Yes, my apologies, I’ve been scarce again- besides working insane hours without access to personal use of the internet, I had some surgery this week and am in recovery. I never knew that a penis reduction would be this complex, but there it is. Another few days in bandages and I’ll be ready to go, and at least I was less work for the surgeon because, you know, Jewish.
Many really great birthdays today including a guy named after a dog; a wop Jew limey; a guy who may have rivaled Ruth (but we’ll sadly never know); a guy who had his fist up Jerry Mahoney’s ass; a once-hot evil airhead; arguably one of the two or three greatest bandleaders and composers in 20th century America; a milf emeritus; and the second-best running back (and first-best personality) on the best running team in the NFL, ever.
On to news!
And I have to start with a jaw dropper from the New York Times, where they outright admit cherry-picking to make history bend to an ideology.
I can’t figure any of this out. These are odd people.
Most libertarian president ever. Fuck you, Donnie.
“Quasi-paranoid libertarianism?”
The area we live in now is as crime-ridden as the Chicago hell-hole we escaped.
And for Old Guy Music, a delightful song from one of today’s birthday guys, proving my point, and making me a bit homesick.
WOO HOO, ZAPPA!!!! I still have Freak Out! and Hot Rats that I discovered in my parents record collection when I was wee. Great stuff.
In my youth, the local library had LPs for checkout. I stumbled across Joe’s Garage, and brought that home. That was some weird shit for me at that time. Some months later, I noticed later that the library no longer had it on the shelf.
OH YEAH! Media loans from the lie-berry are the best. The main branch in Tallahassee had complete runs of Dark Shadows and Star Trek on VHS, along with awesome documentaries. There was series called Ring Of Fire made by these two brothers who bought a sailboat and spent a decade living in the Malay Archipelago. I would love to see that again.
Just about as evil as an Eskimo boy can be
I never knew that a penis reduction would be this complex,
Didn’t you get that when you were eight days old?
Pruning makes things grow bigger.
So you’re a grower, not a shower.
“foreskin? More like a fiveskin!”
Most libertarian president ever
I was laying with that same exact line.
* nasty aside about smoking and stinky cabs deleted *
WTF is up with that. 1/2 or more of those resting in Arlington are probably 21 and under. Now a 20 year old will get busted for smoking? Cops don’t have enough to do. Real teenagers seem to be able to buy other products with ease but smokes? No way, man, gateway to vaping.
Unreal. Every voter, 18-21, ought to be looking for a new candidate. Make draft registration 21 in that case as well.
Except the 18-21 age group historically votes in very low numbers, and politicians know this. Soccer moms, otoh, do vote and they never saw a right they weren’t willing to stomp on “for the children.”
Yeah, I know. With fewer smokers too, the young are even less concerned about the law.
No driver’s licenses, marriages or military enlistment until 21. Seems like a standard adulthood law is required, too discriminatory. Really laughable and only done for political theater.
Repeal 26A!
I’m OK with this.
It at least would be somewhat honest about making the age of majority 21 again. Or 26.
I was once 18. I remember registering for the selective service. It was a pretty heavy moment, since I was in the first group to do so since the draft was ended. We were close enough to it to have some memory of what the draft was all about.
A big F.U. to anyone who would deny any of the rights of citizenship to people who are expected to kill and possibly be killed on behalf of their nation.
If you don’t want 18-20 year olds drinking and smoking, then raise the age for military service. Otherwise, STFU. You have no right.
Meanwhile in Mexico, the legal age to buy cigarettes is “18” or just make sure your kids tell the guy the box of Cohibas they are buying is for you, not them.
Is the age for buying percocet still “That’ll be 12 bucks, please”? Or do they have different prescription requirements for controlled substances now?
It has been a long, long time since I was in Mexico.
I have an alibi.
It used to be called “playing doctor”.
I had a Mattel speculum.
That is so wrong. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
There is nothing about me that’s right. So I embrace that.
Wow! NYT with the Red-shaming? That’s pretty ballsy for the Gray Lady still clinging to Duranty’s Pulitzer.
That entire project is covered in shame. They openly admitted that they were using the Russia scandal 100% to bring Trump down. And then they openly talked about how they were looking for a different angle to attack the President once that failed. Then they proclaimed that they would be covering race and racism in place of Russia, to bring Trump down. Then they announced the 1619 project.
The entire thing is planned explicitly for the purpose of fomenting racial animus. They are not interested in having historians tell people that slavery didn’t cause black people to smoke menthol cigarettes. They want something to rile up the black vote and make white people fear being associated with Republicans.
That is why their work is shoddy and sometimes ahistorical. Because the goal isn’t scholarship or educating the public about the “real history of racism”….. the goal is demonizing the enemies of the left. This is just some foundation laying work for that project.
Mr. GT makes frequent comments about moving to Montana to raise dental floss. Now I get it.
I learn so much here!
Give that man a boob flash, or whatever you do that does it for him.
Heh! I used to joke that I was going to move to Montana and live in a sod house and raise green beans.
Everyone wants to live in Montana. (Except maybe not in the winter.)
LOL Yup. https://youtu.be/8xlpOjcyst8
Don’t forget Merle
Okay that is the spookiest. In posting that reply, this song came on my mp3 player – okay I was listening to merle anyway but I didn’t know which song was coming next. It’s a sign, of something.
I joked about moving to Wyoming and raising mushrooms. In honor of the way Americans get treated by our government.
Who is giving ten year olds their own phones?
Helicopter parents.
And there’s your moral panic. Wendy Rice, meet Joanna Schroeder; Jo, Wendy. You gals have so much in common.
And how much of that “sexual” content is “U R a dick” type texts between 10 yo boys?
Not all of us.
See, the problem is not that you don’t know where your kid is after he’s been gone for hours.
1) It’s that you let you kid out at all and, HORRORS! allow him to remain out for hours. SOMEBODY is going to call the police or CPS (ask me how I know). If he has a phone, then it’s all good.*
2) It’s convenient. You’re on opposite corners of Walmart. “wya?” You’re waiting for your kid to finish talking to her friends after church and the game’s about to start. “GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE!”
*Folks at church see my kid out all the time running around town on his bicycle. I’ve let him run loose outside since he was small. They don’t let their kids have that much freedom. There is a hint of real envy in their voices when they tell me they saw him out. The fact that it’s remarkable enough to remark upon it (redundant no? that’s where we are) is telling.
I give my daughter that much freedom, but she won’t go out at all.
Apparently, every parent at my son’s school; the 2nd – 6th graders all file into the building like zombies with heads bowed down to their screens.
Also, wifey’s school has contracted with the Yondr company to provide the children with pouches to keep their phones in while in class. Interestingly, if it is adopted city-wide, it will kill an entrepreneur who runs vans festooned with storage lockers for phones, that he parks outside of schools as, technically, the kids are not permitted to bring them in to school.
We are about to set off a long overdue shitstorm by issuing handhelds (I believe iPods) slaved to our WiFi network to clinical staff, and prohibiting them from having their personal phones on their persons while working. The handhelds will have all kinds of cool functionality for work that we can’t get on people’s personal phones, but the entitled/neurotic bitching will be epic.
“What if my kid has an emergency?”
“They can call the main number and we’ll send it to your unit. You know, just like everybody did until not that long ago. I don’t recall the corpse wagons getting loaded with dead children at the end of each school day 10 years ago, so I think they’ll be fine.”
No cigarettes or phones ’til 21.
I got a dumb phone at 14 that was shared with two of my sisters, then 12 and 11, but I don’t understand a 10-year-old with a phone all their own.
I got a phone at the same time I got car keys.
I think it was age 15 for me. Parents had just divorced so it was easier to coordinate getting picked up from school that way. It was my dad’s old phone, so it’s not like I had a texting plan or anything. It mostly sat in my backpack with the battery pulled out.
I always think I’m in a transitional generation group. 2 years before I was in high school, almost no one had their own cell phone. 2 years after me, everyone did. In my class, About half had a phone. And then there was another group like me who used their parents phone on evenings and weekends, but it was technically”mine”
We’re probably about the same age. I didn’t get a phone until I had my first car and was in college, but by then, that was very unusual.
I remember in high school, having a car phone was a sign of wealth. I think the first time I saw an actual cell phone in use in the wild was when I was an undergrad. A well-off foreign student if I remember correctly. I didn’t get my first cell phone until I was about thirty.
Back then it was a Nokia mini-brick.
I didnt have my own cell phone until I was 35.
DoB c.1965
I think kids started getting their own phones as home phones got phased out.
Isn’t that kinda switching cause and effect?
Not for me. We were in a tight spot when my wife went back to school. Cut the landline because we both had flip phones, and have not had one since. When my daughter was freed from
detentionafter school care, she got the old flip phone. Then the same for my son when he was old enough to come home alone.Still sounds like the cell phones came first, and the landline was cut as surplus to requirements.
Yes, but not for the kids.
Yeah, I don’t remember when the kids got them, but it was concurrent with the land line deletion. My 17 yo daughter is still required to leave her phone downstairs overnight.
It’s not the end of the world if a kid has a phone. Try some goddamn boundaries, people.
Just canceled our landline.
It’s what I wanted becuase I was getting 4-5 spam calls a day and no one else.
It feels wrong, though.
From the NYT editors’ response to critical letter:
But it fits the narrative to imply that English America invented slavery, so…no changes.
And what about the natives who took members of other tribes as slaves? Oops, no written records so they are assumed to have lived an Edenic existence.
+ 1 Noble Savage
I was about to mention that. Slavery was the norm the world over at the time. It was an economic issue, not a moral issue.
These fruitloop pinkos are violating rule #1 in history: Dont judge people in the past by your standards today, but then like ‘climate scientists, they are nothing of the sort. They are commie political activists masquerading as academics so the standards of the discipline don’t apply.
Nice dodge.
Bad United States! Go to your room!
Only the two other nations where slavery was similarly common banned it after us.
Derp.
That reads like a bunch of,SJW, illiterate, illiberal snowflakes sit on the editorial board of the NYT.
Pure effen garbage.
And people pay for that shit?
SJW? Maybe, but probably only tangentially. Illiterate? Hardly. Illiberal? Absolutely.
They’re communists, they learn tunnel vision as part of the ideology. But they’re probably also older and well read. They know what they’re doing.
They’re getting schools to adapt the whole steaming pile of garbage. It is impossible to underestimate how much damage to the country this is going to do.
Yeah, they know exactly what they’re doing, all right.
It’s one of many true details in a saga that you’d be forgiven for thinking was Hollywood invention. Others include Jewell’s long-standing interest in law enforcement, his personal collection of guns, his blank demeanor. He sounds like our idea of the kind of guy who would plant a bomb. Maybe that idea needs revising.
Typical run of the mill right wing domestic terrorist. They’re everywhere.
“Maybe that idea needs revising.”
“On second thought, nah. Let’s yammer on instead about how no female reporter ever banged a source for a scoop, and it’s deeply misogynist to even imply it might have ever happened.”
I’m glad you read that NYT response, because if I read it first I would never have gotten through the first paragraph or so. All the NYT did was hedge.
CAN I GET AN AMEN!!!! PREACH IT!!!!
I sure got educated, reading that movie review.
Somewhat related to my post yesterday
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HjN9OtLDBrpoUhDdR-3eIKFh1UFCDC80/view?usp=drivesdk
This meat grinder ia 45 years old, so at least 45 pigs went through it. Plus other stuff
How many ex husbands/wives went through it?
Pre wood chipper era.
Had a teacher in junior high with an artificial hand, courtesy of WW2. He would say he’d got it caught in asausage maker and hoped that none of kids ate the sausage. (She didn’t get fired, however, as the joke goes)
How many politicians? (Asking for Preet)
President Donald Trump on Friday signed a sweeping spending bill into law, including a measure that prohibits the sale of tobacco products to anyone under the age of 21.
The increased age restriction for tobacco purchases is one of several provisions outside of the spending measures themselves that will be attached to the broader $1.4 trillion spending agreement.
Let’s hear it for bipartisan compromise.
The really bad ideas usually get the support of both sides of the isle.
The patriot act, budgets, and other feel good pork filled legislation.
The interesting/infuriating thing is that it was rolled into a DEFENSE bill.
Why not? The DHS Cyber Hunt and Incident Response Teams Act of 2019 bill had $1.1B in debt relief for Somalia.
Just remember, when you are tempted to think of Congresspeople as decent human beings, they pull shit like this all the time.
bipartisan compromise
AKA Double Penetration
Sorry, I can’t help myself.
1/2 way between 2 bad ideas
Consider this stolen
The restriction on tobacco sales has long been pushed by a bipartisan mix of senators: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican; Republican Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Todd Young of Indiana; as well as Democrats including Sens. Richard Durbin of Illinois, Tim Kaine of Virginia and Brian Schatz of Hawaii.
Those lawmakers have been looking for a way to get the prohibition across the finish line and now they’ve found one, by attaching it to a must-pass series of bills to avoid a government shutdown.
You don’t say.
Pretty sure as a judge, Collyer has the power to “discipline” anyone who brings false information to her court. But nooooooo. Fuck her! Societies based on liberty should not have secret courts. Kill it.
I thought we knew the names of the Fibbies who lied to the court.
Good question, though. Why doesn’t she name them, declare them in criminal al contempt, toss them in the lockup, and request that they be disbarred?
I had the same question. I’m sure muy name would similarly bee withheld if I routinely perjured myself.
Mornin’
Mornin’, Sean!
?
Do you people stay up all night long? I don’t even remember going to bed. Fortunately I have a redneck Murphy Bed in my man cave.
Mornin’ and welcome to the shortest daylight day of the year. Gotta hurry and get things done before dark.
The shortest day this side of the Atlantic is tomorrow, apparently. Winter is garbage. Nearly everybody loves the Sunshine, right? I want to be sat outside with a cold michelada, and the sun to set sometime between 2130 and 2200. I want it to be broad daylight by 0600. I want midday temps consistently around 80 dungarees Frankenstein, and warm evenings with gentle, cooling breezes.
I want I want I want Charles in charge of meeee…I was in the car with the wife last night, and I asked her if she had heard anything about the “Afghanistan Papers.” I did this mostly to gauge if that story was circulating at all in her professional circles, certainly I have heard nothing about it in mine. She says she has not, and I explain my understanding of the story (“Everything US leadership or press has told us for the last 18 years is a lie”). We chat about it for a bit, then move on.
This morning, completely unprompted, she says she went out of her way to track down a link to the WaPo story and put it on her Facebook feed. She normally stays away from political stuff, for obvious reasons, but I guess this seemed particularly important. She’s a good woman, I’m lucky she keeps me around.
*rubs eyes, blinks, swigs more coffee*
Oh. Ok. I first read that last sentence as “I’m lucky she sleeps around”.
How else is she going to learn new things?
“In Soviet Union we don’t worry about the future. We know what the future is. It is the past that is always changing.”
Thursday night, girls night out, wife and her friends were talking and the subject of their introduction to sexuality came up. They were laughing about how young girls ‘ewwww1′ when they find out about sex and swear they will never do that. One of them turned to me and asked what. young boys reaction to learning about sex is. I grinned like hell and rubbed my palms together enthusiastically.
Class warfare is evil. Woodchippers all around for those who push it.
Ya’ know, I could do without the temperance crap. That isn’t the govt’s job. Still, weak tea as far as complaints go. Very weak.
I am not gonna sugarcoat it, The New Republic doesn’t seem overly friendly to those who portray big government in a less than favorable light.
Brides…..I got nuthin’.
I also got nuthin’ on the KY governor’s pardons. I would have to see details on each and every one. Who has less credibility….pols or the system?
Speaking of which, I will say it again: A free country doesn’t have secret courts. Shoot the FISA, hit it in the head with a shovel, piss on it, set it on fire and throw the ashes in the sea.
Woodchippers indeed….something with a lot of horsepower. Let’s shop. I like #2, we could drive it right up on the courthouse steps. #3 Isn’t too shabby. Maybe all of them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIv8vB7D8fU
When the dust settles I want to be a judge at the re-education camps.
Sorry Fourscore. You are too easily bribed. You’d let some shitlord like me out of the camp for a couple pheasants
Need some dumplings thrown in for the kicker, though
I’m going to be a capo, so I’ll see if I can pull a few strings.
::chuckles at guitar player joke::
Jesus, Trump. That spending bill is like watching a punt returner break one, and then spike the ball on the five fucking yard line with nobody near him. All you have to do is restrain yourself from doing anything too completely stupid, and…
Fucking dummy. Did you call David Dinkins and ask for advice?
His brother drank himself to death. Trump is a tea totaler. Strong streak of temperance in him. We should get him an axe.
Except for the Adderall he has a prescription for.
The bill passed with a veto-proof majority. That having been said, his choice to brag about shows he supports it anyway.
It is like they secretly filmed my descent into libertarianism
I had no descent. When I was born the nurse was trying to attend to me and I said “Fuck off and leave me alone, bitch.”
The reason she was trying to slap you Suthen is because you were using your Male Gaze on her
I still read that Term as male glaze. It works either way.
Boys love them titties, starts early and never stops, AFAIK
The Most Libertarian Christmas Song
Happy Solstice you lot.
I assert that libertarianism is the default -ism, ascribed at birth.
The descent is to whatever you became before coming back.
You’ve clearly never met a 1 year old. They’re about as statist as it gets. They get what they want or they complain to the authorities until they give in.
^This. Listen to a group of little kids playing. There is always an argument about what the rules should be, and who should set them. We need freedom, we don’t much like it though, especially freedom for those bad people over there.
SHUDDUP and take my money!!!!!
This would make so much money. Until families of your customers sued your ass off for wrongful death after the cops killed them.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/home-depot-bernie-marcus-elizabeth-warren-millionaires-capitalism
“Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus blasted Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., over her attacks on wealthy Americans, which Warren continued in Thursday’s PBS Democratic debate.
Marcus said Warren, who Forbes reported as having a net worth of around $12 million, likely didn’t work up the corporate ladder the same way he did as the son of impoverished immigrants in Newark, N.J.”
Good for him.
Impoverished immigrants. Warren was born in a one room teepee. She damn well worked her way up.
Kamala been there, done that
And she’s not some damn immigrant!
Earlier this year, Warren said at a debate that her “problem” with people that have made “fortune[s] in America” is that they built that … in part using workers all of us helped educate. You built it getting your goods to market on roads and bridges all of us helped pay for. You built it, at least in part, protected by police and firefighters all of us help pay the salaries for.”
Thieves! Parasites!
Yes they did all of these great things in the same environment that 99% did nothing with.
Pretty much a straight-up “You didn’t build that”.
She started that entire thing, or at least the latest version, Obama was cribbing from her notes when he gave the YDBT talk.
What’s infuriating about the YDBT is the 100% ignoring the fact that in order to pay for all the stuff they are talking about the government had to take the money from you in the first place.
So you’re forced to pay for something and then when you use it it’s proof that you didn’t build that.
Government breaks your legs and wants congratulations for giving you a crutch.
And it’s a shitty crutch so you have to go out a buy a decent pair anyway.
I also like the “your factory” is protected by the police. Because factories don’t have security guards and fences and locks and shit. Half the benefits we “get” from government are so shitty we have to pay for our own anyway.
Public education is a perfect example. Public education is so bad that there is Pretty much everyone, if they had the means, would pay to not send their kids to public school.
I don’t think this is true. I’d put the line at about 50-50 among those who would school their children. There are a lot of people who think the public schools are just fine (if a tad underfunded) and kids who went to private school and especially those who were homeschooled are “weird”.
More of that “You didnt build that, someone else made it happen” commie horseshit.
Feet first. Always feet first.
A trip through Mr. Bonestripper? https://youtu.be/enUo-1TjdEs
Isn’t the whole purpose of building all these things and teaching all these people and what not so that they go out and do things with them? Why build roads if we’re not supposed to, you know, use them. Why educate children if they’re not supposed to go into the workforce, the marketplace, and just general society and apply that knowledge?
Good morning all,
Hope you recover soon old man.
“ Eastwood’s gloss on the story of Richard Jewell has a quasi-paranoid libertarianism—you can’t trust what you read in the papers, and you can’t trust the agents of the state.”
That’s not paranoia, that’s just good sense. What brain addled chump takes anything those two entities say at face value?
You have to ask?
Herd animals, that’s who. Follow the herd leader, don’t ask questions and you will get your daily bowl of gruel.
+ 1 chocolate ration
People who read the New Republic
Wait? Are you telling me a media outlet is challenging the idea that media outlets are dishonest? Next you will tell me that politicians challenge the idea that power goes with corruption.
Does no one consider that’s exactly what the fuck happened to Jewell? This isn’t some fantasy.
Uffda. The mob sure has turned on Warren. A couple months ago she seemed inevitable. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.
Over/under on when the spate of articles comes out that blames her failed campaign on misogyny?
You cant take bets on something that has already happened.
So who’s it going to be? Biden? He’s half dead and more than half senile.
Hilary. It was, always and forever, Hilary.
I’m in the Hillary’s waiting for the right time to jump in camp too.
Yup. That is my bet too.
She’ll swoop in at the last minute.
More and more I’m starting to think that too. I was wondering why the corporate media can’t seem to stick with a candidate (naturally I anticipated the king-makers settling on and stumping for one of these clowns) but they seem to cast shade on them just after shinning the light on them. I’m thinking it’s her shrillness who’s been pulling the strings all along.
I am of half a mind that the party is all in on The Hildebeast and the other candidates are being as horrible as possible to try and make her look like the reasonable good one. Truth is the creature in the Mao suit is the worst of the lot. Jebus, talk about iron-fisted dictator wanna-be.
Didnt I see where the guy that cooked up the Russian dossier on Trump is now….dead?
Will she be on ballots if she waits too long? What are the filing deadlines?
Sleepy Joe is compliant, Hillary will want to do stuff, her way.
Joe expires, Amy becomes prez, Hillary VP, Amy resigns, sorta, for health reasons
“for health reasons”
Sudden onset of suicide?
I believe the technical term is Arkancide.
I’m hoping for
the Oprah/Michelleanarchy ticket at the last possible minute.I hope so, like Dave Smith said I kinda hope he’s the nominee so we can watch the press try to pretend he isn’t barshit crazy when he says completely off the wall shit.
There is a Lovecraft tale, The Horror At Red Hook, wherein a doomed man is compelled (after death) to race for a certain necromantic object while being pursued by monsters. The poor wretch tears his corpse apart with his efforts. That is how I see Hilary; she is constitutionally incapable of disregarding the race for POTUS, and will win even if it kills her.
Ain’t nothin’ constitutional about it.
/pun
Good morning Glibs! I’m off work until January 6, and Mr. Cannoli just got a job offer for 30% more than he’s currently making plus travel benefits (it’s with an airline), so life is really good. I got all of the Christmas presents wrapped last night, and today we’re off to see the in-laws.
The Cannoli’s are moving up to ricotta from custard!
/cue The Jeffersons.
30%? Cha-ching! Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas!
Just don’t spend more than 40% more in celebration and happiness!
Excellent! Hope he enjoys the new job.
Thank you!
and today we’re off to see the in-laws.
Well, I guess every silver lining has a dark cloud.
WOOOO HOOOOO!!!
Always love it when the holiday season delivers.
Mornin’ and welcome to the shortest daylight day of the year.
Yay! We’re rounding the post.
God help me, the middle child has discovered the VSCO verbal tics.
Sksksksksksksksk!
Sounds like an “and you oop”
Save the ???.
The Richard Jewell movie article;
Dear lord the New Republic must be trying to be be a caricature of an awful, snide nasty urban white progressive with absolutely no self-awareness…….it’s the only explanation. Part of me want stop refuse that cuntiness on that level does not exist in nature.
They can’t accept the obvious conclusion of the FBI’s behavior because of the implications it has for current politics.
That’s a good point, how dare they besmirch our most sacred institution that is trying to orchestrate a coupe against Drumpf
If the FBI were orchestrating a coup against Obama, they would be raving about how great a director Eastwood is.
With a thinly veiled caveat concerning his cranky old whiteness.
Wouldn’t put it past them to write up essays about how his movies are riddled with ‘toxic masculinity’.
Hell, that’d be too easy, what will be truly impressive is when they torture a white supremacy narrative out of them.
It’s about that time
What’s infuriating about the YDBT is the 100% ignoring the fact that in order to pay for all the stuff they are talking about the government had to take the money from you in the first place.
They’re like two year olds.
They only look at one side of the ledger.
If “You Did Try to Build That” you’d have been met by City Hall for permits, EPA for lack of studies, unions because. You would give up before you started.
Nailing the first board for a tree house would see a lot of uniformed visitors.
To be fair, my two year old understands “mine” and “yours” better than your average congresscritter.
Also to be fair…
Our entire country seems to have been looking at only one side of the ledger for decades.
And then, you get this
I’ve been watching the Amazing Race. The bunny steeplechase in Denmark was soo cute! My uber driver this morning is the cab driver every team wants. I’m still waiting for my heart rate to slow down.
“Gotta admit, “Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you” is both the most weaselly and the most efficient way to pack the “trans women are rapist invaders of womanhood” trope *and* the “trans women are piteous, unfuckably hideous creatures” trope into a single sentence.”
At this point you’d be forgiven for thinking trans activists were secretly a fifth column of Evangelical trying to destroy the gains made for Gay Rights.
A natural consequence of activism based on postmodernist principles. The most emotional and outspoken lunatics are going to end up in control.
That sums it up nicely. Of course, that was the goal all along.
On my road to realizing I was a libertarian and not a conservative. I was in college when campus’ nationwide were starting to ban smoking (on campus, not just in buildings). I had several classes with the president of the student body. He always described himself as “a small government conservative.” But was all in on the smoking ban. Wrote op-ed’s in the school paper and everything. Also, couldn’t stand that the general store in the union sold cigs. That was just another example showing me “conservative” still want to control you.
Conservatives just have a different set of things they don’t like.
The difference being that conservatives can be shamed.
Ha, thanks Suthen, I needed a laugh this morning.
The only time I have seen them not shamed was when they were too stupid to understand what they have done. Goad them into a little self awareness and they will be.
Leftists on the other hand are well aware of what they are doing and do it brazenly. Fuck you if you don’t like broken eggs.
“It is for the greater good” is their rationalization.
^This. There are some conservatives who are intractable dolts who are just TEAM players as much as any lefty (looking at you thin-blue liners, church ladies and war-mongers), but in my experience people who lean conservative tend to be more open to understanding “you today, me tomorrow”……that may be function of them long ground for the last 30 years.
*losing………sips coffee
Did conservatives act out of shame when they were doing their moral panic crusades in the past? They get power and they do the same bully tactics. Of course that means we have to define “conservative”.
“Of course that means we have to define “conservative”.”
Exactly. Also, are we talking about modern day conservatives or those of the 1980’s? There’s still a authoritarian streak a mile-wide in modern conservative but IMO young conservatives are somewhat more open minded to the ideas of liberty than their parents.
/tips hat to Ron Paul
So can some on the left. But shame can also backfire, and it’s not a very strong motivator on its own.
it’s not a very strong motivator on its own.
IMO, this is more a sign of the times than a truism. Fear, shame, rejection, ecstasy, discontentment, condescension. You can run the world if you can manipulate people to feel those things.
+1 HOW DARE YOU!
The overlap can be considerable sometimes.
and thats when we get it good and hard.
^This. Human nature is a cunte.
Lefties are openly godless, and think that makes them intellectually superior.
Righties profess godliness, and think that makes them morally superior.
Either way, they both want it to be their boot on standing on your neck. Via the state, of course.
Banning smoking, or tobacco use? That chewing tobacco was banned by those proved to me early on that it had nothing to do with affecting non-users at all.
Drunken reaction; Conservative will buy into free markets and free association as long as the result is a a society they believe in. The misfits, artists, crazies, oddballs will be shuffled into one type of state institution or be a prisoner to their family. Locked basement or something. I’m a libertarian by default because neither left nor right will accept those that fall outside of their ideological prison. I don’t believe a free society will be more conservative or more liberal. A free society will be one where the freaks can live in peace as well as the normies.
That kind of describes my good buddy at work. I’d say libertarianish leanings but believes if a cop tells you to do something, you should do it (as a principle, not a practical don’t end up face down in the ditch) and homeless bums if they won’t get a job to support themselves, should be rounded up into camps in the middle of nowhere until they’re ready to do so. I’ve resisted saying “arbeit macht frei” to the last one so far.
I’ve seen that crazy talk here on glibs. Not gonna name names, but it was disappointing. You gotta learn how to live with the freaks. And by freaks, I mean “me”.
Living with the freaks =/= mandating that they have the right to pitch a tent in your front yard, or live in the entrance to your business, or literally shit all over the place.
I handed in my libertarian card yesterday or the day before (on a different issue). The problem of the mentally ill/drug addict homeless needs more of an answer than “live with it”.
Wait, you got a card? Dammit!
I’m not advocating violating property rights. I’m saying that “conservatives” have pushed issues in the past that clearly aren’t what we’d call libertarian. Kick people off your property and I have no problem. Right now in 2019, yeah, the left is clearly the bigger danger in my eyes. I didn’t forget Dubya and Nixon, though. Just saying.
Dubya and Nixon weren’t even remotely conservatives. Dubya was the Team Red “third way” President; if you take a list of policies from his Presidency and Clinton’s you can’t tell them apart. Nixon was Big Government to the bone. Goldwater was the last real small government conservative the Republicans ran. Reagan had conservative impulses but was a political pragmatist and decided that winning the cold war was more important than conservatism. Conservatism like libertarianism is dormant in our society.
There it is. Who gets to decide what “conservative” means? The people who are flying the banner today or the ones we think make a better example of “conservatism”? If it were left to me, I’d say a true conservative would be someone like Ron Paul.
The fact that Bill Kristol et al. took the term for their own use doesn’t change the fact that what they are peddling is socialism with an empire. Call it what you want, but when I talk about conservatism I mean something similar to what SP uses in her bio: Constitution as written. ie. The Federal Government acting as a check on States having trade wars, and as the face we present to the outside world, and the other items in Articles I-III, and everything else handled at the State level, preferably in keeping with principles of limited interference with private action.
How’s that 10th amendment holding up? 😉 Parchment barriers fail, too. But, you get longer use out of and I’ll grant that freely.
Not an argument or snark. I am genuinely curious.
What IS true conservatism and how is it different from libertarianism?
Like I said, Constitution as written.
Every 20 years, then. Every 20 years.
I’m not arguing that it is magic. I’m saying what I believe conservatism means in the US, which is a desire to preserve the Nation as founded.
I’m saying what I believe conservatism means in the US, which is a desire to preserve the Nation as founded.
There we go. A definition I can latch onto. But that nation is gone considering the number of bases the US has scattered across the globe, the income tax, the federal reserve etc. It died by a thousand cuts. Now what?
Well, a decade of extensive helicopter flights followed by a peaceful relinquishing of power…
Speaking personally, I know I have a couple of things that push my buttons down hard enough to put on jackboots. Something to work on for a NY resolution.
Effing left lane drivers…
That’s the whole thing to me: How hard do you throttle people that run afoul of the social norm? How do you coerce them into following the social norm? And even bigger, who get’s to decide what is the social norm? I’m lazy and just say it isn’t my job and good luck to you if your action isn’t profitable. Just don’t violate the NAP.
Drivers who blithely tool about with misaligned headlights or their high-beams on make me want to burn out their retinas.
Also (location specific), NYC forbids right turns at red lights unless it is marked. Most of the dozen or so intersections where right turns are allowed are here in the Rockaways. Why oh why do people just sit and wait for the light to change, while a quarter mile of backed up traffic angrily honks at them?
I want to leave other people alone in large part because I would like them to extend me the same courtesy. The fact that holding such a POV makes me an outlier is heartbreaking.
I’ll take that in a second.
I’m a libertarian by default because neither left nor right will accept those that fall outside of their ideological prison.
I’m on the opposite side of this, and maybe my libertarian card should go into the woodchipper because of it. I have written about how I dislike radical individualism, and I think that families and communities have the authority to say “you can be like that, but not in this community.”
It only makes sense in voluntary communities. Works fine for the Amish and other religious sects that shun those who don’t adhere to community standards. Maybe that seems intolerant by today’s standards, but the alternative is having your beliefs eroded away by the mainstream culture.
The hard part is where community has been subsumed by local government and public accommodation laws prevent the freedom of disassociation. There’s really no good way for a community to set their standards of behavior without overstepping their authority and becoming coercive.
All that said, nobody has a right to be accepted by a family, community, or society. They have the right to be treated as a human being with innate dignity. No more, no less.
Well stated.
Very well put. I have been struggling to draft a post that is very much along those lines.
Mainstream culture becomes political culture and that becomes law. You’re in the same boat I am, but it just takes little longer.
Mainstream culture becomes political culture
Our political culture is by no means based on our mainstream culture. Not any more, if ever. Our political culture is based on the “elite” culture of globalism, leftism, authoritarianism, and collectivist tribalism. Trump’s election provides some evidence that this is not mainstream. Unfortunately, like the Brits, we are going to have to ratify our rejection of our ruling class in another election.
From your lips to god’s ears. I hope it happens. We can dismiss academia as being not part of mainstream culture, but I don’t think it’s not deeply connected. They are brainwashing kids from 6-22 (25,26?) in the public schools and universities and I’m not ready to dismiss that as not part of mainstream culture. Sure, the tippy tops are the ones that are calling the shots, but they have an army of underlings that have gone through the system.
*Forgive the double negatives. I’m used to thinking that way.
The area we live in now is as crime-ridden as the Chicago hell-hole we escaped.
This is absolutely ridiculous! I’m calling my city councilperson— wait.
i don’t live in Chandler. LET IT BURN.
God bless President Trump for bringing back Christmas.
So basically they spend 3 years accusing Trump of being Hitler, then they pretend that Republicans act like Obama was Hitler.
Okay… ran morning errands. Paid people off. Gave feedback to GT. What am I forgetting to do?
Did you wipe your ass?
Alcohol?
Drink?
I was probably planning to write something.
Live.
Did you see your pimp?
Take your Risperdal?
UnSolicitedTestimonial: UCS is not only a talented writer (as many of you already know) but also a gracious and helpful person.
Glory hole, give or take?
/Walks in, looks at others’ replies, nods head
“Yep, my people.”
/Walks back out whistling
I always wondered what a Zappa Zorn collaboration would sound like.
Love your avatar.
It’s right there in the constitution, the fed gov has the right to regulate the age of tobacco consumption. At least they pretended to let the states have a choice on alcohol for awhile before tying it to highway funding due to the tenuous link of highway deaths.
It’s not they did it that bothers me most, it’s that there is essentially no outrage.
It’s being applauded, that’s the sickening part.
Yet they don’t seem to be willing to tie highway funding to NY giving DL’s and sanctuary to foreign commies so they can vote.
It’s been 21 to buy cigarettes here in the people’s republic of Murland for a while now. I don’t use tobacco, I just remember thinking how fucked up it is that tobacco is apparently so dangerous that you have to be 21 to buy it, but you can volunteer at 18 to be shipped off to some desert shithole and get shot up or blown up. Thinking about it just makes my head hurt.
Ammo next, with a ration card. Need to register guns to get a ration card. Learn reloading now!
No one needs more than one kind of bullets…
Land of the free
The U.S. Military Academy, also known as West Point, on Friday concluded its internal investigation of cadets who displayed a hand gesture during a live broadcast of ESPN College GameDay at the Army-Navy game on Dec. 14 that went viral because of its association with the white-power movement.
——-
Despite being cleared of racist intent, the academy suggested the cadets involved in the game may be disciplined.
“We had reason to believe these actions were an innocent game and not linked to extremism, but we must take allegations such as these very seriously,” said Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, the academy’s 60th superintendent. “We are disappointed by the immature behavior of the cadets.”
Home of the thin skinned humorless scolds.
BETTER THIN-SKINNED THAN SKINHEADS!
Immature behavior by guys that don’t even shave yet? Say it aint so.
That’s my favorite take. “Well maybe it wasn’t racist but they shouldn’t be goofing off in uniform.” Just take the L you fucking dweebs.
Second favorite, actually. The best take is “It’s still a white supremacist gesture even if they didn’t mean it.”
So intent doesn’t matter. Hate crime, intent is everything. Pick your nose with your middle finger and suddenly intent is irrelevant.
Heads we win, tails. you lose.
How long until the “OK” emoji gets banned by Google? Because it can be really apropos when posting here occasionally
The point is to just make almost anything illegal. That way, whoever is in charge at the time can just make examples of their political enemies. All we need at that point is our own lifetime dictator just like Pooh Bear over there in that Chingy Lingy place.
Then we can build camps for those
Uighursdeplorables.?
As if the 4chan crowd won’t move on to another longtime handsign and use it to troll these people.
?
I’m on my computer so I don’t know how to do the black “OK” sign but that’s gotta be troll level 9 in the right context
???????????
???
Also early awaiting the crystal for wypipo to have ethnic emoji’s removed from their phones because racism.
ugh *cries*
Racism is just so ingrained in all we wypipo that we just do it subconsciously.
They should have been taking selfies at a presidential funeral instead.
Anecdotally, my Army unit had battery level officers from both West Point and college ROTC programs. The ROTC grads were universally preferred by us underlings. Even worse, the West Point Cadets who rotated through during their Summer vacations. Insufferable gits who spent their first few days trying to get us all to march when walking around the motor pool or to stop sitting around drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
My experience with ROTC vs West Point is that you get a similar distribution of talent. But ROTC is 1/4 the price tag.
Ring knockers were the worst. Mustangs usually the best.
“Mustangs usually the best”
/shines fingernails/.
Everyone needs to be broken in by the big green weenie at some point. Might as well get it as cadets.
Meh. These “kids” are expected to Lead the men and women in the military once they graduate. They can afford to not act like 15 year olds on television.
Censured or w/e the WP does to wayward cadets, fine. I seem to remember an openly communist graduate a few years ago getting expelled, and I had no problem with that. So I’d be a hypocrite to say they shouldn’t be punished for unbecoming conduct.
But I’m still going to piss on the Twitter pinheads who refuse to acknowledge they fell for a hoax.
At my daughter’s graduation 2 years ago, the valedictorian (Indian female) was making her speech while a white girl signed along with the speech. Being a teen, the valedictorian was overusing the word “OK”. I leaned over to my dad and whispered “they keep flashing ‘white power’ hand signs.” I forgot how loud the old man can laugh.
That’s pretty awesome.
What am I forgetting to do?
Change your gloves?
Santa’s outside UCS’s home, waiting, waiting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_-C11_LbYI
*watching Our Planet*
Y’know, I just wanted to watch a reel of beautiful ocean shots with generic commentary describing what I’m seeing. Instead, I got an hour-long misanthropic lecture synced to a video of the ocean.
*mutes the audio*
Is that another one narrated by that insufferable prick Attenborough? That guy needs to learn to play the harp.
Yup… Every other word is about climate change or overfishing or ecological imbalance. The problem is that the musical arrangement is actually good, so I have it turned down enough that I can hear the music but the words are too quiet to parse.
I liked his brother better.
Was just listening to the SiriusXM jazz channel – as I do for background music on Saturday mornings – when this artist’s lament grabbed me by the ears. Wow. Just beautiful.
I’ve found myself listening to that Yacht Rock station on Sirius. That’s how I know I’m getting really old, just a few years ago it would have been the heavy metal station.
Sunday is jazz day, and I hope you are listening to “Real Jazz” and not “watercolors” or “Spa” or whatever they call that shit.
“Watercolor jazz.” I like that.
Moje, you need to hear the song I linked above if you haven’t already. I think you’d love her voice. I’ve switched from the radio to everything she has up on YT.
Sunday morning for me is “Symphony Hall” for “Vox Choral” and “Millennium of Music.” Saturday morning is, indeed, “Real Jazz.” “The Spa” is for those days at work when I need something to keep me from cuttin’ a bitch – or my (male) boss.
Otherwise, on less stressful weekdays at work, I bounce between ’80s, “Coffee House,” and “Soul Town” mostly.
This is what I go to sleep to and what I listen to to recover my Zen.
https://youtu.be/XJ9Vylyk5Uw
Today is Christmas gathering with all the nieces and nephews. It does bring a smile to my face to see them open the presents (that they’ll lose or forget about within a week) and be so excited. Huzzah!
Stolen promise
Looking back from the shaky edge of a new decade, it’s clear that the past 10 years saw many Americans snap out of this dream, shaken awake by a brutal series of shocks and dislocations from the very changes that were supposed to “create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace.” When they opened their eyes, they did indeed see that the Digital Nation had been born. Only it hadn’t set them free. They were being ruled by it. It hadn’t tamed politics. It sent them berserk.
And it hadn’t brought people closer together.
It had alienated them.
——-
I’ve spent six years reporting on deeply alienated people on the internet, during which time I’ve come to see conditions of disconnection and frustration everywhere the Digital Nation touches: on social media, in search algorithms, in the digital economy. In myself. The feelings of powerlessness, estrangement, loneliness, and anger created or exacerbated by the information age are so general it can be easy to think they are just a state of nature, like an ache that persists until you forget it’s there. But then sometimes it suddenly gets much worse.
Much worse: The Americans who marked this decade most visibly with their anger and impotence are, of course, young white men. In the summer of 2014, I first reported on the jilted 24-year-old who started an unlikely social movement with a seething blog post about the behavior of his ex-girlfriend, an obscure game developer. Gamergate! It was so stupid and about nothing and quickly became so scary and about everything. An entire culture of alienated posters and clever scammers cohered around it, around the impulse that something needed to be protected and some people needed to be attacked. What you think doesn’t count very much anymore. Some of these young men were trolls, others neo-Nazis. Some got TV shows. Some got paid out by billionaires. Some made it to the White House. Many wanted media careers. A few stewed for so long in their own resentment and the deeply sad world they created that they broke with reality. Several killed. One committed one of the most horrifying crimes of the 2010s.
The internet is a dark, lonely, terrifying place.
Boo fucking hoo.
Something something blind man describes elephant.
The most important and monumental thing that occurred this decade is that Greta Thernburg had her childhood stolen
Gee, when you trade an initially interesting analysis in for cheap one-sided pot shots at the end, I wonder why people are so distrustful now?
On the internet, everyone can hear you scream.
Rheeeeeee!
It wouldn’t be so bad if we all weren’t forced at gunpoint to browse derpbook and twatter on our cell phones all day.
And it hadn’t brought people closer together.
It had alienated them.
/looks at wife
/looks at closest friends
/notices that they were all met via the internet
And Hats Off to you and SP for making Glibateria a reality. Lots of new friends, some of them in real life are OK, too.
Kidding, of course, the few I’ve met have all been spectacular. Thanks to all TPTB and Glib Life
I’ll second this. Our little sub-gang of villains is now at 14 or so, none of whom I would likely ever met otherwise.
LOL of course.
You’d think these people might have teh minimal historical and societal understanding to grasp that the single most dangerous thing on this planet is a population of alienated, angry young men.
Protip: they aren’t alienated and angry because of the internet, but because of a systematic and intentional attempt to drive them out of society as defective women, toxic masculine rapists, etc.
They are sowing the wind. Not unlike the Chinese, in some ways, whose “one-child” policy has likewise saddled them with millions of young men for whom it is literally impossible to start a family. If we do not reap the whirlwind, it will be a miracle.
You can see it building up in Europe, right how. They’re going to keep it up until they have some real trouble over there in places like Germany. I wonder how the UK leaving the EU is going to impact Germany? They’re already footing the bills for most of the EU, the German people are going to be facing some real confiscatory level taxes in the near future.
Y’all think I am joking when I say we should invade Europe.
Yeah, but Canada is needing some invading. We gotta have priorities.
“https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/study-sexting-common-among-kids-as-young-as-10”
IOW, the more things change, the more they stay the same. If we had cell phones with cameras when I was a kid, well, yeah it would have been the same. Maybe not at 10, but definitely around 12 all we males would have been exchanging our best up-skirt photos of our poor exploited female classmates.
Let’s have some holiday music up in here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBhXONtFk88
Robyn Adele Anderson style.
Moar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGnvjF5z7JY
Nice. Downloaded from Spotify.
Right now my wife is mocking me for having the Christmas Fireplace playing on the living room TV. Heh. Whatevs.
“Jane Lynch has a message for Elizabeth Warren: “Class warfare is ugly.”
So, Warren’s deal is that she wants to be one of those billionaires in wine caves. The difference is that she has no real skills to earn that sort of money, so she’s planning to steal it from tax payers. After all, why would any billionaires miss that 1 cent on a dollar of their 2 cent tax increase when she just happens to wind up with it in her personal account? After all, there is a price to be paid for managing the affairs of the little people.
The new need to differentiate between millionaires and billionaires is very telling. There’s very few billionaires, comparatively, but there’s a lot of millionaires and they’re votes and money are important to any political campaigns. Not to mention, of course, that the cozy older revolutionary play-actors don’t want people looking all that closely at how they themselves are.
The currency has been so devalued that many people in the workforce today need to become millionaires to have a comfortable retirement.
Our number is in 7 figures, and it’s an open question whether it’ll provide enough annual income to be comfortable.
And thanks to government intervention in the marketplace, housing and education have becomes so expensive as to be unattainable to the average person without requiring them to go into massive amounts of debt, but yeah, it’s the billionaires fault.
Definitely… anyone who is not retired now will need a 7 figure retirement account.
“Wheel up the woodchipper”
Well, you heard Comey, some ‘underlings’ made some mistakes. Grease up those bus wheels.
Scarier and scarier.
These dynamics play out in a desperate theater of social media optimization that my colleague Anne Helen Peterson so memorably described in her viral story about millennial burnout. It’s almost always unpaid work, the product of which doesn’t belong to the person who makes it. To be alienated from one’s labor — that rings a bell!
Which brings us to the new economy of freelancers and gig workers, precarious, unprotected, and connected. Hourly workers fry their brains with images no one should ever see — information detoxification — working to meet bizarre and inconsistent standards handed down from a distant authority, and then melt down in filthy bathrooms. Harried subcontracted delivery drivers feel so desperate to meet overnight shipping deadlines they get in deadly crashes. Uber drivers, some of whom sleep in parking lots, have separate bathrooms than Uber corporate staff. These people, it stands to reason, might be alienated. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Meanwhile, the median home price is San Francisco is $1.4 million. This is where the Digital Nation mostly lives, in the most beautiful place in the country, profiting directly or indirectly off our participation in the alienating world they’ve built. Many of these people don’t want their children using the products and networks they build and sell. The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you.
We’re all victims, now. Except, of course for the shadowy cabal of puppetmasters who run the world and bathe in the blood of the innocent.
“the shadowy cabal of puppetmasters who run the world and bathe in the blood of the innocent.”
Look, just leave Hillary alone, she’s suffered enough having had to sit and watch Putin and the bad orange one steal her emperor’s chair.
in the most beautiful place in the country
Can somebody mark me down as a solid Meh on this? It’s a great area from a “there’s a lot of different biomes within a single tank of gas” perspective, but none of those biomes, taken individually, were anywhere close to best In class, even limiting to the US. Redwood forests excepted.
I enjoy reading about how Uber drivers are poor exploited people with no other options slaving away for mere shillings.
My experience with Uber drivers;
“It’s a great way to earn some extra cash and l love talking to people”
“I can make more doing this and work less hours than my old job”
“This keeps me active and is a better use of my time than sitting home on weekend nights”
“I support my mother and disabled father doing this, the opportunities in America are amazing.”
Yeah, I did a lot of Uber when we were in Chicago and I heard similar stories.
the most beautiful place in the country
Oh, fuck off already.
True equality won’t be reached until we all have a government issued house in San Fransisco I guess? I’m good thanks.
Considering that an unlivable shithole in SanFran goes for around 1 million, that will make most of us homeless. But maybe our benevolent betters will build us some ‘Stacks’ to live in.
“This time we’ll build housing projects that don’t instantly become dangerous ghetto’s, you’ll see!”
Look, we gotta have some sort of population control.
California is without a doubt a beautiful state, and SF is (was?) a picturesque city. The problems are all government related. There’s plenty of amazing places in America, there’s just more of them in closer proximity in CA than any other state. It’s truly a shame that the nazis are in charge of it.
My take on California every time I’ve visited was “I can understand why everyone wanted to move here from 1850-1950, after that, not so much.”
That’s not really a comment on the politics, just on the population density. I’m sure the place was like paradise 60 years ago.
Even up to the ’90s. It’s crowded because of the appeal. The crowds, while a problem, are tolerable. The government is not. Still beats most of the rest of the world. We could be in Hong Kong right now. Or we could be Norks, even.
Oh, of course. I’m a borderline misanthrope and prefer to live where I can’t see a neighbor within 500 yards, that’s why California doesn’t appear to me personally.
Believe it or not, most of the state by area is like that. The crowds are clustered in LA, SD and SF. Just like Nevada is huge, yet everyone considers it to be mostly Vegas and Reno.
Yep, I’ve been to Barstow. Unfortunately the really nice parts aren’t the one’s with nobody there. That being said I haven’t had the occasion to explore N. California yet.
The 78 Patriots were the best rushing team in NFL history. Their yardage record will never be broken no matter how many games get added to the season. And the star was the best Guard to ever play.
https://youtu.be/STdtQL6xzuY
I knew what that was before I even looked. For those of us who grew up when they were mostly known as ‘the Patsies,’ Big John Hannah was a point of pride and gave us some respectability. Man, he was fast for a guy that big and he sure as shit liked to hit people.
A song in honor of today (or tomorrow?) from the only Jethro Tull album I ever owned.
Thank you GT!
Good morning Old Man! Sorry to hear about the surgery and I hope recovery is quick.
What a perfect musical selection and – oh look! – what’s that Frank is playing?? A Gibson SG?
Coolest guitar ever.
Make it a great day, everyone! I’ve got ribs to prepare and hockey to watch.
Greta starter pack.
TW: reddit.
Brutal.
“My nice things aren’t the problem, it’s your aspirations to have nice things”
/Every Greta ever
Also; you’re 16 fucking years old Greta, way to old to be plunked down in mommy’s lap. The is definitely some Trevyvon affect going on here; the media would much rather have her be about 11 in the minds of the viewing public.
Not creepy. Even 16yo girls sometimes need their mommies to give them a snuggle, and my kid’s bigger than I am.
Greta’s problem is all the insane adults around her with their hands up her ass.
I didn’t mean it was creepy necessarily, just inappropriate for a public photo op. She’s a young lady, not a little kid. My point is it’s deliberate optics to make her seem younger and therefore more innocent than she really is.
To expand further; we all know that 16 year olds are capable of cunning calculation and manipulation and near-adult levels of thinking. The media would have you believe that Greta’s grandstanding is purely the work of children-born innocence and honesty, which anyone here knows is utter bullshit.
Both true.
However, the cunning in this girl has been trained and she’s like a police dog—smart enough to know how to please her handler and get her treat.
I tend to agree but also believe she’s old enough to have agency in this. Here parents are Commies and she’s a commie, I’m not expecting her to one day wake up and change her opinions when she suddenly becomes self-aware. She’s been groomed, not just trained.
When I was 16, all I wanted was to please my dad (didn’t).
I would have done almost anything to get it. A couple of things crossed my personal line of ethics, but one look of horror would get him to back off.
This business is not up to my personal level of ethics violations.
That said, I do not overestimate the agency of a brainwashed 16yo who wants to please her parents over a situation she has been taught is the Most Ethical Thing Ever.
I don’t believe she has a lick of agency and if she did, she believes she has the moral high ground.
Our view of her and “climate change” would shock and appall her and only prove that we are the dirty filthy evil serfs she thinks we are.
Repeat: She has little agency at all, and even if she did, she wouldn’t buck her parents because she is a zealot.
See this is where I tend to disagree. I’ve long believed that we have very unnaturally extended our concept of childhood through the teen years. Merriweather Lewis managed his families estate from the time he was twelve. Alexander the Great conquered half of the known world in his teens. Does a teenager have total agency, no probably not, but they have to have a healthy measure of it.
If a 16 year old bashes their little siblings brains in is your gut impulse to say “well he’s a kid, he didn’t know any better”?
I think we do kids a great disservice infantilizing them through their teen years. And we wonder why teenagers are surly and difficult during that time in their lives. It’s because they aren’t kids yet we force them to be.
To expand further, when we were an agrarian society it was not uncommon for kids to be finished with their education and working full time on the farm in their early teens. Very little writing from that period talks about kids being terrible teens or incapable of making their own decisions. What I’m getting at is people rise to the level of expectations and our expectations for kids of that age is at a historically unprecedented low.
And to bring it back around to Greta I think the media is playing on the very idea that she’s a kid with no agency (hence portraying her as a child rather than a young woman). A young woman can be challenged and criticized whereas “how dare you speak ill of this innocent little child”
That is not a disagreement. It’s an explanation that makes my point and that I agree with.
I know how teenagers used to be treated. It’s a shame that parents who would like to treat their teenagers like responsible young adults are punished by the system for doing so.
My husband and I are raising teenagers in this environment. Let me tell you. Trying to stem this tide of learned helplessness and infantilization is like standing on the beach and trying to push the waves back.
If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. My son is having issues I don’t want to talk about, but they are … disturbing, all encouraged, cheered on by his peers (I know this because I read his Instagram DMs) and teachers. His issues are not really with us, our opinions, or his home life. In fact, I might have a glimmer of hope that home is his safe space where he gets a refreshing dose of reality that he can sit on like a solid rock.
I can’t home school. It would be a disaster.
If I had to do it all over again, knowing what we are up against (it makes the Satanic craze of the 80s look like a charming sitcom one-episode plot), I would not have children.
Everyone struggles with their identity and place in the world as a teen. It is what that phase of life is for. If your son finds the stability of home a ‘safe space’ that is as good an indication that he will find his way through to a good adulthood as you can hope for.
When I was 16 I had to go to school and didn’t get to lecture adults.
P.S.
Even 51yo girls need their mommies but I can’t sit on her lap.
Ouch.
But that Eames is fucking awesome.
Mies >>> Eames
You know I love you, but that’s just crazy talk. Mies is waiting room furniture.
I really love Eames homes.
Nice, no question, but not at the top of my list. As a Stickley fanboi, I’m partial to this. With the ottoman, of course. Totally different style, true.
Even have a spot picked out for it.
Robber baron paradise. I like it.
One’s cozy, one’s streamlined. I like them both.*
*Don’t like Eames, so I am speaking of midcentury modern in general, particularly Mies, because Mies >>> Eames.
It really, really doesn’t.
Their argument is ultimately an appeal to returning to energy poverty. We see what that’s like in the developing world. It’s primativism that few willingly accede to, and nobody would wish on their children. So to suggest that despite being “one of the lucky ones” she’s still suffering isn’t merely idiotic, it’s evil.
Look, deplorable, that’s YOU returning to energy poverty. Gretel is saving the world, so she still needs that fossil fuel to fly around saving the planet.
she still needs her sailing crew to have that fossil fuel to fly around saving the planet.
One of the stupidest things I have seen is that flying has too much of a carbon footprint for her, so rather than buying two tickets for her to get to and from the US, they bought multiples to fly her crew of sailors for the same trip.
It’s just theater. Neither she, her parents, crew or sponsors actually give a shit about to the environment or consider their actual impact on carbon emissions or anything else for that matter. It’s the pursuit of power and nothing more.
You know Gretel is taking a break, right? Hope we can also survive that.
Just out of curiosity, has any adult (meaning over 18) sued his/her parents for failing to cover them until 26, even if the adult won’t pay the insurance premiums? Coworker was griping about the healthcare costs for his Obamacare children and my thought was, if they aren’t paying, why would you cover them? They are supposed adults now. Hell, my dad wouldn’t sign off on my driver’s license unless I paid towards his increased premiums.
“They are supposed adults now.”
Have you seen what colleges are mostly cranking out these days? 22 year old adult children, 22 going on 3, give me everything I want right now or I’ll whine on the internets. Still living in mum’s basement at 40 complaining that no one wants to hire them.
I don’t really understand how my degree in Patriarchy Repression of LGBT+ Dance Theory hasn’t netted me the same salary as my engineer father, but I’m sure it’s the Patriarchy.
You obviously were not white or male enough or you could have gotten a STEM degree. But because wiminz and colored folk and LGBQTXYX are forbidden in those classes, you know, the Gender Studies course was your last resort.
The currency has been so devalued that many people in the workforce today need to become millionaires to have a comfortable retirement.
Our number is in 7 figures, and it’s an open question whether it’ll provide enough annual income to be comfortable.
When the interest on a million dollar CD is less than you could make wrangling shopping carts in the Walmart parking lot, your “economy” might be a little out of whack.
Considering seven figures is around the lifetime earnings (leaving aside NPV calculations), why wouldn’t you need about the same amount of money for a similar period of time?
I could live pretty comfortably for the next 10 years on a million dollars. After that, I guess I’ll be in line for the Walmart greeter job.
Average market return in 7% so there’s 70K a year. Minimum SS at age 62 will probably be at least 20K if you’ve managed to amass a million, so there’s 90K at 62. Hopefully you have equity in your home as well. Before you go to work at Walmart, just remember that there is always pimpin and dealin.
“pimpin and dealin.”
I might try gigalo if there’s any rich chicks into old dudes.
Hope you have a speedy recovery OMWC. Thanks for the Zappa!
I had some surgery this week and am in recovery.
Get well soon!
On Monday, Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in a written statement that raising the federal tobacco age to 21 without also prohibiting flavored e-cigarettes will not stop the youth e-cigarette epidemic.
Did I misread that CNN article? This is the closest I could find to ORANGEMANBAD and it came at the end of the article.
Eastwood’s gloss on the story of Richard Jewell has a quasi-paranoid libertarianism—you can’t trust what you read in the papers, and you can’t trust the agents of the state.
So Eastwood got it right?
I think that reviewer was banking on the likelihood of readers being reflexively “libertarian? eeewwwww”, so I can see how it plays to her intended audience.
I hate to break it to them, but banning “flavors” isn’t going to “stop the youth e-cigarette ‘epidemic'” either.
Off it goes! Wendy is have the right foot taken right now, it’s for the best at this point,
I’m both happy and sad for you and Wendy. ❤️
Good. I suspect that foot is at risk for sepsis, which is one scary infection.
Sending love to both of you, for whatever it’s worth.
Thoughts and Prayers to the drives a kia family.
Sorry, best wishes.
Bob, I’m someone you only know electronically, but I love you, and by extension Wendy, like family and hope this all works out. Your strength, courage, and fortitude is inspiring.
Good luck to Wendy and you, Pardner. Keep us informed of the progress.
Best wishes to you both!
Explain this to me. So the FISA court is pissed off (supposedly) at the actions of Comey’s FBI in their FISA warrant. The people who are seeking the FISA warrant are also supposed to provide exculpatory evidence? In what world would that system work?
*And yes, prosecutors are supposed to provide exculpatory evidence IIRC, but we’re talking a secret court with FISA.
Warrants are routinely issued “secretly” by grand juries, and likely by courts as well. Why we need a sooper-secret court that is supposed to ride herd on agencies that have repeatedly proven they can’t be trusted is a mystery to me.
The same reason we need libraries and book sellers reporting what people read, medical personnel reporting ‘warning signs’, NSA recording every communication on Earth, and children to never be unattended for a moment. We are children. In a free society kids get hurt sometimes, and some die. In a free society assholes who want to commit murder cannot be arrested until they go out and do something. That means they will sometimes succeed. Being a grown up means understanding and accepting that life is imperfect, that bad things will happen, and that everything has a cost. Children get to believe that Santa brings you stuff for existing and that Mommy and Daddy can make the scary stuff go away. If you look at what people say and what it means it is obvious, we are children who never grew up. We have been materially successful enough that we got rid of the struggles that bring maturity and this is the result. It’s a self correcting problem, but the correction is going to flat suck.
DING! DING! FUCKING DING! ^^^^^^^
Why does it seem so obvious to me that the vast majority of the problems in our society are the result of nothing more than immaturity? Modern liberalism could easily be classified as a mental disorder whose central feature is being trapped in the mindset of the average ~14 year old.
Another way of analyzing this, however, is to claim that almost all of society’s problems can be traced to bad parenting. Except that we have them until they’re 6… and then the State gets them for the next 12 years for the majority of their waking hours.
So what really is the problem again? Yes, kids, see upthread. It is as Mojeaux notes; the public education system needs to go. Now. Not later. It is the single most important piece of the govt machinery that needs to be broken.
In what world would that system work?
A just one? (not sure if you are being snarky)
I’m saying they need to allow someone on the other side to be present to keep these people from going rogue.
“the FISA court is pissed off”
Well, they failed to get rid of orange bad man, so…
The people who are seeking the FISA warrant are also supposed to provide exculpatory evidence? In what world would that system work?
“The Court requires an apology.”
“Gosh, your Honor, we’re really really sorry.”
“Okay. That’s better. Keep up the good work.”
Swampies gonna swamp.
Considering seven figures is around the lifetime earnings (leaving aside NPV calculations), why wouldn’t you need about the same amount of money for a similar period of time?
My point there was that savers are getting brutally fucked by our betters at the Federal reserve.
****
Average market return in 7%
Sure it is.
*looks at brokerage account, laughs bitterly*
“My point there was that savers are getting brutally fucked by our betters at the Federal reserve.”
I figure that all I have to do is wait for negative lending rates and then buy a 5 million dollar home. You gotta think ahead…
Barenaked grifting
The fight over whether WinCo Foods can come to Bozeman isn’t over.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Local-4 Union and several Bozeman store workers have appealed to the Montana Supreme Court in an effort to prevent the grocery chain from building in Bozeman.
The appeal, filed this week, picks up a complaint filed in Gallatin County District Court in early 2019 against the city of Bozeman for approving the store’s plans to build just west of 19th Avenue, close to Target. A judge dismissed the case in October.
——-
The initial complaint claimed WinCo would further clog traffic for commuters and risk jobs at other grocery stores in Bozeman. It also alleged Bozeman violated the public’s right to offer feedback on the development.
——-
WinCo has tried to get to Bozeman for roughly four years.
In 2016, WinCo dropped plans to open a Bozeman store over issues with the city’s building requirements.
It tried again a year later with new designs for a 75,000-square-foot building with tin-panel siding paired with red and stained-wood accents that passed the city’s review.
Union members appealed the Bozeman City Commission’s approval of the WinCo project in November 2018. Their appeal arrived after the end of Bozeman’s public comment period for the plans. Commissioners heard arguments against the project at the November meeting and ultimately upheld their approval.
At that time, WinCo representatives said the pushback was an effort to ward off competition.
Dog in the manger politics. Nobody needs that many grocery stores. We know exactly how many are needed, and how much the workers should be paid. The union and “workers” are filing suit. I wonder what the corporate guys at Albertson’s and Rosauers are doing behind the scenes.
I like how they say another store will reduce the number of jobs.
Fuck the unions. Fuck them, one and all.