Its hump day. I can tell because I been humpin’ all over the place trying to get work done. Come on, cocktail hour!
Damn. Nobody beats Alabama Woman in her kitchen.
When vegetarians turn into butchers (no this is not about the Earth Day founder guy)
Oh man, I eagerly await all the news outlets abasing themselves for misgendering a murdered trans-man
This guy is about to be unpersoned
I think I like this song.
“They can have my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers,” the hat said, turning from the TV in disgust.
“You don’t have fingers,” the hair replied.
“I have fingers,” Donald mumbled.
“I mean, just look at this,” the hat said, gesturing to the TV awkwardly. “Is there no one thin in Ohio? They all look like tattooed manatees.”
The hair ruffled the newspaper he was reading and faked a hacking cough.
“What?” the hat asked. “Look at the TV.”
“Swing state,” the hair said, cutting his eyes toward the TV.
“I know it’s a swing state,” the hat said hotly.
“I knew a girl from Ohio once,” Donald said. “She gave great head.”
“That’s nice,” the hair said.
“Big mouth,” Donald said. “Could fit the whole thing in there, including the balls. It was amazing.”
“OK, Donald,” the hat said.
“No gag reflex. Just tremendous. Starred in that TV show about cops.”
“Well that narrows it down,” the hat said.
“Is that from a song?” Donald asked the frightened social secretary who stood frozen in the Oval Office. “I knew a girl from Ohio once / She gave great head,” he sang tunelessly. “Neil Young, maybe?”
“Young sang a song about Ohio, but there wasn’t anything about getting head in it that I remember,” the hair said.
“All songs should be about getting head,” the hat said gruffly.
The secretary stared at the hat and the hair on the desk for a little too long.
“Uh, I think we got a live one,” the hat said.
“Then shut up,” the hair whispered.
The hat and the hair sat like a hat and a toupee, motionless and quiet until the secretary stopped looking at them.
“Mr. President?” she finally ventured.
“Who are you?” Donald asked angrily. “What are you doing in here? Don’t have have any goddamn security?”
“You asked to see me, sir. To help coordinate your trip to El Paso.”
Donald picked up his hair and jammed it onto his head roughly. He perched the hat on his shoulder like a devilish parrot and said, “Speak! I have no secrets from my advisors.”
“Advisors?” she asked, looking around the room.
“These two idiots,” he said pointing to the quiescent hat and hair. “They bicker like old women, but they keep me on the straight and narrow.”
The social secretary made an effort to close her gaping mouth.
“Let’s get down to business,” Donald said. “I want to ride in on a pegasus. A white one.”
“A pegasus, sir?”
“Winged horse. From Greek mythology. I guess we hired you on looks alone.”
“Sir?” she asked in a pained voice.
“Wait, did you sign your NDA yet?” Donald asked.
“Yes. I mean, yes, sir.”
“Good. Grand. Gramendous. I said, ‘I guess we hired you on looks alone.’ That’s me suggesting you aren’t very bright. Unlike me. I’m a genius.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“Tell me that I’m a genius,” Donald ordered.
“Y-you’re genius, sir,” she said.
“Kind of skinny, but you’ll do,” he said. “Watch this.”
Donald slammed his hand down on the Diet Coke button and one rose from a slot in the desk. The disembodied voice of Shania Twain sang, “MAN, I feel like a woman!” Donald giggled and knocked the unopen can of soda on to the floor.
“MAN, I feel like a woman!” sang Shania again and a Diet Coke rose.
“MAN, I feel like a woman!” sang Shania again and a Diet Coke rose.
“MAN, I feel like a woman!” sang Shania again and a Diet Coke rose.
“I can have all I want!” Donald crowed.
The social secretary nodded as she back out of the room.
“Hey,” Donald asked her. “Anyone ever tell you you got a yuge mouth?”
Not a new article, but I just had to share it, because, omfg, these people love to complain…
A Cultural History of ‘TERF Bangs,’ Beauty’s Most Puzzling Term
At some point in the past half-decade, short, chunky bangs have become associated with TERFs, an acronym that stands for “trans-exclusive radical feminists” and is used to describe feminists (typically second-wave) who argue that trans women aren’t “real” women. TERFS also like to insist that TERF is a slur, although others would say it merely sums up their world view. It’s unclear whether self-proclaimed feminists who don’t respect others’ gender identities are more likely to sport short bangs, but the concept of “TERF bangs” has nonetheless become so deeply embedded in certain parts of the internet’s consciousness that when Emma Watson cut her fringe short, she inspired at least one mournful “Hermione got TERF bangs” tweet.
THE DAY OF THE ANIMALS!* PANIC! FULL BLOWN PANIC!
People are Becoming Prey. Sorry. Not panic-y enough… PEOPLE ARE BECOMING PREY!
It is not clear when an alarm was raised regarding Salubiro’s disappearance. Several reports suggest that the search for him began as early as Monday night. After two days and still no trace, local villagers notified Salubiro’s uncle about his disappearance. Equally concerned, the uncle went to Salubiro’s house and found the doors locked, the house empty. The uncle and villagers then went to the local police, who issued a manhunt to look for Salubiro, searching the palm oil plantation and nearby area. They did not find him, but they did find a boot, a farming tool, and scattered palm oil at the plantation.
Nearby Salubiro’s remaining boot and tool, villagers noticed the presence of a 23-foot engorged reticulated python in a ditch, struggling to move. One villager noticed shoe-shaped indentations visible in the distended body of the snake. Hoping to be wrong, the group got together and killed the python. By this time, it was late Tuesday night. There is a gruesome video posted by the local police where, in just under six blood-curdling minutes, witnesses watch as one man wielding an 18-foot-long knife cuts open the belly of the snake. The video is dark and blurry, with cellphone cameras and flashlights flickering, as men shuffle uncomfortably around the dead python. The long, engorged body of the snake is lifeless but daunting, uncanny.
At first, you see what could possibly be a boot. Soon after, it is undeniable. Those are clothed human legs, feet. The snake’s belly is cut open, further and further. Minute by minute, you see the presence of two fully clothed, lifeless human legs. Then a torso, shirted. By the time they get to the top of the torso, it’s very clear what you’re looking at.
Because before climate change, animals never ate humans.
*The Day of the Animals was one of the many animals attack movies churned out after the runaway success of Jaws. These include Orca, Grizzly, Piranha, The Swarm, Squirm, The Food of the Gods, Long Weekend, Kingdom of the Spiders, The Pack, Ants!, Rattlers, Nightwing, The Bees, The Savage Bees (and it’s sequel, Terror Out of the Sky,) Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo, Bug, Empire of the Ants… But Jaws was preceded by Phase IV, Night of the Lepus, Frogs, Willard and Ben, Chosen Survivors, and Killer Bees. So was Jaws part of the animals attack genre, or a throwback to the earlier giant animals attack genre (King Kong, Godzilla, Mighty Joe Young, Them!, Reptilcus, Tarantula!, It Came From Beneath the Sea, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, etc.)?
You know what we haven’t done in a while? Checked in on Poppy.
I think it speaks to the undercurrent of distrust of the government and the military,” said Lt. Gen. Ronald R. Blanck, the Surgeon General of the Army, the service that oversees the [anthrax] vaccination program. “Agent Orange. Nuclear tests in the ’50s. People say, ‘How can you say this is safe?’ Clearly, we have a credibility problem.”
~ Steven Lee Myers, Armed Services Opt to Discharge Those Who Refuse Vaccine, N.Y. Times, March 11, 1999.
The United States Armed Forces has a long and not-so illustrious history of testing nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons… on its own citizens. From at least the 1940’s on (and if you want to include Native Americans, we can go back a lot further!), the Department of Defense has conducted experiments on U.S. servicemembers using ‘unconventional’ weapons. A report prepared by the staff of the Senate Committee on Veteran’s Affairs in 1994 concluded that “[f]or at least 50 years, [the] DOD has intentionally exposed military personnel to potentially dangerous substances, often in secret[.]”[i] That report followed a Government Accounting Office inquiry into experiments conducted on servicemembers by the Department of Defense.[ii] The GAO report detailed many different programs, some of which the DoD still lists as classified, in which servicemembers were given experimental drugs and other treatments without their knowledge or consent. A few of the more stunning examples of experimentation are worth discussing in detail, not simply to attack the Department of Defense or the military establishment, but rather as context because it is against this history that the DoD’s anthrax program was launched. And it is against this background of secret experimentation and tests conducted on coerced subjects that the DoD asks members of the Armed Services to “trust us” with regards to vaccines and inoculations claimed to be safe and effective.
[i] An Institute of Medicine report looking at the history of mustard and lewisite gas found the Armed Forces researching chemical warfare after World War I and up through World War II. The report even traces some research back before the Civil War. See Senate Report No. 103-97, at 15 (1994).
[ii] The Government Accounting Office (GAO) is the watchdog arm of Congress that investigates government agencies. See “Human Experimentation, An Overview on Cold War Era Programs,” U.S. General Accounting Office, September 28, 1994, GAO/T-NSIAD-94-266.
In the 1940’s, the Department of the Navy began soliciting volunteers to participate in a program to test protective clothing. In reality, the program was designed to test mustard and lewisite gases, chemical agents that the United States thought might be used by the desperate Axis powers at the end of World War II. There are some who claim that the tests were done simply to see what effect mustard gas had on soldiers in order to determine the offensive potential of chemical weapons. The truth is likely that these are not exclusive propositions. Either way, the program solicited potential ‘volunteers’ with the promise of two weeks of extra leave or some other similar incentive. “Due to the strategic importance of these experiments [however], the Navy deemed it inappropriate to inform potential volunteers as to the precise nature of the tests. Instead . . . the . . . volunteers were led to believe that they would be testing uniforms for use in tropical climates.”[iii] These ‘volunteers’ were sworn to secrecy and threatened with court-martial if they told anyone about the program for which they had just ‘volunteered.’ Of course, at this point, because no one had told them exactly what they volunteered for, it was relatively easy to extract such a promise. It is rather doubtful that most members would have agreed had they known that they were about to be experimented upon with chemical weapons.
Nathan Schnurman was a young sailor who figured he could use the extra few days off. He had just finished boot camp and was stationed at Bainbridge, Maryland, awaiting further orders when he volunteered for the program. He was put on a bus for Anacostia, Maryland, where the experiments actually took place. Young Nathan Schnurman, along with the other volunteers, was given a bunk in a Quonset hut and some blankets for that evening. All of the volunteers were issued protective clothing, including a gas mask, given a physical, and the next morning the experiments began. The protective clothing and masks were fitted and checked and then the ten volunteers were led to the testing building. At this point, the volunteers had still only been told that they were testing clothing for tropical weather.
The building itself was a simple structure with an entrance platform and test chamber. A single door separated the platform from the chamber and an intercom allowed for communication between the subjects inside the chamber and the corpsmen on the platform. The subjects were told that, once inside, a vapor was to be introduced into the chamber and that they were to remain in the chamber for one hour. The subjects were not told what the vapor was, but were told that it might produce a slight irritation on the subjects’ skin, similar to a sunburn. The subjects were admonished not to discuss the experiment with anyone.[iv]
The volunteers were exposed to the vapor for the one hour, as advertised. After that, they were instructed to continue to wear the protective clothing for another four hours, to eat meals and pass the time in their Quonset hut. They later disrobed and were given physical exams to check primarily for burns on the skin. This routine repeated itself the next day. The second day’s physical was the last one that any volunteer ever received as a part of the experiment.
The hour-long gas exposures continued on a daily basis for the next four days without incident, save the departure of a few of the subjects due to painful burns. On one of those days, just prior to the morning’s exposure, plaintiff [Schnurman] was informed by a corpsman that they would be testing mustard and lewisite gas that day.
On the sixth test day, while inside the chambers, plaintiff’s gas mask malfunctioned and plaintiff breathed the noxious vapor being tested. The inhalation of the gas produced extreme nausea and a burning in his eyes, nose and throat. Before being helped out of the chamber, plaintiff regurgitated in his mask. Once outside the chambers and free of his mask, plaintiff continued to experience nausea and dizziness, plus an intense pain in his chest. After further vomiting, plaintiff lost consciousness. No record was made of this incident.
Upon regaining consciousness, plaintiff was informed that he would no longer be needed for the experiment and that he could return to Bainbridge. He was not given any physical examination or treatment with the exception of local treatment for the minor burns on his skin. Plaintiff left the site of the experiment and traveled to his home in Roanoke, Virginia for a ten-day leave.[v]
Mr. Schnurman went on with his life, experiencing long-term health problems. Sworn to secrecy, Schnurman felt that he could not tell his personal physician about the source of his ailments because of his oath and the threat of punishment. Thus, he did not provide essential information to his doctors about his health because of his fears of what would happen to him if he told. This scenario was not uncommon.
A Mr. John T. Harrison described to a senate committee how he was sworn to secrecy in 1943 when mustard gas tests were conducted on him.[vi] Because of these vows to which the man had been sworn, it was not until much later in life that plaintiffs, such as Mr. Schnurman, (1) learned of what had been used on them, and (b) then filed lawsuits against the government.
A very similar incident happened to a John William Allen in 1945, according to a statement before the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Mr. Allen testified that the real purpose of the testing was to determine how much sulfur mustard a man could take before being overcome: these were known as ‘man-break tests.’ “He was exposed several times to sulfur mustard and was removed from further exposure on May 5, 1945, when he passed out in the gas chamber. A physical examination on May 14, 1945, revealed many wounds as the result of exposure to mustard gas.”[vii]
It is important to understand that these are not isolated incidents. An Institute of Medicine report in 1993 estimated that some 60,000 military members were used as human subjects in the 1940’s to test just for two particular chemical agents, mustard gas and lewisite, and the majority of these people were not informed about the nature of the experiments, nor were they given proper medical care or follow up after the research.[viii]
[iii] Few things have amazed me more in my time in service than what members of the Armed Forces – even moreso Marines – will do for just a few extra days of leave or liberty. I am still not sure what that says about the military, but leave and liberty are the promise land to most servicemembers.
[iv] Schnurman v. United States, 490 F. Supp. 429, 430 (E. D. Va. 1980).
[v] Schnurman, at 431.
[vi] Is Military Research Hazardous to Veterans’ Health? Lessons from World War II, the Persian Gulf War, and Today, Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, 103rd Cong. May 6, 1994.
[vii] S. Rep. 103-97, at 18 (1994).
[viii] Veterans at Risk: The Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite, Pechura, C.M. & Rall, D.P. (Eds.) Institute of Medicine, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1993, p. 3-4, 6-8, 50-52, 224-226.
During the 1950’s and 60’s, the CIA and the Army engaged in experimentation on U.S. servicemembers, both with and without their knowledge. In several different experiments, the DoD caused servicemembers to unknowingly ingest hallucinogens. Most of the experiments centered around ‘mind control’ and interrogation of persons under the effects of hallucinogens. This was prompted by the perception in U.S. intelligence that China and the Soviet Union had used, and were using, hallucinogens for ‘brainwashing’ and interrogation of prisoners of war. This program was known by the code name MKULTRA. It involved giving LSD and another substance known as quinuclidinyl benzilate, a hallucinogen code-named BZ, to unsuspecting members of both the Armed Forces and civilian communities.
In 1958, Master Sergeant James Stanley responded to a posting on Fort Knox, Kentucky, that solicited volunteers to help the Army develop methods for testing and defending against chemical weapons. Ironically, the volunteers were told they would be testing protective clothing (just as in World War II). MSgt Stanley was transferred to Aberdeen, Maryland, for the testing. He did not learn until seventeen years later that he had been unknowingly given LSD during the program. He found this out accidentally in 1975 when contacted by Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which was conducting follow-up on those who had participated in the 1958 test. Walter Reed wanted to know of any long-term health consequences to MSgt Stanley from his ingestion of the hallucinogen. MSgt Stanley in the intervening years had suffered health problems and hallucinations that he had no explanation for that eventually led to a divorce. See United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S. 669 (1987).
In another instance, Lloyd Gamble, who enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1950, volunteered for a special program to (yet again!) test new military protective clothing in 1957.
He was offered various incentives to participate in the program, including a liberal leave policy, family visitations, and superior living and recreational facilities. However, the greatest incentive to Mr. Gamble was the official recognition he would receive as a career-oriented noncommissioned officer, through letters of commendation and certification of participation in the program. During the 3 weeks of testing new clothing, he was given two or three water-size glasses of a liquid containing LSD to drink. Thereafter, Mr. Gamble developed erratic behavior and even attempted suicide. He did not learn that he had received LSD as a human subject until 18 years later, as a result of congressional hearings in 1975. Even then, the Department of the Army initially denied that he had participated in the experiments, although an official DOD publicity photograph showed him as one of the valiant servicemen volunteering for “a program that was in the highest national security interest.”[ix]
What is worth noting about these programs, beyond the experimentation on servicemembers without their informed consent, are the arguments offered by the proponents and defenders of these programs. According to Sidney Gottlieb, a doctor and former CIA officer, MKULTRA was established to investigate whether and how an individual’s behavior could be modified by covert means. Dr. Gottlieb testified before Congress that “it was felt to be mandatory and of the utmost urgency for our intelligence organization to establish what was possible in this field on a high priority basis.”[x] Although many human subjects were not informed or protected, Dr. Gottlieb’s defended these actions by stating, “. . . harsh as it may seem in retrospect, it was felt that in an issue where national survival might be concerned, such a procedure and such a risk was a reasonable one to take.”[xi]
These attitudes persist even today. Dr. Gottleib’s responses in the 1970’s sound remarkably like the reasons offered to justify mandatory vaccination of troops today with unapproved, unlicensed, or investigational drugs. In a television appearance in 1997, Secretary of Defense Cohen held up a five-pound bag of sugar and stated that if the bag were filled with anthrax spores, it could wipe out half of the population of Washington, D.C.[xii] In a later opinion editorial appearing in Army Times, Secretary Cohen wrote that
At least 25 countries, including Iraq and North Korea, now have – or are in the process of acquiring and developing – weapons of mass destruction . . . This is not hyperbole. It is reality . . . The race is on between our preparations and those of our adversaries. We are preparing for the possibility of a chemical or biological attack on American soil because we must. There is not a moment to lose.[xiii]
The truth of these matters will be examined in greater detail later. The point to be made here is that Secretary Cohen’s defense of the anthrax program, and the justification for biological warfare programs generally, distilled to its essence, is nothing more than “the ends justifies the means.” Where matters of national security (Gottleib called it “national survival”) are at stake, it does not matter how we go about defending ourselves, even if it means experimenting on unsuspecting troops, because it involves ‘National Security’.
This is a particularly dangerous path for a number of reasons, some obvious and others not as obvious. While there are any number of moral points of view about using troops in this way, one’s opinion about whether it is right or wrong to experiment on troops in this fashion depends largely on one’s view of individual liberty for the citizen-soldier and the limits of a nation state’s ability to protect ‘itself.’ These arguments inevitably devolve into philosophical debates, punctuated by twelve-letter words and citations to long-dead philosophers, spoken by people far removed from the gas chambers and vomiting victims on their hands and knees; much like Dr. Gottleib’s testimony in an air-conditioned chamber in front of politicians and cameras during the famous Church Committee hearings. More importantly, where ‘military’ or ‘national security’ matters are concerned, the academics inevitably defer to those wearing uniforms with stars on their collars.
It would appear on the surface that this issue was decisively concluded at the end of World War II in favor of the rights of the individual. In August 1947, the Nuremberg Trials of the Nazi Doctors, including those such as Karl Brandt, came to a close, resulting in the death penalty for many of the doctors who conducted such experiments on unwilling prisoners in concentration camps across Hitler’s Reich. It is there that we must turn briefly in order to understand the law of informed consent and how it applies to the military, if at all. But if it seems that the present author is ‘laying it on a little thick,’ compare Secretary Cohen’s above remark about the necessity of the mandatory anthrax vaccine program to this one:
We are not conducting these experiments, as a matter of fact, for the sake of some fixed scientific idea, but to be of practical help to the armed forces and beyond that to the . . . people in a possible emergency.
This is from a letter written by Doctor Wolfram Sievers, Colonel in the German Army in November, 1942, to Dr. Karl Brandt, both convicted Nazi War Criminals, excerpted from Prosecution Exhibit No. 263 at their trial.
[ix] Id., notes omitted.
[x] Human Drug Testing by the CIA, 1977: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, Committee on Human Resources, U.S. Senate, September 20-21, p. 169 (1977).
[xi] Id., pp. 169-217.
[xii] Paul Richter, Experts Assess Risk of ‘New Terrorism’ Threat, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 7, 2000.
[xiii] William S. Cohen, Preparing for a Grave New World, Washington Post, Jul. 26, 1999.
What? You have a problem with me waiting for the 3 free monthly NY Times articles?
Screw you, all of you, I’ve been busy. Here’s Krugnuts’ article.
I’ve seen a number of people suggest that the 2020 election will be a sort of test: Can a sufficiently terrible president lose an election despite a good economy? And that is, in fact, the test we’d be running if the election were tomorrow.
Shockingly, he recognizes the day he wrote this, was in July of 2019.
On one side, Donald Trump wastes no opportunity to remind us how awful he is. His latest foray into overt racism delights his base but repels everyone else. On the other side, he presides over an economy in which unemployment is very low and real G.D.P. grew 3.2 percent over the past year.
But the election won’t be tomorrow, it will be an exhausting 15 months from now. Trump’s character won’t change, except possibly for the worse. But the economy might look significantly different.
So let’s talk about the Trump economy.
If you think this is going to be a bunch of hand waiving, some sleight of hand, your right.
The first thing you need to know is that the Trump tax cut caused a huge rise in the budget deficit, which the administration expects to hit $1 trillion this year, up from less than $600 billion in 2016. This tidal wave of red ink is even more extraordinary than it looks, because it has taken place despite falling unemployment, which usually leads to a falling deficit.
Strange to say, none of the Republicans who warned of a debt apocalypse under President Barack Obama have protested the Trump deficits. (Should we put Paul Ryan’s face on milk cartons?) For that matter, even the centrists who obsessed over federal debt during the Obama years have been pretty quiet. Clearly, deficits only matter when there’s a Democrat in the White House.
Were you warning us about debt apocalypse while Obama was the president? You do understand anything and everything you write and publish on the internet is as permanent as genital warts? Tell me you aren’t nearly as stupid as you sound right now, just to entertain a bunch of partisan whores?
Oh, and the imminent fiscal crisis people like Erskine Bowles used to warn about keeps not happening: Long-term interest rates remain very low.
Now, the evidence on the effects of deficit spending is clear: It gives the economy a short-run boost, even when we’re already close to full employment. If anything, the growth bump under Trump has been smaller than you might have expected given the deficit surge, perhaps because the tax cut was so badly designed, perhaps because Trump’s trade wars have deterred business spending.
For now, however, Deficit Man is beating Tariff Man. As I said, we’ve seen good growth over the past year.
But the tax cut was supposed to be more than a short-run Keynesian stimulus. It was sold as something that would greatly improve the economy’s long-run performance; in particular, lower corporate tax rates were supposed to lead to a huge boom in business investment that would, among other things, lead to sharply higher wages. And this big rise in long-run growth would supposedly create a boom in tax revenues, offsetting the upfront cost of tax cuts.
None of this is happening. Corporations are getting to keep a lot more of their profits, but they’ve been using the money to buy back their own stock, not raise investment. Wages are rising, but not at an extraordinary pace, and many Americans don’t feel that they’re sharing in the benefits of a growing economy.
The buybacks…always with the butt-fucking buybacks…I don’t have time to explain this shit to you again.
Wages are indeed rising, they always have been. Given that 56% of the American population receives health insurance through their employer, as part of a package of compensation–that is theyre health insurance is part of how they get fucking paid, and since those costs keep going up for reasons you never seem to comprehend, we can safely say wages are going up.
And this is probably as good as it gets.
I’m not forecasting a recession. It could happen, and we’re very badly positioned to respond if it does, but the more likely story is just a slowdown as the effects of the deficit splurge wear off. In fact, if you believe the “nowcasters” (economists who try to get an early read on the economy from partial data), that slowdown is already happening. For example, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York believes that the economy’s growth was down to 1.5 percent in the second quarter.
BULLSHIT. BULL-FUCKING-SHIT. YOU PREDICTED A GLOBAL RECESSION LAST FEBRUARY.
And it’s hard to see where another economic bump can come from. With Democrats controlling the House, there won’t be another big tax cut. The Fed may cut interest rates, but those cuts are already priced into long-term interest rates, which are what matter for spending, and the economy seems to be slowing anyway.
Which brings us back to the 2020 election.
Political scientists have carried out many studies of the electoral impact of the economy, and as far as I know they all agree that what matters is the trend, not the level. The unemployment rate was still over 7 percent when Ronald Reagan won his 1984 landslide; it was 7.7 percent when Obama won in 2012. In both cases, however, things were clearly getting better.
That’s probably not going to be the story next year. If we don’t have a recession, unemployment will still be low. But economic growth will probably be meh at best — which means, if past experience is any guide, that the economy won’t give Trump much of a boost, that it will be more or less a neutral factor.
And on the other hand, Trump’s awfulness will remain.
I take it you haven’t watched the shit show that was the Dem debates?
Republicans will, of course, portray the Democratic nominee — whoever she or he may be — as a radical socialist poised to throw the border open to hordes of brown-skinned rapists.
Wait, which one is not effectively saying that? Biden? That bald guy from Montana? Hell, half the reason I like the Yang dude is his dick isn’t big enough to fuck everybody.
And one has to admit that this strategy might work, although it failed last year in the midterms. To be honest, I’m more worried about the effects of sexism if the nominee is a woman — not just the sexism of voters, but that of the news media, which still holds women to different standards.
But as far as the economy goes, the odds are that Trump’s deficit-fueled bump came too soon to do him much political good.
Good. The more people wise up and see the political class as the retards they are, the less likely they’ll vote to let them run their lives.
So, I went to the dermatologist today, because my wife insisted that I get checked for cancer. Her dad had some pretty bad melanoma before he got the other cancer, so I didn’t put up a fight. And boy am I glad I didn’t. The doc was a complete smoke show. I haven’t been touched by a woman that hot since… well, the last time I paid someone that hot to touch me. Anyhow, I now look forward to my annual skin cancer screening. She didn’t find any alarming growths, but only because I was thinking really hard about baseball and cold showers.
Florida Man, you’re supposed to do wacky and dangerous things that injure yourself, not this. I hope your mamma brings several of her coworkers around to beat some sense into you.
Although, maybe not beating someone so badly they get brain damage. Dude should try that on someone his own size.
I got the following note: STEVE SMITH SAD THAT INSPIRATION FOR HIS FILM, “STEVE SMITH KNOW WHY CAGED HIKER SQUEAL” DEAD. I would not want to be caught by the rapesquatch tonight
This is somebody’s fetish, and probably has a big future in teledildonics
My son had decided this is his favorite song. Sometimes being a parent is actually not all that different from being psychologically tortured by tiny, sadistic sociopaths.
In the following exposition I will try to explain my understanding of Japanese swords – a subject which first enchanted me about 50 years ago – with common English terms. I will refrain from using Japanese terms when not required.
Understand that Samurai and their weapons were part of Japanese history over several centuries. To say that some item or use never was accepted or it was the one, true item or way a real Samurai would use or act often cannot be pinned down as customs and usage did evolve over time. In this discussion I will mainly be presenting the ultimate condition of the Samurai caste and the swords they carried up to the middle of the 19th century.
The sword was considered the soul of the Samurai. But exactly what was a Samurai?
From the 12th century until 1868 Japanese society was rigidly structured into 4 castes (with numerous other groups outside and socially beneath these castes) placing the Samurai at the top, followed by Farmers, then Artisans, with Merchants at the bottom. At the end of this feudal period Samurai made up only 7% of the Japanese population. The Samurai and royalty were the only Japanese to bear family names.
In the beginning, the primary weapon of the Samurai was the bow and arrow, with the spear being secondary. The sword was a personal weapon and almost always the weapon of last resort. In combat, should the Samurai run out of arrows and lose or break his spear, upon drawing his sword it was not uncommon for him to discard the scabbard signaling that he did not intend to live long enough to need it anymore.
As you would expect for a country with a strict social caste system ruled by warriors Japan never really knew peace for much of its history. However, for most Samurai much of their time was spent in cities and fortresses which made every day carry of a bow or spear impractical. For this reason over time the sword became their primary weapon mostly because it was what he could expect to have immediately available.
Samurai were the only Japanese who could legally carry a pair of swords – the long sword, either Katana or Tachi, and the shorter sword known as Wakizashi. This pair of swords was the badge of their caste. The Katana differs from the Tachi mostly in the format of the scabbard furnishings – the Katana scabbard was thrust through the Obi (waist sash) with the cutting edge upwards while the Tachi had two metal hangers or attachments with a cord which was to be wrapped and tied around the waist, suspending the blade with the cutting edge downwards. As the Katana was easier to remove from one’s body – something one would do often in an urban lifestyle – it became the preferred long blade over the Tachi. For this reason I will be focusing my discussion on the Katana.
The Japanese sword differs from swords of most other cultures in that it was constructed to be easily disassembled. The entire assembly was held together by a single, bamboo pin. The handle was constructed of two halves of wood, glued and often pinned together in a single unit. It had a flat guard and an end cap where the pommel would have been on a European sword.
The handle had a hole bored through it side to side at a point that corresponded to a hole in the tang. The bamboo pin was sized to fit in this hole and hold the sword assembly together with a friction fit that put slight tension on the tang of the sword.
Japanese sword furnishings are a standard pattern for all Japanese blades from short daggers to immense, two handed swords often longer than the men who carried them. While the pattern was a common standard for any fighting blade the nomenclature had some slight variations. In general, one can expect that each of these items will be ornate and even have gilded features or inlaid with precious metals. I will give the most commonly used Japanese name for each item in parenthesis – but use the English equivalent in my explanation.
Here are the components of a standard Katana – Scabbard, blade with Hit-extension, Washer, Guard, and Handle assembly. Like many old blades the one here has more than one hole showing that it has been re-shaped and re-polished three times. Often this is does when the tip has been broken or damaged and requires a new hole to be drilled through the tang.
Hilt-extension (Habaki) – this is a wedge-shaped copper, brass, or bronze tapered block which the blade’s tang passes through. It is fit tightly to the base of the blade and fits snuggly into the mouth of the scabbard. This holds the blade securely in place while in the scabbard.
Hilt-washer (Seppa) – This is a thin washer which the tang passes through after the Hilt-extension and before the Guard. These would be changed with thicker or thinner replacements as the different components of the handle and furnishings became worn or were replaced over time. It is not unusual for a blade to have more than one Hilt-washer – usually on opposite sides of the Guard.
Guard (Tsuba) – This is the handguard which protects the user’s hand from being struck by the opponent’s blade. The tang passes through this before attaching the handle assembly.
Hilt-collar (Fuchi) – This is a metal ferrule on the handle which goes against the inside of the Guard.
Handle (Tsuka) – This is the wooden handle which goes over the tang.
Sharkskin (Samehada) – This is a single sheet of polished shark (or ray) skin which is wrapped around the handle.
Cord wrapping (Tsukamaki) – The Cord wrapping which goes around the Sharkskin. This is a flat silk or cotton woven cord which is folded or twisted in intervals which gives the traditional diamond-pattern seen on most Japanese swords. This pattern also provides a practical grip surface.
Pin covers (Menuki) – These are a pair of flat metal ornaments, one on each side, held in place by the Cord wrapping. These covered the pin holes and would hold the pin in place should it somehow become loose.
Pin (Mekugi) – This is the bamboo pin which holds the Handle on the tang.
Endcap (Kashira) – This is a cap which goes on the end of the Handle opposite the hilt end. The Endcap is held on the Handle by the Cord wrapping which passes through holes in the Endcap.
Scabbard (Saya) – This is the housing for the blade in which the sword is carried. It has its own group of standard furnishings with numerous examples where some items are omitted.
Scabbards were made of wood and generally lacquered or sometimes covered in metal, or ray or shark skin. These were the primary surface treatments although other finishes or coverings may be encountered. The scabbard has a small wooden (sometimes metal) protrusion (Kurigata) on the outside (away from the body) surface at the balance point of the sword and scabbard. This had a hole for attaching a long cord which could be used to secure the scabbard to the Samurai’s sash when the he was expecting to be moving vigorously. Alternatively, this cord could be used to tie back the voluminous Kimono sleeves when a fight was expected. The cord was tied to the scabbard with an elaborate knot which could be instantly unraveled by pulling on the ends of the cord.
There is one major variant of the above handle and scabbard pattern – a plain wood set which is used for storing a blade and not designed for fighting. The only pieces of the standard furnishings which would be used with this set are the pin and the Hilt-extension. It is unusual to see these decorated.
There were two predominant types of rack which were made for Japanese swords – at the time these were basically furniture, somewhere to put one’s swords when not wearing them. In present time I see these used to display swords but it seems few people, even Japanese, understand the correct way to place swords on these. One common rack is made for two swords held horizontally. This is made for a pair of swords, the Katana on top and Wakizashi on the lower position. Both blades should be placed on the rack cutting edge up. If a Tachi is on this type of rack in place of the Katana the Tachi is placed on the rack with the cutting edge down.
The other type of rack you might encounter is made for a single, long blade and holds the sword upright at a slight angle. The sword would be placed on this rack with the handle downward and the cutting edge towards the rack. This orientation may seem unintuitive until you realize that this would be on a Tatami mat next to you while you were seated on the mat. Preparing to leave, before standing you would first reach for your sword in which case is more practical to have the balance point towards the bottom and closer to you.
I would say something about Ninja swords but in the 50 years I have been interested in Japanese blades, having visited dozens of sword shops and museums in Japan, and in the hundreds of books I have seen in both English and Japanese, I have never seen nor even heard of an historic example. The only examples I have seen are fantasy replicas.
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ZARDOZ HAS BEEN SPEAKINK!
Imagine if instead of using “micro”, they had gone with another synonym when coming up with “micro-aggression”: Measly-aggression. Lilliputian-aggression. Pygmy-aggression. Any of those would clearly expose the self-detonating nature contained in the concept. Those synonyms also don’t lend the air of scientific terror that “micro-aggression” enjoys. “Micro” evokes similar terms like “micro-organism” which is a potentially lethal creature because of its diminuitive stature. Micro-aggressions are on par with serving E-coli burgers at a Jack-In-The-Box drive through.
Psychologist Derald Wing Sue describes micro-aggressions as, “brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership.” You’ll notice that intent is not part of the equation and that is by design as it renders the perpetrator incapable of mounting a defense. When dealing with E-coli, Mens rea is no excuse for diarrhea. As long as the words or behavior appear on a list cultured in a petri dish at some university sociology department, you’re guilty.
Self-righteous and zealous social movements take kernels of truth and surround them with shit so thick it’s impossible to pluck them out. Assuming a Mexican woman at the hotel is a maid, telling someone they are a credit to their race or asking a black person if you can touch their hair certainly could be deemed offensive. However, they would be offensive only if there is no context which would change the dynamics. If the Mexican lady is wearing an orange apron and emptying a trash can in the lobby, you could be forgiven for believing she isn’t an astronaut. “How dare you assume I work here! Micro-aggression!” she shouts. The problem with MA aren’t that assholes are nonexistent, but rather that the entire concept guarantees you’ll be an asshole in return.
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes, “You have power over your own mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” If there were an AA for MA addicts, the opening prayer would go, “God grant me the serenity to not mistake an offhand comment for HIV.” For any recovering MA addicts out there, I`d like to offer another way of looking at the world: Micro-respect. MR shifts a person’s perspective from finger wagging to chin stroking. The respect comes from waiting for a person to express themselves thoroughly before you jump down their throats like streptococcus.
MR uses the earlier definition of MA with a little tweaking. MR, according to me, are, “Brief, everyday exchanges that send humanizing messages to certain individuals regardless of their group membership.” I can’t go a week without a Japanese person asking me, “Where are you from?” I suppose I could try to get all 120 million Japanese to never, ever ask me that question again. めんどくさい。Rather than pissing blood and assuming that the question is the product of a grave historical injustice, how about I just answer the question and see what happens? In fact, it was the first question the hot young number that became my wife asked me.
Human interactions are messy and festering with opportunities to assign malice to even the most benign questions, comments or behaviors. Sure, MR may allow some comments that are truly bigoted to slip by unchallenged. But, unlike with MR, MA will slap blame on many people that don’t have it coming. There aren’t many cultures that devolved into murderous killing sprees because ten year old boys played “Smear the Queer”. History is replete, however, with many cultures that destroyed themselves by playing “Spear the Unbeliever”.
Links
Derald Wing Sue on MA: https://world-trust.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/7-Racial-Microagressions-in-Everyday-Life.pdf
Examples of microaggressions: www.sph.umn.edu/site/docs/hewg/microaggressions.pdf
DOOM! All is lost, woe is us. Wait, actually, its not that bad. But the first link reveals why the idea of a libertarian society is a pipe-dream, albeit one that keeps most of us from publishing manifestos and shooting random people just trying to do school shopping. Wait, actually, I think not being crazy does that.
The headline here pretty much shows why libertarianism will never be popular: Ohio shooting: Gov. Mike DeWine urged to ‘Do something’ at vigil. Okay. What should he do? Hand out the names of people who teach concealed-carry courses? Put everyone in camps so they can’t murder each other with guns?
Fucking bath-dodgers
Oh look, another new trend I was unwittingly on the bleeding edge of.
I assume it was the erection that gave him away.
My Youtube started working, so I’ll post a free-speech anthem that is… does math… wait… 25 years old? Fuck me. This is contemporary with my teens. It cannot have been that long ago.