Presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris is vowing to fine corporations that don’t take steps toward closing the gender pay gap.
The Democrat from California wants to turn the current system on its head. Instead of requiring female employees to come forward with complaints, her plan would require companies to submit data each year on equal pay to comply with new standards.
The plan, unveiled Monday, was touted by the Harris campaign as “first-of-its kind” and “historic.”
The candidate said in a statement that the issue of equal pay hits home: “[A]s the daughter of a working mother in a male-dominated field, I know the fight to be treated equally in the workplace has persisted for generations.”
Harris said her proposal would “finally put the burden of ensuring equal pay on the corporations responsible for gender pay gaps, not the employees being discriminated against. We can finally ensure women earn the wages they deserve by forcing companies to step up, holding them accountable when they don’t, and committing as a nation to ending pay inequity once and for all.”
I know the Dems are in the “throwing it on the wall and see if it sticks” phase of the primary. (They are up to 25 candidates!) But this is especially difficult to implement fairly, so expect it to be implemented unfairly by default.
Isaiah Carvalho Jr. woke up on Friday hopeful that his life was about to turn a corner.
Instead, he was told that his estranged wife, a New York City police officer, had been plotting to kill him all winter.
Five months had passed since the 32-year-old had filed for divorce from his wife, Valerie Cincinelli. But after a messy custody battle, the matter appeared almost settled.
It was, but not the way Mr. Carvalho had hoped.
Law enforcement officers informed Mr. Carvalho that Officer Cincinelli, a mother of two and a 12-year veteran of the Police Department, had arranged to hire someone to kill him and her boyfriend’s school-age daughter.
Instead of going through with the scheme, her boyfriend contacted the F.B.I.
The details provided in court documents paint a troubling portrait of a botched murder-for-hire plot ripped from the pages of a true-crime thriller.
It’s a terribly written article, trying to be a feature instead of just telling us the facts. No motive given as to why the boyfriend wanted to kill his own daughter, or how the ex-husband/murder target makes a living selling fireworks (fancy airburst ones or snakes and sparking tanks under a tent in a parking lot?) or if they were in contact with a real hitman at any point.
As president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka is America’s most prominent representative of the interests of the working class. The following document explains exactly how he is to be chauffeured around by staffers who are told they should be “proud” to act as his driver.
Trumka has been the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of labor unions, since 2009, and as such is the de facto face of America’s labor movement.
Splinter obtained the following memo, written in 2018, which instructs AFL-CIO staffers how they are to drive around the federation’s officers. (The memo presumably applies to all three of the top officers, but Trumka is the only officer whose preferences are detailed in the memo.) Sources say that when Trumka travels on business, an AFL-CIO staffer—such as a communications staffer, or a field mobilization staffer, or a staff member at a state labor federation—is often detailed to serve as his driver. This memo tells staffers exactly how to fulfill that assignment, which they are told that they should be “proud” to have been chosen for.
Watch as one clueless idiot argue that two and two can’t add up to four. It just can’t!
Ermahgerd, Patty Smyth. So hot. Even with the hair.
This haircut hit Kentucky hard and stayed popular for a long time. My high school girlfriend still had this haircut in 1987 when we started dating. Bangs are like cancer you give your own face.
We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not much bandwidth, and this will be an image-heavy post to support that. So hang on.
While the French were developing the Lebel, Europe’s first military smokeless powder repeater in mass production, the Germans weren’t hiding behind the door.
In response to France’s adoption of the Lebel rifle, the Germans did something that almost never happens – they formed a government commission that successfully designed a cutting-edge infantry rifle.
The 1888 Commission Rifle
The 1888 Commission rifle had a five-round magazine and a bolt with two locking lugs at the front of the bolt body. While the 1888 is frequently referred to as the 1888 Mauser, this is incorrect, as Mauser had no hand in the design of this weapon and, in fact, made few if any of the almost three million Commission rifles; most were made by the Ludwig Loewe works (later renamed the Deutsch Waffen und Munition-Fabriken, or DWM) by the Steyr works in Austria and by Imperial arsenals at Amberg, Danzig, Erfurt and Spandau.
The 1888 Commission rifle was only in primary German service for ten years, but it did have one outstanding characteristic: Its cartridge. The 1888 Commission rifle introduced the 7.92x57mm (generally known as the 8×57 Mauser) cartridge, in its original Patrone 88 J-bore configuration, firing a .318 diameter, 227-grain round-nose slug at about 2400 fps.
The 7.92x57mm cartridge would effectively father an incredible variety of rifle cartridges. Such legends of riflery as the great .30-06 Springfield, the .308 Winchester and the .270 Winchester share its case head, which has become damn near standard for medium-power bolt gun rounds. Unlike the rimmed Lebel case, the 7.92x57mm was rimless, using an extraction groove in the case to remove fired cases from the chamber; this made it easier to feed rounds from a magazine quickly, smoothly and efficiently.
Down in Oberndorf, Paul Mauser was, to put it mildly, displeased at the German government’s bypassing his design people to build their own infantry rifle. Mauser-Werke was at the time still churning out the 71/84 rifle, but Paul Mauser had some ideas, and if the German government didn’t want an improved Mauser, there were other governments in Europe and elsewhere that would.
The Run Up to The Final Mauser
Mauser’s late-nineteenth century battle rifles went through three main phases, each marked by several technological innovations. Those phases included:
The 1889 Belgian, 1890 Turkish and 1891 Argentine Mausers
The various 1893-1895 small-ring Mausers, which include the 1894 and 1896 Swedish Mausers
The 1898 Mauser
1889 Belgian Mauser
So, let’s look at each in turn.
By today’s standards, the 1889/90/91 rifles looked a little odd, at least if you’re used to more modern Mauser-type actions. Missing was the big claw extractor. The magazine was a protruding single-stack affair, loading five of the new 7.65x53mm Argentine cartridge, a fast, powerful round for the time. But these rifles did retain the 71/84’s over the top safety and the bolt locked securely into the receiver ring by the expedient of two large opposed locking lugs at the front of the bolt.
Some years ago, I picked up an 1891 Argentine that had been rebarreled with a 7x57mm tube and had a Redfield peep mounted on the receiver. I put on a nice blonde walnut stock with a narrow Schnabel fore-end; I re-blued the action and refinished the wood, had the bolt body jeweled and a butterknife bolt handle installed. It was a beautiful rifle, handy and light; I fed it mild handloads and killed a few deer and a couple of javelina with it.
The Belgian Army used their 1889 model in the Great War; the Ottoman Turks still had some by that fateful day in 1914. All in all, a little over a quarter-million of these rifles were made.
1893 Mauser
Following close on the heels of the Belgian/Turk/Argentine rifles came a new design, which entered the market with what became known as the 93/95 action. This was a more modern-looking piece, retaining the safety but exchanging the single-stack magazine for a flush-fitting staggered-stack magazine, and introducing the characteristic claw extractor. Previous Mausers were, like many modern bolt guns, push-feed operated; the bolt simply stripped a round from the magazine and pushed it into the chamber. The new Mausers big claw extractor engaged the extraction groove on the cartridge and guided it into the chamber directly, making for what most bolt gun mavens consider a more reliable feed; the down side of this system is that one cannot simply drop a round in the action and close the bolt. Loading a single round requires the shooter to place the round into the magazine so the bolt can engage it as designed.
Most of the new Mausers were chambered for the new 7x57mm rimless cartridge, a low-recoil, high-velocity round that would prove popular in martial circles and, later, in the game fields. In fact, of all the Mauser cartridges, the 7x57mm alone remains popular among American shooters to this day. The first models turned out by Mauser went to Spain, and these rifles still are often referred to generically as “Spanish Mausers.” But many of these guns were made and sold all over, seeing service with the armies of Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Congo, the Ottoman Empire and Serbia.
In Sweden, the Carl Gustaf works turned out what may be the finest of the pre-98 rifles in the M94 and M96 Swedish Mausers, chambered for the excellent 6.5x55mm Swede cartridge. Many Swedes have been imported into the States, and as they are easily converted into lightweight sporters, make excellent rifles for deer-sized game.
In 1898, though, Paul Mauser produced his finest work.
The 1898 (or, simply the 98) was the culmination of Mauser’s design work. Most bolt-action sporters today are adaptations of the 98 Mauser. This new action had a larger receiver ring with a stout reinforcing web, a solid bolt with the usual two big locking lugs but also a third safety lug at the rear; the bolt shroud was larger and had a large flange to direct hot gases away from the shooter in the event of a case rupture.
There was one other major innovation. Prior to the 98, Mauser actions combined the initial lift of the bolt handle with a slight camming action to initiate the extraction of a fired round. When closing the bolt, the shooter was required to push the bolt home against the mainspring, thus cocking the piece.
The Gewehr 98
The 98 changed that, using the camming action of the bolt to cock the striker on opening, rather than closing. This made operation of the action faster, more secure, and allowed the force of the run forward to be devoted to chambering the next round.
It was with this action and the Gewehr 98 rifle built around it that Paul Mauser finally regained the attention of the German Army. Germany entered the Great War fielding this long, heavy, powerful rifle and its 7.92x57mm S-bore (.323) cartridge; over 9 million Gewehr 98s were made, many millions more rifles were built around the basic M98 action, and the 98 Mauser action would become the basis for martial and sporting rifles all over the world. I have in the past mentioned my favorite hunting rifle, built on a 98 Mauser action made by DWM in Berlin around 1911 on contract for Brazil; if you own a Winchester Model 70 or a Remington 700, you are shooting a rifle closely modeled after the 98 Mauser.
Mauser produced a wonder, but across the English Channel, the Brits were developing a gun that may well have surpassed it as a pure battle rifle.
Meanwhile, in Britain
James Paris Lee
In 1879, the British Army was looking to replace their single-shot black-powder Martini-Henry rifles with something more modern. Enter a sporting chap named James Paris Lee. Lee had developed a practical box magazine that allowed a shooter to load multiple rounds with a new device called a stripper clip, or to simply stuff single rounds into the magazine.
Working with another inventor named William Ellis Medford, the two came up with a bolt-action repeater with an eight-round (later ten round) magazine, locking lugs on the rear of the bolt, and a cock-on-closing mechanism similar to the pre-98 Mausers, the thinking in Blighty being that the cock-on-close action was quicker to operate.
My personal experience is just the opposite, but I’m just one guy, after all.
While Lee-Enfield’s the short bolt throw (60 degrees compared to the Mauser’s 90) was probably as much to do with that quick operation as the action, nevertheless the new rifle proved acceptable and in 1888, after nine years of tests, the British Army adopted the Lee-Metford magazine rifle and its .303 rimmed cartridge.
Important note: In the last issue I incorrectly identified the Italian Vetterli as the first mass-produced bolt gun with a box magazine; as a sharp-eyed reader noted, the Lee-Metford preceded it.
The Lee-Metford rifle would, however, only stay in primary service until 1895, when a modified version was adopted. This was the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield (SMLE) rifle, a ten-shot magazine-fed adaptation of the Lee-Metford built at the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield.
The Lee-Enfield
The Lee-Enfield would prove successful indeed as a battle rifle. Its ten-round capacity was double that of most magazine rifles of the time. Like its competitors it would be loaded by stripper clip or with single rounds; unlike them, the magazine could be removed from the rifle and replaced with a loaded one, although this practice was not encouraged at the time due to fears that the common soldiery would simply lose the detached magazines.
Over seventeen million Lee-Enfield rifles would be manufactured in several variations.
But about this time, across the Atlantic, the United States Army was finally thinking of moving past single-shot black-powder breechloaders, and another Lee design would be part of that calculation.
The Americans Upgrade
In 1894, the same year the immortal Winchester Repeating Arms Company brought out the immortal 1894 lever gun, the U.S. military was looking around for a smokeless-powder repeater to replace their single-shot black-powder Springfields. The Navy chose to adopt a semi-rimmed 6mm cartridge, and the Navy Test Board invited manufacturers to submit repeaters for their testing at the Naval Torpedo Station.
After screening a mess of rifles, including no less than five Remington bolt-action prototypes, the Navy settled on a straight-pull bolt gun designed by no less than James Paris Lee.
The M1895 Lee Navy rifle had a fixed box magazine that was loaded with a five-round en bloc clip, which had the advantage of speedy reloads but the disadvantage of not being able to top off the magazine with single rounds. Nevertheless, the Lee was an interesting design and, in 1895, the choice of the small-bore cartridge was unprecedented.
That cartridge design survives today, incidentally, necked down to .22 caliber, as the .220 Swift.
The Lee Navy rifle only ended up in front-line service for three years, though, as in 1898 a board of Army, Navy and Marine officers determined a standard rifle was in order.
The 1898 Krag Rifle.
The story of the first inter-service standard turn-bolt repeater begins in Norway with a gun designer named Ole Herman Johannes Krag and a gunsmith named Erik Jørgensen. Krag had been in the small-arms business since 1866 and was unsatisfied with the tubular magazines in military rifles of the time; he sought out Jørgensen to design something new. What they came up with was a solid bolt gun with a 5-round magazine that loaded through a loading gate on the right-hand side of the rifle. This novel loading system had two big advantages; it allowed for topping up the magazine with single loads, and allowed for fast reloads as loose rounds could be dumped into the open magazine gate and, when the spring-loaded gate was closed, the rounds would automatically be aligned for proper feeding.
Denmark had adopted what became the Krag-Jørgensen repeater in 1889. In 1892, after a competition among 53 rifle designs, the U.S. Army, Navy and Marines adopted what would be called the M1892 Krag rifle, firing the .30 Government cartridge, later known as the .30-40 Krag.
The Krag was a good, solid reliable rifle. About half a million were manufactured by the Springfield Armory between 1892 and 1907. Krag repeaters saw service in the Spanish-American war, the Philippine Insurrection, the Boxer Rebellion and the Mexican Revolution, and as a reserve weapon in the Great War. But during the Spanish-American War, the Krag performed poorly against Spanish troops armed with 1893 Mausers and their 7x57mm cartridge. The Army determined that a more modern rifle was in order.
The Great Springfield.
Thousands of Spanish Mausers were surrendered by Spanish soldiers in Cuba. Many of those found their way to Massachusetts, where Springfield Armory gunsmiths examined that design and came up with an American counterpart. Features of the 93 and 98 Mauser patterns were combined along with some American requirements, like a knurled cocking knob on the striker rear and a magazine cut-off. A new, powerful rimless cartridge was designed that fired a 220-grain round-nose jacketed bullet at about 2200 fps, but after three years and a distinct lack of zap, the original .30-03 round was replaced by a new round with a slightly shorter-necked round firing a 150-grain spitzer bullet at about 2800 fps. Now the combination of rifle and cartridge was complete: The M1903 Springfield and the Ball Cartridge, Caliber .30, Model of 1906, or simply the .30-06, which remains today one of the most popular centerfire rifle cartridges in the world; it has been claimed that more North American big game has been killed with .30-06 rounds than by all other centerfire rifle cartridges combined and while I have never seen numbers to support that, I don’t find it outside the realm of possibility.
This rifle would be the primary weapon of the U.S. Army and Marines when the U.S. entered the Great War in 1917.
In Russia
The story of bolt-action repeaters in Russia is the story of the Mosin-Nagant.
A middling rifle, but a great tent pole.
Russian troops were armed with the Berdan single-shot rifle when they went off to fight the Ottoman Turks in the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877. Unfortunately for them, the Turks were equipped with Winchester repeaters. Although Russia eventually won that conflict, the Russian troops fared poorly in direct action against the fast-firing Turks, and this was enough to make even Russian military planners realize a change was in order.
In 1889, the Russian Army evaluated three rifles: Captain Sergei Ivanovich Mosin’s “3-line” (.30 caliber) rifle, Belgian Leon Nagant’s “3.5-line” (.35 caliber, more or less) rifle and third design by one Captain Zinoviev. Trials continued until 1891, when the officers in charge of the evaluation commission decided to combine the best features of the first two rifles, resulting in the M1891 Mosin-Nagant rifle.
The Mosin-Nagant was certainly a robust piece, even if most examples I have seen lacked the fit and polish of German, British and American-made rifles of the time. The M1891 used two big opposed front locking lugs like the 98 Mauser, a fixed single-stack magazine like the 89/91 Mausers and a push-feed system.
Like the Kalashnikov rifles that succeeded it, the Mosin-Nagant was stoutly built, made to withstand slapdash maintenance and hard use by poorly educated peasant soldiers. Its 7.65x53R cartridge was on a par with the German, British and American rounds, and the Russian rifle, however rough in design, certainly stood the test of time. Like the AK, it was service all over the world; also, like the AK, it is impossible to know precisely how many Mosin-Nagant variants have been built, but the number probably approaches forty million.
And Then This Happened
There is a saying among bolt gun aficionados that among Great War battle rifles, “the Mauser is the best hunting rifle, the Springfield the best target rifle, and the Lee-Enfield the best battle rifle.” (The Mosin-Nagant, on the other hand, made the best tent pole.) The Great War provided us with plenty of evidence of how these three guns worked in action, but truisms aside, the impact of these pieces would go well beyond the war.
With the breakout of the Great War, the Allied powers and the Triple Alliance were all equipped with bolt guns. While the European powers went into the fray well-equipped, the British found themselves struggling to produce enough Lee-Enfield rifles for their troops.
Enter that industrial powerhouse across the Atlantic. Great Britain’s estranged offspring, the United States, was about to bail out the Brits (not for the last time) by producing a new bolt rifle for the .303 British round – and later, in 1917, another version of that same rifle to supplement the standard-issue Springfield. The result of that was almost five million American doughboys who became accustomed to shooting bolt guns at the detested Hun, and an American firearms industry that was suddenly proficient at building bolt guns. More on this in Part Four.
This trend would continue through the inter-war years. While the American bolt gun trend started with service rifles, the various gun companies here would quickly bring out their own bolt-action sporters, and competition among the companies resulted in a great variety of rifles available for sale. We’ve already examined the career of the prescient Charles Newton in a separate work, but Newton had plenty of competition.
Americans then and now love them some guns. Plenty of shooters then and now like to be in on the latest big thing, and after the Great War and on into the rest of the 20th century, bolt-action sporters were the New Hotness. Not to be left out, European manufacturers weren’t about to miss this growing market either. But that’s a story for Part Five.
My short vacation is over – back to the Link mines. I am having trouble getting going, so the links may not be up ConfoederatioHelvetica standards. But by God, you shall have them, and have them on time.
So get to it!
I have stopped following the Brexit. My last impression is that the great slime engine of the state had managed to stall…and is looking to somehow reverse the appalling decision of those grubby voters.
OK, everyone – what do we say to slavers? In this case more like “bribers”.
Back from our local gaming CON. Tradition calls for getting hammered on Saturday night, and dragging oneself away on Sunday morning. If naught else, you may call me a keeper of tradition.
So no time for witty banter, just your weekly preview, and the open comments section.
Monday – Animal continues the Bolt Guns series, with Part 3. Yusef (well, whatever name he is using today) visits a park.
Tuesday – Pie ponders welfare and the UBI. MLW continues her forced march through “Woke Charmed”.
Wednesday – If your sanity and survives the Hat and the Hair, you will have to stay buckled up to deal with another episode of Tonio’s “The Glibbening”.
Thursday – ElspethFlashman explains Mentally Incompetent to Stand Trial. SP has a poll.
Friday – trshmnstr opines upon prosperity. The Cryptid of the Week returns to give links.
Weekend – Not Adahn, Mexican Sharpshooter and OMWC will keep us entertained and informed.
Just one alignment here, but it’s portentous: Mars-Mercury-Venus with the Sun in opposition. Mars and Venus are simultaneously opposing planets (War/Peace, Violence/Love, etc) as well as complementary (Male/Female). When you have them facing off across Mercury (change) you’ve got a recipe for something big, sudden and/or unexpected. Good or bad? Well… that’s where the sun in opposition comes in saying “sucks to be you.” Wear a helmet.
Now having said that, the best tactics for dealing with this are as follows:
Patience, directness and labor will be your allies. Allies are important. Strategery double-dealing and various Xanatos gambits are not recommended. (Mercury and Venus in Taurus).
Secrets will be used against you. Keep your skeleton closets locked up tight, maintain your payoffs and/or threats to keep people from talking (Mars in Cancer).
Precision, subtlety and “proper channels” are not to be relied upon (Jupiter (retrograde) and the moon in Sagittarius).
Plan, don’t rely on improvisation (Saturn (retrograde) in Capricorn).
The cards also indicate a week full of happy horseshit. The first six cards drawn were all reversed, and the leadoff one literally means “Bad Luck.”
Taurus: The Wheel of Fortune, reversed – Increase, superfluity
Cancer: Knight of Wands, reversed – Rupture, division, interruption, discord
Leo: The Moon, reversed – Instability, inconstancy, silence. Lesser degrees of deception and error.
Virgo: 7 of Swords, reversed – Good advice, counsel, instruction, slander, babbling
Libra: Page of Swords, reversed – A situation for which you are unprepared, a weaselly bastard working against you, possible sickness.
Scorpio: 5 of Coins, reversed – Disorder, chaos, ruin, prolifigacy
Sagittarius: Ace of Swords – Triumph, excessiveness in everything, great force in love or hate
Capricorn: The Tower – Misery, distress, ruin, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception. The frogurt is also cursed.
…so if you wish to call me out and complain about my links being too Mexican, not Mexican enough, or whatever other pejorative you want to lob my way—don’t bother. I’m at the gym.
I am up earlier than normal to accommodate so if for some reason you find me saltier than normal. Don’t blame me, put the blame where it belongs.
This seems fitting for Sunday morning. National Review defends…coffee? This is either Poe’s Law or they just forgot the part where they are supposed to leave out their MO for their “You know what really grinds my gears?” audience. Its called “Cold Brew Coffee.” Its not redefining “coffee” if you add a modifier. Society is not redefining a word to suit the agenda of Big Coffee, Starbucks, or caffeinated hipsters taking 30 minutes to adjust their purple sash, refit their vintage, ironic Johnny Rotten studded belt to their skinny jeans while a line 6 guys deep is behind them in the men’s room. Next they’re going to write an article bitching about pop being soda, soda being Coke, even if its Pepsi. I’m just sitting here thinking there’s a label on the goddamn can. Call it that.
Also, for your edification (Yes, thats a fucking word) “The story of the Toddy® Cold Brew System begins in 1964 when Todd Simpson, after graduating as a chemical engineering student at Cornell, tasted a cup of coffee created with a liquid concentrate made by an ancient Peruvian process.” Starbucks was founded 31 March 1971.
On the floor in front of them in a pool of blood was 30-year-old Farina Caspari, suspected of honoring Weiss’s dominator command to first kill him and Enders and then take her own life, which she clearly did, according to investigators.
Weiss and Enders left wills at their sides, presumably to ensure that the motives were clear. “Investigators suspect they were all members of a kind of sex circle with a focus on the Middle Ages,” according to RTL news quoting local investigators on the scene. “[Weiss] may have been the guru of the group.”
Gay dude running for president turns down another gay dude pining for an interview. I like Rubin, but I’m pretty sure Butt-kowski turned him down because Fox News has a much bigger audience. I’m just saying.
A third of the migrants at the border claiming asylum with the children they brought with them are NOT their children. Something they confirmed via DNA testing. Anybody working around government types might point out this is the Hawthorne Effect in action. This is body of behavioral research that suggests people will react a certain way to confirm the bias of the observer. This came about when researchers confirmed workers are more productive when their supervisor is watching (No…Shit). To break it down: when you make it known that there is only so much room for families at the detention center, and you’ll be released with instructions to be appear in court for your asylum claim…don’t be surprised when people show up with kids, claim asylum, and fail to appear in court—even if they are not their goddamn kids.
Deontay Wilder knocks out Dominic Breazeale in the first round to defend his heavyweight title; this is brutal. If the name “Deontay” drives you up the wall like the word “cold brew coffee” or you’re too much of a choir boy to watch to watch a guy getting knocked the fuck out…don’t click the video at this link.
Today is Saturday. This means I have about 30 hours until the only adult activity in my house will involve dropping everything, turning off all the lights and….watching Game of Thrones. I don’t hate it, but I don’t get it either. I first came across GoT while I was living in Colorado. I was visiting my parents who were into the show from the beginning of Season 1. I noted the terrible effects, poorly choreographed fight scenes and the fact that Boromir finally found a universe that won’t kill him.
This is my review of Trader Joe’s Providential Golden Belgian Ale (made by Unibroe)
Too bad for Boromir though, he just can’t catch a break.
I’ll show you what I can REALLY do with a bottle of Wesson Oil.
Unfortunately, others including my wife tried getting me to read the books. I stopped sometime around the albino wolf. I didn’t get around to watching it until midway through this last season. So my analysis of this show starts around the time K.I.T.T., flaming-sword guy, hilarious asshole, and freaky-eyed ginger dude, all go on the other side of Trump’s wall to capture a zombie-Mexican. I couldn’t understand what the deal was. They needed to capture a Mexican to convince the fake blonde, and/or evil Carol Brady they need to help the Scots defeat Mr. Freeze and his army of zombie-Mexicans?
What was the point if the wall was made out of ice, and Northern Scotland was going to continue to be in nuclear winter for the next ten years, couldn’t they just fortify Trump’s wall with MORE ICE? There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of SNOW and ICE in Northern Scotland–make the ICE wall stronger or something by adding more ICE.
In the next scene we see Wee-Man giving the fake blonde excellent advice for any government figure, that sometimes the best choice is to do nothing. Nope. We gotta do SOMETHING, so we’re saving K.I.T.T., flaming-sword guy, hilarious asshole, and freaky-eyed ginger dude. To the Dragons! Where they pull two classic TV mistakes of provoking the marauding horde, and staying in the LZ way longer than necessary and paid dearly for it. Don’t they do CSAR in Northern Scotland? Provide cover fire, land, mount up, and get the hell out of dodge. Now they have to deal with Mr. Freeze slaying and resurrecting–a zombie dragon.
I bet they wish they just fortified Trump’s wall now. Nothing is stopping the zombie-Mexicans from overrunning Trump’s wall, and evil Carol Brady is just going to let them get run over.
Now that the fearless crew have returned to the Scotland with their zombie-Mexican safely in a crate, we find out through the magic of dramatic irony that while K.I.T.T. is doing it with fake blonde–she is his aunt. Seriously? Is it really any wonder why incest-porn is a thing now? Whatever, they’re royalty.
The next season begins with Northern Scotland being ground zero for the zombie-Mexican invasion. Northern Scotland is greeted by an enormous army of black Spartans and Turkish Mongols. How do they deal with the logistics of three armies being in one place in the dead of winter? Who cares, these are zombie-Mexicans due to arrive at any minute. We also find out that fake blonde does not play well with either of K.I.T.T.’s sisters: slender ginger and wide-eyes. Its cool though, because we are further reinforced that K.I.T.T. and fake blonde are related when he mounts a dragon, and doesn’t die. Other plot lines involving awkward moments between other characters also occur, thankfully not between siblings.
The battle for Helm’s Deep! I think. I couldn’t see anything because they decided to shoot the entire episode through a camera lens coated with Wesson Oil and shot it at night. K.I.T.T., crazy-eyed ginger dude, flaming sword guy, hilarious asshole, the Storm Trooper captain from the new Star Wars, Goldfinger (evil Carol Brady’s brother), Wee-Man–screw it. Nobody of consequence to the story dies at Helm’s Deep, and all manage to fight off a zombie dragon, zombie-Mexicans, plus …zombie-Scots, zombie-black Spartans, and zombie Turkish-Mongols. That is, except for Mr. Freeze. Apparently wide-eyes is some kind of super assassin who stabs him under the ribs with a dagger made by magic Romans, thus killing all the zombie Mexicans, Scots, black Spartans, Turkish-Mongols, and dragons.
It is here we get to a point in the storyline that seems to have surprised “people” on the “internet.” This entire time they all thought fake blonde was somebody worthy of admiration. Even Elizabeth Warren got it wrong, granted that is par for the course for her. They want a do-over. I for one saw that fake blonde has been an evil, impulsive, power-hungry tyrant the entire time–they all just thought she was the candidate most likely to be a “good” leader. —Spoiler Alert— Everyone vying for the throne is either evil or stupid.
Everyone all seemed to miss this. It was foreshadowed by parts like where she required everybody to bow down to her for her help. How she didn’t purchase her army of black-Spartans, she just ordered her then toddler dragons to murder the guy selling her the army. In fact, she pretty much burned all of her enemies to a crisp for the transgression of being against her; such as slave owners, other monarchs, the cue ball that was the only character that figured this out on his own, her brother, etc. She told slender ginger the only goal she ever really had was to win back the throne, which she believed the entire time was rightfully hers–sort of like evil Carol Brady.
Upon finding out she had relations with her nephew, instead of feeling slightly disgusted or acting in a manner to what any reasonable person would do (dousing themselves in Holy Water, for example) her first thought is that means K.I.T.T. technically has a claim to the throne more legitimate than hers. Then she takes her dragons, one fresh off a fight with a zombie dragon, where he is clearly injured, and decided to attack a flotilla commanded by Captain Jack. Predictably, Captain Jack brought that dragon down to the railroad track.
So is the plot of last week’s episode really that surprising? Not really. Here’s a spoiler friendly version.
For everyone else, they now see she is an evil, impulsive, power-hungry tyrant that will stop at nothing to achieve her objectives. It doesn’t matter there are other people with claims to the throne that also made sacrifices towards that end. It doesn’t matter an army surrendered and then were burned for their trouble along with an absurdly large medieval city. It certainly doesn’t matter the throne she sought, was destroyed because she literally decided to burn the castle it was placed.
…but this is definitely a person worthy of Elizabeth Warren’s admiration. I’ll give you that. Which reminds me, remember when Hillary compared herself to evil Carol Brady?
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Is this beer any good? Yes, it’s Unibroe and they make good stuff. Since it is marketed under the Trader Joe’s brand it is a very reasonable $6.99. It has excellent body, mild citrus notes, and overall is simply lovely. I will go so far as to say it is better than this show, and the best part is that I can still buy it on Monday when I will be inundated with people in my office yammering on about GoT. Trader Joe’s Providential Golden Belgian Ale: 3.9/5.
Greetings to the various homonims – and heteronims- who are up on this beautiful Saturday morning. I feel that it is my duty to make you as miserable as I am today, and what better way to accomplish this than bringing you news stories? I will not be around much, since I’m spending the rest of the morning driving to Absentia, but I assume you don’t need adult supervision. Don’t make me stop this car and turn around!
Labour, totally not antisemitic. Bonus appearance by that blonde chick who chubbed out in an Israeli prison. No hunger strikes for her since then, either.
Old Guy Music today is one that amuses the hell out of me. I always thought Alice Cooper was an underrated band because of the extreme gimmickry. The same gimmickry that made them popular. In any case, here’s a song from one of their early albums, where they decided to show everyone that they could Prog rock with the best of them. And yeah, they pretty much did.
Sometimes I consider what would happen if I took that flight attendant job, but then I wouldn’t be here, reading this asshole.
I made a bad economic call on election night 2016, predicting a Trump recession. But I quickly realized that political dismay had clouded my judgment, and retracted the call three days later. “It’s at least possible,” I wrote on Nov. 11, 2016, “that bigger budget deficits will, if anything, strengthen the economy briefly.”
What I didn’t realize at the time was just how much bigger the deficits would get. Since 2016, the Trump administration has, in practice, implemented the kind of huge fiscal stimulus followers of John Maynard Keynes pleaded for when unemployment was high — but Republicans blocked.
NO.SHIT.
Contrary to what Donald Trump and his supporters claim, we are not seeing an unprecedented boom. The U.S. economy grew 3.2 percent over the past year, a growth rate we haven’t seen since … 2015. Employment has been growing steadily since 2010, with no break in the trend after 2016. Still, the long stretch of growth has pushed the unemployment rate down to levels not seen in decades. How did that happen, and what does it tell us?
The strength of the economy doesn’t reflect a turnaround of the U.S. trade deficit, which remains high. Nor does it reflect a giant boom in business investment, which proponents of the 2017 tax cut promised, but didn’t happen. What’s driving the economy now is, instead, deficit spending.
Nice deflection on the unemployment rate, which is indeed at near unprecedented levels. At 3.8%, it is the lowest since 1969. I should also point out you are citing the GDP growth rate. What Trump and his supporters are pointing out, is the GDP itself is at levels we have not seen, as this graph suggests. The truth is, citing either of these statistics without any further context is disingenuous.
Economists often use the cyclically adjusted budget deficit — an estimate of what the deficit would be at full employment — as a rough measure of how much fiscal stimulus the government is providing. By that measure, the federal government is now pumping as much money into the economy as it was seven years ago, when the unemployment rate was more than 8 percent.
The explosion of the budget deficit isn’t just a result of that tax cut. After Republicans took control of the House in 2010, they forced the federal government into austerity, squeezing spending despite high unemployment and low borrowing costs. But once Trump was in the White House, spending was suddenly O.K. again (as long as it didn’t help poor people). In particular, real discretionary spending — expenditures other than those on Social Security, Medicare and other safety net programs — has surged after years of decline.
So there’s really no mystery about the economy’s continuing strength: It’s a Keynesian thing. But what do we learn from the experience?
Politically, we’ve learned that the G.O.P. is deeply hypocritical. After all that Obama-era shrieking about the dangers of debt and the looming threat of inflation, the party cheerfully opened the spigots as soon as it had its own man in the White House. You still see news reports that describe prominent Republicans as “deficit hawks,” and puzzle over their relaxed attitude toward the current flood of red ink. Come on, everyone knows what that was all about.
*Yawns*
We already knew that. Try to keep up, cunt.
This has been said for years by people you have publicly decried as fanatics. Glad to seen you took time away from massaging your prostate with your Nobel Prize to notice. Once team icky is out of power, I suppose you will just shove the prize back up your ass.
Beyond that, we now know that the long period of high unemployment that followed the 2008 financial crisis could easily have been avoided. Those of us who warned from the beginning that the Obama stimulus was too small and short-lived, and that austerity was hobbling the recovery, were right. If we had been willing to provide the same kind of fiscal support in 2013 that we’re providing now, unemployment that year would probably have been under 6 percent, not 7.4 percent.
But at the time, what I used to call the Very Serious People offered many reasons we couldn’t do what textbook economics said we should be doing. The V.S.P. said there was a debt crisis, even though the U.S. government was able to borrow at incredibly low interest rates. They said high unemployment was “structural,” and couldn’t be solved by increasing demand. In particular, workers didn’t have the skills needed for a modern economy.
None of these claims were true. But together with Republican obstructionism, they helped postpone a return to full employment for many years.
If only we tried to prog harder…you sound like that old joke about a medical intern that was visiting a psych ward. He came across a patient that was furiously masturbating and asked the doctor what his problem was. “Oh, he has a condition where he needs to constantly ejaculate, it keeps him busy at least.” Then they came across another patient getting fellated by a nurse, and the intern again asked what his problem was: “Same condition, he just has commercial insurance.”
You’re the first patient.
So are the Trump deficits a good thing? It turns out that two years ago the U.S. was further from full employment than most people thought, so there is a case for fiscal stimulus even now. And the risks of debt are far lower than the Very Serious People claimed.
PROG HARDER!
If we’re going to run up debt, however, it should be for a good purpose. We could be using deficits to rebuild our creaking infrastructure. We could be investing in children, making sure they have adequate health care and nutrition, and lifting them out of poverty.
But Republicans are still blocking any kind of useful spending. Not only are Senate Republicans opposed to infrastructure investment, the Trump administration is proposing big cuts in aid to children, especially health care and education. Deficits are apparently good only if they’re incurred giving huge tax breaks to corporations, which use the money to buy back their stock.
So that’s the story of the economy in 2019. Employment is high and unemployment low, because Republicans have embraced the kind of deficit spending they claimed would destroy America when Democrats held power. But none of that spending is being used to help those in need, or make us stronger in the long run.
Wait…Team Red is opposed to funding infrastructure? And again with the goddamn stock buybacks. Does the Times give you a 401k? If the Times (FINRA Symbol NYT) buys back some of their own shares on the open market, that creates scarcity for their stock, which in turn raises the price of their stock…assuming anybody wants to buy shares in the New York Times. This in turn adds value to any firm or individual that invests in NYT. Given that such investment vehicles, like a 401K, are provided as a source of compensation by many companies, it stands to reason this benefits an awful lot of working-class schlubs.
To continue to promote the fallacy that stock buybacks only benefit the wealthy suggests you are either you are a shitty economist, or a disingenuous cunt. I’ll let you decide which.
Presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris is vowing to fine corporations that don’t take steps toward closing the gender pay gap.
The next season begins with Northern Scotland being ground zero for the zombie-Mexican invasion. Northern Scotland is greeted by an enormous army of black Spartans and Turkish Mongols. How do they deal with the logistics of three armies being in one place in the dead of winter? Who cares, these are zombie-Mexicans due to arrive at any minute. We also find out that fake blonde does not play well with either of K.I.T.T.’s sisters: slender ginger and wide-eyes. Its cool though, because we are further reinforced that K.I.T.T. and fake blonde are related when he mounts a dragon, and doesn’t die. Other plot lines involving awkward moments between other characters also occur, thankfully not between siblings.
The battle for Helm’s Deep! I think. I couldn’t see anything because they decided to shoot the entire episode through a camera lens coated with Wesson Oil and shot it at night. K.I.T.T., crazy-eyed ginger dude, flaming sword guy, hilarious asshole, the Storm Trooper captain from the new Star Wars, Goldfinger (evil Carol Brady’s brother), Wee-Man–screw it. Nobody of consequence to the story dies at Helm’s Deep, and all manage to fight off a zombie dragon, zombie-Mexicans, plus …zombie-Scots, zombie-black Spartans, and zombie Turkish-Mongols. That is, except for Mr. Freeze. Apparently wide-eyes is some kind of super assassin who stabs him under the ribs with a dagger made by magic Romans, thus killing all the zombie Mexicans, Scots, black Spartans, Turkish-Mongols, and dragons.
Everyone all seemed to miss this.
