Short holiday weeks always get in my head. I better go get my covfefe and wake up before I post the links…
…that’s better. Man, these are the barren wasteland days of sports. Not hockey last night. The NBA Finals hasn’t started yet. Its become a foregone conclusion that the Astros are gonna win. There’s just nothing really to discuss from last night. LaVarr Ball is nuts. Can that be my sports topic? I mean, we’ve known this for months. Anyway, hockey tonight. That’ll get the juices flowing again. Let’s hope its a good game.
Alright, I’ve dithered enough. I know what you people want. So I’m jumping right into…the links!
Since Democracy Dies In Darkness, WaPo dedicates an incredible amount of time and space to a misspelled tweet. So much time and space that it is literally one of the three leads on their website. Hey, President Trump should feel honored. 28 murdered Coptic Christians in Egypt didn’t even warrant that kind of coverage from them!
Trump attorney Michael Cohen
Can you say “witch hunt”?
Has-been (or is “never-was” more accurate?) exercises First Amendment right in despicable manner. Left falls over itself to applaud and defend her. Right falls over itself in rush to condemn. The rest of us worry about more important shit and try not to give the publicity hound a moment of our time.
Sometimes a Frenchman’s gotta do…what a Frenchman does.
Is it ever really news when a Frenchman gets “handsy”? Apparently it is!
I didn’t even know “Texas Anti-fa” was a thing until I read this piece. Somehow, I don’t think their first order of business is gonna gain them many supporters in the Lone Star State.
Questions abound as University of Cincinnati cop prepares for retrial in killing of unarmed black motorist. Yeah, namely “is there is any justice in the world?”
Sorry, Canada. And everybody else. This one belongs to us alone!
Have a good one, friends.
Good morning.
Sloopy spelled coffee wrong. I think we should all talk about nothing but this today.
Coffee sucks. I don’t know about covfefe, though. That sounds like something I might want to try.
“Coffee sucks”
*narrows gaze, sips Kona*
Kona is overpriced swill that only costs so much because it is grown on a couple tiny US plantations and they have to pay the workers Hawaii minimum wage.
Jamaican Blue Mountain Reserve ftw
Kona is my fav
About time someone said it! Coffee is disgusting.
You and the preaching thinker are on my list.
Imma more suspect of you infiltrators than Trump’s love letters to Putin.
Be fair. They may be at Starbucks.
I stand with The Elite Elite! Coffee is nasty.
Ya’ll a buncha’ tea drinkin’ royalists. Some one bring me a rail to strap these here George garglers on.
Covfefe is secret lizard people language for ‘coverage’. Every once in a while if you’re paying attention, one of the lizards will slip up and use their own reptilian lingo. Of course, most of the time no one is really paying attention. But since the leftist media stand at attention 24/7 watching every single move and word from Trump so they can start up the next great pantshitting episode, this time they caught it.
Give that man a Pulitzer!
-Jeff Bezos and Carlos Slim
It’s the #2 story on CNN.com
Other top stories are about themselves, “Cooper Calls Out Trump’s Hypocrisy”.
So brave.
And stunning?
Hard hitting stuff.
Sloopy’s spelling is better
31) Let’s say a father in America today had a couple bright, academically-oriented children who in earlier generations would have gone to college. Only, that parent, in looking at the price tag for college today, and the way higher education has traded the traditional curriculum for pop culture and women’s studies, is interested in exploring other options for his children. What alternative paths exist for a family like this? Is it just a matter of seeking out those colleges that have avoided recent academic trends? Community college? Steering the children into skilled blue collar work, and providing funds for them to audit local college courses as a hobby? Or something else?
What alternative paths exist for a family like this?
Let the kids themselves decide if they want to make the investment in college. If they pay for it, they’ll value it a lot more than if you do.
So can I spend their college funds on vacations, booze, and vintage comic books? I like the way this is heading….
Do what you want with it. Hell, set it aside and helpnthem open a business with it once they graduate. Or burn through it. Either way, they’ll benefit more from an education they personally invest in than one somebody else pays for with no strings attached.
I couldn’t agree more. I paid for mine and I took it very seriously. Most of my friends that had their parents paying for it dropped out or became 7-year super seniors before graduating with ~2.2 GPAs and shitty no-job degrees. This doesn’t apply to everyone, obviously, but maybe you should just hold onto their college funds – make them take out loans and pay their own way – and if they graduate on time, with good grades and a degree worth something, then pay off their loans for them.
^This
University in Singapore. Probably fewer gender studies
What you did there, seen.
Gender studies is probably considered an elective.
I’ve always liked the idea of going to a 2 year school and get some trade training (machining / welding). Then get a job at an employer that will pay for schooling. Make some good money doing your trade and then have a college degree with little debt.
I wonder if you would find more thoughtful and educational curriculum being taught online now.
The online education thing is going to become very popular. Testing in an online course is a slight issue, but almost all profs at brick-and-mortar universities give students B’s for completely phoning it in anyway. As soon as more employers start to understand this, the stigma of online degrees will vanish.
Community college for a trade is a great idea if you want to go into a trade, but I’m not a huge fan of them for funneling students into 4-year schools. A lot of the students out of community colleges tend to be less prepared for upperclassmen work than their peers (this isn’t exactly what you were arguing for; just my $0.02 and observations).
A lot of the students out of community colleges tend to be less prepared for upperclassmen work than their peers
Back in the late 80s this got so bad that Georgia Tech created standardized finals for Statics (and maybe some other courses, but that is the one that I remember). The students transferring in from other Georgia state schools were not ready for GT level.
Also, I knew a number of 3/2 students (3 years at a liberal arts school, 2 years at GT, graduate with a dual degree from both schools, one in LA, one in Engineering), they all did it as 3/3.
I think part of that comes from the overall group that goes to CC. If you were good enough to do the traditional 4 year, but want to save cash and skip some of the less important classes, CC is pretty brilliant. If you just get into CC and then transfer, you’ll have a good number not make it.
And even today, there are ways of doing testing for an online course. There are testing centers where students can show up and take a proctored exam, and some employee just sits there and makes sure that nobody brings any cheat sheets or Googles the answers on their phone.
One of the teachers for an online class I took would just put a time limit on the test that was so short that you really didn’t have time to look up the answers; you had to know them right off the top of your head.
I spent 2 years in a community college a few years after high school. The company I was working for paid for it and I got an associates degree in industrial controls. The school cost me nothing, but even if I had paid out of pocket for it, it would have been around 3000 dollars a year. I have had steady employment since I left Hugh school and have been doing the industrial controls/electrician thing for about 9 years now. I don’t know about the whole country, but where I live there is a shortage of people who can do controls work. I’ve made more money every year with 100% job security. The plant I work in could close tomorrow and I could be working again by monday, no problem.
Waaay too late for this, but saw some nice programs recently – some of the shipyards in Newport News have their own paid apprenticeship training programs for welders/etc that lead right into full time work.
Particularly if you can get in early and can keep your nose clean for a clearance. Getting the skills to weld/wire/etc on a sub or something similar is guaranteed work.
I’ve been visiting schools with the kid, mostly hard core engineering ones. I’ve seen zero evidence of the foolishness.
That said, if one of my kids wanted to go the womyn’s studies route (or some such idiocy), I would get them working in a skilled trade asap.
Yeah, for some inexplicable reason studying something where you can’t just ignore reality and impose your own insane worldviews on it or people die, make it hard for the nonsense you see in the other areas to happen. What kills me is how colleges can get away with charging people the same for an engineering degree and one for one of those studies waste of time deals.
I like how you are remaining supportive of your kids if they choose the idiotic rout though. Mine went and got a mechanic certification after high school, is working towards the state licensing requirements (ain’t it sweet how government feels they need to make it as hard as possible for people to make a living?), and plans to then get a 2 year degree in business so he can own his own place.
I myself had the US tax payer pay for my schooling and then worked that off after graduation. They then even paid for my masters! Great employment opportunities and a career change from AE/EE to software (I spent all my time computer modeling crap anyway before computers were cool) writing has provided me with a good living.
I think the big lesson is that not all education is worth the same (especially when it comes to return on investment), and even a big name school can churn out idiots.
For one thing, if they chose the college route I would definitely advise them to do two years of community college on the cheap and then transfer into a 4 year school. I had a roommate who did that in college and his degree looks identical to mine and cost a whole lot less.
But I think going into a skilled trade out of high school would be smart. Put some coin in your pocket, go to community college part time, and then in their early 20s they can look at their options. Maybe they enjoy the work they do and are doing well. If they still wanted a degree, they should have plenty of money in the bank to pay for it. And, should office life not be what they were looking for after all, they still have a trade to fall back on. I wish I had gone that route. I probably would have gotten a lot more out of college if I had.
Plus, then you can have a legitimate reason for being on campus in your mid 20s talking to the freshman girls.
The danger from that route is you start making good money and it becomes harder to take a (possibly significant) pay cut for 4-8+ years.
I would agree with this. They can also save money with online courses at many 4 year schools. My youngest daughter was actually able to take college coursework for credit for free while in high school for to her good grades. May see if you have a similar deal where you are at.
I did that and had a job in IT before I finished the 2 year degree, then continued to work and pay my own way. I had zero debt when I finished.
Yeah, watching kids today with degrees in “French Poetry of the 14th century” or “Womyn’s grievances of the crazy years” serving me tea and complaining about how their degree can’t get them decent employment puts a smile on my face. You make stupid choices, especially when you let moronic people that are more interested in indoctrinating you into being a leftist than educating you tell you you should pursue your passion, regardless of the fact that it can provide income, you deal with the consequences of those choices.
I love the reaction when I ask them what their parent’s role was, and they tell me the parent told them not to study that and then decided not to pay for it either, and I tell them they had smart parents that now get to enjoy money they would have just pissed away. Yeah, I can be a dick.
I sympathize. I once said to someone who was very excited about going to grad school in anthropology “Well you didn’t really get in if you have to pay for it.” In my defense, didn’t know she was paying for a PhD. (Stupid, stupid, stupid. DO NOT PAY FOR A PHD.)
Exactly…
Have them save up to buy a beat up piece of earth moving machinery have them rebuild it and start their own business. They will be hiring employees within a year.
there are accelerated “boot camps” for every tech field now. my cousin (second) did one for game programming and graphic design. he is very employed right now. now obviously YMMV in that intense environment.
tech schools, north bennet street school or other trade schools. I’m on the internet path after paying my way out of $30k or so.
If they are interested in computers, either an AA degree from a community college or one of the various coding boot camps out there would be a fantastic option.
I hire lots of developers and I only look at where someone went to so I can ask them about their alma mater’s sportsball teams.
My daughter got a good job as a developer after getting an AA degree and went to a coding academy. If those options had been open to me when I was a kid, I would have jumped at the chance.
If you love coding and feel you have to get a fancy degree, it is easier to do after you have been earning $70K a year for a few years.
You hiring?
We really need an edit feature.
It is much much tougher to go through a 4 year degree in a no-job field (History), then get married and have kids and work fulll time and then put yourself through a coding bootcamp.
I really wish these existed 10 years ago.
Most people I’ve known with history degrees work in IT now after going back to get a cert or 2 year tech degree, or they’re un or under employed.
What? No big job opportunities with a history degree?
Old joke:
The engineering major asks, “How does it work?”
The accounting major asks, “How much does it cost?”
The history major asks, “Would you like fries with that?”
You would figure more people would catch on and we would have fewer people going for degrees that don’t provide ROI, but I see the exact opposite going on these days.
BTW I think I was one class away from having a minor in History when I graduated with a degree in electrical engineering.
I loved history classes.
I, too, am interested.
I am taking online courses through Coursera to update my skills/let me keep up with my assistants. Not really what you are talking about I think, but I am getting a lot out of it and it is cheap.
nice! added to bookmark
Listen up you fuckers, don’t you know there’s not enough IT people who are Murikans and so we have to import them from India? Why do you hate the Indians?
Shut up man… I have a dozen of them working for me, and while they really put in the hours, the quality of the work is often lacking. but hey, the bean counters are impressed, because they get 60 hours and pay for 20. That i spend all my time cleaning up crap that is basically useless never sinks in.
My current gig went from expecting to hire 20 or so developers this year (in Chicago) to only hiring 2 new people. The only reason is because our giant corporate overlords finally noticed we were doing our forecasting in a different manner. We did so because we were growing from a tiny office to be our big develpoment center in N America. So we were forced to use the same formula as the big centers in EU and now we only get 2 people.
I’m fairly burned out on this place now, but if you are looking for a job in Chicago (our office is downtown), feel free to drop me a line and we can talk more. We do IoT projects and are very heavy on Java.
This could be a very cool place, but our masters are determined to avoid any and all risks. The best way to do that is to have a process that is so convoluted that noting gets done.
I second that. I have an AAS in CET (Computer Engineering Technology) from the local community college, and that combined with working on some open source projects (triage/bug squashing for a couple Linux distros, doing some coding on my own that I tossed up on SourceForge and Launchpad, etc.) has gotten me to about the same place I would’ve gotten with a 4 year degree in almost the same amount of time (I had the misfortune of graduating in summer ’09, right as the local economy/job market finally caught up with the rest of the country and collapsed), with almost no debt. My community college cost about $500-600 a semester, and did payment plans for cash payments, so I worked a crappy retail job and paid for my degree mostly out of pocket– the first two semesters I had a small college fund, and my last semester I took out a $2700 student loan. The other 4 or 5 semesters were paid out of pocket. The student loan was paid off a year early in 2015.
Except for product-specific training courses, I haven’t done any traditional classroom style learning since I graduated, but I’ve kept up on training and dabble at home to learn new skills. Unfortunately(?), years of grade school plus taking 3.5 years to complete a 2 year degree (I couldn’t keep up working ~35hrs/wk plus a full course load, so something had to give) burned me out on school, so I’ve no current plans to get a higher degree.
So, yeah, if there’s a community college (especially vo-tech, since hands-on training is best imo) option for whatever they want to study, I recommend going that route, and doing extra things above and beyond school to show competence and drive.
Welcome, you are officially out of mediation. Unless you post two links in one post. Then you’re with all the others in the queue.
Thank you. I’ve been lurking here since someone put a link on TSTSNBN in March pointing to where all the good commenters were disappearing to. 🙂 So, no surprise on the moderation and linking rules, but it is nice to break out of that post minimum in one day.
I agree.
I hired a bunch of developers and never once worried about where their degree was from. It was just a proxy for “how smart are you” for those who got in to top schools. Beyond that, I didn’t even worry about what degree they had. Motivated and smart, that’s what it takes. Not a bunch of training in some specific language.
I hired one young lady with 2 years of community college for the help desk because she seemed motivated and very smart. Turns out she was weird-smart, with an IQ above 160. With a little prodding from me, she taught herself a lot of skills beyond her job title and in a couple of years I made her the Director of Technology. This at a billion dollar company.
My top developer was a chemistry major. Another top developer was a former Air Force technician who worked on electronics maintenance at a nuclear missile base.
IT is largely a meritocracy. If you can build cool stuff, everyone will know it. And if you can’t, all the degrees and certifications in the world won’t hide it. (you will be able to get lots of consulting gigs though)
The best Help Desk person I ever worked with was our bar maid at a nearby tavern. We were lamenting one day about how lousy our IT help desk was when it came to customer service. As a joke we suggested that we hire this gal because she was fantastic at keeping everyone in the bar happy and satisfied no matter how busy it got.
She took it seriously and asked for an internship and training. Within six months she was a team lead and within another year she was the manager. She could keep things straigtht and she knew how to negotiate with people. The technical stuff she learnt as she went.
Absolutely love the meritocracy of IT. It is amazing how much you can get away with when you are an earner.
What alternative paths exist for a family like this?
If you have significant savings for their education, there would be nothing wrong with buying them a piece of heavy machinery (track hoe, bulldozer, dump truck) and have them start learning it and finding a way to make money with it. A friend of mine’s grandfather bit him a backhoe when he graduated high school. He learned it and started making money with it. He now owns a couple hundred acres of land, runs a significant number of cattle, and has several pieces of earth moving equipment in his equipment business.
Nothing wrong with it. Not everyone is mechanically inclined though.
That may be true. I was sort of forced to become mechanically inclined as a teenager. I tore up lots of stuff as a kid and had no but to fix it or do without. A lot of my mechanical ability is self taught out of necessity. I think most (fairly intelligent) people can figure it out if motivated to do so.
‘cactly. I knew next to nothing about engines when I was a teenager. When I got the muscle car bug as an adult, I managed to do an engine build and swap by reading a book or two and asking questions online. And amazingly everything worked!
Hah! Same here, had to learn to fix my own muscle car because the mechanic was too expensive. Got manuals, and learned that you could pretty much figure out what was wrong once you started taking it apart. with some experience and a bit of common sense. Got to the point where I could tear down and re-build an engine on my own.
Yup. The path to success is finding something that you’d be doing for free and find a way to make a living at it.
Computer nerds happen to be living in a time where that intersection is easy to find. For lots of people it is really hard to identify that passion.
But the underlying premise is solid. Become a plumber, electrician, stone mason…. there’s loads of trades where you can earn a great living. And then hanging your own shingle is always an option if you want to make really big money and are so inclined.
If the only thing you love is money, then sales is a great place to be. They get paid really well. You gotta have some sort of personality though. (although, surprisingly, not necessarily a good one. I’ve met plenty of very successful sales people who were less personable than you might imagine)
Tom Woods advertises this on his podcast:
https://discoverpraxis.com
Seems like a good idea and if the stated results are true (why wouldn’t they be?) it seems like a pretty good way to go.
On the subject of higher education and choosing career paths…
I think “do what you love” is pretty bad advice. Not everyone “loves” something that aligns with a job. If you do, great – pursue that dream. But most people just have to shovel the shit to pay the bills. If I had heeded the advice to do what I love, I would probably be one of those baristas with a history or creative writing degree.
I think the better piece of advice would be, “make a list of profitable careers that line up with your skills, then pick the one that you think you might enjoy.”
Exactly – I, too, would have a history degree. Instead, I have a PhD in Econ. Don’t get me wrong, I like it. But it isn’t the thing I love.
Harvard Extension School literally uses the facilities and staff of Harvard to provide you a far more reasonably priced education. And the degree says “Harvard” on it.
Estimated total cost for undergraduate degree : $22,400–$44,800
“Despite the constant negative press covfefe”
This results in acres of negative press coverage. Trump is like a Level-100 Troll, and the MSM doesn’t even realize what they’re doing.
Marine Corpse-men hardest hit?
They should just give up on it. Their’s no they’re their.
There There…
Thayer?
Perhaps “covfefe” is Austrian?
You know who else was Austrian? And spoke German!?
Archduke Franz Ferdinand?
Sigh.
This guy?
The Von Trapps?
Ahnold?
In all 57 states.
damnit! I was only 2 hours late on that one!
Does that 57 states include the Maldives?
In all 57 states.
the MSM doesn’t even realize what they’re doing
Selling a whole lot more adspace and subscriptions than they used to, for one.
Slow down there, sport. The Twins will pull it together and prevent the sweep today. Mark my words.
Unless it turns out that I am wrong, then forget my words.
Today’s as good a day as any with a AAA pitcher popping in for a spot start on short notice.
The Twinks have been doing it with mirrors this season so far. I’m waiting for the wheels to fall off. Today seems as good a day for them to implode as any other.
Have faith Jimbo! This is our year!
*takes another Vicodin/Jack Daniels shot – AKA the “Brett Favre”
Sadly, I think Jimbo is right. It’s been a nice little run, but if I’ve learned anything since I’ve moved to Minnesota it’s that the wheels always fall off.
1981, the year of the airplane flanger.
Nice tune, but I don’t understand Kim Wilde’s concern for the kids in East California in that song. What would that be anyway, Fresno?
Victorville? Barstow? Or even up to Bishop or down to Palm Springs. But definitely not Fresno.
When I was a teen living in Wilmington, NC, and they finished I-40 to the city, I always thought it was pretty cool that the first mileage sign on the highway read “Barstow, CA: 2,554 miles.” Didn’t have any idea what might be in Barstow, though.
Bats. There’s bats in Barstow. Be careful.
“Bartsow, Gateway to Daggett”
The only Daggit that matters.
https://youtu.be/P2pgWsYSyUA
Mad Man Maddox was in 501st Bomb Disbursement Unit at Barstow…
God didn’t do that; you’re a fucking narcotics agent.
Homeless people.
Lots and lots of homeless people.
The LA area missions use Barstow as a place to house and dry out the street people and a lot of them pick the same lifestyle there.
She is English, so I’d give a give a pass on that. Heck, I’d give her a pass on just about anything back in the day. 80’s Kim Wilde keeps me hanging on.
Mummy DNA shows that the ancients don’t have much in common with modern Egyptians
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/30/15713536/ancient-egyptian-mummies-dna-genome-sequencing-near-east
I’ve often noticed how people of few accomplishments cling to some glorious past or other. I really don’t get the whole what were the ancient Egyptians thing. I get is as historical interest, but I don’t see how it matters more than a random factoid. But some people greatly debate if the Egyptians were black, white, mid eastern, whatever. Who the fuck cares? Just like the Greeks yelling about how great ancient Greece was. So fuckin what?
What does it matter that some guy 500 or 5000 years ago did something and he may be genetically closer to A than B? His accomplishments have nothing to do with A.
Off course, I do happen to descent from the ancient Dacians who basically invented civilization and everything before other jealous peoples stole it from them and rewrote history, and I suppose that makes me genetically superior to you lot, but I don’t use that fact as some sort of personal accomplishment.
Scythians or GTFO
+1 drinking cup made from enemy’s skull
Bobarian of Cimmeria.
Bring it
“It dont make a shit who your daddy was. The only thing that counts is what YOU do.” – My Grandfather
Wise man.
We wuz Kangz
This brings to mind two P.J. O’Rourke quotes. “The Greeks built the Parthenon, invented democracy, then pretty much called it a day.” and “Technically, Italy is not a third world nation but nobody has bothered to tell the Italians.“
Dacians built the Parthenon and invented democracy. Get it right
You dacian build that.
The Greeks can get bent about their looted Parthenon.
Was that some kind of Greeks not leaving their brother’s behind joke?
Tennesseans built the Parthenon.
I think it has to do with colonialism and being overrun by European technology and culture. If that was our experience, we might cling to the glories of an ancient civilization, too.
I was reading about Australian aboriginals recently, and someone was going on about how when the first English ships came, the aboriginals were stone age peoples. They had no writing, or permanent structures–they hadn’t even invented the wheel. This guy was saying that they should be grateful for colonization because it brought them civilization, education, modem medicine, etc.
I don’t think he got the point that they might resent the colonization for precisely those reasons.
I think that’s what happens to a lot of African Muslims when they come to the west, too. They believe their own societies to be superior but come to the west and find us ignoring all the precepts of Islam, see our women walking fee as birds, and see how wealthy we are comparatively speaking to what they had in the Middle East and Africa.
That experience doesn’t fill them all with excitement about the new culture–especially if they’re stuck driving a cab or being stuck in the lower rungs of western society. It fills them with resentment against the new culture.
Say what you will about the detriments of modern medicine, indoor plumbing, modern farming techniques and technology, sanitation and property rights, adding those things to any society that lacked them previously is about as close to an objective improvement in the quality of life as it’s possible to get. People who resent the advent of those things are free to go die of a tooth ache.
The novel “Milla’s Sense of Snow” talks about the natives of Greenland. One is asked if things are better since the white man came and replies “Of course, no one dies of starvation now.”
You expect gratitude from people in backwards societies and cultures that just want more free shit? That there is the problem in the first place.
Ha ha no I don’t expect gratitude. I actually encouraged such people to go die of a tooth ache.
“But what have the Romans done for us?”
I find that the people that complain about these inventions and technology take advantage of them every day of their lives. They usually complain about these things while sitting in an air conditioned room.
I was reading Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Sociology, and he referred to a source that said when the aborigines first saw white people, they thought they were ghosts of people who had died; they’d notice a white man with a certain facial feature of their long-dead brother or something, and they figured that this white man was his ghost.
That’s racism, straight up.
The one you always hear is Cleopatra being a Nubian princess when she was actually Macedonian.
Yeah, that one always cracked me up.
Part of it is a national identity thing. Italians think of themselves as the nation of Caesar, Americans come from everywhere and so we don’t think of ourselves as the Nation of Adams.
Mummy DNA shows that the ancients don’t have much in common with modern Egyptians
Right. Ancient Egyptians were not Arabs.
The female mammal with the red hair and multiple inert augmentations really should have restarted her career as a combat cyborg.
Restart?
When did she ever start a career?
Stossel vs. Chomsky
Got it. Venezuela, not the least bit socialist and ruined by capitalism.
It was real socialism until they ran out of other people’s money, then it was capitalism. /MSM
Ain’t that always the excuse provided by these morons peddling this evil ideology?
Are they really gonna continue peddling this “state capitalism” crap? Everybody knows it’s bullshit. Hell, even my liberal buddies know it’s bullshit.
Can’t they just say “it could have worked if not for the corruption and graft Chavez and Maduro tolerated.” At least that story is plausible. “State Capitalism” defies all rational thought.
As opposed to what, the rest of what progressives think?
I never understood why people think Chomsky is some kind of genius. Looking at all of the socialist/communist heroes is like taking a tour of the mental ward at your local hospital.
Anytime I hear the term ‘state capitalism’ my first thought is “Fuck off you mendacious POS”
Noam Chomsky is the stupidest smart man in America. I actually do believe he’s intelligent, he just doesn’t let facts get in the way of his ideas.
Some of the dumbest and most destructive ideas to ever blight mankind were thought up by comparatively intelligent people. Maybe it’s because they’re smart but don’t know how to think in a systemically logical way, so they come up with bad ideas that are cleverly disguised as something other than completely retarded.
Even intelligent people tend to overestimate their intelligence. It’s also blindness to their own logical fallacies – the same thing all of us suffer from to some extent.
It’s easy to say that we all suffer from it to some extent because that’s true. But that statement doesn’t account for the legions of academics and otherwise intelligent people who are a species of socialist, and the comparatively small number of intelligent people that understand the value of free markets and property rights.
In the end, I think it comes down to intellectual laziness and intellectual dishonesty. Bad ideas are easier to come by because they’re easier to produce and easier to wrap your head around, “expropriate the rich!” for example. It takes a little more thought to think of the ways that expropriating the rich would be a bad thing for everyone in the end. Then you have the dishonest people who know full well that “expropriate the rich!” would have disastrous results but they don’t care because it furthers their solipsistic ideological goals, so they lie and tout the boundless benefits of expropriation.
*looks up solipsistic*
I’ll be, there is a word for everything.
I was talking about the actual philosophers that came up with the dumb ideas in the first place (before they were ever tested in the real world), not the academics that parrot talking points in the face of obvious evidence that they’re wrong.
The people that you’re talking about aren’t intelligent, at least in the realm of economics. I don’t regard them as such. Another thing that people in general suffer from – thinking that being good in one field suddenly makes you better in other, completely unrelated fields.
I’m glad you brought that up because after I posted I felt that I had omitted one shining example. The difference between sophistry and rational philosophy. It’s much easier to be sophist, than a rational philosopher. Dumb people aren’t even sophists, it takes a certain amount of intelligence to be that bad in your thinking. The dumb folks don’t even traverse much in the way of serious thought. Smart people are the most dangerous sort of person when they believe in dumb ideas.
Look at Neil de Grasse-Tyson. He’s a smart guy, very smart some would say. Then he opens his mouth about issues of history or the proper ordering of society and government and you’ll quickly realize that he’s completely retarded outside of his narrow field of expertise.
Chomsky on Chavez – “There’s a strong opposition press bitterly attacking him all the time. There’s much more of an opposition press than there is in most of Latin America… There is some repression of the press, but it’s mostly, you know, verbal intimidation…”
“Chávez carried forward this historic liberation of Latin America…. (He was certainly) destructive to the rich oligarchy, to the US power…
Over the past ten years, I’ve seen a change of absolutely historic significance. I mean, if you go back to the Conquistadors 500 years ago, I sense that Latin America has been pretty much enthralled to Western force, (to) the United States in most recent times. Now, it’s pretty much free.”
I think he was careful not to call it socialism because he knows that socialism always fails and Chavez’s effort would eventually have to be disavowed. He wasn’t short on praise or excuses though. I suggest that Chomsky is an evil dude. Maybe we will get lucky and he will step in front of a bus.
Chomsky definitely is evil. The man excuses the vilest shit, constantly, and continues to peddle the lie that socialism can deliver anything but misery and death. Any philosophy, economic or otherwise, based on envy of what others have, and proposes redistribution as a solution, is doomed to produce only pain and suffering. That it sometimes looks like things might be working because there is plenty of wealth to steal from others, is why these things don’t devolve into immediate misery, but it sure as hell is funny to note that the poorer the place where they adopt these ideas, the quicker the devolution into misery and death comes.
Chavez’s daughter, BTW, is worth some 4 or 5 billion dollars, and she looks like she can skip a few meals. So does Maduro. And that guy Kim. Funny how practically always the guy ordering the deaths looks well fed and protected by all sorts of expensive weaponry their country can barely afford, while the serfs are starving to death…
Being one of the most cited people academically may help with the intelligence narrative. He did some good work with computer science and linguistics. But yeah that doesn’t make him correct on socialism.
Oh, I think he gave himself away to Rowe. He is correct…in his head, he just wont come out and say it. He knows socialism is an unsustainable system that results in poverty, misery and death.
He is no Paul Erdos.
Heh, fun fact:
Danica McKellar has an Erdos number of 4 and a Bacon number of 2.
HIs work in linguistics is pretty good. His political diatribes, however, nah.
He apparently made a significant and still relevant contribution to linguistics, and is obviously very “smart” in some meanings of that word.
It’s just one of the meanings that matters a lot less than people think.
What a dipshit Chomsky is.
Chomsky is a joke. Venezuela doesn’t represent socialism but Chomsky’s own vision of socialism is actually libertarianism, got it? Because I don’t.
Kulaks! Wreckers! Hoarders!
I’m sure CNN will find some fake evidence and fake witnesses to link you to the fake conspiracy. They’ll also pretend not to notice Clinton and Pdesta’s real links to real Russians.
I’m sure they are working with a couple “unnamed sources” as we speak.
Headline: “insider source contradicts Truml attorney on Russian ties”
I’ve seen it almost b every time I get on Facebook (not often) in their tending new section.
We shot down an ICBM over the Pacific in a test.
I think that’s kind of a big deal.
The fat kid wants to show the world how big his dick is? Well, we’ve got a big dick, too.
And as Team America showed the fat kid’s platform shoe wearin’, Eraserhead haircut of a daddy, dicks fuck assholes.
Shooting down one North Korea’s tests would be a big humiliation–talk about losing face.
Yesterdays successful test may have been a big deal in bringing this latest round of missile tests to a close. Only time will tell, but the implications of our successful test yesterday were probably important.
Well, we’ve got a big dick, too.
It’s called Florida.
Yeah, that was my company that made the rocket. It was a big deal here yesterday.
the ‘fake’ one?
cool either way, just curious.
Apparently both. The target was 100% us and we made parts for the other one.
Orbital ATK?
very awesome!
Truth be told, Kim Jong got several different Taepodong’s with which to fuck US up.
I eagerly look forward to the Republic of Texas v. Texas Anti-fa “least sympathetic group of assholes” fight.
The dark side of poutine: Canada taking credit for Quebec dish amounts to cultural appropriation, academic says
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-dark-side-of-poutine-canada-taking-credit-for-quebec-dish-amounts-to-cultural-appropriation-academic-says
There’s a light side to poutine?
Well, that certainly sounds like an enormous waste of time and money! But hey, as long as the taxpayers are footing the bill, who cares, right?
BTW, did I miss when Quebec finally broke off from Canada? Is pulled pork being culturally appropriated as an American dish when it’s actually distinctly Southern?
I said kiss my grits, Mel! Not culturally appropriate them!
/Woke Flo
I say we take of and nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
‘Academic’. There is the first clue.
Yup…
At this point when I hear that some academic said something or other, I immediately assume it was something not just idiotic, but destructive, and the productive will be footing the bill for the damage these idiots do.
Idiot.
Last I checked, regional recipes and dishes from places like France and Italy are not necessarily segmented and are just called French and Italian respectively.
No one says that Spanish dish is Galician or that’s from Provence give it back or Tuscan so it’s mine.
Very dumb this cultural appropriation. Plus let’s keep perspective here: It’s fucken french fries topped with salty gravy and some type of product they call cheese. Is this what Quebec wants to hang its nationalist culinary pride on?
Let’s rework the sentence:
No one says ‘that Spanish dish is Galician’ so stop calling it Spanish or that this recipe is from Provence so give it back or this lovely Tuscan wild boar plate is cultural appropriation if called Italian.
My Paella is Valenciana!
Chicken Florentine hardest hit.
I’m going to scream at the top of my lungs the next time someone calls parmagiano or prosciutto “Italian”, culturally appropriating the fruits of my ancestors in Parma.
They’re trying to be more European with the cultural designations, and those absolutely reference distinct regions.
Wait till they tell us we are not allowed to eat the stuff that isn’t from our own culture…
Why stop at the borders of the province. Narrow it down to the specific city where poutine was invented and claim that Quebec is appropriating Montreal (or other city) culture.
Please try to tear down the Sam Houston statue – and make sure to have cameras going during the battle.
Why would they do that?* Texas had to depose him as governor to secede from the US and join the Confederacy.
*In a sane world
Because self-styled “antifascists” are as dumb as rocks?
Hahaha, you expect them to actually know some history?
They force you to take TX history 3 or 4 times. I couldn’t even test out of history in college b/c you had to CLEP the Texas History separate.
I forgot the part where he was an officially adopted Cherokee and showed up to a negotiation (on the US side) dressed as a Cherokee, which got him into a disagreement with the Secretary of the Army. Sam Houston was my kind of scum.
So, a forerunner to Lizzy Warren, then?
Except for the ‘officially adopted’ part.
Rhetorical?
Also, I expect to see every starter on the Astros pitching squad hit the 10 day DL at least once more between June and August as long as they are at least six games ahead. I forget who started doing it last year (the Indians maybe? I think last year was the first year of the 10 day DL) but basically, if you have a rest day and you assign tomorrow’s starter, it works out so they can only miss one start. Why not give your starter a rest and get your AAA guys some big league work when you’re 20 games over .500 and (11 games in front of the division) after a third of the season? So yeah, I expect McCullers will get some sort of shoulder/finger/abdominal “injury” in mid June.
I can’t think of a way this wouldn’t end well. No, sir.
https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170530/lincoln-square/renting-transit-oriented-development-no-permit-parking-for-you?utm_content=buffer1facd&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=DNAinfoCHI
Is there a worse-run major city than Chicago?
Probably, but none nearly as high profile. Many of the same people that call for high density housing in the areas mentioned in the article are now bitching about longer commute times on public transit due to the influx of new residents. Some have told me that they have to get on an outbound train for four or five stops and then switch back to inbound just so they could fit into the train car because no one thought to expand train capacity or add more runs to compensate for all the additional commuters. Progressives truly are retarded.
I like to ask “mass transit” enthusiasts who consider “mass transit” and “public transit” synonymous if they are ever anywhere as dirty as a BART station… If they ever go literally anywhere else that has fallen into such disrepair but which still acts as if it is reasonable to charge you the full retail price. The only answer I ever get is “dive bars” which is an hilarious illustration of my point. Government is providing dive bar level quality, very expensively.
It’s truly bizarre how many excuses “we” will make for a thing if it has a virtue halo of publicness.
Mary Kay Letourneau’s husband files for separation
If their marriage can’t survive how can I have any faith in the institution?
See! The SoCons were right. Gay marriage ruined the institution.
I’m dissapointed Glibs was expecting a “would” comment by now.
Their just gentlemen, waiting for the separation to be final.
“Never stick it in a middle-aged white woman wearing a Kangol.”
She’s on the wrong side of the crazy/hot line.
Here’s some sports news:
Report: Heroic Predators Fan Charged Over Catfish Toss
I did something similar with an octopus at a Red Wings -Caps game the year after the Wings swept the Caps (I was also at Game 4 of that sweep!). Nobody said shit when I chucked it on the ice.
fucker
What kind of octopus?
Yet another reason to hate the Penguins.
Ah, Kim Wilde. ’80s poster girl who , according to Wikipedia “sold over 10 million albums and 20 million singles. Starting in 1998, while still active in music, she has branched into an alternative career as a landscape gardener.”
Lol.
Imma break the rules and toss in another link: Valley Girl soundtrack!
Good one, Sloop!
Feminists ‘Gallop’ Around Stockholm to Protest ‘Patriarchal’ Statues of Men on Horses
They hate history almost as much as they hate reality and themselves.
So they’re acting like beasts of burden to protest men who used beasts of burden to fight their enemies?
::raises hand::
I don’t get it.
Because you are blinded by the patriarchy and have no tools to understand feminist ways of communicating.
Incoherently?
Wrap a word salad of femspeak jargon around that, but yes.
“Release the rapefugees!”
To be fair, some of them look like they’d make for a good mount. Others could surely pull a plow.
“Hoping that ‘City Horses’ could start a debate about men and women in public space…”
I wouldn’t call it a debate, actually.
The debate topic is: Why do women around here feel the need to prance like ponies while in public?
One theory: they want to attract a man hung like a pony.
Another theory: They want to get ridden by a general.
That just an excellent set up for a joke, not a debate.
You just have to work on your debating skills.
Come back when you’ve mastered it.
We’ll all recognize you for it.
Ok, let’s pack it in. We’ve had a good run, but I think that’s enough civilization for one species.
Are women being banned from driving cars in these ‘spaces’? No? Then “space” is not being “given” to men.
Fucking hell, they really are serious about logic being a tool of the patriarchy, because they avoid it like the plague.
it’s just fucking stupid
Is that why they have so many fewer accidents?
*ducks, then remembers there are no female libertarians*
“Brandi Is Terrified That She’ll Fall Back Into Addiction if Obamacare Is Repealed”
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/obamacare-repeal-addiction-substance-abuse-insurance-coverage-medicaid-expansion
Well boo fuckin’ hoo.
I like that she had to trade weed for food and apparently couldn’t afford any furniture, yet she was able to scrape up enough cash to keep feeding the cats that pissed all over her apartment.
The comments aren’t exactly reassuring.
The left has completely abandoned the principle of personal responsibility. Their principles are the polar opposite of what our nation was founded and built upon. And they keep doubling down on them even as they suffer catastrophic losses on election days.
Which really means that without the fucking media, they’re just crazy people yelling at the sky.
Its not about personal responsibility. Healthcare is a resource that belonged to everyone equally before the rich stole it.
Seriously it can’t ever be about personal responsibility for anything, because that would make people feel bad. And we can’t have that.
How would you control people and tell them what they can or cannot do, if you then also expect them to be held accountable for their actions? It’s easier to get rid of personal responsibility and to then rule people with an iron fist, so they do the right thing, you know…
This is why we need a new nation. Or to completely disenfranchise anyone who is unwilling to be personally responsible for their own government.
Not a fine girl. What a bad wife she would be.
OT: Are there any Glibs in NC? The GF and I are planning a move from Maine to the Raleigh area, and I’m wondering if anyone has any tips or insights to the area.
Make sure you have a tank full of gas if you drive the Blue Ridge Highway.
Avoid the transplanted Massholes.
Eat at Bullock’s Bar-B-Q (I think somebody hacked their home page).
This past weekend was a sad thing for me as it marks the beginning of the Massholes overwhelming my state, generally behaving like cunts.
God I’ve been craving real BBQ. That looks pretty delicious. These are the kinds of reasons I look forward to moving south.
Yes, the Carolinas and Virginia are getting lousy with Northeastern transplants, who show up and immediately start bitching about absolutely everything that makes our states distinct from the shitholes they fled.
I am 100% one of those transplants. I promise the last thing I want is to bring New England with me.
Well, yeah – if you’re posting here, I’m assuming the last thing you’re going to do when you come on down is say “You know what? North Carolina really needs a senator like Elizabeth Warren”
Pssshhh! Please! I’m from Maine, we got Susan Collins. Clearly you should have a Susan Collins. She’s so dreamy!
More seriously: Maine has a citizen referndum system which allowed a bunch of retards to vote for a minimum wage hike that raises it to $15 / hour over a few years. This also applies to restaurant workers who didn’t want the hike, but clearly voted for it anyway. Portland is already a.) expensive and b.) has a shitty economy. This is not going to help, and it’s kind of the last straw for me. Combined with the shitty winters. It’s time to go.
Gotcha. Technically I’m a NY transplant, anyway – we moved to VA when I was 7. I used to beg my parents every year to move back to NY because we couldn’t get bagels or good pizza or Yankees games.
Most of the state has good deer hunting and you are permitted 6 deer annually (no more than 2 bucks). If that is not enough multiple military bases provide free doe tags to keep the runways safe.
The Raleigh area has some great Carolina BBQ (vinegar based) along the railroad tracks.
Cary is a fine town with good schools (same with Apex) but the locals say the name stands for “Containment Area for Relocated Yankees”.
Drive about 90 minutes west to Lexington if you want decent BBQ.
Very much this.
Yes! These are the kinds of tips I want! BBQ related tips!
That sounds like a bit of a haul, but as a special event thing could be a blast.
Drive east to get some eastern NC barbeque. It’s much better than the western NC stuff. Eastern NC BBQ is pulled+chopped, with a vinegar-based sauce.
Yes. The Blue Door.
Except on Sunday.
Keep going for another 90 minutes to Owensboro.
The research triangle is an incredible economy. No one is from there. State maintains awesome parks. I left for OBX.
Avoid Cary if you want to avoid the transplants, don’t go into Durham unarmed after dark, and I highly recommend living 30+ minutes outside the cities. If you can throw a rock and hit a corn/soy/tobacco field or a cow pasture, you’re in a good part of the state.
OTOH, I have a dim view of that part of the state. I work remotely for a company up there, but make it a point to only visit the office, and I live out in the swamps in the southeast corner of the state, ~40mi inland (to avoid the transplant retirees infesting the beaches and coastal golf courses). So I might be exaggerating how bad RTP sucks.
5 Sex Toys That Are Feminist AF
Sexual pleasure is now a right? How is the government going to hand that out?
With the big swingin’ dick of government – that takes a whole committee to get hard.
STEVE SMITH COULD BE GS-13 AND HAVE OFFICE!
10/10
LOL
I wouldn’t necessarily call what STEVE SMITH does “pleasurable”…
WHAT? STEVE SMITH GET MUCH PLEASURE WHEN RAPE!
I’m pretty sure he’d qualify for SES. Guy is for sure a subject matter expert.
How does sexual pleasure as a right work out with asexuals?
How does it work out for guys who can’t get laid? I guess the government should be paying for prostitutes.
No because SEX TRAFFUHKING!!!11!!1! Also, women have no agency and would never, ever choose to be a prostitute. They are always forced into it by evil shitlords like you.
Well, since sexual pleasure is a right, it’s only fair to force women to “pay” their fair share to those men who are less fortunate.
A brothel run like the DMV… it does have a certain appeal.
What? We have 7 people standing around drinking coffee, while one angry ho badgers the customers?
They do this in The Netherlands. Something like 12 times a year.
Time to move!
Rapugees are going to give sexual pleasure whether you want it or not!
AF? There’s a Feminist Air Force? Do they fly invisible jets like Wonder Woman?
Nah, it’s just like the normal Air Force, but they nag men into doing it for them. Think He For She, but with fighter jets.
I’m picturing Top Gun with a lot more passive aggressive comments.
And a reworked volleyball scene.
I’m picturing more hair in the volleyball scene. I just threw up a little.
Suddenly interested…
“The Lioness, the world’s first smart vibrator, collects data about your vaginal movements and temperature, which it displays on an app.”
Oooh baby, collect that data, plot that graph, calculate the standard deviation, harder!
Hey some of us think statistics can be sexy.
Cue the complaints about how this data is abused. (Dear god, why would you give someone this data?!)
Yeah, no one should see that data, right?
Somewhat OT: I went to a continuing legal Ed lecture last week on data mining phones re: litigation. There’s a somewhat local company that is essentially a private investigator, but for smart phones only. And they are using the same technology that was used in the FBI for finding information on the San Bernadino shooter. The dude who was explaining some of the data had used his daughter’s phone (so as not to give away client information) as a sample. Soooooo much information is available through the tools.
How long until one of these gets hacked and someone is “virtually raped?” It will happen…or allegedly happen.
Don’t you mean literally raped?
How about digitally raped?
By network penetration?
*Swish*
God, sex data analysis. Isn’t that just modern feminism up and down, if they’re not making sex a political statement, it’s a clinical experience.
My wife has been known to taunt me over the female ability to have multiple orgasms. I demand orgasm equality.
No, because women have rights, and men have responsibilities. Get it right, shitlord!
Try Cabergoline!
http://joe.endocrinology-journals.org/content/179/3/357
Is the sexual pleasure gap linked to the thigh gap?
Not the wage gap?
Because that’s a myth, too.
obligatory:
Mr. President, we must not allow a
mineshaftsex toy gap!sex toys with encouragingly feminist missions?
A sex-robot set to ‘KILL ALL MEN’?
I dont watch basketball, but I listen to sports radio on my drive in because it’s the only station that I get on my radio. Someone mentioned that game 1 of the NBA finals will be June 1st and game 7 will be june 18th.
Must be nice being an NBA fan when your offseason lasts approximately an hour.
Tennis has been handsy for decades. Look up Jeff Tarango and Bruno Rebeuh.
Miami-Dade County prosecutor mocked at Democratic party meeting
This stood out to me.
So correctional officers tortured a man to death by more or less melting the skin off his body. We’re used to that. We’re also used to there being no punishment for such an act.
I am, however, surprised that the claim that a grand jury wasn’t an honest process, but the prosecutor deciding by herself whether or not charges should be laid is.
It’s this new thing called double-speak. Or lying.
That is fucking sick. Yeah, I’m sure the guy was a pain in the ass and had probably pulled this shit before. Does that even remotely merit death by torture? Does being a cop/CO turn you into a sociopath or does the profession just naturally appeal to sociopaths?
“…little column A, a little column B.”
“We believe that we will not have true gender equality until we have pleasure equality,”
[insert “lap of luxury” jibe]
Outdoors Calendar
Come for the hike, stay for the STEVE SMITH RAPEFEST!
Sacrificing your kids to STEVE SMITH is a form of abuse.
When is the point when STEVE SMITH jokes get stale? Did anyone research the duration of inside jokes among glibertarians? Why are some long lasting and some not? Where is a sociologist when you need one?
SOCIOLOGIST FLED TO AVOID RAPE BY STEVE SMITH
Never. They will never be stale. They will always be funny. In a century our great grandchildren will meet in a glib chatroom in VR space and make STEVE SMITH jokes.
I think this video explains it all
COME TO WOODS AND STEVE SMITH WILL GIVE YOU A JOKE. BY JOKE STEVE SMITH MEAN RAPE
STEVE SMITH HAVE MUCH ENDURANCE
Thankfully the Poppy references died out quickly.
I never got the Poppy thing anyway. STEVE SMITH AT LEAST MAKE SENSE.
I am Poppy.
I’m Poppy.
STEVE SMITH
AMRAPE POPPY!I am Poppy reference.
But before the poopy references died did you tell it that Donald Trump was impeached? That way it could die happy.
Poppy.. damnit now my joke is ruined, Classic Leon.
“This way everything is open and honest,” she said.
“Imma just say it, so’s you people will get oughtta my hair. Imma say it slow, too.
Fuck
You.
That’s
why.”
Belgian university tells female students to wear ‘low-cut’ tops to graduation ceremony
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/31/belgian-university-tells-female-students-to-wear-low-cut-tops-to-graduation-ceremony
Well, if there are recruiters on campus, it might be a good move.
They should wear whipped cream and strawberries.
I clicked on that link. Not one picture of tits. Not a single one.
I know, right?
Here you go.
http://thechive.com/2017/05/08/they-may-take-our-lives-but-theyll-never-take-our-flbp-40-photos/
Marginally SFW.
In a world filled with universities making “safe spaces” for their students, it’s nice to hear of one that sounds like it’s actually worth the money you’d pay.
some milton
I really enjoy listening to him.
It seems like it would have been fantastic to learn from him. I would imagine he would point out your errors and challenge you. Doing this to get your grow, not for himself to feel like he’s better than you.
I love the videos of him doing Q&A sessions. He just oozes affability. My favorite line is when asked about equal pay laws and explaining that those very laws shield sexists from repercussions: “I’m on your side! But you’re not.”
it is very good. i think he’s the best econ writer to get people to move toward libertarianism.
from there, I start handing out mises or hayek.
I need to put those guys on my reading list. So many books to read. So many damn books!
Me too, me too.
The mayor of Florence has told tourists they will “get wet” if they settle down for lunch on the steps of some of the city’s prized churches as he is turning to hosepipes to restore “decorum” among visitors to the Renaissance city.
The steps of the Basilica of Santa Croce, the burial place of Michelangelo, will be the first to be hosed down, taking place at about lunchtime, in order to stop visitors from eating on them, followed by the Chiesa di Santo Spirito.
“We have nothing against tourists. We know that they are a great resource for our city,” the mayor, Dario Nardella, told The Guardian.
“But there is a problem with respecting decorum. The majority of visitors are respectful and elegant. But there has been an increase among those who don’t respect our cultural heritage, who sit down on church steps, eat their food and leave rubbish strewn on them.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/31/florence-mayor-dario-nardella-hosepipes-basilica-santa-croce
Florence hired Bull Conner as a police superintendent?
The bailiff from Night Court?
Basilica of Santa Croce
“Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” was a fine song but I think they’re passing out sainthood a little too easily now.
Look, you don’t mess around with Jim, OK?
Ugh, worstest song in the whole damned town.
Is this really about trash or about getting people into overpriced cafes and restaurants?
If you look like Kelly Rohrbach you’d look good in a burlap sack, but beyond that I strongly disapprove.
http://nypost.com/2017/05/29/bikinis-are-dead-long-live-the-one-piece/
I’m sure the number of fat people has nothing to do with the increased sales in one piece bathing suits.
hickok45 shooting .50 BMG prone and standing says it has less kick than a 12 gauge.
a little too much banter at times but still overall has that just shooting the shit with your homies feel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0uJ2BjRPOA
Yeah, he’s kinda chatty but overall good videos.
I love that guy. He has the greatest job in the world.
.50BMG rifles aren’t that bad. I wouldn’t want to spend all day shooting one, but they mostly hurt the wallet.
Take the muzzle brake off that thing and it would break bones.
I don’t think you’d break anything, but it wouldn’t be much fun to shoot.
https://youtu.be/wrImp-ek3bI
That malevolent bastard is an A-Square .577 T-Rex. It’s spinning up around 80% of the muzzle energy of a .50BMG, in a rifle weighing half as much (and with no muzzle brake). As you can see, it’ll move you around a little…
“The couple appear to be going from strength to strength, with model Stella previously dating singer Miley Cyrus.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4558176/Stella-Maxwell-girlfriend-Kristen-Stewart-cosy-up.html
It’s hard out there for a Victoria’s Secret model.
It often is.
Will Wilkinson points the way to our glorious liberaltarian future-
Fortunately, defending a more freewheeling economy implies no hostility to the welfare state. On the contrary, a generous and effective safety net can be embraced as a tool to promote and sustain a culture of freedom, innovation and risk taking. Politically, repairing and improving the slipshod infrastructure of the safety net would liberate Republicans from the bad faith of attacking the welfare state in one breath, halfheartedly promising not to cut entitlements in the next and then breaking that promise once in power.
More important, grasping that government spending is compatible with high levels of freedom and economic vitality would give Republicans space actually to govern. The belief that it is necessary always and forever to reduce spending leads to the embarrassing spectacle of obstruction and paralysis unfolding on Capitol Hill.
A Republican Party that aimed instead to free markets and improve the effectiveness and composition of spending could govern, govern well and win elections doing it.
A lot of handwaving and nebulous Utopian what-ifferry.
Big government compassionate conservatism would work. It’s just never been tried.
‘On the contrary, a generous and effective safety net’
‘A Republican Party that aimed instead to free markets’
These people live in a fictional world where things don’t have costs. In their world coercing a safety net has no effect on people choices and is compatible with a free market.
Yes, yes, nothing says “freedom” like having your earnings forcibly confiscated and handed to those who didn’t earn it.
Fuck off, slaver.
So does Wilkinson just admit to being a full-on prog at this point, or what?
alright, class. repeat after me. Economic freedom is personal freedom.
*shrug*
Some hedge-trimming would help. Making the phase-out of benefits for working recipients less of a staircase would go some way toward encouraging employment. It’s utopian to think we’re getting rid of these programs with anything short of national bankruptcy and civil collapse, and even then we’d come out looking more like Greece than Scandinavia.
Perhaps more of a “necessary evil” attitude, rather than a “golden road to utopia” attitude, about welfare would help.
Calling it “welfare” rather than a “safety net” would be nice. I hate happy-clappy euphemisms like that. I slipped last week and corrected somebody when they called Medicaid “insurance”. I reminded them that its welfare, not insurance. Got some dirty looks for it, but for fuck’s sake, unless you can call things what they are, you can’t engage with reality.
He’s talking to you Nick Gillespie.
That’s about as honest as declaring food stamps a source of income.
I bit my tongue before I dug a deeper hole, but in other contexts I tell people that Medicaid is insurance like Social Security is a paycheck. They’re both welfare.
I made the mistake of trying to explain the distinction to mom’s friend. “But I worked for that money,” was the refrain she kept coming back to. Well, no, you worked to pay for the money they sent to your parents. I’m working for your money.
I heard that Ariana Grande has organized a benefit concert for this weekend. In addition to spreading love and stopping terrorism, the proceeds will go to the bombing victims.
I will be happy to donate rope for the teachers who have their students write letters to suicide bombers.
WTF??
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/810115/school-children-told-respect-killers-teaching-aid-talking-about-terrorism
they disabled comments. smart.
It’s been a long time since a certain gentleman spoke these words. Now he would be ashamed.
Well, he was a cis-white shitlord so what does he know?
He was correct in a way that he couldn’t foresee. That was their finest hour…and it’s been all downhill since then.
A while back I saw where an Englishman was arrested for ‘hate speech’ because he quoted Churchill in public.
Yes, that was their finest hour. Now, not so much.
I for one plan to change my avatar to a flag to show my solidarity while I agitate to preserve the status quo that makes these attacks possible in the first place. Because love trumps hate and stuff.
Since I know that Lachowski means there’s at least one other college baseball fan here….UVA got screwed six ways to Sunday. Clemson hosts a regional, we do not. Clemson, who finished behind us in the conference, lost 11 of their last 15 games, and was hammered 10-2 by UVA in the ACC tournament. On top of that, we get shipped halfway across the country to play at TCU, who is the #6 national seed.
Shockingly, the ADs of Virginia Tech and Maryland were on the selection committee. Can’t imagine why we were fucked over. What a mystery!
I just want to second this. Our Cavs got effed over, but hopefully that fires them up enough to get out of the sub regional.
VPI is just bitter that they still have zero National Titles and we picked up 2 more in the last month (Tennis titles do count right?)
On the other hand, I’m sure you remember what happened the last time the Hoos were slighted by the selection committee. I KNOW Vanderbilt does….muwahahahaha.
Seriously, though, the team from O’Connor on down is pissed. They have a massive chip on their shoulders. I’d love to see Pavin and Hase just carry us by clubbing the shit out of everything they see.
That’s what I’m banking on as well. “Nobody respects us” is a great motivator!
Damn that sucks. We are hosting this year, first time 2007 I believe. We got a pretty tough draw in our regional though. Oklahoma state is our #2. They beat us earlier in the year. Missouri St. is our #3. we beat them about a month ago in a midweek game, but Missouri St. hates us. In 2015, we won the still water regional and missouri st. won their regional as a national seed. They share their ballpark with a minor league team. The weekend of the supers they couldn’t play in their own park because the minor league team was playing. We played the super regional in Fayetteville and ended up beating them 2 out of 3 to go to the college world series. Missouri st. feels like we robbed them of their CWS berth. They will be out for our blood.
If it makes you feel better, TCU thinks we were screwed too. We’re the #6 national seed and we have freakin’ Virginia in our sub-regional. Yes, y’all got screwed.
Third, the idea that reducing taxpayer-financed government spending is the key to giving people more freedom and revving up the economy encourages conservative hostility to government as such. Republicans for whom it’s definitional that greater liberty and prosperity come from less government tend to distrust it as a matter of principle. Democrats in turn come to distrust that Republicans who believe this can govern in good faith.
This leads to an overall decline in trust for institutions and contributes to the polarization and dysfunction that lead voters to clamor for populist outsiders who will shake up the system. But populist politicians like Mr. Trump, who cater to discontent, never make the system work better, because they don’t know or care how it works.
Of course, we just don’t have the right Top Men.
But populist politicians like Mr. Trump, who cater to discontent, never make the system work better, because they don’t know or care how it works.
Or maybe because the entrenched political establishment will fight like lunatics to preserve their power, graft, and cronyism?
Nah, that couldn’t be it.
But were they married? If not, LOCK. THEM. UP!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4554434/Two-camels-mating-middle-motorway-Dubai.html
This is Dubai. Execute the female by stoning, give the male a warning.
This is Dubai.
ExecuteThrow the femaleby stoningin a rape cage, give the male a warning.Come on, man, be reasonable! Camels have value!
Must be why they never have drivers ed and sex ed on the same day?
Trump pulling U.S. out of Paris climate deal
You mean the deal that was never voted on by anyone but Obama? How was it ever legal in the first place?
yeah! we gotta impeach a president who uses that kind of power! No tyrants! #impeachhim
oh, wait. not trump?
Voted on by the Senate, pshaw – who needs such formalities when you’re a Lightworker?
“How was it ever legal in the first place?”
It isnt.
What do you mean? This morning my local news said the agreement was ratified. I almost spit out my milk and went on a minute long rant at the TV about how that was a bald faced lie and fake news, but I don’t think they heard me.
Trump is literally the only Republican in as long as I can remember, outside of Rand Paul, who actually has a pair. I hope more people in the GOP can imitate that and get elected so the pussy GOP Congress will finally start standing up to the Democrats. Of course I also hope they become more libertarian.
Why would democrat-light republicans in congress that also love themselves a big government fight the democrats? That’s our problem today. There is very little distinction between the 2 parties other than the democrats are bat shit crazy too.
These people live in a fictional world where things don’t have costs. In their world coercing a safety net has no effect on people choices and is compatible with a free market.
They also pretend paternalism can be constrained to their preferred categories of behavior. It’s like they have never heard of “mission creep”.
The same do-gooder impulse which leads them to believe in a “reasonable” safety net will inevitably convince them the necessity of such regulatory constrictions as the EEOC.
Good news
The Supreme Court on Tuesday placed sharp limits on how much control patent holders have over how their products are used after they are sold.
The case concerned Lexmark International, which makes toner cartridges for use in its printers. The court ruled that the company could not use patent law to stop companies from refilling and selling the cartridges.
Mark Lemley, director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology, said that anyone who refurbished, repaired or resold used products would now be protected from patent infringement claims. The ruling will also prevent manufacturers from forcing consumers to buy supplies only from the original source.
I predict evolutionary warfare as ink manufacturers design more complicated cartridges and refillers try to keep up. It’s gonna be duck genitalia all over again.
Dubious Study? McNuggets makin’ you gay
somebody call alex jones!
IT’S GOING TO MAKE THE FRIGGIN’ FROGS GAY!!
THEY’RE MAKING THE FREAKIN’ FROGS GAY!!
Dammit. Too slow.
listen here, folks. Q’s gotten into the matrix.
I know Kung Fu.
woah…
Can’t be true – I’d be as queer as a French horn by the point if it were
Well if masterbating too much makes you gay then I am literally the gayest man in the universe. Not sure if this counts, but if I were a chick, I would totally be a lesbian mcnuggets or not.
What do you mean by ‘too much’?
Blisters?
I AM a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, so be careful there please…
Maybe Michelle Obama should have gone with that strategy.
Burying the lede… you can sue your parents for alimony in Spain? WTF?
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/will-more-sex-save-spain/
First part of article had me scheduling vacation to Spain to help take care of all those lonely Spanish women. Then they had to run it. /Cancels vacation plans.
RE the Cohen witch hunt. I thought the Russian conspiracy thing was funny at first, now it is just getting stupid. I don’t think it is ever going away. They will investigate forever. As to Cohen, I have never heard that guy in an interview, and or on a panel when I did not think, “god, what a giant bag of dicks”.
Actual foreign interference in U.S. elections:
“More than 5,500 illegals registered to vote in Virginia in last decade; 1,852 actually cast ballots
Critics say McAuliffe kept key facts hidden”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/30/illegals-in-virginia-registered-vote-in-elections/
More:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/10/02/virginia-illegal-voting-fraud-coverup/
good god, the comments. how can people defend that?
Team BLUE! ???
But I was told that this never ever ever happens.
That is at least 1852 felons, plus the people who covered it up.
Look! RUSSIANS!!11!!!
*barks internally*
Follow up from yesterday’s story about the commonalities between the 16 terrorists who’ve perpetrated attacks in Europe over the past two years.
For a refresher, ten of them either went to Syria to join ISIS or attempted to go to Syria.
13 of the 16 were born in Europe, meaning that restricting their travel or right to return is complicated or legally impossible.
The question yesterday was what to do about such people. Well, to follow up, the French have come up with an interesting solution–assassination.
“MOSUL, Iraq—French special forces here have for months enlisted Iraqi soldiers to hunt and kill French nationals who have joined the senior ranks of Islamic State, according to Iraqi officers and current and former French officials.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/frances-special-forces-hunt-french-militants-fighting-for-islamic-state-1496090116
If I put two links in the same post, they have to wake up Heroic Mulatto to approve it, or something, and I start to feel guilty. So I won’t post a link for the following. It’s at the wsj as well. The quote goes like this:
“A French government spokesman said fighters who travel overseas to join Islamic State are taking risks, as he responded to a question regarding a Wall Street Journal article on secret French operations to kill French jihadists.”
No, I’m not advocating that we assassinate Americans who are fighting for ISIS, but it’s interesting 1) That they’re dealing with these problems in a more radical way than we would and 2) They’re not worried about a mass media meltdown if they admit to doing such things. Can you imagine what they would say about Trump if we were doing something like this?
Note, the French aren’t necessarily killing the French citizens fighting for ISIS themselves. They’re telling the Iraqis where they are and letting the Iraqis kill them.
Regardless, I’ve read of dozens of Americans going to fight for ISIS. We’ll need to have a conversation about this eventually.
Here’s a report alleging that Mattis will focus on killing foreign fighters so they can’t go back to their country of origin:
https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/05/20/mattis-announces-new-dod-authority-to-act-quickly-against-isis-focus-on-killing-foreign-fighters/
Logically, it makes sense that they would want to do this.
From a moral, constitutional, individual rights perspective . . . not so much.
Even if we just charge these people with providing material support to terrorists, I believe that’s a section of the Patriot Act, which I’d like to see go away.
If they die on the battlefield, that definitely solves a lot of problems.
You might just be able to charge them with treason.
Queue all the media sob stories with families outraged about their sons being killed who they swear were there just visiting family or sightseeing. There’s no way their little Muhammad (formally Albert) was involved with ISIS.
The strategy targets all foreign fighters, not just ones from the west. And most aren’t, of course. It strikes me as a sound strategy. Foreign fighters take their expertise back to their home countries, where they cause further unrest and create new ISIS strongholds.
Why? They, including the US citizens fighting for ISIS, are foreign fighters. That makes them legitimate military targets. Prioritizing foreign fighters makes sense to me, regardless of where they are from. Kill them all. Regardless of where they are from.
I imagine in the heat of battle its pretty damn hard to sort the US citizens from the others, anyway. How exactly would you arrest that guy with an RPG, and kill the guy next to him with the AK?
From the article, it appears the French are specifically targeting French fighters–and they don’t want those people coming back to France.
I agree that if someone joins ISIS and takes up arms against the United States, they should be considered the enemy. Picking out individuals for assassination because they’re Americans, though? And that’s the point. I don’t care if they’re dead so much as I care that they can’t come back to the U.S.
I’m okay with charging these people with treason. From the article I read on Somali Americans joining ISIS, it seemed like we had a pretty good idea who they were. Issue an international warrant. If they cross our border, or the border of our allies, we can keep them away from the American public that way.
I am sure there is some team blue hack ready too take anyone proposing what you just did there to court to prevent you from picking on these misunderstood people coming back…
The Somali-Americans who were busted for trying to join ISIS are doing serious time.
“Hamza Ahmed, 21, was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years in prison and 23 years of supervised release for charges connected to a plot to join ISIS.
Another conspirator in the case, Hanad Musse, also 21, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with 20 years of supervised release.
Before he was sentenced, Musse apologized for lying to his family and acknowledged that he committed a serious offense. The judge asked Musse directly whether he was a terrorist, and Musse replied: “I am a terrorist, your honor.”
Musse, Ahmed and two other men took a Greyhound bus from Minneapolis to New York in November 2014 and were stopped by federal agents as they tried to travel overseas from JFK Airport.
The pair are among the nine friends in Minnesota’s large Somali community who are being sentenced this week for conspiring to join the militant group.”
—-CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/minnesota-isis-trial-three-sentenced-hamza-ahmed/
But, you know, those kids were prosecuted back when Obama was in office. Now that Secret Nazi President is in charge, yeah, I’m sure the media would make a big stink about it.
I’m all for getting these guys if you respect their constitutional rights. The penalty for treason is death, but they get a jury and counsel and the right not to testify against themselves, etc., etc.
Those kids were more like conspiracy to commit treason.
As I’ve written before, the French have little compunction about doing extreme stuff in the defense of la République française. And they really don’t care if others call them hypocrites when they object to precisely the same tactics when used by other nations. The French invented the “Gallic shrug,” after all.
I don’t think that restricting travel to and from Syria or Iraq during an active war would be illegal. They obviously don’t have the balls to do it though. Nor do we.
The courts would have us believe that the American electorate lacks the sovereignty to have their duly elected leaders put policies like this in place on the off chance that some people proposing and supporting the policy would not be doing so for goodthink reasons. Apparently we have a constitutional requirement to keep the door wide open with no discretion, a requirement that was only discovered to have existed in 2017.
And, unfortunately, the courts are largely correct.
The fact that the very people who framed the constitution went on to legislate specific immigration policies that were decidedly not-open-bordery and the subsequent generations up until this one would have thought an open border immigration policy to be unfathomable, tells me that this broad reading of the constitution is an innovation. But hey, if you think the Constitution is a living breathing creature whose meaning is subjective, then sure, that’s exactly what the Constitution says, or something.
I think I’ve been misunderstood…
I see that. Sorry if I got a little rantastic.
The court decisions striking down Trump’s ban on immigration from the Seven Bad Places are comprehensively bad, bad decisions. The courts have been anything but “largely correct” on this issue.
SCOTUS has been crystal clear that (a) there is no constitutional right to immigrate to the US, (b) US citizens have no standing to file suit seeking to enforce a right to immigrate, and (c) executive action on immigration that has a facially valid purpose is, well, valid. The court decisions blocking the Trump EO have disregarded all this SCOTUS precedent.
I meant that courts are correct in that the electorate lacks sovereignty because they (the courts) have decided they can do whatever they want becuz feelz. I agree the decision is awful. It’s not even a decision, it’s a soft coup. Yet, here we are.
No longer a nation of laws, but of elites with an agenda that sucks for the plebes…
A soft coup is exactly what it is. The judiciary usurping tremendous amounts of power from what was ostensibly a sovereign electorate.
The Democrats would quickly find a leftist judge to declare it “unconstitutional”, because fuck you, that’s why.
Even if we tried, it would get blocked by some 9th Circuit dipshit.
Of course if the Dems decided to restrict travel to and from Russia the 9th circuit would bend over.
I forget, how many divisions does the 9th have?
It really is time for another Jacksonian “He’s made his decision, now let him enforce it” moment.
I think the specifics of the targeting would matter. I might be a hypocrite myself here, but I think if they are killed on the battlefield, as in combat, they or any other country is well within their rights to target them just as they are within their rights to target any enemy fighter. Now if we are talking about drone strikes when they are attending a wedding or something far from the battlefield and not in actual combat, that is a bit of a grey area and gets kind of close to summary executions.
“I’m really good at killing people” – Barack Obama
Also, if they know who they are, how could they get back into the country? It is my understanding the French let them back in and then watch them until the go on a murder spree. I have to think there was/is opportunity to arrest and try them at some point.
Military strikes on enemy forces “far from the battlefield” are perfectly legit, you know. Plus, there’s the difficulty of knowing where the battlefield is, these days.
In some cases yes, that would be legit. A wedding party is probably not entirely made up of “enemy forces” though.
Well, I for one have no idea how many actual wedding parties we have bombed. I suspect its fewer than have been reported.
I’m also one of those folks who thinks that its perfectly OK, maybe even advisable in the long run, to disregard human shields, on the theory that you don’t let the other guy get an advantage from committing war crimes.
The citation on this is so bad that I would not, personally, put it in quotes.
Do I believe he expressed something like that sentiment? Yep. But that’s not a quote.
It was reported in 2012 that he said that to aids. They are not my words, they are words reportedly spoken by Barack Obama. Maybe, ‘…..’ for indirect quotes?
Which is the problem with Muslim immigration right there. Even if the government was allowed to sort the good from the bad, within a generation or two you have a legally entrenched population of people whose aim is conquest. The younger generations trend more radical and conquesty than their parents and grandparents.
26% of younger Muslims in America believe suicide bombings are justified.
35% of young Muslims in Britain believe suicide bombings are justified (24% overall).
42% of young Muslims in France believe suicide bombings are justified (35% overall).
22% of young Muslims in Germany believe suicide bombings are justified.(13% overall).
29% of young Muslims in Spain believe suicide bombings are justified.(25% overall).
http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf#page=60
28% of Muslims in the UK prefer Sharia (37% for those younger).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6309983.stm
It’s truly bizarre that the children of Muslim immigrants, likely born in the new country, seem to hold more extreme views than those of their parents. How did this happen? Something is very wrong here…
Young guys that can’t get a clear path to prosperity, access to a woman that loves them, etc. . . . they tend to do bad things.
It isn’t just Muslims. Take a white kid like that from the back in the day, and he could easily become a Nazi skinhead.
Take a Mexican or black kid like that in Los Angeles, and he becomes a soldier for a gang.
Take a Muslim kid like that, and he may want to join ISIS.
It’s worse in Europe, too, because the unemployment rate is so bad–even for young, native born citizens, whose parents brought them up right, got them an education, etc.
Imagine from your experience, something like Goth kids used to be. Many of them come from wealthy homes, where life was good. Why did they go goth? For whatever reason, they feel disconnected from mainstream culture. In later goth stages, a lot of that had to do with being whatever orientation. I think for a lot of kids it was easier to tell their parents they were goth rather than gay. Whatever . . .
Point is, guys who feel extremely alienated from mainstream culture are easy pickin’s for somebody that pumps them up and tells them what they want to hear. That 72 virgin sales pitch is probably a big seller, too. How’s that old misogynist joke go about how the difference between a slut and a bitch? A slut will have sex with anybody, but a bitch will have sex with anybody but me? Imagine you’re a heterosexual guy with first generation Muslim immigrant parents, and you go to school and you’re surrounded by these women who seem to be available–but are way out of your reach. There’s no dating in your culture. Your parents pick someone for you to meet to get married–but in an immigrant community, there are only so many of those women to go around.
72 virgins in the afterlife probably sounds pretty good.
Then you have places that are very poor with relatively low rates of violent crime (think Appalachia) compared to particular groups that live in places like New York . Poverty does not breed crime, crime along with many other things, breeds poverty. Culture is a vital factor to consider here.
Population density?
Culture is a vital factor to consider here.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner.
Trying to register a domain on a new domain extension during the trademark sunrise period is fucking ridiculous. As you can imagine, lots of hoops. Hoops within hoops.
Is the domain extension .xxx?
Lots of hoops so .nba maybe. Or possibly .kkk for KewlKibbledKristen.
Kristen’s Keksy Kekistan.
Listen, I haven’t worked in porn in, like, 10 years!
Links or it didn’t happen.
Yeah, baby! Yeah!
(let’s see who clicks and who mouses over)
Lol
She thinks the price of half a million blinded people was worth it.
I was blinded by the mouseover. Didn’t need to click.
Luckily the hosting website is ponderously slow and I had time to change my mind before it loaded the shoulders down portion of the image.
“He was banned from the 2017 French Open for sexually assaulting a TV reporter live on air.”
Maxime Hamou’s Wiki
“Sexual assault” no longer has any meaning.
+1 male gaze
“hort holiday weeks always get in my head. I better go get my covfefe and wake up before I post the links…”
Just the latest evidence that anything will make the unhinged snowflakes shit their panties. Hey snowflakes, NUTTAFINGA!
Oh, no!
After years in which any sign of economic weakness was reason enough for the Fed to maintain its stimulus campaign, the Fed is now willing to shrug off at least a little bad data. Lael Brainard, a Federal Reserve governor, told the New York Association for Business Economics that the Fed should raise its benchmark interest rate “soon,” despite new evidence that inflation remains below the level the Fed desires.
I blame Trump.
They have to raise rates so that they can cut them again. Seriously, that is all they are thinking.
And she might want to check out the dollar index. The Fed has painted itself into a corner.
In fairness, no one could have seen that coming.
Ought to be fun. Raising rates as you go into a correction. What could possibly go wrong?
At some point, setting the rates closer to the natural clearing level is going to be the best move. I’m not a PhD economist, but if I do a regression analysis on what people want to lend money to banks to lend to other people, the clearing level is approximately 4.5% +/- 2% in a guaranteed environment like FDIC backed banks and banked back CDs. To my mind, that means that banks have to loan money at at least 5.5% and borrow it at least 3% to remain long-term solvent absent this central bank insanity.
I have no idea what the natural clearing level would be except to say it would be significantly higher than it is today. Your guess is better than mine. It’s the servicing of the national debt that is worrying.
Everrything the Fed has done since the Big Dump of ’08 has been painting itself into a corner, the only exit for which is inflation.
“On balance, when assessing economic activity and its likely evolution, it would be reasonable to conclude that further removal of accommodation will likely be appropriate soon,” Ms. Brainard said.
She’s like the Oracle of Fucking Delphi.
Well, it looks like Trump is about to pull out of the climate deal. I can already see the ocean rising from my house.
Maybe it’ll block the view of Russia.
There is a very small patch of grass between my building and the neighbors. Some asshole has been “mowing it” for over 40 minutes. He keeps hitting rocks, bottles left by local inebriates, etc. It’s a 10 minute job—if you count the 5 minutes it would take to PICK UP shit BEFORE you start mowing! Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be the dim-witted brother-in-law of a landlord.
easy?
What’s easier, picking up shit in a lot, or just mowing over it with your BiL’s mower?
half ass mowing then grabbing some chick-fil-a?
OT: Interesting, but long, article. This is what it’s like to be struck by lightning
explodes the clothes off
go on…
You like naked dudes, eh?
Mens be dumber then womenz and shit so dat lightnin struck em good all da time.
I have done some work on boilers over the years. Steam pressurized to 150 psi when vented to atmospheric pressure expands in volume something like 11,000 times. I don’t know what the water to steam expansion in volume at atmospheric pressure would be, but I could see flash boiling sweat easily blowing your clothes off.
You’ve Been Duped. The Affordable Care Act isn’t raising your premiums. Republicans are.s
PROTECT THAT LEGACY
“Earlier this month, I lost my job.”
For stupidity and incompetance I presume.
It has to be stupidity because no proponents of Obumblecare have been mendacious. Well meaning but mistaken, thats all.
the republicans have some sort of economic time masheen.
Tricknology!!!!
SABATEURS! WRECKERS!
I’d like this motherfucker to explain to my why my deductible and premiums have both shot up over the past 5 years and why my wife’s employer refuses to allow anyone to work more than 27 hours a week, forcing her to work another part-time job.
evul capitalists?
Well, we all know that all business owners are sitting on Scrooge McDuck-style piles of money, and are simply hoarding it from the poor workers.
What else are they going to do their swimming in, huh?
Oh, now I remember, the ACA was Republican legislation. And when my premiums and out-of-pocket and deductible went up between 2011 – 2016, Republicans were in total control of the federal government. Oh, jeez, how could I forget?
I know you are just making jest of these morons, but they are counting on most people being so stupid and worried about missing out on free shit that this basic stuff escapes them…
Chip and Tripod, those premium increases (just like mine) are all in our heads. We have been duped into believing that $1000 > $500.
Ah, Molina. The guy fired because the company was underperforming its peers and he was standing in the way of a sale.
Totes fired for being pro-ACA.
More projection from the progs – because they would fire someone for opposing the ACA, they assume we would fire someone for supporting the ACA.
*holds envelope to head*
It’s because Ryan scotched the risk corridor bailouts.
*clicks link*
Damn straight, skippy. Neglecting to mention of course that the risk corridor fund was immediately wiped out by year-one shortfalls, and Obama tried to line up a sneaky backdoor bailout by encouraging insurers to pilfer the Treasury judgment fund by suing HHS. Yeah, that has all the trappings of a robust, healthy market.
Christ, it’s like arguing that the Titanic sank due to insufficient lifeboats.
I thought it was deck chairs?
Me too. They weren’t correctly arranged, was the story I heard.
Tucker takes on bike lock attacker’s lawyer. Holy shit. Tucker picking on the low hanging fruit is annoying, but this one is just mind numbing. Got to be the world’s worst lawyer.
Appearing on television program to discuss your client’s case being a key indicator of his world’s-worst-lawyer status.
It’s a riot. People were screaming racist and homophobic slurs, but that wasn’t my client. Lol.
I’m pretty sure the lawyer is in the BAMN cult too. So it makes sense.
“Mr Simpson, I’m Lionel Hutz, attorney at law. Here’s my card – it turns into a sponge when you put it in water!”
Works on contingency?
No, money down!
It appears he’s trying the 2-mutually-exclusive-arguments-at-the-same-time thing i’ve joked about as being “the Japanese defense re: Rape of Nanking” (1 – it never happened; 2 – and they deserved it)
in his case its,
– “Its actually not him there at that event!”
– “and besides, he was triggered at that event!”
If the first argument is to be believed, you can’t throw the second one at people at the same time. Because it suggests you yourself don’t believe the first. Else, why would being ‘triggered’ matter?
I’m also not convinced “words shouted in a crowd made my client use a bike lock on some guys head” is a good argument. If you hit people with deadky weapons because there are words in the air, you shouldn’t be in public.
If I had been there, here’s why I did it.
SF has a new post up so I’m just going to leave this. The picture RT using of McCain is priceless. The sound bite is almost as bad.
I must be a child because that screen grab of McCain caused me to laugh so hard I woke up my wife in the next room.
i lol’ed as well. he looks like he was just woken up from a nap.
CRH and doggie gadgets. Just for the cuteness.
Well, Ross Ulbricht’s appeal didn’t end well. He is still in jail for the rest of his life.
*drools*
Girls care about the weirdest shit.
That’s so many cars!
I see it as a decent little house in NoVA (like, Rose Hill if you’re familiar), or a decent condo at Copper Mtn. Or a really fantastically nice house in New Hampshire.
Agreed!
now to get the cash…
WOAH!
You pimp’n or something there DOOM?
my love is not that of a square.
Or one REEALLLLY awesome one.
*checks google*
Or a New Unimog 5023 with a GTR in the back.
A house is probably the smart play.
how much for a used A-10 Warthog?
Taking bids = “shows some signs of wear“
With or without the GAU-30 with depleted uranium shells?
I guess without…
I was near a bunch of those GAU’s in VT at some firing range. I can’t remember the name of it.
I remember the sound. And the way the entire room vibrated.
This is the one I really, really super-duper want. A bargain compared to the Hermes!
ok, that one is cool.
I feel like I could make that one myself for about $150 including labor.
I’m in! Because it’s not the brand label I’m after (nobody would know it was Coach anyhow) – I want the space shit.
you’d like a few of my shirts. I can’t find a link, and straight faded’s website won’t show their stuff.
one is a bunch of small shuttles and cartoony rockets with various moons and planets.
Cool! I have a few space-themed things from Modcloth
My favorite thing about Modcloth? Dresses with POCKETS!!!!. Big SMOOCH to them.
For the ladies who want to show that they fucking love science?
It sounds fancy.
there’s an ad with pre mudded jeans on there?
$450?!
I’ll sell my used carhartts.
That was in the news a few weeks ago. It’s not even mud – just paint.
I swear, fashion is confusing.
Can’t Johnny Depp (or whoever) just paint his own jeans?
There’s a pair caked in red that I like to think of bus stop stabbing chic.
^think of as
Not a fan of that Kathy Griffin, but I really enjoyed her New Years Eves with the patrician Anderson Cooper. Who am I supposed to watch on NYE? Ryan Seacrest? Fuck that. And no, I won’t go out to party on amateur night. I avoid public appearances on NYE and St. Patrick’s. And Cinco de Mayo.
On the Tweeters, Maggie McNeill calls out that other site for it’s “to be sure”-ism.
*its
Scrolling down her page, I came across some ENB derp whereby the badness of a law is determined by how it affects protected groups. Because fuck Asians and white people.
She and ENB are actual real-life buddies…I like how she called her out, though. That wishy-washy weenie stuff is annoying.