Category: Daily Links

Goooooood Morning, Gliber-nam! Hope everyone is having a wonderful friday. My kids slept an hour late and later I will help my brother load up for Colorado. So that will be good. I’ll have a reason to go out there and he has friends in The Industry. In SPORTZBALL, the Astros just acquired Justin Verlander, signalling that they will not be happy with a cursory appearance in the ALCS, and picked up a win at the Trop. White Sox and Orioles lose, Twins and Cubbies win. Oh, and there’s some foosball game in Atlanta this weekend. And Sloopy’s team managed to pull away from the class of the B1G last night. Way to stomp on Indiana. And now…. the links!

Judge orders FBI to release uncensored documents in relation to the Clinton email probe. We’ll see whether this is more stake to the heart or more tempest in teapot. Information that would have been valuable to Americans choosing their government LAST YEAR.

Journalists reflect on perhaps developing ethics after being shamed on live TV, decide that their careers are more important

Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke resigns without explanation. I’m thinking live boy/dead girl (hey, its homophobic to hold people to different standards, but it happens). Alternative theories include Clarke being Obergruppenfurher of the new Southeast Texas Federal Rehabilitation Region. (Not really, I just made that up)

Never let a crisis go to waste. Car makers in Britain are trying their own “Cash for Clunkers” scrappage deals. A private solution, you say, its fine you say. Oh look here at the end…”It comes as tougher emissions tests begin to be rolled out across the European Union on Friday.” Ahhh. So much more subtle than us Americans.

Today we will play the Theme Song. And an uplilfting message from a Texas band.

OK, you get me again for morning links. Someone will have to do the music link thing in the comments, that is outside my abilities. I will throw in some sportsball scores for ya:

Cleveland STEVE SMITH’s the Yankees, twice. Cubs win (so what) Minnesoda beats the White Sox (#$%^&*!) Filthadelphia drops a pair. Team Canada gets rogered by the Beantowners. Balmer wins, so OMWC is happy, while the Astros don’t so sloopy is not. Oh, and Cincy loses, but consoles selves with Chili 3-ways. So, enough of that.

On to the linkage:

• China’s Most Wanted? Looks like they want to get him the same way Assange is being sought… *tightens foil hat*
• Show me the money? Money is fungible? Who knew?!
• Police race relations outreach?
• Even more racial healing murdering?

Happy Wednesday everyone. I’ve got a kid home sick and I’m even less productive than usual. In Sportzball, the Astros-Rangers series is being held in my neighborhood. The Astros may have been a little distracted last night, losing 12-2. Hoping to take the wife and kids (he’s not THAT sick) to the game tonight. Tickets are only $10 and the Rays are donating all tickets, concessions, and parking to Houston relief efforts — so good on ’em. For my own sake, I hope the Astros never get to repay the favor. The NFL version of the Dallas-Houston rivalry, scheduled for tomorrow, has been cancelled. Which, preseason game, so whatever. And now… the links!

One can only imagine how badly the internal polling is going for Antifa when Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of Berkeley have started talking about violent gangs on both sides. Or maybe they’re just dogwhistling to all those Democrats in the Klan. I can’t keep up with the narrative. (Acknowledgements to beloved commenter Chipwooder, who I see had this same thought at 9am this morning. I’m still not taking this down.)

Wow, you’ll all be shocked to find out that Bill Nye is pitching what appears to be a huge solar scam. To be generous, I assume he is just the first sucker and not actively participating in creating a corporate structure no one should ever put money into unless they’re in a Brewster’s Millions type scenario.

And Pope Jimbo, I gotta know, what the hell is an “ax-like tool“?

Someone’s not getting shit for his 12th birthday.

It’s weird how the GDP revisions go in one direction for Democratic presidents and the other for Republicans. Not to worry, though, there’s gonna be lots of broken windows to fix in the Houston area for the next year.

A little cheer-me-up for your Wednesday.

Sloopy is still a bit wiped out from usurping rightful government function and insisting on helping people instead of laying back and bleating for the government to do something!!1!1! as all good sheep citizens should! So, you get my version of the Morning Links. So here you go:

• “They’re America’s white-trash blue bloods.”
• First world problems, or idiot airlines?
• If only someone in charge of the Executive Branch wanted something to happen in this matter…
• Private companies?  Who woulda thunk it?!

UPDATE: Bonus links – thanks to Brett for drawing my attention to the amazing Duffleblog:

Collision!

Training Time!

Harvey’s relentless rain sends water spilling over local levee and two dams protecting downtown Houston

A fifth day of relentless rain sent water spewing over a suburban levee and two dams protecting downtown Houston as Tropical Storm Harvey continued its lethal assault.

Brazoria County authorities tweeted a frantic message Tuesday when the rising water proved too much for a local levee to handle, threatening residents in low-lying areas about 50 miles outside Houston.

“The levee at Columbia Lakes has been breached!!” the tweet read. “GET OUT NOW!!”

80-year-old Indiana couple accomplishes goal of visiting every Cracker Barrel

TUALATIN, Oregon – They finally did it! An Indiana couple has finally accomplished their goal of visiting every Cracker Barrel location.

Ray and Wilma Yoder, 80, of Goshen, Indiana, flew out west over the weekend so the couple could visit their 645^th Cracker Barrel on Monday morning at the grand opening of the new Tualatin, Oregon location. The monumental occasion also happened to be Ray’s 81^st birthday, and the restaurant even put up a sign to welcome them.

Ray celebrated with blueberry pancakes, and Wilma had eggs and sausage. All expenses were paid by Cracker Barrel, according to KOIN6.

Disaster Socialist capitalizes on disaster: HARVEY DIDN’T COME OUT OF THE BLUE. NOW IS THE TIME TO TALK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE. -Naomi Klein (Hysterical ALLCAPS in original.)

NOW IS EXACTLY the time to talk about climate change, and all the other systemic injustices — from racial profiling to economic austerity — that turn disasters like Harvey into human catastrophes.

Turn on the coverage of the Hurricane Harvey and the Houston flooding and you’ll hear lots of talk about how unprecedented this kind of rainfall is. How no one saw it coming, so no one could adequately prepare.

What you will hear very little about is why these kind of unprecedented, record-breaking weather events are happening with such regularity that “record-breaking” has become a meteorological cliche. In other words, you won’t hear much, if any, talk about climate change.

The Federal government spends around $100,000 a second. What economic austerity? It’s really difficult to think of a worse Naomi.

Anyway… Let’s have two songs, the obvious one and the one that just makes me happy.

Morning all, last we heard from Sloopy he was fine, but wiped out from voluntarily helping his neighbors deal with a natural disaster that has now reached biblical proportions. There’s some dude in eastern Harris County that thinks he should have listened to that voice in his head last time he went off his meds saying he should build a big-ass boat… and sleep with his daughter.

Sportzball — The Detroit Lions will pay Matthew Stafford a bunch of money to continue to put up huge numbers but never buy him the support to win the big games. Cubbies and Orioles won, Yankees lost. LA and Houston did not play. JJ Watt continues to be a good face for the NFL, and the Rockets and Astros ownership put up some money. Also, some doper is back in women’s tennis and all over the news. And now …the links!

Trump gets a qualified okay on hurricane response from a major daily. Meanwhile, Time joins the list of journalistic publications pretending like there’s a city in America that can absorb 30-50 inches of rain in 3-4 days. It must be sprawl and glubal warmink! Dear Houston, you’ve been the fastest growing major city in America in the 21st century for a reason. Don’t listen to the haters.

In much, much lighter news, every punk eventually grows old. (Yes, I saw the date, but I needed the chuckle)

Russkies and Chinese joint naval maneuvers? Don’t they have 1 functional carrier between them? I’m sure the pearl clutching will commence apace for 3-5 more aircraft carriers.

Everyone will be surprised that Marines whose tattoos were fine in Afghanistan and Iraq are being barred from re-enlistment coincidental with a 10% active duty force reduction.

Woman uses experimental method to determine if pistol her son found is real, no one injured. Please teach your children gun safety, if only so they can tell mom what a really bad idea that is.

This one’s for Sloopy.

I keep hearing, “I’ve got Ocean Front property in Western Houston”. So inapropes.

Its a rare day when I’m don’t miss living in Houston at least a little bit. Today is one of them. If Noah had come from Texas, a hell of a lot more people than just his family would have survived. The good news is, very few lives are lost. The bad news is, probably a million people will be economically destroyed. I’ll start looking into emerging voluntarism opportunities to help or fund. Maybe at the end of the week, when we (hopefully) know what it all is going to look like.

UPDATE: Texas Monthly has a starter list here. I did a preliminary vetting of the charity Global Giving mentioned and it appears to be quite reputable.

Onto the links!

Good news, everyone, I’m going to live forever! Actually, I’m probably down to 2-3 from 6+. So maybe I need to raise my game.

Expect gas prices to go up at least 10% until Houston gets back to work. Maybe, just maybe, enviroweenies, we should move some of our eggs out of that basket.

Headlines that surprise no one: California considers taxing _____ .

Uber picks a Persian CEO. No racist jokes about knowing the taxi industry!

More evidence that when the robot uprising occurs, it’ll be because some disaffected 16-year old with no friends decides to hack all robots to kill all humans.

A Houston boy covering an appropriate song. Serious question, how do I get the job as the background trombone player?

And seriously, no shit, sloopy has been busy doing what libertarians do- actually putting his ass on the line helping instead of passively waiting for Big Brother to do something; in his case, doing flood rescue. He managed to extract 40 people from a flooded apartment complex in about three hours. The official fire and rescue people showed up several hours later and yelled at him for running his boat too fast. No word on whether there was a police beatdown.

SP and I watched football.

Since sloop isn’t here to talk about his little league whatevers, I’ll mention that the Orioles came to Fenway, destroyed the Red Sox, and then wisely got out of town. Mike Glennon started and likely saved his job with a not-terrible performance. Brian Hoyer looked sharp and didn’t attention-whore during the Star Spangled Banner. The Ravens first team defense allowed exactly zero points through the preseason- we’ll see how that holds up when shit gets real.

OK, news items:

Every time I think that people are stupid, they demonstrate to me that I had no idea of HOW stupid.

At some point, even WaPo has to say something true. I was startled.

Those of you trying to convince libertarians that Trump isn’t the same kind of authoritarian as his predecessors have one more piece of evidence to try to talk around. As much as I enjoy the TDS spectacle, and as much as I hate being on the same side as the NAACP, the guy really is going out of his way to convince me that he’s a total piece of shit.

Israeli protesters, unlike their American counterparts, have their priorities in order. (Confession: never actually watched that, no regrets)

DO NOT MENTION LUCY!

And finally, some decent music. There could only be one Monk, and America is the only place that could produce him.