Goooood Monday Morning my Glibertariat shitlords. I’ll be giving you the links because Sloopy had a prior engagement this morning. Let’s see, Astros lost. Justin Verlander appears more interested in seeing what pregnancy is doing to his wife’s already generous bust than striking people out. And good for him. Seattle lost, too. As did Croatia, The Yankees, D-backis, Angels, and Toronto. Its the All-Star break, so lord only knows what Sloopy will talk about tomorrow.
People had birthdays and shit happened in the past.
NASA chief says the new US Space Force will be based on the Navy, not the Air Force. So I guess the dropship Rodger Young is a possibility.
Elon Musk calls Thai rescuer “pedo” in tweet, fuck stick.
Cocaine is a hell of a drug, that encourages you to engage in poor choices.
We give Californians a lot of shit, but I’m going to give this one’s persistence a thumbs up.
Okay this is too funny. Is this one of you?
Comments
417 responses to “Monday Morning Links”
Couldn’t pedo be short for pedocab driver?
Or maybe Musk thought it meant pediatrician?
More likely Musk has been to Bangkok and thinks them Thais are all lady-boys and child porkers?
Maybe if they hadn’t named their city using a single entendre…
I’ve met quite a few middle aged white guys on transit to Thailand. They are an odd bunch, for the most part. The guy that was called a pedo seems not to fit the mold, but I fully get where Elon got the notion from.
*serves summons on straff*
Can I do the Strzok shuffle?
As long as you don’t make that smarmy face.
That’s a pre-requisite for the move, Bacon.
Is this the shuffle you are talking about?
Gotta admit, I was hoping for a GIF.
GIFs are depricated, users who continue to post them will be removed by any means necessary.
I may be mistaken, but we don’t have any “means” available.
Yeah, but I have to think Musk was drunk when he tweeted that out. It was a Trump-level angry pop-off in response to some loudmouth who thought Musk was stealing some of the attention he felt he deserved.
Not exactly a great move for a CEO… no drunk-tweeting when you run multiple billion-dollar concerns.
“We give Californians a lot of shit, but I’m going to give this one’s persistence a thumbs up.”
I guess she’s finding out that even in #metoo eta you can’t chase down and stab non-violent dirtbags.
Did you see her picture? She probably stabbed him for fleeing and not finishing the job.
Looks like a meth bust mugshot.
You know Straff, this is something I always seem to be baffled about. Why is it that the women screaming the loudest about abuse and rape are the women I wouldn’t fuck with your dick?
I’m impressed and insulted that you think I’d know the answer to that.
Sloopy had a prior engagement this morning
That’s a very polite way of describing masturbation.
We are nothing, if not well mannered.
*buuuurp!*
Damn straight, Swissy!
*scratch scratch*
I guess spanking the monkey or bopping the baloney are no longer vogue?
Petting the pony?
Whitewater wristing
Playin’ a little five on one.
Distributing free literature.
And my favorite, “roughing the passer”.
Feeding the geese
“Six minute workout”
Polishing the bishop?
Musical stroke
I’m not even sure why the Air Force is a separate branch, so have at it Navy.
I think airforce makes more sense than keeping Marines. Why not make it a specialty in the Army?
Personally i think all the military should be consolidated into one Defense Force, it wouldn’t cut out all the beuracracy but it would have some cost savings.
Those are fighting words. That fuckstick Truman had the same idea until we saved his ass.
To be completely fair, I’d be okay with integrating the Army into the Marines, and going back to keeping our Navy as the main fighting force. Essentially liquidating the standing military force.
The same Navy that can’t avoid running into other ships given the entire ocean to maneuver in?
This was never an exercise in awarding a branch for competence. But maybe them Soldiers could show the Navy a thing or two. Not like they ever crash their vehicles.
There’s a difference between driving a humvee with five guys in it off a road and running a cruiser with five hundred guys in it into a containership on an otherwise empty sea.
Both ships that ran afoul of traffic where Burke class destroyers, usually well short of the regular 276 man complement, and if you can get past the flack and noise will find that while the male CO and XO of these boats were charged by the NAVY, at least in one case where the facts escaped the usual attempt to hide inconvenient facts, we found out that the OD which was running the ship when it crashed was too busy texting another friend to pay attention to steering.
So what you’re saying is we should blame texting while driving?
There is a reason that a well known statistic in the insurance industry where young males were 3 times more likely to have a car accident than young women, and thus required higher premiums, was recently reversed to the point the odds are now exactly the inverse, and it is texting. Look up the gender of the texting OD BTW, and you will know why she was not charged but her CO and XO are having their careers ruined by the NAVY.
In the Fitzgerald crash all three officers on duty were lady sailors.
If the NAVY brass focused on teaching new people how to run a ship and sail instead of all the PC bullshit they now must put them through because of our elite political class’ desire to virtue signal, I think this issue would clear itself out..
Which is why the CO/XO which are males will be the only ones given that article 32.
So what the navy is saying is “You guys fucked up by letting the women drive the ship”?
Sounds like the NAVY is saying that they will always avoid dealing with the problems the PC culture foisted on the military by our congress critters has caused them by making the guys pay for whatever goes wrong.
My best guess is that it’s because historically marines were sailors trained specifically for boarding rather than soldiers taught to not fall off the deck.
Well, what that tells me is that the marines don’t need tanks, or trucks, or artillery, etc. They can be brought back to their original purpose of defending the ships against boarding and leave ground warfare to the branch designated for it.
The Navy SEALs?
If you want to stretch the mandate to retain them, then frogmen to plant explosives on enemy ships is still a valid function of the navy.
Leave ground warfare to…the people who aren’t as good at it?
Besides, the Marines and the Army have different missions.
The marines are better at self-aggrandizement and building up a mythos, not at fighting.
You might want to revisit some of the WWII island hopping in the Pacific history to get a different perspective on that brah..
You might want to revisit them as well. The Marine mythos is overinflated.
I had several instructors over the years say “don’t believe your own bullshit”. But the Marine win/loss record stands on it’s own. I was in the Marines, then the Army. Totally different mindset. The Marines as an organization are far more oriented towards winning battles. The Army exists as a giant bureaucracy that will get around to fighting if it really becomes necessary.
Their track record of barging in unprepared, having to get bailed out by the army and abandoning the army when in a position to provide aid?
Ah, Found the article I’ve been looking for.
As opposed to the Army completely failing to prepare for war from 45-50 and having their asses saved so many times by the 1st Mar Div it can’t be counted?
The fiasco that was 1st Marine was covered in the article.
A. Scott Piraino does not know shit about the Korean War or some Marine screwed his girlfriend really well. Conveniently skipped the Pusan Perimeter that the Eighth Army’s complete unpreparedness to fight.
Bragging on Task Force Faith blundering into an ambush and getting annihilated? I notice he declined to compare the Battle at the Chosin Reservoir with the Great Bug Out going on the west side of the peninsula – the longest retreat in American history and a complete breakdown in discipline.
I couldn’t be bothered to read the rest.
I mean, if we’re being historically authentic, then yeah, Marines should be engaging in ship-to-ship combat. Obviously we don’t do that anymore, so that’s off the table. I think the evolution of the Marines into a group designed primarily for infantry-based assault is pretty well in line with the spirit of their original purpose. But yeah, it might make more sense to incorporate the Marines within the Army from a “like with like” perspective.
On the other hand, while I’ve never served in the military, my understanding is that marines are trained for different things than soldiers. Yeah, there are people in both groups that are trained to shoot people, but once you get past that there are significant differences. At first blush I’d say that it seems like the Army is built around holding and occupying a region, long-term campaigns, stuff like that. Stuff where logistics and long-term strategic planning become very important. The Marines appear to be designed primarily to go somewhere, kick doors in, make things go boom, and leave.
The current significant difference is that the Marines as a force, are specifically used for ‘over the shore’ operations.
Seizing and establishing a beachhead, so that further military operations can proceed. (eg seize the port or Inchon/Normandy). The only special equipment they have is for that particular operation, everything else is army hand-me-downs.
Which is exactly what the 82nd Airborne does, but they seize and establish an airhead. (seize an airport or Normandy/Market Garden)
I’d support making the Air Force part of the Army more than the Marines.
I definitely think the Air Force should go away. The Tactical forces should go to the Army and the Strategic forces to the Navy. The space stuff should go to Star Fleet.
The Marines are more shock/storm troopers compared to the regular Army. Ideally, they do assaults, and the Army follows to support and consolidate. If the Army needs to be bailed out by the Marines, something has gone wrong.
I still believe the Marines have a warrior culture worth keeping, and rolling them into the Army would put that at risk. If anything, Marines and Airborne should be combined, and the frigging SEALs (talk about glory hogs) should be rolled out of the Navy and into something else, since they seem to be mainly spec ops infantry these days, sort of a small unit Force Recon.
Caveat: raised by a Marine, so confirmation bias. Also, not super knowledgable about what the various bits of spec ops scattered around the military actually do. I know from talking to a former Force Recon Marine that they see a lot of action that never gets reported anywhere at all.
The Navy is the odd man out, it should be normalized to the rank structure of the other branches.
Space MARINES.
duh
+1 Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Nothing good ever comes from introducing Space Marines.
Not even cool lines like it should be nuked from orbit?
Those were Colonial Marines.
Ah, a true distinction.
Falkenberg’s Legion?
China’s ‘red education’ history tours and the rise of communist cosplay
“They are sent by their employers or schools as part of their work or study requirements.”
See china is winning because the emphasis they have on mandating education. I think free college tuition is not enough. We need mandatory bachelor’s degrees.
/She Guevara
Navy/ you want herpes, cuz thats how you get hrpes.
SF Mayor: ‘There’s More Feces … Than I’ve Ever Seen’
Maybe covered, but I love the headline.
I can’t imagine. I saw today that when you adjust for cost of living California is the poorest state in the union. Whichis the only way it makes sense to gauge poverty.
I gauge poverty by how much more someone has than me.
And then call anyone who has more a kulak?
And a wrecker too, right?
Interesting that both of you left out “hoarder”…
*clicks ball point pen open, makes note*
Do you have a link you can share for that?
From a year ago:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2017/08/22/poverty-in-america-by-the-numbers/amp/
Thank you.
I couldn’t tell, does that only do a state-wide adjustment, or does it adjust for locality too?
San Francisco and Fresno have a different standard.
Mentioned in this video:
https://youtu.be/Rd_uJBov4y8
So Trump created Star Fleet?
We’re not that sad.
Dear Flying Spaghetti Monster,
Please make this happen.
Amen.
Fire that main inline weapon..
Oh wait.. that was a different type of online content not appropriate for a family site.
I get building a ship around a giant gun. But why clad it in the hull of a sunken WWII battleship?
Upcycling
Ultimate effort to save Gaia and play to the nostalgia of days gone bye?
So they could land in the ocean from time to time. Duh.
isn’t the underside unprotected? major engineering flaw.
Fuckin’ A! Spaceship Yamato. Loved that cartoon growing up.
“People had birthdays and shit happened in the past.”
You can say that again “Brett” who should be working at your at a Ruby Tuesdays“….
Mark my words, somebody is going to blame Anthony Bourdain’s suicide on the Clinton cabal.
He knew who really killed Seth Rich?
That was floated a couple of hours after the news broke.
not a shithole
Reports differ on how many people have been killed in riots — at least two, three or seven — that happened over the last weekend. Demonstrators reportedly blocked roads, burned tires and vandalized shops.
The government announced on Friday, July 6 that prices would go up the following day by 38 percent for gasoline, 47 percent for diesel and 51 percent for kerosene.
By the following day, Lafontant said the price rises would be suspended, and said the government “strongly condemns the acts of violence and vandalism” that happened after the initial announcement was made.
The price increases were part of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, which often requires countries to implement economic reforms in exchange for access to funds. The Haitian government signed an agreement earlier this year with the IMF to gain access to $96 million in loans and grants, according to the Miami Herald.
Maybe they could offer Hillary the job,
Thought the article was going to be about Chicago.
Haiti, Chicago, both third-world shitholes.
The IMF wouldn’t touch Chicago (or Illinois) debt. They do have some standards.
Plus they would have to fight the Chicago mob – the DNC presence – to get to rape the locals.
By the following day, Lafontant said the price rises would be suspended, and said the government “strongly condemns the acts of violence and vandalism” that happened after the initial announcement was made.
The “and” in that sentence should be a “but”.
Someone should have pointed out that having the government set prices is the problem here….. but then we already knew that.
So yesterday in I fucking love cultural appropriation, at the Taste of Tremont festival, there were two beautiful examples of cultural appropriation.
1) A Japanese restaurant was selling Japanese Polish Boys.
2) The owner of a Thai restaurant was selling “Oriental hats” for $10 a pop.
Fear the hypersegregated shitlord city that is Cleveland!
Ugh. That Polish Boy pic looks like Ripley’s abortion.
It’s a cheap filling meal for after drinking. Another option here in Cleveland is Panini’s, which has lead to lots of people expecting a small pressed sandwich, and instead being presented with a sandwich that you nearly need to dislocate your jaw to bite into.
That looks good. Made Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches for dinner tonight. My wife called me from work and told me to make her a sammich. *Triggered*
As someone who puts fries and chips on burgers and sandwiches the concept appeals to me. I’ve also eaten fried baloney sandwiches from time to time, and I feel like it’s in a similar culinary family.
My local diner has a “College Breakfast sandwich”
It’s eggs, sausage patties, american cheese, cream cheese and nacho cheese Doritos on a bagel.
It is glorious.
Ditch the cream cheese and the doritos and you’ve got something.
Then it’s just a breakfast sandwich on a bagel.
Which are also on the menu.
See also, the chip butty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_butty
That looks like something that would get thrown together in the “It’s still two days to payday, we’re broke and the kitchen is bare” situation.
Holy crap, I had no idea there was a name for that! Maybe there’s something to genetic memory after all. Is making a sandwich with margarine, white bread, and Hershey bars a thing?
Polish Boys are awesome!
……says the big fat guy
I had never heard of them… so I read the Wikipedia link.
Of interest… the polish sausage and fries on a bun sandwich is ubiquitous at Cleveland area *soul food restaurants*?
Eh…. I don’t know where they get Clevelanders from, but polish sausage and fries are nowhere in the soul food lexicon. It would be interesting to see how that combination came about.
Soul food = American cucina pauvera
Here “soul food restaurants” translates to locally owned old barbecue shops. There’s not too much history on the sandwich itself, but most people believe that the owner of Whitmore’s ribs created the sandwich with items he had on hand. A couple of the old locations have closed (being in sketchy neighborhoods will do that to you), while some new places are starting to pop up with their own twists on these sandwiches.
Shootout in Southern California.
Sounds vaguely familiar.
Training Day?
Some idiot posted it yesterday and was told the story is from 2014.
Apparently a screenshot is making the rounds on FB or Twitter, and now everybody and his brother thinks they’ll be the first to post it here.
My gosh. Is the reporters only experience with guns via Fallout 4? I didn’t believe that was an actual quote.
That’s got to be a typo.
You’re too charitable.
I’m going with typo, given the actual revolver also present.
I’m going with hypo.
An assault revolver
It has the thing that goes up, or it’s black?
An assault revolver with high-capacity magazines and a revolver were recovered at the scene.
Was it one of these?
Nope. One of these https://i.imgur.com/iFNZhPk.jpg
Will Governor Moonbeam Ignore the court order?
Hey anyone know if Putin gave Orangeman his new marching orders after they met? The usual dnc ops with bylines have been very quiet on this….
“Oh James Woods you kill me brah!”
She’s such a mendacious, narcissistic, evil, stinky twat. The balls on that wretched creature is something else.
Maybe the Ruskies finally pushed her idiotic reset button.
Why do they keep trying to out snark people when they are the biggest prudes out there? It doesn’t make any sense.
I can’t decide if Rosenstein’s announcement of Russian indictments is a stab in Trump’s back on the eve of his meetings with Putin.
I do know that they made sure that none of these guys would show up in court and embarrass Mueller this time.
I don’t see why not. Their lawyer appears, they stay home in Russia, just like the troll farm indictment.
The first time around, they made the mistake of indicting a corporation – harder to lock one of them up without bail and delay the trial for a few years.
They can’t lock anybody who is in Russia up.
Exactly – which is why they only indicted individuals in Russia this time. No corporations, nobody who will ever show up and challenge their bullshit in court.
Unless the Russians decide to embarrass Mueller again by having counsel appear without accepting jurisdiction.
“Your honor, we need a delay to ensure process was served on the defendant who showed up in court for arraignment. Say… two, maybe three years.”
They tried that on the troll farm when their lawyers showed up. The judge laughed the Mueller Klown Krew out of court.
“The trial was supposed to resume on July 9, 2018. What happened on July 9? Nobody seems to know. All of the media outlets and internet sources are silent. The trial has been forgotten.”
So it was a secret trial? Why doesn’t American Thinker ask the defendants?
Reminder that the “Russian Hacking” Narrative is the biggest intelligence and media lie since “WMDs in Iraq”
And the same group that was right about Saddam and Iraq has been shouting from the rafters that we are being lied to again, and nobody besides Glenn Greenwald is listening to them.
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/07/15/memo-to-the-president-ahead-of-mondays-summit/
The whole WMDs in Iraq thing was always hilarious, because the answer to “How do we know for sure that Saddam Hussein has WMDs?” is “Because in the 80s the US government arranged for him to get the production facilities so he could use chemical weapons against the Iranians.”
It’s like asking “How do you know for sure your kid owns a coat?”
Destabilizing foreign governments is okay, when we do it.
At the top of Putin’s agenda will be relief from sanctions stemming from his land-grab in Crimea. Caving would be a monumental mistake. These punishments are working as they were meant to: Despite rising oil prices, Russia’s petroleum-dependent economy is struggling and Moscow’s financial straits have resulted in nationwide protests over pension reforms. The sanctions must stay on.
Prissy douchebag Bloomberg preaches about “our shared American values” and wants to put the screws to the damn Rooskies.
Anyone who is pounding the drums for a war with Russia ought to be forcibly conscripted. Hell, don’t even need them to do anything, but if the Navy is going to sail into the Barents, or the Air Force is going to penetrate the Russian air defense network, some of these softhanded chickenhawks should be along for the ride.
Why exactly are we hating the Russians? Probably will always be rivals in Eastern Europe and should be somewhat on our side when it comes to China. Of course they spy on us but the “hacking” thing is preposterous.
It would be funny if Putin handed Trump a couple of disks with all of Hillary’s emails.
We have to be at war with Russia because the security establishment isn’t going to let a little thing like reality stop the gravy train. There has to be a large, somewhat capable boogeyman to drive defense spending and security investments.
What pisses me off is that it is the people that spend decades whitewashing the evils of the Soviet empire and defending their evil marxist dogma, only to spend years not caring under the Obama administration, that now are screaming about the red menace. Russia and tyrannical dictatorial ideology was never a problem for these fuckers until they needed another excuse to attack the guy that managed to win the election they thought they had rigged for one of the most corrupt and narcissistic people ever to have existed.
I hated “chickenhawk” in 2003-2004, and I hate it now.
Defeat arguments (theirs should be quite easy) and refrain from using time-worn epithets.
I don’t think anyone from the Hillary or neo-con camps has even articulated why we need confrontation with Russia.
– The “hacking” bullshit? The DNC never even turned the “hacked” servers over to the FBI, probably because they were so compromised by their own Pakistani IT crooks.
– Syria? Am I supposed to cheer for Assad, ISIS, or Iran there? I forget.
– Ukraine and Crimea? That was some bad shit that all happened while Hillary and Obama were running our foreign policy. Not sure what we do now other than get them to stop sponsoring chaos in what’s left of the Ukraine.
Syria is a textbook example of a conflict where there are no good guys, unless you count the civilians who are getting the absolute shit end of the stick with the lovely prospect of whoever winds up as the victor being a horrible totalitarian regime. In these situations our role should begin and end with offering sanctuary to genuine refugees until the storm blows over, with the possibility of becoming an American citizen if they’re interested in going through the whole song and dance.
Refugees should be granted refuge as close to their homes as possible – and returned to them as soon as feasible.
Yes, this means we might be stuck taking legitimate refugees from Mexico in the near future, but it would also mean housing them near the border and returning them to south of it when it makes sense to do so.
Why is it that when legislators finally decide to exercise some oversight on the bureaucracies that they decide to do it for really stupid trivial reasons?
Minnesoda legislator mad that a big payout was purchased via a mobile app.
My guess is that Davids is a nanny do-gooder who is opposed to gambling. Might be nice though if he focused on bigger things like asset forfeiture or drug war stupidity.
“Justice“…
Nice
“Welcome to Longshoremen’s Bar and Grille. Did you fookin’ want somethin’?!”
Someone didn’t think that their scheme would be discovered because the dnc operatives with bylines would proect them, but then things go wrong anyway..
Team blue is getting desperate and sloppy.
They must really hate Justice XX
That was funny to see man.. Justice XX (fill in the blank, we will hate the nominee). Seriously, it must be mentally draining to fixate so hard on bullshit made up stuff for this long, and fatigue is causing them to slip off the mask…
Nice pics in that article.
It’s nothing new.
Hey, remember when a bunch of news stations owned by the same conglomerate issued an anodyne, even trite, statement about the importance of objectivity, and they were denounced as American Pravda for it?
Ah, the halcyon days when lefties cared about apolitical news media… a couple months ago, in that one, trivial case.
Proof that newspapers are either lazy as shit or in the tank. Either way, their credibility is zilch.
Hateful GOP gov candidates for Minnesoda are real shitlords.
They have both proposed that Minnesoda stop (or at least suspend) our state’s participation in the federal refugee resettlement program. Why? Mostly because no one knows how much the refugees may be costing the taxpayer. (We have taken in 13% of the refugees so far).
I’m pretty sure those agencies are like tobacco executives. They are willfully blind to the costs because they know it wouldn’t be good for them if the public learned the facts.
Perhaps, just perhaps, Q could pick up a few useful historical titbits from this whimsical pamphlet on bras.
27. There’s a Twitter-connected bra which tweets every time it’s unhooked to encourage women to self-examine their breasts.
Pic or GTFO.
My breasts were hacked by the Russians!
“A sports science researcher from France, Jean-Denis Rouillon of the University of Besançon, found after fifteen years of empirical research that women who go braless have, on average, perkier breasts, with nipples on average 7 mm higher in relation to their shoulders than regular bra users.”
Correlation is not causation.
A woman who is smaller will be more prone to go without, and will have less strain on the connective tissue, thus have a lower average sag.
It’s the same problem with the bra-cancer correlation.
By any chance, was his research assistant named Q?
“Kesha Made Bra out of Fans’ Teeth
Ke$ha has revealed she made a bra and a set of earrings out of teeth sent to her by her fans.
The ‘Die Young’ singer recently asked her followers to send her a tooth each and after receiving over 1,000 canines, she decided to create a bra, headdress and earrings out of them.”
https://www.femalefirst.co.uk/celebrity/Kesha-267372.html
I would expect a Ke$ha fan to be able to get any number of teeth from the bodies in their basement.
Or the ones that fall out after too much meth or urine drinking.
So IT guys, is this experience typical in the industry or do am I just especially lucky?
I’m currently unable to login to my computer.
Last time this happened I was able to use my personal computer to submit a work ticket, marked Urgent, unable to work. I took three days for a response. I called the Help Desk line 26 times over two days before getting a human to pickup. After spending hours on my computer, she concluded I would have to lose at least a week of work shipping it back to the company, waiting to have it fixed, and then shipping it back out.
Then I called back again, and got someone else who fixed it in 20 minutes.
Now it’s happened again and the fixer no longer works at my company. 5 calls to IT have gone unanswered. The vicious cycle begins again.
Partly a rant, but also curious if this is normal? Seems like an incredibly inefficient way to run a department in a business.
Normally the first problem is your account got locked. If this isn’t the case the second diagnostic would be a password reset if you were connected to the overall network. In very rare cases your machine is borked and needs to be reimages (bad times there, but as I said, rare)
The runaround you describe is abnormal, and wouldn’t even be tolerated at the state.
That is definitely not normal. You work for the government where inefficiency is the norm? Even the backward insurance company I do IT work for now has an automated system for morons to unlock their ID/PWs (they lock your ID automatically after 3 failed login attempts), and this seems standard. Where do you work that it can take 3 days to get your damned ID unlocked?
Not even the State of New York would tolerate this level of fail at the helpdesk level.
No my company is generally awesome and moves at light-speed. Our IT just seems to like to sock it to the rest of us. Getting software approved, even using our own budgets, is a brutal 6-month long process with manpower cost for time spent justifying well exceeding the original expense of the programs.
And management hasn’t kicked their asses over that? What sort of blackmail material does the CIO have on the rest of the executives that they can get away with obstructing basic operation?
Without exaggeration, it took 3 vice presidents from 3 different departments involved to get the last piece of software I needed approved for installation. Around $6,000 in multiple meetings and days of work spent justifying a $1400 program my dept was paying for and already had approved in the budget.
The IT director was apparently pissed we didn’t come to him for permission first before applying for it in our budget and wanted to make it as painful as possible.
Yep. As he should. Guess who has to support that “cheap” program you just bought?
I understand that but in this case it was a perpetual license installed locally to my machine.
His concern wasn’t the support, but rather a goal to implement LEAN by making all departments use the same programs. Our explanation that Engineering, R&D, and Clinical Research may have different needs for specialized programs fell on deaf ears.
As does his that he might have different support skillsets. You can say it was just one license and one machine, but that’s how my client ended up with six different customer relationship databases and no plan. He’s doing his job.
At some point due diligence becomes willful obstruction. Demanding a graphic designer Microsoft paint when they need Illustrator and Photoshop just because is harming the company.
That came out horrible. Let me try again. Demanding a graphic designer use Ms Paint when they ask for Photoshop/Illustrator is harming the company. Part of his job then becomes figuring how to support Photoshop/Illustrator, not prevent the graphic designer from working.
Yeah, that’s a never ending battle.
I’ve been the decision maker in that position. You always want every department to bring “here’s what we are trying to get done” to you, not “please install this software”.
As an organization gets to a certain size, it becomes really difficult. Managers and department heads want control – which would make their lives easier in the short term but hurt the overall organization. IT wants to do their due diligence and make sure they have the best solution for the problem – which can be frustrating to the department who just wants to get something done today.
I had plenty of people “go rogue” and buy their pet project over the years. Marketing bought a package that the new director was familiar with … but didn’t actually do 90% of what we needed, and we could have built the part that he was actually using in a couple of weeks. So it ended up being a difficult and expensive job to integrate the software he wanted, and then they didn’t really use it for much more than could have been accomplished with Excel.
This is one of those situations where everyone has a point. And it is pretty tough to satisfy all of those competing needs.
But the right answer is always to work through the IT department and let them help with software purchases. They know stuff that you don’t… like what else is already in use in the organization.
Cyto, as with Brett’s point, that’s fair and I understand that IT needs to manage software.
Ultimately though, if the FDA says we need to use software program A, B, or C or else they will not accept the results of studies that cost in the hundreds of thousands to millions to run… IT needs to bend and not insist we use program D because another department that has no relation to mine already uses program D.
That plan always ends up with support and software only being provided for the lowest common denominator.
We have 10k employees who have a proprietary piece of software for conducting their daily business and access to the microsoft office products.
I work in the analysis shop where we’ve been using the ‘power user’ version of the recruiter app, but the new purchased software doesn’t have that capability, and the IM support is focused on the big number.
His overreaction means he needs to be fired, but there is a kernel of a valid complaint when it comes to supporting the software. That question of who is responsible for that and where the expertise is going to come from needs to be ironed out before the calls start to arrive at the helpdesk.
However, the degree of obstruction still means he’s not doing his job of facilitating the company’s primary work.
Yeah, usually that isn’t your IT people, but your audit people making it impossible for the IT people, which then decide to make it impossible for you so they don’t have to deal with audit. In the computer world there is an intrinsic problem between the security people – the ones that feel the only secure system is the one nobody can use – and the IT people – the ones that feel you have to have full access to get shit done – which hopefully leads to a middle ground, but more often than not, does not.
I could get all the systems running perfectly – if only I could lock out the end users.
Yeah, and Alex has a point.
Back around the turn of the century, I had an audit ding for not requiring password lockouts after 3 attempts.
I told them that if you could brute force an 8 character alphanumeric password in 10 tries (our lockout number), I’d be convinced. But otherwise, 3 tries is stupid. If you accidentally leave caps lock on, you could burn 2 tries really easily before you even figure out that there was a problem. Moving from 3 to 10 reduced our support calls for this problem from lots to none overnight. And I’d say it had absolutely zero effect on security.
It took a couple of years for the audit industry to catch up on that one.
But then again, they never figured out that if someone really wanted to steal data, they could just break in at night and take the hard drives from the server room. Despite our fancy security systems, the walls were just drywall… so it wouldn’t have been that hard. You could have stolen everything in under 10 minutes, if you had a small crew dedicated to the task.
And we actually worked in an industry where this was a concern. Competitors would pay FedEx drivers to give them lists of the addresses on our outgoing mail.
No, that is not normal. If you’re staffing a helpdesk, you need people to answer the calls. What was your average length of the calls? Is it an internal helpdesk, or external contract?
And of course, have you tried turning it off and back on again? 🙂
Hell, when I was on a helpdesk, we got in trouble if there was anyone waiting in queue for over a minute. It didn’t matter if everyone was on a call or not.
Most call centers run a 80%/30 model, where the goal is to answer 80% of calls within 30 seconds of queue time. Most helpdesks are not manned to that level, but should have comparable goals for answer speed and handle time. Last place I had the info on the helpdesk staffing, they were aiming for 75%/90 for answer goals. They had alerts that started pinging the agents if a call held for over 120 seconds, with more alerts as the max wait time went up. I don’t think I ever saw a call hold for more then 10 minutes for the helpdesk (now, one of the other call centers was another story).
Our’s automatically boots you to voicemail if you’re on hold more than 5 seconds, so no queue possible. I left a voicemail on my first call. It took 3 days before it was returned.
Five seconds is too short unless it’s one of those godawful stupid “automatically picks up for anya gent marked as ‘available’ systems”. Those lead to more problems than they solve.
I hate brilliant people who think VM reduces call volume. You should almost never automatically route calls to an ACD to a VM, you can provide the option for people, but forcing them just increases your call volume (by making people call back in over and over), and leads to duplicate messages (since they keep calling back in). It’s even worse if the helpdesk is operating under the all calls/e-mails must generate or update a ticket model.
I agree. That’s bad programming.
The best option in an unavoidable and unreasonable wait is to use virtual queuing. I.E. Leave a callback number and we’ll call you when it is your turn. But lots of systems can’t handle that.
Also, voice mail sucks. Listening to those messages is pretty unproductive. I used voice-to-text solutions to allow my agents to read, rather than listen. It didn’t always work, but it sure did cut down on time listening to “uh… uh… Hi…. uh… this is Ted… uh….. call me….. uh…… ok… bye. ” level voice mails.
I figure that’s a joke, but I actually did try several times. I can still access my sever through a VDI, but I hate using the VDI. It types two keystrokes for every one I push.
If VDI still works, your account exists server-side.
Yea, you’re right. They did have to reconnect my account somehow though, because it wasn’t being recognized through my work computer.
Depends on the company, but no, that’s not how the help desk should work.
That seems to be the consensus.
To clarify, it’s a problem on their server where my account is no longer recognized from the company’s end. They have to manually add me back into the system. At least, that was the problem last time.
Still, someone should have answered your call and gotten a ticket created and routed to the proper technical team. That’s the bare minimum for a helpdesk.
^^^^THIS^^^^
Helpdesks suck balls, by design. Anyone who shows that they can rub two neurons together to form a thought is taken off the helpdesk and put to more useful work within a few months. The person who helped you will probably not be available for long. You are probably better off using self-help.
In theory, we’re supposed to go the the Helpless Desk when there’s a problem. That is as inefficient as you describe. My solution was to cultivate a personal relationship with our head of IT (who is actually a terrific guy), so I get private help.
It’s a good solution that I tried on lower level. Unfortunately as PyschoE said, they keep leaving.
My intern’s computer completely bricked two Thursdays ago. Despite escalating the ticket 3 different ways, he didn’t get a “new” computer shipped to him until last Friday. They only started the process of shipping him the computer when I got on the phone with IT and told them I wouldn’t hang up until I had a tracking number for the shipment.
Our interns had something similar happen. The company decided the interns would just all use VDI and have their own computers. Sounds good in theory except our VDI went completely down for their first 3 or 4 days.
That’s awful. We’re in an exclusive supplier agreement with one of the computer manufacturers for (reasons redacted because they would give away who my employer is), and the latest model computer they’ve been using is absolutely trash. Out of the 7 people in my group that has this model, not one has been issue-free. The department head ended up bringing his own personal MacBook and forcing IT to set it up on the network because he was sick of the issues. I’m trying to avoid paying $1500 just to have a consistently functioning work computer.
I’ve had issues that I took to my manager because IT was dragging heels. Usually when one boss gets on the phone with another boss, things happen.
I wish that we could force the smarmy bastards at truth.org to use their tobacco settlement money to stop running anti-smoking ads and instead run PSA’s that say “never call the police unless you want someone to die.”
Minnesoda cops shoot and kill suicidal 16-year old boy.
I guess pulling back and de-escalating isn’t an option they teach you in cop school.
“He did not commit suicide” – Police Union Rep.
Unclear from the article what exactly happened. Too bad you trigger happy cunts have destroyed any of benefit of the doubt. RIP Kiddo. 16. Fuck.
Those moronic antismoking ads are still a thing? I moved over to internet based TV a couple of years ago and, thankfully, am no longer exposed to that dreck.
So there’s a little more to it, but still, I think it’s a good rule of thumb to assume that if you call the police and say, “There’s an armed person who isn’t laying down, bound, gagged, and unconscious,” they’re probably going to shoot that person when they get there.
Even shuffling down the hall on hands and knees, sobbing, is a death sentence if you try to pull up your britches.
“I guess pulling back and de-escalating isn’t an option they teach in you in cop school”
Well, how on Earth do you expect them to be HEROES IN BLUE without firing their weapons and neutralizing the threat? You want them to calmly approach a situation and deal thoughtfully with the circumstances as they arise? What are they, fags?
The meme about GOP presidents being a chimp is back! I’m so happy! I missed that insult. Local prog columnist says that Trump is a chimp and chicks don’t dig chimps. His latest column raves about some of his fellow proggies work:
I seriously cannot think of the last time I read a Leftist opinion piece that didn’t boil down to “The Right is BIG DUMB MEANY STUPID MEANY RACIST STUPID HEADS”
Yusef: Yes! I want a Nazis vs. aliens diorama. Make it happen!
The scenario: A flying saucer crashes in the outskirts of Dusseldorf in 1940. The German military scramble to make sense of the weird alien technology, in the process coming up with all sorts of amazing wonder-weapons they can use against the Allies. BUT – the alien overlords want their crashed ship (and bodies of their comrades) back, and are on their way to get them. Meanwhile, an Allied special forces unit is tasked with infiltrating the whole thing and bringing back as much tech to the U.S. as they can……
Maybe more of a novel than a diorama, but a novel I’d read.
Hrmmm….
Some of it has already been done pretty well here. I liked it a lot although you should read A Hymn Before Battle first.
Dammit.
I had just worked out how it would fit into my existing world, and what characters would be available as leads.
Turtledove did it to although not as well.
My treatment idea was thus –
Prior to official first contact (in the 1950s), the Scya were doing recon and assessment visits at least as early as 1911. They took a great deal of interest in the world wars (resulting in ‘foo fighter’ sightings). In their overconfidence in their technological advantage, the Scya got sloppy, and failed to react in time when they flew right into the path of a V-2 launch.
Allied air recon flights trying to find the V-2 launch sites spot the wreckage and assets on the ground are dispatched to investigate. These being Felix Walker and Roy Byrd (possibly Sennofre of Waset as well, as he was in the European theater).
The German’s first thought is there was a failure with the rocket and they send a technical team to see what’s left of it. Finding Aliens, they radio for reinforcements. Things escalate from there.
This does not get counted as ‘first contact’ because it’s hushed up due to wartime.
Not bad. And very different than Watch on the Rhine.
Seriously, this has big dollar sale to a movie studio tattooed on its ass.
hymn is a great series, but imo this is closer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwar:_In_the_Balance
Ha – just said the same thing. I read parts of the series but ended up hating his main character with a passion.
HT has a habit of ending his series in ten pages. or not ending at all.
I’ve been rereading those books. Good fun with lots of explosions.
I think you can get the whole series on the BaenCDs that are still floating around.
Dean Koontz’s Lightning was kind of similar. It involved Nazi time travelers who go to the future from 1944 to attempt to acquire technology that will turn the tide of the war in their favor.
Hmmmm, I like it, I like it more now, I saw some, things at the Hobby shop that might, just. Work.
I’ll update as I go….
Nice! I’ve got a kinda-sort diorama project of my own, might take a few months before I finish it though, will share when/if it’s done.
Yusef, I was thinking about D-Day. All kinds of set-pieces there, on the beaches and otherwise. An embarrassment of riches. The problem with the beaches is probably scale. Now, the various airborne ops might be more suited. There is this classic skirmish:
How Easy Company Incredibly Captured Two German Howitzers
There was a short story in one of Pournelle’s There Will be War books I’m trying to remember. Aliens had invisible drone cameras on Earth in the 20th Century. WWI was a hit and WWII was the highest rated show in the universe. The Cold War war and skirmishes in Korea and Vietnam were build-ups to something even bigger.
100 years ago today, Bolshevik pigfuckers murdered Tsar Nicholas II*, his wife, four daughters and one son, plus the four servants that had chosen to remain with the Tsar (personal physician, maid, cook and footman) by taking them in the middle of the night to a basement room, then opening up with pistols and bayoneting the survivors. They then buried to bodies in two unmarked graves outside Yekaterinburg.
*Don’t get me wrong, Nicholas was a shitty ruler, and his wife was a piece of work, but this pretty much sets the SOP for Communist rule in the Soviet Union.
They weren’t even one of the first thousand murdered. Or the first ten thousand.
One of the more insidious and lingering Commie lies is that Lenin was some kind of peaceful revolutionary, and either only turned to terror in response to the White resistance, or was just a good dude all around and it was Stalin who did all the murdering. It’s bullshit. The Reds were slaughtering their political opponents from the very beginning. It was a regime founded in murderous barbarism, and the only thing that changed as time went on was the bureaucracy that was layered on to cloak it and provide plausible deniability for the fellow travelers in the West.
There’s a quote in one of the books I read, don’t remember which one, where someone who was interviewing Molotov in the 1980s, near the end of his life, asked who was the harder man, Lenin or Stalin, and Molotov replied “Lenin, of course”
Molotov was just being incendiary.
“The Reds were slaughtering their political opponents from the very beginning”
This is how Communism/Socialism always works. You can’t convince people to give up their property and self-determination without force.
It puts the lie to the idea that Communism is only ever imperfectly implemented. No, the underpinnings of Communism are just as heinous and unworkable as their inevitable outcomes. It doesn’t “work on paper,” it’s a barbarous, murderous plot from the start.
Communism is collectivism. Collectivism means you treat people collectively, so that they are rewarded (or punished) based on which collective they are assigned to. The foundation of communism is collective punishment, which in the real world means mass graves. Every. Single. Time. Those mass graves aren’t a mistake or bad implementation, they are the point.
KDW has a pretty good line this morning: “If you believe that man ought to be better, it implies that he can be better, and that “better” means something. And here materialism fails us, which is why Marxism became an ersatz religion. Christianity is a fortunate religion in the sense that the endless moral failings of its leaders (and followers) keeps illustrating, generation after generation, the fundamental facts of the creed. The creeds based on human perfectibility, which is the romantic notion at the heart of all utopian thinking, have as their main problem the countervailing example of everybody you’ve ever met and ever will.”
Nice! For some reason, the tech evangelists (uploading consciousness to computers, etc) come to mind.
Trotsky was a ruthless murderer as well. Everything I read about the October Revolution makes me shudder, more than any other historical event.
And the October Revolution occurred in November. It took a while to get used to that when I was traveling to Moscow on business.
It’s the difference between the Gregorian and the Julian Calendars. On the calendar they were using it was October.
A gold star for UnCiv.
An Order of Lenin?
“One of the more insidious and lingering Commie lies is that Lenin was some kind of peaceful revolutionary, and either only turned to terror in response to the White resistance, or was just a good dude all around and it was Stalin who did all the murdering.”
I happened to watch some nonsense about this on the History channel yesterday, and man did the fuckers that put that piece of shit together go out of their way to finally admit how evil Lenin was, but only so they could then make the idiotic assertion that Lenin railroaded the beautiful people’s revolution that would have delivered Utopia on earth. You know, the whole “that is not real communism/marxism” shit line of excuse making that you constantly hear from the scum peddling this evil ideology.
No justice, no baseball
Thousands of workers from Metro’s largest union voted Sunday on whether to authorize a potential transit strike, a risky move that would be the culmination of an extended labor dispute and could grind the region’s transportation network to a halt.
———–
Because Metro workers are forbidden from striking under the system’s governing compact, a judge or arbitrator could order an end to any strike and penalize those who do not comply.
But even a brief work stoppage would have the potential to significantly disrupt the transit system, which transports about 1 million people a day and is expecting an additional influx of riders Monday and Tuesday nights in connection with Major League Baseball All-Star Game festivities.
By all means, strike. That’ll get people on your side.
Wondrous women are willing to wow with weapons of mass distraction.
http://archive.is/l0evG
All I want for Christmas in July is a foursome with 34, 38 and 52. That’s not asking too much is it?
Is that Zardoz’ wife at #53?
Doom
The extreme heat that has come with climate change is prompting airplane manufacturers to test their fleets for increasingly hotter temperatures.
While travelers are used to flight cancellations in blizzards, the unpredictable storms and extreme heat of warmer months present airlines — and passengers — with some of the most challenging conditions of the year. The gradual warming of the earth that has come with climate change is causing more frequent and more severe swings in weather patterns across the globe. That means more days of extreme heat that airlines didn’t have to worry about before.
——–
Higher temperatures could make flying more unpleasant for travelers. A 2017 University of Reading study based on computer models found that hotter air could increase strong turbulence in the coming decades by generating instabilities in air flows at high altitudes.
“It’s normal to break some records every year,” said Adam Allgood, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “It’s much easier to break a record high than a record low because the trends are toward warming.”
Weather is not climate, except when it furthers the narrative.
” the[…]extreme heat of warmer months present airlines[…]with some of the most challenging conditions of the year”
This is not new. There are always at least a few days each summer in Phoenix where they have to cancel flights due to heat.
and the cold, and the rain, and the snow. any excuse
STOP RAPING GAIA!
But, I just got to the front of the line, dammit!
You might to be up to date on your shots…
I only remember on day in the seven years I was there. But that was 25 years, so rampant climate change may have shifted the results since then. 😉
I rode a bike to work the day it hit 122. What a glorious experience.
You can delete a comment, but it’s still on the net, Asshole.
I’d pay good money to see a mob of people harass Claude Taylor everywhere he went.
BTW, just look at him – could there be a more straight-from-central-casting leftist asshole than this guy?
There was a bit in The Federalist (I think? Been a minute…) that basically advocated giving as good as you get from the left. So instead of turning the other cheek, call these assholes out in public. Don’t serve them in restaurants or bars. Harass them within the limits of the law when you see them walking down the street. Essentially, fight fire with fire, as they’ve completely abandoned any pretense at civility and need to learn what the world looks like when you abandon civil discourse.
Nobody ever won a fight by unilaterally disarming. Is it any wonder the soi-disant opposition to the left has lost every battle, save one (gun control)?
Hasn’t worked with Westboro Satanists has it? They still get served, etc. Being anonymous, non-celebrity helps because most people can’t identify you.
Yup. This is the world the left wanted. This is the environment they have created. I didn’t want this. Never did, but sometimes you have to fight on the opposition’s ground, so to speak.
If this is what they wanted, so be it.
Well, shit:
Snowden turned himself into a political pawn the instant he decided to go to Russia instead of any one of 100 other countries. Sadly for him, he’s going to end up back here eventually one way or another. Then he’ll live out his days in ADX Florence.
I’ll agree that Snowden committed some errors in judgment, but the idea of this man rotting in prison for telling us of the extensive ways our rights are being systematically violated pisses me the fuck off.
Especially when scumbags like Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, and Eric Holder – to name but a few – got to fuck the law and this country, and are walking free.
Well, I think he went to Russia because it’s the perfect combo of a place we can’t kidnap him from, a place where he doesn’t have to live in a hut, and a place willing to take him. Where else would he have gone that would avoid extradition but still be in the developed world?
If you call Russia ‘Developed’…
It is developed. It is horribly mismanaged, but it is developed.
Yeah there’s no other place that has the combo of ability to tell the US government to fuck itself, and the willingness to do so.
Once China was off the table…
His only other option would have been ending up like Assange.
“Other officers on the scene returned fire and Lopes was hit in the leg. Lopes attempted to flee on foot through the neighborhood. Still in possession of Chesna’s service weapon, police say he fired multiple rounds while attempting to flee and a woman was fatally struck by a bullet while inside her home.”
Ouch.
Note the inconclusive “and”. A woman was struck by a bullet, not necessarily by his fire. Maybe I’m over-parsing.
It would probably take awhile for forensics to figure it out.
“Say, Bob, this bullet we took out of the woman looks like a 9. What was the perp shooting?
“A .45.”
*long pause*
“I mean, this bullet we took out of the woman is too fragmented to do ballistics on. Do you know where we left the hammer?”
The article claims he took the gun from a cop.
Not happy with Elon
TW: Thinkprogress
Musk said his donations to the GOP actually give him more political leverage with Republican lawmakers who are “willing to listen when I call to object about issues that negatively affect humanity.”
There are a couple of problems with this thinking.
First, if climate change-denying Republicans who push agendas that negatively affect humanity were not running all three branches of government, Musk would not have to call them to object to their policies. Funding their political efforts merely helps them stay in power.
Oh, no. Musk donates to Republikkkinz, too.
There are a couple of problems with this thinking.
All of them the author’s
He exposed himself in a park. A woman chased and stabbed him, California cops say
Florida woman visits California.
I have to hand it to Musk; he’s kept the con going for a long time, longer than I would have thought possible. Now that Tesla is on life support, and he’s nuked his reputation with this tweet, I look forward to the epic downfall. Which is a shame since I think Space X actually has some potential to be useful.
I want him spared only for the sake of Space-X.
He can be spun off from SpaceX without it collapsing.
https://twitter.com/ashtonbirdie/status/1018842642107588608
“Fuck them into woodchippers”?
The #LoveIsLove stuff is tedious enough as it is, but the pond scum applying it to pedophilia are twisted subhuman shitstains. I agree that it’s possible for someone to be attracted to children and not act on it. That doesn’t mean you should shouting it from the rooftops and trying to legitimize it. This is late-stage Lefty cannibalism; they’re actually trying to skinsuit their own movement.
It’s basically people focusing on the “born this way” argument and ignoring the “not hurting anyone” argument, since it doesn’t apply in this case. So I don’t know how much it is skin-suiting versus just a faulty application of logic. Although if the end result is the same, I guess it doesn’t really matter.
Social shame is a good thing at times. Unfortunately the ever-hungry left has cooped the shame mechanism for ideological purification, so those sick fuckers are being validated for their fuckuppedness. This the culmination of 50 years of turning sex into a political weapon. Any positive results of the sexual revolution are quickly being overshadowed by this bullshit, if not completely rolled back by intersectionalism and SJWism.
TDS? ME?
The substance of Trump’s bygone words is so repugnant and morally degenerate that Americans should feel upset he is representing our country in bilateral talks. At best, the values implicit in Trump’s bygone statements are un-American—they explicitly value a foreign leader’s brutal, repressive strength more highly than the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness it has undermined.
Because he has been similarly obsequious when talking about other murderous dictators, and because his personal life is so rife with senseless cruelty, I think his depraved personal values are sufficient to explain his disconcerting words.
Other critics insist that the way he flatters Putin suggests something even darker when seen in the context of his suspicious business ties to Russians, his determination to hide the details of his finances, the closeness of his political associates’s corrupt ties to Moscow, and Trump’s flagrant lies about those associates. With a publication as mainstream as New York titling a cover story, “Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart—Or His Handler?” it is clear that the president is regarded by many of his countrymen as every bit the possibly traitorous usurper that Birther Trump kept implying his predecessor to be.
——–
Many Trump-hating elites long assumed that America would never elect so unfit a president, and so dismissed all worries about what such a person could do in a room with a foreign adversary of whom they are bizarrely fond. That isn’t the only reason that Congress should reassert greater control over war, foreign trade, international treaties, and military alliances, and downgrade the president’s power in substance and in the eyes of foreign governments.
But it is yet another reason to do so that most of the American establishment undervalued during its generation-long push for increasing the power of the presidency far beyond what the Constitution or the wisest of the Framers intended.
Is Trump’s meeting with Putin, or the broader phenomenon of his presidency, enough to cause anyone to revise their bygone view of executive power? As yet, I’ve read a lot more formerly influential people calling this moment “an emergency” for our democracy than grappling with their role in exacerbating it.
Buried somewhere in that mess is a legitimate question about executive power, and how Congress has been ceding authority to the President for decades. But it’s just a steaming pile of OMFGTRUMP!
I bet this douche had no problem with this shit when Obama was doing it, and would have cheered Hillary on had she managed to steal the election and gone on to rule like the tyrant she is.
Conor Friedersdorf is like what Robby would be if Robby had any writing-talent
iow, he can have brief moments of wit or insight, but when you try to put them in some context and figure out what the unifying theme is… its that he’s constantly trying to water down his only-10%-libertarian views in order to ever risk offending his progressive-reader’s sensibilities.
you keep wondering: Who is he writing *for*? who is his audience? its like “a few people @ Cato and Niskanen” who also have some similar progressitarian posture purely because its professionally convenient.
Yes. Friedersdorf is a guy who consistently writes columns where he raises a number of good points….and then dismisses them when because they don’t comport with his general worldview. He’s already drawn his conclusions, and he isn’t changing them regardless of any questions he may have raised that might cast doubt on those conclusions.
Someone should tell that author about the FDR-Stalin relationship. Diplomacy sometimes requires being nice to evil people.
There’s a meme in there, with a side-by-side photo of Trump with Putin and FDR with Stalin. Trying to think of a good caption. Perhaps:
You Know Who Else met with the Russians?
You could do a collage of all the Presidents who have done so.
https://twitter.com/Audacious_Leaf/status/1018243304373346304
Cocaine is a helluva drug.
How the fuck do I unsee that shit?
The Great Marxist Hope! baaaahahahahaha….Commie Barbie stutters through her by-the-numbers comments on Israel like Miss Teen South Carolina.
I’m surprised the DNC propagandist interviewing her actually pressed the issue. I would have thought the style guide for journalists now is to skate by outrageous comments by Dems without challenging them. Someone is looking for a job today.
The DNC candidate lost. However much socialist barbie might be catching attention, there is still bad blood there.
^^This.
I’d not be surprised if the DNC doesn’t sabotage her run, figuring the soft republican would be an easy take-down in 2 years.
I thought that I read that the hack she beat in the primary is going to run as a 3rd party candidate.
What are these people going to do when the hack beats her?
Well, last I heard, he’s still on the working family party line, so he doesn’t have to do anything else to continue to run.
He is, but the WFP explicitly endorsed Karla Marx over their own official candidate, which was amusing..
Karla Marx! LOL
I hope that doesn’t happen. I hope the DNC continues to jill her off as the future of the party and keeps putting her on TV for years to come. The more explicit they can be about their socialism and tyranny the better.
He is listed on the ballot on another party. That party says they want to support Commie Barbie.
There are a limited number of ways to get his name off the ballot. He said he won’t make any effort to get his name off the ballot, and he won’t actively run. So he is fucking both the 3rd party and the Dem party by doing nothing.
Did you expect a safe-seat NY Dem to be a gracious loser?
Of course not.
He has one of those glorious opportunities to fuck over his enemy by doing nothing. One of life’s greatest gifts.
I routinely fuck myself over by doing nothing. It combines my two great passions, laziness and self-loathing.
Gentlemen (and hypothetical ladies), we need to settle something. We have many strong candidates for a nickname for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Are there any others besides:
She Guevara
Karla Marx
Commie Barbie
I think we need to settle on one.
No need to make an active decision, one will emerge and the frontrunner and the others will fade away.
You and your “emergent order”. I say we convene a committee to set an agenda for a meeting to discuss how we should pick which name to use. Who’s with me?
Are you with the Glibertarian People’s Front or the People’s Front of Glibertaria?
The United Glibertarian Front, of course. You revanchist.
SPLITTER!
I like “She Guevara”. But my chances of spelling it properly (without cut and paste) are slim and none.
Commie Barbie has a nice ring to it and is easy to spell.
Commie Barbie would work better if she were indeed blonde.
Titler
Awesome. I like it as a callout to her anti-Semitism.
Needs bigger boobs for that to work.
Commie Barbie is out because she’s not a blonde-hair, blue-eye cheerleader type. The fact that she’s Latina seems to lend She Guevara some weight, so I’ll go with that.
Oh, so any Latinx candidate has to be compared to the Latinx revolutionary, shitlord?
I think you have an unnecessary comma in there. Also, not sure it should end with a question mark rather than a period.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that she shares a last name with intrepid newsman Cortez Cortez.
Anyway, my own creation off the top of my head is Barmaid Sanders, but the others are better. She Guevara remains my favorite.
I’m gonna go Karla Marx. Commie Barbie is nice and straightforward, but as has been said she’s not a blonde-haired blue-eyed cheerleader type. She Guevara is funny as hell but it only works in the written form; when you say it, you either just sound like you’re maybe saying “Che”, or you’re just saying “She” and the joke isn’t as immediate.
Interviewer? Would.
Three way?
From each according to his ability to each according to his need.
Her Shrillness cannot stop projecting.
Great World Cup. Question for President Trump as he meets Putin: Do you know which team you play for?
Jokes on her, the US did not qualify. Also, the world cup is over. Your struggle for relevance and to identify with the commoners is futile. ///ShePersisted
Do you guys remember like a decade ago during the Iraq War the Left would shriek, at the drop of a hat, DON”T QUESTION MY PATRIOTISM?
I usually replied with “What patriotism? You mean to marxism?”…
Didn’t make a lot of friends on team blue.
or “Will you support the winner of the election?”
Bet all the Uranium One money spends well.
Do you know which team you play for?
“Yes, I also know which team you were playing for. #UraniumOne #ResetButton #MoreFlexibleAfterTheElection”
Nearly as cringy as claiming to carry hot sauce in her purse. Sure you do, drunky. It’s in the flask.
It does burn, going down.
So I was watching this video, when the following amazing comment from it caught my eye. But first, the comment that prompted the amazing one:
The economy is a vastly complex machine of spontaneous order with a tremendous number of moving parts within it. At least, that’s what it appears to be. But this guy’s got it all figured out:
I played a drinking game: every time he said the word “universal”, I take a shot. I died before I got to the end of the comment.
The worst part? His comment got two likes. God I hope those two likes were from his parents.
I’m intrigued! How does universal education mean that no one has to work for minimum wage? In this universal utopia, everyone is a highly paid professional, I take it? There are no garbagemen, landscapers, or fry cooks?
Those are jobs for imported Helots.
That brings up one of my favorite thought experiment games.
I’ll give you the choice of two worlds to live in. You will be exactly as you are… same abilities, appearance, health, etc. Everyone else would have a normal bell curve distribution of abilities…. we are just going to alter the baseline.
In one world, everyone is less than you. You are the smartest, nicest, most moral, most attractive, most athletic most generous, most honest person on the planet. That means you would be the best at everything. You’d be the king of kings in this world. But think of what kind of society it would be. …
In the other world, everyone is better than you. They are all smarter than you, more moral, more honest, more generous, better looking, more athletic. You would be the least attractive person on the planet. You wouldn’t even be qualified to pick up the garbage. But think of what kind of society it would be…
Which world would you rather live in… and why? It is very interesting to see how people think about this question.
In one world, everyone is less than you.
I thought both options were supposed to be different than reality.
…no one has to be on minimum wage…working poor…
Something does not add up.
That’s marxism or progthink in a nutshell.
Never read youtube comments.
Never.
But that fruit, it hangs so low. It’s brushing the little pointy ends of the blades of grass.
In local-to-me news, Chicago’s police superintendent totally dunks on career race huckster Michael Phleger by promptly releasing body cam footage of a shooting that sparked
violent riotingpeaceful protests over the weekend.http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-man-shot-and-killed-by-police-identified-additional-protests-planned-20180715-story.html
Phleger’s response is believed to be forthcoming as crickets provide the musical interlude.
“A tape might exist of Trump doing something in an elevator, though exactly where that somewhere is and what that something might be, no one in media can say. That’s because no one in media seems to have seen the tape — or is even confident it exists.”
https://twitter.com/HuffPost/status/1018290098503340033
Is this journalism?
Journalism is no longer reporting facts. It’s reporting how people feel about things and what they are saying on Twitter.
Not when it hurts team blue, however.
Republicans and libertarians don’t have feelings. They cause others to have feelings, which is news.
I’m shocked they are actually admitting that the tape might not exist.
I’m shocked someone at HuffPo can understand the concept of existence.
If they didn’t make it clear enough already, check out the banner photo on their Twitter feed.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DiMtdMKVMAAEuHF.jpg
LOLOLOLOLOL
took me a few before i figured out what happened.
https://twitter.com/RealMrClean/status/507694605396353025
Zardoz is Mr. Clean?
“I drive food delivery for an online app to make rent and support myself and my young family. This is my new life. I once had a well paid job in what might be described as the social justice industry. Then I upset the wrong person, and within a short window of time, I was considered too toxic for my employer’s taste. I was publicly shamed, mobbed, and reduced to a symbol of male privilege. I was cast out of my career and my professional community. Writing anything under my own byline now would invite a renewal of this mobbing—which is why, with my editor’s permission, I am writing this under a pseudonym. He knows who I am.
In my previous life, I was a self-righteous social justice crusader. I would use my mid-sized Twitter and Facebook platforms to signal my wokeness on topics such as LGBT rights, rape culture, and racial injustice. Many of the opinions I held then are still opinions that I hold today. But I now realize that my social-media hyperactivity was, in reality, doing more harm than good.”
https://quillette.com/2018/07/14/i-was-the-mob-until-the-mob-came-for-me/
However much it rings true, it also has the vibe of those “I used to be an X” articles for other groups, so I’m skeptical.
If you’re already a pariah under your regular identity, what harm can be done by posting under that identity and letting people verify the claim?
My question exactly.
I used to be a libertarian, but then I stumbled into a good excuse to believe all the things I believed anyway.
Is that you Barack?
Justice served.
“Every time I would call someone racist or sexist, I would get a rush. That rush would then be reaffirmed and sustained by the stars, hearts, and thumbs-up that constitute the nickels and dimes of social media validation”
I don’t remember who it was, but someone made this argument; that SJW name-and-shame stuff is an addiction just like smoking and that it goes hand in hand with the brain junk food of social media.
From that Quillette piece:
Social justice is a surveillance culture, a snitch culture. The constant vigilance on the part of my colleagues and friends did me in. That’s why I’m delivering sushi and pizza. Not that I’m complaining. It’s honest work, and it’s led me to rediscover how to interact with people in the real world. I am a kinder and more respectful person now that I’m not regularly on social media attacking people for not being “kind” and “respectful.”
No kidding.
It’s a cargo cult with a direct linage back to the Puritans but without the limiting morals of Christianity. And like Puritans, they need to burn witches occasionally.
The Puritans didn’t burn witches, they hanged them.
Puritans who worship a different god, that’s all. It’s obviously not an accident that New England is such a prog hotbed.
Pretty decent book on that theme.
The author’s an academic so some of the later chapters make some conflations and comparisons that most libertarians would disagree with but, overall, quite good.
Anyone else ever have this happen – a band that you really didn’t like for a long time, but who grows on you gradually until you really like them?
Is the band called Stockholm Syndrome?
LOL
Chip has gone Backstreet
Nah, but I really like Ben Folds now
not so much individual bands, but i think i’ve had that experience with ‘entire genres’
at different ages in my life, 2-3 genres were my entire world, and the rest were garbage. Now, its like ~2dozen genres are interesting to me, and i at least appreciate the ‘better examples’ even within ones i used to despise. Or i find a few tracks that open the door and make you go, “oooooohhhhhh *that’s* what people like about this crap”, so at least you understand the appeal in a way you didn’t before.
Claim: It’s a crying shame that Ted Kaczynski turned to violence, not just for the sake of his victims (obviously), but because if he had stayed peaceful and tried to persuade people of his ideas, he’d have a lot more influence. And I think there are some definite nuggets of truth in his manifesto.
Change my mind.
Never read the manifesto. Don’t care enough.
TL;CAF
Open your presents
No, you open your presents
Kaczynski Christmas
Greatest haiku ever
I’ve read it, and he made some good points. But his conclusions were wrong.
tl;dr
“Homeless drug addict who burgled Jewish homes is jailed for six years
Steven Lovell, 47, put behind bars after blood left at the scene of a Manchester home allows police to identify him
Sentencing, Judge Richard Mansell agreed that Lovell had not targeted Jewish households for reasons of prejudice, saying: “You were aware there would likely be high value ornaments in the house… You are becoming a menace to society.””
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/homeless-drug-addict-who-burgled-jewish-homes-is-jailed-for-six-years/
“I didn’t hate Jews, I just wanted their gold” – Defendant.
Lovell cut himself while breaking into the first home near Broughton Park through a conservatory window, leaving blood at the scene.
Homeowner charged separately for maintaining a property dangerous to the health and safety of burglars.
We’re not the UK!
THIS. IS. AMERICA.
*stand ground, opens fire with assault revolver*
The conservatory window makes it sounds like a game of Clue.
“In this episode of Trump Bites, Donald Trump’s not-so-secret admiration for Vladimir Putin plays out in a teenager’s bedroom, where the fantasies of this forbidden romance come to life.”
https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1018770963813490688
CPRM hardest hit?
These people love to project.
If that’s my competition, I like my odds.
My days of not taking the NYT seriously have certainly come to a middle.
https://twitter.com/PeterSweden7/status/1018638747901022208
That’s one disturbing picture.
I anticipate this show being a boring flop.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sacha-baron-cohen-criticized-stolen-valor-hijacked-la-billboard-1127231
I’ve hated all forms of ambush journalism going back to Jerry Rivers. I don’t care of Cohen is ambushing people that deserve it. He’s still a prick of the worst kind.
Even Michael Moore “barging in” on interviewees with whom he’s been invited to meet?
I enjoyed Roger and Me, but he was fucking with the truth even then.
Micheal Moore is the genius that figured out he could become rich peddling socialism and socialist lies to morons.
Technically Rodger Young was an Army Infantryman and all Navy ships to date have been named after Navy or Marine personnel – but yeah, would probably get cross-service support for Space forces – although you’d have to stick with the Marine concept for ship to ship or ship to surface combat.
Still tear up every time I read his wiki entry.
Burl Ives does him proud in the song too.
I hear Sacha Baron Cohen will play him in the upcoming biopic.