I’ve avoided pro football for some time now due to the assholery of a large group of players. But I’ll touch on it a bit today. Well Zeke is back on suspension. Pretty sure Jerry ain’t gonna like that. And file this under good news: Richard Sherman can dedicate more of his time to kneeling, making up bullshit stories about police interactions and accusing the owners, one of which pays him millions a year, of being despicable human beings akin to slave owners. Seriously, fuck that guy. He’s the poster for asshattery.
He’ll probably say the police had him proned out tomorrow.
In the world of soccer, Croatia thumped Greece in the first leg of their playoff. They should feel good heading to Athens with a handsome lead on aggregate. Meanwhile, the Swiss topped Northern Ireland 1-0 after a controversial penalty. The away goal was crucial. Second leg in Basel on Sunday.
On the frozen ponds, The Oilers beat the Devils. The Flyers topped the (somewhat) faltering Blackhawks. The Wild go crazy on the Canadiens. The Blues beat the woeful Coyotes in a shootout. The Flames torch the Red Wings. The Ducks fuck up the Canucks. And last but not least, the Lightning blast the Kings.
And now…the links!
The Roy Moore thing has been beaten to death since yesterday so I’m not going to bother linking to it. I’m acknowledging it as a news story, but I’d sure like to see some corroboration beyond “mom said she remembers her daughter talking about an older guy 30 years ago”. Let’s see how it plays out. But in my opinion, the GOP would be wise to ask him to step aside now and then offer to bankroll his lawsuits against the people making the statements if they’re untrue.
Is this gonna be like Bicentennial Man, but in reverse? Because I’d like to see that if it at least made me feel like I got those two hours of my life back.
Fat, drunk and stupid apparently IS a way to go through life.
Don’t make him angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. Especially if you’re his wife or a waiter.
Remember this the next time some gun-grabbing dips hit says the “good guy with a gun” thing is a fallacy and that we’re all going to have to give up some freedoms to be safe: and be sure to tell them that using that logic, they believe its ok for this girl to be kidnapped just so they can feel safe in their retarded, progressive little mind. Then tell them to eat a turd.
Without this hard-hitting journalism, our Democracy would surely die in darkness. Its the #2 most popular story on the site, otherwise I’d dismiss it as a puff piece. Well, a soft hit piece anyway. And the comments…don’t enter the comments. You’d think this was some huge diplomatic faux pas like if he took a dump on Abe’s desk with cameras rolling. And these cretinous people wonder how Trump won in the first place. Maybe its because they cover every single thing he does to death and most people find their hyperventilating completely unwarranted.
Trump’s fault, obviously.
I can’t believe this even made the front page in Boston. Try to remember it now, because as strong as that cop union is, it’ll probably be the last anyone hears of the review except for the suspension without pay, but one that allows for additional overtime in the preceding and following weeks so the cop essentially gets a free vacation.
Once again, the city of Chicago finds a way to fuck businesses and consumers in an effort to fund their own failed systems and the pensions of those who operate them. Why the hell anybody would want to live there is beyond my comprehension.
Well its certainly not the job for this Glib. But there will be ample Mexicans, ass sex (if desired) and weed (if desired). So fire up those resumes. It might be a perfect fit for another one here.
I tried to avoid it, but I knew the week would end with this track.
Have a great end of the week. And a better weekend.
Front picture – Not how you smoke salmon or turkey.
Can I get a ruling? Is this technically a first?
Of course, how else would the dancing 1 appear?
You can rewrite history, but you can’t change the truth, Stalin!
Yes, but he can certainly change the editor of Pravda.
You know who else fell in a bunker…
Mike Stivic?
+1 Meathead
And we have a winner
Jayne Cobb?
Archie?
(Edith had a big vagina)
Google “Mike Stivic”
lolollll!
Having only read the book, I can say that this does not make sense. How badly did they screw up the film?
Have you ever had a broken bone reset without anesthesia? Watching it was more painful than that.
I’ll take your word for it (and the unanesthatized bone-setting too)
Wonder how they got Abe out of that bunker. Flamethrower?
Naw, they’ll leave him for a few decades, then have an old comrade stop in to tell him the war is over.
Some things tickle me. That made me laugh out loud at my desk.
*rises, bows deeply*
It took me a minute, but I got. You’re an awful person for making me laugh at that.
That is straffinrun’s specialty.
いいね！
RIP, Higgins.
Oh my God.
Did they ever reveal if Higgins was really Robin Masters?
Yup, in the series finale, he finally fessed up. It was a bit lame.
Magnum calls him on it in the final episode, and he alludes to Magnum being right, but you never got a definite yes. Maybe they were planning a movie or something, but that question was never answered.
Damn, I was watching a few old Magnun episodes the other day and wondered if Hillerman was still around…
I miss good shows like that. These days it is all proggy porn and posturing shit that just make you wonder if it wouldn’t be better for the entire entertainment industry to die a horrible and painful death from an ass infection of some kind.
I loved him as Higgins, but a favorite was his “dual-role” in Paper Moon.
“Oh, blow it out your ass, Howard.”
Both of the great Blazing Saddles supporting actors gone now.
You’re not *at* the bottom of the list, you *are* the bottom of the list. – Up the Creek
One of my favorite dumb movies from the 80s
I thought I was the only fan of that film. May I also suggest, if you are not already familiar with it, Surf II: The End Of The Trilogy.
https://youtu.be/ip8b0FU4mwU
Looks like my kind of movie – Unfortunately, doesn’t look like it made it to DVD, at least netflix doesn’t have it. I’ll have to check the torrent sites. Thanks
If you’re justifying the assault on Rand Paul because you don’t like his politics, you’re an a**hole
There is no standard of legality, morality or decency that justifies that application of force under those conditions.
I think this goes beyond legal or decency. What kind of person actually finds joy in another human being being attacked and hurt by a criminal simply because they are butthurt about not getting their way politically? I can understand people living under the yoke of the typical lefitst tyrannical government entities the left always pine for restoring to violence against violent tyrants. But this shit is just a sign that we have too many people not ready for adulthood.
“It’s okay to punch Nazis.” Or anyone I don’t agree with because anyone I don’t agree with is a Nazi.
Pretty much sums up what these people are telling each other…
Yes, the left has been glorifying political violence, which is also known as terrorism, and many appear to relish it. But don’t forget we have been known to fantasize, however abstractly, about politicians we disagree with falling into woodchippers.
Somehow I doubt WaPo will be reprinting that.
I keep hearing how he had a compost pile. I have a compost pile. It doesn’t smell. and It’s not very noticeable. Even if compost piles are against the HOA regulations there for some reason, how would anybody even know, unless he has it on his front lawn or something?
busybodies always know what their neighbors are doing, regardless of the effect.
Oh god this
^^^
Furthermore, the correct procedure is to turn an offender in to the HOA through the established guidelines, not to go berserker mode.
And since multiple HOA board members have publicly said that there was never a single complaint filed, this entire line of justification is little more than an attempt to keep him from being charged by the Feds.
The guy sounds like a true scumbag and I’d like to see the book thrown at him, but should you get a harsher penalty for assaulting one of the king’s men than if you had assaulted a regular peon?
If he did it with a political motivation in order to keep Paul from performing his duties as an elected official, then I do think additional charges are in order.
I get your point and agree mostly. Problem is that any assault on a senator or congressman could be argued to meet those conditions.
Meh…get in a bar fight after you both had a few too many, and are arguing about a ball game… No.
I MUST STOP THE TRUMPENHITLER’S MINIONZZ!!!! Yes.
What Swissy said.
Yeah, okay. When you see someone whack Pelosi upside the head with a shovel, I’m remember this, though.
Exactly – but self-defense against zombies is allowed.
Punctured lung and death would’ve been funnier.
/derp
The first half of the tweet is so bad, you almost miss the last part:
We’re building a civilization here
WTF? Never mind the delicious contradiction with the latent desire to beat people you don’t like. No, no, no. According to the New Republic, we don’t presently have a civilization. Apparently, it’s Mad Max out here, or something. Forget Somalia, just look out your own window! Total barbarity and privation.
Of course, you probably don’t even have windows, because there’s no civilization in place to have sustained the infrastructure necessary for industrial glassmaking. I think my entire house is about to implode, if only to close the massive gaping maw that is Jeet Heer’s cognitive dissonance.
‘Weird hotels’ staffed by robots to add 10 outlets mainly in Tokyo
Sex robots included with the cable package?
You get all the cable you want, if you’re into that kinda thing. /NTTATWWT
The allegations of sexual abuse of anyone famous or Republican is now officially out of control.
Charlie Sheen Accused Of Raping Corey Haim When The Late Actor Was Only 13
Good luck proving you didn’t rape the dead boy.
Oh, come on! He wasn’t dead, at the time!
*blinks rapidly…begins frantic applause*
I think we need a spreadsheet to keep track of who’s accused of what.
I had a laugh the other day at some show promotion I saw on TV for a leftard late night show, where the host was trying – desperately I add – to pretend the problem here was that people now pointing out the hypocritical left was again projecting their own faults on others, were the ones being hypocritical about this. The fact that people not members of the left are willing to throw their own under the bus on barely substantiated accusations, mostly because they are unwilling to tolerate this shit, while the left has spent decades circling the wagons to protect their own, only to have TDS infected nutjobs now try to tear down society and the country in general, this because these snowflakes are angry they didn’t get their way in the last election, seems to have been swept under the rug.
You couldn’t make up the insanity we see now from these spoiled children if you had wanted to write strange and crazy SF style fiction.
Wow. Maybe they could be grouped into brackets like college basketball.
Let’s hear it for Mariah Carey!
Yep. The only thing I’ve seen is hearsay testimony from someone who claims that Haim told him that Haim was molested by Sheen. Corey Feldman, who should know if anyone does, issued a very tepid statement but stopped far short of an accusation.
Yeah, but at this point people are willing to believe anything about Charlie Sheen.
All you have to do to be safe from this witch hunt is to not have any serious money. Draw your own conclusion.
John McCain has drawn his conclusions without noticing a wiff of irony in his bullshit.
It is funny that the people coming out are all after the ones with money Suthen. I however am far more pissed at the fact that everyone is acting now as if access to success in Hollywood was not directly tied to sexual favors to the gate keepers. It’s not like all sorts of movies, going on several decades of the usual fare that comes from Hollywood, have made fun of the fact that some seriously clueless people – of both sexes – get to make it big only because they slept with the gatekeepers. No, I am not condoning this behavior, but I am certainly not going to let people pretend as if this revelation is some kind of bombshell nobody else could have imagined either.
It is not accidental that the most proggy virtue signaling entities tend to be the ones where some of the vilest shit happens. These people love to project their own sins onto others.
I guess have a hard time imagining why a stripper/porn-star bangin’ notorious horndog would want to molest a 13 year old boy.
Cocaine is a hell of a drug?
Apparently he is into gay pornography with young guys. This is supposedly part of the divorce documents, so take it was what it is worth.
These nitwits proved the point of the 4chaners hook, line, and sinker. The folks at 4chan were utterly upfront about their goal. They made clear that they were going to put out the most innocuously positive statement about white people they could think of. If you take offense to the statement “It’s okay to be white.”, what you’re fundamentally saying is that you don’t believe it’s okay to be white. And, by definition, that makes you an anti-white bigot. They should at least have the integrity to own it.
SPLC found more than 150 reports of white nationalists fliers and recruitment materials on campuses.
How many reports of communist fliers and recruitment materials has the SPLC found? Or is that not something that they track?
Of course by “white nationalists fliers and recruitment materials” they mean Trump signs, campus Republican organization posters, etc. etc.
By the SPLC’s standards, I’m probably a white nationalist.
You are if you think it’s okay to be white.
They had you at Steel Industry.
Where you been RAHeinlein? The whole steel industry has gone gay. Aerospace too. You know who else?
Broadway.
I’ve been out of the areospace game for a while, how bad is it?
Me too, and I’m not even 100% white. The SPLC is a fucking joke.
There the southern POVERTY law center, so I imagine communism is good for business.
It was formed by a bunch of commies pretending to be caring people, so, you go from that…
It was formed as a slush fund for Morris Dees.
Identity politics is the very definition of bigotry. How the left gets away with promoting it and not getting called and shamed about it is a mystery to me.
They do get called out and shamed for it. At the ballot box.
Did you see the election results in Virginia? Sometimes, they don’t.
Also: Barack Obama got re-elected. With fewer votes, but still.
We live in a world where despite the fall of the USSR, its pogroms to brainwash the masses into believing all the KGB peddled grievance nonsense from the early 50s on out – all so they could find pissed people that wanted to burn down the status quo – have succeeded. I hear it every time the great majority of the supposedly well educated open their clap traps. Its social justice nonsense all the time, and they are not even frazzled by the real world examples that invalidate the nonsense they have been spoon-fed to believe in. Envy of others and a desire to hobble others, even if it hobbles yourself, are the predominant feelings of the grand majority these days. Unfortunately for the rest of us, these people that have been pointing fingers at the rest of us that have not drank the kool-aid for decades, seem to have key centers of power under their control and are able to use that to prevent the tar and feathering that should come to them every time they show their true selves.
“The post said that the signs will gain media attention and “normies” ― what white supremacists refer to white Americans as ”
I’m pretty sure a normie is someone who goes with the progressive flow. And it was used derisively by 4chaners, but I don’t think 4chan is interchangeable with white supremacists.
Internet Hate Machine
I like the Bosstones. There I said it, and feel okay.
I don’t mind them. I just wanted to try and avoiding em so somebody could say “why no Bosstones, sloopy?”
Why no Toasters, sloopy?
🙂
Frakkin’ toasters….
DId they get the song title from a U2 lyric?
Why no horrible Boston songs, sloopy?
I’ll do that one week in February.
I prefer their earlier stuff, but I will admit to getting sick of this song in the 90’s, when it was on the radio nearly every hour.
I saw them open for Murphy’s Law around ’89 or so. It was fun, but their schtick wears think in short order. Their music is more befitting of a Buffalo Wild Wings in a mall food court than it is of a punk show.
That’s the impression that I get.
::sounds the Swissy klaxon::
*plugs ears, narrows gaze*
86) Ach! Greenland is burning! It’s unprecedented! Global warming is here! Time to panic! Lots of articles lately on this!
Oh, wait a minute: the fire only “cover[s] around 1,200 acres (about two square miles).”
Still, it’s unprecedented! There’s never been something like this in Greenland before! Panic, right?
Wait: “since reliable satellite-based fire detection records began in Greenland in 2000.”
Since 2000. I see. And from another article in the Independent, I find: “wildfires were not unknown in Greenland with reports of a major one taking place in 1966”
So, a small fire, with reports in decades past of other probably comparable fires, but only a few years of real scientifically measured observations. But, global warming?
What I actually learned from this is that there are forests in Greenland.
This. As a lifelong geography buff, I was never curious enough to look into what level of vegetation covers Greenland.
Vikings there grew barley in the eleventh century, too, up until the little ice age.
I knew that.
I didn’t know there were trees there today
Kinda weird how they keep talking about corn, sometimes in the same sentence as barley. Presumably they’re not referring to maize.
You can see Caesar’s writi ngs make reference to corn. Most certainly not maize.
“The word corn derives from Old English and is used to describe any small, hard particles or grains.[3] In the case of “corned beef”, the word may refer to the coarse, granular salts used to cure the beef”
But, global warming?
Well, fires are hot.
This is page one of their playbook. Sensationalize some common but little known occurrence as uncommon and tout it as proof that their scam is not a scam. Global warming is the very definition of a scam as is this tactic. It is absurd really.
“Across the entire Arctic, forests are burning at a rate unseen in at least 10,000 years.”
Bullshit. Complete bullshit. Let’s have a look at some ice cores and see how many layers have smoke particles in them, how much smoke particles and how frequently that occurs in the record. I am guessing this is pretty common.
They tried this shit with tundra fires in alaska a couple of years ago. The people that live there wanted to know what the fuck they were talking about. Tundra fires are common and had been occurring as long as any of the locals could remember. The geological record confirmed that.
I cant wait to hear what dipshit climate barbie has to say about this. I bet it will be gold.
“dipshit climate barbie”
I like it
Strange they would say that given the artic, and where I currently live, were under ice 10,000 years ago. I can certainly see how a (generally) constant warming from that period to now would see a (general) trend of increasing fires.
*checks link and sees mother Jones*
Oh, I see the problem…
As usual the paper they refer to has some merit, but they willfully misinterpret the results.
I am a forester and work in the sub-boreal forests that evolved under regular forest fires, so this is something I actually feel competent speaking about.
It hasn’t been this warm in Greenland since the Vikings landed!
Watch out for Vikings, is what you’re sayin?
Bigfoot 911 founder shares bigfoot research at Patrick Beaver Memorial Library in Hickory
STEVE SMITH HAVE LARGE MUSCLE, IF YOU KNOW WHAT STEVE SMITH MEAN!
*applause*
RUSSEL THE LOVE MUSCLE!
Pat Beaver
he heh
/Beavis laugh
That’s “Patrick” to you, jerk.
Patrick Phuk Thet Beaver. His father is from Thailand, you got a problem with that?
Bruner said some of their habits include rock throwing, wood knocking, building tree structures and building stone piles.
Wood Knocking, eh?
That’s a rape euphemism I haven’t heard yet.
DON’T KNOCK RAPING TREES UNTIL YOU TRY IT!
Ummm…I think you misunderstand…the wood in this euphemism isn’t being knocked…it’s doing the knocking
STEVE SMITH SHOW HIKERS TRUE MEANING OF WOOD KNOCKING!!
STEVE SMITH NEVER HAVE TO KNOCK ON WOOD. BUT STEVE SMITH KNOW SOMEONE WHO HAS. IN ORDER TO AVOID RAPE
IT NOT WORK EITHER!
IT NOT GOOD. THAT THE IMPRESSION STEVE SMITH GET
I’M SURE IT ISN’T GOOD TO BE RAPED BY STEVE SMITH.
There’s a Knock Knock joke in here somewhere, just have to sift through all the rape first.
He showed the audience a rock that was thrown at him during the encounter in August.
Unless that rock is embedded in his skull…
Interestingly, other humans are the only great apes that are efficient throwers. Throwing hard is all about mechanics rather than strength. Despite their strength, an adult male chimp can only throw about 30 mph, while a human can throw around 3 times as hard. It has to do with the structure of the rotator cuff and arm geometry. Other apes don’t have the same rotator cuff structure that allows for hard throws.
Look at Tim Linecum. Amazing how much torque those small guys can create.
Then can’t they go all Kent Tekulve and go sidearm?
Give me six months with a studious and athletic chimp and I’ll have him throwing 80 mph sliders.
Can you get it to wear the old goofy Pirates hat too?
Damn your speedy fingers!
*perks up*
You could?!
/White Sox GM
Nope, arm structure is wrong, it won’t work.
Also couldn’t throw with any particular attempt at spin, because they don’t have fine motor control.
Fine, then give me the chimp and Tim Wakefield for the six months and I’ll have him throwing sick ass knuckleballs that’ll be knee-bucklers.
But would the chimp’s throws be in whatever strike zone the umps are calling this year?
Since the umps have been calling strikes like dyslexic chimps, it would probably work out.
Imagine a chimp pitcher’s melt down if the ump squeezed the zone on him…
“Oh, Bobo didn’t like that call…he’s leaping up and down, shrieking at the ump. And.. oh my God, did he just fling a handful of feces at the home plate umpire?! I think he’s getting ejected for that. OH NO – he is trying to tear the umpire’s face off!!!”
Give me six months with a studious and athletic chimp and I’ll have him…
…servicing Banjos so I have more time to drink beer.
With an infinite number of monkeys throwing pitches, eventually one of the balls is going to hit Shakespeare.
You are doing important work on the bigfoot beat, LH.
Makes me wonder how many bigfoot sightings are due to psychoactive chemical hallucinations. ? ? ?
I’m just making a futile attempt to keep the Glib asses clean and unsullied… for the Warty Workout (patent pending).
THE GREATEST TRICK STEVE SMITH PULL IS MAKING WORLD THINK HE NOT REAL.
Funny how these descriptions always match what people’s fears and imaginations desire rather than reality. It looks like a monster rather than an actual wild animal. Matted hair? the purpose of hair is insulation from the elements. Furry critters spend an inordinate amount of time maintaining their coats. Those that dont do not last very long in the wild.
A giant like this would spent all of it’s time finding food (where is a 900 lb critter going to find enough to eat?) and maintaining itself. From all descriptions these things sound like they live the lifestyle of bears. Given the behavior of bears how often do they expose themselves to discovery? Yet this thing seems to exist only in people’s imagination? I think I know why that is.
STEVE SMITH ACTIVE USER OF GRUBHUB, UBER EATS AND PEAPOD. BRUSH AND BLOW DRYER SAVE TIME ON GROOMING.
You sound skeptical.
*slaps sticker on Suthen’s car*
You can’t fool me. That’s a Yeti!
Mmmm….Yeti.
Now I want an Imperial Stout.
Thinks back to what’s in the cellar… I think I’ve got some of the Espresso and Chocolate stashed away. I haven’t seen the Chai Yeti before, but if I see it, I’ll probably pick some up.
The tough decision is if I do the Gavel Slammer release at Hoppin’ Frog for Black Friday.
From all descriptions these things sound like they live the lifestyle of bears.
I’m of the opinion that any sightings that aren’t hallucinations or fabrications are people being freaked out by walking bears. On rare occasions a bear will learn to walk upright (such as if they’ve seriously injured a front paw), and from the videos on youtube that is a freaky sight that I could easily see someone mistaking for a bigfoot-like creature.
From all descriptions these things sound like they live the lifestyle of bears.
Musclebears? Leatherbears? Chubs?
It Begins: Pension Bailout Bill To Be Introduced This Week
“Borrow”.
You can’t borrow your way out of debt.
You could, and it goes something like this: “We are taking out this bond, and are going to simultaneously slash 90% of the government, relax all business and labour regulations, and cut all income taxes in half.”
In your example, it’s less the bridging loan that gets them out of debt than the fiscal restructing. That is not borrowing your way out of debt.
How about letting a country buy your T bills, pulling a false flag and then nuking them?
“YHBT YHL”
Or, let a country buy your Tbills, then reorganize under a new name.
No, no, we are the United States of Vespucci. Totally different place.
“Sorry, the USA didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
“Check with Great Britain…I saw them hanging out once in a while.”
No but you can fake an alien invasion to spur the economy. Speaking of which, are the Limeys doing just that? Ikeep hearing nonsense about aliens coming out of the UK from what would ordinarily be considered reliable sources. They have gone so far down the rabbit hole it wouldn’t surprise me.
But can you confiscate your way out of debt?
If you have enough guns (and people willing to pull the trigger).
Fire up that printing press – it will spur the economy, duh.
+1 trillion dollar coin
*sighs in frustration that didn’t end Obama’s re-election campaign*
People say that the current Commander in Chief is a fucking idiot. He isn’t the only one.
My bad, that incident was after the election it seems.
*Presidents Carter, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, and Trump, singing together*
“Maybe someday, you can join us. And the whole world will be our oyster!”
The more the print the more I love my hard assets.
FFS.
Because they weren’t guaranteed a 6% rate of return, they deserve to get bailed out to compensate for reality’s lack of compassion.
How did they do that exactly? And how were they able to with prudent oversight from the ever fiscally responsible government?
Cheap asphalt?
No doubt their ingenious moneymaking strategy involved divestments in key industries because MUH SOLAR
“NO, FUCK NO, AND FUCK YOU TOO” is the only appropriate answer.
Eddie already made the response
So how is this not taxation without representation?
I’m paying federal taxes, and those taxes are being taken to fix the fuckups of another state where I am not permitted to vote?
That ship sailed long ago, especially with local taxes. Not sure how it is where you are, but in Ohio you pay taxes in the city you work, and the city you live in.
I do live in Ohio, and I remember my mom complaining about this (working in Dayton but living in a non-shithole town about 30 minutes away).
This pension thing just strikes me as a particularly fucked up example.
God knows, if we had a libertarian neighbor we’d want to beat them.
The difference between them and us, in a nutshell.
Oh, to have a libertarian neighbor. We could talk across the fence, sipping tea and calling each other slaver when abortion came up.
Yeah. Libertarian neighbors would be the worst TV show. Look at these guys just leaving each other alone and tolerating each others decisions. worst plot ever.
Yeah but you’re forgetting the gun emplacements, concertina wire, and minefields
Real libertarians don’t drink tea!
So what’s your opinion on the destruction of the Corporate property of the East India Company in Boston Harbor?
Well, that was in response to a government edict providing the East India Company an unfair tax advantage over other merchants to be enforced by government troops. So the force in that case was arguably initiated by the government and the East India Company.
Prior to this lowered tax rate, the majority of teas consumed were noncompliant, black-market teas on which were paid no taxes. Devil’s advocate, is it not an effort at avoiding force when attempting to incentivize voluntary compliance through lowered rates?
Taxation is theft, brah.
Would you have a problem with throwing Solyndra assets into the Gulf of Mexico?
The moment the mob gets to simply overrule property rights and destroy assets, you no longer have rule of law.
You are correct, and the mob does that every day in DC.
You have very subordinated property rights. Kelo. Property taxes. Environmental regs. Etc. . What is the point?
You will get my Alokozay tea from me when you pry the mug from my cold, dead hands!
Not Swiss Miss hot chocolate? Sad.
Droste.
Tea from Jew haters, for Jew haters.
Got (((tea)))?
*glares while sipping earl grey*
Our elite doesn’t want gun control. It wants us control.
“BTW, want to know how many attempted illegal gun buyers Obama’s DoJ prosecuted out of 48,000? 44.”
It is odd that people for more gun control couldn’t care less about enforcing the existing laws.
It’s not about gun control, it’s about people control.
*cunning grin spreads across face*
You can scratch the (somewhat) – they are…
I put that in there specifically for you, Swissy. To give you hope that it’s just a blip and not a full-fledged funk they’re in.
TOO LATE!
*sobs into coffee*
I thought you were drinking tea.
Tea is for the afternoon and weekends.
I do it the other way around. A sever problem with caffeine in coffee (and chocolate) coupled with a sleeping disorder makes it so that I only drink coffee when I know I can skip a night’s worth of sleep.
A sever problem with caffeine in coffee (and chocolate)
Then you should
::dons sunglasses::
cut it out of your diet.
BOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
The Humility Hurdle
I don’t hear that from my friends because I don’t hang out with bigots. That “Lizard brain” response was the last gasp of rationality trying to tell you to get away from these people.
This. Usually, the women spouting that bullshit are unlovable Shrews known best for being the easiest cum dumpsters at the local watering hole. When you have no standards and no redeeming qualities, you end up surrounded by assholes. That’s true regardless of genitals.
What a sissy. When I hear that shit, I think “good luck without men” and excuse myself.
Your response is the difference between the reaction of chucks and betas, like the idiot quotes, and men..
If the women in your life are anything like my friends, you hear stuff like this all time.
This one should find some new women-folk.
Yep, men are assholes. So are women. Amazing.
In my experience women are far worse than the worst man you can come up with when it comes to assholery, and they do it unconsciously most of the time because of nature’s programming.
I think if you had a scale of Assholeness Men would form a pretty normal distribution looking like a regular bell curve as you rise from “Not at all an asshole” to “Complete and total asshole with no redeeming features”.
For women however you would have a small cluster on the “Not at all” side of the median, then nothing and then a much larger cluster in the “”Complete and total asshole with no redeeming features” side
Pack up your rape culture and take a hike!
This movie was like looking into the future.
To think PCU was 23 years ago.
This guy sounds like an abused spouse.
Christ on sale. The level of hypocrisy is staggering – say a bad word about Islam, and they jump down your throat. If they say “men are assholes”, you’re expected to just lie there and take it.
If they didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all.
But if you pointed out this double standard, they’d make some inane point about ‘punching down’. It’s ok to make massive generalisations about white men because that’s what Andrew Jackson and Cecil Rhodes were. It’s not ok to make generalisations about Muslims not because they’re intrinsically unfair, but because Muslims are an oppressed minority, even when they’re blowing away French satirists with AK47s.
It’s ok to make massive generalisations about white men because that’s what Andrew Jackson and Cecil Rhodes were. It’s not ok to make generalisations about Muslims not because they’re intrinsically unfair, but because Muslims are an oppressed minority…
This is especially galling, since for every Jackson and Rhodes there’s a Timurlane and Aurangzeb. I know the people who treat Muslims as an oppressed group aren’t interested in intellectual consistency, but it grinds my gears.
Urgh, I always shut that shit down. You’re welcome (even the guys who peddle collectivist bullshit about women)
Thank you IFH
Both sides can be guilty of some collectivism and generalization.
Everyone does it.
How do you say “asshole” on your side of the world?
/still can’t figure out how you don’t fall off
“arsehole”
We don’t fall off because we carpeted the entire country with old, sticky pub carpet, and drink continually to replenish its adhesive qualities
I learn something new every time I read the comments here.
The only thing I disagree with is his claim that he is not an asshole.
Yep. Look at who he hangs out with. My friends and I don’t spend our time sitting around saying ‘men are assholes’. I mean,really, how is that a fun way to spend time?
“Look honey, aint nobody forcing you to be here. See that thing over there? It’s called a door.”
Good, good…I would use “Sweety” instead of “Honey” though. It is a more condescending appellation.
‘Sugar tits’ for the best effect.
I always bust out Skunkcunt because I am an asshole.
I don’t know, when my wife starts a comment to me with “Oh, Honey…” I know that in about five seconds I’m going to be pissed off.
Jane, you ignorant slut!
With Communism, “oppression and murder IS the goal”.
The problem with Communism is not that it twisted these ideals or implemented them badly. The crime of Communism is that it took them seriously and implemented them fully, all the way to their logical conclusion. That is what people don’t want to face up to in the history of Communism.
Ugh, I can’t believe a think tank would be so stupid as to mix up State Capitalism and Communism.
Actually, the NEP first proposed by Lenin in 1921 was a form of State Capitalism — it tried to create more “free markets” within the Soviet Union to recover from the crippling civil war.]
However, it was abolished by Stalin in 1928, so lasted a mere seven years.
Surprised that people who celebrate abortion, call for NRA members to be murdered, actively support and promote bigotry, deliberately attack morality and propriety would want a system like that.
Seems like Poland is one of the few countries that actually get it.
Unlike Germany, which believes mass migration from third world countries is the only way to solve their demographic decline, Poland is encouraging couples to make their own citizens by ‘breeding like rabbits’, with the help of an educational video from the Polish health ministry.
Georgia, too:
https://ifstudies.org/blog/in-georgia-a-religiously-inspired-baby-boom
the Polish health ministry. That should be a lower case “p”.
Is this the video
Educational:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYW00cQ81WA
My family emigrated here from poland in the 1880s. We are known for having very large families. I’m one of 6 siblings and that’s about the norm. It must be a Polish thing. Either that or were all too dumb to know when to pull out.
Nah, it’s a Catholic thing. My Jewish Polish family (emigrated from around 1908-1912) aren’t like that.
“My brother Ivan was not so lucky. He was a fatality of war. He had been bayoneted to death by a Polish conscientious objector.”
‘Educational video.’ Sure.
Funny that the countries that have battled tooth and nail to keep the saracen from invading europe for centuries would have a different attitude about this latest invasion than the more western naive countries that have been mostly insulated from those invasions.
Just heard on the radio, they takin down Louis Ck for masterbating in his hotel room in 2002.
So…. When does this all end? Typically crazed witch hunts end when the accusers become the accused.
It ends with Chelsea Handler hosting The Tonight Show and Samantha Bee running Comedy Central.
Is there an index fund for distilleries?
There is an ETF:
WSKY
VICEX
Also known as “the end of comedy”.
Political correctness is a victory for absurdist humor.
I would say matriarchy followed by social collapse, but with our level of tech, it could be that going forward wealthy men can have bodycams at all times, thus ensuring that other men and honest women will not buy false accusations. The presence of incriminating evidence for decades, just waiting to fall into the hands of a hacker or government, will cause people to more scrupulously stay on the right side of the law, if not necessarily of ethics.
they takin down Louis Ck for masterbating in his hotel room in 2002.
Uh oh, I’ve masturbated in lots of hotel rooms.
Masturbating in a hotel room is a really disingenuous description. What he is accused of is incredibly shitty behavior and without consent, is sexual assault. Let’s not downplay it. Not surprised by this from yet another (self proclaimed) male feminist ally.
Everything I’ve been unable to avoid says he asked for consent. What did he do without consent?
He didn’t necessarily wait for an answer before whipping it out. That’s not consent, even if he technically asked.
Also, if it was so consensual, why did he need Becky or whatever his name was to make the women shut up?
Jesus punches Jedi Knight outside Dundee nightclub
So, Thursday then.
You’re not my father.
Nice…
Too many holy spirits?
In the name of the Father *pow*, myself *bang* and the Holy Ghost *zap*, I smite thee!
The Jedi tries to force his way past Jesus’ defenses, but–whoa!–The Messiah just baptised him with a series of right hooks!
Jesus falls to the mat! Wait! He’s back up again!
The girl who was almost kidnapped?
Umm….absolutely would.
Just be sure to check with dad first.
The wife brings sees these crazy FB postings about how people are coming up with the Wil E Coyote schemes to kidnap people and I don’t fully believe them. But here we are a documented hair brained attempt.
I’m assuming the parents are particularly proud that the daughter has some good instinct to see the situation and react appropriately. Nice job pops, your daughter really knows your love for her.
Whatcha wanna bet dad has her packin’ now?
I think it is relevant that she was wise enough to not exit her vehicle when she encountered something out of the ordinary.
I wondered if the would-be kidnappers were her classmates.
They also wanted to rob the place. They were fortunate that the father caught them outside in daylight rather than inside at night.
My mind is a kaleidoscope of whirling jagged thought fragments and images. Like this-
I’ll believe artificial intelligence is real when my spellchecker can intuit, from context, whether the word I just typed should be corrected from “there” to “three”.
Meh. An intelligent person programmed it to do so.
I agree and disagree. At some point the intelligent person programmed the machine to learn in a way that finds connections that the programer didn’t even care or even could understand. It’s like saying that humans don’t have intelligence, because at some point God made them(If you believe in a God)
*looks at links*
I don’t think humans have intelligence.
You got me there.
I can’t tell if this is a personal slight or not. But I’m too lazy to worry about it.
I think he means the usual suspects the stories in the links are talking about.
Hedley Lamarr: My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.
Taggart: God darnit, Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue prettier than a twenty dollar whore.
and Twenty dollars was a lot of money back in the Seventies. Eighteen OR Nineteen.
Err there are programs that can do just that without any hint of intelligence
That is just natural language processing and the only reason spellcheckers can’t do it is the programs that can do it require an IBM Watson Mainframe to run and can’t really process your text in real time because of networking delays. It would however be possible to have a service where you can submit a document for review and it will find/fix all such typos.
the brain is pretty damn efficient, performing the processing it does on just a few watts.
Underground coal miner Dave McLachlan has been “saved” after the Fair Work Commission found he was unfairly sacked for joining workers who stripped down to their underpants in protest against cuts to their laundry services.
more
Blue Sky Mine?
For anybody that’s interested, one of my favourite albums of all time is Midnight Oil’s Red Sails in the Sunset. It is a fucking weird album that is just a stream of any kind of leftist complaint topic you can imagine (nukes, aboriginals, taxation from the wrong Top Men) and a great romp.
I’ve always liked that album as well, even though the lyrics are a huge mess of lefty stupidity.
That one, 10,9,8 and Place without a Postcard are all terrific. And not all leftist complaint topics are per se wrong, you know, just the solutions
“Helps Me Helps You” and “When the Generals Talk” are the best tracks on the album in my opinion.
So, every Midnight Oil album?
10 minutes of standing in their skivvies? Lighten up, bosses.
Meanwhile, Trump is getting standing ovations in South Korea, gets long fine with Abe and Japan and has China intrigued.
But let’s focus on this little story about Abe falling over.
Good Morning.
Grüezi!
Nothing pisses the left off more than the fact that despite their attempts to prevent people from thinking Trump has had sort of success – especially on their behalf – he pulls off shit like this that drastically contrast how much of a loser entity the Obama administration and all its cock sucking foreign policy activities were. Proggies hate real world examples that showcase the shit they pretend to believe is just beyond idiotic. And nothing brings that home more than watching a man they consider to be an unqualified boor and a retard have success where their brown Jesus was actually seen and treated like the chuck he was.
Obama’s stupid actions in Syria alone was the work of a very stupid man who thought he was winning a game of chess.
And he wasn’t even bright enough to play a decent game of checkers Rufus. I used to joke that Obama would be the one to rehabilitate Jimmy Carter, the worst president of my lifetime, because it pissed off the proggie morons that worshiped him. Then he went and actually did it, and while the dnc operatives with bylines have done their best to protect him from this, I am certain that history will reflect Obama was amongst the worst, if not the worst president we have had, not just domestically, but on the global stage.
Someone told me “the worst thing about Trump is that he’s making us look like fools to the rest of the world“. That doesn’t even ring true now.
And I find it odd that so many people have this idea that the president has some obligation to the rest of the world other than respecting their rights as sovereign nations. The president’s job is to manage the functions of the executive branch.
Progs who know nothing about Japanese politics putting Abe in a good light are perpetually amusing. Not that I think he’s that bad but he’s very much a shitlord.
Well, he might get them to repeal article 9 which would be a real win in spite of all his other terrible policies.
I keep hearing how smart (I think one of the terms they used was ‘well-spoken’) Richard Sherman is but each time I hear him he sounds like an idiot. How dumb are the other players if the media considers Sherman smart? Gee. how stupid are the media?
Mr. Peabody was the smart one, anyway.
Dude…you are killing it this morning!
*prolonged ovation*
But he dressed up as a Potterverse wizard! That shows he’s well read.
Duh. Stanford. 😀
but, but.. Stanford
Yeah, he was definitely accepted to Stanford for his academic prowess.
Stanford plus his ability to make his nonsense sound profound?
Some bullshit about Stanford as if he studied anything remotely rigorous. Plus he once “destroyed” Skip Bayless.
*EDIT FERRY FINDS NO LINK*
Much like you “destroyed” your link?
Stupid fruit based mobile device…it wasn’t that funny anyway.
The creator of #MeToo is ready to move forward
something mob something rule
The names of perpetrators don’t matter anymore
Gee, I wonder why?
Perhaps she is a perpetrator, given the new, awesome, standard of sexual violence.
Given the new, awesome, standard of sexual violence, everyone is a perpetrator.
I think that the problem is that the perps seem to all be proggies and she now realized that eventually this stupidity will come full circle and destroy her and her movement?
It’s time to focus on the systems that allow sexual violence to flourish.
So, as always, free stuff for some and reduced rights for others. Free stuff will be magical police-summoning panic buttons and a vast array of sexual violence prevention educators. Loss of rights will be all males age 12 and over having to attend mandatory yearly sexual violence prevention education.
“The time to move is now.”
The time to move to what? my guess is communism, because that’s where all these awareness campaigns inevitably lead.
I wonder if she’s aware that she’s massively reduced the chances of any positive action being taken against genuine criminals? Almost certainly not – she’d probably have a tantrum if you suggested there’s any such distinction.
#metoo
This chick wants to move on because everybody getting hammered for this is on the left side of the spectrum.
I cannot believe otherwise.
Roy Moore?
zzzzzzzz….wait what? who was talking? *shrugs* zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzz
Yeh. That won’t end well. Most of these alleged assaults happened in Hollywood (and probably in politics) two places people live in a bubble. To project that onto the general population is misguided.
If it was truly about justice she wouldn’t be saying that.
Now it’ll cross into witch hunting and enabling nut jobs.
And universities.
It’s going to be interesting to see how it turns out with tenured professors who banged undergrads. After all of Hollywood gets torched, I assume that’s where the next purge will be.
I always tell proggie communism loving morons, especially the ones in academia, that Pol Pot knew how to handle these uppity educated types like them the best.
It has already started. They are taking names off chairs etc. See, for example Jay Fliegelman at Stanford. In that one at least, Stanford clearly knew about it.
It has long been a problem, not just at Penn either. How many people knew about the kids, yet did nothing?
I think we’ve already entered the witch hunting stage.
The patriarchy – code for Western Civilization. I wonder what she plans to do about the patriarchy and what system she thinks should replace it? It’s a mystery so far.
Huh. I wonder what would happen if we handled murder that way. “There will always be another murderer, so let’s not try to find or prosecute them, and instead implement a bunch of mad social science experiments in the hopes that one of them will suddenly magically stop people from being bad”.
The most excellent part of that “kidnap girl” story is the picture of the guy’s ’57 chevy station wagon hearse. I want one.
Also, would have been even more satisfying if she had just shot their dicks off herself.
Did you skip past the pic of the daughter?!
But let’s focus on this little story about Abe falling over.
Trump had his caddy sneak around behind Abe on all fours, and then pushed him over.
I thought it was the 8 sakes he had before the round?
Then Trump answered his golf bag phone.
“I hear this place is restricted, Abe, so don’t tell ’em you’re Jewish, okay?”
So basically, you think they should let the mere accusation of wrongdoing destroy a most likely innocent man’s career? Essentially just let it work? I couldn’t disagree more.
You’re correct. His best bet would be to attack the accusations Trump style, assuming they are not true. Loudly call anyone who pushes this story a liar and public ally question their motives.
I wish that were the case, as it was with trump. But I don’t see how t playing out the same way. Trump ran in circles where the lefties never dared call out his boorishness with too much vigor because, let’s face it, based on the recent revelations of their behavior, he could have buried them. Moore has no such power and no such base of anti-establishment support like Trump.
The elections aren’t similar enough for the same defensive strategy to play out with the same results.
Again, just my opinion. And part of it might be fueled by thinking Moore is an odious person that would really like us to be a theocracy where “sins” are criminalized as are any vices deemed antisocial. That way of thinking needs to go the fuck away.
I don’t care for Moore at all. I do wish that he, and anyone else, would loudly and agressively attack
attack any outer that is pushing false allegations. The only way to get this stuff to stop is to fight it tooth and nail.
That last part is what I think is clouding your judgment on this issue. Because you don’t like Moore, you say he should just step aside. Would you say the same thing if some woman said “ZOMG, Rand Paul sexually molested me during eye surgery 20 years ago!”? I’m going to guess that you wouldn’t.
You’re almost certainly right. I’m being a hypocrite about this, I’ll admit it.
I think Moore is that bad. I know I should be more principled, and I’ve tried to be.
/no snark
I base that opinion on two things:
1. The accusations will not stop and the media will beat the drum endlessly, hurting his chances at winning. And the only way he can address that is to constantly deny the accusations, which will drown out anything else he has to say.
2. He’s poison to the GOP. He needs to go away or they risk losing that race and a seat that should never even be close to going blue.
they risk losing that race and a seat that should never even be close to going blue.
I think I may see a motive for the accusations…..
Agreed..
People on team red need to follow Trumps example on these things and not cave in if the accusations are bogus. What I hope they don’t end up doing is throwing themselves on the mercy of the crowds, like the leftists do (I will go to rehab to deal with my sex problem!), hoping to get a break. They will never get that. But I agree that if the accusation is a lie, you fight it and call the other side out on their lying. Too many people have been destroyed by lies for which there never was any kind of justice later.
Indeed. I don’t remember who it was I saw post this in one of yesterdays articles, but I completely agree with the sentiment. There have been so many false accusations thrown around at men for many years now that have ended up destroying their lives that my complete knee-jerk reaction is the guy is innocent and the woman is full of shit.
sweary pencils
Too Cool to Do Drugs
Woman sentenced to prison for marrying her mother
I mean…
The DHS worker said Patricia Spann never reported that she had married her biological son in Comanche County in 2008. That marriage was annulled in 2010 after the son described it as incestuous.
Cue banjo. Fuck.
“Patricia Span also was once married to her biological son.”
Ok then.
Has anyone seen Oedipus lately?
That mother previously married her own son, so she had to marry her daughter to avoid accusations of favouritism
Glad she didn’t have triplets. *Shudders*
“Patricia Spann told the investigator that she lost custody of Misty Spann and her other two children when they were children but reconnected with them in 2014. The mother reportedly told authorities that she and Misty “hit it off.””
I can’t imagine how she lost custody of her children in the first place….
Dear God, looking at that picture I’m wondering how she even has any kids. Who’d procreate with that? *barf*
Global Warming, folks:
Researchers at NASA have discovered a huge upwelling of hot rock under Marie Byrd Land, which lies between the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ross Sea, is creating vast lakes and rivers under the ice sheet. The presence of a huge mantle plume could explain why the region is so unstable today, and why it collapsed so quickly at the end of the last Ice Age, 11,000 years ago.
I don’t think this was a recent discovery. I remember back in the 70s when I was in school that this precise subject came up in a geography class, not just about Greenland, but about Antarctica. I am sure the cultists will ignore this, because there is no way to push the political solution they really are after if man is not behind the whole world ending shame the cult peddles.
Scientists have discovered that increasing amounts of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere raises the temperature of the planetary core. News at 11:00.
Libertarian, council member
Obviously needs some broken ribs to put her in her place…
Sounds like an a**hole to me.
The idiot who started this is GQ’s Jack Moore.
Not very Gentlemanly of them, eh?
So when does someone break her ribs for using roadZ?
Good for her. I still think infiltrating the GOP makes more sense, but it’s nice to see some small successes.
This is a slanderous hit piece, we know that there are no libertarian women.
It’s a day late, but guess they must have sat on that Abe golfing story – was hoping based on the date that something like that happened to Xi. Show the people what it really looks like when your gov’t is built with feet of clay. Course, it’d probably be blocked/banned/etc but that’s why we have the interwebs.
Did Trump throw Koi food at Abe in his bunker? That would be a travesty.
The first-year council member’s laissez-fare attitude on property rights is a key reason the council has spent part of 2017 reconsidering its bans on short-term home rentals and accessory dwelling units.
But that’s anarchy!
Myself and some associates are going to this ‘Stifling of Free Speech” discussion in Toronto tomorrow, featuring Jordan Peterson, Gad Saad, and Orin Amitay. It was cancelled back in August when it was to be hosted at Ryerson, much to the delight of the social justice commies in Toronto, who equate these professors with Nazis …. even though Saad and Amitay are Jews, and the lady organizing the event is/was a Sikh.
Here is Sarina Singh’s website, which includes details of the re-booked event.
I’m going early to make fun of any idiot communists who show up to protest.
I will venture to file a report here on Saturday night or Sunday.
*Edit Fairy helps, and asks for report to be sent in as a submission to the site, plz*
Link don’t work brah.
Works for me. Took awhile to load for some reason, but it’s coming up.
Maybe if Edit fairy removes some clothing the link might work for you guys?
She’s one of the top two edit færies, along with the THICC blonde.
*Giggles*
From the library – recommended light book reading: The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History
It’s a story of Malcom Bricklin, communism, manufacturing, and trying to compete in the American market with a subpar product. Worth reading just for the descriptions of socialist Yugoslavia and their top-down approach to building cars. Also Bricklin was a real con man, building businesses with grand aspirations but very little cash flow. Of course that didn’t stop him from living the high life. He did, after all, bring Subaru to America. And fail to make his own sports car, among many other business ventures that went bankrupt.
Great review, thanks for linking! It sounds like Bricklin was Musk’s sensei.
Lol.
Justly deserved.
Reminds me of the Adobe.
Ha – that skit gets a mention in the book.
“Fact check: Trump recycles flawed gun talking point”
Usually to perform a fact check requires you to know the facts. *Banging head on desk*
USA Today trying to do serious talk about guns so soon after their chainsaw bayonet infamy?
Shameless liars are shameless.
derp. At least USA Today’s scare-infographic on assault rifle accessories is good for a laugh. The chainsaw attachment is the best.
“That’s an opinion, but it’s worth noting that other cities – some with less stringent gun laws – have higher rates of gun violence.
Experts also warn against cherry-picking cities to score political points”
You can’t make the cognitive dissonance up.
USA today recycles flawed gun talking point back at Trump.
“States with a higher number of firearm restrictions have lower firearm deaths.”
Delusional is a state.
What is the official flower of the Commonwealth of Delusional?
Peyote or salvia.
Saliva? Gross.
salvia divinorum
Vermont.
But wait, Chicago has laws against owning dangerous guns without a government permission slip! How can someone physically bring these guns into the city limits? Why aren’t THE LAWS stopping them?!?!?!
And there is some evidence that most of the guns confiscated from crimes in Chicago come from out of state.
There are three other states (i.e., not including Illinois) within an hour’s drive of Chicago. How is this news and/or why the fuck does it matter?
You see because the guns aren’t manufactured in Chicago, it’s not the fault of gun control legislation that it does nothing to stop violence.
Why don’t they go on to explain why the bordering states with the lax gun laws have lower crime rates than Chicago?
They’re just exporting their gun violence, duh!
/derp
There’s nothing worth killing in Gary, Indiana?
Yesterday at the dog park, my dog was part of a four dog pile up. She was running with two other dogs when the three crossed paths with a fourth dog and they collided. Unfortunately, the fourth dog was a Great Dane. She got smushed and we had to go the emergency vet. Sprained shoulder and strained ankle. Happily, she is already limping less.
I hope I never, ever, hear her scream like that again.
Marmaduke. Christ, what an asshole. (I think I’m doing this right)
She was just chasing a ball. It’s just that she weighs 130 pounds and my dog weighs 70.
Those are big dogs. I haven’t seen a dog bigger than a toaster in over a decade. The Great Dane probably even felt a bit guilty, no?
What a fucking asshole!
Poor puppy. I’m glad she’s ok.
What breed?
My dog is greyhound. She loves, looves running with other dogs.
Great dogs. It cracks me up, though, that dogs that fast are so lazy the rest of the time.
I grew up with an Italian Greyhound (the wee tiny version of the racing dogs). She was beautiful and kind and loyal and fast as greased lightning; she killed a couple snakes, a rabbit and quail or two, and harassed the turtles and armadillos until they fled the yard. She also got along quite well with the cats. Great little girl.
Sorry to hear your dog was injured. Had the same thing happen to one of mine. She is a small, scruffy mixed terrier. She ran with the big dogs when she was only about 8 inches tall and got stepped on. Poor thing fared worse than yours, it shattered her hind leg. Surgery, the cone of shame and much doting was required but she fully recovered.
My 50-pound boxer/pit/lab?-mix has *twice* flattened his 80-pound rottie buddy via high-speed ramming attacks. /proud dad (Seriously, his head must be solid bone – he’s walked straight into cars while distracted, and he just bounces off without noticing.)
When I was a kid, we had a white Boxer about the same size as yours. I called him to me, and boy was he excited – ran over and, to my recollection, didn’t even slow down. Knocked me flat on my ass. It was funny though, and I like to think he did it for that reason.
He loves kids, and kids love him – but I have to be careful, because not every parent appreciates having their darling get flattened by a dog, even one as handsome as him. (I think it’s a good life lesson for the kid, personally.)
One time at the dog park my German Shepherd (105 pounds) was running full tilt with a Rottweiler (85 pounds) and as I noticed they were heading straight at me, I moved a step forward to get out of their way, just as they adjusted the same direction to avoid me. So they ran full tilt right into my legs, flipped me up in the air onto my back and kept right on going like nothing happened. Fucked up my knee for weeks.
STEVE SMITH TAUGHT FUR-FRIENDS THAT MOVE
I had that happen. Two dogs were running and I wasn’t watching them. They were each maybe 40 lbs, hit me on the outside of my left legs just below the knee. One minute I was standing there, minding my own business, the next I was hitting the ground. I’m lucky I wasn’t seriously hurt. The stoner guy who helped me up said “are you okay? That was epic”.
http://imgur.com/8zYRrqu
*narrows gaze and raises sights*
Ok. The highways suck. I’m more worried about the truck on the trailer than ever.
At least I was able to drive on some routes till Indy.
Slippery?
Not yet. Just fucking rough road. Bumpy as hell. 70 through Indy was so bad I was going 35 and thought I’d bounce the truck off the trailer.
Last time I drove through Indiana, the highways were worse than Michigan’s, which I thought was an impossibility. The Accord I had at the time felt like it was going to bust something. Glad I didn’t take the beemer.
They spent all their highways funds on smokes and meth.
And fireworks.
Going from the smoothest road I’ve ever driven, rt 36 all the way to Indy to that was a nightmare.
I think I’ll get off asap and go north to 6 through the top of Pennsylvania until I can go north into NY and VT.
Route 6? Depending on how far East you follow it, you’ll end up in my backyard. Let me know if you need some suggestions on places to stop and eat.
Will do!
First time I drove through Indy from MI to WI, I hit a pothole so large it blew out both driver’s side tires and utterly ruined my alignment. We sat on the side if the highway for 40 minutes waiting for the tow truck, and saw the same pothole take out probably 7 or 8 other cars.
I loathe Indiana’s roads. Loathe.
It’s a good idea to strap down a load on a trailor. just saying
I’m thinking about trying to get the rear axle ratcheted down. The front is super solid.
And check the straps often. All of that vibration tends to stretch or loosen them.
Just did that again. We had it loosen up in the first hundred miles or so, since then it’s been much better! I was worried after that highway stretch though.
These euphemisms.
I’ve avoided pro football for some time now due to the assholery of a large group of players.
There are libertarian NFL players?
Chris Kluwe?
Nope. Just an asshole.
Yeah probably.
I think there’s another player, maybe on the bills?
Two libertarian NFL teams would be rather boring. The line of scrimmage would like the DMZ.
And the linebacker who sacks the QB gets shot by the TE.
I’m straining to remember, but wasn’t there a football movie where a guy shoots another player on the field in the opening scene?
Not the intro to “No Escape”?
Every time I see No Escape on Netflix, I get disappointed because it’s not that movie.
The Last Boy Scout?
Yes.
^This^
“Ain’t Life a Bitch!”
The Last Boy Scout
This shit is really starting to piss me off:
Finally, as we have written before, there is no evidence that gun control laws result in higher murder rates. In fact, studies suggest the opposite: States with a higher number of firearm restrictions have lower firearm deaths
Bait and switch. Suddenly, it’s “firearm deaths” which include suicides and accidents. There can be no doubt, if there were no firearms, there would be no such thing as a firearm death. But that’s not where we are. And making these flagrantly dishonest comparisons of two different categories leads me to ignore everything the “gun safety mob” has to say.
They have no interest in honesty. They accuse Trump if cherry picking cities, right after they do the same.
Gun grabbers are liars and lying liars lie.
What is the gun crime rate like in England? Up or down? What are their gun laws like? How about Mexico? Which staters have the highest and lowest rates of gun crime? What are their laws like?
Looking at all of that it starts to look like guns have little to do with any of it and culture, everything.
You cant have my guns motherfuckers.
You cant have my guns motherfuckers.
Really all that needs to be said.
Due to schedule and timing (and so many movies in the theater this weekend, next review will probably just be a wrap-up of the festival screenings I’m catching) – with the originally planned K-review going up on Thanksgiving weekend. (drill next weekend). Hard to try and get ahead of the problem when you have my “work ethic” ;p
So will try and work something up using a few different video elements to cover all 4 flicks – Hitchcock’s “The Lodger” (1927) tonight, “Beetlejuice” and Takashi Miike’s “Blade of the Immortal” tomorrow, and Chaplin’s “The Immigrant” (with 2 additional 1917 single reel shorts) on Sunday.
Going to be a little chilly tonight and tomorrow night, but I still plan on doing a bit of trekking between theaters, and to kill time and check out some restaurants closer to campus (since I don’t intend to pay for parking). Should work out on the whole.
Re: Richard Sherman. I don’t like to see anyone get injured, but man that guy is an asshole. I can’t decide if I’m happy or not. I’ll have to think on that for a while.
In the mean time, here’s my all time favorite picture of Sherman.
Here’s my favorite picture of Sherman
*Thinks about clicking link*
*Thinks about likelihood LH named his manhood ‘sherman’*
No, he calls it Pee-body.
*narrows gaze*
+1 Uncle Billy
This is the best Sherman.
Sherman or Sherman?
My personal favorite.. I’m going to miss Fitz.
Hey I got great news of a new movie I’m sure all Glibertarians will be lining up to watch the Wendy Davis biopic!!!
Barf
Only if they make it into a porno.
was hoping for a Wendy O Williams biopic
That reminds me, the other day I heard the writers of ‘The Big Short’ were some kind of progs or something along those lines.
Which explains why the government’s role in the scandal barely got mentioned.
I reduced my intake of Hollywood movies drastically. Aside from the fact they fail to pique my interest, I just don’t want to give people like Affleck and Damon money.
Knock it off with the didactics already.
I listen to LeBatard in the morning and it just blows my mind how ill-informed he is because he’s set on accepting the ‘white privilege’ narrative. It’s a shame because he ain’t stupid and his show is great. He just bought the bit is all.
To this day, I still have people smugly tell me that the financial crisis “proves that you can’t just let the market do whatever it wants”. It’s aggravating.
Finance and healthcare: the two most fucked up industries in America and most likely to be brought up as an indictment of free market ideas, and also the two most heavily regulated (volumes and volumes of laws, price controls, licensing, and major players in both industries being outright government institutions).
It’s pretty easy for me to see.
The markets that the governmemt interferes in the most are always the most dysfunctional markets.
healthcare
finance
education
drugs
Nice speech. Wish we could get this guy into politics over here.
https://youtu.be/h0-cgs51zEA
What an amazing man.
“You confiscating my home, and forcing me to live in government housing in no way morally obligates me to help fund the welfare state.”
Excellent once that commie shut the hell up.
Thanks for that
I wish we could hear her response
I’m sure she’s making the “he’s crazy” gesture to the audience.
Very nice. I approve of this message.
That guy is cool. Balls of steel.
He’s a regular Bill Weld.
/sarc
Interstate 70 is a goddam nightmare, from sea to shining sea. All that long haul truck freight should be riding the rails.
*crosses arms, glares at sky*
Well I’m guessing they closed the pass W of Denver already (tunnel snowed in, etc?) – but the rest of it should be fine. 70’s better than some routes.
We stayed off 70 for a reason. 36 was the straightest road I’ve ever seen. It ended in indy for a bit, and now all the side roads are not a great path home. Highway for a bit, then back on the side roads.
65 is the same, only perpendicular.
I think there is a subsidy problem with shipping, because while I realize the last mile (or last 100 miles really) need to done by truck, it makes no sense to me that trains aren’t more cost effective for 1000-3000 mile trips.
What part of “government hates efficiency” do you not understand?
Chicago and the Illinois Tollway are trying to destroy a huge train yard to get another road into the airport. Somehow a million people used the airport everyday as is for the last 40 years and now people can’t get into the airport? It’s not like people go to that airport for entertainment, people go there because they have to – there’s no extra revenue involved in making the experience 5 minutes faster.
This is the same city that expanded the airport in order to attract huge logistics hubs on the north end and south end of it – and part of the growth on the south end was due to the train yard.
Every king, without fail, will kill his golden geese.
Lets not forget what happened to Meigs Field.
#$@% you, Daley!
Here’s my favorite picture of Sherman
Most excellent. His autobiography is well worth a read.
I’m thinking about trying to get the rear axle ratcheted down. The front is super solid.
If you didn’t already know this. Strap it down at the axles, so the suspension still works. It’ll take much of the stress off the trailer, and your straps. I always used chains at the back, and ratchet strap / comealong at the front to cinch it up. Much stronger if you have to really jump on the brakes.
Some classic ska:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3AbgBOcYHg
Is that pineapple?
https://twitter.com/SaltySc/status/928590140863320064
This is an apple.
Is there a second clip of the one guy bursting into flames?
You cant have my guns motherfuckers.
A few nights ago, I was listening to some dipshit at the other end of the bar moaning about getting assault weapons off the street and similar bullshit. I finally piped up and asked, “Why don’t we just make it illegal to shoot random strangers for no reason?”
He didn’t seem to think I was taking the issue seriously. And then I asked him who he was planning to send to confiscate my guns.
And then I asked him who he was planning to send to confiscate my guns.
A naive person will actually have to think when asked that. True believers get a statist boner when day dreaming about jack boots stomping on redneck gun owners necks.
Those shitheels imagine the cops will show up at my house and kill me if I resist. They think they can make that decision and then have someone else take the risk. I always assure them that I have no plans to shoot at guys who didn’t pass laws to confiscate guns doing as they are told. Whatever guns the cops find they can take without resistance. Then I am going to go find the douchebags who did support and pass those laws. That has an amazing effect on their attitude.
Eh, concentration camp guards were just doing what they were told too. If you willfully aid and abet your people’s oppression for a paycheck, you’re a traitor to your people and you deserve whatever’s coming your way. That said, it’s certainly a wiser idea to hit the enemy where they’re weak rather than going for a frontal assault.
Did Skynet set a writer back in time?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23631512-900-letting-robots-kill-without-human-supervision-could-save-lives/
That reminds me, the other day I heard the writers of ‘The Big Short’ were some kind of progs or something along those lines.
Michael Lewis. He has written some good stuff, but he also wrote a long adoring piece about the Ascended One (probably in Vanity Fair) after following him around for a few days with his tongue firmly lodged in Obama’s asshole.
He married well.
“Trump Thinks Scientology Should Have Tax Exemption Revoked, Longtime Aide Says”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-scientology-tax-exemption_us_5a04dd35e4b05673aa584cab
TW: HuffPo
Well, it is a fraud and its well known abuses should have led to prosecutions long ago.
We talking about Scientology or the Catholic Church?
Yes.
That could get very interesting. They’re kind of like Trump in the sense that they never let any slight go unpunished, no matter how small. Hopefully for my entertainment that turns into a major twitter war.
I don’t because it is a bad precedent.
Scientology, being a branch of science, not only should be tax exempt but should be government funded as well.
Should really just remove the tax exemption for charitable giving and non-profits altogether.
“A federal judge tossed a lawsuit Thursday that would have pushed the State Department and FBI to do more to try to track down Hillary Clinton’s emails, ruling the government has done all it reasonably could to locate the former secretary of state’s messages.
Two watchdog groups, Judicial Watch and Cause of Action, had sued in 2015 demanding the government recover all of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, saying she violated open-records laws by not preserving her messages.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, though, said the FBI did what it could, and did manage to recover thousands of messages Mrs. Clinton didn’t return herself.
“Those efforts went well beyond the mine-run search for missing federal records … and were largely successful, save for some emails sent during a two-month stretch. Even then, the FBI pursued every imaginable avenue to recover the missing emails,” wrote Judge Boasberg, an Obama appointee to the court.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/9/federal-judge-fbi-exhausted-search-clinton-emails/
That “two-month stretch” was right after Benghazi.
I wold love to see Hillary or any other governmemt criminal prosecuted for theor evil doing. Doesn’t appear to me like it’s going to happen yet.
Laws are for little people.
Funny how “exhaustive search” didn’t include a quick phone call to the NSA.
Ugh I have a 10AM meeting about replacing our current EDI package, which would mean tons of work to duplicate what we currently have.
Thank goodness I have next week off.
Do we work for the same company?
You don’t want a suite of new programs that takes more bandwidth and provides no additional value beyond theoretical program maintenance by untrained, offshored companies?
+1 The Cloud
https://twitter.com/TeenVogue/status/928842191832846336
I like how the picture is from The Bling Ring.
Not sure what the Bling Ring is. In liked the first comment “Angry feminist spotted”. I went to that girls page. Not sure how to share the specific tweet but check out her tweet about feminist fashion and the pics. Those outfits say run away as fast as you can.
https://twitter.com/PetiteNicoco?s=09
This?
https://twitter.com/PetiteNicoco/status/927208778155610114
Yeah, that’s the one
I’d posted several days ago about my frantic push to get my hands on a new passport as I’d found out the expiration date listed on the passport isn’t really meaningful. I ended up going through a private expediter — so far, so good. I sent in documents and received a new passport in a few days — for a hefty fee, of course. Fingers crossed, hopefully everything is set at this point.
I know there’s a few Liverpool fans here — my trip is ostensibly based on their CL game in Seville on the 21st. My first non-MLS/USA soccer game will be sitting in the away end of the Sanchez Pizjuan (that is, if my ticket arrives at the airbnb I had it sent to. That’s a whole ‘nother story — trying to buy tickets to this game was also a pain in the ass, as (a) you can’t print the tickets remotely, and (b) you have to have it sent to a Spanish address).
Anyone have any suggestions on places to see or restaurants in Madrid or Seville?
Have fun soccer hooligan! Was in Seville for a day after our plane went mechanical. No idea where to go in those pre-mobile Internet days nor did we have a guidebook. Just drove into the city, ended up going to a random bar, had some drinks, and drove back to Moron. Good times.
Good on ya! You’re going to have so much fun, soccer games in Europe are the bomb. I remember some park in Madrid where you can get Sangria go cups and just sit in the grass drinking and talking. Get out there! Spanish women are… imaginative.
Take a wild guess at which hateful words subway announcers are no longer allowed to utter.
They just use the phrase “tax cattle” instead.
should
It’s NYC, “ladies and gentlemen” is completely inappropriate.
Thugs and thugettes?
Bitches would be all inclusive.
Government lies at every opportunity.
Ladies and gentleman, The derp is among us
Nailed it. Time for you to move Rhywun. Come out to Colorado, we need more liberty minded (and fewer statist) Ex-New Yorkers.
This is another instance of the left pretending one of its ephemeral stances is an eternal truth. Logically, the idea that ‘gender isn’t binary’ undercuts the suggestion that being trans is actually that significant. If you believe that gender is a spectrum, then having male genitalia but many sensibilities associated with being female doesn’t really matter that much. You could, without the suggestion of surgery, dress as the opposite sex at different times of your life and still be considered male or female or whatever you like, moving along the spectrum as you choose.
In practice, though, many trans people actively aspire to be a member of the opposite sex. They don’t necessarily want to be called xer or whatever, but to be recognised as female or male depending on their choice. For my own part, I’m willing (up to a certain point) to indulge them out of politeness. Privately I may think that a man who has had surgery can’t be anything other than a simulacrum of a woman, but I wouldn’t take that attitude publicly merely to upset someone.
Explicitly banning the phrase ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ “because of the trannies” pretty much does just that, though. It says to a trans-woman “you are never going to be a woman in the way you desire”. It ignores the fact that plenty of trans people do seem to think of gender as being at least binary enough that a transition is a serious thing.
Yeah, I am perfectly willing to entertain the fantasy as long as it’s… I dunno, “complete”? E.g. there is a woman at work that I am pretty sure is actually a man but given that she looks enough like a woman and doesn’t use made-up pronouns, I’ll go along with it.
It’s the made-up genders and pronouns I won’t entertain.
Gotta be Florida Man.
Dyslexia is a ibtch
His daughter is older than him? Is this some kind of reverse grandfather paradox?
Never, ever attempt to understand redneck family trees. It never ends well.
It’s not so much a tree as it is a post.
She is actually his stepdaughter. He married the girls 30 year old mother — after dating his future daughter.
Rednecksplaining
*While in bed*
“That’s not the way your daughter does it”
“Man Arrested After Selling Farts In Jars Without A Vending License”
thechangepost.com/man-arrested-selling-farts-jars-without-vending-license/
You expect me to copy-paste to get to this webpage?
Trying to order a food allergy test and not the damn lab is balking because I don’t have a physician sign-off on it. It was all I could do to not tell them that they’re retarded and just take my damn money so I can get the results.
“Trump Thinks Scientology Should Have Tax Exemption Revoked, Longtime Aide Says”
It’s a start.
Let’s end with revoking the tax exemption for all “non-profits”
Well, I’m *supposed* to be on my way to the airport to go to Delhi right now, but I got a text about 20 minutes ago saying that my flight from EWR to DEL has been cancelled due to severe and hazardous air pollution (yuck). So I’m not going till Sunday now. TITS!
http://archive.is/SggKa
I think there is a subsidy problem with shipping, because while I realize the last mile (or last 100 miles really) need to done by truck, it makes no sense to me that trains aren’t more cost effective for 1000-3000 mile trips.
Every time the load is “touched” the cost rises significantly, according to what I have been told. Shippers want to load it once and unload it once; also, shrinkage. Thanks, Jimmy Hoffa.
“Intermodal” containerization seems to be becoming more popular. I see a lot of containers on the railroad through here. That, and coal.
Take container off train, put container on truck shouldn’t cost that much.
But maybe it does, stuff surprises me sometimes.
I wonder if the interstates were privately owned if things wouldnt shift.
Someone gilmore’d the link so I’ll reply to the later one. Did research on this too. There’s definitely a need for more intermodal yards and we’re getting better with automation when it comes to unloading ships, loading trucks/trains/etc – but a big issue is that so many of our harbors are in very “inconvenient” places for further development – ie. South Seattle, LA/Long Beach, NY/NJ. If we developed a new mega port or two on each coast – outside city limits, etc – you could work it in from scratch and develop the perfect port – they recently did something somewhat like that with the Rotterdam rebuild but I don’t recall the proximity to the original port. Of course, with the amount of dredging, etc you’d have to do to build your own from scratch, probably not going to pass any environmental assessments any time soon.
The Canucks may wind up beating us with that if they get – I think it’s “Prince Rupert” port fully developed.
So. Many, Euphemisms.
Let’s end with revoking the tax exemption for all “non-profits”
That’s what I’d do.
There is no reason a corporation organized in furtherance of the “public good” cannot reinvest everything back into their operations on their own initiative.
I’d go the other way with it. I’d extend tax exempt to all for-profit enterprises.
Preferable but unlikely. At the minimum I want those fuckers who lobby for higher taxes to be in the same boat with me. And I want the IRS crawling up their ass like it is for everyone else.
I would end the income tax.
And if we had the single land tax, I wouldn’t exempt anyone. Not non-profits, not churches, not governments. Yes, the Feds would have to write a big check to Wyoming every year for Yellowstone.
Yes, the Feds would have to write a big check to Wyoming every year for Yellowstone.
That’s an even bigger fantasy than the land tax itself! Also, why is the land tax paid to the state, and not the municipality?
/stirs the pot
Its paid to three levels in my concept, to Fed, to state and to local (county/city can fight over how to split it).
So Feds would write a check to Wyoming state and Jellystone County (just guessing at names, not gonna look it up) but not to themselves.
But then Wyoming has to write a check to the Feds and Cheyenne County (see above) for state land. And ditto city/county land.
The DC city government would get a nice check from the USA every year, wouldnt they?
Okay, I looked it up, it is Park County. I like my guess better.
The DC city government would get a nice check from the USA every year, wouldnt they?
Only if the former got some kind of independence. As it stands, the money would flow the other direction.
Or perhaps there would be no flow of tax monies between the two governments at all, since the one is really just an agency of the other.
I would end all taxes on property – including land.
Anything that penalizes people for simply existing is evil.
While we’re on the fantasy train – Optimal funding mechnism would be a fee for services actually used with no ability to ban compeditors from offering similar services.
The single land tax is a fee for deed services. And the court system protecting property rights.
No it’s not. It’s a fee on existing.
Court system gets funded by fees when a case is brought and decided.
Deed archives can be kept in multiple places and be equally validated without the threat of people seizing your property year over year.
You are assuming some sort of natural law right to land.
While I am huge on natural law, I haven’t seen an argument for land that I accept.
A head tax would be a fee on existing. A land tax is a payment to the “authority” that “acknowledges” and “grants” your “ownership” of the land. I don’t necessarily think it is the correct authority for that money, but it is hard to write a check to society.
You keep saying you don’t accetp that, and go to twisted lengths to justify your double standard between different types of property. Property is property whether it is easy to pick up and move or not.
One type of property is the result of labor, one is not.
Land just exists, there is no twisting needed to justify that difference.
So artificial islands and reclaimed coastlands are tax free in your regime of punishing those who dare to reside on the surface instead of floating a few inches off the ground?
This is also where your logical pretzel starts when we ask about how you determine this mythical “Unimproved value” that you use to determine your tax, when land that is not worked has no value, and as such should rate a $0 tax for any percentage of the unimproved value. All to avoid admitting that you can’t treat property different from property and call it “just” or “moral” as you are want to do.
Yes, although the unimproved water had some value, so not entirely tax free.
It isn’t that hard, its easier than determining the value of improved land that is done today.
I have a specific real-life example I am going to use in showing that difficulty. I acknowledge it will, like any tax system, be subject to the foibles of humanity and government. I am not an ancap, so some sort of low level taxation would be necessary. And the SLT is better than all the others.
The improved value is easy to determine – at time of sale.
In between, there’s no justification for slapping a number on it.
Your property tax is not better in any way, and does cause significant distortions to the market – penalizing those who own land for the purpose of living.
Aye yes, I forgot. You’re the single land tax tyrant. I remember now. Fuck off slaver.
J/K.
I have issues with the SLT, but it would absolutely be better than what we have now.
If for no other reason, it can’t be revenue neutral. At best, it would raise maybe 1/3 of current total government revenues. So adopting an SLT would require massive cuts in government spending.
I read an article by Rothbard the other day that convinced me that, so long as we’re going to have government, the head tax is the only one that doesn’t cause massive market distortions, create perverse incentives, and allow the government to look into every aspect of your life in an effort to find some pennies that you may have withheld from Uncle Sam.
They already assign each person an SSN at birth… It would be a million times easier to just have a database with every SSN and check if they received a payment corresponding to each number.
It goes without saying that the government should be cut down to almost nothing so that this tax would be very low.
I think the same applies to the SLT, and the head tax really is a tax on existing. You can choose not to own land, you can also choose not to live, but that truly is a perverse incentive.
You can choose not to “own” land under a Georgian system, or more properly pay to exclude others from it as the entire basis for the fig leaf of morality is that land cannot be owned, but you still need a place to live. Outside of living in a car on public roads, you’ll be paying rent, and that rent will include the landlord’s taxes. The SLT is just as broad as a poll tax, but requires far more administrative overhead. Besides, taxes shouldn’t be voluntary, the only justification for them in the first place, outside of Georgism’s singularly twisted views on property, is to provide revenue for things that people wouldn’t voluntarily pay for, to eliminatethe problem if funding the commons. Everyone feels the pinch, that’s the point.
Fair points, other than this:
Mises had essentially the same view on property.
Both acknowledge property rights to land as a useful fiction. Mises flat out states that “might makes right” was the standard property rights principle for most of history.
The ability to defend your property, be it static or movable chattels is a requisite factor in defining property rights. The fact is, the tax debate ends up boiling down to “how do we fund the outsourcing of force in defense of life and property?” That it is still “might makes right” has not changed. The pragmatic realities of society have merely distanced people from that lamentable fact.
Perhaps, but a might makes right system trends to evolve into an allodial system where property is held in perpetuity without taxes, as the lander is sovereign over their owned territory. This then devolves into feudalism, and then we reach the modern era. The historical treatment of property is interesting, but lens little support to either our current system or Georgism’s.
While other people have had similar views on property, no one has ever signed onto the entirety of Georgism’s view except Georgists. Until some other viewpoint adopts George’s views on property or states that their views are directly influenced in a positive manner by George’s, by definition Georgism has a unique view of property. This isn’t a condemnation of Georgism, if I felt like attacking it I would do so on it’s merits, not it’s popularity, it was an observation and a small tweak of your nose.
If we are going to have taxes, that is how it should be. Government spending divided by # of people in the country. Due in lump sum once a year.
If you want to see a demand for spending cuts, that’s how you get massive amd permanent spending cuts.
The SLT has the same benefits and fits in with the natural law issues of land.
With the minor issue of nobody has yet figured out how to assess the SLT in a way that doesn’t make property tax by another name. But other than that, it’s a great system.
???
Once you separate out land value from improvements, it isnt a property tax anymore.
Once you separate out land value from improvements, it isnt a property tax anymore.
Therein lies the rub. Yes, technically, many (most? all?) property tax jurisdictions already make this separation. But it’s mostly arbitrary and nobody really cares about it since they are taxed on the combined value.
Moreover, the valuation of land presently done is still heavily dependent upon demand. Demand is human, not divine. You cannot say that the tax is solely on rents accrued from the exclusionary use of God-given land when it is based upon something that did not come from God (or nature, or existence, whatever–the deity, deities, or lack thereof is irrelevant to the point).
If you cannot get at the value that precedes human existence, then you cannot rest the tax on the morality of the land preceding human existence. The SLT thus collapses into property tax, but perhaps with some stricter controls on how the tax is assessed.
s/tax on the morality of/morality of the tax on/
I’m not familiar with national park service land payments, but both the US forest service and the bureau of land management make payments to the counties through the state.
There is PILOT (payment in lieu of tax), although I don’t think it’s as much as the tax would be and of course if the Federal government decides to stop paying it, there’s not much the state can do*.
* = In theory, a national park could be confiscated by state eminent domain power, since operating national parks is not an express power of the Federal government nor is owning parkland an implied power to any of the express powers. But I am 99% sure that argument would not prevail in today’s courts because FYTW.
You mean after they pay their 30% vig to the Fedgov, then they can reinvest “everything”.
Not exactly. The only thing that really gets taxed as income in a corporation* is income held as cash and payments to the owners. I think the IRS limits the amount a nonprofit can have in cash on hand, and it has no owners per se to receive dividends and such.
* = Not counting payroll taxes and withholdings
I’d go the other way with it. I’d extend tax exempt to all for-profit enterprises.
Equal treatment, FTW!
Yes, I’d really like to go that way, but Magic Eight Ball says, “Haha! You hilarious!” on that.
Take container off train, put container on truck shouldn’t cost that much.
That’s what I meant, as opposed to the bad old days, when you had eight Teamsters doing the work of three men unloading and loading piece by piece.
I wonder if the interstates were privately owned if things wouldnt shift.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say they’d be better maintained.
Any of you northern Indiana or Chicago glibbers want to weigh in on the Indiana Toll Road (I80/90 I think)? As I recall, Macquarie has a managerial lease on it now.
The increased cost has taken some of the riff raff off the toll road.
Just for Swissy. This one is Level 5.
Fucking Hate Birds, the Birds That Hate.
Chinese Democracy
interesting story about failed ‘democratic experiment’ in China., now operating along lines of surveillance/police-state.
I can barely remember when a president last made “freedom” an actual diplomatic priority. the idea was bandied about w/ Cuba, but there were really few liberty-related conditions put on the regime in exchange for more-trade. Obama’s thing was to say, “we need to gently prod them” (while they bought him off with Green Summitt)…which the media cheered as a suprior diplomatic approach to Bush’s sterner, ‘cowboy rhetoric‘
meanwhile most china-watchers say that China has become far more repressive under Xi, with little/no comment from most foreign leaders.
The rhetoric which passes for ‘libertarian foreign policy’ suggests it aint nobody’s business what they do; and that more/freer trade ultimately is the most effective form of influence on liberalization. I think that sounds nice on paper, but don’t think its actually functional in practice, particularly with very large countries like china which effectively cordon off zones of free trade and socially-tolerant policy from the rest of the country, which remains a communist police state; if anything the former finances the latter and keeps it viable.
if anything the former finances the latter and keeps it viable.
You’re probably correct about that. However, I, not being a globalist don’t care. I want free trade with China because it is good for me and what the Chinese do to one another is their business.
Free trade with China also helps the chinese. The more capitalistic China becomes, the more the commumist dysfunction is exposed for what it is. Maybe the Chinese people will be able to reform their government eventually. Maybe they wont. Either way is not my concern.
Free trade is good because free trade is good regardless of what nations do with the profits from free trade.
i’ve never heard anyone actually specifically define what they mean by the term ‘globalist’.
apparently you can be entirely pro-liberalized-international-trade, and still non-globalist. but I’m not sure that’s how people currently use the term on twitter, so color me confused.
true. and as i said – the legacy rhetoric around libertarian foreign policy tends to be extremely skeptical of the wilsonian instinct to ‘democratize’ the world.
I’m not myself locked into any particular view
but i do observe that longstanding claims that ‘trade always leads to greater liberalization’ may just be some nice-sounding patter that isn’t particularly true in practice. This isn’t me making an argument that trade should be conditional, just that perhaps libertarians should avoid that sort of moral grandstanding in the future.
I really dont have a good definition for what others see see globalist to mean. For me, when I use the word I intend it to mean something along the lines of –
The U.S. doesn’t have any business mucking about in the internal affairs of other countries. The U.S shouldn’t act as the world police. The U.S. has no obligation to spread democracy or freedom. Basically we should be isolationists politically.
Trade promotes wealth and wealth brings power with it. It may not truly spread to everyone but the new mercantile class will want more rights and with their wealth they will probably be able to obtain at least some of what they want. The government is getting their cut off that new wealth so it behoves them to play a little nicer to keep the ball rolling.
I agree with this. Rich people are harder to oppress. The richer a population, the less dependant on government they are. When a population is not dependant on government, they tend to not like that government doing too much to fuck up their lives.
through extensive bribes/kickbacks, yes. that’s how its worked in china, saudi arabia, etc.
i think its completely fine to posit a perfectly neutral view on “trade for its own sake”; my point is that the libertarian FP arguments have have had their own wilsonian-ish thematic streak for decades, pretending that this ‘trade only’ view STILL inevitably leads to greatest possible freedoms for all.
I’m simply suggesting that idea is mostly feelgood-bullshit.
One of the problems with libertarian ideas about international relations is a fixation on how reality “should” work…. rather than what “is” and “has been”, and why.
I have mentioned before that there is a certain vanity to the libertarian conception that you can have completely liberal international trade across borders, and yet somehow maintain absolutely zero political or security interests in the people/entities you’re trading with.
Its a naive sort of proposal that thinks that ‘international relations’ can be 100% segmented and compartmentalized, and that nations can maintain perfect-political independence from one another, despite hugely dependent trade relations which have enormous effects on each other’s prosperity.
its a point of view which seems only possible if you are entirely ignorant of the hugely-political nature of most international-trade. a quick scan of any WTO conference agenda would probably be informative. Or maybe Chinese statements about US sales of missile-systems to Taiwan.
Michael Bennett made up the police encounter. Draymond Green made the slave owner comment. I don’t remember Sherman kneeling, but he may have.
Temporarily permanent.
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/38781/
I think they should allow you to replace the portraits they took down with ones more “stimulating”.
Let me guess, you want to put Q Continuum in charge of procuring the artwork?
It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.
I’d settle for this:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4a/cf/97/4acf9793ed27c3affb76c4ec2b5c574a.jpg
See that’s what I’m talking about:)
The rhetoric which passes for ‘libertarian foreign policy’ suggests it aint nobody’s business what they do; and that more/freer trade ultimately is the most effective form of influence on liberalization.
I think it was in one of P J O’Rourke’s books; there was a conversation with a South African (in the ’80s, probably), who said a trade embargo was bad, because if they could trade, they could raise money for guns.
From Steve Deace, on Twitter:
Judge Moore’s wife, Kayla, informed me today they used the word “defamation” in their statement for a reason — they intend to pursue legal action against the Washington Post.
Which they won’t have the slightest chance in hell to win. They likely wouldn’t have a chance to win even without the “actual malice” standard that will be applied.
Why I’m not on my way to Delhi right now.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/10/health/delhi-pollution-equivalent-cigarettes-a-day/index.html
TW: CNN
Yikes. Did you pack a respirator?
Gonna go buy one today. My flight got moved to Sunday.
Class aims to rid students of ‘racist, classist, heterosexist, ableist, privileged attitudes’
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/38832/
***
The class requires students purchase a book titled “Foundations of Cultural Competency,” written by the class’s own Professor Starck. Priced at $26.99, it includes several exercises delving into racism, oppression, class and sexual orientation.
One part of the book is called “White Racial Identity Models.” It essentially describes how attitudes that white people develop are “reinforced by stereotypes of dominant society,” which leads to a desensitization of race by whites to other groups.
…
One segment of white people who have achieved “white racial consciousness” is described in the book as a “dominative type.”
They are “characterized by a strong ethnocentric perspective, which justifies the dominance of racial/ethnic minority peoples by the majority culture with the view the White Americans and the majority culture in the US as superior and of more value than minorities and their associated cultures,” the book states.
“White culture is considered to be superior because they have achieved more due to their intelligence and personal attributes,” the book continues, “and therefore, are entitled to the advantages they receive. However, a minority in the same position is the result of cunning evil and blind luck.”
Other types of white people who have achieved “white racial consciousness” are described in the book as a “conflictive,” “reactive” and “integrative.”
***
Racist sure do love talking about racism.
Um, the only white people who have a strong ethnicentric perspective are the tiny handful of white supremacists that remain and the white “progressive” SJW leftists who obsess over race day and night.
Everyone else is pretty much living their lives in harmony with other races.
Meh, some whites who aren’t supremacists have strong ethnocentric perspectives, be they Irish, Polish, Italian, Greek, etc. The thing is, their ethnocentrism is based around their own family’s heritage, and not some nebulous aggregation of white people who inherently must oppress the darker skinned peoples.
I like how, in the process of making shit up, their own biases accidentally shine through. Nobody but socialists such as themselves believe being successful is automatically a sign of some sort of cunning evil behavior. I’d wager this writer isn’t big on capitalism in general, and is using their position of authority to instill distrust of capitalism in their flock. Luckily, in the gulag we’ll have ample time to discuss the intricacies of white culture and oppression.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/11/10/professor-draws-ire-for-saying-students-will-have-to-work-hard-and-avoid-drinking.html
***
He added: “Remember that you are NOT at any other uni, where students do drink a lot and do have what they regard as a ‘good time’ — and you are NOT on a course, as some Cambridge courses sadly are, where such a behaviour pattern is possible or acceptable.”
The professor’s comments caused an uproar among activists and students, who called his email “extremely damaging” and neither “appropriate nor acceptable”, with one other university vice-chancellor accusing Terentjev of “frightening impressionable undergraduates”, the London Times reported.
A mental health campaign at the university, Student Minds Cambridge, said the message sent by the professor “could be extremely damaging to the mental well-being of the students concerned, and potentially others as well,” the Times reported.
Anthony Seldon, vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, said the professor message scaremongers the students rather than helping them to learn to live a balanced lifestyle. “Frightening impressionable undergraduates into believing that work alone is all-important is irresponsible, unkind and wrong-headed,” he told the newspaper.
***
“Frightening impressionable undergraduates into believing that work alone is all-important is irresponsible, unkind and wrong-headed,”
The truth is unkind, dipshit.
He’s the boogyman
You’re finished, Britain. May as well turn in the keys and wander off into the highlands or swales or heaths or wherever it is you people go to get lost.
“Look to your right, look to your left. Only one of the three of you will graduate.” – Georgia Tech freshman orientation circa mid 1980s.
They had stopped doing it by 1987, but we all heard the line anyway.
How many students responded with “Then why did you accept them?”
If they increased their acceptance standards, I wouldn’t have been accepted. And I ended up graduating with highest honors.
It was easy (well, relatively) to get in, hard to get out system. And it wasn’t like you were there for long, if you made it thru your freshman year, your odds went way up. If you made it thru two years, you were going to graduate eventually, barring weird exceptions.
It has changed over the last 30 years, I am not sure I would have been accepted today.
It was meant as a reflection of the level of sarcasm evidenced around that age.
I have heard people from certain “high quality” scores criticize is as stealing money from students who couldnt hack it.
These are schools with really high standards but with very high graduation rates. Once you are in, you can mostly coast. Ivys, Stanford, etc.
I think that if a state school has tight connection between acceptance and graduation rates, implying a set of high and consistent standards, then it kind of defeats the purpose of having state schools. Not that they shouldn’t set standards, but the U.S. has never had a lack of high-standard private colleges. The state schools exist, at least in theory, to provide avenues of opportunity for people who aren’t able to get into Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc.
Like exercise, most of the benefits of studying come from doing none to doing some. And yet many people refuse to exert any effort. Sooner or later, everyone runs into a task that requires extra work.
Twain, paraphrased: Thank god for fools, for without them, who could succeed?
85% of success is showing up.
That’s all well and good until you’re accused of stalking.
I can’t wait until this “higher education” system collapses and colleges become places where you do your classes for 6 hours a day then leave and go do whatever the fuck you want.
No more rapist witch hunts, no more taxpayer-funded Marxist indoctrination.
“places where you do your classes for 6 hours a day”
So the way it was 60 years ago?
Or rape while touching your penis during urination when the woman is two rooms away, but spidey-rape-sense picks up your hand on your dick.
FIFY
Facebook Users Will Have to Decide If They Trust the Social Media Network with Their Nude Selfies
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/facebook-has-harebrained-new-scheme-fight-revenge-porn-online
A good rule of thumb: Never get photographed naked unless you are being paid a lot of money.
I keep an old Polaroid around for the naked stuff.
“Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called his first few thousand users ‘dumb fucks’ for trusting him with their data”
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/
Also, will there be a permanent wanking team poring over these photos to verify their bangability?
That could be my retirement job
The TSA sucks
I’m about 90% sure I fucked up the link. Had to manually type the URL on my phone. Lo siento.
*EDIT FERRY FINDS NO LINK*
*Follow Up Edit Fairy fixes!*
Don’t ever doubt yourself. Be 100% sure
I was 100% sure as soon as I hit submit. I missed the trailing double quote.
Edit faerie, could you please fix the link?
http://theweek.com/articles/736329/tsa-pathetic-failure
With the minor issue of nobody has yet figured out how to assess the SLT in a way that doesn’t make property tax by another name. But other than that, it’s a great system.
This is the problem I have. How is valuation established, and by whom? Is it based on the “productive value” of the land? If so, then it becomes coercive redistribution: “Well, if you can’t utilize that land in such a way as to raise the money, there are plenty of people out there who can. You can sell out on your own, or we can seize the land and auction it off .”
Fuck
that.
You’re not wrong. It stems from the fact that a major philosophical argument for SLT is that property rights in land are more of a utilitarian measure (similar to IP rights, or limited licenses for hunting/fishing to preserve animal populations), as opposed to a fundamental moral question (like ownership of one’s mind, body, and effort).
IOW, starting from a state of nature, there is no particular reason for person A to own a plot of land versus person B. “I saw it first” isn’t exactly a massively compelling moral argument. While efforts that improve the value of land complicate the fair transition to an SLT system, in a fresh state, one would wait for a lease before beginning such efforts.
On the other hand, there’s a very strong reason for having someone own the land, to avoid the tragedy of the commons. Assigning ownership to person A means that person B has been deprived of something, since neither had a substantially greater original claim. Taxing the rents is then a way of making person B whole for the loss they incur in agreeing to the property system, which helps to reduce the number of losers in the system and maintains support for it, which makes everyone better off.
While putting in those terms might make it sound unappealing to a libertarian, it isn’t really that different from the current fee simple understanding of “ownership”, where the only true owners are sovereigns — it’s just altering the concept such that the state is not so much the ultimate owner of the land, as it is a manager on behalf of the owner (e.g. the people of that land).
“Well, if you can’t utilize that land in such a way as to raise the money, there are plenty of people out there who can. You can sell out on your own, or we can seize the land and auction it off .”
That’s already the case, if you have property tax. IOW, the value is at least to some extent based on an estimate of what other people will pay for it, and you either use rents from the land to help pay the tax, or you have income from an external source that makes up for your inefficient use of the land. And if you can’t do either, you can’t pay the tax, and you lose the property.
And if you can’t do either, you can’t pay the tax, and you lose the property.
Hopefully there would be a long period of liens being placed on the property before it was just confiscated.
I think another problem with the SLT (and property tax) is its interaction with zoning. The valuation of a parcel will be based, in part, upon its zoning category and boundaries. If rezoning or subdivision would alter the tax assessment such that the
property taxland tax became affordable, then that throws a whole new variable into the moral calculus.Fuck zoning.
Since I am dreaming anyway, zoning doesn’t exist in my SLT-based universe.
Fair enough, I guess parcel size and shape would also be left up to the owners to decide/negotiate. That shifts the system nicely from “asking permission” to just “filing notice”.
Although, this does open the question of how liens would be handled. Prorated by value at time of division? Seems most fair but subject to gaming.
If working to design the system, I’d advise putting language in the contract that generates the lein to handle the conditions of division. thus the actual mechanics would be acceptable to the parties involved instead of looking for a one size fits all set of terms.
By agreement between all parties including lien-holder?
Meaning if their is a lien on the property, the lien-holder is a stake holder and the property couldn’t be split without their signature. Hence, no gaming.
mental sandbox time
restructuring the US military
budget- reduced to about $360 bil/yr; per capita spending would be similar to UK and France
size- 5 troops per 1000 population; 1.5 million total. 300k active, 1.2mil reserve
nuclear weapons- land-based and aircraft-launched cruises missiles only; 450 Minuteman missiles with 3 warheads (currently load is 1) plus 300 cruise missiles
redundancy/waste- eliminate Coast Guard and USMC, close service academies, greatly reduce airborne training, close most overseas bases (Germany, Japan, Korea)
navy- reduced to 20 attack subs plus support ships; no carriers or aircraft except helicopters, 100k active
army- reduced to 1000 main battle tanks in active units, 100k active
usaf- reduced to 500 fighter and attack aircraft, 100k active
increased use of drones for recon
officer ratio- reduced to 1 officer per 20 total from current 1 per 5 total.
While I like removal of the Marines as wholly redundant, The coast guard search and rescue functions should really be a nonmilitary body.
Why no carriers?
YOU’RE CUTTING IT TO THE BONE! Why do you hate the military? You want the terrorists to win!
/GrahamCain
Why no infantry?
No standing army?
For the most part, you are going about it the wrong way. Define the mission and then let the size of the military fall out.
My wish list – abolish the Army and let the States maintain guard/militia units if they choose to do so. Beef up the Navy, focusing almost exclusively on anti-piracy/maintaining freedom of movement for traffic on the open seas. Focus the Air Force exclusively on space and subsume NASA (also, likely NWS and NOAA) into USAF Space Command.
To hell with the infantry and carriers, why no artillery?
To clarify: I didn’t mean to say eliminate infantry and artillery. What I was trying to get at is there should be a great reduction in the numbers of things like tanks, jets, and ships. Those very expensive to build, maintain, and operate in spite of the fact that they have little use in the wars we have been fighting. And even in a conventional war, losses are inevitable. So the focus should be to build weapons and equipment that are reliable and and cheap. Sorry defense contractors, time to put the brakes on the gravy train.
What is the point of a $4mil tank if it can be detroyed with a $100k rocket? What is the point of a $4bil carrier if it can be sunk with a $1mil anti-ship missile?
I just don’t see the point of building a weapon when the countermeasure is 1/100 the cost.
If anything, there should be a bias *towards* infantry and artillery. They do the bulk of the fighting and for a much lower cost.
What’s the point of a $1mil anti-ship missile if it can be shot down by a $1 bullet? (nevermind that the gun shooting it is firing three thousand per minute…)
Wars are not one on one matchups between systems and countermeasures. You get more bang out of a properly integrated set, some of which will be high price tag, high value systems. The question is not “can the $1bil carrier be sunk by a $1mil missile” but “will we get more than $1bil out of it before it is sunk”
I think we are far past the point of diminishing returns. The USSR and China were able to deter the US during the Cold War despite spending much less.
And today Russia’s spending is 1/5 of the USSR. Russia and China put together are 1/3 of US military spending.
http://api.theweek.com/sites/default/files/legacygeneric/USRussiaDefSpend.jpg
A large conventional military deters conventional attack, but does little to deter terrorism, which is currently the biggest foreign threat.
Focusing only on today’s problem will leave you vulnerable to tomorrows problem and yesterday’s problem.
Fair point, but neglecting the present is just as bad. Given that US has nuclear weapons and has been willing to use them, it is very unlikely that the US would go to war with another country with nukes or that a country with or without nukes would invade the US.
If the goal is to prevent US allies from being attacked, the smart thing to do would be to sell them weapons and train their troops rather than station US troops nearby. The US does this to some extent already.
If the US really wanted to keep Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran in check, the best thing to do would be to give nukes to Germany, South Korea, Japan, and Saudi Arabia.
SouKs, Japan, yes
Germany – not with the way they’ve been acting.
Saudi Arabia – hell no. They’d end up blowing up our friends (and maybe Iran, eventually)
-1 pussy whipped Truman
Carriers are primarily power projection but in a conventional war are pretty damn important. Even more so things like close air support and air superiority. If you do not control the skies your infantry in addition to doing most of the fighting are doing an awful lot of dying.
nuclear weapons- land-based and aircraft-launched cruises missiles only; 450 Minuteman missiles with 3 warheads (currently load is 1) plus 300 cruise missiles
No submarines?
I think we should get rid of everything else, and refer to the subs as our “Doomsday Fleet”.
the value is at least to some extent based on an estimate of what other people will pay for it, and you either use rents from the land to help pay the tax, or you have income from an external source that makes up for your inefficient use of the land.
How do you “fairly” [insert morose laughter] value a piece of land? Twenty acres of Ohio bottom land are vastly more productive, agriculturally, than my twenty rock strewn acres in Montana, but I’d rather be here. Who gets to set the tax value? What, aside from the price agreed upon by a willing buyer and a willing seller, is a justifiable basis? I’d rather see a sales tax on real estate (try getting THAT past the Board of Realtors!) than a “simple land tax”. Not that I’d rather see any tax, at any time.
Mencius Moldbug once spitballed the idea of self-assessment – property owner sets whatever price they please and are levied upon that but they are required to sell at that price to anyone who offers as a disincentive to undervaluation.
Heinlein had that in one of his possible nice places to live in The Number of the Beast.
The problem with that system is that it totally fucks people who just want to keep their houses. I suppose that aligns with the SLT goal of taxing “land rents”, though.
I don’t want to sell, period.
How does your system accomodate that?
Put your number high enough that no one can afford to pay it.
Problem solved.
Except in the system discussed, that’s the value you get robbed based upon, and you lose it anyway by being unable to afford it.
The “You must sell if someone offers” is even worse than the land tax.
It doesn’t really work with the single land tax either, but does work with property tax.
I’m sorry but I can’t make heads or tails of what you said.
Please elaborate on what you actually mean before I make assumptions.
I am saying that Moldug’s idea would “work” in the current property tax world. But doesn’t work in the single land tax world because you woulen’t be putting an assessment on the entire property, but only on the unimproved land value.
No, it would not work in today’s environment for the very reason I outlined.
You have an unconscionable choice between grossly punitive tax rates, or the prcarious dance of poentially being foist out of your home at a moment’s notice by the first person with a checkbook.
But when generalized to all property makes for an interesting dystopia to write about.
There is definitely something… disconcerting… about the notion that somebody can be forced to sell their property, even if they have never done violence to anyone, simply because they are unable to pay the highwayman’s toll.
We are still left with the fundamental conundrum that there is no such thing as a moral tax.
That is the world we live in today.
Barring some ancap utopia, I think it will always be the world we live in.
I think the SLT is better than the current regime, but that isn’t to say it doesn’t have issues too.
I would say that the land tax is moral, if only because of the nature of land ownership. And if we could distribute the rents to everyone it would be even more so. The government as caretaker for the people is the big flaw, IMO.
But such is life.
And this is where you fail. It’s like saying “I believe in freedom of X, but…” and you try to rationalize your claim that it is somehow not an immoral taking.
There are no rents to redistribute.
That is the world we live in today.
No argument there.
And if we could distribute the rents to everyone it would be even more so.
I think the flaw is the leap in logic embodied here. Even if we assume that unimproved land is not rightly and properly ownable by individuals (e.g. the exclusion of others is some sort of taking from others), it’s an enormous leap to communal ownership of unimproved land. Hell, why don’t the herds of deer and mounds of ants receive these reparations? They’re just as put out as the other people.
Mencius Moldbug once spitballed the idea of self-assessment – property owner sets whatever price they please and are levied upon that but they are required to sell at that price to anyone who offers as a disincentive to undervaluation.
I confess to seeing an appealing simple clarity to that.
One additional caveat:
Only individuals/corporations can make the offer…governments and government entities (public schools, etc) are excluded.
Otherwise there is an easy scam. I set my rate high, pay tax for one year, then my friendly mayor buys me out. $$$$
So, if someone claims that football team “owners” are akin to slave “owners”, does it mean they believe that corporations are people?
In what world are slaves a) paid better than the vast majority of the population, b) allowed to compete for the employer with the highest pay, and c) only bound by contracts that they are under no compulsion to sign and whose only penalties for breach are remittance of earnings?