ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. HAVING PLEASED ZARDOZ, HE GIVES YOU LINKS TO ENJOY THIS NIGHT. GO FORTH AND SNARK!
- PORTLY BRUTAL CALLS FOR KILLING. WHY ARE CANADIAN BRUTALS UPSET? ZARDOZ HAS OFTEN CALLED FOR GOING FOR AND KILLING…
- FAMOUS BRUTAL PROBABLY SHOULD NOT BE PILOT ANYMORE.
- GERMAN BRUTAL MUSES ABOUT CITY JERRYS ONCE TRIED TO DESTROY.
- PRIMATES SAVE BRUTAL.
- HOODED BRUTAL BELIEVES IN GOING FORTH AND KILLING …FRENCH BRUTALS
I see…links!
Sew…who else totally saw this SCar/Baylor thing unfolding the way it has?
Pretty typical Baylor team. They bring in talent and Drew ruins it.
Not me. I also didn’t expect to see Butler completely shit the bed.
The likely Kansas/UNC final four will be the real Championship game. That or Kentucky will win it all.
Kansas looks good.
No love for Xavier?
This UCLA/UK game is gonna be a blowout. Two teams that are this good but prone to have mental meltdowns…somebody is gonna shit the bed.
Kind of sloppy (not sloopy) to start. If Steve Alford was not an ambulatory crap sack, I would be cheering for UCLA.
Halftime…I have been entertained!
UCLA is going to have a serious problem if Monk keeps making threes.
I’m sorry, I’m from Cleveland, is it unusual for a team to shit the bed?
OK, I’m back. UK wins and all is right in the world. Still could go either way with my prediction.
I did not see this…but then again, I do have enough self awareness to not bet money on anything with two legs or more.
Way to crap down your leg, Wisconsin.
Bad Spiegel! Hire a better copy editor.
MEIN GOTT!
Auf Wiedersehen.
*adjusts to Schwiizertüütsch*
Bis spöter!
Wow. I had a Swiss foreign exchange student in a class with me in high school. I was the only other student in the class who knew any German, and I didn’t have trouble understanding her and vice versa.
While I know what you said, that spelling… Maybe there was something to her complaints that Germans always told her they couldn’t understand her. 😉
Oh, the Swiss know Hochdeutsch, but they treat it like a foreign language – Swiss German first, High German, if needed.
OT : Hey Fusionist, I finally finished reading that long ass post about Campbell. That was really interesting, it’s a nice illustration of how even without apparently changing much personally, a man’s circumstances and fortunes can undergo dramatic changes.
I’m glad you liked it!
I wonder where he landed after the Kessel Run?
Mos Eisley…International?
Less than 12 parsecs my ass.
WELL ITS NOT LIKE WE CAN ASK HIM ABOUT IT ANYMORE!!!!
“O Muslim, O servant of Allah, O Muslim, O servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
Yeah! Assex!
Death by snu snu?
There not pissed he said it. They’re pissed they have to rationalize it all away again. It’s a PR problem.
No, and you were not supposed to fly over it either.
When asked to explain the events from his perspective, Ford’s copilot replied “brrwhhhaargh grrrwaaaaaarggggh grrrwaaaaaarggggh wawoohrgh.”
Well, that’s just how the Wookie mumbles.
*narrows gaze*
*staggers up, knocks over empty beer glass and beings furious applause*
“Let the Wookie land.”
-2 arms pulled from sockets?
Sorry, Ford.
A Chilean tourist survived for nine days while lost in a dense expanse of Bolivian rainforest — thanks to a troop of hero monkeys who “dropped him fruit and led him to shelter and water every day,” the man claimed
Self deportation with help.
ICE …monkeys?
And the Darwin awards are cheated out of their yearly winner by a bunch of monkeys, Or is it pack of monkeys? Herd? Gaggle?
A barrel. It’s a barrel of monkeys.
Sigh… *narrows gaze*
Dammit! But I’m batting .500 tonight on the gazing. Which is better than Ted Williams even.
And you haven’t had your head frozen yet, either!
Troupe
I thought that was mimes or clowns or Cirque d’ Soliel?
I thought that was boy scouts?
smh….*narrows gaze*
You all are killing me today.
It’s a troup of guppies.
A soviet of monkeys!
The “Freedom Caucus” may have burned our only legitimate chance to get rid of the individual mandate and get rid of the ACA Medicaid expansion–in the name of, what, specifically–dumbfuckery? It sure as hell ain’t freedom or fiscal conservatism.
Part of the problem is that ObamaCare will continue to crater on its present trajectory.
The insurance industry won’t be able to continue as is without some serious new funding, and if reform is now off the table, then it’s safe to assume we’ll see a ton of more funding for ObamaCare from Congress this year. When that happens, I’m not sure who to root for–the asshole Freedom Caucus “conservatives” who made reform politically impossible will be the same people calling out the GOP leadership for funding a continuation of ObamaCare.
But the GOP leadership won’t need the Freedom Caucus’ support to get money for ObamaCare. The Democrats will be more than happy to help Ryan and the rest of the GOP leadership fund that. I doubt we’ll get a second chance. If they think they’ll get another chance at reform when it comes time to fund ObamaCare again, I think they’re sadly mistaken.
If Barack Obama, Liz Warren, and Nancy Pelosi had used a satanic ritual to possess the souls of the Freedom Caucus and take over their bodies, the members of the Freedom Caucus would have acted the exact same way they did.
Remember when we started referring to french fries as “freedom fries” because the French gave us the finger? Maybe that’s what we should do with the Freedom Caucus in reverse–let’s call ’em the French Caucus, ’cause they might as well be the Socialist Party of France.
They saved ObamaCare in the name of what, . . . liberté, égalité, and fraternité?
Dear Freedom Caucus,
Up yours!
Sincerely,
Ken Shultz
P.S. Fuck you.
Maybe they didn’t want to replace the 100 lb turd with an 80 lb turd. Trump said they’d revisit Obamacare repeal and replace in the summer after they deal with tax reform. Perhaps Rand Paul and Co will spend a good deal of that time selling their far superior replacement to their constituents and the WH.
I get what Ken is saying. Of course Rand’s bill was superior, but missing the opportunity to get rid of the individual mandate? That’s a tough one to swallow for something better that may or may not come along.
Er, can’t the mandate just not be enforced? Wave a magic executive order to say so and let people drop it as they like.
It’s not like the left doesn’t do selective enforcement. It’s hypocritical, of course, but par for the course in partisan politics these days.
I thought that was already done. EO number one or two.
Guess what President Liz Warren’s first EO will be?
And the pressure to reinstate it will be there. The Medicaid expansion depends on forcing young healthy people who don’t use insurance to buy it anyway–to save the insurance companies from gouging by providers.
That pressure doesn’t go away simply by an EO.
Market forces remain what they are regardless of Trump’s EO, and when the Obama administration argued that the ACA system would collapse without the individual mandate before the Supreme Court, they weren’t lying.
Guess what President Liz Warren’s first EO will be?
That made me shudder. Don’t even joke about that.
I see your point. But I am not convinced what they were pushing would have changed much, and I think there are other options down the road. I think it will collapse on it’s own. Doctors are pulling out of medicare, insurance companies are pulling out. The thing will fail on its own and hopefully free market and medicare cuts can be sold.
I’ll leave it to you guys to do the stratetemgizing. We all want the entire thing shit canned.
Getting rid of the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion is not an 80 lbs. turd.
That bill they put forward was hot garbage. A couple good things there but by and large, it was a mess.
Those were the two most important things.
The rest isn’t just icing on the cake, but it could be remedied later.
You’re probably not going to get another chance to repeal the individual mandate or cut Medicaid.
Why not? Because people will start to realize what great things they both are…as their premiums skyrocket and their coverages get worse and worse? Not to mention the number of providers that drop out of the Medicaid program?
Nope. A few more months of this shit and people will have a better idea of why it should be replaced in its entirety in one shot.
I’m curious how long well-heeled/corporately-insured libs are going to be able to spin the “Obamacare is the Greatest!” until even the MSM can’t deny the wreckage we’re going to get. Right now I’m not sure there’s any awareness of the problems with it at all, certainly nothing enough to get any Dems interested in the process of course. But by the time we are, we’ll probably be at the “Repubs failed to pass the reform so it’s on them, neener neener” stage.
Why not?
Because passing a bill to float more debt and throw more money at it will be ten times easier than reform.
That’s how we end up with these self-perpetuating monstrosities. Who needs the Department of Commerce? Why have a Department of Education?
Getting rid of things is sooooooo much harder than funding them.
It’s like the universe trending towards entropy in reverse. Government trends towards self-perpetuating financing. It’s the path of least resistance.
No it wouldn’t. Once the R’s passed the bill, they would own Ryancare/Trumpcare. Just like they have with any other social welfare/spending program.
Kill it.
Kill it.
Kill it.
Kill it.
Kill it.
Kill it.
EXACTLY – REPEAL IT FROM ORBIT, ITS THE ONLY WAY TO BE SURE.
Dig up Curtis LeMay and Bomber Harris to be the legislative point men for guiding that work.
That isn’t one of the options.
The bill that came out of committee had the features it did because that’s what it needed in order to get passed.
A perfectly libertarian solution isn’t going to come from a non-libertarian Congress, and if we wait for one to miraculously spring forth from non-libertarians, we may wait forever.
This is not a libertarian Congress, but the bill was about as libertarian as can be reasonably expected under the circumstances.
We’re not going to get another bill that cuts funding for Medicaid.
We scream, “Fuck you, Cut Spending”, and then when the GOP leadership floats a plan that actually pares an entitlement like Medicaid down (after a few years), we oppose doing that for other reasons?
Us geeks get to go to the prom with a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model? That’s awesome!!!
What do you mean you won’t go unless it’s with Gigi Hadid? Why does it have to be with Gigi Hadid? It’s a fluke that we get to go with an SI model.
But this plan isn’t Gigi Hadid or a SI model. It’s Nancy Pelosi in a thong.
Damn it sloop, That wasn’t necessary.
Sloopy,
It cut Medicaid.
It got rid of the individual mandate.
That’s as good as it was going to get.
For seven years Team Stupid has done nothing but pass repeal bills as far as they could through Congress, getting closer and closer to passing it as they gained seats each election, until only Obama could stop them. Then when they get Congress and the White House, they suddenly hem and haw and try to put forward some mealy-mouthed bullshit bill that leaves most of Obamacare in place and then try to say it’s the best they could do.
Fuck Team Stupid. Thank goodness for the Freedom Caucus trying to actually hold Republicans to their campaign promise to actually repeal Obamacare. Pass Rand Paul’s bill. The end.
Grumble – exactly right!
O’care will continue to degrade the system and people will suffer. Maybe in 2018 we’ll be able to primary the worst of the leftist Heffalumps and get a complete repeal of O’care.
Otherwise, maybe let Washington starve by not letting food get in there … or whatever it takes.
“For seven years Team Stupid has done nothing but pass repeal bills as far as they could through Congress, getting closer and closer to passing it as they gained seats each election, until only Obama could stop them. Then when they get Congress and the White House, they suddenly hem and haw and try to put forward some mealy-mouthed bullshit bill that leaves most of Obamacare in place and then try to say it’s the best they could do.”
——-
1) The Ryan plan did not leave most of ObamaCare in place. It ended the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion and repealed the individual mandate. Those are by far the two worst parts of ObamaCare.
For a rough idea of how big a problem Medicaid is and why we need to kill the ACA Medicaid expansion before our problems get any better, see my Glibertarians submission posted earlier this week, “Why You’re Wrong about Healthcare”.
2) Is your intention to hurt the Republican leadership’s feelings, or do you want better healthcare policy?
OK, let us just try the same fucking FULL repeal that Congress had passed how many times now? Are you saying there will never ever be any chance to re-legislate this again? Go home, Ken…you are drunk. Or, rather, maybe I am.
^This The full repeal part. How many times did the fuckers vote on a repeal bill when they knew it would not be signed? That is what one should be angry about.
Right. I sympathize with Ken’s position because if you’re on fire, and you have the chance to be less on fire, you kinda want to take it. But, the only thing a person on fire wants more than to be less on fire is to not be on fire at all. And the fact that the people who swore up and down that they wanted to repeal this dog are now refusing to do so is a serious betrayal. Either they were talking out their ass the first time and now don’t believe repeal is viable, which reveals them to be idiots, or they were never in favor of repeal in the first place, which makes them the most vile disingenuous scum.
^ This right here. The Repubs were perfectly happy to have pointless full on repeal votes when they couldn’t actually get it through. It made for a great “Get Out The Vote” campaign. So, there is ZERO excuse for them to do anything less than a full repeal of this garbage now that they can get it through.
I’m absolutely on board with that!
Repeal first. New system later.
Trump didn’t want that. He came out publicly against repealing it first.
That was a mistake.
But you gotta swing at the pitches you get.
It was over the plate. Shoulder high. A chance to pare back Medicaid doesn’t happen every day. A chance to kill the individual mandate doesn’t happen every day either.
Have not the IRS been neutered in enforcing the mandate? I thought that was like executive order number one or two. Not that I am a fan of executive orders.
They can’t throw you in jail, but the IRS has all sorts of ways of making your life miserable.
Most people who fall afoul of the IRS don’t end up in jail. That would be too easy. The IRS would rather make you wish you were dead.
Trump didn’t want that.
That is because he is a “Government can fix things DemoRepublicrat”. I say let the freedom caucus choke him until they convince him the government can’t fix it. I have my doubts they can do that, but a dude has to hope.
If you read Suderman, he complains that it doesn’t cut the deficit down until 2020.
That’s because the Medicaid defunding doesn’t happen until the end of 2019.
But it happens! Now it’s going to happen at all.
The Freedom Caucus was apparently complaining because they expect to lose seats in the 2018 midterms, and they’re afraid the Democrats will save the ACA Medicaid expansion in the run up to the Presidential campaign of 2020. They’re afraid the GOP leadership won’t resist that refunding in 2019 ahead of a presidential election either.
Timing is always going to be a problem, but they’ve gotta cut Medicaid every chance they get. You don’t not cut it for fear that it will be refunded. Future congresses can always undo what you did. You do the best you can today anyway–and fight the good fight every minute, every day.
A chance to CHISEL GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF MEDICAL CARE INTO STONE doesn’t happen every day. “
Incidentally?
I don’t see Rand Paul listed as a member of the Freedom Caucus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Caucus
And that’s good.
That might be because it is the House Freedom Caucus. Massie isn’t a member either – although it isn’t like the collect dues.
House only on that list.
Here Ken, Fred has some sympathy; except of course for the part where most of Obamacare remains because the Republican proposal was too cute by half.
Really putting the stupid in the Stupid Party.
Essay from a doc I follow. (Yes, it needed an editor.) Even includes a Hayek shout out.
ZARDOZ is a calming presence.
Zardoz instill instills awe, dread, and fear.
Zardoz spews guns out of his mouth so that his favorite minions can spread death and destruction!
Zardoz is not a calming presence.
Have you even watched the movie, once, Warren?
I haven’t, but it seems I need to.
Here is a nice chunk of what you need to know about Zardoz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwZhKGgmoUI
Take two minutes, behold Zardoz, and TREMBLE!
I can’t imagine a more calming ideal than a giant, floating, stone head giving out free guns
ZARDOZ IS PLEASED WITH BRUTAL _WARREN_.
Incidentally, I find the picture of those saber-toothed vagina eggs disconcerting. Is that what you were going for? Or do you find saber-toothed vagina eggs calming, as well?
LEAVE ZARDOZ ALONE! *sobs*
I was talking about Warren!
What the hell are those things in his picture?
. . . if not saber-toothed vagina eggs?
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. ZARDOZ IS INDEED A CALMING PRESENCE. ZARDOZ REMINDS YOU, THE GUN IS GOOD, THE PENIS IS EVIL!
I just posted in the last thread, but apparently we get many articles/ link aggregations in the evening now, which is nice. It’s the report that the article RC Dean linked to referenced regarding rise in premiums due to the ACA. I haven’t looked over it but it might be of interest to others.
Milliman 2015 commercial health insurance: overview of financial results
This has to be fake news because the French have common sense gun control laws and don’t have the level of racial and religious hatred that we do in the Age of Trump.
Whether you wanted the ACHA to pass or not, the victory laps my statist relatives are taking on FB is insufferable.
At least we’ll always have ZARDOZ. And I’m off to work. Have a good night, y`all.
oh I am right there with you, it’s nauseating. Not one of them has CLUE THE FIRST about obamacare. they’re just giddy that Trump lost. No, you gits, HUMAN BEINGS LOST. AMERICA LOST. Trump doesn’t even warrant the cherry on top of people who lost here.
I am finding the less I expose myself to that derp-pile, the happier I am.
Re: the monkeys saving stupid guy who wandered away from for group:
I’ve never heard of a lizard saving a human, not even once.
I worked a job in the Cameroon Jungle. The guys we hired to carry in the food for the crews stole most of it. One of the surveyors came back to base camp after several weeks in the deep bush and showed me a picture of an Iguana soup they made (his pic had a claw in it) so I have to disagree with your statement.
Yes, it’s huffpost, but twenty inventors killed by their own inventions.
+1 Zalinski Dynamite Gun?
Another post? OK…
USA! USA!
5:0 with 40 minutes left. Jürgen who?
Regieren, Brittanien!
Clearly has some sort of love-hate thing with Londonium.
Meh… I have a love-hate thing with NYC and I’ve lived here for 20 years.
Have you ever read Ceasar’s stairs of his campaigns? One of my favorites, read it a few times. Lot of propaganda, since it was published when he was running for office, but still pretty informative. I love how he describes the marching Roman army digging in a fortification/camp every night.
Diaries, not stairs
Everyone had their task, and their gear to make a nightly camp that was already half a fort. Romans kicked ass, man!
And they wrote on stairs! Talk about tough dudes!
One commentary I read about the “Gaullic Wars” is that Caesar didn’t lie in anything he wrote, but he omitted stuff.
The best thing – and what I most admire – is his Commentaries were full of the bravery of other men, the deeds of his soldiers. Not some sort of proto-Obama, LOOK AT MEEEEE!
I also really enjoyed the story of how the engineers built a bridge over whatever river was the border at the time, kicked a bunch of Germanic ass, then went home, tearing up the bridge behind themselves.
But seriously, Roman camps were serious fortifications to build every night. At least in Ceasar’s campaigns.
Smart generals also used construction to keep the troops busy. Germanicus had his troops build a canal connecting a river to the Weser River to keep them busy.
Domitius Corbulo said that the enemy was defeated through the pickax.
And for a Ph.D thesis in bad ass- at Alesia Ceasar constructed fortifications around the city and when his opponents relief army approached he made a larger ring of them to keep them out and his army in. Then he beat both armies.
My goodness. Watching Planet Terror and Rose McGowan was such a babe. What the hell happened?
Age?
Not just age. I’m going to blame Manson.
Planet Terror was like half a decade after those two ended their relationship.
I only know her from The Doom Generation. The only direction was down, right?
No.
More music
London is digging a new train tunnel, total cost 19.7 billion or 269 mil per mile, to add 73 miles of track. All of this will add only 10% capacity to their existing system.
I wonder what the real cost is and how much is being stolen. I’d guess that it’s at least half and half and more likely 1/3 cost and 2/3 skimming.
I thought the Brits had institutionalized corruption better than that?
And I’m working real hard to get outside of 25 ounces of Budweiser right now. One of the best beers produced.
My thoughts and prayers are with you…
*stares in astonishment and distaste*
Unless you meant the beer from Budovar, CZ?
Light, clean, fresh, refreshing and cheap.
*throws empty Stroh’s bottle*
Bottle? Get a load of Mr Fancy pants over here.
*crushes can, belches*
Stroh’s is available in bottles and cans? I thought it only came in kegs stuck in a metal garbage can full of ice at picnics and served in plastic cups.
Oooh, you party with the elite… Can I haz invitation?
I mean, it’s a good American adjunct lager. It’s lawnmower beer. Light, clean, and fresh are not necessarily terms I’d use to describe it, but maybe you’re getting better Budweiser than I’ve gotten. Different strokes and so forth, but it just seems to me that there are so many better beers that fill that niche that you can get on draft in most bars or certainly packaged in most liquor stores that there’s no real reason to get Bud unless you sweat Bud for reasons other than taste.
I don’t know, I drink beer with Old Bay in it, so who am I to say?
“”Ceske Budejovice”‘, technically. A town southwest of prague.
I don’t know what the “var” suffix actually means, but from what i gather its probably something like “of” or “from”, and Budvar is a reference to “from Bud”, bud being the shorthand term for Budejovice. that’s my wild guess at least. My experience in czech beer-country was entirely as a consumer, and the only thing i remember clearly is peeing off the highest church tower in western bohemia. If you don’t believe me, i have a picture. Really.
Affordable Care Act remains ‘law of the land,’ but Trump vows to explode it
If you can’t unfuck that girl I raped, that’s your fault.
On a certain level he’s absolutely correct. But he’s not going to “explode” anything. everyone who operates in those markets will, because they know the thing’s days are numbered. Everything is going to be run on loss-minimization, and yes, costs are going to explode because there’s no prospect at all of their losses being offset by political freebies like there was under obama.
I just watched the Florida/Wisconsin game. Hell of a good game with one of the best endings I have ever seen.
Damn. Not really. But a little. I’m an Alum that never donates anyway.
I had no skin in the game, it was highly entertaining. Wisconsin needed to make more free throws in OT. Florida needed to make more free throws at the end of regulation.
We sucked at Bball when I was there. Did know how to drink though. Free throws. I played in high school and there is no good reason for anyone under 6’7 or so not to hit 80%.
Those monkeys sounded like Good Samaritans, but what makes them heroes? Heroism implies they fed the tourist at some risk to themselves.
“Okay monkeys help lost hiker survive” just didn’t have the same ring.
Although I did see the Okay Monkeys open for Gorillaz.
If Hollywood taught us anything, there is some kind of monkey civil war going on about whether to help the humans, and anyone who gives a human food is in violation of Monkey Law and risks execution.