sure the people repeating the talking point would be too comfortable with.

    Men, or women, aren’t owed sex because others have rights and a person’s existence doesn’t give him or her a claim on others’ happiness as a means to fulfill their own. But, if that’s the case, there are a host of other things that no one is owed. I don’t owe you or anyone healthcare. I don’t owe financial support because you’ve made poor life choices. I don’t owe you an education so that you can take classes in Women’s Studies. I don’t owe you additional tax money because I’m more successful than you.

    If incels are creeps and terrible people, and I’m perfectly happy to agree they are, you can’t really be a progressive and be anything other than the incel’s equivalent in the realm of economics.

    1. Scruffy Nerfherder

      You’re asking for a consistent logical application of what is to them, a purely emotional statement.

    2. DiegoF

      If incels are creeps and terrible people, and I’m perfectly happy to agree they are

      Spoken like a true copecel, Keyboard Chad.

    3. commodious spittoon

      Which are creepier, cucks or incels? One the one hand, they get off watching other men fuck their wives. On the other, they take on their celibacy as a fucking identity.

      1. DiegoF

        They are extremely entertaining although a bit depressing; I don’t know creepy. (Don’t think those with the watching-your-wife-get-fucked fetish–now called cucks only because of the porn–are creepy either, just weird.)

        The incels are people who are very low desirability to women. Incel is their rebellion against snake-oil-and-hope-peddling predators like PUAs and the vapid, feel-good overassurances of society that they are not, in fact, fucked. They consider themselves to at least have hung on to the dignity of being strong enough to face these facts instead of submit to comforting delusions. Of course, as with all such “being strong enough to be a realist” things, they take things so far in the other direction that it becomes a delusional religion of its own. And wallowing in pessimism can, of course, be its own sort of comfort because it removes your agency. (We all know people like that of one style or another.)

        There is a meme about incels’ dads thinking they’re gay when they find their “chad folder” of physically attractive men; that’s how obsessed these guys are. I still like the white nationalists better, but these guys are pretty interesting too.

        1. Brett L

          There is a meme about incels’ dads thinking they’re gay when they find their “chad folder” of physically attractive men;

          I can see how that could happen. If one of my sons is in the gym 3 times a week trying to get big and he’s got a couple of bodybuilder posters, okay. If he’s got a folder full of attractive dudes I’m going to tell him its okay to be different and he should feel free to bring home anyone he enjoys spending time with.

          1. DiegoF

            Arnold says his parents took him to a shrink because he’d papered his room’s walls with posters of greased-up muscular dudes in banana hammocks. You have to control for your kid’s level of obsession.

        2. Suthenboy

          The incels are just plain insane. They cant get a date because women pick up on that through body language, tone of voice, avoidance of eye contact or speech, lack of confidence or even if they will talk something disturbing slips out pretty quickly. They cannot socially interact because they are batshit insane but they blame others for their inability to connect with others. And they are dangerous.

          1. DiegoF

            I think this is the second incel mass murder. (The first was that Eurasian dude in Cali with the rich Hollywood dad. He was an incel who was actually better than average looking, so he hated women for being too stupid to realize what a dish he was.) The trouble with saying incels are dangerous is a sort of causation problem. I think “incel” is merely a designation destined to attract a disproportionate number of people who are already likely to lash out desperately at society like this. But I think they were there in the same numbers and same level of violence before incel, before messageboards. There’s often an implication that “incels are dangerous” in a way beyond this.

            Would I want my daughter dating an incel? No. But luckily, there’s little danger of that!

          2. DiegoF

            *Eurasian dude in Cali with the rich Hollywood dad who ran all those people over

          3. commodious spittoon

            That was because toxic masculinity. And when most men look at that bitchy little cunt and call him what he is, a bitchy little cunt who bears about as much resemblance to real men as pajama boy does, that’s also toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity is simultaneously men like the Aurora shooter and the Vegas shooter, but also the men who died shielding women with their bodies.

            I can’t think of a concept better geared toward producing more entitled loser psychopaths than “toxic masculinity.”

          4. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

            I wonder how many married guys are incel.

    4. Heroic Mulatto

      This point is made quite eloquently in Zamyatin’s We. In the dystopian socialist state he describes, citizens are given sex rations that anyone else must consent to if one gives them the ration ticket. The protagonist has to fuck this ugly old fat chick who gives him the tickets every night.

      1. Scruffy Nerfherder

        I had forgotten about that, maybe intentionally.

      2. straffinrun

        He didn’t seem to hate it too much, to be fair.

        1. Heroic Mulatto

          Who can fight City Hall?

          1. straffinrun

            The Benefactor?

      3. wdalasio

        Thanks for the heads up about that novel. I’d never heard of it.

    5. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

      More sex, less violence. Its pretty obvious really, we’re not all that different from an emotional standpoint than Bonobos.

  49. The Late P Brooks

    DerpBook is lit up with the talking point that men aren’t owed sex.

    I’m not sure how this is presumed to be some sort of surprising revelation.

    1. Suthenboy

      Because self-ownership is something they either have never heard of or have been told is evil. A while back someone was wondering why the people caught up in MeToo were not libertarians.
      No brainer – If you believe every person’s mind, body and conscience are their own property and no one else’s the chances of you committing trespass is greatly diminished.

    2. The Last American Hero

      ZARDOZ disagrees.

  50. Count Potato

    “May 6th. London. #DayForFreedom
    Feat. Gavin Mcinness. MILO. Stefan Molyneux. Lauren Southern. Count Dankula. Sargon Of Akkad. Tommy Robinson. Raheem Kassam.”

    https://twitter.com/CaolanRob/status/989815268800069632

    1. Count Potato

      “Today my and @PatrickLenart s private flats were broken into and searched by austrian police. Also across they country they searched GI-offices and houses. An attorney wants to ban GI in Austria & put us up to 3 years in prison for critizing islam with peaceful actions.”

      https://twitter.com/Martin_Sellner/status/989847985629655041

      1. Hyperion

        Soros, who was a Nazi sympathizer and actually helped them steal property from Jews and making the classic Nazi ‘if I didn’t do it…’ excuse, sure has a lot of followers in fighting these Nazis. Something is sort of odd about that. It’s almost like Nazi is almost an excuse for something else entirely.

        1. commodious spittoon

          Ken is going to burst a capillary in his eye. (I think that was Ken.)

    2. Hyperion

      What? They’ve let those shitlords loose in Londonistan! Oh noes! Get to the safe spaces, grab a stuffy and coloring book!

    3. I have a policy that when I find myself on the same side of an issue with people I despise, I re-evealuate my position. I can’t stand half the people on that list, even when I agree with them. But when I look at the other side, I see people lighting generators on fire and prosecuting jokes.

      1. Hyperion

        I don’t see anyone on that list I dislike, but I don’t know of half of them.

        1. Gavin is an irritant and an unfunny little shit. Milo is an obnoxious cunt of a professional troll. Molyneux’ default smug setting makes me want to punch him.

          Okay it’s not quite half.

          I do listen to Mr Of Akkad’s work on a regular basis even if he is too much of a lefty in areas regarding the public fisc. Southen and Robinson on occassion, but I don’t feel the need to be outraged so often that I seek out their work on a regular basis. I believe Kassam is a Breitbart contributer, but can’t point to much of his work in particular. The Count I only know from recent controversy.

          1. commodious spittoon

            Gavin was funny on Red Eye. I liked his characters, like his Scottish father and his soyboy brother.

          2. I never saw his older work. I just know his more recent output.

          3. Hyperion

            Gavin is fucking hilarious. The one I like most of his is ‘why you’re not moving to Canada’. If you haven’t seen that, it may change your mind about him not being funyy.

          4. I will not argue that it is impossible for people I don’t like to produce good work, but when I find myself closing out his videos more than seventy percent of the time before the halfway mark because he’s irritated the crap out of me, I’m not going to go looking for the gems.

          5. Hyperion

            Why you’re not moving to Canada

            I agree with you that Gavin can be annoying because he’s so abrasive and cocky, but sometimes he’s very funny. At least to me, everyone has their own idea of what is funny.

    4. Suthenboy

      They are all going to be tossed in jail.

      1. Hyperion

        If they jail Lauren, I say we nuke them. I mean I already wanted to do it, but that’s a good excuse.

  51. Just Say’n

    I want the Korean summit to be a success mainly because I want to see Shikha’s head explode when Trump accepts the Nobel Peace Prize. Owning the libs by bringing peace to Korea.

    1. Just Say’n

      That would make for some really awkward cocktail parties:

      “To be sure, this only helps Russia or something”

      1. Hyperion

        You’re late to the party, the media are already spinning it as ‘Putin in control, puppet Trump helps Russia gain control of region’.

        1. Just Say’n

          This is my new favorite Russian fever dream. My God our media is insane

          1. WTF

            They’re not insane, they know that they’re lying. They’re just propagandists for the left.

    2. Hyperion

      Trump’s not getting a peace prize even if he brings peace to the Middle East.

    3. commodious spittoon

      You mean Trump’s imperialist strategy of imposing Western norms of de-escalation and nuclear disarmament on the sovereign, peaceful kingdom of formerly-unified-Korea?

      1. Hyperion

        Trump and Putin actually traveled back in time and started the Korean war. Now they’re using it as an excuse to set up an Axis of Evul, beginning with both of them Koreas. Dubyah knew about it before anyone else, because he’s one of the lizard people.

        1. trshmnstr

          Please tell me this is the direction hat and hair will go. Trump putin time travel adventures!

          1. Hyperion

            We can only hope.

    4. straffinrun

      The Norks securing a somewhat viable nuclear deterrent is what brought an end to the brinksmanship. The US has guaranteed that any would be regional power will go balls out to develop nuclear weapons in order to be taken seriously and not get sodomized with a bayonette.

      1. Just Say’n

        True

    5. Suthenboy

      “Trump accepts the Nobel Peace Prize”

      This is the third time I have heard this. Y’all dont really think he would be awarded a PP, do you? If he ended all of the wars we are involved in and denuclearized NK, Cooled China’s heels in the SCS and then got Islamists to stop murdering people the leftist world would go insane and try to have him assassinated. They wouldn’t offer him a prize.

      1. commodious spittoon

        He’s got about as much chance of the Nobel committee giving him a prize as he does Cecil Richards blowing him.

        1. commodious spittoon

          +e

  52. Count Potato

    “OK, let’s play the left’s game here for a sec. Stephen Colbert (white) & his team of writers (almost all white) using a platform owned by a 94-year-old white billionaire (Sumner Redstone) to lecture a black dude about how he should stay in his lane.”

    https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/989625521460994048

    1. Heroic Mulatto

      I’m not a PJW fan, but when he’s right, he’s right.

      1. Just Say’n

        You expect us to believe that you weren’t aroused by Alex Jones’s “gay frogs” rant?

        1. DiegoF

          *airhorn* REMIX!

  53. Just Say’n

    Angela Merkel is a lesbian. Convince me that I’m wrong

    1. Idle Hands

      gross

    2. Hyperion

      And just think, if Hillary would have won, her and Frau Merkel would have had constant pantsuit orgies. The horror, I mean for real

      1. commodious spittoon

        With Trudeau and Macron watching and languidly masturbating one another.

  54. kinnath

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43921567

    At least seven students have been stabbed to death and 12 injured in a knife attack outside a school in northern China, officials say.

    Clearly, the mouth-breathers that support the NRA have blood on their hands. Their influence ranges far and wide. No one needs an assault knife.

  55. Gustave Lytton

    Ok, I’m out of it. WTF is an incel? Some kind of incest cosplay fan?

    1. According to previous days’ lynx, ‘incel’ is short for ‘involuntary celebate’

      1. Raston Bot

        “awkward kid with no game who was spoiled by mommy and got whatever he wanted growing up” was too long to say.

      2. commodious spittoon

        re: my comment above, it’s not necessarily people with weird fetishes and fixations who creep me out. It’s people who make their quirks a social cause. I can see having a chip on one’s shoulder for being born a charmless uggo. I knew a girl like that. She’s morbidly obese, and even if she’d been willing to shed the weight, which, given her condition, would be a lifelong struggle, she was ugly and had that bitchy butch lesbian persona that’s a boner killer for anyone but the most desperate men. And she was clearly saddened by that. But she didn’t indulge in it. She was very sociable, if a little abrasive, and fun to hang out with. She made friends easily and readily. She was more than the sum of her prodigious parts.

        1. commodious spittoon

          The cucks who creep me out aren’t men who merely like to see other men fuck their wives, which is incomprehensible to me, but whatever. I’m thinking in particular of a certain Stanford professor who tried to intellectualize it, or the Vogue or GQ writers who promote it as the hip, woke thing to do because monogamy is just, like, what conservative trash people do.

          1. DiegoF

            I’m woke/cosmo enough to have been unimpressed with any evidence that any sexual fantasy is causal of, or even strongly associated with, real-life problems. The very stark difference between real and make-believe is actually one of the very first, and very deepest, lessons a human being learns in his childhood. (Ditto, therefore, video games etc.) I don’t think there’s anything to “intellectualize.” I find the wokeness studies people (who was this professor exactly?) creepy because they are indoctrinating our youth and eroding the foundations of our culture and freedom; I find anyone who wrote the articles you describe (which I haven’t seen either but do sound like something that would exist) creepy because the sentiment is patronizing intrusive and asinine.

          2. commodious spittoon

            He published it anonymously. (And it might have been Hahvahd.) The gist, iirc, is that tempering jealousy and resentment makes it as much an intellectual exercise as a sexual indulgence.

          3. commodious spittoon

            And to be clear, I’m willing to concede that my sexual preference for monogamy makes me parochial and vanilla, at least to anyone geared differently. I’m fine with that.

  56. The Late P Brooks

    Speaking of Russia

    Today Russia happily participates in and influences international organizations in order to hollow them out, to pursue the vendettas of its oligarchs, to render the international community toothless. This is why it’s so important to protect world bodies from Russian influence. Where the West can, it means kicking Russia out of the commissions, task forces and groups that are supposed to uphold international law. When it can’t, it means subjecting Russian influence and participation in organizations like Cicig to much higher scrutiny than other nations face. In short, treat Russia like a second-class international citizen.

    This won’t necessarily deter future Russian aggression, but it will begin to save an international order that the Russians seek to destroy.

    Eli Lake no likee.

    Sounds like we need to quit pussyfooting around and just start bombing them.

    1. kinnath

      Today the USA happily participates in and influences international organizations in order to hollow them out, to pursue the vendettas of its politicians, to render the international community toothless.

    2. And then they wear the organizations like a skin-suit, demanding respect.

    3. Suthenboy

      They really need that hobgoblin, dont they?

  57. The Late P Brooks

    They really need that hobgoblin, dont they?

    They do now. It’s a different world than the one in which they all laughed at Mittens for being worried about the Russians.

  58. Akira

    OT:

    I hate how “progressives” use “for-profit” as a smear term to indicate that a person or institution is inherently untrustworthy and immoral. There’s the obvious point that the only way to make a profit is to satisfy someone’s desire for something (unless you’re engaging in political cronyism, which libertarians staunchly oppose).

    But what really irks me about this distinction is that almost every organization exists to make a profit. Yes, the commercial corporation has a board of directors collecting dividends, and they’re driven by a profit motive.

    But isn’t the government run for a profit as well? After all, those employees are collecting paychecks and pensions, plus there are the government sector unions whose upper executives make several million dollars per year. These people are all making a handsome personal profit, and they want to keep it that way. Employees of government welfare agencies have a financial interest in poverty continuing to exist, because that’s how they get their paychecks. How is this not a profit motive?

    Another example: Mother Jones magazine touts itself as “non-profit investigative journalism”. But are the people who produce the magazine completely unmotivated by profits? They are getting paychecks, and they want those paychecks to continue, so their incentive is to write whatever gets more clicks and subscriptions, and what’s popular with that audience is not necessarily the same as what’s true.

    Even most private charities have employees who are collecting paychecks and enjoying the pride that they get from holding those job titles.

    Unless all members of an organization are working on a totally anonymous volunteer basis, they are working for-profit. Or, as it has also been said, organizations inevitably become more concerned with their own continued existence than the original objective.

    1. slumbrew

      That always irks me; my wife worked for a ‘not-for-profit’ where the founder & director paid herself north of $100k, worked maybe 25 hours a week and got to pat herself on the back for her “sacrifices” she made, vs. working at some icky for-profit. Good intentions are the most important thing.

      1. Akira

        It’s almost as bad as people insisting that Hillary has a “lifetime of public service“. Yea, a life of wealth, fame, and supra-legal privilege. She sure did sacrifice a lot to serve the public.