Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

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  • Thursday Morning Links

    The ball is juiced and the strike zone tends to get bigger and smaller based on the situation. But none of that was able to keep the hard-hitting Astros from coming back to win Game 2 of the World Series last night.  Hoo-boy! That was a doozy of a game.  Now its back home to Minute Maid Park, where the ball will really fly (unless they replace them with, you know, actual baseballs that don’t surprise batters when they leave the field instead of dropping in for lazy pop flies).

    Also, football is back tonight as a diversion. Thank God I can watch something boring after those two action-packed baseball games.  Think about the truth in that statement for a minute and then wonder why the NFL’s attendance and viewership is really dropping like a stone.

    Right. Let’s do…the links!

    So now we’re supposed to believe these things about Vegas:

    1. The shooter acted alone
    2. He put up security cameras in a Vegas hotel/casino hallway without anyone noticing
    3. Nobody else helped him
    4. He shot a security guard several minutes before his rampage in a hail of 200 bullets and the police never came upstairs and nobody in a room on the floor opened their door and called the front desk
    5. His house was burgled just after the shooting but nothing important was taken
    6. And now we are being told that he took his laptop with him into that hotel room but the hard drive is gone.

    OK, sure thing.  That all seems legit. Especially since the dude has absolutely none of the signs of a mass shooter and nothing else in the world makes any sense in this thing.  I’m sorry, but this whole thing feels like someone is trying to feed me a pile of horseshit.

    Spot the racism! Its there.

    The latest hotbed of racism?  Kellogg’s!!!!  America’s cereal manufacturers have always been racist, so this shouldn’t be news.  Those fucks at General Mills have been making fun of the drunken Irish since forever. And their “Kike Flakes” brand with the gold-dust coated flakes was obviously a bad idea in 1934.

    The FBI informant that brought you the real Russian collusion scandal has been cleared to testify before the House and Senate committees on the Uranium One “deal”. That ought to fill a few pairs of pants with shit over at the DNC Headquarters, not to mention the Clinton Global Scam and there FBI.

    Disgusting fat pig

    Don’t worry Rosie. I’m sure you’ve got enough fat and bile stored up inside you to labor through it.

    What a shitty way to go.

    Still delicious, but also evil!

    Where do your delicious gummy bears come from? Sugar…and slaves!

    Grrrrrrrrl Power!

    Enjoy the day, friends.  Banjos gets home in a few more hours from Balmer. So it looks like I’m gonna make it through her trip without going insane.

  • Wednesday Afternoon Links

    Hey kiddos, I’m here to provide you with your daily dose of afternoon links! Won’t this be fun?

    • Speaking of kiddos, the Paddock family is really working hard at notoriety. The Vegas shooter’s brother is in the OMWC way currently having been arrested during an investigation of consumers of adult content featuring child actors.
    • The .in.mb family seat in rural NY now has a spectacularly named gun club for homos and trans-folk “Trigger Warning Queer and Trans Gun Club.” I’d rather see the membership and clout of the Pink Pistols grow, but I’ll take what I can get.
    • Fun fact: Playa Manhattan is masturbating furiously right. this. minute.
    • Philipines continues to snuggle up to people we don’t really like.

    And since I was drunk at Oktoberfest this weekend, here’s a scruffy blond fellow in (faux) leather lederhosen playing the sax.

    Thanks, Alpine Village Oktoberfest!

  • Maybe It’s the Internet

     

    The spark for this rant came from this piece on Oprah.com called “The New Midlife Crisis.” Though this one focused specifically on Gen X women, I’ve seen the details before in articles about millennials of both genders, about working people, about teenagers (Gen Z or whatever the heck we’re calling them), on and on: people are stressed. Diagnoses of depression and anxiety are at all-time highs. Humanity is in crisis, be it mid-life or quarter-life or whatever. Everyone is unhappy and no one knows why.

    I don’t deny that people are more stressed, depressed, and anxious. I’ve witnessed it firsthand. I’ve experienced it personally. Every article has a different theory: it’s because of the economy, it’s because of white supremacy, it’s because of capitalism, it’s the damn Republicans’ fault. But I think I know the answer and, in fact, I can almost guarantee that my theory is right.

    IT’S THE INTERNET.

    There are a lot of hand-wringing articles about younger millennials and the next generation growing up on the internet and spending most of their time on it. But no one seems to acknowledge the fact that older people use the internet too, you know. I am a millennial but I’m a bit of an older one (1985), so my family didn’t have a PC until I was in around fifth or sixth grade; we had no internet until freshman year of high school, and there was no such thing as smartphones until I was already out of college.

    I did spend quite a bit of my formative years on the internet, but it was in the “Web 1.0” era. Slow internet speeds, basic web pages and no social media. I made a lot of friends online, but the settings were very similar to those at Glib: we all interacted under screen names. Very few people knew my real name or what I looked like. I spent time on fandom message boards, LiveJournal, fanlistings and the very occasional IRC chat room. We’d leave comment threads pertaining to a specific topic, such as whether those who watched dubbed anime should be burned at the stake or not. (Full disclosure: I am a dubbie, not a subbie. Feel free to shun the nonbeliever.) The friends I made in those places didn’t know every single detail of my life—we’d just talk about Sailor Moon or video games or whatever. It was an escape from reality, a nice way to de-stress when I got home from school. Building fanlistings was a fun way to teach myself web design and Photoshop as a creative outlet. It was a more innocent age.

    Since the rise of MySpace and then Facebook, the internet has evolved, and you can easily see that the ways it has encroached more and more steadily into our lives is a recipe for stress overload. Moving away from the previous online culture of anonymity and limited sharing, social media has encouraged us to SHARE MOAR! SHARE MOAR! SHARE EVERY SINGLE DETAIL OF YOUR LIFE!

    People live on social media, blurting out every little thing that comes to mind. Status updates for every second of every day. Everyone knows the second you start dating someone, the second you break up, when you get a job and when you lose one, what time you get up in the morning and what time you go to bed. Photos of every meal, every drink from a bar or a coffee shop, every outfit, every haircut. Family drama gets aired like dirty laundry. And don’t even talk to me about people with kids. Every milestone in life gets a professional photographer involved. Proposal photos, engagement photos, wedding photos, anniversary photos, pregnancy announcement photos, shower photos, gender reveal photos, photos with a chalkboard saying whatever week you’re at in your pregnancy, BIRTH photos—women are literally having someone glam them up while they’re in the damn hospital and posing with the baby on their naked chests. I could make a collage of these. They all look the same. And then once the kid’s popped, it’s annual family photos, holiday photos, first-day-of-school photos, the photo cycle never ends.

    People get on Facebook Live or Instagram Stories or myriad other video sharing platforms even while they’re driving their damn cars and fill the empty space with the sound of their voices. It’s performance art. People are building an audience, whether they are looking for strangers to become their followers or just subjecting their family and friends to it.

    So many people, saying so much…

    Every second of everyone’s life is on display. And it seems like the general public is only acknowledging that this as a problem for the teens and young millennials. But I’ll tell you what, these Gen X women? I have gotten to know a number of women around ten to fifteen years older than me since I started publishing, which means that I’m seeing a bunch of moms whose kids are graduating high school and going to college, and HO-LY SHIT. These women have the millennial moms with the toddlers beat. They won’t shut up about their kids, and they’re tagging the kids in the status updates. One woman the other day posted a public Facebook post calling out a girl her college freshman daughter was friends with, shaming her for being ‘a backstabber’. AND SHE TAGGED THE DAUGHTER IN IT, so now all the daughter’s friends will see it.

    This is just one example of the pervasive oversharing that’s going on thanks to social media. But it’s not just the cringe factor that’s the problem. From all these pro photo shoots for every moment of someone’s life to the professional networking aspect of social media, social media is encouraging unhealthy levels of competition. I’d be the first to admit that some competition is a good thing, as it encourages people to excel; but there needs to be some moderation. Before the internet, competitiveness was limited to face-to-face interaction or specific tasks. With the internet, it’s 24/7. People are lying in bed trying to sleep at night looking at their phones and seeing Sally Supermom coifed and made up like a model in a hospital bed with baby number three posed tenderly on her bare chest. #blessed #wokeuplikethis

    When everyone around you seems like they’ve got their shit together and you feel like you don’t, it can be very difficult to ignore feelings of helplessness or desperation that ensue.

    For me personally, it’s very, very hard for me to be around other authors. Especially with the rise of indie publishing, there are a lot of Type A personality authors who are obsessed with maximizing productivity, and they can be overwhelming. “I wrote 50,000 words this week but I think I can get it up to 75,000 if I use dictation software so I can ‘write’ while I do chores and use my exercycle.” “I’ve been feeling a bit drained recently, so I’ve been doing thirty minute bursts of mindful meditation after every 5000 words, and I’ve found it lets me get my productivity up even higher—I’m averaging 30,000 words a day!” “You’re never going to make it in this industry if you don’t put a book out at least once every three months, so you need to focus on ways to write faster while also maintaining a well-balanced social life, running five miles every day so you’re not a fatty, raising 2.5 children and experiencing spiritual enlightenment through the teachings of Zen Buddhist monks!”

    American politics

    And you’ll notice I’ve not even mentioned politics at this point. Because I think we all know what the state of politics is like thanks to the internet. It would take a whole separate article to talk about that trash fire.

    My point is: I’m not surprised at all that stress, depression and anxiety are at all-time highs. And there’s a solution, as difficult as it is to accept—if you want to feel better, you’ve got to get off the internet. I know it’s hard. And sometimes you don’t have a choice, especially if you have a job that requires social media marketing. But we as individuals all need to make a conscious choice to cut back. If you can’t deactivate Facebook entirely, use it sparingly, and don’t be afraid to unfollow every person who says something stupid. Same thing goes for Twitter, Instagram, and every other form of social media. I’ve noticed a marked improvement in my mood since blanket-muting just about every author on Twitter and only having exposure to William Shatner, Emergency Kittens and my local branch of the National Weather Service. The other day, I took the day off and did nothing but play video games and comment on Glib, and I felt so relaxed and unstressed afterwards (probably because it was a day that Derpetologist didn’t post).

    Want to solve the “crisis” crisis? Be you man or woman, a Gen X-er, a millennial, or someone older or younger, try cutting out or cutting back on social media. I can guarantee you that you will feel much better in a very short amount of time.

  • Wednesday Morning Links

    Well Game 1 is in the books.  Three mistakes made in the entire game. Unfortunately, two of them were made by Dallas Keuchel.  Verlander on the hill tonight for the good guys. Rich Hill up for the bad guys.  Let’s all pray for another game getting done in 2:30.  That part was awesome.

    That’s all for sports. The world is going insane so I want to get right into…the links.

    REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

    What would you expect a bunch of autistic screechers to do on the anniversary of election day? Why, you’d expect them to autistically screech at the sky, of course.  Not sure if they’re officially endorsing President Trump with this action or if the temper tantrum can be considered an in-kind political donation to his 2020 campaign. But I can assure you that a lot of Americans will be looking at this retarded act of petulance and will be leaning a little bit more toward the right after it.

    Maybe I should have put this in the sports news.  But it looks like Harvey Weinstein is a Red Wings fan.  Good for him for finding a team and sticking with them even when times are tough for a year. I’m sure this divers…. (reads article) … oh my! Th-, that’s different.  Oh my!

    Homeless Advocate who makes $120,000 a year is now about to be homeless. I’m sure she’ll land on her feet. But after 20 years of working with Bay Area homeless people, she can’t afford to stay any more.  Hey, maybe if you can’t get by on $120,000 a year, the rent is too damn high. Try getting the idiots in city hall to stop all the anti-landlord policies and idiotic housing regulations they have in place so maybe people like you can afford to stay.  Oh, and after 20 years of working there with homeless people at a fat salary, you still have $60,000 in student loans? Methinks there’s something else going on here.

    Wow. This is a pretty accurate portrayal of how tax money is pissed away in order to get rid of shitty government workers. I hope that writer has a guardian angel, otherwise he might get mugged. And by mugged, I mean killed.

    Colluder-in-chief? Close, but no cigar.

    And lastly, I bring you: COLLUSION!!!!!!!!!!!!  I don’t know what else to call it.  A political campaign hires a foreign intelligence agent to work on their behalf to dig up dirt on their opponent and then use that to further their political ambitions.  But that’s not the best worst of it.

    After the election, the FBI agreed to pay Steele to continue gathering intelligence about Trump and Russia, but the bureau pulled out of the arrangement after Steele was publicly identified in news reports.

    You got that?  The Obama FBI hired a foreign agent to dig up dirt on the president-elect, who Obama openly campaigned against, in an attempt to discredit him.  This coupled with the fact that Obama’s intel agencies and UN Ambassador Susan Rice have admitted to having unmasked several Trump associates for no reason whatsoever and have admitted to having tapped several phones at Trump tower with no named suspect associated with any specific investigation.  This is some serious Nixonian bullshit here. In a sane world, you’d have people hanging from lampposts around the DC metro area as a warning against this kind of perversion of our electoral systems. But instead I’m sure you’ll see justifications in Op-Eds across the nation.

    That’s it for the links. As for the musical selection, Banjos is at a conference in Balmer. So this psychedelia is for her. But I hope the rest of you enjoy it. I know I did.

    Have a great day. Game 2 tonight…GO ASTROS!!!

  • Tuesday Afternoon Links

    After experiencing the joys of the global workplace with an 11pm (EST) conference call, and my wonderful, coordinated 2 year-old who will not be kept in bed just because The Man says so when he wakes up at 4am, I’m a little punch drunk. Or maybe just drunk-drunk. I heard vodka and redbull worked like cocaine, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Or six.

    The second best part of the Verlander trade

    Florida Man takes semi-pro football pretty seriously.  If Coach lived in Seminole Heights, he should be worried. I don’t know much about Seminole Heights other than I drive past it to go to the zoo.

    Given that the FBI just dumped files on Adam Lanza, I suspect that we can expect that they don’t have shit on the Vegas shooter.

    OMG! FEMA shipped packaged food with a long shelf life instead of Blue Apron to Puerto Rico where they may not have power or gas to cook with. Supplemented with MREs. Now, I don’t have personal experience, but everyone I know who had to subsist on MREs was more than happy to have beef jerky or cheese and crackers for a change.

     

    I love that nutbars can wander into our Capitol and throw Russian flags at the President from close range. I mean it. It gives me some hope that it isn’t as bad as it could be.

    When did aging Brit pop assholes become the voice of sanity? First Morrisey then Boy George?

    “We have to be really careful with the Internet because people say everyone is talking – it’s like five people, they’re retweeting each other,” he told Israel’s Channel 2 News in an interview this week, “and that doesn’t constitute a revolution.”

    Speaking of British heroes, it looks like at least some in England want to land a human on the moon in the future.

    Sometimes you just fall into the song.

    Oh yeah, Go Astros!

  • Exploration of Philosophical Vagueness: aka, Principles are Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!

    You’re being vague

    One of the most difficult problems in current political philosophy is related to the concept of vagueness.  This is a distinct phenomenon, but related to, vague communication.  In common vernacular, when we say someone is “being vague”, typically we mean that individual is, purposefully or not, leaving out certain details of a concept or description that prevent it from being fully defined.  The problem of formal logic I’m discussing here involves the issue of definition, but not from a communicational standpoint or a necessary lack of defining information.

    Philosophically speaking, vagueness falls within the greater realm of metaphysics, a greater branch of philosophy that seeks to define the nature of reality.  Clearly, in defining reality, a key exercise is understanding and categorizing objects and concepts around us.  This is where vagueness kicks into gear.  The classical problem of vagueness is the sorites paradox (the paradox of the heap).  Start with a heap of sand, then remove one grain at a time, at what point does it cease to be a heap and become something else?  Working in reverse, one grain of sand is certainly not a heap, nor two, nor three.  The heap object and furthermore the concept of a heap itself is vague.  Vagueness is distinct from ambiguity, which implies multiple specific, well-defined interpretations of a particular concept (eg: a problem that presents a dilemma) whereas vagueness presents difficulty in forming a well-defined interpretation at all.

    What does this have to do with politics?

    Problems of this type often present some of the most difficult challenges in contemporary political philosophy.  After all, politics is really just philosophy applied to the question of how a society should function, and any problem which calls into question the very nature of specific pieces of reality will be particularly operose.  Vagueness often lies at the core of so-called “slippery slope” arguments; if the difficulty in defining a heap is bound up in a wedge issue, then the point at which a heap ceases to be a heap becomes of critical interest.

    Let’s explore examples a little closer to home.  Probably the biggest problem in society currently related to vagueness is the point as which a fetus ceases to be a fetus and becomes a baby.  The way that our society has currently structured the debate about abortion, it is nominally “ok” to kill a fetus because it is not defined as a human, whereas a baby is unquestionably a human and killing it would be murder.  I am well aware that there are many other angles to the abortion debate and many people would say that “fetus” and “baby” is a distinction without a difference; i.e., they are the same thing and killing either one is murder.  I focus on this particular framing of the abortion debate strictly for illustrative purposes.

    Another issue at hand is the concept of adulthood.  It is universally agreed upon that two “adults” having consensual sex with one another is acceptable (I would certainly hope so for the sake of humanity’s continued existence).  However, what defines “adult”?  In the context of sex, it seems to not only depend on an individual’s age, but also the disparity in ages between the two participants.  Most people are OK with two 14 year-olds fucking, but would, at the very least, consider a 49 year-old male copulating with a 14 year-old female unsettling.  Switch the genders.  Does it make a difference?  Should it?  Outside the specific context of sex, the concept becomes even murkier.  Much has been said that it’s unreasonable for someone to be able to legally die for his country, yet not order a beer.  Why is it unreasonable?  Who should decide this?  These questions all arise from vagueness surrounding the concept of adulthood.

    Go on…

    While one can see clearly that vague definitions can have potentially disastrous consequences for policy debate, libertarianism is especially susceptible to inconsistency and hypocrisy surrounding vagueness.  The reason for this is libertarianism’s special emphasis on principle and logic.  Libertarians pride themselves on intellectual consistency, principle, logic and rationalism.  When definitional concepts of objects themselves (say, fetuses for example) become questionable, strict rationalism becomes quite difficult.

    There’s a reason why it’s a common joke/stereotype that autists are drawn to libertarianism.  One of the archetypes of the autistic mind is an extreme black and white understanding of the world.  If everything in the world is either black or white and everything that’s black is evil (RAAAACIST!!!) and everything that’s white is good, it’s very easy to be principled.  However, once vagueness is introduced, the water is muddied.

    Many philosophers have tried to solve this problem.  There are three main philosophical solutions to this problem: fuzzy logic, the epistemic solution and vague object solution.  In fuzzy logic, true and false are not absolute concepts.  To paraphrase from the Big Bang Theory, it’s somewhat wrong to call a tomato a vegetable, it’s very wrong to call a tomato a suspension bridge.  Truth or falsity of the tomato’s description is subject to gradation.  The epistemic solution says that there are solid definitions and boundaries, they simply can’t be known.  There is a single, discrete grain of sand that marks the boundary between “heap” and “not heap”.  Finally, the vague object solution claims that the objects themselves have no firm definition and they are fungible depending on context.

    SHITLORDS!

    Typical of libertarian shitlordianism, usually we punt on this question.  Libertarians often admit that there is no valid solution to these concerns and give the power to make such determinations back to the individual.  Each individual sees the problem differently and the emphasis of libertarian philosophy is sovereignty of the individual, so each and every one of us is free to make such determinations as we see fit.  The problem with this is when it clashes with commonly held beliefs (a “tyranny of the majority” problem in itself).  If I arbitrarily define “human” to be someone over the age of 5, and furthermore anything below that age is fair game for barbecuing, I face no sanctions morally or otherwise for going on an cannibal killing spree in the maternity ward.  Conversely, if I admit that I can’t possibly define what a “human” is, and I remain in irresolvable doubt whether a fetus of any age is human or not, it’s probably better to not kill it.  I can even take this to a more absurd level and then make an unironic argument that Onan was morally reprehensible for depriving his sperm of the chance at future personhood (the “every sperm is sacred” argument).

    What is to be done?  I haven’t the foggiest idea.  Often, we libertarians enclose ourselves in a cloak of moral superiority related to our principles.  “We have logic on our side!” is our battle cry.  The point of this essay is not to tear us down into the muck of progtastic postmodern nihilism; a miasma of nothingness in which nothing has any solid definition and there are no truths.  The purpose is to re-examine our premises so that we may be better prepared to tackle these difficult questions when faced with opponents who debate in good faith.  It also serves to explain why principles are often more difficult to keep in practice than in theory.  And boobs; nothing can ever change the definition of a high-quality rack.

  • Tuesday Morning Links

    Also known as the World Series Game 1 Links. or even the Global Warming World Series Eco-killer Links.  Or whatever else. Just don’t call it the Yankees Latest World Series. Because it is definitely not that, although I think Aaron Judge did strike out while answering a question about who he thinks will win it all.  I believe he was taken aback when the reporter threw him a couple of curveball questions.  But I’m not here to be mean. I’m sure he’s going to have a hell of a career. And I mean that in all sincerity. Dude just needs to learn to his curveballs away and occasionally take something off that swing and hit for average.

    Now, it is gonna be hot today in L.A.  They’re expecting it to dip just below 100 for the start.  Tomorrow will bring little relief. And in a series where a few of the absolute best pitchers in baseball will be taking the hill, it will be interesting to see how they are able to maintain.  Let’s hope for a fun start tonight.

    He likes french fried potaters, mmmmm.

    And oh yeah, the Wall Street Journal does some solid, and truthful, sports reporting from time to time. I enjoyed that thoroughly.  I hope you do as well. (It opens for me from the tweet, but if it doesn’t for you, copy it and then open in a private window.)

    Right, that’s that with sports.  Time for…the links!

    Talk about upsetting your narrative. MSNBC gets more yuk-yuks than Saturday Night Live anymore.

    This is how modern men become the Unsullied. Except, you know, they probably can’t fight.  Seriously though, if you’re taking this class, you should just go have your dick and balls cut completely off and chucked in the Potomac River.  Then tie a cinder block to your foot and jump in after it.

    Hobos about to be kicked to the curb in Bay Area. But the local denizens have so much compassion, they’re demanding our tax dollars be used for a “solution” to the “problem”.  In the immortal words of the Representative from South Carolina “I got a solution. You’re a dick!”  They can use their own money. Or at least the tax money from Californians.

    Hey, where the white women at?

    MATT DAMON!!!!! Way to take a brave stand, ass.

    I’m sure you’re just as shocked as I am. But its true. Chicago residents will face property tax hikes in 2020 and 2021 to try and fund municipal pension funds.

    Chicago taxpayers face yet another property tax increase for police and fire pensions in 2020 — and another hike the following year in the tax tacked onto water and sewer bills to save the Municipal Employees pension fund, aldermen learned on the first day of City Council budget hearings.

    Following five-year “ramp-up” periods, the additional increases will be needed to honor the city’s statutory promise to keep all four city government pension funds on the road to 90 percent funding by 2048.

    By the city’s own estimate, police and fire pension costs will rise by $297.3 million, or 36 percent, in 2020. The Municipal and Laborers plan costs will grow by $330.4 million, or 50 percent, in 2022.

    Well, enjoy being fiscally raped for the foreseeable future, Chicagoans. Because rates rising that sharply this quickly will never, ever be shored up.  This is what happens when your one-party ruled city lets pubsec unions fund campaigns and then sit across the bargaining table from the people whose campaigns they funded.  You have two viable solutions: bankruptcy with the legacy costs being discharged. The other involves nuclear bombardment from a space platform.  I wish you luck.

    This is the costume, I shit you not.

    LOL How could she ever have thought this was a good idea?

    They better not start calling this cultural appropriation or I’m gonna fucking lose it.

    Have a safe trip, Banjos.  See you in a couple days. I’ll try not to let the house go completely to shit. The rest of you…pray for me.

  • Monday Afternoon Is It Football Yet Links

    Man, the games yesterday were really, really, really bad. I have a purple and black paper bag to put over my head when SP and I go to Lambeau to see the Rodgers-free packers take on the Ravens and Joe Flaccid. The other games were no better- just piss poor play. If I’m ever made King, I will take five actions:

    1. Get rid of all domes and artificial turf.
    2. Have all Superbowls schedled for outdoor stadiums in snow zones.
    3. Fuck parity: no salary caps and reduce the number of teams by 50%. Eliminate any team playing in warm winter climates.
    4. Get rid of the pussy rules that make hard hitting old fashioned football illegal.
    5. Not allow any TV coverage that talks about anthems, social justice, or anything other than football. And lose that horrible chick announcer with the air-raid siren voice, the one who makes my wife scream at the TV, “SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU STUPID TWAT!”

    But like Charlie Brown every year, I know Lucy isn’t going to pull the ball away, so I’m going to watch Monday Night Football tonight. Enough ranting, let’s see what’s in the news.

    Apropos to my post this past weekend about Dr. Strangelove, it’s time to buy stock in the company that makes CRM-114s. Abandon all hope, ye who foolishly thought that Trump would be less war-bonered than Obama or Clinton.

    Do you feel the same contempt that I do about Chris Christie? Do you feel like you couldn’t lose any more respect for him as a human being, that your regard for him is at rock-bottom? Well, here’s a diamond-tipped drill to prove you wrong.

    How do you sell out of the “Female Libertarian” costume when there are no female libertarians? Huh? This is some conspiracy shit up in here.

    So let me get this straight- Progs make numerous death threats to the EPA boss, then complain when he increases security. Ohhhhh-kay.

    A Jewish pedophile? This cannot be.

    They named a dog Strudel, then were shocked that he got fat. Humans, hmpf.

    And of course, obligatory Old Guy Music. The finest feminist anthem ever written. And seriously, listen to it all the way through. Trust the Old Man.

  • Monday Morning Links

    Lewis Hamilton won the USGP in Austin (sort of), Texas. He’s close to locking down a World Championship. Bummer that he’s such an unlikeable bastard. A bunch of other shit happened over the weekend in hockey and other stuff. The Longhorns lost in OT when their QB inexplicably tossed the ball to a defensive back rather than throwing it away and kicking a FG. Alabama throttled Tennessee in what should in a sane world be Butch Jones’s last game.  Penn State, as expected by every sane and sober adult in America, annihilated Michigan, exposing Jim Harbaugh as…mediocre? subpar? a bigmouth prick who should spend more time finding a QB and less time finding a Pontiff?  You decide. The battle for the Big Ten East starts this Saturday afternoon in Columbus as the Nittany Lions come visit the Buckeyes in a redemption game.  Miami won, Wisconsin won, Oklahoma (barely) won, Notre Dame pummeled USC and exposed Sam Darnold as pedestrian. A bunch of other games happened on the gridiron that I’m sure you will discuss in the comments section.  Some of it played yesterday, even.

    Bregman with a freaking laser beam for a crucial out.

    And then we come to the American League Championship Series. I mean, I don’t even know what to say. I was shit-talking like crazy after games 1 and 2, chest all puffed out and sure the series was gonna be a romp like Boston was.  Then the tide turned and by Thursday morning, the Yankees fans on here were strutting around like the cock of the walk. The Astros bats went cold and the Yankees heated up at home in the Bronx.  I’ll admit, I was pretty sure the Astros had blown it.  But then came Friday and a comfortable win.  And then came Saturday, where all hands were expected to be on deck in the bullpen just to hang on against CC Sabathia, one of the most clutch pitchers out there and a man who had gone 10-0 following a Yankees loss this season.  Well, the Astros only needed a pair of pitchers, who were lights out. Hell, Morton and McCullers each only threw 54 pitches in five and four innings respectively. Their breaking stuff was filthy and the defense behind them made plays when needed (especially the laser beam Bregman threw to get Bird out at the plate. Anyway, lots of fun was had by all in Bayou City this weekend. And now we wait until tomorrow night for the World Series to start. Hopefully they’ll beat the Dodgers. And the way our pitching staff lines up, I’d expect to head home with at least one win from the two games in Chavez Ravine. Stay Tuned.

    This is how Saturday night ended.

    Whew! I got excited just writing that stream-of-consciousness intro to the day’s festivities.  Which can mean only one thing: time for…the links!

    People on both sides of the pond are shitting their pants about the insane, right-wing nutball 31-year old elected to run Austria.  The dude is a train wreck! Oh wait. You mean he actually comes across as a sober*, reasonable man who plans to shrink the government footprint, lower taxes and distance his nation from the meddlesome twats in Brussels? Oh no! Whatever will they do to stop the madness?

    Let the “crazy, young Austrian leader” comparisons begin.

    *Preemptively addressing the “you know who else was a sober Austrian leader” comments.

    The Mueller witch hunt takes a left turn. I’m ok with the foreign agent registration process, but I still think witch hunts like these are not a good thing.

    The Kate Steinle murder trial is getting ready to start up. And the judge is warning both sides to stick to the facts. I assume his request of the jurors won’t keep Twitter from exploding. I’m grabbing my popcorn.

    Hey look! Some good news involving the FBI. Actually, the rest of the article is horrifying if at least the encryption piece makes me smile.  These fuckers want access to anything and everything whenever they feel like it and expect to demand the Trump WH and GOP-led Congress give it to them.  Let’s hope Rand Paul explains to his new friend President Trump how that is a bad thing for liberty. God knows Obama and Bush didn’t listen

    Musk is nothing if not creative…at scamming.

    The 21st Century’s PT Barnum has found a few more suckers to extract cash from. Of course its between Baltimore and D.C.

    Kim Jong Un’s half-brother’s death eight months ago in Malaysia still a mystery.  Yeah, no shit.

    Bubble gum pop can be excellent.

    Have a great day and a great start to another week…even Yankees fans.

  • ZARDOZ’S SUNDAY EVENING LINKS

    ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU HIS CHOSEN ONES. ZARDOZ IS PUZZLED. HE RECEIVED A TRANSMISSION FROM THE TABERNACLE…

    Caution: You are approaching the periphery shield of Vortex Four. Caution: You are approaching the periphery shield of Vortex Four.

    THE IMAGE ZARDOZ WAS SENT APPEARED TO BE SIMILAR TO FRIEND STEVE SMITH.

    NIGHT VISION IMAGE SENT TO ZARDOZ

    YET THIS APPEARS TO BE MUCH MORE … SOPHISTICATED THAN FRIEND STEVE SMITH. ZARDOZ WILL SEND A PRIORITY INQUIRY TO THE TABERNACLE TO FIND OUT THE SITUATION. IN THE INTERIM TIME INTERVAL, ZARDOZ WILL GIVE HIS CHOSEN ONES THE GIFT OF THE LINK. GO FORTH AND COMMENT. ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN

    • BRUTAL NATION OF JAPAN RE-ELECTS PRIME MINISTER WHO WANTS MORE ARMS. ZARDOZ WONDER IF THIS HAS THIS HAPPENED BEFORE?
    • ZARDOZ DOES NOT BELIEVE W.H.O. HAS GONE FAR ENOUGH. A DISTINCT LACK OF CLEANSING IS NOTED.
    • AGAIN, ZARDOZ IS DISAPPOINTED BY THE LACK OF KILLING IN THIS INSTANCE. HOWEVER, ZARDOZ BELIEVES THAT THIS CAN PROVIDE ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR HIS CHOSEN ONES’ FICTION EFFORTS.
    • ZARDOZ ALWAYS FEELS THAT TOO MUCH IS SPENT ON HEALTHCARE OF BRUTALS.