“This is Lisa Fletcher reporting from Capitol Hill where there have been reports of sewer explosions and of giant sewer rats emerging from toilets. DC Water and Sewer Authority is on the scene, and here we see a DC Fire and EMS ambulance leaving leaving the Dirksen Senate Office Building. We don’t know who or to where because of patient privacy laws, but we have reason to believe it isn’t life threatening.”
“Thanks, Lisa, and now to a live press conference at City Hall with Mayor Bowser and DC Water and Sewer Authority director Gadis.”
§
The staff at Le Diplomate were shocked when their normally-punctual senator didn’t show for her standing Friday evening reservation. The hostess then somehow managed to mention that to Mr. and Mrs. EJ Dionne of The Washington Post as she was seating them. On Monday a messenger brought her two orchestra-level Orange Section seats to the matinee performance of “Avenue Q” at The Kennedy Center.
§
Imelda Ramos checked the calendar for the days appointments. “Senator K” was written in big letters for the 9:30 slot. She always took care of the senator herself, as much for the prestige as to avoid the complaints from the girls. She made sure Maria the cleanup girl parked in the spot just outside the front door so she could move when the senator arrived. Hopefully the senator was having a good day. If it were anyone else, Imelda would have fired her as a customer, but in DC a senator was a rare prize and having her as a regular drove up business.
Nine twenty arrived and Imelda sent Maria out to wait in her car. The senator was usually punctual, and always had someone call if she were delayed or had to reschedule. Nine forty-five came and went. At eleven she waved Maria back inside. When Judy Woodruff came in, Imelda mentioned that the senator was no-show today and how unlike her that was.
“Your daughter is in college, right? Have her call my office about an internship.
§
Jayne Sandman’s Saturday evening soiree was as full of awkward groping as a teen party with no parents. Those who had heard the rumor were trying to make sure everyone else knew that they were in the know. Yet, nobody wanted to be the first to just blurt it out like a yokel from Manassas or Frederick. Many hints were dropped about a probable forthcoming announcement from a Senator from flyover country.
§
On Sunday morning the Tim Russert Memorial TV Studio at the National Press Building was abuzz with rumors that Amy Klobuchar was missing. Tasha the makeup artist whispered that to Kamala Harris while she was getting her ready for her appearance on “Meet the Press.” Fortunately she had time to text her campaign manager. “AmyK disappeared from DC. Suspect she’s holed up with declaration imminent. Be ready.”
“You know, I’ve always wanted to go on a campaign tour as like someone’s personal makeup and hair girl.”
Credit: Mythical Libertarian Woman
He hadn’t heard her come in. It had been two nights and he’d been baching it. He’d assumed that she’d been holed up in her ratty little apartment on Capitol Hill; her own fortress of solitude. He rustled the law student’s paper ostentatiously. Nothing. One of The Iron Rules was: No papers, bills or briefs (ha, ha) in bed. She must want something very badly, and there were few things for which she needed his participation or assent. He decided to troll harder.
“Jenkins in my Con Law class argues that the Second means an individual right to keep and bear arms.” That should get her going.
“Oh,” she responded, shrugging off her satin peignoir to reveal a sheer babydoll nightie with nothing on underneath. “I’ll bare more than that…”
She was going to run for president, he thought. Because it wasn’t his birthday where he got a “blowjob” which was really just her taking his cockhead into her mouth for five seconds of unconvincing moaning, then giving him a handy; their anniversary where they had perfunctory sex recreating their wedding night; or Valentine’s Day where they awkwardly and often painfully enacted the trendy eroticism of the moment, as defined by Cosmopolitan and Teen Vogue.
She let the peignoir drop do the floor and simultaneously crouched down and hiked up the babydoll to place first her left knee on the bed, then her right. Her pendulous, teardrop shaped breasts swayed in rhythm with her movement as she crawled towards him on her hands and knees. She had a predatory look in her eyes which he had never seen before. Her eyes were fixed upon his crotch.
By now she had reached him and stopped. She was on all fours with her shoulders lowered and her head tilted up to look him in the eye. She licked her lips awkwardly yet greedily.
“Who are you,” he asked, reflexively drawing up his knees to protect his manhood.
“I am your wife.”
He woke up the next morning with her tightly snuggled in as the little spoon. Usually she was on her side of the bed like a sarcophagal statue of a Roman matron in repose.
Her eyes opened and blinked and her tongue darted out. “Good morning, Dear. Shall I make breakfast?” Without waiting for an answer she slithered off the bed and put on the peignoir and headed downstairs.
Breakfast was coffee, bagels and lox. She sipped at a single cup of black coffee, picked at a bagel, but devoured the fish. He decided to try his luck and groped her from behind when she was bent over the sink, something she hated. Surprisingly, nothing was thrown or stabbed.
“You really should go to the cabin, you know…”
“What? Are you displeased with me?”
“No, but I know you’re planning to announce and you need to be ‘found’ back in Minnesota so you can credibly claim to have been on retreat. Doris will see you and then call Ollie who will call the press and get his fifteen minutes as ‘Rural Sheriff Finds Missing Senator.’ I’ll wrap up here and fly out to meet you.”
“You are the best, hon.”
“This is Lisa Fletcher reporting from Capitol Hill where there have been reports of sewer explosions and of giant sewer rats emerging from toilets.”
So, Tuesday?
So far, the doppelgänger Klobuchar seems like an upgrade.
How could it be worse?
Great job, Tonio! Hilarious!
Well it IS election day.
Valentine’s Day where they awkwardly and often painfully enacted the trendy eroticism of the moment, as defined by Cosmopolitan and Teen Vogue
People get hurt recreating pornos, and those are with actual humans. I’d hate to think of the injuries that the ravings of one time teen mags could lead to.
OT: RIP Vonda Mcintyre. Another name from my childhood gone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vonda_N._McIntyre
Back in the early (funny) days of Cracked.com I remember they had a column that was X number of sex tips from Cosmo that can send you to the hospital. Not Googling it at work to provide a link though.
Are we sure Cracked isn’t straight reporting and Cosmo is satire? Maybe that’s where all of the humor went when it bled out of Cracked.
Never heard of her, to my shame. Sounds like the broad had an interesting life. RIP
+1 inverted 69
RIP, though I was just reflecting the other day on Dreamsnake; I read it in elementary school and I remember thinking “this isn’t science fiction”.
Formatting comment: Is there supposed to be something next to or in place of some of the section marks? There are two pictures visible s I look at thin with Chrome.
Also, I love these.
They look like the placeholders you get when your system can’t display a certain font/character combo.
Originally I put in fancy section symbols from (I think) Wingdings that WP no like; I then reverted to standard section symbols. Section symbols, instead of pictures throughout, are me being lazy.
I cant say who my favorite author is but I can say I have never seen an article here that I didn’t like. Good job Tonio. More please.
I am probably the worst of the lot so y’all should get busy and make more contributions or I will.
Oh, there will be moar.
OT: Lefty cannibalism.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2019/04/theres-reason-that-after-describing.html
Good stuff Tonio.
How come the ladies don’t just identify as men for the 27% increase in pay and all the other “privileges?”
Yep.
More blue-on-blue.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/protesters-face-off-in-dueling-rallies-over-kim-foxxs-handling-of-jussie-smollett-case/
I hate everyone involved.
Poor Jussie, always having to wrestle with the demons in his mind.
Popcorn sales are skyrocketing.
That idea, that being a woman is a thing you “feel” and isn’t a reflection of your biology, and therefore can be defined in any way you so choose, continues to have very, very interesting ramifications. One implication could be that if there’s no “right” or “wrong” way to be a woman, if it all comes down to what you feel a woman is and whether or not you are one, then you can’t very well be discriminated against for being a woman since there are no distinct qualities that make you a woman other than you’re own self-perception. If the term “woman” means whatever you want it to mean, then it doesn’t have objective meaning, which is another way of saying that it doesn’t exist outside of your own mind. You can’t very well be discriminated against by a quality that no one else can perceive or define, can you?
You can’t very well be discriminated against by a quality that no one else can perceive or define, can you?
*doesn’t bother looking for one the articles promoting pedophiles as oppressed because “you can’t help what you feel” *
Of course they were going to paint themselves into a corner. Spouting gibberish makes it inevitable.
“If the Olympic Committee responds by getting rid of the men/female categories, the fur will really be flying, as the “real” men will clean the clocks of the women and all the trannies.
Biology is Destiny.
Nature–and Reality—will not be mocked.”
Pretty much that.
Interview on Friday. Structural framing company. Oh jeez.
Wait, so you’re interviewing with Andrew McCabe?
Or Eliot Spitzer’s latest prostitution payment system?
Or the drug enforcement unit of the local PD?
It was good, but…No staplers thrown at staffers? Kinda a ripoff.
Yeah, and no hair combs as eating utensils.
And I don’t see how Amy Klobuchar is an attractive woman.
Gravity?
Whodathunk that an industry reliant on exposure and foot-traffic would be pissed off by attempts to suppress exposure and foot-traffic?
https://apnews.com/ab196e9ddae648cbad8d3773e1b9314c
New Puritans.
The deputy mayor’s name really makes that story.
What a Kock blocker.
sex workers’ union
Pass.
Aside: I fucking hate the term “sex worker”; it’s meaningless and vague. If there’s really nothing to be ashamed of, then use the proper term, whether that be “prostitute”, “stripper”, “porn actor”, whatever.
Just more mutilation of the English language into nonsensical garbage.
Wife Assistant
Marital Aide?
-1 Bertha has seniority
Union rules dictate that the hooker with the most seniority gets first pick of customers.
That’s not how it works in Amsterdam.
A: I wouldn’t know.
B: The joke is based on applying the way other unions work to the industry in question, and is more a mockery of those other unions who assign work to people not because they’d be best at it, but because they haven’t been driven off in dusgust.
A: hard to be funny when you don’t know the topic at hand.
B: a very old and worn out joke.
Just like the senior prostitute.
Look, I’m required to use the union-approved joke book when on the clock.
That one works.
When the sex workers become part of the teamsters it’ll bethe damn work rules that would ruin it.
“Get off of me. It’s time for my break.”
“That operation is only supposed to take 45 seconds. ”
“I can’t do that unless you supply knee pads.”
“$200 for me and $200 for the shop steward who must be present at all times. Don’t worry about privacy, he’s usually asleep anyway.”
But the alternatives.. do you really want a scab prositute?
But they wouldn’t have scabs if they had a union health plan.
Depends on the amount of overtime you work.
There were a lot of media stories that claimed the sex workers wanted something to be done.
The people actually selling their services, or “Advocates” for them who were self-appointed and likely never spoke to any of the people for whom they purport to “advocate”?
I’m not sure I like the implications of your line of questions here. It’s like you’re suggesting that people, female sex workers no less, can know and act in their own best interests.
Female? Look buddy, you get the union person who is next in line, they can’t discriminate by gender nor age.
If it’s too congested, they can just make it a toll road and keep upping the price of entry until things thin out.
Also, something interesting from the article:
they can just make it a toll road and keep upping the price of entry until things thin out.
Not really possible.
As I recall, you take the train to central station and the red light district is a ten minute walk away.
No one drives down there at night. It’s all foot traffic from the main roads with restaurants and shopping to the alleys that constitute the red light district.
The Wise Purpose of the Electoral College
There are many today who argue that the Electoral College ought to be relegated to a museum with other quaint relics of the past. They argue that it is anti-democratic and has no legitimate place in our government today.
In part, I agree. It is anti-democratic. That is what it was supposed to be.
The purpose of the Constitution, according to the Declaration of Independence, is to “secure” the unalienable rights of the people. That is all our national government was supposed to do: protect and preserve us in our lives, our liberty, and our property. To do this, the Founders gave us a republic, not a democracy. They understood that in a democracy, eventually, the people can gradually be taught to accept the idea that it is perfectly legal — and therefore just — to put their neighbor’s unalienable rights to a popular vote, and that this will incrementally erode and destroy our right to life, to liberty, and to property. The Founders sought to guard against this as they debated the principles they would incorporate in the Constitution. There was purpose in the design of the Electoral College. It was created to be part of the bulwark they erected to protect our unalienable rights from direct democratic usurpation. But this is precisely why it is held in such contempt by many. Those who inveigh against the Electoral College usually argue that it is an impediment to pure principles of “one man, one vote.”
And indeed, it is.
The object of our constitutional republic is not to make everyone’s voice exactly equal, but rather to make everyone’s unalienable rights equally secure. The legitimate concerns and even the rights of large segments of the citizens of our nation could easily be ignored and even trampled upon by the largest cities of the nation. And don’t think ambitious and unscrupulous politicians wouldn’t play that situation like a fiddle.
Just in terms of principle, democracy versus a republic, consider a sports analogy. Who wins a baseball game? Answer: The team that scores the most runs. Who wins the World Series? Answer: The team that wins the most games.
Baseball is suddenly relevant and useful. Even if you score more overall runs in the world series , you may not win the world series.
If the electoral college was producing the election results team blue wanted, there’d be a whole lot less attention paid to the matter.
^^This.
The proper rules are the ones that keep them in power. That can change on an hourly basis.
Hourly? I mean, they actually seem capable of believing two completely contradictory positions at once. Just get one scream about the electoral college and then ask them what they’d think about the sabotaging of the Brexit.
Excellent example. It’s not the principle of governance or representation they care about, it’s the results. They don’t care how they get there, so long as they get there.
Every single idea they come up with, like government ran healthcare and all the green deal baloney is just pure lust for power. All of that is of no intent to help anyone, just to grab more power.
It’s something they constantly do. They have no real principles, only lust for power. They were just going on about Trump threatening our very dear and important Constitution. Right after they just said it’s old and outdated and should be replaced. They’ll argue that it’s perfectly fine if the USA gets a billion new immigrants and at the same time argue that the population of the entire world should be 500 million or less in order to save the planet.
That’s a given.
I don’t even know why they keep bringing up. It’s not something that can possibly be achieved. Where are they going to get enough states to go along with that? Waste of air to even talk about it. They’re just going to have to stick to mass illegal immigration to turn enough states blue forever, and then it won’t matter.
They’re working on an end run. The National Popular Vote movement will give the electoral votes of the member states to the candidate who wins the national popular vote.
I’m not convinced that the Stupid Party won’t start advocating for it as well as a way to gain power for themselves. Or deliver really awesome concession speeches.
I can’t wait for CA, NY, and IL to give all of their electorial votes to Trump.
That would be epic.
Another reason the left hates the electoral college is that it cant really be rigged.
Indeed, it acts as a nice firewall against voter fraud – stuff the ballot boxes all you like in Chicago, it won’t change the number of electoral votes.
Sure it can. Put in the stupid “all candidates in the primary, top two have run-off” scam. California does this to ensure the race is between a Dem and a Dem.
No superdelegates.
And the ME/NE plan is even more of an anti-fraud measure. If they want to change the EC to force every state into that plan, I support them.
I ballot stuffer in Chicago can only effect 3 EC votes, not the entire state of Illinois.
national popular vote
No such vote exists and
to speak of one is treasonno candidate ever wins more than a plurality. What the states pushing this are saying is that their state boundaries and the will of their citizens do not matter.They said that loud and clear when they tried to overturn the presidential election. You dumbasses can vote but it only counts if you vote for who we tell you to vote for.
The residents of those states ought to be flogging, tarring, feathering, and running their leaders out on a rail.
They always play the long game. Throw the idea out there and keep flogging it for a couple of generations if they must. After a while it doesnt seem so crazy in the public’s mind.
+1 Overton window
TBF if my whole life I had been taught a lie and within 20 years the like is shown for what it is and I was on the loosing end, I’d be upset.
Of course I’d be upset that I had been lied to…
They’re just channeling their ancestors. It was the southern slave states that wanted the President to be elected by popular majority vote.
Fuck democracy. Long live the Republic.
Actually, its not. Everyone still gets one vote. And nobody ever has a vote outside of their jurisdiction. Its not contrary to one man, one vote for Pennsylvania to say that New Yorkers can’t vote in their state elections.
I think he’s barking up the wrong tree on the whole high-minded “this prevents your rights from being put to a popular vote.” No, it doesn’t. Your rights are never, and never will be, put to a (national) popular vote because we don’t have national referenda.
The EC is there, I believe, because the Founders had just seceded from a country that tried to rule them from afar, with a legislature and executive controlled by, essentially, a single city (London). They wanted to keep their new country from splitting apart because some regions were being ruled from afar. Without the EC, it has always been the case that a handful of cities would control a national popular vote; the list of cities has changed, but I don’t that fact ever has. Allow a national popular vote, and you feed the (justified?) belief in much of the country that they are effectively disenfranchised.
Disenfranchised people start revolutions. The Founders knew that, because that is exactly what they did, and what they wanted to prevent in their new country.
Talk until your head falls off and you will never convince the left of this plain fact.
Joy. I’ve been added to the on call rotation in my company. I learned about this when a coworker mentioned it to me (previously I was not part of the rotation, as I’m on call for a large client all the time). So I sent a couple of questions to my manager, who said they would look into it and get back to me by next week. Which would be nice, but I’m secondary on call now, and supposed to be primary on call starting Friday. This has now started a chain of e-mails that’s gone up three levels of management now to get some pretty basic questions answered (like, do I need to tell someone if there’s travel time during my on call rotation).
Are you still on call all of the time for your client or is shared? What happens if your client needs you while you’re responding to the other rotation’s call?
The client is supposed to get priority. From my understanding, they’re paying my salary (with a healthy bonus for the company I work for I’m sure). I’m told that being called is supposed to be rare (and it appears it has gotten rarer since we have people of my same position on staff 24/7 now). I’m just wondering why the hell this keeps getting passed up the management chain. The questions I asked aren’t that difficult, nor did I complain about being put in the rotation (although I wish I had been at least notified before being put in the rotation).
Well good luck. Hopefully it’s just the on call rotation and doesn’t migrate to backfilling for vacations and such. Maybe start feeling out the client to see how they stand about bringing you in house?
The client is in the process of cutting staff and shifting more things to external contractors, so being brought in house isn’t likely at this point. At least the pay is still good, and the on call rotation doesn’t seem to onerous (2 weeks about every three months or so). We’ll see how the annual pay increase for me goes to see if it’s time to start looking for another job/position. My annual review was good (those happen about 6 months before the annual pay increases), and my last bonus was just under 10% for the quarter (which I was told was the maximum when I was hired on). I didn’t take this position expecting a long term role, but to use it as stepping stone on to a better job.
Senior VP: “I don’t give a shit as long as someone picks up the fucking phone. Why am I involved in this?”
No kidding:
“I pay you people to do shit like sort out call without fucking it up. Are you telling me I need to do that now? Because if you are, I have to ask myself, why the hell am I paying you?
This guy was outside the call rotation for a reason, right? Has that reason changed? No, we still have this client that we wanted him reserved for. Was it a bad reason? Do we we no longer want someone reserved for this client? Has anyone told the client? No?
Why are you even here? I have an appointment with my, err, personal therapist in a few minutes. I don’t want to hear about this again, from you, an employee, or any of our clients. Any questions? I didn’t think so.”
And with that, RC was off in a flash for his daily Asian massage.
Actual conversation from a week ago:
RC: “Why did you call the ethics committee for this patient?”
Manager: [rambling, roundabout answer]
RC: “When you say it out loud, does it still sound like a good reason?”
Manager: “Not really.”
Wait, the manager actually admitted it?
He really didn’t have a choice. We had already arrived at the conclusion that the ethics committee shouldn’t have been called. This was more of the final nail in the coffin; the correct answer was “I was trying to pass the buck, and started an epic clusterfuck. Won’t happen again.” But, he wasn’t ready or able to admit he made a mistake, hence, the above exchange.
Also SVP: “Why the fuck did you do it that way? You should’ve consulted me before rolling that change out!”
The only part I miss about being on-call was the hefty on-call bonus for the week.
No bonus that I’m aware of (but your willingness to help out weighs for the quarterly bonuses and merit increases).
What is a bonus?
I am at on-call every 3rd week now, as we have had a few team members leave. It should be back up to 4 in May, which isn’t too bad.
I’m always on call. I mean it doesn’t happen too often, but it can happen at any given moment. And the only way I’m ignoring it is if I’m in a situation like I was once where we were out all day riding dune buggies through the Atlantic rain forest in NE Brazil, because there was no cell phone reception. Otherwise, I take the call.
I spent about 12 years that way, It wasn’t very often, and one of my clients was very polite, they would wait until 8 AM when they found a problem in the morning.
I burnt out on it though.
I did ~10 years like that. It was rare to get the call in the middle of the night, but it did happen.
Same, but the fact that it MIGHT happen and I needed to know where the phone was, was annoying. Now I have to pay attention to my work phone for 2 weeks per rotation, and barely that when I am secondary.
The new company hasn’t provided a work cell phone. I’m waiting for them to ask me to install work software on it and get irritated when I explain that I don’t install personal software on work machines, and don’t install work software on personal machine.
I never get any in the middle of the night because I don’t take calls from end users, who might be people out of my time zone of course. But I have gotten them on Sunday and just last week took one on a day I was officially on vacation. It’s rare enough I don’t even consider it a problem. I am the person ultimately responsible for those apps, so it’s just the way it is.
Oh, sure, I’m always on-call in that sense – if things are bad enough, they’ll call me. I had to pull over on the side of the road in Maine a couple years ago while on vacation, because things were in a truly bad state.
Interesting segment on Tucker last night. Some dude made a short film interviewing proponents of segregation. He asked college students if they supported black-only graduation ceremonies. He got enthusiastic endorsements from students of all demographics and the usual gibberish justifying it.
Then the guy goes into a black majority part of town and asked them. He got a lot of angry “are you fucking crazy?”, “We got rid of that racist horseshit fifty years ago and at a high cost. Why would anyone want to bring that back?”
Then he goes and interviews a KKK leader. Of course the KKK guy thought it was a fantastic idea. His wife even broke down in tears of joy at the possibility.
How does a person’s mind become so enslaved? Demoralization is the perfect word for it.
Some people are calling it post-modernism. I think it’s just he same old commie bullshit. The left, they’re a death cult hellbent on destruction of everything of any value. All because they’re a bunch of deranged envious malcontents. I really don’t think there is a better word to describe them than malcontents. If they can’t enjoy life, why should anyone else be able to?
There’s a quote out there on propaganda that i can’t find at the moment. It’s something to the effect of “Get a man to knowingly repeat a lie and you have captured his soul.”
But I did find this Stalin gem which I had never heard before:
“Social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism…. These organizations (ie Fascism and social democracy) are not antipodes, they are twins.”
I like the Dalrymple quote:
Yuri Bezmenov said exactly the same thing. See TOS and what got them down the proggie rabbit hole.
Wife: They dont believe any of that shit, they are just signaling. They dont even know what they are saying. The threat of being ostracized is horrible to a college student.
Me: It didn’t bother me.
Wife: Everybody isnt you. Now let me watch Perry Mason.
I think I just got told to shut up. Heh.
Government hacks who just forced on their subjects a five-cent fee on fucking paper bags just got fat pay raises. But there’s totally nothing to see here, move along citizen.
This is more or less what I was getting at in my #12 comment. How do these people keep getting elected? It’s not like they try very hard to hide their corruption. Who votes for them? Why? Why do so many Blacks and Jews vote for leftists? The Democrats are the party of Jim Crow, segregation and lynchings FFS. They talk just as badly about the Jews, yet both of those demographics support the party. It’s insane.
Because they’re the party of [even more] free shit and easy answers, aided by a sympathetic media and schools.
I think the fondness/tolerance of Blacks (and, to a lesser(?) extent, Hispanics) for flagrantly corrupt and even epically inept politicians is almost a protest vote and/or a way of sticking it to the system. From their perspective, the system is already busted and chock full of politicians working against their interests and for the interests of the people keeping them down. Why not put somebody in there who shows the whole thing up for what it is?
To some extent it is. I’ve had this discussion before. “Whitey got theirs, we’re gonna get a taste too.”
It’s always most noticeable in the cities that have been corrupt for decades.
Same thing with revolutions. The American Revolution and the founding fathers, particularly Washington, were an anomaly.
The Democrats have been in 100% control of Baltimore City for at least the past 50 years and they just keep getting voted back in by overwhelming numbers. Despite the fact that the city has lost over 40% of it’s population in the past few decades. The highest taxes in the state, the worst roads and highest crime rate, not only in the state, but in the entire fucking world. Unreal.
My son was pointing out all of the rainbow pride flags in Baltimore last time we were there.
I said to him “If they really wanted to show their support for an outgroup, they’d put up a Trump sign. That would be taking a real risk in this city.”
I guarantee the LGBT population in Baltimore is larger than the registered Republican one.
FDR won the support of the Jews for the democrat party when he sent the transports to Europe to rescue the refugees.
I briefly described this conversation to my wife. She just looked at me and said
“You can lead a horse to water but you cant make him think.”
You will note from my link below that the five cent fee (which they totally “don’t want to collect”) is supposed to go to a fund to give out free cloth bags to the poors and assorted others who are at the top of the hierarchy. You might object that, if nobody buys the paper bags – and who would, because they’re shit in a city where most people don’t have a car – then how are they gonna afford to give out any cloth bags?!
You really can’t make this shit up.
It really drives me into a spittle-flecked rage. My corporate task-masters at the Pause & Purchase had a perfectly elegant free-market solution in place. For each bag a customer brought from home, a dime would be deducted from their grocery bill. Those who chose to use the store provided bags were free to do so but did receive a discount. Now, NY, in their infinite wisdom, has seen fit to mandate that 5¢ be collected for every store bag used and to incentivize cooperation from the grocers, the grocers get to pocket the fees.
Yep, payoff to grocers and hobble their competitors so no one can undercut one another.
can anyone provide a link to the actual story re NY bag fines?
Here. Note that plan has changed. The money now goes to the state (and it’s a fee on paper bags – plastic is now banned). That was Cuomo’s objection with the original plan to make the money go to store owners.
It’s time to begin mulching. Find the woodchippers.
Bonus: now I get to pay for plastic bags I need for things I used to recycle the store bags for. Thanks, Cuomo!
This is why I wanted more details, I hadn’t heard about the state-wide ban as such. And it really is pissing me off. I need those bags, even after I get the food home.
Christ. Good thing the peasants are mostly disarmed.
Today my wife asked me to turn on my scanner because of some commotion at her office. Whatever the commotion was turned out to be a nothing-burger but they got to go all police state of course.
Anyways, after an hour of listening to my scanner, all I got were the local public works channels, and I think rural fire dispatch. City cops and county sheriff were silent.
I’m guessing both police agencies changed to digital radios since the last time I turned it on during a big summer storm.
Since they have real people out and about in the countryside, I figure they are a fairly reliable real-time source of info about where a storm happens to be.
I’m sure there’s at least one of you out there that knows about everything there is to know about radio.
My initial looking about for solutions tells me I need a considerably more costly scanner to have any hope, assuming they aren’t also encrypting their transmissions (small town so I’d expect not)
Or am I just better off finding out what frequency local amateur storm spotters are using if I want the closest to local real-time storm info?
It will depend on how they got the funds for their new systems. A lot of podunk towns got encrypted radio systems under Homeland Security grants, as if Muhammad were going to attempt to blow up the sugar beet warehouse.
Attacking the strategic sugar reserves of the US would probably get more attention than a few occupied towers.
I don’t even know what a sugar beet is. I tried beets once and they were fucking awful and I’m never eating that awful shit again. Muhammed the camel fucker can have all of them, blech!
20% of the real sugar you get on the market comes from sugar beets instead of cane. You’ve eaten plenty of it already.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s encrypted. I just have a simple scanner (for railfanning, haven’t used it in a long while either) but a buddy was into it, got his scanner set up and built by some service, and was into listening to all traffic. Both the municipal police departments and sheriff’s office switched over about 5 years ago which ended that, and they were trunked before. There’s a lot of pressure to put everyone on interoperable radios, combined with normal lifecycle upgrades, makes that likely.
Might browse through something like https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Encrypted_Agencies
I’ve looked at radioreference and the best I can see is they are using P25 mode, but nothing to indicate encryption.
They do seem to participate in some state wide, and/or multi-county Interoperable sort of system, but no indication of encryption there either
I started playing Elder Scrolls Online because it’s free to play right now. I’m not sure how to describe it, but the game is weird. It feels very awkward. The only weapon I’ve tried so far is a bow and it’s just so awkward feeling. I was loaded up with inventory within 10 minutes of starting to play, there is loot everywhere. Not complaining about that, but the feel of the game is very strange, it’s nothing at all like Skyrim.
Why the hell am I drinking Natty Bo?
“The only thing anyone inherits by right of birth in the
Soviet UnionBaltimore is congenital idiocy.”Crusader Kings II is on Steam sale for $9.99. Anyone play it? Is it worth picking up?
“the most outrageous thing that you’ve gotten away with as a white person that you know damn well a black or brown person would have never gotten away with?”
I had these two Irish guys that I worked with pretend to beat me up late one night so I could try to elicit sympathy, stir up some racial hatred and get some money out of it.
That reminds me, your check bounced.
Ha! Always pay by check so you have a record.
Damn meant to post that on the new thread.
the most outrageous thing that you’ve gotten away with as a white person that you know damn well a black or brown person would have never gotten away with?
Nothing. It helps, of course, to not do outrageous things that you need to “get away with”.
I’m late to the party.
I like this. Nice job Tonio!