Monday Morning Links

Man, the college baseball playoffs are all out of whack with the weather. Poor Rice made a game effort but LSU was too much. I noticed the Hogs staved off elimination and the Hoos moved to the losers bracket. I still have faith! And let’s all give a round of applause to Davidson. And start cheering for Vandy and Bethune-Cookman. Why? Because their opponents are (mostly) dicks!

In MLB news, Houston steamrolled the Rangers and are on a 10 game winning streak. They only need to win two more games before July 4 to be assured of a winning record at the All-Star Break.  That’s insane.

The Predators got their groove back, bad breath (perhaps) and all in Game 3. Game 4 is tonight, and is still a must-win for Nashville. I expect another bloodbath. And in the NBA, the Warriors throttled the Cavs in both Game 1 and Game 2 at home. We’ll see if the Cavs have an answer back in Ohio, but its looking like they have no answer right now.

Alright, enough is enough. Here come…the links!

Qatar sure has pissed off its neighbors. Is it a real crackdown on actual ties to and financing of terrorism? Or just more tribalist bullshit? You’ll have to wait and see.

Spelling Bee Champ Ananya Vinay

I guess a CNN personality took time off from their normal agenda of spreading bullshit to throw out a little soft racism.

British officials playing the blame game after the latest pair of terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, they’re not blaming the pieces of shit that carried out the attacks or their warped ideology. They’re blaming tech companies for not doing “enough” to censor the internet or eliminate encryption. No introspection expected in light of fact that they were tipped off about the very people that carried out the attacks and did nothing about it. Nope! Its gotta be somebody else, not the lazy, ineffecient intel agents that completely ignored an credible threat.

In other censorship news, the British government said they’re not going to name the people responsible for the attacks or any of the other dozen extremist Islamist terrorists  picked up in the immediate wake of the attack until it is “operationally possible.”  (Read: when they fuck something else up so bad they need to toss these names out to deflect the deserved criticism.)

Hah-vahd: Safe Space

In the last bit of censorship news, for the day anyway, private Facebook group for people that enjoy sharing memes results in Harvard pulling college acceptances to at least 10 incoming students. Jesus, I hate to think what dirty jokes or comments people my age used to say would result in for Generation Safe Space and their idiot enablers in college administrations.

Paris. London. Regret. Synths. This song has it all.

Have a great day, friends.

Comments

676 responses to “Monday Morning Links”

  1. commodious spittoon

    Firfthst

    1. WTF

      covfefe?

      1. Scruffy Nerfherder

        Poppy?

        1. I’m Poppy.

        2. WTF

          I am Poppy.

          1. bacon-magic

            I AM POPPY IN THE PAN

        3. Pomp

          I’m Poppy.

      1. F. Stupidity Jr.

        Is it wrong that I immediately thought “Muslim”? Because I immediately thought “Muslim”.

        1. Those damned Anabaptists!

          1. Wow, so listening to the live newscast I heard one person say that they wanted to be clear that this was a disgruntled employee and not terrorism and the other guy said, as if reading my mind, that it was sad that in this day and age you just assume an event like this is terror-related.

          2. AlexinCT

            He did it because he had to work at a KFC?

          3. WTF

            He’s fighting for fifteen.

          4. WTF

            Interesting, all the information I can find has no details on the shooter or motives.

          5. F. Stupidity Jr.

            The lack of detail tells me this isn’t a white Christian male.

          6. AlexinCT

            Sad that the media had become that predictable, isn’t it?

          7. Here’s what Fox News is saying.

            Looks like the guy was a problem employee who’d been fired in April.

        2. WTF

          No word yet on any “Allahu Akbar”.

      2. WTF

        I don’t know if this is just a coincidence:

        The shooting comes a week before the one-year anniversary of the Pulse nightclub massacre, also in Orlando, where 49 people were fatally shot by Omar Mateen, an Islamic extremist.

  2. Chipwooder

    With Murdoch and Haseley both done for the year, the Hoos just don’t have the pitching. They were already a bit thin on the mound even with those two. At least we won’t face Janczak again – that guy is the goods.

    1. It’s college baseball. Anything can happen. Just ask UNC.

    2. PBRstreetgang

      Strange things do happen, but having to win 3 straight (that’s right isnt’ it?) to get out of the regional is going to be very, very difficult. Hopeful, but not optimistic.
      At least football season is coming up soon (eye roll).

      1. Chipwooder

        Yup. Have to beat Dallas Baptist once, then TCU twice.

    3. SimonD

      I understand the frustration. The Frogs have been held together by duct tape and prayer all season. They seem to be built like the mid-80’s Cardinals teams ( strong pitching, and a bunch of speedsters anchored by the one big guy hitting home runs). The problem is that half of the pitching staff has been hurt, and the big guy in the middle is out for the season (Luken Baker).

      Luckily, the pitchers are finally starting to get healthy again (Janczak is almost back in form from his injury).

      Oh, Janczak isn’t the most talented pitcher on the staff; wait ’til you see Nick Lodolo.

      1. Chipwooder

        He may not be the mostly talented but he sure knows how to pitch. Very efficient.

  3. Woah – these are some early links!

    19 bags of mulch, a bunch of flowers, some ornament grass, and some edging – and I managed to get my front yard in order. And I managed to also fit in my Sunday workout and a bunch of pool time. Exhausted.

    Side notes:

    My wife went bra-less and lawless over the weekend. Down with the patriarchy!
    Rogue One is kind of a stinky movie
    A Mini Clubman can carry 11 bags of Mulch, one passenger, and one driver. There was room for more but the rear suspension was starting to sag just a bit.
    Beefeater Gin < Bombay Dry

    1. Also: made low-carb breadsticks – tasted waay better than I expected considering it was cauliflower, mozzarella cheese, eggs, and garlic/oregeno.

      1. WTF

        That actually sounds pretty tasty.

        1. Recipe

          It could also be used as a pizza – thinner would make the crust crispier.

          1. WTF

            Thanks!

          2. bacon-magic

            Thanks!

      2. How did you get the mozzarella and cauliflower to bind? That seems nearly impossible without flour or corn starch.

        1. Brasidas

          Eggs, nature’s glue.

        2. commodious spittoon

          I’ve done a pretty passable almond flour bread. And flaxseed focaccia.

    2. Atanarjuat

      Pics?

      What didn’t you like about Rogue One?

      1. AlexinCT

        You are asking for pics of his wife without the bra, the yard work, him lifting or hanging by the pool, or one the other activities? Specifics matter I guess..

      2. Not enough character development – ie, I really didn’t care about them, even as they met their fates by the end of the movie.

        1. leonadasiv

          The Vader scene tho, at the end…

        2. Fatty Bolger

          I enjoyed it overall, but that’s a very valid complaint. I think they were afraid of going all the way and letting the audience get too attached.

        3. F. Stupidity Jr.

          I thought it was superior to The Force Awakens. Both of those were superior to the Prequel Trilogy. All five of those are lesser films than ROTJ, which was a step down from the standards of the previous two films.

          What I’m trying to say: Star Wars is permanently in self-parody mode, at least in film. The two KOTOR games are as good as anything I’ve watched at the theater, at home, played on a console, played on a PC, eaten, drank, snorted, injected, or stuck my dick into.

          1. You need to get out more.

          2. F. Stupidity Jr.

            They’re really good, is what I’m saying.

    3. I have minimal self-restraint, so I bought the newest Star Wars movie and Rogue One, and neither movie did much for me. They both felt a little like SyFy specials.

      1. Count Potato

        I found both of them to be a big nothing.

    4. Certified Public Asshat

      19 bags of mulch

      No local landscape store to buy a yard from?

      1. Sure – but we didn’t want to wait for delivery. Or – ti put it another way – my wife wanted the work done NOW.

        1. Number.6

          Conjures up an interesting scene from MM2 cut during editing,

          The Lord Humungous being bossed around by Blonde Catamite as Feral Kid watches.

          That movie will never be the same again.

          Then again in a parallel milieu, Number.6 was being bossed around by Number.2 yesterday, Hauling trap stone around to level a driveway.

        2. Man, a metric shit ton of (sloppy) home improvement and landscaping has been done around my house as a direct result of my wife seeing something interesting on Pinterest or remembering that there’s a thing called “gardening” and then getting a wild hair up her ass.

  4. What’s Wonder Woman’s superpower? Making the patriarchal world shut up
    It’s not only girls but also boys who see 2017’s kickass Wonder Woman as worthy of emulation.

    It’s apparent in Diana’s stride as she walks the streets of London, least bothered by which part of her body is showing even as Steve (Chris Pine) and his secretary are ruffled.

    Although presented as an extremely attractive woman, director Patty Jenkins does not subject Gal Gadot’s considerable sex appeal to the male gaze. Instead, Diana is confident about her sexuality and owns it – she even tells Steve that while men are necessary for procreation, they are unnecessary for pleasure. We’re allowed to see the female body beyond its usual sexualisation in powerful scenes where Diana and the other Amazons perform gravity defying stunts.

    The extent to which women are limited in public and political spheres also comes through as Diana is constantly interrupted by men around her – Diana, however, couldn’t give a fig. She excels in doing what she’s told not to do and wears an expression of amusement whenever there’s mansplaining on screen.

    1. Scruffy Nerfherder

      They’re not going to let me just enjoy the movie, are they?

      1. WTF

        Not a male-gazing shitlord like you, no. You must be “educated”.

      2. AlexinCT

        I was looking forward to watching this hoping the whole D.C. comic genre would finally get a boost and get better than meh, but after this freak show I am certain that this movie now will be a total letdown.

    2. WTF

      These people are nuts. Seriously fucking nuts.

    3. Sure thing. You want to know what would have made the movie even bigger? A quick flash of nudity.
      Which means the patriarchy still rules. SHITLORDS UNITE!

    4. Scruffy Nerfherder

      Diana Prince > Trigglypuff

      1. WTF

        My flatulent bulldog > Trigglypuff

    5. leonadasiv

      Can someone explain mansplaining without femplaining?

      1. UnCivilServant

        Mansplaining – any person, male or not, bringing facts and logic to a situation that a feminist does not approve of.

        1. AlexinCT

          People that like feels hate logic and reason, and obviously facts in contradiction of what they want reality to be, so yeah, anyone that doesn’t just go by feels now needs to be labeled, and in a negative way, because you know, feels are so much more important than reality, reason, logic, or all that other patriarchal shit. I hope these women avoid STEM fields. I for one don’t want to fly in an airplane, ride in a car or bus, or cross a bridge or ride an elevator in a building put together by one of these women that thinks their emotions are more important than the laws of physics or nature.

          1. straffinrun

            You need help navigating Trump’s America

            ::good edit faerie thinks xe got it right::

          2. straffinrun

            Argggg.

          3. WTF

            “Benevolent edit faery, cleanup on aisle 4. “

          4. straffinrun

            Thank you edit faerie. Zardoz wouldn’t have. He disapproves of the avatar.

          5. mr simple

            From the link:

            As president, Trump has met with 122 execs whose companies have been fined $90B for breaking the law

            That’s not even slightly misleading. No other way to interpret this than to assume Trump is a crook.

          6. hate_speech

            I maintain that this is one of the greatest pieces of satire in the modern era:

            C+=

          7. Number.6

            I agree with directive 8 though.

          8. hate_speech

            Something something stopped clock…

      2. Akira

        mansplaining

        There’s an experiment I’d like to try. I want to popularize the word “negroblasting” to refer to the activity of driving around a residential neighborhood playing rap music at full volume with your windows rolled down. The term suggests that it’s something that only black people do, even though people of all races engage in this annoying behavior.

        I’d be interested to see how fast people crucify me for implying that the blame for loud, shitty music rests squarely on black people.

      3. mr simple

        Originally it meant that thing that (all) men do where they explain something to someone a woman (because men never do it to other men and women never do this to anyone) that actually knows more about the topic than the original explainer while assuming that they know more. It, like all terms of this nature, morphed into anytime a man talks to a woman, particularly SJW feminists.

        1. DOOMco

          did a man interject a fact you left out? did he illustrate a point with more depth than your broad strokes? Mansplaining.

          It’s was at one point just another word for being a condescending asshat in conversations, but it morphed into anytime a man puts forth information in short order.

          1. mr simple

            Thanks for the mansplanation, shitlord.

            /3rdwave

          2. DOOMco

            Did you just assume my gender?

          3. wdalasio

            Even its original meaning was essentially bullshit. Unless you’re Marvin the Mindreader, you don’t know what other people’s knowledge base is or isn’t. And offering explanations is not something that should be inherently offensive to anyone.

            All too often, I get accused of the opposite, of talking over people’s heads. Through careful practice, I’ve trained myself to slow down and provide the underlying explanations for my arguments or discussions. And even then, I’m not exactly batting 1.000. But the same assholes who would give me crap for talking over their heads (as opposed to simply asking for clarification), tend to be the exact same sort who accuse me of “mansplaining”. Generally people, men or women, who know the subject better than me, can quickly enough let me know, and we generally have a great conversation.

            “Mansplaining” has pretty much always been the purview of intellectually lazy women who want to hide behind their vaginas.

          4. DOOMco

            Very much.

    6. Rufus the Monocled

      This weekend my SIL was talking about Wonder Woman and pulled a ‘did you know WW is Amazonian”? I couldn’t help but notice about her lack of awareness of possibly coming off presumptuous. She assumed no one knew this, you know, basic fact. Annoyed I said, ‘Didn’t you read comics?’ to which she answered ‘no’ and continued to be amazed about WW being Amazonian.

      1. leonadasiv

        Did you know Batman was Bruce Wayne?

        1. Rufus the Monocled

          He has two first names?!?!

          1. leonadasiv

            Not only that but he was totes an orphan. I betcha didn’t know that.

          2. Rufus the Monocled

            WHOAH!

            /flops down on couch. Lights doobie.

        2. UnCivilServant

          I thought it was Thomas Wayne.

          Or Dick Grayson.

          Or Terry MacGinnis.

        3. The Last American Hero

          Next time use *spoiler alert* please.

      2. Bobarian LMD

        Does she have the single mastectomy?

      3. Hyperion

        “did you know WW is Amazonian”

        So Wonder Woman is a short brown person?

        1. Number.6

          Yeah, they took the sticks out of her nasal septum and gave her a nice hair-do too.

          It was hard to break her of that whole curare-tipped blowdart stuff though.

      4. Agent Cooper

        Which means she’s Greek, not from South America.

    7. “Patty Jenkins does not subject Gal Gadot’s considerable sex appeal to the male gaze.”

      So, there’s no wish on the part of the moviemakers to have men gawk at the scantily-clad professional model? Sure, I’ll believe that.

      1. Patty may not have subjected Gal Gadot to the male gaze, but I’m sure I will – along with a few million or even billion men.

        1. IIRC, the comic-book version of Wonder Woman was invented by a very interesting fellow who was supposedly a male feminist. Also he invented a purported lie detector, though I don’t think the version he developed involved bondage play.

        2. The Other Kevin

          He had such high esteem for women that he was a polygamist. True story.

      2. Sure, that’s why they cast a 57-year-old overweight housewife from Iow–wait, oh, no, they didn’t. They cast a gorgeous, statuesque model.

    8. Can it just be a movie, please?

    9. Suthenboy

      “…men are necessary for procreation, they are unnecessary for pleasure.”

      I dont care how hot you are, I have better things to do than put up with this crazy-ass shit. Like organizing my sock drawer. I dont do crazy anymore.

      1. Pope Jimbo

        You may not care about crazy, but crazy cares about you….

      2. Bobarian LMD

        organizing my sock drawer

        That is some fine euphemizing, right there.

      3. commodious spittoon

        Necessary, no.

        And…?

  5. I see wood chippers

    throw out a little soft racism.

    Stupid? Yes. Racist (even soft)? No. Come on, sloopy.

    1. WTF

      A CNN anchor became the target of rebuke for assuming that the 2017 national spelling champion, a California resident who’s of South Asian descent, is “used to using” Sanskrit.

      You sure about that? I mean, isn’t that kind of like assuming someone has rhythm just because they are black?

      1. I see wood chippers

        Assuming blacks have rhythm isn’t racist either, unless we’re adopting the brainless equivocating meaning of “racism” in which any recognition of differences is racist.

        Racism is the belief that other races are inferior. Period. Assuming that another race has rhythm or can read sanskrit doesn’t imply inferiority (except about the speaker).

        1. AlexinCT

          I thought the new definition of racism was whatever progressives choose it to be so they can beat people the don’t like into submission.

          1. WTF

            Pretty much, so holding them to their own standard seems fair.

        2. wdalasio

          Racism is the belief that other races are inferior. Period. Assuming that another race has rhythm or can read sanskrit doesn’t imply inferiority (except about the speaker).

          Can we split the difference and just call it bigotry?

          1. Gilmore

            Can we split the difference and just call it bigotry?

            Don’t think so. Bigotry is intolerance and refusal to accept ideas/people outside your own niche.

            e.g. refusing to listen to black music or refusing to eat indian food – not because you dislike specific qualities about the content, but because of *who makes it*, or simply because its “not [insert native culture]” – are classic examples of bigotry.

            Simply observing that a given race/ethnicity/religion possesses certain qualities (positive or negative) isn’t intolerance of those things, even if you don’t like them or if those observations are incorrect.

            ergo, a music teacher who says “rap isn’t music” is being bigoted
            a music teacher who says, “rap music is primitive” isn’t – even if the observation is false (or not)

      2. mr simple

        I think you can favorably read what she said as meaning the word has roots in sanskrit, which the girl would be used to because she had spent so long studying and memorizing etymological roots. The really stupid part of the whole ordeal was this CNN anchor spending like 10 minutes joking with a 6th grader, who really had no idea what was going on, about “covfefe” and pretending it was some big deal rather than some typo that any sane person has moved on from.

    2. “Hey you have brown skin. I bet you can speak Sanskrit.”
      It’s borderline.

      How about “excuse me, you look Asian. Read this Japanese for me prease?”
      Same

      Look, I’m letting progs define what’s racist. And I’ll hold them to their own standard. And this meets their definition of soft racism.

      1. I see wood chippers

        Look, I’m letting progs define what’s racist. And I’ll hold them to their own standard

        In that case, fair enough.

        1. rac·ism
          ˈrāˌsizəm/
          noun
          -prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.
          “a program to combat racism”
          synonyms: racial discrimination, racialism, racial prejudice, xenophobia, chauvinism, bigotry, casteism
          “Aborigines are the main victims of racism in Australia”
          -the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

      2. So, what’s *hard* racism?

        1. WTF

          Something along the lines of “I’ll have them niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years.”

          1. OK, that would qualify…any other ideas?

        2. So, what’s *hard* racism?

          Leaving the Paris Climate Accord.

        3. l0b0t

          So, what’s *hard* racism?

          Getting an erection while watching videos on worldstarhiphop.com?

          1. Bobarian LMD

            Wait,… what?

            Now I’m conflicted.

      3. Count Potato

        The dumbass thing is that most Indians don’t speak Sanskrit. It’s pretty much only used for religious purposes. Just like most people in Rome can’t speak Latin, most Israelis can’t read Aramaic, etc.

        1. But with Israel, Hebrew is both the national language and, I believe, the liturgical language for those who go in for that sort of thing.

          1. Count Potato

            Most people who learn to read Aramaic do so in order to study the Talmud.

    3. I think you’re conflating “racist” with “insulting”. Believing that all people who look like they’re part of a given race have shared behavioral characteristics is racist. Believing that Asians are good at math because they’re Asian is racist. It might not be offensive, which is why it’s dumb to get worked up about it, but it meets the definition.

      1. Raston Bot

        i think you’re confusing “conflate” with “confuse”. conflate means to combine.

        1. Count Potato

          “Conflation happens when the identities of two or more individuals, concepts, or places, sharing some characteristics of one another, seem to be a single identity, and the differences appear to become lost. In logic, it is the practice of treating two distinct concepts as if they were one, which produces errors or misunderstandings as a fusion of distinct subjects tends to obscure analysis of relationships which are emphasized by contrasts.”

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflation

        2. I think you might be right, because I do that all the time…

          1. But on rereading, no, I think I’m using that the way I intended. I’m saying that a thing that is racist isn’t automatically insulting. Mr. Chippers specifies further down the thread that he believes racism is the belief that one race is inferior to another, whereas I contend that racism understood strictly doesn’t carry a value judgment. For instance, the stereotype of black men as being good dancers and hung like horses isn’t negative, obviously, and whether or not one finds that insulting is a separate issue from whether or not those attributes are being assigned to an entire race of people.

      2. Bobarian LMD

        I think a better term would be ‘predjudicial’. But I kinda think that’s covered in ‘soft’.

  6. UnCivilServant

    Drizzly in Kentucky.

    Not sure what that means for my plans. phooey.

    1. leonadasiv

      If your plans don’t include ‘leave Kentucky because it’s too damn hot in June’, then I don’t know either.

      1. UnCivilServant

        It was cooler than Alabama yesterday.

        1. leonadasiv

          Ugh I can only imagine.

          1. UnCivilServant

            I did spend a few hours at the space and rocket center. I didn’t take pictures of everything and still ended up with 290 photographs by the end of the day (and used up two camera batteries in the process).

          2. leonadasiv

            Where in Kentucky are you now? I’ve only been to Louisville area. Coming from the desert the humidity kills me.

          3. UnCivilServant

            I’m in Louisville. I went to Churchill Downs yesterday, lost $10, decided betting on horses was as dumb an Idea as I had thought it to be and had a really nice brunch.

          4. Bobarian LMD

            Are you gonna do something on the bourbon trail?

            Jim Beam has a pretty good tour. Not a huge fan of their products, but there is a tasting at the end.

    2. UnCivilServant

      Actually, that’s not just drizzle, that’s an inbound thunderstorm.

      Well, I’m not going to the outdoor range I guess.

      1. Jefe Hayek

        Rained like a mug in Frankfort. Ya know, I’m all for rain providing a nice summer respite from the scorching Sun, but this rain and still be hot BS is for the birds

      2. Bobarian LMD

        Knob Creek has overhead cover, but not sure they’re open on Monday.

    3. robc

      Bat museum is inside.

      If the weather turns nice (it wont), check out the park system.

      Expecially http://www.theparklands.org/, its a (mostly) privately funded park.

      21st Century Parks raised more than $120 million in its Capital Campaign in order to acquire land and construct the park system. This includes $70.5 million from private sources and $49.5 million from public sources. The public money includes $38 million from the federal government, $10 million from the state and $1.5 million from Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government. The annual funding of The Parklands, expected to be about $4 million per year, will be supported by annual membership, private donations, in-park revenue and an endowment. The Parklands will not receive tax-payer support for annual operations.

      Not perfect.

    4. Agent Cooper

      Is it a Cold Kentucky Rain?

  7. It is time to imagine our entire politics in loving terms

    You probably already agree that we should try to love in our day-to-day interactions, but what might loving policy look like?

    In education, the Politics of Love might see us promoting loving values. One way we could do this in settler-colonial societies is by teaching young people our indigenous languages. In Aotearoa New Zealand, where I am from, we could make te reo Māori (the Māori language) compulsory in schools. As an adult learner of te reo Māori, I have seen how it can bring people together and extend our understanding. Importantly, teaching our indigenous languages in schools could support decolonising efforts.

    In health, the Politics of Love, with its values of care, concern, and moral equality, would see us focusing on disadvantage. We might aim to create a “loving system” which, rather than shunting people from service to service, would “wrap around” people, nurturing them throughout their lives. This would require creativity and collaboration – in its development, and its implementation.

    etc

    1. leonadasiv

      Nothing says love like: you are required to do this by force.

      1. WTF

        The Ministry of Love agrees.

    2. Scruffy Nerfherder

      CS Lewis had something to say about this

    3. All these loving policies should have their own Ministry.

      1. Oops, WTF beat me to it.

    4. SugarFree

      NO ONE KNOW LOVE LIKE STEVE SMITH.

      1. Some know it better, but nobody knows it the same way he does.

          1. If I in any way prompted you to link that, I should be the one apologizing.

          2. Agent Cooper

            YOU BASTARD.

          3. Tundra

            I SAID I WAS SORRY!

      2. WTF

        A SASQUATCH LOVE NOT LIKE A SQUARE’S LOVE!

    5. robc

      Visited a church yesterday, theme of Sermon was:

      Love is not tolerant. Love is transformational.

      The pastor specifically called out progressives on that first part.

        1. robc

          He was actually covering 1 John 4:11-21, but that is a good example.

      1. The Last American Hero

        Why was the pastor not talking about Pentecost on Pentecost Sunday?

        1. robc

          verse 13.

    6. Love means doing as I say because it’s for your own good.

    7. compgrokker

      ‘Decolonizing’ sounds like they want to kick all the people of European descent out of NZ.

      1. Bobarian LMD

        THAT NOT WHAT STEVE MEAN

        1. WTF

          What you did there, I see it.

    8. Hyperion

      It is time to imagine our entire politics in loving terms

      “I would love some more of your money, now stop complaining!”.

      /politicians

    9. Michael

      In Aotearoa New Zealand, where I am from, we could make te reo Māori (the Māori language) compulsory in schools.

      Nothing expresses love quote like compulsion.

      1. Number.6

        And not to put too fine a point on it, it wasn’t very long ago that Maori compulsion was a thing if you were in a competing tribe.

        The haka isn’t exactly a lover’s serenade.

    10. Chipwooder

      A “loving system” that “wraps around” people for their entire lives, huh. Doesn’t that just sound wonderful?

    11. Cliche Bandit

      SO, three things:
      1. Just did the whole Disney World thing. Very loving, rather fun, (Avatar ride is fucking ridiculous, it is the wave of ride entertainment…I want to buy stock), and DAMN Orlando is HOT!
      2. I peeked in on “The Other Site”(tm) and holy crap Hihn is dumber than a box of rocks. I couldn’t watch it anymore, my logic circuits couldn’t take it.
      And Finally:
      3. Speaking of Love, i just finished Stranger in a Strange Land and that is one weird/awesome/interesting/frightening book. My jury is out on whether I liked it. One nagging thing, VMS is essentially Superman and I have always found that character to be the literary equivalent of “cause I said so” a la a weak premise.

      1. 1. The wife and I have been to Orlando on several occasions, only once in the summer. And yeah, coming from Maryland that shit literally took my breath away. Maybe more so than New Orleans, and I thought there wasn’t a way for a place to be hotter than New Orleans on a sunny day in late July.

        2. I don’t go back to the other site anymore. The comments suck now, and the articles are just sort of meh.

        3. That’s the only Heinlein I’ve read, and I feel a little embarrassed to say that I didn’t like it. The hippy cult ethics were tiresome, and, like you say, I found the Superman-esque aspect to be trite. Maybe it wasn’t when it was written, but if so it hasn’t aged well.

        1. Cliche Bandit

          Moon is a Harsh Mistress is fantastic.

        2. Number.6

          Stranger in a Strange Land is part of a narrative thread Heinlein developed and expanded on after his brain surgery. Whether the two are linked is a matter of speculation, but SIASL is not to everyone’s taste.

    12. Holger-da-Dane

      This is some 50 shades kinda shit.

  8. Does Sasquatch live near Lebanon County?

    The 15 men and boys searching a cavern along the Swatara Creek knew enough about the danger they faced to each carry a weapon.

    After all, the creature they sought had was likely responsible for a pile of 23 chicken heads left at a nearby farm.

    Two of the men claimed to see the creature that night near Bindnagle Church in North Londonderry Township, according to an October 15, 1910 Harrisburg Telegraph article. One fired at it but missed.

    The next day, another group of 20 men visiting the cave saw the animal bathing in the Swatara Creek. They described it as light in color with a sandy head and weighing between 200 and 300 pounds.

    Occasional sightings of bigfoot-type monsters in Lebanon County have continued throughout the years.

    1. SugarFree

      STEVE SMITH NOT EAT CHICKEN HEADS. STEVE SMITH THINK BEAKS HAVE WEIRD TEXTURE.

    2. leonadasiv

      STEVE SMITH DON’T INTERRUPT YOU WHILE YOU’RE BATHING… NEVERMIND

    3. WTF

      STEVE SMITH CHOKE A LOT OF CHICKENS WHEN NO HIKERS AROUND!!

    4. Mr Lizard

      CONSTANT RAPE WORK UP APPETITE

    5. Bobarian LMD

      STEVE BIG FAN OF CHICKENHEADS. DONE RIGHT, MIGHT SAVE HIKER BUTT…

      FOR LATER.

  9. straffinrun

    Harvard College rescinded admissions offers to at least ten prospective members of the Class of 2021 after the students traded sexually explicit memes and messages that sometimes targeted minority groups in a private Facebook group chat.

    Private group targets minority groups. How the hell do you do that?

    1. leonadasiv

      Ha Harvard really stuck it to those 18 year olds!

      1. UnCivilServant

        Saved them from the indoctrination factory. They’re getting the better end of the deal.

        1. I don’t know. College is as much about pedigree as anything. I could go there and avoid the brainwashing and be pretty happy exiting with a Hah-vaaahd degree. It opens a lot of doors these kids may not have open for them anymore.

          1. UnCivilServant

            That’s what’s disgusting and infurating about the credentialism stranglehold.

            How to get rid of these decayed institutions of brainlessness and move towards it being what you know rather than what name got stamped on the participation trophy. (Yes, I stipulate that some programs can, in fact, be rigorous, but that does not put the lie to the general trend of academic decay)

          2. Akira

            I think once these SJW-indoctrinated snowflakes start percolating through the workforce, employers are going to notice that a college degree is no longer a reliable indicator of work ethic and intelligence.

            We might see more of these “boot camp” educational programs (like they have for computer programming) since they offer training for specific skills without the “student life” and political indoctrination bullshit.

            It would be nice if there were more skills testing done by employers, but they would first have to overturn the numerous court cases that have ruled that to be “racist”.

          3. Caput Lupinum

            Well, employers can still do skill testing, the tests just have to be narrowly focused and specifically tailored to the job at hand. So things like IQ tests are verboten, unless the employer is the government, because IQ isn’t directly indicative of job performance. Of you are hiring programmers though, you can have prospective employees write sample programs.

            With the cheapening of higher education, there could be a potential business opportunity in this. Start a company that designs employment tests based on the specific needs of individual client corporations. You’d need one hell of a legal team to handle the potential liability, but I bet companies would pay handsomely if your tests could be proven to secure better applicants on average while avoiding ECC lawsuits.

          4. Holger-da-Dane

            Don’t worry, occupational licensing will soon get a loving expansion.

      2. Drake

        I’ll be curious to see if the successfully sue the shit out of Harvard. They won’t have much else to do for the next year as they are fucked out of college now.

        1. Stinky Wizzleteats

          Most of them can probably afford to do so. Also folks, never, never, ever use your real fucking name for that kind of stuff and that includes here.

          1. Meh. You think I give a fuck what some stupid ass snowflakes think about what I say here? I could call them all goatfuckers and not give two shits about them gong after my business online.
            Do you really think them whining like a bunch of bitches is gonna drive equipment owners away from doing business with me? If so, you don’t know that business very well.

            Use your real name. Or don’t. But don’t be cowed by these fucksticks whose only weapon is intimidation, whatever you do. They feed off of it, and run like little schoolgirls when people stand up to them.

          2. Stinky Wizzleteats

            You’re in a bit of a unique position but if it works out for you that’s fine. Most people do have jobs they could and would be bounced right out of if they’re edgy and end up getting targeted for outrage.

          3. Not if they refuse to apologize and publicly tell these assclowns to pull the stick out of their ass and lighten up.
            Everybody that grovels gets destroyed by these scumbags. Everybody that either ignores them or calls them out eventually gets left alone or gets callbacks from Fox News.

          4. straffinrun

            I want to say Aristotle, but not sure. Who was it that said that the virtuous are usually the last to act because they normally have the most to lose?

          5. Gadfly

            Sloopy’s advice is good if you’re your own boss, but I think Stinky’s position is coming from the place of working for someone else. Many bosses are cowardly in the face of such histrionics, and if you work for such a person it is wise not to rock the boat.

          6. Suthenboy

            Preach it Ken. Same here. I dont tolerate bullies and neither should anyone else. They only have the power we give them, so give ’em none.

          7. Hyperion

            What’s going to happen and I would say it’s already happening, is that they’re going to make enough enemies and reach a tipping point.

            And then they’re going to get bit in the ass hard by their own foolishness. They’ve already started eating their own.

          8. MikeS

            I agree.

    2. WTF

      Big Brother found out they were privately engaging in wrongthink, that’s all that matters.

    3. Password gl1b

      Snitches get stitches accepted to Harvard.

    4. Old Man With Candy

      For me, it’s an IQ test- put that shit up there in a publicly accessible place with your real name and you’re in a hypersensitive social milieu? You’re too stupid to come here.

  10. Tundra

    Tesla Inc. Spent $565K Lobbying for Fed Subsidies Musk Says He Doesn’t Need

    Musk said on a recent earnings call that he resents reports crediting his success in part to the subsidies, arguing that the credits and deductions help the competition more than they help Tesla.

    “And I should perhaps touch again on this whole notion of—it’s almost like over the years there’s been all these sort of irritating articles like Tesla survives because of government subsidies and tax credits. It drives me crazy,” he said. “Here’s what those fools don’t realize. If Tesla is not alone in the car industry, but all those things would be material if we were the only car company in existence. We are not. There are many car companies. What matters is whether we have a relative advantage in the market.”

    Butt-hurt rent seekers are funny.

    1. UnCivilServant

      “What matters is whether we have a relative advantage in the market.”

      The lobbying market?

    2. leonadasiv

      It is interesting that he is put up by some on the left as the good type of businessman. Isn’t he exactly what they hate about cronies and businesses loving of the government teat? Or just another example of hypocrisy?

      1. UnCivilServant

        Tesla is a goodfeels company, so nothing they can do can be bad.

        Exxon is a badfeels company, so nothing they can do can be good.

        See how that works?

        1. Hyperion

          Yes, they’re like the Apple of cars.

          Bill Gates makes billions = BAD

          Steve Jobs makes billions = GOOD

          The cognitive dissonance of the left, always on full display.

          1. AlexinCT

            Well Gates made his millions peddling that piss poor Windows shit.

            Apple stuff is totes good.. yeah, sure…

      2. Rufus the Monocled

        They also talk as if he alone created Paypal.

        1. robc

          Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek and Ken Howery.

          Not only did he not do it alone, he didnt do it at all.

      3. wdalasio

        What makes you think for a minute that progressives hate cronies or businessmen attached to the government teat? As far as I’ve ever been able to tell, they only ever raise the issue as a means to shame conservatives into shutting up about government largess. And even then, the only “corporate welfare” they seem to care about it the absence of totally soaking business.

    3. straffinrun

      arguing that the credits and deductions help the competition more than they help Tesla.

      Let’s see if he makes that same argument for affirmative action.

    4. AlexinCT

      Yup. No doubt about it. Point out that all this green money can only happen when tax payers subsidize piss poor tech, and they all get mad at you for some reason..

    5. ron73440

      Why do so many people not speak English?

      I read Musk’s quote many times, it has no logic and makes no real point.

      1. Tundra

        …it has no logic and makes no real point

        Like rolling a failing solar company into a smoke-and-mirrors car company, all the while pimping moon shots and giant underground drills, baby?

        Musk doesn’t have to make sense. As UnCivil noted above, he has created a nice little cult that requires no actual proof of anything. Just good feelz.

        1. Count Potato

          Also, a brain-machine interface.

          http://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html

          1. AlexinCT

            I bet the usual suspects see this as a great thing, not for what it will allow people to do, but how they can use it to control good-think…

    6. Password gl1b

      …over the years there’s been all these sort of irritating articles like Tesla survives because of government subsidies and tax credits.

      What matters is whether we have a relative advantage in the market.

      Yes. Because subsidies and credits cannot create a relative advantage in the market. /derp

      1. Stinky Wizzleteats

        When Musk releases his affordable shitmobile that ordinary people will have to use day in and day out he’ll get his comeuppance. So far his unreliable garbage has been bought by people who own multiple cars and don’t really mind multiple trips to the shop. That’ll change and it will ruin him (or at least his car company).

      2. I wouldn’t touch Tesla stock with a borrowed dick, if you will. I never thought I’d see a “green bubble”, but sure as shit here it is. The reason there are subsidies for things is because they’re not profitable enough to be self-supporting. Typically that means there isn’t enough demand to merit investment. That’s why I get a little twitchy when I hear well-meaning dopes calling in to C-SPAN or whatever to talk about how important subsidizing the green energy sector is for driving the economy. I just want to reach through the radio (and then the phone, I suppose) grab the person by the shoulders, shake the shit out of them, and scream, “Would you please write what you just said down, read it carefully, and tell me why you think that makes any goddamn sense?!?”

        1. AlexinCT

          That’s why I get a little twitchy when I hear well-meaning dopes calling in to C-SPAN or whatever to talk about how important subsidizing the green energy sector is for driving the economy.

          They should start asking these people to disclose their investments or relations with the companies that do this green nonsense..

          I bet there is some serious overlap between those that want the “investments” (read subsidies), because they are making money from it, and these people dailing in to promote more tax payer money be pissed down these swirling drains.

          1. Gadfly

            A lot of people who talk about the importance of these “investments” are people who’ve been duped by the guys you’re talking about. They’re economically ignorant and have been told countless times that “green” energy is the energy of the future, so therefor they think that moving towards the future will be good for the economy. Never mind that energy is the lifeblood of the modern economy and that reliable, cheap energy is a boon for literally all economic activity; no, let’s hop on the bandwagon of unreliable, expensive energy: that’s the future!

          2. AlexinCT

            That is definitely the future for some well connected leftists to make a ton of money they don’t deserve..

        2. SimonD

          You’d think CSPAN callers would understand opportunity costs (yeah, I know….). It’s not about the subsidies, it’s about what else you could be doing with that money. There’s nothing stupider than an ideologue with more ‘education’ than intelligence.

          1. AlexinCT

            I find that a lot of what passes for education these days is nothing more than marxist drivel intended to confuse things..

          2. You get a lot of “multipliers” from the brainier ones. Mind you, I’m willing to concede that economic multipliers are a real thing, I just don’t believe the factor is 1 or greater. In other words, a $1 taken from the private sector and spent on police still contributes value, just not enough to balance or exceed the loss.

    7. Cliche Bandit

      Tesla is afloat on public money, there is no two ways about it. Their are NOT PROFITABLE!
      Musk is an eccentric. And I hate that he is a tax-sucker but at the same time he does inspire some cool shit. Even at Tesla, new battery tech etc. SpaceX (went to KSC to see launch, was scrubbed 30 min prior…DAMNIT), hyperloopy, all of it is visionary stuff. I, in general, like rich eccentrics with visions. In our broken system he is going to rent seek. That’s a bummer. But at least he is providing a paid service with SpaceX.

      And Jobs was not the liberal apposotle the left thinks he was, anymore than Trump is a “conservative”. Jobs did what he liked until it wasn’t profitable then he didn’t do it anymore. I will always respect Apple for two three things: 1. bringing personal computing into fruition. 2. Telling the world “We are the single LARGEST taxpayer. and 3. Telling the FBI to go fuck itself.

      Nobody is perfect.

  11. Jefe Hayek

    Anyone been keeping up with the Evergreen State BS?

    Of all the campus craziness stories over the past 5-10 years, this is easily the worst in my book.

    1. straffinrun

      Nuts, but it’s crazy all over. ABC news has a “Racism New” section now.

      1. AlexinCT

        And I am sure they will manufacture plenty of news for it when they have a hard time finding stories that meet the narrative…

      2. Agent Cooper

        Dr. Seuss is racist?

        1. Count Potato

          He was a white male, so yes.

          (He was also a prog who supported the Japanese internment during World War II)

    2. JD

      I’ve watched the two big interviews Weinstein did and have been trying to keep up. What happens there could set a terrible precedent.

      Post any updates you find.

      1. Tundra

        What I Saw at Evergreen State College

        By an alumnus of that fine, fine institution.

        Evergreeners are called “the Fighting Geoducks.” Geoducks are clams. Evergreen is an anti-traditional college that prides itself on its anti-capitalism, socialism, radical environmentalism, postmodernism, and Marxism, with a special emphasis upon indigenous values that convert the old American melting pot ideal into a subversive form of racist multi-tribalism under the guise of progressive multiculturalism.

        Fighting clams??

        1. Count Potato

          Clams are more intelligent. Also, happier.

        2. In other words, an institution which could only exist because there are productive capitalists generating tax revenue.

        3. A Leap at the Wheel

          They are passive, solitary, animals that don’t inspire aggression or toxicly masculine dominance, so their use as a school mascot is an ironic lampoon of patriarchal schools that use aggressive predators to compensate for their penis insecurities.

          Also it looks like a dick, so that’s totes hilarious.

          Now you might think those are mutually exclusive assertions that display the same kind of weak-minded tribalism that the good educated folks at Evergreen assert they’ve moved past. But you probably look at a professional model in bondage gear, photographed with expert lighting, framing, and post production, and appreciate the way she looks. So you are a shitlord who doesn’t count.

        4. The Last American Hero

          Not only are they clams, but they look like big limp cocks.

        5. Suthenboy

          “Fighting clams??”

          Scissoring?

          1. Cliche Bandit

            BOOOM!

      1. straffinrun

        Can we let him twist for a little while longer before we come to his aid?

        1. I have zippy sympathy for this guy. He still refers to himself on his Twitter profile as a “progressive intellectual”, and apparently thinks all this is just factional infighting. It’s as if one were to say, “Look, it’s not National Socialism that’s the problem, it’s the younger brown shirts who are ruining the movement.” It’s like his beef is that the monsters he helped create don’t respect their elders, and he’s either oblivious to or unconcerned with the fact that this shit is rooted in the progressivism he espouses.

          1. Tundra

            “Bravo! The wolves devour each other!”

          2. AlexinCT

            I see that as social justice….

          3. Chipwooder

            One of my favorite quotes of all time!

            And yeah, piss on this guy. You can’t teach at Evergreen State if you aren’t a hard left progtard.

          4. Gilmore

            No. I think the prof should be defended vigorously, regardless of how progtarded he may personally be.

            But the institution of Evergreen should suffer for letting this insanity happen in the first place. I think they should get a taste of their own bullshit PC-medicine, and be forced to take “Mandatory Civil Liberties Training” so they can learn why their safe-spaces nonsense is incompatible with a free society. Or else they can stop taking public money and all go to UW

          5. The public money is the most galling part. Universities are blatantly and unapologetically political places, typically with a distinct leftward bias. So, basically, it’s like they’re taking money out of the pockets of the same people they’re deriding as backward rubes and racist shitlords.

          6. Zero Sum Game

            It is useful. If they’re all in fear of one another, they’ll act even more irrationally. That cloistered behavior will cause them to close ranks and appear even more cult-like to the average person trying to decide if they’re right.

            Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.

          7. Hyperion

            “progressive intellectual”

            Best oxymoron example ever.

          8. Zero Sum Game

            Cult leaders are often very bright people. It’s how they develop the skills needed to attract followers and persuade them.

            There are many really intelligent Marxists stalking the hallowed halls of academia, for example. Hubris and projection of their own intelligence onto tho populace leads them to think their ideas could work for everyone. Leftists especially are concerned with tests of purity, and that maxes them susceptible to the “no true Marxist” fallacy. The same holds true for the cult of cultural Marxism. It takes little to be excommunicated as an unfaithful SJW. Just express some doubts or find two competing ideas the group holds and pit them against one another. They fear excommunication the most.

            Most of the cult members are profoundly stupid, however. Cult acolytes usually are. This is an internecine struggle for power between the uppity, but influential stupid ones who have built large cult followings of their own via social media (built by parroting the leaders unswervingly), and the cloistered academics who have up until now served as their cult leaders.

          9. Fatty Bolger

            It takes an intelligent person to rationalize a system that has lead to devastation and failure every single time it’s been tried in the real world.

    3. Jefe Hayek

      The video of the President of the college literally being held prisoner while students and “faculty” call him by his first name and curse at him is illuminating. Both in how little these people fear repercussions (let’s be clear, they actually do fear repercussions, they just know there won’t be any) and how timid and weak this President is. They escorted him to the bathroom to make sure he didn’t try to escape…

      Why his first response wasn’t to call the State Police and tell everyone there they were about to be forcibly removed is very telling.

      1. leonadasiv

        Yeah…. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer group of people

      2. I’ll take “Shit you’ll never hear about happening at BYU” for a thousand, Alex.

  12. Tundra

    And then there’s this:

    US insurer hikes Tesla premiums due to ‘higher-than-average’ claim rates

    Who would’ve thought it? I mean, real-world testing on customers seemed like such a sound idea…

    Fan boys: “Nuh uh! Tesla will create its own insurance!”

    1. Rufus the Monocled

      Heh, based on flawed data according to Tesla.

      This from a company that isn’t exactly forthcoming with information.

    2. leonadasiv

      Fan boys: “Nuh uh! Tesla will create its own insurance!”

      Ah yes, Tesla has the secret sauce that will allow them to avoid the actuarial problem called reality.

      1. Rufus the Monocled

        Soon they’ll be into revisionism. Alessandro Volta didn’t invent the electric battery! MUSK AND TESLA DID!

  13. Drake

    Connecticut was once a tax-haven from New York, now they’ve runs out of other people’s money.

    1. AlexinCT

      Drake, the story is worse than what they are telling you now. Malloy has realized that he must cut spending, and he is under siege by the donkey controlled government that wants to keep the gravy train going. The latest decisions point to these people thinking they can just fleece employers to cover the losses caused by previous bad policy, and now we are hearing one of the states biggest employers, Aetna, is out of here. I suspect they will be followed by quite a few others as they too end up in the sights of people that believe that money is theirs to do with as they please and the rest of us should be happy they leave us with some of that money.

      1. Number.6

        Molloy had a great hope, that Shrillary would be President. Rumor has it that he was lining up for all kinds of federal ‘help’ if he would enact some very draconian laws (anti-2A, sanctuary cities etc) and take a lot of heat as a ‘pioneering’ governor. Of course, with the failure of the Red Queen, he (and the state) are back in the shit again.

        And yes, it’s starting to look as though Aetna is just the first in a long line of insurance industry cows fed up with being milked. Time to try and come up with a Pareto Optimization (recovering real estate prices vs tax rape) on selling mi casa and getting the hell out of the North East.

        1. AlexinCT

          I am having a bunch of work done on my place right now precisely so it is up to code and I can sell and get out if I decide I have had enough. Lucky for me I have a ton of equity in the place (I have a mortgage now because I needed to give my ex part of the value in the home) and I won’t be losing money if I sell, but when I talk with my neighbors, I hear I am a rarity and most people are just plain stuck here because of that depressed market and lack of opportunity thing.

          1. Drake

            I have a lot of equity in my house in NJ but I still would like to get something close to what I paid for it when I sell in a couple of years. I have a bad feeling that NJ is going to elect a Dem Governor this November and go full-retard leftist even harder.

          2. WTF

            Yeah, you can pretty much count on that idiot Murphy getting elected on his platform of higher taxes, more spending and more regulation.

          3. Drake

            And when has that formula ever failed?

          4. AlexinCT

            Leftists have never seen a problem they didn’t think would be solved by more tax and spending. After all, only top men know what is best for us unwashed plebes.

          5. WTF

            Well, every once in a while in New Jersey, after a Democrat has really fucked things up more than usual (Corzine), we get a RINO to replace him (Christie), but then the RINO combined with the Democrat legislature fail to fix anything, so It’s right back to another Democrat.

          6. Drake

            That is the cycle. Similar in Massachusetts.

          7. Bobarian LMD

            California was in that cycle, but managed to break out of it?

          8. Number.6

            We can get out, except we have a high-schooler to process thru’ the mill for the next 2 years. Then we’re out.

            But in my town, there’s a lot of negative equity home ownership. Many of my neighbors are pulling down great salaries, but they have ridiculous spending habits and I’m concerned that a load of them will end up in foreclosure if their mortgages tick up 50 basis.

          9. AlexinCT

            Funny you mention this Six. I spent this weekend looking at how much new real estate is up for sale in my area, how much has been for sale since last year (or before), and how many people my town has lost, and the analysis – if it is happening elsewhere in the state – bodes very, very ill for CT. That is why the usual losers doubling down on the policies that have gotten us here just baffle the shit out of me. I would joke and ask about the definition of insanity, but at this point I don’t think this is a joke anymore.

          10. Number.6

            Are you prepared to share the town you’re in?

          11. AlexinCT

            Marlborough.

          12. Number.6

            OK. Ridgefield.

            No, stop laughing. I’m serious.

          13. AlexinCT

            I don’t judge brother, but yeah, that is some dangerous country you live in there…

    2. Count Potato

      Malloy also pushed for the stupidest gun laws ever after the Newtown shooting.

      1. AlexinCT

        Yes he did. We have some seriously stupid laws on our books, and they only impact law abiding citizens. And now he is pushing to raise costs associated with license to carry by something like 400% as one of the ways to raise the states bloodletting of the law abiding community.

    3. PieInTheSKy

      right wing lies

  14. speaking of Tesla:

    Tesla Motors Annoyed After AAA Raised Insurance Rates on its Cars

    The American Automobile Association thinks Tesla cars should cost more to insure due to abnormally high claim frequencies and expenditures compared to similar vehicles. The group said premiums for Tesla’s Model X and Model S could increase by up to 30 percent, based primarily on data from the Highway Loss Data Institute. “Looking at a much broader set of countrywide data, we saw the same patterns observed in our own data, and that gave us the confidence to change rates,” said Anthony Ptasznik, chief actuary of AAA.

    Obviously, Tesla Motors isn’t pleased and is offering a rebuttal before other insurers follow in AAA’s footsteps.

    “This analysis is severely flawed and is not reflective of reality,” the automaker said in a statement emailed to Automotive News. “Among other things, it compares Model S and X to cars that are not remotely peers, including even a Volvo station wagon.”

    Tesla asserts that it is “false and misleading” to compare its products against vehicles like the XC70, specifying that the Model S held the lowest likelihood of injury, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. While that may be true, the Highway Loss report showed the Model S possessing a 46 percent higher claims rate than normal with repair bills over double the industry average.

    1. Curse you, Tundra!

    2. Bob

      Tesla’s statement makes it sound like they don’t understand how insurance works.

    1. AlexinCT

      I would ride her like she was the metro?

    2. PBRstreetgang

      wow. I have no more words

      1. AlexinCT

        If you have to go before you hit it, yeah… Then again, as a once wise man told me, no matter how hot she is, there is some guy somewhere that has had enough of her giving him grief….

        1. The Last American Hero

          You know Billy Joel?

          1. AlexinCT

            We used to date in the same circles…

      2. Homple

        I’ll be in my bunker.

    3. Got-dam!

      Man, you can keep Gal Gadot. I’m all in on the MILF (GILF, possibly?) from Berlin.

  15. Rufus the Monocled

    Man oh man that CNN chick and the Sanskrit comment. The benign ignorance and presumptuousness of the left never ceases to amaze me.

    Everyone’s a racist or prejudicial simply because that’s who they are.

  16. ron73440

    OT: I HATE the fact that all this sexual assault/rape/drunk sex combination makes me doubt anyone who says they survived sexual assault.

    I did twenty years in the Marine Corps and SAPR (Sexual Assault Prevention and Response was just starting when I retired a year ago. I am currently a Govt. Contractor and work on a base.

    We have signs everywhere listing what sexual assault is and it irritates the hell out of me that somehow they think the problem is drunk people having sex and that is the same thing as using roofies or, to quote a famous idiot “rape, rape”

    I watched Fantastic Lies (talk about rage inducing), it’s the story of the Duke Lacrosse rape allegations and at the end one lady says “as a sexual assauly survivor…” and I wondered if she had been raped or just regretted drunk sex.

    I remember growing up, rapists were the lowest form of life, they still are, but the watering down of the definition doesn’t help a damn thing.

    /rant

    1. straffinrun

      Desire to take a peek at a nice rack? Not rape, but I’m old school. Using alcohol to smooth out the nervous of a date? Not rape, but I’m old school. Pinning a chick down and forcing her to have sex? Rape, but I’m old school.

      1. Rufus the Monocled

        Know what someone should do? A meme/avatar of cry bully baby Griffin holding her own fucken head.

        1. straffinrun

          I saw one today on YouTube. You think SNL will do a skit roasting her? …Gave myself a laugh there. Do a skit of SNL not doing a skit on Kathy Griffin. It’d be so postmodern.

          1. Rufus the Monocled

            SNL and Michaels should just close up shop now. They jumped the shark under the Obama administration.

            Nothing but partisan weak humour at this point.

          2. Pat

            They jumped the shark under the Obama administration.

            It was the “Hillary sings Leonard Cohen” what done it, if you ask me. But honestly, has SNL been at all relevant or funny since the ’80s?

          3. Rufus the Monocled

            Was that before or after they fawned over Obama after he left office?

            I don’t think they realize they possess exactly the traits necessary for a cult.

          4. AlexinCT

            Last time I thought they were funny Eddie Murphy was on that show..

          5. Chipwooder

            It had moments in the ’90s, particularly when Norm was doing Weekend Update. He was savage towards the Clintons. He wouldn’t have lasted 2 minutes in the Obama era..

          6. What the fuck is a “SNL”?

          7. AlexinCT

            Exactamundo sir..

          8. Gustave Lytton

            Saving ‘n Loan. You know, the industry John McCain got bucks off of.

      2. ron73440

        That’s basically what I was trying to say, some lady at the gym this morning had a SAPR shirt on and it got me thinking about how retarded it has become.

        Do they realize the damage they do to their own cause?

    2. Count Potato

      Feminists watered down definition of “rape” so that it’s meaningless.

    3. wdalasio

      What I’ve never been able to understand about the claim that drunk sex is rape is why the equally or more inebriated guy (and in most cases where the girl is drunk, the guy is, too) isn’t the victim of rape by the woman?

      I remember more than a decade ago, a blogger I’d read was evaluating a story by a prominent third wave feminist that she’d gone out and picked up a couple of drunk frat guys to have a three-way. The implication was that she’d done much the same before. The feminist put an end to it in her room because it occurred to her that it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that one of the guys could be a rapist. The feminist was arguing that the whole affair was evidence of the supreme injustice women face that they have to worry about such things. But, by her own standards, there was absolutely, definitely, a rapist in the room that night.

  17. AlexinCT

    A democrat is no longer in charge, so the usual suspects are back to worrying about evil American nukes. Don’t recall hearing these people complain or worry about this shit when Obama was the one with the football.

    1. You’re such a racist for mentioning football in connection with a black person.

      1. AlexinCT

        DOH!

    2. Atanarjuat

      Funny, I just saw an anti-nuke t-shirt on a chick at the grocery store yesterday.

      I wonder if we’ll see a return of the “honk if you’re anti-war” crowd in front of the state Capitol building, too.

      1. straffinrun
      2. AlexinCT

        I am surprised they haven’t started this shit yet. Maybe they are hoping if they wait a bit before they start this shit up, people will forget they had no problem with Obama bombing the shit out of brown people everywhere.

        1. DOOMco

          “Say, I didn’t see you guys here last year when we bombed 8 countries. was it too hot?”

      3. Akira

        Who knows – maybe they’ll bring back Cindy Sheehan!

        Remember her??

  18. Drake

    “That will require some difficult and often embarrassing conversations…”

    The kind that get you arrested for naming the enemy?

  19. Rufus the Monocled

    Crosby clearly is playing as if that hit is impacting his play. Up until that point when Niskanen hit him, he was typical Crosby. What Subban claimed (and being from Montreal I’d take it with a grain of salt) would normally fuel a stud like Crosby. Why would you try and ‘woke’ a sleeping giant?

    1. Tundra

      I was surprised that the Preds rolled over so easily in the first two. The bad breath thing is kind of stupid. Have we really reached a point in hockey where that’s an insult?

      This is how it’s done!

      1. Rufus the Monocled

        ‘You feel shame’ is still one of the all-time great lines.

        I love the solid skating in that movie. That’s pretty much the old hockey we grew up with. Man the fights in the stands in smoke filled, drunekn arenas during ‘Q’ games here where Mario Lemieux played were something else.

        1. Rufus the Monocled

          Now it’s all towel twirling, corporate boxes and security guards ready to throw people out.

          Bah. Boring.

          1. Mutual combat is fine – but getting sucker punched by some drunken yahoo because their team’s goalie just let in another soft goal….not so much. I also do not miss the rats, streams of urine and beer running down the stairs, and the smoke inside the old Chicago Stadium.

            I do wish the ticket prices were not so high that the crowd ends up mostly older and richer and less loud and active.

          2. Rufus the Monocled

            Yeh, those are pluses for sure.

      2. Chipwooder

        It was mostly just Rinne who rolled over, really.

        1. DOOMco

          yeah, the preds have looked better even when they lose.

  20. PieInTheSKy

    I am impressed by the British Conservatives valiant attempt to out-retard labour. They might even snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the elections they called for

    1. Number.6

      Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is their superpower, after all.

    2. straffinrun

      Was there ever any doubt that May was going to use the attack to go after the intertoobz? She’s an imbecile.

      1. PieInTheSKy

        where is sir Humphrey when you need him…

        1. Number.6

          Behind the curtain, of course.

    3. PieInTheSKy

      Seriously the internet thing is bad. I mean real bad. Internet security is bad as it is. As more and more gets connected, the more dangerous it becomes to have shit security. Nothing should be done to weaken it.

      1. leonadasiv

        Are you suggesting the government might weaken a vital social system so that it can benefit in the short run at the expense of everyone in the long run? Why I never…

      2. Number.6

        I need to get back up to date with all my security certifications. I sense opportunity!

      3. Drake

        It’s an unbelievably Orwellian response to an attack. May won’t even name the enemy who has declared holy war on her country. Instead she wants complete government control over the internet. And why does an elderly Anglican woman claim to be such an expert on Islam?:

        Let the message go out that we know Islam is a religion of peace and it has nothing to do with the ideology of our enemies.

        That certainly doesn’t give with what the Koran and many Muslims say.

        1. If you’re not Muslim, there’s no such thing as “real” Islam. There are the versions of Islam practiced by actual Muslims.

          An armed minority has a version of Islam which teaches jihad against the West. These jihadis don’t think a majority of Muslims are with them, otherwise they wouldn’t be denouncing the apostasy, cowardice, etc., of those Muslims who don’t join them.

          I don’t really see this armed minority picking up majority support, unless the West does something really dumb, like saying that “any Muslim who sides with us is a bad Muslim who ignores his own scripture, lol!”

          1. Drake

            They don’t need majority support – just silence and submission. The “moderates” almost never snitch on the radicals, much less confront them. The moderates own Korans and Hadiths too and know the crazies are right (according to Islam).

          2. AlexinCT

            Agreed.

          3. Drake

            The difference between moderate and radical Islam in one picture.

            https://twitter.com/TheRealZBlog/status/871395117755662336

          4. AlexinCT

            Moderates just watch the others?

          5. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

            True of moderates everywhere really. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be, you know, moderate.

          6. Number.6

            I think it was Steyn that said that there are two kinds of muslims. One group that want to chop our heads off, and the other that are prepared to stand by and watch the first group chop our heads off.

            It’s hard to refute that view, at the moment.

          7. Drake

            He is our Cassandra.

          8. I think I said at one point that those Muslims who want war with us, we pretty much have to be at war with them, or surrender.

            Those who keep their heads down and don’t help us, we should keep them at arm’s length.

            But those (like, say, certain armed Kurds) who fight the people who are killing us, are worth supporting. And they in turn, if only from fighting common enemies, may come to like us.

            We can’t tell them what to *think,* only what we will *do* based on what they do.

          9. Caveat: With so many extremists posing as “moderates,” it’s not enough to say, “oh, yeah, I deplore this yada yada” to show that you’re an anti-terrorist. Fairly or unfairly, we have to be alert to possible wolves in sheep’s clothing.

          10. AlexinCT

            I think I said at one point that those Muslims who want war with us, we pretty much have to be at war with them, or surrender.

            You may not want war, but when they bring it to your door you have 2 options: You fight (and do so to win) or you perish. And have no doubt these people want you to perish. There is no compromise with that, but I keep getting told that there is by people that say the compromise is to not worry about them and instead focus on the fact that Gaia is going to go apocalypse now on us because of carbon emmisions.

          11. But as to whether all Muslims should logically be terrorists against the West: If this is true, if Muslims are divided into terrorists who follow the religion and naive people who misunderstand their religion and that’s the only reason they don’t attack the west – well, then, we’re screwed, aren’t we? Unless they abandon Islam altogether. It’s just one gigantic Fifth Column, simply waiting to be activated.

            It says that one of those Brit terrorists fought with an imam who was antiterrorist. Was that simply a put-up job – “OK, I’ll fight you to make it look like you’re against terrorism, then you can fool the infidels better!”

            I’d prefer to think that, if only for self-preservation, we have Muslims prepared to fight the terrorists.

          12. Drake

            Everything in the last few comments from you and Alex was common knowledge in Europe a thousand years ago. When Ferdinand completed the Reconquista, Muslims had the choice of converting or leaving. Same when the Normans retook Sicily and Malta from the Saracens.

            Similar actions in Eastern Europe as the Ottoman Empire declined.

            Now Europeans are relearning the same lessons and if they have the resolve, will have to do it all over again if they are to survive as Western nations.

          13. Gadfly

            The Fusionist is right, a distinction needs to be made, because it does exist. There are various factions within Islam that want different things, and there are of course a great many people who just want to get by and don’t really care about the struggle to define their religion. It would be foolish to lump everyone together, as it is foolish to drive people into the arms of your enemies (the imperialist faction). Recognizing this distinction and working to create allies is the best course of action. And it does not preclude immigration restrictions, if that is determined to be a proper course of action: the people most willing to fight the extremists are also the least likely to emigrate, so you don’t have to worry too much about alienating them with such measures.

          14. WTF

            Merkel and Macron are proof that Europe is already lost.

        2. Number.6

          One new development is the (partial) agreement to not slap the names of the terrorists all over the news media, and, really, what point is there in pointing out what ideology is responsible for the attacks?

          From a point of principal, I recognize the value in calling islamic terrorism “islamic terrorism”, but I doubt that there’s much support going to be gained by it, and it staves people like Anjem Choudrey of oxygen, which is a good thing.

    4. The Elite Elite

      I don’t know. As stupid as the Conservatives are being about censorship, I still think it’s a slamdunk for them because of Brexit. No one else looks like they’ll even attempt to do it right. After Brexit is done and over with, however, I think the Conservatives will be dropped real fast because of this BS.

  21. Count Potato

    “Paris. London. Regret. Synths. This song has it all.”

    Shorter Sloopy: “would”

    1. That poor girl – it was obvious that man wasn’t any good…it was the 80s and his hair was shorter than hers!

      1. Bobarian LMD
  22. Rufus the Monocled

    Re Britain: If I’m William the Conquerer reincarnated, I take my chance for a second invasion. They’re ripe for a second 1066 with that kind of mentality.

    1. You know who else wanted to invade Britain…

      1. Philip II of Spain?

      2. UnCivilServant

        Claudius?

        1. C-C-C-laudius /Derek Jacobi

      3. Floridaman

        John Paul Jones?

        1. Tundra

          Helluva bassist, that guy.

      4. Number.6

        Ragnar the Fearless?

      5. PBRstreetgang

        Vikings?

        1. Tundra

          No better than 8-8 this year, I’m afraid.

          1. Juvenile Bluster

            But they do play in London this season!

      6. Gustave Lytton

        Parliment and William and Mary?

      7. Agent Cooper

        The Bizarro Beatles?

        1. F. Stupidity Jr.

          I remember them: Ringo, George, Paul, and John. Disgraceful the way John Lennon killed Mark David Chapman. Of course, they might have broken up in 1970 if not for the efforts of Yoko Starr.

          1. MikeS

            Ah yes, Yoko Starr. What a beautiful voice. Sings like an angel. And quite the hottie, too!

    2. UnCivilServant

      Harold Godwinson did not roll over and let foreign migrants take over his kingdom. He kicked out Hardrada, and William the Bastard had to literally march over his dead body to seize the Isles.

      Today is nothing like 1066.

      1. straffinrun

        So you’re saying the descendants of William the Bastard are Cucks?

        1. *opera applause*

      2. leonadasiv

        So you’re saying it’s easier

      3. Drake

        Harold Godwinson fought a spectacular battle against Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge. He should have waited for the fyrds to gather before taking on the Normans.

        1. KibbledKristen

          I thought the fyrds basically told him to get fucked, as they had been marched at lightning speed to the north to meet Hardrada, and it was harvest time? I seem to remember the narrator at the reenactment I went to saying something along those lines.

          (if you ever get a chance to go to Battle for the reenactment, I highly recommend it)

          1. Drake

            It was harvest time – and the Normans were trying to provoke a hasty English response by pillaging farm towns. But I think very few from the fyrd fought at Stamford Bridge. And since that was in York, it would have been different local militia than Hastings – where the militias from Sussex and Wessex would have fought.

        2. Number.6

          Problem was that William the Bastard was an aggressive, competent enemy who had a very mobile and competent army.

          Harold had to go to war with the troops he had and not the ones he wanted. Arguably, Senlac Hill was winnable if the fyrd hadn’t fallen for William’s ruse.

    3. PieInTheSKy

      sadly the EU ain’t much better. And the vikings were thoroughly cucked, to use a popular phrase from certain circles

      1. Why do you think they wore horns on their heads?

        1. Bobarian LMD

          Something about Steers and Queers?

          1. JD

            + Beers

      2. Drake

        The Norsemen who went East founded Kievan Rus’ (which eventually became Russia and the Baltic States). They aren’t quite the cucks the state-at-homes in Sweden have become.

    4. Churchill must be rolling in his grave. It really must be true that the two world wars killed off the cream of English manhood.

    5. The Last American Hero

      Yes, but the troops you’d be leading now aren’t fierce Normans, but thoroughly…French. And not Napoleon French either. I’m talking post-WW I French.

  23. hmm:

    Ex US Vice Joe Biden says he was personally involved to avoid Grexit

    President Obama and I were engaged with all parties in the Greek financial crisis, because we wanted to prevent Greece from experiencing financial collapse. Grexit would have had very serious long-term consequences for Greece and Europe – and could potentially have triggered a wider crisis of confidence in the global economy. We were concerned that in the high-stakes negotiation between Greece and its creditors, failure to reach a sensible agreement would have made all parties much worse off in the end. But because of each side’s desire to secure the best possible terms, this worst-case scenario was a real possibility.

    While the ultimate decision was up to the leaders of Greece, the IMF, and the eurozone countries, I think we helped steer the conversation in a more pragmatic direction because of the credibility we had in Athens, Brussels and Berlin. We argued with the creditor countries that Greece had been saddled with an unsustainably high debt burden and that reform would only go so far with such a large debt overhang.

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      Do you mean to tell me we got involved in the politics of another country? I mean, is that allowed? Isn’t that bad?

      1. leonadasiv

        Uncle Sam = Good
        Russian Bear = Bad

        1. The Elite Elite

          Hey, Uncle Sam influencing the politics of another country will be bad for the next 4-8 years.

          1. AlexinCT

            It was awesome when Obama tried to steal the Israeli election for Bibi’s opponent. After all, Bibi is not a right thinking guy. But anyone that Trump would like is definitely an enemy of the people, if by people you mean the global government peddling elite cabal.

      2. Pat

        BREAKING: INVESTIGATORS LOOKING INTO POSSIBLE US HACKING OF GREEK REFERENDUM

        1. straffinrun

          Zerohedge hired STEVE SMITH?

  24. KibbledKristen

    Is there such a thing as a job just creating reports in Google Data Studio? Because I would like that job.

  25. FreeSociety

    CNN caught staging a Muslim protest of the the latest London attack. This is exactly why the left stopped using the “fake news” excuse for Hilary’s loss, it’s a grenade that will never fail to get thrown right back at them with great accuracy.

    1. straffinrun

      That’s not a grenade. That’s Reza’s piece of shit.

    2. Pat

      To be fair (with apologies to Robby), I suspect this is how quite a substantial portion of the “news” has always been done.

      1. FreeSociety

        It’s a very diverse casting couch.

        “So Muhammed, you want to be a star? You and your goat need to do something for me.”

        1. AlexinCT

          Oh shizz…

      2. The Last American Hero

        I’ve seen local OWS protests near my office that were covered by the news like it was a Million Man March when in fact it was about 200 people, half of whom were layabouts that are in the city square even when a protest is not going on. It’s all about camera angles.

    3. Count Potato

      Wow. That’s almost worse than NBC and their bullshit editing.

      Well, at least we know her mic isn’t going to suddenly fail.

  26. The Late P Brooks

    The chat grew out of a roughly 100-member messaging group that members of the Class of 2021 set up in early December to share memes about popular culture. Admitted students found and contacted each other using the official Harvard College Class of 2021 Facebook group.

    “A lot of students were excited about forming group chats with people who shared similar interests,” Jessica Zhang ’21, an incoming freshman who joined both chats, wrote in an email. “Someone posted about starting a chat for people who liked memes.”

    Minds in search of a hive. The cream of America’s intellectual crop.

    And now… where do they go? Fucking Dartmouth?

    1. robc

      Yale should group accept them.

    2. leonadasiv

      Like I said earlier (though not articulated very well), It was super brave of Harvard to go after these 18 year olds. I get that these kids are ‘adults’ now and at some point, you learn some hard lessons, but seriously? These are a bunch of teenagers. Harvard can do what it wants, but it wasn’t brave. And in essence, this is what the SJW movement is all about. Ganging up and attacking the helpless and then calling yourself brave.

      1. AlexinCT

        Virtue signaling is the primary purpose of teh SJW movement…

      2. F. Stupidity Jr.

        First the kids are a bunch of helpless snowflakes, then you say they shouldn’t be treated like adults. Fuckin’ libertarians.

        /EveryReasonTroll

        1. R C Dean

          NAH. We’re saying everyone should act like adults, and take the consequences.

          “Everyone”, BTW, includes the SJWs and their puppets/fellow travelers at Harvard. Adults don’t cancel college admissions because people are sharing jokes.

  27. The Late P Brooks

    We argued with the creditor countries that Greece had been saddled with an unsustainably high debt burden and that reform would only go so far with such a large debt overhang.

    Debts were incurred.

    Those poor Greeks. Through no fault of their own, they just woke up one morning with bill collectors harassing them.

    1. straffinrun

      *Shave and a Hair Cut, 2 Bits*

    2. leonadasiv

      Yup those nasty Creditor countries just got together and told greece that they owed them money.

    3. FreeSociety

      “Join the EU they said. Borrow money with an artificially high credit rating they said. It’ll be fun they said.”

      1. AlexinCT

        Is that not how that guy Julian played by Robert Downey Jr. in the movie “Less than Zero” ended up on his knees paying off his debts?

        1. FreeSociety

          Thankfully, I’ve never seen that one.

  28. The Elite Elite

    Is it OMWC territory to say that the spelling bee champ there looks like in a decade she’d be a total would?

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      No, OMWC territory would be if you left out the “in a decade” part.

  29. Juvenile Bluster
    1. Count Potato

      Would love long time.

  30. Pat

    Why Aren’t American Teenagers Working Anymore?

    For Baby Boomers and Generation X, the summer job was a rite of passage. Today’s teenagers have other priorities. Teens are likeliest to be working in July, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that’s not seasonally adjusted. In July of last year, 43 percent of 16- to 19-year-olds were either working or looking for a job. That’s 10 points lower than in July 2006. In 1988 and 1989, the July labor force participation rate for teenagers nearly hit 70 percent.

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      Ctrl-F “Minimum Wage”

      One result found, but mostly misses the point.

      1. The Elite Elite

        But the minimum wage helps make sure workers earn a fair amount for their labor. It doesn’t affect employers hiring since they can easily afford it!

        /prog

        1. AlexinCT

          FEELZ!

        2. If you can’t afford to pay your workers a living wage, you’re bad at business and should close down anyway.

          /stupidest prog retort I’ve ever heard

          1. Michael

            “If you pay your workers more money, then they have more money to buy things from you so your business will be more profitable.”

            /progonomics

          2. AlexinCT

            Shit we should pay everyone a billion dollars then regardless of what they produce..

          3. I mean, that’s kind of what Keynesians actually believe, isn’t it? Pump currency into the economy so that people will spend it?

          4. AlexinCT

            Magic money created by fiat…

            What could go wrong?

          5. DOOMco

            maybe if we didn’t have an income tax or SS. stop witholding. 10x40x4= 1600.

          6. Akira

            If you can’t afford to pay your workers a living wage, you’re bad at business and should close down anyway.

            I love that logic. It’s like if I walked up to someone, knifed them in the gut, and said, “well, if you can’t survive a little peritonitis and massive blood loss, you’re too weak to live anyway!”

      2. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

        That and the whole mandatory insurance thing.

    2. leonadasiv

      Totally has nothing to do with new labor regulations that have hit in the last 10 years…

    3. FreeSociety

      The author’s favored argument is “because they’re all in school learning and stuff”. So even if that is true, there is absolutely no denying that vast swathes of the collegiate population have no business being there, which itself is a result of artificial causes that we could spend paragraphs talking about. The net benefit to the economy is a glut of underqualified overeducated people, and a dearth of labor in the intervening time it takes to produce them.

      Not to mention unskilled immigrants bidding down unskilled labor to the point where native born won’t compete given alternatives like getting your Masters degree in feminist glacier studies.

      1. robc

        Longer schools years probably does change things. Starting in early/mid August and ending in early/mid June doesn’t leave a lot of time for jobs.

        There use to be a full 3 month break.

        1. FreeSociety

          Yeah, I’d be interested to see the teen labor participation rate in relatively homogeneous places like Japan and S. Korea so you can see the interplay of factors minus unskilled immigration. Though those places do year-round schooling if I’m not mistaken.

          1. AlexinCT

            DO you count the ones playing WOW all day, or not?

          2. FreeSociety

            Apparently some real world economic phenomena is happening in those games, but no. Honorable mention to the SK kid who played WoW so much for so long that he somehow “died of exposure”.

      2. Number.6

        Teenage Libertarian Student Daughter has friends in our town who had a miserable time trying to find work this summer. It wasn’t so much the immigrant labor that depressed demand for these ‘kids’, it’s retirees and gig-economy hipsters.

        1. Cliche Bandit

          A proper teenage libertarian student daughter would create a business where she hired illegal immigrants, paid them change, and brought in a ton of profit with little to no personal effort. Just sayin’

          1. Number.6

            Oh, *she* had no problem getting a job. She dug herself a comfortable niche in a local business a year ago – fully prepared.

            Her ability to start an “Orphan Exchange” somewhat limited by her infuriating commitment to actually learning “useful stuff” at college.

    4. JaimeRoberto

      Maybe because there’s a huge pool of illegal immigrants who are highly motivated to show up on time, work cheap, work hard and keep their noses clean?

  31. Count Potato

    Britain wants to increase their surveillance state, weaken computer security, etc. but keeps ignoring the obvious. Just like a number of people reported the Manchester asshole, there is this:

    “The London Bridge killer wearing an Arsenal shirt slipped through the net despite being reported to the police twice for extremism including trying to twist the minds of children he bribed with sweets and cash, it was revealed today.

    The security services face difficult questions because the 27-year-old Muslim ringleader, known to friends as ‘Abz’, even appeared in a Channel 4 documentary last year about British jihadists and unfurled an ISIS-style flag in Regent’s Park.

    He was also caught on camera alongside two notorious preachers who were well known to police and intelligence officials because of their extremist views.

    A friend of the suspect called the anti-terror hotline because he became obsessed with watching hate preacher videos on YouTube and police were later warned he was trying to radicalise children in a local park and giving them treats to listen to him.”

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4571902/London-Bridge-killer-slipped-police-s-net.html

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      Arsenal is the “Gunners”. Therefore, this is because they need a name change. I suggest “Wizards”.

    2. Count Potato

      Meanwhile, “One surveillance camera for every 11 people in Britain, says CCTV survey”, but they can’t be bothered to watch Channel 4?

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-camera-for-every-11-people-in-Britain-says-CCTV-survey.html

      I don’t want to go all InfoWars — cock up before conspiracy — but is it so implausible that the British government is deliberately allowing these attacks to happen?

      1. Juvenile Bluster

        Hanlon’s razor. It applies especially to government. It’s incompetence, not malice.

        1. AlexinCT

          If you refuse to even acknowledge or identify the real problem you have to deal with, why do you think any action you take will solve it?

          1. FreeSociety

            This exactly, is the West’s greatest failing in dealing with terrorism from within it’s own borders and population.

          2. AlexinCT

            Methinks this applies to a lot more than just terrorism, though. I suspect that the people championing the fixes often misidentify what the issue they want to fix is on purpose. For one, if they do identify the issue and then fix it, they will be out of a hobby horse, and it is quite lucrative to frame the problem in a way that allows you to sell special favors and increase your power.

            And the problems seem to get worse as we get more and more of this, and less and less real problem solving…

          3. Pat

            Upton Sinclair was a piece of shit, but he had this much right:

            It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

        2. robc

          I often think Hanlon got it backwards.

          1. Akira

            Agreed. If you apply Hanlon’s Razor to every situation, you risk misidentifying the cause of a lot of government bullshit.

            In fact, it’s usually “progressives” who tell me that these government injustices should be chalked up to stupidity.
            “Oh, he’s not a very bright guy, but his heart is in the right place”
            “He may have some facts mixed up, but he has good intentions”

      2. Number.6

        You seem to be under the impression that the CCTV cameras are there in order to catch criminals.

        Let’s not forget this – yes, I’ve shared it before, no, it’s not a fake.

        1. leonadasiv

          That link gave my computer cancer…

        2. Gadfly

          Dang, if that’s something they actually posted and not merely a concept art they considered and discarded, then that’s pretty much the most big-brother ad campaign I’ve ever seen.

    3. commodious spittoon

      What’s Daily Mail without the goddamn comments turned on?

    4. antisthenes

      So, while Britain was getting the shit bombed out of it in WW2, what would happen to a German Brit who openly declared loyalty to the Reich? What about one who did so and began a plot of sabotage?

      If they stopped treating terrorism as a domestic crime problem, and started treating ISIS supporters as what they are — traitors and saboteurs loyal to a monstrous foreign wartime enemy — they might understand how to handle it.

      ISIS loyalists deserve nothing more than a short trial for treason and a bullet in the back of the head. Shit, let ISIS spew propaganda on Twitter, it just makes the fifth columnists easier to find and eliminate.

      1. Count Potato

        I’m thinking if they were treated like regular domestic criminals, it would be a vast improvement. If someone was being that conspicuous about their intentions, regardless if they were a drug dealer, sex trafficker, or armed robber, they would have been caught.

        1. F. Stupidity Jr.

          If they stopped treating terrorism as a domestic crime problem, and started treating ISIS supporters as what they are — traitors and saboteurs loyal to a monstrous foreign wartime enemy — they might understand how to handle it.

          Punishment for treason is unhip nowadays. All the cool kids instead ask, “What are we doing wrong to deserve such a fate?”

          1. R C Dean

            Punishment for treason is unhip nowadays.

            Well, unless you are a member of the Trump administration. Then, you are totes a traitor and should be prosecuted as such. Just ask any journalist.

    5. Gilmore

      What’s particularly embarrassing about this for the British security services is that they have none of the legal concerns about religious freedom or 1st and 4th amendment constitutional protections that Americans do

      I’m not suggesting that the NSA et al dont routinely violate everything in the book as well, my point is just that there’s not even the hint of any civil liberties barrier to UK anti-terror investigation if they happen to have a domestic suspect.

      Obviously the security services probably get hundreds if not thousands of these kinds of warnings all the time and maybe they *weren’t* at all lazy or incompetent about this particular guy. The assumption is that they “missed” him – as though if they had him in their DB, they’d actually have been able to do something about it before he acted. The reality could very well be that they’d actually had a drawer-full of intel on the guy, but that no matter how much ‘data’ you collect about someone, you still can’t stop them from engaging in a terror-act if they don’t commit a crime beforehand that justifies intervention.

      Basically my point is that the idea that “total information awareness” will lead to “terror prevention” is a lie and a myth. its the “24” delusion about terror: that somewhere there’s some dude trying to stop plots before they’re carried out.

      The reality is that FBI/MI5 types, like all cops, don’t really stop crimes before they happen = they show up after they’ve happened to clean up the mess and gather info simply for the purpose of having info. Intelligence bureaucracies serve to perpetuate more intelligence-processing capacity = not “action taking” capacity. Because unless they are prepared to deport thousands of people on nothing but (well-founded) suspicions, there’s nothing that they CAN do.

      What they’ll do however is still complain that their ‘systems are not advanced enough’ or that they don’t have enough funding or staffing. Every crisis is an opportunity to enlarge themselves and further erode civil liberties. The urge to “Do something” will mean more security theater. what will not happen is any honest discussion of what sort of draconian powers the state would need to have to truly make ‘terror prevention’ a reality.

      1. Gilmore

        **footnote = i’m pretty sure the reason the FBI spent so much time and effort *cooking up fake terror plots* in order to entrap mentally retarded domestic jihadis over the past decade+ is so that they could actually finally DOCUMENT themselves having ‘stopped plots’ and so they could claim they ‘stop plots’ all the time.

        I think it was an awareness that stopping plots was in most cases impossible, and if plotters were caught in advance, it usually happened the way the Millenium bombing plot was busted – by accident. They literally stumble on the crime. Or the other most-common scenario is that someone involved rats out the rest.
        (a family member or girlfriend or someone goes to the cops and manages to convince them to do something; and even in these cases, about half or more of the time they still don’t fucking do anything – see Omar Mateen et al)

      2. Number.6

        One of the problems that the UK has is that ‘terrorism’ falls between the cracks where MI5’s mission statement butts up against Special Branch’s. That’s one of the reasons that CTSFO exists at all. in the 90’s, information sharing between MI5 and Special Branch was spotty and informal – to gain access to each other’s files, they had to escalate to the Home Office, and this undoubtedly led to significant confusion, and probably does to this day. Neither branch had (and arguably, neither *should* have) enough of their own personnel to respond to widespread threats, because without many of the safeguards the US has, London could easily look far more like a set from V for Vendetta.

        There are plenty of ‘systems’ in place, technologically. The problem, I suspect, is the feudal nature of the British establishment.

        1. Gilmore

          London could easily look far more like a set from V for Vendetta.

          and that’s the likely outcome.

          what’s absurd is that this whole “treat everyone like a potential criminal” surveillance-state is a cost they will endure for zero actual benefit. Because even with all that shit in place and those mammoth bureaucracies, they wont ever bring themselves to do something as simple as Israeli-style ‘profiling’

          The problem is that there is a refusal to concede that there is in fact a low-level war going on. If you’re at war with ISIS, then expressing support for them should be grounds for deportation. But they want to pretend that no such conflict really exists, and that this ‘terror’ is just a one-sided situation where the Islamo-meanines misunderstand the good intentions of the British, who seek only to hug and better-understand them, and would not dare to offend good muslims by acknowledging that there are some bad ones among them.

          1. It’s strange to me considering Britain’s Orwellian campaign against “hate speech” that they don’t seem to have any issue with people waving ISIS flags or calling for jihad. And by strange I mean strangely typical and expected because I’m a suspicious cynic.

          2. Number.6

            something something rich tapestry of ethnic blah blah diversity blah blah blah

          3. AlexinCT

            SOOO FUCKING MUCH THIS!

          4. Gilmore

            It’s strange to me considering Britain’s Orwellian campaign against “hate speech” that they don’t seem to have any issue with people waving ISIS flags or calling for jihad.

            You’re exactly right, and its a perfect example of why granting the state the power to police speech is so fucking dangerous = they become politically arbitrary in what sorts of speech they consider ‘worth policing’ such that its always impossible to know what is speech-crime and what isn’t. So the enforcement is always selective and opportunistic; and the public ironically ends up demanding *more* speech-policing because they never see it as ‘fairly applied’. Basically, once you grant that any such thing as ‘hate speech’ exists, the definition of hate-speech will be guaranteed to expand without any end.

            Even without speech-police, we have some pretty bizarre situations in the US – where kids can get their acceptance to Harvard revoked, or provoke public outrage simply by using the same slurs that are liberally used in popular music and movies.

            Similarly – in the UK, i assume the issue is that if any *white* person starts saying something positive about ISIS, they’ll probably be prosecuted immediately, while similar statements from recent immigrants is seen as ‘normal’

            A quick google finds some interesting contrasts –

            there have been 800+ people who’ve left the UK to join ISIS, but none were prosecuted until they actually tried to return from combat.

            They did prosecute a high-profile cleric (Anjem Choudary) for repeatedly making pro-ISIS sermons; but his case seems unique in that it was actually ‘pledging allegiance’ to ISIS that got him in trouble. He probably would have been fine if he simply admired them from abroad.

            They did actually prosecute a woman for trying to join the kurds to fight *against* ISIS =

            e.g. “”Girl becomes first Briton convicted of trying to join fight against Islamic State in Syria “”

            A story that seems to be making the rounds today in the UK is that in 2014 Jeremy Corbyn argued that merely stating support for ISIS should be considered a ‘political opinion’. I’d agree with him in theory but for the fact that its also bastards like him who are gung ho to criminalize “hate speech”

          5. EvilSheldon

            Oddly, this would be in line with some of IS’s stated goals.

          6. Gilmore

            Where’s their list of stated-goals you’re referring to?

  32. Juvenile Bluster

    The first amendment case of the Colorado bakery who dared to not BAKE THAT CAKE was not acted on by the Supreme Court this morning. Now been re-listed 11 times without any action (positive or negative)

    1. leonadasiv

      Could you explain again so that a 7-year old (me) could understand?

      1. Pat

        SCOTUS refuses to hear an important case regarding religious freedom and gay rights because the court is split.

      2. Juvenile Bluster

        So, after losing in court up to this point, the bakery made an application to have the case heard by the Supreme Court. The application comes up before the Court, who decide whether to grant cert (accept and listen to the case) or reject it (allowing the prior court ruling against the bakery to stand). The case has now come before the court 11 times without them deciding either way; they just keep punting it and more or less saying they’ll decide later.

        1. robc

          IIRC, it requires 4 members to grant cert.

          Which means they have the 4, I guess, but those 4 arent interested in hearing it NOW.

          1. Pat

            Technically there’s no actual legal provision for the rule of four, it’s just a matter of court custom. And even then, the justices divvy up the cases by circuit and decide individually which cert memorandums they will take before the full court for a vote.

            Basically, Kennedy is considered the wild card on the split in this case, and neither the conservative nor liberal wing of the court wants to risk it.

            Spoiler: Kennedy votes with the liberal wing, as he has in nearly every gay rights case before the court in his entire career.

          2. F. Stupidity Jr.

            Basically, Kennedy is considered the wild card

            Justice Anthony Kennedy

          3. Pat

            I’m never going to be able to read SCOTUS news without thinking of this now.

          4. The Last American Hero

            Why do I picture him as Twoface?

        2. AlexinCT

          WTF man, you want them to deal with easy things that have been made difficult things by idiots?

      3. leonadasiv

        Awesome. That makes sense. Thanks guys.

  33. Pat

    They live in Mexico and go to school in the US

    JoAnna, 11, needs proof that she is a US citizen to get to school. The self-proclaimed future nurse with the long braid draped down one shoulder is one of nearly 800 American students who live in Palomas, Mexico, and cross the US border each morning to attend public school in nearby Columbus.

    1. WTF

      That sounds like they are not actually American students.

    2. R C Dean

      Their poster moppet has a US passport, it sounds like. I’m guessing these kids are US citizens, most of them are “anchor babies” whose mothers scooted across the border to deliver, and a handful have US citizens for parents and happen to live in Mexico.

    3. JaimeRoberto

      I knew a guy who lived in Tijuana but went to school in the US. His mom snuck across when pregnant so he could be a US citizen. He ended up going to Harvard and was adamant about being Spanish, not Mexican.

      1. R C Dean

        Odd that he wasn’t adamant about being American, not Mexican. Of the three, it seems he has exactly zero claim to be Spanish.

        1. Number.6

          And it’s likely the moment he opens his mouth, any ‘natural’ Spanish speaker will know he’s not Iberian.

    1. Pat

      The poliburo doesn’t live like the proletariat? Why I never!

      1. AlexinCT

        Ain’t it funny how the west’s biggest socialism peddlers seem to be the people that make the most money peddling favors? Or maybe it is tragic that the idiots that think this shit is a good idea always fail to notice this discrepancy. Shit, that tub of lard Moore has made millions peddling stupid socialism, in the most capitalist manner possible, and yet, he has people that think he is a friend of the cause.

    2. leonadasiv

      I’ve wanted to make a meme that had a picture of Bernie and said “Proof that Bernie Sanders doesn’t understand Economics: He bought his third house during a market high, rather than waiting for a low”

      1. AlexinCT

        Why would he care? Someone else foots the bill…

    3. Rufus the Monocled

      Sorta like Obama and his ‘returning the favour’ tour. Capitalism never worked….until he cashed in on it.

      Classic hypocrites.

  34. Pat

    Retirees flock to Latin America to live an upper-class lifestyle on $1,500 a month

    The growing wave of ex-pat seniors is not only upending notions about retirement in the hemisphere but reshaping the face of communities throughout the Americas. And the trend is expected to grow as waves of baby boomers exit the workforce ill-prepared for retirement.

    1. Juvenile Bluster

      This is by no means new; it’s been happening for at least the last couple of decades.

      1. AlexinCT

        I know people that live like millionaires in Costa Rica on SS checks.

        1. Number.6

          You mean the place with an economy that Connecticut is striving to emulate?

        2. Rufus the Monocled

          Then again, I know someone who lived there for four years and finally left because after a while the way things operate there can be a little too much.

          1. Hyperion

            Good point.

            Yeah, you might be living like millionaires, but you will not be living like American millionaires. You’ll be living like Central American millionaires. Which might be both good and bad. But if anyone thinks it’s going to be just like home only cheaper, they’re going to get a big surprise.

          2. AlexinCT

            Yeah, if you are in a different country, you are going to be subjected to those differences..

    2. Hyperion

      I might do that one day in the future myself. The problem is safety. None of those places are that safe anymore. There’s a lot of poverty and ‘rich’ gringos might draw unwanted attention.

      1. Pat

        Health care could potentially be another big issue. But if you’re trying to retire on 1500 bucks a month, it’s not like you’re going to be able to afford a substantially higher level of care in the states anyway.

        1. FreeSociety

          When it comes to healthcare, availability works out better for low income people than affordability, given that American hospitals don’t turn people away for emergency services and then you have charities and of course tax payers the pick up the tab in very indirect ways for everything else. Meanwhile in South America, you can pay your doctors with brief cases full of cash and that fish that swam up your peehole is still going to kill you.

        2. Hyperion

          Healthcare at the moment will probably be better/cheaper. Wife and I have private healthcare insurance out of the country. It’s expensive, but the availability (not waiting 5 months to see a specialist) is better and the out of pocket cost is much lower. Obamacare fucked the US health insurance market. Private insurance and / or dollars will send you right to the front of the line in some South American counties. For people who have neither of those things, it’s very bad.

      2. leonadasiv

        Uruguay, while not the cheapest place to pick, is fairly safe, and a US salary goes about 4 times farther there than in the us.

        1. Hyperion

          We’ve actually been looking into that. There’s crime, but it’s mostly petty theft. Violent crime is uncommon. The thing that sort of scares me off is the climate. Apparently, it’s very windy most of the year. I hate wind.

          1. leonadasiv

            I wouldn’t say it’s windy most of the year. However, it is right on the coast so it does get some big squalls. If I had to compare it to a US state (climatically/Geographically) I would say it is like Texas, with colder winters (due to being right off the Atlantic coast). Petty theft is a problem, and Drugs are often a source of the problem. But that’s really only of concern if you choose to live in Montevideo. If you live in the smaller towns in the country it’s quite pleasant.

    3. KibbledKristen

      I wish Farellones (Chile) were that cheap. I looked up some real estate there, thinking it would be reasonable for a ski town. Nope.

  35. Enough About Palin

    Man who mowed lawn with tornado behind him says he ‘was keeping an eye on it

    http://www.timescolonist.com/man-who-mowed-lawn-with-tornado-behind-him-says-he-was-keeping-an-eye-on-it-1.20394290

    1. Hyperion

      If you’ve ever lived in an area where tornadoes are a common occurrence, you sort of get used to it. I remember sitting on my mother’s front porch once, drinking a beer and watching a tornado in the distance. There were other people outside watching it also, nothing unusual. But that is a good photo.

      1. egould310

        Summer 1992, Bloomington IN, my friends and I were watching the MLB All-Star game and drinking beers. The game was interrupted and switched to the severe weather tracker/news lady panic alerts. The radar showed a tornado forming over our house. We took our beers to the front porch and for 20 minutes, watched a tornado slowly forming to the west. We all agreed that if it got to our block, we’d run down to the basement.

        Turns out it never really touched down in town. Was one hell of a thunderstorm though. We got pretty drunk that afternoon and then went to BW3 and played pool and got drunker.

        1. Hyperion

          The storms there are terrible. You ever see a really bad thunderstorm come up quickly in Iowa? Holy shit, they have the worst thunderstorms of anywhere I’ve seen.

        2. SimonD

          We had one in 2011 or so. I was training new contractors at a big-box store near Indianapolis when I saw a tornado to the SW moving in our direction. The store manager and I moved all of the customers and employees to a relatively safe part of the store, then we went to the front to watch the tornado. It traveled right down the middle of the highway (about 150 yards away) on the ground like it was a car.

          It traveled down the road for about three miles farther then destroyed a trailer park.

          1. Hyperion

            Trailer park is somewhere you do not want to be… well period, but especially near a tornado. They’re like tornado magnets.

    2. AlexinCT

      What eye? His brown eye? Cause the two in the front were looking the other way…

      1. That’s why it’s hard to sneak up on STEVE SMITH.

        1. Bobarian LMD

          THAT WHY STEVE HARD WHEN HE SNEAK UP ON YOU

    3. Tundra

      Sorry-ass excuse for a lawn. And terrible landscaping.

      Cool photo, though.

    4. KibbledKristen
    5. KibbledKristen

      *rolling eyes*

      Theunis said he watched a TV program about storm chasers, so he’s familiar with them

    6. Pope Jimbo

      What are you guys so worked up about? There is clearly a fence between him and the funnel. He’s totes protected.

      And I might choose death by tornado over mowing my lawn if given the choice.

    7. Michael

      That photo looks like it should be on a Jello Biafra spoken word album cover.

  36. Hyperion

    “Or just more tribalist bullshit?”

    this

  37. Count Potato

    “Parents ‘horrified’ after man performs surprise drag show at Manhattan school talent event”

    http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/parents-horrified-man-performs-drag-show-nyc-school-article-1.3213718

    1. AlexinCT

      WTF?

    2. F. Stupidity Jr.

      Why are those parents so hateful?

      1. Pat

        They all attended the Playa Haters Ball.

        1. F. Stupidity Jr.

          My work internet don’t like your link.

          1. Pat

            Well thanks to Comedy Central’s IP gestapo the clip isn’t on YouTube, but you can get the gist here

            (It’s the Playa Haters Ball bit from Chapelle’s show)

          2. AlexinCT

            Good for you man…

    3. FreeSociety

      “I saw her doing things like sticking her legs out and shaking her bottom and it felt weird,” said the boy. “I don’t know why they would do that for an elementary school.”

      “Mom! My tummy stick hurts!”

      But seriously the kid is calling the she-dude a “her”. If we were really talking about a “her”, this wouldn’t be more than a local news story about a local slut.

    4. Agent Cooper

      My favorite comment from a parent:

      “It was a very poor presentation of Iris Chacón, anyway. She was not like that.”

      1. AlexinCT

        LOL!

  38. commodious spittoon

    Spicer parody account for the lulz.

    Sean Spicier
    @sean_spicier

    Qatar gave the Clinton Foundation $1 millino while Hillary was Secretary Of State. So we already knew they sponsored terrorists.

    1. AlexinCT

      Funny cause it is so expected…

  39. The Late P Brooks

    Thanks in large part to his successful foray into authorship, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made more than $1 million in 2016.

    I’m sure he happily forwarded the great majority of that income to the Treasury, less modest and reasonable living expenses.

    1. AlexinCT

      You seem to not understand socialism bro. You don’t send “YOUR” money, you demand other people send “THEIR” money… Free shit doesn’t mean you pay for it.. DUH!

    2. Number.6

      He has to finance his dacha from that stipend.

      And the vig on his Zil 4112Rs must be a bitch.

    3. Pope Jimbo

      No one needs more than one book!

      Right?

      1. Tundra

        A little red one?

  40. Pope Jimbo

    Oh noes! Somali deportations rise!

    In fairness, the article does admit that the rise started in the Obama administration, but there is still a lot of “Trump is a meanie on immigration” talk.

    I have to admit that the Somalis have assimilated pretty well. Look at all the grievance groups that they have funded. I’m sure they are all pretty much funded entirely on govt grants.

    Confederation of Somali Community
    Somali Human Rights Commission
    Somali Action Alliance
    Somali Justice Advocacy Center
    Ka Joog
    St. Cloud Area Somali Salvation Organization

    I think the St. Cloud group is the fucking splitters in this.

    1. Pope Jimbo

      In their letter to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, all Democratic U.S. senators and representatives from Minnesota said the deportations could undermine the Somali community’s efforts to counter radical recruitment by feeding an Al-Shabab narrative that “Somalis are unwelcome and unwanted in America.”

      1. FreeSociety

        could undermine the Somali community’s efforts to counter radical recruitment by feeding an Al-Shabab narrative that “Somalis are unwelcome and unwanted in America.”

        Truth hurts. If you concede that the immigrant group your defending is apt to produce terrorists at an elevated rate if they are ever to feel anything other than perfectly welcome, then you’re just proving the case against welcoming such an immigrant group in the first place.

        1. Pat

          “Don’t stereotype us as terrorists or we will fuck you up.”

          1. Pope Jimbo

            I can’t find the exact quote, but one of the old Sandanistas said something like “They wanted to print a story about censorship of the press here. Of course we don’t have censorship here, so we stopped them from printing that lie”

          2. AlexinCT

            Irony…

          3. R C Dean

            *hums “like rain on your wedding day” . . . *

  41. The Late P Brooks

    I wish Farellones (Chile) were that cheap. I looked up some real estate there, thinking it would be reasonable for a ski town. Nope.

    At one time (when I could actually have afforded it) I did a little research into a summer ski expedition to Argentina or Chile. The places I looked at were not cheap. International Jet Set Pricing prevailed.

  42. The Late P Brooks

    If you’ve ever lived in an area where tornadoes are a common occurrence, you sort of get used to it.

    What I learned while living in Injanoplace- don’t worry until the sky turns green.

    1. F. Stupidity Jr.

      don’t worry until the sky turns green

      But it’s so pretty

      1. Raston Bot

        birthplace of witches

  43. Pope Jimbo

    I bet you guys are so jelly that you can’t go eat here! It is a prog paradise.

    It is a story about a guy who opens his restaurant to serve an iftar (the meal to break your Ramadan fast for the day) charity dinner.

    That’s what’s great about Ghandi Mahal iftars, said Muhammad Jiwa, who comes all the way from his home in Osseo to attend the dinners. Many restaurants host buffets during Ramadan, he said, but at Ghandi Mahal you get food that’s delicious, healthy and locally sourced and sustainable (the restaurant grows most of its food in local gardens and in aquaponics in the basement). “You can go anywhere [for iftar], but you got to come here. It’s definitely worth it.”

    BTW, Osseo is right next door to Tundra and I. And it is a haul to go to this restaurant. Of course it is worth it for all the proggie goodness of locally sourced and sustainable eats.

    1. Pope Jimbo

      And oh yeah, you could rub elbows with such giants as Keith Ellison

      Rep. Keith Ellison also made an appearance at one of the dinners Thursday night to talk about climate change, pay his respects to the restaurant’s owner, and to pray. The community, charity and food all make Ghandi Mahal a unique establishment, Ellison said, and one of his favorite places to go. “It’s more than just a restaurant,” he said. “It’s a social gathering place. It’s a place where people who are facing political struggle come to organize. It’s just a great place.”

      1. FreeSociety

        . “It’s a social gathering place. It’s a place where people who are facing political struggle come to organize. It’s just a great place.”

        So it’s a place where Western civilization’s enemies go to plot and scheme. Got it.

        1. Pat

          A modern Hop Sing.

        2. Pope Jimbo

          Duh! The quote said that Keith Ellison went there. How much more explicit do I need to be about the enemies of Western Civ?

    1. KibbledKristen

      Those are my favorite kinds of Youtubez (douchebags get their comeuppance), other than police chases.

    2. Pope Jimbo

      My favorite part of all those fuckers is that they all spent thousands on accessories like fancy brush guards and extra lights and then they get stuck trying to pull a trailer out of the water.

      1. Tundra

        About the only thing I miss about not having a boat anymore is the launch entertainment.

        1. Pope Jimbo

          I grew up in a tourist trap (412 lakes within 25 miles of town). Every year, it was infuriating to watch the NoDaks try to figure out how to launch their boats. The only good thing about them is that most of them were farmers so they all had tow chains with them and new how to use them.

          Nothing gets me more riled up to be waiting in line at the launch and see someone ahead of you who is going to wait until it is their turn to launch to take off their boat cover, put their rods in, etc. etc. I always get out and go over to let them know that they should be getting ready while they wait. Some guys take it well and understand you are just trying to make things run faster. Other guys get offended, but realize quickly that everyone else in line is not on their side.

          1. MikeS

            The only good thing about them is that most of them were farmers so they all had tow chains with them and new how to use them.

            You forgot the other good thing about them; they were from North Dakota and not Minnesota.

        2. ChipsnSalsa

          No need for a boat to go enjoy that entertainment. Just roll up with a cooler, lawn chair and an umbrella for hours of entertainment.

          Though you will be getting diminishing returns the further we get past Memorial Day.

  44. Raston Bot

    dumped..

    Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts):
    They used knives because UK DOESN’T GIVE EVERYONE EASY ACCESS TO GUNS. How many more would be dead with semiautomatic weapons?

    1. Tundra

      A keen intellect there. It’s a question of tools, of course.

    2. commodious spittoon

      As opposed to, what, six-shooters? Bolt-action rifles?

      “Semiautomatic” is just something she threw in there because it’s something she’s heard, isn’t it?

      1. commodious spittoon

        Oh, and: we’re talking about internationally trained and financed savages. If they need guns, they’re going to get guns. As it is they can wreak terrible harm, physically and psychologically, with the tools at their disposal. So fuck you and your pet peeve.

        1. Chipwooder

          The IRA didn’t seem to have much trouble finding firearms to tote around Northern Ireland.

          1. Number.6

            Yeah, but now the Kennedys aren’t so prominent in Boston, and NORAID ain’t collecting for the muslims, at least they won’t be getting AR-15’s and Mini-14’s.

          2. Count Potato

            Maybe we should deliberately give them mini-14’s. At least that way they won’t be able to hit anything.

          3. Number.6

            Modern Mini-14’s aren’t bad at all. They went thru’ about 5 years of shitty manufacturing in the 90’s, but I wouldn’t like to be 200 yards downrange of someone carrying one.

      2. FreeSociety

        No one needs machine guns with silencers and detachable clips full of bullets. /informed opinion

      3. Hyperion

        Prog dictionary:

        Semiautomatic rifle: A scary black thing that ‘sprays’ bullets.

        1. The thing is – full auto weapons will consume ammo like a motha – unless you like to run around with a backpack brimming with clips, I would rather use a semi-auto. Unless I’m going close urban fighting – then’s it nothing but a PPSh-41 or Thompson with a big ol’ drum; or sawed off shotgun.

          /that’s just my opinion, man

          1. Chipwooder

            Marine Corps style, baby. One shot, one kill.

          2. Bobarian LMD

            a backpack brimming with clips,

            *narrowed gaze*

            Are you armed with an M1 or an SKS?

          3. M1 – paatang!

        2. Chipwooder

          Don’t forget the dreader shoulder thing that goes up.

      4. Hyperion

        Since the UK probably cannot ban trucks and knives, they’ll ban pedestrians. “Stay at home, you fools, stop walking around and tempting these peaceful religions!”.

      5. Count Potato

        Shannon Watts is the spokes-retard for Bloomberg astroturf Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Like Bloomberg, she’s repeated demonstrated that she is either lying or doesn’t understand what “semiautomatic” means. Not that “gun sense” means anything either. If words are only used to incite emotion, denotation is irrelevant. See discussions about “rape” and “racist” above. Which used to have clear meanings. After the Newtown shooting we kept hearing about how the shooter used an “assault rifle”, when in reality he didn’t even use an assault weapon.

    3. Gadfly

      So how does she explain the previous bombings? Either the UK gives its citizens much more leeway on the explosives front (ha!) or government policy has little bearing on terrorists’ armaments.

    4. one true athena

      I was just reading the article about that guy who left a backpack bomb on the tube in London last year (the bomb failed) and he was sentenced recently. Cops found guns in his flat that were obtained legally. I have no idea HOW in the UK, but it’s obviouly not that hard.

    5. Waterfall Insurance

      They just need knee cap shooting turrets at every camera in London. We can’t trust civilians or cops with weapons only skynet can be properly woke.

    1. Count Potato

      I couldn’t care less who sings the opening song. MNF still has the worst announcers.

      1. F. Stupidity Jr.

        Me neither. But it just looks like a token effort against the leftward moves they’ve made. “See? We’ve got the guy that bitched about Obama, too! We’re not leftists!”

        1. Hyperion

          Lately the left seem to be denying that they’re leftists. I got into an argument with one of them last week because I said something with ‘you leftists’ and the person freaked out and denied being a leftist. I said ‘I can’t even count the number of times you’ve claimed to be on the left’. What the fuck is going on with that?

          1. Number.6

            “I’m not one of those people who want to cut Donald Trump’s head off. I’m one of the good guys, you know, the kind that want to watch those people who actually do cut Donald Trump’s head off!”

          2. Bobarian LMD

            “And then impeach his corpse!”

      2. Hyperion

        I’ve been watching NFL for close to 50 years. I’ve noticed lately that I can watch a game and make calls on plays about 10x more accurately than the announcers. It’s like some of them have never even watched the game.

        1. DOOMco

          I’ve noticed as well. I think it’s the tv aspect. they just talk about random shit.
          If i want to hear a game, especially the nhl, I use the play by play radio announcer. just mute the tv.

        2. Fatty Bolger

          It’s always been background noise to me.

    2. egould310

      Aw fuck. Never was a fan. Just play the goddmn game. No songs, no raps. No dewy eyed segments on whose mom had cancer, or whose brother died in Iraq. Just play the goddam game please.

    3. Raston Bot

      I can’t wait for the SJWs to announce a boycott of MSESPN.

    4. Pope Jimbo

      My home town has a giant country music fest every summer. It started when I was in high school (We in 83) and was a week long event. In ’84 or ’85 Hank was the headliner. He showed up a week early, stayed the entire week and then stayed another week after. He stayed at the Holiday Inn where I worked and wore his Hank suspenders and had a number of different smoking hot gals with him all the time. He also spent a shit ton of money in the bar. In a nutshell he was living the exact life he should have been living.

      I admire him for never feeling like he needs to do some sort of political advocacy to justify his wealth and fame.

      1. Tulip

        I love We Fest, but haven’t been since I moved to VA. For those who don’t know, it really gets great acts. I

        The beer guys with the silver back packs always made me laugh.

        1. Pope Jimbo

          I knew the owner of the Dude Ranch (that became the site of the music fest) pretty well growing up so I always got a job at one of the concession stands.

          The We Fest back then would sell you food and beer tickets to use at all the concession stands. A food ticket was like $1 and a beer ticket was $2. So the whole point of working the concession stand was to pocket as many beer tickets as you could. Then you would go over to the beer stands and buy as much beer as you could handle. (The assumption was made that if you had a beer ticket you had already been ID’ed so you never got hassled).

          One night my friend and I got a ride back into town with a Sheriff’s Deputy who was going back to the cop shop because we were so drunk. The reason they were so accommodating is that my father was a probation officer in town and my buddy’s dad was a public defender. And we lived about 3 blocks from the PD.

          1. AlexinCT

            Pays to be connected, but back then people didn’t demand human sacrifices just cause you drank when too young..

        2. trshmnstr

          silver back packs

          Not only did they kill Harambe (pbuh), but they turned him into a pack!

    5. Hyperion

      Druley said she was not concerned about backlash over bringing Williams back.

      Yeah, right. Just wait until Bocephus is overheard in private saying something in support of Trump or even not criticizing Trump strongly enough. Then Druley is going to have the outrage machine show up at her door.

  45. Old Man With Candy

    From an article on the Harvard withdrawn admissions:

    The exchanges took a dark turn, according to an article published in the Harvard Crimson on Sunday. Some of the group’s members decided to form an offshoot group in which students could share “R-rated” memes, a student told the Crimson. The founders of the group chat demanded that students post provocative memes in the larger group to gain admittance to the smaller group.

    The students in the spin-off group exchanged memes and images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust and the deaths of children, sometimes directing jokes at specific ethnic or racial groups, according to screenshots of the chat obtained by the Crimson. One message called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child “piñata time.” Other messages quipped that abusing children was sexually arousing.

    IOW, Glibs.

    1. Emmerson Biggins

      We should get in touch with them. Let them know about this place.

  46. Enough About Palin

    People say that the terrorists are home grown and not immigrants, so immigrants should not be denied entry. But think about it. They should be denied entry because even their kids become killers.

    1. FreeSociety

      There’s more adherence to Islam and it’s nastiest tenets within the younger generations. It would be easy if it was just the first generation you have to worry about, but it’s the later ones that pose as much if not a greater threat, not just in terrorism but for criminality as well. This is why it’s so important to stop handing out citizenship and to halt immigration from that part of the world as soon as possible.

  47. Juvenile Bluster

    Nutpunch via the Balko, the original King of nutpunches:

    Body cam footage shows cops luring dog out of fenced backyard, continuing to provoke it, and then killing it because it was “charging” them

    This is sociophathic behavior. There’s really no other way to put it

    1. commodious spittoon

      The recording break is… interesting. Either they had the presence of mind to cut off the recording during the trespass, or the department edited it out before turning it over.

    2. Count Potato

      Government employees shouldn’t be allowed to have unions.

    3. Vhyrus

      The only gate to my yard is padlocked. They would have to physically cut a lock, pick the lock, or lift my 100+ pound pit bull over a 6 foot wall to do this.

      If any of you have dogs, I highly recommend you lock any gate to your fence. If for nothing else than to deter something like this from happening.

      1. Same here. My back yard is fenced, there’s one gate, and it’s locked from the back side with a combination lock. If I see someone or something in my backyard that didn’t get there through my kitchen, they explain themselves slowly and clearly to Herr Doktor Glock Halbautomatische-Pistole the 17th.

        1. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

          He comes from a long line of doctors.

    4. ron73440

      that pretty much ruined my day

      What the fuck?

      I know they’re assholes and you can’t trust them, but WHAT THE FUCK?

    5. R C Dean

      According to police, they were called to the neighborhood that day on reports of an aggressive dog roaming the neighborhood.

      So they were primed for some dog-killin’. When they didn’t find an aggressive dog roaming the neighborhood to kill, what do you expect them to do? Get back in their cars and go home? That rock-hard killboner isn’t going to, err, satisfy itself, you know.

  48. The Late P Brooks

    IOW, Glibs.

    Track those kids down and offer them a place at Universitat Glibertarianz for $75k per year. In four years, they’ll emerge ready to deal with the world as it is, not as the professoriat imagines it should be.

  49. The Late P Brooks

    We’ll even teach them how to change a tire.

  50. Raston Bot

    David Burge‏ @iowahawkblog
    *8 guys unfurl ISIS flag in park, scream at police, threaten jihat, post to YouTube channel*
    May: we need some way to decrypt this

    1. Raston Bot

      fascinating. sad.

    2. John Titor

      Yeah, it’s pretty, but they don’t seem to include photos of the quasi-serfdom slums nationwide that helped fund those state capital projects.

      The tsarists weren’t much better than the communists.

      1. Hammercorps

        No better at all, actually. Things just went from bad to worse over there.

        1. John Titor

          I’d argue they were marginally better only because they were worse at suppressing dissent. Total monarchies have to play a balancing act with their tyranny or they end up overthrown whereas authoritarian socialism gets a lot more leeway. There was a liberalization movement in Tsarist Russia, not so much in the Soviet Union.

          1. Hammercorps

            True, and there was some form of private land ownership at least. Only for a select few, but at least it existed at all.

          2. R C Dean

            I’d argue they were marginally better only because they were worse at suppressing dissent.

            I think the tsarists were a hell of a lot better than the commies, based solely on relative body count.

          3. What RC Dean said.

    3. Hyperion

      So that’s what hoarders and wreckers look like.

      1. DOOMco

        They don’t seem rich…

        1. Hyperion

          But one of them might have more than one of their neighbors. So the only right thing to do is let the government solve this problem. It works like this:

          Family 1 has 6 eggs in their kitchen but family 2 only have 3 eggs. Not fair.

          So government takes 2 eggs from family 2, but family 1 has to pay more for their fair share, since having 6 eggs amounts to oppressing family 2. Then government takes 4 eggs from family one. Then the government gives family 2 back one of their eggs in the form of social welfare.

          Now family 1 and family 2 both have 2 eggs each = equality. So maybe you say wait a minute, now both families are poorer! Well, administrative costs you know, equality isn’t free.

          1. DOOMco

            this made me laugh and I want to steal appropriate it.

          2. Hyperion

            It’s yours. I actually made that up a couple of years ago. Only the scenario I used then involved an Easter Egg hunt and equality. But same basic principle.

  51. The Late P Brooks

    Democrats will save us.

    One of the boldest ideas coming down the pike is a universal child allowance: a monthly stipend for all families with children. International data show that child poverty in America remains at 20 percent — twice the rate in Germany and seven times the rate in Denmark.

    Those countries, and most other advanced economies, provide regular payments to families with children based on the recognition that investing in children is an essential public good. Yet here in the United States, though we have a patchwork of programs, the lowest-income children often get no income support, while children in wealthy families benefit from generous tax deductions.

    ———-

    Next, even as we close in on full employment, there are parts of America where job growth and labor force participation are well below the national average. Historically, public policy tries to help such left-behind areas through place-based tax credits, but their track record is dismal. If we want to help places with too little labor demand, we must implement direct job creation policies, meaning either jobs created by the government or publicly subsidized private employment.

    When I want somebody with a good idea, Jared Bernstein is the first guy I think of.

    You just sprinkle the government money fairy dust on the problem, and poof! it disappears. No problem cannot be solved, provided you have a sufficiency of money taken from evil rich people.

    1. Hammercorps

      How is this a “bold idea?” it’s just the UBI exclusively for families.

    2. FreeSociety

      So the solution to growing numbers of children born to unemployed, unemployable, unskilled or otherwise low aptitude parents, is to subsidize the production of children in such households.

      1. ChipsnSalsa

        yes, if you don’t agree you hate children.

        1. AlexinCT

          Those children are reliable voters for one political party from my experience..

      2. WTF

        What do you mean, just because they get more money for every kid they have, that wouldn’t produce any perverse incentives or anything.

    3. Holger-da-Dane

      The squirrels ate my first response to this. Sorry if it shows up later.

      My parents relied heavily on this kind of redistribution scheme in Denmark when I grew up, despite both working. If their purchasing power had been better (aka. lower taxes, lower VAT, etc.), this wouldn’t have been the case.

      International data show that child poverty in America remains at 20 percent — twice the rate in Germany and seven times the rate in Denmark.

      I’m sure this data has been thoroughly adjusted for how much disposable income and purchasing power people actually have in those places. Right??

      1. Holger-da-Dane

        And I’m sure the same bill setting this up will get rid of existing similar programs in the US, like WIC, right?

      2. Gilmore

        “Child poverty” is one of these metrics like “food insecurity” designed to lower the bar of what is considered a ‘problem’.

        *also like how “sexual violence” has replaced “rape” in the surveys looking for problems on college campuses. and how people like the CDC included everything from ‘unwanted looking’ to ‘creepy facebook messages’ in their surveys of sexual violence. they are literally trying to create a problem out of data that reflects normal behavior. No one thinks “not being able to buy whatever food you want all the time” is the standard definition of “not starving”. But that’s exactly how they came up with the concept of food-insecurity. Basically, if you skipped a meal once in the past month = congratulations! you’re food insecure. Never mind that you’re a fat fuck.

        1. Akira

          “Child poverty” is one of these metrics like “food insecurity” designed to lower the bar of what is considered a ‘problem’.

          Fun fact: I live in an official USDA “food desert”. It’s true – I checked it using the map on their own website. What’s odd is that within this “food desert” is:
          – A Kroger supermarket with a huge fresh produce section
          – A small but popular family-owned market that sells local meat, produce, jams, honey, and other food items
          – A farmer’s market in the summer months
          – A large farm outside of town that has a weekly vegetable delivery service; you sign up and they bring you a big tupperware bin of whatever vegetables they were able to distribute that week

      3. Raston Bot

        ha! Europe is poor..

        For example, Mississippi has a higher median income ($23,017) than 18 countries measured here. The Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and the United Kingdom all have median income levels below $23,000 and are thus below every single US state. Not surprisingly, the poorest OECD members (Chile, Mexico, and Turkey) have median incomes far below Mississippi.

        Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, has a median income ($25,528) level below all but 9 US states. Finland ranks with Germany in this regard ($25,730), and France’s median income ($24,233) is lower than both Germany and Finland. Denmark fares better and has a median income ($27,304) below all but 13 US states.

        http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0DUVq9s0eN4/Vi5aYpjEMSI/AAAAAAAAIvQ/HkzAig-uflM/s1600/nonrppadjustedmedian.jpg

        1. robc

          Looking at that chart, KY==France, only we pronounce Versailles correctly.

        2. Hyperion

          I’ve told progs this several times when they cannot shut up about how much better Europe is than the USA. Most of them have never been there and none of them are willing to move there. Yet they never shut up about this. I’ve told them that Europeans have a lower standard of living than in the USA, but I might as well be taking to the wall because they refuse to hear this. They’re off in their Eurotopia dream world.

          1. Holger-da-Dane

            Yeah, that difference quickly became apparent when I moved from there to here and got a job in the same field with a very similar income (before taxes, etc.)

            Not only did my disposable income increase significantly, my purchasing power sky rocketed. On top of that I experienced a large gain in individual liberty in most areas of life. Having both the liberty and the means to exercise that liberty has thoroughly convinced me that more of each will impact life even more positively, with the only downside being more personal responsibility. Well, a downside to some, initially it was scary, but it was easy to understand that this was the price of liberty and embrace it.

            I’ll add that I moved here as an adult, with 10+ years of experience in my field – so this isn’t simply a case of waking up into adulthood. There is probably no substitute for experiencing something like this on your own body. Your prog friends should go live in Europe as adults for 10 years, before they decide to give up everybody’s freedom because of their feelz.

          2. AlexinCT

            As someone that got to see what the rest of the world was like when younger, I also have advocated that all American kids be sent to some other country to experience how things really work elsewhere. Appreciation and all that..

          3. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

            Grand Tour you say?

          4. Fatty Bolger

            Even when they’ve been there, it’s just for vacation, they are having fun, not worrying about how much money they spend or how they’ll make ends meet. They don’t visit people in their homes and see how they actually live. If they did, they might get a huge wakeup call.

    4. WTF

      There is no absolute poverty in America. The poor in America are only poor compared to other Americans. Compared to the world as a whole they are wealthy. They have living accommodations, heat, flat screen TVs, smart phones, plenty of food, etc etc. But sure, let’s force productive people to pay even more of the cost of supporting the bad decision-makers.

      Fuck off, slaver.

      1. Hyperion

        When my wife first came here, she couldn’t stop going on about how rich poor Americans are. I mean in her country, if you’re poor, you do not drive an Escalade, have 4 kids who weigh a combined 3000 lbs, and have a real house with 5 TVs and more groceries than 3000 lbs of tweeners can eat in a month.

        1. AlexinCT

          Perspective…

          1. Akira

            Indeed. Just the other day, I found myself grumbling about how I didn’t have room in my fridge for all the food I had bought.

        2. Akira

          have 4 kids who weigh a combined 3000 lbs

          Just out of curiosity, was it 4 kids who weighed 750 pounds each, or 3 kids who weighed 100 pounds plus one who weighed 2,700 pounds?

    5. antisthenes

      Letting people free ride in old age on the productivity of other people’s children is a major social distortion. The subsidies for childcare just introduce further distortion, since it still doesn’t create a stake in having successful children. Transition social security so that it’s a direct generational transfer from children to parents to grandparents, with a little bit for those who are childless through no fault of their own, and you would solve a whole host of dysfunctional social trends.

    6. Hyperion

      Also, it’s a job creator. Now that we’re encouraging people to have more children (not everyone you know, just the ones who can least afford it), we’re going to have a population problem to deal with. Well, never fear, government is your friend, we’ll have to create a new ‘Population Control’ bureau and some population czars, and create millions of new jobs! WIN/WIN!

  52. Holger-da-Dane

    So apparently Trump is going to privatize air traffic control?

    I’ve already heard one argument today that ATC is a “public utility” and therefore shouldn’t be privatized.

    1. commodious spittoon

      Some things are too important to be left to government.

    2. Juvenile Bluster

      Don’t Canada and the UK both have privatized ATC?

      1. Number.6

        UK, certainly. NATS is a plc under contract to the British CAA.

        They’re relatively new to the whole thing though, only having run Heathrow (for example) since 1962.

      2. Holger-da-Dane

        Someone (aka. “not me”) needs to quickly crunch the numbers to check if they have a higher or lower incidence rate of fuckups related to ATC in those places.

    3. Dr Mossy Lawn

      Well, the devil is in the details and has two major items, Funding and Control.

      Currently most of the funding in the USA is via fuel taxes (a proxy for use), and there is minimal cost per services used (outside of airport landing fees/ramp space). This is especially true of general aviation (everything other than the airlines)

      Will a portion of these current taxes be earmarked to “ATC” or will they impose all new fees? and lower the fuel tax right? (Stop Laughing!)

      Will this be a Canada style quarterly charge? or a Euro style per service fee. Per service fees distinctly impact the safety of the system. If you are charged a per flight plan, per landing, per weather briefing, per instrument approach, etc. you will severely limit any non essential activities like recurrent training. You will fly VFR under iffy skies to skip the IFR fee, etc. Euro flying vs. USA is night and day in flexibility and utility.

      The general aviation (GA) traffic essentially flies in the “spaces” around the airlines. If you removed all GA traffic you would not save any radar/tower/ground operator seats. Those are all scaled for the airlines that are 90% of of the system.

      Then, we can talk about control.. with 90% of the traffic and 99% of the $$ the airlines are going to have majority control of this ATC board, and their business needs have no use for aircraft smaller than a RJ or Dash-8. I suspect very rough handling for the part 135 and part 91 travelers. The current system shows its growth from the beginnings of the aviation industry and is very equal about handing traffic, FIFO with some prioritization/ streamlining for airlines.

      I was landing/taking off from Philly last month (KPHL) in a four seat airplane and had no delay landing & taxing in the morning. Had bout a 20min wait (#4 in line) for release on departure waiting for a string of 737’s to clear on the main runways (9L) and before a bunch of Dash-8’s were released on the short runway (08).

    4. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

      Also similar to the argument used to break their attempts at unionizing.

  53. The Late P Brooks

    While direct job creation will help achieve the necessary job quantity, we also must boost job quality. A strong idea in that regard is an expansion of the earned-income tax credit into the working class. The tax credit is both broadly popular and very successful: In 2015, it lifted 6.5 million people, including 3.3 million children, out of poverty.

    “Job quality”? WTF? As in, more intellectually rewarding?

    Apparently not.

    If we really wanted an effective government policy to reduce poverty, we would just move the “poverty line”.

    1. R C Dean

      How does expanding welfare improve job quality? I don’t get it.

      1. AlexinCT

        I bet that is built in to their logic like that on purpose..

  54. Hyperion

    Hillary gets her religion on

    Hillary’s minister is named Reverend Shillady. You can’t make this stuff up.

    So what’s Hillary praying about? I’m gonna take a wild guess:

    “Dear God, the Democrats cannot shut up about Russians and now they’ve gone and opened up a whole can of worms with this special investigation. I I didn’t do it, God! You believe me, right? I didn’t do any of those things! Please keep me out of prison, my thighs will look really huge in bright orange!”.

    1. R C Dean

      Please keep me out of prison, my thighs will look really huge in bright orange!”.

      Never stopped Herself before.

      1. Hyperion

        Clinton a “Style Icon”?

        Yeah she’s right up there with Kim Jong Un.

        1. AlexinCT

          All those dictatory types favor the same pant suit outfits..

      1. F. Stupidity Jr.

        What you can’t see in that photo is the TV she’s trying to turn on.

        1. DOOMco

          heh

        2. Number.6

          “Where’s the fucking multiply key on this calculator, you morons?”

          1. AlexinCT

            So much this…

    2. John Titor

      Also, you know, for a British paper, the Daily Fail’s comments usually aren’t completely retarded. I mean, they’re internet retarded, because that isn’t going to change, but they’re at least moderately coherent and not completely delusional. The near universal position on that article being “Jesus Christ Clinton, just fade away already.”

    3. Akira

      Sometimes I daydream about Hillary going to prison, but then I remember that when I worked at the women’s prison, every single political statement I ever heard from the inmates was gushing, fawning love for Hillary. She’d probably be treated like royalty.

      I guess she’d still have a pretty rough time with the drab uniform, the stinky rock-hard mattress, and the boiled dog chow that they call “food”.

    1. Number.6

      … and be prepared to shoot your own dog.

    2. DOOMco

      “Well England, here I am!!”

  55. Hyperion

    And ya’ll think Poppy is silly.

    Let’s Play Hobby Horse!

    1. F. Stupidity Jr.

      It’s in Finland. At least one Nordic country is doing something about Islamic rape gangs.

      1. Hyperion

        Well, I’m sure that when the Islamists see this, they’ll want to join in. They’ll probably arrive in a truck. In all seriousness, we’ll probably see grown men doing this before long.

        1. R C Dean

          – 1 firearm.

          1. Holger-da-Dane

            Finland actually has probably the most awesome gun laws in Europe. Still can’t carry though.

          2. Holger-da-Dane

            Awesome comparatively speaking. So probably somewhere between CA and NJ in strictness.

          3. {|}===[|}:;:;:;:;:;:;:>

            Well, at least they gave us the Puukko.

    2. Gilmore

      would

      1. Hyperion

        I knew someone was going to say that. I can’t wait for SF’s coverage of this ‘sport’.