Monday Morning Make Up Links

by | Jul 27, 2020 | Daily Links | 452 comments

 

Yeah, I played a shitty joke on you yesterday- there you were, expecting the usual soothing and calming Old Man links and… OHMYGOD NO, IT’S SUGARFREE! I mean, he’s great if you’re prepared, but this comes out of left field, like a smiling child who suddenly punches you in the nuts. So to make up for it, I’ll be this morning’s curator.

And what a morning it is, what with so many notable birthdays. These include a guy who know how to go with the flow; a guy who was rather twisted; a guy for whom the phrase, “Christ, what an asshole” was seemingly designed; a guy who inflicted Rob Reiner on us, in every aspect; a son of a car; a guy who lowered our collective IQ by twenty points, minimum; and a guy who owes each and every one of you a sign.

News for Jews and non-Jews alike. But first, Graffiti Of The Day.

 

YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

 

This attack piece makes me like Pompeo more than I did. Yeah, start a Cold War with China, the writer argues. Christ, what an asshole.

 

Team Blue has an excellent grasp of a winning strategy, given what they’ve got. And what they’ve got is a deeply, deeply confused dotard.

 

Of course, shutting down the scam isn’t in the cards.

 

Wait ’til they get a load of my official Glibertarians #talismask.

 

At least we still have Abe Vigoda.

 

Old Guy Music honors one of my two favorite Jew guitarists ever, who sadly left us this past week. He should have achieved the fame and fortune that eventually found fellow Mayall alumni Clapton and Page. He didn’t. He went a little funny in the head. But before he did, there was… stuff like this.

About The Author

Old Man With Candy

Old Man With Candy

Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me. Wait, wrong book, I'll find something else.

452 Comments

  1. AlexinCT

    KUNTA KINTE!

    The guy from upstairs!

    • straffinrun

      Yep. And it’s Monday, you haven’t studied for your test and you’re just noticed you’re buck naked at school.

      • UnCivilServant

        I’m fully dressed and in my living room.

        Must be Tuesday.

      • straffinrun

        Even your dreams lack spice.

      • Festus' Mustache

        He’s wearing the gimp suit and ball-gag combo. All is well.

      • bacon-magic

        Beyond the edge of the map was a good read. It did need more spice…no ass sex, messicans or weed anywhere.

      • Evan from Evansville

        Eeeee! Yes it was and is!

      • Don Escaped Spring Training

        I hadn’t remembered my dreams in years until the vid

        now I remember a nightmare almost every week

      • Festus' Mustache

        Check out all these chicks! I have a bag of weed, too! We’re gonna jump in Mom’s K-car and party like its 1981!

      • Ted S.

        We’re gonna jump in Mom’s K-car

        A nice reliant automobile?

      • Festus' Mustache

        Hey now! Lee Iacocca flattened the curve!

      • Hyperion

        Uhh, I had to borrow my mom’s K-car once. Zero to 60 in 3.2 hours if you were going down hill all the way.

      • This Machine

        Ted I just want you to know that I see what you did there.

  2. UnCivilServant

    start a Cold War with China

    You mean the one that’s been going on for decades?

    • Rhywun

      Seriously. They certainly are under no illusions that we aren’t, unlike most of the MSM.

      • Festus' Mustache

        Just in case- really good to see you back, Rhywun. Missed your snark. Might have already given sentiments but what the fuck. You deserve them and I drink a lot.

      • Rhywun

        Golly, thanks 🙂

        I need a drink, that’s for sure. But Tylenol keeps winning out instead.

    • juris imprudent

      Trump is alienating the China that was thoroughly transformed from Communist dictatorship to full partner in Western institutions via our fruitful engagement and influence. Can’t you SEE how terrible OrangeBadMan is?

      • WTF

        That the left sides with Communist China over the president tells all you need to know about the left.

  3. AlexinCT

    This attack piece makes me like Pompeo more than I did. Yeah, start a Cold War with China, the writer argues. Christ, what an asshole.

    There a lot of people that make huge money sucking CCP cock, and these people all are in panic mode trying to save that arrangement as well as prevent public sentiment to turn on people like them that sell out to the CCP.

    • juris imprudent

      Unfortunately the DC consensus has only two positions on China – hawk and dove. Either we must beat them into submission or allow them to roll over us. I guess that is the nature of groupthink – to coalesce around one idiotic position, or another.

      • Jarflax

        Nuance requires honestly, introspection, and intelligence. Politics requires deceit, a willingness to leave motivations unexamined, and cunning. This makes nuance extremely difficult for politicians. Unfortunately statesmanship depends on nuance.

      • Jarflax

        honesty damn it!

    • WTF

      Yeah, I saw that. Welcome to the reality of taxation is theft.

  4. straffinrun

    Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

  5. Rebel Scum

    Graffiti Of The Day.

    Nice.

  6. robc

    No sloopy, so I will post the soccer updates: everything went to the big money clubs. Literally.

    Even the relegation battle…it came down to a 3-way battle betwen Aston Villa, Watford, and Bournemouth, and of course, Villa stayed up.

    Spurs nicked Wolves for 6th and the guaranteed Europa spot (Wolves can still get the last spot unless Arsenal wins FA Cup this weekend…oh wait, that would be the money play, so Arsenal will win).

    The Man U, Chelsea, Leicester City battle for the last 2 CL spots left Leicester in the Europa League.

    I would suggest it is rigged, but it is European soccer, so know need to make the suggestion.

    • Rhywun

      Yeah, a big day of whoop-de-doo. It’s amusing watching the talking heads try to make it “suspenseful”.

      of course, Villa stayed up

      *spit* Man, I wanted them to go down. God dammit.

      • robc

        Everton did everything in their power to keep Bournemouth up.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      Eh, the restart was not kind to Leicester and they are apparently garbage without Maddisson and Chilwell.

      Norwich were never going to survive, Watford are pretty bad, and Bournemouth are just as bad as Villa.

      Fuck Chelsea, but I do hope they beat Arsenal for FA Cup.

  7. Rhywun

    Pompeo is also ultra-loyal to a president who cares not one whit for democracy, dissidents, freedom, or transparency overseas.

    *taps out*

    More sober journalism from The Atlantic.

    • WTF

      “They stated without evidence”.

    • AlexinCT

      You mean the people that along with the usual crowd of TDS infected retards are all turning a blind eye to the things Black Jesus & his weaponized bureaucracy of credentialed inept elites did that Nixon was run out of office for even thinking about doing?

      • Festus' Mustache

        It’s akin to arguing with a crazy girlfriend but in this case we’re not allowed to walk away.

      • Viking1865

        “democracy” just means “Democrats win elections.”

        That’s all it means, and all it will ever mean going forward. If Donald Trump wins an enormous landslide in both the electoral and popular vote (not predicting this, just saying) they will come out on Wednesday, look in the camera, and say with a straight face “Democracy is under serious threat.”

  8. leon

    I could only get so far in the pompeo article before you could tell it was just gonna be, ” I agree with pompeo but he works for orangemanbad, so I have to make him wrong”

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The left cannot separate anything from their hate of Trump anymore. It’s truly bizarre.

  9. Rebel Scum

    Baboons at a popular safari park have been spotted with knives, screwdrivers and even a chainsaw, according to reports.

    Enough monkeying around.

    • straffinrun

      Animal Farm 2020 version.

      • Animal

        Leave me out of this.

    • WTF

      I’m guessing they must have stolen this stuff from careless maintenance workers?

      • Gustave Lytton

        No one heeds the warning these days from Wham! of the dangers of a careless worker.

    • Nephilium

      Maybe they’re just doing a remake of Army of Darkness?

      • WTF

        No need to go ape-shit.

      • This Machine

        Is a narrowed gaze effective in gorilla warfare?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      This thread should be a howler.

      • Rebel Scum

        There is always plenty of shit-slinging.

    • IntraveneousWoodChipper

      Keep it up and I’ll orangutan your hide!

    • juris imprudent

      Hopefully there were no large black obelisks seen in the vicinity.

      • UnCivilServant

        Just a cut-rate supervillain. We’re all right.

  10. The Late P Brooks

    I stumbled across this

    There were approximately 781 000 total deaths in the United States from March 1 to May 30, 2020, representing 122 300 (95% prediction interval, 116 800-127 000) more deaths than would typically be expected at that time of year. There were 95 235 reported deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 from March 1 to May 30, 2020. The number of excess all-cause deaths was 28% higher than the official tally of COVID-19–reported deaths during that period. In several states, these deaths occurred before increases in the availability of COVID-19 diagnostic tests and were not counted in official COVID-19 death records. There was substantial variability between states in the difference between official COVID-19 deaths and the estimated burden of excess deaths.

    ——-

    To calculate the number of excess deaths, we first needed to estimate the baseline number of deaths in the absence of COVID-19. We then subtracted the expected number of deaths in each week from the observed number of deaths for the period March 1, 2020, to May 30, 2020.

    Each of the 48 states (excluding North Carolina and Connecticut) and the District of Columbia were analyzed individually. We fit Poisson regression models to the weekly state-level death counts from January 5, 2015, to January 25, 2020 (see the eAppendix in the Supplement for details). The baseline was then projected forward until May 30, 2020, to generate baseline deaths; excess mortality was defined as the observed mortality minus the baseline for the pandemic period March 1, 2020, to May 30, 2020. The baseline model was adjusted for seasonality, year-to-year baseline variation, influenza epidemics, and reporting delays. The model for pneumonia/influenza/COVID-19 mortality used all-cause deaths as a denominator and did not have a separate adjustment for reporting delays. Poisson 95% prediction intervals were estimated by sampling from the uncertainty distributions for the estimated model parameters.15

    ——-

    Across the United States, there were 95 235 reported deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 from March 1 to May 30, 2020. In comparison, there were an estimated 122 300 (95% prediction interval, 116 800-127 000) excess deaths during the same period (Table). The deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 accounted for 78% of the excess all-cause deaths, leaving 22% unattributed to COVID-19. The proportion of excess deaths that were attributed to COVID-19 varied between states and increased over time (Table and Figure 1).

    Maybe somebody better at parsing this sort of stuff than I am could take a look. It seems there are a lot of “adjustments”.

    It’s the first thing I have seen (other than here) which makes any reference at all to “excess” deaths rather than shrieking about a massive die-off of humanity.

    • robc

      I don’t get the adjustment for influenza epidemics. But other than that, I think the adjustments had to be made if you are going to try to do that right.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        maybe the baseline is calculated using the mean and they’re removing extreme outliers? seems like median would be a better fit, but who knows.

      • Overt

        “I don’t get the adjustment for influenza epidemics”

        Influenza epidemics are extremely variable, and so if you are trying to create a “baseline” of “expected deaths” it is arguable that pulling out influenza deaths is a good idea. Indeed, this is how the CDC usually tries to quantify the impact of Flu each year. The use a similar excess deaths model that shows a nice curve of expected deaths, and then sum up any spikes above that number.

      • robc

        I would think for COVID, you would want to keep in an average influenza value, because part of the offset of covid excess deaths may be a reduction in influenza deaths. Or not.

      • invisible finger

        From year to year influenza epidemics are variable, but over a period of, say, 30 years that variability is smoothed out. An actuary would piss their pants laughing at a statistical study of deaths that only covers a five-year period, which is what JAMA did.

      • robc

        Yeah, I found that lacking too. My college roommate was a math major who took some actuarial exam his senior year, he got the 2nd highest score in the nation, IIRC. He had insurance companies beating down our door offering jobs.

      • Overt

        “An actuary would piss their pants laughing at a statistical study of deaths that only covers a five-year period, which is what JAMA did.”

        I don’t think you understand what they are doing, so your criticism is way off. They are not averaging out Influenza deaths. They are removing them from the signal. Depending on what types of questions you are trying to answer, it is valuable data.

        Grabbing 30 years of data is not going to solve anything. To average 30 years of data would be to create a baseline with its own signal problems. The death rate in this country has fallen by over 20% in that time frame.

        Simply put, this is absolutely a valid statistical analysis that has been actually validated in the past. Instead of just averaging, they are doing a signal analysis- you are watching a seasonal curve, predicting what it will be for the next time slice- within a statistically defined level of uncertainty- and then noting when the line of deaths departs from that level.

        The problem is that it cannot tell us a lot of stuff- like why there are excess deaths. We can surmise it had to do with COVID, but notice that the paper never says that the excess deaths ARE caused by covid. They just compare it to the confirmed cases. They do this intentionally because they know a lot of other things changed at the same time.

    • Q Continuum

      Two relevant sayings:

      If you torture numbers enough, they’ll confess to anything,
      Statistics are like bikinis: what they reveal is enticing, what they conceal is vital.

    • Rhywun

      That stuff just makes my eyes glaze over. Good luck.

      My main gripe is the freakout over places like Florida and California. zOMG 2nd wave!11!

      No, idiots – the thing is spreading. You know, like diseases do. This idea that it was gonna appear magically everywhere at once and decline at the same time everywhere… it’s so stupid only the MSM could come up with it.

      • robc

        Arizona is the worst state right now (death rate). Looking at its graph, AZ never had a first wave. This is their first wave.

        South Carolina (my current state) is 2nd. We had a first wave, it peaked at about 3 per million per day. Now we are up to 9 per million per day. In other words, WAY below the peaks of many states. We got bad when we opened up and tourists from yankeeland came to the beach. I blame NYC in general and Rhywun in particular.

      • leon

        I wouldn’t blame you Rhywun.

        #LeonsTheGoodOne2020

      • Festus' Mustache

        Apple-polisher.

      • robc

        Proof he is the evil one.

      • leon

        Bah. I want to let the People Decide! #Democracy. How could that make me evil?

      • Rhywun

        I do my best.

      • R C Dean

        “Now we are up to 9 per million per day”

        Impressive, since the population of South Carolina is @ 5 million.

      • robc

        9 per million per day.

        Not 9 million per day.

      • robc

        Cases peaked in SC about 10 days ago, so I expect deaths to start dropping in about 2 weeks.

      • robc

        Arizona cases peaked 21 days ago and it looks like deaths has flattened out and maybe started the decrease. It peaked at just over 11.

      • robc

        I said the other day that the states/counties that got up above 12 or so at their peak seem to be the ones resistant to a 2nd wave. In other words, they not be at herd immunity, but they are close enough that another exponential peak isnt posssible.

        If your state hasnt had a high peak yet, it will.

      • Don Escaped Spring Training

        above 12 or so at their peak seem to be the ones resistant to a 2nd wave

        This agrees with what I posted here a couple of months ago as the southern wave emerged. Look at total deaths per M and you’ll see two kinds of states: those who had theirs already and those who are just now catching up.

        It’s fuzzy because of the nature of the data, but the two types of curves are concave: damping towards some long-term, typical (national?), mortality rate.

      • robc

        Don – yep. Looking at the total deaths for European countries, you can see a wide range of points where it levels off, not sure why the difference. Belgium leveled off at 850. UK is leveling at about 700. Spain and Italy at 600, which Sweden is approaching. France settled in at 450.

        All numbers in deaths per million.

        US is still short of 450, but isn’t really leveling off yet. New Jesey is approaching 1800, New York 1700. Conn and Mass 1200. Skipping a few, Michigan has settled in at 650. Arizona is 450 but still increasing. South Carolina ditto but still short of 300. South Dakota is under 150, Kentucky is just over 150, but both are increasing slowly.

        Outside of a few outliers in the NE, US looks like Europe only not yet leveled off, due to starting late.

      • Nephilium

        Yeah. The media screaming about the number of cases spiking up seems to be burying the real story. Even with the number of cases going up, the number of deaths has stayed relatively flat. Isn’t that good news?

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        Isn’t that good news?

        of course, but it doesn’t get the bad orange man tossed out on his ass.

      • WTF

        It’s very good news, it means the infection fatality rate is much lower than previously assumed.
        Which is why they bury it.

      • robc

        And/or the IFR is getting lower due to better treatments and/or mutation.

        I think “and”.

      • Nephilium

        Hell, the Cleveland Clinic built out a COVID ward for the predicted surge. It was never used.

      • juris imprudent

        The stupidest shit I’ve seen is the “we have to defeat the virus” usually linked with extending lockdowns, etc.

        Viruses are nature’s way of reminding us that we aren’t really in charge.

      • straffinrun

        Death in general should remind us of that.

      • WTF

        No corona virus in the history of man has ever been “defeated”. It goes through the population and runs its course.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Uh, except sars-cov-1. And while mers-cov hasn’t been “defeated”, it hasn’t run rampant either.

      • R C Dean

        I think SARS-1 mutated into something relatively benign. Not “defeated” by anything we did.

        Not sure about MERS.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        MERs is still around. It uses camels as a repository. There’s the occasional outbreak in the Middle East, but that’s about it.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Original formula SARS was wiped out in the general population. The last couple of infections several years ago were researchers fucking around with virus samples.

        It was also much easier to detect and more deadly to infectees.

      • OBJ FRANKELSON

        The hubris of these politicians/public health experts is staggering. This is not something that they can control. They need to be honest, they won’t of course, hearing that risk cannot be mitigated down to zero causes Karen to freak out and Karen votes.

      • Viking1865

        Which is particularly infuriating because when this whole thing started the propaganda was

        “We need to flatten the curve, so that the same number of cases will take place over a longer time.”

        No one ever promised that it wouldn’t spread.

    • Overt

      “It’s the first thing I have seen”

      This has been something that people refer to when they can. The problem is that CDC total death numbers are notoriously vulnerable to reporting delays. At the start of the pandemic I was reading that the numbers change significantly for 2 – 3 months as backlogged death reports get filed on monthly and quarterly basis depending on the source.

      The method looks about right. However, you should be very careful to interpret the results. Notice that they only refer to their results as “Excess deaths” not “Implied COVID deaths” or anything like that. While they do compare excess deaths to covid deaths, they never specifically say that 125k deaths ought to be the official number. They imply that some number above the 125k is probably COVID due to lack of early testing, but do not attempt to quantify it.

      Without a doubt, shutting down our economy caused additional deaths in people who didn’t go to the hospital when they should, but also saved some lives by taking people off of highways each day. So they cannot legitimately say what the balance of deaths was during this time. They can only say that we had significantly more than you would expect.

      This won’t stop the media from totally misinterpreting the results.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        What does ‘excess deaths’ mean?

      • Overt

        If you look at deaths in a large population, you will see that it follows a seasonal curve- lower in the summer, higher in the winter. Periodically that curve has jagged spikes in it. Imagine isolating where the spike starts, and then ends, and connecting those two points. You are basically saying, “But for this spike, we expect the deaths to have been about like this”.

        So excess deaths is essentially mathematically isolating those spikes from the curve. They don’t literally draw the line between points, they use various methods to identify the expected curve, apply uncertainty boundaries above and below, and then use that data to isolate the spikes.

        Note that to experts in epidemiology, this is very important data, but you have to understand its limits. To laymen and media, it is dangerous because they misinterpret what it can be used for.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        That may be true about the cars (hadn’t thought of that), but I’m almost certain the trade-offs are negative if consult deaths do to, say, suicides, starvation, murder and abuse due to lockdowns, people not getting critical care….etc.

    • Negroni Please

      Even excess deaths for a given time period seems useless to me. I’m interested in mortality displacement since the vid largely kills those on deaths door.

      It is totally possible that we see large numbers of excess deaths for the first half of the year and then a big dip in all cause mortality after that as everyone that was gonna die is already dead.

      Who knows?

      I still don’t give a shot about the vid either way

      • Overt

        “It is totally possible that we see large numbers of excess deaths for the first half of the year and then a big dip in all cause mortality after that”

        This is absolutely true, and is why you want a year of data. But we don’t have that data now, and won’t probably have the data until Q2 of 2021.

        For me, the most valuable data will be the “Years lost” data. This basically applies an expected number of years that the disease cut short. The problem will be isolating flu from COVID. Prior to COVID, we counted the various flus together, because those were generally the big spikes that caused excess deaths. You really couldn’t easily isolate Swine Flu from the others. I don’t see how they easily isolate COVID from other flus at the beginning of the year.

      • Brawndo

        I’ve heard of this referred to as a “harvesting event”. A possible explanation but impossible to evaluate until next year, which does nothing for our current situation of lockdown now, lockdown forever, lockdown always.

  11. Rhywun

    Linda Macintyre, a single mother herself, is donating a portion from her Tarot Tuesday readings to the Black Fairy Godmother Official, with her clients also thrilled to be giving back.

    Do better, Not Adahn.

    • leon

      “, with her clients also thrilled to be giving back”

      Why’d those assholes take it from them in the first place?

      • WTF

        I really despise the term “giving back”. It implies that you are returning something that you were given in the first place, as though it is some sort of obligation on your part. When you contribute to charity you are not “giving back”, you are “giving”.

      • leon

        I absolutely hate it. It posits charity as some sort of obligation rather than an act of free choice.

      • juris imprudent

        I smell a kulak.

      • Rhywun

        We’re all in this together, comrade.

      • AlexinCT

        Famous last words before they cancel us?

      • Festus' Mustache

        Donation not Taxation! *Sandmann Smirk*

      • Mad Scientist

        “Giving back” also implies that your daily effort doesn’t produce anything beneficial to anyone but yourself, and to be a good person you need to donate time and/or money to people who produce nothing at all. The whole thing is disgusting.

  12. Rufus the Monocled

    De Havilland is now really gone with the wind.

    • IntraveneousWoodChipper

      Dust in the wind! RIP

  13. Scruffy Nerfherder

    That Atlantic article is hilarious. The author assumes the position that “Yeah America is a shithole because Trump, but I guess China is worse and yada yada yada…”

    • Rufus the Monocled

      The author should go drown in the Atlantic.

      Doo-dee-doo.

    • IntraveneousWoodChipper

      The fact that some people are taking China’s side in all of this in spite of everything we know about them tells you everything you need to know about this moment in American history and how fucking stupid it is.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        And that they have the gall to say we’re on the wrong side of history.

        A stupid favorite phrase of stupid idiotic people.

      • Festus' Mustache

        I bite my lip so often these days that I have become the Mouth of Sauron.

      • Viking1865

        Well of course it’s stupid, it’s Marxist cant.

  14. leon

    You can call people Nazis, but don’t you dare make your criticism of someone as a Nazi any more than calling them one. Otherwise we’ll just say that you secretly love Nazis and that’s why you have a swastika mask.

    • IntraveneousWoodChipper

      See: Antifa rioters

  15. The Late P Brooks

    Police say the couple has been issued trespass notices. Officials said they are banned from visiting any Walmart facility for at least a year.

    Video posted on social media showed the couple going through a checkout lane on Saturday with the masks that featured the Nazi swastika flag. Onlookers appeared shocked by the masks and demanded the couple to remove them.

    ——-

    In a statement, a Walmart spokesperson said the incident was upsetting: “What happened today at our store in Marshall, MN is unacceptable. We strive to provide a safe and comfortable shopping environment for all our customers and will not tolerate any form of discrimination or harassment in any aspect of our business. We are asking everyone to wear face coverings when they enter our stores for their safety and the safety of others and it’s unfortunate that some individuals have taken this pandemic as an opportunity to create a distressing situation for customers and associates in our store.”

    It’s unfortunate that some government officials have taken this pandemic to expand the scope of their power and restrict the freedoms of the citizenry.

    They’re wearing masks. How will they be identified?

    • Agent Cooper

      Attention-seeking couple gets attention. News at 11.

  16. Pope Jimbo

    Rack up 2 more Covid deaths in the paradise that Tundra and I call home. A man who admitted to strangling his wife to death was found dead in his cell this weekend. Why did he strangle his wife?

    Frustrations over COVID-19 and Minnesota’s stay-at-home order may have contributed to the killing, Freeman’s office said. While the couple were having marital problems before the pandemic, they had been arguing about COVID-19 in the days leading up to her death.

    • robc

      This brings a question up about the excess deaths above — are the excess deaths due to covid or due to the response to covid?

      How do you go about teasing out that one?

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        it would be interesting to see a breakdown by cause and percentage change per cause.

      • Pope Jimbo

        This story is from early in the pandemic, but I bet the numbers wouldn’t be that much different if you looked now

        Kurt Nelson, who spent three decades in Minnesota law enforcement, paid for a public information request from the Minnesota Department of Health detailing the information on all the death certificates of those who died in the state this year through May 25. He sorted the spreadsheet officials sent him and found that of the 741 death certificates that listed COVID-19 at all as a contributing cause of death, on just 338 was the virus listed on “line A,” indicating that it was the primary cause of death. In other words, in only 44% of the cases was COVID-19 listed as the top and most immediate cause of death. In 287 of them, the virus was listed on line B, and in 116, the virus was listed on line C – with two other primary causes of death above it.

        btw I was being sarcastic about those two death being listed as ‘Vid casualties. Allegedly they are only including deaths that have a lab confirmed CV test.

      • WTF

        Yeah, I would bet the death numbers for COVID are overstated by at least 30%, probably more.

      • Overt

        You really cannot tell. Which is why they never actually try to quantify. It’s like you monitor your application for performance day to day, and then developers come in and refactor your code. They make so many changes that you can’t tell if latency is changed due to changing database versions, or other code changes in the stack. Fewer people were traveling on highways, which is one of the biggest killers in the US. But then, people were also under lots of stress and depression. Even in a world with perfect information, determining what is a COVID death is more a semantic game than a scientific one, and we don’t live in such a world.

        The study notes that many of the excess deaths were from states that seemed to have COVID outbreaks before testing came along. So that implies that some of those excess deaths really are COVID. (This also implies that we had a pandemic going on any no one fucking noticed until the media and our government started freaking out 24×7).

    • AlexinCT

      So are they putting as cause of death COVID on their government paperwork?

  17. Rebel Scum

    In his book, the former national security adviser John Bolton wrote that on two separate occasions, Trump told Xi that he “should go ahead with building the [concentration] camps in Xijiang, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.”

    Yeah, sure.

    instead of a rules-based international order where small countries enjoy equal rights.

    Countries are individual political entities that have to see to their own interests.

    This whole thing is a steaming pile.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I saw that and thought “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”

    • WTF

      When officials who were also present state publicly that Bolton is lying, it kind of destroys any reason to believe the ridiculous and incredible claims in the book.

      • leon

        John Bolton, a liar?!?! Why would anyone think that?

      • Pope Jimbo

        How do you think he is able to grow such a luscious mustache? Being constantly inundated with the fertilizer that Bolton spews every time he opens his mouth is why.

      • Festus' Mustache

        Hey! My ‘Stache grew from innocent “tall tales” and the like. I’ll not have my Mark Twain/Frank Zappa be sullied by the Bolton!

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        In Bolton’s defense, he considers anything short of nuking them an endorsement of their behavior.

    • leon

      “instead of a rules-based international order where small countries enjoy equal rights.”

      But replace countries with”states” and this person hates democracy.

      • IntraveneousWoodChipper

        BUT BUT MUH POPULAR VOTE!!!

    • Viking1865

      “instead of a rules-based international order where small countries enjoy equal rights.

      ‘Twas Brittania bade our wild geese go
      That small nations might be free
      But their lonely graves are by Suvla’s waves
      On the shore of the gray North Sea

  18. Drake

    I don’t think Peter Green ever wanted that much fame and fortune – he named his band after his rhythm section. When his accountant wouldn’t stop sending him royalty checks, he chased the guy with a shotgun until they hauled him off to the funny farm.

    Green might be my second favorite Jewish harmonica played too. Magic Dick takes the prize.

    • Old Man With Candy

      Corky Siegel and Howard Levy might disagree.

    • Rhywun

      *marks for later*

      I don’t always agree with him but he’s always interesting.

    • leon

      “That progress stalled in the 1970s in the West, as wealth began to concentrate in fewer hands and income growth all but ended for the vast majority. Instead, we see the rise of two classes that parallel the feudal structure.”

      What changed around then 70s that could have messed with money and wealth?

      Also he doesn’t make any room for government authority in his analogy. The thing that has shown me the biggest jump to neo-fudalism would be the extent that the governor’s have flaunted their own orders and made carveouts for their employees, throughout this crisis.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Hmmm, I don’t know man. Was it something to do with the color gold?

      • Viking1865

        Well, he does talk about the managerial class. He’s a leftist, so he struggles hard to condemn government straightforwardly.

        That, to me, is one of the main things: there is no adversarial relationship between the corporate and governmental hierarchs. They move seamlessly back and forth, and very cordially fuck over individuals and small businesses. I’m getting more and more anti corporation as time goes on. I used to see them as a necessary evil, now I’m leaning in a more left anarchist conception where I see them as arms of the State. Kapos, to jump right into the Godwins Law.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      In Quebecois there’s a saying ‘ca brasse’. Stir it up. Shake it up.

      That’s what’s happening. It’s going to be a bit rough the next couple of years. There’s something happening and if we don’t play our cards right, we can very well see the end of a lot of things. There’s a group – call them Globalists under the cape of Marxism and wokiam? – on the march. Covid is just a smokescreen now. It’s totally astonishing how people haven’t said, ‘ok. This is stupid now. What am I doing here? People are macing each other. Angst is through the roof. People have died and lost everything. Fuck this shit’. And then piss on the faces of the leaders that made a mess of all this.

      They’ll lose in the end I feel but it’ll take some time. I think Gen Z and generations after them will benefit once the new ‘Awoke’ takes place.

      Or. It can all just come crumblin’ down the walls.

      • Festus' Mustache

        Time to grow out the beard and move to the cottage.

      • Festus' Mustache

        I don’t currently own a cottage.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Yeh, been trying to figure out how to do this.

        I’m want out. I can’t stand listening to well to do people science-plain ‘viral loads’, cheer on Greta, babble on about Trump etc. anymore.

        Here. Take the keys. Go. Leave me alone.

      • Agent Cooper

        I find your suggestion Thoreauly interesting.

  19. Rebel Scum

    Chris Wallace would be the best thing for Biden as far as anyone at FNC to interview him. He could say he went on an opposition network even though the interviewer is a partisan Dem.

    • WTF

      But Wallace might actually ask a couple of serious questions, even though he would let Biden skate on the follow-up after he flubbed them.

  20. The Late P Brooks

    Frontrunner

    When former Sen. Chris Dodd, a member of Joe Biden’s vice presidential search committee, recently asked Kamala Harris about her ambush on Biden in the first Democratic debate, Dodd was stunned by her response.

    “She laughed and said, ‘that’s politics.’ She had no remorse,” Dodd told a longtime Biden supporter and donor, who relayed the exchange to POLITICO on condition of anonymity.

    “Dodd felt it was a gimmick, that it was cheap,” the donor said. The person added that Dodd’s concerns about Harris were so deep that he’s helped elevate California Rep. Karen Bass during the vetting process, urging Biden to pick her because “she’s a loyal No. 2. And that’s what Biden really wants.” Through an aide, Dodd declined to comment. Advisers to Harris also declined to comment.

    ——-

    While some of Harris’ detractors say they’re still concerned about her record as California attorney general, others who interacted with her earlier in her career told the Biden team they’re wary of how she would conduct herself as a No. 2.

    Still, others have raised concerns about Harris’ presidential campaign itself, which launched with great promise before 22,000 people, but steadily lost ground. Harris dropped out a month before the Iowa caucuses.

    “Look for someone who does no harm,” former California Democratic Party Chair John Burton said he told Dodd. Burton said he worried President Donald Trump and GOP allies would weaponize Harris’ clash with Biden on the debate stage over race.

    Despite those question marks, there are compelling reasons why Harris hasn’t budged from the top of Biden VP lists.

    No other contender matches her experience as someone who was elected three times statewide in the largest state in the nation and has gone through the wringer of a presidential campaign. As the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, she would be a historic selection.

    Biden/Harris,
    JUSTICE FOR THE BLACK FOLK

    • leon

      “She laughed and said, ‘that’s politics.’ ”

      Yeah, and you seem to be bad at it. Like did you really think it was going to be that easy to unseat the front-runner? You really thought your odds were so good that you’d burn that bridge?

      It’s politics, and all your know is prostitution.

      • Rebel Scum

        +1 top tier candidate

    • Rhywun

      As the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, she would be a historic selection.

      Yes, the daughter of privilege raised in the toniest Canadian suburb would be quite historic. ?

      • Viking1865

        Right, I get so absolutely mad at this idea that someone who grew up in a very privileged situation somehow is different from their white next door neighbor because melanin content.

        I am perfectly willing to have conversations about income inequality, wealth distribution, and how that affects social mobility. But please, please, please stop telling me that rich black people have it worse than poor white people. Fuck out of here with that bullshit.

      • leon

        Once again leftist “diversity” is more about novelty than real differences. They will retreat to “having different experiences is important to building a team” but then insinuate that all white people have had the same experiences, unless they are gay or trans.

      • Viking1865

        “having different experiences is important to building a team”

        Yeah their diversity is just people of different hues and sexuality who all think the same way.

    • mrfamous

      If Chris Dodd doesn’t like Kamala Harris, I might have to re-evaluate my hate for Harris. Dodd is the very definition of “lizard person.”

      • juris imprudent

        Just because bigger lizards will eat smaller ones is no reason to get sappy for the smaller one – particularly if it is venomous.

      • mrfamous

        Well, yeah. Harris’ lizardness record stands on its own, I suppose.

        Dodd was infamously the person Ted Kennedy tried to perv vicariously through after Ted’s pecker stopped working. Between that and the rampant corruption, Dodd seems an excellent person to pass judgment on someone else’s character.

    • Festus' Mustache

      “Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly…”

    • Gustave Lytton

      they’re wary of how she would conduct herself as a No. 2

      I think at this point, Harris has proven her capabilities at being a piece of #2.

  21. Rebel Scum

    Onlookers appeared shocked by the masks and demanded the couple to remove them.

    But you HAVE to wear a face covering…until you don’t apparently.

    it’s unfortunate that some individuals have taken this pandemic as an opportunity to create a distressing situation for customers and associates in our store.

    I am distressed that there is a mask stasi.

    • Pope Jimbo

      What make me nuts about the mask mandate is how arbitrary it is. You have to wear the mask from the front door of the gym to the locker room, but then everyone takes it off. But somehow it is absolutely necessary to wear.

      And it is so important a health measure that up to last week our Gov was using the mandate as a bargaining chip in his negotiations to pass his monstrous bonding bill. So yeah, it must be totes important and scientific if you were willing to forgo it in order to get $1.8B in bonding money.

      • Rebel Scum

        The arbitrary rules are how you know it is bs and they know it is bs. It is theater designed to control you and keep you in a fearful state while they and we can appear to be doing something proactive (even though there are negative effects of being masked constantly), never mind that the relationship of a virus to a mask is that of a mosquito to a chain-link fence.

      • Fourscore

        Oh c’mon, Jimbo. Bonding is free. Bonds are sold to unsuspecting voters. The bills are paid in the future (with interest) by the new and young. That’s why it’s so great, like SS and stimuli money.

        “Hands off my Medicare”

    • leon

      Satire and malicios compliance have ever been the bane of those who would impose order.

    • juris imprudent

      Wearing a mask is supposed to demonstrate moral superiority. These masks failed to convey that, thus the acute distress.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The guns possess the souls of Chicago residents and force them to commit violence against each other,

      • AlexinCT

        Funny how the places she claims these guns come from never seem to have the problem the guns cause once they end up in Chicago, huh?

      • Old Man With Candy

        Gary, Indiana disagrees.

    • Rebel Scum

      states with loose gun control

      Where are these states? Pretty much every American state is currently in violation of both their constitution and the federal constitution and have been for quite some time.

    • WTF

      Never addressed: why do those states with loose gun control not have the same problems as Chicago?

    • leon

      Gee. Wonder why those states with such loose gun control don’t also have death rates like Chicago.

    • WTF

      *Jedi hand wave* “This is not the fraud you are looking for.”

    • Rebel Scum

      “He’s not telling the entire truth,” said Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh, a political rival of those who were charged and a Democrat who has held the nonpartisan office since 2018. “But then again, he’s Donald Trump.”

      Skimming a ways down the article I am unable to find the “entire truth”. All I can see is how “extremely unlikely” that this could be a widespread and consequential phenomenon and it is that because say so.

      • WTF

        And of course the “local officials” denying fraud are Democrats in a position to benefit from the fraud.

      • leon

        well seeing as there are only a few states that are actually in play, and only a few areas in those states that are in play, it doesn’t seem to need to be “widespread”

    • WTF

      Was it this guy?

    • Rufus the Monocled

      “….if convicted, the suspect will be subject to chemical castration in accordance with tough local laws against paedophiles.”

      Meanwhile, here in the West we want to give light sentenced and there are psychologists and psychiatrists who want to treat it as a mentaller illness.

      No wonder we’re terrified of the virus. We’re pussies.

      • Mostly Peaceful JaimeRoberto

        Heck, in Germany they’d give him his own boy toy.

    • Drake

      The best thing about the article – the photo of Joe Biden in the middle of the article. If you look close, it’s a campaign ad just really well placed.

  22. Rufus the Monocled

    Holy mackerel! That guy from The Atlantic is a Senior Fellow at Brookings?!!

    I think I’m gonna start a think-tank and change all the credentials and titles around. Senior Fellow would become Junior Chap. Senior Retard. Stuff like that.

    • bacon-magic

      Head Moppet.

    • EvilSheldon

      Imagine that. Sexual attraction is more complicated than, ‘It’s all in your genes, assigned at birth, and it never ever changes.’

  23. The Late P Brooks

    Senior Fellow would become Junior Chap. Senior Retard. Stuff like that.

    Senile Fellow

    You can hire Biden.

    • Agent Cooper

      That was an article that went nowhere.

  24. Rebel Scum

    As we blocked streets, certain drivers got annoyed and attempted to maneuver their way around us. This particular white woman tried to cut through a gas station. Me and a couple other protestors stood in front of her car and demanded she turn around. Instead she steps on the gas.

    Oh. Well…in that case…

    *floors it*

  25. Evan from Evansville

    Rhywun: 11 days in the hospital. That ain’t pleasant. I hope you’re being as strong as possible and getting better. Try to push the negative as far away as possible. You’re back and recovering. That’s what’s important. Focus on the victories. They mean everything.

    Cheers, mate. You’re conquering it and way to fucking go!

    • Rufus the Monocled

      What’s going on with Rhywun?

      No one tells me anything.

      • UnCivilServant

        Some sort of abdominal surgery.

      • Rhywun

        I had some innards removed and rearranged. I should have been out after 3 to 5 days but I couldn’t eat so they put a tube down my nose for two days straight to suck everything up and do a reset. That was… unpleasant. But there are several other ways this could have ended up worse and which would not be known until the surgery, none of which came to pass. I got the best outcome so I am grateful for that.

    • Rhywun

      Thanks, man. Right back at you. My head is in a great place.

  26. straffinrun

    Jihadist plots used to be U.S. and Europe’s biggest terrorist threat. Now it’s the far right.

    Jones defined right-wing extremists as “sub-national or non-state entities” with goals that could include ethnic or racial supremacy. They can also be marked by anger against specific policies like abortion rights and government authority, as well as hatred toward women, or they may be members of the “involuntary celibate,” or “incel,” movement.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Don’t believe your lying eyes….

      Written by Willem Marx? A little bit too on the nose, don’t you think?

    • leon

      Ad blocker, so can’t read it all. Sadly.

      I’m interested in the data on this. However i’d like to take the time to remind everyone, that not all right-wing extremists are violent, and that you shouldn’t allow your Dextrophobia make you a bigot. They have legitimate complaints about the government, and if we listen to them maybe we can bridge our cultures.

    • Rebel Scum

      anger against specific policies like abortion rights and government authority

      What specific authority? Or specifically authority in general?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        They’re not going along with the mob. Therefore they are a risk.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        ^This. Unconventional thought is scary to a lot of people.

    • leon

      ALSO, regardless of weather or not the “numbers are rigged”, this was a completely forseeable consequence of what was put forward by Bush with the Patriot act, and the additional moves by Obama to extend “War on Terror” powers to be used against Americans.

      The Left is just posturing the right to be the new target for the War on Terror, and vioala, no more opposition. I imagine that even some libertarians would say “I told you so”, except i expect that they would be among the first to be targeted.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      If you can manage the mental gymnastics to tell yourself that Antifa doesn’t exist then these are the kinds of results you’re going to get.

    • Rhywun

      Who’s trying to start an actual race war, I wonder?

    • R C Dean

      Of course, Islamic terrorists also fit that definition of far-right extremist.

      As do “black bloc” anarcho-communists and their current version, antifa.

  27. EvilSheldon

    Alright, I know some of y’all been out shooting this weekend. Let’s hear the results.

    I was up in the beautiful rural exurbs of east Pittsburgh, shooting the USPSA Western PA Sectional Championship. It was a really good match. I came in 11th in my division, not quite where I want to be, but not bad. My trigger pulling was generally very solid, I need to spend some more time on movement and stage planning.

    What’d the rest of y’all get up to?

    • DOOMco

      Just the backyard. Practicing mags on my handgun.

      • EvilSheldon

        Nice. I actually did a quick pre-match practice in my friend’s backyard. He’s got a great setup, a big hill for a backstop, enough room to set up almost anything, and cool neighbors who like the sound of gunfire.

        Next house I buy, is gonna have enough space for a pistol range. That’s a promise I’m making to myself.

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      My target ammo comes today for the shotgun I’ve ordered, and subsequently had cancelled, 3 times. I finally found it in stock again last night from a different retailer and bought immediately.

      …received the order cancellation email this morning.

  28. The Late P Brooks

    Numbers games

    Florida has recorded more coronavirus cases than New York. Only California, the most populous state in the country, has more.

    As of Sunday afternoon, data from Johns Hopkins University shows 423,855 people in Florida have tested positive for the coronavirus, compared to 411,736 in New York. California leads with 450,242 cases.

    New York, once the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., managed to bring the number of deaths and hospitalizations under control in late spring, as cases began to surge in many Western and Southern states.

    ——-

    Florida logged 9,338 new cases among residents and 77 new deaths on Sunday, while New York’s latest daily numbers reflect 536 new cases and three deaths.

    Leaders in each state have dealt with the pandemic using starkly different strategies.

    Gov. Andrew Cuomo gradually lifted New York’s stay-at-home order on a regional basis in May, with New York City becoming the last region to enter Phase One of reopening in early June. New Yorkers have been under statewide orders to wear face coverings in public since April, and the state will decide next week whether to reopen schools in the fall.

    In most of Florida, businesses such as restaurants and retail stores could open starting in May, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has resisted calls to impose a statewide mask mandate and other restrictions as cases surge.

    Eventually, you run out of old people.

    Cuomo good, DeSantis bad.

    • leon

      New York, once the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., managed to bring the number of deaths and hospitalizations under control in late spring, as cases began to surge in many Western and Southern states.

      “Bring under Control”. Yeah. in that case, florida, never let it get out of control, like New York.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Now do total deaths.

  29. Drake

    Jerry Nadler: Antifa Is a ‘Myth’

    There is a guy who knows how to stick with the story he’s been told to stick with. You don’t get to be a Congressman forever by doing a lot of thinking.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      He looks like an old and decrepit Oompa Loompa.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        All the King’s horses and all the King’s men managed to put Humpty Dumpty back together again and they did a shitty job.

      • robc

        I never got that. Who would let the horses help to begin with?

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Maybe that’s why they couldn’t put him back together, horses are pretty stupid even as hoofed mammals go.

    • leon

      I wonder if a good General ad could be made with Nadler and other Dems calling Antifa a myth, mixed with videos of them beating people with bikelocks and throwing molotov cocktails could be made.

      Also:

      Want to support Townhall so we can keep reporting the truth about ANTIFA and the insane leftist plot to “Defund the Police”?

      This is the conservative version of “Donate to stop Orangemanbad from locking up the gays!”

      • Rhywun

        Well, except a large chunk of the left actually says that’s what they want.

      • leon

        Sure, i just find it really stupid. “Insane leftist plot”. why not throw in a “Block insane yo mama” in there too.

      • Viking1865

        Yeah I notice leftists love to keep whipping up this idea that Donald Trump is anti LGBTQWTFBBQOMG when there’s just not any evidence of that other than “Mike Pence is the VP.”

  30. Festus' Mustache

    Going to bed now. You guys have not helped even a tidge. I Love you.

  31. Rebel Scum

    This lying asshole.

    Listing the ‘Boogaloo Boys’ as one of the groups present, Chief Smith says a majority of the individuals in the riots were Caucasian.

    Mayor Levar Stoney then took to the podium after Chief Smith’s statements.

    “White supremacists were marching under the banner of Black Lives Matter,” Mayor Stoney said. “I would like to give a thanks to Black Lives Matter — it was not them. They shared the fliers and had concerns. It was not them and they told their members not to come. This group came to bring violence to the city and that is not us.” …

    “Here in Richmond, our standard for protests is all protesters walk away safe. That’s not what happened last night,” Stoney said. “What happened last night was violence that hurt many people in the Richmond community — both in the threatening of lives and destruction of property. That is unacceptable.” …

    “What changed last night? There were white supremacists marching under the BLM symbols/banners. To me, it is no coincidence that after 24 days of peaceful protests we had White Supremacists in our city and it was disgusting. It’s not the Richmond we know. What we saw last night undermines the work that the community has been doing for the last few months,” Stoney added.

    Show me the evidence.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Absolute gaslighting blame displacing horsefuckingshit. Those white douchebags are leftists.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      He said it’s true. That’s all you need to know.

    • leon

      Listing the ‘Boogaloo Boys’ as one of the groups present, Chief Smith says a majority of the individuals in the riots were Caucasian.

      Mayor Levar Stoney then took to the podium after Chief Smith’s statements.

      “White supremacists were marching under the banner of Black Lives Matter,” Mayor Stoney said. “I would like to give a thanks to Black Lives Matter — it was not them. They shared the fliers and had concerns. It was not them and they told their members not to come. This group came to bring violence to the city and that is not us.” …

      I read this and this is what it says:

      If you are white, and you riot, you are a white supremacist. All white supremacists are right wing. therefore this is the fault of the right wing.

      No evidence, no facts. Just the logic of : “Riots bad, Left Good, riots can’t be done by the left”, added in with, People rioting are white. White supremacists are white. Therefore the people rioting are white supremacists. This is absolutely Orwellian, and a lot of people will believe it because it is convenient to do so.

    • Viking1865

      Richmond was fun while it lasted.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    From the “far right extremists” link:

    The limited censorship and law enforcement surveillance of “hard-core far-right extremist propaganda” on the internet has made it easier for users to access such material without inviting attention from government intelligence agencies, Hegghammer said — at least for now.

    And there it is. Why don’t censor the views of those whom we do not agree with?

    Way to stand up for the First Amendment, NBC.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      “at least for now”

      Translation: If Biden gets elected we’re going to use federal law enforcement to fuck everyone to the right of Mao up the ass.

  33. The Late P Brooks

    “White supremacists were marching under the banner of Black Lives Matter,” Mayor Stoney said.

    White supremacists are sneaky.

    • leon

      They must have learned those skills from (((them))) / Nick Cannon/Farakahn

    • Chipwooder

      Every time I think that fucking clown can’t sound any worse, he uncorks a gem like that.

      My decision to stay the fuck away from the city is looking better every day. I still have to go inside the city limits for work sometimes, but I will never spend another penny in that fucking place.

      • Viking1865

        Yeah and I don’t think you’re alone there. I had a comment deleted on NextDoor, some fucking leftist was reeing about racism, so I said

        “Hey we should elect a black Democrat mayor. Might need to elect two or three in a row though, to really fix the racism problem.”

  34. Drake

    Police Tell Business Owners in Seattle ‘You’re on Your Own’

    Please also know that the City Council Ordinance 119805 Crowd Control Tool goes into effect this weekend on Sunday, July 26, 2020. This ordinance bans Seattle Police officers the use of less lethal tools, including pepper spray that is commonly used to disperse crowds that have turned violent. Simply put, the legislation gives officers NO ability to safely intercede to preserve property in the midst of a large, violent crowd.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      I think they’ve found a judge to strike down that order for the time being.

  35. DOOMco

    I haven’t been here enough to know if this has been talked about to death or not so I’ll probably just kick this horse.

    Shouldn’t Portland try to buy the federal land if they want their people to burn it down without any defense?

    • DOOMco

      Which leads me to my joke about the Southerners- at least they tried to buy the forts first.

    • Drake

      Why would Portland want to do that? Then the rioters would turn their attention to the rest of the city.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The best thing Trump can do is leave Portland. Take away the federal scapegoat and let them deal with it.

        Of course, they’ll blame white supremacists next, but it will be Portland’s buildings they’re burning down.

  36. Rebel Scum

    Collusion? Meddling?

    Amazon Studios will open All In: The Fight for Democracy in cinemas on September 9 ahead of its streaming debut on Prime Video on September 18. The documentary, which stars and is co-produced by Stacey Abrams, follows the failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate in her on-going quest to expose alleged acts of voter suppression, which she has blamed for her defeat to Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in 2018.

    To promote the movie, Amazon Studios is also launching a “non-partisan” social media campaign #ALLINFORVOTING that will train people to spot and report voter suppression.

    “We need to come together as a country and make sure every voice and vote is counted,” Abrams said in a statement sent to multiple outlets. “The title All In: The Fight for Democracy speaks to the importance and necessity that every American has the right to have their voice be heard and their vote counted. We know that if our votes were not important, so many folks wouldn’t be working so hard to take our right to vote away.”

    • Hyperion

      “The documentary, which stars and is co-produced by Stacey Abrams”

      Umm… I ain’t saying she’s stupid, I ain’t saying she couldn’t produce a fast food commercial, I’m just sayin…

    • Gender Traitor

      Makes me glad I don’t have Prime. They’ll probably make it next to impossible to watch anything else until Election Day.

      • TARDIS

        This is the heartburn for me. We have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Google Premium. I would cancel all but Hulu right this second, but the wife can not live without them. When she is not at work, the TV’s are on until she goes to bed. She half attentively plows through vapid and trite show after show. TV on, and book or kindle in hand. I can probably find a reason to cancel Hulu too.

      • Animal

        As long as Hulu has Letterkenny, I’ll keep Hulu.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Vote fraud is fake, vote suppression is real. Got it.

      • leon

        any attempt to secure the system is an attempt at voter suppression.

      • Hyperion

        If we only had an online voting system with Twitter and Google in charge of the system, we could finally take back our democracy.

    • Rhywun

      Wow. They’re not even pretending any more.

    • Pope Jimbo

      I wonder how much air time will be devoted to Holder’s investigation into the Black Panthers standing outside polling places in Philly with bats? Because that is a great example of “not suppressing”.

  37. Hyperion

    “YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!”

    Wow, antifa is everywhere now!

    • leon

      “Peaceful demonstration intensified”.

      at first they were being quiet, and then it got real crazy when the hippies started singing Kumbaya.

  38. Hyperion

    “An ideological struggle is under way between Beijing and free societies, and the Trump administration is on the wrong side.”

    Jeebus, Atlantic… I can’t even…

    • UnCivilServant

      So the Atlantic is on the side of Beijing, got it.

      • Hyperion

        That sure is the way I read it that headline, am I the only one?

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        The Atlantic is on the side that wants to implement mass censorship and a defacto social credit system. Of course they’re on the CCP’s side.

      • Hyperion

        That’s a far more affirmative theory of the case that would better reflect American values, play to our comparative advantages, and frankly get better collective results.” That strategy is the way to get allies and Americans on board with a competition between governance systems because it recognizes that the challenge comes from within and is something the U.S. should do even if there were no competition with China.

        Also, can anyone make any sense of that quasi-Marxist fluff?

  39. Sean

    Serious question. Due to the Kung Flu, many employers are temp screening their employees upon arrival for their shift.

    Do they also screen potential new hires if they apply in person? How is your HR handling this?

    • Hyperion

      It’s antifa’s new combat wing, the CFGA (Cosplay Fat Girl Army). Many woke, much brave.

      • WTF

        Those assholes are need of a hickory shampoo.

  40. Semi-Spartan Dad

    I finally went though and read Andy Ngo’s tweets.
    https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo

    My perception of the Portland “riots” have completely changed after watching the videos. These aren’t protesters or riots… we are looking at well-funded and coordinated insurrection. The laser “pointers” are not pointers at all, but rather two-handed commercial models. As well as commercial fireworks being used as mortars, molotov cocktails, gas masks, and power tools. Many are armed with firearms but not using them yet. They have organized teams with skirmish units, protective units, and support units.

    The coordination is what disturbs me the most. People are being released from jail as soon as they are being arrested despite being charged with multiple violent felonies (where else does that happen?). The city councils are passing local laws to prevent the cops from breaking up these attacks. It’s become quite evident that there is a coordinated effort going on from much higher up that involves the entire political and judicial leadership of these cities. Who is bankrolling this? Who is coordinating the communication and marching orders?

    To me at least, this changes the notion of using Federal LEOs or even sending in the troops. Though it ultimately doesn’t matter unless the organizers/funders can be traced back and dealt with. I don’t see how anyone could view Andy’s videos and even still think of this as just riots. Worst still, I think they are just using Portland and Seattle as testing and training grounds.

    • Sean

      Worst still, I think they are just using Portland and Seattle as testing and training grounds.

      Agreed 100%.

      I don’t see it stopping Nov. 4th either. Unless some *really* heavy handed crackdown happens.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        If Biden wins, the cities will instantaneously crack down on the protests or they will stop on their own accord.

      • Sean

        I don’t see that happening in Portland or Seattle. Or a couple other commie shitholes.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I do think there is a large potential for miscalculation on the part of the state and local authorities here. They think they’re in control. We’re going to find out.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        I don’t think this is primarily being funded or coordinated by the DNC. My guess is global organization(s) have co-opted parts of the DNC and dems at local/state levels.

        A Biden win would be preferable to these funders but that is far from their end goal. Biden as president could even serve as the cover desired to spread this insurrection nationwide with the understanding that Biden would stand-down the federal response just as the city/state leaders have done in Portland and Seattle.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Or use the federal government to go after anyone who defends themselves. Oh that AR pistol you used? Video shows you repeatedly shouldered it. Where’s your tax stamp? Illegal SBR.

      • TARDIS

        Is there any one left in the military that reads (and cares about) the BoR, and realizes the federal judiciary has been ass-pounding it for a long time? If so, bring on the coup. I don’t know if I’m kidding or not.

      • Viking1865

        The entire officer corps above O-6 is hopelessly political. You think there’s anyone who made stars under Obama who wasn’t 100% on the team?

      • TARDIS

        There are probably a few, but after 8 years, not nearly enough. Plus, I can’t imagine the mindset of the enlisted corp after decades of indoctrination. After all, they’ll be the ones kicking my door in and killing me. We can survive 4 more years of Trump. Biden plus 1, no way.

      • Gustave Lytton

        And even if they weren’t, the selection process weeds out those who aren’t on Team Deep State/Team Big Gov Bureaucracy (same thing).

      • Gustave Lytton

        And even if they weren’t, the selection process weeds out those who aren’t on Team Deep State/Team Big Gov Bureaucracy (same thing).

      • Chipwooder

        Yeah, this is a case of Dems thinking they can control these insurrections once they’re no longer useful to the Democratic Party, but I don’t think that will be the case. They’ll start to crack down, sure, but it isn’t going to just go away, and significant factions of the Dem party will push back on it.

      • Viking1865

        Disagree. They just have to start denying bail and the riots stop instantly. These people are getting arrested, bailed out, and they had back out in the street.

        Or hell, the honchos of the National Lawyers Guild and the other commie lawyers just shrug and say “Sorry, we are out of money for bail.”

        This can 100% be stopped at any time.

      • Chipwooder

        You’re assuming that the NLG will stop paying the bails. I don’t think they will. The Commies think this is their moment.

      • Rhywun

        They are literally crossing their fingers and holding out until the first week of November. It’s sickening.

      • leon

        I think that is the thing that “worries” me the most about Biden winning. Is that a group can riot its way around into making the incumbent look bad enough to kick out.

        I forsee Biden being another 4 years of Obama. Not great, but not apocalyptic. Just a continual march to the Tyranny that we have been going towards since the 1900’s at least.

      • Rhywun

        It depends on whether the Dems win back the Senate. If they do, it’s game over, man.

    • Chipwooder

      Worst still, I think they are just using Portland and Seattle as testing and training grounds.

      Of course they are. What the hell are they even doing out there continuously for months otherwise? They aren’t protesting anything. They don’t have any specific demands, and actual riots don’t sustain themselves for weeks at a time. This is all calculated and centrally directed.

    • tarran

      The George Floyd riots started withing two or three days of the handwritten notes coming out that demonstrated Obama had directed the framing of Flynn.

      The timing is not coincidental. It has nothing to do with police brutality. The purpose is to paint Trump as a tyrant so taht people will have no sympathy for him and to distract people from Obama’s serious crimes.

  41. The Late P Brooks

    Meaningless number is meaningless

    The US has a fourth of global coronavirus cases and as officials work to slow its rampant spread, face coverings remain a point of contention with some local authorities declining to enforce mandates.

    Police in Miami, Florida — what experts call the country’s coronavirus epicenter — issued more than 300 citations in 10 days to individuals and businesses that aren’t abiding by the local mask order.
    “The growth rate (of cases) has shown flattening since we implemented the masks in public rule and we’re following the advice of our health care professionals and our hospital administrators who are telling us that what we have to do now is focus on enforcement,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez told CNN Sunday. “We created a special task force just for that and we’ve been issuing hundreds of tickets over the course of the week.”

    But we can still use it to keep our boot on your neck. Blah blah blah wear your mask or everyone will die.

    A first world nation with an extremely large population and lots of testing has a large number of “cases”? Shocking.

    • WTF

      They never talk about the death rate. I wonder why?

    • WTF

      Hey, they’re just holding lasers, not a deadly baby!

      • Drake

        Then maybe put a couple Anglico air teams on the roof with laser designators and return fire if they aren’t dangerous.

  42. Don Escaped Spring Training

    HR sends out one of those online Stuart Smalley programs with a dozen modules of six courses each with the sappy, moralizing videos followed by multiple guess. Shockingly, I strongly agreed with three of the main points. I fly through all of these as quickly as possible, watching the minimum of the video to get the system to allow me to take the tests, hammer through those, and on to the next flying along to minimize the loss of life, limb, and brain cells as one does in these situations.

    But there is ONE test I can’t pass! Never in my life! It’s about handling difficult customers, so, admittedly, I don’t care; I’m passive aggressive and if you cany buy a better product at a better price, I won’t waste another second on you: good luck, nice knowing ya. But I can’t parse the questions or the answers. It’s drivel. Even eliminating the most insane answers doesn’t help. I’m running out of time (shocking because I’m always the first to do these things because I want problems off my desk; I don’t inventory or manage bullshit: I dispense with it) and can only retest daily. First pass was 60; last week was 20; this morning I got my score back up to 60%. I’m keeping a matrix of my answers and will deduce the correct answer with linear algebra if I don’t guess my way home first.

    I post this nonsense only because I think it’s emblematic of the BS world we’ve come to work in. I’m tired of the most mundane things being lorded over by twits, the simplest of situations being mucked up with turbid phrasing, and the softies getting in the way of the capable and seasoned.

    rant /OFF

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Dude, multiple choice questions are the key to life.

      • Don Escaped Spring Training

        a/ I have a 25% chance of passing it tomorrow
        b/ I have a 33% chance of passing it Wednesday
        c/ I have a 50% chance of passing it Thursday
        d/ I have a 100% chance of passing it by Friday

        My life is clearly over already. What will be stunning is how many of the answers I threw away as clearly not tenable turn out to be correct answer.

        Spending the rest of the day in the back yard doing mag swaps sounds nice.

      • TARDIS

        “What are the chances of another Covid grift bill passing for 1 Trillion?”

      • UnCivilServant

        “Just One Trillion? Pikers.”

    • UnCivilServant

      Don’t tell me they are the sort of company that caters to the complainers at the expense of their customers.

  43. Hyperion

    “Wallace on Sunday informed viewers that the Biden campaign told Fox News he was “not available” for an interview.”

    He was in a brave push up contest with the commie flu.

  44. Rebel Scum

    Pwnd.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Sunday chided President Donald Trump’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. According to Pelosi, Trump has made the entire situation “worse” since the beginning of the pandemic.

    “The point of all of this is this president, I have a new name for him: Mr. Makes Matters Worse. He has made matters worse from the start. Delay. Denial. It’s a hoax. It’ll go away magically. It’s a miracle. And all the rest,” she told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan.

    • UnCivilServant

      Nancy, I know you’re so old and dessicated that you lost touch centuries ago, but the reason none of your nicknames have stuck is because they’re not memorable or snappy.

      • leon

        It’s no Crooked Hillary.

    • Chipwooder

      Old people trying to be edgy always looks ridiculous, unless you’re George Carlin.

    • Rhywun

      Tell us please what you would have done or STFU.

      • WTF

        She called Trump a racist when he imposed a travel ban from China and encouraged everyone to go down to Chinatown to shop and mingle.

  45. DEG

    A McDonald’s spokesperson told us, “Biden was incorrect in claiming that McDonald’s hourly workers are or were required to sign noncompete agreements.”

    Countdown until McDonald’s becomes unpersoned….

    • UnCivilServant

      Off the record, McDonald’s continued “I mean, if we fired them, they’re grossly unsanitary or unable to even manage to show up reliably, and we don’t care if our compeditors are stuck with employees like that.”

    • Pope Jimbo

      The poaching “rules” were mostly targeted towards managers and asst managers. A sharp manager can turn stores around and make the owner quite a bit of money, so the owners don’t want to lose them. And usually the owners compensate them pretty well because they know they are worth it.

      Back when I used to do a lot of consulting in the QSR* industry I knew dozens of franchisee’s who would buy underperforming restaurants and then bring in a crew of their superstars to turn the place around. After about a year, the ramrods would go to a new store and when they left the best workers usually got promoted to be the manager and asst managers.

      If people were honest, you could make quite the case that QSR’s are a great advertisement for free trade. They teach basic skills to a lot of young people. Good workers are promoted pretty quickly. Bad workers are let go quickly as well (which is a good lesson for young people to learn too).

      • Pope Jimbo

        QSR=Quick Serve Restaurant

        Fancy talk for fast food joints

      • Chipwooder

        Hah….reminds me of the Kenny Rogers Roasters Seinfeld episode. “Jerry, it’s not ‘fast food’. It’s good food quickly.”

  46. DEG

    Atilis Gym owners arrested

    The owners of Atilis Gym were arrested Monday morning, and the entrance to the gym was boarded up, putting a temporary end to the months-long standoff between the defiant small business and the state of New Jersey.

    Ian Smith and Frank Trumbetti, co-owners of the Bellmawr gym that was operating against the state’s coronavirus closure orders, were arrested by the Camden County Sheriff’s office around 5 a.m. and taken to the Bellmawr Police Department, Trumbetti said. The charges are not yet known, as Trumbetti said the police could not find the charges in their system while they were at the station.

    • leon

      We’re charging you with something that isn’t a crime

    • Pope Jimbo

      It is also going to take a long time to type up those charges because they will have to enter the names of all those people who were infected at that gym. I mean surely there must have been 100s of infections that the local authorities tracked back to the gym if they took such a drastic step.

    • Viking1865

      “the police could not find the charges in their system while they were at the station.”

      So there’s no crime.

      But don’t worry, the BACK THE BLUE copsuckers will earnestly explain to me that yes, these cops arrested them, but they felt really bad about it and didn’t want to do it.

    • Sean

      Comment:

      Two guys that just don’t understand the magnitude of this disaster. People are dying to the tune of a thousand a day !! Not only should the gym be closed, but we are going to have to go back a total shutdown . The govt has caused this situation and anyone with a brain should kiss the republicans goodbye. This should have been almost over with good leadership. Total failure on the ” stable genius ” lack of doing anything for way too long.

      That person needs to be medicated. Heavily.

      • EvilSheldon

        Well, he’s right about the government having caused this situation. Stopped clock, etc.

      • creech

        “Why didn’t Trump play Hitler when we needed Hitler?”

    • Chipwooder

      The charges are not yet known, as Trumbetti said the police could not find the charges in their system while they were at the station.

      “Hang on, we’ll make up some phony bullshit charge in just a little while”

    • Drake

      Bellmawr is about a 2 hour drive from here. I’d be tempted to go down there if there was an organized protest.

  47. JD is in the United Karendom

    I see some zero-evidence, maximum speculation UFO pieces of news here and there what for generating clicks, so I think I’ll dive right in and chuck in my uninformed, uninvited, worthless 2 cents: If some bored defense consultants/contractors want to talk up some briefing that happened years ago where the possibility of craft “not of this earth” (or whatever theatrical language they dress it up with) were mentioned in passing, well good for them, but I’m nowhere near convinced at all. If there is anything to it, anywhere, it’s going to be humans, and it’s going to be stuff that is kept top secret so the Top Men involved can’t even tell the other Top Men all about it, so you get a bit of fuss in the media or some waste-of-time Senate Committee or something, but even if it’s highly relevant to national security, the people dealing with it won’t be anyone you’ve ever heard of, or anyone showing up on the DoD’s books anywhere, so then again, this line of speculation sounds just as crazy as “ALIENS!”. It’s never aliens until it’s aliens, and even then more fool you because it wasn’t aliens at all, it was humans all along. And, if there truly is any totally unprecedented, new tech that does things never before seen or generally thought possible, just remember how far humanity has come in the past couple of hundred years, and realise that what is mindblowing today, will be terribly mundane tomorrow, kitsch by the end of the week, and on the scrapheap of Herstory by next year.

    • Pope Jimbo

      I want aliens so badly because I want Trump to be the one who gets to deal with them. Imagine the TDS if Trump gets to be the one to negotiate trade relations with the Grays.

      • JD is in the United Karendom

        I thought the grays were supposed to be us from the future/past/the other now?

        I forget because the X Files really took a dive after the first couple of seasons and that whole story arc was very drawn out and boring.

        #graylivesmatter

      • leon

        “We’re gonna build a Dyson Sphere and we’re gonna make the Grays pay for it”

        “They’re not sending us their best. They are sending the kidnappers and the human experimenters, and some, i assume are good lifeforms”.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        “You’re going to love the anal probes. I had one the other day, it was amazing.”

      • JD is in the United Karendom

        Make Earth Great Again! MEGA!!!!!!!!11111111111111111111111111111111111111111

      • Pope Jimbo

        human experimenters

        Uffda, you libs and your inability to call things by their proper names. I bet you call them “undocumented workers” too.

        Be honest. The correct term is “anal probers”

      • Viking1865

        “Aelooom is a great guy, really great. Kind of short, and I got to tell you folks, hearing his voice inside your head is a little weird the first time. But I’m used to it now, I adjusted very quickly. Hillary would not have adjusted as quickly, let me tell you.”

      • JD is in the United Karendom

        ??? Can we please get a full on alien diplomatic relations-themed Hat & Hair?

      • leon

        Space Force. SPACE HAT!!!!

      • WTF

        Dude, do you really want to see what SugarFree does with the anal probes?!

    • Gender Traitor

      WTH is FairyCon?? Or am I happier not knowing?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Imagine a furry convention for people who think they’re fairies or like pretending to be them.

        And yes, there’s a lot of cheating going on.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Maybe one step up from Bronies in terms of social acceptability.

      • Chipwooder

        When bronies are looking down on you….oof.

      • Chipwooder

        Way back when we lived in Florida, my wife had a friend whose husband was probably one of those people. He had figurines of anime-looking fairies all over their house. My wife always mocked the hell outta him.

      • TARDIS

        I hope its Carol Kane hitting people in the face with toasters.

      • Chipwooder

        “The bitch hit me with a toaster”

      • Pope Jimbo

        The Democratic version of the GOP’s Log Cabin group?

  48. The Late P Brooks

    Forgive me, Father Society, for I have sinned

    Fourteen members of a Texas family tested positive for the novel coronavirus after some attended a small barbecue and went on to spread the illness to their relatives.

    Tony Green, a Dallas resident, detailed his extended family’s experience with COVID-19 in a personal essay published on Friday. The essay’s publication came nearly one month after his father-in-law’s mother passed away from health complications caused by the respiratory infection. Green and his father-in-law, Rafael Ceja, were both hospitalized one week earlier.

    “The virus had attacked my central nervous system, and the staff stopped me from having a stroke,” Green wrote in Friday’s essay.

    The family get-together, which Green’s parents and in-laws both attended, took place at his home on June 13. All six went on to test positive for COVID-19 during the week that followed, as did additional family members visited by his in-laws at the onset of their symptoms. Five more of Green’s family members tested positive in mid-July, on the day of Ceja’s mother’s funeral.

    ——-

    “You cannot imagine my guilt at having been a denier, carelessly shuffling through this pandemic, making fun of those wearing masks and social distancing,” he continued. “For those who deny the virus exists or who downplay its severity, let me assure you: The coronavirus is very real and extremely contagious. Before you even know you have it, you’ve passed it along to your friends, family, coworkers and neighbors.”

    Six days? That’s a shorter incubation period than they have been telling us, isn’t it? But the backyard barbecue makes a nice hook. Even the most innocuous activities will kill you, if you do not do exactly as we say!

    The important thing is, he has seen the error of his ways, and publicly professes his love for Big Brother.

    • Viking1865

      How many are dead though?

      ““You cannot imagine my guilt at having been a denier, carelessly shuffling through this pandemic, making fun of those wearing masks and social distancing,”

      What year was it where every leftist organ had some kind of “I used to be a libertarian, but then….” piece?

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Yeah, that’s just a variation on a tried and true theme.

    • PieInTheSky

      That’s a shorter incubation period than they have been telling us, isn’t it? – I think the average is 5 -6 days. It can be 14 but most are in the 6 day range

    • EvilSheldon

      Hmm, let me check… Nope, still don’t care. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I don’t really care about that either.

      • WTF

        Would we be having this hysteria if his pops had been killed by the seasonal flu? No?
        Then fuck off with that shit.

  49. UnCivilServant

    Trying to read an RFP for work… I think I’ve developed narcolepsy.

    • PieInTheSky

      does it matter? you work for the government

      • UnCivilServant

        I would like to get promoted, make more grift. You know, the personally rational goal.

      • PieInTheSky

        For what shall it profit a man, etc …

      • UnCivilServant

        Well, in section 1.1.1.2.1 …

      • R C Dean

        For what shall it profit a man, etc

        You should be able to answer that based on the increased comp and bennies you receive. I mean, its not like its a big mystery most of the time.

    • UnCivilServant

      Oh dear god, it is almost worse than the caricatures of bureaucrat speak, only not funny.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        People are tribal, this is known.

      • Chipwooder

        This is something I’ve never, ever understood. I’ve never remotely given a shit if people agree with me.

      • PieInTheSky

        that is why you don;t get invited to any of the better cocktail parties

      • Viking1865

        I’m really really good at framing my libertarianism to my audience. Like, on foreign policy:

        “There’s not a single foreign nation that’s worth a drop of our sacred American blood. They should fight their own battles.” for one audience

        “War is a racket, this is all a way for big corporations to soak up trillions in tax dollars” for the other.

        Both are true, just gotta know how to sell it.

        Hell even on something like healthcare you can engage leftists on the all the straight up immoral supply side constraints like CON laws and the deathgrip of the AMA. They still want Daddy Gov to pay for everything, but they don’t understand why the government stops new hospital construction.

      • leon

        I hold that a very large segment of people rate whether or not they voted ‘correctly’ based on if the person they voted for won or not.

  50. The Late P Brooks

    What year was it where every leftist organ had some kind of “I used to be a libertarian, but then….” piece?

    “I once was lost, but now am found” genre. Very compelling.

    • PieInTheSky

      Is there any data of ideology change through time? I would suspect most start of as lefty young and move in other directions.

    • juris imprudent

      Redemption is a powerful motivator. There is a reason the modern proggies have a religious revival going on about America’s original sin.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Just pay attention to the leftist rioters, looters, and arsonists that are in plain sight for everyone to see. It’s a fundamental denial of reality by a fairly large segment of the population and it’s concerning.

      • leon

        This isn’t about denying reality. It’s about creating the foundations for suppressing Right wing speech, movements and locking up right wing people.

        You think the prosecutorial double standard is bad now, just wait till that ratchet moves forward and any right wing protest is declared hate speech, and broken up by federal officers. And this time they wont hold back.

    • leon

      Sure, but would you have drugs fall out of their ass?

    • Chipwooder

      Pay no attention to the insurrection in Seattle and Portland! The REAL threat is a handful of bozos wearing aloha shirts!

  51. The Late P Brooks

    I’ve never remotely given a shit if people agree with me.

    If you’re a libertarian, you just have to get used to nobody agreeing with you.

    • This Machine

      Who was it that came up with the laws of Libertarianism? Weren’t they something like this:

      1) Everyone is libertarian about something.
      2) No two libertarians will agree on everything.

  52. PieInTheSky

    The California State University system is requiring their half a million students to take at least one course in ethnic studies or social justice—the system’s new established religion.

    https://twitter.com/yhazony/status/1286593517649899520

    We had that in Romania back in the day. You studied engineering but had a bunch of course in socialism

    • Chipwooder

      When you major in Ceaușescu Studies, you can pretty much write your own ticket.

      • leon

        What about a combined “Ice Climbing and Trostkyism?”

      • Chipwooder

        Get that degree and no one has to ask what to get as a graduation gift – the Ramon Mercader Signature Series ice ax.

    • leon

      ethnic studies

      So this is something i tried in college. I signed up for the “Chicano/Chicana Experince” course to fulfill a ‘diveristy’ credit. First day I’m in there the class is about 70% latina and 30% white dude. “Diversity” means taking a course about your self. So i always wanted to know where the Scots-Irish Experience course was so i could take that one.

      • Chipwooder

        So i always wanted to know where the Scots-Irish Experience course was

        Wise, VA

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        *chuckle*

        Even the Scots-Irish look down on the Melungeons back there.

      • PieInTheSky

        70% latina – did any ass sex come out of it?

      • PieInTheSky

        also latinx. You are now fired.

  53. Nikkodemus

    I have to do some online training for work about some California insurance law. I have never seen the word “reasonable” used so many times. It pisses me off because I know that part of the laws is used to extort businesses. The word “reasonable” seems to be the justification for our 4th amendment rights disappearing. Everyone has a different definition of the damn word.

    • PieInTheSky

      be reasonable. they need to live some freedom for hard working regulators to stop the evil capitalists.

  54. PieInTheSky

    Researchers analyzed the data from every study on the protective effect of masks.

    Their bottom-line estimate: If 95% of people wear cloth masks, transmission drops by at least 30%.

    https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1287467070247055366

    • leon

      You can’t get 95% compliance on drinking water every day.

      • Jarflax

        True, but the knee jerk “masks are de debil” schtick is starting to bug me as much as the “U no wear mask u kill grandma” schtick. Masks to stop viral spread are not like using a chain-link fence to stop mosquitoes. Viruses don’t travel on their own, they ride droplets in your exhalations out into the wild, and yes, masks properly worn do indeed reduce the amount of such droplets that get out there and the distance to which they spread. We cannot keep mocking the left for emotion driven scientism and do it ourselves.

        (not saying you are in the “I’ll wear a mask when you place it on my cold dead face” camp, I have not really been tracking who is where on this, just the general trend)

      • Fatty Bolger

        Viruses don’t travel on their own, they ride droplets in your exhalations out into the wild, and yes, masks properly worn do indeed reduce the amount of such droplets that get out there and the distance to which they spread.

        Exactly the kind of a priori assumption I’m talking about. What you are describing is a *theory* of how masks might work. Not an empirical study proving it.

      • Jarflax

        Sort of like the a priori assumption you are making that they have no effect, and that all of the studies that show a limited but measureable effect must be fake because it challenges your position?

      • grrizzly

        Can a scientist publish a study today that shows that face masks are not very useful and/or have serious drawbacks? No, if he cares about his career. It’s a religious fetish. All decent people wear face masks. Questioning it is haram.

      • Jarflax

        Does one fight dogmatism by holding to the opposite dogma? It seems that the position here has become no decent person wears face masks, no matter what the store says. Which I find interesting because back in March when the left was announcing that masks don’t work and we must all stay home I am pretty sure I recall the default here being let us wear masks and go about our business.

        We are rationalizing animals not reasoning animals, and I should probably stop fighting against it and just pick a side and go true believer.

      • grrizzly

        I cannot really talk about the consensus here. Some people wanted to wear face masks. I don’t have and never had any problem with that. I guess some people favored a “compromise” where businesses would be allowed to open at the price of wearing face masks. Not my position and not sure how common it was here.

        I disagree with the entire concept of social distancing that’s never been tested before 2020 even on a smaller scale. The concept was concocted by non-epidemiologists in 2006 when it was approved by the Bush administration. It is based–to some degree–on a high-school science project. Closing schools, sheltering in place, banning businesses from operating, wearing face masks–none of these things were done in the last hundred years and they were not necessary in 2020.

      • Fatty Bolger

        What studies? RCT studies with professionals using professional grade masks show they don’t work to stop the spread of viruses.

      • Jarflax

        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2662657/ among others. There are studies that go different ways on the question, you are correct in that, but when you have studies that contradict each other you cannot simply take that as proving your position. We know empirically that masks reduce droplet spread. What we do not know is how much that effect reduces transmission of 1. viral infections in general and 2. any specific virus. I am not advocating masks, and certainly not advocating mask mandates. i am advocating against adopting the position that If left dogma = 0 then Glib dogma = 1. Dogma sucks.

      • Fatty Bolger

        That’s a study showing no difference in households wearing masks vs. not wearing them:

        During the 2006 and 2007 winter seasons, 286 exposed adults from 143 households who had been exposed to a child with clinical respiratory illness were recruited. Intent-to-treat analysis showed no significant difference in the relative risk of ILI in the mask use groups compared with the control group

        Interestingly, the authors continue to try to make a case for mask use, pointing out low compliance (self-reported, btw) and lower illness rates for individuals who reported higher compliance wearing the masks. However, there could be many reasons for this unrelated to mask wearing, and a cluster study pivoting to individual results for whatever reason should be given zero weight.

      • mrfamous

        But none of the studies show that. Every RCT up until March 2020 showed no statistically significant effect on the use of masks to prevent the spread of infection. Many showed the opposite but also to an insignificant extent. The one study that compared cloth masks to surgical masks showed a statistically significant increase in influenza like illnesses to the health care workers wearing cloth masks.

        CIDRAP is not Alex Jones University. If surgical masks do not prevent infections during surgeries (and all the studies done on this suggest they do not), how exactly are homemade cloth masks supposed to prevent infections walking through Safeway? It seems like everyone is starting from “everyone should assume they work, and so it’s up to you to prove 100% that they don’t.” Why?

        The chances of asymptomatic spread * the chances of the mask doing any good as PPE or ‘source control’ * the chances of infection from a passing encounter * the chances of a serious health complications even if infected = a very small rounding error away from ‘zero percent.’ And that’s in the best case scenario.

      • Surly Knott

        Null hypothesis anyone?

      • Don Escaped Spring Training

        I reject thee !

      • leon

        True, but the knee jerk “masks are de debil” schtick is starting to bug me as much as the “U no wear mask u kill grandma” schtick.

        I’ve said before that i think both sides are stupid and obscenely obstinate in picking this point to be the flashpoint.

        I’m just pointing out that by the standards of the study, they are shooting for a compliance rate the height of which you can’t even get people to do for things that are vital to life. A system that requires abnormal human behavior is not one that can last very long, for very much of society. In short the study would be better showing us the results of a range of compliance rates that are more realistic.

      • grrizzly

        Fundamentally transforming our society in order to reduce the transmission rate of a bad flu by 30% is not worth it.

        I’m more anti-mask here than anyone.

      • Jarflax

        Fair enough, I have said repeatedly I oppose mandates. I am just really tired of the lack of nuance in every discussion, and this one has become two groups of crusaders who adopt all or nothing positions.

      • mrfamous

        I have no problem with people wearing masks. And if businesses want to mandate mask usage, they can do that too. But if the Richard Reid example is anything to go by, we’re gonna be mandated to wear these things for a VERY long time, and that’s unacceptable.

        The lack of scientific evidence to support these mandates makes this an ideal spot to start saying ‘no’ to this. We didn’t stop it at seat belts, we didn’t stop it at helmets (which for bicycles, anyway, have a similar lack of scientific evidence), we didn’t stop at shoes at the airport, we’re not stopping it at masks. Where, if not here, do we draw the line?

      • Jarflax

        Once again:

        1. I oppose mandates

        What do you mean by drawing a line? Refusing to wear masks and refusing to leave a store that insists? Refusing to wear masks, and complying when asked by the store? Campaigning against mandates? Going to the wilderness and sniping at the mask police?

        I’m with you on the campaigning against mask mandates. I’m with you on refusing to wear masks unless asked by a store. I’m willing to join you in the wilderness if the left gets all 3 branches and starts implementing a 5 year plan, not to avoid wearing a mask to shop. I’m against refusing to leave a store that asks/ ignoring the store’s request.

      • grrizzly

        @Jarflax I guess the only difference is that I don’t don a mask unless a store employee asks me to do it. What’s remarkable is how rarely I’m asked to do so even in the places with the signs “NO MASK NO SERVICE” on every window.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Betcha some of those studies assumed a priori that masks worked.

    • Chipwooder

      Oh,man, thank you for this. I needed a laugh, and the thought of that dullard poking a hornet’s nest with a stick and running away while getting stung repeatedly will keep me smiling all day long.

    • juris imprudent

      Chris – that stove is hot, you don’t want to touch it.

      • leon

        I always thought they were speaking metaphorically when they talked about holding a tiger by the tail. Now i get it.

      • Chipwooder

        Chris Hayes
        @chrislhayes

        I’ll confess I’d heard comedians making jokes about kids sticking forks in electrical outlets thought they were mostly jokes, but I just jammed a fork into one and…yup, I get it.

  55. PieInTheSky

    So I read on the interwebs on the Austin protest shooting incident about who shot first (besides Han Solo). SO in self defense does it matter who shot first or who pointed the gun first or who was belligerent and threatening first? If someone points a gun at you do you wait to see if they shoot first?

    • leon

      Ahh, thats the rub. No i wouldn’t say it is who shot first. Plenty of justifiable shootings where the person shot didn’t shot at all. It’s who initiated the use of lethal force, or was conducting a forcible felony. The definition of lethal force changes from state to state, and the toleration by the state of its use varies from state to state. Don’t know what the laws are in Texas, but i don’t imagine they would be that good.

    • kinnath

      SO in self defense does it matter who shot first

      not really

      or who pointed the gun first

      yes

      or who was belligerent and threatening first?

      yes

      If someone points a gun at you do you wait to see if they shoot first?

      no

      • TARDIS

        If someone points a gun at you do you wait to see if they shoot first?

        no*

        *does not apply to non-communists. Take the bullet.

    • Drake

      *shrugs*

      Walking around in Texas pointing a gun at people and threatening them is not how to live a long healthy life.

    • Don Escaped Spring Training

      In most US states, you can’t produce a weapon unless responding to a threat of violence/injury/harm; without the threat, one is apt to be charged with “brandishing.” In TN you can open carry a loaded pistol in a holster with a license but cannot carry a loaded shotgun down the street or in the backwindow of your truck. There is no consistency from state to state in this things, or, in one state from law to law; as always, Texas is the stupidest of all the states for knowing what to do but refusing to do it and therefore leaving a morass of moronic, complicated, and contradictory laws on the books that it tinkers with endlessly instead of setting right by simply taking most gun laws off the books.

      In most US states, you can respond to a threat with an attack, but, without witnesses and other evidence, the question of who started it can become a big issue in whether you answered a threat of violence or initiated one.

      In some US states, you have a duty to retreat from a threat of violence; I advise ignoring and avoiding those places until they starve and perish from this Earth.

      • leon

        Texas is the stupidest of all the states for knowing what to do but refusing to do it and therefore leaving a morass of moronic, complicated, and contradictory laws on the books that it tinkers with endlessly instead of setting right by simply taking most gun laws off the books.

        In some US states, you have a duty to retreat from a threat of violence; I advise ignoring and avoiding those places until they starve and perish from this Earth.

        Once again, i find myself agreeing with everything you are saying.

    • EvilSheldon

      All of that matters. However, there is no legal requirement, anywhere in the US, to give the other guy the first shot, stab, or swing.

      • leon

        I’d posit that “Duty to Retreat” would indeed mean that you have to give the guy not only the first shot and stab, but all of them but maybe the last.

      • kinnath

        “Duty to Retreat” would indeed mean that you have to give the guy not only the first shot and stab,

        No. It means you have to run until there is no way out. It does not mean you can’t shoot first if there is no way out.

      • EvilSheldon

        Nope, not remotely. Duty to retreat just means that if you have the ability to safely withdraw from a conflict, you have to do so before using lethal force in self defense.

        If you have a reasonable belief that retreating would put you in more danger, then there is no duty to retreat. This should not be difficult to articulate in court.

    • EvilSheldon

      There are four elements of lawful self defense in the United States. Those elements are ABILITY, INTENT, JEOPARDY, and PRECLUSION (sometimes shortened to AIJP.)

      Ability – the bad guy must have the physical ability to seriously injure or kill you.

      Intent – the bad guy must demonstrate, through words or actions, that he intends to injure or kill you.

      Jeopardy – you must have a reasonable belief, not based in panic or paranoia, that the bad guy is going to injure or kill you right now.

      Preclusion – you must not have any reasonable option, other than the use of lethal force.

      There’s a shitload of additional jurisprudence on this subject, going back decades. But AIJP is what you need to thoroughly understand, if you’re going to keep a gun for self defense.

      • Jarflax

        The jurisprudence suffers from several serious flaws mostly in the A and to some extent the J, because there are common assumptions that are simply untrue and those work their way into the process. Any healthy male between 16 and 60 has the ability to seriously injure or kill you with their bare hands (I am not saying beat you in a fight, I am saying simply that the degree of strength required to inflict lethal injuries is within the normal range of a male human being in normal health) , but the assumption is almost always that Ability equates with an armed assailant.

      • EvilSheldon

        Oh, I’m fully aware of how easy it is to get killed by an ‘unarmed’ assailant. I knew a guy in high school who got in a fight with another student, got knocked down, hit his head on a curb stone, and his parents pulled the plug on the ventilator three weeks later.

        I know of a couple of cases where someone has killed an unarmed assailant and been cleared, either at trial or prior. The Travon Martin case immediately comes to mind.

        But yeah, it’s always better if the assailant has a weapon. If he doesn’t, expect to add a zero to the check you write to your lawyer.

      • leon

        Just one zero?

  56. The Late P Brooks

    Researchers analyzed the data from every study on the protective effect of masks.

    Their bottom-line estimate: If 95% of people wear cloth masks, transmission drops by at least 30%.

    NPR = bullshit on stilts.

    “Why don’t people believe what we tell them?”

    “Because we’re sick of being lied to.”

    • Pope Jimbo

      So the rate of transmission drops by 30%. That just means that it will take longer to work its way through the population.

      The same crazy thinking that made my wife (and many others) think that by going into lockdown for 15 days would get rid of this because we would flatten the curve.

      The part that baffles me so much about all of this is the idea that the virus will go away at some point. Like the flu, I expect that the Vid will be around for the rest of our lives. The good news is that I expect that the mortality rate on the elderly will decrease drastically as years go by because tomorrow’s geezers are being exposed to it now.

  57. leon

    https://twitter.com/AmbassadorRice/status/1234575446714523654

    I’m proud to endorse @JoeBiden
    for President.

    Here he is comforting me on 1/4/17 just after my mother passed away. There is no one kinder, more empathetic and caring than @joebiden
    . He will lead America with the same deep compassion and decency.

    He’s up there with the saints. No one in the world is as nice as him, and we are just so lucky that he decided to run for president.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      There he is sniffing hair again.

    • Chipwooder

      There is no one kinder, more empathetic and caring than @joebiden

      Well, except for the guy who he falsely accused of drunken vehicular homicide for years.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Given that you can’t see a face in that picture combined with Susan Rice’s track record of dishonesty, I am skeptical that that is her.

  58. The Late P Brooks

    We cannot keep mocking the left for emotion driven scientism and do it ourselves.

    Can we mock them for being inconsistent and irrational? Can we mock them for not comprehending the concept of marginal gain?

  59. Viking1865

    Thread is about deaden, but I must plug this book

    America’s Second Crusade, available for free legally on Mises. https://mises.org/library/americas-second-crusade

    I knew FDR lied the country into war. But I didn’t know exactly just how deep his deception and propaganda machine was. I’m not even halfway done with it, and I already loathe him even more than I did before I read it, which is really saying something.

  60. The Late P Brooks

    I’m guessing those “mask studies” have an unrealistically high contagion factor built into them.

    If you want to get my willing compliance, show me not merely that masks “may impede” the distribution of teh cootiebug, but that the slightest contact with that bug will be my undoing. Show me five thousand dead sailors bulldozed over the side of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Show me the mass graves where all the unmasked airline passengers are buried.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      His argument can be summed up as “Hitler was not a communist, therefore not a socialist.”

      They’re both collectivist ideologies that bring the means of production into subservience, if not outright control. Both denigrate the value of the individual and make them expendable to the higher purpose.

      • Rhywun

        Now do the “Democratic” party, Vox.

      • leon

        Meshes nicely with their “Communism and Socialisim are not the same” routine… Oh wait…

      • Akira

        They’re both collectivist ideologies that bring the means of production into subservience, if not outright control. Both denigrate the value of the individual and make them expendable to the higher purpose.

        I have a copy of Mein Kampf and read about half of it (aside from being racist collectivist drivel, it’s a dreadfully boring slog).

        It’s striking how well some of the quotes in there would fit right in with modern-day Leftist rhetoric.

      • Rhywun

        There is speculation that Hitler flirted with communism so it’s not for lack of trying.

      • Akira

        F.A. Hayek wrote about how easy it was to convert a communist to a Nazi and vice versa.

        From that and other things I’ve read, it sounds like the spat between Nazis and Communists wasn’t one of opposite ideologies battling it out, but very similar ideologies fighting for the same hearts and minds. Kind of like the divide between Sunnis and Shiites.

    • Rhywun

      ?

    • Fatty Bolger

      If you look at party propaganda, it’s quite clear that they were socialists. They were just nationalists as well, unlike the commies.

      Of course, we’ll just ignore how commie/socialist governments always end up in the same place as the Nazis, albeit occasionally minus the genocide.

    • Rebel Scum

      Adolf Hitler was not a socialist
      A Republican representative described Adolf Hitler as a socialist and compared Democrats to Nazis. Sadly, Rep. Brooks is far from alone in his opinions.

      The Nazi platform is readily available online. Read it, you ignorant cunte.