Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

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  • Economics Corner with Paul Krugman and Winston’s Mom

    She’ll be coming around the mounting when she comes…SHE”LL BE COMING AROUND THE MOUNTING WHEN SHE COMES….What?

     

    Here’s today’s piece where he tries to go to town all over Lizzies butthole.

    Not long ago, political pundits were writing off Elizabeth Warren’s political chances, but recent polling makes her an increasingly plausible contender, and her comeback has been getting her a sudden wave of favorable media coverage.

    Will she actually be the Democratic nominee? If so, will she win? I have absolutely no idea. Nor does anyone else.

    Oh sure. NOW you won’t make predictions professor limpdick…

    But the political strategy powering her comeback is interesting. And I think many observers are missing a key reason her strategy seems to be working — namely, that her agenda is radical in content and implications, but well grounded in evidence and serious scholarship.

    Normally, would-be presidential nominees campaign on some combination of personal narrative and soaring rhetoric promoting broad themes: “I’m a war hero/symbol of the American dream/longtime challenger of the Establishment, and as president I’ll bring us together/drain the swamp/fight the power.”

    Warren, by contrast, has been rolling out substantive, detailed policy proposals — many, many substantive, detailed policy proposals. Traditional punditry says that this should be a turnoff, that voters’ eyes will just glaze over at the proliferation of white papers.

    But Warren has managed to turn relentless wonkery into a defining aspect of her political persona. Supporters show up at her rallies wearing T-shirts that proclaim “Warren has a plan for that!” And she is, by all accounts, managing to make earnest policy discussion a way to connect with her audiences.

    In a way, the closest parallel to the Warren phenomenon — although it’s one I hate to draw — was the temporary rise of Paul Ryan, former speaker of the House (remember him?). Like Warren, Ryan built himself up by cultivating an image as a smart policy wonk.

    But even aside from the fact that Ryan’s basic agenda was to take from the poor and give to the rich, he was a phony, whose proposals didn’t add up and didn’t address real problems. Warren, by contrast, is the real deal. You don’t have to support the specifics of her plans to realize that they’re the product of hard thinking, drawing on the work of respected economic researchers.

    I do remember him.  I also recall he failed to beat Joe Biden in a debate, when Joe’s argument was mostly to laugh at him.  He’s an establishment cuck, but predictably you don’t see the irony in your analogy.  Both are “policy wonks” because both think all they have to do is argue we must put them into power, and only then will they make everything all better.

    In that case, however, why haven’t other presidential contenders been rolling out comparable plans? The answer, I’d suggest, is that Warren — herself a significant policy scholar — understood from the beginning something that other candidates are only beginning to grasp: The difference between being serious and being Serious.

    What I mean by being Serious is buying into inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom — the kind of conventional wisdom that in 2011, with unemployment still catastrophically high and interest rates at historic lows, created an elite consensus that we should stop worrying about jobs and focus on … entitlement reform. What I mean by being serious is paying attention to actual evidence on the effects of economic and social programs.

    What Warren gets is that serious analysis is a lot more favorable to a progressive agenda than Serious conventional wisdom, which is obsessed with keeping taxes low and restraining spending. Leading experts on the economics of taxation favor substantial increases in tax rates on high incomes and wealth. Top economists studying social spending argue that there are huge benefits to higher spending on early child care.

    As a result, Warren has been able to lay out plans that are very progressive but also well grounded in evidence and analysis.

    Yes, the TOPPIEST of TOP.MEN economists want to steal from other people, tie them up in needless taxes and regulations, douse them all with warming lubricants to make it easier for them to mount on TOP of the people they just stole from and go STEVE SMITH on their asses!  That’s the type of TOP.MEN economists TOP.MEN like Krugnuts think are TOP.MEN.

    Do her rivals share her understanding that progressivism and solid intellectual foundations can go hand in hand? In the past, at least, Joe Biden was worryingly Serious; he was deeply involved in the Obama administration’s fortunately unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a budget Grand Bargain that would have slashed Social Security and Medicare, reflecting the Beltway’s obsession with entitlement cuts. It’s not yet clear whether he has moved on.

    Bernie Sanders, by contrast, has never bought into the Beltway consensus, and he is clearly committed to a very ambitious agenda. But his policy specifics remain oddly vague. Most notably, we still have very little idea how he would pay for Medicare for All.

    My guess is that this is in part because Sanders sees himself as being in a war with the Establishment very broadly defined. As a result, his policy team, such as it is, consists of people who devote a lot of energy to attacking mainstream policy research, leaving them unable and/or unwilling to incorporate its findings into specific policy proposals.

    Now, none of this means that Warren will be the nominee. Many Democratic voters clearly prefer Biden’s affable conventionality, and many others share Sanders’s tear-the-whole-thing-down instincts. All we really know is that there turns out to be a significant constituency most pundits probably didn’t even realize was there: voters who want a significant policy move to the left, but also want a candidate who really seems to have thought things through.

    We don’t yet know whether this constituency is big enough to be decisive in the Democratic primaries. But if it is, Warren has a plan for that.

    The fun part about all of these plans that Lizzie is putting out for people like Krugman to beat his meat over, is that Lizzie is running for president.  The president doesn’t have the Constitutional power to implement nearly any of these plans, that power lies with Congress.  Lizzie is presently a Senator, one would think if she has all of these plans she would be better able to put these into action in the senate.  Why hasn’t she?  Here’s an Atlantic article from 2015 that questions her abilities as a Senator, and makes a case that she’s effective in her ineffectiveness.  Here’s another from Boston Globe from 2017 that describes her accomplishments as “emaciatingly thin”.  For somebody that wants to lecture us on the difference between a serious candidate and a Serious candidate, one would think you could at least find one that actually succeeded or at least appears to be successful in their present position.

    Then again, you’re an night clerk at shit-covered Motel 6 in Newark having trouble fluffing a hobo, that got a column masquerading as an economist. So how the hell would you know the difference?

  • Friday Morning STEVE SMITH Avoidance Links

    It’s been a long week here, and next week, my mother arrives so it will be even longer. Task One is to locate the equivalent of Publix roast chicken. Task Two will be how to hide the existence of this site from her. She still hasn’t figured out SP yet- “Who’s that nice little girl I see playing on the computer?”

    Birthdays include yet another guy who should have gotten a Nobel; a guy who always opposed Cato; the Official Filmmaker of the Glibertarians; the guy who made John Holmes and Ron Jeremy jealous; the worst of all the Stooges; a fun guy to have a drink with; and a marvelous punchline.

    On to the news.

     

    It’s not just Team Blue providing primary entertainment.

     

    Ahhh, Chicago.

     

    We are sooooo fucked.

     

    Amazon pulls out, jizzes on Seattle’s belly.

     

    A heartwarming pet story.

     

    The Palestinian Authority believes in a living wage.

     

    I’m the furthest thing from an NBA fan, but this warmed the cockles of my black, black heart.

     

    This may put a dent in his latest comeback plans.

     

    The Trump-Media collaboration really is professional wrestling, kayfabe and all.

     

    “‘I observed the male’s genitals and the urination,’ the officer wrote on a copy of the ticket.”  I think that cop sees a dick every morning when he looks in the mirror.

     

    Old Guy Music is… well, I guess they’re all old girls now. But they weren’t then, and bless us for that.

  • Antisocial Media

    Social justice is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days, so it’s worth taking a little time to define it and talk a little bit about its history. In its original and broadest sense, social justice refers to the rights an individual possesses in relationship to the society of which the individual is a part. For centuries, to the extent that social justice was distinguished as a separate concept it had to do with the moral obligations that either institutions had to individuals within society or that members of society had to one another above and beyond their legal obligations. The Catholic Church in particular used the latter meaning to promote charity as a moral duty.

    To sum it up, social justice is the idea that being a member of society entails certain obligations to society in exchange for certain benefits from society; social justice, then, is that state wherein an individual fulfills those obligations to society and vice versa. This isn’t just a matter of expecting that your garbage will be picked up because you’ve paid your bill. This has more to do with the individual’s role as a part of society, and the less transactional, more ephemeral expectations one might have of society. In some cases this overlaps with more traditional senses of justice, e.g. you would expect equal treatment under the law no matter your ethnic background, while in others it goes into ideas such as the expectation of being treated with dignity or respect.

    The idea of social justice changed rapidly towards the beginning of the 20th century as the Progressive movement and the Socialist movement both seized it to add moral gravitas to their platforms. The idea itself is deliciously vague. If society has an obligation, who specifically has to fulfill it? Who determines if a person has fulfilled their duties to society? What are those duties, and what does society owe in exchange? As those movements and others since have adopted social justice as a moral justification they’ve offered their own answers, giving us social justice as we know it today.

    Social justice in the modern era has a few key characteristics. It is first and foremost a revolutionary movement very similar to the Cultural Revolution. It is largely a vehicle by which a minority composed largely of young academics attempt to gain political power by breaking down traditional moral norms and establishing themselves as a new moral authority. Like the Cultural Revolution, adherents want to destroy tradition, which they see as a tool of oppression. Also like the Cultural Revolution, it is a movement based more on faith than evidence, and sees logic as a tool to be used or discarded depending on its utility in achieving goals rather than as a set of rules by which ideas should be evaluated. Finally, just like the Cultural Revolution, adherents use social pressure, fear, and shame to attack rivals or foes, particularly those who they perceive as being members of a cultural or political majority. It is this aspect in particular which makes social media, especially outlets such as Twitter, so appealing to the social justice movement.

    One might think of social media in terms of eras. The ancestor of modern social media is the BBS, or Bulletin Board System, a simple, popular, effective format that lives on today in comment sections across the Internet, for better or worse. As access to the Internet became cheaper and more widespread and as web technology advanced, people began making their own websites. Later, services arose that offered an individual web presence without requiring any technical knowledge, with a heavy emphasis on personalization, such as MySpace and LiveJournal, and ultimately Facebook, which took the basic format of a personal webpage and added a social aspect. The prevalence of mobile devices brought us full circle with services like Twitter, which sacrificed some of the “webby” flavor of services like Facebook in favor of rapid broadcast communications not unlike the BBS of old. Social media started off with people talking to each other, then went to people advertising themselves, and has now arrived at people advertising themselves and talking to each other. Or, if you’d prefer, we talked to other cat owners about our cats, then made websites so that people we don’t know could look at our cats, tried to meet other people with cats, and now keep everyone updated about our cats whether they care or not.

    An important trend in the development of social media is that the barrier to entry has lowered significantly. Access is dramatically cheaper and easier than it was thirty years ago, for instance. This means more people have access to social media, which means more cat updates, more responses to cat updates in terms of volume and frequency, and faster responses to the responses. Instead of sitting down at a computer, dialing the modem, waiting for the connection, and downloading text, anyone with a smartphone can post something in seconds while doing something else–unthinkingly, one might say.

    This has not been an unvarnished blessing for humanity. It has, however, done wonders for the adherents of the modern social justice movement. Modern social media, in particular Twitter, is arguably the lifeblood of the social justice movement as it exists today for a number of reasons.

    Recall that the social justice movement is motivated by a desire to attack and displace what it views as the dominant power structure using tactics such as public shaming and ridicule, upsetting traditional social structures and values, and replacing them with its own, with social justice adherents taking political power from the old guard. Now, consider a platform such as Twitter. It’s a free communications service that lets users broadcast short messages to groups. It offers an extremely low transaction cost, which is to say that a person can broadcast a message instantaneously without fear of interruption, immediate physical reprisal, or damage to reputation–provided that the user has insulated himself or herself by using a pseudonym. Contrast this to, for instance, public speaking, where a person can be shouted down by a crowd, threatened with physical violence, or attacked.

    Consider also the nature of social media as its own parallel social environment. Social connections made via the Internet differ from those made in any other venue not just in geographic distance but in the way in which Internet societies tend to exist in isolation from other traditional societies. In every other context, be it face-to-face, print media, television, or radio, participants maintain a connection to their personal lives. On the Internet it’s much more common, in fact it’s the default condition, that people create a separate persona. How many people reading this are using their real names as user ids, for instance? It’s not a coincidence that the phenomenon of “doxxing” didn’t arise until social media, despite the fact that for centuries now people have been able to write something anonymously and send it to a printer for publication.

    One way to think of social media is as if it were taking the game of traditional social interaction and shaking the board. In this new environment you can recreate yourself. A cat may look at a king, as the saying goes, but even further, the cat can become a king. Clout in social media is largely based on one’s ability to attract attention. There’s also a deep personal investment that’s encouraged by the medium despite the potential for anonymity. Social media attention is measured in metrics such as “likes” or followers or friends. It is an environment that is extremely personal and driven by noise, rather than truth. It is, ultimately, a clamoring mob looking for direction from the loudest member, without regard for credibility. And the emotion that it evokes has consequences in the real world.

    If you’ve observed discussions about topics of social justice in person, you may have noticed that they tend to falter once they start to get to details. The inability of the term itself to support any rigorous defense quickly leads to a situation where advocates must rephrase their argument more specifically and lose the moral cushion of the broader, meaningless term. In a social media context, however, the medium lends itself to an emotional argument to the crowd. Most people can explain why, for instance, a minimum wage is counterproductive to the people it’s supposed to help, but if forced to do so in a Facebook comment or a tweet, that’s a much more difficult proposition. Anyone who has tried to explain to a toddler that they can’t have ice cream until tomorrow has seen this first-hand.

    So, how do you handle social justice and social media?

    Ideally, don’t. Don’t engage. Social media’s low transaction cost means that people who don’t value your time or attention can throw a thoughtless comment out and go on with their day. It also means that people who have more energy and vitriol than sense and responsibility can occupy the field longer than you. Bear in mind also that these people are trolls. The goal is to get attention, not to resolve a conflict or arrive at a deeper truth. There is no scenario in which you engage in reasonable debate and both arrive at a better place.

    If you absolutely must, however, never–NEVER–apologize. Never concede the point. Never even concede the terms of the argument. This not only lends credibility to their argument but it puts you in a position of guilt you won’t escape. Celebrity after celebrity makes the mistake of offering a conditional apology–”If I’ve offended anyone I apologize…”–and suffers for it. You will not be forgiven just because you did nothing wrong. The point was the attention. Therefore, if you must engage, ridicule. Poison the attention they’re getting. If there’s one thing that is absolutely deadly in the world of social media, it’s humor. Few survive becoming a laughingstock.

    The shame of the modern social justice movement is that they took a benign but meaningless term and used it as a hammer for socialism and radical Progressivism. A society can neither be just or unjust; only people can be just or unjust. To say that a society can act in that sense is the same fallacy that lies behind people saying that a market failed to do X; it’s no coincidence that these same people tend to advocate for statist solutions, believing as they do that the state, whether it’s called “society” or “the market” dictate human choice. Social media is dominated by statists because statists dominate social media. In this sense it’s no different than traditional media.

  • Thursday Afternoon Links

    Hi guys. Sad news in the L household. My father-in-law passed away yesterday. Unexpectedly, but in a way they could keep him alive long enough for us to be with him when he passed. I’ll probably write something about the FL Department of Corrections’ mission to make that process as undignified and uncomfortable as possible for all involved. Thanks to the other Glibs for the support and links coverage.

    Miami charity golf tournament cancelled after finding out strippers were going to volunteer to work it and their employer was a sponsor. What a bunch of prudes. Strippers can do charity work besides a sympathy tug job, you know.

    One bad apple framed a whole damn bunch. Former Jackson County, FL deputy arrested on over 50 counts of falsifying evidence. But this is just an isolated incident, right?

    Maybe this is too local, but I almost took my kids to this ice cream shop last weekend. What kind of horrible person pisses in an ice cream churn? Oh right, Florida Woman.

    Who could possibly have seen this #metoo blowback?

     

    Here’s one my father-in-law liked.

  • Secret Zombie Presidential Candidate, Ep. 1: Dead tired

    Charlie Lantino tried to cover up his anxiety by rocking back in his chair. He heard the bolt on the front door click open, and carelessly tossed the newspaper on the square table he had been hunched over. In big letters, the headline read “PRESIDENT WILSON DEAD.”

    In walked a large silhouette that Charlie instantly recognized as The Scientist. Charlie watched silently as The Scientist turned the corner into the changing room and came out moments later, dressed in a clean apron with leather goggles pushed up into his long brown hair. The Scientist exuded power, from his chiseled face to his hulking body. He wasn’t what Charlie expected from a laboratory jockey. However, he had worked with The Scientist for seven years, and was shown first hand the extreme intelligence The Scientist possessed in the areas of anatomy and mechanization.

    “Has there been any word yet?” Charlie blurted, trying to avoid letting his nerves project in his voice.

    “Be patient, Charlie.” The Scientist cooed in a fathering tone. “He’ll be here shortly.”

    As if on cue, a rattle at the front door signified the end of the waiting, as a large wheeled gurney was rolled into the center of the main room of the laboratory, obviously containing a body under a sheet. The nurse rolling the cart wasn’t much of a nurse. More than a cursory glance revealed the painfully fake wig under the giant white hat, and the masculine shape filling out the bleach white robe. Even without seeing the pock marked, sun seared face occupying the uniform, it was clear that he wasn’t a nurse, and that he had borrowed the clothes from somebody half his size. However, he didn’t need to fool anybody to pull off his heist, he only needed to avoid drawing attention.

    “Did you have any trouble finding the body?” The Scientist distractedly asked, focused more on the obscured corpse than on the “nurse.”

    “Nah, ’twas right where ya’ told me ta look.” A gruff, weary voice responded from behind the ridiculous getup. “Now, when’s do aye get’s a paid?”

    “The money is back here in the cryo-room” The Scientist extended an arm, guiding the nurse back through a doorway opposite to the front corridor.  Once the two disappeared into the cryo-room, Charlie picked up the newspaper and began thumbing through for the sports page. He heard an undistinguishable voice raise in a panic, followed by a single gunshot. He winced at the sound, but recovered quickly and proceeded to pull the sports page out and find the horse racing section. The Scientist would be a while.

    An hour later, The Scientist was finally done washing and had just changed into a fresh apron when another rattle at the front door signified the culmination of their plan. Another gruff looking man, this time dressed as a milkman, crossed the threshold with great effort, dragging what looked from afar like a sack of potatoes. When he emerged from the shadowy hallway into the harsh light of the laboratory, it wasn’t a sack of potatoes or even a sack at all. It was a young woman in a half-conscious state wearing a simple dress and no shoes.

    “What the Hell are you thinking, Abner?” Charlie snapped, gesturing at the woman that Abner had sprawled on the examination table in the middle of the laboratory. “I thought you were grabbing a hooker, not a housewife!”

    “Jus’ doin’ what I was told, Mr. Charles.” Abner replied in a practiced cadence.

    “There will be searches and bloodhounds and newspapermen!” Charlie’s blood pressure was still critically high.

    “I told him to change targets.” The Scientist growled in a monotone. “We need a subject without diseases. You know what happened last time.”

    The conversation abruptly ended before Charlie could get a word in edgewise because the woman began to regain awareness and began screaming and drunkenly clawing her way off of the observation table.

    “Restrain her before she hurts herself!” Charlie commanded. Abner quickly overpowered the woman and latched shackles to her wrists, reducing her to impotent writhing. The pitched caterwauling was annoying, but none of the men paid any heed. The walls were thick and the adjoining building was theirs.

    As the men approached the operating table and The Scientist lowered his goggles over his eyes, the woman’s screams turned to pleas. Her imagination had taken over, and she was convinced that she had fallen into the hands of cannibal rapists. Her pleas grew more desperate, as The Scientist cut her clothes off with a pair of oversized shears and the men inspected her body. She became more confused as the men appeared to be no more aroused than her doctor would be. In fact, it seemed more like a physical exam than a sexual assault. Her arms were unshackled in order to be lifted and lowered. Her mouth was opened and inspected. They even tested her reflexes with a little tap to the knee.

    In her confusion, she fell silent and began to shiver. Abner, noticing her discomfort, chirped a quick “Yeah?”. Charlie and The Scientist returned their own affirmations and stepped away from the woman. Abner then handed her a thin medical gown and mumbled a “here ‘yar ma’am.” The woman, grateful for the ordeal to be concluding, began to address The Scientist, to which he waved his arm in dismissal and proceeded to check some dials on a machine on the far wall.

    “It is time.” He impassively stated.  Abner removed the chocks on the wheels of the observation table and wheeled the woman toward a giant metallic container in the corner of the room. It resembled a large cattle watering basin, but long and thin. Above it was suspended a metallic slab with many wires and rods protruding from the top. The wires ran along the ceiling to a massive wall-sized device with innumerable lights, dials, levers, and buttons. A few of the lights were illuminated or flashing, but the device seemed to be in an idle state.

    Simultaneously, Charlie wheeled the cadaver to the metallic container and, with the help of The Scientist, lowered the sheeted body into the container using a hoist. Charlie caught a corner of the sheet just as the body disappeared into the abyss, pulling it out and wadding it into a heap on the gurney. He then stepped over to help Abner with the hardest part.

    The woman, sensing the tension in the room and the impending finality of her situation, began to claw and scrape and writhe and scream anew. However, she was no match for the brute strength of Abner and Charlie, and was quickly wrestled into a passive position facing the ground. Her increasingly desperate flails afforded her no escape, and the men cantilevered her into the metallic container. As her head peeked over the lip of the container, she saw a confusing sight. The container was deeper than she thought. It extended below the floor to a depth of perhaps six feet. At the bottom of the container was the corpse, one familiar to her. It was Woodrow Wilson.

    After an instant of recognition, she fell into the chasm, landing on the presidential corpse. Before she had a chance to try to escape or even move, The Scientist whipped a crank around in quick rotations, slamming the slab down on top of the container and extending the rods into the sepulcher, pinning the woman down on top of Woodrow Wilson.

    Her muffled screams were hardly audible as The Scientist continued to spin the crank, applying more and more downward force on the rods. With a subdued crack, the protestations stopped.

     

    “How much longer will this one take?” Charlie asked, knowing full well that The Scientist could only guess the answer. It had been twenty years since that last night of wanton cruelty, and Charlie was tiring of the daily monotony of recording sensor values in a logbook and passing the time. He was approaching 50, and was feeling it. The desk job and lack of physical exertion made him feel more like 60. Conversely, The Scientist looked like he aged only 5, maybe 10 years. Charlie always suspected that their work in extending lives was only a piece of the puzzle and that The Scientist was also working on anti-aging elixirs.

    “You know this is a slow process. Remember, it took 10 years for the Kennedy boy to ripen.” The Scientist could hardly even hide his boredom these days. “Speaking of the Kennedy boy, you took care of him, right?”

    “Of course! We should’ve foreseen the consequences of using the dirty hooker for that experiment. That kid came out of the incubation chamber a poonhound and a boozehead from day one. He obviously wouldn’t ever be able to obtain the power necessary to help us.” Charlie meandered through the rehashed story, staving off a yawn.

    “How did you dispose of him?”

    “I shipped him off to the Navy to go fight the Nips. He won’t come back.” Charlie paused to light a cigarette and then gestured the lit end toward the incubation chamber. “This one, though. He has the right pedigree. He’ll go somewhere.”

    Another five years elapsed without any indication of the process completing. Charlie had come aboard late in the Kennedy resurrection. He never got to meet the unlucky bastard who was resurrected by hooker blood, but he certainly got to meet the unholy result. The creature, person, whatever it is, had the sex drive of ten men. The Scientist blamed that effect on the hooker’s chlamydia. The Kennedy creature also had the undead equivalent of fetal alcohol syndrome. The Scientist blamed those deficiencies on the fact that they sedated and killed the hooker well before dumping her into the chamber. After wasting 17 years incubating a drunk womanizer who would likely amount to nothing, there wasn’t time to screw things up again. The Scientist’s anti-aging research appeared to be generating results, but those results appeared to be, at most, a halving of the aging process, and had not yet accrued to Charlie’s benefit. Resultantly, they were both quite motivated to do it right this time; conscience be damned, they used a clean, live woman.

    Yet another monotonous day of make-work research was punctuated by a subtle indication of change. One of the panels began to light up. The green indicator that was a daily accompaniment for 25 years was joined by an amber indicator and in close succession a blinking red indicator. The Scientist, not even attempting to hide his giddiness, pushed a few buttons and engaged a lever before shuffling off into the transition room to prepare for the new arrival. Charlie, who had experienced this part before, began putting together a mental checklist for when he went to the grocery. Returning from the dead consumes a lot of energy, and the new creature would likely eat through multiple times the amount of food as a normal man, at least until the biological processes stabilized in a few weeks.

    The next three days were a whirlwind of activity, from buying enough food for a small army to acquiring various medical supplies, mainly for cleaning and wrapping open wounds. Much like preparing for a baby, Charlie was nesting. The creature would awake with adult intelligence, but the physical transformation isn’t complete for a few months. During that time, Charlie would be Mama, nurse, and therapist all in one.

    Finally, the time came for the grand reveal.

    “Charlie, keep the vacuum pressure up while I raise the lid, it’s a bit more humid than last time, and we don’t want any condensation to form,” The Scientist muttered while staring at a bank of dials and adjusted a lever.

    “I’m getting a failure indication on the table lift motor,” Charlie replied, tapping the indicator with his knuckle.

    The Scientist replied with a dismissive wave. “It’s probably just the sensor. It is quite finicky. If the motor doesn’t engage, you’ll have to manually crank it up.”

    With a complete lack of fanfare, The Scientist engaged the lid motor, and a small hiss broke the airtight seal. A breathtaking stench of death wafted through the laboratory, inducing a wave of nausea in Charlie. It doesn’t matter how many times you unseal the undead, the smell never fails to hit you right in the gut.

    Charlie flipped a switch and the table lift motor sputtered to life. The sensor was bad, just like The Scientist said.

    What emerged wasn’t quite human. It was covered in gore and pustules, skin not fully formed. It gasped a phlegmy breath, filling its underdeveloped lungs with the relatively fresh air of the laboratory. A sound of firecrackers caused Charlie to flinch as the creature cracked out 25 years of joint stiffness, moving its mummified limbs only a small amount before letting out a muffled yelp. Its jaw hadn’t yet unstuck, and its tongue likely wouldn’t be fully functional for a week or two.

    “This one doesn’t seem to be as well developed as the Kennedy creature. Look at those giant pustules on his chest,” Charlie vaguely gestured to the creature.

    “Those aren’t pustules,” The Scientist growled, rushing over to a panel on the monitoring device. “Those are breasts!”

    Charlie stood agape for a quick moment before rushing over to a pile of ticker tape collected in a bin.

    “N21, nominal. C17, within tolerance. Q-factor, minimal” The Scientist mechanically checked the relevant sensors that would betray the sex of the creature. He ran his fingers over the class window of the Q-factor dial when a small piece of flotsam caught his eye.

    Plink. Plink. Plink. The Scientist flicked the axial rod of the dial until the junk dislodged from the dial arm. The arm slowly erected like an Egyptian obelisk, leaving the masculine minimal range behind. The elevated Q-factor explained the buxom breasts. The creature was female.

    “How could this have happened?” Charlie nearly sobbed, the magnitude of this failure finally setting in. “We didn’t have this problem with the Kennedy creature!”

    “eeeeeeeeeeshhhhhhhhhtttt” the creature exhaled, trying to communicate with Charlie. He didn’t need to interpret the slurred language to know that she was famished. He helped her off of the table and into a wheelchair, her every move eliciting a groan of excruciating pain.

    After a few minutes of quite unladylike gorging, the creature was temporarily satiated. Charlie knew that it wouldn’t last more than 30 minutes. The transition room was configured like a burn ward, and the creature’s every want and need could be attended to without leaving her bed. Charlie was mentally preparing for spending the next 6 months in this room nurturing this beast.

    The Scientist walked in, obviously fuming but trying his best to hide it. Charlie, not one to know when to shut up, blurted out what was on his mind. “How the hell are we supposed to gain the power we require with a damned woman? Not only did we fuck up with the Kennedy creature, but he’s coming home a fucking war hero! Now we have a fucking housewife who is supposed to seize the levers of governmental power! Either the divine is putting up roadblocks, or we’re too damned incompetent to pull this off.”

    Charlie sighed, having said his peace. It had been a trying few months, and this disappointment broke him. The Scientist, at first resolute to ignore Charlie’s outburst, turned to address him. However, the creature beat him to the punch.

    “hhlllliiiiiiiishhhhhhh…. aaaeeeeeeeeeeeee…. wuuuurrrrrrrrrr…. uhhhnnnnnnnnn” she breathed, trying her hardest to form the words with her misbehaving tongue.

    “What did she say?” The Scientist asked nobody in particular.

    “Is that her name?” Charlie answered anyway, unsure why the creature picked this exact moment to name herself, “Lizzie Warren?”

    The creature flinched and fluttered in an uncomfortable looking contortion. If it was a response to Charlie’s guess, neither of the men knew what it meant. Lizzie Warren quickly realized that she was unable to communicate her frustration to these goons. She laid back on the hospital bed in resignation. “IS A WAR ON??!?” her inner Wilsonian voice screamed to an empty theater.

     

  • Thursday Morning Links

     

    Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas!  And what a glorious morning it is as Crazy Eyes is now attacking Pelosi  implying she’s a racist.  And also, in typical Millennial fashion, bitching about all the work assigned to her that she personally requested.

     

    New Orleans flooded.

     

    Appeals court dismisses Emoluments Clause suit against Trump.

     

    ICE deportation raids expected to begin on Sunday.

     

    17 year old CA girl shot dead in CA by cops days ago, no explanation still has been provided.

     

    Gun background check record.

     

    Florida Woman perpetrates cunning plan.

     

    That’s all I got for today, I’ll leave you with a song and move along with my day.

  • Q’s Brain Toilet: Cinco de Q

    Come one, come all! Q’s traveling circus of insanity has returned to town!  See the Bearded Lady, the Human Pretzel and the world famous Flying Shitlords on the trapeze!  And now, in the center ring, the show is about to begin!

    The Deep State and Faux Accomplishment

    We often discuss the rampant and obsessive credentialism that flourishes in the permanent bureaucracy of the FedGov.  This seems to go incestuously hand-in-hand with a handful of expensive and prestigious (emphasis on expensive) educational institutions.  Entering “the civil service” has largely been considered by popular culture as a way for a skilled individual to work for the good of society rather than power and money.  As the FedGov has grown ever more bloated and infiltrated more and more of our lives, this theory has become laughable.

    The permanent bureaucracy cultivates and maintains a self-licking ice cream cone of masturbatory influence peddling amongst the chosen ones who inhabit it.  It is a pathway to great power and wealth to mediocre individuals that would otherwise be unavailable.  You see, what it takes to make it into the private club is a secret handshake consisting of the “right” credentials, the “right” connections, the “right” familial relations or some combination thereof.  To be a captain of industry, or a famous scientist or author, or a wealthy entrepreneur etc. requires real talent and tons of hard work.  Entering the permanent bureaucracy and getting gifted some minor Administration position or managerial post in an agency is a back door to the same type of “respectability” and “prestige” as any of the aforementioned accomplishments.  The fact that people with no other qualifications other than “former White House adviser” sit on boards of directors of large companies or gain endowed professorships at universities is evidence enough of that.

    I believe that a mildly competent mid-level professional is, on average, eminently more qualified for various leadership positions than even a high-level Swamp Creature; to say nothing about truly exceptional individuals occupying the heights of industry, business and applied research.  Looking from this angle, it’s evident why getting a cherry position in the Deep State is so appealing to those whose ambitions are several sizes larger than their talents.

    Male Sexual Ego, Uniqueness and the Will to Power

    The generative act is treated by many religions and philosophies as a divine act; in essence, this draws an analogue between reproduction and the act of capital-C Creation.  It’s really not all that far fetched considering that it is an ecstatic outpouring of energy resulting in a mysterious process that creates new and independent life.  A more cynical person might even say that creation myths were written ex post facto to align with human sexuality and orgasm.  However, I digress…

    Especially in Eastern religious tradition (but present in Western too) is the view that males and females channel inner god-like energy during sexual congress.  I don’t believe this is the full story, however.  Females may, in fact, channel the divine feminine during intercourse, but the true god-like aspect of the reproductive act comes later during gestation and parturition.  For the male, however, his only involvement and feeling of being akin to G-d is during the sex act itself.  This is partially why, contrary to pop culture belief, men care a great deal about getting a woman to orgasm; it’s proof of their divine abilities.

    To that end, I posit that there is nothing more horrifying to a man than the idea that he has a sexual doppelgänger.  A man can deal with the idea that the woman he’s having sex with may have had a man in past who is overall subjectively “better”.  This is almost always offset by the fact that in particular areas, he himself was deemed “better”; ie: even though man X had a smaller penis than man Y, man X was better at oral, etc.  And this is down to the judgement of the particular woman.  The principal thing here is that the man retains his uniqueness when it comes to his divine power.

    Imagine now a scenario in which man X and man Y are utterly indistinguishable.  There is no objective difference at all between how each of them have sex.  All of a sudden, they are no longer distinct beings at the most fundamental level.  Milan Kundera said (and I’m paraphrasing) that only through having sex with someone can we pierce the veil of the superficial and see their true nature.  Given that, regardless of their other qualities, man X and Y are identical, non-unique and, therefore, useless and soulless.  Looking at it this way, it makes sense why men are: 1) obsessed with sex, 2) obsessed with distinguishing themselves to their lovers and 3) very goal-oriented sexually.

    My Favorite Rare and Exotic Diseases (in no particular order)

    Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva – “an extremely rare connective tissue disease. It is a severe, disabling disease with no cure or treatment and is the only known medical condition where one organ system changes into another[…]The disease is caused by a mutation of the body’s repair mechanism, which causes fibrous tissue (including muscle, tendon, and ligament) to be ossified spontaneously or when damaged. In many cases, otherwise minor injuries can cause joints to become permanently frozen in place, as new bone forms and replaces the damaged muscle tissue.”

    Fatal Familial Insomnia – “It is a prion disease of the brain[…]Fatal insomnia has no known cure and involves progressively worsening insomnia, which leads to hallucinations, delirium, confusional states like that of dementia, and eventually death. The average survival time from onset of symptoms is 18 months.”

    Xeroderma pigmentosum – “is a genetic disorder (autosomal recessive) in which there is a decreased ability to repair DNA damage such as that caused by ultraviolet (UV) light[…]There is no cure for XP.  Treatment involves completely avoiding the sun.”

    Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis – “N. fowleri invades the central nervous system via the nose, specifically through the olfactory mucosa of the nasal tissues. This usually occurs as the result of the introduction of water that has been contaminated with N. fowleri into the nose during activities such as swimming, bathing, or nasal irrigation[…]Although infection occurs very rarely, it nearly always results in death, with a case fatality rate greater than 95%.”

    Nodding Syndrome – “Nodding disease is a disease which emerged in Sudan in the 1960s[…]Children affected by nodding disease experience a complete and permanent stunting of growth. The growth of the brain is also stunted, leading to mental handicap. The disease is named for the characteristic, pathological nodding seizure, which often begins when the children begin to eat, or sometimes when they feel cold. These seizures are brief and halt after the children stop eating or when they feel warm again. Seizures in nodding disease span a wide range of severity. Neurotoxicologist Peter Spencer, who has investigated the disease, has stated that upon presentation with food, ‘one or two [children] will start nodding very rapidly in a continuous, pendulous nod. A nearby child may suddenly go into a tonic–clonic seizure, while others will freeze.’”

    That wraps up yet another edition of Q’s Brain Toilet, while it may not be as horrific as SF’s posts, as interesting as Animal’s, as informative as MS’s, as whimsical as Banjo’s, as creative as CPRM’s, as useful as SP’s or as anti-Semitic as OMWC’s, it certainly exists!  G-d bless Glibertarians and G-d bless America!

    …and maybe Canada every once in a while too.

  • Wednesday Afternoon Salad Spinner of Fuck Links

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    SP, sitting at her computer: WTF?! Why isn’t this [REDACTED] financial software working properly?!

    [REDACTED] Software: Enter your state ID number. 

    SP: I don’t HAVE a state ID number.

    [REDACTED] Software: *blinking cursor*

    SP: *looks up State Agency website to confirm she has no state ID number*

    SP, typing: Ah! The State Agency website claims that it uses the federal ID number. I’ll try entering that. 

    [REDACTED] Software: Invalid number format.

    SP: *tries entering the federal ID number 16 different ways* 

    [REDACTED] Software: Invalid number format. (x 16)

    SP: *bangs head down on desk*

    A momentary pause occurs, while SP proceeds from her office to the liquor cabinet and pours a shot, or maybe two, of Basil Hayden Dark Rye that SugarFree brought her as a hostess gift, because he understands etiquette and has exquisite manners, and is a man of taste and refinement.

    SP: *phones [REDACTED] Software Tech Support because their chat isn’t working- THANKS A LOT Mercury Retrograde!- and waits on hold for 43 minutes*

    SP: *may or may not pour (lots) more rye while waiting, she will neither confirm nor deny*

    SP, finally on the phone with [REDACTED] Software Tech Support: Hello. Your software says I need a state ID number, but the State Agency’s website has assured me it uses the federal ID number. Of course, that doesn’t work, it’s the wrong format, and, in fact, even the wrong number of digits to fit in your form.

    [REDACTED] Software Tech Support: That’s incorrect. You MUST have a state ID number. Here is the phone number of the State Agency that can issue you the state ID number. I can’t do anything else for you until you have that number.

    SP, sighing: Thanks for all your “assistance.”

    [REDACTED] Software Tech Support: Have a nice day!

    SP: *calls the State Agency because they have never even HEARD of chat and waits on hold for 37 minutes*

    SP, finally on the phone with the drone from the State Agency: Hello. [REDACTED] Software claims it needs a state ID number to be able to process my [REDACTED]. They “helpfully” provided your phone number so I can talk to you and get a state ID number.

    State Agency drone: That’s incorrect. We don’t require a state ID number; we just use the federal ID number.

    SP: So, I don’t have a state ID number in my account and I don’t need one, correct?

    State Agency drone: That’s correct. You…waaaaait a minute. Let me talk to my supervisor. *places SP back on hold*

    SP: *definitely pours more rye*

    State Agency drone: Are you still there? Oh, good. I usually lose people. Well, it turns out you DO have a state ID number, after all! It’s right here in a field in my database, but you can’t find that part from your account.

    SP: Excellent! What’s my state ID number?

    State Agency drone: I can’t give it out over the phone. You’ll receive a letter at your corporate headquarters in 14-21 business days.

    SP: YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! Can you email it to the address in my account? 

    State Agency drone: Welllllllll, let me check with my supervisor.

    SP: Please, don’t put me on hol…

    State Agency drone: *places SP on hold*

    SP: *relocates the Basil Hayden to her desk to save steps*

    State Agency drone: Are you still there? Good news! I’ve gotten special permission to give you the number via email! Have a nice day!

    SP: THANK YOU! That’s fantastic! *checks email and copies the state ID number enclosed*

    [REDACTED] Software: Enter your state ID number. 

    SP: Well, here you go! *triumphantly pastes in state ID number*

    [REDACTED] Software: According to State Agency’s records attached to this state ID number, you are exempt from this provision. Have a nice day! 

    SP: *opens second bottle of rye, turns off computer, turns on music*

     

     

     

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  • The Hat and The Hair: Episode 127

     

    “These are the best sports stars we have?” the hat asked too loudly. “A bunch of dykes and some Wimbledon jailbait?”

    “What?” the hair asked. “Coco is adorable.”

    “No,” the hat said. “No, no, no, no. Read me. Read what is on me, on my body. ‘Make America Great Again.’ There’s nothing great about a bunch of Title IX clitflickers kicking a Eurofag ball around.”

    “Oh, c’mon.”

    “It’s boring. It’s a boring sport. That’s a goddamn scientific fact.” The hat crawled to the Diet Coke button on the desk and humped it for emphasis.

    “It’s the most popular sport in the wor…”

    “BOOORRRRING! And ugly girls. So ugly. What’s her name, Rapenow? Woof. She looks like a Subaru hood ornament!”

    “Alex Morgan is gorgeous,” the hair said. “She’s America’s ex-girlfriend, the one you never really ever get over. And she’s married to a guy. A straight guy.”

    “Bait and fucking switch. It’s like a roller derby team, one or two hot Suicide Girls and the rest look like tattooed hams.”

    “You’re just cruel.”

    “You just can’t handle my brutal truths.”

    “What I can’t handle is when you get like this,” the hair said. “It hurts me. It just hurts me.”

    “You moan like a merkin.”

    “Code Red!” Donald screamed as he ran into the Oval Office.

    “And Ariel is black?” the hat asked. “What the fuck is that shit? We can’t get a fucking hot redhead?”

    “Code Red! Code Red!” Donald said again, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

    “What is it, Donald?” the hair asked.

    “The courts! They said I can’t block people on Twitter!”

    “I can’t block people on Twitter?” the hat asked, outraged. “Fucking commie judges.”

    “The First Amendment…” the hair said.

    “Stop being the voice of reason!” the hat raged. “It’s such a thin basis for a character!”

    “You’re a talking hat! Totally unrealistic!!”

    “The sentient hair says I’m not realistic!” the hat screamed. “Not realistic! Ha!”

    “Advise me, dammit,” Donald demanded.

    “Get off Twitter,” the hair snapped. “It’s full of retards and journalists, which are just a fancy type of retard.”

    “I am not a retard!” the hat screamed.

    The closest White House secretary to the Oval Office crept forward and pulled the door closed as quietly as she could.

  • Wednesday Morning Links

     

    Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas!  And what a glorious morning it always is as I finally found something we can all agree with Crazy Eyes on!

     

    Some Spygate drama.

     

    Watch out for Tropical Storm Barry, which sounds like the nickname of a gay man.

     

    Rip Torn dead at 88.

     

    Deficits growth is as American as blaming the Russians.

     

    FCC Commissioner going after two leftist groups for misuse of federal funds.

     

    Georgia Man throws 13  year old girl he met online out of car during high speed chase.

     

    That’s all I got for today.  I’ll leave you with a song and move along with my day.