My brain is going in a thousand different directions today, so I’m gonna roll with it. I’m just gonna write a few sentences for each thought in stream of consciousness form and see whether it gets me booed off the stage.
- It’s amazing how much money touches every sore spot in a relationship. My wife and I are going through Dave Ramsey’s FPU to “tune up” our finances now that I’m making a paycheck again, and it’s painfully obvious how different our respective priorities are. I’m very risk averse and want to be completely out of debt within 5 years. She’d rather have nice things and not think about money. There was definitely some sleeping on the couch happening this week.
- Am I the only one who couldn’t care less about this Russian bullshit? It didn’t pass the smell test in November. It didn’t pass the smell test in January. Now it smells like an Obama fart as we are starting to get wiretapping information.
- I’m not at all surprised that the Whatever 7 from Wikileaks was another big nothing. We learned more about how utterly out of control our intelligence agencies are, but none of it was a “shocking revelation.” Wikileaks needs somebody to better market their info dumps because they’re all hat and no cattle at this point.
- I think the NFL is suffering from the same problems as the NBA, and their ratings will continue to decline in the next few years. The players are less and less interesting to the majority of the population, prices for tickets and apparel are out of the reach of many, and the media spends more time on who beat up their girlfriend than on actual football anymore.
- Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell is a great read! I think I’d recommend Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt first, simply because it’s shorter and less repetitive. Either book is a great primer on why everything politicians say about economics is crap.
- Complete detox from the MSM has been nice. I’ll watch the occasional local news segment or click the random link to a MSM outlet, but generally I just avoid it. It gives a level of perspective to the daily Olympic pants shitting that happens in our culture. Also, nothing pisses a prog off more than when they’re hyperventilating with “Did you see that Trump did that????!?!?!?”, replying with “nope, must’ve missed it. Doesn’t sound very important.”
- After watching a few Dateline episodes with Mrs. trshmnstr (what is with women’s obsession with that show??), I’ve come to the conclusion that if the random guy you met at a party texts you 2 hours later, he’s already in your garage getting ready to rape you, strangle you, and dump your body three counties over.
- Final thought: I had always thought of the Civil War as being fought mostly in open fields. My visits to the Manassas Battlefield have disavowed me of that notion. I’m sure the artillery were set up in large fields, but it looks like much of the battle must have taken place in densely forested areas.
Final thought: I had always thought of the Civil War as being fought mostly in open fields. My visits to the Manassas Battlefield have disavowed me of that notion. I’m sure the artillery were set up in large fields, but it looks like much of the battle must have taken place in densely forested areas.
There was also a surprising amount of guerilla warfare during the Civil War that rarely gets discussed outside of Mosby’s Rangers.
I wouldn’t assume that forests today were forests 150 years ago. A lot of tilled land has gone back to nature.
I seem to remember the Unfinished Railway Cut at Manassass to be right in the woods. I believe at the time of the battle it was already overgrown with weeds and brush.
Antietam had the East and West Woods.
I camped at Antietam when I was a boy scout. Lots of woods surrounding open fields.
I would be spooked to camp out at Antietam Natural or Gettysburg. When I went to Gettysburg and the sun went down we were still in the car, and we all freaked out because we were so used to streetlights. Pitch black.
Don’t know why I put natural after Antietam. I blame the phone.
The thing that struck me about Antietam is why would someone have a battle there? There’s nothing to fight over. Even today it’s 30 miles from the nearest significant town (Frederick). What the hell were they fighting to control exactly?
Lee was going to invade the North. Antietam stopped him from doing so. Strategic goal, not tactical.
Back in those days men were men and fought each other for the hell of it. “Hey, nice army you got there, I bet my army could kick its ass though.”
and they just lined up yards from each other and started shooting.
no ducking allowed
Lee’s Maryland Campaign reasoning:
Strategic: better to initiate attacks and try to control the situation than stay defensive in Virginia.
Logisitics: Food and fodder in Maryland and Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley, with the Fed Army between him and Washington, DC.
Political: the 1862 elections. if Lee could keep attacking on Northern soil, he hoped to hurt Lincoln and the Republicans and maybe sway the election toward peace.
And maybe sway Marylanders leaning pro-Confederacy toward the South.
Antietam happened to be where the two Armies met.
In addition to what I (and Slammer) said above, J Davis believed a clear victory might allow the Brits and French justification to officially recognize the CSA.
AFAIK, the Confederates set their forces up there because it was a good defensive position. Then again, I haven’t been there and I’m no Civil War expert.
The battle was driven mostly by a desire by Lincoln to get a victory to shore up popular support for the war effort.
McClellan had mostly been non-committal in heavily engaging the Confederacy to this point. There was significant pressure to engage ,especially since Pope just got his ass kicked at 2nd Bull Run.
Bloodiest day in American warfare was a draw, and resulted in McClellan being fired. McClellan then ran against Lincoln as the democratic nominee.
Friggin’ McClellan.
His troops loved him, though.
Obviously you didn’t grow up in the middle of nowhere like some of us did.
The railway cut at Manassas ran thru’ partially cleared land, the Reb’s defense there relied on a clear shot across rough ‘pasture’ out to about 100 yards where the next section of woodland began, which is where the Union emerged.
Was Quantrill chopped liver?
For most of the major battles the areas were much more open than today. If you examine photos from the era you’ll find large open areas and copses of trees. Arty was largely a direct fire weapon so it was situated where it could hopefully drop rounds into the defensive lines. The open nature is not surprising when you consider the importance of wood for heating, construction and transportation. Also since with a well trained infantryman capable of 3-4 rounds per minute the only way to mass fires was to mass people.
Some battles were in more constricted terrain. The most well known was the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864 which started Grant’s Overland Campaign. The area was a recent 2d growth after logging (think a clear cut a few years after re-planting) and featured units getting lost (compasses were few), many wounded burning to death after black powder lit the undergrowth on fire, James Longstreet being wounded by his own men (only a few miles from where Stonewall Jackson suffered the same fate) and large swings in momentum. Despite being a tactical draw, the battle was an operational victory for the Union as Grant proved to be the commander Lincoln required to bring the war to a successful conclusion.
When I was attending Carlisle the Park Service proposed to log Gettysburg to restore the appearance to July 1863. The history types (and locals) were in favor but the enviro’s opposed the idea.
he’s already in your garage getting ready to rape you, strangle you, and dump your body three counties over.
What do you have against Ted Koppel?
(what is with women’s obsession with that show??)
They’ve the hots for sexy, sexy Lester Holt.
Lead on Drudge right now, but Juncker threatens to encourage the secession of states like Ohio and Texas as revenge for Trump’s support of Brexit. And they say that Trump is delusional…
I know that the only thing stopping Texas from secession right now is the lack of leadership and advocacy from an idiot Belgian bureaucrat (huh, apparently he’s from Luxembourg).
“Luxembourg? Shee-it, you could fit Luxembourg into a standard Texas swimming pool and still have plenty of room left over for all the fucks I don’t give about this Juncker fella.”
Why Ohio? I would think California would be the first state many would think of in this climate.
It that a threat or a promise? Is he trying to sell me a Maga hat?
Juncker is literally a drunken blowhard. Word on the street is that the boozy bugger is routinely blotto by 3PM on work days.
You know the drunk guy passionately slurring that he could totally double his company’s sales if they would just listen to his brilliant idea to transmit smells over the Internet? That’s the sort of guy who is the EU president.
If you’ve never heard Nigel Farage savage Juncker during his many speeches you are missing out of the thrill of a lifetime.
I think I’ve watched every one of his speeches on YouTube. I’ve kind of taken him out of the heart-shaped frame near my bed, because the guy who calls himself an “old-fashioned liberal” and a “libertarian” is a full-throated enthusiast of the security-panic surveillance state. But those speeches are fucking brilliant and absolutely rivetingly entertaining, and everyone should watch.
Real libertarianism, even by their own ridiculously degraded standards, is not easy to locate among the Brits. Just try suggesting that France maybe shouldn’t be forcing Muslim women into bikinis to a Tommy who seemed cool thus far, and see how he reacts.
As a Brit, my response would depend largely upon whether the muslim in question was Mia Khalifa, or Suha Arafat.
Ha! Everyone knows Suha Arafat is a Roman Catholic, you racist shitlord. So you’ve revealed you really do want every Muslim chick in a bikini, like Muslim bodies are yours to own. Sexist, Islamophobic, Orientalist, neocolonialist, and transphobic because why the fuck not. The Crusades are over, Richard the Zionhearted. Get over it.
You gots any pics of Mia? :)P
Libertarianism is a rare bird pretty much everywhere other than the US. Try arguing gun rights with just about any English speaker not born in North America and you’ll see some real spit fly.
Something I honestly don’t understand about Austrailia. You’d think they’d be gun crazy given that they are living in a 1950s schlock horror movie every day.
A philosophical argument I have frequently made is that if dinosaurs still existed and were widespread the only gun laws would be a required minimum number of certain type and caliber you had to have on hand at all times, similar to how life vests in a boat are regulated. This argument becomes much less abstract if you live in Australia.
Most of their dangerous wild animals can’t be easily controlled with firearms, and they did have a somewhat active gun culture until they pussied out in the 90’s and had all their guns turned into scrap metal.
So now, the only guys with guns are the bikies</a).
Hell, I just tried arguing privacy rights with a Brit once when I visited there. His view was (on the topic of London feeling like something out of 1984,) was the classic “I’ve got nothing to hide, so I don’t care.”
European ‘libertarianism’ and colonial libertarianism are different breeds.
I remember Noam Chomsky (aka the anarchist who is actually a worse anarchist than Stalin) saying something about American-style libertarianism being a counterfeit libertarianism that is nothing like the genuine article that Europeans know. But I just figured he was full of shit. I know a fair bit about the history of the “liberal” label in Europe from the Carlist Wars to the present, but nothing about the “libertarian” one. Where can I learn more?
He’s referring to libertarian socialism, i.e. the anarchism that modern libertarian stole its name from when liberal was stolen from it. Bakunin is probably its most well known advocate, they were pretty big in socialist circles for the late 19th century, then participated in a couple of the revolutions of the early 20th only to be stomped by the communists usually afterwards (or in the case of some of them in the Spanish Civil War, the fascists).
Afterwards with the rise of the Soviet Union they were somewhat marginalized by the influence of the KGB and ideological conformity on Western socialist/communist groups, but they’ve made a comeback after the end of the Cold War on the classic argument of “of course the Soviet Union failed because it wasn’t really socialism, to be true socialism it needs to be an anarchy (that is not really an anarchy).”
Spot the not Jean Claude-Juncker quotes.
1. When it becomes serious, you have to lie.
2. I’m ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but when I want to be serious…I am for secret, dark debates.
3. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would it be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?
4. If it’s a yes, we will say “on we go”, and if it’s a no we will say “we continue”.
5. I cream a little when Nigel speaks.
I guess that was too difficult. The answer is 5.
I was going to guess 5 but I was really scared that wasn’t the right answer.
For me, 5 was the least scary.
Fuck – pick any pair and one of them to be his. Scary. More scary the Euros think is normal.
Foreign meddling!
F-u-u-u-c-k! This has the support of both parties and the governor, and is going to happen.
I *really, really* wanted NC to stand firm on this shit (and against its own worthless Johnsonesque state LP, I might add), but I was kind of suspecting despite their tough talk about a booming economy, they were going to pussy out and save face with this shit. It is opposed by the gay movement and technically won’t even satisfy their precious corporations’ demands either (though we’ll see whether they bow to the local Dem pragmatists, or to the always-woker-than-thou nationals who will probably condemn the yokels).
Fuck this shit. I fucking loved HB2. The new law lets the municipalities pass private-property bathroom laws (the only part I ever gave a shit about) as soon as 2020. And seeing a state give the finger to corporate bullying alone was worth it. Good while it lasted.
Why do you hate trans people, Diego?
Because the fuckers are *everywhere* these days, and now the Target is always out of my size panties when I check.
I kid, I kid. (I’m actually quite petite.) It should be noted, btw, that I actually *favor* the “trans-friendly” NYC/Charlotte bathroom rules (i.e. anyone can use any bathroom they like, much as the progs would like to spin it otherwise) for my private property and for government buildings. (HB2 left those renting out a government building, even short-term–as in stadiums–with the freedom to set their own bathroom policies, so the NCAA–shockingly enough–was full of shit.) Seems “moar freedom” that way, and it seems it hasn’t really been abused so far (so it also is kind of stand-up-to-moral-panicky). Kind of surprised it hasn’t been abused, tbh, but there you go.
Target is always out of my size panties when I check.
I kid, I kid. (I’m actually quite petite.)
Go on…
This cartoon sums up pretty precisely how I feel the bathroom issue would play out if we let progs run the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MchxUdi0MO8
Maybe getting blamed for NCAA Tournament losses was the last straw.
From what I hear of NC, I wouldn’t be surprised. Once the NCAA made their move, I was actually surprised it lasted as long as it did.
I hope the “progressive groups [who] say the proposal is a sham” are right, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
Like I said, it’s a sham because they’re not getting what they want, which is full repeal or better (like a statewide Charlotte-style regime). Apparently it continues the pre-emption of local laws until 2020, and bars any statewide agency from making statewide policy without the legislature itself approving.
So they’re right, the bone it throws them from what I see is pretty small. But I am furious any was thrown at all. Why? There was no need to compromise; *the law is already on the fucking books*, and the Republicans have huge (and ostensibly “very conservative”) majorities in both houses. Instead, Charlotte (and probably every other urban) property owners have less than three years of freedom left before the bathroom police kick in the doors.
So they’re right, the bone it throws them from what I see is pretty small.
In two and a half years or so, they’ll get pretty much everything they want at the local level. Seems like a pretty decent bone to me.
I love how both progressives and family values whatevers seem to think trans people didn’t exist until a few years ago. Or, if they didn’t exist, apparently never pee or poo in public bathrooms.
Mrs. Doubtfire smiles. Creepily.
I love how apparently none of these people have ever heard of gay people or bisexuals, so they think that trans people are the only people who might go to the bathroom (or shower!) in the same room as people they find sexually attractive.
Tim Kaine, mendacious twat.
The actual text he’s
misrepresentingflagrantly lying about:I am willing to forgive a lot of what Trump does on the basis of nominating Gorsuch. The fact that they both drive deceitful hacks like Tim Kaine bonkers is icing.
I wish Gorsuch was able to say, “If I suck so bad, why did you all you Democrats approve me for the circuit court?”
Politics in this country is so bad it’s at the point that I don’t even need to read the articles. All I have to do is know who is against something in order to support it. This is a great example. Tim Kaine is against Gorsuch, therefore I do not have to read a single word Gorsuch writes or says to know that I support him.
In defense of Tim Kaine, Gorsuch is making a complicated point and Tim Kaine is really stupid.
It’s a fair cop.
He is absolutely one of the dumbest motherfuckers ever to run for VP. I don’t know why Quayle, Ford (who wasn’t really dumb at all, just clumsy), W Bush, Herman Cain (math B.S. from an elite school), etc. all got stupidity as their primary narrative during their executive campaigns and this guy largely got away with a bunch of cracks about looking like a dad or whatever. If that fucker was my dad I’d probably die of embarrassment if I had the brain capacity to comprehend death as a concept.
I admire Trump. The point of a VP is to be demonstrably worse than you so no one actually tries to kill you. Most POTUS candidates pick a stupid VP. Trump picked an evil one. Rather inspired, I think.
Do you mean you admire Hillary, or that Pence is evil in a thread about Kaine?
The second one. I was pointing out that Hillary used the same line of thinking as all other recent candidates, which is to nominate a horrendously stupid VP. Cheney and Pence are not stupid, but they are the exceptions.
“Ford was a clutz” was media fabrication. Yeah, the got him on tape stumbling a few times, but the guy was an named MVP for his University of Michigan football team. The media surely could’ve found a little footage of FDR faceplanting.
I misspoke. I like to bring this up, but I missed the mark this time. I meant to say, the Michigan football star and Yale Law School grad who had the random misfortune to get caught on tape stumbling a few times, and ended up portrayed as a retarded guy tripping over his own feet.
I will say this: I’ve been on teams with a lot of America’s most skilled collegiate and international athletes (far from being one myself), and some of those fuckers are really fucking clumsy in real life. Lazy, too.
The Veep is always ripe for ridicule. Ford is the first president I can actually remember and it instilled the attitude in me that presidents are bumbling simpletons. Of course not accurate, but at least it wasn’t the slobbering worship of POTUS than its become for supporters.
Why? Well, for starters, what does everyone you mentioned have in common? Hint: it has to do with elephants and the color red.
“I don’t know why Quayle, Ford (who wasn’t really dumb at all, just clumsy), W Bush, Herman Cain (math B.S. from an elite school), etc. all got stupidity as their primary narrative during their executive campaigns and this guy largely got away with a bunch of cracks about looking like a dad or whatever.”
The media is invested in the stereotype of Democrats as worldly, intelligent people and non-Democrats as deranged, stupid, and boorish. Just look at how they largely gave Obama a pass on blunders like saying “Navy corpse-man” and calling the Falklands/Malvinas the “Maldives”.
I’d recommend Economics in One Lesson
I just read that, after hearing abo9ut it for years and years. It could have been written last summer, except for the technical quality of the writing.
I keep giving my copy away to members of my innumerate, ineducable extended family.
I should just go full bore and order a box load, like I do with copies of the Constitution.
I’m glad I saw this. I was planning on going right into Sowell’s book, but with the fine recommendation here I’ll go with Hazlitt first. I do have this pesky little thing called the Professional Engineer’s Exam coming up April 21st, so tbh neither of these books have any shot of being picked up before then.
Good luck on the PE! I took the FE and was shown how little I actually knew.
I quit watching football for years, and restarted a couple of years ago. Replay needs to go. They completely disrupt the rhythm of the game, and then blow the call anyway. If they are going to do replay, they should only get to watch any particular shot once, at full speed. None of that endless frame by frame bullshit. If there isn’t an obvious and compelling reason to overrule the call on the field, play on.
Replay and the commercials have ruined it for me.
XP. Commercial. Kick off. Commercial. Punt. Commercial. FG. Commercial. Kickoff. Commercial. Repeat ad infinity.
We went to one of the NCAA tournament games last year and in person you really feel the difference in the play. It’s seriously astonishing any team can manage momentum, when there’s a “time out on the floor” called what feels like every other minute of play. I know the broadcast wants commercials, but it’s ridiculous how many breaks there were. It was far worse than any NBA game I’ve been to (including playoffs).
(basketball – should’ve been in there somewhere)
Amen. Thank God for the DVR.
All the “fixes” replay is supposed to address don’t fix anything, they make it worse.
The “officials” making the call are a Star Chamber in a war room in NFL headquarters in NYC.
I don’t know who those people are, or their qualifications
They have it sorta right. It should be like NHL. Office calls game, initiates replay. They make decision there. Refs at game have nothing to do with replay.
American football is an incredibly boring game, made incredibly more boring by television and the current lawyering of it to death.
Watch some Rugby, especially sevens Rugby, and you will be amazed at how fun a sport centered around throwing a ball and tackling the guy with the ball can be to watch.
I will cop to watching Dateline as a guilty pleasure, but only when Keith Morrison is doing the story. His voice is awesome.
Ugh. My wife loves Dateline and 48 Hours. Morrison with his whiny voice is the worst.
–“It’s amazing how much money touches every sore spot in a relationship. My wife and I are going through Dave Ramsey’s FPU to “tune up” our finances now that I’m making a paycheck again, and it’s painfully obvious how different our respective priorities are. I’m very risk averse and want to be completely out of debt within 5 years. She’d rather have nice things and not think about money. There was definitely some sleeping on the couch happening this week.”–
Yep.
It’s funny I know they say money can’t buy you happiness but right now my family is going through some tough times and a conversation I had with my wife about them yesterday I noted that there wasn’t a single one of those problems which could not be eliminated or significantly mitigated with a large influx of money.
It might not be able to buy you happiness but it damn sure can buy your way out of hell
The people who say money can’t buy happiness do not actually understand the way money works.
“They have never been poor. They have never known the joy of a welfare Christmas.”
I’ve read that money actually can buy you happiness, to a certain point. Once your needs are met, the the amount of additional happiness you get from money starts to diminish. But no doubt that if you are constantly worried about paying the bills and feeding your family, you are definitely unhappy.
Money can in fact buy you happiness. What people don’t understand is that the amount of work you put in to get the money has to be equal or less than the value of the money. If you’re making a million dollars a year but working 110 hours a week then no you won’t be happy because you’ll have no time to actually use any of the money. This is where lesser minds get the ‘money can’t buy you happiness’ thing because they’re factoring in the amount of time it takes to make the amount of money they would need to be happy.
I’d be happy with $1,000,000/yr at 110 hours per week. Because, personally, the personal cost of working that many hours would be more than outweighed by the joyous sound of screeching progressives. Schadenfreude is sweet.
Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy security. Security is a pre-existing requirement for happiness.
It also buys freedom to go where you want when you want, which makes a lot of people happy.
I chatted with dad awhile back about mom and the divorce. He talked about the good times they had before she graduated and started teaching, and he started making okay money. Suddenly all the money problems that had plagued their life together were replaced with a new raft of problems, mostly of their own making: he worked too much, she was treating him like a child, he indulged us kids too much, she was too frugal. They split up maybe two years into their newfound middle-class lifestyle. After that, money was central to their problems again.
I’ve had financial good times and (really) bad times. There are no redeeming qualities to the bad times, other than motivating you to never be there again.
Money can absolutely buy happiness. More importantly it can buy peace of mind.
Good luck and keep fighting.
Amen. Been there too and I don’t want to go back. Things are much better now and I bust my ass to keep them that way.
I noted that there wasn’t a single one of those problems which could not be eliminated or significantly mitigated with a large influx of money
Maybe, but I’d be surprised. Depends on why you don’t already have the savings and/or why you need a big chunk of money now. In my experience, it doesn’t really matter how much you make – if you are the thrifty, planning sort, you’ll be fine absent a disaster, and if you are the I want nice things now dammit sort, there’s never enough money.
I can understand why it wasn’t clear but only a small part of the problems are related to lack of money.
Having the State Police call you because they are taking your 14 year old daughter to the hospital for an emergency mental health exam and similar family issues are the bulk of them
The most succinct assessment is that money is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for happiness.
You watch local news?
All it is is a parade of mug shots and the moral panic of the day.
And traffic & weather on the 5’s!
Don’t forget the cute anchors and reporters.
Am I the only one who couldn’t care less about this Russian bullshit?
No. My response to the “Roosky Hackjob” is the same as my response to the money-in-politics crowd. Show me where it affected the vote count. Did Putin find some way to stuff the ballot boxes in Florida and Pennsylvania?
Or- show me where each dollar spent is counted as a vote.
If not, STFU.
Sorry, “hacking” an election is not the same thing as releasing a candidate’s emails. When I hear “hacking”, I think of tampering with voting machines or people who count votes.
Also, I’m still convinced it was Kim Dotcom and not the Russians.
Also, I believe even the emails were phished, not hacked.
It’s not even that. If the Russians spread (or even were accused of spreading) honest to god false information and propaganda in order to elect Trump I would be upset. That is not at all what happened though. People are claiming that the Russians leaked actual truth about the DNC like that’s somehow a bad thing. So if Snowden leaks state secrets he’s a national hero, but if the Russians do it it’s WW3 time. I don’t get it.
The hyperventilating over “connections” and *gasp* this person had communications with a Russian and that somehow strengthens our case makes Alex Jones seem not so unreasonable in comparison.
Can we just call it what it is – a conspiracy theory. That term has enough of a negative connotation to make people realize what’s going on.
I’m skeptical it even happened. Crowdstrike’s CTO is a member of the pro-globalist Atlantic Council (a Ukrainian, I think I read, so that’s another anti-Russia strike). It’s not exactly like the Democrats would be averse to planting evidence of an attack on their server that changes the conversation from “DNC are perpetrators of election shenanigans, according to emails leaked by whistleblowing insider” to “DNC are victims of election shenanigans by evil foreign power”. And thanks to Wikileaks, we know that not only is such evidence-planting possible, but that private US-affiliated contractors have gained that capability. Is Crowdstrike part of that list, I wonder?
As a secondary benefit, it helped to make Trump the scapegoat for their own party’s/candidate’s sins of corruption, particularly pro-Russian corruption. They may have also believed it would be an adequate fig leaf for the Clinton administration to justify not investigating the Obama administration’s misuse of intelligence to spy on an opposition campaign.
That the DNC servers were never even looked at by the FBI definitely make the whole thing a big iffy. I mean, my God, the yelping for “evidence” for Trump’s wiretapping accusation, plenty of yelping about “independent prosecutors” for the Trump-Russia connection, and yet not one shred of even half-hearted “let’s start the investigation by looking at the actual server this malfeasance supposedly took place on”. That’s how you know it’s all a lie and poor/biased journalism is helping it along. If anybody was really interested in “getting to the bottom of this” the first thing they should want is the FBI to look at the item in question. But echoing silence.
Lets not forget: the FBI asked to look at the servers, and the DNC refused. Which makes me wonder what the DNC has to hide.
So much this…
I’ve been avoiding the MSM as well, and I’m feeling a lot better for it. I also un-followed anyone on Facebook that posts political crap. And to be honest, this site is much better for my stress levels than the previous site, what with all the trolls and screeching about the Trump-induced end of the world over there.
That’s funny, because I only go on FB to hang with ancaps or share punchy memes to annoy my progressive inlaws 😀
I hear you about the MSM though. The screeching is just too much.
I also unfollowed everyone on social media who posts political crap. Don’t miss the people in question.
Wondering what exactly they hope to find proving Trump and the Russians were working together. He took money? He’s a billionaire. They told him about the Wiki dump? Why would Wiki do that and why would that even matter?
read my quote above. If the data that wikileaks revealed is true (and there is no one arguing it isn’t) I don’t care who it came from or how it got out. If Trump really did mastermind the whole thing we should be thanking him for telling us the truth. To anyone with open eyes this Russian conspiracy is at best a dead end for the dems and at worst a serious trail of tears if they aren’t careful.
Trump somehow got to Assange at the right time he had this stuff on the DNC? Or…he hired someone to obtain the info and then handed it to Wikileaks in secret? There’s no way in hell they are going to find a smoking gun on that. I agree it doesn’t really matter if the Russians did it given the info was authentic, the U.S. does it all the time and Trump can’t be linked to it directly. Now maybe you could pin it on one of his “associates”.
Because…[screeching]…literally, HITLER! Treeeeeason!! Worst president EVAR!
I mean, seriously, at this point I can’t decide if the left has lost their last marble or if they think this is the path back into power?
The problem is that screeching louder has actually been working up until very recently. When you acquiesce to a tantrum it just makes the next tantrum worse. They haven’t realized people aren’t caving like they used to yet so they haven’t adjusted their plans.
That sounds very plausible…does that mean that we’ll see peak durp soon, or you think they’ll just triple-down until they win an election again?
The later one.
Are you married to my wife?
The big issue we have regarding Dave Ramsey is over insurance. I want plenty and the right kind. She would buy everything under the sun.
She had a bad situation due to her Dad not leaving enough insurance (he never thought he would outlive his wife, for good reason, she lasted 20 years with brain cancer, including 7 after they declared her terminal) But I dont think it was that, they just didnt plan for it. And so a lot of stuff fell on my wife after he passed.
“Are you married to my wife?”
Are you?
It could be worse. Your wife could be an insurance broker. Her concept of risk could be completely and uncorrectably biased as a function of handling nothing but claims impacting her profitability bonus.
My niece is an actuary.
The big issue we have regarding Dave Ramsey is over insurance
I didn’t think he had radical views on insurance. He says you need life insurance and that whole life is a scam, but I can’t think of anything else he says about it.
Damn tagging fail on the phone.
Also, as with everything Dave ramsey, helix philosophy is the financial equivalent to AA.
His*
*sigh*
I believe he says get 10 years of salary if you can afford it in term life insurance. He also has a company that he recommends.
He is opposed to things like hospitalization policies and cancer policies and the like.
My wife has a hospitalization policy for her and our daughter. She wants me to get on it, I want to get rid of it.
Right now our compromise is we keep it until we have X in the bank and then we get rid of it. We shall see.
I’m very risk averse and want to be completely out of debt within 5 years. She’d rather have nice things and not think about money.
I am very happy that I am the spender in the relationship while my wife is the cheap ass.
I frequently ask my wife what it’s like to be wealthy.
“Yeah it’d be a real shame if they took MY money out of OUR wallets.”
http://www.adultswim.com/videos/family-guy/hi-c-tropical-punch/
Haha, I am going to have to use that one.
I am the frugal, free spirit.
My wife is the spendthrift, detail oriented one.
Except, I have to do the budget, she doesn’t get that process. Once I have it, she can follow it. She just wants me to give here a total in each category and then she will follow it.
As long as I can keep her off-budget spending in control, we do good. But that can be hard sometimes.
My wife and I have agreed to get permission from one another to make non-budgeted purchases over $25. It has worked pretty well for us. Though, we made that rule when I was only bringing in $30,000 a year, perhaps it’s time for a revision. 😉
That’s why I have a slush fund to finance my firearms habit ….
The key to a happy marriage is not letting your partner ever see the inside of your gun safe.
She can identify wheel guns vs semi-autos, black vs stainless. She knows I have 4 guns. I just have to not buy anything in FDE or anything exotic.
I lol’d. I’ve gotten around this in part by building guns. That’s not the only reason I’m doing that, mind, but a big one. So instead of $1200 at a gun store, it’s $250 here, $75 there. And she wouldn’t recognize a lower if it bit her in the ass, especially considering the state of my office at home.
Though, we made that rule when I was only bringing in $30,000 a year, perhaps it’s time for a revision. ?
If you don’t revise that rule, you’ll continue to have a very tight, disciplined budget.
That reminds me of one of Dave Ramsey’s lessons: “If you were broke when you were poor, you are going to be broke when you are rich.”
Buuut, daddy wants a new AR-15. 😉
You can build one for cheap, and not only that but you can buy the pieces as your budget allows, and wait for good deals to come along.
I should really figure out how to build one from parts. Just like a PC, you always get exactly what you want, better than the prebuilt crap, and usually for a better price.
If you build a *good* one from parts, it won’t cost much less than a *good* standard production gun, but you’ll have the advantage of building exactly what you want into it.
Just about everyone I know who has bought a stock AR-15 ends up changing a few parts on it, which means they have the bits they already paid for sitting around in a box depreciating. At least a custom build can avoid that kind of failing. But don’t expect to be able to build something as good as an LWRC or something directly comparable to it for half the price.
I can live with that. Also, just having the knowledge of how to build one of those from parts I think would be very helpful.
So, totally humping a dead thread here, but if anyone that has successfully built an AR upper has advice on specific brands/types of parts to seek out/avoid, I’d be interested in hearing said advice.
Absolutely true.
FWIW, the richest dude I know drives an old Suburban and couldn’t give two fucks what anyone thinks. He’s got a couple nice properties, but they are very private and secluded. His kids all work and seem to be very much like him.
It’s definitely a good way to live.
Well, that’s the underlying idea behind “The Millionaire Next Door”, buying your cars by the pound and keeping them forever. That philosophy is applicable across your whole life, and it works.
I have a dear friend who runs a very successful business and I remember her coming over to very excited to tell us that her business did $1MM that month for the first time ever. As she left, her 2003 dodge stratus hit a speed bump on the road and her bumper fell off. Next time I saw her the bumper was back on, secured by bailing twine.
Awesome. I love stories like that.
She’s been on the other side of success. I guarantee it.
Told myself when I hit it big I’d buy a James bond car. Picked up a ’96 Z3 1.9. for a shade under 3k. It now has 250k miles on it and my plan is to have the children learn proper driving technique with it when they’re of age. My only gripe is there aren’t enough parts cars left in the junkyards.
See, my gf and I (we’ve been together for 8 years so basically married) don’t have a joint account. I make the money, I pay the bills. If she wants or needs something, she pays for it herself or she asks me. It makes finances so much easier.
Yea, but that’s one of the delightful challenges of marriage – coexisting with entirely joint finances.
I really believe that getting through something like that improves the relationship.
Married for 26 years. We could never work this out; my wife lives completely ‘hand-to-mouth’ and we could never have a safety buffer.
We separated accounts after it nearly ended our marriage. Still have issues, but now I have enough set aside to handle her ‘oh-shits’ and put her on an allowance.
I’m here to speak truth to power. NY style pizza is greasy, cheap, and bland. And the cheese and pepperoni usually taste half uncooked. If you like it, you are an argument for euthanization.
While I am an ecumenical pizzaist (except for chicken, bacon, ranch “pizza”), a pizza should not be purchased by the slice or folded.
Speak to us of the correct pizza, O pizza prophet.
I prefer the official title of ‘pizza revolutionary.’
You say greasy like it’s a bad thing. To me, it’s pretty much the whole point.
I prefer thin crust for an even better carb to fat ratio.
Fuck off with dat shite!
NY pizza is chewy, melty, and delicious!
She’d rather have nice things and not think about money. There was definitely some sleeping on the couch happening this week.
You know who else just wants nice things and doesn’t want to think about money?
Every woman. Ever?
Paris Hilton?
Communists?
Ron Paul?
Wondering what exactly they hope to find proving Trump and the Russians were working together. He took money?
Go back to the shrieking about DT’s tax returns. They evidently believe there’s a 1099 from Rasputin Global Domination Enterprises for “services rendered”.
What those services are, and how they turn America into a client state of the Russians, I have yet to comprehend.
Golden showers. Copious, vodka fueled golden showers. Thousands of them.
I posted this in AM Linx for the guitar, and now it looks like I get to repost it here for the lyrics:
Well now I don’t read that daily news
‘Cause it ain’t hard to figure
Where people get the blues
They can’t dig what they can’t use
If they stick to themselves
They’d be much less abused
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2HRrjpiM7Y
Great post, btw. I dig the groovy brain nuggets format.
To find out what your elderly neighbor FOUND IN HER ATTIC!!!!!?
I remember one time, back in July of 2000, the local ABC 6 o’clock news lead story was about a beehive in Sherman Oaks. I shit you not. Granted, it was a large beehive in a tree. But it was a beehive. Lead story in a region of 11 million people.
My wife and I still talk about that to this day. Also, that squirrel on waterskis.
I’ll take a squirrel on waterskis or a big-ass beehive over the fucking OMG RUSSIANZ!! any day.
And that cat played with that yarn… for the rest of the day.
Song of the day. Little Dilla Joint. Little mood music fu’ya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbEpP7tLvMU
Speaking of the MSM, and why sane people should not watch; I was just listening to Chuck Todd interviewing Debbie Stabenow about Gorsuch. Holy shit, what a maundering retard. That guy she and all the other Democrats voted for, last time around, is totally out of the mainstream. He sticks up for corporations.
Law? Constitution? What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Some big mean corporation fired some guy, and that’s not fair.
I had a very young (like, 22 years old) colleague that was very fiscally educated and enjoyed researching and participating in various kinds of trading. He was talking about his fiancee one day, and he said she was even more fiscally educated and very disciplined. I told him he needs to hold onto her like grim death.
Like, hugging her until she suffocates to death? Like a Sugarfree comic?
Eggsackly
Yeah, I know how this goes…
Not like this?
See, people love to bring up Rape Horse, but no one remembers the part afterwards where she tries to masturbate with a sword.
what the hell is that?
Junji Ito comic about some serial killer who sews lovers together, I can’t remember what the name of it is.
I’m right there with you. I do click on MSM for giggles and rage therapy occasionally.
If you build a *good* one from parts, it won’t cost much less than a *good* standard production gun, but you’ll have the advantage of building exactly what you want into it.
Just about everyone I know who has bought a stock AR-15 ends up changing a few parts on it, which means they have the bits they already paid for sitting around in a box depreciating. At least a custom build can avoid that kind of failing. But don’t expect to be able to build something as good as an LWRC or something directly comparable to it for half the price.
I built a 1911. I spent as much (a little bit more) as it would have cost to just go buy a decent shooter off the shelf. But I wanted to do it my way.
All this gun talk is making me want to go out and get one. But, no more guns until I buy a good safe to put them all in.
There’s a case to be made for a simple, solidly built steel cabinet with a lock.
$80 worth of angle grinder, 10 minutes Youtube viewing, a bit of perseverance and a vacant house effectively negates the benefits of a ‘good’ safe. Plus, a safe is a very large, very visible artifact that says “I’m worth opening”.
Ill just have to buy a bigger safe to put my first safe in ;).
Just keep them out on the coffee table like the rest of us do. That way we know when one of the kids touches one.
Haha, yea, my 3-year old knows no law but her own… I don’t think that is likely to work out well.
From an 80% frame?
From an 80% frame?
No. 100%. It had to come through an ffl.
On a warm morning last November I visited Appomattox because I was in the area for work. I learned that the Civil War was fucking savage. Lee’s troops had marched for at least 72 hours leading up to the surrender. Every single attempt to supply the army was seized or destroyed while cavalry provided incessant harassment. Also the wooded area around the final battle site was indeed clear cut and tilled. Much of northern VA where the final battles played out were much less forested during that time. Reading the writ of free passage given to each of Lee’s men welled up a weird emotion in me. Each soldier was given a letter that effectively “I have laid down my arms and am free to go home”. It’s hard to imagine what living through that war was like. I have ancestors on both sides of the mason-dixon line.
racist.