Astonished to find that my millennial daughter had never seen Dr. Strangelove, I queued it up last night over dinner. The generational difference was never so stark- she found most of it incomprehensible. “Why is this in black and white? Was that to save money? They had invented color by then, right?” When Strangelove pulled a circular sliderule out of his pocket to calculate how long the survivors would have to stay in the mineshaft, she asked, “What’s that?” In the airplane scenes involving rotary switches, toggles, and code-setting, she asked, “Is all that all supposed to be a technology?” During the credits, she observed, “I’ve heard of James Earl Jones, I don’t know any of these other people.” “This was just… weird.”
Sic transit gloria Sellers.
OK, before I haul my ancient ass all around the hiking trails at the Bong Recreation Area (not making that up), I will toss out links, scientifically designed to be noticed but not actually read.
An editorial writer does not seem to notice that states that don’t shit on the Second Amendment likewise seem to be states which are business friendly. And would like to stop that.
Canadians also don’t understand basic economics and after showing proper horror at how markets work when their government decides to meddle, figure to use their ignorance to keep poor people poor.
Speaking of Wisconsin (that’s where the Bong is), the latest on how racism was used to suppress minority voting and hand the election to Trump. Because black pipo can’t get ID cards and that’s why they didn’t turn out for Herself in the numbers they turned out for the Lightbringer. That must be the answer. Or maybe not.
We libertarians have McAfee. The liberals have… someone else.
In the same vein, is there nothing that Trump can’t do?
Zardoz would seem to have great influence in Africa.
And finally, obligatory Old People Music.
Comments
311 responses to “Saturday Morning Pre-Hike Links”
First
No comment on links. Ten yard penalty. Repeat first down.
Here is my comment on the links, there are no titties in the links. You call yourself a pervert but no titties…… Pffdft whatever.
titties means they’re too old.
Meh, anyone can first a Saturday morning links, now get back to me when you first through fifth a ZARDOZ evening links, then you’ll have something to crow about.
But don’t, crowing is unbecoming in a gentleman.
Good thing there’s none of those here
Gentle …what?
Huh, never heard of ’em.
*belches, scratches, wanders off*
But…but…what about the top hats and monocles? they’ve got to count for something.
“I’ve been to one World’s Fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a pair of earphones.”
The best of Slim Pickens set to a punk rock western rave-up. https://youtu.be/40mhFhaGV_E
Sic transit gloria Sellers.
The scenes in the war room as Strangelove are where Peter Sellers really became a tedious, self-indulgent bore.
Being There is horrendous.
I saw Being There in a theater, and I was so tempted to get up and walk out – until the end and then I was really glad I didn’t.
The movie was difficult, but brilliant.
I too saw it in the theater and as it was the very first non-Pink Panther Seller’s role to which I was exposed, I have very fond memories of the film. I still stand by the assertion that Seller’s best role was as George Kite, the (Communist) Union Shop-Steward in the Boulting Brother’s I’m Alright Jack. Closely followed by his turn in the very best Bond Film – Casino Royale.
I bought a Sellers box set to get “I’m Alright Jack”, and really enjoyed “Two-Way Stretch” as well.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001LXIDUY/
I saw it on TV because it just happened to come on, and I didn’t mean to watch it, but it hooked me.
Being There is horrendous.
I know people who think that movie is awesome. I have never managed to sit through it from beginning to end. It sucked.
So…You don’t like to watch?
*slow clap*
The NRA and its toadies say that no law could have definitively prevented this or any other massacre. This is a dodge: Traffic laws don’t prevent all car crashes or air bags all deaths in those accidents. But they help. If the carnage in Las Vegas prompts even a few more state experiments, something good may yet come from this evil.
What a steaming puddle of rancid dog shit. Is there no limit to the moral preening of these anti-gun imbeciles?
*That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.
If the carnage in Las Vegas prompts even a few more state experiments,
If concentrating all the children into camps where only responsible, government-approved adults look after them could save the life of even one child, don’t we have an obligation to try?
Seriously, the above was what popped into my mind after Obama had his Rose Garden hissy fit after gun control was voted down in the wake of Sandy Hook.
Come on Ted, the Sandy Hook shooter never bought a gun and didn’t use an assault weapon, so we must ban the sale of assault weapons. That’s just common sense.
This is a point on which I disagree with most of you guys. There’s no question that gun laws reduce gun use. Just like there’s no question that employment laws reduce employment use. Disincentives matter. Will some people acquire guns and cheap labor anyway? Of course. Some people will. But if rifles were banned, Paddock might never have gone to the trouble of acquiring them. And even if Paddock was sufficiently driven to overcome a rifle ban, there are certainly other killers out there who wouldn’t have been. Speed limits are a good analogy. Whether speed limits are right or wrong, without them there would be a lot more drivers going 100 mph than there are now, and there would be a lot more accidents. That’s obvious.
That being said, gun laws (i.e. all gun laws) are blatantly unethical and unconstitutional. But if you’re going to take the utilitarian path, you can’t simply wave your hands and say that laws you don’t like have insignificant effect.
The only things I see gun laws do is prevent law abiding citizens from lawfully owning guns. Criminals and people intent on committing crimes never have problems ignoring laws in their way. I had to jump through hoops and fork over $500 over to a bunch of douchebags that see my constitutional right just as a means to fill up the state’s bank account. In the mean time most of the big cities are not safe to be in because there are countless criminals with illegal weapons there ready to steal from anyone that crosses their path. Gun laws will never deter the people that want to commit crimes and will do whatever it takes to commit said crimes.
Never? Come on. There’s a spectrum of criminality and intent. Yeah, there are people on that spectrum who are above the threshold of letting laws get in their way. But there are definitely people who are not so criminal and not so intent. I don’t know what the numbers are. The gun grabbers don’t know what the numbers are. And no one here knows what the numbers are.
This is where I like to point out that more gun laws means more people in jail that never harmed a soul. And some of those people have kids that are going to grow up with parents in jail . That alone can help create a troubled individual. Which adds up to a bunch of troubled individuals. Which is bound to create all sorts of problems. Unintended consequences are real.
*Edit Fairy says, here you go hot stuff!*
Like, not lime. A little help sexy fairy.
You don’t get the fairy you want, you get the fairy you need.
Paddock owned two planes (although apparently the FAA can’t tell which two) and supposedly had explosive materials in his car. If someone’s intent is mass murder, gun disincentives are irrelevant.
The world isn’t divided into two groups: those who would never murder and those who would murder despite any obstacle. Paddock might have been very very intent and little hindered by any realistic law. But not every murderer is a Paddock.
“If it saves just one life….”
No thanks.
Except those two groups exist. And the number of people who wouldn’t murder if it were only slightly more inconvenient seems insignificant.
“But not every murderer is a Paddock”.
You could also have said, “not every horse corral is a paddock”.
But all chinos are khakis
That’s lacist?
There’s no question that gun laws reduce gun use.
The correct phrasing would be:
There’s no question that gun laws reduce legal gun use. Strong gun control laws coupled with high murder and violent crime rates of places like Chicago, Balitmore, etc. would dispute the notion that gun laws reduce illegal use.
To use your own example about employment, employment laws reduce legal employment, but increase grey and black market employment. Unless you believe that more restrictive employment laws reduce the incentive for grey market employment, your own analogy would contradict the claim that stronger gun laws reduce illegal gun use.
There’s no way that net employment (legal + grey market + black market) is as high as it would be in the absence of employment laws.
Correct, but that’s irrelevant. Why would you care about legal gun use being high? That’s only beneficial… women preventing rapes, fathers protecting their children during home invasions, etc.
You must have missed my comment because you do not make a distinction between legal and illegal use. Gun control reduce legal use. Most of the evidence points to it increasing illegal use which equals violent crime. So yes, you may be technically correct that stricter gun laws would reduce overall gun use. However, I have no clue why you find it beneficial that legal gun use would decrease while driving an increase in illegal use (even though there would be a lower net in gun use).
This is like seeing a woman, who used to be legally armed but turned in her gun, getting raped/mugged unable to defend herself and saying look guys, gun use is down! The thug doing the raping/mugging still has a gun. So net use is down but not beneficial to anyone but criminals.
I guess I didn’t respond specifically to why the employment analogy supports reducing gun control so let me do here. I don’t think anyone could disagree with the below effects of employment laws.
Strong employment laws
-reduction in net employment
-reduction in legal employment
-increase in grey/black market
Absence of employment laws (gun laws)
-increase in net use
-increase in legal employment
-decrease in grey/black market
Of course, you the analogy may fall apart since an absence of gun control laws may even reduce net gun use since criminals become more fearful of targeting armed victims. Criminals operate with impunity in Chicago. Many have found robbing a Texan to be their last act.
Paddock burned through over $100G on a bunch of weapons, most of which he didn’t even use. With that kind of cash he easily could have bought a belt fed machine gun in the U.S. or Mexico on the black market.
Or easier still, he could have fueled up one of his planes literally across the street, and crashed it into the crowd, killing far more people.
With his money and lack of red flags in his background he probably could have bought a couple of belt fed machine guns legally.
A lot of the old, water cooled WW1 machine guns on the registry aren’t that expensive (comparatively). For what he spent on shitty bump stocks and rifles, he could easily have gotten an honest to god tripod mounted actively cooled MG in something .30 cal, and that would have really turned that concert into a charnel house.
A water cooled gun could have effectively shot forever, as long as he had an adequate supply of water and ammo. In that room, with that kind of cash? He could have had both, no problem.
“But if you’re going to take the utilitarian path, you can’t simply wave your hands and say that laws you don’t like have insignificant effect.”
Most of us aren’t utilitarians though. Libertarians will sometimes use utilitarian arguments to convince others, but that’s more because that’s, unfortunately, how people judge things.
There’s no question that gun laws reduce gun use.
You should let Brazil know that, they apparently didn’t get the memo.
Less glibly (drink!), the places where gun laws have been most effective at getting guns out of peoples’ hands and preventing people from openly using the guns they possess have been economically developed islands (Britain, Ireland, Japan, Australia). The U.S. is not an island, and the places where guns actually get used to effect the most killing are not exactly the most economically developed places in the country. More people will get killed and injured from guns in each of Baltimore and Chicago this year than in Paddock’s massacre in Las Vegas.
I couldn’t make it past
My personal boycott of that rag seems like a good decision.
That Sally John article is confusing. Wouldn’t it be a good thing that Trump has brought attention to the issue, resulting in abusers being run out of town? Isn’t that what liberals want?
John, Kohn, whatever.
I was amazed that CNN is allowing comments. It didnt take many before people started pointing out Sally is an idiot.
The comments are surprisingly sane. Must be a bunch of people stuck at airports.
“What this article fails to point out is we could have elected a woman who has turned a blind eye to the womanizing, sexual assaulting ways of her husband.”
The day after Trump won, basically the other 48% of white women, most of the women of color in America, and a lot of men were pretty much horrified. This was definitely true in Hollywood. America’s cultural tastemakers had mustered massive amounts of money and outrage to try to bring about Trump’s defeat. And they — liberal celebrities specifically — failed.
These stars and titans who outwardly champion women’s rights and equality had not only failed to leverage their prodigious influence and power to elect the nation’s first female president but, instead, saw the ascension of a President who in every way seemed to be a backlash against the fairness and tolerance for which Hollywood has always imagined itself to stand.
Oh, Sally. Sally, Sally, Sally. You make me laugh. Who says women cannot be funny?
Imagined being the key word here.
Pretended would be more accurate.
You ever notice when they talk about predators the name Bill Clinton is never brought up?
Wouldn’t it be a good thing that Trump has brought attention to the issue, resulting in abusers being run out of town? Isn’t that what liberals want?
Haha, a sane person might think so. Weinstein is the man behind the curtain, to whom we ought to pay no attention. Just admire the pyrotechnics and obey the booming amplified voice.
Well, you have fun hiking OMWC. I’ll be having fun fishing (with my license, thanks government!) and catching nothing today and tomorrow.
I’m OK with fishing licenses since they stock fish, etc.
This. In my state, and I suspect many others (most…all?) the Game and Fish department is wholly funded by license sales.
Same logic applies to hunting licenses. Unfortunately my state which has a massive spending deficit because of the bloated vote buying “free shit” schemes common to NE blue states, now wants to up all taxes not to pay for the things they originally did, but to put more money in the hands of the political class that stays fat and on top by buying their office with freebees paid for by the ever dwindling productive class.
I’ve got my hopes pinned on Gorsuch helping destroy pubsec unions later this year.
I wish him the best of luck. Heck, if this administration makes some significant progress at rolling back the existence of these unions, I might just vote for The Donald next time around.
Pubsec unions are going to be one of my major issues. I just ordered a book about them called “Shadowbosses”. Should be interesting.
I have to have a license to fish in my pond. that I own. That I have stocked. This is wholly enclosed on my property.
The king claims right to my fish.
Do you need a hunting license too?
I’ve always assumed that I don’t need a license to fish my own pond (which like yours is wholly on my property and I stock myself). I do know that I do not need a license to hunt on my own property, though I still have to hunt in season and am technically supposed to call the deer in.
OK, you have me there. These situations are bullshit.
The king claims right to my fish.
BFYTW.
Poor hillbilly libertarians who have to fish just to eat are disappointed in your stance on fishing licenses
I can’t go hiking because it’s hunting season. Poor guy who comes up and hunts on our land hasn’t bagged a deer in years even though we see them all the time outside hunting season.
You coordinate with the guy and you could easily push a few deer his way on a hike.
Good way to get yourself shot.
The lake by my moms house has no licence, but no fish either.
Lake by your mom’s house has no fish? You wouldn’t be the son of Jack O’Neill, would you?
Don’t forget the STEVE SMITH repellant on your hike OMWC.
AND BY REPELLANT STEVE SMITH MEAN RAPE-PELLANT.
STEVE SMITH LIKE SILLY SPRAYS PEOPLE USE – MAKE RAPE SPICY!
Someone should make some t-shirts with “Rape Spicy” printed on the front.
AXE = STEVE SMITH ATTRACTANT?
dammit
Don’t worry there’s plenty of Axe in the world for everyone’s needs.
As a resident of NYC’s outer boroughs I am all too aware of this fact.
a/k/a “Axe”.
And if Hollywood is so supposedly hyper-liberal, why are “bad guys” in action movies so often based on anti-Muslim stereotypes and why do the “good guys” suggest that torturing suspects works?
Why can’t we go back to the good old days, when Hollywood villains were all members of the evil moneygrubbing white kkkorporatocracy?
Such as? I don’t watch a lot of recent Hollywood movies but I do recall one or more instances of switching out Muslims for Amish because PC.
Or don’t forget I read about a Liam Neeson movie a few years back (Non-stop?) that had one of the unquestionable good guys being a muzzy in traditional garb.
What the hell is a vungle?
A vagina jungle?
If Hillary is female and has an OB-GYN, this is his pet name for her vag.
Welcome to the vungle we got fun and games
We got everything you want honey, we know the names
We are the people that can find whatever you may need
If you got the money honey we got your disease
In the vungle, welcome to the vungle
Watch it bring you to your sha na na na na knees knees
I wanna watch you bleed
Welcome to the vungle we take it day by day
If you want it you’re gonna bleed but it’s the price you pay
And you’re a very sexy girl very hard to please
You can taste the bright lights but you won’t get there for free
In the jungle welcome to the vungle
Feel my, my, my, my serpentine
I,I wanna hear you scream
+1 David Bowie.
I’m screaming, I’m screaming!
Now I know how Slash got his name.
So, the JFK files are set to be released. So, will this be the confirmation that it was the smoking man that killed JFK, not Lee Harvey?
Who gives a shit? Can we finally move on from the Kennedys?
But, what about Camelot?
It’s only a model…
Ted’s grumpy this morning.
Or he just hates the 60’s , I’m not sure.
Ted’s grumpy
this morning.🙂
Cynical, not grumpy.
I was born in 1972, so I never got the doe-eyed look back at the baby boom years.
Ted hates America’s royalty!
I am sure that the releases records will tend to confirm the Warren Commission report, which will be explained by conspiracy theorists as the documents having been changed. One or more of the documents will likely have questionable traits (like the document “proving” that George W. Bush shirked his military duty).
Bottom line: no one in either the “Oswalddidit” camp or “OMGonspiracy!” camp will change his mind.
As an aside, JFK himself, even though he was the target of assassination, is almost incidental to the story.
The possibility that an adolescent Deep State pulled off the assassination of a sitting U.S. President is the more interesting element. Lincoln was assassinated in a time of war by an enemy of the U.S. government, so it isn’t quite as notable as JFK’s assassination, in my view. You have a clear motive–the assassin thought he was helping the war effort for his side, even though Lee had already surrendered.* A sitting president being assassinated by his own employees (if, indeed, that is what really happened) is something worth looking into.
*Now that I think about,it, I am certain that Lincoln was killed by his own government, as an act of conciliation to the South.
Much of them will be redacted?
So, the JFK files are set to be released.
X-Files prequel? Pass.
From the terrible WAPO gun op-ed:
Oh! Let me guess what the take away will be; While he had his flaws, on the whole Carter was a terribly underrated president. He should be considered one of the best of the 20th century, if not one of the best ever. Reagan beating him in 1980 was one of the greatest travesties in our country’s history. If Carter had gotten a second term, America we be a much better place to live in today.
There is still time for you to get that Carter book out before he does!
No one is reading any Carter book without half-naked Martian chicks.
“In my I heart, I’ve committed alien adultery.”
And as the Martian rabbit charged, I said, “Set phasers to stun!”
He’s a uniter, not a divider
“Folks don’t feel good right now about what they see,” Obama said. “They don’t feel as if our public life reflects our best. Instead of our politics reflecting our values, we’ve got politics infecting our communities. Instead of looking for ways to work together and get things done in a practical way, we’ve got folks who are deliberately trying to make folks angry, to demonize folks who have different ideas to get the base all riled up because it provides a short-term tactical advantage.”
Obama cast the upcoming race in terms of choosing between progress and more division.
“If you have to win a campaign by dividing people,” Obama said, “you’re not going to be able to govern them. You won’t be able to unite them later if that’s how you start.”
“Don’t let those deplorable bible-hugging gun nuts wreck my legacy. The future of democracy is at stake. Once we win this election, we can impose our will on them.”
So Obama is finally confessing to what he and his administration and the Democrat Party did the past eight years?
All the this.
Not to mention Killary’s election strategy.
+1 “I’ll have more flexibility after the election”
He sure likes that word, “folks”.
He thinks it makes him sound more rural and down to earth.
It polls better than rubes.
Letters to the Local Rag: Corporatism Is Good Edition
So, the only possible expanding of the business would be through hiring more employees? That extra money wouldn’t be put to use for anything else, right?
My takeaway is that corporations exist to serve the interests of the state.
That pretty much defines the way these collectivists want the world to work..
Then they accuse anyone that points out this is what the fascists believed and implemented of being fascists for calling them out on their fascism..
That’s what low-tax development zones are for: political control.
The 14th only applies to things that aren’t in the Constitution, which doesn’t mention taxes or commerce.
“Do to companies as they do to employees: Earn first, then get paid.”
Except that, you know, anyone with a sliver off economic understanding would see that businesses don’t work for the state. What this person is advocating is fascism to a degree. The Nazis may have lost world war two, but the fascists came out on top.
Well, the government is the one thing we all have in common. We all are owned by the government.
Do to companies as they do to employees: Earn first, then get paid.
Somebody should let these companies know that they don’t need to keep cash on hand anymore, because apparently the magic payroll fairy ensures employees get paid even if revenue doesn’t come in.
Or the person writing this is a complete idiot who’s never seen a ledger in his life.
Letters to the Local Rag: Expertism Edition
Only drunks should comment alcohol taxes
I was gonna file a public comment, but then I got drunk.
I was gonna lobby my legislator, but then I got drunk.
Now I’m going to pay the liquor tax and I know why
Because I got drunk
Because I got drunk
+1
I like your plan.
By that logic, only people who pay into Washington should have any say in how that money is spent; tax eaters shouldn’t.
Hmm…..
Walter Williams had a proposal along those lines.
Muh narrative!
The CIA on Thursday was forced to walk back an assertion by Director Mike Pompeo, who incorrectly said U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election were unsuccessful.
Asked at a security conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday whether he could say with absolute certainty that the November vote was not skewed by Russia, Pompeo replied: “Yes. Intelligence community’s assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election.”
In a later clarification, the head of the CIA’s office of public affairs, Dean Boyd, said: “The intelligence assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed, and the Director did not intend to suggest that it had.”
That election was stolen, and don’t you forget it!
If this whole incident doesn’t prove that the CIA has become completely political, I don’t know what does. Gut it.
Also, ineffectual. There are 17 intelligence agencies, but no one knew the Secretary of State was using her own private server, or can determine if a foreign government hacked the server of a major political party. But they are supposed to be able catch professional Chinese hackers, and jihadists who are experts in tradecraft.
There’s a lot of jurisdictional friction among those agencies* and I don’t think any of them are tasked with commmunications security/counterintelligence authority over the State Department. Basically, nobody was watching State outside of State and quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
* = This is not a bad thing, although it is about as effective as the Constitutional separation of powers at protecting civil liberties
If only hillary had more chances to tell deplorables how pathetic they are, they would have voted for her
Speed limits are a good analogy. Whether speed limits are right or wrong, without them there would be a lot more drivers going 100 mph than there are now, and there would be a lot more accidents. That’s obvious.
Whatever you say, Tulpa.
There ought to be a Glibs law about proper threading.
Shut up, Tulpa!
Internet commenting as a whole should be prohibited because some people will use it incorrectly.
Speeding food trucks! aieeee!
Europe highways are a wasteland of skeleton car frames, burning tires, scattered limbs everywhere, it’s hard to see the white and yellow lines because of all the blood.
Ok. Maybe I shouldn’t have written “a lot more”.
In Utah when they raised the limit to 80, they noticed a drop in accidents. I see no logical link between the speed and accidents. Once your going over 65 the likelihood of surviving anything but a small wreck is going to be small.
The thing i’ve noticed when traveling in the states with 75 and 80mph limits is hardly anyone goes faster than the limit. They’ve basically found that sweet spot that 90% of drivers are comfortable at.
In IA and IL where most of the interstate miles are rural enough that 75 is reasonable they still have 70mph, and at those limits you still have over half of people driving 5-10 over.
A reduction probably has something to do with everybody now going more or less the same speed, meaning there is a lot less aggressive lane changing, tailgating, and such.
Collisions have a much stronger correlation with traffic density than speed. Indeed, if anything the correlation between speed and collision likelihood is negative due to the confounding variable of traffic density.
So my mother has a vegetable garden and there is this habbit in Romania in automnb o dig the garden using a spade,.o translate it would be turning over the soil. Basically dis a spade depth and turn over the clods(is this a word) of dirt. The ideea is that during winter the big pices of dirt crumble or something. Usually my father did this bum now it is up to me. Now i am reasonably fit I go to the gym so I thought 3 4 hours of spade work should not be that hard, but for an office worker not used to the movement patterns it was tiring. Working the land aint as easy as it may seem. Some people do this shit all day many days. Then again it can be less stressful mentally then 10 hours a day looking at a computer screen. Anyhoo
Rent the vampire equivalent of a rototiller? In the U.S. you can buy a gas-powered one for under $200.
Get yourself a tractor. It makes life easier.
Not to mention, real men own tractors.
I second this
There’s just something more personal about clubbing a copperhead with a shovel than running over it with a tractor though.
If you’re really adverse to a tractor/tiller, at least try using a fork.
Letters to the Local Rag: Driving Lessons Edition
Editor’s note: These are the entire letters, excerpted in full.
#1 – These people make my head hurt.
#2 – *flips him the bird*
#3 – OK, this could have been written by me.
I work at a University hospital and typical of these kinds of hospitals you can pay your months salary to park in that garage or pay a quarter of your month’s salary to park far away and take a shuttle into work.
Or if you’re savvy you look on parkapedia for the closest free street parking, which in my case is a street that can fit no more than 7 cars. What does some douchebag with a thin blue line bumper sticker do ALL.THE.TIME leave 2-3 feet between him and the car or sign in front of him!
/automotive bitch session
Hospitals shouldn’t charge for parking.
I understand many University hospitals have to charge money for parking because they either A. would be full 24/7 with University students B. be full 24/7 because the hospital is located downtown. C. Both if their parking garage was free.
My hospital is neither (the academic campus is quite a walk away). My father in law can’t believe the hospital charges its employees for remote parking ($10 a month I think). I did that for about a month then investigated in earnest the nearest free street parking.
My campus charges and restricts which lot you can park in. I think I’m paying close to $450/year.
When I was a grad student, 10 years ago (sob), I paid $400 a year for parking on campus. That was with the grad student discount.
One of my favorite authors (Scarlett Thomas) has a line in one of her books about how parking in the lines is really about social signalling: ” look at me! I park in the lines, I’m sane!” “Me too!”. Ever since I read that, I want to park so that I take up 4 spaces, parallel park where I should be nose in, etc. I don’t do it, but I think about it a lot.
If that were the reason for it, I would make me slightly less enraged. But I suspect the real reason for most people doing it is that they just don’t give a fuck about anyone else but themselves.
#3 is basically Manspreading: Car Edition
I don’t see what’s wrong with any of these three. Nothing worse than some jackass who tailgates your ass. If I have to stop suddenly, that guy is going to have zero time to respond to my stopping. If you’re going to change lanes, yeah use your turn signal, it’s there for a reason. And yes, park in your parking lane.
I read #1 as when he’s stopped at a traffic signal, not when he’s moving. I’m with you on the tailgating thing.
I actually agree with you on #2, I was just being glib
Well, in that case I would say it depends on how much space is being left.
Being glib…here?!
*squints suspiciously*
I read #1 as when he’s stopped at a traffic signal, not when he’s moving.
There’s a highway (not a freeway, obviously) on my usual commute home that has a long kinda steep hill leading up to a traffic light (the last traffic light for a while, in fact, which makes it all the more annoying). People will leave 2-3 car lengths of space in front of them when stopped at the light, even though nearly everybody is driving modern automatic cars in good shape. That doesn’t work out so great when there’s so much traffic that it causes the road to be backed up all the way to the previous light, half a mile away.
My business is located in a small town so the two options I have to go to work is basically one-lane roads in the city. So lotsa a derpy things and driving I see on the commute.
I can’t stand people who drive below the speed limit and then turn out of nowhere without putting their flasher or speed up suddenly to make the light. A more inconsiderate facia culo move if you ask me. These same people who drive this way also don’t do their stops properly. The other day I was stuck behind one such asshole. He was driving 20 mph in a 40 zone for 3 miles with his arm outside the window. At a busy four-way stop he suddenly didn’t exhibit the same patience and went out of turn almost getting onto a head-on collision with a motorcycle. I wanted to pummel him
If a cyclist is riding along next to you, it should be a sign you’re going a tad too slow.
Finally, I notice there’s been a rise of people stopping in the middle of the road to let cars in coming from a parking lot or waiting at a stop. Nice gesture, but dangerous and invites accidents. The person waiting to get onto the street can wait. Here, I have no choice but to honk whenever it happens.
I hate it when people honk. It always startles me.
I don’t generally and if I do it’s a tap. A person with their head down when the light turns green needs to be notified somehow.
BUT, sometimes people deserve a hard honk.
sometimes people deserve a hard honk
QFT.
The stopping for letting someone in after the light has changed kills me. It’s green, GO. You’re fucking everyone behind you.
STEVE SMITH GUILTY OF THIS DESPITE NOT DRIVING
*prolonged ovation*
Re: stopping in the middle of the road. I used to live in the KC metro area. The ring road around the city is I435. On the southwest side of town there’s an exit to I35 and there’s always assholes who fly up the center lane then cut across two lanes. But one day, there was a guy DEAD STOPPED in the center lane of I435 with his turn signal on waiting to move across two lanes to get to the exit.
One thing I do notice is that drivers seem way more reckless in parking lots than they did in the past.
Lotsa speeding to get to that open spot I’ve observed. Last month I waited outside the mall for a few minutes and noticed three cars zoom past the stop and walk-way almost hitting shoppers heading into the mall. On one occasion the driver sailed right on through at 5mph looking at her phone. Literally, I stood in front of the car like Super-Man and gave a ‘wtf do you not see all the yellow lines and stop signs?’ to the girl who just prior almost hit an elderly couple. Man did she turn RED fast.
At least here in the states I blame ADA. Thirty parking spots with another parking spot sized loading zone next to each near the entrance, all with about 3-5 cars in them.
The other day in the parking lot at grocery store, I was loading my car and had the door open. There were spaces on either side of me, in the next row, in the row beyond that. The lot was about 1/3 full. Some woman was sitting in the lane glaring at me because she apparently wanted to park in the spot that I was blocking with my open door. I ignored her – she could have parked on the other side of my car. She honked at me.
So I took my time.
Nothing about those fucking left lane hogs?
On my homeworld we developed a consumer rocket and artillery market prior to a personal-conveyance industry. When we finally started driving as a population such behavior was dealt with in a explosive manner.
We managed to rid ourselves of the scourge of slow assholes in the left lane within a decade.
Those people should be flayed.
This.
Slow on the right, pass on the left. Don’t weave and swerve. Keep your speed within a reasonable range near the prevailing speed. Signal your moves, make them slowly, and make them early. That’s how you drive responsibly on the highway.
And in local news…
His manifesto should be interesting.
Trump supporter, white supremacist, Evangelical Christian?
From his picture, I’m guessing retarded Richard Spencer aficionado.
Yes, I know that’s redundant.
I bet it starts with Hear Ye, Hear Ye!
If they want to keep getting tax credits, they have to keep employees and hire more employees as the company grows. Do to companies as they do to employees: Earn first, then get paid.
The sole legitimate function of “employers” is to hand out paychecks. They have a magical cash box which allows them to do this.
Of course. A job is a good in and of itself. Any goods and services provided are secondary.
When I’m God-Emperor of Mankind, anyone who says something like that will get a free forehead tattoo reading LABOUR IS AN INPUT, ASSHOLE.
When I’m god-emperor, people who use that extra “u” will be sent to reeducation camps.
^ this guy gets it
Don’t let this colour your whole legacy. You’ll get people to armour up around you.
If I have any extra ‘u’s at the end of the day, I sprinkle them on my deep dish Hawaiian pizza.
PS Deep dish will be mandatory.
What’s your stance on peanut butter? ‘Cause I see a revolt coming before you’re even throned.
Crunchy, duh. Oh, hey, brilliant idea – crunchy peanut butter as a deep dish topping!
Crunchy? Okay, you have my support. I’ll overlook the Hawaiian pizza bit.
Mmmm, yummy. Hawaiian pizza. Mmmm, artisan Hawaiian pizza is even better.
I was joking about *that*… Though I actually do like BBQ chicken pizza. And deep dish. Especially in combination.
BBQ Chicken pizza is delicious! Peachy rex for god-emperor!
One of my local places makes a *bacon* and BBQ chicken. Oh man.
There is no other correct answer but bacon on a BBQ chicken pizza.
*makes sure all weapons are loaded. double-checks ammunition caches*
That’s because you want to be armed while you go out in support of Rex, right?
A Sioux Falls man discovered something no one else had, and his tweet about it is going mega-viral
This is actually pretty funny.
Woo.
Like, I totally remember that tweet!
Working the land aint as easy as it may seem.
!!!!!!!
I love how Trump strips everyone of their free and moral agency all of a sudden.
The left are truly a sad specie.
Stephen Powers, 30, was arrested at his home in Gloucester and was charged with possessing and using an explosive device and committing an act of terrorism, according to Williamsburg Police.
Police got a call about a vehicle fire around 5 p.m. Thursday near the corner of South Boundary and Francis streets, near the campus of the College of William and Mary, police said Friday.
Most people, when their car won’t start, just call triple-A.
There are 17 intelligence agencies, but no one knew the Secretary of State was using her own private server, or can determine if a foreign government hacked the server of a major political party. But they are supposed to be able catch professional Chinese hackers, and jihadists who are
experts in tradecraftdrinking and throwing money around in strip clubs.Extremist is another word for hypocrite.
So I’ve been full keto for a month with no allergies of any kind. This morning I ate a couple of tortillas and broke out in a skin rash. I need a glibs diagnosis.
Stop appropriating Latino culture, you shitlord?
Tortillas? Have some Mexican ass sex while smoking a joint and you’ll be fine.
I’m confused on this Mexican ass-sex thing: is it as simple as having ass-sex with a Mexican or is it some weird post bean consumption scat thing?
I want to be sure to Libertarian correctly.
“she came prepared with an expired Wisconsin state ID”
You mean she came unprepared
“couldn’t take time off from her job as an administrative assistant at a housing management company, and she had five kids and two grandkids to look after.”
So she raises 7 kids and never misses work? Evidently voting wasn’t the priority she claims it was.
So in Wisconsin you can’t take your kids to the DMV? also how big an asshole to you have to be to not have one friend/family member that’ll watch your kinds while you run an errand or two. I used to get into it with idiots over the food desert bullshit, over this kinda nonsense.
People unwilling to overcome some slight inconvenience because they “lost” their identification is proof of a mass conspiracy. I bet if she needed that id to pick up a check she would have found a way.
Or is she wanted to cash that check, board an airplane, buy alcohol, buy decongestant, open a bank account, enter a Federal (and some State, County or City) building, etc etc etc.
Meanwhile, back in the real world: Wisconsin sets early voting record
Online registration, early voting, absentee ballots mailed to your home. The fact is, voting has never been easier than it is now, especially in major elections.
If the carnage in Las Vegas prompts even a few more state experiments, something good may yet come from this evil.
Hey gun grabber. Fuck off. the states have experimented with gun laws. People in Illinois are still killing each other with guns. Funny that is.
See? Illinois is evidence that we need to test a semiautomatic ban.
Herewith Wikipedia on Richard Bong, born in Superior, Wisconsin.
Richard Ira Bong (September 24, 1920 – August 6, 1945) was a United States Army Air Forces major and Medal of Honor recipient in World War II. He was one of the most decorated American fighter pilots and the country’s highest-scoring flying ace in the war, being credited with shooting down 40 Japanese aircraft. All of his aerial victories were in the Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter. He died in California while testing a jet aircraft shortly before the Japanese surrendered and the war ended.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bong
We need Eddie to do a full
Biography.
Only 28 of those Japanese aircraft were shot down while he was a fighter pilot. The other 12 occurred while he was an instructor pilot and not supposed to be in combat.
Not only have I hiked in the Bong Recreation Area, I’ve smoked a bong there. I believe it was 1985, when we were road-tripping as far away from school as we could get one weekend.
Funny to see that sign again. Between Kenosha and Racine on 94, IIRC?
“Rigged: How Voter Suppression Threw Wisconsin to Trump”
Were Trump voters allowed to vote without ID in those states that required them? Or is it just that Trump voters are so much smarter than the rest of the country? If so, shouldn’t they be glad that the smart people are picking the president?
Noooooooooooo!
I need a glibs diagnosis.
I need a translator.
“The Florida congresswoman is the latest—and pointedly, the latest woman and person of color—to be attacked by Trump for daring to tell the truth about him. She joins a roster that includes broadcaster Jemele Hill, the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and before that, a Latina former Miss Universe. Now add in Hillary Clinton and the more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual harassment or assault. Trump has attacked or threatened a few men too, notably black NFL and NBA stars, Gold Star father Khizr Khan (along with his wife), decorated Vietnam War veteran John McCain and other United States senators, but he typically reserves his greatest vitriol for those who aren’t white and male. We’re all still waiting for the president’s sure-to-be-blistering response to Eminem.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/frederica-wilson-vs-trump-and-now-john-kelly-easygo-with-wilson
“Attacked” = “tweeted about”, I assume?
Fact: during Roman times, it was legal to murder your own children.
https://twitter.com/JustJOSH_ingYa/status/920841882162417664
WTF??
I’d say I won’t go to Burger King anymore, except I never did go there.
WOKE BK (raised fist)
From the comments, or tweets, or whatever:
Candy @candyfornia 22h22 hours ago
Replying to @JustJOSH_ingYa @LeslieMac
Quite often, people don’t stand up because they don’t want to be SHOT or beaten up by a gang of feral teens
#BlackWomenBeingVerified account @LeslieMac 22h22 hours ago
Ma’am – Did you just say “feral teenagers”. I honestly don’t even know how to respond.
Candy @candyfornia 22h22 hours ago
A gang of bullies, mob mentality
#BlackWomenBeingVerified account @LeslieMac 22h22 hours ago
Most of the bullies I know are grown ass white men so… I can’t relate.
Yeah, I was about to comment saying the comments are even worse than the stupid commercial. “Why doesn’t BK make a commercial about the oppression of black men by police?” This is exactly why you don’t do this kind of social signaling BS, Burger King. It’s never going to be good enough for these fanatics.
its the *whole point*
if you’re not endlessly disappointed and outraged, you’re not morally-superior.
How the VA Fueled the National Opioid Crisis and Is Killing Thousands of Veterans
Long-winded screed about how the VA either overprescribes opiods or underprescribes them. I couldn’t get through the whole thing.
Big Pharma is evil:
A key role in spreading opiate use was played by Purdue Pharma, the OxyContin manufacturer convicted of hiding the drug’s addictive properties. It gave $200,000 to the VA pain management team that essentially turned the VA into its propaganda arm, according to secret corporate documents obtained by Newsweek. The team helped develop the initial VA–Department of Defense guidelines that concluded opiates “rarely” cause addiction.
tl;dr- The VA health care system is fucked, in every way imagineable.
The opiod part seems to be merely the hook to drag the unsuspecting reader in. Somewhere in there, I suspect they explain how that bastard Trump ruined our perfect single payer health care model.
It’s true that “opiates “rarely” cause addiction”. Drugs don’t cause addiction.
“As we mark the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s triumph, Chamberlain’s book broadens our understanding of the roots of the Bolshevik Revolution, describing how German Idealism, which first emerged from Immanuel Kant’s reaction to the French Revolution, came to inspire philosophers and cultural figures throughout 19th-century Europe and Russia. Dismayed by the inequities of early capitalism and the feudal nature of czarist rule, they “dared,” as Chamberlain puts it, “to wonder what might be ‘the right way to live.’ ” In separate chapters, she attempts “to restore dignity” to this “utopian imagination,” examining the work of major figures like Kant, Hegel, Herzen, Marx, Dostoyevsky and Lenin himself, writing as if they formed an unbroken chain of thought and influence.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/books/review/arc-of-utopia-lesley-chamberlain-russian-revolution.html
Does anyone know if the New York Times building has a heliport?
Following this line of thought, Chamberlain, rather than merely outlining the utopian threads that in her view led to Lenin, might also have tried to explain how a utopian thirst for beauty and love evolved into a genocidal dictatorship.
I wonder how this line slipped in at the end of the review for “Arc of Utopia”. Everyone knows that the claims of Communist crimes are right wing propaganda.
I’ve actually seen people argue that the massive death toll of communism is not as bad as that of Nazism because “most of the deaths in the USSR were from disease, starvation, overwork, and the harsh climate, not deliberate extermination“.
Even that claim is debatable (I know it’s stupid but take it at face value), depending on how many kulaks were shot and how many citizens overall were killed in the purges.
From the “boycott states with lax gun laws” story
this is how people think ‘good govt’ should work
(ahem)
I’d consider this trade as long as it involves unlimited ability to acquire new domestically-produced select-fire firearms, destructive devices, anti-tank guns, and the like. But that’s not what you’re talking about is it, Diane?
If government-funded healthcare didn’t exist, nobody would be paying for anyone else’s gunshot wounds or obesity-related illnesses (unless they voluntarily signed up for insurance).
Sames reason you aren’t required to pay extra taxes for running your mouth or going to church.
They used to have a gatling gun. But that was back when they were cool – so, not recently.
“America’s Worst Governor
Dannel Malloy may be too far to the left even for Connecticut.
Meanwhile the sledgehammer of tax increases bludgeoned Connecticut’s already-fragile economy. In 2011, the year the new taxes were implemented, Connecticut’s GDP shrank by 0.9 percent, and it’s remained anemic ever since. According to a University of Connecticut economic analysis in 2013, “Connecticut is one of the few states whose economy, whether measured in output or household income, is not close to its 2007 peak.” Couple that with the nation’s third highest tax burden, third highest energy costs, and fifth worst business environment, and you have a state charging its citizens a fortune in exchange for minimal economic expansion.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/389857/americas-worst-governor-matt-purple
In the early 90’s CT had no income tax and was booming. It was a convenient tax haven for lots of New York’s richest. Now all those people are flipping their residency to Florida and CT can’t figure out why those high taxes aren’t working.
Some of them are apparently even moving to MD. That explains my new neighbors from CT I guess. When you move to MD to escape, that’s just sad.
Toldja-
The disaster is likely to worsen under the Trump administration because of its assaults on Medicaid and Obamacare; this affects veterans as well, since fewer than half of the nation’s 22 million veterans receive their care from the VA. (In late August, the administration left no doubt it wanted to destroy the Obamacare marketplaces by announcing it would cut by 90 percent the advertising needed to promote enrollment and slash funds by 40 percent for helpful “navigators” to help people sign up for the program.) Nearly as troubling, the looming denial of care is aggravated by the suicides, overdoses and illegal use of opioids that are all compounded by draconian new federal pain medication restrictions on chronic pain patients. So when New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s federal opioid commission released its initial report at the end of July calling for swift federal action, his home state newspaper, the Newark Star-Ledger, pointed to the “elephant in the room.… The obvious fact that Donald Trump’s team is striving as hard as it can to gut Medicaid and make it even more difficult to get treatment.” (Trump referred to the opioid crisis as a “national emergency” on August 10, but the federal government hasn’t yet taken the steps needed to invoke emergency powers that could allow for more spending or loosen bureaucratic restrictions on providing medication-assisted addiction treatment, such as Suboxone, which cuts overdose fatalities.)
It’s all Trump’s fault. When Obama was President, the VA ran like a finely tuned machine. Now, they’re clubbing veterans to death in the stairwells.
It’s true that “opiates “rarely” cause addiction”. Drugs don’t cause addiction.
Are these people “addicted” to the drug, or are they “addicted” to not constantly being in pain?
Well, not counting people who have chronic pain. Which is stupid because no one counts diabetics as being addicted to insulin. Even with people who actually are addicts, the drug didn’t cause their addiction.
https://youtu.be/Es2f5MsEWmg
Appropriate.
True.
Relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKXN6Vdr3g0
and worth reposting.
Some of each.
“The White-Minstrel Show
We rarely used to put it in racial terms, unless we were talking about Eminem or the Cash-Me-Ousside Girl or some other white person who has embraced (or affected) some part of black popular culture. With the Trump-era emergence of a more self-conscious form of white-identity politics — especially white working-class identity politics — the racial language comes to the surface more often than it used to. But we still rarely hear complaints about “acting un-white.” Instead, we hear complaints about “elitism.”
The parallels to the “acting white” phenomenon in black culture are fairly obvious: When aspiration takes the form of explicit or implicit cultural identification, however partial, with some hated or resented outside group that occupies a notionally superior social position, then “authenticity” is to be found in socially regressive manners, mores, and habits. It is purely reactionary.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/452910/white-working-class-populism-underclass-anti-elitism-acting-white-incompatible-conservativism
Um, “more often than it did”, although I understand every editor on the right is busy making sure no one misspells “Niger”.
And a million Find & Replace subroutines cried out
Same with the Large Hadron Collider while it was news.
*confused scowl slowly spreading into amused applause*
The great Harvey Silverglate dishes on the scumbag Robert Mueller and and talks shit about the entire concept of a special prosecutor.
http://news.wgbh.org/2017/10/17/silverglate-how-robert-mueller-tried-entrap-me
And that from PBS heavyweight WGBH no less.
Is the tide turning?
I hope so. Because that witch hunt will result in serious pushback if he ends up going after Trump for some garbage “collusion” that is politics as usual.
And by pushback, I mean bloodshed.
While Mueller ignores his friends’ and staff’s involvement with actual bribery in the Clinton uranium deal.
I’ve said for a year (and even before when I gave my reasons for voting Trump), this is deep state vs the people bullshit here. They’re protecting the systems in place that are the only means for scumbags like them ever having a job.
The government bureaucracy is filled to the gills with people who would otherwise be unemployable: craven, power-hungry and petty human beings. All they know is that the world needs them and they’ll see to it that they maintain their power even if it means undermining a free and fair election.
Fuck Mueller, Rosenstein, Comey, Clinton, McCain and the entire rest of the deep state who would all make nice water for the tree of Liberty.
I don’t get it. The story doesn’t mention anywhere that people are still free to pay for their own shit. But it’s Salon, so I should have set my expectations a little lower.
https://www.salon.com/2017/10/19/trumps-moral-exemption-is-geared-to-just-2-groups_partner/
The headline:
Trump’s birth control “moral exemption” is geared to just 2 groups
Trump’s exemption benefits anti-abortion and the Religious Right
Um, you mean two groups that might very well have a moral issue with paying for someone else’s birth control?
I’ll start having some respect for the left when they start forcing Muslims to bake gay wedding cakes. Well, no, not really.
I’ll start having some respect for the left when they start throwing themselves off bridges en masse.
“DESPICABLE: Piers Morgan victim-blames Dana Loesch for her rape and death threats”
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2017/10/20/despicable-piers-morgan-victim-blames-dana-loesch-for-her-rape-and-death-threats/
What a shitbag of the highest order.
He hates guns more than anything in the world.
I wonder if he had armed security when he was working here. Perhaps an enterprising reporter should look into his security arrangements and then feed that info to a pro-2A opinion show so they can point out his obvious hypocrisy.
It’s past time to deport Piers.
I thought he went back to Limetree Island when he lost his show a couple years ago.
Maybe he did. Can Trump put him on the banned list?
https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/921466652180480000
LOL
Dayum
James Wood is cool
Cool guy
WHO? Wtf. You can’t make this shit up.
hotair.com/archives/2017/10/21/picks-world-health-ambassador/
Crikey, that guy looks like Mugabe!
They love his money printing policy.
I bet Obama approves of this. The left love them some third world dictators.
SF’d link
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/10/21/picks-world-health-ambassador/
Unbelievable. Actually, no it’s not.
Doug Stanhope:
http://baiting.org/Logs/Chatroom+Fun/991631133/
More:
http://baiting.org/Logs/Chatroom+Fun/994494705/
https://familyfriendly.site/review/Baiting.org
I’m pretty sure that means they haven’t even looked.
“Over the weekend, Fox News anchor Kat Timpf appeared on the network’s panel show Gutfeld where they were talking about the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominations. On the subject of Radiohead she said, “I don’t even like them but the guys that I like have to be three things: strange malnourished, and sad, and those guys always like Radiohead.” She went on to describe the band’s music as, “elaborate moaning and whining for ringtone sounds.”
Unsurprisingly, the footage made its way quickly around the internet, and to the band themselves. Jonny Greenwood updated his bio on Twitter in reaction to the comments, changing it to “my life in the gush of boasts……….’strange, malnourished and sad’ (fox news – *spits three times*).””
http://www.brooklynvegan.com/jonny-greenwood-responds-to-fox-news-anchors-radiohead-comments/
brooklynvegan.com?
Their “about us” page:
http://www.brooklynvegan.com/about-us/
Sounds like the “vegan” thing is just them being catchy. Looks like it’s actually a decent music-focused site even if it does spend almost all of its energy on the NY scene. The Austin site has pretty good pieces but it looks like they go dormant after ACL.
Most overrated band of the aughts – surprised they weren’t already in there.
The only people who seem to notice that Donald Trump is kicking ass, taking names , and winning on the ISIS front are neocon types who are slobbering all over themselves in their self-contradictory statements as to the reasons for that victory and what to do next.
Exhibit A:
“After Victory in Raqqa”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-victory-in-raqqa-1508539304
The Free Syrian army, along with the Kurds, have taken Raqqa, ISIS’ capital–ISIS’ last stronghold. ISIS isn’t much of a caliphate if they hold no territory. The Journal is correctly pointing out that this victory in Raqqa wouldn’t have been possible without the Trump administration’s leadership and the combination of American air power and Free Syrian and Kurdish troops on the ground.
But then they turn around and claim that Trump forging a ceasefire with Putin (Putin delivering on behalf of Assad, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and Hezbollah) amounted to an abandonment of the Free Syrian Army?
Not only do they need to make up their minds on whether the Free Syrian Army was crucial to the Trump administration’s success on the ground in Raqqa, they need to consider whether the ceasefire agreement they claim amounted to an abandonment of the Free Syrian Army significantly contributed to the victory they’re celebrating.
Is it possible that once the Free Syrian Army and the Kurds, on one side, were no longer distracted by needing to fight and defend themselves against Assad, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and Hezbollah, on the other side–specifically because of the ceasefire Trump negotiated with Putin–that this might have freed them up to concentrate their forces on fighting against ISIS in places like Raqqa?
The correct answer is “yes”.
That isn’t the only part of the quoted article that misses the obvious. If Iran’s influence now extends across Iraq, that isn’t because of the excellent decision we made to double down on the occupation of Iraq. Isn’t that’s because we destabilized the region with our presence in Iraq and because our presence unified the opposition against us–leaving Iran with a free hand in the region? Our allies are now starting to fight each other over control of the territory they’ve conquered, and that’s an excellent sign that it’s time for us step back and look for the exit. They say some Sunnis are now flocking to Al Qaeda–haven’t we seen that part of the movie before in Iraq?
Now is not the time to put American troops on the ground.
Trump’s pragmatic impulses are exactly correct. He had a mess to clean up, and he did what could be done without putting American troops on the ground in Syria, much to McCain and the neocon’s chagrin. Trump campaigned on doing what he did, he did it–and it worked, not that the news media, obsessed with reporting his overtures with Putin as collaboration to defeat St. Hillary, will give him or his policies any credit. Regardless, it’s time to declare victory and let our allies either fight it out among themselves or come to an understanding among themselves. Long term stability comes from our absence, and if we never withdraw until Syria is stable and democratic, we might never withdraw.
Better not to deploy in the first place–fer goodness’ sake.
Astonished to find that my millennial daughter had never seen Dr. Strangelove, I queued it up last night over dinner. The generational difference was never so stark- she found most of it incomprehensible.
There’s a part in Slaughterhouse V, where the main character is laying in a hospital bed and he’s sharing a room with one of the generals who ordered the bombing of Dresden. The general is writing his memoirs and defending his decision to bomb, and his defense is all about logic and figures. The main character in the bed next to him was on the ground in Dresden as a prisoner of war during the bombing. He was part of the clean up detail that was forced by the Nazis to go out and retrieve all the dead bodies.
He slips backwards in time to that moment, and the book then goes into a completely fictionalized account of what it was like to pull the dead bodies of people who had been asphyxiated in their bomb shelter due to the firebombing or burned. The point, to my eye, was that whatever logical, statistical, legitimate reasons there were to support the firebombing of Dresden, the reasons against it can’t be properly expressed without also taking the suffering and misery of the victims into consideration. Putting themselves in someone else’s shoes and properly understanding history probably requires fiction.
I say, the world today really can’t be properly understood outside then context of the Cold War, and the Cold War can’t be properly understood by people who didn’t experience it without fiction. I think I’ve made the case here before that modern audiences can’t properly understand “Oedipus Rex” unless they wrap their heads around another Cold War film, The Manchurian Candidate. I’d think those three dramatic works in succession would be highly educational and an excellent introduction.
Slim Pickens doing his patriotic duty–even if it hair-lips half of Lubbock–and riding his patriotism all the way to our destruction, that isn’t just a Cold War thing. I see parallels between Truthers and Birthers and Birchers and fluoridation, too.
Has she seen or read Slaughterhouse V?
I bet she stopped watching the franchise after the Slaughterhouse II and Slaughterhouse III plots got absurd.
If “Oedipus Rex” can still speak to people by way of a Cold War movie like The Manchurian Candidate, then Slaughterhouse V (book or film) should be able to speak to Millennials.
It’s a timeless thing!
I suppose the idea that Millenials are somehow invulnerable to the influences of the past is part of what makes them the way they are, but that idea is a crock of shit. Birth, death, sex, coming of age, the relationship between the individual and government, passion, sacrifice, fear, . . . why human suffering should be considered even if it doesn’t show up on some utilitarian’s spreadsheet.
These things didn’t suddenly all dry up because Millenials think we’re all a bunch of homophobes.
I like how Ken just powered through Sloop’s joke and continued with his thesis. That’s dedication.
Actually, I appreciated the joke and responded to it.
I thought his joke had a point, and I responded to it.
That’s the way I see it anyway.
There was no point to my joke other than to make me (and hopefully a few others) chuckle.
It seemed to me that the point was that Millenials aren’t likely to relate to . . .
Never mind.
Robert Webb Verified account @arobertwebb
Anyone who expects to feel safe in a driverless car has never owned a printer.
I was talking about this with somebody about fish the other day.
Dude: “You caught a fish and you’re gonna eat it”?
Ken: “Yeah”.
Dude: “How do you know its’ safe?”
Ken: “I know where I caught it, and I’m the on that cleaned it. How do you know your fish wasn’t caught in front of the sewer pipe in Tijuana?”
I don’t have a fear of flying, but I think that’s probably the most rational “phobia” in the world. I’ve met people with two different kinds–my own identification system.
Type 1) People who can’t induce delusions in the themselves.
You get on a roller coaster a hundred feet in the air going 60 mph, and people throw their hands in the air and scream with fear and delight.
You put the same people in an airplane 30,000 feet in the air going 600 mph, and they sit there reading a magazine like they’re in the waiting room at the dentist.
It’s the rest of us who are crazy–not the people who can’t induce that delusion.
Type 2) People who don’t trust the pilot.
You’re putting your life in the hands of someone that, not only do you not know, but you’ve never even met.
Why shouldn’t that cause anxiety. I’ve known people who have studied flight takeoff and landing procedures to deal with this, and they listen to the pilot over their headphones when they can.
It’s not that they’re afraid of flying. It’s that they don’t trust strangers with their lives.
That’s not entirely irrational.
I don’t have a fear of flying, but I think that’s probably the most rational “phobia” in the world.
I think fear of heights and claustrophobia are probably the two most rational phobias.
Homophobia (as in, fear of the same, not fear of da gheys) is probably the most rational phobia. Other humans are dangerous.
People who trust in themselves and their own judgement–that’s just not a good foundation for legitimately neurotic.
A bunch of these gizmos would work better than a border wall:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardium
the most heavily armored vehicle in the world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namer
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amer has been designed for survivability and rapid repair, with modular armor, V-shaped belly armor pack, and NBC protection.
According to Brigadier general Yaron Livnat, they are more heavily armored than the Merkava IV tanks: “The weight saved by eliminating the turret was ‘reinvested’ in beefing up the armor.”[20]
From 2016 onwards, it is planned for some of them to begin to be equipped with a Trophy active protection system.[21]
Israel’s defense ministry stated in 2015: “The Namer is considered to be the most protected armored combat vehicle in the world, which proved its abilities during fighting in Operation Protective Edge against many threats.”
…
Namers took part in Operation Protective Edge. During the fighting, Namers (which at the time were not fitted with an Active Protection System) were hit multiple times by RPGs and ATGMs, including suffering direct hits by 9M133 Kornet ATGMs, but the vehicles emerged undamaged and in no instances was the armor penetrated or injuries caused.
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Asiago and Cabernet, breakfast of champions.
Don’t know how many people are around, but here are your titties.
http://archive.is/8cQlI
I wouldn’t ever miss your hard work.
Was going to say obviously #11, until I saw 15… hot damn.
19 and 31 are allowed to join in as well.