I don’t even know what to open with this morning, other than this: find a video some time today or go to the Golf Channel On Demand app and watch the Feherty episode from last night with Condoleezza Rice. It was actually great TV. That man is by far and away the best interviewer on TV and the late night (plus Comedy Central) talking heads could take lessons from him. And now the links…
Kill Obamacare Take 2.
Finally, somebody on Team Red gets it. I sure as hell hope this gets to the floor.
Victor Davis Hanson offers a blistering takedown over the Russia hysteria that has all but consumed the left. Well, either “consumed” or they’re using it as deflection for all the illegal goings-on the deep state has been carrying out since November 9, 2016. You can decide that as soon as the Nunes reports start coming out.
Politico laments Trump’s “war” on civil servants. I didn’t see anything in there about the incredible growth in size and scope of the federal bureaucracy in an age when information systems should be shrinking it. Nor did I see anything lamenting the strain federal pension systems are beginning to create on the budget. Of course, its Politico, so if I was expecting that, I should run out for a lobotomy this morning.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the DoJ will withhold funds from sanctuary cities. The grants represent billions of dollars. Good.
Curtis Samuel would have scored this TD if you were playing touch football, Jourdan.
Mom films her son, who suffers from Sensory Processing Disorder, going through a TSA pat down. She is not happy. Hey, welcome to the club, lady.
Michigan standout Jake Butt makes excellent point about college athletes being compensated beyond their scholarships, tutors, access to world-class athletic facilities, trainers and nutritionists, etc. Because his argument involves using his own name and likeness rather than developing a system that Title IX would kill. On a related note, Jakey-boy was 0-4 vs The Ohio State University Buckeyes in his career at Michigan. Same as his teammate Jourdan Lewis of “Shit happens, Bum Juice” fame.
Don’t Look Back. The future is in front of you.
16) This past weekend I drove down to North Carolina and noticed Virginia has some new signs up admitting defeat in fighting speeders. The signs read, “Above 80 MPH is reckless driving, penalties higher.” To me, this actually reads, “Never mind the posted speed limits, you won’t get a ticket if you stay under 80 MPH.” I’m pretty sure most other drivers will see it the same way.
What I’m trying to figure out is if this is Virginia’s actual intention here. Is it, “Well, we can’t actually stop people from going over 70, so let’s try to at least cut out the really dangerous speeders,” or is it just another message going up without any thought to how drivers in real-life will take it?
If you are going 72 in a 65 in Virginia, be prepared to get a ticket.
Pretty sure that sign is in response to some auto writer than got pulled over there doing 85 on an empty road and he was facing possible jail time since reckless driving is a criminal offense there rather than a traffic violation. There was an outcry to let people know and this is their reaction.
I’ll try and find something on it…
Here you go. He spent three days in jail.
The state doesn’t allow radar detectors of course they’re nuts about speeding
Author did an excellent job of not sounding like much of an entitled asshole, and frankly that is pretty hard to pull off in this type of piece. Most authors fail in pieces that have a fuckload less potential pitfalls than this. Plus this is a (ex-)Gawker group property, where they pretty much can’t hit a spacebar without coming across like arrogant, obnoxious pricks.
One thing he did say casually that is almost second nature in our society, though, at the end:
Of course it’s actually a fuckload *more* justifiable to lock someone in jail for speeding than it is for simply selling drugs. But again, it’s sadly easy for this not to even occur to generally decent people. The state has got us really, really fucked in our heads.
Ok, I’ll bite. By what principles is it more justifiable to lock up someone for speeding than for simply selling drugs?
Don’t ruin the narrative!
I thought this was fairly obvious, Mr. Smartypants. To the extent that there are public roads, it makes sense that there are safety regulations for their use, for which speed of travel can certainly be a factor. You may be able to make a good case that “absolute speed limit” is not a particularly good safety regulation, especially when no one else is around, and thus an unacceptably burdensome and ineffective implement for a libertarian to support. I see that. But what we are comparing it to is banning a commercial exchange between two parties, involving a substance that is desired for its effect on one’s own body. That is unacceptable and intrusive at the most profound and fundamental level. Saying one had to *paint one’s car bright red* to operate it on public roads would be less so by comparison.
Which is to say your argument is, to me, one of degrees and not principles. Accepting your analogy, and properly drawing it for the sake of comparison: To the extent the State provides a public forum for Commerce and efficient manners of settling disputes between parties under contract you should be comfortable with the current regulatory system of drug laws is appropriate because their use is safely regulated by a system of schedules which permit only those with the appropriate skills and need to use or offer them.
I should add for the sake of clarity, by my operating definition, the fact that you may be able to craft more justifications for one argument than another does not make it more justifiable under most rational ethical frameworks.
No, because I deny the state *does* “provide” some sort of abstract “forum.” That is a statist argument. Now, if there is some sort of actual, physical forum, like a “government fair” or something…well, there should not be in the first place, but it is far less preposterous for them to set particular ground rules. Like, no drugs to be sold. Or only food to be sold. Or signage on booths must be uniform.
Are you denying that it is legitimate for a government road to have any traffic rules at all? Because if not, then yes, I do consider having a traffic regulation that exercises that power but is foolish or ineffective to be thereby an unacceptable (because unnecessary) infringement on personal behavior–but unacceptable at an entire other level than the government extending itself into a power (and into every physical space within its boundaries) that it never legitimately held in any manner in the first place.
I am not denying that there may be legitimate justification for the State to make laws regarding the use of public roads. I am denying your proffered justifications, 1) safety, 2) extent to which an individual’s Rights are burdened, and 3) judicial economy as a legitimate ethical basis for the State exercising force through law. This logical flaw should be glaringly obvious if you reject these same justifications for supporting State drug laws.
This is interesting. Since you do believe that the government might legitimately have traffic laws, I would be curious to know what it is you do believe could justify such laws, if my own standards are spurious. (And why this particular law, a speed limit law, is so illegitimate as to rise to the level of a blanket ban, into every corner of the realm, on a substance that adults take for the pleasure of their own bodies.) Maybe I really can learn something and improve my own views.
An acceptable safety versus burden on individual choice calculus is not a *sufficient* condition (“justification,” in your words) to make a regulation legitimate; it is a *necessary* one. We have to be talking about an exercise of a government power that is potentially legitimate in the first place. The government cannot prevent me from building an unacceptably “unsafe” bungee jump in my backyard, nor indeed from driving a car unequipped with seatbelts on a public road. But it can judge my vehicle, or my operation of it, to be unacceptably endangering other users of that public road. I would not call this a weighing of safety against “Rights,” because I deny that there is such a “Right” being infringed upon.
The answer is right there, and I think you’ve been hitting all around it hence my Socratic prodding. The conditions, both necessary and sufficient, to justify ab initio a speed limit law for public roads is that public roads are property. This assumes, of course, you accept the premise that there is such a thing as public property.
A property owner may extend a license to use his property on whatever terms he sees fit and, should the licensee’s use of the owners property exceed the scope of the license granted then the owner may exclude him from his property. This exclusive right inherent in property justifies legal force.
We all are literally given licenses to use public roads, the terms of those licenses are that we obey speed limits posted by the property owner. Exceeding the terms of a license makes one a trespasser as to the breach, and the owner may therefore use force to exclude the trespasser and seek damages to the extent suffered.
Note, while speed limits – however arbitrary – are themselves justifiable given the principles above, these principles alone do not provide justification for what I believe was our central point of friction, i.e. an individual who violates a speed limit law justifies the State to imprison them.
Oh, you mean the use of criminal law, as opposed to tort or contract? Yeah, I think I can get on board with that. I didn’t parse that from what you were saying.
Note a couple things though. First: Genuinely decriminalizing (as opposed to “violationizing”) these offenses would naturally bring in the civil-court burden of proof. If it’s right it’s right, but do note that it would make it much easier to stick you with a fine, not harder. (In fact, I’m looking it up now, and several states seem to have claimed to have “civilized” traffic offenses, and have indeed adopted the lower burden of proof.)
Second: I still take issue with your “however arbitrary–are themselves justifiable” part. States are not ordinary landowners. Their ownership of the land is a *necessary* condition for them setting rules for its use, but they still have to meet other tests of varying strictness for those rules. It is not “whatever terms they see fit” in the same way it is for the rules I decide to make for my land; they are uniquely constrained.
And to my point below, a law enacted “for your safety” is illegitimate — if solely supported by those grounds — because it it would necessarily presuppose a property in “you” the individual.
I agree that there are other principles which can operate to restrict the “arbitrary” nature of speed limits. I merely submit that you will likely have to reach beyond principles of natural law to find those limits. Your point about State landowners being somehow different is well received but that ‘difference’ has to come from somewhere else. At root, all property is property or it is not property. I can get behind the premise that, through our process of forming the State, we have granted it a somewhat more limited set of rights in public property than those held naturally by an individual landowner. I.e. the rights inherent in a public property are a constructed subset of the rights inherent in natural property by virtue of collective license.
As an aside, I am all for a mechanism that allows me to pay to avoid traffic laws. Russia does this and it is glorious. Pay a fee, equip a set of flashing blue lights on your car, generally ignore traffic laws and speed limits.
Oh, I agree. There are important restraints that we the people place on our government that go beyond its infringement on private parties’ rights; these should not be seen as adhering to the government qua property owner, nor even to the government qua generic natural-law party, but rather as restraints that are wise and necessary to apply to the particular party that is given these very dangerous powers over others.
One example is religious disestablishment. Actually, it’s not even clear that this *is* necessary in a liberal state. Why *can’t* the government declare an “official” religion of Protestantism, Wicca, atheism, or whatever, provided it does not infringe upon anyone’s free exercise? But this is an extra precaution we’ve decided on. It’s kind of odd, from a certain perspective, that the government has a well-established Constitutional right to hold and express “official” opinions in general. It can have and express an official state opinion on any question in the universe *except* the ones that might be ruled “theological.”
That said, we also say that the government *cannot* show any favoritism as to what opinions *other* parties use government property to express. (This distinction was crucial in the–wrongly decided–Texas Confederate license plate case.) And even its viewpoint-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions must meet certain tests; it can ban demonstrations in the town library, for example, but cannot turn the town’s entire public property into no-speech zones. Little wonder these are some of the murkiest judgment calls out there for liberalism. But in general, the public’s dependence on government property for its social functions–for things from petitioning the government itself, to transporting our own movable property–certainly plays a big role in the necessity of restraints we place on it for our own safety. With a reduction in the scope of that dependence, the government could plausibly be under less stringent general restraints.
This brings up a final point that is often overlooked: The government should feel compelled to keep itself *small*. This is often depicted as being the upshot of its unnecessary (and thus larcenous) cost to taxpayers, its threat for real intrusion into private rights, its effectiveness or responsiveness or resistance to corruption, and so forth. But I think it goes beyond that. I think there is *intrinsic reason* that the government should not hold most of the West and nearly all of Nevada in BLM and other agencies. And I think that, if the world’s billionaires–the Soroses, Bloombergs, Gates, and so forth–started buying up huge amounts of property in Massachusetts, then donated it and the remainder of their money to the Massachusetts government on the condition that it could operate Massachusetts as a sort of socialist landowner, that it should *decline* to do so.
early clarification: *direct* infringement on other parties’ rights.
i hear ENDANGERING a lot. I can’t see how it’s a crime. reckless i could see as a decent compromise in a society. maybe.
Endangerment, of any kind, as a crime is absurd. It is appropriate however as a Tort if tied to some objective measure of harm.
I should add, although this is probably obvious, laws related to consumption and possession of drugs are ethically unjustifiable, at least in the framework operant in founding the United States, because the State has no property interest in your person.
I don’t know, It doesn’t say that there are no penalties for speeding. just that they are higher. I don’t know ’bout virginia, but the penalty for minimal speeding is pretty high (over $100 for 1-9 mph over) here in Utah. Still is is fun to see moments where the state has given up, and said F*** it do what you want. Like a bully who no one pays attention to.
In Virginia, going 20 mph over the speed limit is considered reckless driving. However, going over 80mph is also reckless regardless of the speed limit so the signs there where the speed limit is 65 or 70mph and you can get reckless without going 20 over.
There are places in VA that will ticket you for going anything over the speed limit, especially with out of state tags. If you’re ever near Emporia, and you’re out of state, set your cruise control to the speed limit. It’s well known throughout the state to slow down in that area.
Ahhh. We have a town like that in Utah. Right off the Freeway in the canyon, you have little choice but to drive through it if you are headed north (unless you want to go the long way around). But apparently they pulled over and ticketed the wrong guy (TW: Autoplay ad).
Exact same thing happened here. Now the law is that parishes and municipalities can only keep $2 from the ticket fine unless the speeder is going 9+ mph over the limit. It has killed the speed trap industry in Louisiana. There are still some holdouts. A little spot on the map near me called Creola, Washington, Woodworth, Ferriday, Fenton and a few other places still try it. What they have learned is to replace the speeding tickets with tickets for having mud on your license plate, not putting your blinker on the required number of feet in front of your turn, having your tires too worn, windshield obstruction, and other petty offenses.
On the upside several mayors and chiefs of police have gone to jail for keeping ticket money they were not supposed to keep, notably Washington and Ferriday. Ferriday was giving tickets for people not having inspection stickers on light duty trailers (not required in La). Washington was giving out tickets for 1+mph over the limit on the interstate.
Golden Meadow, Louisiana is a town through which one must transit when travelling down to Grande Isle. It is a wee village comprised of a thousand or so residents (mostly shrimpers who have been there for multiple generations), a fun but often frightening biker bar, and some the most aggressive speed traps in the state. One is not given a ticket in Golden Meadow, one goes to jail until one can appear before the town magistrate. It’s like a Tom T. Hall song come to life.
Never heard of that. Not the least bit surprised. Sooner or later they will get the wrong one.
To be sure, it’s a really nice little town. If one likes insular Cajun/redneck communities (I very much do) where everyone knows everyone and everyone minds their own business and are content to let their neighbors live in piece, it’s very pleasant. The downturn in the seafood industry (thanks BP) hit it very hard though. I think traffic violations form the bulk of the town’s revenue.
Yep, Emporia is an economy that runs off truck stops, fast food, and ticket revenue.
In Maryland the main route to Ocean City is like that once you hit the eastern shore. There are a bunch of little towns where the main revenue stream seems to be ticketing people headed to the beach. There are long stretches where the limit is 65, and then they’ll post 45 right at the edge of town in deliberately inconspicuous spots. Or my favorite, “Speed Limit Reduced”.
I got nailed on that +25 MPH thing a while back. Divided highway, school behind an access road on the right. Going 51, normal speed limit was 45, school zone was 25. Had to go to court, got a ton of mail from local lawyers. I’ve heard that the whole law was basically a handout to lawyers. The state puts a massive threat on you and you give the lawyers $1-3k / case to get you off.
I showed up to court and got it knocked down to ~200 bucks.
Not 20, 15. 15 over the speed limit or anything over 80. Virginia has always been shitty when it comes to speed limits.
I have a friend who makes a goid living in the Virginia courts defending people who drive faster than the speed limit. Pay attention to the posted limit. Their cops sure do.
My dad used to tell me about this little spit of land in the Potomac that juts off of Virginia but is technically part of Maryland. Being difficult to get to, it naturally sported gambling, dog fighting, stuff like that. Friends of his in Charles County (one south of PG, where he was a deputy) would get called out there and get pulled over for speeding by this one VA cop who apparently lived to fuck with these guys. Apparently it got down to fisticuffs on more than one occasion, and the guy came within a hair’s breadth of being shot in the head and stuffed in his trunk.
South Dakota speed limit is 80 (at least on the Interstates). I saw someone pulled over and wondered aloud, HTF do you get pulled over when the speed limit’s 80?? How fast do you think you can handle? Then my wife asked me “how did you drive when you were a teenager?”. I got humble.
“Finally, somebody on Team Red gets it. I sure as hell hope this gets to the floor.”
Now how hard was that?
Any Republican who doesn’t vote for this is worthless.
Any Republican who doesn’t vote for this is worthless.
So, McCain, Collins, and Graham can be counted on to kill it in the Senate.
McCain’s name needs to become synonymous with someone who is completely unprincipled and a useful idiot. e.g ‘That guy is a total McCain’
McCain like to be all “mavericky” by giving the Democrats whatever they want so the NYT and the WaPo will like him.
**The Senate**? You think Ryan is going to allow this to get anywhere near the floor? Ten times better odds on seeing him make Republicans go on record on Steve King’s suggestion as to whether Tubman or Jackson should be on the 20.
It will be a fuckload of fun seeing him concoct his excuse, though.
I hate SJW bullshit as much as the next guy, but putting Tubman on money is something I can get behind. Although I wished she would have kicked that snake Hamilton off the ten rather than remove Jackson.
I wonder if the initial decision to put Jackson on the $20 was a little “fuck you” to the famous opponent to central banking.
Either that, or someone who thought he was supremely clever suggested it as a joke, but no one else was educated enough to get the joke so it kinda just happened.
As long as it is the picture of her toting a rifle.
She carried a pistol. One time one of the slaves in the group got cold feet, and wanted to turn back. She stuck that pistol in his face and said something along the lines of “you can keep heading north, or you can stay right here forever but you ain’t going back and ratting us out”
This one.
I’m impressed at her trigger discipline, to be honest. Wouldn’t expect that from someone wearing a frock coat and a bustle.
I weighed in on this in the other website. Basically Tubman is one of my favorite Americans ever, and a personal hero of mine. She would top my list of naming just about anything.
That said, while I think it’s appropriate that the females and coloreds get a bit of favoritism in future naming honors, to make up for lost time, I dislike the bean counting notion that the balance must be achieved in microcosm in every little thing. I am perfectly comfortable with certain things being a “closed canon.” I don’t need to see a Latino face on Mount Rushmore, or see the old white dudes get phased out of Statuary Hall, or whatever.
We have a very conservative, “classical” looking currency right now, that is instantly recognized in the remotest corners of the world, and that hasn’t seen much of a change beyond the security-necessitated big faces in nearly a century. What hasn’t been reported in all the Tub hubbub is that this is just a tiny part of Jack Lew’s plan to completely change our entire currency design ethos. It’s basically changing it from the present ethos to one of avant-garde design and periodic radical revisions, like in other countries (where often there is a huge social uproar on who is on the latest issue; in Britain humanities profs once even protested that there were too many scientists). This involved some Orwellian revision of the very modest Bush-era design changes (which were mostly security-driven). Now the “theme” of that upgrade is said to have been “liberty” (in fact, the “theme” of the United States of America is liberty), which is henceforth to be considered just the first of many. The theme of the Obama-era revision is “equality,” a recognition of which is considered more modern, inclusive, and appropriate for today’s diverse country. Who knows what the next one will be? I’ve got my fingers crossed for “that episode of Who’s The Boss where Tony sees Angela naked.”
…And, I can’t believe a currency-competition supporter actually has given this much thought, but there you go. I’m just praying the government lets us keep any cash at all for long enough to get independent currencies up and running before they decide to force us into their longtime wet dream of universal transaction surveillance and negative interest rates.
Apparently it was very hard. So hard, enough Republicans will come up with excuses as to why it shouldn’t be passed.
While completely ignoring the fact that they happily passed it when they knew Obama would veto it. Fucking pieces of shit they are.
You mean, measuring someones preference might be invalid if there is not cost associated with it?
Yup. If they don’t pass this or some other full 100% repeal, it’ll be just more proof of the uselessness of the Republicans as anything other than being the opposition party when Democrats are in charge.
Except they’re not even very good at being the opposition party when the Democrats are in charge. They are just fucking useless.
Now now.
Do we have card check? Carbon taxes? Garland on the SC?
There are numerous things on the Obama wish list that never happened because of the obstructionists. They weren’t totally worthless.
See, also, “damning with faint praise”.
There are what, a dozen who aren’t worthless?
Why aren’t bills on infrastructure, tax reform and free speech lined up like planes on a runway?
Republicans are completely blowing their golden opportunity. Paul Ryan would have been a blue-dog Democrat 30 years ago. (I think he’s even starting to look like a young LBJ) He is going to completely fuck-up tax reform, civil service reform / reduction, and everything else until the Republicans remove him – or lose Congress and he can go back to making conservative promises.
You SF-d or Gimore-d that link.
I sure did.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/03/26/gop-doing-well-state-level-glenn-reynolds-column/99664022/
“Mom films her son, who suffers from Sensory Processing Disorder, going through a TSA pat down. She is not happy. Hey, welcome to the club, lady.”
Sloopy, I think you’re missing the larger point that harassing autistic children is an absolutely necessary component in fighting terrorism in our country’s skies.
But….they have a muppet now. So all is well.
“Can you show me on the doll where Kermit touched you? …wait, shit.”
I think it’s more “Can you show me on the doll where Elmo touched you?” Elmo’s the pedophile.
You weren’t around the Jim Henson Company when I was ten, don’t other my experiences! Kermit’s a monster when the camera’s off, and Big Muppet has been covering up his abuse for years. I took Jim’s money and shut up, but no longer!
“Big Muppet has been covering up his abuse for years”
Sweetums?
Seem’s like you owe Jim some money back…
How do we know he wasn’t just faking autism in order to smuggle a bomb on board? Why do you want the terrorists to win?!
Do you see what autistics are doing to poor Shia Labeouf?!? They should be on the terror lists to begin with!
Autists joust crazy man?
It’s more entertaining than “rich hobo mumbles at camera for four years.”
Seems like the TSA are the ones with the “Processing” disorder
This pisses me off.
The pat-down is pretty fucking absurd too. Seriously, there can’t be any doubt that the rub er, pat-down was so long in duration so that aborted version of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen could get some jollies at home, alone, with his 1″ member up at full attention later that night.
Thanks for that – I shan’t get any sleep tonight with THAT description rolling around my head.
I use metric. Is 1″ one inch or one foot?
inch
H/T
This is why I don’t fly anymore. Fortunately I don’t need to for work or anything, but even when I went with my wife to a conference recently we just packed up the car and drove. I refuse to engage with the TSA on principle, but I also am pretty sure that it’ll take one TSA agent patting my toddler down for me to go to prison for murder. I’d rather save up for a truck and a fifth wheel.
Re: TSA. I don’t fly often but did so this past Sunday. I was not aware that the “TSA Pre-approved” status is now, apparently, a random thing. Anyway, I was automatically given that status when I checked in online and went through Sunday mid-morning security at DIA in 5 minutes. So, is TSA now basically admitting they don’t accomplish anything?
Omitted closing sentence: “or are they using some kind of algorithm to determine who is a lower risk?”
TSA algorithm is likely the equivalent of flipping a coin because we’re kind of backed up right now.
I have it, but fly pretty often for work. I really don’t understand how it works because the previous dozen flights I had Pre-Check, but didn’t last week flying into Miami. I’m not shelling out cash for the ClearMe thing.
Some airlines don’t participate in the PreCheck program. SpiritAir for example won’t connect its system with TSA so you always have to go through the normie line if you have a ticket from them.
Other smaller airports don’t even have a PreCheck line.
Yeah, when I fly to Newport News, there aren’t ever enough people for two lines. The TSA folks there are super nice, as well. I think they’re lonely.
Let me know next time you’re in town.
Will do!
Judging that they spent 40k on an app that could be built in 10 min i hope they haven’t spent money trying to develop an algorithm to determine who is deemed more safe.
It is totally random. When they first started that some years ago, some airports had a dude, or dudette, with an I-pad type thing that flashed an arrow that changed randomly pointing from the unwashed line to the pre-check line. TSA is a joke. I am not sure when they integrated it with the ticketing process.
There are so flipping many at DIA.
The TSA seems to put on sweep weeks where they will randomly grab people and tell them they can use the PreCheck line. They also will tell all those people that they really should sign up for PreCheck because soon, they won’t do the random inclusions anymore.
When Chicago was having problems a year ago with giant lines (and at Mpls too) the TSA came out and said that way less people had signed up for PreCheck than they thought would. That meant that that line was underutilized.
I fly for business a lot, so I have PreCheck. I hate it when they grab you proles and put you in the line because too many times you guys fuck it all up. You start taking off belts and shoes.
It so sad how much we have sheepishly become accustomed to undressing for our overlords.
And they don’t even look like the ones in my amateur short stories, either!
Years ago I almost got myself detained after a long flight back from China. It was circa 2003. The person in front of me went thru the metal detector with shoes on, so I asked the TSA agent if that was OK now. He said yes. So I walked thru the detector and was immediately pulled aside for a patdown/search. I asked why and he said “Because you didn’t take your shoes off.” It was all I could do to not curse the ever-living shit out of him in public.
Had a sales manager need to get PreCheck. He kept being pulled over as apparently he had the same name as an IRA terrorist.
2 years ago I accidentally went into the Pre-approval line at Logan. When I noted the sign and turned around to leave the area (there was no one behind me). The TSA person asked what I was doing I explained my error and she no I approved you go ahead.
20-something female arrested for groping another female on airline flight.
Would accept her groping any day.
*Boom chaka wow wow*
She should throw her hat in the ring to be the CEO of a blood-proof underwear company in New York. I hear they have an opening.
Indeed they do. But you probably want to avoid filling it for a couple days.
“They’re real, and they’re spectacular.”
Should see what she did on the red eye.
So apparently the newest theme among the left is that Bannon is a Leninist, based on an interview he gave where he used Lenin as an example of someone who tore down the existing apparatus of state.
Which of course means Bannon is a Russian puppet.
I Gilmore’d my psot.
So not quite as bad as Susan Rice (I think) calling Mao a hero, or whatever she did.
He’s a Leninist and a Fascist, simultaneously, you see.
He is all things evil to all people.
Bannon getting up for work every morning pictured here.
Dude, run away!!
He probably doesn’t realize that the crazy sex he thinks is worth it now won’t be worth it as the years go by.
Maybe that just means she’s Irish?
Nah, the Irish metabolize alcohol quite well. They just drink a whole lot of it.
That’s awesome
I would fly all the time if I could expect this kind of groping. Shit, even if I could watch.
I had almost forgotten about this little detail.
The brand of metal detector at the local courthouse is “Rapiscan”
Don’t tell me you don’t see it.
STEVE SMITH SCAN BACKPACKS FOR SLIM-JIMS AFTER HIKER RAPE
OH YEAH!
I believe all of the TSA body scanners are Rapiscan as well.
Isn’t the company that makes them owned by a family member of a former congressman?
I’d have to see their earlier chain of command. They’re owned by OSI Systems now. Whose president and CEO is Deepak Chopra.
Wait, so drinking water that is too cold will fuck me up internally something fierce, but these are A-OK? Maybe they are actually rigged to *reverse* damage from everything else in modernity. I will have to check my chakras before and after next time I fly.
“Rapiscan”
Seems above board to me.
I’m sure this won’t help the number of cattle being used by OSU fans.
Ohio bans sex with animals; violators could face jail
Good. Now those nighttime raids by goat-fuckers from TSUN can be prosecuted.
Don’t try to tell me this is a homegrown problem. We’re bordered by WV and KY in addition to that place you live. This was just cheaper than a series of border walls.
and have the animal seized and impounded.
Punishing the victim as usual!
Apparently there are nine states left that have yet to add this extremely enforceable law onto their books to address this very serious and pervasive threat. Kentucky has been embarrassed enough by its neighbor’s move to introduce a bill that gets with the program (oddly enough, apparently banning sex with pets only).
I do wonder how these things come to pass–what with legislators’ love of legislating, and the tendency for ideas to percolate from state to state and now country to country–how laws like this, especially laws with little open opposition among legislators or citizens, often remain stubbornly resisted in a few places for so long before suddenly being passed by huge majorities.
Customs officials seize more than 40,000 counterfeit condoms
You can tell the difference between counterfeit and real condoms, cause if you look closely at them, the fake ones don’t have the correct ‘watermarks’ on them.
The real ones have a bar-code at the bottom…
But I guess you’ve never had to unroll one that far.
/rimshot
Hotel owner faces being slapped with an ASBO after giving his guesthouse this cheeky name
Can we slap an ASBO on the Blackpool council for their lack of a sense of humo(u)r?
What kind of communist thing is an ‘ASBO’? I’ve never heard of these before.
UK speak “Anti-Social Behaviour Order” it’s basically a totalitarian command to “behave different”
They really are trying to make fiction into reality, aren’t they?
The Aussies have a similar thing called an ‘AVO’
Couldn’t they just issue him the ASBO? Why do they have to slap him with it?
It’s a tradition in British society, I believe.
Feature, not bug.
Islamism’s Culture War Sets Sight on Multi-Billion Dollar Beauty Industry
A whole new meaning to “Cover” in CoverGirl.
I look forward to Mennonite-inspired high fashion any day now.
This is going to go well, what with the whole freakout that happened in Lebanon over that porn star wearing a hijab in a video.
I’m guessing Mia Khalifa. She looks fun, but it looks like she ruined what appeared to be fantastic natural breasts with implants.
Yep, I don’t think she does porn anymore anyway, apparently she’s ‘over it’. Not going to check at work though.
High fashion is full of hypocrites. Each and every one of them would proclaim their liberal credentials and express utter disdain for anyone to the right of Mitterand.
The reality is that they will whore themselves to anyone with disposable income as long as they can twist the appearance of that business relationship into some kind of progressive totem. Even if that requires them to compromise their other ideals.
I wouldn’t mind if they were honest about it. But they’re highly opinionated shitheads who love to virtue-signal to the rest of Western civilization how progressive they are while accommodating the worst of trends in institutionalized misogyny.
+1 George Clooney….?
Pull your pants up!
I find the though that IT systems would lead to fewer bureaucrats amusing. The main point of IT systems is for money to be spent, not to reduce bureaucracy. Bureaucracy exists for bureaucracy sake. If it existed for other reasons, it would make sense to reduce it when you can accomplish the goals other-ways. But it doesn’t so it won’t.
From the perspective of a Government IT worker there are two things that happen after automation is implemented – Either the unit remains at strength and takes on additional tasks it could not do before, or the unit is allowed to shink through attritional losses that would have happened anyway. Their titles being moved elsewhere when filled because the particular task automated no longer requires as many hands.
A reduction in headcount is never achieved.
However, the assertion that IT exists for money to be spent is utter bullshit. No one who controls the budget wants to spend money on IT. They whine and complain about even basic hardware or software refreshes, then bitch about things breaking because they refused to pay for the upkeep. Budgets are for their pet projects, not keeping the lights on.
That may be but there are plenty of hundred million dollar it projects that go nowhere and this is in most countries (i read recently about some german agency which spen 100 mill for a system that was then scraped). And then there was the TSA random queue app. And I am pretty sure a bunch of $$$ was spend with little to show for on Obamacare sites. I find IT projects very easy to swell to high values and hard for to control costs, efficiency etc. And this goes for the private sector as well, more so for government.
I think i see what you are saying. Yeah Software Development often could present itself as a way to funnel money to certain people because most people don’t know what it takes to develop a piece of software.
Pet Projects.
What happens is the missive comes down from on high. The career IT people say “You’re going to have this that and the other problem interfacing with the existing systems” the management says “The consultants say it will work” then they have this that and the other problem that drags out the project until it falls off the radar and the well runs dry. Nothing gets completed, the consultants run off and regular maintenance gets neglected because “X is going to replace that”.
Then the next missive comes down from on high…
Welcome to my world.
DIMHRS was the ultimate IT disaster and continues to fuck up the Army, despite being cancelled 7 years ago.
It was going to be COTS (commercial, off the shelf) and therefore cheap and easy to implement. Leaders ignored what techies told them and drove on to spend $1B on vapor. They chose PeopleSoft, ignoring its limitations, and pounded on a large square peg into various multiple shapes of small holes for ~10 years.
Meanwhile legacy systems were left to languish (which are still being used today) and/or bypassed by multiple small work-arounds. Each change and work-around added more bureaucratic structure and oversight. The Army has doubled down and is attempting to keep parts of it alive through IPPS-A. The bureaucracy and the system are two parasites that team up to better feed each other off the host.
Headdesk. Headdesk. Headdesk.
Larry Ellison strikes again.
In government IT, this:
seems always to immediately precede this:
In our case, Sharepoint. It seems to go, “Buy thing that does X off the shelf. Hire consultants to explain why it can’t do Y as well. Pay them more to try real hard. Get Z. Repeat.”
Obviously there was some hyperbole in my post but …
So now all the ladies who were in the typing pool in the 50’s are managers and directors making 6 figures. Yay progress.
Um, anyone who was working in the 50’s is retired on max pension by now.
People born in the fifties are retired on max pension by now.
The same pool of talent a couple generations later.
“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”
-Often attributed to Oscar Wilde, but there seems to be some debate about that.
Schumer loses cool with Trump supporter at swanky restaurant
Schumer, winning new converts to his party, one voter at a time.
So, Schumer really believes his own bullshit. Interesting.
Excellent. I foresee ample opportunities to recycle my Chucky Moobs artwork.
Schumer can fill out Alec Baldwin’s team for the tag-team match against Alex Jones and Steve Bannon.
+
Will there be brackets for the 1-on-1 version??
If Schmuck attacked my lady like that he would get the double titty-twister with thumbs.
You need machine tortion to twist those Pepperidge Farm nipples.
Two rechargeable power-drills? One set to reverse, to offset the torque?
Que the thought pieces on how this Senator is a shame to the decorum of the prestigious chamber of congress. Oh, wait a second… Whats that? You say he’s a democrat? oh well never mind then.
The Democrats are really growing their party
Holy shit. He started screaming at them in the restaurant and then followed them outside when they decided to leave? I imagine that if that cops would be involved if it was any of the hoi polloi behaving like that instead of our senatorial royalty. And what the fuck does he care since Clinton carried New York anyway?
Bonus points for her name being Hillary too. That must have made the sting especially nasty for Schumer.
I’m not at all surprised. He’s got the most to prove in today’s Democratic Party climate, so he shouts the loudest. New York has had his number for decades now. Most everyone here with any political principle, no matter what it is, despises the guy for being a shameless showhorse, opportunistic whore, and revolting Wall Street cronyist. His only real fans are the wine-and-cheese Pataki-Bloomberg “moderates” who actually run this city; they’re basically him, making token efforts to keep up with whatever the “social liberal” virtue signals of the day are, so they can assure themselves they aren’t like those hair-slicked-back *evil* yuppies of the 80s.
The fucker was actually making all nice with Trump, you’ll remember, as befitting a Senate Leader greeting an incoming President (and one with a pre-existing relationship to boot) before the intersectionalists got fed up with this latest (and tiniest) whore-straw on his camel back, and informed him via a giant Stonewall Plaza protest that his lack of panic was most unwoke.
Never change Dems. Keep it up. You will be successful where the Republicans could not be.
What does worry me is that their complete intolerance of wrongthink coupled with the more radical groups attempting to provoke violence is going to start us on a downhill run towards widespread bloodshed.
If they knew any history they’d realize that political violence is grease that guides republics into dictatorships, so it would be in their best interests to refrain from it if they want to retain their rights. Perhaps they could be frightened off from this foul tactic by the specter of such actions turning President Trump into Emperor Trump.
Transgender woman known as the ‘toxic tush doctor’ for injecting women’s buttocks with silicone and cement is sentenced to 10 years following the death of a patient
*barf*
OMG that picture. Thiccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc.
Gah, it’s like that bloody scene from Brazil.
See where unlicenced medicine leads!
/AMA
I’ve heard about people injecting silicone in their ass, but that’s just completely insane.
Also, this sentence needs work:
“Nuby passed away from acute and chronic respiratory failure reportedly caused by the silicone used in the procedure while serving time in a Tallahassee prison.”
Editors are a rare breed these days.
Put the “while serving time” part first.
This is a peek inside a world of horror and insanity that I could have done without.
Man identifies as a woman is gibberish. Those people are clinically insane. Women who surgically alter their bodies to cartoonishly enhance their female attributes are clinically insane. Put all of this together and hyou get one nutcase stabbing another with an air needle on a can of fix-a-flat in the lawnmower shed out back.
*I would never seriously consider a relationship with any woman who has had unnecessary plastic surgery to ‘enhance’ her looks.
Even a nose job? Oy vey.
I’ve got a golden ticket:
Rich Chinese Race to Apply for a U.S. Golden Visa
We should include them in random chocolate bars. Increase Hershey exports.
Gold visas are the classiest kind of visas
As I watched Scott Pelley doing his segment on 60 minutes about fake news, this is all I could imagine.
Who?
Sad.
‘They Think We Are Slaves’
The U.S. au pair program is riddled with problems—and new documents show that the State Department might know more than it’s letting on.
I’ll be in my bunk…
Voluntary servitude is technically legal.
I’ll put money on it that most of the worst offenders in the au pair program are recent immigrants themselves.
Or State Department officials. Or Amabassadors
“I’ll put money on it that most of the worst offenders in the au pair program are recent immigrants themselves.”
^My first thought^
I wonder if there are stats on the number of au pairs who end up married to their former employers. I’ve seen it happen a couple times, and I believe nannies took down both the Stefani and Garner marriages, as well.
Here’s a tip: don’t bring a hot, young foreign chick into the house when your marriage is already shaky. Or, rather, do that, but don’t act surprised when your husband bails for the eastern European hottie.
You have been warned.
I wonder if it happens that the wife bails for the eastern European hottie.
I’m very interested in subscribing to your newsletter…
I misread the ‘i’ in ‘bails’ and thought it was something else, and agreed wholeheartedly. I mean, shit, a porch dog is still a dog.
We had tons of au pairs in B’ham and Rochester. Hamlin Pub would be loaded with them on weekends. It would be a travesty to do away with this program, and deny college kids hot European girls.
Fuck both An Ohio State and Michigan.
http://edsbs.wikia.com/wiki/The_Traveling_The
Yeah, the Luke Fickell year…congrats Purdue.
Ha. Purdue.
Those are some rock hard solid links. Nice work
“Victor Davis Hanson offers a blistering takedown over the Russia hysteria that has all but consumed the left.”
I’ve been reading his stuff for years. It’s tough to take him seriously again after he shot his wad on W’s Iraq war. Too bad, because his knowledge of ancient Greek history is unparalleled.
There were a lot of nuts busted during the Iraq War
VDH was and is always stronger when he writes about domestic stuff. I find his stories about California farm country fascinating.
Meh, everyone fucks up once and awhile. You’re just mad he don’t commit seppuku over it like in your civilized adoptive country.
He can hold off on the seppuku. I’d settle for an “I was wrong”.
^This^
Everyone is wrong about something all the time. Seeing the light and admitting you are wrong is a sign of intellectual honesty. Refusing to admit it means you cant admit it even to yourself.
From the department of dubious facts comes this story about how wonderful bicylcles are.
The Minnesoda Dept of Transporation did a study that showed that we should all ride bicycles all the time in Minnesoda.
I also hate common tards who can’t close a block quote out.
Doesn’t Minnesota get, like, Winter?
Not this year, but yes, normally.
Minneapolis is trying sooooo hard to be like Portland and Seattle. It’s like a derp arms race.
When Portland wins some award for being the most bikeable city, Mpls freaks out big time. Think the reaction of the Iowegians if someone said they were going to have a caucus before them.
You almost feel bad for them. You know their single speed bike chains are going to get rusted up from all the tears.
Yeah….. sure….
How much of that is in stitches and setting broken bones?
Uh huh, “at least once in awhile” may be freely translated as “once”.
Fuck you, proggies. You’ve already helped wreck the traffic flow downtown with your bike lanes and your light rail with the fucking bike racks.
Fine. Take it. You can have Minneapolis. You are hereby banned from the suburbs, though.
I laughed at that too. “That’s some fine methodology you got there, Lou” (read in Chief Wiggums voice)
My guess also is that with the known density of the progs in Mpls, they didn’t even ride once. But they felt that they had better get it on record that they did so they didn’t get sent to a camp once a true socialist utopia was created.
I love how it’s always super important to reengineer downtown traffic flows just to accommodate dumbass underutilized bike lanes in places that are frozen for a third of a year.
My local university town restructured the downtown area entirely a few years ago by eliminating one of two lanes of a very busy thoroughfare to allocate for bikes. Luckily they realized it was going to be a disaster long term, and restored it. Good thing too, otherwise the rich Mainland Chinese students would be more frustrated in their Maseratis.
Other Site has Gillespie going after Bannon out of nowhere, mostly so he can stomp his feet over Bannon saying “libertarians don’t live in the real world” (the fact that 90% of people say this apparently doesn’t matter, Bannon is a meanie). I can’t think of anyone on that site less qualified to respond to that statement than Nick ‘Libertarian Moment’ Gillespie.
Why’s he pissed? It’s not like Bannon was insulting him.
I couldn’t be bothered to read the article, but Nick’s bitchy headline made me laugh. The first comment was perfect.
1) Bannon never actually said a word about Libertarians in his comments/or that piece. He mentioned ‘cato’, but was being specific to certain ideological republicans. He broadly meant ‘ideologues’
2) Gillespie’s retort included the claim that “libertarians are the largest ideological bloc in America”. (yet somehow can’t pull better than 3% for a candidate) – proving the point Bannon never actually made
I like Nick’s writing and have enjoyed seeing him mix it up a few times with proggies on TV. What don’t you like about him?
In Tanking Venezuelan Economy, People Are Using ‘Rare Pepe’ Digital Trading Cards as Currency
You know what is dumb. That Pepe “Became a symbol of white supremacy” at the whim of ONE lady. That is bullshit. those memes were hilarious. Just because Hillary is a humorless **** doesn’t mean we have go and make the preposterous claims she makes a thing.
*Reads about how everyone thinks Russia hacked the election*
GOSH DAMNIT!
Not to mention throwing the alt-right into the public discourse, because a couple hundred people on the internet was a substantial influence on the election.
Memes have consequences, John.
There is a vast racist conspiracy in America and we must bring it to light.
That Pepe “Became a symbol of white supremacy” at the whim of ONE lady.
Are you fkn kidding me?
The white nationalist/Nazi types were spreading Pepe memes long before Hillary said anything. Read this for instance:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/26/how-pepe-the-frog-became-a-nazi-trump-supporter-and-alt-right-symbol.html
All that happened before Hillary opened her mouth.
Top kek
Fucking normie, get off my stream.
Hmmm where do you stand on free helicopter rides?
What’s the Ceaușescu equivalent of a helicopter ride anyway? I’ve heard Securitate was quite efficient in their brutality.
Probably a Lada with steel plates welded over the windows, and a long ride around the fields.
THEN a bullet in the back of the head.
Nothing special really. Just lock you in a filthy prison and slowly torture you to death over the years.
Or send you to dig the Danube to Black Sea Canal. Bout 100k people got the Canal treatment. You had to manually dig 4-5 cubic meters a hard dirt a day, if you knew whats good for you. No one really knows how many died doing it, of illness, malnutrition, exhaustion, beatings, the occasional bullet.
But on the bright side, the people who tortured political prisoners during Communism got fat government pensions after communism fell for their trouble, so there is that.
Fuck.
REEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
Not at all sure we should be informed by TDB on the history.
The Pepe meme originated primarily as a simple trolling meme, and gained traction with a lot of people for a lot of reasons. As of about mid-2016, I’d have said the most visible ‘pushers’ of Pepe were people like Sargon of Akkad, who is hardly a ‘Nazi type’, although an ungenerous observer might be able to make ‘white nationalist’ stick with an awful stretch.
Undoubtedly, some of the people who got involved in using the Pepe meme were white nationalists, but then white nationalists buy Fords, drink Starbucks and own fridges, so obviously, we’re all white nationalists now.
I know when I want to know anything about weird underground internet culture, I ask out of touch journalists desperate for headlines.
Let’s not forget that Hillary’s rant was directed at Milo Yiannopoulis, for fuck’s sake.
Only a Nazi if you have a really broad definition of Nazi-ism.
You mean Hitler wasn’t into black cock?
I was actually being somewhat more serious. I’m sure there were some bona fide (can I say kosher?) Nazis who would have been avid coalburners given the chance.
If you wanna tag Milo as anything, he’s a western cultural chauvinist rather than anything else. Well, other than being a 24th level Troll Shaman.
Well, other than being a 24th level Troll Shaman
There is the left’s problem. They thought he was a Barbarian.
Sure it was being used by some groups. But its a gosh damn meme. Should we rally against Overly Attached Girlfriend Memes because some guys have used them to be insensitive to women. Or should we purge any use of the Dave Chapelle, “Got any more of that X” memes because they can perpetuate racism?
I’m familiar with that article. I’m sorry, but i reject the notion that if someone takes a symbol an throws a swastika on it, that any other use of it immediately becomes a symbol of White Nationalism.
I’m familiar with that article. I’m sorry, but i reject the notion that if someone takes a symbol an throws a swastika on it, that any other use of it immediately becomes a symbol of White Nationalism.
The Jainists are going to be pissed.
I larfed
Should have had better IP lawyers.
The daily beast?
This has been explained over and over Jeff.
The people that showed up for Shia LeBeouf’s live cam dressed as nazis aren’t real nazis. They dont even know what the word means. The 4Chan crowd trolling people about being white supremacists and nazis are just emotionally stunted, overgrown children provoking hysterics for attention. It’s a joke to them. They are like teenagers getting tattoos and peircings, dying their hair purple because it amuses them to see their parents freak out.
The rest of us find it amusing as well. Watching the woman who swore she would put americans out of work, destroy industries, seize guns by executive fiat in spite of congress and the will of the people, the woman who got caught red-handed at pay for play as SOS going around squawking about how the Ruskies and secret nazis stole her birthright from her is hilarious. Hillary lost the election. No one helped her do it. She did it all on her own.
Pepe memes. No Jeff we aren’t kidding you. We are laughing though.
When freaking Old Man Suthenboy ‘gets’ internet culture more than you do, it’s time to reconsider things.
The 4Chan crowd trolling people about being white supremacists and nazis are just emotionally stunted, overgrown children provoking hysterics for attention.
What’s really weird is that this is actually a public service.
Politico laments Trump’s “war” on civil servants.
I eagerly await the news footage of A-10s strafing the Rayburn Office Building with 20mm rotary cannons.
So, Uncivil Servants are alright?
Not a federal employee.
I only have to deal with Andy. Andy is a chump.
We should hope they aren’t hit hardest
spergin’: it’s actually a 30mm.
What I was gonna say. Depleted uranium ftw.
Students Confess Their Sins At ‘Masculinity Confession Booth’
This sounds to me like a chance to brag.
Overly-emotional women never abuse anyone.
How stupid can you be?
Lesbian couples have the highest rate of domestic violence. But facts are sexist.
Mansplain it to them, Brother!
It’s like the Catholic church, if you took out the alcoholism, Crusades and unprotected sex.
So the good parts.
Well I assume the unprotected sex is the point of the free birth control. But then again the Law of not sticking it into crazy comes in.
Laws are meant to be broken.
*waits for Pomp to break the law of conservation of energy*
“Then the universe ended…”
“and then her roommate joined in. I tried to stop them but I just didn’t have the strength to push both of them off.” *sobs*
There, there… If you didn’t make passionate love to both of them, you may have harmed their self-esteem.
Misandry, on the other hand, is an indisputable good.
Because Regina rhymes with fun?
Yes, we need a change in our culture. A kind of “revolution”, if you will. Like a cultural revolution, so society can make a great leap forward, as it were.
We are on the right track. I see people are getting together and having sessions where they struggle with the problem.
“Every time I take a new pair of pants in to be tailored, they always ask me why I want a third leg attached to the front. It’s so embarrassing.”
This minimum wage fight in Minneapolis is getting good.
The proggies in Minneapolis are determined to push through a $15/hr min wage law. Not so fast say the restaurant servers. They are actually making $28/hr on avg with tips. With the new law there will probably be less restaurants to work at.
Luckily we have leaders here who can help those poor saps suffering from false consciousness:
Fuck it. Time to wall it off.
No, wage theft is what the government does to your paycheck, which is not to be confused with a voluntary agreement between employer and employee.
Make a cross stitch sampler of that and have it over the fireplace.
A lawsuit over Costco golf balls shows why we can’t have nice things cheap
Man, what scummy business practices.
Costco should counter sue for malicious litigation, harassment, anything their legal department can come up with. Fight dickery with dickery.
I buy the 2 dozen bag of Wilsons at Wal-Mart for $10. For my shitty game, they are great golf balls.
I have not been to the Before Place in weeks, but the discussion yesterday about how completely fucked their comment system has become, and how obviously indifferent they are to fixing it, led me to this awful, awful speculation:
What if they’re intentionally trying to offload the last few dregs of the once-great reason commentariat onto this site, in order to prepare the ground for the great millenial liberaltarian surge? You know… nuanced, insightful thinkers; not a bunch of jaded anti-society misanthropes and gun nuts.
If that is the case, I will just come right out and say it: one of the best things about this site is the absence of John and his screeching personal attacks one anyone who doesn’t agree with him. Just sayin’.
Reason has been conducting a passive-aggressive purge, on purpose in my opinion, for quite some time. Between the terrible articles and the terrible site infrastructure it’s the only reasonable conclusion. I wish them the best of luck in running their place trying to attract lefties who want nothing to do with them.
Between the terrible articles and the terrible site infrastructure it’s the only reasonable conclusion.
Nope, not a purge, a long term dumbing down. The terrible articles are a product of that, Soave’s obviously there to attract the dumb, intellectually shallow Millennial bracket for example. It’s basically the Gary Johnson method as a magazine policy. Also, Gillespie has gone a bit nuts after the Trump election, and I think his editorial decisions are actively damaging.
Whatever the motivation or cause, it’s a shame.
Yup.
“The Gary Johnson method as a magazine policy”
Bingo. And with the same outcome.
Good luck to them.
I recently saw a discussion from a long-time respected member of our commentariat on attending an R convention. Apparently Welch was aloof and Gillespie, upon meeting said commenter and learning he was a commenter suddenly couldn’t run away fast enough.
Fuck them.
You’re overthinking it, The Late Alex Jones. The Other Site doesn’t give a shit about the commentariat and whether they stay or go, they’re just garbage at running a functioning blog. If they really wanted to clean comments up they’d just lock them and claim they were updating for awhile.
The editorial direction has obviously been pushed to the left and Gillespie wants to be the ‘vanguard of the Trump resistance’, but that’s the extent of what they’re actually doing.
Occam’s razor, they suck at running a blog, works well too.
Well Welch should care about his wardrobe at least.
Gilmore has already taught him all he needs to know, time to push him out of the nest.
‘vanguard of the Trump resistance’
Resistance to a guy who is inadvertently advancing many libertarian goals and planting the seeds for a real libertarian moment.
Genius! or mask removal. You judge.
BUT HE’S UNDOING SOME OF OBAMA’S GLORIOUS REGULATIONZ!!1
DC journalists engage in open tribalism with other DC journalists, news at 11.
If they didn’t hop on the hyperbolic freakout train they’d be social pariahs.
Well, if that is the case, we could agree to flood back in and deluge the site with counter views. Or we could just ignore it and let it burn. I don’t feel any obligation.
With all the comments they have, they don’t need us around anyway
/sour grapes Gillespie
I think they’re definitely trying to distance themselves from a lot of elements of libertarianism, but that the rationale has more to do with the writers than the readers. The broader problem for a Reason writer these days is that the rest of the MSM have completely lost their fucking minds since Trump was elected, but because journalism is such a tenuous profession, no writer can afford to be ostracized by their peers. Unless you’re going to start your media brand somehow, being a contrarian in journalism these days is basically career suicide.
IOW, I think what we’re seeing is a very short-sighted attempt at career preservation on the part of the old site’s writers.
Oregon Seeks To Regulate ‘Dangerous, Preventable’ Cow Farts
and even death
Only if you’re locked in a closet with one.
I thought cow burps were worse than farts for Mother Gaia
Uh, Ok. How?
low fiber diet?
Well, that kind of defeats the purpose of having cows, which are fairly efficient at turning plant matter into protein.
cause memory loss
You know i discovered the unifying theory of Gravity, but then a Cow farted next to me and i lost it all. True story!
Comedians hardest hit.
This sounds to me like a chance to brag.
“I didn’t fuck *all* the bridesmaids at that wedding last weekend. I have standards.”
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the DoJ will withhold funds from sanctuary cities. The grants represent billions of dollars. Good.”
Really? I see it another way. It is yet another exercise of using federal money to bully states into adopting federal priorities.
States aren’t supposed to be law enforcement officers of the federal government. If the feds want to enforce immigration law, they should be the ones doing the enforcement, not conscripting local cops into doing their work for them. It’s the same with any other federal law, not just immigration law.
Federal funds are the end-run around what little is left of the tenth amendment.
Yup. Imagine if Jeff Sessions would start withholding funds from states that legalized pot. Who here would say “hey, they’re not spending money, what a great way to cut spending!!” Precisely no one.
Who here would say “hey, they’re not spending money, what a great way to cut spending!!”
Less “cut spending” and more “hey, long term way to ruin federal control”, sure. *Raises hand*
If you mean me, then yeah, no one.
The biggest difference I see is that this is one of the few cases where the bribery has to do with something that is actually in the federal purview, rather than trying to make the state change a policy that should be up to that state’s own discretion (ie, speed limits, etc)
They’re not adopting federal “priorities”. They’re following federal law.
And deliberately ignoring detainer requests when one is made and that person goes on to kill someone deserves scorn. Sorry, that’s my opinion.
Yeah, it seems that these states are going out of their way to facilitate violations of federal law.
Then the feds should resolve it in the courts. Granted this at least falls somewhat within federal powers, unlike the vast majority of federal initiatives that come with funding, but it is a question for the courts as to whether the feds can force compliance.
Resolve what? Grant money being doled out with favoritism given to jurisdictions that comply with federal law?
If the states want to sue, it should be on them to prove the Feds are violating their right to the free money. Or that the laws they are violating are unconstitutional. The Feds shouldn’t have to do anything here other than say what they’ve said.
Sorry, sessions may be an asshole but he’s right on this one.
I see your point, and tbh, I am not sure how I feel on this one, but: They are not asking local cops to go do no knock raids and round up illegals. They are asking they hang onto already arrested criminal aliens who are in their custody until an ICE officer can get there and take custody. I am not seeing that as a big imposition, and I think criminal aliens here illegally should be chucked out asap, (due process followed of course). If the localities are arguing they are not reimbursed for the extra detention, (which I have heard) the feds just need to re-name the LE money they already send to states from , “here is a bunch of money so your swatt teams can buy urban assault vehicles”, to “here is some money for illegal alien detention reimbursement”.
You aren’t arguing honestly. They are not forcing conscription of local cops to do their work for them. They are saying when you do catch an illegal for breaking state/local law, you have to tell us you have him/her. Big difference.
Then maybe states shouldn’t be so dependent on federal funds. Maybe states should raise their own money to govern their own affairs. Maybe we should rediscover federalism.
One of the funds he is withholding is money specifically earmarked for the detention of illegal aliens, so even if he is overreaching on some of them it is entirely appropriate for that specific fund to be tied to sanctuary city status. It floors me that the US government is giving money to defer the cost of holding illegal aliens in cities that refuse to cooperate with immigration officials by releasing them before ICE arrives.
There are so many ways that arguing against this is counterproductive.
1. If the Feds are the only ones who can be involved in enforcing immigration law, then that will ultimately mean more Federal intrusion into individual lives. Right now, the states act as more accountable intermediaries. It’s far from ideal, but I’d rather have the sheriff tipping off ICE when he arrests an illegal immigrant for a crime than have ICE running around conducting raids (not that they don’t already) and extending the 100-mile Constitution-free zone around the border (which is already bullshit) into a country-wide Federal immigration enforcement zone (which would be a fucking disaster for civil liberties).
2. Setting and enforcing the law of naturalization is an express power of the Federal government. If they can’t enforce that power against the states, then how can they enforce their other powers like 14th Amendment equal protection? The Courts have already ruled Federal law is the supreme law in matters of immigration. The route to changing the law is thus through the U.S. Congress or a Constitutional Convention.
3. These funds are specifically set aside for law enforcement purposes. It’s not like arbitrary funds are being tied to unrelated concessions. This is not commerce clause trickery like drug enforcement, nor is it shoehorning neoprohibitionist attitudes into highway appropriations. Maybe there are some hills worth fighting for buried therein (e.g. asset forfeiture, civil liberties abuses*, militarization), but the overall concept of “if you want Federal funds for law enforcement, then you have to enforce Federal law” is far down on the list of objectionable Federal coercive actions against the states.
* = Excluding deportation as a civil liberty abuse, to not beg the question
What’s up, my nerds? My work blocked this site until recently. They have more firewall shit here than the Fed gov. WAY more.
Glad you could make it here!
How you doin’?
Hello, one who successfully rocks the rainbow striped onsey.
I did rock that thing pretty hard.
WHAT UP?!
I got two choices. Jack Reacher (New one) or Morgan. Never heard of Morgan. Either any good or both bad?
Read a book
It’s with the wife. Movie night.
Kama Sutra, that’s a good book.
Well i started watching Jack Reacher with my wife, and then we had to go to bed, so she finished it the next day while i was at work. That’s the long way of saying that it’s not great, but i can’t realy judge cause i havn’t seen it all the way through yet.
It was not great, but it was entertaining enough.
At this point, I’ll take “entertaining enough”.
I’m slowly weening myself off film and concerts. I can’t take the chance to be victim of a virtue-signalling progressive asshole who doesn’t respect their audience.
The other day I watched ‘The Brothers Grimsby’. At the end they gave Trump Aids. I felt completely ambushed by this cheap trick. So screw Cohen and now will choose my movies VERY FUCKEN CAREFULLY.
Fuck everyone who thinks they’re so fucken smart.
That is, not interested in cheap shots against my core beliefs or lectures from people who clearly don’t read.
Not at my age anyway.
Ok. I’m done.
Should we get off your lawn, Rufus?
Also, can you *please* take all the snowbirds back? Was nearly killed *again* driving home yesterday by a car with a Quebec license plate.
Keep ’em. Their your problem for a few months out of their year.
Now if you don’t mind, I have some kids to go kick off my yard.
the year.
I think I will stop commenting now.
HA, the legend of the shitty Quebec driver continues to spread.
Maybe they can’t read signs in English?
Doesn’t explain how they manage to still be shitty drivers in their own province.
Ever since I moved to South Florida I’ve known it. Seems like half the province comes down here for the winter, and none of them can drive.
They don’t hold a candle to Maryland drivers. I haven’t spent a tremendous amount of time in MD, but it’s never been positive and always rage-inducing.
Yeh, well I’ve seen some pretty retarded stupidity I’ve never seen in Quebec with drivers from Maryland, NJ, Delaware, Virginia and Ontario.
Maryland’s bad, yeah, but Pennsylvania, boy. There’s a thing called the “Pennsylvania Turn”. If you’re not familiar, it’s when you turn across multiple lanes. Like let’s say you’re in the middle of a three-lane highway and want to take an exit ramp. Why use a signal and change lanes like a rational human being when you can just hang a hard left and hope for the best?
Any movie that does not give Trump aids implicitly supports Trump
It was completely irrelevant to the story to insert it. It was clearly a political trick.
I’m gonna go full John here and scream, ‘YOU’RE SMARTER THAN THAT COHEN!’
I heard Jack Reacher was stupid. And I don’t like Tom Cruise. So I never watched it.
I enjoyed Morgan. Then again I could probably enjoy watching Kate Mara read the newspaper.
It had an original plot. Its well-scripted dialog was subtle enough not to seem expository (my biggest complaint about most science fiction), but it and the actors performances presented enough clues that some found it “predictable”.
Darth Odeh agrees to leave the U.S. in return for no jail time.
No hat tip to me?
I haz a sad. *sniffles*
A march organized by an actual terrorist funded by a Nazi collaborator. You go girl.
Intersectionality at it’s finest!
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the DoJ will withhold funds from sanctuary cities. The grants represent billions of dollars. Good.”
Shikha Dalmia says that’s like enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/02/like-fugitive-slave-laws-deportation-is
In all seriousness, if (second person plural) you are gonna go balls out on how the President should ignore Congress on immigration law, then you’re gonna have a hard time making the case at a later date that the President shouldn’t indulge in foreign adventures unless Congress specifically declares war.
That ain’t some bullshit clause that’s been stretched beyond all recognition by way of a bullshit case stating that I don’t have the right to grow food on my own property for my own consumption. Setting the rules of immigration is an enumerated power of Congress, bitches!
Yeah… I’m lean pretty strong to the open borders, and i am sympathetic to the idea of sanctuary cities (mostly because it is a f*** you to the feds) but, i also know that if i was going to write up a defense of it it would not site Shikha, as she is a spineless weasel. Also her argument doesn’t really stand well, Slavery should be considered a uniquely American version of Godwins Law (i.e the first person to compare another person’s actions to American Chattel Slavery, has lost the argument).
However, think about this: You could say that sanctuary cities only support keeping criminals in the US, but we also know that there are a lot of things the Feds call crimes, that have no victims (War on Drugs?). Now it would be much better to just end the War on Drugs, but it hasn’t happened yet. I am not convinced that we should then deport people just because we have failed to get rid of a set of unjust laws.
I’d be cool with the slavery argument if Dalmia was some principled anarcho-capitalist who argued constantly and firmly that state control or management of anything was a form of slavery. But she’s not, she’s a “progressive libertarian” (with an emphasis on the progressive) spewing a crude and vapid smear.
But she’s not, she’s a “progressive libertarian” (with an emphasis on the progressive) spewing a crude and vapid smear.
Yeah, that’s a better way to put it. It’s not that the argument isn’t totally analogous (because as i argue, there are some people who are being unjustly labeled criminals and then taken away, just as slavery itself was unjust, yet people were being put into chains being called fugitive slaves). It’s just comes off as a disingenuous, coming from her. I get trying to get people hit in the emotions, so that they will be open to a logical argument- but this is the wrong way to do that. This only conjures up the emotion for someone to defend themselves from being attacked as a slavery sympathizer. It’s piss poor rhetoric.
Are these people being “taken away”, or are they sent back home and told to follow the law if they want to return? I don’t see this as some horrible thing, unless you want to argue that nations have no right to control their borders, and the US is somehow obligated to accept any and all of the billions of people who want to come here from 3rd world shit-holes without restriction. Which seems like national suicide to me.
“I’d be cool with the slavery argument if Dalmia was some principled . . . ”
Slavery has no place in a free society, and democracy shouldn’t have anything to do with justifying it.
But in a free society, Immigration rules are properly an enumerated power of Congress, and, like the power to declare war, it should be properly subjected to democratic considerations. Maybe think of the latter point this way: Subjecting the American people to an unpopular immigration policy is in many ways like subjecting them to an unpopular war.
That doesn’t mean anyone’s rights should be violated by immigration policy–Congress is still subject to the First Amendment, and people accused of being here illegally should still have their rights protected by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Even looking beyond the obvious differences between sending someone back into slavery and sending someone back to Mexico, however, voting to keep slavery justifies absolutely nothing, but democracy is the proper venue for constitutional policies on immigration.
There’s certainly a difference between suggesting that our immigration policy should be expansive and saying that we should have no immigration policy.
Yes, and if there is to be a policy, which is within the constitutional powers of the federal government, it would need to be enforced. Not exactly analogous to enforcing slavery.
Well, one can assume the value of what follows with great confidence.
Is this a sly shot at this place from Gillespie?
Hard to say, old obscure pop culture references are Gillespie’s forte.
Too timely to be a coincidence.
I’d say so.
No.
Shot or Nod to? It comes of as a nod to me. But i’m young and Naive so who knows
More a side-swipe, I’d say
Who cares?
I’ve noted over the past few days at TSTSNBN. The links comment numbers have fallen off the charts.
Totally on purpose, but I did laugh.
it’s actually a 30mm.
Even better.
Pomp, if you’re still here – your Schumer cartoon was teh awesome. Moar, pleez.
Why thank you kindly. Owing to the fact that Schumer has dialed up his petulant child antics to 11 as of late, I’m sure there are many recycling opportunities for the future.
That Gillespie twitter link makes as much sense as mud splattered on a fence, to me.
I must be missing something.
It refers back to a twit about some much more recent movie with The Rock and Sean Connery, so Gillespie’s comment has some context.
“Tykables, the only brick and mortar storefront in the United States dedicated to adult baby diaper lovers (ABDL), is located in Mount Prospect, a suburb of Chicago. Its customers, John-Michael Williams, the store’s owner says, include those ABDL who have a fetish or sexual interest in dressing like or pretending to be a baby; people who have a medical need for adult diapers and enjoy the brand’s options; and individuals, some of whom are on the autism spectrum, who find the diapers and child-style clothing provide a sense of comfort and stress relief.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tykables-adult-baby-storefront_us_58d127f7e4b0be71dcf7e9ba
my expression
They’re probably most popular with leftist snowflakes, who definitely need them with the amount of pants shitting going on right now. The store can thank Trump for the big jump in sales.
Hmmm…Jake Butt makes some very interesting, substantive points.
And such a nice young man, too. Shame about the ACL injury.
So free tuition, housing, food, fame, TV exposure, connections to NFL scouts, and free training by a former NFL head coach and small army of highly experienced personnel isn’t enough?
Oh, did I mention that with that fame you get access to a bunch of hot 19 year old jersey chasers?
I’m sure that kid schelpping food in the cafeteria on a workstudy program feels your pain Jake.
Shikha Dalmia says that’s like enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Good for her.
Many of the forces that fueled the last American inquisition are resurgent. The public sector is under siege by an alliance of corporate robber barons, right-wing media and free-market ideologues. Much of the population, especially but not only in rural areas, feels economically and culturally insecure in the face of globalization, multiculturalism and gender fluidity. Hostility to experts and susceptibility to conspiracy theories are rampant. Those fundamental forces weigh more heavily than the fact that President Trump’s onetime mentor was the lawyer Roy Cohn, McCarthy’s right-hand man—but that connection, too, is worrisome.
——-
A government of sycophants selected for personal loyalty rather than expertise cannot check authoritarianism or protect the public interest from exploitation for private gain.
“Free-market ideologues”? If only. I suppose those guys at Politico would be offended if I called them a bunch of paranoid idiots.
worrisome, problematic, concerning, troubling…..
The rallying cries of today’s left.
Robber Barons and McCarthy? Does this person even have a sense of history? I mean even if the Robber Barons stories was true, that was in the 1880’s
Today, the demagogue is in the White House, and the Republican-controlled Congress seems disinclined to put country above party. To defend the roughly 2 million civil servants who help sustain American democracy, we need independent journalists and judges even more desperately now than we did in McCarthy’s day.
Fight on, you noble heroes, you freedom fighters, you enlightened few! Hold back the unwashed hordes.
He thinks that millions of civil servants are actually good for American democracy? He really is a special kind of stupid.
Also glad to know there hasn’t been a demagogue in the White House previously, and only Republicans put party above country.
The problem is the the term ‘civil servants’. Replace that with parasites and we’re getting somewhere.
the roughly 2 million unelected and unaccountable civil servants who help sustain American democracy
That is 1984-level cognitive dissonance.
There are a couple of tech/science blogs that I frequent, but it’s totally driving me nuts that so many writers on those sites have jumped aboard the ‘we need government involved’ train. Bunch of little Al Gore wannabes have infested practically everything. The government has a big old hoard of tax payer dollars and there’s no lack of rent seekers wanting in on it.
I used to be active in an IEEE affiliated non-profit.
It was pretty depressing how often they would cheerfully build some cool technology to be incorporated into the mobile oppression palace, oblivious to the harm it would do in the hands of a totalitarian despot.
They were the archetype of useful idiots.
Ha! IEEE is infested with statists. Always has been. Maybe it’s the result of being so tightly associated with national standards for measurement or performance, or maybe it’s a result of decades of DOD and NASA relationships, I don’t know.
Keep your government hands off my defense contractor money.
“2 million civil servants who help sustain American democracy”
Fuck me, that’s dumb.
Social justice on the frontier
A former student is suing Montana State University in federal court for more than $225,000, charging that the university violated his rights by kicking him off campus after he privately discussed his objections to transgenderism with an instructor who mistook his comments as threatening.
————–
Blah, blah, blah
————–
Sletten concluded that it was reasonable to believe Kujawa’s version of the conversation with John Doe because an instructor was more believable than a student. Though Sletten wrote there was no reason to doubt John Doe’s claim he didn’t intend to cause harm, he still found John Doe had violated MSU policy and harassed Jane Roe by creating a hostile environment. The lawsuit charges that is “a clear showing of bias” because John Doe had never spoken to her.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22.”
Typically convoluted and obscurantist “he said, she said” narrative, with pseudonyms for extra confusion. Too bad Teen Beat Reporter Soave isn’t here to provide contextual throat-clearing and to-be-sures.
*scratches Montana State off list*
“an instructor was more believable than a student”
Geez, just fill in the blank. Respect my authoritah!
“Sletten concluded that it was reasonable to believe Kujawa’s version of the conversation with John Doe because an instructor was more believable than a student. ”
Say wha?
So, if I’m following, the college admin (Sletten) who ruled on John Doe’s credibility never actually spoke with him?
That should be a lay-down win for Doe in court.
“To be sure, John Doe’s behavior was problematic, and the behaviors the professor described should not be tolerated. But prior to expelling John Doe, the investigator should have met with him and listened to his side as to what happened. Only then would deciding to give the professor’s testimony more weight would have been meaningful” /Robby Soave style progsplaining about the importance of the illusion of a unprejudiced process.
Also- if you read the story, it doesn’t sound like he particularly gives a shit about transgenderism as a concept.
It has more to do with having his face rubbed in it.
*appy polly loggies for teh phrasing
Meh.
Ad for a construction company in my area. I like them already.
No snowflakes