Monday Morning Links

by | Feb 28, 2020 | Daily Links | 585 comments

Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas!  And what a glorious morning it always is! Damn the news is slow today, let me see if I can get a turd to shine.

 

Ex-FBI unit chief blows whistle on Comey and McCabe over warrantless spying.

 

Police say initial reports that an Obama-era whistleblower died of suicide was incorrect.

 

CDC confirms first possible community transmission of coronavirus in the US. I hope ya’ll are prepped.  Sloop and I could use a few more sharped edged weapons in case it turns into a zombie apocalypse.

 

Mitt Romney’s name was booed during a speech at CPAC. Romney was also formally not invited to attend.

 

Without the government who will help the needy?

 

Damn you global warming!

 

Now they tell me!

 

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

About The Author

Banjos

Banjos

Wife of sloopy, mother to three bright, curious, and highly active young girls. Perpetually exhausted.

585 Comments

    • Banjos

      Mornin’

  1. Tres Cool

    mornin’ ya’all

    • Banjos

      Mornin’

  2. Hyperion

    Morning, wokesters.

    • Banjos

      Mornin’

  3. Atanarjuat

    Who said I was trying to cure anyone’s hemorrhoids?

    • Fourscore

      The next big breakthrough will be that eating potatoes cures obesity.

      • Festus

        Eggs over-easy in butter is a “super food”.

      • Swiss Servator

        That is waste … should be turned into wodka!

      • R C Dean

        “Potato concentrate”

      • banginglc1
      • Brasidas

        Plain potatoes, cooked and allowed to cool, are very filling per calorie. Plus they have vitamin C so you don’t get scurvy!

        Adding fat and salt turns potatoes into obesity machines.

      • C. Anacreon

        Skip the high-carb potatoes, just eat fat and salt and you’ll lose weight.

      • Mojeaux

        I’ll say it again because it’s worth saying:

        Adding fat and salt turns potatoes into obesity machines.

        The potatoes is the problem.

  4. Pat

    Police say initial reports that an Obama-era whistleblower died of suicide was incorrect.

    In unrelated news, police chief dies from 27 self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the back of the head.

    • Hyperion

      Has anyone seen Hillary lately?

      • Nephilium

        She’s resting up for a run.

      • Festus

        I think she just regained her humanesque form, judging by the literature.

      • Swiss Servator

        “judging by the literature”

        Wonderful!

    • AlexinCT

      Funny how the press rushed to make that conclusion before the facts were in? Especially since this guy spilled the goods on how corrupt that weaponized Obama administration era system was….

  5. UnCivilServant

    Sloop and I could use a few more sharped edged weapons in case it turns into a zombie apocalypse.

    There have been no confirmed reports of Wuhan Zombies. The rapid response crematoria are for hygene reasons only. Those infected who have taken to the streets monaing ‘腦’ are merely looking to further their education.

    • Hyperion

      How many people died of the common flu virus in the USA last year? I’m just saying that the common flu virus might be more of a concern in the USA than Coronavirus, but it makes very poor click bait. It’s also very unlikely to take down bad orange man. So no one talks about this.

      • robc

        16,000 this flu season, so far. As or 7 days ago.

      • robc

        As of

      • UnCivilServant

        The flu is a known factor. Like car crashes.

        We don’t actually have good data on Wuhan, and there’s a lot of things where the question is “to what extent are the Chicoms lying about this?”

        That fact that it’s apparently got the Chinese administration in a panic makes people wonder.

      • Drake

        The mortality rate for coronavirus appears to be much higher than the flu. The flu usually kills the elderly and otherwise infirm. Coronavirus is racking up kills of relatively healthy adults.

      • Urthona

        Not really though. it’s mostly mowing down the elderly at an even higher rate.

    • Lackadaisical

      Has anyone noticed that racoon is an anagram of corona? like. .. racoon city?

      *adjust tinfoil umbrella*

      • Pope Jimbo

        You want conspiracies?

        The latest lies about coronavirus from China

        In a lengthy and seemingly humorous yet serious article on its WeChat account, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of Tongzhou district in Beijing clarified that farts, normally, do not constitute another transmission route of COVID-19, unless someone takes a good and rather close sniff of gas from a pantless patient.

        The comments from the Tongzhou district CDC were made in response to netizens’ recent concerns that infected patients may spread the disease via passing gas.

        The only way to stop transmission from farts is to filter farts through a potato inserted into the rectum. If anyone refuses to take this common sense step, they should be beaten.

      • Festus

        This really is the best timeline, n’est pas?

      • Drake

        If we light them on fire, will that kill the fart-borne virus?

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        look, call me a conspiracy theorist if you must, but every single person in this picture is confirmed dead as of Wednesday of this week.

      • Drake

        No big deal, they were obviously White Supremacists.

      • Tejicano

        Silent but deadly takes on a whole new meaning

      • pan fried wylie

        I ain’t fallin for no banana in tha tailpipe.

      • Animal

        It’s not if you spell “raccoon” properly.

        /pedant

    • Drake

      I was just thinking about the John Ringo book Under a Graveyard Sky. His take on a zombie apocalypse caused by a man-made virus that starts out as a contagious cold, then eventually destroys enough of the victims’ brains to turn them into something like 28 Days Later type zombies.

      There was a period when it was obvious to the reader that the world was ending and vaccines would not be available in sufficient quantity in time, but people just kept going about their lives and going to work because they didn’t know what to do. I found it creepy and now that we are in the early days of this pandemic, reminded of it.

      • Animal

        I was on a panel with Ringo at DragonCon in 2008. Say right next to him. I cracked a few jokes at his expense, which he didn’t appreciate.

        He’s kind of a dick, actually.

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        Based on the tone and tenor of his books, this may be the least surprising thing I’ll ready today.

      • Drake

        Not surprised. He’s written some stuff I really enjoyed, and other stuff that sucked. Really likes to write chicks with guns stories that end up being kind of preposterous. And he’s perfectly willing to start a new series, then lose interest and stop writing.

  6. Pat

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t know exactly how the California patient contracted the virus. The individual is a resident of Solano County and is receiving medical care in Sacramento County.

    Take California

    • Festus

      What, Arizona Bay?

  7. Certified Public Asshat

    For every $100 donated to RIP Medical Debt, $10,000 in medical debt is wiped out, according to the New York-based organization.

    Not that this isn’t good news, but most people can settle their own collections debt in a similar manner. Just get everything in writing obviously.

    • robc

      While YMMV, I found hospitals are willing to give very generous 0% interest repayment terms and big discounts for immediate payment.

      There was an ER in Bowling Green that gave 20% off your total bill if you paid $100 up front. And since you got 20% off, that was only $80.

      • banginglc1

        After my last hospital visit I asked for a discount for paying it in full. They said no. But they did give me zero interest and my choice of how much I wanted to pay. I chose $10 a month and had that auto deducted from my HSA. I ended up paying it off quickly anyways because I just hate debt.

      • Fatty Bolger

        Was that without insurance, or your portion after what the insurance paid? If it’s your portion (co-pays and deductibles), they usually can’t offer you a discount unless the same discount is offered to the insurer for their portion.

  8. The Late P Brooks

    Asked why the FBI would keep a program that was not producing any terrorism leads, Youssef said: “It was a way to say, you know, it’s an insurance policy to show that we’re doing everything we can, when in fact it wasn’t giving us anything of what we hoped it would get.”

    FBI and DOJ declined comment on Wednesday. Lawyers for Comey and McCabe also did not respond to requests for comment.

    Optics, people. When people look at us it must appear as if we are busily doing something.

  9. Atanarjuat

    The audit showed that while the program had generated two moderate leads for counterterrorism cases, it had not helped thwart dozens of terrorism attacks as officials had claimed, despite costing tens of millions of dollars per year.

    In fact, the program was generating large numbers of “false negatives and positives,” Youssef said.

    The audit, he added, also showed “there was collateral damage in terms of civil liberties” of Americans whose phone records were unnecessarily searched or who were falsely identified as connected to terrorism.

    It’s kind of amazing that Roger Stone is going to prison for lying to the FBI, but lying to the American people about your successes thwarting terrorism not only goes unpunished but probably leads to lucrative contracts on TV or with industry.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Wasn’t that also the program that James Clapper directly lied to Congress about? Of course he’s been sentenced to CNN, talk about solitary isolation.

    • Hyperion

      There are 2 types of people in this world. Those who are fighting against orange bad man and those who aren’t. They must be judged accordingly.

  10. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Retired Special Agent Bassem Youssef ran the FBI’s Communications Analysis Unit from late 2004 until his retirement in late 2014. He told Just the News he fears the deeply flawed program, which was started in response to the Sept. 11 attacks, was allowed to keep going to give Americans a false sense of security in the war on terror and possibly to enable inappropriate spying, such as that which targeted President Trump’s 2016 campaign.

    “I have no doubt, or very little doubt, that it was used for political spying or political espionage,” Youssef said during a lengthy interview for the John Solomon Reports podcast.

    Once again, fuck Cheney and Bush with a rusty dildo.

    • Lackadaisical

      lol.

      if this it’s true, I hope youseff has a life insurance policy that covers suicide.

    • banginglc1

      But it was all cool and shit when he ran it . . .why can’t these people come out against things when they actually have some power to change them?

      • WTF

        Because they don’t want to get suicided?

  11. Lackadaisical

    “The release from Wednesday reiterated that the investigation into Mr. Haney’s death is active and ongoing. The sheriff’s office has reached out to the FBI to assist in processing evidence and has scheduled an autopsy to be conducted by forensic pathologists from the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office.”

    yeah, if the fbi is going to help there won’t bee any evidence of anything other than suicide.

    • leon

      The upper echelons of the FBI are just there enacting political subterfuge. They are as much politicians as anything, just not elected

      • Lackadaisical

        and the bottom ranks enjoy throwing people in cages for victimless crimes and fabricating evidence (so-called forensic science).

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        How else are they supposed to get ahead in their chosen career?

      • Tejicano

        And in what way is this different from how the actual Gestapo was?

    • Jarflax

      The only way the FBI should be “assisting”, is as persons of interest “assisting Police with their inquiries”

  12. Festus

    Stock market crashing! Corona virus! Global Warming! We’re all gonna diiiiiieeeee! Until the next President with a “D” is elected. Thanks media, thanks a bunch.

    • straffinrun

      Welp, my kid has a month off of school now and I’ve lost a couple grand due to this outbreak/reaction to the outbreak. Sucks on the economic front, but at least I get to spend some time with the kiddo.

      • Festus

        I haven’t had an honest-to-god-kill-me-now Flu since the 70’s. I must be pretty much immune. Same with colds. I get the symptoms but they never knock me down and seem to be gone in a day or two. I was a very un-washed child, so there is that.

      • Tejicano

        The first fall/winter season after moving back to Japan in 1994 I got a series of colds/flu for a couple months. I believe I was catching every type of viral infection common to the area. Since then I rarely even get a sore throat. It’s like my immune system got checked out on everything they had and now has the weapons to keep me from getting sick.

        I guess I will see how it handles this corona bug (AKA: the Pooh flu). I live right in the epicenter of an outbreak that’s been in the news so I expect to be hearing about more neighbors coming down with it in the next week or two.

      • Festus

        I’d love to see “Pooh-flu” catch on.

      • Sensei

        My friends there were discussing how essentially everything is canceled.

        For example, one of my friends teaches Japanese to non-natives and has had her classes canceled for all of March.

        I also read that Dentsu (of karoshi fame) shut down their entire Tokyo office. So 5,000 people are going to have to overwork themselves at home.

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        Win win. Don’t have to pay for office upkeep. Don’t get blamed when employees die at their desk.

      • straffinrun

        Company workers will get paid. Wouldn’t surprise me if the government starts passing out cash to companies. It’s contract workers like myself that get the full brunt.

      • Sensei

        Good point!

    • Hyperion

      +1 internetz

    • R C Dean

      *checks diversified portfolio, shrugs*

  13. DOOMco

    Morning everyone! Happy Friday!!

    • Festus

      BAYBEEE!

    • Tundra

      Hey Doom! How’s the beautiful baby-Doom?

    • Banjos

      BABY!

  14. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Freaky Friday: News You Can Use

    Would your cat eat you?

    It’s a question that’s kept many a pet owner awake at night, and one that’s gaining attention thanks to a recent paper out of the Forensic Investigation Research Station at Colorado Mesa University. While conducting a study on body decomposition, in separate incidents, forensic researchers unintentionally captured footage of two feral cats feasting on human corpses. Interestingly, the cats picked favorites, each returning to their preferred body multiple times over the course of several weeks.

    • Atanarjuat

      If your cat doesn’t like some food you’ve bought, just read it this story about feral cats having a favorite rotting corpse to munch on.

    • Pat

      I’ve never owned a cat that wouldn’t have brutally disemboweled me at one point or another if only they were large enough. It’s part of what makes cats so awesome.

      • WTF

        100 pound dogs are welcome in homes everywhere. But you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near a 100 pound cat.

  15. Lackadaisical

    “Without the government who will help the needy”

    I’m impressed. I rarely hear of these megachurches doing good works.

    • Pope Jimbo

      It will be interesting to see if the Bee says anything on this. They are just as savage to the mega churches as they are to pols.

      • Fourscore

        What? Saving your soul isn’t enough?

        They also don’t stop global warming/cooling, cats eating corpses or politicians from lying.

    • robc

      While not things that large usually, the ones I am familiar with do a lot. More things, smaller scale.

      I have been adjacently involved with two churches recently that did reverse offerings…they give everyone in attendance a small amount of money($5 and $20) and asked them to go give it away to someone who needed it.

    • ChipsnSalsa

      You shouldn’t hear about at all. Though this would be hard to keep under wraps.
      Matthew 6

      2“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It’s a good thing this is made public as it helps dispel the notion that government is the solution to all social ills.

    • Jarflax

      I rarely hear of these megachurches doing good works.

      They do tend to part stupid people from their money. Is that a good work?

      • Tejicano

        I can’t say it’s good work but it sounds like a good gig if you can get it.

  16. Pope Jimbo

    So the taters story ……

    Are you saying Spud needs to pull his head out of his ass?

    • banginglc1

      No, I think his head is going in other people’s asses.

  17. Atanarjuat

    I’m not a conspiracy nut, but that guy obviously did not kill himself. Further, he was planning on writing a new book. Is it crazy to think someone didn’t want that book published bad enough to commit murder?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Mugging gone wrong.

      Stop spreading unfounded rumors.

      • Festus

        Yeah! *hides sleeve of Reynolds behind back*

    • Rufus the Monocled

      I hope he hid a copy of the manuscript.

    • Fourscore

      Maybe he just re-thought about getting married at 66? Suicide might have looked like a better Plan B.

      • AlexinCT

        I joked about that, but the fact of the matter is everyone around this guy pointed out he was a fighter and was at a high point in life. The dead giveaway – like it was in the case of Epstein – is how quick the media was willing to tell everyone that of course it was a suicide, while doing their best to avoid pointing out this guy was a major pain in the ass of the Obama admin and their illegal activities, so much so that Obama’s people tried to destroy him.

        I am suspecting a lot of people able to provide details of how corrupt the Obama admin’s practices were will suddenly hit the lottery (read pay-off) or turn up committing suicide (mostly from a double tap to the back of the head) as we now are heading for a Trump reelection and inevitable action to dig deep into the corruption, abuses of power, and the evil shit going on by team blue and the swamp. And don’t count out some team red swamp rats also having things to hide.

    • Charles Easterly

      “I’m not a conspiracy nut, but that guy obviously did not kill himself. Further, he was planning on writing a new book. Is it crazy to think someone didn’t want that book published bad enough to commit murder?”

      He should have recalled the fate of Dorothy Kilgallen and not made the same mistake she did, that of telling others they were going to write a book/story.

      • Ted S.

        People actually believe Dorothy Kilgallen’s bullshit about the Kennedy assassination?

  18. Festus

    I must admit that putting a potato up my poop-chute as a cure for piles was the furthest thing from my mind but you never know. I mean, I used to hate broccoli…

      • Festus

        damn

      • straffinrun

        Pringles?

      • pan fried wylie

        That’s why they come in a tube?

      • Rhywun

        thicc

    • Pat

      Does butt chugging potato vodka count? Asking for a friend…

    • Nephilium

      Just florets, or did you go with the full head?

      • Atanarjuat

        It’s probably a reference to the old joke.

        What do anal sex and broccoli have in common?

        If they’re forced on you as an eight year old, you won’t like them as an adult.

      • Festus

        ^^^ Dandy!

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        If they’re forced on you as an eight year old, you won’t like them as an adult.

        Bullshit. I’m living proof that this isn’t true!

  19. Private Chipperbot

    I’m just here to say no one beats my Red Wings 8-1. Take that Minnesota!

    • Tundra

      That was just sad. I wonder if Howard is on suicide watch…

      But quit your whining, PC. Still a lot of banners hanging in that (empty) arena.

  20. Lackadaisical

    “Doctors are starting to get very concerned about people who subscribe to a dangerous home remedy touted on numerous websites, which involves inserting a potato into the rectum”

    I saw this in a documentary once.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Are you sure that this is a home remedy and not just the next generation of spud guns?

      • banginglc1

        Why not both?

  21. Festus

    Oh! Mornin’ Banjos!

    • Banjos

      Mornin’

      • Festus

        Yay! A pretty girl acknowledged me! I can go to sleep now, happy that “I’ve still got it…”! Everything’s coming up Festus!

  22. Tundra

    Well, what a nice surprise!

    Good morning Banjos!

    And thanks for the whacky lynx!

    Over the summer, some British women needed a reminder that inserting ice pops into the vagina does not help cool off.

    Good to know.

    I’m not sure what to think about the cornonavirus. The Geneva Auto Show was just cancelled and some people I know are cancelling plans to visit Germany. Unless I’m really missing something, this seems to be overkill.

    The end of things?

    Make it a great day, peeps!

  23. Animal

    Uh – Monday? Have I somehow slept through three days?

      • Animal

        I haven’t been falling into any unscheduled hiberZZzZzzzzzzZZZZZZz…

    • leon

      Congress voted to get rid of weekends, so that everyone will blame Trump

    • Agent Cooper

      Avatar checks out.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      Zero pride and utter lack of humanity. That’s how I see people who do these sorts of things. I understand some of them have time constraints but still. Does it really save that much time? The trade of potentially getting sick to save a couple of minutes doesn’t seem like one I would take.

      I used to clean an entire daycare by myself and it would take me hours because I did right by the kids and parents by cleaning the damn thing properly and pride.

      • Pat

        The trade of potentially getting sick to save a couple of minutes doesn’t seem like one I would take.

        This is why it’s hard to present a strong argument for market self-regulation. It’s fairly incomprehensible to me why someone would take a risk like that, but they do so routinely.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Government is supplanting third party compliance efforts.

        Regulators get paid off too. It’s a false sense of security.

      • Pat

        All true, it’s just a hard sell because of the perception that you’re taking away some form of protection and replacing it with nothing. The orthodox argument has always been “what incentive does a business have to harm its customers?” Logically of course there isn’t one, but practically many sets of incentives pile up to result in a chain that results in harm to the customer.

      • invisible finger

        There’s a difference between “harm” and “not protect”.

        Government is supplanting “buyer beware”.

      • Pat

        But for example, it’s not really practical to perform your own chemical analysis to make sure you aren’t buying toys tainted with lead paint, or vitamins with half the indicated dose, or cannabis gummies with the labeled THC%. Reputational organizations should theoretically take up the burden, but I’m skeptical that they would not be captured in the exact same manner as public regulators. Ultimately, getting screwed is basically part of life and there’s not much that can be done about it.

      • invisible finger

        Ultimately only you can watch the watchdogs.

      • Fourscore

        You had a vested interest, proud and proper.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Correct. An incentive.

        I actually became a legend among parents because they noticed.

        How many times did I get asked ‘do you clean homes because I need help!’.

        I still have a few employees who have been with us since the beginning and from time to time they tell my sister ‘the food was the best when your brother and mother cooked and when your brother cleaned.”

        I didn’t get paid those first two years (just stipends) but this is close enough payment for me.

    • Tejicano

      On my first trip to China in 1988 we checked into a hotel in Guang Zhou. The carpets had dirt and grime ground into them along the normal pathways. The elevators no longer worked. Everything was in disrepair. We were surprised to find out that it had been built just three years previously – it looked to be more than 15 years old.

      Yeah, that was over 30 years ago but the foundation of a culture doesn’t change that quickly.

  24. DOOMco

    The pope has it too now?

    • UnCivilServant

      Well, either that or Goat Gonorrhea

      • Atanarjuat

        That seems like an illness more likely to be contracted by an imam.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Yeah, the Pope (that faker, not me) is more likely to get Altar Boy Chlamydia

      • AlexinCT

        Someone told me this pope wishes he was the altar boy in the engagements…..

      • Not Adahn

        Imams have figured out how to cure it by using the correct anal lube “essential oils.”

        I didn’t RTFA to discover essence of what exactly.

      • AlexinCT

        Did you say “essence of Warty”?

        Damn, I need glasses.

  25. A Leap at the Wheel

    Guys, guys, guys, why aren’t you all freaking out about the stock market crash!!! This is what we’ve been waiting for fearing since Trump got elected!!! The dow has been falling like a rock. Its wiped out all its gains since..

    Aug 23, 2019?!!?

    • DOOMco

      I barely made it to work again. The piles of bodies in the street keep getting bigger.

    • robc

      S&P is at Nov 2019 levels.

      • invisible finger

        That’s the funny thing. A one-year 30% rise was always unsustainable; a 15-20% correction was fairly predictable.

        Of course the best indicator of bubbleness is still the three new office buildings going up near my office complex which has plenty of vacancies.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        My brain initially read that as:

        three new office buildings going up near my office complex which has plenty of vacancies vaccines

        Too much news…

      • Fourscore

        You mean I shouldn’t jump off the kitchen stool? (Fear of heights). It’s not the end of capitalism as we know it? The Fed needs to start shoveling more green paper into the market, gin up the economy, buy back some clunkers, do something !

      • invisible finger

        The only financial advice I have is “Give me your money and don’t expect it back.”

    • Rufus the Monocled

      Either the market knows something or this was the usual panic sell off.

      Imagine if Florence had a stock market during the Bubonic plague!

      • robc

        Or an excuse to cash out profits from the recent run

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Profit taking is definitely in there.

        Then they go back in when it’s safe again.

    • Nephilium

      Because I’m not retiring any time soon, and dropping prices mean buying opportunities. The one thing that seems strange on this one is the drop is across the board, stocks, bonds, crypto, precious metals, etc.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Because it was long overdue and the big boys had positioned for a selloff

      • Fourscore

        LewRockwell had 2-3 different articles yesterday that explained different aspects of the sell off and all were pretty much what you said. Corona was just another beer name, as far as they were concerned.

        /Hides generic brand aluminum foil hat

  26. Hyperion

    BE EXCITED, BE BE EXCITED!

    I know ya’ll excited, I see you with your little ear buds on in anticipation.

    • Pat

      Look out Joe Rogan.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I’d rather listen to Gilbert Gottfried for hours on end.

      • AlexinCT

        AFLAK (no more)…

    • Rhywun

      Conan O’Brien, who recorded an episode with the former first lady and her daughter Chelsea last fall

      Jesus. Remember when those late-nite shows used to be watchable? You know, before they all went balls-deep into politics?

      • Toxteth O’Grady

        I like his podcast, but that’s the only one I skipped. The Michelle O. episode I took my time getting to. He wears politics on his sleeve less than other talk-show hosts like Kimmel or Colbert though.

    • Not Adahn

      Will they call it “Air America?”

    • The Last American Hero

      Does the studio have a backup cough button? Because it’s going to get used. A lot.

  27. The Late P Brooks

    Surprise

    So how did a life-long avowed socialist and someone who’s never actually won an election as a Democrat get to the top of the party’s mountain?

    The simple answer is that he’s being supported by millions of younger Democratic voters, and those voters have been raised to be Sanders voters, even if their parents don’t realize it.

    Here’s how it happened:

    We convinced everyone college was 100% necessary, and then we made college unaffordable. Since the end of World War II, the chorus of educators, politicians, and journalists making it sound like college was essential for career success only became louder and drowned out any counterargument.

    At the same time, college tuition costs have exploded thanks greatly to government programs that produced unintended, but predictable consequence

    ——-

    For the Democrats, the price is becoming clear: it’s made moderate presidential candidates look less viable than ever.

    Think about it: if you really believe the president is a traitor and supporting violent plots against non-white Americans, is this really the time to support mainstream Democrat or Republican candidates?

    Maybe raising a generation of Jacobin activists wasn’t the smart thing to do. Sorry, Democrats. Don’t stop digging, whatever you do.

    • Hyperion

      Unless you are actually going to do something useful to society and the economy that cannot be accomplished solely by sitting at a computer, learning institutions and teachers are already completely obsolete, as worthless as the buggy whip factory. I mean, unless you are going to be an auto mechanic, a surgeon, or anything else that actually requires physically interacting with 3D objects, academia is nothing more than an activist indoctrination center.

      The latest thing that academia is pushing ‘we have to change minds and hearts through policy’ is a real example.

      Allow me to translate:

      We have to change minds and hearts through policy == you will agree with us and do what we say, or we’re going to put a gun to your head.

    • leon

      At the same time, college tuition costs have exploded thanks greatly to government programs that produced unintended, but predictable consequence

      If it was predictable, then the people implementing it knew what they were doing.

      Think about it: if you really believe the president is a traitor and supporting violent plots against non-white Americans, is this really the time to support mainstream Democrat or Republican candidates?

      I mentioned this yesterday. If you have spent 4 years convincing yourselves and everyone that the opposition is literally Hitler, you don’t have much to stand on when you try to hold back your own extremists. What are you gonna do? Vote for Hitler?

      • Ted S.

        Yeah, I saw it coming 30 years ago. When we filled out the financial aid and the college determined how much our family could afford, I realized that if there were more money in the system in the form of government aid, the college would still we could afford the same amount, and the extra money would go to increased tuition.

    • R C Dean

      “unintended, but predictable consequence”

      *grinds teeth in frustration*

      • Festus

        It’s my cake and I’ll eat it too1

      • tarran

        You know, someone should publish a set of rules about this. 💡

  28. Pat

    Uh oh…

    The State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) has registered a criminal case on pressure from former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden on former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin.

    “The SBI has added information on the criminal offence to the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations,” Shokin’s lawyer Oleksandr Teleshetsky said during a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency on February 27.

    The case was opened under an appeal from Shokin. The court obliged the SBI to register the proceeding.

    In his motion, Shokin spoke of pressure put on him by Biden, Teleshetsky said.

    “The reason for the pressure was the investigation being conducted by the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine into grave crimes of international corruption linked with the activities of former Ecology Minister of Ukraine Mykola Zlochevsky and top managers at the Burisma company,” he said.

    Shokin’s motion was filed with the State Bureau of Investigations back on January 28, 2020, but information about the criminal offence was added to the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations only on February 24 after the country ordered the bureau to register the case, Teleshetsky said.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      If everything the Democrats did with Mueller and impeachment (and all the scandals in between) was indeed fabricated and they knew it all along I find it hard to believe people hurt by this along the way wouldn’t wait for their moment to hit back.

  29. The Late P Brooks

    Speaking of cats- I have been watching this Japanese teevee show on Amazon called “Samurai Cat”. It’s weirdly addictive, subtitles and all.

    Spoiler alert: The cat is not actually a samurai

    • Pat

      When i was a kid there was a cartoon called Samurai Pizza Cats. I’m guessing they are completely unrelated.

      • Pat

        Damn, that site is a nostalgia trip. They even have my personal childhood favorite, David the Gnome.

      • banginglc1

        I had completely forgotten David the Gnome . . . I vaguely remember it being a favorite when I was very young.

    • Sensei

      If you enjoy history the rise Oda Nobunaga is really interesting.

      • Jarflax

        Nobunaga’s ambition was a great game on one of the Sega systems.

      • Sensei

        Naturally turned into a high school harem manga / anime.

        The Ambition of Oda Nobuna

        There are many works of fiction based on him because of his importance to creating a nation out of Japan.

  30. Pope Jimbo

    WTF Brooksy?

    What is wrong with Montana? (Besides the penchant for fucking sheep Montana blonds)

    4:15 p.m. A Kalispell woman was sitting on a park bench watching her kids play while drinking a beer out of an Arby’s cup.

    I guess I’m not moving to MT anytime soon. I don’t need a lengthy rap sheet.

    • invisible finger

      Sounds like freedom, JImbo.

    • A Leap at the Wheel

      Preposterous. This is Taco Bell cup domain, not Arbies!

      • Pope Jimbo

        I’m partial to McD’s cups myself.

      • Tundra

        Culvers. But I’m fancy like that.

    • Fourscore

      Looks like Kalispell is gonna need to beef up its LEO, with an unorganized crime wave like that. What’s next? Selling loosie potatoes?

      • Pope Jimbo

        Billy, what is this! I found a bag of tater tots in your sock drawer!!!!

      • invisible finger

        Sounds sorta like pedatophelia.

      • Atanarjuat

        Selling loosie potatoes?

        If you buy black market potatoes, make sure you wash them very carefully first.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Yeah, I had a buddy who bought 5 lb of what he thought were russets and then when he was getting baked discovered the bag had been laced with yams.

      • Fourscore

        We’re gonna have to squash that rumor.

    • Hyperion

      Indiana?

      Wut? When I left there 12 years ago, you could buy beer at Walmart. You sure cannot do that in the people’s republic of murland, and we have blue laws as well.

      • robc

        You can buy beer in an Indiana gas station…BUT NOT COLD BEER.

        Still not on PA level, but bad.

      • Viking1865

        Eh, you can buy liquor at grocery stores and drugstores, you can buy on Sunday. The only really weird law they have is the “no cold beer at gas stations and groceries” and really thats just rent seeking by the liquor stores, because you can buy cold beer in the liquor stores.

      • Timeloose

        Just leaving Indy, good craft beers everywhere. I didn’t look for beers in stores, but there was a liquor store next to the convenient store by my hotel.

      • Nephilium

        Not on Sundays. Then you can only buy to go beer at an actual brewery location, and only by the growler (unless they lightened that up).

      • Festus

        We couldn’t even buy alcohol on Sunday until 1986 when Princess Diana waved her magic wand and made it so. The Royal visit coincided with a relaxiation of the laws. Before, we had to either go to understanding restaurants or jaunt 20 miles out of town to the radar base and hope that you’d get signed in. Needless to say, if you didn’t stock up on Saturday you were dead fucked come Sunday. We still can’t buy booze after 11 PM here.

      • Festus

        Thus all the pot we used to smoke…

      • banginglc1

        Indiana resident here. We can buy beer anywhere really. Liquor everywhere but the gas station. No cold beer except liquor store though (or carry out at a bar). Mon-Sat 7am -3am. Sunday Beer Sales were passed a couple years ago, noon to 8pm.

    • Pope Jimbo

      I’m not a fan of Surly, but their owner has always been good on the BS laws. What you don’t realize is how much worse our booze laws used to be. No Sunday sales and even lower limits on tap rooms. The Surly guy has helped change all those laws.

      BTW Beers = Years

      Those on half a pint of beer a day are 81 per cent more likely than teetotallers to reach a tenth decade.

      A study has found that men who drink half a pint of beer a day nearly double their chance of hitting 90

      Women who drink similar amounts increase by a third their chance of reaching that landmark.

      Even blokes who consumed three nips of whisky or two pints daily — double the recommended NHS maximum — are two-thirds more likely to live to that ripe age when compared to abstainers.

      • Fourscore

        Why would that be a gain? Its tough enough getting through the 80s.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        I’m already tired of it all in my 40s!

      • Nephilium

        Most of the craft breweries have been good. It’s the AB-InBev/MillerCoors ones who have fought against most of the opening of the beer laws. I like Surly, I know the owner has a mixed reputation in the industry as a whole (hello Todd the Ax Man!). But I have seen a couple of craft breweries run into rules of that they lobbied for a couple years before, and you can always look at the BA and Boston Beer Company for other interesting examples.

      • Pope Jimbo

        The stuff I know about the Surly guy is when he is in the papers advocating for changes to the liquor laws or fighting zoning laws for getting his brewery built. He always seemed like he was just trying to make beer and was fighting laws that kept him from that. I’ll take your word that he might be a dick in other ways.

        Minnesoda has long been in the grip of the three tier system. The distributors hate the craft beer brewers because they are slowly eroding the boundaries between brewer/seller which leaves them out in the cold. Like cabbies, why would you not defend to the death the legal system that lets you make a lot of money without having to worry about competition?

      • Nephilium

        Ohio is strange with that. We’ve got the three tier system going strong (with a 25% minimum mark up for each step of the chain), but the breweries can self distribute and sell beer to go at their locations. In general, the breweries don’t undercut the retail price (if they’re distributed) because then the distributors would drop them. This means if you buy a sixer at the brewery instead of the store, the brewer is getting a much larger cut of the profits. Several of the breweries also will have exclusives that are released only at their locations, with none of it entering distribution.

      • robc

        My article next Friday is on the 3 tier system. It is very generic, looking forward to people adding specific state stuff.

        I have a few examples.

    • ChipsnSalsa

      The Corona PR people must be scrambling (or they should be) to get something together to counteract this.

      There used to be a phone payment type program that was called ISIS, that name got dropped.

      • Nephilium

        Yep, the phone payment app was Samsung’s IIRC, and renamed Softcard. The TV show Archer had a similar issue (the spy agency for the first several seasons was named ISIS).

      • Atanarjuat

        A humorous commercial claiming to be a cure/prevention for the disease. Don’t get rid of the connection, just use it to your advantage.

      • Chipwooder

        Way back when, the phone-based system we used for registering for classes in college was ISIS – the Integrated Student Information System. I was flawless at imitating the voice and cadence of the recording.

      • Jarflax

        Aids diet candies agrees.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      To be fair, 16 percent is way short of most.

    • Chipwooder

      At least you don’t have a state monopoly on liquor sales as we do here in Virginia.

      • Nephilium

        I do. But I’m in Ohio.

      • Jarflax

        Yeah, but it’s not a socialist monopoly anymore, now it is fascist.

  31. Pope Jimbo

    OMWC in AZ news!

    Arizona Man Gets Drunk, Steals Bike To Celebrate Sobriety

  32. AlexinCT

    Whycome the Linx say it is Monday? That’s evul!

    • Banjos

      I was groggy this morning. I was going to fix it, but it’s too funny.

      • AlexinCT

        Agreed it was really funny. Especially once I realized you were just yanking our chain lady!

    • Chipwooder

      In other news, words no longer have actual meanings.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I’m assuming there were drugs in there.

    • ChipsnSalsa

      Did they find the drugs up there to?

  33. Festus

    Funny story that I can’t link to – some shit-lord in Alberta is passing out stickers that show Greta being rammed from behind while the rammer is holding her braids in his hands with the caption “This is gonna hurt!” Busy-body Mom from the oil-patch made it public saying “When I saw it I just sat down and cried!” It’s just a silly cartoonish line drawing but she “sat down and cried” and shared it on Facebook so that nobody else would ever have to experience the trauma of a cartoon referring to Greta getting rammed up the bunghole so that it also made them cry. National news. You can’t stop dank memes and I think someone in Alberta is a lurker although we have two confirmed.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      Was she also literally shaking?

      I saw a ‘Fuck Trudeau’ sticker the other day.

      • Festus

        Been seeing them around for awhile. Jacked up 350’s and such whatnot. Lotsa people here commute to the patch.

    • JD is Unemployed

      Wow, it’s almost as if what she really wanted was some validation via having others experience the same outrage she did, almost.

      Also, it’s almost as if the folks handing out and sporting those stickers have no concept or do not care that it plays right up to various evil identarian tropes, like, you know, oppressing stunning and brave women with sexual violence. Almost. Or something. Oh lord this comment is going to get chemjeff’d in the behonkus.

      • Festus

        Or (hear me out, now) someone made an off-colour joke that some people might find amusing and she is Jan! Arbiter of all that is Humorous! Oooh look at me using the Queen’s English for once! I feel naughty!

  34. JD is Unemployed

    The potatoes in butt thing was propaganda spread by BIG POTATO now that keto diets are wiping out their profits! Don’t trust the potato fat cats!

    *adjusts tinfoil hats and retunes brainwave disruptor*

    • Pat

      He meant well, that’s what matters.

  35. Pope Jimbo

    How much govt money and State/Fed programs would it take to make this Minnesoda mom happy? Before she agreed that her precious snow flake had been properly protected and nurtured? She has written a lengthy article advocating against throwing disruptive kids out of school.

    The first time my son was disciplined and removed he was in preschool. The first time he was illegally restrained, secluded, abused and unfairly suspended was kindergarten. In first grade, he was suspended almost every day for the first three weeks, put in illegal prone restraints and seclusion before they called police to eventually have him arrested. My son was pushed out of school, unable to get the help or education he has a right to. I was desperate for answers and assistance, so I reached out to everyone in my community for an emergency meeting regarding the crisis in public schools. The only person who came to his defense was my neighbor. She saw my son as a child, not a monster.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      unable to get the help or education he has a right to

      Herein lies the problem. Government has guaranteed primary education, paid for with your tax dollars. So in some sense, she’s correct.

      • invisible finger

        According to SCOTUS, “Government is under no obligation to provide any service…”

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        Yes. And this a real problem for children with autism who have difficulty mainstreaming but are too advanced for a special ed classroom. There’s been at least one court case recently, launched by a very wealthy father who could afford the attorney fees, which resulted in schools having to pay for a private school if they can’t provide adequate services. Which virtually none can. Of course, in Libertopia, there would be no forcible taxation for public school anyway and none of that would matter.

        The major issue is that school is compulsory. Kids get kicked out schools and the mother gets arrested. Not many can afford private school and the Dems have tried their damn best to prevent the free option (homeschooling). It’s a really fucked up situation. And it’s fucked up for the other kids at the school that are trying to get an education.

        As long as the government is throwing parents in rape cages for not sending their children to state-run institutions, I don’t blame parents for pushing back against public-schools any way they can.

    • Rhywun

      Hm, I wonder what’s missing in that kid’s life. It’s a mystery.

    • kbolino

      Based upon what is not being said by the mom here, and my anecdotal experience lining up with the comments from “Tory Koburn” on the article, the child is unlikely to ever get “help” or “education” from the school system primarily because the child is unwilling and/or unable to help himself and learn. There is no amount of staff or money in the world that is going to overcome people not wanting to get punched in the face.

      Nobody should be “entitled” to be foisted upon the school system who refuses to be taught. If you are such a behavioral problem that you’re getting repeatedly kicked out, in preschool, kindergarten, and then first grade, then you do not belong in a conventional school. By the time you complete puberty, you will be a threat not just to the safety of teachers, staff, and other students but a threat to their lives as well. If that is how you are going to act, then there is only one place in our society for you and that is prison, not school.

      Special education teachers (and whatever other euphemisms people come up with) are being asked to do double duty. Not only to teach children and young adults who are very difficult to teach, but to put up with violent and unstable individuals as well. There is no policy that can solve this if it doesn’t involve all of the “illegal” mechanisms this woman is complaining about. If your child is going to punch, kick, or otherwise physically abuse teachers any chance he gets, then he is not ready for a school that doesn’t restrain him or treat him like an inmate.

      This used to be understood. Now, instead, there is an expectation that no matter how ill behaved or unteachable a child is, they get to sit in the school system until the age of 21. This is an abuse of the system, of the public purse and trust, and of the employees. It will not be solved by throwing more money at the problem. It is certainly not going to be solved by meeting union demands, since the union primarily represents the teachers and administrators who don’t have to put up with this bullshit directly.

      • ChipsnSalsa

        Your newsletter sir, what address can I send the subscription request to?

      • kbolino

        Semi-Spartan Dad’s response came after mine. I wasn’t trying to go on such a one-sided diatribe here. I think he raises some valid points, and a better argument involves squaring these two perspectives.

      • ChipsnSalsa

        I thought it was great. Our “one system to rule them all” mentality of education is terrible.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        It’s a complex situation with the forcible taxation and compulsory thrown in. Not to divert too much, but I think it’s similar to the health care debate. The left says “Health Care is a Right” and many Glibs say “No, it’s not”. What’s overlooked is that Americans are forced to work with the government-controlled health care system and cannot seek it out on their own (medical license cartel, prescriptions, etc). It’s not black and white.

        It’s kind of like saying access to food is not a right, but we’ll throw you in jail if grow your own food or purchase it outside of government-sanctioned businesses. There’s a problem there.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        And for the record, I’m not saying education, health care, or access to food are rights. I only believe in negative rights. The government has placed barriers in place to obtaining these things though that distort the free market acquisition and are worth addressing.

      • AlexinCT

        There is no amount of staff or money in the world that is going to overcome people not wanting to get punched in the face.

        And that’s the gist of it. Our system fails because the people that want kids in these indoctrination sessions demand they be there even when they can’t or don’t want to. Education starts at home: parents provide the example drive, because most kids are not going to understand why they must learn things. No amount of money will fix this disconnect.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Assuming:

      A) no discipline by the mom

      B) dad is awol

      • ChipsnSalsa

        I think those are very safe assumptions.

  36. A Leap at the Wheel

    Any vegan or lactose-free readers have a good recipe for almond yogurt? My son is being put on an elimination diet to figure out what is bothering his GI track, and he’s off dairy for a while. But he really loves yogurt and store-bought almond yogurt. I do not love paying for store-bought almond yogurt.

    All the recipes I find online are from hippie vegans or bubble-head naturophiles who swear their recipe is “JUST LIKE” real yogurt. Bullshit, I don’t believe you.

    • Pope Jimbo

      GI track

      Your son is a bit young to already be making decisions about his future career path isn’t he? And if decides later to do the AP/College track can those army classes he’s taken transfer?

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        His recruiter said we don’t have to worry about the details, the Army will make sure he’s taken care of.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Child Abuse!

        At least get him in Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children.

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        He said he doesn’t like the taste of crayons.

      • Pope Jimbo

        No one likes the taste! You just do what you gotta do. You don’t just sit around asking “why?”. That is what those AF pussies do.

      • Shirley Knott

        If he prefers the taste of paste he should consider the Navy.

      • Fourscore

        “Army will make sure he’s taken care of.”

        uh-huh

        /looks in mirror, sees no reflection

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Utterly predictable. Government goes into cost saving mode and resorts to triage methods, politicians get treated first.

      • Jarflax

        politicians get treated first.

        I prescribe Pb injections via nitrate combustion

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Wouldn’t that happen anywhere though? If resources are limited prioritization has to happen.

      • invisible finger

        In a just system, you pay to go to the front of the line. In this socialist system its more like “You paid in advance. Sucker!”

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        I didn’t think of it that way but you make a good point. They paid in but they’ll be squeezed out if things go south. Seems a bit unfair…

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        In a fluid market, if resources are limited, people redirect other resources to the limited area. In this system, people with other resources that could be redirected are told “Fuck You Go Die,” thus enhancing justice by being protected from the ignominy of having to sell their home to receive life-saving medical care.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        In a free market, there’s the possibility that additional supply could be deployed to address the demand.

        The Us doesn’t have a free market either.

      • kbolino

        The great injustice, the absolutely unacceptable original sin of the United States healthcare system, is that if you have enough money you can command a reallocation of resources. If you’re 75 and you get sick, you’re supposed to just die, or else stand in the same line everybody else waits in to get treatment, which is a fancy euphemism for “you should just die”. But, in our system*, you can instead choose where to go, choose who will treat you, choose how much time and effort is expended, etc. Sometimes, the end result is the same (you die soon), but other times you get more favorable outcomes, like continuing to live and perhaps even getting a better quality of life than you had before (the opposite result is more common, though; aging is a bitch). But to do this you either need to have money and/or assets to burn yourself, or else the benefit of someone else’s charity.

        This is unequal. Inequality is unacceptable. Much as the soi-disant tolerant must purge the intolerant, so too must the equal purge the unequal. The administrators of tolerance and equality get to live better lives, of course, but that’s just because they’ve done so much in the name of the right cause. That they might be hypocrites, that they might get to enjoy the benefits of sitting atop the “equal” and “tolerant” society they’re supposed to maintain, well that is just the price of equality and tolerance. So suck it up, you bigot. Oh, and die.

        * = And many others. NHS vs. USA is a gross oversimplification to the point of false dichotomy, but hey it’s the territory the NHS proponents want to fight on, so let them have it.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      They added that Three Wise Men was developed by The Committee on Ethical Aspects of Pandemic Influenza ‘to minimise the harm the pandemic causes,’ despite disparities in care levels for sufferers.

      Orwell looms large.

      • Drake

        The triage: 1. Tax-paying workers go first so they can get back to being tax-slaves. 2. Future tax-payers (kids). 3, Then, maybe, the elderly who are burdens on the state and should hurry up and die anyhow so the state can tax their estates.

      • Fourscore

        ” the elderly who are burdens on the state”

        Hey, I’m n…leggo my arm

    • Chipwooder

      something something death panels

    • Sensei

      What I do love about the NHS is their honesty. It’s everyone else who advocates for this system in the US that seems to lie.

      • kbolino

        There seem to be two sides to the NHS’s public face. One of those sides is honest, almost brutally so. They will tell you that your child is not worth saving, that your elderly parent is not worth any more effort, and that you should just accept this because it’s free. The other side is downplaying the honesty, covering up the problems, and going around telling everybody that everything is fine, and if you do anything except what they want you’ll be living in a dog-eat-dog hellscape like the United States.

        Sadly, it is the latter group that seems to command the attention and respect of the British voting public.

  37. The Late P Brooks

    a recent paper out of the Forensic Investigation Research Station at Colorado Mesa University. While conducting a study on body decomposition, in separate incidents, forensic researchers unintentionally captured footage of two feral cats feasting on human corpses.

    This is what they mean when they say, “Leave your body to science.”

    They dump your earthly remains out in some field, with a couple of trail cams to watch over you.

    • Animal

      My folks’ will specified cremation for them both, and they stipulated that not an unnecessary cent be spent on funeral services or any other such frippery. And my Dad doggedly refused to state any preference as to what was to be done with his ashes. “I don’t care what happens to them,” he insisted. “I’ll be dead.”

      My oldest sister has the folk’s ashes now. We’re still not sure what best to do with them.

      • Pat

        My dad had the exact same feelings on the matter.

      • Animal

        Honestly, I’m of the same inclination. I’ll be dead. The disposition of my ashes are utterly inconsequential to me.

      • Tundra

        I was gonna have mine scattered over northern Minne from a plane. My wife talked me into a small vault at a beautiful local cemetery. She likes having a place to visit her dad, and I get that.

        My dad is to be cremated and interred at Ft. Snelling. Same reasons.

      • Private Chipperbot

        I’m having mine passed around as a white elephant gift. People have to pretend to be happy getting me for the first few years.

      • Fourscore

        My folks are buried in Emily. No one ever visited, I go once or twice a year.

      • Gustave Lytton

        My MiL and stepson are scattered into the ocean near where my MiL once lived. My wife and I will go to the same place.

      • Shirley Knott

        My folks were both cremated, ashes scattered in favorite locations in Montana.
        My only wish for my ashes is *anywhere else*.

      • Pat

        If I had an absolute shitload of money I’d like to be blasted into space, but barring that I have no particular preference. The disposition is for the living – let them memorialize it however they wish.

      • Jarflax

        I keep saying it, but I know no one will comply. Take me up to the high places and leave me for the ravens.

      • Festus

        My Aunt was very put out when I wouldn’t attend the scattering for my Dad. She’s never wanted so she didn’t understand that doing so would have put a huge crimp in our finances. At least a thousand bucks and missing a week of work. Wealthy dimwits don’t get it.

      • Fourscore

        Your dad gets it right.

        We’ve requested our bodies go to science. Hey, maybe we’ll be involved in a Corona cure!

      • Festus

        Great song title.

      • Jerms

        Just throw me in the trash

  38. The Late P Brooks

    My son was pushed out of school, unable to get the help or education he has a right to.

    And what about all the other mommies’ children? Don’t they have a “right” to an education uninterrupted by your disruptive psycho?

    • Banjos

      My son was pushed out of school, unable to get the help or education free babysitting he I has a right to.

      • Festus

        Unprepared people make stupid choices. “Haaaalp us Bernie!’

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        *thinks about linking to my article that asserts that single parenting is almost inherently statist*

        *decides to be lazy*

    • leon

      What kind of Hateful hate-mongerer are you? This is 2020 and now we don’t prioritize the feelings of the oppressive majority over the minorities and marginalized.

  39. Pope Jimbo

    No forgiveness Evah!

    Minnesoda wimmin still mad at Garrison Keillor. I think mostly because he didn’t confess and grovel when accused of harassing women.

    A Twin Ports feminist group is asking Duluth’s NorShor Theatre to cancel the event of a former Minnesota Public Radio host.

    Garrison Keillor, best known for hosting the variety show “A Prairie Home Companion” for more than 40 years, is scheduled to bring his solo show, “Garrison Keillor: Stories, Songs, Poetry, Humor,” to the theater April 16. MPR terminated Keillor’s contract in 2018 after allegations of unwanted sexual touching.

    The Feminist Justice League, formerly known as the Twin Ports Women’s Rights Coalition, is organizing a protest against the event.

    “Keillor never took accountability for the ways that he made female co-workers feel sexualized and harassed. He minimized or denied his harmful behaviors,” organizer Heather Bradford said. “It is up to the community to hold him accountable and believe victims. By canceling the event, it sends a message that sexual harassment and sexual assault should be taken seriously.”

    • Pope Jimbo

      I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the meetings where the Twin Ports Women’s Rights Coalition decided to change their name.

      “Lena, I’m a bit worried. Ole laughs every time I say ‘Twin Ports Women’ and then makes jokes about *whispers* anal.”

      • AlexinCT

        Heh heh heh…

    • A Leap at the Wheel

      The Feminist Justice League

      Like, they know superhero stories are simplistic morality tails for people who don’t yet have the intellectual complexity to deal with the real world, right?

    • Chipwooder

      I can’t stand anything about Garrison Keillor, but those accusations were such weak sauce that I actually was grudgingly happy for him that he didn’t do the performative self-denunciations he was supposed to do.

      • Festus

        Having “fuck you” money is a salving balm.

      • The Last American Hero

        Were all the asses he grabbed above average?

    • banginglc1

      Has anyone read Keillor’s The Book of Guys? My dad loved it and gave it to me. It’s been sitting on the shelf for years. My dad is most certainly not the typical Keillor reader, so I’ve always wondered if it was any good. Maybe I’ll crack it open this weekend.

  40. Not Adahn

    Getting a late start to Glibbing this morning — I took the day off from work and slept in.

    Some rage-virus must be going around, because I was also at the point of earning a visit to jail HR yesterday.

    Instead, I’m going to clean my kitchen and go to the range. I’ve got my first IDPA classifier tomorrow.

    Question for upstater Glibs — the person running the classifier is providing a “chili” (undoubtedly with kidney beans and quite possibly corn) and the instructions were to “bring some food to share or your own lunch.” What would be adequate to entitle me to eat the chili without appearing to be a cheapskate? A couple large bags of chips? The same plus sodas? Plus Ro-tel queso? Or am I going about this wrongly by bringing chili-complementary foods and should bring something entirely different?

    The social norms of the area are still a bit hazy to me.

    • Drake

      Make some cornbread muffins?

      • Not Adahn

        Capital idea!

      • Sean

        Cornbread muffins is the correct answer here.

        Though I’d be too lazy to make them. Store bought would be fine.

    • Festus

      You’re over-thinking this, compadre. Just show up with a denuded six-pack, dangling from your pinky. “I meant to bring enough for everyone but parking was a bitch. Hey! How you doin!”

    • Rhywun

      LOL I wouldn’t worry about it.

      • Not Adahn

        The good ol’ boy network and informal hierarchies are totally a thing here. Breaking into them takes work.

    • Jarflax

      If you really want to become popular with the right people, bring an interesting gun with a puzzling feed problem. Catnip for the guy at every range you most want as a friend.

      • Not Adahn

        Alas, all of my guns work perfectly.

  41. Pat

    Viral video of WMU choir sparks appropriation debate: WSA joins BSU in demand for apology

    Western Michigan’s Student Association (WSA) released a statement in support of a student who raised concerns of appropriation during a WMU School of Music production.

    WSA joins WMU’s Black Student Union in calling for a formal apology regarding a Feb. 19 show at the Dalton Center Recital Hall.

    The university has responded to claims of discomfort among members of the show and audience after music student and audience member of the Feb. 19 production of “Spirituals: From Ship to Shore,” a collection of songs sung by black slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries, called the WMU School of Music show “a mockery of (black) culture.”

    Taking place inside of the Dalton Recital Hall, featuring over one hundred members of WMU’s vocal ensembles, the show was led by Dr. John Wesley Wright, guest professor at WMU and associate professor at Salisbury University.

    According to multiple members of the majority white production and audience, Wright described how the spirituals “don’t belong to one race,” that the songs had become so entrenched in U.S. history and culture that the songs being performed “had no ethnicity” and are “American songs.”

    Fourth year music student, Shaylee Faught, called Wright’s comments “ignorant.”

    The video Faught posted to Twitter Thursday has been viewed over 2 million times, liked over 141,000 times, has garnered nearly 2,000 comments, which range in opinion.

    In the post, Faught says “So apparently Western Michigan University thinks it’s ok for white people to sing negro spirituals while the instructor talking about ‘these songs don’t belong to one race.’ They sure as hell do.”

    • Sensei

      Should we insert an obligatory reference to “Blazing Saddles”?

      • AlexinCT

        WHERE THE WHITE WOMENZ AT?

      • JD is Unemployed

        Sister’s BF was outraged and disgusted at Blazing Saddles. He says it’s just a bunch of nasty, racist stereotypes and is a horrible, racist movie. There’s something missing in younger generations, some level of understanding, nuance They’re missing any suggestion of good faith in anything that isn’t prescribed as rightthink.

      • Animal

        There’s something missing in younger generations…

        A sense of humor?

      • Jarflax

        I think, in absolute seriousness, that what is missing is the experience of being hit. Parents don’t spank and every minute of childhood is monitored so you don’t get fights between kids. How the hell are they supposed to learn that not all “outrages” are equal when the worst thing that ever happens to them is someone using ‘hurtful’ language?

      • Animal

        Some years ago, I had occasion to do a bit of yarning in front of some of our “satellite kids” (friends of our own kids that regularly hung around our place.) I had described a scrap I got into with another guy that ended up a few days later with the two of us drinking a few beers together and parting friends.

        A comment by one of them made me ask if he had ever thrown a punch, or taken one. He hadn’t.

        I wonder how common that is. When I was in high school, settling our differences with a scrap wasn’t at all uncommon, and the schools didn’t much care as long as we did it off school grounds. Parents took it as an inescapable part of growing up.

        It’s not like that now. It’s part and parcel, I think, of the over-sheltered environment too many kids are raised in nowadays.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Animal, my father the probation officer thinks this is a huge problem with society. Boys never scrap on the playground and don’t learn that there are gradations of aggression. You used to learn how much you can get away with before you have to be worried about getting punched.

        Without that too many kids build up a ton of frustration and then it snaps and they end up shooting someone. Instead of being allowed to get those frustrations out earlier, they just build and build.

        The do gooders think that bullying is the cause of the shootings, but he says the opposite. Zero tolerance for any fighting (to stop bullying) ends up causing some kids to snap.

      • Rhywun

        ↑ Patriarchy

      • Nephilium

        Have him watch the Producers next.

      • Tundra

        I hope you gave the little pussy a swirly.

      • Festus

        I took my future Wifey#1 to that movie when we were 15 and she swore up and down that it never happened. That’s how much SJW’s hate that flick. I asked her, “If it wasn’t you then who did I take? I dunno, some floozy”, she replies…” It was the first time that I’d ever taken a girl to the theater. A boy remembers that. I should have used that one a a bellwether instead of wasting six years of my life.

    • Pope Jimbo
      • Tundra

        Never, ever gets old.

      • Sensei

        As has been mentioned multiple times here – imagine trying to make this movie today.

    • Drake

      Didn’t slaves appropriate Christianity from their white masters?

      • Festus

        Just the bad parts.

      • Pat

        Yeah, but they eventually shed the religion of the slavemaster and embraced the religion of the slavetrader, thereby rerouting around the Jews’ tricknology.

      • Jarflax

        Not really. I know Qadaffi hung out with Farrakhan but if you have ever actually read the Final Call (seriously buy one sometime, it is a ton of entertainment for a buck, and they will sell it to you, they just glare when you ask) they are to Islam as JWs or Mormons are to Christianity. In other words their beliefs would probably be classified from outside religion as a sect of the religion, and from inside their sect they think they are part of the religion, but the other people who practice the religion wouldn’t think so.

      • l0b0t

        The bean pies sold in some locations can be quite good as well.

    • leon

      I really wish the leaders of the BSU wouldn’t appropriate White Liberal Bitch culture.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      As I understand it, the choir director, who chose the songs and ran the rehearsals, is black.

      • Sensei

        Even better!

      • Pat

        Yes, that’s correct.

      • Agent Cooper

        I wonder how he feels.

    • Rhywun

      “Spirituals: From Ship to Shore,” a collection of songs sung by black slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries

      It’s hard to believe that anyone in current year thought this was a good idea.

      • The Last American Hero

        Heads you win tails I lose. If you don’t put on such a production, you are ignoring a vital piece, nay the centerpiece of American history. If you do, it’s cultural appropriation. Never change, Black Student Union. When I was in college they were strongly advocating people using the phrase African American. Dare to point out that they are the BLACK Student Union and you got called all sorts of things. Bottom line, these people are always pissed about something and don’t deserve to be taken seriously.

    • Agent Cooper

      Now do Hebrew spirituals!!!!

  42. Certified Public Asshat

    Lol:

    This is one of the reasons why I have no patience anymore for libertarian conservatism. It has no answers for stuff like this. “Well I don’t like it but people can do what they want blah blah blah…” Enough of that weak crap. pic.twitter.com/b4P5OLcPdE— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) February 28, 2020

    Libertarians, now blamed for drag queen lap dances on children.

    • Pat

      It’s not really an unreasonable criticism. This isn’t a violation of the non-aggression principle, and libertarians would have no moral or legal impetus to prevent it. Conservatives and traditionalists can’t really reconcile that with their moral and religious viewpoints, which transcend their concerns for practical politics.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        I see this as more of a gray area, not something most of us would just shrug off and walk away.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        There’s a lot of people in the middle who dislike or even despise this type of behavior, but who are simultaneously terrified of being judged by the shrieking harpies on the left for speaking out against it.

        They’re content to let the authoritarians on the far right (or left) take care of the problem for them by making it illegal, thus absolving themselves of any personal moral duty.

      • Pat

        I can’t think of any possible contortion of libertarian thought that would justify intervening in a situation like this. Scruffy points out the public shaming option. I mean… OK. These people took a fucking video of it and put it on the internet. This isn’t something of which they are ashamed, and since the forces of culture are on their side, there is no reason they should be. If anything it will be those opposed who experience public shame and ridicule. And that’s where the problem lies for conservatives and religious traditionalists with libertarianism. It is morally agnostic by design, and unfortunately, it’s only a small minority of turbo autists like us who can separate morality from legality. Amoral governance tends to lead to an amoral society as well.

      • Viking1865

        I mentioned this a couple days ago, and think it’s important.

        The libertarian consensus on sexual morality is, essentially, “Consenting Adults can do what they wish.” I would argue that the leftists, while they often use the rhetoric of “Consenting adults can do what they wish” are in reality just looking to transgress the social norms of whatever the present year is. So it’s not really an objective standard, it’s “Whatever the current church ladies are against, I am trying to push that boundary.”

        Which is, to me, worrisome because we are 50 years into the sexual revolution and from my perspective, “consenting adults can do what they wish” is something that the majority of the people agree with. LGBT is everywhere, its in the culture and the schools and the sports leagues. 50 Shades of Gray was a cultural phenomenon. Group sex, swinging, open relationships, polyamory are all things that are openly discussed and portrayed in the media.

        So what’s left to transgress against? Because if your fight for sexual justice is actually not “consenting adults” but “shock the normies” then what else is there to shock the normies with? Birth control and abortion are legal, cohabitation is not only legal but completely normalized, adultery has been completely decriminalized and even culturally watered down, gay marriage is a done deal. The only real “consenting adults” roadblock still up in the US is legal recognition of multi-partner relationships.

        Well now, if you absolutely must shock the normals with your sexual avant garde attitude, and consenting adults aren’t batting an eye at anything you do with adults, whats left?

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        The libertarian consensus on sexual morality legality

        *points to Pat’s comment above * ?

        Seriously though, I’m a devout evangelical Christian. I believe that one universal truth is that sex outside of marriage is immoral. I don’t believe in “live and let live.”

        However, I also believe that the government would do (and has done) more harm than good by enforcing this truth because they do not have the authority to do so. What I believe is moral and what I believe should be legal are two very different things.

      • kbolino

        And power you hand to a government you are not guaranteed to control will be used against you.

        Any time you think you have enduring control of the government you are one revolution away from having your head on a pike.

        Libertarianism is not about keeping your kids out of the hands of perverts. It is about not giving government the power to force your children to be around perverts. Because if you give the government a power, it will eventually use it the opposite of the way you originally intended.

        Such is the nature of government.

        Republicans (or Democrats) who whine about the government not carrying out their policy visions the right way need to accept that this is the consequence of losing elections, losing control of the institutions, and ultimately not having a permanent grip on the culture. You can externalize the blame for all of that, but it doesn’t change the reality of it.

        Libertarianism is not a promise that your kids won’t ever be around perverts. It is a statement that you and you alone should get to decide what is best for yourself, and in your capacity as a parent/guardian, for your children/charges.

        The constant push to redefine libertarianism away from this foundation is deserving of criticism, but the argument that “people might do things I don’t like” is not a valid criticism; it is simply missing the point.

      • Tundra

        Well said.

      • Pat

        Libertarianism is not about keeping your kids out of the hands of perverts.

        And that’s precisely why it’s unconvincing to people like the guy who wrote the tweet. You can explain to him why he’s wrong, but you can’t sell him on libertarianism preventing kids from being groped by crossdressers, because libertarianism has no answer for that. It’s much more difficult to get people to change their entire moral premise than it is to sell them a solution to a problem. Of course no politician will ever be successful in championing this guy’s views permanently, but by god he has the solution!

        A further complication arises when public funding is involved, because you will universally find libertarian public intellectuals on the side of barring religious observance or participation in public facilities, while defending things like drag queen storytime in public libraries. And of course the libertarian faithful trot out the old saw that we shouldn’t have public libraries in the first place – the funding is the issue – but here again, you’re selling a total and complete ground-up reframing of our public institutions instead of addressing the practical concern that you can’t have a Bible reading at your pubic library, but you can have drag queen storytime at your public library. Most people don’t want to spend the next century slowly restructuring society so that there is no more public funding of libraries, they’d rather just pass a bill that says “Hey, no more crossdressers reading to children because it’s creepy”.

      • kbolino

        I don’t agree with the notion that public funds can’t be spent on “private” school that’s religious. I think that’s a stolen base, and any libertarian who agrees with it is being bamboozled. Every school has an agenda. Some of them are, mercifully, committed to providing a solid education grounded in the liberal arts, civic virtues, and natural sciences. That is still an agenda though one most of us would likely find acceptable if not desirable. Yet just as many “public” and “private” schools are committed to spreading the gospel of social justice, climate justice, or whatever other en vogue quasi-religious cultish ideas are out there. If the latter don’t count as religious, then a school with a cross out front and Bible study in fifth period shouldn’t either.

      • Viking1865

        The gross distortion of the establishment clause is a huge issue.

        “established church” has an actual defined meaning. School vouchers going to parochial schools, Christian students associations meeting in public schools, even religious iconography on public property are not an establishment of religion. The Establishment Cause bans the formation of a Church of America, it does not mandate late 20th century secularism in all things.

      • kbolino

        And, ultimately, the core disagreement is going to boil down to talking past each other and not sharing common ground.

        Not counting sophists and recent converts, the libertarian and the conservative (in this case) are arguing on different battlefields. The libertarian would likely say the conservative is missing the bigger picture, that the power today is in somebody else’s hands tomorrow. The conservative would likely say the libertarian is missing the bigger picture, that children are being exposed to perversion and (at least borderline) sexual abuse, and the government could have done something about it.

        I think both are right, to some extent. I just think, much like with Keynes’s “in the long run, we’re all dead” which led to nearly a century of nothing but short-sighted planning, looking at how the government can help you enforce morality today is setting up the corrupt system of tomorrow.

      • Pat

        And, ultimately, the core disagreement is going to boil down to talking past each other and not sharing common ground.

        100%. That’s what I was getting at. The guy’s tweet isn’t really wrong – iibertarianism legitimately can’t address this particular issue in the way he wants it addressed for fundamental reasons. Libertarians are going to be OK with that for the most part, while conservatives are not.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Libertarians are going to be OK with that for the most part.

        Legally, not necessarily morally.

      • Jarflax

        I really need to make myself sit down and finish writing my article. I am increasingly convinced that ‘libertarianism’ isn’t even this. I am coming to think that the whole an cap/minarchist/constitutionalist argument is angels dancing on the heads of pins, and that all libertarianism is, and ever can or should be, is a moral compass direction. To shamelessly bastardize Kant (in a way that would infuriate him);

        In political arenas, act only on that maxim through which you can minimize the infringement of liberty produced by your action.

        If I ever manage to pull it all together the argument is something like: Libertarians can never end up running a society because every skill, attribute, personality trait, and tactic that provides advantages in politics is one we actively dislike and avoid. We won’t be the leaders and legislators, we MIGHT be able to be the philosophers and advisers.

      • kbolino

        You may well be right.

        At the very least, such an article would lead to an interesting discussion.

        And boobs, but that’s to be expected on every article.

      • leon

        In political arenas, act only on that maxim through which you can minimize the infringement of liberty produced by your action.

        If i’m picking up what your putting down, i think i agree with you. Basically, NAP is just a baseline morality around which i think society can be successfully organized, but i don’t think it is the only standard of morality, and that others probably have positive results. It just pre-empts any idea of enforcing those other moral standards via violent coercion.

      • Jarflax

        Not exactly. I am saying that there is no possible situation in which we will ever get libertopia, and other than as a fantasy to argue about privately we should stop worrying about that and just do what we can to push the needle toward liberty. Basically that we should shut up with the purity tests and denunciations of politicians that generally promote liberty whenever they do something that isn’t purely libertarian because it makes us useless as allies and in the long run reduces the amount of liberty. It isn’t fully thought out yet. (I started out writing a quick little piece about what aspects I think are necessary for laws to be valid, not even a really libertarian article, more on the lines of promulgated, not hostile to the ‘good’, kind of thing and it went odd places in my mind, producing the one I wrote about anarcho capitalism and this mess I am trying to pull together in my head so I can actually write the rest of it.)

      • Viking1865

        “Libertarianism is not a promise that your kids won’t ever be around perverts.”

        Libertopia means that when your eight year old daughter is walking past the heroin vending machine down a completely privatized sidewalk toward her school that her parents chose and paid for with their own money, and some pervert accosts her, that she can shoot him with whatever goddamn gun she feels the need to legally carry.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      The only people who need blaming are the parents who didn’t immediately go into ass whipping mode.

    • leon

      This is one of the reasons why I have no patience anymore for libertarian conservatism

      He only has patience for Authoritarian conservatism.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      There’s a distinct difference between passing laws and throwing people in rape cages for a specific action and socially condemning them for it.

      That’s what people like Walsh (and most everybody else) don’t get.

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        Right, his criticism is of libertines, not libertarians. Given the output of the DC based Libertarian Industrial Complex, I can’t really blame him for the error.

      • Pat

        You really can’t divorce the two though. Libertinism isn’t libertarianism, but it’s certainly contained within it. The entire premise of the NAP is (legally) permissive of anything done consensually. Meaning that if NAMBLA decides to open a chapter next to an elementary school, you have no recourse besides your righteous indignation. Trying to shame shameless people is unlikely to be of any value. The practical effect is that you’re going to have a lot more libertine behavior.

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        In a Venn diagram, libertaraians and libertines circles look like a figure 8, not binoculars or a telescope.

        *I* have a problem with libertine libertarians who want to remove morality laws because they want to be immoral, even as I want to remove morality laws so that the civil society, not the state, enforces morality norms.

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        I guess figure 8’s don’t overlap, they just touch. What do you call a shape with 2 circles that overlap a bit, but not mostly or completely?

      • leon

        A Venn Diagram.

        /Runs, Hides, Ducks

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I call that a Q Continuum.

      • kbolino

        In line with what Leap said, the two are adjacent (I think with some overlap) but the one is not a subset of the other. This is the same fallacy that was once argued to say that gay men were much more likely to be pedophiles because, among known pedophiles (at least, as perceived by the public), more victimized boys than girls. Then, of course, along came Jerry Sandusky with his (apparently) picture perfect heterosexual married life and his lifelong and thoroughly enabled by heterosexuals penchant for abusing boys. The point being, not that gay men are saints, but that male-preferring pedophiles are not a subset of gay men (the sets are not disjoint, either; similar things have happened with homosexuals).

        In my experience, most libertines are socialists. If capitalism is a defining element of libertarianism, then at the least the libertine socialists are excluded from being considered libertarians as well.

      • Pat

        You could have libertinism without libertarianism, but not vice versa. Put it that way. In a libertarian society you will always have libertine behavior because there is no legal or practical sanction to prevent it. That’s technically one of the ‘benefits’ of libertarianism – it can accommodate any aberrant social group.

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        I don’t believe this for a second. History is full of people groups with no state and iron-hard enforcement of sexual, drug, and religious norms.

      • Pat

        Closed societies like the Mennonites I suppose. I don’t think that’s a practicable model for, say, Bend Oregon, let alone New York City.

      • Pat

        And of course even in closed societies, libertine behavior can’t be prevented; it just gets moved outside of the closed society. One chooses their membership.

      • kbolino

        And as to your other example,

        Why open a NAMBLA chapter next to the school, which is a blatant warning sign to everyone around, when an NEA or AFT chapter will let you get away with abusing children and fight for you to get paid more to do it?

      • Pat

        I’m not arguing for how well optimized it is a strategy, only that there’s not shit you can do about it in libertopia, and that freaks out a lot of people.

    • JD is Unemployed

      Good grief, he’s still at it, and presumably Matt Welch is taking heat for it from the more dyslexic twitsters.

  43. The Late P Brooks

    The Feminist Justice League, formerly known as the Twin Ports Women’s Rights Coalition

    “Does this leotard make my ass look big? ”

    “It’s okay. The cape covers it.”

    • Not Adahn

      If the cape covers the ass, you can always just edit it out.

      Now I want to play WoW again.

    • JD is Unemployed

      Hehe, “twin ports”.

      • Festus

        Front holes and back holes. We’ve got both kinds of apertures ’round these parts.

  44. Tundra

    Our lovely Dem-controlled house passed a couple of beauties last night: House File 8 (Universal Background Checks) and House File 9 (Red Flag Gun Confiscation Orders).

    The senate will most likely kill them dead, but this shit is getting old. If Two-Scoops tips Minne in November, I’d sure like to see the donks lose a bunch of seats too.

    Fuckheads.

    • Pope Jimbo

      I wonder if there are still enough non-Metro liberal voters in Minnesoda to give the DFL the thrashing they deserve.

      I’m with you, this should be a wake up call to every gun owner in the state that only the GOP senate is keeping us from being a cold Virginia and grabbing a bunch of guns. I’m not sure though that we still have enough rural voters to vote them out.

      The tribes should look at this as a money making proposition. They should open their tribal rolls to gun owners for a fee. Then we could use their sovereign nation status to keep our shooting irons.

  45. Rufus the Monocled

    People lose it over Coronavirus but meanwhile Turkey unleashing Syrian migrants into Europe – whatever. Seems to me the latter is far more problematic. Was watching footage of it and the migrants were hurling rocks, busting up cars heading into Greece.

    I don’t get it. If they’re acting this way BEFORE even setting foot into a county how the heck will they act AFTER and once in?

    I don’t understand if Turkey sends them, then Europe just rounds them up and send them back.

    Grow a damn pair already Europe.

    • Pat

      For that matter, as disease vectors go in the US TB is much more severe risk than coronavirus, and yet you haven’t seen that splashed across every headline in America.

      • leon

        Tuber-Culosis? more Potato stuff?

      • JD is Unemployed

        You know, in the UK, we keep TB at bay by mass badger execution because something something cows something science something something farmers. Of course it’s only the cows they’re worried about. I’m not sure what their logic is but if the cows don’t have TB, it must be working. I suggest the Federal Govt round up all mustelids and kill them. Likewise you can defeat bird flu by killing all birds. No more birds = no more bird flu. Swine flu, likewise. Kill all the pigs and you have bacon for days and no swine flu. Haha! Why aren’t TOP MEN taking my ideas seriously????!1

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Of course the media is gonna describe them as extremist xenophobes. I doubt they’re lashing out at immigrants. They’re lashing out at the perceived lawlessness of illegal migrant crossings.

        HUGE difference.

      • Drake

        I bet it’s both – particularly since the majority of those immigrants appear to be single Muslim men. Greece has been independent from Muslim rule for less than 200 years.

      • Festus

        I wonder when the pendulum snaps, half swing over the nonsense we’re living through right now, Rufus? There are a lot of hard, angry people being robbed of their living by a bunch of LARPER’s playing at extremism.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Once they get to their destination I’m sure they’ll settle in and be peaceful and productive members of modern society.

  46. Certified Public Asshat

    So let's imagine @StephenAtHome is a billionaire, and that plate of ribs represents all of his money. It would just take a teeny tiny corner to pay for universal child care—and more! pic.twitter.com/Df9VY17Gpm— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 28, 2020

    Good analogy. How can we grow more food instead of taking someone else’s?

    • Pat

      Let’s say that Stephen is a billionaire, and he is seated at a table with 1,000 other billionaires, and their respective plates of food represent their respective fortunes. It would take everything on all of these plates to pay for about 3/4 of the cost of your healthcare plan for one year. Now tell us how you pay for it the next year when the table is empty?

      • straffinrun

        Eat the rich?

      • The Last American Hero

        See the cat thread near the beginning.

    • straffinrun

      Somehow that’s less stupid than her “It’s just a two cent tax!”

    • Animal

      Princess Liawatha keeps going on about her “wealth tax,” and I haven’t seen that many people pointing out that it’s FUCKING UNCONSTITUTIONAL. From the Constitution, Article 1, Section 9:

      No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

      They had to pass the Sixteenth Amendment to get around the “…in Proportion” clause to levy the income tax. They would have to likewise pass an amendment to get Fauxcohontas her “wealth tax.”

      I know, I know – the FYTW clause applies. But it’s just such an obvious damn counter-argument, I’m baffled why it isn’t pointed out by the Trump campaign every damn moment of every damn day.

      • Pat

        They had to pass the Sixteenth Amendment to get around the “…in Proportion” clause to levy the income tax.

        They had to pass the 18th Amendment to ban alcohol, and yet here we are a century later with a list of banned substances that stretches to the moon and back.

      • Animal

        Thus my citation of the FYTW clause.

      • WTF

        Although it would be nice if someone were to point it out to Warren and ask how she plans to pass such an amendment.

      • WTF

        Trump doesn’t need to bother since she won’t be the Dem’s nominee.

      • ChipsnSalsa

        You don’t want people to start thinking that the Constitution should be followed as written. That could lead to all sorts of trouble.

    • Chipwooder

      Deciding who has the more punchable face, Stephen Colbert or John Oliver, is the toughest decision I’ve ever attempted to make.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        You have two fists, why not Both?

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        Damn Yusef, you lookin a my pronhub history again?

      • The Last American Hero

        Why? Did they grin at a guy banging a drum in his face?

      • Rebel Scum

        John Oliver. He is extra smug even when he is dead wrong and/or lying.

      • JD is Unemployed

        Rejected by his own people, John Oliver finds solace in the fawning laughter of the American coastal elites.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      A rib analogy for universal child care payment? A tailor made argument for the upcoming SC primary. I wonder how many focus groups it took to come up with that one. Maybe she can do grape drink next.

      • Festus

        “drank”

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      It would just take a teeny tiny corner to pay for universal child care—and more!

      Never mind the illegality of it, it’s demonstrably false.

    • WTF

      OMG, the fucking comments. I guess it’s okay to steal if you’re stealing some smaller percent.

    • Agent Cooper

      Does the fuckwit know that it’s not money just lying around?

  47. The Late P Brooks

    In the post, Faught says “So apparently Western Michigan University thinks it’s ok for white people to sing negro spirituals while the instructor talking about ‘these songs don’t belong to one race.’ They sure as hell do.”

    I wonder how Einstein jr here feels about notorious cultural appropriator Jessye Norman.

  48. leon

    https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1233179232735502342

    Coronavirus exposes all of Trump’s biggest weaknesses:

    1. Incompetence

    2. Rejection of scientific facts

    3. Distrust of expertise

    4. Disinterest in long-term planning

    5. Embrace of conspiracy theories

    6. Paranoia

    7. Inability to learn from mistakes

    Sure but don’t give him credit for his Trade War that has kept contaminated Chinese goods out of our markets.

    • Not Adahn

      Why should he get credit when it obviously didn’t work — I was just at the store and Corona was still on the shelves!

      • straffinrun

        According to Secret Beijing, an anonymous social media commentator, who terms himself as an analyst on China affairs, the patient was shot dead.

        According to who?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Given the relative general health of North Koreans and their medical care capacity, they ought to be scared shitless of the virus.

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        You assume they know about it?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The North Korean government would not miss an opportunity to tell their populace about all the great steps they are taking to protect them.

        https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200227008900325?section=nk/nk

        North Korea’s media has almost daily reported on measures that the country is taking to prevent the spread of the virus into the country. Earlier in the day, the North’s state radio said that Pyongyang has postponed the opening of schools across the country amid coronavirus fears.

      • Gustave Lytton

        The Nork government sure is. They implemented a complete tourism ban and incoming visitor quarantine early on. Which sounds good on the surface but their northern border with China is very leaky.

      • Jarflax

        And is the source of virtually everything in the country from energy to food.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Anywhere that’s not reporting infections. Iran was a perfect example. It was festering all along with zero awareness until it blows up and they still wouldn’t take obvious steps such as closing down religious shrines and reducing person to person contact. Instead, blame other countries as usual.

    • kbolino

      Who knew Trump was President of China as well.

      • Festus

        He is the “God-Emperor”. You saw the Italian float so it must be true.

    • Mojeaux

      his Trade War that has kept contaminated Chinese goods out of our markets.

      Unintended consequences…

      • Festus

        If we go through some hard times so that China as a polity collapses I’d consider that a win.

      • Mojeaux

        Me too. That’s always how my stance on the China tariffs has been.

        You go to war, there are gonna be casualties.

      • Festus

        Yep. I’m fairly old and if this gets stifled in the crib without too much bloodshed, I’ll be happy. Fucking China has been drinking our milkshake for thirty years.

      • whiz

        If the hard times includes a Sanders presidency, I don’t think it is worth it.

    • Naptown Bill

      Oh, Orangemanbad? Fascinating. Insightful.

      What exactly is the POTUS supposed to do about a viral outbreak in China? Just curious as to what these critics would define as an acceptable response besides not be Donald Trump. I swear to God, I just tune out as soon as someone gets the TDS tone in their voice (or text) because I’m 100% certain that the ideas they’re going to express are unoriginal and inane.

      • Festus

        He’s supposed to go sit on his throne at the tide line and command that the sea recede.

      • ChipsnSalsa

        +1 whipping the river

      • WTF

        And of course when Trump decided to restrict China travel 3 weeks ago as a precaution, they were screaming that was because of racism and xenophobia.

    • Rebel Scum

      He has ostensibly directed medical professionals to handle the situation and has relied on their analysis to form his apparent opinion, which is an opinion that does not support hysteria. It is like this list is the opposite of what is true.

  49. Tundra

    The most dangerous thing about coronavirus is the hysteria.

    There is something more to the Covid-19 panic. It is the latest phenomenon to fulfil a weird and growing appetite for doom among the populations of developed countries. We are living in the healthiest, most peaceful time in history, yet we cannot seem to accept it. We constantly have to invent bogeymen, from climate alarmism, nuclear war and financial collapse to deadly diseases. Covid-19 has achieved such traction because it has emerged at just the right time. At the end of January, Brexit had just been completed without incident. The standoff between the US and Iran — which preposterously led the ‘Doomsday Clock’ to be advanced closer to midnight than during the Cuban missile crisis — fizzled into nothing. The Australian bush fires, which caused an explosion in climate doom-mongering (even though the global incidence of wildfires has fallen over the past two decades) had largely gone out. What more was there to worry about?

    Then along came a novel strain of disease and the cycle of panic began again. But there are already strong signs that it has peaked. In the seven days before 24 February, the WHO recorded 6,398 new infections in China — down from 13,002 the previous week. On Monday it was 415. Very soon we are going to have to find another thing to agonise about. Asteroids? The next ‘freak’ weather incident, now the storms have died down? Who knows, but we will certainly find something.

    He ain’t wrong.

    • leon

      Why does this person Hate Science and Revel in Conspiracy Theories?

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      He ain’t wrong but anyone who takes the Chinese numbers at face value should have their head examined.

      • Gustave Lytton

        And the sort of lockdown required to get there- torch your economy for 6-8 weeks. However, it doesn’t have to be that extreme and there are lessons from that though, social distancing works.

        Reduce the number of people out in public, cancel mass public events (sporting events, political rallies), keep 3ft of distance from other people (unlike the assholes who want to crowd right up to you in checkout lines), stay home if you’re sick or symptomatic, stop casual person to person contact (handshakes), and sanitize surfaces regularly.

      • Naptown Bill

        (unlike the assholes who want to crowd right up to you in checkout lines)

        It’s like you’re in my head!

        Seriously, though, this is high on my long, long list of things that piss me off. Contrary to my upbringing and inclination I’ve taken to “big arming” and making deliberately slow, expansive movements when I’m in line at the grocery store to fend those people off. Now and again I still get some idiot staring at her phone bumping into me with her cart. One time some woman was looking right at me and smacked into me with her grocery cart and said absolutely nothing. Like just looked right at me and wondered why I was standing there.

        I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: all the wrong people get cancer.

      • Mojeaux

        How old are these people, generally? Because I find the worst offenders are oldsters.

        At the hospital, I wanted to get something out of the vending machine, but a lady in a wheelchair was parked right in front of it talking to another lady. Six more feet and she would’ve been out of everyone’s way. I squeezed in between her wheel and the vending machine, with her looking at me half-oblivious and half-daring at the same time (somehow). I said “Excuse me,” and … nothing. I didn’t feel like making a scene.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Don’t ever get into an argument with a person in a wheelchair. You might get videod and the optics are terrible.

      • Mojeaux

        I never thought of that. Good advice.

      • Naptown Bill

        Counterpoint: some people act under the mistaken assumption that terrible things can’t happen to them, and by reminding them that not only do actions have consequences but that there really are people in the world who value a Snickers at just over a human life is doing them a service.

        “Hey. How much longer do you want to stay in that wheelchair?”

      • Mojeaux

        Eh. In this world, optics is everything.

      • Festus

        I used to do that for a pay-check. Lots of disabled people are bitter, vengeful sorts.

      • Mojeaux

        Had a very disabled person in romancelandia who took every opportunity to be bitter and nasty, was almost the first on the SJW train, and wanted people to know that disabled people were bitter and nasty just like everyone else and shouldn’t be treated any differently and why weren’t there more disabled people in romance novels?

        Soooo I had an opportunity to review a book for a very popular blog. The villain was in a wheelchair. He was an asshole. I called him an asshole. She screamed bloody murder at me for picking on him because he was disabled. “He was an asshole to begin with. He didn’t change just because he wrecked his lower body doung stupid shit.”

      • Naptown Bill

        Honestly, mid-20s to probably early 50s. A disproportionate number are wearing big Jackie O sunglasses or flaunting a Kate Spade or Coach purse. There’s a demographic in Annapolis that’s sort of a combo of Real Housewives and the kind of people who would go to a Hillary Clinton book signing that is absolutely insufferable. They’re the kind of people who will block you into a parking space with their Prius running because it’s really important that they just run into this store really quick, or who “walk” their labradoodle unleashed in an urban area because it, despite all visual evidence to the contrary, is fine and is really friendly and always comes when she calls so it’s ok that it’s enthusiastically sniffing a stranger’s crotch or taking a five-pound dump in the elementary school playground next to the “No Dogs” sign.

        Blithely oblivious to the world around them, breathtakingly inconsiderate, casually rude, self-absorbed, and operating under the assumption that they can do whatever they want and the rest of the world will just make sure it winds up ok. I refer to them as “registered Democrats” among my friends.

      • invisible finger

        Then there’s my BIL who is a staunch Democrat and committed income tax fraud every year and finally got caught 25 years later. (And he got off easy, which means he still feels he came out ahead.)

      • Hyperion

        “is fine and is really friendly and always comes when she calls so it’s ok that it’s enthusiastically sniffing a stranger’s crotch or taking a five-pound dump in the elementary school playground next to the “No Dogs” sign.”

        Look, Trumptard, it’s fine because their intentions are pure. YOU need to obey the rules, Trumptard, they are exempt because of their good think.

      • Animal

        Mrs. Animal is great at this. It regularly happens at the grocery store or Wal-Mart, when two land-hippos are blocking an entire so they can chat about everything that has happened to them since the last Ice Age.

        She will start slamming her walker into their calves while saying “EXCUSE ME!” in her Army voice. Works like a charm.

      • Animal

        *Entire aisle. Damn the lack of an edit function!

      • Mojeaux

        I don’t slam my cart into them but I say, “Excuse YOU.”

      • Naptown Bill

        “Excuse me” as a command is the best use of the phrase.

      • Pat

        The town where I live must be about 90% 65-and-over. Grocery shopping is fucking horrifying. I spend at least 45 extraneous minutes per shopping trip because of meandering 400 pound people in motorized scooters treating the aisles like a Facebook group chat

      • leon

        hahaha. Yeah that’s when Asshole Leon really presses to make an appearance. I think the only time i’ve had an urge to call someone a fat ass is in a shopping context where they blatantly don’t care about other people trying to move down the aisle

      • Hyperion

        In my hood, if you’re 65, you’re one of the kids. I was stopped at a traffic signal yesterday a couple of blocks from here (not too much foot traffic on count of it wasn’t Jewsday (known to Goyim as Saturday)), and as soon as the light turned, here comes this guy who must be 105, with his walker, and I’m thinking ‘Oh fer fuck sake, there’s no way he makes it before the light turns again’.

    • Mojeaux

      weird and growing appetite for doom among the populations of developed countries

      MOAR CIRCUS!!!

    • creech

      Please tell the stock market. My retirement nest egg has suffered enough already.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Have a drink tonight. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. The market and media in this country have been downplaying Covid-19 until a few days ago and the likely possibilities and range of outcomes are starting to get brought up. Right now there isn’t certainty and the economy hasn’t even begun to evolve to cope with what’s probably coming. When there’s more certainty, the markets will improve.

      • Jarflax

        It will bounce back. Once every conspiracy loon friend of mine stops emailing me daily about ‘were all gonn die” because we all din die things will return to normal.

  50. The Late P Brooks

    You know- morons

    Sanders, 78, with a surly resting face and a disheveled halo of thinning white hair, may seem like an unorthodox choice for voters several generations removed. But with his defiance for convention and decades-long crusade for revolution, Sanders is uncommonly in sync with the political sensibilities of younger Americans hungry for sweeping action on climate change, student debt and healthcare.

    For younger voters, their formative years have primed them to embrace more radical politics. The warnings they hear from scientists about the consequence of climate change have become increasingly dire. The frequent school shootings that have made lockdown drills a normal part of life have prompted students to call for more government regulation on guns. The Great Recession — which hammered millennials as they entered the job market while Generation Z watched their parents weather the downturn — instilled a deep skepticism about Wall Street and, more broadly, the country’s economic structures.

    Sanders may come across as angry. But young voters consider the problems at hand and figure, why shouldn’t he be?

    “You have people that actually criticize him for being so passionate and yelling at you,” said Norma Sandoval, a UCLA graduate student in molecular biology. “But you see that he truly does want what’s best for the majority of the people.”

    Bernie truly wants what’s best for Bernie, and he’ll bulldoze you into a mas grave to get it.

    That’s how you should look at any politician.

  51. Rebel Scum

    *Peers in*

    Do you people even work?!

    I’m too busy for a Friday.

    *Gets back to work*

    • Hyperion

      Work? You’ve already spent through your yuge monthly Koch Bros check?

      Next thing, you’ll be telling us you don’t have any orphans working your diamond mine.

  52. The Late P Brooks

    There is something more to the Covid-19 panic. It is the latest phenomenon to fulfil a weird and growing appetite for doom among the populations of developed countries. We are living in the healthiest, most peaceful time in history, yet we cannot seem to accept it. We constantly have to invent bogeymen, from climate alarmism, nuclear war and financial collapse to deadly diseases.

    “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”? That’s crazy talk.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The human brain is wired for it. Without a predator lurking in the shadows, we start to imagine them.

      • leon

        This is why we need to go forth and share the word of STEVE SMITH

      • Mojeaux

        “Hi. Have you heard of STEVE SMITH? Would you like to know more?”

      • Festus

        *shudders just picturing the leaflets*

  53. leon

    So i just read at Reason that Trump didn’t even cut funding to the CDC, he just proposed it and congress ignored it.

    Which leads me to another thought. What a little bunch of shits congress is. They love blaming the president for cutting funding, when they are the ones who make the budget….

  54. A Leap at the Wheel

    Got a voicemail from a very angry and confused old man, telling me never to stop calling and texting and to never call or text him again. I’ve never called the number he was calling from, and its a land line so it never sent a text.

    *deep sigh*

    • Not Adahn

      Spoofing phone numbers is fraud.

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        Based on the way he was talking, I think he likely punched in the numbers of the person calling him and accidentally typed mine in.

    • leon

      Did you call him back to let him know….

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        no

    • Festus

      Hey! At least someone noticed you!

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      I had something similar happen to me recently only with texts and the other guy wouldn’t stop accusing me. I finally had to tell him t fuck off and blocked him.

    • Agent Cooper

      I’d start calling at random times just to check in and see how he’s doing.

    • Not Adahn

      I thought if you were worried about viruses, you bought Apple products.

    • Festus

      I went on a date with Elizabeth Warren. She ate off my plate and then held me down so she could use my front teeth as a bottle-opener. After that we went dancing but she cleared the floor with those crazy akimbo elbows. -10 of 10. Would not date again.

      • Q Continuum

        How was the sex?

      • Not Adahn

        like fucking a can of pringles.

      • Spudalicious

        That’s a many layered description, right there.

      • Festus

        That was an apt description. I’m going to go die somewhere nice and and dark and quiet now.

      • leon

        She raped him and then called the cops on him.

      • Festus

        As you would imagine. Mantis-like but not even a kiss on the cheek. I head-less cried into my pillow for 5 seconds. She’s beastly!

  55. l0b0t

    I’m now 6 episodes in to a Hill Street Blues binge. It holds up quite nicely, apart from several plot points turning on an inability to contact the station due to all the neighborhood payphones being broken. Oh, and despite neighborhood gangs being identified as black, Puerto Rican, and white gangs, their membership is decidedly diverse. Even though the leader of the white gang wears a green t-shirt, a green bowler hat, and carries a Shillelagh stick, half of his crew wouldn’t pass a bag test.

    • Festus

      It was 1980, what do you want, Pizza-Man?

  56. Spudalicious

    Yeah! Quit sticking me up your butt! Unless of course, you’re a hot Messican chick.

    • Festus

      The green one from the home-page? This is allowed.

  57. Mojeaux

    PSA: Scott Bakula has aged VERY well.

    • Festus

      Always liked him as an actor. Never broke big.

      • Sean

        I’m a sucker for Lord of Illusions. If it’s on tv, I’m probably gonna watch it.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Famke Janssen in her prime.

        Yes.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I knew what that was before I clicked.

        YES

      • Festus

        Yep

      • Mojeaux

        Famke Janssen in her prime

        I did not see Famke Janssen in that clip.

      • Pat

        This may be controversial, but Izabella Scorupco > Famke Janssen

  58. The Late P Brooks

    What exactly is the POTUS supposed to do about a viral outbreak in China? Just curious as to what these critics would define as an acceptable response besides not be Donald Trump. I swear to God, I just tune out as soon as someone gets the TDS tone in their voice (or text) because I’m 100% certain that the ideas they’re going to express are unoriginal and inane.

    Sacrifice money (lots and lots and lots of money) on the altar of Good Government.

    Set the money pyre alight, and feed it ’til the sky turns black with smoke. That’s how you govern.

    • Hyperion

      Have you noted lately that the left has run out of heroes to save them from bad orange man? Well, not really, the new hero wish is a pandemic, since the economy didn’t collapse like they prayed would happen. How exactly that works, I don’t know, but it’s the level of desperation they’ve sunk to.

      • Pine_Tree

        I’ve told the situation before of having really smart/functional Engineer co-workers with bizarre TDS (and America-hate). This morning it was basically “well this Coronavirus seems like our last hope for taking down Trump”.

      • Q Continuum

        “I don’t care how many people have to die! Public Enemy Number One must lose the election!!!!”

      • Tundra

        Time to drop the gloves.

        Remember to get a good handful of jersey, er, shirt so you can pull them into the punch. Don’t look away from your target.

        Good luck.

      • Festus

        Strangling Gloves?

      • Mojeaux

        Proggy friend on FB: “We don’t have anybody who cam beat Trump.”

        ? I know.

      • Festus

        It’s the on-line left. Regular people could give a shit. Many of them don’t vote.

      • Hyperion

        Or the activist ones. The rest signal, signaling is cheap, free actually. Sure they support socialism until they have to give up stuff to get it. And none of them are putting on a pussy hat and going to protest, since they’re busy with work and family.

  59. Q Continuum

    Real socialism = Utopia.

    Utopia doesn’t exist.

    Ergo: Real socialism has never been tried.

    Q.E.D.

    DESTROYED by FACTS and LOGIC TRUMPTARDS.

    • Hyperion

      The only reason socialism won’t work in the USA is that they let the Dodgahs move to LA. Once president Bernie moves the Dodgahs back to Brooklyn where they belong, Utopia will appear and everything will be free.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Nihilistic death cult

    • Pat

      Safe, legal and rare!

      • invisible finger

        Orangeman prefers safe, legal, and well-done.

      • Pat

        It’s the ketchup that really makes it grotesque though.

      • invisible finger

        i larfed

  60. Rebel Scum

    Worst. Racist. Ever.

    “I gotta say this because it’s black history month: man, you the first black president.” Jack Brewer said, Bloomberg News’ Josh Wingrove reports. Brewer made the remarks in the Cabinet Room of the White House where President Trump hosted a roundtable event and addressed a group of roughly two dozen black civic and religious leaders. …

    “Donald Trump will get over 20% of the black vote,” Mr. Brewer said in an interview with the Washington Times. “That is what’s going to win the election. Why? Because there hasn’t been a Republican to even try to go in and talk to the black community. They don’t go there. They don’t even try. I think he’s trying, finally.”

    “For me, once I saw the policies that President Obama pushed in the back half of his presidency — it left a bad taste in my mouth,” he said during an appearance on Fox & Friends. “And then I really started being awakening [sic] to what was happening with the Democratic Party — making so many promises but then abandoning the community that I worked so hard in.”

    “I said enough was enough, and I really started putting aside what my parents and my grandparents taught me about sticking to the Democratic Party because they were the party for African Americans,” Brewer said. “You know all that rhetoric sounded good back in the ’60s, but the facts are that the policies just don’t help our families.”

    • Naptown Bill

      I have it on good authority that Donald Trump is a vile racist who hates women, so this is clearly impossible.

    • leon

      For me, once I saw the policies that President Obama pushed in the back half of his presidency

      I larfed.

    • Pine_Tree

      I’m betting he’s right about the 20%.

      • Q Continuum

        If so, it’s going to be an unbelievable blowout.

      • Pat

        I don’t think it would make a huge difference electorally. Most districts with large black populations are already solidly D. 20% of the black vote would be unlikely to flip the electoral votes.

      • invisible finger

        It sounds like you’re suggesting middle-class blacks might push back against being gerrymandered with underclass blacks.

      • Q Continuum

        He’d likely flip VA and CO and it might even be enough to flip MN.

      • Naptown Bill

        It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. If he really does get a significant percentage of black voters I look forward to the explanations offered by Don Lemon and others as to why that’s either irrelevant or somehow related to his being a racist.

      • invisible finger

        Only the best African-Americans.
        Or the most deplorable.
        Depends on who you ask.

  61. The Late P Brooks

    Q.E.D.

    Urggggh, ya got me!

    *clutches chest, falls from horse*

  62. leon

    https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-presidential-delegates-tracker/

    Nice tracker, state by state, of the Dem fundraising. However This is something I noticed: Puerto Rico has more delegates than some states. Now i know the DNC isn’t going to care about what Utah or Nebraska Dems think as much, because their vote really doesn’t matter in the General. But then again, neither does the PR votes… So why does the DNC give them any delegates?

    • invisible finger

      Always helps to know just how hard they can be raped.

    • Pat

      They think it’ll appeal to mainland Hispanics. Those minorities stick together, doncha know.

    • Rhywun

      Weird how many there are in the northeast relative to their current populations. Looks like they haven’t re-apportioned them in decades.

  63. The Late P Brooks

    “I said enough was enough, and I really started putting aside what my parents and my grandparents taught me about sticking to the Democratic Party because they were the party for African Americans,” Brewer said. “You know all that rhetoric sounded good back in the ’60s, but the facts are that the policies just don’t help our families.”

    Hang in there, dude. They beat you and push you down the stairs and steal money from your tip jar and then lock you in the basement because they LOVE you.

  64. Jarflax

    So a friend of mine posted a gif on facebook that he thought was cool looking. It purportedly shows the seasonal progression of the big dipper around Polaris during the year. Of course it is a 4 chan thing that forms a swastika with the 4 positions of the constellation… He is one of our crayon eating cohort.

    • Pat

      Kekistan acquires more territory.

  65. Sensei

    Unsurprisingly, Japan’s government doesn’t quite grasp “voluntary”

    Japan’s government to demand halt to online face mask auctions

    Those selling face masks at high prices on auction websites are believed to have been hoarding them.

    The ministry will set a grace period before the voluntary sales halt by auction companies in order to incentivise such sellers to unload their stock of the face masks.

    (Let’s set aside how effective most of these non N95 masks are in the first place.)

    • We're not saying BEAM's an alien, but . . .

      Even the N95 masks aren’t that effective. They’re designed to keep the wearer from infecting others (surgeons, ferinstance), not to keep the wearer from getting infected. We bought a bunch of them at a liquidation sale a couple of years ago (t’was from a now-defunct TV series, they were practically free, and they were bundled with some bitchin’ boxes full of unused glass test-tubes), but do not intend to use ’em unless *we* get infected and still have to go out to buy, say, food.

      • Sensei

        It’s partly cultural too. At this point a Japanese person without a mask is going to be looked down upon.

        Funny enough same thing with my Asian co-workers here in NYC. They are all scrambling to find them.

    • invisible finger

      One would think the Japanese government would understand the concept of saving face… masks.

  66. The Late P Brooks

    (Let’s set aside how effective most of these non N95 masks are in the first place.)

    They might do some good if you get infected people to wear them to keep their germs *in*.

  67. Rebel Scum

    Get back on the plantation!

    Rye said, “I think Donald Trump does not have a strong record to stand on as it relates to black unemployment. He has Barack Obama’s record to stand on with that, and I think that at some point, black folks have got to look themselves in the mirror and say, hey, do I want to follow Mark Burns? Do I want to follow Katrina Pierson? Do I want to follow Diamond and Silk? Who the hell are these people, right?”

    She added, “Instead, you want to give Donald Trump kudos for throwing Cheez-It bits at you and then criticize the people who have spent their careers doing things for the betterment of black people and black society. And I would just say at that point, if you still go over to Donald Trump after that, shame on you. Period.”

    • Naptown Bill

      Don’t other black people see how racist that is? Doesn’t she?

      • Animal

        GMTA, Bill.

      • invisible finger

        I know! The Cheez-it thing was a disguised snide remark about his orangeness.

    • Animal

      …doing things for the betterment of black people and black society.

      Do they really not see the racism inherent in that comment?

    • Hyperion

      Look, you shitlord racist Trumptard! The dems have allowed blacks to live in the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world, for free! Now they have time to become artists! I mean if they don’t get shot first in a drive by.

    • Mojeaux

      FTA:

      accouterments

      This is where I stopped reading.

      • Sensei

        I know better than to read the articles at Jalopnik, I usually only look at the pictures.

    • ChipsnSalsa

      stands out too much. needs to translucent in the cityscape.

  68. Pat

    The ‘Dating Market’ Is Getting Worse

    The idea that a dating pool can be analyzed as a marketplace or an economy is both recently popular and very old: For generations, people have been describing newly single people as “back on the market” and analyzing dating in terms of supply and demand. In 1960, the Motown act the Miracles recorded “Shop Around,” a jaunty ode to the idea of checking out and trying on a bunch of new partners before making a “deal.” The economist Gary Becker, who would later go on to win the Nobel Prize, began applying economic principles to marriage and divorce rates in the early 1970s. More recently, a plethora of market-minded dating books are coaching singles on how to seal a romantic deal, and dating apps, which have rapidly become the mode du jour for single people to meet each other, make sex and romance even more like shopping.
    More Stories

    The unfortunate coincidence is that the fine-tuned analysis of dating’s numbers game and the streamlining of its trial-and-error process of shopping around have taken place as dating’s definition has expanded from “the search for a suitable marriage partner” into something decidedly more ambiguous. Meanwhile, technologies have emerged that make the market more visible than ever to the average person, encouraging a ruthless mind-set of assigning “objective” values to potential partners and to ourselves—with little regard for the ways that framework might be weaponized. The idea that a population of single people can be analyzed like a market might be useful to some extent to sociologists or economists, but the widespread adoption of it by single people themselves can result in a warped outlook on love.

    • invisible finger

      “dating’s definition has expanded”

      No it hasn’t. But it wouldn’t be an Atlantic article without building a strawman.

    • JD is Unemployed

      Definitely 99% of people with whom it’s worth pursuing a relationship pair off quite early. I’m under no illusion that I’m one of those people, but I also dread the idea of another relationship. I’m mid thirties so maybe when I get older I’ll start feeling lonely? I think this sets me apart from many of the more “conservative libertarians” because having a more casual attitude toward relationships is seen as detrimental to the nuclear family, “family values”, and by extension, society itself. While I understand that and sympathise with it to a degree, I just prefer to be a selfish, self-centred shitbag who is deathly afraid of commitment and emotional intimacy.

      • Mojeaux

        I just prefer to be a selfish, self-centred shitbag who is deathly afraid of commitment and emotional intimacy.

        You have no idea how much of a blessing it is that you know that. Not that you are that, but that you know it about yourself.

        Like people who know they don’t want kids (my daughter), I think it is very, very wise and self-aware.

      • invisible finger

        Several couples I know that “paired off early” were simply of a mutual mind of “I just want to get this dating shit over with” and had nothing to do with either of them being “worth it”.

      • Pat

        If you want to get in it for the long haul I think it’s definitely better to start young. I’ve become such a miserable, stubborn fuck in my old age that I can’t imagine anyone putting up with me.

      • Mojeaux

        My husband and I married in our 30s. We’ve been married 17.5 years. We still can’t think in “we, us, our” as the default and instead think in “I, me, mine.”

    • Q Continuum

      Ummm, what exactly is the point of this article?

      That incels are actually correct and sex should be redistributed socialist-style?

      I guess it’s just that “free markets are bad!!!” whatever consequences fall from that are irrelevant.

      • Pat

        Near as I can figure, it’s capitalism’s fault that a lot of people like to go on hookup sites and have meaningless sexual encounters.

    • Fatty Bolger

      The logic is upsetting but clear: The (shaky) foundational idea of capitalism is that the market is unfailingly impartial and correct, and that its mechanisms of supply and demand and value exchange guarantee that everything is fair.

      Um, no, that is not the foundational idea of capitalism. An obsession with “fairness” is the hallmark of socialism, not capitalism.

      It’s a dangerous metaphor to apply to human relationships

      It’s a stupid metaphor to apply to anything.

      because introducing the idea that dating should be “fair” subsequently introduces the idea that there is someone who is responsible when it is unfair.

      Again, finding blame for “unfairness” has nothing to do with capitalism. And while it’s definitely dumb to try to apply ideas of “fairness” to dating, it’s certainly not capitalism that is encouraging it.

  69. Festus

    Time to hit the hay. Have fun and stay in your lanes, Glibs!

  70. JD is Unemployed

    I have a “too local” story for you. Earlier this week two punks robbed a local business, with no effort to disguise themselves, arriving and leaving in their own car, that was registered to their home address. Cops picked them up within the hour. I like it when criminals are stupid enough to weed themselves out of society. Of course they’ll get a slap on the wrist and be out doing it again fairly soon, perhaps?

    • invisible finger

      I don’t know what to think without knowing their skin color.

      • JD is Unemployed

        Some say they were green, so I’m going with Orion, or possibly Zen-Whoberian.

    • Jarflax

      They will get an award for saving the council the time and effort of carrying out the redistribution

    • ChipsnSalsa

      Did they say anything to make someone feel inadequate or marginalized because that would be the true crime.

    • Hyperion

      “I like it when criminals are stupid enough to weed themselves out of society.”

      Now if we would just stop locking up the Tide Pods, we could finally start cleaning up that gene pool like God intended.

      • Rhywun

        That guy is in jail now, three arrests later.