“Everything is for sale,” the hat said. “Everything.”
“Are you talking about Greenland, again?” the hair asked. He was perched on Donald’s head as he slept, turning around and around on the tips of his walking hairs.
“Of course I’m talking about Greenland,” the hat said, eyeing a selection of McNuggets the staff had set out for Donald.
“Why would we even want Greenland?” the hair asked. “It’s not green and the people are only sort of medium attractive. I don’t see the appeal for you whatsoever.”
“It’s the largest island. I just want it. Why do you care?” the hat asked, inching over to the McNugget box. The relentless drone of Donald’s snoring changed and he froze.
“Because it is going to cost a lot of money and a lot of people are already making fun of us about it,” the hair said, continuing to walk on Donald’s pale bald head. The hair scraped off a scab and flicked it to Oval Office floor.
“What are you doing up there?” the hat demand.
“I’m aerating Donald’s scalp,” the hair replied.
“Aerating his scalp?”
“For the proper maintenance of scalp health,” the hair said primly.
“You’re nuts,” the hat said. “An insane hairpiece. The toupee of madness.”
“I am not a toupee!” the hair said vehemently. “You’re the crazy one. You want to buy Greenland.”
“White people need a homeland!” the hat shouted. Donald shifted and farted and briefly opened one eye.
“And Greenland is your solution?” the hair asked, settling himself down on Donald’s head.
“Largest island?” the hat asked. “Did you not hear that part? Defensible, contained… the ocean will be our wall!”
“Greenland is like 90% Inuit!” the hair shouted.
“We’ll evict them once we buy it. Any of the Danes that want to stay can submit DNA results,” the hat replied. He moved closer to the McNuggets box. He was almost touching it.
“Just what America needs, more genocide of native people!” the hair spat.
“Who said genocide? I didn’t say genocide, you strawman motherfucker. Evict. Canada can take them, they seem to love the unemployed!”
The hair squirmed on Donald’s head and turned away in disgust. The hat made his move, climbing on top of the McNugget’s box and thrusting away at it in sweet abandon.
“Yeah, special sauce,” he muttered. “Get that fucking special sauce.”
If the hair walks on its hair, the dandruff cloud must be amazing….
SF enough?
Don’t you dare evict the unemployed from Greenland! They are looking for the six fingered man.
I’ll call the Brute squad.
To be continued…
Roh Roh Shaggy…
Old Flip Wilson “You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.”
When Global Catastrophic Overheated Deplorable Caused Weather Change sets in Trump will be our hero. The guy knows the new rules of chess. SF understands this and is leading us rubes to enlightenment. Thanks, SF, my day is brighter.
Wait, shouldn’t the hair have been the one who says “Just what America needs, more genocide of native people!”?
scalping eye for an eye ?
The hair was born in NYC, no natives there iirc
They beaded it out of there?
Original dreadlocks, as it were….
Indians and Inuits live in flyover country, it’s a natural fit, like the Hair!
It seems unlikely the Danes will sell. There are only 56K welfare recipients yet loads of mining interests. They don’t even have to do the mining, they just sell the rights to someone else. The someone elses go there, figure out how difficult it is to mine in an environment like that and throw their hands up and leave. Rinse, repeat. It’s a cash cow for them.
I say we nuke it and take what we want, just like Japan.
Can’t risk heavy losses from a ground invasion.
Nah, this is the 21st Century. We really just need to tip the scales in favor of regime change, it always works out so well.
Remember when we were gonna get so rich on that Iraqi oil? I ‘member.
We’ll replace that lost opportunity with Greenland whale oil!
Nuke the Whales
No just have hank Johnson move some troops from Guam, its sure to tip over then…
Lol we’ll just install Hank Johnson as our surrogate dictator after the regime change. He’ll run things so well The Hat’s depopulation proposal won’t be an issue.
Not if we unload them carefully from opposite sides.
HAWT
https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebrity/lori-loughlin-wants-a-plea-deal-willing-to-pay-substantial-fine/ar-AAG7wrj
Unfortunately for Loughlin, it’s too little, too late. At this point, says the insider, “any deal would involve significant jail time.”
The risks of having her roaming the streets are too great, particularly the possibility of a Full House reunion episode.
It’s ridiculous that paying a bribe to get admitted to college is a criminal matter.
This, where a the crime?
Bribery is illegal because it is either fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and/or breach of the duty of loyalty by whoever accepts the bribe. The person paying the bribe is a co-conspirator, accessory, and/or induces the fraud.
Whether it should be a criminal matter is an open issue. Fraud can certainly be criminal.
Are they prosecuting the people who accepted bribes?
Oh, get technical…
Good response thanks
This is similar to Don’s serial liability issue. Nobody made you take the bribe.
Of course, the law was written by politicians who never see themselves as the real culprits.
Isn’t inducing somebody to do something wrong, wrong in itself?
It is distinct from most of Don’s serial liability examples, because someone who sells you a gun isn’t doing so in order to get you to shoot people. Somebody who offers you a bribe is doing so in order to get you to breach your duties. They have mens rea, which is one of the core elements of criminal acts.
If you don’t like inducement, then I think they are still co-conspirators and/or accessories.
It’s more akin to the incitement argument.
I’ll go along with co-conspirators because it involved actual action on their part.
I have a hard time saying someone who intends and facilitates harm to others should get off the hook because they outsourced the immediate action causing harm. It comes down to what we will count as facilitating harm to others. Mere speech, maybe not. But even that may be too permissive. What if my speech identifies someone’s home or where they will be at a particular time, so the goons know where to find them for the beatdown? Should I be able to say its within my First Amendment rights, as long as I don’t actually swing the bike lock?
Is attempted bribery also a crime? How about giving cash incentives to get out of public school? Bueller? Bueller?
The FBI doesn’t seem to think so.
From what I remember reading on this – yes they are!
I think there is also something with using the Postal Service for fraud.
Postal service/fraud/redundant
Mail Fraud
That looks like me after returning from a few minutes outside today.
Newman or George?
The freeze before it plays – sweat-covered Newman.
Yeah, bribes are for losers, the honorable way is to become a politician, so you can influence your kids into ivy-league schools, fair & square.
Harvard freshman Piggy sez “Fuck yeah! I got mine by standing on a pile of dead classmates!”
I can’t wait to bump into him in Harvard Square and thank him for convincing me to become a gun owner.
Who are these people? And why should we care? Is this the national enquirer?
She’s starting to get a serious case of “old-lady neck.” As I recall she was still a hard WOULD just a few years ago.
I got old lady neck, wanna fite?
I never wanted to bang you
Thank the gods…..
STEVE SMITH DOESN’T MIND OLD LADY NECK YUSEF
As an aside, being left handed, and driving in the left hand seat has left my entire left side slumped and kind of melted, as we as surgeries, go figure
You might be having a stroke.
She looks good to me.
She’s still a smoke show for 55, but she is hitting the age where this young buck starts to lose interest. I’m sure in ten years I’ll look back and call myself a fool………..
You will, believe me, you will.
You most certainly will.
Yeah, the bar definitely moves with age.
I look back at the stuff I didn’t even acknowledge because “chubby” or whatever. Wow. The standards of a 20 year old dude are bizarre by 50 year old dude standards.
I don’t know, I’m fixing to turn 50 in a couple of months and my standards are pretty much the same as they were when I was 20…
is she willing and not too batshit crazy? then yes
50 is a glimmer away for me but my standard, if anything, got higher but in a weird way.
I have near zero interest in most women in my age group – being married helps – but they’re usually:
a) too fat
b) aren’t very much fun to be around
c) let their looks go, or even care about fashion
There is a slim minority but meh – I don’t have the “must flirt with them!” feeling anymore.
I still _look_ at younger gals. Lovely until they start talking.
Funny thing is I have more confidence than my younger version. I’m also fitter and have minimal gray hair but I have no heart to be “in the game”.
Yeah humungus… I’m not talking about grading 50 year old women on a curve.
I’m talking about that same 19 year old that was maybe 5 to 8 pounds overweight that you didn’t even take a second look at, but that you’d pay to see nekkid today.
20 year old me wouldn’t have touched a 28 year old woman with a 10 foot pole. In fact I had a room mate with a 27 year old girlfriend that we ragged on relentlessly for being into old moms.
Rasilio..
Your answer reminds me of a joke some comedian told maybe 20 or 30 years ago…
“I have standards. I mean, I won’t have sex with a woman unless….
… unless she says “yes, I will have sex with you.”
Gotcha … I remember when I was 21 and my 23 yo friend was dating a 30yo woman born in Kuwait.
I thought she was so old looking. She was actually quite the good-looking and exotic woman with a wonderful British accent (where she was raised).
In further defense of my addled 20 year old self…
I went to college in Chapel Hill at a time when women outnumbered men 2:1. And women in Chapel Hill are notoriously above average.
So we had no idea how good we had it. Simply being above average made you highly desirable in that environment.
Yeah.. Youth is wasted on the young…
oh and when I was in high school, one of my friend’s step-mom was a total knockout MILF with curves everywhere.
During those late night computer gaming parties, she would come over to the bed and tuck me in with a kiss on the cheek. Major 14 year old hormone time!
Should have taken the plea deal!
To keep the OT comments in once place I’ll add this here as well:
A Guide To Making Your Next Motorcycle Wreck More Instagrammable
Shoot yourself because you have no life?
Nuke us from orbit – it’s the only way to be sure.
Hey now! I like it here…….
No one was harmed. No one was threatened. There was no malice. She was playing the game in a system she didn’t create in order to better her children’s lives. Yeah, she committed a crime. Make her pay a fine and leave her alone. The fucknuts that solicited and took the bribes, jail them.
Someone is making a show out of this to make their career. It is disgusting.
Yep
“The fucknuts that solicited and took the bribes, jail them.”
^This
No one was harmed. No one was threatened. There was no malice.
Well, the universities whose employees took the bribes were harmed.
Just because you want a good result for someone (your kids) doesn’t mean everything you do to obtain that result is OK. Arguably, she knowingly paid money to subvert the admissions process so that her kids would get in, and because college admissions is a zero sum game, that means somebody else did not. We can’t specifically identify them, but some individual was also harmed by this. I have a hard time saying that “I’ll buy you off to deny them a place and give it to my kid” is free of malice.
But how is this criminal? If it is, then there are tens of thousands of criminals walking around that made large donations to alumni funds just before their kids got admitted. This is like scalping tickets.
The fraud occurred between the employee who effectively embezzled that money from the school, which would have happily taken it if they thought it wouldn’t cause them a public relations problem.
large donations to alumni funds just before their kids got admitted
Those aren’t bribes.
But how is this criminal?
Maybe it shouldn’t be. Some fraud is, some fraud isn’t. Its not clear to me where and why the line is drawn. “This defendant will get me headlines” isn’t a good reason to treat fraud as criminal, and I suspect that was in play in this case.
” because college admissions is a zero sum game,”
No, it isn’t. There’s a finite-but-not-hard-and-fast number of “at large” admissions, and then a finite-but-not-hard-and-fast number of “graft” admissions. We’re just splitting hairs about the style of graft.
I would argue no harm was done to the student whom wasn’t admitted, because now they can get their education at a community college and not have the crippling debt or SJW indoctrination. In fact that hypothetical student should be thanking Lori.
I wasn’t arguing that she committed no crime, only that jailing her is a bit over the top.
Make her pay a fine and leave her alone. The fucknuts that solicited and took the bribes, jail them.
You might be able to draw a line between civil and criminal there, but people paying bribes are co-conspirators, and it would be odd to jail some members of the conspiracy and not others.
I haven’t given it tons of thought but it seems that, while both should face penalty, the bribee is the party that violated public trust and should therefore be subject the the harsher penalty. That’s my gut reaction. I agree with you though that there is mens rea on the part of the briber.
It is a different breach of trust.
Like some random dude banging your wife. Sure, you might hold some animosity toward the dude, but he didn’t stand up at an altar and swear fidelity to you either. So the bulk of the resentment and blame has to fall on the one betraying the trust.
Same thing if you take a job. You are breaking your promise if you do less than your honest best. I’ve been offered bribes in the form of kickbacks from contractors. I told them to pound sand and passed around the knowledge of who is offering those payments so other managers would know not to entertain that company’s business.
I had a manager once who was about to inform some foreign supplier that they had won a contract. They came to the meeting and literally handed him a brief case full of money to spread around as needed for a contract they did not know they had already won. He but the brief case aside told them the company would not be doing business with them and informed his bosses.
I think this is the key element, at least to me. The problem with applying equal penalty to the person taking a bribe and the person making a bribe seems to me the equivalent of prosecuting a thief and a person who buys stolen goods equally. One person did something wrong that deserves some punishment, but not as much as the person who actually stole the goods.
This doesn’t even address cases where public officials hold out demands for bribes as a requirement of even doing business at all. In that case, punishing the briber is essentially punishing the victim.
Well, let’s consider a different sort of bribe. Say, Harvey Weinstein tells a budding young actress “Blow me and sleep with me, or you’ll never work in this town again!”. If she goes along with it, you could easily conclude that she’s bribing him. Does that make her a co-conspirator against the people financing his movies?
This is why libertarians can’t have nice things.
This is extortion.
Which leads to the interesting question of when gatekeepers demand bribes is it just bribery or does it cross into extortion.
And if it crosses into extortion, is the person paying the bribe committing a crime or the victim of a crime.
That is actually a very interesting question – and posing it in the form of a young actress really highlights one angle.
She’s likely to get 100% sympathy and be considered the victim.
But what if you are the sales guy for a big company. Your job is on the line. You have a young family, and you just bought a new house. Things are strained at home because your wife has been pregnant these last 6 months and the 2 year old is still a handful.
Now, the purchasing manager says he wants 10k to award the multi-million dollar contract to your company. Your boss has made it clear that if you lose this account, you are done. You don’t think your marriage will survive losing your job.
Now, who is under more pressure? Yet I doubt you’d find a prosecutor who’d label that extortion. So unless he goes to the police himself, he’s probably toast.
That’s pretty much what I was trying to get at. It’s really not clear to me that there is a 100% straight line distinction between bribery and extortion.
Conspiracy law is a steaming pile of crap. To my mind you cannot rightly be charged with crime unless you personally took criminal action. The whole “overt act” in furtherance idea is guilt by association. Also lawyers should be shot for coining the term co-conspirator. Co-conspirator is redundant it is the same thing as menus reading with au jus.
So where’s the line at? Hypotheticals that come to mind range from helping a buddy get in touch with a hitman to kill his business partner, or providing information and planning on a bank robbery. Do you regard these as non-criminal acts or criminal acts?
Depends on the facts of the case.
Are you profiting from the robbery? Did you know it was being committed? What sort of information? Alarm codes? Ways to fuzz the cameras? Probably yes. But those cases can generally fit under accomplice laws. Conspiracy laws come into play when the nexus is less clear. You can be charged with conspiracy as to crimes you knew nothing about and had nothing to do with as long as you are part of the ‘enterprise’ the actual perpetrator belongs to. They were crafted to go after Mafia and drug cartel higher ups, which seems reasonable as those people’s “Didn’t know anything about it” is usually pro forma, but they are now used to go after people in vastly less clear situations.
I don’t like the argument of “we need a way to get this bad guy/type of bad guy” as justification for laws that erode the presumption of innocence, the requirement for mens rea, or any other principle that requires the State to prove a man committed a specific wrongful act before they deprive him of rights.
Are you profiting from the robbery? Did you know it was being committed? What sort of information? Alarm codes? Ways to fuzz the cameras?
I’m not sure those facts arise to “personally took criminal action” unless you count them as essentially the equivalent of overt acts in furtherance of a conspiracy.
You can be charged with conspiracy as to crimes you knew nothing about and had nothing to do with as long as you are part of the ‘enterprise’ the actual perpetrator belongs to.
RICO is not the same as (common law) conspiracy. It is definitely prone to abuse, and was objected to when passed on that basis.
I don’t object to common law conspiracy. I object to the expansion thereof. Direct involvement in planning a crime, and participation in the proceeds is mens rea.
Let me be more clear I do not object to conspiracy as a charge against a person who participated in the planning but not commission of the crime. I do object to the idea (also in common law) that no act of commission need occur. Someone must do something criminal otherwise the planning is just talking.
Ah, I get it. I think “RICO is a steaming pile of crap” might have been a more accurate way to start this discussion.
I do object to the idea (also in common law) that no act of commission need occur.
I can see that. I’d need to learn more about why the common law was watered down to “overt acts” rather than “criminal acts”.
Tell me again how Hillary hasn’t been charged with anything?
Ah, I get it. I think “RICO is a steaming pile of crap” might have been a more accurate way to start this discussion.
probably
Conspiracy law is a steaming pile of crap.
So mafia capos who never personally get their hands duty aren’t criminals?
Paying someone to kill is killing. Taking a share of the proceeds of a theft for organizing the theft, or under threat of death to the thief is theft. Conspiracy laws are an end run around having to prove the crime, and yes I believe that “it is hard to prosecute” is NOT a reason to undermine principles of justice.
Paying someone to kill is killing.
No its not. Killing someone is killing. Hiring someone to kill may be an independent criminal offense (I’d have to check, but I think it usually is.
Theft is committed by the person who actually steals. Not by the person they split the proceeds with.
Overtly threatening to kill the thief if they don’t pay up is extortion, which is an independent criminal offense.
Conspiracy laws are an end run around having to prove the crime
If you want to say there should be no “conspiracy” without an independent crime actually being committed or attempted, I think there’s some room there. But if you want to say that the people who knowingly provided “back office” support for the frontline criminal, shouldn’t have to worry about being charged with a crime because they didn’t “personally commit the crime”, I’m going to disagree.
Theft is committed by the person who actually steals. Not by the person they split the proceeds with.
This is handled by accomplice and common law conspiracy, or by laws such as those against hiring murder. It does not require modern expanded conspiracy. Those laws are flat out end runs around the rights of the accused.
>>Canada can take them, they seem to love the unemployed!
true words.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-shooting/trump-says-he-will-push-to-close-background-check-loopholes-for-gun-buys-idUSKCN1VB1WD
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday his administration would seek to fill in background check loopholes for gun purchases after Democrats accused him of reversing course on gun control measures.
I can’t confirm this elsewhere.
Were any mass shootings committed with guns bought without a background check? I honestly don’t know, but I don’t recall any.
Most of them, right?
Adam Lanza. Of course his guns were his mothers and he would have passed one had he bought them.
The columbine shooters also. They were 17 when they got someone to straw purchase them for them, but they were 18 at the time of the massacre and would have passed a background check also.
Lanza stole the guns. No background check would ever apply.
Columbine violated a different law, against straw purchases. Universal background checks wouldn’t make any difference.
It’s like he wants to lose. We’ll see I guess.
He might be using the old “baffle them with bullshit” tactic or he might just be caving because he feels the the optics of “doing something” are a fair trade for possibly alienating some of his base. Either is plausible.
“some of his base”
You misspelled “most.” If he indulges the gun grabbers on this he’ll lose. Nobody voted for him hoping for more gun control.
Trump is a Democrat of yore. He can’t help his blue blood New Yawker instincts.
Without universal registration there is no way to have universal background checks. If you want to close the gun show loophole, only allow ffl dealers. Anyone who wants to do a private sale can advertise in a public forum. None of this will effect crime.
Also every gun I’ve sold, I’ve sold to a gun shop or someone I know personally. I’m not sure I would sell a gun to a complete stranger, but probably not.
Not just sales, transfers. All to go through a FFL and be recorded. Next will be the temporary loan loophole. Or the family transfer loophole. Or the 20 year ATF records loophole. Gun grabbers are liars. Loophole is whatever wasn’t banned during their last ratchet. Their goal is eliminating private ownership of firearms. Fuck them. Repeal the Brady Act and the rest of the unconstitutional bullshit. Fuck those clowns. We didn’t need background checks for 200 years of this nation’s existence and we don’t need them now.
Gustave 2020 right here.
“And the rest of the unconstitutional bullshit” was my key 2016 presidential platform plank. My campaign slogan was “see how fast we can get impeached!”
I’d have started with full pardons for everyone convicted of a consensual crime – like drugs or prostitution – and moved on from there. I’d have zero-budgeted everything and gone with the test of “Is this explicitly authorized by the language in the constitution” (9th and 10th amendments in action!). If the answer is no, then it is out.
That would eliminate, what? Just about all of it? Social security, medicare, medicaid, Oof. Yeah, they’d have me impeached by the end of March.
I’d still vote for you then if that makes things any better.
It would be epic for the lulz. People would be reminiscing about the good old days when we had a sane president like Trump.
Wait, I thought it was the gunshow loophole? So shouldn’t they close that? All of a sudden it is the background check loophole?
Oooops. Looks like the gun grabbers were lying yet again.
Delightful.
How many of us readers will be muttering that to a partner this weekend? I know at least one.
“this weekend”
Showing your age, Crusty…. showing your age…
Your right hand is not a partner
It wasn’t very SugarFree until the end. Then it went all the way.
Isn’t that the way “just the tip” always works out?
For a second I thought MgNuggets was an attempt to avoid a copyright issue while also working in some kind of sly racial slur.
No, just a fucking typo. 🙁
a lot of people are already making fun of us about it
Of course the US has been after the territory since the mid-late 19th century. But Trump is the crazy person.
You might be able to draw a line between civil and criminal there, but people paying bribes are co-conspirators, and it would be odd to jail some members of the conspiracy and not others.
It’s not as if that never happens.
Apocolypse?
https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2019/08/21/liberals-turning-fascists-says-piers-morgan/
Some one quick check the temperature in hell.
Turning?
What he means is that media operatives and people like him can no longer help mask the fact the liberals are fascists without exposing that they are hacks.
Five Years Later, It’s Time To Admit We Overreacted About Apple Putting A Free U2 Album On Our Phones
Truth all around. Also, this is a good example as to why a show like The West Wing is hilarious to watch now, because the politics are truly quaint. “The US Navy arms testing at Vieques!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Bullshit it was the worst of U2. If you’re gonna force me to have Bono at least put on something from the 80’s
Isn’t it crazy that people cared so much about this?
Not really, that piece of shit still winds up showing up in my playlists from time to time.
U2 sucks!!!!
The one time I tried to watch West Wing, I was ready to hurl the then tube television out of the house.
Like watching an actual delusion someone managed to film.
I couldn’t watch much of House of Cards either. “Sure he’s evil, but look at how effective he is getting Democratic policies in place!” The squishy lefties at work were ready to overlook every murder, infidelity, and instance of corruption in order to see a Dem politician who was at least competent.
Sorry but Spacey’s Frank Underwood couldn’t hold a candle to Ian Richardson’s Francis Urquhart.
+1 Recycled Aaron Sorkin Speech
Christ, his characters are intolerably smug assholes that he and his sycophants venerate.
Obligatory
I do not.
I have a dedicated mp3 player with no internet connection that I load via a microSD card from a library of files I manage locally.
lol okay nerd
Mrs Hero recently binge watched it. I should have taken notes and done write ups a la Woke Charmed. It’s a disgusting worship of power and government.
It’s also Alan Alda’s finest acting job given his political views. He must have thrown up in his trailer after filming each scene.
It was very well acted, very much Sorkin and is very much unwatchable to anyone with a half-hearted desire for personal liberty, but it is still very popular.
When I saw it, I shrugged and listened to something else. Still in my collection and I’ve never listened to it.
The problem was less “U2” than “(1) jamming crap I never asked for on my phone and (2) making it a pain in the ass to get rid of”.
Total disaster.
“It’s an insult from a close friend and ally,” Danish Member of Parliament Michael Aastrup Jensen told the Post.
“He said Trump’s interest in purchasing Greenland took the country by surprise and was initially widely considered to be a joke, before Danes realized the full extent of ‘this disaster,'” the Post reports. “Jensen said Danish lawmakers felt misled and ‘appalled’ by the president, who ‘lacks even basic diplomatic skills,’ he said.”
“There was no word [ahead of time] about: ‘I want to buy Greenland and that’s why I’m coming,'” Jensen told the paper.
The Post also cites a tweet by Denmark’s former business minister Rasmus Jarlov. “For no reason Trump assumes that (an autonomous) part of our country is for sale. Then insultingly cancels visit that everybody was preparing for. Please show more respect,” Jarlov wrote.
Frederiksen was more measured in her response, saying her invitation for discussion about a stronger relationship between the two countries still stands and that she hopes Trump’s response to her rejection of the idea would not “change the character of our good relations,” the Post notes.
If anything I would want to get _rid_ of Greenland.
I mean yay?
What’s with the colors on houses in Iceland and Greenland?
To add a little color to a bland and dreary environment?
I live in Michigan. We’ve put a lot of color – no gray walls! – in the interior. An orange rug, an aqua blue sofa, artwork on the walls, lots of different lights, etc. All to try combat the winter doldrums when everything turns gray, brown and then eventually white white white.
People who live in places with little natural color have a tendency to increase the degree of colorfulness of their artifiical surroundings. You see it in desert regions too. Anywhere that’s sufficiently ‘desolate’ and the residents have the capacity to do so.
I think it’s about time to liberate the Greenlandians from their Danish oppressors. Plus, then we will have Canada fully surrounded, which will allow us to easily invade those pieces of useless garbage if and when we see fit.
The Trump Hotel and Casino Sasktatoon would bring some much deserved class to that trash nation.
MAGA? Why stop here? MAKE THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE GREAT!
“Jensen said Danish lawmakers felt misled and ‘appalled’ by the president, who ‘lacks even basic diplomatic skills,’ he said.”
“There was no word [ahead of time] about: ‘I want to buy Greenland and that’s why I’m coming,’” Jensen told the paper
Yeah, doesn’t that orange uncouth bum know that international relations are all about making decisions in advance in private and then pretending it’s being done in public.
Their huffing and sniffing is kind of funny, TBH.
Maybe they’ll take this opportunity to learn a lesson about putting their own politicians on a pedestal.
Best-case scenario would have been Trump keeping quiet about wanting to buy Greenland, visiting Denmark, and springing it on them out of the blue. Lots of confusion follows, and Trump then says he’d like Denmark to credit the U.S.’s account for the sale of Greenland with all of the money that Denmark was supposed to be paying on behalf of its own defense under NATO treaties. When Denmark points to other countries as the scofflaws, Trump says, “Oh hell, all of your countries are the same.”
Trump is killing the planet!!!111!!
I also feel the need to point out that three senior officials tasked with sorting this mess out have left the administration, a fourth senior official has been moved, and it’s all being overlooked by a 29-year old aide from Vice President Mike Pence’s office with limited climate policy experience now, according to the Times.
So yet again, the Trump administration has proposed unnecessary and even potentially costly and damaging policy that impacts a large chunk of Americans and American industry without properly vetting any justification for said changes, and then picked a fight with those that challenge the move, only to have it all devolve into a very public shitshow of even greater consequence than just not doing anything at all, or focusing effort and energy on much more necessary and time-sensitive issues like infrastructure, healthcare, gun control, economic stability and accountability, education, industry, or anything else that’s objectively more important than increasing oil consumption in the U.S.
Meanwhile, most of the automotive industry is already well on its way to accomplishing the targets set out by the Obama administration’s regulations, as the Times points out, and has zero interest in creating a split regulatory system in the U.S. In this case, rejecting a cut to regulations would actually benefit a U.S. industry. What a time to be alive.
I love how this idjit characterizes a minor relaxation of the timetable as a massive new set of regulations which will be nearly impossible to implement without destroying the automotive industry as well as the entire planetary ecosystem. Where is the justification for this? Whycome Trump no sciencey?
Poor Obama, he tried to save us, but there he is, rotting on that cross while Satan’s minions dance and laugh.
*Jalopnik has suddenly gained standing in the googlenews search pattern. Huh.
Not one of those things is within the power delegated to federal government. (well, postal roads fall under infrastructure I guess)
It’s almost as if congress shouldn’t have given that power to the president.
it’s all being overlooked by a 29-year old aide
I think the semi-literate author meant “overseen”, but I hope it really is “overlooked”.
So, Trump is shit-canning Obamas unrealistic fuel efficiency standards to the benefit of all Americans instead of advancing the Democratic agenda. Huh. Obviously worse than Hitler.
“…limited climate policy experience…”
Something that shouldn’t even exist.
And-
it’s all being overlooked by a 29-year old aide from Vice President Mike Pence’s office with limited climate policy experience now, according to the Times.
Am I supposed to think that’s a bad thing?
‘The Simpsons’ gets political, mocks Donald Trump with ‘West Side Story’ musical parody
This is one of the lamest things I have ever seen, and I’ve seen my pathetic slug of a dick rest on my inner thigh, disappointing my potential lover after one too many glasses of Scotch.
It is a sad state of affairs when a diabetic librarian can fire out a satirical piece of art that far surpasses that from a Hollywood writing staff.
These are truly dire times in which we live. Godspeed, all. Godspeed.
Yeah it was some pretty high-grade cringe.
People still watch that show? It lost its cultural relevance well over a decade ago.
/Don’t have a cow
I haven’t watched the Simpsons in fifteen years. There was a time when it was really, really great, but they should’ve put that horse out to pasture years ago.
I watched it until about two years ago just out of habit. I can’t remember the last episode to make me actually laugh.
Yeah, I tried to watch an episode a couple of seasons ago and it was brutal.
Subtle.
Zombie Simpsons has been an embarrassment for almost two decades. I’m not surprised they managed to sink ever lower.
Well, another cast member died recently. Soon it will be Zombie Simpsons.
There was an interesting explanation of the “get woke go broke” comment with regard to entertainment some time back. The theory was that, from a marketing standpoint, “getting woke” is a rational response to an entertainment phenomenon that is winding down. There is a chance you get a short-term boost from virtue-signaling consumers that would have otherwise tired of your product. But, even if you don’t get the short-term boost, you have an established justification for your eventual failure, claiming persecution for your brave truth-telling. That, in itself, probably assures a better post-success economic prospect than just having lost your edge or been passed over by the market. In effect, going broke isn’t so much a consequence of getting woke. Rather, getting woke is a response to going broke.
I think it’s just marketers living in a bubble, same as writers. No grand plan, just echo-chambered stupidity.
oh whom can we impose a tariff to save these jobs?
“It’s just going to kill the economy. They are just going to keep pushing drivers out,” Rowe said.
So which party will come running to bail these guys out ?
With all these Tesla crashes, I don’t want to be anywhere near something that dangerous being driven by a computer.
-1 Buggy Whip
Why is today’s featured post on Wikipedia the article on Hillary? Are they priming for something?
Scott Jordan, president of Powerhouse Transportation, a trucking company in Peculiar, Missouri, said Missourians need to stand their ground so that self driving cars don’t cause deaths on the roads.
“If they run over you, you are just an attributable loss,” Jordan said.
Being killed by a semi with a human being at the wheel is more humane, I guess.
Listen, and understand. That truck is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
+1 Dennis Weaver
LOL, it was the gratuitous tarantulas and snakes out of nowhere that made the movie.
I would say, “Just what you see here pal,” but instead this given the topic.
Emiliooooooo…..
Minnesoda Not-Nice: Miracle on Ice alum Mark Pavelich beat the hell out of his neighbor with a metal bar.
Of all people, itty-bitty Mark Pavelich?
That team was balls-on tough. Size ain’t everything.
sounds like he might be nuts… senile or whatever. Prolly took a lot of head injuries in his day.
A judge ordered a competency hearing for Pavelich.
I didn’t know Rand Paul had a home in Minnesota.
Pavelich had a rep for being a little odd.
Yeah, he was the only member of that team who wouldn’t come to any reunion or appear in any of the shows about the Olympics. Just wanted to live out in the woods and be left alone.
https://reason.com/2019/08/21/the-founders-were-flawed-the-nation-is-imperfect-the-constitution-is-still-a-glorious-liberty-document/
Interesting article at TOS. It hits on a point not made a lot. The lefts portrayal of history and slavery must follow that slavery is what made US prosperous.
Related from mises:
https://mises.org/wire/left-argues-slavery-was-economic-blessing-heres-why-they-are-wrong
If slavery is what made the U.S. prosperous, why isn’t Brazil a global economic juggernaut?
anyone who has read De’Toqueville knows slavery was not a source of prosperity. His discussion of the relative development of the Ohio and Kentucky banks of the Ohio river is pretty clear.
That, too. Look at the relative prosperity of the Union states and the Confederates before the Civil War. The agrarian South was being eclipsed economically by the North. The South’s capital stock was partially made of slaves, which was locking it into, or at least slowing its evolution from, an agrarian economy.
Precisely. The economic reason why the South clung so desperately to slavery is that, even WITH slavery, the South was falling behind. Without slavery, the lag would become that much more pronounced.
Without slavery, the lag would become that much more pronounced.
Interesting counterfactual. I was leaning the other way; that by tying up so much of the South’s capital in “stock” that was only useful for farming, slavery was holding the South back.
I can see how the South was reluctant to give up such a fundamental part of its economy while it was falling behind, not willing to go through the creative destruction phase to get to the other side.
I’m just guessing, though.
self-driving cotton gins destroyed the South
I’ve seen that argued, and am sure there is something to it.
But why? Why would a more efficient way of harvesting cotton destroy an economy based on cotton. rather than make it more profitable? I think it may be because the traditional plantations were too invested in slaves (in many senses) to make the switch.
I agree with your last bit. We see that it would have benefited them in the long run, but they didn’t see it that way. Not in their own narrow interests as planters, anyway.
That was the economic rationale, anyway. The racial aspect was the other part of it. One of the things that frustrates me is the way many people can’t admit that both parts were essential to the advent of the Civil War. There was a racial component, and any good old boy who prattles on about states rights as the alpha and omega of the Confederacy is either ignorant or a liar. That doesn’t mean that states rights played no part whatsoever, though.
I think part of the Confederacy’s rationalization of the Civil War was that it was pretty much on the same footing as the Revolutionary War. They wanted their own country, and if the distant government wouldn’t give it to them peacefully, well, they would do what is necessary. If it was good enough for the colonies, it was good enough for the Confederacy.
So really if anyone should pay reparations its descendants of northerners who prospered while letting slavery continue to rot in the south.
The Reason.com article is better. Quite good, actually.. He digs in to historical positions on race, slavery and freedom and pulls up reasons for imbuing the constitution with things other than intended at the founding. Nice work.
It would be great if folks who read Vox or The Atlantic were to read such work.
Yeah. The Mises article was more focused on one claim that slavery is an economic boon to society.
Totally explains the economic success of the US during the Industrial Revolution.
Capitalism is also slavery to them.
While communism/socialism is chattel slavery to the state.
Round and round we go.
The argument that slavery is what made the US prosperous relies on slavery being a variable that was unique to the US. It wasn’t. So the argument has to ignore or at least explain away the widespread slavery outside the US in countries that weren’t made prosperous by it.
The myth is that those slave plantations all over the south were cash cows. They weren’t. They barely stayed afloat.
How much wealth was destroyed when Atlanta was burned down
Another excellent point. From what I’ve read, most large plantations were very, very, heavily in debt. Running a large operation that isn’t even fundamentally solvent can still afford a fairly extravagant lifestyle.
See DC
Keep in mind also that that extravagant lifestyle was enjoyed by a very small percentage of the population. The vast majority lived hand to mouth.
The NYT’s project is, even for leftist propaganda, startling in its level of historical ignorance. Frederick Douglass, who knew a thing or two about slavery and race in the USA, had this to say about the Constitution while visiting Scotland in 1860:
He must have been some white supremacist apologist
He was a race traitor uncle tom.
No Court in America, no Congress, no President, can add a single word thereto, or take a single word thereto.
If only.
+1 Penaltax
Well, that’s on John Roberts, not James Madison
Nice rebuke of the NYT’s grotesque exercise.
I’m on the dole !!!!1!1!
Laid off 2019-04-15
playing golf and updating the resume ever since
and lazily filling out state paperwork (no idea how normal people cope with all the nonsense and incompetence)
first check of $200 2019-08-21 (will cover six rounds of golf depending on the course)
* goes back to score last night’s MIL@STL game longhand on cool scoresheets I keep in Excel . . . ice cream burp *
Since the question has come up over on the Discord, is anyone round here doing a Glibs Fantasy Football league this year?
Rasilio just volunteered to run it. Check with him.
Lol I actually have no problem running it but I didn’t want to step on anyones toes
I’ve never done FF but might be willing to give it a go
I put the March Madness bracket together, but I hate pro sports (except baseball), so I’m not the guy.
“but I hate pro sports (except baseball”
Being wrong about everything is Hyperbole’s thing, find your own shtick
I would be down.
CNN is breathless that Obama is going visit Denmark after Trump snubbed a US ally.
Now they’re outraged that Trump thinks Russia should be back in the G8/9/whatever.
CNN is breathless that Obama is going visit Denmark . . . .
Who?
An apparent Logan Act violator.
Ex-Presidents should be put on house arrest until the government has need to use them for photo ops.
Ex-Presidents should be put on house arrest
Give it few years, and that will the NYT’s official line. Starting with the most recent ex-President, that is.
Imagine the breathless outrage if it gets whispered that Trump might resume his real estate empire. Or worse, resurrect The Apprentice. It’s so unsightly for an ex-pres to host a reality tv show.
Until they rehabilitate him for the next Hitler. I’ve seen that W is already being a good house Republican for the establishment.
W was always a good house Repub for the establishment.
Now he can be the ex-pres for all of the establishment.
Why not vault 11 style and sacrifice them.
Obama needs to retire back to some fucking ranch and paint pictures of clowns. Or self-portraits. Same difference.
*golf clap*
Tips Hat
All apologies to SF.
I am back. I just laid down 225,000 good words (not including the 110,000 deleted ones) in 2 months. My husband and my bank account miss me desperately. What kids?
Welcome home.
You were missed!
Glad you are back, though. Congrats on finishing the book!
YAY! Welcome back
Hey Mo Jeaux. Congrats on the writing progress.
“Exxxxxxcellent, Smithers!”
Welcome back!
*throws confetti*
yeah!
Thanks all! Glad to be home.
I just laid down 225,000 good words (not including the 110,000 deleted ones) in 2 months.
Sounds like what I hope to do post-“retirement”. Well, maybe not that many words.
It’s freaking addictive once you get on a roll.
For my current technical and business writing, I know the feeling. I write so much during the workday that I have zip, zero, nada left to try and write fiction when not at work. I’m just keeping a notebook with ideas in it at this point. When I do stop going to the office, I will be very interested to discover if I actually can write fiction.
Of course you can. What you really want to know is if you can write good fiction.
Welcome back!
Welcome Back!
Strangely tame.