You gotta feel bad for that Bears kicker. Or not. But Cleveland and Philly fans Venmo-ing him money after the missed FG is a bit much. Tough way for one’s career to end. Elsewhere, the Chargers beat the Ravens (and now head to Foxboro for a date with Tom Brady. The Iggles, who were the beneficiaries of that missed kick will head to New Orleans to take on the juggernaut Saints. And Indy will travel to Kansas City while the Cowboys travel to Los Angeles to take on the Rams. The college season will end tonight in front of a half-empty stadium. And the NBA still doesn’t matter.
And as hockey hits its midway point more or less, the standings put the Lightning, Leafs , Bruins, Sabres, Caps, Pens, Blue Jackets and Islanders in current playoff positions in the Wales Conference, with Montreal nipping at their heels and the Jets, Preds, Avs, Stars, Flames, Army, Sharks, and Ducks in the Campbell with Vancouver, Edmonton and the surging MINNESOOOOODA WIIIIIILD just outside. Enjoy the stretch run, gentlemen.
Oh, and I’d recap the FA Cup weekend, but there’s still a game to go. I wonder if either will field a strong team though.
Happy Birthday if today is your day. And by the way, you share it with: president Millard Fillmore, bluesman Bobo Jenkins, publisher (of a once-great magazine) Jann Wenner, Kenny fucking Loggins, actor David Caruso, libertarianish politician Rand Paul, person in movies Nic Cage, and Formula One great (but also a douchebag) Lewis Hamilton.
It was also the day the following took place: Galileo discovered the first three moons of Jupiter, Francis Bacon became Lord Chancellor of Britain, the typewriter was patented, the US government recognized Castro’s Cuban government, Jimmy Carter authorized bailout of Chrysler, and Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial began.
That wasn’t a lot of great stuff. Oh well, on to…the links!
Socialist says socialism won’t create another socialist state. Interviewer doesn’t press the issue because that would be…what, racist? Mysoginistic? Making fun of a retarded person? Hell, it must be something bad for Anderson Cooper to keep lobbing her softballs. But in his defense, maybe he was still drunk from this three tequila shots he did earlier int he week. Oh yeah, and she also said Trump is a racist.
Wow, a telescope in a plane! Next thing you know, we’ll manage to put one in space beyond the atmospheric interference.
Hey, when the government goes back to work (with back pay for their vacation), can they just go ahead and leave this program on the scrap heap? Nothing. Left. Too. Cut.
Looks like Kevin Spacey will have to appear in court for his arraignment for felony sexual assault. Quick question: how loose does someone’s pants need to be for someone else to get their hand down them far enough to grab their genitals, in a bar against their will? Without being seen by anybody else? And without taking an ass-beating on the spot? That whole story sounds far-fetched to me.
Scoring a triple double ain’t any easier than chopping a head off.
Kurdish forces say they have captured two American men fighting for ISIS in Syria. Huh, and here I thought Lebron was playing for the Lakers.
The Chicago medical Examiner’s Office has a strange definition of “top priority”. Just kidding. I’m sure they’re really focusing on the shitty job they did for years.
Somebody needs to get Linda Sarsour and the rest of the Women’s March leadership on the phone. Because I’m sure they’re gonna jump right up in defense of this woman, right? RIGHT?!?!?!??!?!?
Worst revenge plot I’ve seen in a while.
Well, I’m sure he’s familiar with the layout of the courthouse, so he should be on time to his hearing. Also, dude looks creepy as shit. But seriously, this guy is a hilariously bad criminal mastermind. No wonder he was a judge.
One of the greatest songs from the greatest arm wrestling movie of all time. And if you think I’m wrong, I’ll turn my cap around and we can settle it with our arms.
Have a great day, friends. And a great start to the week.
Socialist says socialism won’t create another socialist state. Interviewer doesn’t press the issue because that would be…what, racist? Mysoginistic? Making fun of a retarded person? Hell, it must be something bad for Anderson Cooper to keep lobbing her softballs. But in his defense, maybe he was still drunk from this three tequila shots he did earlier int he week. Oh yeah, and she also said Trump is a racist. – When America becomes Sweden by magic do the wimminz all become tall blondes or covered in burkas?
“OCASIO-CORTEZ: I’M GOING TO TURN AMERICA INTO ANOTHER SWEDEN, NOT VENEZUELA”
NEEDZ MOAR RAPE GANGS!!
‘My policies most closely resemble what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden’ – there is a lot different between those countries. And *as an European* cause you have to mention these things these days I am not that sure why Sweden is seen as such a paradise.
I’ve been to the UK. It reminded me of Upstate New York with fewer hills. While that meant nice scenery, that also meant visible signs of economic depression.
In the first place, Sweden was never a socialist country, it was a capitalist country with a generous welfare state. And for the Swedish model to work, you need an entire country filled with 10 million Swedes. Once that changes, the social dynamic changes along with the efficacy of their system. As we are currently seeing.
But I would argue a country filled with 10 million Swedes would have worked a lot better without the welfare state, as such I would not say it worked for Sweden if it made them poorer than they would have been.
Of course their model was going to fall apart eventually, but the mass influx of “refugees” greatly exacerbated it.
Because heavier tax burden provides benefits like this?
Oh yeah…..
Very nice.
* looks down, grabs binder
She could go a little deeper.
You’re dead inside.
Ass to grass or it doesn’t count.
But I did pass out for about two minutes after the camera caught the shot from the behind.
I know Norway gets a shit ton of revenue from licensing oil companies to extract oil from the north half of their country. Not sure about Sweden, but I think they have some of that oil money too.
So I guess AOC plans to do the same?
I’m just looking forward to the privatized social security, universal school vouchers and lower business taxes.
And 2/3rds of the roads being privatized!
Who decided this dimwit would be the face and mind of the new left? Everything she says is wrong in the dumbest way imaginable.
That was the prerequisite. See: Obama, Feinstein
But, that’s the new left.
You’re hung up on being factually correct. Which, according to her, is a no-no:
https://twitter.com/60minutes/status/1082068489597267968?s=21
“There’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right,” @AOC says in response to criticism that she’s made factual errors. cbsn.ws/2GYii3B
You can’t fucking make this shit up.
Because being factually wrong is the higher morality, because reasons?
Because she entered a field of work where wrong answers that sound good have positive consequences for her.
Because you can either be correct or good, but not both. That’s why it’s okay to shoot people who tell you that they can’t grow wheat and mine coal in the same place.
It’s not like she’s running around telling the world she’s going to remake it into a socialist paradise! What? Her facts aren’t supported and she has zero life experience? Oh well! Socialism here we come!
I’m starting to see a parallel between her and Trump, in the sense that both their enemies take them literally, but not seriously, while their supporters take them seriously, but not literally.
It’s a mistake for Trump’s enemies, I think. Is it also a mistake for hers?
^^^ This. Conservatives, Libertarians need to stop elevating this intellectual lightweight. She is only a god damned representative of one of the bluest districts in the country. It says very little about national politics and much more about the local politics of the district she comes from. She should be regarded as a Hank Johnson. Laughed at and ignored. Not focused on for ridicule. You only increase her cred and reach.
I think you are wayoff here. I lived in Illinois in the early 90’s when the DNC anointed Obama and Emmanuel (at roughly the same age as AOC) as their new face(s). They were being actively promoted by the party for over 15 years and the GOP acted as if they just ignored them they’d go away. We see how well that worked.
The DNC is doing the exact same thing again.
I think of most politicians are actors. Obama, Cortez, Gillibrand,Booker, and many in the GOP and just empty suits. The get paid to play a roll and do and say whatever their handlers order.
That’s the crazy thing about Trump and why he’s attacked so relentlessly – he isn’t a hired-hand,
“I think you are wayoff here.”
It’s entirely in the realm of possibilities. I think that she was a bit of a fluke. She wasn’t supposed to win the Primary, and I think (like Trump) she actually represents a grass roots movement within the Democratic Party. I think that the DNC are less “grooming” her than they are trying to use her popularity for the DNC. It’s fine to have a few Radical Representatives, but we will see how they react to them trying to take more power from Establishment Democrats. I imagine it will be similar to how the GOP reacted to Trump.
You were right that she wasn’t supposed to win the primary – but it was also a primary with such a monumentally low turnout that you cannot say it represents a grassroots anything other than a grassroots disconnection from engagement.
“but we will see how they react to them trying to take more power from Establishment Democrats. ”
The old Democrats will get forced out, a la Paul Simon in Illinois. They will either get with the new leftism or they will get put out to pasture.
Democrats more so than the GOP absolutely LOVE low-turnout primaries because it tells them who and what their truest believers are supporting.
The major difference being AOC has no real power. Yet.
Of course, giving her Andy Rooney’s old segment on 60 minutes will help. Plus I’m sure she’ll get an annual appearance on SNL and all the late night hosts will be giving her serious screen time. She ain’t going away, and they are giving her a big megaphone.
I think the difference is that Trump led a soft populist coup against the Republican establishment and won a nomination despite them. Karla Marx seems to be enjoying at least the tacit support of the DNC. Now, maybe that’s because they’re afraid of upsetting the Bernie Bros., or maybe it’s because they saw Trump and decided to harness that dynamic in a way the Republicans failed to do. I personally believe that, frankly, a critical mass of voters will vote on the basis of anything other than dispassionate, principled analysis of policy and personal qualifications, which means they’ll elect people who tell them what they want to hear, or look a way they like, or give them some sort of added virtue-signalling ability. What I’m saying is that Crazy Eyes may or may not be worth taking seriously, but the movement behind her certainly is, and if it’s not this particular whackadoo doing damage it’s gonna be someone else.
My sentiments exactly, NB.
I think that a lot of it is that she has figured out how to push the media’s buttons using social media. Like Trump she is the one with the laser pointer and the MSM are the kittens who are chasing it.
What this tells me is that the MSM has gutted newsrooms of any experienced editors. They are staffed with tons of millenials who work for nothing. A crusty editor would have spiked any stories about her impromptu cooking show and told the kids to go do some work on real stories.
The world isn’t as violent and unjust as it used to be. Get used to the cat and baby videos, this is the new norm.
” ‘Of course’ that’s not what’s being planned, she said. “What we have in mind”
She has good intentions, and is too ignorant and unimaginative to imagine that replicating the shit that caused Venezuela to go full poverty * might * have the same results.
Of course the new left loves her.
Kurdish forces say they have captured two American men fighting for ISIS in Syria. Huh, and here I thought Lebron was playing for the Lakers. – Don’t even meting the Lakers. They had a game yesterday at an hour I could watch. 5 minutes in it was 3-22 against the fucking Twolves. Bleah. Horrible. While yes, they had injuries, the players on the field did not look like they had a fucking clue.
If they were playing on a field, I think we’ve discovered part of their problem.
Court. Whatever.
Then the Timberwolves proceeded to fire their coach right after the game.
Yes. The Lakers were so bad they got the other teams coach fired. Must be some record.
My kid and I were stunned when we heard that. I thought Thibs was actually doing pretty well this year considering that it started with his
superstarcancerous player demanding a trade. The guys he got from Philly for Butler have played very well for us.And for Glen Taylor who has tolerated shitty results for years to say shit like this in the paper is pretty amazing.
I think Thibs is not a good development coach and did not do well with the young “stars”.
You may be right on that. My biggest beef with him is that his rotation is too tight. He plays 7 or 8 players for tons of minutes and doesn’t let anyone else off the bench.
So where is LeIslamo going to take his talents to next? The Decision 2.
I’m sure he also blamed the poor performance of Isis on everyone except himself.
I thought the picture was Lebron but then I noticed the hairline. Perhaps he had some work done I thought to myself.
Somebody needs to get Linda Sarsour and the rest of the Women’s March leadership on the phone. Because I’m sure they’re gonna jump right up in defense of this woman, right? RIGHT?!?!?!??!?!? – well that is not in America so who cares? Also Sharia is the best
One of the greatest songs from the greatest arm wrestling movie of all time. And if you think I’m wrong, I’ll turn my cap around and we can settle it with our arms. – there is such a thing as great arm wrestling movie? Or is just greatest among the category?
You poor Eastern European man.
Enjoy: https://youtu.be/fUZHpFu3MYo
And it’s a Cannon film.
You post this OMWC trolling movie opinion the day after his beloved Ravens stank up the playoffs? So mean.
What are the odds that Occluded-Cortex has filled out at least one 1040 in her lifetime?
Better than the odds that she ever does again in the future. I predicted it in yesterdays links but my intuition tells me that in 20 years she’ll be a standout for corruption and hypocrisy. And thats a tough crowd to stand out in.
Doubt it. Nearly half the country thinks the Clintons are not corrupt. Delusion ain’t a river in Egypt.
Oh, I’m not saying she won’t be universally adored. I’m saying that she will be no different. She’s not a revolutionary, she’s just another grifter looking to ride her wave of fame to wealth and power. She’s more likely to be on the take from the big banks in 20 years than taking them down.
Well Fauxcahontas ain’t gonna live forever and somebody has to get those checks.
That dancing video proves she’s filled out at least a 36C.
+1 Mullet Era Loggins Song
And because the important news stories were not linked by this sloppy link work
‘Fiji Water Girl’ At The Golden Globes Might Be 2019’s First Meme
https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/a25770017/fiji-water-girl-golden-globes/
I would be disappointed if we made it to the 7th without a meme…
Also would
https://www.instagram.com/kellethcuthbert/?utm_source=ig_profile_share&igshid=1pzewqifevff0
Would… like the King of England
Are we talking Edward the Confessor type or Henry VIII type?
More like Uther Pendragon
So your liaison will be entirely ficticious. Got it.
I’m staying with what works.
Well, she would probably lay back and think of your kingdom.
#metoo
Oh. “Meme”. I thought you were talking about Mimes, much scarier than mere memes.
Mime Memes?
*runs away screaming*
Now that is what sultry looks like. Yowzah.
‘My policies most closely resemble what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden’
She’ such an idiot.
And dangerous.
‘I’m gonna turn American into another Sweden….”
Wow.
But I don’t want to live in another Sweden…!
Well go to Somalia then
Sweeden + Somalia = Minnesoda
They’re going to die on that hill. White tower liberals are so fucking stupid.
Aw, jeez!
She definitely lost NW Minnesoda with their Norwegian immigrants.
Grenade attacks and rape gangs are easier than thinking.
It’s amazing how left-wing ideas clearly elucidated in Hayek’s ‘Road to Serfdom’ have been around in the exact same state for over 100 years. They were terrible ideas then, and their horrid now.
Ocasio-Cortez, I hope, is all just noise. Right?
Only if you totally overlook the cult of personality springing up about her.
People are retarded if that’s the case.
See: Justin Trudeau
Just remember: Half the population of the US have IQ’s of less than 100.
/shudders/
Unfortunately, just like Trump, she has really great persuasion skills. She’s young and attractive and appeals to dumb people. She’ll be around for her lifetime. Just pray she’ll get wiser with age.
I pray she doesn’t get wiser. She’s less dangerous as a semi-functional retard.
Nope, it’s here to stay. She’s the voice of her generation. Or at least a big part of it. They’ve been taught that personal responsibility is passe and that the rich are exploiting them by most of their professors and teachers. And their parents have ignored them.
The second quarter of the 21st century is going to be a rather bloody one, I’m afraid.
Generation Z won’t want anything to do her with her and retardedly outmoded ideas….I pray and hope.
Gen Z is our last hope, I’m more on the optimistic side due to them.
The institutional structure of every civilized country on this planet is in lockstep alignment politically. Gen Z will fall in line if they want to have careers, and get loans, and stay out jail.
“She’s the voice of her generation”
:sigh: Yup all us millennials are profoundly retarded and the worst. I guess that’s why HRC, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, etc are all millennials.
I said “or at least a big part of it”.
You don’t think she’s wildly popular with her generation?
“You don’t think she’s wildly popular with her generation?”
I don’t know where I made that claim. I’m saying that this whole “Generation _ is the worst” bullshit. It’s just another form of lazy collectivism, and in any sense that “Generations” mean anything, pretty much any Millennial was raised by Baby Boomers or Gen X’rs and have lived under a government run by Baby Boomers and Gen X’rs. The current popularity of Socialism didn’t spring from nothing, and so making it seem like it is just a new thing from the Millennial is missing the deeper problem.
The millennial generation is the culmination of the long march through the institutions is all. So there’s a lot more conformity of thought than there might have been previously. The loss of religious affiliation in particular is a big one. Most people replace religious moralism with the political kind.
I think you are taking offense where none is warranted:
Sloop’s not really letting the other generations off the hook. I read that as the ideas are bad, not the people.
“I think you are taking offense where none is warranted:”
I’m willing to accept that, I just get frustrated when we break down dysfunctional politics/society into different “generational failings”. And that includes blaming the “Boomers” for everything too. The fact is, as a lot of us have stated, our society has been on this road for a long time. And it’s all Wodrow Wilson’s fault.
Reread what I wrote. I said she’s popular because her generation has largely been taught wealth envy by all their teachers and that their parents ignored them.
I’m saying they’re a product of their environment
True. I’m sorry if i lashed out. As stated above, i think blaming any “generation” for anything is pretty dumb as each generation is the product of their upbringing.
Affirming the consequent much?
I don’t know. Millennials remind me of the evolved humans of the future in Wells’ Time Machine. They’ve had it so good for so long that they’ve lost the ability to defend themselves.
Brave New World frightened me more than 1984 for this reason. I know I’m collectivizing but I think most people would happily teleport to that dystopia without a second thought. Particularly the young people I know.
Eloi brand Morlock food.
No she’s the future. I don’t say that sarcastically. We are seeing the intellectual fruits of the budding generation. Listening to “The Coddling of the American Mind” has illuminated some things to me. Some millennials/post-millenials aren’t stupid. Others will get wiser with age. On the whole though this generations values and thinking are irreparably broken. I’m not sure if that toothpaste can be put back in the tube.
I’m part of that generation. You’re right, we’re not stupid. No matter how we handle things, the previous generations have and will continue to fuck us. Between the boomer’s drunken spending spree and the greatest generation’s authoritarian love affair with welfare programs, we’re pretty fucked. I won’t even get into the foreign wars, drug wars, mega corps or patriot act.
I’m almost a millennial too. I was born in the no-mans land between GenX and Millennial. And actually I misspoke when I said millennials because really the coming of age we are seeing now is the igeneration (raised on 24-7 internet and smartphones) and they in some ways are even more fucked than millennials. You are absolutely correct in your assertions about previous generations. Millennials get all the hate but it was the worst impulses of the previous generations that got us here.
Having 18 and 16 year old chidren I disagree. Gen Z/ The iGeneration is in my experience considerably more skeptical of government institutions and socialism than millenials were at the same age
“No matter how we handle things, the previous generations have and will continue to fuck us. ”
Every generation says the same thing. And every generation ramps up the ass-fucking instead of ending it. Your generation will be no different.
^^ This. See my comment above. Given that Generations are so vaguely defined, the idea that they really mean anything is strange. Basically saying that anyone with the same pop-culture experiences are also going to see the world the same way.
Basically saying that anyone with the same pop-culture experiences are also going to see the world the same way.
Shared formative experiences lead to similar outlooks in most cases. And it becomes more and more true the more all-encompassing media becomes in our lives.
Don’t look now, but media has been fragmenting for a while. The ‘petty drama’ online has been a symptom of efforts to stem the tide of fragmentation, but the large, institutional media companies are waning.
the large, institutional media companies are waning.
Lol. You don’t seriously think that do you? The media is more consolidated now than it was 20 years ago.
You are only looking at those same large institutional media companies and seeing that there are fewer of them, and not the actual market consumed by the end users.
The institutional media companies are the gatekeeper by which end users access whatever semblance of a market exists though. The whole decentralized distribution and DIY publishing thing died in the cradle at least a decade ago.
“Every generation says the same thing. And every generation ramps up the ass-fucking instead of ending it. Your generation will be no different.”
I disagree. Water has a boiling temperature and eventually debts have to be paid, one way or another. Whether our generation wins that lottery, I don’t know. But to claim it’s going to be business as usual is to ignore history.
I have every confidence that the public debt game will be resolved within my lifetime with a currency reorganization and effectively a structured bankruptcy. Sort of a Bretton Woods III type of thing where we basically default without defaulting and redenominate in a new currency.
To assume that debts have to be paid is to be ignorant of history. One entity’s accounts payable debt is another entity’s accounts receivable asset. Guess who is going to “pay”?
There is always the possibility of taking the road Phillip IV did with his creditors…
Hah that’s waht you think. There is a very real probability that Gen X will never actually wield the reins of power in this country or if we do it will not do so for more than a decade.
The country is still being run by Baby Boomers at nearly every level and to the extent that it is not millenials are already our power equals.
The most powerful Gen X’er we have seen to date would be Paul Ryan on the government side, in the Corporate side the biggest name I can think of would be Melissa Mayer or maybe Page and Brin from Google, every other big name CEO type I can think of is Boomer or Millenial.
If we look forward to 2020 it is likely going to be Trump (a boomer) against one of Hillary (boomer), Warren (Boomer), Harris (borderline between boomer/GenX), Booker (Gen X), or Klobuchar (Boomer) so more than likely the next President will be a Boomer and when we get to 2024 whatever Gen X candidates that do run are going to face serious challenges from Milenial candidates the oldest of whom will be in their 40’s.
No matter what areas you look into the odds are that Gen X will never really run the country. We are on the weak side of splitting power with the Boomers today and by the time the Boomers age out entirely the best we will be able to manage is a power share with Millenials.
Gen Xer’s may never run the country, but it’s interesting that every Gen Xer you mentioned is only interested in increasing the size of government and ass-raping individual liberty even harder than it’s being raped now.
Feature of Gen X or feature of positions of power.
Also while no one could credibly accuse Paul Ryan of being a libertarian it is awfully hard to credibly accuse him of being a proponent of massive government.
I was reading that the last few weeks and I just kept on shaking my head because damn did Hayek speak the truth and that was a while back. Same when I was reading Road to Serfdom
Road to Serfdom is one of those book that contains profound ideas but is not an easy read, and thus is a tough one to recommend to people to turn them on to the ideas of libertarianism. I almost wish there was an abridged version (and I hate the idea of abridged books).
IIRC there’s a picture book version.
https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/Road%20to%20Serfdom%20in%20Cartoons.pdf?file=1&type=document
Yeah, I had to put it down quite a few times and take some breaks reading it.
How about the comic book?
https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/Road%20to%20Serfdom%20in%20Cartoons.pdf
It *can* get muddled I suppose; particularly when he gets all economicky.
But I think for those who really care and want to learn, they can get through it. The general message is pretty obvious and should resonate fairly easy enough.
Caldwell’s The Definitive Edition is the one I read and it always helps to have an introduction that explains parts of his ideas.
Here’s one.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Capitalism-Saved-America-Pilgrims/dp/1400083311/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1546875933&sr=8-2&keywords=how+capitalism+saved+america
Or anyhting by John Stossel. He is kindof like Libertarianism 101.
There’s a 20 page condensed readers digest version out there somewhere. I’m listening to Road To Serfdom right now, and the story of the book was explained in the preface of my edition.
God dang it, I meant to say Free to Choose. Point is both books were right on about all of what’s going on now.
Yeh well, that 2pt conversion looked good to me and the Bears were getting away with a lot of clutching and grabbing’ out there so yeh.
I hope the Bears learned their lesson. This is what happens when you don’t tank the last regular season game and eliminate the Queens.
If they had laid down last week they would have easily thumped us again in Chicago.
It’s always good to see both the Chicago team *and* the Minnesota team fail spectacularly.
Listened to Dave Smith go over Tucker Carlson’s rant against Libertarianism/Capitalism on my drive in. Were Socialist Conservatives always such bitches? Seriously though, He spends a whole lot of time talking about how everyone else is missing the point that Culture and Economics are related. You know what buddy, if their is something so “obvious” that you think everyone is missing you should probably re-evaluate what you think of everyone else. We get that culture and economics are related. It’s you who keep seem to miss that it’s government that has profoundly fucked up the social structure/ culture.
Yes.
lol. I figured, just checking to make sure.
The more I hear from Tucker Carlson the more turned off I get on him. He’s good on war and on criticizing the left but he is at his core very hostile to liberty. He’s an unabashed Statist that thinks the wrong people are in charge. The only silver lining is he is pushing the Fox narrative in a slightly better direction than it has been on previously.
Just remember, Tucker Carlson worked at The Weekly Standard for years. His split with the Bill Kristols is based on two things – war adventurism and Trump. He didn’t suddenly have a big change of heart.
Haven’t heard that one yet, but of all my regular driving podcasts, his is perhaps the most engaging.
For me it’s cathartic, I rarely get introduced to new ideas or challenged while listening, but it’s nice to hear someone with a voice call out the government and particularly the MSM on their bullshit.
Currently My driving podcasts:
– Tom Woods Show
– Contra-Krugman
– Bob Murphy Show
– Part of the Problem
– Critical Role
– Sometimes Dan Carlin’s Hard Core History, but the last few haven’t been in history that i’m super interested in.
Generally I’ve got enough content to last, but i’m open to some new ones if ya’ll have any suggestions.
Classical Stuff You Should Know – very good or very dull depending on what they cover. When covering a classical piece of literature = very good. When riffing on their own take on something (e.g., their recent episode on psychometric scoring) very bad.
Context with Brad Harris – reviews of great books of history of science.
Clear and Present Danger – A history of free speech (it is what it says it is)
Economics Detective Radio – Guy interviews someone who just published an econ paper, about the paper.
Short Circuit – Almost biweekly review of circuit court decisions.
So to Speak – FIRE’s free speech podcast.
Not into Imperial Japan? Man, I think that’s a fascinating topic.
The Naked Woman Who Soaked In Hitler’s Bathtub Read more: https://forward.com/schmooze/323460/the-naked-woman-who-soaked-in-hitlers-bathtub/
Nice.
Kohler’s smart toilet promises a ‘fully-immersive experience’
With built-in speakers, ambient lighting, and Amazon Alexa support, why go anywhere else in your house?
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/6/18170575/kohler-konnect-bathroom-smart-gadgets-numi-intelligent-toilet-ces-2019
Those are ALL Negatives.
Things a toilet needs:
Work every time.
Be comfortable to sit on.
Be easy to clean.
Things a toilet does NOT need:
Anything electrical.
You mean you don’t want to put your bare ass down on a piece of electrical equipment, located above a body of water?
^ said by someone who doesn’t own a washlet
I’d never go back. The heated seat pays for itself this time of year.
If you end up immersed in your shitter, you’ve done something wrong.
It’s a quiet space for me, not for my wife though.
TMI! TMI!
I don’t want to be immersed in my toilet, thank you very much.
If it doesn’t measure my poop by volume, weight, and VOC content, and then post badges to twitter when I read new personal records, I am not interested.
German?
I found out that part of my old National Guard unit is gearing up for a deployment to Somalia this year. Peace-keeping and Nation-building. Fucking stupidest thing I’ve heard in a while. I hope the whole thing gets called off with Mattis and Kelly on their way out.
Drop them a video and some Legos.
“National Guard unit” “Peace-keeping and Nation-building.”
It makes sense to be sending the Citizen soldiers out to go do the global peace-keeping. I mean the Military Leadership already like to believe that guardsmen have nothing better to do than think about the Army all day every day.
I got out when they took away our tanks and asked me to MP school. We transitioned from heavy combat units to deplorable cops.
On a personal level, some guys will be happy (like the government employees who’ll get 2 paychecks for most of 2019). Some will be screwed financially – although most of them probably punched out after the last senseless deployment.
“On a personal level, some guys will be happy (like the government employees who’ll get 2 paychecks for most of 2019). Some will be screwed financially – although most of them probably punched out after the last senseless deployment”
If i could change 2 things about the Guard it would be : 1.Return it to the Strategic Reserve status, and 2. Bar Cops from being members. I have a lot of friends who are Cops in the guard. Good people. But Cops are to much in the mindset of law enforcement to be able to participate in any form of a militia.
Yep. 30 years ago the Guard was built as the heavy follow-on force to be deployed as reinforcements if the Soviets invaded Western Europe. Now they are just live bodies / semi-skilled labor for these endless stupid foreign entanglements.
We were a tank brigade when I reenlisted. As I got out they were making the unit into Reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition (RSTA) – a fancy way of saying “deployable cops who would be worthless in a real war”.
That started to change post Desert Storm. When I joined it was still sort of that way with a blue moon Bosnia deployment hanging overhead (hah yeah right, got Southern Watch instead). By the time I left six years later, it was wet dreams of deployment cycles every 4 or 5 years. Good luck finding people where their civilian career allows a void like that every couple of years.
Even the normal cycle would suck by the time I got out. Get ready for drill one weekend, go to drill, recover from drill following weekend, one weekend off, and then right back at it.
I loved drill weekends, but no way was I going to do those kinds of idiotic deployments on a regular basis.
The units are going to be just students and government workers. Nobody else will be able to afford it. Had several guys who were engineers at Picatinny Arsenal in my unit. They would collect their $100k federal salary while deployed on top of their Army pay with overseas / combat bumps. I would have been trying to pay an NJ mortgage on E-5 pay and nothing else.
Look at it this way – they’ll finally do something.
Tweet Trump and see what happens.
Re Trump is racist. This has to somehow has to be addressed. If you cede them the claim without rebuttal it will be a truth to them.
I don’t believe he is one but if he is, I want actual proof. Not ‘the KKK voted for him’.
You’ll be waiting quite a long time, man. *insert the old skeleton on a bench meme*
Oh hell, they also claim he is a homophobe, even though he was in favor of gay marriage when Obama was still claiming to be against it, and he held up the rainbow flag at a campaign rally to enthusiastic cheers. And he is a misogynist even though he has long promoted women to positions of authority and was putting them in charge of major construction projects back in the 1980s when nobody else was doing that.
The idea is just that “Republican=Racist” and the higher the office, the more racist he is. (and misogynist, homophobic, etc.) It’s really insane.
This is why I so badly want Trump to legalize pot and pardon anyone in jail on drug charges. That would break the strangle hold on the Black vote that the Dems have.
More Kanye time.
No it wouldn’t. Maybe it should, but it wouldn’t.
You don’t need to flip it, you just need to get it down to 65/35.
GOOD NEWS ALERT: CAIR Welcomes Amazon’s Removal of Doormats, Bath Mats with Islamic Religious Text
Guess I shouldn’t have gotten that doggie bowl with the Koranic verses engraved in the bottom.
I thought that was for watering hogs.
Material supporter of international terror and the propaganda arm of the muslim brotherhood suppresses free enterprise.
FIFY.
Vaginal Mutilation kits will still be available, however.
You mean, like the American flag doormats they also sell?
Does that mean I have return my new litter box?
Exhibit Infinity on why you can never get rid of any law once it is passed.
Sob stories about people who will die in the streets if the ACA is repealed.
Wish the reporter would have asked that jackass how he feels spending that money that was taken from people like me who are paying a lot more in premiums and deductibles.
Also included are people who don’t want to pay for mammograms.
Ah, yes, I remember the dark days before 2009 when the bodies were piling up in the streets and the morgues were overflowing because there was no healthcare. The horror, the horror…
Funny you never hear about the poeple who did die due to Obamacare. I mean at least they were forced to buy expensive health insurance.
I was paying about $600 a month for medical coverage before the ACA. Now I pay $1,100, for worse coverage (had a PPO, now have a HDHP) with a much higher deductible.
My very expensive coverage sucks now. Premium increases have been absurd and the good doctors typically don’t take the OCare policies.
I am calling bullshit.
“As an individual with pre-existing conditions,
[the ACA] hasvictims of gubmint coercion helped save me thousands of dollars and given me a better lifestyle — free to give to charity and my church, to take trips, to eat out at a restaurant, while limiting those victims’ freedom to do the same.”— free to give to charity and my church, to take trips, to eat out at a restaurant.”
You’re welcome. My wife and I, healthy 20-somethings with no pre-existing conditions and minimal income, subsidized your ass by paying nearly $1k/month for our shitty O-care coverage.
By the way, this shows 1) the bias of the media; and 2) that Henry Hazlitt was a genius.
Diktat via anecdote!
I think dangerous illiterate loons like Ocasio-Cortez don’t understand that what they’re angling for is more China than Sweden.
And that the idea they can ‘socialist’ while not impacting individual liberty (to the extent they believe in it – which they don’t despite what they say because they’re collectivist) or democracy as we practice it is preposterous.
‘Democracy’ is just a shell; a concept. It’s what you put it that determines how it functions. Like an RRSP or 401k. Those are just ‘shells’ that alone are nothing. It’s what you put into it in the form of investments that determines if it grows and properly ensures a retirement nest egg.
Yes. They want a Cultural Revolution in the worst way.
“I think dangerous illiterate loons like Ocasio-Cortez don’t understand that what they’re angling for…”
Think again.
Some do for sure but there are a breed of them that once they succeed and unleash some of their idiocy come to the realization of ‘oops’.
A man can dream no?
But it’s never “oops.” It’s always, “Someone else made our plan go awry and we just need to try harder.”
This is something that most politicians do not understand: democracy is a process, not a result. If you scrap the process to arrive at a certain result, no matter how appealing in the short term, you don’t have a democracy anymore.
You can literally find/replace democracy and science in that statement and have it be equally true.
Amend that to “don’t understand that what they’re unwittingly angling for is more China than Sweden.”
‘I’m gonna turn American into another Sweden….”
Will there be rape and plunder, Viking-style?
No. The current residents will be the victims of the rape and plunder.
Unfortunately, just like Trump, she has really great persuasion skills. She’s young and attractive and appeals to dumb people.
People want simple solutions to complex problems. That’s what they have been taught in school.
This. I get why people bristle about collectivizing generations. Like Solomon said “there is nothing new under the sun.” Human nature hasn’t changed in the last few thousand years. If there is any distinction to be made though, it’s that in the 90’s and from what I’m told the 00’s the public school system really ramped up pushing collectivism, groupthink, moral relativism, etc. I think that’s the root problem everyone is trying to get at.
I would say, that if there was any sharp formative event for Millenials it would be 9/11 and the terrorist attacks. For a large chunk of them the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Government surveillance were things that occurred in their childhood/young adulthood.
Those events were why I when I was a neocon from childhood until I got into college.
were why I was*
jeebus me.
Same. I had the same reflexive “somebody needs to pay” mentality. Plus a healthy dose of Make America Christian Again SoCon upbringing. I amazed when I think of how 2007 me would react to most of my opinions now.
I’m in the same Boat. I was raised in a strong Conservative house, and it was obvious that Saddam was just evil and needed to be killed. And that Freedom would just win out in Iraq.
My dad was about as conservative as they come, and I remember on the day Bush came on TV and announced the invasion he said “This is going to be a disaster”. I had no strong opinion at the time. But he was right.
Yet, I listen to my daughter and don’t get that impression.
They seem to be aware the culture wars is bull shit.
Take Pewdie Pie. They KNOW it was a smear campaign against him and they don’t like it. At some point, all this crazy SJW is going to hit a wall.
At some point, all this crazy SJW is going to hit a wall
Trump gets a hard on.
My son loves Alex Jones. He knows it’s all BS and quackery but he think he’s hilarious.
I don’t think people really want simple solutions. Simple solutions exist, and in most cases are obvious. The problem is that people want easy solutions. Simple solutions almost invariably involve effort or sacrifice. Easy solutions are mostly based in magical thinking. To take an obvious example:
If you are fat and out of shape, the solution is simple. Exercise hard and eat less food and more healthy food. This is an absurdly simple solution. But it is extremely difficult because it involves putting forth a lot of effort every day, giving up convenience and immediate pleasure, and being disciplined, so instead people chase fad diets, magical diet supplements and medicines, risky surgeries etc.
Want the budget balanced? You have inputs and outlays. Revenue only increases toward a limit when you increase taxes so you simply cannot have unchecked spending no matter how willing you are to tax. But cutting spending involves actually cutting programs, and as soon as you get into specifics you are goring someone’s ox and they start squawking.
The ole Bear Patrol Tax conundrum.
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-india-46778879
I don’t think this has a libertarian angle, but Indian scientists dispute Einstein’s theories, citing ancient Hindu texts.
This is the kind of ignorant shit you get when you start down the “mathematics and deductive logic are racist patriarchal constructs of knowledge” route.
Ken Ham agrees.
Lol. I just started a “through the Bible” deep dive study, and it was funny reading commentary after commentary with the theme of “the bible isn’t a scientific textbook, stop trying to use it as one.”
I’m fairly biased toward the literalist interpretation of Scripture, but unlike the Ken Hams of the world, i have no problem saying that authors of the various books were writing within the context of their own culture, and their writing may reflect the deficiencies of their culture’s understanding of physical processes.
Methuselah didn’t really reach nine hundred years old?
Those Evangelical Hindu’s at it again? / snark
I thought they disputed it because he was a jew / ok really end snark.
Well, Aryan physics vs. Jewish physics is already a thing.
Except this time, it’s the real Aryans.
On a unrelated note HM, I’ve been listening to “The Horse, the Wheel, and Language” by David W. Anthony. It’s been an interesting read (for someone who isn’t a linguist) but i’m curious if you know anything about him and his thesis, and what, if any, your thoughts on it are. I think he has a lot cool points, but sometimes overstates his evidence and understates issues with them.
I’m familiar with the book, but historical linguistics, particularly PIE, isn’t my area of specialty. From what little I’ve read, I think the genetic evidence supports Anthony’s claim of a PIE urheimat around the Black Sea. As for what was the primary impetus for the spread of PIE language and culture, I do lean towards trade over military expansion (a la the Aryan invasion theory to explain the displacement of the Dravidian languages from the north of the Indian subcontinent.)
Re Trump is racist. This has to somehow has to be addressed. If you cede them the claim without rebuttal it will be a truth to them.
But Rufus, he wouldn’t rent to teh coloreds. Everybody knows that.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-received-ellis-island-award-in-1986/
They had to fact check that?
It’s almost as if Snopes heard about it. Didn’t believe it and set out to see if it was true.
Too funny.
Of course they have to opine that the fact that Trump received the award doesn’t mean he’s not a racist.
He acts not racist to hide he’s…..RACIST!
Everyone who has made that claim points to a case where the problem is the law. The way it is written, “Discrimination” is not defined as discriminating, but as showing statistical disparity from a hypothetical perfect proportion of population. If you reject applicants with poor credit (standard practice) you end up rejecting more poor people, but because blacks are overrepresented in the poor category, you are guilty of discriminating against blacks as the law is written. Even if your process is 100% colorblind.
Kohler’s smart toilet promises a ‘fully-immersive experience’
That sounds unsanitary.
Crappy.
It sounds like a shitty idea.
If it ends up being popular, they’ll be flush with cash, if not look for them to be circling the drain.
It won’t come to that, they’ve been around a while and certainly have more products in the pipe.
Good morning, Sloop!
Nice to see your lynx once again.
…the surging MINNESOOOOODA WIIIIIILD just outside.
Fucking Wild will do just enough to make the playoffs, get smoked in the first round, and tee up another year of mediocrity. And the dumbshits in my town will keep filling the arena anyway.
“Globes upset for Gaga as A Star Is Born loses out to Bohemian Rhapsody for Best Picture, while Glenn Close pips her to Best Actress at awards gala where Trump wasn’t mentioned ONCE
There was no mention of US President Donald Trump at all during the broadcast”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-6563681/Golden-Globes-2019-Winners-announced-film-television.html
“As award shows have become increasingly politicized during his time in office it was interesting to note that the Golden Globes had zero mentions of US President Donald Trump.
It definitely seemed to be a concerted effort as host Sandra Oh previously told The Hollywood Reporter: ‘I’m not interested in [talking about Trump] at all.
‘What I’m interested in is pointing to actual real change. I want to focus on that because people can pooh-pooh Hollywood all they want – and there is a lot to pooh-pooh, sure – but we also make culture. How many gazillions of people have seen Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians? That changes things.’
One moment did get political, however, as Christian Bale had one of the most memorable speeches of the night while accepting Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his role portraying former US Vice President Dick Cheney in Vice.
He blasted the former politician as he said: ‘Thank you to Satan for giving me inspiration on how to play this role.’
Bale, 44, also thanked director Adam McKay but couldn’t help but take another shot at a different political figure.
He said: ‘I will be cornering the market on charisma-free a******s. What do you think, Mitch McConnell next? That could be good.'”
Republicans are so stupid. I hate Republicans
There was no mention of US President Donald Trump at all during the broadcast
It’s hilarious that that’s big news.
What was he nominated for?
Best comedian?
These “stars” who participate in that crap should be fed into a wood-chipper.
(JK, Preet!)
Mammary Monday cures the workday blues!
http://archive.li/Jsy7V
Best for last, 45.
7, 16, 21, 32 (HUGE TRACTS OF LAND), 34, 41 (dat is one fine Mai Shiranui cosplay)
Channel-surfing last night I came across Steve Hilton’s Fox show. He had a great take-down of Mattis, Kelly, and people angry that they are gone since they couldn’t persuade Trump to get onboard their stupid world-view.
He threw in some old clips of Maddow and Obama talking about ending our endless foreign wars. Well done.
Imagining a Libertarian Society (It Looks A Lot Like . . . )
I still maintain that if you were to magically institute anarcho-capitalism, you will soon find a re-emergence of warlordism from people who find it easier to raid the productive, or extort protection payments from them leading through a semi-fuedal period to established states again.
Minarchists HATE him!! Watch how he EVISCERATES argumentum in terrorem with this SHOCKING secret!!
If you don’t take into account that human nature will remain the same, you fall into the same trap as other utopians.
Who’s asking for utopia?
Ancaps. Even if they don’t recognize it.
I’m not interested in shadow-boxing. If you want to tell me what my arguments are, then I’ll lend you my avatar so you can make a spoof account.
You weren’t making any, so I continued to expound upon my statement.
I’ll continue to let Murphy be my proxy until you are willing to discuss this in good faith.
If, after cultivating a reputation for posting links no one should ever follow, you expect me to follow one of your links while at work to see some argument you didn’t yourself make, you’re the one arguing in bad faith.
Nice try, but no.
You claimed that I seek utopia. I informed you that I do not. Your response was merely “Nuh-uh! You are!”
You’re a grown-ass man. You know better. Now, if you’ll quit being silly, then I’m happy to continue; if not, then this bout of pigeon chess is over and you are free to strut on the board.
Fine, let me rephrase my response to your random snarky comment – If you fail to take into account that human nature will not change , you are a utopian.
Now stop shitting on the board.
Thank you for not defining my argument for me. However, again, I ask, who is failing to take into account that human nature is indelible? You haven’t done the work to show that human nature will inevitably lead to a regional, national, or global system of oppression, much less define what human nature is. I would give you my framework for human nature, based in evo psych, but I’m saving that for an article I’m currently drafting – “Argumentum ad Simium”.
The issue at hand is that just because some individual or group would seek to aggress isn’t an ipso facto dismissal of Voluntaryist ideas. It’s as silly as seeking to limit one’s right to bare arms for self-defense because someone could abuse that right to shoot up a school. Indeed, the Voluntaryist/AnCap understanding that one is ultimately responsible for one’s own self-defense is the most clear-eyed and realistic worldview. Belief in Officer Friendly is utopian, if you ask me.
Now it is your turn to mistake my ideas. Yes people are responsible for their own defense. People also lose wars. My prediction of the inevitable downfall of a hypothetical voluntarist order is based upon the observation of the patterns of human behaviour. The great people who institute this starting condition will not last forever. In that mix of persons who follow, you will have some that strive for the same ideal, and those who don’t see why they should when it is easier to exploit a different comparative advantage and take what they want. If systems and ideals did not erode over generations, the Roman republic would never have given way to Empire then decay and collapse.
The reemergance of warlordism is the pattern such a society would follow, the only question is one of timescale.
To further elaborate what I am inarticulately converying.
Stasis is impossible. The question to be answered is which starting state will last longer before reaching a failure state. Will an ancap society stave off warlordism longer than a minarchist central government takes to metastasize into tyranny?
In my opinion, a minarchy can remain benign longer than the volunteerism can stave off warlordism. We’ve had historical examples that survived centuries, even with external and internal threats. A volunteerist society doesn’t even appear to be metastable from the available record. The closest examples involve low population densities with subsistance living.
Ok, but you’re changing your argument a bit. As I’ve similarly argued with Winston, nothing lasts forever – that would be utopian. However, your original claim was that a AnCap/Voluntaryist society would soon fall prey to warlordism and tribal warfare, but now you’re talking generations. If you want to claim that an AnCap society would degrade over generations, I agree. However, if you’re saying that it would inevitably last no longer than the Paris Commune, then I disagree. Outside of a particular cultural, geographic, and historical context, it would be impossible to predict how long such a society, or any society, really, would last.
Now, one could argue that the conditions that would allow an AnCap society to flourish currently do not exist, and I am sympathetic to that argument. For example, one could not imagine an American-style Enlightenment-era republic forming in Europe during the 18th century (Indeed, look at France). It required a frontier and an ocean to keep the early republic from getting squashed by larger autocratic empires in its vulnerable, formative years. An AnCap society would require the same sort of conditions. Underwater, as per Bioshock’s Rapture, perhaps? Or interplanetary colonization? Or merely rebuilding on the ashes of the coming firestorm?
“Just the tip” tyranny is still tyranny.
Let’s not confuse AnCap/Voluntaryism with no social structure whatsoever. in AC/V societies, one can voluntarily choose to be subject to a particular leader. In many places at many times the past, provided one was not a serf and could afford the cost of travel, one could migrate from one city-state or realm to another if he felt one liege-lord was superior to another.
A more interesting question is what of the warlords themselves? Is it possible for AC/V warlords to exist? The various Pirate Republics known to have existed in the Caribbean could be argued to meet the criteria. Ah, but didn’t they exist on the basis of violating the NAP? For some, of course, but for others, they were contracted as privateers, which could be seen as a legitimate form of warfare. Much less those pirates/privateers who were formerly enslaved by the countries whose ships they would attack. Not saying I necessarily agree with those arguments, but does push back against those who would assume an AC/V society would be necessarily pacifist or under-militarized. Again, why isn’t buying out the warlords a possibility?
Is it possible for AC/V warlords to exist?
I would ask, is it possible for people to resist the lure of warlordism for any reasonable period of time?
Of course, if everybody buys into the AC/V paradigm, then there would be no warlords because they would have to violate the paradigm.
The issue I have with AC/V in general has to do with dispute resolution. There will be multiple fora for dispute resolution, but unless there is one top-level tie-breaker, you will have disputes that are not resolved peacefully because one dispute resolution entity won’t include both disputants, and/or two dispute resolution entities will reach different results.
Once you have a single top-level entity with the authority to resolve all disputes, you have the seed of a government, IMO. Without one, you have disputes that are not resolved peacefully, which means resolved violently, which I think would be the death knell of a voluntarist society. Look at the drug cartels, or any organized crime arrangement; they are outside the government, and they are basically proto-warlord organizations.
Who said it wasn’t? Paying the danegeld is an option, but rarely a good long-term solution.
So, we won? Or is this just another libertarian moment?
And it’s interesting that they’re finally talking about AnCaps.
Written from the typical false assumption that libertarians are selling Utopia. Most of us aren’t, we are selling freedom. Messy, imperfect, wonderful freedom.
^This^
“In most cases, the description ends up sounding an awful lot like our current system. But you know, with a lower “voluntary contribution” level than whatever state they happen to be from and a more efficient “contracted manager.”
Yeah it sounds just like our current system of coercive institutions that can decree that something is one way and all of the sudden everyone is beholden to their whims.
In most cases, the description ends up sounding an awful lot like our current system.
I must have missed that shareholder meeting where my corporate overlords decided to form a mutually beneficial alliance with 300 million other people and steal my shit with a gun to my head.
Well next time you should vote
He makes the mistake at the beginning of thinking that libertarians and an-caps are the same people.
Of course, as a libertarian, my system would look a lot like the current one. I would never get rid of it. I would just cut federal spending back to 19th century levels.
I agree with Ancaps in spirit but I do think they sound utopian at times. I have great respect for Rothbard, Walter Block, Tom Woods, etc but I do not claim anarco-capitalism for that reason. It has less to do with the idea that we need government that the idea that some measure of government is inevitable.
Meh I am not even sure I agree with them in spirit depending on how you define an-cap off course.
I like the term “Voluntarism” better than Anarcho-Capitalism, because i think it better describes what society would look like: i.e groups of people who voluntarily enter agreements and have voluntary forms of social organization. But i do get a chuckle when Anarcho Comunists act like AnCaps are crazy for claiming to be Anarchists.
It has less to do with the idea that we need government that the idea that some measure of government is inevitable.
I feel the same way, although I don’t think that a private government in an ancap utopia would ever rise above about the municipal level. You’d end up with a huge number of city-states, most likely. They’d still be government in all but name, but their greater number would offer an individual more choices than a central government.
At best that would be a brief phase before some decide it would be profitable to gobble up their neighbors. Then you get small states, some of which succeed at absorbing their new acquisitions, some fail, and some turn into the spartan and helot situation where they keep what they take but are crippled by trying to hold it. Those who succeed will move on to take more territory and we’re back to baseline.
Yeah, not only that, but at some point the takeovers probably start becoming hostile rather than voluntary, at which point you’re right back to a government with a monopoly on violence. They just came about it through M&A rather than decree.
But if you have government, the institution growing like a cancer may also be inevitable.
Exactly. Our founder did their best to chain it down but those wore through a long time ago. Empires rise and fall. Tyrants live and die. The is nothingness under the sun.
Something something tree of liberty, patriots and tyrants, yadda yadda.
Ugh that was a lot of typos….even for me
Indeed. In broad enough strokes, a minarchy has all the same bits and pieces as a plenary state. Its a matter of degree.
It never ceases to amaze me that so many people simply cannot comprehend of anything actually happening without the Almighty State making it so.
how society would be organized
Spontaneously.
Many will start describing how people would voluntarily band together in mutually beneficial alliances and trade with one another to secure their collective safety and livelihood
People already do this despite the government.
In most cases, the description ends up sounding an awful lot like our current system.
This is just as disingenuous as the Family Guy Tea Party episode. Idk about anyone else here, but I am a minarchist. And many, if not most, libertarians are not anarchists. The object is to have less government interference and control over people lives, particularly keeping it in its constitutional bounds, if not restricting it further. This person does not understand that because they (probably) want a total state that controls everything and everyone all the time with strict economic and social regimentation. IOW this person is a fascist.
I think of both an caps and minarchists as stating the limit of an asymptote. We are never getting to pure voluntarism and even the high point of minarchy under the Articles of Confederation had fully sovereign States being oppressive as hell. But it is a direction to move in and things can certainly be more liberty oriented than they are now. I just want to approach the limit.
I tell people libertarianism is a tendency, not (really) an ideology.
Sex WARNING: Antibiotic-resistant super-gonorrhoea on rise in UK – what are the symptoms?
A love for Haggis, XTC, and bad teeth?
It’s nature’s way of trimming the chavs from the herd.
I would not do an English chick without two condoms anyway
Two condoms together are more likely to rip than one alone.
^What this cool cat said. You just need one monster condom for your magnum dong.
Except for anal right?
It has to do with the different in friction between two layers of latex versus say latex and skin. they’re more liekly to bind and tear, regardless of the orafice.
Two condoms is less safe than one… Or so I hear.
Know this – I wrap my rascal, TWO TIMES, cuz I like it to be joyless and without sensation. It’s a way of punishing supermodels.
Speaking of simple solutions to complex problems, as embraced by the Neiman Marxist et al…
The idea, put forth by a vast array of idjits, that there was some sort of definitive linear cause and effect relationship between personal income tax rates and economic growth in the ’50s and ’60s is nothing less than mindboggling stupid. It’s at least as dumb as thinking you can improve your crop yield by tossing somebody else’s teenage daughter into the nearest volcano.
And yet, there’s Krugabe, spilling column inches of bytes under the banner of the New York Fucking Times, promoting it.
And- if the “marginal utility” of an additional thousand dollars is virtually nil to a “millionaire” what makes them think the marginal utility of only keeping twenty five cents on the dollar would be? The obdurate irrationality of their reasoning is truly a wonder to behold.
Everywhere else Taxation is known to dis-incentivise what you are taxing. Except for Income. Taxing Income makes everyone work harder so the economy bursts.
I’m perfectly willing to go back to 1950s-level taxation if we get 1950s-level tax breaks and shelters back.
There’s a reason the 1986 Code raised taxes for the vast majority of people on the higher end despite it being a large percentage cut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0zaebtU-CA
I trust the Beatles more than Krugman.
And yet, there’s Krugabe, spilling column inches of bytes under the banner of the New York Fucking Times, promoting it.
Because that’s what his readership wants him to say. Krugman pretty notoriously says things in his textbooks, intended for consumption by an actual academic economist audience, utterly at odds with what he says in his Times column. The man is, in the simplest terms, a sell-out.
You misspelled “Whore”
I’m pretty much to the point where any tax reform that doesn’t start with repealing the current Internal Revenue Code and all dependent regulations in their entirety is basically a waste of time.
Newport County sprayed water in the locker room after upsetting Leicester City, as the team couldn’t afford Champaigne.
That is my FA Cup update.
Also, can anyone who watched the Seattle-Dallas game explain Seattle’s 2 pt attempts? They both seemed…odd. I kind of liked the first one, and the second one was ballsy but I would have liked it better in college pre-OT days. It looked like the 2nd one was primarily to cover the spread.
I was told their normal kicker was out of the game. I assume account of an injury.
*disclaimer I don’t normally watch football*
For some reason I thought this was a response to Newport County at first, and I was very confused.
He was injured.
Also, speaking of kickers, the final kick in the Eagles-Bears game was blocked. Just, just barely, but it was blocked, enough to change the spin and the trajectory just enough to cause the double bonk and out. It was good off his foot.
Spread was 2.5 points. Lot of players had money on the line?
Janikowski hurt his leg earlier in the game and the Seahawks didn’t have a reliable replacement.
Everyone who has made that claim points to a case where the problem is the law. The way it is written, “Discrimination” is not defined as discriminating, but as showing statistical disparity from a hypothetical perfect proportion of population. If you reject applicants with poor credit (standard practice) you end up rejecting more poor people, but because blacks are overrepresented in the poor category, you are guilty of discriminating against blacks as the law is written. Even if your process is 100% colorblind.
I can’t even remember where I saw it, now, but I read an article yesterday about how the Trump administration is hamstringing enforcement of discrimination laws by undercutting the notion of “disparate impact” in a barefaced attempt to bring back slavery via implicit bias.
It’s amazing to me that Dems think this is a winning strategy.
The DC suburbs are ruining this state.
It’s a risk-free proposition. Red meat for their base, it only pisses off the people who would never have voted for them anyway, and the mushy middle, even if they knew or cared what was going on (they don’t) will have forgotten all about it by the time the next election rolls around.
I like what Suthen says: “No one has ever wanted to get rid of your right to self-defense for your own good”
I wish I could take credit for that line but the truth is I got it from someone here, or something to that effect anyway. I just repeated it over and over because it is such a good line, gets right to the heart of the issue and it is true.
I used to love this state. I’m starting to fucking despise it.
Infringement after infringement after infringement.
If this shit passes I’m moving to Arizona.
Geez, are we going to need on a wall on the southern, western, AND eastern borders of AZ now?
Yes.
OCASIO-CORTEZ: I’M GOING TO TURN AMERICA INTO ANOTHER SWEDEN, NOT VENEZUELA
So she wants a free market with high taxes and a welfare state?
She just wants to make America
GreatwhiteSweden Again.Rape Gangs? She wants rape gangs and off-limits neighborhoods?
“Rape gangs are for the little people.”
Wait, you mean we’re going to have roving gangs of dwarves raping people?!
Speaking of socialist geniuses, I’m pretty certain I overheard Warren on NPR waxing nostalgic about an era when a family earning minimum wage could afford a mortgage and comfortably be able to raise three kids. Now I want to find the audio because I’m eager to find out when this might have been.
What she leaves out is that they built the house and were subsistance farmers with no surplus to sell. They needed the three kids for extra farm labor.
And the house was 500 square ft and everyone slept in the same bedroom.
They can’t do that now?
The property tax makes the farm untenable.
You think the town inspector and zoning board would allow it?
“an era when a family earning minimum wage could afford a mortgage and comfortably be able to raise three kids”…
… never existed
“Speaking of socialist geniuses, I’m pretty certain I overheard Warren on NPR waxing nostalgic about an era when a family earning minimum wage could afford a mortgage and comfortably be able to raise three kids”
I’m sorry but i don’t think that being able to live comfortably is the responsibility of society at a whole. This is not arguing about keeping kids from starving, or helping the homeless. This is about taking wealth from everyone to make sure some people can live off of it.
She’s absolutely right. In, say, 1910, a family with an income of around $10/hour would be very comfortable.
Otherwise, she’s absolutely 100% wrong as hell, unless she’s referring to what UCS is talking about. Yes, a sharecropper family could afford a mortgage (barely) and raise three kids and be comfortable–for a given value of comfortable–assuming that the kids and wife worked the farm as well. Of course, for her statement to continue to be true the family would need to violate child labor laws and OSHA regs on a daily basis, so there’s that. I mean, shit, today you could have the same situation if you eliminated SS disability payments, food stamps and unemployment assistance, ended mandatory school attendance, and repealed child labor laws. Bring back the good ol’ days, Lizzie!
She also ignores the fact that “making a living” in that era looked absolutely nothing like it does today. Black then making a living included a room, four walls, food twice, maybe three times a day. Most consumer goods were considered a luxury. It was all about staying a few steps ahead of hunger.
Now ‘making a living’ means no shared bedrooms, food in excess, money put away for education, savings, insurance…….
There is no comparison. When you evaluate what capitalism hath wrought in this light it’s absolutely insane that it’s vilified.
No one had a mortgage in 1910 except the rich. Mortgage loans to working class people became a thing post WWII. This whole “we are worse off than prior generations” thing is based on untrue images of how things used to be.
Bulldoze Choctaw, chop down trees, plant corn, kill deer. What’s a mortgage?
It’s a financial instrument in which people amortize costs they can’t afford up front over many years of ownership of a piece of property they can’t acquire by shooting the people currently living there.
*updates company real acquisition plan to eliminate references to shooting the current owners*
I’m sorry your sod insulated house made from improperly treated lumber does not comply with HUD, OSHA, EPA, and HHS guidelines. Additionally its design violates the ADA in 9,657 distinct ways. You also do not have USDA approval for your corn, and deer are out of season. You would be facing 9000 years in jail, but instead Janet Reno has sent snipers to shoot you and your kids.
Have a nice day!
I still can’t get over the fact that she bit the dust on the eve of Trump’s election. There’s something incredibly poetic about that.
I could have found poetry in whatever day she happened to expire.
I’m crying: you fuckers are hilarious. Glibs is the best thing in my life after
* whiskey
* G30
* beer
* W94
* golf
* SW686
* truck-boat-truck
* gonna get some new shiny drill bits like Mojeaux just didded
* NewWife
* Escaped Jr (who never escaped)
* baby-food jar of old screws and washers
* and this paddle game
This whole “we are worse off than prior generations” thing is based on untrue images of how things used to be.
It’s based on a very brief post-war freeze-frame of middle class America rather than a complete look-back of American history. In that narrow sense it’s true.
What we need is another giant war that destroys the industrial capacity of everyone but America. Then it will be Nirvana again.
In, say, 1910, a family with an income of around $10/hour would be very comfortable.
In 1910, a family making $10/hour was quite well off.
It was a big freaking deal when Henry Ford raised his wages for the assembly line to $5.00 a day around, I think, 1918?
I Should say someone making $250 an hour would be comfortable
Even still they didn’t have access to as much music/entertainment/knowledge as the modern day poor.
No kidding. That’s a pay package that would put you well into the top 5%. Most doctors and lawyers (including this one) don’t make that much.
*does math*
I don’t make 1/5th that per hour.
Define “comfortable”. The small house my grandmother grew up in rural Georgia in the 1920s and 1930s in was ancient and had cracks in the outer walls that they had to stuff newspapers into to keep the draft out.
Simona Halep: ‘My dream was to be the best. I did everything for tennis’
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/07/simona-halep-dream-best-tennis-donald-mcrae-interview
Sometimes I wish I had that kind of single-minded focus and drive for something. And then other times I’m glad I don’t.
Three months ago I’d say I didn’t.
Then I willingly put in sixteen hour days on something for over a week and would willingly have kept doing so if not for the need to return to the day job, despite the additional strain the drive to meet my self-imposed daily goals put on my health.
Perhaps you merely haven’t found that which drives you.
Perhaps you merely haven’t found that which drives you.
I most assuredly have not. I’m becoming increasingly convinced there isn’t any such thing. Not everybody is blessed with a purpose.
I gotta say, UnCiv, that impressed the hell out of me. I just can’t get any traction writing while working full time. I’m hoping that I have a similar experience once I quit going to the office every day.
“Then I willingly put in sixteen hour days on something for over a week”
You need to get better at golf.
LibreOffice is free, and I’m already paying the electricity to run the computer which I’ve already got. It’s a lot cheaper than investing in a new hobby I don’t have much interest in.
Is that Mrs Pie?
lol good one
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2019/01/06/walls-are-built-one-way-or-another/
In a nutshell, why libertarianism is pure fantasy. Utopianism. Like Marxism. Same smugness.
So , then, the question for me is how libertarianism a person is. Just because I am throwing out the stupid utopianism, doesn’t mean I want the DEA
I don’t think there are any magic fldirt nationalists here, cuz people here are smart, so this shouldn’t be too controversial
I like how he’s aghast that he might have to take personal responsibility for his own defense.
Now I want to find the audio because I’m eager to find out when this might have been.
Bread was a nickel. Gas was $.19/gallon. A three bedroom ranch could be bought for $10,000.-. A Cadillac was 2200 bucks right off the showroom floor. America was GREAT, then.
Reminds me of a story I was told about my grandfather. In the late 40s he had $15,000 and had two options. Buy a 3 bedroom house, or buy some land. He went with house. In the early 80s the land he considered buying sold for a couple million to some commercial developers who were building a mall. Doh!
In the meantime, he had a nice house for 40 years.
That assumes he stayed in the house and that it was nice.
$15k in the 40s sounds nice.
He still would have needed a place to live for 40 frickin’ years.
A friend of Pater Dean’s bought a couple of sections outside Santa Fe in the 50s? 60s? for next to nothing. They sold it 30-40 years later for a nine figure sum. The key is being willing to carry the property for decades.
And being lucky enough to correctly anticipate the city expansion pattern, decades before the factors that would drive it arose. Raw land investment is either speculation or inside knowledge.
The guy who bought raw land outside Detroit, Akron or Canton did not do all that well I suspect.
I don’t think they anticipated that Santa Fe would grow the way it did. I don’t think anybody could, in the 50s/60s.
Absolutely, they get extremely lucky. But they were in a position to get lucky.
Pater Dean also know of opportunities to invest on bare dirt in what is now northern ABQ back in the day, but had no capital to invest. Those people also made very large sums of money.
“Akron or Canton did not do all that well I suspect.”
Nah. They did well. Expansion over decades filled in all those gaps between towns. From Kent, Ohio to Lodi, Ohio is basically one long “city.”
Actually, outside of Detroit is where all the money is at.
Baghdad at 10 million: fragile dreams of normality as megacity status beckons
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jan/07/baghdad-at-10-million-fragile-dreams-of-normality-as-megacity-status-beckons
First Mega City with a 10 Car Bombings per 100,000?
Is Jesse around? Or anyone who’s been to Daegu.
The Boys and I are going this weekend. I think I was last there about 6 years ago. We did a treetop zipline/obstacle course. I know there’s a military base but was hoping you had some local haunts that you remember. I think the plan pretty much is to paint the town red.
I just booked a hotel near Banwoldang, which is apparently universally the best place in town for food/drinks/fun.
Long shot, but hook me up if know anything special. Thanks!
Now they know how Gary Anderson felt.
A Japanese schoolgirl is set to become the youngest professional player of the board game Go.
Sumire Nakamura will be 10 when she enters the lowest professional rank of the game on 1 April.
She began playing the complicated strategy game at the age of three and was competing in national tournaments in Japan by the time she was seven.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46773504
I have tried to play GO once.
A 10 year old 1-dan?
Dayum son!
BREAKING: Talcum X is an asshole.
https://twitter.com/HashtagGriswold/status/1081985309447987200
He really wanted to go full-on ol’ school lynch mob didn’t he?
Seems like there should probably be some legal consequences for doing that shit, civil at least.
+1 Richard Jewell
“In July 1997, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, prompted by a reporter’s question at her regular weekly news conference, expressed regret over the FBI’s leak to the news media that led to the widespread presumption of his guilt, and apologized outright, saying, “I’m very sorry it happened. I think we owe him an apology. I regret the leak.”[24]”
Sounds like Janet
I still can’t figure out why their isn’t a Richard Jewell statue in the centennial olympic park.
The whole incident got memory-holed because it made people look bad.
Stay Classy Baltimore
I haven’t been to NFL game in years, this one of the reasons why. My family had season tickets to the Chiefs when I was growing up I can’t recall a game where I didn’t see at least one fight. Something about the NFL attracts the trash.
Awww Twitter took it down.
https://youtu.be/_CFC0n7K0pg
That isn’t part of the show? I stopped going because it costs way too much for the mediocre entertainment value.
Then you need to go to an Oakland game. Guaranteed entertainment value.
Don’t forget your stab proof vest.
That’s the other reason, especially with the Chiefs. Ticket prices went up and the team did what it does best flop in the playoffs, if they even made the playoffs.
I’m on the verge of cancelling my annual CO trip. This trip is my mental recharge time, and it’s supposed to sustain me for an entire year of bullshit.
Not enough snow?
Boulder guns laws?
Looming (temporary, hopefully?) unemployment
Shutdown or new employer isn’t working out?
Shutdown…I love my job and the people I work with. Our contract is “forward-funded”, but not sure how long and not sure if they’ll furlough us just for “optics”.
I have until Wednesday to make a decision on cancelling my trip, so hopefully I’ll know one way or the other.
not sure if they’ll furlough us just for “optics”.
I have a hard time seeing how they can just quit working on a pre-paid contract without losing money.
Problem is, each of us has been given permission to work on a very limited number of tasks. I could have finished the one task I was assigned in a good steady 8-hour day. I don’t see how much longer that situation can go on.
Stall, delay, stalk, impede… go full Fabian tactics.
KK, to survive this furlough, you’re going to have to start thinking like a government ‘worker’. Sure, the task once you get started will only take eight hours. But that’s just the part that, you know, matters. Invent things to look into, information to gather, discover forms that need filling out and shredding.
If it’s a lack of snow thing, Park City should have a ton.
Mountains are getting pounded now. It’s just windy as hell down here in the 9th circle.
https://giphy.com/gifs/sad-drinking-alone-l2QDP39mURZH1Ble0
“We need to start talking about ‘thin privilege’ ”
https://twitter.com/bbcthree/status/1081264000917168128
Why are they re-tweeting this? It was retarded six months ago.
“Need”
No, no we don’t…
I (now) have to work at being thin ::thankyouverymuch::
I hope “we” refers to some other group of people, and that I’m not included in that, because I don’t need to do shit but stay black and die. So to speak. “We” don’t need to talk; you need to talk to me, but I don’t need a damn thing.
An important warning for Canada. (And the U.S.) Which will be ignored.
Please excuse me, I have to borrow this.
FTA: Read the following admission from the co-chair of the UN IPCC Working Group III, during an interview in 2010 with the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung:
“We must free ourselves from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy … We must state clearly that we use climate policy de facto to redistribute the world’s wealth.”
At least he’s being honest.
Another joint Gorsuch/Sotomayor dissent in a 4th Amendment case this morning (this time dissenting from the Court’s denial to hear the case in the first place).
I suppose I’ll go have a coffee and contemplate the ennui.
You’re not turning French are you?
Do you need a yellow vest?
What difference, at this point, does it make?
*snaps fingers to applaud the elegant existential simplicity
Withdraws applause. The period placeholder was elegant. Cat pictures are bougie
(._.)
But what greater source of ennui than bourgeouisie culture and values, enervated and attenuated as they are to squeeze the individual into a convenient box?
Did anyone watch the Ocasio-Cortez interview with Cooper Anderson? I just heard some audio clips on the radio. If you need any more proof that journalism is dead…
Every now and again I look at CNN for five minutes to see if there’s any evidence of critical reporting there. Nope. What’s left is ideologically slanted op-eds for the most part, and that doesn’t interest me. That’s what the wife doesn’t get, bless her heart. It’s not that I only want news that reinforces my preconceptions, and it’s not that I’m particularly offended by biased news coverage. It’s that I don’t care about other peoples’ opinions, especially if I can predict what they’ll be. Nobody who anchors a CNN show likes Donald Trump. Got it. I don’t need to tune in again to reaffirm something that hasn’t changed.
and it’s not that I’m particularly offended by biased news coverage.
This. I don’t mind biased news coverage. What I find contemptible is the pretense that, somehow or other, it’s objective truth.
My ex-FIL was a rabid evangelical Christian conservative. I swear the dude never knew there was a difference between fact, faith and opinion. Debating politics with him was a trip.
+1 SoCon Dad
My brother is exactly like that.
Cuomo tried to pin her on “how do you pay for it?” CNN (and Cuomo…) is trash, but credit where credit is due.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg misses 1st oral argument in Supreme Court tenure
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is missing oral arguments on Monday for the first time since she joined the court in 1993, as she recuperates from a recent cancer surgery.
A Supreme Court spokesperson told Fox News that Ginsburg, who underwent lung surgery in New York City last month to remove cancerous growths, is continuing to recuperate from the surgery.
The spokesperson said that Ginsburg would participate in the consideration of the cases through written briefs and transcripts, but there has yet to be a date decided for when she will return to the bench.
It’s time to step down. But she won’t.
Tell me the case and i could probably figure out what her vote would be.
In her defense, oral arguments are an utterly superfluous distraction at that level. Plus the facts at issue in any case have never influenced her decisions before.
“Plus the facts at issue in any case have never influenced her decisions before”
This. She and the other “liberal” judges already know how they’re going to rule before ever even reading the case.
Taking time to polish up on the South African Constitution?
RE: Pol Thot and how America would be totes like Sweden.
OK, let’s run with that. Via wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden) here are the Swedish income tax brackets (converted to USD)
0% – up to ~$2100/year
~32% up to ~$52500/year
~52% up to ~$75800/year
~57% above that.
That’s *not* including a 25% VAT. So, you’re going to go from approx. 50% of the US population paying no tax at all, to almost everyone paying at least 32% plus a huge VAT that will greatly increase the cost of everything. This would by far be the largest tax increase on low income people in US history. So when she’s furiously masturbating about how these tax increases will only affect “the rich” all these low income folks are in for a very rude awakening.
Britain Is Poorer Than Any US State: Yes, Even Mississippi
“When a politician says he wants to raise everyone else’s taxes, he’s not talking to you”
That’s what idiots like her ignore. The “workers’ paradises” they want America to emulate have much flatter tax structures than the U.S. There’s a simple reason for that. The “rich” simply don’t have enough money to finance these programs. Even if, by some miracle of naivete on the part of the rich, you were able to get them to make no changes in their behavior whatsoever in response to your tax schemes, you’d still fall wildly short of where you’d need to be, in terms of revenue, to make these things possible. You only manage to implement these programs by soaking the working and middle classes.
I’d argue that “Soak The Rich” socialism is more likely to lead to Venezuela, because it maintains the power in those who are doing the soaking, since the “masses” are unlikely to directly feel the pain (they feel it when the rich leave/divest, but that’s just dirty capitalists trying to sabotage the peoples will)
ULL DOCUMENTARY – Venezuela: State Of Disaster | The Big Story | Real Vision
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=210&v=9qdO2pFoGgw
And I doubt they even socialism as hard as she would like. When she says “free college”, she doesn’t mean “free for some” like in Europe, for example.
Of course not, requiring an entrance exam and only taking the capable is discriminatory.
“…an awakening…”
You are a funny guy Q.
The secret to Sweden is that they blatantly tax the shit out of the poor. Here, we hide it by calling it a lottery.
Pelosi, Nielsen clashed during border-security meeting: ‘I reject your facts,’ House speaker said
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen got into a tense confrontation this week, with the California Democrat interrupting Nielsen’s presentation on border security and illegal immigration, telling her “I reject your facts.”
The clash between the top House Democrat and a key member of President Trump’s Cabinet occurred during a Wednesday meeting in the White House amid the impasse over the government shutdown, with Trump standing firm and demanding $5 billion for the border wall.
At one point during the meeting, according to the Wall Street Journal, Pelosi interrupted Nielsen, who was citing statistics related to the border, including how many criminal illegal immigrants attempted to enter the U.S. last year.
“I reject your facts,” Pelosi told Nielsen
“These aren’t my facts,” Nielsen shot back. “These are the facts.”
I recall a media freak-out when Kellyanne Conway used the term “alternative facts”, which is apparently a legal term.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
Wow, AOC living in a lot of heads rent-free like Trump does on the left.
*looks way up thread*
Yup.
She is too entertaining to ignore and she is the new face of the Commun….uh…Democrat party.
If she’s going to go on CNN people are going to talk about it. I notice no one bothered to interview Ross Spano* about jack shit.
* – just picked random incoming House Republican.
SJW is going to hit a wall
One wonders. We can’t dissect the demographics in a few characters here, but it boils down to who gets distracted by reality when, doesn’t it? Underclass folk struggle every day, don’t read or vote, and don’t expect help. The nouveau riche are either competent (Gates, Jobs) and busy or they’re frivolous (actors) and passionate: the frivolous shall be with you alway. The rest are working class readers wondering when they’re getting theirs and commenting on Slate; as long as there is a prospect to tax you to fix their middle school, I don’t think those cohorts ever evaporate.
SJW is tribal language and status games. It follows tribal changes, not a function of these things. Taste-makers influence institutions, institutions influence the population at large, and the population at large uses the tribal rules as the interface between sects in the tribe, with actors on each side working to rally their side to improve their own individual standing within their side. Mostly by showing how terrible the other side is according to the tribal rules at the interface.
The culture war will get hot, reach a peak, and then cool for a bit, then the cycle will repeat.
There’s a PhD in it for you to reconcile what you and I wrote.
not a function of these things I’ll submit that my who is a function of your how: the die stamps out the widget, not the other way around. I really like your taste-maker model, but I’m still guessing that the tribes who kinda look like I see them line up for your taste-makers . . . I’m not far off.
But I would submit that it’s a vicious chicken-and-egg whirlwind that is not new nor likely to soon burn out . . . because that’s how it works with my toothless family on the socon side, another identically opposite cycle. The die you described above is just inserted in the press one way or the reverse to stamp out left-hand or right-hand widgets.
SJW is going to hit a wall
Of course. Everything does. The question is, how much damage will it do on its way to its appointment with the wall, and what residual effects will it leave?
Tribalism + confiscation and redistribution of wealth is a time-tested recipe for disaster, and that’s what the SJW program boils down to.
I think there’s an important thing people are missing. Eventually, it has to hit a wall. The truth is the SJW paradigm doesn’t work in reality. It can only survive by virtue of subsidization. It isn’t the genuinely poor, or even the working class, who are palming off platitudes about “cultural appropriation” or “there are 57 genders” or “milk is racist”. They can’t really afford to play that game. At least for toothless socon family, the closer they live to their professed beliefs, the more likely it is that they would succeed and thrive. The SJW ideology, however, is a doctrine that, the closer one follows it, the less possible it is to live in this world. Eventually, it has to collapse in on itself.
toothless socon family, the closer they live to their professed beliefs, the more likely it is that they would succeed and thrive
You keep the gubbermint away from my Medicare!
But Medicare is not in line with their professed beliefs. It is a corrupting influence on them.
If middle to lower class whites are continually propped up as the boogeyman because of their skin color, they will eventually act on that by banding together on that basis. If you’re considered by polite society to be a “white supremacist” regardless of your actual beliefs or actions, why wouldn’t you?
I’m not following you. Can you bridge back a bit, apologies if it’s obvious to everyone else.
Not to speak for Chipwooder, but the idea is straight forward.
SJWs promote various tribal groups (blacks, browns, yellows ,reds, all types of queers and cripples, and combinations of the same) to band together and promote their own interests by demanding handouts, obeisance, and deference from whites. While simultaneously demanding whites simply take it. Including some poor shlub in the mountains of NC who works like a dog to put food on his table and keep his trailer roof over the head of his family because he and all his kith and kin are racist white supremacists.
It essentially gives whites a choice: proskynesis before the other various tribal groups, elimination, or fighting back with the same sort of tribal nonsense. Lot of whites are going to choose the last one of those three. Because they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t, but at least if they do they have a chance.
Which is to say, its only going to be so long before Travis Benton starts voting based on his skin color.
Structural problems https://imgur.com/gallery/08HlW1K
This weekend at work, the ladel car on the 5th floor at the caster starting hitting the roof of the operator station as it moved the ladle over the machine. After doing some looking, I found that the railroad tracks that the car traveled on were sagging a few inches, causing the issue.
The above picture turned out to be the root cause of the problem. That is one of the structural beams that hold up the floor and all the equipment on it.
Yikes.
Well you should have been more careful where you set that water bottle.
Yeah, that additional load is out of spec and lead to all sorts of problems.
Despite being shut down, looks like our IT department has seen fit to add imgur to the firewall block list. Huzzah.
It could be a scheduled refresh of block lists these do need to be updated regularly.
I actually use Imgur for professional purposes occasionally. I see 0 reason to block this service.
Here’s a dirty little non-secret. It is likely that no person at your work actively went “lets add Imgur to the block list”. It’s likely they said “category X should be blocked” and the company that provides the outbound proxy heuristically move imgur to category X during a recent blocklist update.
Holy crap!
That looks like a bit of a problem.
I cant weld for shit, but I think I could do a better job than that. How old is that construction?
34 years
So, where the break is is where the beam goes through the floor on the story below.
Its rusted through, but only in that one spot. 5 years ago, we busted out that entire floor and poured new concrete. When you pour concrete that has structural beams traveling through it, there is supposed to be a gap left all around the beam to allow accumulated moisture a place to dissipate.
Apparently, that didnt happen. The new concrete was poured all the way around the beam, thus trapping moisture and exacerbating any oxidation that was occurring.
Are they going to have to replace the beam?
We jacked up the floor to get the height right and welded in two temporary beams on either side of the rotted one. The unpainted beams that are on either side of the rusted out one were put in pla e and welded in yesterday.
They will hold for now. This May, when we shut down for a week, we will pull the bad beam and replace the whole thing.
It’s going to be a bit of a job. Its 40 feet long and is a structural component of 4 different floors that will have to be shorn up to facilitate its removal.
I was looking at the weld on the back side. I was guessing that the welder did not clean the surfaces adequately before welding but the concrete problem makes sense. If it lasted 34 years then the weld was good.
Outside of chemists and metal workers few people understand just how corrosive a substance water is.
+1 Universal solvent (not a chemist or metal worker) and thank God for the corrosive effects of oxygen and water, cause they are what allow life.
Outside of the moisture transference, concrete has a lot of salts that exacerbate the corrosion issue. But you are correct, the encapsulation of the beam was a mistake. Your typical concrete contractor knows jack shit about structural engineering. The blame would fall on whoever was performing that function for the facility at the time.
I never thought about salts, but that makes perfect sense.
A lot of concrete mixes have fly ash in them. That is coal ash which means it contains god knows what but for certain phosphorous.
My employer sells paint for preventing corrosion under insulation. It’s inteneded for coating pipes carrying cryogenic or really hot stuff. Wonder how it would do with concrete coated beams.
I’m no structural engineer or ironworker, but it sure looks like that would a good place for brackets and bolts.
Nothing lasts forever.
I wonder how much of the stuff I built 30 years ago is still standing. I’m told that the most dangerous thing I ever built, an automated can drainer, ran for decades and never hurt anyone. I’d say my biggest risk is water and steel, particularly the exhaust to a water stripper (used to extract various chemicals dissolved in water): it’s really a recipe for rust and will all fall over some day if it hasn’t already. The other scary bit is PRV on vessels: there’s a schedule for testing and cleaning them, but, again, some genius will book a nice bonus for doing away with that pointless expense and then one day or another: BOOM
“Automated can drainer”
Was it dumping sand out of stainless steel can that were being used used to cook carbon electrodes?
It dumped small cans of resin into a recovery drum while all material remained under nitrogen blanket. I owe Browning a fee for borrowing his ejector pin arrangement: the empties are hurled into a nearby open-head drum. It was really nothing more than a punch spout like we used on oil cans automated with a few safety devices attached.
A few as in some safety devices, or a few as in there should have been more?
never hurt anyone
Just because it hasn’t doesn’t mean it’s safe.
If the injury reports I get are anything to go by, quantity is less important than making the safety devices really hard to remove.
I feel like the gradual prohibition of cigarettes is going to be a nice blueprint for gun grabbers.
https://twitter.com/fox5dc/status/1082304052388683778
Cigarettes hit a confluence of factors:
(1) Loss of cultural acceptance.
(2) Ridiculous taxation. There are probably going to be some Constitutional challenges in our future to deterrent-level taxation on guns and ammo.
(3) The tobacco litigation, which the gun industry is insulated against by statute.
Of course, one they have (1), the other two are likely a matter of time.
If the cultural acceptance of guns falls too far gun rights are history. Look at automatic weapons, bump stocks, even silencers. If something slips into “that’s weird” territory in the 2nd amendment context it gets banned.
Did you see my question the other day about where your Dean peoples come from?
I missed it. Bro Dean has done a lot of geneaology research, but I don’t recall the details.
In broad strokes, on Pater Dean’s side, his grandmother’s family was New Mexican (ethnically Mexican until she married a gringo). Some of the family stories are straight out of the first section of Lonesome Dove, and his uncle lived without electricity or running water on a ranch.
My recollection of Mater Dean’s side is Anglo, moving across the US from the South (like the gringo who married Pater Dean’s mother), going through Colorado until they fetched up in ABQ. The ethnic mix there was German and Scots-Irish? Can’t recall the gringo’s ethnic mix, just that he was Anglo.
I’m 1/4 Mestizo (genetically 1/8 – 1/16 Amerind), and 3/4 Anglo.
Dude, you should apply to teach at Harvard.
When I was looking at going into the Law Prof biz in the early ’90s, I was advised that affirmative action candidates were snarfling up all the openings. I looked at the requirements to qualify, and concluded that I would have to lie to pass myself off as a minority. I declined to lie just to get a job. I may be a lawyer, but I have some standards.
Wow!! That is hell-and-gone from where my Dean people come from – Dorchester County, MD. LOL
You know “Dean” is a nom du blog, yes?
Lemme try that again:
You know “Dean” is a nom du blog, right?
Nice
My boss’s wife’s maiden name is Dean, too, but she and her ancestors come from upstate NY.
Shhh nobody tell them there’s dozen bodegas within easy walking distance every pharmacy… Oh snap they’re probably already drafting another bill as we speak.
*erases original comment*
Oh, it is only about NYC. Carry on.
To be fair, the completist can substitute “convenience store” and “driving” as needed for the remoter regions of the outer boroughs.
PS. To RC’s point number one above – CVS dropped them by choice, at least where I worked in NJ. Some chain I visited in Cleveland once didn’t sell them, either.
Yeah, but I had started to write a comment that had nothing to do with the area actually under the scope of this particular law and not associated with regulatory creep. It was wholly irrelevent and not entertaining, so I pre-emptively retracted it.
I thought all cigarettes in NYC were bought without tax stamps out of the back of vans from guys with Russian, Italian, or Hispanic accents?
You used to also be able to buy them from fat black dudes, but there was this incident…
Supposedly, the majority are. I’ve never seen it in practice, but if it’s true, I have my suspicions that they’re being re-sold in shadier bodegas for a tidy profit.
CVS dropped cigs when Obama Care rolled out, because they restructured to be considered a Health Care Provider to get some goodies.
Interesting. For some reason that part wasn’t mentioned in all the signs I saw in the stores touting how brave and woke they are.
So, what you’re saying is, CVS has PR staff on the payroll?
Here’s a linky.
The above picture turned out to be the root cause of the problem.
Eek. Heat, weight, vibration.
Nothing lasts forever.
Corrosion. My main complaint with construction is that very often the guy that puts something together knows damned well he will be long gone when failure occurs and repairs are needed.
That a good metaphor for political leaders.
Rest assured, I originally quoted it with the TruCoat! I’ve seen my work shattered on the ground because management refused to pony up for the tracing and insulation and then hired an operations genius who knew that weather shutdowns are stupid.
Challenger o-rings? Flint water? “Managers” were told.
Wow, AOC living in a lot of heads rent-free like Trump does on the left.
She is a treasure trove of dumb ideas, but as a rookie Congressperson, she has little to no actual power to put any of her grandiose plans into effect. I’m not sure if she realizes that, but we should.
I don’t think she realizes this. I also don’t think she knows how deeply, deeply conservative Washington is.
Let’s just ignore her. Why create a lightning rod, a distraction, when there are going to be plenty of ugly legislation proposed by Dems with real power? There is nothing people like her hate more than to be ignored.
Instead of giving everybody a free college education, why don’t we just give everybody a free college degree?
See how easy that is?
We’re all geniuses, now!
It’s not fair that some people get diplomas at the expense of the differently-brained anyway.
Let’s make them all Harvard degrees too.
I’d rather have one from a respectable institution.
UnCiv from the top rope!
At what point does one go from being an abortion rights advocate to a mentally unstable abortion fetishist? Could this be it?
http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/07/propagandizing-abortion-kids-embarrasses-abortion-supporters/
Didn’t some bint recently say she regretted not have an abortion, or maybe not having more abortions?
I’m ashamed for even knowing this – the bint in question was Lena Dunham.
But of course.
My college girlfriend’s mom said that to her daughter’s face. Needless to say, that girl was messed up.
That is truly fucked up.
There’s a chasm of difference between safe and legal and that abomination of moral indifference.
Ok, I know this is a dead thread now but I’ve gotta get my two cents in. Let’s say I have recent, personal experience with a medically-necessary second trimester abortion and leave it at that. Let’s also say that with .333 record on children going full-term in my immediate family I have a certain perspective on abortion that has become stronger each time I’ve encountered it. I’m sure there are lunatics in the world who think nothing of it, but, honestly, the idea that someone would view terminating a healthy pregnancy as tantamount to a “crappy dentist appointment” is horrifying. That’s crazy, or evil, or both. Don’t get me wrong, I feel very, very strongly about preserving the right to abortion in circumstances of medical necessity, or even serious risk for that matter if you can find a doctor willing to perform it, but I cannot imagine not wanting a child so badly that you’d end the pregnancy on purpose. I am obviously entirely biased based on personal experience, but I find the concept absolutely morally…alien. Not even repugnant, but beyond that to the point of being impossible to comprehend.
I feel very, very strongly about preserving the right to abortion in circumstances of medical necessity, or even serious risk for that matter if you can find a doctor willing to perform it, but I cannot imagine not wanting a child so badly that you’d end the pregnancy on purpose.
First, I’m really sorry that you had to go through that. I hope that the healing process is quick and thorough.
I’m basically of the same opinion as you. I don’t think that mom should be forced to die for baby. Short of that (or risk of serious, permanent injury), abortion is barbarism to the extreme.
I draw the line at viability, which I think for legislative purposes could be drawn at 22 weeks. After viability, I would support exceptions to protect the mother (trust me, as someone who makes a good living in the loophole business, that’s a loophole you could drive a Planned Parenthood refrigerated delivery van through).
I used to be cool with viability as a good compromise, but as I shifted away from utilitarian pragmatism toward obstinate principle, I couldn’t find any connection between viability and personhood. The fact that the baby couldn’t survive on it’s own doesn’t seem to have much bearing on the fact that it’s still quite viable in the womb, whether or not its mother hates it enough to kill it.
I arrived at viability from being in Neo-Natal Intensive Care Units. That baby lying in that bassinet is a person, period, and it would still be a person if it were still inside the womb. I don’t think personhood, whatever it may be, is somehow conferred by cutting an umbilical cord.
Its my lack of ability to say when personhood arises that keeps me from being an “at conception” guy, or to tie it to a given level of neurological development. I know that 22 weeker is a person, and that’s all I really know, so that’s where I draw the line.
I’ve always had an issue with “viability”. Are you (not specially you, RC) saying that a newborn child is capable of living on it’s own? I mean, viability should be somewhere around 3 years, old or more.
I’m with you. A couple of risky pregnancies with my wife. My sister lost a couple. One the docs told her she could abort or carry to term and watch it die shortly thereafter – she reluctantly ended the pregnancy.
I’m horrified that people think it an acceptable form of birth control for convenience.
she reluctantly ended the pregnancy
The functional equivalent of withdrawing life support. This would be another exception to my rule against abortions after viability.
My niece had 7 miscarriages and had to end another pregnancy prematurely due to her own health. She now has a little girl who is 2.
the guy that puts something together knows damned well he will be long gone when failure occurs and repairs are needed.
I used to say that about race cars: “That was drawn up by somebody who knew he was never going to have to work on it.”
+1 Scarlatti gearbox.
Let’s just ignore her.
She’s an indicator of what burbles beneath the surface of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. A pop-off valve. The “good” thing is she’s too dumb to try to sneak up on you.
Occasional Cortex needs to watch Dead Wrong from Free to Choose, those interested can watch the whole thing here.
Cop shoots dog, with a shocking result.
Note the PR release:
“Deputy Wallace fired his service weapon that injured an animal while in close proximity to a citizen.”
Its not like shooting dogs that aren’t a threat to anyone will get you fired. Its doing so when the dog is close to a citizen. Props to the sheriff, though, for using “citizen” rather than “civilian”.
My press release would have been a little different:
“Deputy Dope has been fired, and is not eligible for rehire, because he shot a dog that was no threat to anyone. His last paycheck will be docked to cover the dog’s vet bills. A referral has been made to the district attorney for possible criminal charges.”
Also props for saying that “[he] fired his service weapon” instead of the typical “it discharged” nonsense.
Nick Cage is “a person in movies” and David Caruso is an “actor”. This must be upside down day.
It’s NIC CAGE THANK YOU VERY MUCH.