Well, I’m headed to Dallas today to drop my daughter off at the airport so she can head to California for the summer and teach kids how to swim, and artificially inseminate cattle. I just gotta get on Amazon and order her a gross of turkey basters before I go.
Read the links…
Hoo-boy, did the Penguins ever shit the bed last night in the first period. It was probably as painful to watch for Pens fans as that rendition of “O Canada” before the game started. I swear that took 15 minutes. And half of it sounded like gibberish. Anyway, I think the Senators are gonna win that series now. And I think Nashville will win the west. Which will get us that dream matchup all hockey purists have been begging to see.
OK, I’ve dithered enough. There was some real shit that went down and we need to talk about it. So I bring you…the links!
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller named Special Counsel in probe into Russian election interference. Impeachment countdown clock starts…NOW NEVER!
Students may soon have more options.
In an absolutely stunning move, Charter School advocates have gotten control of the Los Angeles school board. Seriously, this is a huge story that’s gonna get overshadowed by the above one.
Maybe he was just trying to add a little flavor to one of their pies.
Another accusation
You know, after another accusation, perhaps its time to roll out the death penalty. I mean, come on.
Have a great day, friends!
(Edit: second link fixed.)
RIP Chris Cornell
At least we still have Lou Reed.
Almost 4 years later, and that still never gets old.
I’m gonna go there:
Soundgarden sucked, Audioslave sucked worse, and You Know My Name is the 2nd worst Bond film song of all time.
Still tragic when anyone dies that young.
Well, I’m a metalhead. I can’t stand sludge and that whole Seattle scene. So going there doesn’t bother me.
I can’t stand
sludgegrungeI was gonna say.
Although it was never really clear to me where doom ends and sludge begins. Anyway, here’s Electric Wizard.
https://youtu.be/F-x6qqNy0mo
Acid Bath, bruh
You guys are dead to me. At least for tonight.
Unlike Cornell, who will also be dead tomorrow night?
Damn, that’s colder than a 2 day old corpse.
Brett’s fallen on black days.
Would you say he’s been outshined?
I heard Nirvana for the first time when I was 12, and it was a pretty big deal. But when I was a kid I still mostly listened to either stuff like Nitzer Ebb and Skinny Puppy, or like Megadeth, or Fugazi. Grunge was sort of a brief sidetrack for me, musically, but I remember thinking of Soundgarden as kind of the weakest of the bunch, led by Sonic Youth, with Nirvana coming in second place. Maybe it would’ve been different had I lived on the west coast.
I never considered Sonic Youth grunge.
Sonic Youth were not grunge. They are awesome.
This. The more I listen to them the more I like them.
So this one time, I took 3 hits of acid and went to a show; Thurston Moore and Nels Cline on dueling guitars, backed by Mike Watt bass and George Hurley drums. Two hours of improvised guitar noise played by the best in the biz. The sounds literally blew my mind. Plus the acid. Alligator Lounge, Santa Monica circa March 1996.
How do you bother going to anything after that?
I was at this way underground show in NYC. I forgot who was playing? Pussy Galore? Well, they were there. Anyway, the door was giving out a free hit of acid to everyone. I didn’t take it. So I’m sitting around, and a mouse ran across the floor. So I took the paper bag from what I was drinking, and scooped up the mouse. Then I go outside, and I start talking to Thurston. I’m explaining a ball governor. Which was pictured on one of their album covers. Thurston is very amused by the name, and seemed surprised, as he didn’t know that was what it was called. Kim, who always tried to give me shit, said she didn’t believe me. Then she starts taunting me, what’s in the bag? I keep telling her it’s a mouse. She called bullshit. This went on for a bit. “No, really, the rodent, not the computer thing.” So eventually, I opened the bag at her feet. Eek!
Their first couple of albums… I lost interest when Daydream Nation came out.
Yeah, they definitely occupied their own category assuming that weird NYC art rock with a ridiculously hot bassist is an actual genre. Plus they pre-date “grunge” by about a decade.
In what way is Kim Gordon a “a ridiculously hot bassist”?
In what way is Kim Gordon a “a ridiculously hot bassist”?
By comparison to Kim Deal?
Can you explain every weird boner you get? I didn’t think so.
Kim isn’t conventionally pretty, but there’s something sexy as hell about her. Well, at least there was when she was younger, she’s probably around 60 by now.
I find the bassist from Silversun Pickups hot for some reason. Not sure why. She’s not pretty. Weird boner, I guess.
I’ll take your word for the former and agree with the latter. They were on Sub Pop around the time when that label was pushing the whole “Seattle sound” thing, and to the extent that my 12-year-old self was aware of music scenes I’d always hear them talked about in the same breath as Nirvana and Mudhoney and all them, so I tend to think of them as fellow travelers if nothing else.
I tried, but I could never enjoy Soundgarden.
RIP, though. 52 is pretty damn young.
I’ve come to the odd conclusion that being a rock star is not a recipe for a long life.
Keith Richards says ‘huh?’
Random mutants don’t count.
Heavy Metal, on the other hand…
Which one is the worst?
Other than Nicole, of course.
Die Another Day, of course.
It’s so bad it’s the 1st and 2nd worst
Die Another Day, and, much as I loved Duran Duran back in the day, A View To A Kill.
View to a Kill was AWESOME! But not, in fact, written by Duran Duran. They were having their major internal band conflict around that time and asked John Barry to come in and “help” them write the song.
I was at just the right age to be obsessed with grunge music. After Nirvana, Soundgarden was my favorite.
This sucks.
You shut your whore mouth. At least where Soundgarden is concerned, I couldn’t give a shit about Audioslave.
I might have liked them had not the first summer I could drive, Black Hole Sun played literally every 15 minutes on the radio, which means that of the 3 or so rock stations in Houston (IIRC, Rock 101 was still going, but sucked in drive time) one was always playing it. I only had 2 mix tapes at the start, and I was tired of them long before I was tired of driving. It was brutal.
Black Hole Sun was their worst song and yet got all the play. Amazing how it always seems to work that way.
Ugh. Like Groundhog Day amounts of play. I still can’t listen to it.
I guess I can see that. Black Hole Sun was terrible.
I was going to say you are wrong about Audioslave…
But then I realized I only like Cochise and Show me how to live. Plus Tom Morello is an asshole.
Confirmed: Audioslave sucks.
I despise everything about Tom Morello as a man, but I love his playing.
Their first album was great. Period.
Yeah back in the day I hated Soundgarden, Nirvana, The Screaming Trees, etc – I knew the alternative / underground scene was dying in the late 80s, but grunge was one of the nails in the coffin. It seemed that music got a whole lot less interesting in the 90s – with a few exceptions.
Bob Mould is still one of my favorites. Not sure if you like him much, but he came out of the punk scene with Husker Du.
His music never jelled with me – at least the songs I’ve heard. If you have any favorites I would gladly listen to ’em!
Give Workbook a listen. Also Sugar’s Copper Blue.
Both excellent albums. He’s a tremendous songwriter and all around cool guy.
Listening to Workbook now – In some ways I’m reminded of Richard Thompson
Interesting. I think they have very similar personalities.
Here’s a WTF podcast with Bob Mould if you have some time to spare. Skip to 15:30.
If I Can’t Change Your Mind back from his Sugar days.
A Good Idea too.
Screaming Trees
You monster.
If i remember correctly, Chris Cornell told the people at Lalapalooza 96 he and Soundgarden would refuse to play the tour unless the could bring the Ramones along as well. So without him, I would have never seen the Ramones. He’ll always have my gratitude for that.
Lies. “You know my name” isn’t even the worst song from the Craig era. The jack white song from Quantum of Solace is the worst. At least the Cornell one sounds like it belongs in a Bond movie. White and Alicia Keys are talented musicians, but that song is garbage.
Man, that just sucks. He was the best of the grunge rockers.
^ This.
Mark Arm or gtfo
Say hello to heaven Chris, you already had the voice of an angel.
Obligatory
Yep. He had one of the very best voices in Rock-n-Roll. RIP
Yessir. Ignore the haters above. He’s feeling Minnesota tonight.
And, given the condition California’s in, definitely looking California.
That’s really sad. I’ve never considered Soundgarden to be part of the whole “grunge” thing. To me they were just straight-up rock, and pretty solid at that. Cornell had the most exceptional voices of the era, and he put Eddie Vedder’s insufferable yodeling to shame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWFE-poTaXM
Its also the anniversary of Ian Curtis’ suicide… coincidence???
Yeah it is, but still.
RIP. Black Hole Sun came at the just the right time for an impressionable teenager. Was talking to a colleague at a conference not too long ago and he raving about a recent Chris Cornell concert. Said he put on a terrific live show with both his own songs and past bands. Water under the bridge now.
https://youtu.be/3mbBbFH9fAg
29) Some evidence, mostly anecdotal, that insect populations are declining. I would like to congratulate this article for not once mentioning climate change or global warming as an explanation for this. It made me take the rest of the article much more seriously.
The article’s biggest flaw is the way it jumps around from time period to time period. Insect populations have been declining since the 1940s! No, it’s a new problem, since 2013! No, it’s due to neonicotinoid pesticides from the 1980s! It also seems to think small surveys in Germany and Great Britain are likely representative of far more widespread problems. Well…maybe? But no evidence is presented of that.
The article seems to push the pesticide theory. Except we were using DDT like crazy in the 1950s and 1960s, and the article barely mentions that, except to suggest certain beetle populations affected at the time recovered afterwards. So maybe our more directed pesticide use today isn’t such a big deal? It also suggests reduced habitat space—except at least in America, we use less land for agriculture than we used to, and much of the northeast is more forested now than it was a century ago.
If indeed there is really a problem, I like this explanation: “light pollution that leads nocturnal insects astray.” I know in my own lifetime, light use has grown much more intensive. I remember as a kid gas stations at night would have a few lights on, but nowadays gas stations are lit up like the spaceship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind all hours of the day. Same with office buildings and housing developments. At my grandparent’s house in the Ozarks, the 20-miles-distant town was barely visible from their deck at night, now it looks like a small city and seriously degrades star viewing in that sector of the sky. It seems pretty likely all this light could mess with creatures that navigate by the light of the moon and stars.
Light ‘pollution’ is a problem for sea turtles that nest along the Atlantic coast. Many places have banned outside lights on the sea side of buildings during nesting season.
Especially since it’s linked to the same story (until the Edit Fairy comes by)
Charter school in LA link is same URL as probe into Russia election interference link.
Oh wait, was that the joke?
Nope, looks like the edit fairy came by.
I picture the edit fairy as a morbidly obese man whose wings aren’t even strong enough to lift him off the ground. So he splits his time on the computer editing bad hmtl and playing World of Warcraft.
You’re surprisingly close. Although not as much WoW.
and he’s wearing a diaper.
I thought of the green fairy from Eurotrip
Do you mean this Green Fairy?
Impeachment countdown clock starts…NOW NEVER!
impeachment is so January 21st. We 25th Amendment now.
The Slow-Motion Assassination of President Trump
it’s fake outrage over fake manufactured stories. The press is the enemy.
NYT seems to have trouble with the definitions of words like “hope” and “is”.
An anonymous source told me that all this use of anonymous sourcing is not restoring the media’s credibility. I’m a journalist now!
My butthole whispers to me, too.
“I also think we are seeing with the recent leaks the first phase of Mutually Assured Destruction of our government. The leaks will destroy Trump if they continue. But if that happens, no Democrat and no anti-Trump Republican will ever be able to govern in the future. Payback is guaranteed. The next President to sit in the White House will be leaked to the point of ineffectiveness.”
Nope, unless Trump really does drain the swamp. The majority of the people who run these things will not destroy a president who supports the state.
^This. As much as I hate to say it, Trump is the last hope for any actual type of reform or diminishment of the deep state. If they win out over Trump, they will be empowered like never before and there will be no chance to effectively oppose them in the future.
My take as well.
The new Praetorian Guard.
I think those of us that wish for smaller government and/or a third party candidate standing a chance, should pay careful attention to what is going on now. What the left is doing now is basically make sure everyone realizes that unless the WH is owned by them and the lefts government uber alles doctrine is the only one allowed, they will not allow the country to be governed. This is plain and simple sabotage. They will keep flinging shit until something sticks or fatigue basically makes it impossible for anyone to roll back leviathan and the dastardly work of the statist-marxist alliance. This is basically a coup playing out with the perps resorting to chaos to confound the populous and make the people that don’t breathe the left’s agenda to just tire of this nonsense and disengage. If that happens we are toast.
I’d relax. The U.S. government is doomed.
These flailings and paroxysyms are simply sympoms of an organization that is incapable of handling the challenges life throws at it.
And, the more they flail, the less people will bother paying them any mind.
I’ll relax when I can stop paying them any money.
It will ultimately end either in disengagement and surrender, or armed conflict. Not sure which way it’s going to go at this point.
I believe the exact same thing would be happening if a miracle occurred and we somehow elected a Libertarian President. The Left and Deep State would declare war, mobilize their journalist allies, and try to destroy him.
And I agree with WTF – this won’t end well.
I would favor direct democracy that Adams describes but in more localized ways. Otherwise, we’d be fellating President Hillary’s shriveled cock.
Baaahahaha…..good luck with that one. The 25th Amendment exists to prevent a repeat of Woodrow Wilson drooling his way through his second term. It’s not a “hey, this guy sucks and we want to get rid of him” clause. There is specific language detailing the kind of impairment necessary to invoke the 25th Amendment, and armchair diagnoses of “He’s crazy and unstable!” don’t cut it. As Charles CW Cooke (no Trump fan at all) noted, there’s a word for what they’re advocating: coup.
Remember when the Democrats were complaining how Trump supposedly said he wouldn’t accept defeat?
“Donald Trump used the high-profile setting of the final presidential debate here Wednesday night to amplify one of the most explosive charges of his candidacy: that if he loses the election, he might consider the outcome illegitimate because the process is rigged.
Asked directly whether he would accept the outcome should Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton prevail on Nov. 8, Trump said, “I will keep you in suspense.” Clinton called Trump’s answer “horrifying,” saying he was “talking down our democracy.”
http://www.pressherald.com/2016/10/19/trump-clinton-call-each-other-puppet-in-heated-debate-over-russia/
I never understood the freakout over Trump “refusing to accept the results” if he had lost the election. What the fuck would he have done, raised an army and invaded the White House? A president taking office is not contingent on the approval of the defeated candidate.
Part of it was just he wasn’t playing the game of “accepting defeat nobly” (which is a laugh when Hillary couldn’t even come out and give a concession speech).
But more practically, at least some of them were probably afraid of his money. He could’ve paid for quite a few recounts dug up fraud that they’re all so sure doesn’t exist.
“Polls show Mr. Trump trailing Hillary Clinton in many crucial battleground states and facing close races in states that usually back Republicans, increasing the possibility that he could lose the election by a big margin in the Electoral College. Since contested election results must happen on a state-by-state basis, a stinging defeat could render Mr. Trump’s threats to dispute the results a moot point.
To emphasize that, the Clinton campaign initiated a new fund-raising pitch imploring supporters to help run up the score.
“We can’t just beat this guy,” Christina Reynolds, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Clinton, wrote to potential donors. “We’ve got to beat him so definitively that Hillary’s victory is undeniable.”
Democrats seized on Mr. Trump’s comments Thursday as evidence that he ws not fit to be president.
President Obama, speaking at a rally in Miami, skewered Mr. Trump for complaining of a rigged system and rejected the notion that an election in a country as large as the United States could be manipulated. He said that Mr. Trump was weakening the country by casting doubts about the validity of the election.
“When you try to sow the seeds of doubt in people’s minds about our elections, that undermines our democracy,” Mr. Obama said. “You’re doing the work of our adversaries for them.”
““We are a country based on laws, and we’ve had hot, contested elections going back to the very beginning,” Mrs. Clinton said. “But one of our hallmarks has always been that we accept the outcomes of our election.”
Mr. Kaine went further in a series of television interviews Thursday, saying Mr. Trump was trying to take down a “central pillar” of the political system because he is on track for defeat.
The uproar over Mr. Trump’s potential unwillingness to abide by the results of the election threatens to further unravel a candidacy already in sharp decline.”
Woops, forgot link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/us/politics/campaign-election-trump-clinton.html?_r=0
Ha
good times, good times
Wow, that’s as close to a bloodless coup as I think you can get without the implication of violence and while remaining within the legal pale. Imagine the shitstorm that would ensue should Congress invoke that amendment. Let’s talk about optics: what would the national mood be if a person elected on the basis that he would “drain the swamp” because he comes from outside the DC establishment was removed from power by the establishment?
Maybe such a move would finally wake people up to the fact that voting is mostly a waste of time? It doesn’t matter which party is in power, they both have a vested interest in keeping the power they have, and they aren’t going to part with it peacefully.
Not only that, I don’t see Trump going, “oh well, guess I’ll pack up and leave.” Then what happens? Capitol police vs. Secret Service shoot out on the White House lawn?
Million Gun March on DC by the irredeemables.
No joke, man. I heard yesterday on MSNBC of all places that in recent polls Trump’s “very favorable” is something like 20%. That’s a big number of possibly very motivated people. Then you’ve got to consider that using the 25th is obviously an end-run around the more difficult impeachment proceedings and will be seen as such, which is going to galvanize people in the middle. Sure, some people will say that these are exceptional circumstances and go along with it, but I’m going to bet a lot of people who are lukewarm on Trump (or even against him) will see Congress as the bigger threat.
So then you get demonstrators, some of whom no doubt will be armed, then the ensuing confrontations with law enforcement, some of whom will be sympathetic to the protesters. It has the potential to get very ugly, very fast.
Just 2 years ago, talk of armed resistance against factions of the government would be shot down as ridiculous. These days, it’s becoming more and more accepted to voice concern about such things.
“The law carves out a defense for juveniles having consensual sex with someone within three years of their age, sometimes called a “Romeo and Juliet” rule, which would allow a 17-year-old to legally have sex with a 14-year-old.”
The thing about Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is that Juliet was not quite 13 (and at her age, her mother had already given birth to her). I’m not sure it’s exactly clear how old Romeo was in the play.
It was on the curriculum in High School, but we did “Taming of the Shrew” instead. So I’ve never read the play.
We read it in 9th grade, and then watched the Zeferelli movie. There’s a scene in that where Romeo’s bare ass is visible, and our teacher rewound that part at the request of the girls in the class. I bet that teacher would be fired today (she was one of the best teachers I ever had, btw).
I got hooked on Shakespeare after reading Titus Andronicus. That play has it all.
Olivia Hussey. I had a huge crush on her.
I remember that movie from high school); so I had to do some quick research and apparently she was also nude in some prison movie.
I still say that Hollywood needs to invest more time investigating the female prison genre…
I know you’re just being snarky, but I always like to remind people that a real-life women’s prison is the unsexiest place in the world.
A lot of the inmates get morbidly obese on commissary food; it seems like the rest of them get freakishly skinny. Most of them reek either because they are too apathetic to take showers or because the place is so disorganized that they aren’t able to get to the shower during the times allotted. Then there are the “studs”, the ones who “identify” as a man and walk around with a buzzcut and what little facial hair they can grow (actually, a few of them had straight-up beards. It was freaky).
That’s the one with Juliet’s boobs right. Quite an enjoyable movie.
It is. It was by far the highlight of 9th grade English class.
When we watched it, our English teacher fast forwarded through that scene.
She didn’t mess with the murdering with swords part, but was offended by boobs.
*sigh*
I would like to thank everyone who gave advice and suggestions yesterday. I did read them, even those I didn’t comment on. And I revised the paragraph I shared.
I’m not going to reduce the number of times the heraldric motif shows up, it’s a deliberate cultural element within the Empire (or the Volkmund as stated above)
I still think you can use Big Bloody Magpie or something, not by the main characters but as a mock/comic relief by people who don’t like the family/peasants etc
I’m not sure how it would fit in with the contours of the story as I have mapped in my head. Unless it’s the Dwarf Traditionalists jeering at them as they’re run out of Quendaverus…
Sounds like the exact scene I had in mind.
Isn’t that 12-year-old a sex offender for having sex with someone who is only 14?
See, that would make sense if the 12-year-old had been a dude.
You laugh, but I heard a story by a guy from my parents generation who was 16 when he had sex with a 17 year old and got arrested and nearly prosecuted for it. The law in Illinois at the time was that if a man older than 15 had relations with a woman younger than 18 without being married it was statutory rape, IIRC.
I’m very old fashioned when it comes the subject of children having sex. My thought is that neither of them are old enough to consent and therefore it should be left up to the parents to handle the situation, preferably with the girl’s father shooting the little bastard.
My cousin knocked his girlfriend up when he was 14 and she was 13. He’s 41 now I think. And his grandson is in like fourth grade.
I had “The Talk” with my sixteen year old grandson this weekend. He has his first “real” girlfriend and I started the conversation by asking him what he and the girlfriend planned on naming their first born. Given his shock I can only assume that my daughter and SIL never explained to him to correlation between sex and pregnancy. His sister, who is thirteen, told me that she is never going to get “preggers” and that she plans adopting any children she might have. It was a fun conversation (extreme sarcasm) but I’m getting the vibe from their parents that because they are “good kids” they don’t have to worry about things like sex and pregnancy. I do have a double standard when it comes to these things. If someone touched the granddaughter I’d be beyond livid. If the grandson got his seventeen year old girlfriend pregnant I would just be very sad.
If you’re guilty of wrongthink, the BBC will use whatever info it has on you and doxx you.They threaten to inform your employer, school, ISPs or LEOs.
Orwell was right, he was just off in his guess as to when this would all start occurring. Unless you’re an optimist – then you might be inclined to believe his writing helped forestall it for a few decades.
Well BBC is sort of the government …
Free thought begets question.
Question begets heresy.
Heresy begets retribution.
So THAT’S where all the Pravda writers went after the Soviet Union fell.
Being a rat, the lowest of the two steps below child molester/murderer low, seems to be a virtue now.
Student who stabbed boyfriend may avoid jail as it would ‘damage her career’
“It was just surgical practice, honest!”
So, unicorn or don’t stick it in crazy? I am conflicted.
Would…
not want her as my surgeon.
Meanwhile, make an unsavory comment on the BBC website and they’ll actively try to ruin your career.
By giving you a job at BBC?
All the comments at the Big Black Cock website are unsavory.
I don’t know about that particular BBC website. But my occasional perusal of Pornhub yielded far less derp then any mainstream sites. Also the OT’s are way better.
The “Pussy Pass” is alive and well.
Something something misogynist remark, you get to take her jail time now, you sexist. Can’t have such awful people running around, after all.
Women are being oppressed by the Patriarchy!
I would go full-in on a civil suit and claim future earnings.
indeed.
Wow, real RKBA protections from North Dakota. Also, dude married up his second time.
I have to figure out what district this is so I know to stay out of it.
I assume it’s not the first or last time this district court judge has been overruled. Here’s her quote from her ruling:
Emphasis mine. What gets me is why you think that her reason for having a gun on her own property has any bearing on this case! Kudos to the NDSC for reversing a horrible district court decision:
I don’t know why I said the judge was female above. He’s a dude; John C. McClintock, Jr. Way too cool of a name to rule like he did.
“I’m gonna use good judgment. I haven’t sent a docket back in 40 years. But, pilgrim, you caused a lot of trouble in this case. Might have got somebody imprisoned and somebody ought to overturn you in the mouth, but I won’t…
The hell I won’t.”
It always astounds me that 1) WaPo continues to publish Eugene Volokh, and 2) That Volokh would continue to want his name associated with them.
Well, he is the sole voice of sanity there, and it is funny to be able to say that the rest of your coworkers belong in padded celss.
Jerry Brown Calls California Taxpayers ‘Freeloaders’
Not illegal immigrants or welfare queens – people who actually pay the state.
In response to them not wanting to pay even more taxes to support actual freeloaders to boot.
A friend who went to Italy a couple years ago was telling me his impression of various cities. Naples he described as a small really nice old city surrounded by a slum of 3 milion people. That’s the road California is on.
It’s pretty much a slum once you cross the grapevine going north until you get to San Francisco or San Jose. And the inland empire is like the third world.
We are not third world! The IE is great!
909 For the Win!
Russian priest blesses government computers with HOLY WATER in bid to ward-off NHS-style ransomware hackers
Sounds like a plan.
Well, if you short out the computers, they can’t be hacked. Genius!
Still better than the McAfee suite.
Does the priest bring coke and hookers with him?
Was that the hotel room he stayed in while on the run?
Maybe he’s a priest of the Temple of Syrinx and those are the computers that fill their hallowed halls.
Let us give thanks for this bounty of Omnissaiah, and may its machine-sprit look favorably upon our request!
Seems legit to me. Time that Christian church got onto the turf already, we’ve been sacrificing chickens for decades.
Ohm…
Ave… Machina…
That song brings back some great memories. Saw Billy back in the day. Dez Dickerson opened – it was fantastic show.
Of course, his first band was pretty good, too
“Education Secretary Betty DeVos’ fellow billionaires poured millions of dollars into the campaigns of charter school advocates who are now in charge at the Los Angeles Unified School District.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/5/17/1663470/-Open-thread-for-night-owls-Funded-by-0-001-ers-charter-school-backers-take-over-L-A-school-board
Because teachers unions never spend money on politics?
That’s different, their soul is pure
If they had one.
Geez, that’s too bad. If they hadn’t spent that money, nobody would ever have supported charter schools. But they spent it and everybody’s opinion changed.
ooooo…. now it’s the 0.001%
I’M HORRIFIED
The butthurt from Daily Kos and its commentators makes this all worthwhile.
hahaha. And let me tell you, unless the reformers were spending heaps of money in some place I didn’t see, there is no fucking way on god’s earth that they outspennt the teacher’s union. My union mailings outnumbered the reform candidates’ at least three to one, and maybe five to one. TV ads seemed pretty equal. But even if I wasn’t a pro-school choice person, I think I would’ve been suspicious of the amount of money the teacher’s union was shoveling to keep this dude. Reeks of him being their stooge.
Pro reform did have a great ad they ran the last few days, maybe that’s what cost so much. Zimmer’s the guy they wanted out. So Melvoin’s ad called his tenure “Zimmeritis” and the ad was constructed like one of those drug ads Then at the vey end, they do the “zimmeritis may cause loss of innovation, poor performance”, etc and the whole ad ends: “Keep out of reach of children.” lol
Valve is not your friend, and Steam is not healthy for gaming
I like how people spreading the word and making memes about steam sales are doing free labour for valve, because it is marketing and marketing is a job or something
Polygon? Why would you link to that fake news site?
Wasn’t Polygon example #1 during the whole #GamerGate fiasco of exactly what the problem was?
last I heard. Non-gamers more interested in social justice than games reporting.
They put out some pretty decent feature articles on occasion, it’s everything else that’s ridiculous. Them and Kotaku are the two best examples of what’s wrong with games journalism.
Polygon are the ones who bitched about The Witcher 3 being misogynist and only having white people, and therefore Beverly affected the reviewer’s enjoyment.
*Severely, damn Autocorrect.
Were they also the ones claiming Resident Evil 5 (I think it’s 5 anyway) was racist because all the zombies were black, when it takes place in Africa?
They weren’t founded until well after 5 came out, that sounds more like Kotaku. They did bitch that Bayonetta was sexist because of her design though.
Kotaku were also the ones hailing Horizon: Zero Dawn as wonderful because it represents women’s struggle against the patriarchy and ripping on Bioshock Infinite for being racist because it gives you the option to throw the baseball.
The credibility for those sites died when one of them was trying to bait the developers of Sniper Elite into saying that the act of shooting Nazis is somehow a rallying point for people to resist Trump and other fascists.
I stopped reading that rag when one of the authors replied to my comment on his article that was claiming GTA V was evil because you can pay hookers for sex. He was basically claiming that women don’t have agency and made an analogy to the real world (Jack Thompson style). I mentioned something about how bringing them out of the shadows so they aren’t abused by both cops and shitty citizens would probably be a good idea. He literally scoffed at me and called me a vile human being. Never visited that shithole ever again. I’m pretty sure that they don’t even enjoy videogames, or life.
wahhhhh…. a company made a product that people like and are willing to pay for wahhhhhh…..
EA launched its Origin client in 2011, and demanded that we install it if we wanted to play Battlefield 3. Our collective Stockholm Syndrome for Steam kicked in en masse, and we rained hellfire on this “greedy corporation” for its temerity.
Yeah, it was because we all hated EA’s corporate greed, and totally not because Origin sucks ass and has literally the worst join system in the entire history of internet-enabled games.
Yes. I probably paid $50 to get all of the C&C titles and then never played them because Origin sucked. Meanwhile Steam basically keeps track of my games, acts as a store, and is otherwise inoffensive.
I’ve had to fully scour any trace of origin from my machine and ininstall from a hard to find complete installer because it had bugged out on an update before.
Steam at least has never completely broken so as to prevent me from accessing my games.
Add the slow start time, bad interface and other frustrating design choices to what you said and every time I get asked to fill in a customer survey in Origin I tell EA “Abandon it and sell through other distributers”
every time I get asked to fill in a customer survey in Origin I tell EA “Abandon it and sell through other distributers”
I do the exact same thing. I used to get about 2 of those a month. I haven’t gotten one in probably close to a year now.
I use GOG for the majority of my games, whenever I can, and Steam for the rest, or I torrent them to avoid the DRM after buying them. But TBH, Origin has been improved dramatically nowadays. It’s definitely usable and pretty slick, it’s mostly more unnecessary now than anything else.
Yeah, I try to use Steam for everything, but Origin isn’t awful. It just isn’t as nice.
You have low standards for “Usable” then. I’m never certain that the program will do what I’m intending to tell it to, and the interface keeps leaving me at best annoyed, at worst confused.
If by “slick” you meant “oily sheen” then maybe.
How recently have you used it? It’s pretty easy to go from “Store” to “Library,” install your games, and launch. That’s all I use it for, rarely.
Now, you wanna take about a client that’s a real pain in the ass, that’d be Uplay currently.
Past weekend. I still haven’t finished my Andromeda playthrough.
I don’t even use the store anymore (It kept denying that my card’s security code was valid for that card type, so I figured EA didn’t want my money).
Haven’t used the store in a long time, I usually buy my Origin games from GMG because they give you at least a 20% discount, sometimes more.
I can’t remember the last time I bought a game anywhere but G2A or CDKeys. I am pathologically incapable of paying full price.
I remember when games came in boxes, and the biggest inconvenience was having to punch in a sixteen-digit alphanumeric code.
For once, that’s something I actually remember too.
I’ll take digital over that.
tbh I prefer Steam to the boxes, but I did get FO4 from Hastings (REMEMBER HASTINGS?!) last year because I didn’t want to wait for 60GB to trickle over our shitty broadband connection.
About 4 months ago after an update I couldn’t close Origin from the systray anymore – had to manually kill it from task manager every time. They finally fixed it a week or two ago. Can’t join a BF4 or BF1 match from my Origin friends list – have to launch the game first and join from the in-game dashboard, which at completely random intervals doesn’t show my friends online (when they’re in-game and talking on TS, so I know they’re there). Speaking of which, the shared BF4/BF1/Hardline dashboard still can’t properly toggle from one game to another – you have to close your current game, launch the other game, and then use the exact.same.dashboard to play. Shift-F1 overlay is enabled across the board but doesn’t work in at least half of my games. I find the new welcome page/home screen obnoxious. WANNA PLAY THE SAME GAME YOU PLAYED YESTERDAY? NO? WELL FUCK YOU!
I’m not in love with Steam either, but it’s easy to ignore the bits of it that I don’t use or don’t like, it runs my games, closes when I ask it to, and joining friends is a single-click operation even if I don’t have the game running (what a novelty).
It’s gotten to where if I like a AAA game, I buy it where available and then just torrent the damn thing and play that version instead. Less headache that way.
I don’t really have any issues with Steam. It’s always worked just fine for me, with a few minor hiccups, and the Store side of the equation has been fine. Most of the big things people seem to be mentioning lately as evidence that Valve is destroying PC gaming or whatever are things that either don’t bother me or that I can easily ignore.
With that said, I’ve started migrating to the GOG client. No real reason, I just prefer their model (you can download a full backup of any game you own through them) to Steam’s. Plus, you can connect your GOG account to your Steam account and as publishers allow GOG will give you a copy of the game on their platform. I’ve got something like 400+ games on Steam and only one has been eligible thus far, but still.
These days, though, 90% of my games come through Humble Bundle, so I’m kind of at the mercy of the pubs who put the games up as to whether it’s a Steam key or not.
To be fair, people are constantly bitching about EA’s so-called “corporate greed.”
Before ponying up 60$ to play the next Battlefield or FIFA, that is.
I literally understood nothing about that comment
Me neither. Wanna play Rock’em Sock’em Robots?
I call blue!
How about another 5 hour session of Axis and Allies? They let you put Europe and Pacific together now!
Axis and Allies was the bomb, and yes, we changed the rules and alliances all the time.
I’m trying to get my son into it.
You mean tabletop or is there an electronic version of it now?
Last time I actually played a full game of Axis and Allies against someone my own age (as opposed to my kids) the game took 19 hours to complete
Sega Genesis or nothing
Okama Gamesphere?
The Aurora KAR-A-A-A TE MEN
I had these
I dunno about the sex offender thing. I mean 12 year old dude … Then again 14… Was the girl past puberty at least?
Past? Unlikely. Started? Probably.
It’s a 9th grader and a 7th grader. There were definitely girls who were “more mature” when I was in the 7th grade.
I first had sex when I was in 7th grade (1990 or so) with a girl who was my age, and I was not that girl’s first. The Norse considered adulthood to begin at age 12. Therefore, I’m a Viking.
QED.
Ugh – my wife had a case with a man in his twenties who was given lifetime sex offender for something he did when he was 14.
Is there any kind of appeal process for something like that to get it scrubbed from your record?
Or is it just a matter of it costing too much?
There is – but it’s difficult to get through, especially some of the conservative counties here. No elected judge wants to be seen for “helping a sex offender”.
IBM constructs a 17-qubit quantum processor, its most powerful to date
Unfortunately, it just keeps repeating 42.
Nice.
why 17?
Age of consent?
/snort.
And in your Through the Lookinglass political article of the day, Dennis Kucinich, asks a question that many of us want answered. Why are the careerists trying so hard to fuck Trump? Why are so many people going along with it?
Dennis is kooky on a lot of things, especially economics, but he actually is a principled anti war lefty. Good for him on that.
I disagree with him on most everything, but I do believed he’s principled and honest. What drove me away from the Republican party, a slow process over a decade or so, was the realization that both parties are staggeringly corrupt to their cores. Worse, that corruption has become their raison d’etre, the entire organizing principle of the whole enterprise. Everything else is just theater for the masses.
He worked with RP on getting the audit the Fed through. Failed, but I’ll take him any day over almost any other pol with a “D” in front of their name.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rZdAB4V_j8
Anyone remember Mike Gravel? He was an honest Lefty, too. Just as crazy as Kucinich, though. Also, Kucinich’s wife is hot.
https://www.google.com/search?q=dennis+kucinich+wife&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2i_TJxvnTAhVRw2MKHQ0SDxQQ_AUICigB&biw=1280&bih=591#imgrc=mI7QSD4rCWF-jM:
And 31 years younger too.
See John McCain. Man, what a douchebag.
The thing that pisses me off most about the Republicans is that the party in general is disingenuous. The Democratic Party more or less does what it says on the tin, but the Republicans for decades ran as the party of small government conservatism, which pretty much goes straight out the window as soon as they enter office.
Or they wimp out when they get in power. They actually think that if they just moderate their positions and don’t go too far that the media will give them a fair shake. How’d that work out for the Bush’s?
Economically speaking, the Republicans are essentially the Whigs reborn (+ some cruft from other factions). The Whigs were of course the party of the mercantilists after the Federalists were nuked by an electorate fed up with their corruption.
The Republican Party – for all its blather – has stayed remarkably consistent. They are mercanitlists for evah.
As a former cleveland area resident and employee of LTV Steel, all I can say is
HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!
I’m not going to say that without his efforts LTV Steel would have survived its second foray into Chapter 11. I will say that his interference and acts of political grandstanding- blatantly purposed to improve his chances of winning the next election – ensured that the negotiations between the union and the trustees failed. He got catapulted into the senate. A spectacularly capable integrated steel mill was turned into a few enterprises in a sea of polluted land.
Fair enough. All I know about Cleveland is that my father quit his job rather than move there with his company in the 1980s, so I’ll take your word for it.
Also, his wife is hot. And maybe a foot taller than he is.
About time someone said it
The answers aren’t obvious?
LOL
Well, at least they’re persistent.
They’re pretty confident they are going to take over in 2018, I hope they don’t I need more Liberal tears.
that leaves us with Paul(the hatchet to all things deemed subsidies) Ryan and that is a bit scary as well
Replacing subsidies with refundable tax credits for the same or larger amounts = OMFG SKY IS FALLING OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK.
Meanwhile, the price a lot of people are paying AFTER the goddamn subsidies or their equivalent tax credits is still higher than the amount they would have paid for unsubsidized insurance prior, and their annual deductible is at least twice as much as they would spend out of pocket purchasing medical care without any insurance at all.
at least dems will rule
I see they’ve given up all pretense of representative, constitutionally-restrained government.
Damn, I crawled out of my hole just to say this.
This is really how they see our system. Rulers & subjects.
Persisterhood? Oh shut the fuck up.
WTF happens when taxes are massively cut and the grease trap cleaner at the local McD’s suddenly has a ginormous paycheck? I’d love to see the intelligentsia and the actual working stiffs who have been tricked into thinking tax cuts are bad, go at it once the working stuff realizes he’s been duped.
The new narrative has been released. Suddenly, the WaPo had an opinion piece saying the Trump wasn’t the problem- it was Pence.
They’re starting to delude themselves that they may actually be able to get rid of Trump, so now they have to DQ Pence so they can install herself?
The difference between the Democratic Party and the NYT and WaPo is almost indistinguishable at this point
Almost?!
So they consider themselves wilted flowers?
“Dress Made Out Of 10,000 Starburst Wrappers”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/starburst-wrapper-dress_us_591d6f1ce4b034684b098dd3
My only thought is “would”, but I haven’t finished my coffee.
Strawberry is the best Starburst flavor, closely followed by lemon. Deal with it.
GROSS. Lemon and orange or GTFO!!!
I’ve had my coffee and, while she is very cute, that kind of obsession and creativity unnerves me.
What would she do if you pissed her off?
Put 10000 starbursts in your gas tank? Cut you 10000 times with a piece of paper?
X-acto blade undies?
Should’ve used Mounds wrappers for the top.
It’s like 10000 starburst wrappers when all you need is some fucking skittles.
Emily Seilhamer describes herself on her Facebook page as an artist whose “passions are painting, upcycling, sewing, and crafting.”
Upcycling? Those dickholes have to make a new word up for every fucking thing they do. Whatever happened to “reusing” or “repurposing”? Those are perfectly accurate words for this. But NOOOOOOOO. These cunts have to call it “upcycling”. Which is so retarded not even apple autocorrect recognizes it.
Might. Oh, who am I kidding? Probably would. Plus, I admire her sense of thrift, although impracticality and precociousness get on my nerves pretty badly.
Don’t forget the obsessiveness involved in actually doing the work required to turn 10,000 skittles wrappers into a dress.
Yeah, this might be one of those situations where you’d probably want to meet up at least a three hour drive from your home, just to be safe.
She’d just make a diaper out of 3000 fortune cookie slip so she wouldn’t have to stop on the way.
3000 fortune cookie slip
So racist. The Chinese can do plurals, you know.
I think you mean “prurars”.
No, he means Americans, the Fortune Cookie was invented in this country, dammit!
It was invented either in Japan, or in California by an Asian!
I know it wounds strange, but California is still a part of this country.
Ranking the Pain of Stinging Insects, From ‘Caustic’ to ‘Blinding’
One passionate entomologist poetically describes and ranks over 70 species’ painful stings.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-colorful-pain-index-of-the-stinging-ants-bees-and-wasps-around-the-world
Um, wouldn’t this bias the results towards higher rankings for earlier tests as the person builds pain tolerance? Or did they do multiple run-throughs in differing orders?
Probably a good description of a single fire ant bite at #25.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a ‘single’ fire ant bite.
Democratic Rep. Val Demings Tells Facebook Commenter: ‘My First Amendment Right Is Different From Yours’
The retarded part is she probably meant the second amendment instead.
Either way, it still doesn’t make any sense.
Either way she’s correct.
She edited, too. First she put: ‘My First Amendment Right Is Different From Yours’, then she edited to: ‘My First Amendment Right Is Different From Yours’?, then back to ‘My First Amendment Right Is Different From Yours’
“Cops In This City Haven’t Killed Anyone Since 2015. Here’s One Reason Why.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/salt-lake-city-police-de-escalation_us_591c9070e4b03b485cae1129
OK, two other reasons might be that Salt Lake City has fewer than 200K people, and almost half of them are Mormon.
Oh, there’s another reason, but I don’t want the BBC on my ass so…
Big Black Cock?
In SLC? Unlikely.
Wow! Two whole years! Break out the champagne!
Also SLC itself is quite small the surrounding metro is wire populous and there have been quite a few police killings in the last two years.
Ya, isn’t SLC about a three block radius around the Tabernacle?
A little bigger then that, but according to Wikipedia city Pop is 190,000 while metro pop is 1.1 million. Plus most crime is pushed into West valley and South Salt Lake.
Deadspin asks the important question, “Which NBA Playoff Team Is The Most Woke?”
I’d say that’s sarcasm, but this is the Gawker network, so I’m guessing it isn’t.
What the hell?
Does anyone actually care?
Bonus from the comments: Complaining about San Antonio’s (black female) mayor being not woke enough for some reason. This was linked. I guess gays are higher up on the ladder than blacks or women? I get confused on how it goes. http://www.kens5.com/news/nation-now/orlando-shooting/mayor-taylor-heckled-at-orlando-shooting-vigil/246585397
It’s sarcasm. They seem to be going for self deprecating humor, but managed to just amplify their own stupidity.
Sounds like a perfect question for the new Economic and Social Programming Network.
FUCK DEADSPIN.
Segregation lives
Take your best guesses as to the race of the perpetrator, because the paper ain’t gonna tell ya’
Democrat?
Maybe they’re mocking Harvard?
“Anyway, I think the Senators are gonna win that series now. ”
I haven’t given up hope yet, but it does seem like the Pens injuries are finally catching up with them.
So you’re saying it’s white priveledge?
Dammit this was supposed to be a reply to Count Potato on the mormons.
Probably more like “sober privilege”.
“I me wed: why are more women choosing to marry themselves?”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/women-choosing-marry/
Why can’t English people understand English?
Florida man tries to kiss rattlesnake; gets bitten
Oh, you.
He should have offered that snake some chicken nuggets.
http://www.wyff4.com/article/woman-arrested-after-offering-sexual-favors-for-chicken-nuggets/9586738
“Former FBI Director Robert Mueller named Special Counsel in probe into Russian election interference”
The Trump administration naming Robert Mueller as Special Counsel was probably a big mistake.
This is the FBI investigating itself.
This is the deep state investigating itself.
In a just country, Erdogan and his facist goons would already be kicked out of the country or arrested.
Odd to see, muslim realist/defender of the faith Donald Trump cozy up next to Islamofacists like Erdogan even tighter than Merkel. CUCK!
Pursuing America’s security interests properly can and will lead us to make strange bedfellows.
If and when it’s in America’s interests to cozy up to Joseph Stalin, then that’s what we should do.
Between progressive prudishness going back to Reagan’s pragmatism and eight years of neocons, who made progressive prudishness look tame by comparison, we’ve forgotten some really basic lessons on how to win.
The Democrats used to argue during Most Favored Nation for China debates, effectively, that Americans shouldn’t be free to enjoy the benefits of free trade with China–not so long as China perpetrates atrocities like the ones at Tienanmen square, holds political prisoners, and occupies Tibet.
Give me an argument that working with Turkey against ISIS isn’t in America’s security interests. Please don’t tell me that Americans shouldn’t be free to enjoy the benefits of a security relationship with Turkey because of what Erdogan does to third parties.
As far as I’m concerned, if Barack Obama sold the interests of American security short because pursuing America’s best interests meant he had to shake hands with people who weren’t as pure of heart as he was, then Barack Obama was basically betraying America. On the other hand, if Trump is shaking hands with a nasty guy like Erdogan (even though Erdogan stinks to high heaven) because shaking hands with Erdogan is in America’s best security interests, then Donald Trump is acting like a grown-up.
Don’t forget literally holding hands with the Saudis.
That was a PR mistake.
I’m perfectly willing to listen to arguments that being allies with the Saudi government isn’t in America’s best interests.
P.S. Did you know the Saudi royal family now has some 15,000 members? Blows my mind.
England has fallen behind in so many ways….
Anyway, I don’t know if not being allies with the Saudis is worse. But they are major supporters of terrorism.
Yeah, I’m not sure what benefits accrue from having the Saudis as “allies”.
Having them as allies made a lot more sense during the Cold War, when any oil that disappeared behind the Iron Curtain effectively disappeared from international markets.
Having them as allies made more sense ten years ago, when the fracking revolution was just getting started, and the price of oil was $150 a barrel. TWI is now at, what, $45 a barrel?
Having them as allies can still make sense if you consider their behavior in OPEC, when they refused to help Iran by lowering their production and goosing the price per barrel–even as the international community was squeezing the Iranians with sanctions over their violations of the NPT. (Because of mismanagement, Iran is rarely able to produce its OPEC quota).
Having them as allies makes a lot of sense so long as they can serve as a proxy against Iran.
I see downsides, too. But I can also see the upsides.
One of the other upsides that should probably be considered is the alternative to them being allies. The alternative to being allies with SA probably isn’t the status quo. If we weren’t allies, we might be enemies and lose our influence, and there’s a downside associated with that, too.
What do you mean when you say “the Saudis”?
They have 15,000 family members!
The Saudi government is a vicious dictatorship–they’re brutal towards dissenters.
Not everyone in the House of Saud agrees with government policy, that’s for sure.
+32 wives each
Well, since people working for Erdogan decided to start beating up American citizens, that changes things slightly. It isn’t about being icky or pure of heart, it’s about 1) not allowing foreign governments to come and attack American citizens with impunity and 2) being real about Turkey and their march towards Islamism.
My post was hyperbole, but there should have been swift action taken regarding the assault yesterday and a deeper discussion about our relationship with Turkey
Well, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be engaging them at all, but they’ve pretty blatantly been aiding ISIS at different points, so I would at least say we should genuflect to them because of their strident help in defeating ISIS. Maybe we should for a variety of other reasons, but not simply that.
*should NOT genuflect
When you say that Turkey is aiding ISIS, what are you talking about?
Bombing the Kurds who are actually fighting ISIS might be considered some back handed aid.
Turkey’s war against separatist Kurds goes back before the War on Terror. Goes back to before the First Gulf War in 1991.
If an expanded alliance makes Turkey more likely to stop doing that so long as the Kurds are fighting ISIS, then that might be in our favor in the future.
I wouldn’t kick Turkey out of the fight against ISIS just because they’re also fighting the Kurds. Hell, the Kurds are fighting Turkey, too. They want Turkish land for Kurdistan.
Turkey fighting against the Kurds shouldn’t stop us from benefiting from a security relationship with Turkey–if having such a relationship is in our best interests otherwise.
Oh I am sure that fight goes back far before 1991.
We shall see in the future how far Turkey goes toward becoming even more of an islamo-fascist regime. I would not be surprised if they start having more in common with ISIS than they do with their NATO allies.
I think the days of the secular democratic Turkey are gone for now. I am not arguing we should kick them out of the fight and or stop all relations with them.
Especially as it relates to the Kurds, Turkey has done things like allow ISIS to operate near and over its border with impunity. They are also the most likely source for ISIS’s stolen oil circa 2015 getting to market. Turkey is a major entry point for weapons and terrorists into Syria, with only occasional obstruction from the military. Turkey also knows about Turkish nationals traveling back and forth to Syria and only make a show of trying to actually track those people down.
There is a lot more “not 100% sure, but come on” type of accusations that would only make sense given Erdogan’s move towards making Turkey a full on Ottoman Junior League.
See my comment above about the Kurds.
Turkey considers ISIS a hostile threat, and they’ve consistently fought against ISIS–since before average Americans even knew who ISIS was.
Here’s a basic rundown of that ongoing conflict between Turkey and ISIS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey%E2%80%93ISIL_conflict
If Turkey is a conduit for weapons into Syria, it isn’t because they back ISIS. They aren’t supplying ISIS with weapons on purpose. Part of Turkey’s problem is that almost everyone involved in the Syrian conflict is an enemy of Turkey: Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Army, the Kurds, Assad’s forces and even Russia, too–Turkey is a NATO member and was all the way back to the beginning of the Cold War.
That a country along the Syrian border became a conduit for weapons into Syria during a revolution that became a civil war that became an international proxy war isn’t surprising. Doesn’t mean that Turkey is aiding ISIS on purpose.
The U.S. gives military aid to the Mexican and Colombian government that sometimes ends up with the bad guys, too. The wisdom of that aid is an open question–the motives of our presidents, much less so. When the U.S. does that, it isn’t purposely aiding FARC, Colombian death squads, or the Mexican cartels. And since Mexico shares a border with the U.S., it shouldn’t surprise anybody that the U.S. is a conduit for arms into Mexico.
Things like selling their stolen oil, purposefully not capturing terrorists who they knew exactly where they were, and having lax travel check points near a war zone has nothing to do with the Kurds.
At best, they see ISIS as a lesser evil in the region. That isn’t exactly a comforting thought, nor is it analogous to US plans in Central and South America backfiring. Of course, there is some clandestine shit that the US does that is not simply “backfiring”, but actual direct aid to bad people. Again though, that isn’t the same as the reasonable allegations that these porous borders and arms trafficking are facilitated by people not in the clandestine portion of the military/government.
I’m with you on this one. We don’t have to stop all work with Erdogan over this, but everyone of those thugs that beat up the protestors should be escorted to the airport and promptly kicked the fuck out of the country.
THey were whisked out of the country almost immediately. The key is to never let them back in, even as tourists.
Ah, no kidding? I had not heard that. We will never know who they were then. I assume they were all embassy staff/security thugs.
It reminded me of the Shah’s thugs beating up those German protestors way back when.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benno_Ohnesorg#Legacy
That was the seminal event in the formation of the June 2 Movement and the formation of the Red Army Faction (Bader-Meinhoff Gang).
My understanding is that Subcomander Marcos of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas was a survivor of the Tlateloloco Massacre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre
Students don’t need any help with radicalization. That’s when bad things happen.
Bad things.
Donald Trump, continuing to be his own worst enemy
(he misspelled “counsel” there.)
I would say “Never drink and tweet” but he doesn’t drink so…
Eh i guess i dont see it. His official statement said he welcomed it
This is trump being trump
He makes a good point.
Loretta Lynch and Comey did a better job of protecting Obama and Hillary from scandal investigations than Jeff Sessions and Comey, that’s for sure.
Lynch and Comey understood that their role was to be Obama’s scandal goalies. The idiot Republicans think they are supposed to play by different rules and be “even-handed” and “objective” in addressing the concerns and accusations of the people who oppose them. They are called the Stupid Party for a reason, constantly bringing muffins to a gun fight.
Objective? Maybe, but I’m thinking they are just politicians acting like politicians and watching which way the wind is blowing. That and they’re bought by lobbyists. Being a scuzzy politician is bad enough, but being an ideological one is worse.
There’s a reason I used scare quotes.
Fair enough. Oddly, I think we give them too much credit by calling them the Stupid Party. I prefer to call the two parties the “psychopath party that doesn’t give a shit about you” and “the psychopath party that does.”
I’m not sure which label applies to which party. I think I’d rather have a psychopath that doesn’t give a shit about me vs one that is really into me and what I’m doing (or not doing).
“The psychopath party who thinks they give a shit about you.”
FTFY.
I agree, GL, which is why I’m glad Trump beat Hillary.
I’ll repeat the following, here, as well:
The Trump administration naming Robert Mueller as Special Counsel was probably a big mistake.
This is the FBI investigating itself.
This is the deep state investigating itself.
When the FBI investigates itself, it finds that the FBI did nothing wrong.
When the deep state investigates itself, it finds that whomever was undermining their power acted criminally–and Trump has been working to undermine their power since before he became President by trying to forge a cooperative relationship with Putin on ISIS in Syria.
Trump represents a return to the pragmatism of the Reagan and George Bush, Sr. era–and they hate him for it. The neocons have been ruling the roost for 16 years now. Hell, those agencies were remade by neocons in the wake of 9/11 to fight opponents like ISIS in Syria, and you put the guy who oversaw that transformation at the FBI in charge of investigating them?
Maybe Trump put too much faith in Sessions. Maybe that was Trump’s mistake.
Maybe Sessions screwed up when he named Mueller as Special Counsel.
Sessions should remember that the only reason he’s there is because he was the only one Trump trusted to watch his back like Loretta Lynch watched Obama’s back.
Sessions may have just stabbed Trump in the back instead, and Trump may just be waking up to that fact.
Recusing himself over the Russia flap was a huge mistake. The idiots were baying for blood over nothing, and he threw them meat thinking it would shut them up. Well, it didn’t, because of course it didn’t, because there is no appeasing the mob.
Rewarding their behavior only encourages further howling.
Roger Ailes is dead. I’m not going to link to any of it, but you can guess what’s being said right now, on all sides.
Some people waited 20 years for him to lose his career, and then he dies less than a year later. I bet they’re pissed.
They were hoping for an ending like this.
Cut the money shot. Sorry.
My derpbook feed is eerily silent about this. There’s a lot of anti-Trump stuff, but nothing on Ailes.
If Twatter is any indication, the public cares about 4x more about Chris Cornell than Roger Ailes.
I understood what was going on with Baylor with the previous allegation broke and it came out when the coach heard about the rape, he said “What was she doing out with those guys? Those are some bad dudes.” Or something like that.
You recruited those dudes, doofus.
This is why I like my school’s coach, he may be an asshole to the media sometimes (oh wait, that is another point in his favor), but he recruits decent humans. There are incidents, of course, as there will always be in a group of 85+ 18-22 year old males. There has been one rape accusation during his tenure. The player was immediately suspended even though the evidence was shaky to non-existent, then reinstated when it all fell apart and the courts refused to prosecute.
Plus we have been to two Orange Bowls (previous OB was 1966).
Same with my team. Bill Snyder has maintained a consistent well behaved program, unlike the school down the road. However, I occasionally feel like the only way to get a national championship is to be corrupt.
When I say corrupt I don’t mean ignore rape, I mean paying players through creative means.
We won in 1990. It was a perfect storm of great recruiting, great coaching (Ross-O’Leary-Friedgen as HC-DC-OC) and every major power being down at the same time. GT@UVA was the game of the season (not just for us, but nationwide).
And it happened a year early, Ross thought 1991 was going to be the legit shot at the national title.
Fuck Scott Sisson. That is all.
/bitter UVA fan
This will make it better.
41-38 Mark II
If Bruce McGonnigal hadn’t fallen down a flight of stairs the week before while looking for his girlfriend’s dog, rupturing his spleen, we would have won that game and gone on to win the championship.
Yes, I’m sticking to that story.
KSU has one advantage we don’t have: lower minimum academic standards. A Juco transfer is a once every 5 years thing for us. The last significant one I remember was a punter.
We have a weird combination of the highest (public school) football SAT scores and the largest (public school) gap between regular student body and football SAT scores.
It would be nice if he could win a goddamn UGA game at home.
At least we get to add the “at home” on now.
Thankfully they hired what looks to be a retard for their head coach so I’m hopeful we might get that first home win since ’99.
This is why I like my school’s coach, he may be an asshole to the media sometimes (oh wait, that is another point in his favor), but he recruits decent humans.
So you obviously didn’t to to tOSU.
Women are being unfairly alarmed by official guidelines that warn them to avoid alcohol completely during pregnancy, experts claim.
Some mothers-to-be may even be having an abortion because they are worried they have damaged their unborn child by drinking too much, it is claimed.
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, maternal rights campaign group Birthrights and academics specialising in parenting say official advice on drinking in pregnancy is too prescriptive.
Revised guidelines that came into force in January 2016 are not based on reliable evidence, they say. The advice, endorsed by the four UK nations’ chief medical officers, deleted a longstanding reference to pregnant women potentially having one or two units of alcohol once or twice a week while expecting and instead said that they should not drink at all.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/18/warning-pregnant-women-over-dangers-of-alcohol-goes-too-far-experts-say
” Segregated living linked to higher blood pressure among blacks
The isolation of living in a racially segregated neighborhood may increase blood pressure”
http://www.salon.com/2017/05/18/segregated-living-linked-to-higher-blood-pressure-among-blacks_partner/
What about living in a racially segregated white neighborhood?
Given the general character of majority black neighborhoods (I grew up in one) it’s less the segregation and more the crime that leads to stress and elevated blood pressure.
Causation/correlation and all that retarded bullshit applies here.
What, are we over the food deserts explanation?
So is your daughter going to teach children how to swim and inseminate cattle (thats the weirdest summer camp Ive ever heard of) or is she going to be teaching kids how to swim, and then she is going to inseminate cattle?
Someone else say, “Yes”. I’m bored with that.
Perhaps.
Grammar is the difference between “I helped my uncle jack off a horse” and “I helped my uncle, Jack, off a horse”
Looks more like capitalization and two commas to me.
Punctuation and capitalization are both subsets of grammar, and I will beat anyone who thinks otherwise with an Oxford comma.
Dont talk to me about grammer, I havn even mastrd speling.
You ‘ll beat them into an … Oxford coma.
The kids will not be around livestock. I’ll fix it, you pedantic bastards.
Pudgy Lesbian Falls In Love With Overalls, Has Dog
No, it’s not from The Onion… why do you ask?
Just like she posts about her overalls on the internet for herself and herself alone.
And she thinks they make her look like Gillian Jacobs. Uh-huh.
Anyway. Much like Gillian Jacobs’ character in Love, I am now a person who only wears overalls, and I can’t apologize enough for how not sorry I am.
At least they’re not Rompers.
How can I put this without being unkind? Sometimes men look at women without a single sexual thought going through their minds, much as we might look at an interesting looking squirrel, perhaps, or an indeterminate object on the horizon. In some cases, this is more likely than others, which is to say that I wouldn’t waste that much time worrying about the male gaze were I you.
well I will reserve my male gaze for others. Actually the amount of hot women in skimpy clothing in Bucharest during summer can be distracting …
Go on…
OMFG. These people have too much time on their hands. She really expended mental energy thinking about overalls? REALLY?
But it frees her from the tyranny of a purse, Kristen! Just like not carrying a bunch of shit around all the time would.
Max Planck would be at a loss to measure such a small amount of energy.
“Freedom from the male gaze: Haha, just kidding. The male gaze cannot be escaped, but I care about it a little bit less when I’m wearing my Carhartts. ”
I am not gazing at women in overalls.
if Emily Ratajkowski was in front of me wearing nothing but overalls I would subtly gaze a bit, I have to admit. And probably a few million other women at that.
The ’90s must have been hell for you.
Hah! I was going to say something like that – the ’90s, when girls wore the shit outta overalls, weren’t that long ago.
Don’t get me started on hiding their figures under their dad’s dress shirts buttoned all the way up to the top and a stupid fucking hat.
We who came of age in that time were robbed of our rightful blessings of tight clothes and exposed flesh.
Girls during my high school years wore these, which, for an assman like myself, was heavenly.
Not pictured: thicc, which seemingly all female classmates were. Ah, youth. I’ll be in my bunk, and get off my lawn.
I started the 90’s as a four year old, so I was a good age to not really notice the overall movement.
Heh, we’re the exact same age then. I had a pop culture obsessed older step sibling though, so that might account for my memories of the fashion. Not to mention they kept playing TLC music videos well into my teens…
Not unattractive chubby ones like her, anyway.
Not Another Teen Movie was dumb and juvenile, but the scene where the female lead is transformed from nebish shut-in to stunning sexpot by taking off her chunky glasses, letting down her hair, and trading out her overalls for a dress stuck with me. No, hon, you’re in no danger of being overly-sexualized by men.
It was dumb and juvenile, but I have to admit I got a few solid laughs out of it. Which is more than I can say for more than a few comedies.
I want to say it was the first of that series of genre-parody movies that went downhill fast, so it had a definite advantage in that regard.
I was also a teenager when it came out, so: tits. ‘Nuff said.
I saw it before seeing Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Sixteen Candles, which seem like intentional parody-bait in retrospect.
My wardrobe is comprised of jeans, jeans that have been cut into shorts, t-shirts, flimsy dresses, and not much else.
Appropriating Daisy Duke.
Appropriating Southern Redneck Culture!
My wardrobe consist of cute shit from Modcloth, a few chauvinistic pairs of sweat pants (like, ones that proudly proclaim my loyalty to a sports team or state) and a metric shitton of t-shirts, mostly referencing Parks & Rec. I don’t spend
that muchany time thinking about the sociopolitical nature of my outfits.I don’t spend that much any time thinking about the sociopolitical nature of my outfits.
I own one t-shirt that I bought purely for sociopolitical considerations. If I ever go to the Libertarian Part convention, Freedomfest or there’s a glibs meetup you will see it.
Wait aren’t chauvinistic pairs of sweat pants against libertarian purity?
Vikings sweats?
You sound like my daughter. Rocks the girly stuff on occasion, but left for school this morning in jeans, converse and a cool Ramones t-shirt.
I approved.
Have some of those, a couple Vermont ones, and Northwestern one (my parents’ alma mater). I’m throwing away the American University ones. They can get fucked.
It doesn’t sound like she is a lesbian. Not that I care.
“I went in there because my boyfriend wanted some long-sleeve tees.”
I know I’ve read on here there is no such thing as peak derp, but this has to be close:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sword-wielding-student-apos-viral-194426011.html
It has a (glue)gun scare, a white person talking about privilege while holding a sword and then apologizing for talking about privilege, because she didn’t understand the hurt her privilege caused or something.
How much more derp can you have in one story?
Bonus, it happened at Colgate, her “prestigious liberal arts college”.
A toothpaste has a college?
Well it’s pretty liberal with who they let in…
Where do you think the Colgate Cavity Patrol was born? Where do they train?
They do want whiter teeth
Coming into the parking garage this a.m., this woman in front of me didn’t have her badge out to scan. Once she found her badge, she couldn’t reach the scanner and couldn’t figure out that she should open her door and step out of her car to scan. Then once she did figure out that you’re allowed to get out of your car to scan your badge, she decided to re-buckle her seat belt, close her window, turn on her lights and perhaps light a cigarette before finally deciding to go through the gate.
And people wonder why I hate people.
How are we not reading about this incident in the police blotter and wondering what happened to you?
I hate whoever decided you had to scan in to the garage.
Last time I was at my office in Miami.
Pull up to guard shack.
Me: I’m an offsite employee here for meetings.
Him: Are you visiting?
Me: /blank look
Me: (trying different tact) I work remotely and have a few vendors coming in for meetings.
Him: Oh, where’s Remote?
Me: Can I sign that thing and get in?
DId he have his UM diploma on the wall?
BANG!
I hate people more than you do:
I was just treated to a ‘I don’t need to read anything to know Trump is vile and worse than Hillary. I know by looking and by experience.’
And somewhere Aristotle is screaming ‘NOT AN ARGUMENT!’
One of the best things about my job is that that everyone there, no matter the age, have the fact that we hate other people in common.
Yep. ‘bama was polished and read the words on the screen decently well, had an immaculate resume untainted by actual work, marshalled his optics masterfully, and played Republicans like a fiddle. Which is why he was able to get away with his administration’s manifold scandals, why he could lean over to Putin’s bagman and give his assurances that once this backward ritual election is over they’d be best of friends again, and nobody talked about collusion, why his giveaways to Cuba and Iran netted him no grief from his base: because he had the right aesthetics.
People are sloooooow. Especially when they get old. The ticket machines went to touch screens a few years back. I waited behind an old lady that kept trying to push the plastic frame of the machine. I looked over her shoulder and saw she was pushing the plastic 100 yen coin sticker that shows what coin could be used. Technology is a kicker for the elderly.
The woman in front of me was quite a bit younger than I am. Like, early 30’s-ish. And apparently retarded.
Or she was fucking with you.
The new style Coke machines aren’t usable by the elderly.
Although, I admit, their user interface sucks badly.
Do you mean the fountain drink machines? I was in Qdoba some months ago and had to ask a kid how to work one of those damn things. Horrible interface. A button makes too much sense.
Why does it reset when you stop? I’m waiting for the fizz to cool down a bit before topping off and the things resets to the main menu. Dumb.
‘The mix of mechanical buttons and virtual buttons is the part I don’t get.
Parking services here has decided to go to virtual permits next year. They’re in the midst of setting up license plate scanner. I imagine this is going to generate a shitstorm in the fall when people discover that their permit is tied to a single vehicle. So no driving your spouse’s car if yours in the shop.
This is also the same outfit that had to have someone sitting at the gate to the parking garage with a laptop during the first week of classes, looking up permit numbers and names and manually opening the gate because someone had forgotten to enter the relevant data.
huh. We recently dropped the plate-tied restriction and just went with “if your hang-tag is valid, go ahead and park”.
Yeah, they’re getting rid of hang tags. I’ve got a rough idea of where the scanner is going to be for the student lot. I’m wondering what happens if its snowing hard.
Parking garages comprise a majority of my work day. Sometime I will put together a compilation of camera videos I have saved. The things people do in parking garages never ceases to amaze me.
Pittsburgh has too many injuries to overcome looks like.
What happened? Was there a natural disaster? The whole city is affected?
You’ve never been there, have you?
ehm… no?
I think they have some sort of river though
The Trogs got them.
My hatred of Alain Vigneault has rocketed up to 13 – the Penguins were ripe as hell for the plucking this year, and the Rangers should have won their series in 5 games if Vigneault had used his defensemen properly. IOW, kept Staal and Holden glued to the bench late in games instead of “losing” Smith and Skjei.
They did let it slip away against the Senators.
Rangers should have won in 5.
So far the conference finals are making me happy. Rooting for the Sens, because fuck the Penguins, and rooting for the Preds because of Peter Laviolette.
In some cultures, it’s traditional for elders to smoke grass, a practice said to help them pass on tribal knowledge. It turns out that they might just be onto something.
Teenagers who toke perform less well on memory and attention tasks while under the influence. But low doses of the active ingredient in cannabis, THC, might have the opposite effect on the elderly, reversing brain ageing and restoring learning and memory – at least according to studies of mice.
“We repeated these experiments many times,” says team leader Andreas Zimmer at the University of Bonn, Germany. “It’s a very robust and profound effect.”
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2130257-a-little-cannabis-every-day-might-keep-brain-ageing-at-bay/?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&cmpid=SOC|NSNS|2017-Echobox#link_time=1495012393
The ultimate way to induce pants-shitting among America’s elderly rural population.
Because it’s just way too difficult to get old people to talk at length about their received wisdom without pharmaceutical support?
The “Remaining coherent and relevent” part was the problem.
I’m currently imagining Obi-Wan’s ghost talking to Luke about the Force and shit while also being high.
Considering most of them are boomers, they probably need to forget how bad they fucked the rest of us.
Pretty sure I haven’t fucked any of you, sport.
I’m a gen Xer. We weren’t much help, either.
I guess we’ll just have to rely on the Millenials…oh, fuck…..
I find your comment to be triggering. Please stop with your microagressions, fascist!
Gen Z?
Needz moar pollz.
Speak for yourself panty-sniffer
lol yeah like when did we ever have a chance to do much of anything?
At no point in our existance were we the dominant generation and it wasn’t until 4 years ago that we even started to see Gen X Political leaders. To this day Paul Ryan is probably the highest profile Gen X’er.
Where are these cultures, so i can retire there?
We wiped them out becuase they were too stoned to realize the danger.
dude. not cool.
“Austin man, 37, sues his date for $17.31 because she was texting while they watched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4513584/Austin-man-sues-woman-date-texting.html
“GODDAMMIT, YOU LOOK AT CHRIS PRATT RIGHT NOW!”
I hope she was arranging her emergency call.
Actually, some wag on Twitter suggested it was Kevin Williamson.
Water Canon. The Venezuela example keeps screaming to the world, “Don’t do this!” in myriad ways.
I thought that was going to be the Venezuelan Symphony Orchestra playing Paganini.
They can afford water?
Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner
The Odyssey
Moby Dick
*Rime? Rime. (sigh)
That’s not a rime.
THIS IS A RIME!
Fuck that noise.
She would do well to read up on modern history. Collaborators tend not to be treated very well once the regime is out of power. Especially the grunts.
This makes me so sad.
Fight from your knees. As a single guy, I could see myself fighting them directly. Got mouths to feed, though, so who knows.
They keep everyone so poor, that the only way the average person can survive, is by brutalizing their fellow citizens.
And therein lies the fundamental evil in socialism. When the state owns everyone (and that is what socialism means), no one has a choice but to do the unspeakable when the state commands it. And every bite you take is at the forbearance of the state.
This is what they call the brotherhood of man.
Self-inflicted misery. That is what we are seeing in Venezuela. I am trying to care. Really, I am.
Yoga Hosers was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4518550/Lily-Rose-Depp-dazzles-bright-orange-mini-dress.html
Still, would.
Does she have her mom’s teeth? that could be a deal-breaker.
Office etiquette – if two people are having a discussion, and one of them has a shared office and the other has a private office, in whose office should they have their discussion? Both people have laptops and the company has WiFi, so it’s not a matter of needing to look at someone’s specific computer.
I’d say the private office, even if it’s not a private discussion, if only for courtesy’s sake. But I’m a stranger to office jobs.
Absolutely the private office. This shouldn’t be questionable.
The hallway outside, so everyone can be equally inconveinced by their loud conversation.
Private office, but there’s a power dynamic in play. Sometimes one person big time’s another by asking them to come to their office; other times you pull the big time by dropping by someone’s shared or open space unannounced, forcing a meeting on them.
Women’s restroom.
I work in an open office environment, except for the IT director who has his own private space which has enough room for a few people to meet in.
It works, except for the occasional shouting match or that one guy who does speaker phone for everything.
I also live with my headphones on most of the time.
We have an open office with only 8 people and it fucking sucks. The acoustics of our supremely cool-looking space are such that you can hear a mouse fart across the building. I hate it, so I wear headphones or work remotely if the whole gang is in.
My office is horribly dated – thinks 90s Steelcase – but it’s pretty quiet thanks to all the cloth-covered moveable walls, which are also fairly high. Only 2-3 people per “cell”. But yeah, I prefer to work at home or else wear headphones if I need to concentrate on a difficult task. I wear headphones so much my ears start to hurt by then end of the day.
replace pretty with fairly. It does get loud once two or three people start arguing.
We have individual offices, have sliding doors and are open at the top. The ceiling is covered in steel and everything else is wood or concrete. Nothing to absorb sound.
As I said, cool-looking but not really that practical.
If your walls don’t go up to the ceiling, you don’t have an office, you have a cubicle with a door.
Can’t argue with you there.
We have more than eight people, and listening to conversations from six cubes over gets tiresome.
The answer is obviously that the two individuals should go and ask a third employee (with a private office) some unnecessary question about the issue they’re discussing, then proceed to have the entire conversation in HIS office while he’s trying to work.
… That’s what some of my co-workers at my last job thought, anyway.
I got a new power amp – a cheap Adcom 545 that will be used until I build or buy something else.
How did you guys not point this out to me? Comey has already admitted he wasn’t pressured. Why is this even still a thing?
b-b-b-ut TRUMP is literally HITLER!
Obviously he was pressured into saying he wasn’t pressured. DUH!
I’ve stopped paying attention to the frenzied flinging of bullshit that’s been going on.
Glass half full, we’ve successfully spliced cattle and monkey DNA.
I won’t be impressed until we get that 4-assed monkey I’ve been waiting for.
How did you guys not point this out to me?
We tried floating it, but what with the coriolis effect it didn’t reach you.
It has been pointed out that Comey testified repeatedly that no one ever told him to stop any investigations
(*and this testimony was months after the claimed meeting where the claimed obstruction happened)
And his subordinate also testified to that exact point weeks later
Yet people are still claiming that the so-called ‘memo’ (as interpreted by a anonymous third party over the phone to a NYT reporter) suggests that it is evidence that obstruction actually occurred.
Even though if that were actually true, Comey would have had to immediately inform other people in law enforcement of the occurrence of this crime, else he himself face charges (18 U.S. Code § 4 – Misprision of felony). Yet there’s not a single document outside this ‘memo’ which provides any record that anyone believed any obstruction had occurred.
The story makes no sense and is based entirely on NYT/WaPo feeding a contrived narrative to a public which is frothing for more stories of potential Trumpeachment
Listen, Gilmore, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, letting the facts of the matter go, now that special counsel has been appointed. The Washington Post would appreciate it.
Its also worth pointing out that the special counsel seems to be pointed to investigate “russian influence on the election” . That doesn’t necessarily mean “Russian connections to the Trump campaign”.
Connections between Flynn and Russia – the thing the FBI was investigating which Trump was claimed to be obstructing – may have no relevance to that at all. Flynn, unless i’m mistaken, had no formal connections w/ the Trump people until after the election.
I can’t find any evidence anywhere pointing to exactly when Flynn ever became an official campaign advisor. This story from August 2016 points to Flynn speaking in favor of Trump, but notes that he’s still not actually a member of the Trump campaign – just that he aspires to be
Even if he had some vague ties to Russia through some of his consulting-interests at the time, its unclear how exactly that would be ‘influencing’ the Trump campaign, much less affecting the outcome of the election, which is the thing the Special Prosecutor is supposed to be investigating.
So now I’m hearing that that video isn’t referring to Trump, but to the DOJ and that Comey is only saying that the DOJ didn’t pressure him to drop the investigation. Doesn’t mean Trump didn’t pressure him!
That’s technically true. If he believed there were efforts to shut down investigations through official channels, you’d think it would have worth mentioning.
again – if he believed that Trump *had* attempted obstruction, there should have been immediate documentation of this beyond his mere second-hand notes. Instead, months passed and no one in law enforcement took it any futher? not plausible.
I’m given to understand these special counsel investigations tend to stray wildly from their initial remit. I know nothing about the guy, hopefully he’s a career bureaucrat hoping to lead the FBI back to something approaching respectability and not another self-aggrandizer like Comey who tries to play it cute at every turn. But I fully expect to see some Scooter Libby-type hangings before the end of this.
Yes.
I was probably being too-credible of the initial reports about the definition of Mueller’s task. The actual wording from the DOJ on his appointment was =
you could pretty much include anything in that last term.
And even if his instructions were ironclad from the start, all he’d have to do is grumble in public that the administration is keeping him from looking into x, y, or z tangential (or, hell, orthogonal) to the original investigation, and within hours Sessions would have to issue a statement that of course x, y, z, and even a through w are perfectly reasonable leads to pursue.
And an hour later Trump would tweet something essentially confirming that all the dirty laundry is hidden behind z.
So it’s just going to be, “Take Trump down any way we can!”. Regardless of the facts, they’re are going to go nuclear option on everything. Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a leak completely manufactured or taken out of context. You know it’s bad when an AnCap at heart is saying that they’re playing with fire.
Dalmia has a new piece up.
Anytime I start feeling sorry for Reason, she fixes it.
Seems like some of the old guard’s still hanging out there on occasion.
It’s hard to change habits. But between Suderman and Dalmia, Reason is making it really easy.
“Bill Clinton was (wrongly) impeached for far less.”
Perhaps Dalmia thinks Bubba was impeached for a blowjob rather than lying under oath. What a frigging ejit.
Bill Clinton was a feminist.
Wow. That is just completely unhinged.
http://theweek.com/articles/699530/trump-control-because-republicans-are-control
At least Nick seems within reason.
“All This Impeachment Talk Is Pure Trump Derangement Syndrome”
http://reason.com/blog/2017/05/17/all-this-impeachment-talk-is-pure-trump
HOLY SHIT. She actually made the emoluments clause argument!
I’m friends with some very stupid, very very progressive people, and even they concede that it’s bullshit,
Is it concession or has it been surpassed by the 25th Amendment gambit?
Dalmia was unhinged long before this, when she was screaming about how people enforcing immigrant law are like people enforcing slavery laws and how Trump is responsible for the rise of Hindu nationalists in her own dysfunctional country. Any sane publication would have used her past habit of doing zero research and reporting on fake tweets as fact as a reason for her termination for general incompetence.
The first warning sign was when she chastised Bobby Jindal for not being the right kind of Indian. Honestly, that should have been a red flag not just about her but also about how far Reason had fallen.
Bob Barker reminding you, help control the prog population. Have your progs spayed or neutered. Goodbye, everybody!
From the LA charter schools article: I think we found our narrative:
“Money talked, and teachers union lost
“Teachers unions have long been a dominant force in school politics. But this time, charter forces significantly outspent the unions. Campaign spending was expected to top $15 million, making this the most expensive school board election ever….
“These backers have broad ideological overlap with the Trump administration and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.”
You know what I think? I think these rich guys poisoned the water supply with the drug Republicanium, turning reliable progs into troglodytic conservatives.
oh that’s always been the narrative. My very first election flyer had a big photo of Betsy DeVos on it, basically calling her Hitler’s spawn, and not reelecting Zimmer would mean Betsy DeVos would rape all the children of LAUSD
And like I said above, no way is that “signficantly outspent” true. I don’t buy it for one second, seeing how much the unions were spending on mailings, tv&radio ads. LA Times isn’t counting some pool somewhere, or the reformers were spending a whole lot of money somewhere invisibly.
LAUSD is evil. Kill it, and any other district with more that 5000 students.