Nothing happened in the bike race yesterday. I guess everyone will have to wait until the time trial for any potential excitement. The NBA summer league, which got an incredibly amount of hype from ESPN for some reason, wrapped up and nobody really cared. The Open pairings have been announced. The 1:04 and 1:26 pairings are sure gonna get a lot of eyeballs. As will the 2:48. And while its not as enjoyable to watch at the US Open, in my opinion, at least Birkdale isn’t a tricked out course.
In Texas sports, the Astros lost after clawing their way back and having every chance to win in the 9th. Zeke seems to be having a hard time growing up. And a Texans player gets arrested but happily proclaims, “oh, that is definitely my gun” to the cops.
Feel free to wear me out for the Zeke story. I can take it. Especially after the Buckeyes added to their ridiculous 2018 recruiting haul over the weekend by getting a commitment from the top TE in the country. Suck on that, TTUN!
Well, that’s all for stick and ball stuff. One more sports-related story to go. But I’ll get to that one in…the links!
Jeff Sessions
Trump seems to have fewer blind spots to libertarians than any president for at least the last 30 years. But he sure put an asshole in there as Attorney General.
RAND PAUL WINS! RAND PAUL WINS! RAND PAUL WINS! At first, the right were shitting themselves over it, but now seem to have embraced a straight repeal, which is what the people want instead of a garbage bill full of garbage compromises and garbage throwaways to interest groups. Way to stand for your principles, Rand, Lee and a few others. Now get the government out of the business forever!
If this is all Skynet can muster, then we’ve got nothing to worry about.
ESPN goes further up its own asshole. Cool takedown of a non-American and his willingness to play along with the antics of a serial woman abuser and flat-out piece of shit human being while glossing over, for the most part, the history of that piece of shit human being. Note no comments allowed at that site.
More foreign hacking. Although I would imagine the principals in the case will make it less than newsworthy on CNN.
What’s green and slimy and smells like Miss Piggy?
It’s not easy being green unemployed.
British tabloids do what British tabloids do. Salon gets the vapors. The headline is extra funny since a non-Murdoch paper did the same thing.
Hopefully some of you will enjoy this change of direction.
Good luck out there today, friends. You’re gonna need it.
Hopefully some of you will enjoy this change of direction.
I likes me some green grass and high tides, too!
I had to go just a little deeper. I had green grass teed up and then changed at the last minute.
You made the right call.
I second your first
Um, if the grass is green, I think you should get that checked out by a doctor.
Would play through.
Replace your divots as a courtesy for the next person who plays through….
And make sure to fix your ball marks.
Reminds me of this movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120446/
OT nut punch: Australians expressed dismay and a father pleaded for “the light of justice” Tuesday as investigators in Minneapolis tried to determine why a city police officer fatally shot an Australian woman who had called 911 to report a possible sexual assault.
Possible sexual assault? The plot thickens.
also, Gilmore sighting.
Oddly enough, the cops did not have their body cameras on when officer friendly decided to shoot the unarmed woman from his passenger seat.
Silver lining:
Both cops probably lost a good percentage of their hearing when Officer Affirmative Action cranked off a bunch of rounds INSIDE THE FUCKING CAR. And his partner may have gotten the worst of it, since the gun was probably a few inches from his head.
huh?
Tundra and I are upset you didn’t take time to have a beer with us.
I feel terribly. I’m still confused what the “sighting” was above.
Stalking you, that’s all.
Really WTF Gilmore’d his threading.
ooooooooohhhhh.
carry on then.
Sheila down!! Sheila down!!
I’ll take the bronze.
43) Hey, Congressmen, here’s a crazy proposal about Obamacare: Why don’t you just repeal the piece of shit?
Crazy talk.
Children will die
Wait, you numbered that?
Well it is sort of a though, kinda. In it’s way. Clearly not a sermon though. Blessed are the repealers. Thou shalt repeal. Stuff like this would make it more sermony
Well, not every thought can be a winner, UCS. Though I do like this one. Pithy.
When did you sthart lithping?
We should be encouraging less long-winded thought-sermons.
We have to repeal it to see what’s not in it.
Hopefully it reduces the 30% increase in my premiums from a year ago.
Have you told any “progressives” about that? I’ve told them about how I was forced to pay $135 for an individual plan when I was making $11 per hour, and their response was “well, it’s more fair to spread the costs of healthcare to all of society anyway“. It’s funny because before this turd sandwich got signed into law, they were harping on about how it will guarantee an infinite wellspring of virtually free healthcare for every single citizen and premiums would go down for everyone except those evil rich people.
They should just go ahead and mount some wheels on those goalposts.
As long as those wheels aren’t powered by evil fossil fuels, you’ve got yourself a deal!
I have told some progressives about that. Here’s how that goes.
Me: What about the 500% increase in deductibles?
Prog: No, that’s not true! Mine didn’t go up at all!
Me: Look at your pay stub.
Prog: I don’t need to, I know it didn’t go up!
So just in case you feel like proving this to a prog, you may as well not waste your time.
I think your issue is that you lose most progs at “pay stub”
Except that these are people who I know where they work, approx what their pay is, and know their co-workers who have looked at their pay stub.
Hopefully in reduces the 30% increase in my premiums and the 530% increase in my deductible.
HMM, negotiate with the people in his own party, or negotiate with the dems? Tough choice.
That’s actually looking like the plan now. As sloop reported, (and Hyperion last night in the links), looks like Rand won this one and now the Trumputin may be on board with that plan also.
Rand doesn’t win unless a clean repeal bill is passed. I give that less than one chance in 20 of actually happening.
Actually, I believe he still wins, because just letting the ACA die on it’s own is a win.
I think the Repubs have shown us that they won’t let the ACA just die. The pressure on them to “save” it with “reform” will be too great for them to resist.
Of course, the reform will be to crank up the mandates and subsidies. For that, Dems will cross the aisle, and the handful of Repub dissenters will be consigned to irrelevance.
RAND PAUL WINS! RAND PAUL WINS! RAND PAUL WINS!
The butt-hurt among the GOPe is amazing. From a CNS article on the same topic:
Wow! Nailed us!
That’s the worst haiku I’ve ever read.
It was more Wax off than Wax on.
“There is the promised land of the ideal. You can’t see it from here, but trust me, the principles say it exists.”
I guess this is referring to a land without Obamacare, I.e. a place that existed as recently as 2009? We’re just crazy dreamers, I guess.
Here’s the link.
There’s gold in them there comments!
Some of the comments weren’t that bad. I do like the guy that can read the minds of libertarians, but has apparently never met one.
Hate us cause we’re principled, we know they aren’t
Hihn would be proud of that
98% of libertarians reject the label.
BULLIES!
*snicker*
Aggression in defense of insanity is no vice!
99% chance that Trump tries to primary Lee, Paul, and Moran. Because dedication to getting a “win” for Fearless Leader >>> actual principles.
lets have an angry HILLARY AINT GOT NO PRINCIPLES NEITHER
I’d be surprised. He’s already changed tack to support a straight repeal.
Agreed. He and Rand seem to be getting pretty chummy.
I like that.
Also, Rand was just re-elected, so he’s not up again until 2022.
Yes, he’s always been in favor of a repeal. He’s also been in favor of the bullshit health bill.
My best guess is he figures this isn’t in his wheel house and he’ll support whatever Congress is able to make happen. The repeal lies squarely on the backs of the repubs in congress who have previously voted dozens of time for repeal and are refusing now.
He’s in favor of being a “winner”. He’ll back whatever horse seems likely to come in first, and if that now means a full repeal, so be it.
I think he just wants to deliver something that can be termed “repeal” to his supporters. Whether that is full-on repeal or some mealy-mouth half-measure doesn’t matter to him: what matters is being seen as doing something that he can sell as an accomplishment on behalf of his supporters.
I’m not sure he cares that much about it falling apart.
I don’t see him trying to oust Paul. Rand has been trying to work with Trump from the day he won the election, and Rand bowed out gracefully from the primary with no hard feelings towards the others, including Trump, IIRC. It would be outside Trump’s MO to screw somebody who’s treated him fairly.
I will (sadly) eat my words if he does.
Sadly for Paul’s sake, not Trump’s.
Motherfucker, what do you believe in? Where does prosperity come from, quantitative easing?
But you have to care about the real cost! While we support a law that makes getting out of poverty and bad jobs even harder. That’s not a cost.
He believes in the Republicans running the show. Apparently what they do doesn’t really matter, just that they’re in charge and maybe do some very vague stuff to make things slightly less bad. Not actually fight to get real improvements done.
The real solution to our problems is another country club membership.
He’s a Red Progressive; he believes in Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Republican-flavored handouts.
Shorter CNS: Smaller government, lower taxes and respect for civil rights are fine principles and we talk about them all of the time but reality dictates that we become Dems lite.
This is exactly why I’ve become sick of the TEAM game most people play. You’ve got to vote Republican, because the Democrats are worse! But, how dare you actually expect the Republicans to undo the damage Democrats did when they had power and to do things differently! You’re just a utopian, not willing to live in the real world and compromise!
I talked about the nu-GOP vs. Establishment GOP split two threads ago. What to do about healthcare personifies the split in the party. On one side you have Paul, Lee, Cruz, and the Freedom/Liberty/Tea Party Caucuses, all of whom wanted to push a Conservative/Libertarian agenda from the day they were sworn in. On the other side are the established, entrenched leadership, who just want to sit on their chairs and capitulate to leftists.
I think for success the Republican party has to be a hybrid: they have to defend the welfare state to win the populists, but they also have to destroy the regulatory state to win the small-government conservatives. I think this is the most likely winning strategy for the party in the future, but it won’t make libertarians very happy. It has a high probability of success, however, as people seem to be rather attached to a welfare state, which is only solvent in a strong economy, which you only get with a light touch of regulations (not a heavy hand).
I think this is the most likely winning strategy for the party in the future, but it won’t make libertarians very happy.
I’d be over the moon, it would be such a huge improvement over the last 50 years.
Perhaps, I would argue the welfare state doesn’t have to be as big as it is currently to help the least fortunate. But I’m not sure how you can shrink the welfare state without being labeled as wanting the elderly, children, and poor to die.
Why do you want the elderly, children, and poor to die?
The majority of voters still believe the welfare-regulatory-warfare state is viable. Trump’s election showed the first real cracks in apparent consensus that since the Republicans took the House in 1994. Something has to give. It might not be wholesale welfare reform this time, even though it’s badly needed (again). But you can’t sustain a system that both offers to pay market prices from the public treasury without many limits and also drives up market prices through regulation.
but reality dictates that we become Dems lite.
Do you know what will happen if the GOP doesn’t become Dems lite?!?! The DEMOCRATS will win!! Do you want that to happen, Suthen?!?! DO YOU?!?! You know what they’re like! They go around imposing things like Obamacare and raising taxes AND THEN REFUSING TO CUT THEM!!! That’s the kind of thing that will happen if the GOP doesn’t act like Dems lite. And if, to stop that from happening, the GOP has to cut a couple of corners, like not pushing tax cuts or leaving Obamacare mostly in place, that’s just something Republicans are going to have to learn to accept. No matter what the RINOs say.
That’s not how you spell “facile,” dickheads.
I thought it was supposed to be “fash-sickle”. You know, like a popsicle made from fascism.
Delicious and chilling…
Any relation to Leninade?
I think the writer meant facile or farcical, not fascicle.
Except you know, Rand has actually put forth a Health Care plan that is infinitely better than anything the rest of the Republican party has managed
The funny part is that my friend’s leftist mom is totally on board with Rand’s plan as much better than the GOPe plan since I posted it on one of her rants about “The GOP is going to kill 22 million people!”. That said, she apparently doesn’t get that without insurance company bailouts (which the Republicans rightly did away with during Obama’s presidency), Obamacare is, and will always be, in a death spiral, since premiums for the individual market will rise quicker than the penal-tax.
The bailouts, of course, don’t get rid of the death spiral, they just hook the government into it.
Of course, brain dead CNN are reporting this as a huge victory for the left, when it’s actually a huge victory for libertarians. They really are clueless.
Stealing from (((Tuesday’s))) past.
Cool takedown of a non-American and his willingness to play along with the antics of a serial woman abuser and flat-out piece of shit human being while glossing over, for the most part, the history of that piece of shit human being.
Also a nice diversion from the fact that the SJW-verse was shitting its collective diaper for a couple days there because Mayweather said “faggot”.
So I want to know what the likelihood is of a rematch in the octagon. I mean, it’s all but a firegine conclusion that Mayweather is gonna destroy him. But a “you’ve been boxing your whole life and I had the balls to step in the ring. Will you do the same in the octagon in the Staples Center for $100m?” sure seems like the logical next step in this fiasco.
I mean, I’d take a shot in the face for 100 million…
I can give you 100 million in one shot in face.
NTTAWWT
Mayweather isn’t getting in an octagon. 10 seconds after he stopped running, he’d be tapping out.
Yeah, MMA fighters do better in the boxing ring than boxers do in the octagon by a long shot.
You know, maybe I’m getting high off the hype, but I’m not at all sure it is a foregone conclusion. Mayweather’s not a brawler, he’s a CompuBox technician. He’s going to pepper McGregor with punches and win on points. McGregor’s going to try to get him to overcommit or make a mistake and then catch him on the jaw for a knockout, but Mayweather’s too cautious a fighter and too damn tough for that strategy to be effective. At least that’s my take, for all that’s worth.
Watch Mayweather fighting Canelo. A couple years back, but Mayweather proved he can take a punch and his power is not as bad as people think. If McGregor tries to come at Floyd with those odd angles he uses in the UFC he’s going to get KO’d. You can’t leave a boxer with that much speed that big of an opening for that long without paying a heavy, heavy price.
But then what will they do for the rubber match?
Steel Cage WWE style
Scrabble
McGregor would win at Scrabble. I’m pretty sure that Mayweather can’t read. Seriously, he is illiterate
Chess-boxing.
I’m betting on a decision (maybe even split!) for Floyd which leads to a rematch for them to make even more money.
If Floyd takes this fight as seriously as a real boxing match, it will be over by round 2. If it goes the distance it’s a bigger work than any wrestling match in history
This is my second Minnesoda story in a few days, so I’ll probably have to beg teh pope for forgiveness, but:
No one arrested yet as 30,000 to 40,000 domesticated mink set free from Minnesota farm
Ummm….Burglars steal things. Eco-terrorists open cages and let 10’s of thousands of mink loose.
Burglars break into buildings in order to commit felonies.
All those fur coats wandering around loose must be a felony.
The Mink will kill a lot of small animals, then wander back to the farm for food. A portion will end up as food for local predators.
Shit, I got here with the same link as soon as I could. Fuck me for putting work before posting here!
Priorities!
Your story didn’t have the quote where the sheriff called them nitwits.
That’s because I can’t bring myself to read the Red Star. (HT to Tundra for the moniker)
Mmmmm mink. *gets double-barrel shotgun and ammo pouch*
Momma needs a new coat for winter!
(which begins in another month or so in Minnesota)
Why the millennial stereotype is wrong
Unfortunately, it does not appear as if much polling has been done on this matter.
What’s more, they’re not being rewarded for that loyalty.
Well when the government forces employers to provide extremely expensive benefits to low-level employees that traditionally have been marginally beneficial and have always been quick to move for more money, that loyalty is a bit harder to come by.
+ 1 Hillary Will win the election.
Who is Hillary Will? New children’s book?
My wife and I talked about this awhile back (we’re both in our mid to late twenties) and she mentioned reading somewhere that millennials are less likely to take vacation time than older generations, partly because they feel guilty about leaving work to go on without them (feel free to pontificate about how that means our generation has inflated egos). She commented that it’s like Schrodinger’s millennials, too lazy to work yet too committed to work to take vacations. Made me chuckle.
“British tabloids do what British tabloids do.”
This is as shocking as the Tom Baker nude pictures they published back in the day.
That’s a good way to end up in purgatory.
AK47s, heart emoji and feminism: How jihadi brides are luring European girls to join Isil
Girls…sometimes bored is better.
Back in the day, nice German girls didn’t have to leave Germany to get involved with terrorists.
+1 Baader-Meinhof
Her story is, unfortunately, a common one. In 2015, a report found more than 50 young British women had been lured to join the Islamic State – becoming ‘jihadi brides’ – along with 500 women from other Western countries.
The population of the UK is 65 million. 50 out of 65 million is so far divorced from “common” that my calculator spits out an error when I try to divide it.
Her story is, unfortunately, a common one. In 2015, a report found more than 50 young British women had been lured to join the Islamic State – becoming ‘jihadi brides’ – along with 500 women from other Western countries.
500 women from the entire western world in over half a decade isn’t “common”. More college girls get talked into buttsecks for the first time than that every week. And that’s just the SEC schools.
Bullshit! No way you can convince me that there are 500 anal virgins in the entire SEC (and I’m including the men in that statement as well).
Harem fantasy, I suppose….
So let’s see, about 500 million females in the “Western countries.” 500 (and that’s likely an exaggerated number) try to join ISIS. That’s (starts counting on fingers) 0.001%. IT’S AN EPIDEMIC!
You’re probably just fine with the increased overdose death rate due to the opioid crisis too. Anarchist!
TBH, I’ve started and stopped writing an article about that several times. Eventually…
Opioids are pretty bad. Did you know that it has killed almost as many people this year as alcohol?
Good thing it’s illegal.
This is my “I care so much about the plight of these stupid girls” face.
Unless somebody put a gun to their heads or credibly threatened their families to coerce the jihadi brides, I could not care less about their plight.
In fact, the plight of the jihadi brides serves as an example to other confused women and as an example of how batshit crazy the Isis jihadis are in real life.
BTW, I imagine that a significant fraction of the 500 were disillusioned Muslim immigrants with a propensity to violence. In which case, good riddance.
Whatever, bitch.
Sexist phrases are common, but that doesn’t make them OK
Excuse me? You don’t get to decide what is “OK”.
Fuck off, whoever you are, word-policing interloper.
Men comprise of 95 of workplace deaths,. Why does this matter? This matters to me because I can’t find a logical reason for the disparity in workplace death. We talk so much about living in a free country where we all have rights, yet your gender affects how much you die at work.
Also I find cunt more poetic, rolls of the tongue better.
Romanians put a trill in “cunt”? That’s awesome.
The ladies love it.
As does Ken.
“in 2015, full-time, year-round female workers made only 80 cents for every dollar ”
I thought the talking point was $.79 for every dollar a man earned–so the gap is closing. Progress!
Why is this woman whining like a little bitch?
Girls will be girls?
What can we say, it’s her time of the month.
The stereotypical phrases like, “Boys will be boys” or “You act like such a girl” are ones that many of us use every day without realizing the implications.
What implications? That it will trigger the vapors and a vapid argument in print from some dumbass with more time on her hands that brains in her head?
Get the sand out of your vag.
I guess “don’t get your panties in a twist” is gender neutral now.
The balls really contribute a lot of torque.
“I can’t find a logical reason for the disparity in wages.”
You aren’t supposed to. You are just supposed to swallow the bullshit without question, you idiot.
WHEW!! Glad they were on the job, since other orgs didn’t reach the same conclusion.
Wait, I thought it was 77 cents. Or was that last week? You’d probably better go have a prog huddle and get your bullshit notes together, because it’s starting to look a bit suspect.
Even 99 cents is too little. /prog
101 cents to every dollar a man makes and they’d still be screaming about equality and getting shafted. See college demographics.
No shit. Most of the stats that meant we had a huge crisis for “girls” in education are now reversed (they make better grades, are 60% of the college students, etc.), but somehow they demand moar, MOAR, MOOAAR!
The idea just occurred to me that perhaps that’s part of the push for the “rape culture on campus” narrative, and doggedly pursuing it until male enrollment in college drops further– comparatively, female enrollment goes up, and there’s less male competition for grades, etc.
Sounds a bit tin-foil-hatty, but so does half the real stuff coming out of colleges these days.
You’re overthinking it. The rape culture fairy story is a product of hatred (both of themselves and of men), and is intended solely to inflict pain on men. When they run out of men to torment, they turn on each other. The SJWs are horrible, broken people, and everything they do should be understood in that light.
The complaint itself is the point, not the underlying issue that the complaint seeks to “expose”.
What if all students spent a year working the land before university?
Hugh Warwick
A year of ‘eco-conscription’ between school and university would renew the bonds between people and the land
• Hugh Warwick is an ecologist and writer
School leads inexorably to further education for the majority. But in the rush to qualify, to meet the tick-box requirements of curriculum assessors, there is a loss of time to think. After a 14-year slog young people are in need of a break to ask searching questions. What do they want to do with their lives? Do they want to saddle up a mountain of debt to take out into the “real world”?
What if there was to be a pause. A year in which you have the chance to earn your tuition fees while at the same time learning more about yourself. A time to explore a life outdoors. A time to grow food, develop community and repair a damaged environment. A truly productive gap year.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/17/utopian-thinking-students-working-land-university-eco-conscription?CMP=share_btn_tw
I mean I am not saying a lot of kids could not use a bit o farm work but the word conscription sounds iffy
Maybe some time on the sugar plantation? Ask Raul, he probably has some advice to make this work.
What if there was to be a pause. A year in which you have the chance to earn your tuition fees while at the same time learning more about yourself. A time to explore a life outdoors. A time to grow food, develop community and repair a damaged environment. A truly productive gap year.
If only there were some way that students that could travel to a farm, ask for a job, take the job for a year, save the money they earned on the job, and use the year they spent working on the job thinking big thinks without the government putting a gun in their back.
That’s just barbaric
Forced labor picking cotton?
It’s been tried.
And?
Well, you might be able to get a break on getting into college?
I mean just because it failed one time it does not mean it was wrong. Just bad implementation. The right top men will make it better this time. No need to throw the baby with the bathwater.
Forced labor picking cotton?
Exactly.The prog retardation knows no limits.
::seething burning hatred flushes face and shoulders::
Motherfucker, grow your creepy cult the honest way like the Scientolgists did.
He has big plans for other people’s lives. That’s what makes him happy. You do want him to be happy, don’t you?
No. I don’t care if he’s happy or not..
… clap your hands, stamp your feet and turn around.
I do. I care if he’s happy or not. I want him to be a miserable turd through the hopefully short remainder of his days.
I wonder if there’s some sort of historical example we could look to for a hint. Perhaps somewhere like, oh, maybe China? Some time in the middle of the last century? Maybe a guy name of Mao tried that, with what was, shall we say, not entirely unalloyed success?
Wrong guy in charge. Hugh will do so much better.
Mao is the wrong example.
Pol Pot seems more likely.
Time to increase the peasants’ backyard steel quota.
Conscript my progeny and I will put a bullet in you motherfucker. Not maybe. It is a certainty. Fuck off slaver was never more appropriate.
I occasionally hear the war drums beat for another draft. I’ve wondered if that would be the beginning of another civil war. Surely we’re not the only ones who would react this way?
The US military would likely be leading the charge because they want no part of a draft.
I mean I am sure you can find some people in the military who think there ought to be a draft but the overwhelming majority of the brass recognizes that a huge part of what makes today’s military so effective is the training allowed by and motivation created by having an all volunteer force. Everyone there volunteered, no one was forced and they accepted a 4 year commitment so if need be they can spend 2 years training someone and still get useful service out of them. Throwing in conscripts who actively do not want to be there, have no motivation to do anything beyond the bare minimum, and are only around for a couple of years so you can’t really spend anything more than basic training on them would utterly destroy the quality of the troops and seriously erode our fighting capability.
Conscripts are only useful if you need ditch diggers and cannon fodder. Which, as you point out, today’s military neither needs nor wants.
The only scenario that would justify conscription from a military standpoint would be a Chinese invasion. But, we’d sink all their ships and down all their planes before they could get near the country. Maybe they’d get to Hawaii or Guam or something, but that would be a small force not justifying tens of millions of conscripts on either side. So, there’s no practical scenario whereby every able-bodied man (and potentially woman) would need to be drafted into service.
You know who else wanted to conscript people to work…
The Royal Navy?
Uncle Sam?
Albert Speer?
13th amendment, motherfucker.
You know it is funny, people keep suggesting variations on this.
Wouldn’t it be great if kids had to spend a year or two years comitted to my pet cause? Think of all the valuable things they could learn and how wonderful of an experience it would be for them.
Uh yeah have you ever met a teen? Or even a human?
Force every kid to spend a year “working the land” and 99% of them are not going to come out of it with some profound new connection to the land, they are going to come out of it with a burning hatred for it and the assholes who made them do it.
Furthermore last I checked there was no shortage of farm workers, it is not like we have hundreds of acres of croplands sitting idle because there is no one to work them (either here or in England) and last I checked food supplies for those countries were more than adequate to meet the countries needs so where precisely are we going to put all these kids to work and who exactly are they going to be growing food for?
Farming has never needed less people to farm more land than now. “Hey, wouldn’t it be great to force other people to do farm work!”
“Hey, wouldn’t it be great to force other people to do
farmbusy work!”Indeed, kids are forced to spend 12-14 years on someone’s pet project (public school) and yet a good many of them come out having learned surprisingly little from it.
Mr. Pot thinks this is a splendid idea.
Apple Announces ‘Hijab Emoji’ And Internet Islamophobes Can’t Deal
^This guy gets it^
Yeah guess what HuffPo? I bet you a lot of “Islamophobes” will be using the hijab emoji. Probably whenever news of the latest attack in Europe happens.
My first thought. That emoji will not be used for its intended purpose.
I disagree. People will be using that emoji for the exact purpose they intended.
I suspect nobody will be happier to have an hijab emoji, or will use it more enthusiastically, than the denizens of Kekistan.
Exposure is the opposite of what a hijab does.
There’s so much irony in that tweet I can taste it.
Exposure really is a first step towards acceptance
You see that sentiment quite often, but while there is some truth to it in that exposure can dispel misconceptions, familiarity can also breed contempt. People’s dislikes don’t always come from ignorance: sometimes, they come from knowledge.
I don’t use Apple products so do they have a libertarian emoji?
I don’t think they’ve perfected the crotchety white guy yet.
Charles Coburn for the win!
I was thinking more along the lines of Strother Martin…
According to the recent Reason libertarian Game of Thrones parody video, the libertarian sigil is a porcupine humping a pile of money. That would actually make a great emoji.
(?+???)?????
A+
Order up Scruffy!
Tiny top hat & monocle emoji.
It would take me a month just to figure out how to use the printer on an Apple computer. They suck.
You’re not supposed to print anything. Print is dead. Use the Apple proprietary data transfer architecture and shun any non-Jobsians you have to do business with.
I can print wirelessly from my MacBook Pro to my Canon printer in no time flat.
The problems are more with the printers — I had an HP that never worked wirelessly at all, even after setting it up five times. The Canon was a snap.
Twitter has a ?
I should ? more often.
Won’t that just make you dizzy?
I read this as “I should circle-jerk more often”.
How often do you do it now?
With every post? ‘Cause Abe is “shaking his fist”…
Jesus. Isn’t the ?happy burqa emoji?enough?
++
??
???????
Seems like they are trying to balance things out hijab + breastfeeding = T-Rex + sandwich
What the fuck is emoji?
Believe me, it’s gonna change your life. You’re gonna love it. We’ve got the best, most beautiful emoji you’ve ever seen with some high quality people working on emoji.
Cock-eyed optimists!
The skeptics, however, have consistently been overly pessimistic about this technology. Electric cars face challenges, yet they have caught on much faster than was thought likely just a few years ago. There were two million of them on the world’s roads last year, up 60 percent from 2015, according to the International Energy Agency. The cost of batteries, the single most expensive component of the cars, fell by more than half between 2012 and 2016, according to the Department of Energy. Tesla has indicated that it can produce batteries for about $125 per kilowatt-hour. Researchers say the cost of electric cars will be at parity with conventional vehicles when battery prices reach $100 per kilowatt-hour, which experts say is just a few years away. Electric cars are more efficient, of course, but they also require less maintenance, which should make them cheaper to own over time.
I would like to know just how, exactly, they arrived at that 100kw/h figure. It sounds like something pulled directly out of Elon Musk’s ass.
And- Less maintenance? Seriously?
All of the maintenance I’ve required has been brakes, tires, oil, gas and windshield washer fluid.
Of these, only the gas is removed in an EV, and replaced by a much more time consuming charging process. Though I suppose it might use less lubrication.
Maintenance is just the tip of the iceberg. The increasing complexity and modularity of vehicles simply mean that you are gonna get ass-raped down the road. Batteries, ECMs, etc. Complexity is never your friend.
I am astounded by how the manufacture and disposal of EVs is just utterly and completely ignored, too. The two dirtiest parts of a vehicle’s lifecycle are just imagined away by a fixation on tailpipe emissions.
We may have a gaia-saving energy solution on the horizon, but it ain’t gonna look like EVs and solar roofs.
Complexity sucks. It’s infecting everything. When vehicles should become more reliable and less maintenance intensive, it’s going exactly in the opposite direction.
Amen. More engineers need to adhere to this old quote:
One of the most least tech cars I owned was a ’81 Malibu. Everything was tried and true on it – Holley carb, 305 engine, TH350. I once pulled the engine (had a rod knock when I bought the car) and had the $200 replacement (!) in and running within four hours. After that the only thing that ever failed was the starter. Took 20 minutes to replace.
It was pretty much the same car that GM made in the 1950s – just modified by a previous owner to remove the computer and emissions,
I was at a car show this weekend where a dude had a really nice 1930 Model A. All original. The damn thing runs like a top and looks great.
Seems pretty fucking green to me to drive a car for 90 years…
Shoot, the Japanese Naval LT that bought my grandpa’s ’61 Harley from him (at a 300% markup, shipping to Japan courtesy of the Military-Industrial Complex) still has that thing running over 60 years later. Just e-mailed him a new photo of his grandson on it.
That’s pretty cool.
But electric cars aren’t any more complex than ICE cars. Sure the tech is newer and less proven but an Internal combustion engine, especially a modern one has hundreds of small parts multiple electric, hydraulic, and vacuum sub systems that need to be maintained and so on.
An electric car is mechanically a much simpler object and the only real problem with them is the cost of the battery system.
Sure electric cars are a stupid idea from an ecological standpoint and the tech is not quite there to make them a really viable mainstream option but in 30 years the reality is they are going to be far superior commuter cars than anything with an ICE and they will have far better records of reliability than any ICE on the road.
Maintenance shmaintenance. They never mention that should be in a wreck and incapacitated in your vehicle you have to sit there without medical care until hazmat teams arrive to make sure that it is safe for medical personnel to approach the vehicle. I dunno, that seems like kind of a big deal to me.
One of my coworkers has a son that is an EMT. He confirmed that when EMT sees a hybrid and fluids on the ground, the call HAZMAT and wait.
First rule of Triage, don’t make yourself part of Triage.
Finally, there’s a site where you can right the wrongs of your ancestors.
According to WIkipedia, that’s a Montenegro Internet domain.
Loud Montenegrin national anthem
Literal Balkanization.
Aside from them not having caused those wrongs – I do not owe jack shit for things my ancestors did.
I’ll contribute after I get a check from the Italians for the wrongs the Romans inflicted upon my ancestors.
Anyone on there offering jobs?
So I can pay reparations from my aristocratic ancestors to my peasant / slave ancestors? I think I’ll buy myself a hot fudge sunday.
Walter Williams has already washed my sins away.
amen.
How many of those people with their hand out had no ancestors that were US slaves? How many of them have mixed european/african blood?
They can pay themselves.
So, do I pay, since I am more closely related to Roger Williams (whose descendants, my ancestors, were abolitionist), than James K. Polk (related to one of his cousin’s adopted daughters)? Or does Putin owe me money, since my Lithuanian ancestors were oppressed by the Czarist system, but luckily, my great grandfather got an education in languages, and immigrated to the U.S. before the Soviets? It’s all so confusing.
Let me apply my sophisticated reparations calculation algorithm…
OK, my calculations say you owe 160,000 gold pieces but you get a credit of 100,000 gold pieces for the Williams thing, so that’s 60,000 gold pieces…plus your (((wealth adjustment))), which means you owe 500,000 gold pieces.
But you can take 500 gold pieces off that total in every year in which you vote the straight Democratic ticket.
Nice, so I can just bill Putin the balance? Since he “stole” the election and all. That is sufficiently woke, I trust?
What about the eleventy bazillion gold piece modifier for being a cis-het white male?
https://youtu.be/FuNJq_wI1ns
I’ll tell you what – if you find me anyone who was owned by an ancestor of mine, I’ll give them money. What’s fair is fair.
I feel an overwhelming desire to offer shooting lessons on that site.
Bigfoot Found Dead At Elephant Butte Lake In New Mexico Is A Facebook Prank
FACEBOOK IS EXAGGERATING. HIKER SHOT AT STEVE SMITH FOR SOME REASON, BUT IT ONLY WINGED ME.
Steve Smith is the Abe Vigoda of cryptids.
The last time ESPN criticized Mayweather for that their reporters got kicked out (before the Pacquiao fight). They learned their lesson.
Good luck out there today, friends. You’re gonna need it.
You know who else needed some luck?
Alfred P Doolittle?
Just a little bit?
The Indianapolis Colts?
I believe they already have Luck. They need an offensive line.
Has anybody made a McCain hemorrhoid surgery joke yet? Because a blood clot near his brain immediately made me think he’d be sitting on one of those rubber rings if he comes back.
Can I claim it? I’m claiming it.
Good one but your delivery was off.
Our D.C. office building got a security robot. It drowned itself. We were promised flying cars, instead we got suicidal robots.
Linky
“I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed. Do you want me to stick my head in a bucket of water?”
It had no arms, only wheels for locomotion, and was stuck in DC.
No shit it was suicidal.
That’s the first time I recall hearing you swear.
How come my Glibs doesn’t have sound?
Did you get premium membership.
For only $14.99 a month you can get this handsome tote bag.
For the Premium Plus membership of $24.99 you can hear me, SugarFree, read all of your comments for the month, and you also get the tote bag.
And for the Premium Executive level of $49.99 per month, you get the reading, the tote bag, and P. Brooks HIMSELF will reply to one of your comments in a thread.
Act now, our phone center gimps are waiting!
That Premium Plus option is a steal. No where else can you get voice acting so cheap. Any Glib making a video game or animated film/short has just to subscribe to that option and then write all their dialogue out in comments. Assuming it’s OK for all the dialogue to sound the same, but for a flat fee of only $25, who cares?
You know this is a
lietrap, because P. Brooks has never replied in a thread.Opting for level III just gets you billed for your time in Warty’s dungeon.
Ignoring the pedantic “did you just start using a text reader” approach – I’ve been using profanity in my ramblings at you lot since before the outmigration from the old site.
I’m just saying I don’t recall it. I usually forget your ramblings.
It’s Marvin!
It’s a dalek.
Seriously, if you are gonna make a robot dont make it look like a movie villain.
It’s Cheesoid.
That’s a tweet of the story I literally linked to!
::storms off in a huff::
I’m literally Hitler!
In which ENB ‘steps out of her lane’ and learns a valuable lesson
You can’t just be goin round attacking WOCs now can you. Everyone knows that personal experience or affiliation with an oppressed group is the only thing that gives one the right to talk.
Closing in on 40, dying your hair like a middle school emo kid from 2004, getting into spats on a social network specifically tailored to a lack of exposition or serious thought, and wondering why the users of said social network do not take you seriously…
still would.
All of that is very cryptic. Care to elaborate?
Something called an . R. Kelly is to blame
I’m so far behind what the kids are talking about these days all that shit may as well have been advanced calculus. I think the topic has something to do with racism and R. Kelly, but that’s as far as I got. Also, I couldn’t care less if you paid me.
She simply spoke when it was her place to shut up and was promptly corrected on the transgression
https://twitter.com/ENBrown/status/887242797534900225
And now I have gone through a random twitter feed. The whole tweet thing looks awful silly to me.
I thought ENB was Weigel?
Never buy into Mikey’s delusions. He thought everyone was Weigal. He even called me Weigal once or twice.
His psychosexual obsession with Weigal was disturbing. I’m 100% convinced he has a print of Weigal’s face with a Fleshlight for a mouth.
Don’t ever change.
That’s funny. What does your fleshlight have on it? Hat and Hair? Hillgameth?
Zardoz?
Still have a little crush on ENB. ?
Weigel was on NPR (I know) this morning hawking his book on progressive rock. Ugh.
He’s going on Tom Woods this week, too.
I long have sarcastically called her “Weigel in drag”, but apparently Mikey actually thought she was Weigel.
Ah, there’s where John went.
Twitter was made for John’s rants.
Cheap, fast and out of control.
I like the hair.
Well, see, she really needs to keep in mind the nobility of the goals of social justice here. If that means she gets unfairly hammered online by progs, then by god it’s all for the greater good in the end.
Seriously Twitter, a trigger warning?
I only want the replies that contain offensive content.
She’s got my sympathy. A bit.
But what did she expect? When you lie with social justice cadres you ARE going to get fleas. And do you think this might change her outlook on them for more than a few hours?
which one of you is this…
@BlackJJosh
Replying to @ENBrown
If only you had written several articles featuring WOC’s disproportionate victimization – mostly by police.
About the Doctor Which thing, what I find disturbing is not that they selected a wymin (white cis, can’t have everything though) but the fact that that show still exists. Then again I don’t get British TV. They have a shocking amount of panel shows. Something with cats and something with words and something with quotes and a million more. Much in the quiz format.
“It’s not the first time she’s time-travelled: New Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker goes naked for orgasmic sex scene in chilling drama Black Mirror”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4706886/New-Doctor-star-Jodie-Whittaker-goes-naked.html
Where muh pics?
I can’t fine that article on http://www.thesun.co.uk that Salon is complaining about. And Salon doesn’t doesn’t provide a link to it.
Day 2 using this dating app: I actually got a few cute chicks interested and we’re meeting up (not all at the same time). One cute European chick and another nerdy gamer girl.
Still getting all the fat ladies and trans people interested.
Embrace your love for the fatties – and “others” – let your spirit free /John
You transphobic monster. Just because a woman has a penis, you’re rejecting her?
Even if they were once in posession of one, I’m not interested.
*if they were even once…
I never said I rejected them.
My Filipino girlfriend says having a small penis shouldn’t affect our relationship. I still wish she didn’t have one though.
I did that a few times a while back. It’s amazing how every woman almost has a superpower for taking deceptive photos of themselves. Expect them to not resemble their photos when you meet (but maybe you’ll get lucky). I don’t understand why they do it, either, because they have to know what a disappointment it’s going to be for the guy.
I know this lesbian who is a selfie-holic. The photos of herself look 300% better than the real thing – filters, and picking the right angle is the trick.
My facebook feed.
Hook the guy with a pretty pic, then hope your stunning wit and winning personality keep him around after the initial disappointment. Or that he’s desperate enough to shrug and go “well, may as well stick around with Shamu, it’s not like I have anything else going on right now”.
Except men don’t want to fuck your stunning wit and winning personality.
Yeah, that’s where the plan falls apart.
That’s why I deliberately ignore the girls with the high-angle selfies to make themselves look thinner. Same with the only-face pictures. They have to have at least one candid shot so I can see their shape. Everyone’s pictures on here show them in the best light, of course. There’s no avoiding that. Even the guys do it.
You don’t want to see my beautiful neck wrinkles? You really are a cis shitlord.
C’mon TK, tell us which site and link to your profile thingy. We will be nice, I promise.
“His friends seem like a nice bunch.”
You think I want you freaks hitting on me all day?
yes?
Hey, I linked to my OKCupid when I was using it.
… And a few of you made accounts to message me, which was pretty flattering 😉
What girl can #resist a wealthy cat?
I hope you have nothing but the best of luck. Mr. Riven and I sure did. 10/10 WBA.
“Another nerdy gamer girl.” Have you gone on a date with one already you met on your app? Do tell! I love hearing about gaming chicks.
Unfortunately, every time I’ve ever met a self-confessed “nerdy” girl, they’re always super nerdy. Like, they have a lock of Patrick Stewart’s hair they grabbed at a con. Sadly the sane “nerdy gamer girls” never describe themselves that way.
Why It’s Time To Stop Worrying About First World ‘Gender Gaps’
http://quillette.com/2017/07/15/time-stop-worrying-first-world-gender-gaps/
Also according to this teenage boy girl happiness gap is increased in advanced “egalitarian” countries. So many gaps (and not enough between the thighs)
https://twitter.com/OECDEduSkills/status/885529692538884096
Ancient underwater forest predicts a grim future, scientists say
I wonder what vile act of human development caused it 60,000 years ago.
I think it is worse then we thought.
Then again there was a map on National Geographic about all the cities that would disappear if all the ice on earth melted, and Bucharest was safe
DC and LA on that list? *Lights pile of tires ablaze*
It’s a rpetty cool map.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/09/rising-seas-ice-melt-new-shoreline-maps/
You would lose DC and LA and New York and Boston and Philly and apparently something called Pine Bluff. I would like to visit New Orleans before it disappears though
*pretty goddamnit
Good album title.
And this is supposed to be a bad thing?
Whats wrong with Pine Bluff, I ask you? Also poor Huston. Where would the Rockets play?
The Darwinistic purge of those too stupid to adapt is well worth the sacrifice.
Unless we build a wall around those cities to prevent them from escaping upland, it will be a tragedy. Luckily Trump is on the job.
Wait. What? Trump’s wall is to keep Mexicans out? Now I am alarmed.
Pine Bluff is the shittiest shithole in Arkansas
Dont Pie. Just dont. New Orleans is a shit. hole. There are lots of cities on the gulf coast worth visiting. New Orleans is not one of them.
I guess building sea walls and levies over the course of 5,000 years is just out of reach. Because reasons.
Even just building on higher ground as the tides come in will work…
Yeah. 5,000 years is a long time.
What on Earth makes anyone think we’d have our biggest cities in the same places 5000 years from now? It is not like Jericho is a metropolis today.
Because the left thinks the world should be a completely static museum that never changes.
Pretty sure 5000 years from now Ceres is going to be one of our largest cities
It shows The Netherlands underwater.
Ummm…they already know how to prevent that.
I lived in the NL for years and always found their climate alarmism pretty funny. “You’re concerned about rising sea levels, are you serious? I just got back from a bike ride to a part of the NL that didn’t exist when I was in high school because you guys just claimed it back from the sea.
Sweet, Richmond would become a beach town!
Wait… weren’t we in the tail end of a glacial maximum around then that had much of the planet’s water frozen away from the coasts?
Well this time is different this time we are causing it
Shhhh… don’t ruin it!
Don’t worry. After Yellowstone erupts, they’ll get the next ice age they want so much.
Is this something Margi is just now discovering? This has been known since forever. Where the hell did she think the coastline was at the height of each of the ice ages? Where does she think all of those shark’s teeth and fossil coral reefs in the mississippi river valley came from? How about those indian villages under 100 feet of water out in the gulf?
Ugh.
Shoot, as a kid in Southwest Ohio, we routinely found Triassic era small fossil bits in creeks at summer camp. They even had a dino week, where we’d go and they’d have a UC paleontologist come in and date them for us, and we’d even get credit for certain finds (one year, I managed to pay for 3 days of camp with my finds). It was smart work by the paleontologist, since it’s doubtful we’d find anything significant, but it kept us busy, and many of us interested in paleontology as a profession far beyond the “Jurassic Park is awesome” phase.
Ancient underwater forest predicts a grim future
Waterworld 2?
Another Twitter story, in which the Womens’ March celebrates (another) murderer and terrorist, as if Linda Sarsour and Ramesh Odeh weren’t enough. Come for the apologia, stay for the “we’re just doing this to troll right wingers”.
Alternate title: Why Trump will win again, part 2.83 million.
That organization is a rogues’ gallery of professional lunatics.
“#AssataShakur’s resistance tactics were different from ours. That does not mean that we do not respect her anti-sexism work. (6/20)”
I mean, she liberated at least one woman from the patriarchal bonds of marriage by killing her husband.
I know he’s probably the usual statist prick, but right now I like this sheriff.
A sheriff in Minnesota named Gudmundson pissed off about tens of thousands of minks roaming the countryside. It’s like a Fargo side plot.
It is even in Eden Valley (I just started season 3).
Tard Tuesday: Professional Leech Edition
I say US should drone strike some people to increase standing
I assume he’s talking about Obama.
Oh, since you’re here, can I have you enact my labor for me and Glib up this pic for a new avatar for me? http://imgur.com/FTW9uFq
Needs to be smaller, but I’ll try.
It was smaller when sthgrau posted that for me on the Discord. Not sure why it suddenly blew up.
Some artistic license taken….
http://imgur.com/a/XRubE
That’s awesome! Thank you!
Last night I heard The Goracle say that he saw fish swimming in the streets of Miami. I have no idea what he was talking about.
I’m convinced the man has been dropping acid since the 80’s. Remember when he was adamant that Twisted Sister was telling him to tie up his wife and whip her?
Ya know, T, that avatar cries out for a tophat, and maybe a monocle.
Jus’ sayin’.
Remember when he was adamant that Twisted Sister was telling him to tie up his wife and whip her?
Al and Tipper Gore are divorced. Dee and Suzette Snider are still married. Just goes to show who has the family values.
Suzette has a little more going for her than Tip.
Pretty impressive for 56. Damn.
That primetime Muppets show from a couple years ago was brilliant (at least the first 1/2 of the ill-fated season, until they “retooled”).
The worst white people bracket.
What a great way to make people sympathetic to your cause.
I’m not clicking that. I don’t want to give them traffic (or have that stain on my browsing history)
That is an impressive bracket.. I’ll take white feminist to win it all, although the Milo/ Sessions faceoff in the Second round should be interesting.
That must’ve taken a long time to make. They could’ve learned another language, cleaned their attic, gone shoplifting. Opportunity cost. *SMDH*
Ten minutes and that didn’t elicit a “Racist!”. You guys feeling ok?
I just figured that was a description of your regular monday night.
You’re right. One of them is a euphemism, though.
And anyone with that much free time is not oppressed.
Is “wypipo” an acronym?
I also have no idea who “Beckys” are, or what Miley Cyrus has to do with the KKK (besides both supporting Democrats, which I’m sure isn’t why she was included).
It’s a phonetic pronunciation, a Becky is an annoying white girl
Oh, mispronounced “white people”.
Still no idea why Miley’s picture is on the top of the article.
putting Katy Perry there is crossed the line
https://acculturated.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PKP011.jpg
Mostly seems like a DNC hit list. Not surprising, probably one of their propaganda sites.
The comments are rich with diversity of thought…
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that publication is owned and managed by Wypipo with a business plan for making $$ off wypipo guilt
Awwwww snap, Spicier!
The fact that this parody is hard to discern from something that would actually come from the WH is what makes these time worth living in
UK gonna UK…
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40630582
But the children!!!
…will still find a way past the controls.
Great way to teach kids how computers work.
Oh know what will happen to the posh porn industry without Britain?
Oh no god damn it this is a bad typing day
I’m sure there will be a way to circumvent the id check. And then the police will have to go storming in for “illegal porn access”.
I have to admit I love sites that simply give you two buttons and say click yes if you are over 18, after describing all the goodies on the site. I wonder how many no clicks they get.
They talked about requiring a Credit Card for access, since one must be 18+ to get one in the UK, but really this seems like a thing that has virtually no execution plan and a lot of moralistic hand-wringing.
Scotland Yard, 2020: “Well, the bad news is, credit card theft is up, the good news is, these stolen cards aren’t apparently being used to charge anything.”
UK will ban porn within 30 years. The new Muslim majority won’t stand for it and the leftists and centrists will just let it happen because they’re weaklings and power worshiping idiots that have squandered their cultural inheritance.
If you’re getting raped every day, why would you need porn?
Some of us like to pre-game before a gang rape.
–“The age-check requirement applies to any website or other online platform that provides pornography “on a commercial basis” to people in the UK.”–
Wait, people pay for Porn?
Or a site that makes money by way of ad revenue could be construed as a “commercial basis”.
Good luck collecting those fee’s from the sites owners in Estonia
Digital Minister? I thought he was working with Master P.
Probably already been posted, but damn, that’s some funny robo fail.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40642968
Next you’ll tell me about some dying oregon man.
Actually…
Robot repair technicians let xe down one last time.
The Root (El Gawkero’s BLM site) ponders Mike Tirico’s race as if it matters to anyone but him. The comments are quite predictable
Yeah, cause of all the raging lynchmobs roving the streets in 2017… These people live a very paranoid world. I’d hate to be a part of it.
I don’t think this guy really wants to start a discussion about who is actually committing crimes across racial lines, he’d have to hand over his victim card. He should just stick to ‘we wuz kangs’ mythology.
I don’t think this guy really wants to start a discussion about who is actually committing crimes across racial lines
Those are white man’s statistics, infested with Tricknology!
Statistical oppression is real.
Is that Zeus from Die Hard?
I’m off to go set me up a lynch party to take out some niggers. I don’t like the way they’ve gotten all uppity when they cut the grass.
Shit what a miserable sad soul that asshole who made that comment is.
Christ, that movie was only 20 years ago. Can you imagine the protests nowadays if there was a scene in a major blockbuster movie where the main character stood in Harlem with a sign saying “I hate niggers”?
Or Dan Akroyd in “blackface” in Trading Places.
Or, of course, the greatest American comedy film of all time, Blazing Saddles.
There’s a handful of movies I enjoy that would never, ever be filmed today:
-Black Sunday – the hero is an Israeli commando and the bad guys are Palestinian Arab terrorists. Now, granted, the main terrorist is a “German-Arab” woman played by a 100% German actress, and they’re 1970s style PLO types rather than jihadis, but still.
-PCU – no fucking way in hell does that ever get greenlit today.
-Tarantino still gets away with it because he’s established (although he has started to draw a few complaints here and there), but I doubt he could make Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction today without making some changes to the scenes touching on race.
Pursuing the BBC for morning derp this morning has been hilarious, as every other article is about Trump or healthcare. The BBC writers seem to think that because Rand Paul and others in the Senate have shot down the bill the O-care will now live on forever.
Every story I’ve seen was “Senate leadership pivots to repeal now, replace later”
The BBC headlines are all about the Repub collapse.
http://www.bbc.com/news
I stopped reading the BBC when they lost the plot a few years back. I wasn’t trying to contradict you, though my reduced context may have led to that impression.
The stories from the news sources I still use…
Fair enough. I stopped taking the BBC seriously a while back too, but the well of derp goes deep across the pond
It really is. I kind of feel bad for that land of my ancestors. Culturally and politically they’re degenerating faster than ever.
Senate leadership pivots to repeal now, replace later
Of course, that was Trump’s original proposal.
I doubt it will pass, though. They burned a lot of capital on the OCare Lite waste-of-time. I doubt they can keep two Repubs from defecting.
‘Peculiar’ radio signals emerge from nearby star
Damn Aliens hitting us up for reparations. We’re warming the galaxy.
Turns out that it was a stray bit of noise. They stuck in some Bybee Quantum Purifiers and it all went away. The blackness of space got even blacker and the intertransient silence between quasar pulses became more profound.
+1 Absolute Sound review
Absolute Sound used to be reasonably sane. Stereophile was always nonsense.
Absolute Sound used to be reasonably sane.
Not ever. Never. Remember Enid Lumley?
Gordon Holt was reasonably sane and honest, though often wrong. Harry Pearson was neither sane nor honest.
Keep in my mind they’ve been around since the 70’s, before all the speaker cable and power cord nonsense. They didn’t even have ads when they first started.
I knew those guys back in the ’70s. It was just different woo. Fulton was already starting the magic wire shit, and Enid was already doing cable lifters because having wires on the floor made the sound “hard.” Hiraga was 5 years ahead of that, and was the ur-source for nearly every piece of bullshit that followed.
Emissions traveling through space? Sounds like an Agile Cyborg Jizz Rocket.
First bicycle tax in nation leaves bike-crazy Oregon riders deflated
Democratic Gov. Kate Brown expected to sign $15 excise tax on bikes over $200
” If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
“We are taxing the healthiest, most inexpensive, most environmentally friendly, most efficient and most economically sustainable form of transportation ever devised by the human species,” Mr. Maus said.
Right. All those bike lanes we built for you to ignore just magically appeared.
Fuck off, watermelon.
+1 BIKE ROADZZ
They’re taxing walking?
Technically, it’s a tax on feet.
You joke, but…
Bikes and choo-choos.
Modern vehicles with internal combustion engines release less CO2 per distance traveled than someone pedaling a bike, pal. Do the environment a favor and buy a car.
Italian Mayor: “We Have Been Invaded”
This probably won’t end well.
That there is one o them Islamophobic websites
May it not be the last.
The corrupt NGOs don’t get nearly enough credit, I’m glad to see someone talking about them. The NGOs stateside actually get tax payer subsidies for every migrant they resettle in the US. They are literally acting as importers of people.
Not in Sicily or Calabria it will. My buddy in 1990 during the World Cup witnessed a group of local Sicilians lose their patiences with a horde of drunken English hooligans. To the man they were put in their places. No police.
patience.
How the fuck did an ‘s’ sneak in there?
I might add once the English, those that remained, calmed down they were welcomed to sit, chat, chill and be civil.
“We have been invaded”
No. Shit. You are just now figuring that out?
It’s one thing to see the news about what’s going on in the big cities and on the coast. It’s probably quite another thing when the federal government dumps a pile of worthless foreign humanity on your doorstep and tells you to deal with them. They must be trying hard to suppress the natural European villager response – chasing them out of town with pitchforks and torches.
I get really sick of govt drones thinking that tax money belongs to them and that they should always be maximizing revenues.
Minnesoda “budget guru” laments that we don’t have enough of a surplus.
The guy is worried that we only are going to collect an extra $168M and that the Feds might stop underwriting a lot of their foolishness.
It’s a step in the right direction that the new Dr Who is a woman. But it’s sad that they didn’t also make her a gay black crippled transgender Muslim. Not okay.
It’s a step in the wrong direction that the show is still on the air after being brutalized by the BBC.
Great porn title.
You mean you don’t like that the show is now filled with gays, lesbians, and coloured women (or is that women of colour?) so as to be so diverse? What are you, some kind of bigot?
I am what I am.
I don’t give a damn about diversity. Just tell good stories.
Diversity is contrived, that’s my problem with it.
The color balance was bothering me.
http://imgur.com/a/nBVaP
Even better.
I wonder how much longer the show will be on the air.
You’re still thinking in terms of linear time? What kind of Dr. Who fan are you?
The ‘not’ kind.
I must submit this data to the TARDIS computer, because I don’t think it computes.
Great, now the logic circuit overloaded.
The TARD IS computer?
As long as there is virtue to signal, deplorables to resist, climate changing, we are not communist, Doctor Who will be there.
If the ratings dip too low, they can just show some tits.
We found where da white women at. You’ll never believe it!
J. sounds real smart.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/7/17/a-history-of-zoning-part-ii-the-problem-zoning-solves
Something I would write here if I were more like Eddie.
But someone else already did it, so I can just link to it.
Your morning wood.
http://archive.is/zlfmi
38 wins today.
So many nose rings, I don’t get the “I want to look like a Pampalona bull” look.
Use your imagination, Free. The nose ring on a bull has a definite purpose, after all.
“Gives me something to hang on to!” /Lord Flashheart
WOOF!
“i fell face-first into your tackle box”
I’ll go 9 and a twofer with 15 and 16.
Number 15 looks so wholesome. I want to defile her.
Gilmore’d.
They are all defile-able.
17 is the most defilable
The flags were on point.
I’d plant a flag in her mound. Or on her mound. Or within ten feet of her mound.
Not anything here we don’t already know but it’s worth repeating now and again.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/18655/our-corrupt-media-now-haunted-all-precedents-they-john-nolte
Precedents only apply to the right. Pioneers and bravery when the left breaks them. (Even if they set them).
“Collins viewed the bill as too extreme in yanking insurance coverage from millions”
Why doesn’t she just switch to team D and be done with it?
Isn’t the vast majority of the “losses” from people who would voluntarily choose not to carry insurance? Certainly the vast majority once people getting the Medicade spigot turned off are removed from the numbers as Medicade is not insurance (though of course the media and pols always do).
The stupid party once again is refusing to call the left out on their bullshit fabrications.
That’s because Ryan, McConnell, and other GOP leaders constantly accepts the Left’s bullshit premises. And also because they are statist cowards.
I don’t think they accept the Left’s premises, they surely do realize the numbers are fantasy but just don’t care to counter. I think the GOP establishment falls into two groups.
-The first are the statists you mentioned. They don’t want to repeal Obamacare and will use any opportunity to prevent doing so without appearing to pro ACA. Collins/Ryan/McConnell are in this group.
-The second are the ones who believe it lowers their class to call bullshit. They want to appear to be above the fray. They got their clocks cleaned in the party presidential debates and the tide is turning on them in the primaries.
I don’t think they accept the Left’s premises, they surely do realize the numbers are fantasy but just don’t care to counter.
Functionally, there’s no difference.
Any decent contract or transactional attorney will tell you that negotiations are mostly won or lost in the “Definitions” section. They have ceded all the strategic ground to the progs. Who cares if they did it because they secretly agree, or are weak and stupid?
To use your example, I would imagine if you owned a company that you would care if your attorney purposely sabotaged your negotiations or just fucked up through incompetence. Functionally, there’s no difference, your negotiations are over but the reasoning behind it would impact your future decisions (e.g., just termination or maybe press charges too if fraud was involved).
I think Republican voters are starting to wake-up and are pulling the party in different directions. Some are leaning towards a direction involving people like Milo to counter the weak and stupid. Others who believe the repub statists are the same as democrasts might go Libertarian or work towards splintering off into a new party. So, they do care why their elected officials are backstabbing them. Of course, others are content just to be statists and I would agree with you that statists wouldn’t care.
IMO, more the latter than the former. I’m reasonably sure they don’t buy the bullshit, but I’m even more sure that they’re first and foremost public “service” leeches who only care about remaining fastened to the body politic.
Paperwork vanishes, and so could billions in student loan debt
Company takes college borrowers to court but often lacks documentation.
http://www.startribune.com/paperwork-vanishes-and-so-could-billions-in-student-loan-debt/435054523/
Good. The courts **should** have done the same thing with foreclosures when the banks didnt have the proper papers.
I have long suspected that anyone who demands to see documentation for 20 y/o student loans would cause an awful lot of squirming in the court.
IANAL, but my best friend’s dad is. He always told us, as we were taking out loans for cars, and as part of our limited student loans (his parents and mine paid most of the way for each of us), that if we were ever in bankruptcy court, or in default, to ask to see the original paperwork for the loans.
Far worse was tolerated, and even ratified retrospectively, during the Mortgage Meltdown of ’08.
And it was bullshit. No paperwork, no loan. If you find it later, you can start the foreclosure process over from scratch.
—-Observation 1: Simply repealing the ACA is more libertarian than passing the AHCA.
The AHCA kept popular things like killing the preexisting conditions exclusion. Repealing ObamaCare will get rid of the preexisting conditions exclusion.
Notice, I’m not saying that we should keep the part if the ACA that ends the preexisting conditions exclusion. I’m saying, here, that repealing the ACA is more libertarian because it does things like that.
—-Observation 2: Moderate Republicans refused to pass the AHCA because it was so libertarian.
If they couldn’t get the AHCA passed in the Senate because it was so libertarian, then why would the Senate vote to pass repealing ObamaCare when doing so is more libertarian than passing the AHCA?
For example, if they can’t get the votes to pass a reform that keeps the popular preexisting conditions exclusion, why would they have enough votes to pass a bill to get rid of the preexisting conditions exclusion?
—-Conclusion: Repealing ObamaCare is unlikely.
—-Concession: Doing rational things doesn’t necessarily require rational people, and projecting rationality onto politicians can be problematic.
ACA is never going to be repealed. It’s time you let go of the pipe dream.
Bwaha. Sorry. That was not meant for you.
And yet it’s basically agreeing with me.
I hold out some hope (by way of my concession above) that the Republicans in congress will not behave rationally, but if you can’t get a more moderate reform passed because it was too radical, why would they vote for a more radical solution?
Because sometimes the Overton window is non-continuous.
I think the reasoning goes that ACA is unsustainable, even in the short term. That unsustainability is just about to become very apparent. When that happens, the political calculus will be changed in favor of a more radical solution. You can’t get repeal now. But, you may be able to get it in the near future.
I don’t know if I agree. But, I believe that’s the reasoning.
As the wheels come off, which is more likely
(a) See, teh wheels are coming off, we should repeal it.
or
(b) See, the wheels are coming off, we must save it with more money, more bureaucrats, and more mandates.
I’m betting heavily on (b). Somewhat unlikely that they will go full single-payer, but if they do, why would they raise taxes? Just borrow to fund it. There is practically nobody in Washington who even pretends to think the national debt is a problem.
It’s pretty much this:
https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/887265339796578304
They voted to repeal when they knew Obama would veto.
They’re politicians–elected politicians. There’s an argument to be made that they’re not even supposed to be principled. They’re supposed to change their minds when the American people change their minds.
It’s also true that as the Republicans have taken over more and more traditional Democrat territory, the Republican constituency has become increasingly moderate.
20 Republicans in the House voted against the AHCA, and they were mostly from moderate states (New Jersey and New York) or they were from swing states (Ohio and Pennsylvania). I’m sure the Senate was panning out likewise.
If we don’t end up getting rid of ObamaCare and the Medicaid expansion, Rand Paul will deserve a heaping share of the blame. He’s not acting like presidential material. He may have a mindset that’s perfect for running interference in opposition, but this was an opportunity to show that he could lead.
The last score I saw from the CBO had the Medicaid rolls dropping by 11 million and the tax payers saving $880 billion over ten years. If we miss out on that because we came up a vote or two short in the Senate and one of those votes we needed was Rand Paul’s, then that’s pathetic.
Being a good president isn’t about making grand gestures on behalf of lost causes–and it sure as hell isn’t about opposing rolling back Medicaid eligibility.
If he effectively ends up opposing cutting Medicaid eligibility–on behalf of libertarian principles?–then, on that huge issue, he might as well be a progressive.
— Edmund Burke
All he is asking for is the Senate to vote the same way on repeal today that they did under Obama.
Why would they vote the same way in different circumstances? Why would they vote the same way now that they know Trump will sign what they pass as they voted back when they knew there was no way Obama would sign what they pass?
That doesn’t even begin to make sense–and Rand Paul insisting that people do things they will not do, and holding his breath until he turns blue, is not presidential behavior.
For the reasons I outlined above . . . if the moderates wouldn’t support reforming ObamaCare because it was too radical, why would they support repealing ObamaCare, which is even more radical?
Rand Paul was instrumental in killing the potential to cut 11 million people off of Medicaid, repeal the individual mandate, repeal the employer mandate, and cut spending by $880 billion over the course of ten years. And in help killing the bill that would do that, no principles were defended. In exchange for helping kill that bill–he got us absolutely nothing in return.
That is buffoonish behavior. It isn’t even going to help him win the Republican nomination. Everyone in the Republicans primaries is going to blame him for why we have ObamaCare and why we’re on the road to single payer–and he rightly deserves a huge portion of that blame.
Why would they change their vote?
Before they voted to repeal ObamaCare. Were they lying? Apparently so, and you support them.
As Rand said, he promised his constituents (me) that he would vote for repeal. He ran on that. And so did most of the other GOPers. But apparently they didnt mean it.
I want a Senator who votes the way he promised me he would.
As he said in the article, there are compromises that he would support, but not one that leaves the core of Obamacare in place.
They’re politicians–not moral philosophers.
I get projects approved through planning commissions and city councils all the time–regardless of whether the politicians voting have any principles at all.
if I don’t get those approved, what am I supposed to say to my investors, “Sorry I lost all your money, but the politicians were unprincipled”? The world is full of unprincipled politicians. Being a good president is about getting what you want from unprincipled politicians.
If Rand Paul treats his fellow politicians as if they’re something other than politicians or can’t get what he wants because the politicians in congress are unprincipled, then he has no business being President of the United States. He should go argue with kids in a dorm room instead.
Ken, its one thing, I suppose, to make pretty explicit campaign promises and then not carry them out.
Its another to actually vote repeatedly for something when you don’t think it will actually get signed into law, and then refuse to vote for it when it would actually get signed into law.
Think of the first as “puffery” – the garble that salesmen say that nobody really believes.
The second, though, is pure cowardice and misrepresentation, and should be called out and punished as such. Casting a vote for something that you don’t really want to see go into law in order to get re-elected, is a whole ‘nother level of politician lying.
Now, if you want to take the position that politicians should never, ever be called out for their cowardice and dishonesty, but should be rewarded for it by making excuses for them and accepting whatever crumbs they deem fit to sweep onto the floor for your consumption, well, there’s a Iron Law for that.
Here’s what straight repeal gets that reform doesn’t – a dismantling of the administrative state for administering Obamacare. Reform leaves the infrastructure pretty much intact, making it much easier for all the stuff we don’t like to come back, either via administrative fiat or by the next round of “reform”.
And yet, Paul is my Senator and he is doing what I wanted him to do.
Maybe I voted for a moral philosopher.
Excellent analysis, R C.
I’m not saying that’s a good thing.
I’m saying it is what it is.
If the Republican moderates in the senate won’t do that, then that’s what they won’t do.
This is like a company raising prices to make more money–and being surprised to find that their customers won’t pay more. If the customers won’t pay more, then you can berate them–but that isn’t going to change anything.
Meanwhile, we’re not talking about a bad bill here.
Listening to Rand Paul go after the moderates because they won’t go the extra mile is absurd when Rand Paul won’t go the first mile!
Gets rid of the individual mandate?
Check.
Gets rid of the employer mandate that requires employers to either cut their employees’ hours to 29 a week or offer them health insurance?
Check.
Rolls Medicaid eligibility back to the point that the CBO says we’ll shed 11 million Medicaid patients and save $880 billion over ten years?
Check.
If Rand Paul is against doing those good things because the bill doesn’t also do more, why should I blame the moderates for not being willing to stick their necks out? If Rand Paul won’t even stick his neck out for doing these things, then why blame moderates in blue states for not sticking their necks out, too?
We should be able to depend on Rand Paul to do these things. Not have him lead the charge against the most pro-libertarian bill cutting entitlements that we’re likely to see in our lifetimes.
If McConnell wants Paul’s vote for a replacement, he could replace the current bill with this.
I think Paul would vote for that. I could be wrong though.
If your position is (and it seems to be) that its unfair and unreasonable to expect that Republican politicians will be honest in expressing their disapproval of policies or their policy positions, then I’d suggest you’re being a little unfair and unreasonable in assuming that they’ll all of a sudden start being honest with you and follow through on the 11 million and $880 million? If moderates chickened out now, why wouldn’t they when the uproar over “those poor people” started?
I don’t think some of you really grok what’s happening here.
That 11 million and $880 [billion] is from the CBO’s score of, as I recall, the Senate version of the bill.
We’re not talking about something that might have happened at some future date if the Republicans play their cards right. If Rand Paul and someone else had voted for the senate bill, the CBO said we’d lose 11 million off the Medicaid rolls and save $880 billion over the course of ten years. There’s no follow up condition to that. Rand Paul refused to support doing that, and that is what we’re talking about.
Suderman repeatedly made the claim that those things were unlikely to happen in the future because some future congress might vote them away–but that’s always the case. If we only cut Medicaid eligibility once we’re certain that no future congress will reinstate it, then we will never cut Medicaid eligibility. Future congresses can always undo what’s been done in the past.
And, anyway, just because I support cutting Medicaid eligibility now doesn’t mean I support increasing eligibility again in the future, too. I can keep opposing increasing eligibility; in fact, I’d support kicking more people off of Medicaid in the future and giving them more subsidies to buy more private insurance–until there ain’t no Medicaid no more.
As I keep saying, moving people from Medicaid to private insurance with subsidies is exactly like moving students from public schools to private schools with vouchers–and both should be supported by libertarians for the same reasons: There is no more practical way to minimize the state in those areas, and as the services become increasingly privatized, they will become increasingly better, more affordable, etc. crowding the state out of the business almost completely.*
*orphans with birth defects, right?
Are we talking about the same moderates who didn’t vote for Obamacare because it was too radical?
No, we’re talking about moderate Republicans.
The ACA was passed in the Senate with 58 Democrats and 2 Independents. 39 of 40 Republicans voted no, and the other Republican abstained.
The ACA passed the House with 219 Democrats voting yes. All 178 Republicans in the House voted no.
There were no moderate Republicans who voted for ObamaCare, and there were no Republicans who voted for ObamaCare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Legislative_history
A beautiful explanation of why the ratchet only moves one way.
Now that OCare is status quo, the Repubs are duty bound as “moderates” and/or “conservatives” to protect the status quo.
They are fucking useless for anything but the most marginal improvements. I get that there is a marginal improvement in the Repub bill, but it doesn’t really turn the ratchet back. Shifting people from Medicaid to federally paid “private” insurance is not reducing the federal role in health care finance, its rearranging the deck chairs (indeed, one can see an argument that straight welfare is better than cronytastic funding of the welfare benefits via quasi-privatization). Saving $88 billion a year is nice, but I see nothing that will prevent the ratchet from just firing up again as soon as dimwit goes broke after getting cancer.
The Repubs had a window of opportunity to make real changes. They utterly botched it. Passing this bill would not change my thinking on this.
Good, because so am I.
Glad I remember it correctly. So the moderate Republicans who we both agree didn’t vote for Obamacare in the first place and won’t vote to ‘reform’ it should not be expected to fully repeal Obamacare, a law they claim to have opposed and did not vote for, when the opportunity is there?
Once again, you guys seem to be mystified by politicians acting like politicians.
The problem with the United States isn’t that we don’t have the right politicians in charge and they’re so unprincipled. The problem is that we have politicians in charge of too many things.
Politicians have been acting like politicians since Athens. Go look at the Roman senate, British parliament, wherever you want, you’re never going to find politicians that don’t act like politicians.
The guy who said, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” completely turned his back on segregation a coupe election cycles later and embraced integration as a central part of his campaign.
Politicians will never, never, never, never, never, never, never stop acting like politicians. That’s perhaps the best reason why their power should be severely limited to as small a circle as possible.
Believe me, Rand Paul refusing to vote for a bill that slashes Medicaid eligibility, kills the employer mandate, and kills in the individual mandate is not the solution to our problems. Having more politicians who are so principled they’re worse than useless isn’t the solution to our problems either.
You guys know Rand Paul is just a politician, right? He’s not the Green Lantern, who’s gonna save us all by the force of his willpower. And he just fucked up big time. And electing him president isn’t about to solve our problems–not if he won’t cut Medicaid because of some absurd principle you people have somehow tied to libertarian virtue.
Some of you guys are treating him like a faith healer. He’s not playing 3-D chess. He’s pandering to his audience–and it fucked him up. He’s like his dad opposing free trade agreements for some larger principle that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans compared to trade with China dominating the world economy for the last 15 years. When Rand Paul is wrong, he’s wrong. And guess what?
He’s so fucking wrong.
Of course, because establishment GOP like McConnell and Ryan, love them some big ol gubmint just as much as the Democrat’s do. The one single reason we don’t have Obamacare Lite right now, a structure that both the GOP and the Dems can just keep adding onto and expanding, forever, is a libertarian leaning Republican.
It’s weird because on the one hand, a lot of you know that Suderman is full of shit, but on the other hand, you seem to have internalized everything Suderman said. I don’t know where else you would get this stuff–if not from Suderman.
I repeat: Cutting 11 million people off of Medicaid, repealing the individual mandate, repealing the employer mandate, and cutting $880 billion in spending over the course of ten years is not ObamaCare rebranded–no matter what Peter Suderman says.
I don’t have any idea what Suderman has to say on this. All I know is that Rand is right, they promised to repeal this crap and that’s what they should do, because anything remaining will grow into a monstrosity like every single other thing the government is involved in.
We cannot let ourselves be limited by the way the world should be. We have to live in the world as it is.
We could have set ourselves on the road to replacing Medicaid entirely. That’s not an opportunity we should have had–that’s the bill that was passed by the House, that the Senate fell a couple votes short on, and that the president has promised to sign.
If Rand Paul is living in a world of make-believe, where things can only be supported so long as the world is the way it should be, the he has no business being the president of the United States, where we have to live with real world consequences–even when the world isn’t as it should be.
Again, I try to imagine saying to my investors, “Sorry your returns didn’t exceed my projections, but the world isn’t the way it should be.” The world isn’t the way it should be. I get screwed, mistreated, abused, and robbed by land sellers, government agency officials at all levels of government, local city council members, planning commissioners, brokers, and consultants–and I still deliver returns that are higher than my projections. And I’m just one guy with a business partner.
And I’m supposed to being against winning because the prize should be even bigger?
I’m supposed to support losing because the prize should have been bigger?
We may never get a chance to cut entitlement spending in our lifetimes.
I feel like St. Stephen before the Sanhedrin. Yeah, your real purpose was to watch out for the messiah. You spotted him alright, but when he got here, you didn’t welcome him. You had him crucified!
They dragged him outside and stoned him for it.
All my life we’ve been hoping to cut Medicaid. And when that opportunity was finally born, Rand Paul sneaked into the nursery and strangled it in the cradle.
Fuck Rand Paul. On an important issue like this, Liz Warren would have done the same thing.
Ken, are you mad that Rand won? You just cannot stand all of Rand’s winning. It’s yuuggee winning. MASGA! (make the Senate great again).
Actually, I’m extremely disappointed that blew and opportunity to cut Medicaid eligibility, repeal the individual mandate, repeal the employer mandate, and save $880 billion over ten years.
How many times have I said that already?
That Rand Paul was effective in making sure these things didn’t happen–in the name of libertarianism, mind you–fills me with disgust for Rand Paul, personally, no doubt about it.
Fuck Rand Paul. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was a progressive in sheep’s clothing. That he did what the progressives and socialists wanted him to do for his own reasons is beside the point.
Neville Chamberlain wanted peace in his time. So what? Should I give him credit for that? If he’d intended to sink Europe into a bitter and bloody catastrophe, he’d have done the same thing.
Obamacare is here is “stay” (and by stay, I mean until it collapses, an inevitability). When it does collapse, we will get single-payer. That was the plan all along and the retard GOP did nothing to stop it. They had their chance and they blew it. Everyone get ready for Canadian-style healthcare cause, mark my words, we will have it in 10 years, probably sooner.
We came up a couple of votes short in the Senate, and one of those votes was Rand Paul’s.
It didn’t have to be this way. It was not inevitable.
In order to get something incredibly libertarian done, maybe we’ll have to get rid of Rand Paul and replace him with an establishment Republican.
We came up a couple of votes short in the Senate…
…for something that isn’t even vaguely a market solution, just O-Care rebranded. So leave me or anyone else who’s libertarian out of that “we.”
Did I mention that it rolled back Medicaid eligibility?
If moving 11 million people from off of Medicaid and into the private insurance system with subsidies isn’t a vaguely market solution, then moving kids from public schools to private schools by way of vouchers isn’t a vaguely market solution either.
Not only was moving those people to private insurance a market solution for the problems caused by the ACA Medicaid expansion, it also pointed the way to get rid of the rest of Medicaid entirely.
Did I mention that, according to the CBO, it saved taxpayers a net $880 billion over the course of ten years? Are you a taxpayer?
Cutting 11 million people off of Medicaid, repealing the individual mandate, repealing the employer mandate, and cutting $880 billion in spending over the course of ten years is not ObamaCare rebranded–no matter who says otherwise.
A law that cuts back on Medicaid but conscripts a bunch of people into the army, reinstates the relocation camps for Japanese Americans, and classifies aspirin as a controlled substance is not a bill I would want my Congressional representatives to support.
YMMV.
This bill didn’t do any of that–no matter what Peter Suderman says.
Shreek was right, Ken’s a closet Republican.
But Ken is right, Rand Paul just saved Obamacare. The Senate only passed a partial repeal (not total repeal) once, and since then they’ve lost one of the 52 votes that passed said partial repeal. That means repeal without replace starts at 51 votes, meaning it will only take two defections for it to be a nonstarter. Obamacare is here to stay, thanks to an alliance of moderates and conservatives (including Lee and Paul) determined to protect it.
They’re not determined to protect it. They just had a conscience and voted by it.
This was akin to voting no to a bill that would have us pull our troops out of Iraq…so they could invade Syria.
There were more than two options. He chose the third because he is a man of his word. Good for him.
What Rand saved is not Obamacare. He saved the Stupid Party from hanging themselves by their own dicks. REPEAL!
But the sad thing is, the Republicans never had the votes for repeal in the Senate, so repeal was never an option. As I said above, the Senate only ever voted for partial repeal (a plan that was suspiciously similar to what just failed – I’d like to hear Rand justify how his previous vote for such a plan was OK but now that it’s a possibility of passing it’s not OK), and they never had the votes for full repeal (that was the House, which is more conservative and has voted over 50 times for repeal and would likely do so again, but without the Senate that means nothing). I don’t think Rand or Lee actually want to save Obamacare, but given the political reality that is what they did. Unless the Republicans pick up a lot of seats in 2018 (which doesn’t seem likely), this was the best shot to get something better than Obamacare. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but that’s how I read the current landscape.
I should add I don’t want to come across as just blaming Rand/Lee, as the moderates Collins/Capito/Murkowski/Portman share responsibility (in fact, more-so, since they oppose repeal), but I do think this was a classic case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Its a pathetic commentary on the Senate Repubs that they never even dropped a big enough testicle to vote for repeal when it was meaningless.
On the whole, I don’t know that the easily reversed re-arranging-the-deck-chairs Senate bill is really better than OCare – maybe (I’m less skeptical now), but the differences and, IMO, their inevitably temporary nature, aren’t enough to get me to say that its failure was a big loss.
The analogy of the MA rollback to voucher schools is an interesting one, but the risks (nay, the certainty) of it turning in to a cronytastic lootfest by Big Insurance are just way too high and not present currently in the charter school world.
I’m actually not a Republican–unless you mean in the Jack Kemp, Phil Gramm, Howard Jarvis, Barry Goldwater, Jean Kirkpatrick, Jim Baker, George Shultz, Milton Friedman, expediency sense of the term.
Rand Paul is a Republican with a capital “R”, and if he were replaced with Jack Kemp, Phil Gramm, or some other libertarian adult, we might be looking at shrinking the state right now–instead of immortalizing the status quo.
It was a joke. But you are wrong about this Obamacare fiasco. It just needs to be repealed. Unless you really do believe that the government can make healthcare better.
It isn’t going to be repealed.
If the moderates wouldn’t support a moderate repeal, why would they support something as radical as a total repeal?
For instance, repeal would mean that insurance companies could start discriminating against people with preexisting conditions again. Why would the moderates support doing that when they wouldn’t even support a moderate bill that kept the ObamaCare stipulation that insurers can no longer discriminate against people with preexisting conditions?
An excellent way to kill a negotiation is to insist on something that cannot happen. That’s the way Rand Paul killed repeal of ObamaCare. He insisted on something that couldn’t possibly happen. Whether assuming he did that on purpose is giving him the benefit of the doubt. If he didn’t realize what he was doing was immortalizing ObamaCare, then maybe that’s even worse.
Ever heard the lyrics to Scarborough Fair?
She tells him she’ll marry him–on a few conditions.
Tell her to make me a cambric shirt
Parsley sage rosemary and thyme
Without no seams nor needle work
Then she’ll be a true love of mine
Tell her to find me an acre of land
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Between the salt water and the sea strand
She’ll be a true love of mine
Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather
Parsley sage rosemary and thyme
And gather it all in a bunch of heather
Then she’ll be a true love of mine
Rand Paul is saying that we can’t cut Medicaid entitlements, can’t kill the individual mandate, can’t kill the employer mandate, and can’t cut $880 billion from the budget–unless the moderate Republicans in blue states and swing states cannot do.
That is not leadership. We’d already won the hand, but Rand Paul threw in the cards. Rand Paul refuses to win on principle.
We’re never getting single payer, thankfully.
This guy. Right here. He’s living my ideal life – never experiencing summer.
That’s my ideal life as well.
Instead I live in South Florida.
I wish I was dead.
What a nightmare! I thought DC was bad for winter lovers!
This is why I buy a lottery ticket every once in a while. I dream of shuttling between Colorado and New Zealand. I’d throw Chile in there, too, but South America intimidates me (it’s not a very introvert-friendly place)
South America intimidates me
Plus the Hitler brain thing.
I was thinking Australia and upstate NY, but that works too.
Depends how you define winter I guess. If you want winter temps as Americans think of them, you’d have to live at least as far south in Australia as Albury.
I have an Aussie friend that lives on the Gold Coast, and she posts beach walk pics every day in the “dead” of winter. No thanks. I’ll just keep going south to NZ, then keep going even more south to Queenstown.
If you’re going south, you should just go to Invercargill.
My mum lives here: http://tinyurl.com/yctaoswo
Chile reminds me of Spain in many ways, including the people. It is a great place. I’d love to ski there I’d I get a chance.
You should be living your ideal life
This is a tricky concept for me and something I have spent a serious amount of time pondering. Deciding how to live one’s life is one of the central practical questions of philosophy. Defining what is considered “ideal” can be a minefield. What does it consist of? And how can I know it before experiencing it firsthand? By experiencing it, there are opportunity costs involved and perhaps the mere act of experiencing it will change it somehow (like measuring a particle and causing a wavefunction collapse). I always come back to this:
https://pastorchrisjordan.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/calvin-hobbes-happiness-2.png
Should I be pursuing frank hedonism? Should I take a more Epicurean approach? Is there value in asceticism and self-denial? No easy answers.
You should definitely spend the next 5 decades of your life worrying about it before you drop dead.
Is there value in asceticism and self-denial?
I hope so, because every day you spend pondering these issues is probably another day of asceticism and self-denial.
I’m in the YOLO camp – enjoy life as much as you can but don’t end up in prison or with heavy debt, because that will put an end to the fun.
– buy an enjoyable car, go on fun vacations, drink, be merry, stay at hotels you can’t afford, and chase tail. Because in fifty years no one is going to be saying: “Remember Bob? He was a nice guy. Good accountant too.”
I’m a little more ant than grasshopper. Maybe I just see way too many elderly people with nothing. That’s not a good life.
As with everything, there’s a balance.
I should have said “mostly in the YOLO camp” – but the ol’ Dutch conservative farmer in me keeps me out of trouble.
If you’re truly of Dutch blood, you’re cheap as fuck too. And you complain a lot.
So Lord H is a sock for UnCiv?
Hey I’ve got a smidge of Dutch and I’m not a cheapskate. *goes to hell for lying*
I broke the mold, ok? Because I see how miserable cheapskates are.
I mean who wants to drive a Honda Fit like my brother?
I think one can live a fairly simple life and be happy. I will say though that a “comfortable” retirement is the main consideration to my financial goals. By comfortable, I mean the ability to live a modest lifestyle without having to worry about money, same as I do now.
You misunderstand. Pondering these questions doesn’t eliminate my enjoyment of life, quite the opposite. I think that perhaps there’s a bit too much casual Nihilism in the world today because the answers aren’t easy. I would never be dulled into inaction and stasis on behalf of these questions, but ignoring them saps opportunity for finding additional meaning in everyday life.
You misunderstand.
Nah. I’m just yanking yer pud. The unexamined life, etc.
People who never think about these things are the ones who will look back on a life that suddenly seems empty and pointless.
Make money, fuck bitches.
Crested Butte is a pretty good mountain. Lots of steeps requiring avalanche control, so this guy has job security.
Stupid, hypocritical bint.
Jesus fucking Christ. How the fuck does she say that with a straight face, given her record as California AG? Remember, this is a woman whose office once argued in court against the federal court-ordered prison reform in California because it would deprive the state of cheap prison labor.
She may have already passed everyone as my least favorite person in Congress.
She defended states’ rights? That may have been the right call, depending on the circumstances.
Basically, California’s prisons were so massively overcrowded (thanks to everything being illegal) and the conditions so awful that the federal courts deemed it an 8th Amendment violation and ordered that they start releasing people. Her argument against it was that releasing prisoners would deprive the state of cheap prison labor.
And, of course, they did a bit of Washington Monument Syndrome-type activity by talking about how they’d have to release all these violent people back onto the streets instead of, you know, all the people there for bullshit crimes with no victim.
She defended states’ rights?
Yup. A state’s right to violate the Constitutional rights of its
citizenssubjects.I don’t know the details, but the 8th Amendment forbids punishments which are cruel *and* unusual. I admit that overcrowding is cruel, but unusual? That’s a term of art which, I believe, means contrary to common-law practice.
So if the government sticks to common-law punishments it may be cruel, but it isn’t cruel *and unusual.*
And the 13th Amendment allows the enslavement of convicted criminals.
Now, the specifics of California’s cruelty may go beyond common-law practice, in which case, yes, it would be unconstitutional.
Didn’t she also try to prosecute people for things that were legal, as in there was no law on the books which they broke?
Kamala Harris is one evil bitch. Janet Reno has a jealous.
Here’s a list I made up to try to get a prog friend to realize how awful she is (it didn’t work). Removed the links because of the one link per post rule. Except for the one at the end, because it’s worth watching and reading.
1. Her office argued against prison reform in California because it would deprive the state of prisoner slave labor. No, really. That was the argument in court.
2. Her political prosecution against the owners of Backpage.com, which she continued even after she was told by a judge that the prosecution wasn’t allowable under the first amendment (this is also on the AG of Texas)
3. Her attempts to grab charity donor lists, which were also smacked down by the courts.
4. Her misconduct in the Moonlight Fire case:
5. Abusing her authority to try and kill a hospital merger on behalf of the SEIU.
6. Her willful ignorance (at the very least) in the San Francisco drug lab scandal (when she was DA)
7. Actually continuing to defend everybody involved in the sickening jailhouse snitch scandal in Orange County.
8. The time that a prosecutor flat-out invented a confession in an interview transcript and her office argued that it shouldn’t mean the conviction should be thrown out because, I mean, the prosecutor didn’t beat the guy up!
9. The time she [edit: a deputy AG under her control] defended prosecutorial lying before the 9th circuit until the judges… rather strongly let her know that she *really* didn’t want to know what would happen if she kept it up. The oral arguments are really worth watching. http://observer.com/2015/01/breaking-ninth-circuit-panel-suggests-perjury-prosecution-for-lying-prosecutors/
She’s anti-woman. She doesn’t believe women have agency to make decisions about their own bodies and how make money. (point #2 re: Backpage). She’s literally Big Sister.
You don’t have *uck Schumer as one of your senators.
She’s stupid on crime. Although that’s not being a hypocrite. It’s quite consistent. She’s stupid on everything.
She didn’t get into the CA political machine because of her blinding intellect and unimpeachable integrity.
She got into the CA political machine by fucking its most powerful member.
Why is it that you search far and wide for a female Dem politician who actually got there on her own merits, rather than be sleeping her way to the top? And I include the ones who married into enormous fortunes, BTW, since that was still their ticket to office.
And I include the ones who married into enormous fortunes, BTW, since that was still their ticket to office.
Not that men are above such things. McCain and Kerry come immediately to mind.
From the robot link: Judgement Day
Millennials can’t do anything right!
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/18/breakup-experts-technology-dating-relationships
Breaking up by text is so impersonal. Just boil one of their rabbits instead.
Yo bye lol
“y r u texting me ur sitting next 2 me in bed”
“no time 2 talk gotta run dont be there when I get back dont make me have my mom change the lock in the basement door”
Fox is reporting on Bill’s Clinton’s $500K speech for Russians – while Hillary was fighting against Russian sanctions. Memory-holed for most of the media.
Further, former Secretary of State Clinton’s initial opposition coincided with a $500,000 speech her husband gave in Moscow – a link her 2016 campaign fought to downplay in the press
Didn’t have to fight too hard, though.
Found this, don’t know if it was linked yesterday – anti-nut punch of the day: https://www.texastribune.org/2017/07/18/texas-police-officer-who-killed-jordan-edwards-was-indicted/
Good
Indictments don’t really do anything for me. I’ll be happy if and when any of them are actually convicted.
I mean, look at the article. This is apparently the last conviction of a cop for on-duty murder in Texas… Two and a half years in prison for THIS?
I know, I mean really… that should have been 6 months max with credit for time served. All these cop haters make me sick.
that should have been 6 months max
with credit for time servedbefore they parked him Ol’ SparkyYeah, I know. But you can’t get to a conviction without an indictment, so it’s a start. More of a start than many get.
I posted this yesterday but worth the repeat: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/crime/news/article.cfm?c_id=30&objectid=11892103
NZ cop stalks man for more than 2 years. Then gets put on paid leave for 2.5 years before being given community service and a fine.
The problem is that they won’t convict.
Way to kill my joy, man.
Marital advice from the one of the founding fathers of modern bodybuilding Joe Weider. Written in 1959.
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/10/16/secrets-healthy-sex-life-advice-legendary-bodybuilder-joe-weider/
Bro, do you even Fifties?
I’ll have to read through the backlog from this gentlemen.
“As your purse will allow, take her out to dinner often, to a different place each time. Introduce her to foods of many nations. Experiment with her in matters like this. Always let her know that such nights “on the town” are an especial pleasure for you because she is with you. Be proud to show your wife off to others.”
What a cuck – he should train his wife to be grateful he unchains her from the stove once a day to answer the call of nature.
/manosphere blogger
I’d like to sign up to your newsletter.
The problem is probably that all that test he was injecting, was converting to estrogen since back then there was no such thing as aromatase inhibitor. Which is why so many of them wound up losing their muscle mass and getting moobz after many years.
The secret to Gimore’s writing style.
I don’t know…I kind of like it.
So before 2010, the U. S. was like a patient without a heart?
Well, duh. How else do you explain the piles of bodies in the streets?
Has anyone pointed out to these fuckheads that the insurance industry is loaded with people about 100x as smart as the smartest pol? The industry will figure out in a week how to manage and with increases competition (any company sell anywhere and people can form co-ops) they will do it in record time.
It is amazing to me how fantastically successful liberty is. To whatever degree it is allowed success follows and increases exponentially yet we always have these fucking leeches trying to drag us down. They never learn. From the precautionary principle driven by fear and ignorance everything just calcifies until the system becomes dysfunctional.
Ok, I am rambling. I will quit and go get the grandson. Y’all have fun. I know we will. We might shoot some guns today.
But Suthen, those insurance bastards will be trying to make a buck when they come up with ways to give me new and better products! They won’t be doing it out of the goodness of their heart.
I would be so ashamed to have to pay my hospital bill with money that has been tainted by the profit motive.
I just had a discussion about how much better SpaceX was than NASA, and a commenter jumped in to make the retarded point:
“Yea, but NASA exists to educate and forward scientific progress, SpaceX just exists for profit.”
To which I pointed out that the profit motive allowed space launch costs to be decreased by a factor of 10 and falling.
“But think how much cheaper it would be if SpaceX weren’t skimming off the top!!”
I love that people could make that point, without taking a moment to correlate the fact that it was the retarded “not-for-profit” model of the past that was keeping costs ridiculous.
If only I had the time, I might be bothered to make the correlation to health care as well.
Not to mention it’s just not true: just because the profits aren’t distributed to shareholders, and so technically not “profits”, doesn’t mean that people aren’t profiting from it. Some of the worst instances of people raiding the treasury of an organization occur in what we deem “non-profits”. The thousands of extraneous people pulling money from NASA as part of their 10x higher costs are surely profiting from it, but for some reason this doesn’t count since the profit is not earned as a dividend.
Sorry, looks like the reply was “Yea, but SpaceX benefited from all the knowledge NASA accumulated over time. It’s much easier to improve upon a process than invent it.”. So, they didn’t build that, essentially.
No comment yet on why NASA, with all of that same knowledge and experience, 3x the staff, and 18x the budget was unable to make similar strides to SpaceX.
Not to mention that if you want to play that game NASA’s work is all built on the work of a private German organization.
I hate that shit. The argument’s totally upside-down, too. NASA is a federal agency with public funding. With all of the resources at its command, what has it accomplished?
NASA is a bureaucracy, ran by bureaucrats. That’s all the explanation needed.
NASA is a bureaucracy, ran by
bureaucratshero public servants who eschew profit for the betterment of society. That’s all the explanation needed./progfix
Please dont. I am dumber for having read that.
The pairings I will be following are:
6:57, 7:08, 8:14 and 1:37.
Like, with wine?
Was reading the local rag. In a story on the continuing saga of the Charlottesville R.E. Lee statue and the ensuing Klan demonstrations and lefty counter-protests was this gem of a quote:
Self reflection isn’t his strong suit, is it.
I wonder what the local ACLU chapter is doing on this one.
Charlottesville proggies are so cute. I hope they never change.
Surprisingly easy to avoid them – even downtown.
Oh dear God
Nope, it’s nothing like a brainwashed cult, not at all.
I do like this one
https://www.etsy.com/listing/467083670/snoop-dogg-devotional-prayer-saint?ref=related-1
Can I just get Blair and Jo?
https://www.etsy.com/listing/482286666/facts-of-life-girls-devotional-prayer?ref=related-3
You missed the best one!
I was actually just coming back to post that. Lol.
I don’t blame her for making it, just the idiot that buys it.
The Seinfeld and Harambe ones are pretty cool though.
Yeah, I bookmarked the site. Good for joke gifts.
You can this one for The Fusionist:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/464165618/the-four-horsemen-richard-dawkins?ref=shop_home_active_49
One for our Jewish Glibs as well.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/464280697/barbra-streisand-devotional-prayer-saint?ref=related-2
paging sloop
Oh yeah, I’m getting those for my dad.
Quick! Send one to Nick!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/464965366/lou-reed-devotional-prayer-saint-candle?ref=shop_home_active_71
Guess who wrote the article with this title?
SD?
It’s the same sort of childish shit that comes out of the NYT, CNN, and WaPo, so I guess they believe they have a real media winner with this one.
Christ, I was right.
Sad.
It fits her MO pretty accurately though, like a lot of major progressive journalists she herself is a fundamentally awful human being and projects her hatred on others.
Journalism Dies at the Washington Post.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/17/nra-washington-post-damage-country-keyboards-members-ever-guns/
Was it shot to death by the NRA murder cult? Asking for a
progfriend.Twitter wars
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=370701
Looks like she’ll have the money
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/clinton-donors-have-picked-their-2020-democratic-presidential-nominee/ar-BBEBhcw?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp
Newsflash: Corrupt Party Insiders Prefer Corrupt Party Insider
my feeling is that the smart money is on the sidelines.
anyone profiling themselves as the “prime candidate” for the Dems this far out is simply setting themselves up to be torn apart and scrutinized every 10 seconds until the campaign starts.
i think more-serious people would be keeping their heads down until the mid-terms were done.
Sorry, my shocked face is at the cleaners right now.
I for sure thought it would be Elizabeth Warren running in 2020.
I’m sure she probably will. If the money is backing Harris though, fauxcahontis will be getting the Bernie treatment from the DNC.
If at first you fail to left, left harder!!
I was assuming Bernie would also run in 2020, given his impact on the 2016 election, but perhaps he is worried that photo ops might not give the right impression if his wife is wearing an orange jumpsuit in the photos.
Well, at least running a far left prog from CA will win over the yokels in flyover who cause Hillary to lose, right?
I think another round of the media pointing out how unsophisticated the yokels are and how they should know their place is in order, to get them back in line.
Why don’t these idiot peasants realize that dems are ENTITLED to their votes because they say things like “fair wages” and “middle class” and “blue collar” in their stump speeches!?!? I mean I can’t even…
I really enjoy seeing Clinton donors waste more of their money, though. I have serious doubts about Harris even getting the nomination.
Junior Senator from deep blue state running for prez. Obama With Vagina 2020
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LET HER RUN AGAIN
Gilmore’d. Second time today.
So not only is Trumpcare dead, repeal (well, not now, in 2 years) and replace is dead too.
And we know straight repeal won’t happen.
So what’s going to happen is Obamacare will die, as it would have died anyways. Republicans will be blamed for its death. And we’re going to get single payer in the aftermath.
Your right in that it is going to die.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/18/unitedhealths-profits-continue-to-soar-after-ditching-obamacare/
Why is it off the table in 2 years (unless the Rs lose the House or Senate)?
After the AHCA failed, McConnell said that they’d move to pass a bill that would repeal Obamacare in 2 years, which would give them time to replace it in the meantime. That failed too.
I would have thought it impossible two months ago, but I think the Rs might just lose the House. They have been so spectacularly incompetent that I think a fair number of Trump voters might stay home.
They still have time to save themselves on other fronts. While the failure to repeal or replace Obamacare will be a black mark, if they manage the tax reform and regulatory reduction and the economy improves I think they can whip up the base to protect said gains (while the populist voters probably care little about reform, they care greatly about the economy, which said reform may boost).
We’re not getting single payer. It would require huge and I am talking fucking ginormous increases in personal and business taxes. American will not stand for it. Single payer is a pipe dream for progs to fantasize about. In reality, it’s not happening.
Republicans are only going to get blamed for it if they pass some wishy washy Obamacare lite bullshit. How else can they be blamed for it? The damn thing didn’t have a single R vote. The Democrats own it. You mean the left media will blame them for it? If it rains too much the media blames Republicans for it, literally.
Exactly.
The GOP would be blamed if the “replacement” failed, as it would have too.
They’ll get blamed, but not nearly as much as they would if they had “reformed” it. Reform was always a loser’s play.
They’ll get blamed for not working with the Democrats to fix Obamacare.
Remember, in the first year or two of ACA, when problems were becoming obvious, a standard interview line was “OK, so you voted against the ACA but, now that it’s the law, why won’t you work with the Democrats to fix it?” The media is convinced that all opposition to the ACA was purely political. And most Republicans seem unwilling or unable to explain that the concepts behind the ACA will cause its demise.
The media is convinced that all opposition to the ACA was purely political.
And now McConnell, Ryan, Ken, et al are trying to prove them right.
^This^
They will be blamed for not shoveling even more money to the insurance companies to silently subsidize the dumpster fire that the ACA is.
When huge premium increases hit Minnesoda this year, the “solution” was to throw a ton of subsidies at the people who got screwed. To them things stayed the same because someone else paid for their huge increases. They never stop to think how that pool of subsidy money came about.
And don’t tell me that there aren’t ways to keep ACA going. Sure they are illegal, but omelets need to be made.
Um, for the majority of Republicans in Washington it WAS purely political.
This is proven by the “replacement” options they have surfaced all of which basically keep the core of Obamacare unchanged and only tinker around the edges. They opposed Obamacare because they sensed that if they did not they faced a real risk of being primaried and because it was a Democrat that got credit for it. If it weren’t for those two factors the overwhelming majority of the Republicans in the Congress would have been just fine with Obamacare from a policy perspective.
Yep, agree with this. But I think there were some Rs who opposed it on pragmatic grounds and more have entered Congress since then. But they still can’t articulate the problems.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m being Pollyanna here, but it’s a pretty far gap between letting O’care collapse and replacing it with a single-payer system. You’d need a hell of alot of Congresscritters to go along to pass a single-payer plan. I think it’s more likely that you’d wind up with a bunch of competing replacement plans with none of them getting enough momentum to pass, and then maybe some piecemeal legislation to do things like tweak Medicare/Medicaid.
Single payer only has a chance of happening if the Dems get back to 60 (or go nuclear to get it when they have the majority again), but it is no longer out of the question. If health care costs don’t get reined in, people will continue to clamor for a fix, and unfortunately the single-payer proponents have the greatest zeal and a simple sales pitch (albeit a false one – but when has that ever stopped a sale when they buyer wants to hear the lie?). The Republicans cannot agree on a plan, as the fringes of the party (both moderate and conservative) are unwilling to compromise and the party is not large enough to pass things without the support of the fringes. While the Dems have been scared off of single payer at the state level, this is mostly due to the fact that states have limited borrowing power so they would have to raise taxes unconscionably high to pay for it. The federal government has no such limitation, so I don’t think the Dems will be scared off of single payer once they are handed the keys of power again. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that they will pass single payer, entirely debt funded, and thereby kill two birds with one stone (the healthcare system and the economy).
Our elected officials are opportunistic cowards. The sky is blue. More at 11.
This is old, but I happened to stumble across it today and enjoyed Hihn at his most unhinged.
This is old, but I happened to stumble across it today and enjoyed Hihn at his most
unhingedunhihngedFTFY. I mean, do you even pun, bro?
My favourite Michael Hihn moment still remains the time he called the Jews ‘the most barbaric people in human history’ and then thought anyone would take his opinion on Israel-Palestine issues seriously afterwards.
Fact = they even name their kids Barbara
I like the time he said (almost) all non partisan elected positions were libertarians. Because he got so many of them elected, or something.
Libertarians are the majority of the electorate!! The problem is that 91% of libertarians are ASHAMED to identify with anti-gubmint goober extreme socons like Rand Paul!! You might realize this if you had ever run a SUCCESSFUL Libertarian candidate for Bumfuck County WA sewer commissioner like Hihn did, you BULLY!!
He ‘got’ me because I said they were probably weren’t libertarians. they must be in some other party.
then semantics. Then we realized that my local elections were all partisan, so that was probably the basis of the entire thing.
Then he claimed his ‘thousands of elected officials’ again, so I asked for the list of libertarian dog catchers. The LP of the state, even for a non partisan post, must have some numbers on how many they have managed to put into office.
his list given was like 10 people.
Hihn is exactly like Oprah. I mean, sure he’s white and crazy and male and you can only get an approximation of his age through carbon dating, but just as Oprah hands out goodies to her audience – YOU get a car! and YOU get a car! and YOU get a car! – so Hihn hands out charges of aggression to anyone stupid enough to think you’re going to get reasonable discussion from him:
Dude can’t even have a discussion where people might agree.
He fucking scares people away from reason and LP in general.
IDK what he even is, he doesn’t act like a libertarian. I have tried reading his shit, but I can’t tell for the life of me what he want’s to do. there’s no plan, just anti paul whatever.
Which also doesn’t make sense. He hates Ron for DOMA, which ok. sure. Then it’s just this fucking tirade of anti gov nonsense? Ron and Rand are fascists. because they something?
Fuck it, I say give him a weekly column! It’ll be less bland than Chapman, more reasonable than Dalmia and a welcome change of stupid from Richman (who is basically poor man’s Noam Chomsky)!
Not to go all pining for H&R, but he was awesome commenting about article that says men are more harassed online than women.
Also, this is why I can’t be angry at Cathy Young – she can write a hundred “Putin is new Stalin, and Trump is new Hitler and we they are going to KILL EVERYONE” articles, she’s still one of two journalists who didn’t shit on Gamergate or adopt the “SJWs are in the right, they just need better tactics” position.
Not a real quote
Oh dear….Hihn is losing the few marbles he had left.
yeah. If we’re lucky, he’ll forget how to use the internet.
You know, I rip on Old Man Gillespie a lot, but him running the campus beat while Soave is off has actually been extremely refreshing. He can at least write competently and has way less mealy-mouthed qualifiers. Hell, today he said that Department of Education’s sexual assault policy was a bad policy. What courage.
yet if you actually probe his writings on the subject, you’ll find he goes no farther than Soave; saying nothing about repealing Title IX, or even supporting DeVos proposal of ‘clarifying’ title IX legislatively… and instead saying that DoE simply needs to “revise its guidance”. Which obviously doesn’t fix the problem of future admins interpreting federal law however they please.
they’ve stuck with that line so consistently over the past 2 years that i can only assume its something handed to them by the Reason Foundation policy-analyst types. That they’re basically flogging a institutional position, not developing their own independent POV.
I personally think there’s something ridiculous that you can’t get the most ostensibly libertarian publication in DC to at least *consider* the idea of repealing Title IX. Women are already the majority of college students and graduates. They have countless advocacy groups embedded in the institution like ticks. Do we really need the Federal Govt to play discrimination-police anymore? Its an intrusive law that might have done some minor good 30-40 years ago, but has lived long past its useful date.
Yea, but men’s college basketball is still much better attended than women’s college basketball, so obviously systemic discrimination is still alive and well.
Thog: But they make fun women’s basketball.
Femputer: What? Did you explain how the women’s good fundamentals make up for their inability to dunk?
Ornik: Yes. They still laugh.
Didn’t Bender and the Femputer hook up?
Funniest line on that show ever:
“The spirit is willing but the flesh is spongy and bruised!”
No way, the HnR full-timers have repeatedly assured us that Reason is not a monolith. I’m sure you just missed all the other articles taking a different tack.
I’ll agree with you there. Jacket doesn’t hem and haw like Robby does. Much fewer “to be sure”.
OH? Go back and read some of his opinions on the Second Amendment. I seem to remember a few “we must defend the second amendment but…”
I was limiting my comments strictly to college stuff.
“What’s green and slimy and smells like Miss Piggy?”
Kermit’s dick?