Banjos is home safe and sound and I can finally relax about being stuck a single parent. Jesus, that was not an easy three days. You’ll also note the earlier links are back because my wife is. So thank her instead of my lazy ass.
Dusty “The Lizard” Baker played a little game of Serbian Jew Double-bluff and ended up starting an allegedly under-the-weather Stephen Strasburg. The righty threw a 12-strikeout masterpiece as the Nats thumped the Cubs 5-0 to force Game 5 today. The winner will fly to Los Angeles to face the Dodgers starting Saturday.
Aaron Judge
And on the junior circuit, the fucking Yankees came back from two games down to beat the Indians 5-2. They probably already had their bags packed for Houston and will probably be there by the time I write this. That series starts tomorrow. The win was an act of redemption for Joe Girardi, who failure to replay a call earlier in the series had every talking head going insane. He still probably left CC Sabathia in a little too long, but a comedy of errors by Cleveland in the top of the ninth sealed the deal and made that a long-forgotten memory. In related news, Aaron Judge accumulated three golden sombreros in the five game series. He struck out a total of 16 times over the five games. He avoided the record-tying fifth strikeout in a nine inning game by meekly slapping the ball down the third base line to end the top of the ninth. Man, Jobu has not been kind to him this postseason. But they advance, which is all that matters.
USA Soccer still sucks. And that mighty Troy team that went in and beat LSU on their home field played South Alabama last night. And they got beat 19-8. That’s how bad LSU is (and how bad pre-season pollsters were slotting them at #12 and 13 in the coaches and writers polls respectively). Still not as bad as their miss on Florida State being #3, but the hurricane and the Francois injuries have the Seminole snakebit this year.
Last but not least, the Penguins beat the Capitals. Because that’s what they do.
Alrighty. You people want links? I’ll give you links. Oh yeah, here are…the links!
Remember that crazy little fat fuck who lords over North Korea? Well he’s back in the news shooting his mouth off. I swear, Trump has played him better than he’s playing the NFL. Wildcard, bitches!!!!!
OK, seriously, who farted?
Alec Baldwin: litterer, psychopath, anti-Italian xenophobe. But hey, at least he didn’t call this guy a faggot or berate an 11-year old child. So he’s making progress.
The latest news on the California wildfires ravaging wine country. Hint: its all bad. Stay safe NorCal Glibs. You’re in our thoughts and prayers.
Fight Club: The Early Years. Oh, except for the fact that the plot is actually coherent and the people involved were not doing so freely. Jesus, I hope those fuckers involved in this end up thrown under the jail.
Murderer?
Well here’s a thought-provoking (and hopefully comment-generating) story. It’s a pretty fucked up situation, but those are the ones that drive law and policy. Weigh in below!
Texas Governor Greg Abbott says Texas is about to get “rolled” on the Harvey aid package. If by “rolled”, he means they won’t get the freebies other places have gotten after storms, then he needs to practice what he preaches and call for fiscal sanity. But that never happens. (Bonus local link of eye candy from Austin City Limits)
I don’t usually go for live versions, but its kinda impossible not to for this song.
We hit our 300 thousandth comment yesterday. You guys are the absolute greatest! Thank you so much for being a part of this little experiment.
76) So if you’re the Venezuelan opposition, when does it become time for armed resistance? I mean, Maduro has showed he is resolutely against allowing anybody other than the United Socialist Party to hold power, any power whatsoever. And it’s not even a matter that, sure, he’s in charge, but you can mind your own business and go on your way. The mismanagement is so acute that most people don’t have enough to eat.
But is it still not a worst-case scenario? Would a civil war make things worse? Would you rather see your family slowly starve; or fight, even at the risk of you and your sons’ lives?
Or does the resistance still think there’s a chance to overthrow Maduro peacefully? In that case, violence might spoil any eventual resolution. Is it better to simply wait Maduro out? Or is the resistance waiting for a military coup? After all, no need to take up arms if somebody better prepared than you might do it instead. But if there were to be a coup, why hasn’t it happened yet?
Based on my scant historical knowledge: if the army is still siding with the dictator, it’s hard for the populace to overthrow the government. Once the army breaks, it’s game over.
Seems like someone should take Maduro out. Then let the vacuum do its thing. Leaders like this might think twice about stuff if their head is first onthe chop block
If the population is fully pacified, it could become another North Korea. They need a revolution badly, but I’m afraid they don’t have the means thanks to common sense gun control.
Not to mention that they’re weak from hunger and suffering wicked diaper rash from a lack of toilet paper.
Remember when the first comment was always something sharp and witty? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
You give FoE way too much credit. Or are you talking about the delightful Playa Manhattan insurgency?
Playa is the white people of first comments
There should be a puddle of sarcasm under Brett’s comment.
89)
Yes
Heh
“The righty threw a 12-strikeout masterpiece as the Nats thumped the Cubs 5-0 to force Game 5 today. ”
Holy shit, the Cubs got dominated. 12 strikeouts? Even had Taylor not hit the grand slam, the one run the Nats scored in the fourth still would have been enough.
Should be a good game tonight.
I was not happy at all. Arrieta and Lester pitched well though. Most of the game was a very night affair.
Hendricks toes the rubber, and he’s been my favorite pitcher for about two years. The Maddux-like comparisons really do have some validity.
I will be an absolute mess when I watch this at fucking 8 in the morning. How can I watch such an intense game without the benefit of booze? Here’s to hoping it’s a withering blowout. Fuck suspense. I wanna win 16-2.
Hope to see that W one more time this year.
Yep. I was watching it at work (I work in TV, so I wasn’t slacking. Honest). Very, very frustrating.
For Mustang
https://imgur.com/a/F5IUH
Nice touch with the grill.
It’s even better than I could have imagined. You have a gift.
*golf clap*
“he bought a rope and helped the girl tie a noose before she hanged herself.”
What a piece of shit. Still doesn’t sound like a crime though.
He should hook up with that girl who coached her boyfriend through killing himself with CO gas. And they should go out Thelma and Louise style off a fucking cliff.
Isn’t assisting someone commit suicide a crime? Or is that only for guys like Kevorkian?
I think Sloopy has the right of it here.
Will it sound like a crime when the girl’s father beats him to death? I can’t imagine how that wouldn’t happen.
The article didn’t state specifically that no dad was in the picture, but only mentioned a mother.
This x 1000.
Evil little fuck.
If it was my daughter, prison would be his absolute best case scenario. Not sure he’d be safe there either.
How hard would it be to find a lifer who would shiv the guy for a couple packs of smokes?
I have an uncle who’s a lifer in Texas. He might have some connections in Utah. Don’t really know how that works. He’s a scary MFer and I try to know as little about him as possible.
Oh JATNAS, it’s a crime alright. The creep committed accessory to murder. I am with Sloopy, bury that POS under the jail.
i thought he wanted to pervs and other gatekeepers of Miami’s juvi system put under the jail.
Am I the only who read the names Tyerell and Jchandra and was surprised both were white?
Also, he’s a a total POS.
… those are real names?
Had it been anywhere but Utah, I would have been surprised too.
Back in the golden age of Richmond, VA living, There was a pair of sisters who were our friends/darts groupies that used to hang out with us every league night at Breakers west End or they’d make the trip to watch our away matches. Their names were Laticia and Mystina. And they were the whitest girls ever made. They were so white they were from Minnesota and had platinum blonde hair and blue eyes.
Those were some fun girls to hang around with. Except one or the other would almost always get drunk as fuck and start shit-talking our opponents and start a melee. In fact I would imagine they, and me by extension, are probably still banned from Murphy’s Law in Chesterfield and Rock Falls Tavern off of Forest Hill. Neither of which is any great loss to me.
::strolls down memory lane::
I need to put my dartboard back up.
Memory lane indeed. I grew up south of RVA and lived in Midlothian for 8-9 years. You must’ve played at Penny Lane Pub at least a few times.
Yeah. Before and after they moved.
Used to come into town from Roanoke in the early 90s to play soccer tournaments and we’d always end up at Penny Lane. Terry O’Niell was thick buddies with Bob Pollitt who owned Sgt Peppers Pub in Roanoke and Bob always made the trips with us and occasionally sponsored the trip. After I moved back to the states from PR and settled in RVA, I made it a point to stop in at least once every couple weeks. After they were forced to move after 9/11, it just wasn’t the same and I spent more time at Potters Pub and of course at Rare Olde Times (::pours pint of Guinness out for Martin and Andy::).
I always loved Penny Lane because it was a Liverpool Pub. And I could always catch a match on tv even if it was from 20 years before on videotape. And they really did a good job keeping their lines clean.
And they really did a good job keeping their lines clean.
THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS!
That?
That’s awesome! I was in a fantasy football league with Terry’s son for years and years. Great guy, great family.
Yeah, they are good people. Hell, all those pub owners were/are. I miss the shit out of those places. Always the same peope doing the same things and telling the same stories.
Local pubs are something America missed out on to our detriment.
How many included visits from the edit fairy or images of cat behinds?
I assumed you’d have a column for those on a database somewhere.
Not that many got EDIT FAIRY or Catbutted. We have had some copypasta and some visits from the Cummybot *shivers* that I might not count.
Or bland, lifeless comments with out a hint of salt or humor?
Picky are we?
Picky on he not on thee
sticky away from my shade giving tree
tee hee
tee hee
Sounds like someone has been reading Winnie-the-Pooh.
Like this one?
^and this one.
Wow, that “assisted suicide” link is messed up. Serious overtones of Hannibal Lector.
Regarding what to do with the guy … I’m not sure. He materially contributed to the girl’s death even though he didn’t pull the trigger (metaphorically speaking).
In any case, he sounds like someone who needs to be kept away from the general population for a long, long time.
Put him in the fight club prison?
I agree he’s the type of guy we don’t want on the loose, but I have a hard time putting my finger on what exactly he did in this case that was criminal.
Manslaughter charge? I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer. But I don’t see him doing anything here she might not have done on her own, other than encouraging a bad idea.
Right. That’s the problem I run into. It’s not illegal to buy a rope, to teach someone to tie a noose, or to witness a death. And yet I would feel so much better if this nutjob were kept away from the general population before his taste for death inspires him to take a more active role.
I’m trying to think of the second and third order of effects (or unintended consequences) for locking someone up for this sort of thing and having a tough time coming up with anything. Maybe somebody else can help me out here cause I am inclined to say lock him in a tiny cell and throw away the key.
Hypothetical: Your mother has advanced stage cancer but still has a chance of survival. However, she’s been in excruciating pain for over a year and wants to end it. Knowing this, you drive to the pharmacy to refill her morphine prescription. When you return to her, she consumes the whole bottle and you do nothing to prevent it. Is this murder? If the kid actually gets convicted I could easily see a prosecutor going that route.
Intent matters here though. The kid intended for this girl to die and gave her the means to do so with a pretty good idea about what she was going to do after encouraging her. I didn’t intend for my mother to die or encourage her to commit suicide.
‘Intent matters here though.’
That’s what I’m struggling with. The kid’s a piece of shit, no arguments here. What worries me is that he physically did nothing to the girl. Yes, his intentions are malicious to say the least but it seems that any prosecution would be based on his thoughts and little else. The idea of Thought Crime is abhorrent to me.
But I’m far from a lawyer so I’m sure there’s holes in my reasoning.
It’s been a long time since mens rea meant anything to our court system
And yet, I’m sure she could have figured out how to do it without his help. His presence just made it convenient. Sort of like having a gun. It makes killing yourself convenient, but it likely doesn’t impact your decision to go through with it.
I can’t get behind prosecuting this guy for it. It feels too much like a slippery slope. The social shaming he will deservedly experience should be punishment enough.
How, exactly, is a prosecutor going to prove the above beyond a reasonable doubt? (Excepting you being a dumbass, and tearfully confessing the entire thing. No take backs, sorry!!)
He copped to it on Facebook, described it as being akin to getting away with murder.
The issue I generally have with any attempt to criminalize assisted suicide is that often what divides “good” assisted suicide (your hypothetical) from “bad” assisted suicide (the case at issue) is our third party judgment about the propriety of the suicide itself. So the same acts become good or evil based not on the act (assisting), and not on the mental state of the actor(the assistor), but on outsider’s judgment of the victim’s situation and mental state. And it seems very wrong to my libertarian mind to have crimes that only become crimes based on the nature of the victim.
That said, I think there is a distinction that can be made between assisting someone with the means of suicide, and assisting someone to DECIDE to commit suicide, and in this case it sounds like there may have been active encouragement of the decision by this POS
A human being was deliberately killed (murder) even though the killer and victim are the same person. He assisted and encouraged the act (accessory to murder).
That’s my take.
Except that you can’t murder yourself. The crime behind murder is that you are taking someone’s life that isn’t yours. Suicide is different because your life and body are ostensibly owned by yourself.
In principle you are correct, in my opinion. I dont know how the law sees that in each state. That may be a different matter.
I see what you mean. For what it’s worth, this seems to be quite different (IMO) from the girl who coaxed her boyfriends suicide. Both are horrible human beings, but this has a large amount of differences. For instance this invites an adult and a minor. The physical presence at the suicide, and physical aiding of it do seem to be off. I can’t put a finger on it though.
I was inclined to see the girl who convinced the guy to gas himself as guilty of some sort of crime, or at least deserving of jail time. A lot of people here helped convince me otherwise. Given that, I can’t help but conclude the same rules apply here. Vile son of a bitch. But, being a vile son of a bitch doesn’t violate anyone’s rights in and of itself.
The question is, does procuring the rope and helping her tie it, knowing what she was going to do with it, amount to accessory before the fact?
I’m not a lawyer. So, I won’t be able to say. But, it’s hard for me to think of the guy as an accessory to murder. To me, murder has to involve taking someone else’s life. Your own life is properly yours to take or keep. And procuring a rope and helping her tie it? If we’re going to hold that standard, would gun stores be “accessories” to any crimes their customers commit?
Under some legal systems, there is such a thing as as “Depraved Indifference”, which I think fits pretty well here, although I’m opposed to there being such a law.
If they knew a crime was going to be committed with the gun? Yes.
Getting Hooked on the Weird and Wonderful World of Body Suspension
Ummm… pass.
Fucking weirdos.
I got nothing else.
I know a few people who are hardcore into this and yeah they are weirdos.
That said often their fetish is the only weird thing about them
Personally I don’t get people who watch Hellraiser and think “That sounds cool, do me next” but at the end of the day my biggest beef with them is that they tend to all be hardcore SJW’s
All the people I’ve ever met that are into this kind of thing (or just BDSM in general) seemed to skew heavily toward the SJW side. There also seems to be quite a bit of obesity and spinster cat ladies way past their prime. Go figure.
All the people I’ve ever met that are into this kind of thing (or just BDSM in general) seemed to skew heavily toward the SJW side.
Surprise, surprise. People who are into humiliation and bullying are attracted to a political philosophy that equates humiliation and bullying with political virtue.
I didn’t like this when it starred Richard Harris.
I saw that when i was a kid. It inspired some interesting questions like “Why the fuck would anyone do that Dad?”
Order of the Stick had one of the best takedowns ever of that whole ‘rite of suffering’ trope.
Ugh. I knew what your link was without clicking. A Man Called Horse. No thanks.
It could have been worse. I could have linked to the scene in question.
Might be NSFW, depending on your work, and when you last ate breakfast.
Why would goblins even have a ritual of manhood?
That was an interesting movie. Heap big appropriation.
“Devotees of this peculiar pastime insist there’s nothing more blissful than hanging from hooks laced through your skin.”
When I think blissful, the first that comes to mind is the meathook scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Nope. Nope nope. Noooooooope.
This seems like something for Vhyrus.
This is Native American cultural appropriation.
^
Why did my idea of Body Suspension involve butterfat and a pool.
Whole different kind of fetish.
🙂 years ago I changed a coworker’s home page to the suicidesuspension website. This started a war that ended with everyone in the office having pics of genital bifurcation (if you do not know what it is do not learn, if you do know welcome to the halls of nightmare) as their wallpaper. Small companies are more fun than big ones.
Didn’t seem like much fun when Forrest Whitaker was doing it to James McAvoy in The Last King of Scotland
PM Trudeau – Raise sons to be feminists like daughters
Trudy, I know you don’t know what it’s like to be a man, since you still haven’t mentally grown up, but don’t cripple your kids that way – give them up for adoption so someone who’s actually a responsible adult can care for them.
“helps them “escape the pressure to be a particular kind of masculine” ”
Well, Trudeau has certainly done that.
Seriously, if you don’t want to be a certain type of masculine, then just don’t do it. You don’t have to adopt an anti-masculine ideology to do so.
Maybe he needs to work on indoctrinating women to stop being attracted to masculine men. Otherwise, I’m afraid, toxic masculinity will continue to be rewarded.
Just kidding – there’s no way we could conceive of putting responsibility on poor helpless oppressed womenfolk.
Seriously, if you don’t want to be a certain type of masculine, then just don’t do it.
But then Zoolander winds up looking effeminate in comparison. It only works if everyone is brought to his level of effeminacy.
Exactly how does Canada have a culture of sexism? There definitely isn’t any pressure for men to be masculine up there, I mean, he is their PM.
Well, you see, you can’t blame the patriarchy if there’s no patriarchy along with it’s accoutremonts.
I don’t know. Maybe a Canuck can help us out on this. Maybe John Titor, or perhaps Rufus since he doesn’t even work.
Zoolander’s just flapping his mouth off and doing the typical thing where he lectures Canadians for their supposed sins, which he’s been doing ever since he wrote his godawful book. When I said he was the dumber version of Obama I wasn’t kidding.
The Partriarchy is like a deity. Invisible, ubiquitous, and always pulling the strings for its sinister ends, no matter how woke the Top Man is. And its existence is not based on evidence but faith. We will wage a war against it for the rest of eternity but it will not be defeated.
How about kids just be who they are? I was always a boyish girl, many times mistaken for an actual boy. No biggie. Oh, well.
KK do you also watch the Russian car crash videos? those people are nuts, and the roads are worse!
Life is a Joke is a good channel for these
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1p4RN-Y_24
LOL – pretty religiously!
Same, and agreed.
Although, these days kids (well, teens and twenty-somethings) don’t seem to know the difference between a boy and girl, so I’d be mistaken from some kind of gender-fluid non-binary something or other. Sorry, being a tomboy isn’t a sort of gender dysphoria, it’s just not being a girly-girl. /rant
our sons have the power… to change our culture of sexism
I have an inkling that this isn’t true. The classless utopia is always just out of reach.
RIGHT! Off to the GULAG with you, Mister Wrongthinkful!
I’ll take my culture of sexism over your cult of feminism, thanks.
Fuck. You just know Zoolander is having his girlfriend hanging him from hooks.
I look forward to a day when that pandering douchebag gets exposed for being a serial pivot-man in a stream of otter sandwiches.
Give it time. Ugly stuff will come out about how he treats women.
Bloomberg approves.
I keep hoping for really bad things to happen to Baldwin during one of his tirades.
Baldwin is an icon of New York. He may as well be their goodwill ambassador.
Bullies like that are usually pretty selective in their targets. Still, one of these days he is going to pick the wrong one. You dont see that kind of shit around here. Everyone is armed and everyone knows that everyone is armed. People here are exceedingly polite.
Alec Baldwin (known then as Xander) and my uncle were friends when they were kids, all the way through high school. He was over at my grandparents’ house all the time, and my mother HATES him. Says he was a massive asshole even as a kid.
Too bad it wasn’t Vincent “The Knife” Cabrizzi he was trying to goad out of the SUV. One less Hollywood megatwat would be a good thing.
He called the guy a “meatball”. Get out the car and I’ll give ya noogie.
Anti-wop racism right there. May as well have called him a greaseball dago.
I don’t care how many dago guinea wop greaseball goombahs come out of the woodwork!
-1 horse head
I’m German-Irish.
Well, let me tell you something, my Kraut Mick friend…
(also I think Harvey Weinstein modeled his like on Woltz)
She was the best piece of ass I ever had!
Drunk who tried to take over the world. Got it. Living it with a kilt too.
Astros ‘should’ win this in 5. They did a number on the Yankees even before the Astros picked up Verlander.
It’ll be interesting to see if Judge gets ump’d differently this series. And by interesting, I mean crooked.
I don’t know what to say about US Soccer. AIUI, guys were walking around and half-heartedly jogging in the 80th minute, down 2-1. I’d have given serious thought to making everyone but Pulisic swim home. Tim Howard needs to call it a career. That second goal was brutal. Just no explosion in his leap. May have been due to the surface, but it didn’t look good. Own goals happen, but it’s not like Gonzalez had that much pace on his deflection. Howard just misplayed it. And considering Gonzalez was supposedly absolutely brutal in the rest of the Hex, no reason he should have been playing in a must-draw situation.
How do you lose to a team that had previously gone 1-8? “Just mail
himthemhistheir clothes.”So what you’re saying is Soccer is so uninteresting that even the players are bored?
Hah!
Did anyone see Iowahawk’s tweets about this? Good stuff.
AIUI, guys were walking around and half-heartedly jogging in the 80th minute, down 2-1
They were doing that shit in Tampa when they were up 3-2 on a team that was still trying. Luckily, they got out of it that time, but there was never any urgency.
That’s what happens when you stack the team with crap MLS players and a shit MLS coach.
Oh give me a break – have you SEEN the calls Judge has been getting? They’re ridiculously awful. Fangraphs even wrote an article about how poorly umpires have treated him. Crooked my ass.
Frozen ‘alien body’ discovered deep in Russian wilderness – the truth is utterly bizarre
Every time I see stuff like this I want to believe it’s real. I know it’s not, but I really want to see how the world would react to something like this. I would need lots of popcorn.
It’s a cover up!!! THEY’RE HIDING THE TRUTH!!!!!!!
Trust no one.
Was it the last episode of the 2nd season of X-Files, where the Deep Throat dude gets shot and his dying words to Mulder were “Trust no one…”? That so hooked me, that I watched for years.
A much better hoax than the guy who stuck the ape costume in his freezer and said it was Bigfoot back in 2010 or so.
STEVE SMITH TEACH HIM LESSON! AND BY TEACH LESSON, MEAN RAPE.
“Apparently shot in Irkutsk, Siberia, the small figure looks badly disfigured and is missing a leg.”
STEVE SMITH SAVE EARTH FROM ALIEN INVASION WITH POWER OF RAPE
We need a like button
Singing that to the tune of this?
Should’ve given it a Nazi tattoo. Would’ve been covered by all the MSM.
Seems legit.
or a MAGA hat.
My favorite headline of the day:
Report: Bill and Hillary Haven’t Spoken in Months After He Threw Her Book ‘What Happened’ in the Trash
Sounds like a best case scenario for Bill.
I call bullshit. i have heard that these two have not talked to each other unless it was about how to screw the American people since Bill left the WH.
Well, it’s not surprising. They can’t have had the best of relationships, and then her chosen crew more or less mocked his sound advice during the campaign, then she proves to have not learned the “I told you so” lesson.
Well, that and his infidelity and her being a lesbian probably didn’t help.
If she’s a lesbian, is it really infidelity?
Depends on the rules of the relationship.
Likely in their case the infidelity was not in having sex with other women but getting caught
Toss in that they are both clinical sociopaths and you have a match made in heaven. Rainbows and sunshine every day.
I don’t blame the guy. She probably ignored every piece of advice he offered. Typical.
I can envision her chiding him for his “mansplaining” as he tried to give her advice on winning presidential elections (which he did twice).
I recall a news story where that actually happened. He was trying to tell her that her “Blue Wall” wasn’t as solid as she thought. He got blown off and she followed the advice of her 35-year-old campaign advisor.
No idea if it’s true or not, and there’s no way to confirm that. Sounds like Klein pulled it out of his ass.
I admit, I’d believe it if they claimed the two hadn’t spoken directly in twenty years.
^ This. ^
Why do people think Klein is to be believed at all?
Probably just untrue gossip, but didn’t the Secret Service have a warning protocol and separate entrances for Bill to shuffle his girlfriends—one of whom, allegedly, was code named “Energizer,” because of her personality— in and out of their NY home?
It doesn’t surprise me at all that they hadn’t spoken. I’m just surprised they’re both alive, as poor of health as I thought they were both supposed to be.
WHA HAPPENED???
Remember that crazy little fat fuck who lords over North Korea?
For a moment, I wasn’t sure if you were talking about Kim Jong Un or Donald Trump.
Trump isn’t “little”…
Except his hands.
Who Killed Mr. Fixit, and How to Bring Him Back
I wholeheartedly support this. The fact that the extortionists are freaking out means it’s a great idea.
I don’t. The solution is not to force companies to open their service manuals. It’s for consumers to tell OEMs who restrict service work to go fuck themselves.
John Deere would end this nonsense in a minute if New Holland or Case built a better tractor and sold consumers on parts availability to third party service shops. But they can’t do that because they’re all so leveraged on shitty in-house financing deals they’ve done for the last decade to increase market share that their only reliable profit centers are their service and parts departments.
The tractor business is a fucking shitshow of negative equity notes being carried for years and years by OEM paper-writers. It’s not going to get better until it implodes and corrects itself. I know guys who are getting paper on $150k tractors for $225k to absorb the negative equity of their last two units because Deere just can’t let him switch over to Case.
It’s endemic throughout the equipment industry. I have to demand cash terms anymore, they don’t even bother mentioning them upfront.
Well, that’s true. I guess I was just looking for some vindictive payback for making it illegal to work on your own shit.
“Right to Repair” laws to give independent repair shops access to the same parts and tools as authorized service centers like the Apple Genius Bar.
“Give” = force product makers to provide their competitors parts and tools for their designed and produced wares.
Not really libertarian.
Sloopy is right – just think of the ad campaign…”We’ll sell ya parts, manuals, whatever you need…because we are NOT assholes to our customers!”
I was specifically referring to the car companies trying to use DMCA to keep people out of their systems. I can already choose not to purchase vehicles loaded with proprietary bullshit, but the idea of being sued for ‘tampering’ with the code in a vehicle you own is ridiculous.
It was (sort of) struck down, but I guarantee it will be back
I figured the vacuum cleaner and tv-fixer shops went away because the price of vacuums and tvs have come down quite a bit. It made sense when a new flat screen was $10k. Now, why would you pay someone $60 to fix an $80 vacuum or $200 to fix a $400 tv.
There still are plenty of driveway mechanics. They just don’t advertise and only accept cash.
There still are plenty of driveway mechanics. They just don’t advertise and only accept cash.
In the Chicago area people needing such ask “Anyone got a guy that can…” and if so, the answer is “I got a guy…”
For the autists like me that like numbers, Filthy Donny B got you covered. He comp 1975 good to 2013 goods in terms of hours worked (which is even more illustrative of the human cost of procuring stuff).
Isn’t part of the problem with driveway mechanics that there are plenty of laws against that sort of thing? Things like “you can’t change your oil in the driveway because it’ll go into the storm drain” or “you can’t do that repair on your property because cars on blocks blight the neighborhood.”
HOAs have rules like that, but I don’t know of any city that prevents you from changing your own oil so long as you take the waste oil to a recycling center.
My HOA rules are I can do the repair in the garage, but not the driveway. If our house and neighborhood wasn’t awesome, my wife and I would’ve never bought in an area with HOAs (alas, EVERY neighborhood where we wanted to buy had HOAs).
I’m not about to crack open a DOHC Ti-VCT Coyote motor making in excess of 430 horsepower, all controlled by an ECU that probably has more computing power than it took to get to the moon, in my driveway.
However…that doesn’t mean somebody else shouldn’t be able to give it a shot. I’d be curious to see what regulations he’s proposing first though because unintended consequences.
don’t our phones have more computing power than all the moon landing computers?
Your average calculator does… The moon landing “computers” were just specialized calculators.
I don’t know what your definition of “specialized calculator” is, but the Apollo Guidance Computer was a Turing-complete general purpose computer. It was very limited in memory and processing power by modern standards, but it was capable of running any kind of program.
Sorry, I shouldve been more clear. I meant to say that my old TI-83 calculator could do everything that the guidance system could, short of interfacing with the hardware.
As programmed, the guidance system was pretty much just a sensor aggregator coupled to a specialized calculator.
Your key fob for your car has more computing power.
Probably not. A low-power microcontroller like an ATmega328 would be perfectly suitable for a basic key fob, and that has about as much processing power as the Apollo Guidance Computer. The key limitation of a device like a key fob is battery life, and more processing power means more electrical power. Since all the key fob really has to do is control a low-power transmitter, it doesn’t need anything fancy. Even an “ultra” low-power ARM chip, which would have a lot more computing power than the AGC, uses an order of magnitude more power than a 328.
That having been said, if a key fob needs to be “secure” (as in, have the ability to perform cryptographic operations) then the picture is quite different. While a 328 or similar chip could be used as the “driver”, whatever chip performs digital signing/cryptographic hashing/enciphering/etc. will need to be a lot more powerful to do so in a reasonable time frame.
Honestly, if you are comfortable with the mechanical side of things, modern engines are about as easy to work on as ye olde carbureted engines. Where it gets tricky is doing anything that requires the ECU to be reprogrammed or replaced. I’d actually say the modern engine is easier in some respects than the last generation of carbureted engines.
Granted that a high performance engine is more susceptible to damage or reduced performance caused by user error, but that is true whether or not the ignition and such is electronically controlled.
market solution is consumers drift away from closed IP.
Drift, or run?
Life Fortysomethings Are the New Club Kids
Night spots tout after-dinner dancing, disco music and pricey booze to draw in older patrons
I can’t imagine hanging out in a club on a regular basis. That shit was tedious when I was in my twenties.
It must be MILF city, but yeah, I don’t know if I could be bothered if I was single.
Exactly. After a while…boring.
Divorced guys, divorced gals. More social diseases than a nursing home.
That’s no shit. I have a 50 something friend who is single and the stories he tells…
He even videoed one woman chasing him around in his house with a butcher knife and screaming at him after he tried to break it off with her.
If I were single, god forbid, I would probably just become a hermit. Who needs that shit?
Welcome to my world
We could all be hermits together! A virtual set of hermit caves called Glibs…
Something like this?https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gglhv-aGCag
Agreed.
Yeah – thankfully I’m not single – but I imagine the pool of crazy goes up with age. ie – there’s a reason they are divorced or still single.
I have a 48yo friend who plans to dip his feet into the pool once again. I wish him a lot of luck.
Right? Dudes be fuckin crazy.
My comment – of course -was meant for both sexes (and in-betweeners!)
He’s no catch himself – unemployed, living on disability, ex-heroin addict, and suffers from crippling migraine headaches that make him go incommunicado for long spells. What’s not to love?
He is – at least – intelligent and can hold a conversation about anything.
Well, I’m sure he’ll find some nice woman to “fix” him, or put up with his shit.
My problem is dudes be too clingy. Sorry, I can’t fucking spend all my goddamn non-work hours with you. This is why the squeeze works well for me. He’s almost never around.
Your friend is Eric Clapton?
“Well, I’m sure he’ll find some nice woman to “fix” him, or put up with his shit.”
There are far too many men in my age range looking for some one to ‘fix’ them. Nope. Nope. Nope.
No; he’s tempted by the fruit of another.
Re Baldwin. I skimmed over the article do we know for a fact the person was I-italian that he called a ‘meatball’?
Whatever. Baldwin is pure white trash and is Hollywood hypocrisy personified. Here’s a guy who mocks Trump ostensibly on moral grounds I’m sure yet lives his life like an uncivilized buffoon treating people way worse than Trump does.
Don’t get me started on Lorne Michaels and SNL.
I think this Weinstein scandal is giving people a pretty good look at the unbridled sleaze pervasive in the entertainment industry. Pile on a few more and those people will end up the pariahs they used to be.
I don’t know, hasn’t the whole “casting couch” been pretty well known for a long time? Not sure Weinstein’s alleged harassments/assaults will change public opinion on Hollywood.
I’m just enjoying sitting back and watching as all of these ‘buddies’ in Hollywood try to push each other in front of the bus first.
Here’s my theory: the casting couch has been in existence even before the days of motion pictures, and this has always been a sort of open secret. The only things that have changed are 1) a significant portion of people now subscribe to a ridiculously broad definition of rape, and 2) today’s perpetually outraged “call-out culture” strongly rewards moral indignation like what we’re seeing.
These two factors make a “perfect storm” that result in the outpouring of moral indignation that we’re seeing today.
“I’m lovin’ it.”
I think this Weinstein scandal is giving people a pretty good look at the unbridled sleaze pervasive in the entertainment industry.
It’s reminded people that that’s what these people are like. As much as Hollywood wants to pretend Weinstein is some sort of exception, it’s altogether clear that he’s not. The actresses were willing to go along with the casting couch. Guys who knew about it (like Seth Macfarlane) gave it the chuckling wink and nod. All while treating the “little people” like dirt.
I think, at the end of the day, the entertainment industry is heavily populated by people with deep emotional problems. Tell me another industry where getting approval, no matter how shallow the approval is or how repulsive the person doing the approving is, takes that level of supreme importance. Tell me another industry where being part of the “in crowd” compensates for being a terrible person the way it seems to in entertainment. I think that sort of industry attracts people with serious psychological shortcomings. And if they don’t have them initially, the industry quickly demands they adopt them.
Politics.
True, although I don’t technically consider it an industry. Tellingly the same centrality of approval defines both.
I have a feeling Weinstein is going to be he tip of the iceberg. Woudl not be surprised is eventually fat Alec is caught up in it.
Is there a wager for Harvey’s longevity yet? I say he is taking a dirt nap before 2018.
I don’t think he’ll off himself – narcissists generally don’t do that unless they’re literally cornered (like Andrew Cunanan, for example). I’m not convinced he knows he did anything wrong.
Someone killing him, though? Possible, but all these people were protecting him for years, so I’d give that a low chance.
Last time I heard somebody called “Meatball”, Thunder Lips was beating up Rocky Balboa.
I’ve heard the term a lot…but only as a descriptor of over the top local sports fans.
I use the term once every 2 weeks to describe dinner.
*narrows gaze, passes Parmesan*
*gets Alka-seltzer*
Virtue Signaling Ben Affleck ‘Saddened and Angry’ About Weinstein, Immediately Called Out For Molesting Two Actresses
The meltdown of Hollywood and the media continues. The hypocrisy is astonishing but not surprising. They project. It’s all the left can do because they’re scum. Pure scum. Piers Morgan has been going after them. Never thought I’d see the day when I’d find myself agreeing with him.
Trump’s America continues.
Of course Hollywood projects – it’s key to their business model.
I’m loving all the actresses like Gwyneth Paltrow coming out of the woodwork to accuse Weinstein of stuff. No reporter has summoned up the balls yet to notice that a bunch of her early roles were in Miramax / Weinstein and ask her exactly what exactly she did to get the roles.
Jack Posobiec ?? ✔ @JackPosobiec
Ben Affleck must step down as Batman
6:26 PM – Oct 11, 2017
248 248 Replies 658 658 Retweets 2,478 2,478 likes
Well, I can agree with that, but not because of this.
And Posobiec continues to be the right-wing version of the “PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEEEE” lefty troll.
Will Jimmy Kimmel have a tearful monologue?
Nice. Kimmel seems to be moving ever leftward these days. I hope he gets shown up with some old clips from The Man Show.
I don’t fault people for changing their ethics at some point in life (for fuck’s sake, I used to be a literal card-carrying communist) but what I can’t stand is when they refuse to acknowledge that they ever had a different stance than they do today. This is what Paul Krugman does with almost every economic issue, and it looks like Jimmy Kimmel might be trying to pull the same stunt.
It’s OK to have a radical change in your viewpoints, but if you’re going to criticize your previous stance, you need to explain what made you change it.
Big difference: That was a show and I’m sure none of the people on camera were coerced into doing the bit.
My lefty friends have been sucking his dick the last couple of weeks and my wife finally had enough of it so she got on one of the facebook posts and was like “Y’all realize he was a horrible misogynist and his show was ridiculously crass and unwoke by y’alls standards, right?”
They all decided to deflect and ignore.
My bet is that the number of big named Hollywood actors who have not committed sexual harassment multiple times in their careers is vanishingly close to 0, maybe someone like a Tom Hanks might be innocent by modern standards (and that is a pretty big maybe) and well over half are guilty of sexual assault by modern definitions. Women will fare a little better but I would bet well over half have committed sexual harassment and probably a third sexual assault including quite a few of those accusing Weinstein today.
“Ben Affleck asks reporter to ‘get them titties out’ in 2004 interview”
Earlier, he mentions that “Xenu coming”.
I was thinking about the Boy Scouts yesterday as I was an Eagle Scout.
John O’Sullivan really hit it on the head when he said: Any institution that is not explicitly right wing will become left wing over time.
The BSA eventually were infiltrated, bribed, and pressured into surrendering their core principles.
I think someone else’s take makes sense. The BSA is looking for a way to get more people in. One potential problem for recruitment is that parents can’t send both sins and daughters. Plus with the LDS Church loosening support, that was probably a big blow.
Idiots. They will never get a big population of city kids, even by including girls. And now they’ll lose much of their urban / suburban support as they sink into a shitty leftist organization. Just like the NFL, the people running it have no idea about their actual customer base.
I was literally just mentioning this to my wife as we were having our morning coffee.
I’m interested in investing in scouting organizations because I want them available for my sons and daughters (once those sons and daughters actually exist). But the more I read about Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the less I want anything to do with them. I have been mulling over volunteering for Trail Life USA and my wife has been looking into American Heritage Girls since those seem to be the biggest scouting organizations out there.
I never heard of Trail Life USA before this week. They are going to explode.
“MALE-CENTERED ADULT LEADERSHIP
TLUSA is a program focused on turning boys into godly men. Our firm conviction is that this can only be done by allowing a boy the opportunity to interact, work with, and be mentored by and with other Christian men. All direct contact positions, other than in the Woodlands Trail program for younger boys 5-10 years old, must be filled by men.
Women can serve in a number of roles in the organization including the National Board of Directors, National Advisory Board, Regional Leadership, Area Leadership, Troop Committee members, the Charter Organization Representative (COR), and in the Woodlands Trail program.”
<—-That right there is gold. As a latchkey child of a single mother, I was absolutely desperate for male role models and my mom, God bless her, was doing her best to provide that. Hence Scouts. Unfortunately the only group available was lead 100% by women, who had us making bird feeders out of pine cones and knitting pot holders instead of going camping and shooting bows and arrows. And I respect the hell out of those women stepping up and trying, but female leadership defeats the purpose of BOY Scouts.
Yep, the female scout master of one of the local troops was a total buzzkill. She’s the one that reported our ridiculous fire to the property owner (to be fair, #Robby, it was literally 20 x 20 log cabin style fire, and the heat was so intense that my sweaty socks dried in 10 minutes 15 feet away from the fire), and killed our fun by doing that. She also stopped her scouts from doing stupid crap with our troop almost every time there was a jamboree. I mean stupid innocent stuff like trying to trap and release the aggressive chipmunks, scaring away raccoons (our scoutmaster’s son woke up with one on his chest, trying to go through his suspended backpack at the scout camp at that location, and another scout had his bag rummaged through by one, hence the hanging up the backpack with food in it), and also the paint the deer tag (the scout camp was brand new one year, and they had a lot of left over paint, so we literally dipped our hands into it, and chased down the deer to try and handprint coup them, one was very slow, and was called ‘Rainbow’). Good times were had, no one was hurt, no property damaged, but she didn’t like it (freaking methodists are the worst damn proggie puritans).
freaking methodists are the worst damn proggie puritans
*narrows UMC gaze*
No offense meant. I think it’s a thing with the specific UMC churches in the area I grew up in. Hugely Progressive Puritan churches near my hometown.
You should ask Sloopy if he knew anyone like that (since we’re both from SW Ohio).
Also, there are many varied types of Methodists throughout the country. My dad’s cousin (who I call Uncle) is a very strict Southern Methodist, who very much dislikes Methodism as practiced in Ohio. His version is much more conservative and to my mind, oriented on the Bible and other religious teachings (going to his Sunday School class was actually one of the few experiences I really enjoyed with religion, as it was very studious and thorough).
I have to agree with the freaking methodists are the worst damn proggie puritans observation. I’m generally pretty relaxed about dealing with the devout, but the ones in our town really make me have to count to 10, very slowly.
one was very slow, and was called ‘Rainbow’
Classic.
I think one particularly harmful consequence of feminism has been the devaluing of role models of the same gender as the child. As you said, it’s no disparagement of single women who raise boys or single men who raise girls, but it’s a tremendous advantage to have someone to look up to and show you how to be a man or be a woman.
I once heard a woman say, “I grew up without a mother, and nobody taught me how to be a woman and do womanly things”.
Yeah can we get a group like that which ditches the idiotic religious aspect.
Also, no it ain’t gonna take off because religious belief is cratering. Sure within the few remaining fundamentalist enclaves it may become very popular but a growing base within a shrinking demographic is not a recipe for sustained growth.
Yeah can we get a group like that which ditches the idiotic religious aspect.
For Glibertarians, I’m think you call the group the “Monocled Orphans”. Wholesome family-oriented activities will include hunting, fishing, brewing, AR-15 maintenance, fun with high explosives and snorting lines off of a hooker’s breasts.
Yeah can we get a group like that which ditches the idiotic religious aspect
Here’s the thing, though. The “idiotic religious” aspect is the closest thing we have to a prog deterrent. A secular scouting club would be prog riddled within 5 years of inception.
That’s why, just like all ‘real’ libertarians, we would have purity tests, and those meetings where every acolyte has to grind a copy of Howard Zinn under their heel to prove their loyalty.
Bah, we could just replace the scouts pledge with a recitation of the NAP
When I was a kid I was in something called Indian Guides. I think it was through the YMCA. We appropriated the hell out of Native American culture, but it was a fucking blast. I enjoyed it much more than my short stint in Cub Scouts.
And ironically, you got to learn and appreciate Native culture. That’s what was beautiful about these organizations.
I think I was about the only kid in my neighborhood that wasn’t in Indian Guides. I did the BSA, however.
It’s totes problematic, though.
They still do it. It’s called Y-Guides/Y-Princesses now, but they still appropriate the hell out of tribal culture. They still call their groups tribes and nations (Navajo/Chickahominy in my daughter’s case), still have the accoutrements, “Indian names”, totem poles, etc.
Good to know. Does your daughter already know a ton about the Navajo? We were the Nez Perce and I did many school papers and projects on them.
Not a ton yet, but this is only the start of her second year. I’ll be interested to see if she chooses next year to continue with Y-Princesses or join my son’s Cub Scout pack. That’s actually what she really wanted when we signed her up at the Y(she’s friends with several of the kids’ sisters, plus she likes a bunch of his friends as well), but she’s grown to really like the Princesses. I’m not paying for both of them, and there’s no way in hell I’d have her join the Democrat Party Young Auxiliary known as the Girl Scouts.
I was in two of these types of organizations growing up. When I was in the Girl Scouts, we had our meetings in the school library and earned our arts & crafts badges like good little future housewives.
When I was in Campfire Girls, we camped, did archery, went on scavenger hunts, etc.
Yep, and any of the folks from my troop that had any left wing sensibilities (but have literally nothing to do with scouts now, unlike the more conservative ones) are cheering this on like crazy. I probably wouldn’t have minded some of the sisters of kids in my troop being involved (they’d sometimes come on the family invited campouts anyways), but the whole point of it was to have a boys only institution to help develop boys into men in the absence of distractions like girls.
I think some degree of gender separation in childhood has been unfairly maligned.
For instance, pretty much every study on the subject shows that boys and girls learn differently and benefit from different kinds of activities. Current public schooling is better suited to girls, and they just tell boys to be more like the girls.
I think the best kind of school would have gender-segregated classes along with things like recess, lunch, and maybe a few specific classes being integrated so that the kids can learn how to interact with the opposite sex.
are you referring specifically to prayer and worship? yeah, He has taken a back seat in my son’s den. but there’s still guns, knives, and camping.
My wife loves the Tucker Carlson show. Last night he was asking why, oh why does the left hate the Boy Scouts so much?
Well Tucker, have you noticed that they seem to focus on the Boy Scouts, youth sports, they hate Mormons, academia from kindergarten up, now pro sports, etc etc.?
The left hates any institution that teaches core American values. They have been caught too many times declaring that the destruction of western civilization is their goal. It only makes sense that they would target and destroy those institutions that make western civilization strong. It seems pretty simple to me.
This comment from yesterday is still making me laugh:
Isn’t that Robert Conquest’s law?
Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
I’m involved with BSA at the pack (Cub Scouts, grade k-5), troop (Boy Scouts, up to age 18), and at the district levels. This is in a blue state in a blue suburban area. But even here, the people I interact with are far more red than blue. And mostly everyone is in favor of this change that I’ve interacted with. Including me, and I might get confused for a red-tribe type, but no-one with a head on their shoulders would confuse me for blue-tribe.
This change, ironically, is in response to the fact that as more youth activities are day-care-with-a-uniform, scouts has remained a family-oriented activity. As such, while our numbers have gone down, we’ve concentrated into more family-oriented members. Many of the families I know sign a boy up, mom and dad (2 parent households are *way* over represented) get involved, and sister gets dragged along too. When this rule goes into effect next year, we are going to have a half-dozen sisters that will put on a uniform and keep doing what they’ve been doing all along.
As someone who spends a shit-ton of blood, sweat, and hours volunteering for the BSA, I’m glad this change happened. Just wish it would have happened for this programming year.
You’re a good man, and we need more people like you.
The sad thing is that my town’s so utterly cucked that the Cubs and Scouts do very little of what I would consider scouting, and it’s of little interest to kids with any sense of adventure. Case in point. Last year, my gun club offered free (as in free beer) .22 rifle day where kids from any of the 6 troops in the area (our town or any adjoining ones) could just turn up knowing nothing, and they’d be taken thru’ everything they needed to get their Rifle Shooting merit badge.
6 Troops. How many takers? 4 kids. 4! And 2 of them were from the troop that our chief instructor works with anyway.
Still – all concerned had a great time, but we had facilities for up to 24 kids. Disappointing.
Thank you 6. If I’m a good man, its because I learned it from the last generation of boy scout leaders (including a few ladies).
Your story is both sad and surprising. Do you mind if I ask what part of the country that’s in? If that happened here, you would have had all 24 slots filled up in no time.
Fairfield Co., CT.
In a spirit of transparency, there would have been more attendees except that the instructor routinely puts all the kids thru’ that course as soon as their parents want, so his troop of 12-14 kids ALL end up with that merit badge as soon as they can lift a 10/22 or a target rifle.
But it wasn’t a badly-promoted course at all. We sent out over a dozen waivers ahead of time. Maybe the parents got worried that we were using CCI Standard and not nerf-ammo.
You’re in Fairfield? Ha! Now I know where to find you on St. David’s day. That’s actually one of the few towns in Connecticut that I’m familiar with, I’m wearing a Fairfield university jacket at the moment in fact.
Yep, that’s the exact way I see it. There were at least 2, likely 4 or more, sisters of guys I knew in scouts that would’ve fit right into our culture, and the only problem would’ve been that they would cramp their brothers’ styles (2 of the 4 had working class parents that wouldn’t have been available to go camping with us as often).
Our experience is the same. My son is a Weblo now and has been a scout since Tiger Cubs. Their meetings are routinely filled with little sisters who end up doing a lot of the same activities anyway, including the camping trips. I have no idea what the end result is on a national level, but in our pack, at least, I don’t think much of anything is actually going to change.
True. I have three boys who did Cub Scouts, one just a couple of years ago. Over that time I’ve seen sisters become more and more involved, to the point where they are essentially honorary scouts.
You didnt go with “USA travels to a location beginning with T and wins easily last night?”
Wasted opportunity.
I just went to TOS. I feel dirty.
I’d like to thank the folks who run this place for not letting Tony and Buttplug fuck it up
Tell us about it. Were you excited at first, then ashamed? Did you enjoy it?
It’s ok, this is a safe space.
I find that idea offensive.
STEVE SMITH HAVE UNSAFE SPACE FOR YOU.
STEVE SMITH MAKE ALL SPACES UNSAFE!
Coming here made me forget the rages that would induce me to forgo NAP in order to nearly kill Buttplug ET. Al.
Same here. And that goddamned slimy thief Tony.
Been there!
Some decent commenters were lost in the switch but overall we came ahead I thing
I think the biggest boon in the switch has been some of the awesome user generated content. I’ve learned more about maritime law, guns, and *shudders* HM’s fetishes than I ever knew possible.
Don’t forget you learned from and actual Eastern European that communism was not as ideal as you though it was.
If it was only implemented properly. To be sure…
Don’t forget our own poet laureate: Sugarfree.
How could we… *haunted stare*
I don’t know, I kind of miss being called a Republican, it’s just got that proper mix of American ignorance and narcissism.
The Miami Herald’s been damn good in their exposes on the fucked up “justice” system down here.
But, as these are correctional officers… nah, no punishments. The rapist ones will get punished, but other than that, nah. They’ve got a better union than police officers do.
These people make something like $26K with a GED, and we can’t find enough of them who haven’t been on the wrong side of the cell for something already. Short of halving our prison population, everyone’s going to continue pretending that there’s no problem, because they aren’t getting raised to cop pay or standards.
I can’t imagine A) making that little for doing that job, and B) paying any of that kind of salary to a union.
That happens because Florida needed more prisons more than it needed “better” guards. And at this point, just the maintenance on existing prisons pretty much eats the 1/3rd of the state budget allocated to prisons. I’m not sure assistant wardens make $56k.
Up here in New York, Correction Officer pays between $44k and $56k, and is one of the bigger populations of job seekers in state employment (probably because it doesn’t have any real requirements). The only larger set is the Beginning Office Worker, which only pays $28k-$35k, but has no inmate contact.
“If you visit a prison you will see the worst that mankind has to offer. You will also see prisoners.”
-Sam Clemens
Nah, it aint getting fixed anytime soon.
Another chestnut to tuck in my pocket.
I saw Gutfeld going on and on about how “the casting couch” jokes have been going around for decade in Hollywood and nobody cared. Somehow these law’in order guys never have a problem with the “don’t drop the soap” jokes that capture what is happening in prisons. Dosty nailed it with his quip about how you can judge a society by how it treats its prisoners.
Toddler Thurday: Life Isn’t Fair And It’s All Your Fault Edition
I smell (bullshit)^2
Did he have his life savings in sugar cubes?
” I don’t like America anymore.”
Because America is the only place where natural disasters destroy peoples property.
That’s life. It can happen to anyone at anytime. But to end it with ‘don’t like America anymore’ at your age just shows how little wisdom you’ve gained in your life.
Ah. Democratic Underground.
That explains it.
Eeyup. Wouldn’t be unfair to say them loonies have ever liked America.
It’s the same ‘ol emotional appeal paired with sensational anecdotes and unsupported assertions that they always pull. I assume it is followed by or is in support of a call to end capitalism (western civilization) ? I am not going to go read it. I know how it ends.
It is amazing how reporters keep bumping into cabdrivers and children with sob stories that also happen to support the reporter’s world view.
Thank you so much for being a part of this little experiment.
I am lab rat, hear me squeak!
So, until last year, as everyone knows, California was in the midst of a severe, years-long drought. This, according to climate change “scientists”, was going to be permanent and was more or less the new reality.
Then, last winter, there was a massive reversal of the drought, with huge rains and snows, especially in NorCal, all winter.
Coming out of a drought, all that extra water caused a lot of growth in the forest areas.
Which then dried out in the natural dry season in the Spring and Summer.
Which leads to this huge fire.
Which is the result of climate change.
Rebranding global warming as climate change was pretty damn brilliant. Any change that doesn’t match their models is more proof of how right they are.
Branding is important. Too many bad guys forget this. Darth Vader would have had more success with his whiny son if only the Empire had hired an image consultant to inform him how “dark side of the force” doesn’t scan well. If they called it the “fluffy side of the force” they could have won.
“Climate change”, however, is just a stroke of genius. More funding!
Try and explain that unfalsifiable assertions are never, ever, ever science – that an unfalsifiable assertion instantly puts one out of the realm of science and into that of hokus pokus to the crowd that ‘fucking loves science’ and it will fall on deaf ears.
“You cannot prove a vague theory wrong.” – Richard Feynman
Good quote. However I tend to not be a pure positivist or empiricist. I just don’t believe that empiricism is the only way to derive knowledge.
Define ‘knowledge’ please.
In Feynman’s construction, to scientifically know something is to have the ability to predict the future state of something to a pre-specified precision from a defined number of observations about its past or present state. So if you can’t predict a person’s behavior based on facts about their previous states, you don’t have a scientific understanding of psychology. If your theory of global thermodynamics allows for both warmer and cooler temperatures at the same location at the same future time, and more or fewer hurricane strikes at the same location at the same time, you aren’t meeting the “pre-specified precision” sufficient to say that you have a sound scientific theory of global thermodynamics for the level of prediction you are making.
It isnt, but it is the only way to do science.
Not all knowledge is science. But science requires empiricism.
I’ll agree with that.
I made this realization in regards to child order as predictor of personality or behavior.
“Firstborns tend to be more responsible than middle and youngest children, although sometimes the opposite can be true.” <— shit like that
The climate just changed in the other direction for a small time. It’s still an issue!!
I’ll bet that land owners weren’t allowed to do what any reasonable farmer has done for generations – go out and clear the brush around their properties.
And damage the habitat of the endangered California brush slug? You Monster!
As far as I know fires were much worse in the past in the US (new statistics conveniently start in the 1960) so yes it’s bad but to be expected in the area…
Yep. In 1950, the mountain my parents live on was part of nearly 300K acres of burned down private area NC Forest Service acreage burned. The man who bought the mountain (literally an entire lobe of it, huge area) was a good friend of my step grandfather, who sold property to his friends and business acquaintances. We’ve been going there for family reunions since 1991, and now my parents, and two of my mom’s sisters and their husbands own property on the mountain in addition to my grandmother’s property (we started in 1991, since it’s after my step grandfather passed, his medical condition wouldn’t allow them to stay at the cabin before electric was added, in 2006).
Fun Fact: man did not invent fire.
And I think the altest thing is Climate disruption
Does anyone have a link to a catalog of climate change predictions that are testable (and the outcomes, if applicable)? My gut says that a bunch of testable predictions fail and get retconned, but I’m sure I don’t have a good view of it. Preferably not just a list of failed predictions or positive predictions, but an exhaustive one, if such a thing exists.
Watts Up With That had a post with over 100 failed predictions, but most weren’t sourced. The Federalist has this list, but it’s more of a greatest hits of failed predictions as each is debunked. In order to get a full list of predictions, you’d also have to narrow the field down, it’s a bit unfair to just take anything in a news article and call it a prediction. I mean, they’re journalists, just a step above elementary school teachers.
Thanks for the link, but yeah, I’m looking for something a little more rigorous. In a perfect world, it would be a list of predictions published in peer-reviewed journals and a separate list of predictions made in popular media. I don’t really expect the popular media predictions to be all that accurate or useful, but I’m curious about what the predictions made in peer reviewed articles would look like.
There goes my weekend plans
http://www.ohiostateparklodges.com/explore-your-ohio-state-park-lodges/on-the-trail-of-the-elusive-bigfoot/
STEVE SMITH SHOW YOU HIDDEN TRAILS.
Some stereotypes are just impossible to avoid I guess.
Liberland – a small swamp that was unclaimed by Serbia – signed its first international agreement with…. Somaliland.
I’m guessing it was some sort of agreement on roadz.
Girls scream in terror as ‘GOBLIN’ chases them in bizarre video
That was disappointing.
from the grainy footage
Of course it’s grainy, because camera technology hasn’t improved since 1974.
STEVE SMITH JUNIOR.
STEVE SMITH PAYING CHILD SUPPORT. AND BY PAYING I MEAN RAPING.
A toast to the orphans assigned counting duty.
Who is the top commenter?
STEVE SMITH!
STEVE SMITH TOP COMMENTER MAKE ALL OTHERS BOTTOM COMMENTERS!!
STEVE SMITH RAPE 300000 IN A MONTH
STEVE SMITH HAVE LITTLE PROBLEM WITH PREMATURE RAPEJACULATION
By posts, or by volume? ‘Cause that’s gonna be two entirely different answers.
By quality.
bacon wins.
Yeah, I think I gotta second that
Nay.
Thanks guys.
Don’t worry Uncivil, one of these days you too will be able to spice up our lives.
*deadpan stare*
Just remember, it’s remarks like that which cost you cake.
Bacon rulz!
I’m diabetic so no sugah tonight for me. Now if you have some beef jerky, bacon or hummus I might go on a date. No kissing tho, that’s gay.
Heh heh… +1 Ken Shultz
Who run Glibertariantown?
Aunty Entity.
That would be telling….Number 6.
Who runs Bartertown?
A counter-something to the suicide story Sloopy linked-
Faced with the incredible sorrow of losing his girlfriend in an avalanche in Montana, renowned mountaineer Hayden Kennedy “chose to end his life” the following day, his family said Tuesday.
Gallatin County sheriff’s officials say Kennedy, 27, and Inge Perkins, 23, were skiing on Imp Peak in the southern Madison Range on Saturday when they triggered an avalanche in a steep, narrow gulley about 10,000 feet above sea level.
Perkins, also an accomplished mountain climber, was buried by the 150-foot-wide slide. Kennedy, who was partially buried, pulled himself free and hiked out for help after he couldn’t find his girlfriend.
—————-
Kennedy, who had recently moved to Bozeman, was found dead in his home Sunday as search teams prepared to recover Perkins’ body.
“Hayden survived the avalanche but not the unbearable loss of his partner in life,” his parents wrote in a statement released Tuesday.
I’m not 100% sure how I feel about it, but it was his decision. At least he didn’t run around trying to find some nefarious corporate interest to blame.
The whole thing is worth reading. He sounds like a unique individual. I suspect he searched for a long time before he gave up and went for help.
I believe that self-ownership comes part and parcel with the ability to self-terminate. That doesn’t mean I think it’s a smart thing to do; I think voluntarily checking out (outside of edge cases like incurable, terminal disease with extreme pain) is typically a bad choice. This sounds like an impulsive decision from a guy in the throws of grief, it’s hard to see how he had nothing left to live for. But, ultimately, it’s his call.
What an asshole. I understand he was grieving, but he stole his companionship and friendships from everyone else in his life who had live and affection for him.
I hate physically healthy people committing suicide with every fiber of my being. It’s a goddamn tragedy and it robs those who love the person from more than those selfish assholes will ever know.
I’ll expose my complete lack of empathy here, and note that it was his own life to keep, or take.
His companionship is – his own right to give, or withhold.
It’s hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who believes that he has no reason to live, but I don’t think it’s reasonable for them to weigh other peoples’ discomfort and distress as part of the calculation whether to kill themselves or not.
To do so is would make him the servant to other peoples’ demands.
Suicide is the final expression of self-ownership, and it shouldn’t be undertaken lightly, but equally, it should be undertaken as a rational, conscious and Randian ‘selfish’ act.
Of course it’s his own life to take or keep. But we’re supposed to be living in a civilized society. He’s under no obligation to take others into consideration should he decide to take his own life. But he’s still a fucking asshole for not doing so.
::looks at the psychological profile he posted 3 days ago and nods sullenly::
Suicide is inexcusably rude. Even when I was at my worst (pre-treatment), I wouldn’t do it because I knew that there were a couple of people that I couldn’t treat with such disrespect.
Time to celebrate the day of my birth with everyone’s favorite glands (and I don’t mean Bartholin’s or parotid)!
http://archive.is/hvrQ9
1, 7, 17, 41
20,20,20
Some scary ones in there today.
Yes, skipped 20 somehow. Definitely her.
3 was not bad.
8, 14 (even though she might chop me up and feed me to her cats), 15
Agree on the 17. 38 has tranny legs.
Happy Birthday! Have an orgy.
I like cars, but I don’t like cars enough to include #27 in the orgy.
Thanks and this guy would.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2000899/Man-admits-having-sex-with-1000-cars.html
Oh, and Happy Birthday.
12 17 31. And happy birthday don’t do anything we wouldn’t
Oh, and happy birthday, dude!
Feliz Cumpleanos
Happy birthday. Have your orphans bake you a huge cake. Then have one of them eat some first in case it was poisoned.
Thanks all, I’ll limit myself to the not-shitting-pants stage of drunkenness.
3.26.33
Happy birthday!
Happy Birthday!
Here’s to many more years of you posting for our…gratification
Dedicated to the NorCal Glibs. Stay safe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILUUqvbcBOI
MILF hunting.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fortysomethings-are-the-new-club-kids-1507732221
:rubs eyes: oh good, thought I was seeing double for a second.
Response in the comments that sounds like it could be a new copypasta:
“Despite the vast volume of middle-aged men who are ageists, I demonstrated an exceptional sense of humor – the same cutting style to which I was responding. If this same style of humor upset you because of it being reversed toward middle-aged men, then I apologize for upsetting you enough to the point that it prompted you to respond by attempting to diminish my humorous point of view about the remaining single middle-aged men that might be available – factoring in, of course, the requirement of also being heterosexual. “
“Despite the vast volume of middle-aged men who are ageists”
Ageists? In other words, these guys prefer to go after 20 and 30 somethings, and she’s upset that she can’t compete with those girls.
It certainly isn’t ageism. More like reproductionism.
twitter suspends Rose McGowan’s account for blasting Weinstein, Affleck, board members of The Weinstein Company
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rose-mcgowan-twitter-suspended_us_59df0f1de4b00abf364657f9
twitter: “i’m still unsure of the efficacy of The Streisand Effect. here, lemme try something…”
Twitter – Doing a better job than the Stasi since 2006.
McGowan is freaking me out. What the hell did she do to herself?
Reconstructive surgery after a car accident. aka The Hamill.
She’s a complete whack job like the entire Phoenix family, for much the same reasons.
What I find weird is what he perceive to be a place mostly safe for progressives and liberal viewpoints is not what the left sees as they think it’s safe for libertarians/conservatives and other ‘right-wing extremist’ opinions.
It’s very ENB-Soave like in this weird dichotomy somehow thinking Twitter is hard on the left.
I said this yesterday, I’ll say it again. For a company that has never turned a profit, Twitter jumps all over the money losing grenades.
If I was an investor, if stay away from anything Jack Dorsey touches. His two big businesses have been money sinks (Square and Twitter)
Dorsey is cancer to an investor.
Unless you get in early, then short them.
Would have been overall easier for them to commit to being a free speech platform. YouTube became a shit show with demonizing as well.
Yeh, don’t know why these entities would attempt to monitor speech. It’s like trying to shoot fish in a barrel. It must be such a headache behind the scenes for those charged with such futile under takings. Let humanity roll man.
I think Jordan Petersen said that lefties are pretty good at startups but when a business matures they need a conservative as CEO. Or something like that.
Something to do with conscientiousness vs creativity. Pie in the sky (HEH) thinking tends to have diminishing returns, but it’s critical for innovation.
Well, Twitter is in a very difficult situation, which they created on the very first
twitter posting they ever took down. Indeed, that action was probably far more dangerous, legally,
than banning users.
When you ban a user, you have a defense (albeit nowadays, a threadbare one) in that the user may or may
not have contravened the TOS of the platform. With Gaycakeapocolypsegate, freedon of association and the
ability to choose who you ‘do business with’ has been eroded, but it’s still a defense,
If Twitter is foolish enough (I have no idea if they ever have done so) to selectively remove individual posts,
they are editing their content, and are thus at least partially responsible for any slanders which may or may not
be litigated. Ask AOL (who?) how that worked out in the 90’s.
Yes, committing to being a free speech platform may have been a far wiser choice, but Twitter wanted to be woke. We’ll see if Gab fares better over the next few years.
Stay classy, Twatter. #BelieveHer
Oddball dwarf planet Haumea has a ring
It’s the first object past Neptune in the solar system known to have debris circling it
Haumea can do the hula-hoop. The egg-shaped dwarf planet is the first object beyond Neptune to be spotted sporting a ring of particles.
“It now appears that rings can be common in the outer solar system,” says Jose-Luis Ortiz of the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Granada, Spain.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/oddball-dwarf-planet-haumea-has-ring
I thought dwarf was no longer PC
Huma got a ring from Hillary?
Oh wait … never mind.
Maybe covered, but…California Officials Sound Alarm As San Diego Outbreak Prepares To Overtake Entire State
Sounds kinda like a slum in New Delhi.
Who could have predicted that subsidizing the homeless lifestyle in one of the most pleasant sub-tropical areas on Earth would lead to overcrowding?
Failure of state capitalism update:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4970484/Stomach-churning-video-a.html
This irritates me to no end. People ask how can she eat a cat instead of why the hell she’s reduced to eating a fucking cat.
“The Americanos made me do it, senor”
As Cleveland Beer Week gets ready to swing into gear (which usually means several locations selling off some rare bottles), I figure it’s time to start finalizing the plans for the BIF (Beer It Forward). I’m leaning towards doing it shotgun style, where every participant gets the name and address of another participant and we all ship simultaneously. 72 oz minimum, strong preference for local breweries, and (once again) do not ship USPS. So far the following people have expressed interest:
MikeS
Tundra
Mexican Sharpshooter
RegicidalManiac
Trials and Trippelations
DEG
I’ve been contacted by DEG and T&T already, but if the rest of you are interested, I’ll need at the minimum an e-mail address to pass along to the person responsible for shipping to you. You can contact me at my handle @ gmail.
email sent. Thanks!
Just emailed you, bro. I’m want in. Sounds like fun. I’ve recently been visiting alot of the breweries in LA and OC. Lots of good local stuff to be had, and to share.
Email sent. Grazie!
ESO will hold a press conference on 16 October 2017 at 16:00 CEST, at its Headquarters in Garching, Germany, to present groundbreaking observations of an astronomical phenomenon that has never been witnessed before.
The event will be introduced from ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile by the Director General, Xavier Barcons, and will feature talks by representatives of many research groups around Europe.
This invitation is addressed exclusively at media representatives. To participate in the conference, bona fide members of the media must register by completing an online form. Please indicate whether you wish to come in person to the press conference or if you will participate online only.
http://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann17071/?lang
I would have though its about the dwarf rings thing but that is already announced so I can safely assume Aliens.
I’m not saying it was aliens…
*EDIT FAIRY ENHANCEMENT*
Edit fairy is smoking hawt.
Speaking of
weatherclimatemeteorological phenomena… There’s a little bit of snow out there, this morning.I wasn’t expecting that.
No there isn’t. I just looked.
I’m still having straggler hummingbirds stop off at my feeders en route to their tropical vacations. It’s in the 60’s in the mornings here but still in the 80’s in the afternoons.
I expect that to change quickly. Maybe you could send some of that snow down here so it will cool off enough for me to go cut firewood. I am too old to do that in the heat anymore.
Right?
*driving to work* Oh, look it’s raining a little. *closer look at the windshield* That’s snow. *Me gusta face*
Apple’s first ever VP of diversity and inclusion says she focuses on everyone, not just minorities
https://qz.com/1097425/apples-first-ever-vp-of-diversity-and-inclusion-says-she-focuses-on-everyone-not-just-minorities/
When asked whether she would be focusing on any group of people, such as black women, in her efforts to create a more inclusive and diverse Apple, Young Smith says, “I focus on everyone.” She added: “Diversity is the human experience. I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.” Her answer was met with a round of applause at the session.
“There can be 12 white, blue-eyed blonde men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too.” Young Smith went on to add that “there can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.” – that’s crazy talk
I’m looking forward to her excommunication for such blatant heresy.
Truly pressing issues of our time. It’s up to BLM to crush the scourge of insufficiently available darker toned bandages.
Yes, because all “white” people look the same.
White people are the white people of white people.
It is white people all the way down.
Not as bad as Hitler but definitely worse than Mussolini.
Not exactly news…
http://freebeacon.com/politics/new-study-finds-democrats-moving-left-driving-growing-partisan-gap/
I mean I try to understand other people and other views but I have limits really. I guess no one can truly understand why others believe what they do. And sadly debate is near useless. But so many wanting to put so much power in a government that has show time and time again to be incompetent at best, but more likely petty corrupt destructive is beyond me.
Expressing doubt in government capability is anti-Soviet propaganda, and that’s not allowed in a movement that demands ideological uniformity with the credible threat of ostracization.
In other words, people don’t reason themselves into these positions, they are socially pressured into it. Teacher’s unions are a good example.
There is no questioning in these people’s minds of the idea government should be doing something, and that private business is evil. My aunt works for a federal contractor, my uncle works for the Smithsonian, and it always blows their 3 kids’ minds when my other uncle (big time liberal) and I argue about politics. I try to slip as many libertarian idea worms into them as possible when I’m around them, since they generally look up to me (I’m the 2nd eldest cousin on that side of the family, and the one that’s around the most).
That’s a significant change in only 7 years. It speaks to the influence of academic Marxism trickling into public discourse through media, entertainment, and education.
This faith in the harmful power of class oppression will chip away at the population’s respect for property rights, since they no longer believe that you are entitled to the fruit of your labor because the outcomes are perceived to be unjust. And that’s the real danger in the spread of this anti-meritocratic cult: creeping socialism. Next stop, Venezuela.
Sounds like Obama really ruined things for black people.
If you do not keep up with the frenetic lurch to the left, you will be excommunicated.
Totes homo.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4970166/Young-men-bromances-romances.html
Maybe if they stopped nagging.
Young men are rediscovering what best friends used to be, before feminist dominated society decided to shame guys by calling such relationships gay.
You talk like a fag and all your shit’s retarded.
Baldrick: I also have a plan.
Prince Edmund: Yes?
Baldrick: Why not make her think you prefer the company of men?
Prince Edmund: But I do, Baldrick, I do!
Baldrick: No, no, My Lord. I mean, erm, the, er, *intimate* company of men…?
Prince Edmund: You don’t mean… like the Earle of Doncaster…?
Baldrick: I mean just like the Earle of Doncaster.
STEVE SMITH’S South American brother?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4666867/goblin-scares-girls-video-trees-argentina-tucuman/
Does anyone else feel deja vu?
Two times in one day? *harumphs*
It’s unreasonable to expect me to pay attention. I demand protected status and government grants.
Depends on where you are on the privilege scale.
Oh, nobody noticing your links, eh?
*narrows gaze*
Hey, LH puts a lot of work into his links. You should be considerate.
/runs like hell
…outta range.
*holsters catbutt*
NEXT TIME!
The Spirit of Centrism
http://quillette.com/2017/10/10/the-spirit-of-centrism/
This quillette site has been going on and on about centrism… Although if you listen to the SJW crowd it is an alt right literally Hitler type of site. Now I am not sure what centrism is but I don’t like it.
“Centrism is a decidedly wimpy word, but it is a powerful political idea.” – I agree to the first part not the second
Centrism – A desire to get along with everyone manifesting as a lack of principles.
They don’t rely on principles. It’s mostly people who are sick of the bullshit from both extremes.
To the left, this makes you an Enemy of the People.
To the right, this makes you a cuck.
At least the right won’t try to use its influence to silence you for opposing them.
I call myself a radical centrist sometimes. If you average my beliefs, you probably come about about to the middle, but most of what I believe on a point-by-point basis are things that would either be radical-leftist or radical-conservative (depending on the decade).
Because it’s my birthday and I’m in such a good mood, this is for all the (nonexistent) female libertarians and others that may swing that way.
http://metro.co.uk/2017/10/11/some-extremely-cute-baby-animals-are-the-stars-of-the-australian-firefighters-calendar-2018-6991539/
Distressed Investors Are Already Buying Houston Homes for 40 Cents on the Dollar
Them’s the breaks.
Sadly, some of those former home-owners will be lucky to get .40 on the dollar. However, those neighborhoods can only go one of three ways.
They can become Detroitville with nobody living there and all the former residents living on the government teat, having held out for .60 and getting .10 in a city with reduced tax revenue.
The district can just die slowly over the years, as the population slides into (relative) penury depleting what savings they have to make the uninsured homes as habitable as possible, with nobody new moving in, because who wants to live in a shantytown.
They can settle for .40. Lick their wounds, take a deep breath and accept some government help, and see the area revitalized, generating tax revenue from new residents.
None of the outcomes on a human level are particularly nice, but some are better (for everyone) than others.
Investors buying risk at discount? Why ever would they do that? Also, $120K for a house that’s been flooded twice in 2 years and is stripped to the studs is not an investment I’d make. At that point, you’re hoping that some flood mitigation strategy happens or you can get rid of the house in the eight good years between flood events.
The investors don’t sound that distressed to me.
“…offer of $120,000—half the home’s value three weeks earlier…”
No.
There’s no such thing as objective value except at the moment of a non-coerced transaction.
This one’s especially hard for folks who’ve been fooled into a notion of “property value” as a reason to force their neighbors to do or not do things. Much (maybe most) economic and statist evil derives from this right here – the notion that value is objective.
Saw Blade Runner:2049 yesterday. I enjoyed the movie. I hate Hans Zimmer.
Recommended?
Absolutely
I’m just pissed that they didn’t get Vangelis to score it. That, and Hans Zimmer sucks syphilic donkey dick.
¡Dios mío!
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/10/12/mexican-soap-actor-slaps-reporter-hard-giving-new-meaning-to-red-carpet/
i sent an email to the writer of this opinion congratulating him on getting this “DO SOMETHING” plea to authority posted online. i am utterly convinced it was written in satire and was submitted purely for the lulz.. and the Dallas Morning New only posted it because it was written by an AR-15 owner who requested a round limit on his “clip”.
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/10/11/one-gun-owners-plea-congress-something
Dear Congress,
I own multiple shotguns, handguns and rifles, including an AR-15. Unfortunately, when the gun-control debate is reignited by another mass shooting, my voice is often unheard. Maybe my message is drowned out by the NRA’s continued silence. Perhaps I’m ignored because I don’t fall within a pre-defined box, allowing you to label me an outlier. Either way, in the wake of yet another mass shooting by a U.S. citizen, please do not allow my plea to fall on deaf ears. So I ask that you do the following:
Put me on a registration list or ban my AR-15. Force me to wait three days before I pick up the next gun I buy, or conduct a more thorough background check. Tell me I can’t own a 20-round clip for my AR-15. I don’t care what you do. But please do something.
They could tell him to give his AR15 to you, with all his clips, if it would make him feel safe.
that would at least be “something” which seems to be his only requirement.
It’s a person pretending to be a gun owner who meets the left’s stereotype of reasonable so I’m afraid there’s no gun to be had.
You know who else was an “outlier”?
he just emailed me back. it wasn’t satire.
If he really owns an AR I’ll eat my hat.
he does put on his employer’s page that he’s a hunter but he’s from Chicago so i’m guessing he sat in a tree stand once with some friends and took a shot at a doe nibbling on some corn feed at a baiting station.
and missed
Because a 10 round clip would’ve stopped the shooter in Las Vegas. With the equivalent number of Garands or Mosin Nagants I could have easily surpassed his count, and I’m not that good a shot. The amount of time he had available to shoot is the issue, not the functionality of his guns.
+1 en-bloc clip
Tell him he can make a difference, by only loading his clips with 5 rounds.
Theses assholes love to hear themselves blather on about policies that would have made absolutely no difference in the outrage du jour.
Stephen Paddock had no criminal record.
He had no mental health red flags.
He accumulated his weapons over the course of an entire year. Three day waiting period wouldn’t have done jack shit.
Magazine capacity is practically irrelevant when it takes all of a second to change the magazine. In any case, Paddock had 23 firearms in his room.
So, congratulations on your embrace of policies that wouldn’t have done anything at all!
It’s never about stopping the incident, it’s about using the incident to implement the policies towards civilian disarmament.
Greetings from Fantasyland. For those of you previously unaware, that Trump guy is a monster.
The late 19th century in the United States was the heyday of robber barons – John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould and many others – who secured exorbitant wealth by building unregulated monopolies. They controlled the country’s oil, steel and railroads, and they used their wealth to bankrupt competitors, buy off politicians and fleece consumers. They manipulated a growing market economy that had weak rules and even weaker legal enforcement.
The progressive movement of the early 20th century took aim at the robber barons, calling upon government to regulate their activities in the interest of the public welfare. Writing on the eve of the First World War, journalist Walter Lippmann famously explained that Americans had a choice to continue their economic drift into ever-deeper corruption and inequality, or they could empower their elected representatives to master the challenges of their age and create a more just and sustainable economic order. Lippmann and other progressives wanted a more active government, led by men of intelligence, who would regulate the most powerful corporations and ensure that they served the public interest.
—————-
What the United States needs is less ideology and more detailed attention among politicians to matching regulatory processes with public purposes. That was, of course, the goal of the progressives more than a century ago. If we don’t return to their model, chances are we will continue the current drift into another age of robber barons.
Trump’s America, a land wholly devoid of regulations and consumer protections. A waste land of dog-eat-dog capitalism and environmental rapacity. Bring back our Top Men, before it’s too late.
All of the federal register disappeared over night
*heads to bunk*
I’ll be awhile, fellas.
unregulated monopolies
If you repeat an oxymoron enough times to the masses ignorant of economics, it becomes common knowledge.
Fortunately, propaganda need not be hindered by ‘facts’.
buy off politicians
Thought experiment: if you buy off a politician, what can he offer you? He can provide you with a subsidy. He can regulate you into a competitive advantage. He can create regulatory barriers to entry in your industry, making it possible for you to exploit your monopoly since the threat of competition has been removed.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that regulation is the one factor that enables monopolies. But let’s just keep asserting the opposite, because our smug sense of rightness is all the evidence we need.
You keep forgetting that Democrat politicians are immune to such bribery, and if we just elected all Democrats and they were in charge of everything, we wouldn’t have bribery and corruption.
Doesn’t everyone keep their money in the freezer? Keeps it nice and fresh.
They fleeced consumers.
“…when Rockefeller’s market share was still minuscule, a gallon of kerosene cost 58 cents. In 1870, Standard’s market share was 4%, and a gallon cost 26 cents. By 1880, when Standard’s market share had skyrocketed to 90%, a gallon cost only 9 cents — and a decade later, with Standard’s market share still at 90%, the price was 7 cents. These data point to the real cause of Standard Oil’s success — its ability to charge the lowest prices by producing kerosene with unparalleled efficiency.”
http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/13/vindicating-standard-oil-100-years-later/
Yeah, that’s fleecing. The instant I hear this they lost me. I know they are either lying or they are ignorant.
Sadly this data is not easy to find so I had to use the Daily Caller.
Under Trump the economy is beginning to take off. It’s only going to get better. If the R’s will pull their heads out of their asses and pass his tax reform the economy will take off like a rocket and everyone of us will be as much richer in a decade as we were from my generation to my parents generation. I am kinda excited about it really.
“the economy will take off like a rocket ”
And then we’ll be overrun with foreigners.
“What the United States needs is less ideology and more…”
You see, the ideas the writer espouses is not ideology, but rather progressivism. Who could be against progress?
Progressivism is not progress.
considering Schild’s offer of $120,000—half the home’s value three weeks earlier.
Three weeks earlier; prior to that minor little water damage issue, then. Why would five feet of water in your living room have an adverse impact on the resale value? It makes no sense!
I mean, that lottery ticket they were selling for $4 two weeks ago? I’ll sell you one I bought 2 weeks ago for $2. Howaboutdat?
It’s unconscionable that the market should have winners and losers.
Trump pulls US out of organization dedicated to promoting sex education, literacy, clean water and equality for women.
(I’m positive that will be an actual headline somewhere)
(now if only we could pull out of the UN altogether, and kick them out of NYC)
The Obama administration cut off funding to Unesco in 2011 because the group admitted Palestinians as full members, which the United States saw as undercutting its influence in countries around the world. America lost its vote in the organization in 2013 because it ended its financial contributions.
Speaking of equality for women, have you seen that video Google promoted yesterday? It went on about child marriage, barriers to education, genital mutilation, and the like, as if those were our problems. To anyone who knows dickall about the world, it was problematically Islamophobic, thank goodness it didn’t bother to mention Islam. Signalling virtue is all about making the right incantations.
“Dedicated to” “designed to” “law passed in an effort to”
Those are all bullshit words and they get used for a reason.
I love this kind of stuff. Fuck the international community.
Read their mission statement. Meaningless claptrap. Hint, it’s not their real mission.
Put me on a registration list or ban my AR-15. Force me to wait three days before I pick up the next gun I buy, or conduct a more thorough background check. Tell me I can’t own a 20-round clip for my AR-15. I don’t care what you do. But please do something.
For gawd’s sake, do something. Send the men in the white coats over to his house to put him in a straitjacket.
100% chance that the person saying this doesn’t own any of those things and probably has never touched a firearm in their entire life.
he’s from Chicago. been in TX for the past few years for law school so it’s possible he became acquainted with firearms as soon as he moved here and bought several shotguns, pistols, and rifles including an AR-15 while racking up law school debt. but i’d consider it unlikely.
Put me on a registration list or ban my AR-15. Force me to wait three days before I pick up the next gun I buy, or conduct a more thorough background check. Tell me I can’t own a 20-round clip for my AR-15. I don’t care what you do. But please do something.
(a) No way does this guy own any guns.
(b) He could do every one of those things to himself, by himself. Technically, of course, there’s not a registration list, but he could still write to ATF, FBI, the local police, etc. and tell them all the guns he owns (if any). You can run a background check on yourself, and give it to the store and/or send it along with your gun self-disclosure. You can get rid of all your 20 round “clips” (in case you were looking for a tell that this isn’t an actual gun person, there it is).
64 percent of Democrats say black Americans cannot “get ahead” because of racial discrimination, up from 28 percent in 2010
Look what they did to that nice Obama boy from Chicago. He was oppressed mercilessly. Those mean old white Senators wrecked his plans.
I believe that in a minority of cases, racial discrimination is a factor. Anecdotally, my dad’s co worker (and the other assistant head groundskeeper) when he worked for the Reds in the 80s (Marge Schott era) was African American. The man was significantly better qualified for the head groundskeeper job than my dad (more experience, a degree in sports managment, not psychology) and yet he was passed up for promotion to promote an incompetent that both he and my dad had to cover for. As soon as the other assistant head groundskeeper left, the head groundskeeper was found out as a lazy POS and fired, and my dad was promoted. It ended up working out for my dad, because the hiring manager at his next position was the same African American man. This gentleman was either my dad’s supervisor or co worker for the better part of 20 years, and was really good at getting people to move positions away from discriminatory people and organizations (one of the African American cops that worked the Reds beat ended up working the beat at their new organization for nearly 30 years, I believe he is retired now). But Schott wasn’t just discriminatory, she was a terrible boss and owner. She used to pay the groundskeeping staff to spring clean her house, including leavings by her big dogs. However, my only personal experience with her was a good one. My dad had me into his job for a few minutes (mom had picked me up, had a doctor’s appointment, and left me with Dad for a few hours, since daycare was closed by then), and I got to meet her, and she gave me double bubble, and told me I should take a baseball home.
NAZI!!!!!!!!!
No, her dog’s name was Schottzy, not Nazi.
“64 percent of Democrats say black Americans cannot “get ahead” because of racial discrimination, up from 28 percent in 2010”
How do they account for the fact that in making a success of myself, I also outperformed other Caucasians?
64 percent of Democrats say black Americans cannot “get ahead” because of racial discrimination, up from 28 percent in 2010
Hard to see how this could be true unless a lot of Dem are racists, too.
These data point to the real cause of Standard Oil’s success — its ability to charge the lowest prices by producing kerosene with unparalleled efficiency.
Kerosene lanterns also were a huge safety improvement, if I recall correctly.
I guess this is who Reason is writing for nowadays. I mean, who could possibly flip out over an anti-gun Cato piece or any of the nuggets of brilliance Wilkinson squeezes out at Niskanen?
I would love to hear an explanation of in what way the Niskanen Center is libertarian. Their entire raison d’etre is that the leviathan state is inevitable, so let’s just put our heads together and try to come up with the least oppressive form of it! Oh, and CARBONTAXCARBONTAXCARBONTAX 24/7.
I would love to hear an explanation of in what way the Niskanen Center is libertarian.
When David Frum, J. Bradford DeLong and Evan McMullin are on your Advisory Board you’re not libertarian. Period. Full stop.
Hahaha, even I didn’t know that Egg McMuffin was on the board. That makes perfect sense.
It’s a damn shame McMuffin’s parents weren’t bigger fans of Ghostbusters. Just imagine “Egan McMullin.”
JFC, Frum and McMuffin??? I knew they sucked, but I didn’t realize they sucked THAT much.
Wait, I thought Uncle Frums were House Republicans, not libertarians? And not in the sense of serving in the more numerous part of the Congress.
Frum is only nominally Republican. He’s a huge fan of government power though.
So no, only a libertarian in a retarded sense.
When you don’t really understand what libertarian means, it’s easy to mistake all sorts of things for it. It’s like a person who has never seen a turtle or heard an accurate description of it, looking for turtles. Sees a lizard ‘that must be a turtle, I’ve found it’.
That thread reeks of retardation (except for the pushback) but that’s par for the course for Reddit.
Reddit.
The habit of cosmos who fall on the fainting couch over all the evil ‘alt-right populists’ in the libertarian moment to scream ‘TRIGGERED’ and ‘SNOWFLAKE’ at their opponents is utterly pathetic.
It’s just an outgrowth of their childish refusal to understand opposing arguments. They think the answer to being insulted is to lob the insults back, even if it makes no sense and just further illustrates how shallow their understanding is.
Bonus titties.
http://archive.is/9epxk
Number 4 would be a great birthday present.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Ia6k2DOtLhcJ:www.businessinsider.com/trump-ahp-healthcare-insurance-obamacare-executive-action-2017-10+&cd=22&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
My take:
The ultimate effect of this executive order is not likely to be lower insurance costs for people on the exchanges.
The point of allowing people to join these associations is that it lets individuals purchase health insurance that avoids covering expensive or unnecessary conditions (pregnancy for single males, etc). The ultimate effect of this is likely to be that young, healthy people will stop buying health plans on the exchanges–which would make it even more prohibitively expensive for insurers to cover people on the exchanges without all those young, healthy people paying in and subsidizing the costs of covering especially expensive, preexisting, and unnecessary conditions.
In blunt terms, this executive order doesn’t appear to be a solution to the problems associated with high premiums and high deductibles on the exchanges. This executive order appears to be designed to accelerate the problems associated with everyone who isn’t young and healthy. It should provide some substantial relief for the young and healthy, although–repealing the individual mandate would have done the same thing, only more so.
FWIW, I don’t expect selling insurance across state lines to be much of a factor. You may see some insurers operating in states with low Medicaid participation selling insurance policies into other states with low Medicaid participation, but that won’t really address the problems we’re experiencing. An insurance company in a state with low Medicaid participation would have to be suicidal to sell insurance in a state with high Medicaid participation–and that’s what would need to happen for competition to bring down insurance premiums and deductibles where they’re the highest.
Put another way, even if insurers in other states started competing for your business, they’re still competing to offer you a policy that covers a nationwide average 140%+ of the cost of care because of Medicaid and Medicare. Competition still won’t bring the price of premiums below those inflated costs. The only thing that will is cutting the eligibility for Medicaid and/or Medicare.
In summary, I see two basic ways to look at this executive order.
1) Letting Millennials off the hook is a good thing for Millennials.
Nothing wrong with letting some people off the hook for doing nothing wrong. I’ve never been one to claim that there’s some moral advantage in violating everyone’s rights equally. If some people can escape the thumb of government and get away with not having their rights violated, good for them.
Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Thou shalt not covet. Regardless of their source, these ideas survived in our culture because they survived real world scrutiny. People thrived because of them, so those ideas prospered along with the people who held them. Communism, on the other hand, brought those who believed in it to ruin.
2) The political outcome on pressure for reform could go either way.
On the one hand, letting Millenials off the hook may make them more appreciative of pro-market reforms. I suppose that’s the optimistic outlook, maybe they’ll realize that socialism isn’t the solution to our healthcare problems.
On the other hand, when the Obama administration argued before the Supreme Court that if the individual mandate were declared unconstitutional, it would break the rest of the ACA, they weren’t lying. Freeing those Millenials from buying into ACA regulated insurance plans will significantly exacerbate the problems associated with those regulated plans–with significantly more upward pressure on premiums and deductibles.
If Trump’s “pro-market” reforms result in escalating premiums that run so high they become even more prohibitively expensive and/or the insurance companies accelerate their flight from the exchanges, then what the Democrats propose as the solution for that problem isn’t likely to be further “pro-market” reforms. They’re more likely to portray “pro-market” reforms as the problem and the expansion of Medicaid (AKA single payer) as the solution.
He’s totally sabotaging Obamacare.
Like, ohmygawd. It’s all his fault if it fails now.
Yeah, the Democrats should also blame the Obama administration and congress circa 2010 for the failures.
And they should blame the Republicans for failing to repeal or replace.
They should blame the Republicans for failing to roll back Medicaid eligibility.
They’ll be wrong to blame this all on Trump, but that’s what the Democrats will do. The Republicans won’t want to accept blame for those problems either. Some of them will be more than happy to blame Trump, too.
If they say that Trump is sabotaging ObamaCare, they won’t be wrong on that count.
That’s what he’s doing. He’s pulling the rug out from under it, and he’s doing it on purpose.
As soon as he cheated to rob beloved popular vote president of her turn, everything became his fault.
#i’mwithered
If Medicaid expansion is the driving factor for increased premiums, then you should be able to point to statistics showing that premiums rose faster in states that expanded Medicaid than they did in states that did not expand Medicaid.
A cursory Google search showed that Medicaid expansion had the opposite effect as you claim, but I will grant that I have my doubts about the validity of those stats. They seem to only focus on the “marketplace” premiums which means they’re not accounting for employer-provided insurance which is the bulk of the actual market (vs. the fake “market” created by the ACA).
Although, the employer-provided health insurance is itself a fake market, thanks to the tax-exempt status of employer provided care, and provisions in every law from the HMO Act to HIPAA to the ACA.
Your questioning regarding whether ObamaCare adding 11 million people to the Medicaid rolls (which gives them care below cost and depends on private pay patients to make up the difference) really drove up the cost of care for private pay patients is much like your questioning about whether giving 11 million new Medicaid patients (the economic demographic most susceptible to opioid addiction) access to free and legal opioids might have increased the number of new opioid addicts.
After showing the data (which I’ve already done repeatedly) that details the mechanisms between these things, why should anyone reply to someone who obtusely pretends they understand less than Tony about how and why markets work?
. . . and that’s giving you the benefit of the doubt. The other likely explanation is that you really think giving 11 million new Medicaid patients access to free healthcare at private payer’s expense doesn’t raise the cost of insurance to private payers or that giving 11 million more people in the demographic most susceptible to opioid addiction free and legal opioids doesn’t add to the number of addicts.
This all despite the increase in premiums, deductibles, and opioid addiction rates in the wake of ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid.
Arguing with Tony about these things is actually more productive because it gives us practice for dealing with average people who know nothing about how markets work or why. This, on the other hand, is a show about nothing.
If you genuinely don’t believe that expanding a socialist program Medicaid eligibility by 11 million didn’t have a significant impact on premiums or the opioid addiction rate despite all the data you’ve been shown, then good for you.
You’re finally qualified to become a full fledged creationist. Congratulations.
The ultimate effect of this executive order is not likely to be lower insurance costs for people on the exchanges.
Nope. It will lead to more risk stratification, as low-risk people will have lower-cost options. Concentrating risk in the exchanges accelerates their death spiral. Pretty slick, really.
From a libertarian, agency driven moral perspective, like I said, giving some people better options is a good thing. I don’t begrudge them that.
The question of what this does to the healthcare industry and whether it leads to further expanding Medicaid and puts us on the road to single payer is another question entirely–and I’m not entirely optimistic about that.
If we’ve creating the conditions that make expanding Medicaid more likely, then we’re just sprinting towards disaster.
I’d rather people associated pro-market reforms with solutions rather than disaster, and the headlines will be all about what this does to pregnant women and families with droopy-eyed, armless children (born with a preexisting condition).
One time this girlfriend I had was driving me to the airport. To make a long story short, she could have avoided an accident by breaking a rule; instead, we got broadsided so hard, it spun us around twice. I asked her days afterwards why she didn’t just break the rules and avoid the accident, and her reply was to the effect, “I thought about doing that, but then I thought, if I obey the rules and we get killed, at least it won’t be my fault”.
From a risk analysis position on the likely political outcome of this, I hope we’re not being penny smart and pound foolish.
If the dam bursts before the next Presidential election and Congress is still dominated by the Republicans, this will seem like a smart move. Maybe they won’t let a crisis go to waste.
If the Democrats make gains in Congress between now and then (like happens to most Presidents in their first midterm election) we’re on a highway to hell.
I feel like we’re playing 3D chess here, when all our opponent needs to do is kick over the chess board to win.
Once again, not saying it’s aliens…
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/651799/alien-fukushima-tsunami-ghost-ship-boat-hawaii-mutant-creature
“Lost Fukushima ghost ship washes ashore in Hawaii with MUTANT creatures on board”
Some people might see that headline as being a little sensational.
On the other hand, a Fukushima ghost ship did wash ashore in Hawaii with mutant creatures on board.
Euphemism?
A thinly veiled one.
So, the photos show a yellow plastic tray smaller than a car. How does that constitute a “ghost ship”?
…and the “mutant creatures” are actually just “not native” creatures.
Plot hook for a remake of The Borrowers?
Kon – Tiny
I imagine this will be buried by the media if it proves to be true:
http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/12/fbi-reviews-allegations-of-puerto-rican-officials-withholding-hurricane-relief/
Corruption in Puerto Rico? No way!
I can’t imagine that histrionic mayor is dumb enough to get caught up in a scandal like this after drawing so much attention to herself, but ye gods wouldn’t that be delightful.
I wonder if she’ll have a shirt made that says “THIEF”
Because Ray Nagin was known for keeping such a low profile before being busted?
It’s the era we live in. Ben Affleck can dare to pull the shocked-and-appalled card when there’s documented evidence of him being all harrassy. Hell, I can’t believe Roman Polanski hasn’t condemned Weinstein yet.
Hard times on the assembly line
General Motors Co. is looking at alternative plants for production of the popular Chevrolet Equinox SUV as a strike at a Canadian factory drags into its fourth week.
The company is at an impasse with striking workers at the plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, and feels that it has no choice but to start exploring other locations, said a company official who asked not to be identified amid the negotiations. The Equinox, which was just redesigned this year, is also produced at two plants in Mexico.
GM is trying to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement while the Unifor union seems to be more focused on negotiating a trade agreement, the official said. While most of the economic issues are resolved, according to GM, the main sticking point is Unifor’s demand that the Ingersoll plant be designated the lead producer for the Equinox, meaning any production cutbacks would affect Mexico first.
It sounds like the union is trying to negotiate those workers right onto the unemployment line.
Warden Norton*, IRL
https://twitter.com/Libertea2012/status/918448880093499393
*Shawshank
https://thinkprogress.org/california-tells-court-it-cant-release-inmates-early-because-it-would-lose-cheap-prison-labor-c3795403bae1/
Update:
California Attorney General Kamala Harris told BuzzFeed News she was “shocked” to learn that the lawyers in her department had argued against parole credits because they wanted to retain their labor force. “I will be very candid with you, because I saw that article this morning, and I was shocked, and I’m looking into it to see if the way it was characterized in the paper is actually how it occurred in court,” Harris said in an interview with BuzzFeed published late Tuesday. “I was very troubled by what I read. I just need to find out what did we actually say in court.”
While ThinkProgress does not know what lawyers for the state said in court, the written motions submitted in the litigation make very clear that the state did indeed argue against expanding the early release program on the basis that it would deplete the labor force.
Gosh, it’s almost like injustice towards inmates is not something that only occurs in private prisons. Why, you’d think that it’s largely unavoidable as long as there are institutions where human beings are given almost unilateral authority over other human beings.
Hey, guys – I don’t think these kids are, like, actual kids.
You’re fired!
I posted this in yesterday’s afternoon links but it was at the end of the day, and it looks like only John Titor saw it. One thing I noticed while looking through Trudeau pretending to get along with Trump was the comments. How strange that all the top comments for Zoolander are ones that praise him, while Trump’s twitter has all the “journalists” making responses crapping on him as his top comments. I wonder if that’s Twitter putting their thumb on the scale in favor of pro Trudeau comments in the same way they promote anti-Trump comments? Or is it that right leaning people aren’t as petty and pathetic as progs and they don’t waste their time spamming the PM with how terrible he is?
Damnit, broken link. Again?
There might be some Twitter manipulation there, but I think there’s also the fact that people actually pay attention to Trump whether you like him or not because:
1. He’s ‘the leader of the free world’ (whether you like that term or not).
2. He basically revolutionized the political sphere by using Twitter as his sounding board.
Zoolander, in contrast, has nowhere near the same influence as the President of the United States, and most of the people outside of Canada who would pay attention to his Twitter are probably sycophants.
Trudeau is the white people of heads of state.
Given his likely patrimony, wouldn’t he be a white hispanic?