Why do they schedule the NCAA championship game so late? People on the east coast, especially those Tar Heel fans with a serious rooting interest, had to stay up till midnight. I guess their kids can all find out today who won rather than have actually gotten to watch what was a pretty good game.
Who’s gonna win? This guy!
Anyhoo, we have a winner in the inaugural Glibertarians March Madness Pick Em!!! Congratulations Crunchy Dolphin, whoever you are. Send us an email (from the email that matches the one on Yahoo) so we can get you your prize. Same goes for our Canadian friend Rufus for winning the international division (actually for coming in second) and whoever submitted under “Jeremy” for coming in third. Kristen wins the ladies division by narrowly coming in fourth overall. All of you send in emails so we can get you something as well.
And now we can move on to the links of the day…
The United States will stop sending money to the United Nations Population Fund. Back up, because a wave of progressive tears are about to crash down upon us since they keep saying the federal government must fund abortions and other “family planning” services here. I’m sure they equally think we should be funding it in the rest of the world too.
What, you want the truth? From me?!?!
Yes, Susan. That’s exactly what I want…under oath.
Looks like Susan Rice had an interest in unmasking Trump associates well before the FISA warrant in October was issued. That’s according to White House logs, by the way. Perhaps the leftist partisans are right, maybe she did have the right under the law to ask for the unmasking. And maybe she was right to lie to the PBS News Hour about it. But maybe Rand Paul is also right, and she should sit in front of the intel committees under oath and tell the truth. Because this is starting to look like Chicago politics and an outgoing admin doing everything it can to undermine the new admin in an unprecedented and totally illegal fashion.
A pair of dueling editorials on the Gorsuch nomination:
Here is the first one, which actually deals with his qualifications.
Here is the second, which largely ignores it other than to lament that he won’t give preference to sympathetic clients. Also, and I know its from The Nation and I should have offered a trigger warning, they include as a reason that “the guy that nominated him is under FBI investigation for colluding with Russia to win the election.” I’ve heard that being spun as a fact lately in the media when its a blatant distortion of the truth.
Roman Polanski reading…
Judge refuses Roman Polanski’s bid for no jail if he returns to United States. I guess that judge won’t be getting a standing ovation from Meryl Streep if she’s ever at a dinner where he is honored. She reserves those for people that allegedly drug and rape 13 year old children.
Atlanta area college student wins $100,000 prize. Donates entire amount to local private high school. That’s solid right there.
That’s the last of the links, do you hear me?
Looks like Susan Rice had an interest in unmasking Trump associates well before the FISA warrant in October was issued. That’s according to White House logs, by the way. Perhaps the leftist partisans are right, maybe she did have the right under the law to ask for the unmasking. And maybe she was right to lie to the PBS News Hour about it.
Maybe she did lie…but just this one time.
I’d like to think they can compel her to tell the truth to Congress under oath. But their refusal to prosecute Holder, Koskinen, Lerner and others for perjury doesn’t give me much confidence.
Resist she much!
Question for my personal slip and fall attorney: can executive privilege be plausibly claimed here if congress tries to question her?
I thought that question was settled during the watergate investigation?
Stop laughing.
I don’t think so once she’s out of office. Wouldn’t the current WH need to affirm her executive privilege?
Nope.
That will be $175 plz.
I’ll buy you a beer and a real pizza.
Sold!
Still she resisted.
*opera applause*
And will much, about that, be committed.
Who is ‘they’? Of course the O’ admin refused to prosecute their own people for criminal behavior. Tinpot Chocolate Jesus was always about breaking the law and then asking forgiveness from his own attorney general. We have a different ‘they’ now.
*notices Hildebeast galloping around free as a bird*
Oh. Never mind.
The DOJ. And the current iteration could just as easily prosecute them now. And the Congress could have sent the Sergeant At Arms to pick them up and left them locked up on Capitol Hill in contempt.
James Clapper has a sad he wasn’t included in that list.
The name “Chocolate Nixon” has never been more apt. They literally spied upon the opposition. How is this not just as bad as what Nixon did? Or are we supposed to pretend Watergate wasn’t a big deal?
Compared to the shit the Obama administration pulled, Watergate was a big giant nothing.
Hell, compared to the shit LBJ did, Watergate was nothing.
Watergate’s different! That guy had an R next to his name. And he didn’t promise to make the oceans stop rising. And he wasn’t black, so criticising him isn’t racist, you bigot!!1! /prog
Actually, he did work on that ocean thingy with the EPA.
Nothingburger! Slurpee!
Nixon was a calculating Republican spying on well-intentioned Democrats in order to subvert the good things they were doing. Obama was a benevolent Democrat who had to spy on evil Republicans just to hold the country together. One is hardly like the other.
I wonder what it’s like to be the designated scapegoat.
She probably digs it.
It is all in the service to her god.
What specifically would allow the unmasking which would otherwise be a felony? Because if it’s not done in order to advance an actual national security interest based on the people being unmasked being under investigation with an appropriate warrant in place, then it’s not legal. And why would she lie about it if it was all legitimate?
I don’t know. But the go to defensive phrase at the moment seems to be, “It was legal, it even says it was legal in the Bloomberg piece”.
You have to love that they all just proclaim it was legal without providing any analysis as to why this otherwise illegal act would be legal in this particular case.
Even Rand says it’s probably legal with the rewriting of the national security laws after 9/11 and the latest abortion of an NDAA. He says it shouldn’t be but probably is. And I think that’s part of the reason he wants to drag her sorry ass in front of a committee and grill her on it. He thinks it’ll sway public opinion on that fucked up law.
If it’s not illegal then they won’t mind if Trump uses an agency or two to spy on his opponent in 2020, and then disperse the info throughout the government, who can then leak it and ruin them.
Except if Trump did that we’d have nothing but screeching about how it’s wrong and treasonous and impeachable and shit, because nobody over there cares about about equality before the law and never has.
I never stopped being amazed at how the left went from supposedly anti-authoritarian “hippies” to totalitarian fascists in something like one generation.
??? Why would you think the left’s bristling against Western governments was done for any reason other than to grab power themselves?
Go back and look again. It was there all along albeit in its early stages. This is the where the road they took leads.
Most transitions from one Presidential administration to the next have been pretty smooth. The prior President made sure any decisions were coordinated with the new one and did their best to make the transition between administrations as smooth as possible.
I think publicly Obama and his team said all the right things. But privately, I think Obama and his team did everything they could to handicap the incoming Trump administration. What Rice did may have been legal (because it isn’t hard to do — the reason for the unmasking is they were caught talking to someone who is being wiretapped), but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t sleazy. One thing the Obama administration shortly before Trump became President was to vastly expand who got the unmasked information. I think this was intentionally done to make sure it was easier for the information they have been collecting on Trump and his associates to leak and damage the incoming administration.
Even if what I think is true and backed up by documented evidence, I don’t think anything legally will happen to Obama and the Democrats. And the main stream media will do their best to minimize the political side of it.
And the main stream media will do their best to minimize the political side of it.
Yup, the headlines are all “it was legal!” and RUSSIA! RUSSIA RUSSIA!!11!!!
My understanding is all Rice had to say was there was a national security interest in unmasking the name. And because they were talking about somebody who was talking to somebody who was being tapped, she could make the argument that that alone was enough to be legal. That is a loophole I could drive a semi (and for the record I’ve never driven a semi) sideways through.
So more than likely nothing legally will happen to Rice.
If they can’t show that the person(s) being unmasked were legitimately being investigated for potentially compromising national security in violation of the law, then I don’t see how this flies.
“…all Rice had to say was there was a national security interest…”
Rice, yeah. She’s good but not Trump. His immigration order is unconstitutional because Trump.
Then why mask ever?
Exactly. If you happen to talk to someone hoovered up in NSA collection, (which is anyone outside of the US talking to someone inside the US) you become a, “national security interest”.
unmasking is a subjective decision so it will be said to be legal this time because a D did it
leaking to the press what was unmasked is a crime which will certainly go unpunished for the same reason
Because the law writers assumed their was ethical people in positions of power. Yeah, I know that was and is extremely stupid, but the law writers assumed it would never bite their ass.
To defame Trump?
I’ve given up on the idea that Justice exists in this world. So yeah, if Obama gets prosecuted, which he won’t because it’s unprecedented, it would be because there is undeniable and un-vilifiable period that the media can’t ignore.
Since the media are basically Democratic operatives with the goal of protecting Democrats and damaging Republicans, there is literally nothing that they can’t ignore.
That sonofabitch Chocolate Jesus poisoned the well but good. I think it’s not just pure spite, though, I think he was (and is) trying to set Trump up to discredit any potential Republican nominee for the next election, whether that’s Trump or someone else.
They are trying a no-shit soft coup using the national security apparatus to try to overturn the results of a free and fair election, with the collusion of the media. This is just batshit insane.
Tony Romo retiring and going into broadcasting.
Future headline:
Romo trips on TV set power cable, refracturing wrist previously hurt from microphone mishap
Wrist AND collar bone.
He’d be the resident Mr. Magoo.
Romo: “Thanks for this coa…ow! Ooo, ow. Ooo boy that’s gonna bruise in the morning. Over to you, Jack!”
/stumbles into camera.
ESPN is like 0-5 on Romo news “according to sources” so far. I’ll not be holding my breath on this one.
Streep on Polanski’s rapey tendencies: “Polanski is real art. Unlike Trump supporters.”
“Same goes for our Canadian friend Rufus for winning the international”
You put up a good fight Pepe Isakov!
/flashes Nixon victory sign with both hands.
Hong Kong businessman agrees to pay $2.45 million to take 18-year-old Romanian model’s virginity
What’s the commentariat rating?
B minus.
Post HK businessman virginity take: D
“Two and a half million. Her first sexual experience. Romanian model.”
I just discovered that if you aren’t fast enough to grab both sides of your nose and you shoot coffee out of just one nostril you can get it to go all the way across the room.
Disturbing eyebrows and unlikely virginity.
Middle top pic? Dead soulless eyes of a crazy person.
Would.
For 2.5 mil you can hire a multitude of high-class escorts and housekeepers.
And what’s so great about virgins? Sheesh.
I dunno. An 8 maybe.
That’s one calculating piece of ass right there. Hymen reconstruction is cheap, but hey, if he has $2.5m to blow on blowing his wad, he’s an adult, more power to her.
What I would do is make sure the contract is watertight. Maybe pay in cash and lie about his name.
2.45 million? What a waste. That is proper hookers and blow party funding right there. All wasted on one.
Good for her.
I’m gonna go C-. Too skinny, she looks like she could be 28, and those eyebrows are tilting me. Plus, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, I wouldn’t want to buy the virginity of any woman willing to sell it to me.
Nice ass, nonexistent tatas, too skinny, harsh face, looks older than her supposed age.
6-7
1
5
And never stick it in a gypsy.
It is known.
Y’all lost your minds.
I agree that she looks older than she claims. And I highly doubt that she’s a virgin. Again, like I give a shit. Why would I want to pay that much for someone with no experience. Weird logic there.
She’s still super hot. I have a big thing for necks and hip bones and toned stomachs. Would agree tits could be better, but that’s a tremendous piece of ass.
You all are just Internet-greedy.
She’s still super hot.
Ouch.
Lawrence has a better solution.
Wooden Pres. Trump statue stands tall in Bluefield
I made the hands big because of all the hand shaking they do.”
Does that even count as a euphemism? Barely even tries to hide it.
I was born in Bluefield and my parents met while working together at that paper in the early-mid 70s. Moved away when I was 6 months old to Evansville and the Courier (Now Courier and Press).
We went to the home that my 6 year-older brother remembers but I don’t. Totally abandoned. Crumbled walls. Went up to where my crib apparently was. Obvious that squatters had been living there previously. There was a big hippy flower painted on the wall.
Whole town reeked of desperation and just saturated-gray sadness.
Glad I don’t remember that place.
That statue looks like a clay art project put together by 3rd graders. Define “artist”.
Mickey Kaus: You want a Principle of Trumpism? Here’s one …
He goes on to say:
The underlying assumption seems to be that the status of being a “loser” is created by “growing the pie”, rather than existing alongside and developing independent of it. The last sentence even betrays this reality; what is the material difference between “already at the bottom” and “going to be a loser” besides the grammatical implication of the passage of time?
More broadly, the growth of “the pie” as it were is an organic phenomenon. It cannot be centrally planned. You might say, let us grow the pie a little less in one way so that it might grow a little more in another way. But unless that decision is driven by consumer choice, it is just redistribution by another name. The proposition seems to be that there is a material difference in effect between transfer payments funded by taxes and inflated wages funded by consumers whose choices have been reduced.
Yet, nobody really seems to have any strong evidence on offer for this theory (except insofar as consumers are more numerous than taxpayers). The most I’ve seen is historical comparisons, but such comparisons are always confounded by other variables. Even accounting for the variables that can be “controlled” as such (i.e. government actions or inactions like regulations, taxes, debt, spending, welfare programs, etc.), market conditions are not the same. The demand for a rotary telephone connected to a party line that’s switched by a human operator is not going to return as long as there are transistors, fiber optics, microwave radios, and cellphones in this world. But the latter system, on a global scale, is far less labor-intensive. Whence the demand for labor?
Unless the goal is to reenact Ayn Rand’s Anthem, the demand for labor is not going to return to what it used to be. And if for some reason, you did do that, then you would see a drop in standard of living at least equal to the difference between then and now. I say “at least” because capital creation is not a losslessly reversible process. Moreover, the people most likely to be hurt by these changes are equally those who are most likely to benefit the least from the growth of “the pie”. There is also the untold story of the “losers” of yesteryear, the people who didn’t get a union job in the heyday of American union workers, whose jobs didn’t survive (or never existed because of) the minimum wage and regulatory hikes of the past several decades, etc.
I made the mistake of replying to someone on the old site about something like this. Even the idea that a central authority can “grow” the economy makes about as much sense as trying to “grow” a tree. You don’t; you can’t. You can try to control inputs as best you can–fertilize the soil, clear space to let in more sunlight, water it–but even that is necessarily imprecise and really just boils down to creating the situation that you think is most optimal for the tree and hoping that good things happen. The only real control you have is pruning, and even that doesn’t prevent the tree from regrowing in that spot in the future.
I am sympathetic to the idea that higher tariffs, coupled with substantially lower taxes otherwise, a drastically reduced regulatory burden, and the curtailment of welfare spending would be a winning combination. But I remain unconvinced of the notion that, if you didn’t raise the tariffs and still did all of that other stuff, the outcome would be worse. In fact, I think it would be better. Which is to say, the real benefits are accrued by reducing the size, scope, and cost of government; how the government is funded is somewhat fungible and thus less important. That having been said, the resulting redistribution from a tariff hike will have a more uniform effect on prices than it will on wages. Some people will be better off, some people will be on net about as well off as before, and some people will be worse off. There are always “losers”.
Also, is “loser” a pejorative enough term for them? I’ve known plenty of people without much wealth who were very happy with their lives.
Feds Sentence Waste Management Supervisors for Hiring Illegal Workers
Those dirty rats, conspiring to commit more victimless crimes.
Besides the Id theft, which they should be nailed for.
Isn’t your identity just intellectual property that isn’t real property anyway?
I’m not nearly as smart as you (or any of the rest of y’all for that matter), but even if that was the case, it’s still fraud. You are claiming credibility you don’t have under false pretenses.
I also realize there is a large chance you were being facetious and I’m too obtuse to realize it.
I was being facetious. I’m still undecided on the validity of intellectual property, but I keep running into arguments against it that “prove” way too much.
We’re locking people in prison now for entering into voluntary employment agreements? God bless America.
When you go under the table and try to not give the govt. a taste, you damn right.
What’s so holy about voluntary employment agreements that they invalidate duly passed laws?
Pugtopsy
Snorts of Sorrow.
Pug-fronted metal. Proceeds to charity.
Speaking of dogs the wife and I are looking into getting another. We are looking for a medium to large dog that sheds little. Right now I’m kind of drawn to the Airedale Terrier. Anyone have any breed suggestions?
My parents had a komondor mix that was the best. He was very sick as a puppy and suffered brain damage as a result, and he was literally the dumbest ? you’d ever meet. But he was extremely docile as well.
I wonder if there’s anything in the world happier than a retarded dog.
Not an Irish Terrier.
Miniature Australian Shepherd. Relatively small, but sturdy. Smart as whip and very trainable.
Pater Dean has one of these. Wonderful dog.
Is that yours in your avatar?
Yup. He’s in a very jolly mood in that pic, which often means he just destroyed something.
Cane Corsica. Best dog I’ve ever owned. Loving, low maintenance, not much shedding, great with my three little girls and all her friends, ferocious bark but gets along with the cat. I have a female–beautiful grey color, about 100 lbs.
Cane Corso
A mutt from a shelter. Seriously. Unless you’re going to show the dog you’re better off getting a mixed breed where you can be reasonably sure there won’t be any inherited diseases or the like. Plus, there’s the cost, the selection, and the good deed factor.
With that said, any of the various pit breeds typically max out at 70 pounds and have short hair with no undercoat, so they really don’t shed very much. They’re sturdy dogs, and they don’t have a lot of the issues with hip dysplasia that you see in other large dogs unless you get one of these “blue pits” from idiot breeders. Rotties and Dobies get bigger, obviously, and have a little more in the way of fur, but are also great dogs. If you already have dogs, though, you might be a little cautious about how they get along. There can be some dominance issues with other dogs with those guys. Not all the time and not really that much more than with other dogs, but just something to keep an eye on.
Standard poodles are great, too: crazy smart, decent-sized, and easily trained. They don’t shed much, although you do have to brush them. Airedales are awesome dogs–I know a guy with two–but, like any terrier, they love to dig, get into stuff, and chase small animals. That can be a problem depending on your situation.
Greyhounds are awesome, and really good with kids. Same with Vizslas. The bonus is that both of those guys seem to enjoy running around but are content to just hang out, too, which is nice.
I’ve had pits for, well, many years. If you have the personality to put up with the stubborn, impulsive, powerful side, the jolly, goofy, friendly side is definitely worth it. I would note that the bigger pits (American Staffordshires, which are most pits that you see these days) can run up to 100 pounds of the males and 70 pounds for the females. We went with British Staffordshires – same dog, personality-wise in a smaller package. They are very low maintenance dogs, BTW – generally stupidly healthy, have flat coats with not much shedding. They do need a firm pack leader and until they hit about age 6 or so, a good amount of exercise. At this point, I don’t think Mrs. Dean and I have any plans to get a different breed, pretty much ever.
My avatar is our male, BTW.
If you’re a strong pack leader, a Rottie is the most wonderful creature in the world.
We had an oversized one (160+) who developed health problems, but had more smarts and personality than any 3 dogs combined.
I cried like a little bitch the day we had to put him down (cancer).
Is there any other way to cry?
Yes, there is the quiet, dignified, solemn tears that just run down your face. Like the way an Indian cries when you litter.
My pug is a Cylon. So there!
I found out yesterday an old guy i knew died friday night. The strange thing is in the wee hours of saturday i had a dream about him dying and talking to me then walked off “to the light” so to speak (a little fuzzy on details). I woke up in almost a panic about 6am breathing hard. I cant recall ever having a dream like that or ever being awoken from a dream (wet dreams count???). Anyway, it dawned on me today that we had a conversation about death and semi-jokingly telling him to communicate with me after he died if theres a way. I knew he was in rough shape so its not like it was totally out of the blue but i havnt seen him in over a year and I hadnt given a lot of thought of his impending death. And im mostly agnostic, always figured if the is life after death then we just reincarnate and do this life over and over. Anyways, ive been trying to wrap my head around this.
The psychicy exposition is that-a-way, pal.
When you die, the light at the end of the tunnel is just you emerging from another vagina to start all over again.
The story, as far as i’m concerned (which no one in media will articulate)…
…is that we literally went 1 administration where “the power to surveill anyone at any time – even retroactively” was first created…
(and all these fake-safeguards were put in place in attempt to assure people that Top Men would be overseeing the whole process and that we should trust that this authority would be used responsibly and its part of essential national security and blah blah blah)
…. and that by the end of the 1 same administration, they were already caught using that incredible snooping-power for petty-partisan political purposes.
There is no power that will not be immediately abused to the limits of its utility. If it can be politically-abused, it will be.
And all anyone needs to pretend that this abuse was justified is to pretend that there’s some FOREIGN power out there that aims to do worse upon us! “but but RUSSIA!!” they sputter. As though the fucking Russians can do anything to affect the lives of normal Americans, compared to the depredation of our own government.
….well, fuck me and my inability to thread. i literally clicked on your comment like 2 hours ago. and just came back now.
Cross over, children. All are welcome. All welcome.
Jung talks about these “coincidences”. You may want to check it out.
Syncronicity.
Its definityly to early in morning to dive into that.
Dreams and death. Just seems interesting considering he uses the exact example you mentioned.
Disappointed it wasnt a Police youtube link.
In case you have kids. I think that song has set off more than one synchronicity alarms.
Ill check it out. Ive never cared enough in the past to dive into this sort of stuff but it had never happened to me.
+1 Susan Blackmore.
A little early in the morning for creepy death stuff don’tcha think?
Naw. Of course not. I’d bet half of all people die in the morning.
6 out of 7 dwarfs aren’t happy.
You know who else had a vision of their impending death…
Max Von Sydow?
wasn’t that more a vision of Robert Redford’s impending death?
Clyde Bruckford? Or was that just for other people?
I’ve had weird experiences after people have died. I wish my sainted Ma would come talk to me, though.
One night I woke up in the middle of the night and an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in years was sitting in the chair next to my bed. He told me that he was just there to tell me that everything would be okay and then he was gone. It startled me so much that I googled his name right then and there and sure enough, he had died a year earlier of cancer. About a week later I was diagnosed with cancer and wasn’t given much chance. No matter how bad things have gotten I’ve never believed that the cancer is going to kill me because he told me everything would be alright. My son says that it is my subconscious mind protecting me. Maybe. I certainly don’t have a better explanation for it and it certainly possible that at that point I suspected that I was a lot sicker than the doctor’s were telling me but just wasn’t ready to admit it to myself but I have a hard time believing that I knew that my friend had passed away and just “forgotten” it. In any case, whether I made the whole thing up in my head or not, the experience has been helpful.
Thats pretty crazy. Do you think you dreamed it or do you really think you woke up and saw him?
Unless I also dreamed that I looked him up online and everything that came after (I got out of bed and didn’t go back to sleep) he had to be there. The whole thing is really weird. That next day I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for antibiotics (I had been treated for a UTI for five months) and the pharmacist asked me to come inside because she wanted to talk to me. She told me that I had been on too many different antibiotics for too long and that she wanted me to get a second opinion. I associated her concern with the experience from the night before and called my cardiologist for a recommendation of a doctor to call. He asked a few questions and said he would call me back. He called ten minutes later with the name of a specialist who was going to fit me in that day. The specialist took one peek and a week later I was at Moffitt Cancer Center. I know it is crazy but I believe my friend started a chain of events that may end up saving my life. My son, who isn’t religious, insists that my mind found a way of telling me something that I knew all along but wasn’t able to face. In a way that makes sense because I was under a doctor’s care for five months for something that should have been fixed in a week and I knew that I was getting worse and worse but just kept blowing it off. So maybe I did make the whole thing up but it sure did and does feel real.
Thats wild. Seems less anecdotal than my experience.
It’s amazing how death is sitting there for all us at the end, yet we’ll do anything to avoid looking at it. I say pick up, roll it around in your head, accept the reality. A lot of these “dying relative/friend visiting in a dream” experiences are just your unconscious screaming for you to face up to it. I mean, even if you wanted your name to live forever like Achilles and that is what motivates you, good luck. The sun is going to engulf the earth someday. Nihilism breeds when you don’t examine death carefully and what it means to be alive. *Passes joint*
*Reaches, looks quizzically at the ceiling* Wut?
You sound like my son. If it is true that I made up the whole thing in my head it is freaky how real something imaginary can seem.
I’m not saying you made it up at all. I’m saying there are a lot of connections our brains make that we’re completely unaware of. That doesn’t even make them invalid. In fact, you should listen to them.
I get what you mean. My son and you believe that I got a “message” but you all believe that the “source” of the message is different than what I believe. In either case it is fascinating.
I’m not a militant atheist. In fact, most of the atheists I’ve met don’t like me one bit because I don’t go all “flying spaghetti monster!” on religious/spiritual people.
A friend of mine did the same to me. Two days before he died he and I talked about dying. I think he was hinting to me that he was ready to go. He was in pretty bad shape and I am pretty sure he pulled up his own anchor. He had just had enough. It kinda stuck in the back of my mind after the conversation and when the call came it was not a surprise at all. It is likely that your dream was your subconscious working out what it knew was probably going to happen.
I guess I am trying to say dont put too much stock in what happens in the shadows inside your head. It can be a pretty good guide but it is hardly rational, at least not in the normal way we think about rationality. It is reliable with regards to interpersonal relationships but sucks at figuring out how the universe works.
Honestly i dont know what to think about it. This is far from the first death i had to come to terms with and he wasnt the closest person ive had to deal with but never had anything like this. Whether it is all in the mind or not its amazing. I dunno, i guess now i have something to talk about to the jahovas whitnesses next time they come by. I might not think as much about it had he weighed heavily on my mind in the days before but it didnt
GOD DANG MUST GRAPEFRUIT HAVE SO MANY NUTS!
AND DON’T ANY OF YOU WORK?
Grapefruit has nuts? WTF?
You never heard of Grape Nuts?
What about Raisinets?
I’ve been working since 6am.
No one needs to work before 6am. /Bernie Sanders
No one needs to work. /Bernie Sanders
Damnit. It’s not fair, typing in tags on the phone takes forever.
No one needs to work
before 6am./Bernie SandersFTFY
Not my problem.
I was here from about 5.58, manically mashing the F5 key waiting for Tuesday Morning Links.
You do realize how hard that is, right?
That is some really good euphemizing, right there. I tell ya wut!
Trump aides, lawmakers hold talks to revive healthcare bill
If Rand is on board, there may be some hope that it gets done right.
Done right would be repeal and deregulate.
Okay, let me amend that to “as right as we can expect given the political reality of Republican asshats like McCain and Graham.”
Every night I watch the ABC evening news. When they bash Trump every day, they inevitably say “even some Republicans” are criticizing the president, and 99% of the time it’s McCain or Graham. They are the go to “responsible republicans”.
They and their ilk are the reason Republican voters got fed up with the Republican establishment and voted for Trump.
Folks, look, you know we have a lot of work to do because it’s time, we all know it, it’s time to change things in Washington. Then I watch the evening news, and these guys, they think they’re reporters but they just sit there behind the desk, they look pretty and they read whatever is handed to them. And every night they’re so concerned, so concerned because I’m making changes. Oh no, look what Trump is doing now ! But that’s oK, that’s fine because that’s their job to sit there and read the piece of paper that the establishment gave them. Because they’re part of it, they’re part of it, so they don’t like it when we tell them things are going to change.
But this is the amazing part, we have members of my own party, they call themselves Republicans. But when the anchorman says republicans oppose me, it’s the same guys every time. I turn on the news and there’s John McCain. This guy, he’s been in Washington, how long ? A long time. So is he part of the problem ? Well he’s fighting me and he doesn’t get it. I’m going to drain the swamp, folks. Drain. The. Swamp.
McCain is long in the tooth, but the party didn’t really put up an alternative here. My worry is that Kirkpatrick will run again and win because the party bosses didn’t give the reds something to get behind. She’s exactly the kind of progressive ideologue to do the most damage.
Repeal and
replacethrow enslave every politician that voted for it until the billions they lost are paid back. Not quite as catchy, I know.Enslaved doing what? They have no discernable skills.
Colosseum. People with premiums that have gone up over 50% get to give the thumbs up or down.
Are there still salt mines under Kansas City?
Kansas City? Screw that, they can mine salt from the Devil’s Golf Course in Death Valley.
Rand Paul is my spirit animal.
OT but related to the car threads from yesterday afternoon links. I just got a new car with Honda Sensing the other day and am very impressed so far. The WSJ ran an article yesterday about how these safety features are making insurance premiums skyrocket and the comments were full of old curmudgeons complaining how these safety features would just cause more accidents because people would feel safer to drive more dangerously.
1) My six month premium went up $12 with the addition of Honda sensing.
2) I see how the abrupt braking from the forward collision system could increase accidents from being rear-ended but that’s the squarely the fault of some other driver following too closely, not the driver with honda sensing. The other features are just helpful, especially for new or older drivers. I don’t see how lane departure warning (gently steering you back into your lane) will cause Borderlands like mayhem on the roads.
To conclude, I’m a fan on Honda sensing. I don’t need any of the features but it sure is nice to set the adaptive cruise control and not have to constantly reset the damn thing on long drives everything you come up behind someone going 5 under. It’s a nice compromise for those who don’t want an autonomous vehicle but still have some of the helpful benefits of tech advancement. Plus, it barely cost anything to add to the vehicle, much less then comparable systems for other cars.
I got a new Mazda last year with some of those gadgets (not the automatic braking). My insurance premiums actually went down.
Your insurance going up is interesting. I would not have guessed that.
Adaptive cruise I can get behind because I use cruise A LOT, and it’s really irritating to have to constantly adjust. When I drive down I-81 I usually set it one mile below the speed limit just so I don’t have to constantly fuck with the cruise.
The other stuff…meh.
I set 5 over.
Just to tell the cops I’m not their bitch.
Set it for 5 over around here and you’ll get run off the road. 55 means 80 and lots of sudden lane changes.
55?
Move back to Montana, man! 😉
80 on highways and 70 on secondaries. Meaning 85 and 75
There’s a balance going on between the increased expense of replacing the equipment versus the savings from accident prevention. I got quotes from other auto insurers and some did give a discount for the sensing instead of raising the premium. My insurer does not but they were still ~$400 under everyone else.
Aah, that makes sense.
I’m neither for or against these new features. I’m against them being mandated. We bought a Grand Cherokee in 2014. My first car with a back up camera, which is nice. The salesman said they are going to be mandated in 2018 because something like 300 kids a year get backed over. I know this makes me a mean guy, but people could always do what my mom did when the five of us were kids, and she was backing the car out to go run errands. We all had to stand where she could see us before she moved the car. Because she knew we were stupid little kids and didn’t want to run over us.
but it sure is nice to set the adaptive cruise control and not have to constantly reset the damn thing on long drives everything you come up behind someone going 5 under.
That would be nice. I assume “adaptive” here means that it automatically passes the slowpoke in front of you at the soonest safe opportunity, checking waze for cop reports as necessary. Cause I ain’t got the time or the patience for this 5 under BS.
But seriously, I like the safety gadgets in general. I drove a rental SUV 5 or 6 years with those blind spot indicators built into the side mirrors and I still wish I had those on my TL. Never driven a car with the forward collision avoidance but I wouldn’t mind giving it a try.
Unfortunately I may never have a good enough excuse to convince myself to buy a new-fangled car. Stupid reliable Acura.
Oops, first graph was supposed to be italics. I guess I haven’t figured out the right tags to use here yet.
Good edit faerie flutters by.
Close, the adaptive means if you’re cruising at 65mph and come up behind someone going 55mph, it will automatically slow you down to match their speed and keeps a settable distance between your cars. You then get over to pass and the car automatically accelerates back up to your set speed (65 in this case). It’s not self-driving so you have to change lanes yourself but it takes away the constant resetting that used to be required with cruise control.
Nice.
I don’t get the insurance going up. I suspect that the insurance company is either making a false assumption or outright fleecing you. My assumption is that the systems described perform better than humans. I certainly wouldn’t field a product that was worse than the current standard, simply from a liability standpoint.
I suspect that once the actuary tables catch up with the technology, the cost of insurance will decrease.
My understanding is it’s a cost trade off between replacing the more expensive equipment and saving from accident prevention. Although it marginally raised my rates ($24/year), my insurance was still hundreds cheaper than other companies who gave the safety discount.
It’s not autonomous driving so the systems are meant to be more of a backup when the human driver errs. Although I have read of the collision mitigation preventing accidents where another driver ran a red light at an intersection and the car reacted and braked faster than the attentive human driver could. Deer cause a shitload of accidents where I live and I’m hoping this could help prevent deer crash accidents too as the system is supposed to react to people in the road.
Fair nuff. Read your follow-up after I posted.
the comments were full of old curmudgeons complaining how these safety features would just cause more accidents because people would feel safer to drive more dangerously.
This is actually a very well known phenomenon, classically illustrated with “child-proof” caps for medicine. People were more careful about putting medicine out of reach of children before child-proof caps. The new safety feature essentially gave them permission to take less care, and the rate of children getting into medicine is declining, but more slowly than it “should”; the vast majority of these cases in our ED are people who left medicine in reach of the children. I see no reason to believe that “driver assist” won’t have the same effect. We might see marginal improvements in accident rates, but I’m not expecting much.
It will be interesting to see. I understand and agree that the phenomenon exists, an increase in bicycle fatalities from helmet laws is another example but it’s hard for me to see how these driver assist features can cause an increase in aggressive driving behavior. Besides the adaptive cruise control, the features are secondary to the driver and only kick in when a problem is about to occur. Driving dangerously would just cause your car to immediately brake very hard every few seconds which would get old very fast.
It won’t make people more aggressive, it will make them lazier and less attentive.
Christ, the ads for this stuff show people being inattentive. It is being sold as permission to be a bad driver, because the car will take care of it. It’ll help, but a lot less than people think.
If the system is better than the human, the human being inattentive is a net plus.
Syria conflict: ‘Chemical attack’ in Idlib kills 58
If confirmed, it would be one of the deadliest chemical attacks in Syria since the civil war began six years ago.
Not to minimize the tragedy, but what a shitty way to report something. “One of the deadliest”. So like top ten? Fifteen? Twenty? Cause I thought a ton more people died a while back, so the range of deaths included in this deadliest attack group is pretty large.
This Australian reporter posted some very graphic and rough pictures and videos of the aftermath.
Christ. War sucks.
Many of the symptoms of Sarin or Tabun in that footage. Props to the first responders who waded in for the cleanup, ‘cos they’re at risk too.
Groovus would probably be a more reliable commenter than me though.
Goodbye Connecticut – even the rich libs are fleeing.
Well, they’re leaving so they can stay rich.
What might be interesting, is to see what David DeLucia’s political affiliations are via Opensecrets.org. Oh look! Straight $1000 per donation, straight party Democrat.
Fuck him. Fuck his family. Fuck his neighbors. Fuck his extended Goldman Sachs social circle. He owns every ounce of pain he gets, because while I work in the financial business, I’m pretty much stuck here paying the taxes imposed by the people he voted for.
“The political logic in Connecticut seems to be, “When one rich family leaves another will take its place.”
I truly loathe this line of thinking. It’s not logic; it’s illogical. It’s the prevailing attitude of all civil servants (with guaranteed pensions and benefits). Of course, being the cemented knuckleheads they don’t see forcing a business out or shutting them down has economic consequences as well. It’s not just a matter of ‘someone will take over’. But no skin off their backs, right?
New Jersey and Connecticut have stayed afloat by being slightly nicer places to live and slightly less financially screwed up than New York. They are both going to hit a wall soon. With technology making your physical location unimportant, why move across to NJ or CT? Just pack up and go to Florida or the Cayman Islands. .
The richest guy in NJ left for Florida last year.
And of course the Democrat-controlled NJ legislature just keeps doubling down by raising taxes and increasing regulation. They are so beholden to the public sector unions it just can’t be stopped.
Sadly, NY is still the financial epicenter for my industry, and is likely to stay that way for the rest of my salaried career, but I have a cunning plan.
Does it involve becoming a linguist?
No, but it’s so cunning, you could put a tail on it and call it a fox.
I’m all ears.
In case it’s not obvious, I just filed my state taxes ….
And the Hartford Courant can go suck a bag of dicks. So many trackers and ad networks that I gave up tweaking Scriptsafe and Privacy Badger while I was trying to post a comment about how Mr. DeLucia has basically shit in the everyobody’s bed and now walks away leaving us to launder the sheets and redecorate the spare bedroom.
It’s a Tribune paper. The Tribune has thoroughly fucked every newspaper website in their portfolio. The one in our area is completely unusable at this point even with blocking turned off.
Thanks for the info on xTuple, btw. I’m just finishing up an in-house hosted install for eval purposes.
NP. Let me know if you have any questions on how to customize it.
Funny thing is that about 6 years ago, my firm owned significant chunks of Tribune Group and other dead tree assets. One day, the guy running the the portfolio has a meeting with my boss, next day he’s gone. Day after that, we no longer had any positions in news media.
My (now late) boss was somewhat skeptical about the long-term viability of print media.
Let your hate flow…
I just go out and window shop for another gun, frankly. It may not be healthy, but I feel better afterwards.
Perhaps the leftist partisans are right, maybe she did have the right under the law to ask for the unmasking.
I woke up early today so spent a bit of time over at /r/politics to see what the Obomabots thought about this. Only story under discussion was a Slate piece about how the meany Trumputin is going after such a devoted public servant as Rice. More discussion was centered on how Carter Paige met with a Russian spy in 2013 and that has to do with Trump, and Blackwater CEO setting up back channels to Putin for Trump. It is bizarre. They don’t think an administration using the NSA to spy on political opponents is a big deal, because of course they were monitoring them. They were colluding with Russians!!!!
I’m guessing it doesn’t faze them at all that there is exactly zero evidence of Trump or his people actually colluding with the Russians?
Not only that, but the Blackwater guy met with the Russian 9 days before the inauguration, so it’s no evidence at all of “hacking the election”.
And, of course, if we’re all worried about people colluding with Russians, we know for a fact that highly placed Dems are actually in bed with various Russian oligarchs – the Clintons and Podesta I know off the top of my head. Since the chin-strokers in the media aren’t worried about that, I an only conclude they aren’t really worried about colluding with Russians at all.
For sloopy because it’s never too early to start fellating the Dook basketball program
http://www.espn.com/chalk/story/_/id/19072527/kentucky-wildcats-duke-blue-devils-louisville-cardinals-early-favorites-win-2018-men-ncaa-tournament
There’s a shock.
Can’t you run that story every year with different player names?
Pretty much
I saw that. I almost posted it but I figured 7-8 links was pushing it already.
Just in case anyone still had even a sliver of trust for the mainstream media…
Cernovich got the story from employees of mainstream media organizations which were not reporting it in order to protect Democrats.
I can’t wrap my mind around Cernovich. I’ve seen his Periscopes where he rivals Alex Jones in nuttiness, but he does nail it from time to time. As usual in this age of the intertoobz, gotta call balls and strikes with him.
Well, let me just look around for my shocked face.
Maggie Haberman is a partisan hack. I’m surprised that Lake sat on the story, though. He’s the only one who has written about this whole situation, while being criticized by other members of the media for not just focusing on ‘Russia- under your bed!’.
I thought Eli Lake was a “right wing hack”. That is what I see him called in the progosphere.
I thought he was a nevertrumper neo-con type?
Any admission that the democrats may not be all goodness and light makes you a right wing hack.
So they can hide the awful refereeing?
So I can go to bed without it even occurring to me I’ve missed anything (other than some opening day baseball).
That’s why you know NOTHING! NOTHING!
Exactly how I like it (particularly if UNC is playing).
The United States will stop sending money to the United Nations Population Fund.
Thank goodness I’m off of Facebook. The endless swarm of prog think pieces on why I should care about issue 1.23E16 is unbearable. It’s like huffpo et al exclusively hires people who are so mentally far gone, that they don’t realize that every day they produce the same garbage.
As Joe Kenda would say….my, my, my! Congress had better get their collective ass in gear and subpoena Susan Rice:
As Wilford Brimley said in Absence of Malice, “Wonderful thing, a subpoena.”
Yet the media keep bleating that this was all somehow legal. It’s fucking insane.
What somebody needs to do is find out if Rice or anybody in the Obama admin had the NSA spying on other GOP presidential hopefuls. Because that would be the real smoking gun that the Dems couldn’t refute. And it would put the whole Russia nonsense to bed for good.
Even money says it’s out there and they did it. They’re just brazen enough to figure they’d get away with it.
And they will get away with it.
Not so much brazen as working from experience. They certainly will get away with it, thanks to Democrats in congress and a partisan media.
I would say they would get away with it if it is only people connected to Trump. If there are others, they will have a hard time explaining that one away.
They won’t have to explain it away. The media will bury it and continue to scream about RUSSIA.
I doubt it exists*. Not that they wouldn’t do it if they thought they could get away with it, but the NSA surveilling a U.S. Person inside the U.S. absolutely requires a FISA warrant, which they knew they weren’t going to get and would leave one hell of a paper trail even if they did get it. They were only able to do this against Trump’s people because some of them were talking to Russians. So they collect on the Russians, which may be legal (if there’s a foreign intelligence justification), and then they unmask the identities of the U.S. Persons, which also may be legal (again, with FI justification), and then they use what they find out for political advantage, which is definitely not legal and is probably in violation of multiple laws, but is also impossible to prove/prosecute in the “anything short of a signed affidavit is not sufficient proof of intent” legal climate we seem to be operating in nowadays (at least, for the King’s Men).
* = At least, not in the same form. There are no doubt other ways to get what they want, which they almost certainly availed themselves of, but would require a different chain of evidence.
^This is why I gave you a shout out, KB. That’s spot on.
There really needs to be another Church Commission and a thorough overhaul of this whole process, a la the original FISA changes from the 1970s. The potential for abuse is absolutely still there, and the problem is that the Republicans know they were mostly responsible for creating this monster and, in their hubris, never considered the possibility that it would fall into the hands of the Democrats. I don’t know why every time a political party sweeps the government, they think it’s the last time elections will ever be held and they’ll be in power forever. You will lose and it will happen sooner than you think. Stop giving power to the government because it will be used against you.
My above comment uses the Clapper-tastic definitions of surveillance, where it is only considered as such once a human has looked at it.
Yeah, sounds about right.
Their real safety from prosecution isn’t the DemOp Media or the spineless Congress. It’s is the thoroughly partisan and weaponized civil service which is completely on their side and unaccountable.
Congress can smack down the civil service and hard. However, they’ve thoroughly bought into the bullshit that the executive branch of the government needs to “function” no matter what (not that it leads them to pass a budget in a timely fashion, mind you). Jonah Goldberg’s thoughts come to mind:
The key thing to note is that “mostly” is not “entirely”. One of the jobs of Congress is to make sure that the unelected bureaucracy is not working against the people or their elected officials. The first step is recognizing that there is a problem, which the Republicans seem wont to ignore.
Further caveat: disseminating the identities of U.S. Persons identified in intelligence outside of those with a need-to-know (i.e., to the press, whether overtly or covertly), is a crime even if the unmasking itself was justified. Susan Rice may have had a need-to-know as National Security Advisor, but the press apparatchiki most definitely did not. Whoever gave it to them committed a serious offense.
Citation for what I’m talking about: 50 U.S.C. Chapter 36, specifically and especially 50 U.S.C. § 1801–1806.
So what the Obama administration made sure as many people as possible knew it which did two things. One, made it more likely to leak. And made it harder to find out who leaked it. Rice made have gathered the information, but she is safe because she didn’t leak the information. She may have made sure it was leaked, but she didn’t do it herself.
Would you expect any less from President Plausible Deniability? Obama is no supergenius but he is one hell of a con-man.
“Obama is so slick he makes an eel look like sandpaper.”
-T Sowell
Good line. Then again, I’d expect as much, considering the source.
But he was a man’s man.
Meant as a reply to Suthen, although I also agree with kb.
I love that photo BP. I referred to Obumbles as a twink once in front of a Obamaprog who was very offended by that. He accused me of slandering the lightbringer so I pulled up that photo. The amount of stuttering and disbelief was breathtaking. I walked off and left him gawking at the screen. He simply couldn’t process what he was seeing.
It is what it is brutha.
I doubt it exists
I don’t know. All campaigns use the same pool of people in that biz. They all talk to the same people. It does not have to be a Russian you are talking to to get caught up in surveillance. You just have to be talking to someone outside of the US. They collect it all.
If they want to pull info on an American, they just have to know who outside of the US that person has talked to.
*tightens tin-foil hat*
“…find out if Rice or anybody in the Obama admin had the NSA spying on other GOP presidential hopefuls.”
^This^
Even money? I’d say it is a pretty safe bet. I would be shocked if they didn’t.
No. No. No. They did not spy on Trump or other GOP presidential contenders. They just spied on everybody who did business with them. And if they happened to accidentally collect information on Trump and other GOP contenders and that information just happen to fall into the Hillary campaign, well mistakes happen and we should just strongly condemn the fact that this happened and make the people promise never to do it again.
And they were probably spying on Romney too. Think back to how well prepared they were with Candy Crowley in that debate.
Even more than that – did they spy on Sanders’ campaign for Hillary?
DING! DING! DING! DING!
All Trump has to do is show that, and the Democratic establishment can watch their voting base evaporate further
I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that the Democratic Party, as it exists today, would cease to exist if something like that happened.
The UNC players are going to be welcomed like heroes when they go back to class…lol but seriously the university created an entire major made up of no show classes that ran for almost 3 decades and they should already be on probation if not for the ineptitude of the NCAA.
What I’m trying to say is fuck UNC and their sanctimonious fanbase and cheatin’ ass scum bag university
Syracuse provided extra tutoring services to one player. In the time it’s taken the NCAA to “investigate” UNC, we were investigated, punished, appealed, punished again, and we’re a year away from finishing our punishment.
My only hope is that their two previous titles under Roy get stripped. I know the NCAA ties itself in knots to not take away titles, even when they obviously should, but the depth of the cheating at UNC was so tremendous, I don’t see how they don’t*
*They won’t.
I’m absolutely positive that the NCAA will punish UNC* for this
* UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Greensboro, and UNC-Asheville, probably.
“The United States will stop sending money to the United Nations Population Fund”
Finally, some good news. Peak population is the most debunked theory in human history.
ERMAHGERD! My brackets worked out pretty much how I thought they would, except never expected to bump all the way up to the top 10 at the 11th hour.
MD is close to passing a mandatory paid sick leave bill for companies with 15+ employees. The People’s republic marches on, despite having had a couple of decent republican governors lately.
And that’s not helpful to the big players at all. I mean who cares that companies with 15 employees are probably barely floating as is.
I think the funniest part of this whole Rice/Obama story are the people who talk about what a dangerous precedent was set. How they politicized this tool and eroded safeguards. The Daily Caller had a link this morning on how there was supposed to be a wall between these powers and partisan politics. A wall!
They should keep the intercepts in the Social Security lockbox.
Nobody could have seen this coming! Nobody!
I had to explain to a young colleague that the powers that are granted to one President are carried on to the next. And the next guy might not be someone you like.
She had never thought about it that way. That was a major headdesk/facepalm moment.
At any rate, the only solution for leftists who are in distress that Obama’s powers now apply to Trump is to tear down democratic institutions and get rid of the scary man by any means necessary (except the ballot box). They’re not willing to lie in the bed they made with Obama.
“I had to explain to a young colleague that the powers that are granted to one President are carried on to the next. And the next guy might not be someone you like.”
Every “progressive” I know was cheering from the sidelines while Obama overstepped executive authority again and again, and I tried so fucking hard to explain to them that you shouldn’t support the government becoming a golem (even if you approve of the decision being made) because most terrible dictators are elected fair and square, and you don’t want to leave the implements of a police state lying around. Their response was one of two things:
A) “Obama isn’t overstepping his authority! You just can’t handle a strong black president!”
B) “Obama is forced to do things this way because that obstructionist Congress is holding him back!”
C) “Obama isn’t doing anything bad with those powers. Even if he or another president did something bad, they would be held in check by the voters!”
That last one really gets me, especially because many people who told me that are now screaming about how it’s basically like seven Holocausts are happening in the US because Trump got elected. I’m constantly torn between throwing this quote back in their faces and maintaining good relations with family members.
FC Dallas U15 boys defeat US Women’s National Team 5-2
::whistles::
I’m ready to white knight any inappropriate comments.
Go for it! You might get some bull-dyke tail in gratitude!
The bull dyke took my lunch money and then fucked my gal. I still think she’s into me, though.
If you like being pegged, you should be golden.
‘No fair! They kept raping us on the field and ref wouldn’t card them!’
Like this one?
But they totally deserve to make as much as the MNT.
This wouldn’t happen if we paid them the same as the mens team.
EQUAL PAY!
*Comes galloping in, helmet on backwards, lance shoved up own ass*
How dare you!
It’s that soccer?
Oh? Never mind, I thought we were talking about a sport.
At The Other Place, there was a piece lamenting FOX’s cancellation of Red Eye. It got me thinking about how FOX has given many broadcast hours to libertarian/libertarianish figures: Stossel, Kennedy, and Judge Nap being the big three. FOX, of course, is popularly known as the official broadcast outlet of Team Red.
Have any Team Blue outlets given any broadcast time to libertarians other than Bill Maher*?
* – ROFL
Does Showtime count?
I’m not familiar with Showtime’s programming. Which show are you referring to?
Bullshit by Penn and Teller was on Showtime.
DUH, completely forgot Bullshit, thank you.
Yes, indeed. Wish they made more of them.
They’re canceling Red Eye? Why? That show was awesome.
I liked Shillue as a recurring guest, but he’s no Gutfeld. Firing Schulz did them no favors, either.
Gutfeld lost me when he started repeating the line “if you’ve nothing to hide…” and repeatedly denigrating Snowden, ad-hom’ing (omg! high school dropout!) and calling him a traitor. I was too disgusted to keep watching.
Losing Schulz was what made it lose its mojo, though, imo.
That sort of thing annoyed me too, but he was the irascible conservative curmudgeon and the national defense apologias are part of the turf. He can always fall back on the “I’m an entertainer, not a journalist” defense. Unlike Stewart, Gutfeld is actually funny. And that’s the thing, he communicated humor by actually making inflammatory statements. None of that milquetoast eyebrow waggling/pencil tapping condescension.
That really sucks – I always thought they should have run Red Eye at 10 or 11 where I could actually watch once in a while.
And no, Team Blue networks want nothing to do with obnoxious government-doubting libertarians.
/NUDGES Drake.
Pst. Here take it. It’s called PVR.
/WINKS.
Is that an imaginary Canadian thing like poutine? I have a DVR.
I haz a sad. Where can I get my Joanne Nosuchinsky fix from now?
YouTube. Google.
Fox does give airtime to libertarians now, but damn if they won’t circle the wagons when it comes to massive Republican fuckups. The run up to the Iraq war and basically anything in the months after 9/11 was excruciating.
“Here is the first one, which actually deals with his qualifications.”
Yay, Gorsuch is in the “mainstream” and a bunch of Important People support his nomination.
I guess that means if you like the way the courts are going, you’ll love Gorsuch?
“The United States will stop sending money to the United Nations Population Fund. Back up, because a wave of progressive tears are about to crash down upon us since they keep saying the federal government must fund abortions and other “family planning” services here. I’m sure they equally think we should be funding it in the rest of the world too.”
I had a friend post on Facebook this morning about Trump “rolling back Obama-era workplace protections for women.” I wonder what hysterical post she’ll link to later today about this story? “For Trump, oppressing just women in America isn’t enough. All women of the world must suffer his sexism!”
Let’s see how the AP addresses this.
“Though focused on forced abortion — a concept opposed by liberals and conservatives alike — the move to invoke the ‘Kemp-Kasten amendment’ was sure to be perceived as a gesture to anti-abortion advocates and other conservative interests….
“The UN Population Fund has typically been cut off during Republican administrations and had its funding resumed when Democrats control the White House….
“In a lengthy memorandum obtained by The Associated Press, the State Department said the UN fund partners with China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission, responsible for overseeing China’s “two-child policy” — a loosened version of the notorious “one-child policy” in place from 1979 to 2015. It said the UN collaborates with the Chinese agency on family planning. Still, the memo acknowledged there was no evidence of UN support for forced abortions or sterilization in China.”
They’re “partners” with the criminals but don’t take part in their crimes, yeah, I believe that.
And I’m going to say “citation needed” about “liberals” opposing forced abortion.
What have they done beyond denounce any actual law or policy targeting forced abortion?
I don’t know why I continue to be shocked by the UK’s descent into full retardation, but there you go.
This is the correct way to appropriate culture.
At least change the date. Maybe do it in January when there is snow. Make it a challenge.
Susan Rice is completely stealing my lines now.
“I know nothing about this.”
– Susan Rice, on the unmasking of Americans in PBS interview March 22.
Susan Rice shouldn’t have to explain anything. The insistence on an explanation is inherently dehumanizing. Black lives have been explicitly and implicitly told they don’t matter for centuries.
That kid sounds like an insufferable little prick.
Stanford material then.
So what do we have here? One of Obama’s top advisers, who reports directly to him and leads no independent agency, unmasking names of people associated with the Trump campaign. Various people talking about an effort by the administration to make sure this intelligence info was spread out through the intelligence community. A Senator saying that Hillary Clinton and six of her aides were allowed to maintain their access to classified and top secret documents while she was campaigning, which could very well have included intelligence on the Trump campaign. It’s all starting to sound awfully Watergatey to me, which, I have been told repeatedly for my entire life, was one of the worst things that ever happened in this country.
“A Senator saying that Hillary Clinton and six of her aides were allowed to maintain their access to classified and top secret documents while she was campaigning,”
Good lord, how did I miss that one?
I swear, if these were used as plot devices for House of Cards, the writers would be scorned for being so ham-handed as to defy believability.
I suspect these are political weasel words designed to obfuscate. Needs more clarification.
Did she actually have physical access to classified OR did she simply retain her security clearance? Two different things.
So…
1. I can see the Senator intentionally confusing the two for political gain
2. I can see the media reporting on it not knowing the difference
We know she had access to at least some classified information, because the stated purpose of retaining access for her and her aides (aka “research assistants”) was to facilitate the writing of her memoirs.
Whether or not she had access to specific Trump campaign intelligence, or ever used such access if she had it, is unknown at this point. But it’s a question that should be asked, don’t you think? Especially in light of Rice’s unmasking activities, and multiple reports that the Obama admin was trying to get this info spread throughout the intelligence community.
Agreed
BTW, if you want a chuckle….a Jim Sciutto holds the title of “Chief National Security Correspondent” at CNN. He currently is going on television claiming that stories about Susan Rice are “ginned up, partly as a distraction”.
Now for the fun part: know what Jim Sciutto’s job was before CNN? Why, he was a political appointee in the Obama State Department of course!
Before that, he was with ABC News. Know who was one of his colleagues there? A guy named Ian Cameron….who just happens to be married to none other than Susan Rice.
So his source saying that the unmasking would not be out of bounds could possibly be Rice’s husband? Brilliant.
OT: formatting comments
Little help? Simple html tags seem to just get eaten, and bbcode-style formatting tags don’t seem to work. I tried poking around the wordpress help a bit, but it all seems to be aimed at the site admins, not the poor underclass. If there’s a primer somewhere just point me to it. Thanks.
[strong] gets you bold
[em] = italics
[s] =
strikethrough[blockquote] =
replace [ ] with the proper pointy bracket
That would make a nice addition to the FAQs.
testing which brackets you mean…
bold
Thank you
You know who else didn’t use Monocle?
(reposting because i’m retarded and can’t thread)
The story, as far as i’m concerned (which no one in media will articulate)…
…is that we literally went 1 administration where “the power to surveill anyone at any time – even retroactively” was first created…
(and all these fake-safeguards were put in place in attempt to assure people that Top Men would be overseeing the whole process and that we should trust that this authority would be used responsibly and its part of essential national security and blah blah blah)
…. and that by the end of the 1 same administration, they were already caught using that incredible snooping-power for petty-partisan political purposes.
There is no power that will not be immediately abused to the limits of its utility. If it can be politically-abused, it will be.
And all anyone needs to pretend that this abuse was justified is to pretend that there’s some FOREIGN power out there that aims to do worse upon us! “but but RUSSIA!!” they sputter. As though the fucking Russians can do anything to affect the lives of normal Americans, compared to the depredation of our own government.
It’s like handing a bottle of Oxycontin to an addict and asking them not to open it. Of course they will open it. Expecting anything else is just stupid.
There is no power that will not be immediately abused to the limits of its utility.
That’s Iron Law material right there.
Good edit faerie flutters by again…
Hmm. Its got good bones, but needs more pith. Let me think about this one.
Trump’s executive order on the EPA didn’t go far enough.
HFC’s were strongly restricted going back to the 1980s, if i recall. They were banned because of the “ozone hole”. I don’t think they’ve been used in refrigerators (or aerosol cans) for decades. There may be other applications which Obama banned, but i don’t know the details.
The criticism here seems sort of ridiculous = because its “environmental groups” accusing Trump officials of not going farther with their de-regulations. Its this absurd claim where the left demands that people adhere to their ‘principles’ – i.e. “if you think Climate Change is a hoax, you should de-regulate everything!”
Isn’t it more, “regulating carbon is super-fucking expensive on EVERYONE and creates huge problems”…. whereas, these other issues? are mostly chickenshit that may or may not be narrowly justifiable on some other grounds.
I guess their angle is to try to get officials to admit that “Methane is actually…. like, pretty bad”… because why? because climate change MIGHT BE REAL?? RIGHT??
they seem to think that any admission that some stuff might actually be bad would therefore let the cat out of the bag and justify ALL anti-climate change measures.
my bad –
HFC’s were the replacement for CFC’s (chlorofluorocarbons) in the 1980s. CFCs were the Ozone Hole-making-baddies.
The ban on HFC’s does seem pretty stupid because, despite their ostensible danger from a Climate Change POV, the actual potential for being released into the atmosphere is relatively tiny. Basically, they’re dangerous, yes, but highly-controlled.
Methane, otoh, is just an unavoidable byproduct of some agricultural + waste management processes.
the issue shouldn’t involve “banning” stuff at all, imo. as this article from 2015 notes – its not clear if replacing the ‘bad gasses’ with better ones simply reduces efficiency, and requires more energy output (and thus more carbon-based electricity and other resource hungry processes).
meaning its totally unclear if banning stuff actually provides any net environmental benefit at all. The impetus to ban shit is almost entirely political because it just sounds good to the greenies.
the mentioned article
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/epa-bans-greenhouse-gas-19197
This is the one that really gets me. Earth’s initial atmosphere was nitrogen, CO2, methane, and some steam and traces of other stuff (H2 was lost very quickly). It’s only when plants came along and ate all the CO2 that we got an oxygen rich atmosphere (ie plant poop). So CO2 is a resource for plants, although high CO2 (7%) could cause asphyxiation. That’s only 175 times the current level, and would take about 35,000 years to reach at the current rate of 2 ppm/year increase. Big problem! …..Not. More likely we would be crushed by the growth of grass and trees.