Friday Morning Links

by | Oct 23, 2020 | Daily Links | 404 comments

Good Morning my Glibs and Gliberinas! And what a lovely morning it always is!

 

Biden in last night’s debate says he “would transition from the oil industry“.

 

Lincoln Project helped Iranian disinformation campaign go viral.

 

Ghislaine Maxwell deposition transcript released.

 

Corporations use The ‘STEM Shortage’ Myth To Abuse Guest Worker Programs.

 

Job Growth in the restaurant industry slowed significantly in 32 states last month, operating with 2.3 million fewer jobs pre-Coronona.

 

Pennsylvania restaurant charged with $10,000 in Covid-related fines wins in court.

 

Antifa’s plan for post-election day chaos.

 

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

About The Author

Banjos

Banjos

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

404 Comments

  1. Tres Cool

    mornin’ ya’all

    • Claypoolsreservoir

      Has this discussion been had before? Ya’all or y’all? I’m team y’all. But being child of multiple coasts, I say you all. I’ve always hated saying y’all.

      • robc

        The city of Florence, KY had a watertower that used to say “Florence Mall” on it. When the mall stopped advertising, they repainted it to “Florence Ya’ll”.

        The question is what the ‘ is replacing. If it is replacing the “ou a” in “you all” then y’all is correct. If it is replacing the 2nd a in “ya all” then ya’ll is correct.

        I agree with the city of Florence.

      • Claypoolsreservoir

        Proof that Hickok45 was/is right about Kentucky.

      • Cancelled

        Bless your heart!

  2. The Late P Brooks

    Is it just my imagination, or has Portland completely fallen off the news radar?

    • leon

      Apparently people don’t care about
      Riots so the right has dropped it.

      • cyto

        How does that explain the total lack of coverage on NBC?

      • Festus' Mustache

        I left all Canadian media long ago. I get my news from whatever the local rag serves which is a rehash of AP and CP and then read from Glibs which is much more fair and balanced. They took the payout. They are compromised.

      • Gdragon

        Oh for sure. My mom tells me that the Sun has finally gotten around to printing some of the “stop locking us in” letters they’re getting so that’s a positive I suppose.

    • Agent Cooper

      It’s the new normal there.

      As far as the msn.com story below, I believe that’s partially true as the rioting seems to be contained to the areas around government buildings (for the most part) — so much of Portland is probably untouched by Antifa’s shenanigans. If you live outside the city, and have no real reason to travel downtown, I’m sure you’re living a relatively antifa-free existence. I know several former co-workers who now call Portland home. One has land to the north and raises chickens in addition to his real gig. He’s probably doing a lot of working from home.

      • Fatty Bolger

        Eventually it will be a tourist attraction. People will line up to get mugged and kicked around a little. All in good fun, of course! Facades will be rebuilt during the day, and burned at night to the oo-ing and ah-ing of the crowd. For $500 you can even buy a molotov cocktail, and throw it yourself! Face masks are traditionally worn for the occasion, and can be purchased on site for $20-30 each.

  3. robc

    Followup from yesterday’s morning link.

    The Van Dijk foul on James Rodriguez injured James, he is out of the Southamption match this weekend. The Pickford non-foul (due to previous offsides) on Van Dijk blowing out his ACL seems like karmic justice.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      Does missing one week equal missing an entire season?

      • robc

        Karma can be a btich.

  4. Apples and Knives

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

    The Jam’s my jam.

  5. leon

    So will anyone ask Biden what he was doing for 5 days during “debate prep?” Because he wasn’t prepared.

    • Nephilium

      You dog faced pony soldier! You lie!

      Push up contest… now!

    • WTF

      How can that be? The CNN poll says Biden won easily!

    • Swiss Servator

      Look, fat… I never said I would ban fracking!

      • Homple

        I wish Sugarfree would do a piece on President Biden meeting a foreign head of state.

      • AlexinCT

        And sucking em off?

    • Apples and Knives

      That WAS prepared.

      If it wasn’t already clear to them, any Biden voters watching last night had to have made the realization that they were actually voting for Kamala.

      • Trials and Trippelations

        Which makes all the people virtue signaling with BLM gear all the more loathsome

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      He was napping, trying to set his sundowner clock late enough that he could get thru the debate.

      I wish I were exaggerating.

    • Festus' Mustache

      He got his ass removed, sous vided ,seared and served up. TMITE

    • cyto

      He was completely prepared with a stump speech for the out-of-left-field question about “minorities who live near oil rigs and chemical factories”. Almost as if there were some form of coordination between the campaign and the moderator on that one.

    • Drake

      That “living near an oil refinery” question that was totally out of left field was for him. Somebody had obviously tipped off Biden, he knew it was coming and had a rehearsed answer. Trump was like “what the hell question is that?”. But Biden started off on his rehearsed answer, Trump gave him a little push and he went into Green New Deal mode and talked about phasing out oil.

      • leon

        Almost like it was a trigger phrase for biden? Hmm so you’re saying the five days they were doing this?

      • Drake

        Or this.

    • Rebel Scum

      C’mon, man. That’s a bunch of malarkey.

      • pan fried wylie

        CNN polls say it’s actually poppycock.

      • Surly Knott

        So do his granddaughters.

  6. leon

    MOrnin banjos!

    Sunday morning

    • Festus' Mustache

      ^ legit chuckle!

  7. Rebel Scum

    Antifa’s plan for post-election day chaos.

    Time to crack some commie skulls, I guess.

    • Tejicano

      Reading the linked article makes it clear that these groups are practicing outright sedition. I get that the left sees them as their pets who will lunge at and bite their opponents but the idea that there will be any way to control these groups is a fantasy. This is a true existential threat to the US government and should be treated as such.

      • Festus' Mustache

        Attacking sitting members of Congress while they are doing their sworn duty is a treasonous action, is it not? Who knows nowadays in these difficult times.

      • Rebel Scum

        A crime, yes. Treason, no.

        Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

    • Ted S.

      All I get on that page is an overlay I can’t close.

  8. leon

    Lincoln project confirms that for everything you can criticize Trump for, at least he got the worst people in the GOP to be hated by the GOP

  9. robc

    I agree with the article on the H-1B program but am willing to bet my solution is the exact opposite of the author’s solution.

  10. The Late P Brooks

    I may be susceptible to bias and sampling error, but it is my honest opinion that if Trump were to round up one hundred of the most prominent “media personalities” in America and personally gun them down with a .30 caliber Gatling Gun on the steps of the Capitol (and livestream it), he’d win in a landslide.

    And the world would be a vastly better place.

    • Festus' Mustache

      Too bloody. He needs to line them up around one of those “death ponds” at Yellowstone and have his lackeys shove them in, Busby Berkely-style.

      • WTF

        While the band plays Hail to the Chief.

      • Festus' Mustache

        Nice touch!

      • Agent Cooper

        And he sits on the back of down-on-all-fours Lindsay Graham!

    • leon

      That would be complete pandering to the “Gun them Down” crowd, and leave the “woodchippers” and “Helicopters” crowd out in the cold.

      • Swiss Servator

        So…drop them into a woodchipper, from a helicopter while people shoot them? Harsh.

      • TARDis

        Winner!

      • R C Dean

        “Pull!”

      • pan fried wylie

        The bullets will cause some damage to the internals of the woodchipper. Organic feed only.

      • pan fried wylie

        RTFM People.

      • Agent Cooper

        No, you shoot as they are falling through the air — like skeet.

    • db

      Too North Korean.

    • Mostly Peaceful JaimeRoberto

      It would be a good start.

  11. The Late P Brooks

    Shut Down DC was founded in 2019 as a coalition of DC-based direct-action groups, initially launched around the climate change agenda, and focused primarily on agitating for the Green New Deal. The group was sponsored by All Out DC, a local Antifa group with a professed objective of, according to its Twitter profile, “Burn Down the American Plantation.”

    Bless their hearts.

    • Rhywun

      It’s almost like the intent of the “Green New Deal” is to bring forth a commie utopia or something.

      • juris imprudent

        Just a lucky side benefit.

    • Festus' Mustache

      No matter who wins, there will be blood. It is shocking and tragic that it will come to this but those little fucks are not playing anymore. That sort of shit needs to be *Don Knotts Voice* nipped in the bud.

      • cyto

        You just gave me a new theory. The reason we are having so much trouble with all of these crazy social justice warrior edicts is that these people did not grow up watching The Andy Griffith show.

      • pan fried wylie

        We all watched Andy, didn’t we.

      • pan fried wylie

        *Glibs.

    • Agent Cooper

      Do the rank-and-file soldiers understand that realizing their goal means millions dead? I mean, is Becky Bluehair ready to put a bullet into the skulls of hundreds of people? Or is all fun-and-games for now?

      • R C Dean

        Do the rank-and-file soldiers understand that realizing their goal means millions dead?

        I see no reason not to believe they do.

        Of course, what they don’t realize is they won’t be around to see it, because they will be early occupants of the mass graves.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        How many people will blanch at the horrors of war? How many will be enraged when they see Becky Bluehair turn into a pink mist? Questions I’d prefer left unanswered, but that are more and more likely to be investigated thoroughly.

  12. Festus' Mustache

    It’s well that I’m not Irish or that might be triggering! Mornin’ Banjos!

  13. Certified Public Asshat

    AOC is a name given to me by community & the people. Y’all can call me AOC.Government colleagues referring to each other in a public or professional context (aka who don’t know me like that) should refer to their peers as “Congresswoman,” “Representative,”etc. Basic respect 101— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 23, 2020

    No injustice is too small for this broad.

    • Apples and Knives

      Trump should start calling her “Ms. Jackson.”

    • LJW

      Most popular reply

      “Calm down babe”

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        LOL

      • AlexinCT

        OK this is DA BOMB!

    • R C Dean

      “Y’all”

      This cultural appropriation by a northern city dweller of southern rural culture is highly offensive.

    • mrfamous

      It’s astonishing the level of discrimination and injustice the most powerful 31 year old in the country has faced.

    • Spartacus

      OK Millenial.

    • Rebel Scum

      should refer to their peers as “Congresswoman,”

      I have another c-word in mind.

      • Agent Cooper

        With an e on the end?

      • leon

        Cute can’t get passed bitchy.

      • R C Dean

        “Congresshole”?

    • pan fried wylie

      How many times have I told you boys not to call chicks broads?

  14. The Late P Brooks

    No injustice is too small for this broad.

    She’s having her revenge on everybody who ever said, “Hey, Toots, where’s my beer?”

    • Festus' Mustache

      Either that or the Prof that promised that he’d leave his wife and kids for her and start over in Cali.

  15. Certified Public Asshat

    Trump said "they spied on my campaign." False. Multiple independent investigations, including a series of bipartisan Senate reports, found no political influence over the FBI investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. https://t.co/uclo9l3gjf #Debates2020— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) October 23, 2020

    Only the facts.

    • Festus' Mustache

      Something something Bigger Lie something something. It’s so fucking blatant and done so shamelessly. Honk Honk!

      • cyto

        That’s impressive. Now that we have the smoking gun that it was an HRC campaign plot and that Obama was apprised of it in July 2016 by Brennen, I think we can put this to rest.

        Or maybe not.

        I mean, if the Hunter Biden laptop is “unverified” after his partner comes out and verifies the entire scheme, how can anything really be verified? And if it isn’t verified, it must be a lie.

      • Festus' Mustache

        This is akin to walking out of your room @ 5 years old and seeing your Mom and Dad wrapping the gifts from Santa, going back to bed and then believing in Santa Clause for another 20 years.

      • leon

        It’s really easy. If it is something i don’t like it must pass this standard. For example, sure it may seem like the laptop is real, but we can’t verify it. Also the claims are all nothing. So Bidens kid made money off the name. We need proof that Biden was aware, and we don’t have verifiable evidence of that.

        See the standard is “If i don’t like it, it can’t be true, and it can’t be wrong”.

    • R C Dean

      And, of course, “ no political influence over the FBI investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election” is not the same as “no spying”.

    • Mostly Peaceful JaimeRoberto

      They spied on four people from his campaign. How many people do they have to spy on before you can say that they spied on his campaign?

  16. Festus' Mustache

    All the nodding haircuts are referring to her as “Gu-layne” but I prefer the original pronunciation – “Jizz-lane”.

  17. The Late P Brooks

    Muh democracy bureaucracy!

    President Donald Trump has issued an executive order that would remove job protections for many federal workers, in a move that unions and other critics denounced as an attempt to politicize the civil service.

    The order, signed Wednesday evening, targets workers that are involved in developing policy. It would reclassify workers “in positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” that are “not normally subject to change as a result of a Presidential transition” into a new category called Schedule F, according to the text.

    Under the new schedule, they would be exempt from protections that apply to most federal workers — allowing agencies to hire and fire them more easily and quickly. The Senior Executive Service, which consists of those serving in high-level positions just below presidential appointees, is exempt from the order, according to an emailed statement from the White House.

    ——-

    Unions and Democrats were quick to criticize the move as a bid to inject politics into the public sector workforce.

    “This is the most profound undermining of the civil service in our lifetimes,” American Federation of Government Employees President Everett Kelley said in a statement Thursday. “The president has doubled down on his effort to politicize and corrupt the professional service.”

    “This executive order strips due process rights and protections from perhaps hundreds of thousands of federal employees and will enable political appointees and other officials to hire and fire these workers at will.”

    ——-

    The order comes less than two weeks before a presidential election in which Trump is fighting hard to win a second term. It blurs the line between political appointees and career employees: If Trump wins, the change would make it easier to remove civil servants who do not agree with his administration’s policies. If he loses, it could, in theory, make it easier for political appointees to transition into civil servant roles, allowing them to stay beyond the transition.

    “I‘ve been warning for some time that, if Trump is re-elected, he’ll work to politicize the civil service and set America on a path back to the 19th century, when the spoils system made Feds loyal to political patrons,” former Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub tweeted. “That‘s bad if you don’t like corruption and abuses of power.”

    One last poke in the eye to the mandarins of the Deep State, on the way out the door?

    • WTF

      One last poke in the eye to the mandarins of the Deep State, on the way out the door?

      More like prepping for a second term by being able to remove the obstructionist resistance.

    • Rhywun

      an attempt to politicize the civil service

      Heavens to Betsy, we can’t have that. ?

    • Pope Jimbo

      I would love to see Trump institute a policy of simply taking away pensions and other govt payouts to swamp creatures and bureaucrats who violated the public trust.

      Instead of busting a gut building a criminal case against Obama/Biden for spying on his campaign, just take away their pensions and Secret Service details. Make them go back to being plain old rubes like us. Take away Clapper, Comey and Brennan’s pensions. Let Lt. Col. Ukrainian Fucknut have to go get his own health insurance now. Louis Lerner? She’ll have to share that cat food with her cats

      • Trials and Trippelations

        I want your newsletter!

    • Rebel Scum

      Unions and Democrats were quick to criticize the move as a bid to inject politics into the public sector workforce.

      Being able to fire bad employees is “politicizing”.

      • Mostly Peaceful JaimeRoberto

        And of course there’s no politics now.

  18. CPRM

    Iran has previously been caught running anti-Trump influence campaigns. Iran used hundreds of fake Facebook and Twitter accounts to run an anti-Trump, pro-Bernie Sanders propaganda effort, the two companies announced in August 2018.

    And nothing else was said, because there are Rushuns hiding under your bed.

    • Tundra

      There’s a red, under my bed.

      • Festus' Mustache

        That is a great tune!

  19. cyto

    I’m wondering about the design of news programming. Watching the wife as she watches the news… it seems that they have a design to things that is not entirely straightforward. The wife watches NBC and CNN. A lot. So much that most of the news she watches is redundant. It is something she has already heard them say… two or three or more times.

    Yet she needs to see all of it.

    It almost acts as… an addiction.

    Why? How?

    The Today Show is odd for “straight news”. They don’t have anything labeled “opinion”. But the news content is low. If one of us nerds were to design a news program, we would optimize the delivery of news, providing as much content as possible in the time allotted. We would order things such that stories built upon each other, reducing the need for background exposition. Bigger pieces would provide more depth.

    This is not the Today Show at all.

    They cover a handful of stories over the course of a couple of hours. They basically have 4 hours in the morning and they cover the same news that your AM sports talk radio station covers in a couple of 3 minute news breaks.

    They pad this out with a lot of gossip and “we are all buddies here” chit chat. These folks are all friends. They are your friends. They are visiting with you, and people drop in to tell you stories about the events of the day. They mix in gossip about celebrities, their thoughts on the latest gadget or movie, and of course, politics. But the politics is never overt. It is always below the surface… your friends are really concerned about this horrible event – what did the president do? Your friends are anticipating the exciting revelation from Chuck Schumer… what did he say?

    It is like having a group of friends. Kinda like hanging out here… except we all get to participate and we are all smarter than Hoda Kotb and Craig Melvin.

    But is that all? It seems to be the formula.

    But the on-air talent earns salaries of many millions per year. And they do spend a lot of effort on political propaganda, delivering it with subtlety. They don’t have that many viewers overall…. Between the big 3 plus CNN and Fox, there might be 20 million people tuning in. But it is a loyal 20 million.

    They are able to get their viewers to feel like they are a part of a group, so they are loyal. You don’t see people randomly hopping from Good Morning to Today and then over to Fox. People are Savannah fans, or they are Stephanopoulos fans. Not both.

    The “team” or “family” aspect might be the caffeine in this drink. By creating an in-group it makes the viewer loyal, and anxious about missing any of it. I suppose it is the same formula that Limbaugh uses.

    I was just struck by how strong the pull is. The wife watched the debate pregame, the debate and the post-game analysis. Then this morning, she had to watch Today to see what the take was. It is the same people. She watched them talk about it last night, then she watched them talk about it this morning, with a “shut up and don’t interrupt my show” level of attention.

    It means that these folks have outsized sway over their audience. Nobody is surprised that Limbaugh people have certain political opinions. But Today and Good Morning are more overtly propagandistic than Limbaugh, despite the entirely political and conservative viewpoint of the Limbaugh show.

    Yet we don’t really talk about them in the same group. Maddow and Limbaugh are easy to lump together. Pundit-as-entertainment, single voice talking head show, entirely about politics. That’s pretty easy to classify. But a morning show that spends as much time on shopping tips and celebrity news as they do on the latest white house crime?

    I wonder what the impact of this group is on the electorate. I’m sure they are quite active voters. And 20 million is a pretty high percentage of the total turnout in federal elections.

    • CPRM

      That’s the Talk Radio format. Both sides do it, as you pointed out.

      • cyto

        It is also part of “sports talk”. Rivalries between stations.. You listen to “the Fan”, not “the Zone”. These are my guys… not those guys.

        I guess they just hit on the way to tap into that basic “team” instinct in order to protect a viewer base.

        The mechanisms are interesting to me. Morning news shows are so empty… I don’t see how people can watch that vapid stuff. We do nothing but joke around on here, and the density of information is still orders of magnitude higher.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The “team” or “family” aspect might be the caffeine in this drink.

      Yes. It’s harder for people like us to understand. It has no appeal for me. Zilch. Zero.

      I find people (that I don’t know) pretending to be my friends to be annoying at best, simply because my bullshit detector starts squealing. Most of those TV personalities would sell out their own children for a pop in their ratings.

      • Nephilium

        people like us

        That’s the same thing as pointing out those who support the “team”. We’re a much smaller team that no one really wants to fight over.

      • Agent Cooper

        I simply tell people I am not on either team, and I don’t truly care about their own political opinions. It’s great that they have them, but they have zero effect on my own principles and beliefs.

      • R C Dean

        I like this.

        I can’t resist playing a game with known partisans (almost all Dems, Repubs having learned the hard way to keep their heads down). Say something equally disparaging to both teams. Yesterday, at lunch with some people obviously leaning, at a minimum, Dem, I said “The Russians and the Chinese must be tearing their hair out. “How can we keep losing to these people?” After half a beat, everyone laughed.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Sounds very similar to sports programming to me. Like when you’re watchin SportsCenter and you realize you’ve seen the current segment twice already.

    • robc

      They pad this out with a lot of gossip and “we are all buddies here” chit chat. These folks are all friends. They are your friends. They are visiting with you, and people drop in to tell you stories about the events of the day.

      Isn’t that straight out of Fahrenheit 451?

    • db

      This needs to be expanded upon in a full article. Media analysis and criticism, are actually important. The undercurrent of our society is defined by the channels through which information and culture flow. So infrequently do people look below the surface, they fail to observe the features of the riverbed that define what gets discussed.

      • cyto

        I have kind of become obsessed with this topic over the last 4 years. I read all of the dystopian novels from the last century as a kid and although I loved them and loved the message, I also had a bit of an eye roll…. Big Brother is so over the top. This is a bit heavy handed as a metaphor….

        Then 2020 happened.

        Nope. Not a metaphor. Not a hyperbolic example.

        They all undersold it. The only one that didn’t undersell it was Harrison Bergeron. But there’s time yet…….

      • db

        People in the USA in this time are woefully ignorant of just how animal humans can be. All of our current culture is a thin veneer over tens of thousands of years of violent conflict and tribal warfare.

        We are only 75 years past the destruction of the Nazi regime and the Japanese Empire. We are only 30 years beyond the destruction of the USSR, which claimed tens of millions of lives in the name of a terrible ideology. We are still currently living in a world where the Chinese Communist Party controls a nation which contains 1.4 BILLION people and the largest single economy in the world.

        All of our achievement, liberty, and culture could come crashing down at any time, and it would be a footnote in the long violent history of humanity.

        The only solution I can see is spreading well beyond this planet, and doing our best to escape the predations of other humans.

        Perhaps Heaven is a metaphor for Humanity escaping its own self built Hell by traveling to the planets and stars?

      • Festus' Mustache

        Sure, that. Or conversely we might just calm the fuck down.

    • Festus' Mustache

      People Magazine was huge in the dead tree era. Survivor still gets ratings. Fuck, Commie Pope has basically said that bum-holing is A-OK so far as he’s concerned (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…) We have people calling for a Communist insurrection in the streets and holding Congress hostage if they don’t get their desired outcome on November 3rd. You guys need to vote harder if you want to avoid catastrophe.

      • Agent Cooper

        If you divorce yourself from rampant media consumption (we are all devourers of news and information here because of how often we frequent this site and how we discuss things) you realize quite quickly that life doesn’t work the same way the media portrays it. People are out, doing things for the betterment of themselves and their communities and families. They’re working together, no matter their race or color or creed. And they’re doing all of this (as usual) completely under the radar. It’s still an incredibly small minority of people rioting, etc. The importance of daily conflict is outsized by the media as a whole, making it feel all so overwhelming.

  20. Tundra

    Good morning, Banjos!

    Boy, big tech is really covering themselves in glory these days, huh? I had no idea things with the H1-B scam were so retarded. I guess that’s pretty naive – any business/government partnership is destined for retardation. They all want cake.

    I watched/listened to the debate last night. i couldn’t believe some of the shit Biden said. Two-Scoops wasn’t great, but his tone and timing were. He conducted himself pretty well, and the exchange you linked – about the oil and gas industry – was amazing. Joe got smoked.

    As usual, your musical selection is sublime. Not a lot of fighting with Sloopy over the radio, huh?

    Make it a great day people! My kid is home for the weekend and I am really happy.

    • Gdragon

      I misquoted him last night but the “Will you remember that, Texas?!?! …” part honestly had me on the ground laughing and cheering

    • CPRM

      Didn’t you watch the cartoon this month?! The Hair said he was taking over debate prep from The Hat.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Our entire immigration system is fucked. The H1 program is abused by both sides. Shady employers do abuse those workers because they don’t have the freedom to tell them to take the job and shove it. The H1 program is also abused by workers from some countries where only the rich and connected tend to get permission to apply for them.

      Let’s face it our immigration system is fucked. We should be giving all sorts of preference to workers from other countries who are talented and have skills we can use. Instead we give preference to people from shitholes.

      • cyto

        As someone who has hired highly skilled tech workers I can confirm that finding talent is hard.

        And those who work in the industry know this is true – there are tons of people who have certifications and skills listed on resumes who are absolute crap. Being good at programming or network engineering is not about being trained. You give me a top programmer in ADA and I can put him on a Python project and he’ll be a top Python guy in 3 months. He can probably go be a top router guy in 3 months too. You have to be wired for understanding this stuff.

        I hired a couple of H-1b’s right out of college. They were well worth the money to fight for them. Both are now citizens – I payed for their green card lawyers as well. They are outstanding people who would have been a success at anything. There is no question, we are better off for bringing those sorts in to the country – even if they move the lowest man on the totem pole out of the opportunity to get a promotion by default. Elite talent is, by definition, rare.

        I don’t know about other places, but I sure wouldn’t waste my time getting an H-1B for a middling talent. We went through the hassle for elite talent, and we got elite results. And everyone on the team was happy to have them – because nobody competent wants to work with a guy who can barely paint by the numbers.

        If you have never worked on a team where everyone is an A player, you have missed out. It is really something special. Going to work is a joy.

        If you have never worked on a team where A players are anathema…. well, god bless you. The rest of us suffered on your behalf.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I’ve had a couple opportunities to work on teams where everyone was an A-player and you are right, it is a special time.

        The last one I was on got disbanded because the parent company fucked up so badly that they shut down our entire division. People were very unhappy about it. I had to tell them that even if we hadn’t had the carpet yanked out from under us, it wouldn’t have lasted. All the super smart developers working for us would begin to want to get big pay bumps and/or management experience. Then we would have had to bring in new junior developers and like you said, finding good talent is really hard.

        The best team of people I ever worked with was my first job out of college. Unfortunately I had no idea how lucky I was to be there at that time. I worked my ass off and learned a ton. I thought the rest of my career was going to be like that.

      • Tundra

        Interesting. I had the same experience with my first job out of college. I was the seventh person hired in a fast-growing company. We were really young (the CEO was only a few years older than me) and we were killing it. It was a gas. And then we went public and everything changed.

        I had some other fun job situations, but nothing like that.

      • Mojeaux the Melancholy

        Serious question: How did performance reviews go? My husband is graded on a curve because of raise quotas (x number of people get y% raises and on down).

      • AlexinCT

        They never admit they do this, because this sort of curve paying is illegal in most states…

      • Pine_Tree

        A line I’ve used to try to explain some of it – “coders are born, not made”

        I interview or meet people semi-regularly who are (for example) getting a Masters in a Data Analytics program because it sounds cool. And you can tell that’s as far as they’ve gotten into it. Or ever will.

      • Fatty Bolger

        You give me a top programmer in ADA and I can put him on a Python project and he’ll be a top Python guy in 3 months.

        I think you’re right, but it’s irrelevant for most companies because he’ll never get past HR.

      • cyto

        I spent years trying to coach up HR on that very topic.

        You hire for two things. Motivation and ability. Everything else is gravy.

        You give me someone who is highly motivated and has great ability, and they will be great and very short order even if they have no skills for the job at all. give me someone who is not motivated and they will never be successful. Motivated and not that bright, and you still can find a place for them.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Did you have any success?

        I was never able to get the HR drones to understand that. Like you, I wanted people who were flexible and motivated. HR would insist that I give them a list of skills so they could search various job databases for candidates.

        The worst moment was when they said they had found the perfect candidate who matched everything I was looking for. Turned out that the candidate was someone I had fired at a previous job. The reason his skills matched so well was he listed out all the things he was supposed to have learned working there.

        When I declined to bring him in for an interview, the HR drone got very upset. She told me that it was very hard to find someone who matched all the skills I had listed and when they finally did find one, I wouldn’t even talk to him.

        Sigh.

      • ruodberht

        We have 300 million people. I’m sure we have enough workers to do anything we need.

        If Nazi rocket scientists become available, sure, we can make an exception.

  21. Gdragon

    Morning Banjos! 🙂

  22. Drake

    So the debates are done and we never heard a meaningful word about foreign policy or gun control. I assume this is because ending the foreign wars and not confiscating guns are both huge winning issues for Trump.

    • Tundra

      At least Trump hammered on the lockdowns. Saying that we will open up was smart. It’s not just republicans who are pissed off.

    • cyto

      They replaced the entire “third debate about foreign policy” with “repeat the first debate topics – only hitting Biden talking points”. Coronavirus and healthcare.. that’s the biggies folks!

      Not discussed …. middle east peace, war on terror, NAFTA, packing the court, Obama administration spying on Trump’s campaign, Biden setting up Flynn, Antifa, riots, prosecutors refusing to charge rioters, NATO payments, privatization of space, 8 freaking trillion dollars in stimulus packages, service on the debt, Afghanistan, Iraq (how the hell can we have troops on the ground on a war footing and it never even comes up?),

      The list just goes on and on…. but we got plenty about healthcare and insipid covid 19 platitudes … “We need rapid tests and masks!” good lord. That was 6-7 moths ago. Maybe he can offer a solution to the war in Vietnam too…..

      Politics is always stupid… but damn! Our leadership class is over-the-top idiotic. Remember, Biden was the smart one….

    • Tejicano

      I think Trump didn’t bring up the 2nd Amendment because the left has framed the public argument so that a Democrat can call any opponent a conspiracy-plot, crackpot for suggesting they would take anybody’s guns away while at the same time telling their own team that they’re going to ban all those scary kill-murder machines – and never get called on it. If Trump raised the issue Biden gets to act like Trump is the strange one while at the same time signaling to team blue that he will be using his pen & phone to ban everything possible.

  23. The Late P Brooks

    Debunked

    In August, the US Food and Drug Administration authorized the emergency use of convalescent plasma as a treatment option for hospitalized Covid-19 patients. However, data were still being collected in randomized controlled trials — the gold standard — to study the safety and effectiveness of the treatment. Last month, a National Institutes of Health panel said there’s no evidence backing the use of convalescent plasma to treat coronavirus patients and that doctors should not treat it as a standard of care until more study has been done.

    Randomized controlled trials of convalescent plasma to treat Covid-19 patients are still underway in the United States.

    The new study, called the PLACID trial, included data on 464 adults with moderate Covid-19 in 39 hospitals across India. Among them, 235 patients were randomly selected to receive convalescent plasma along with standard care for treatment and 229 patients received only standard care.
    The new study showed that a higher proportion of patients who received convalescent plasma saw improvements in their symptoms of fatigue and shortness of breath compared with those given standard care, but there was no difference between patients when it came to resolving fever and cough.

    The proportion of patients who needed invasive ventilation did not differ among the two groups, and overall, the researchers found that 34 patients who received convalescent plasma, or 15%, had died — compared with 31 who were given standard care, or 14%

    464 patients. In India. These clowns have so effectively destroyed their credibility that I immediately assume this “study” bullshit.

    Congratulations, boys.

    • Drake

      I assume it will just stay on the shelves until the stores throw it away.

      • Nephilium

        The growth of the NA beer market is frightening and confusing to me. There’s companies out there making nothing but NA beer (Athletic Brewing), most of the Bud/Miller/Coors breweries have launched new lines in the NA space, and even some of the larger craft breweries (Brewdog) are moving into that space.

      • db

        It’s the set-up for the New Prohibition Era.

      • straffinrun

        Hate to say it, but I’ve tried some that weren’t awful.

      • Nephilium

        I’ve had the Athletic Brewing stuff before (it was at a fest, and there was a line for the water). It’s not bad, but they’re looking for $12 a six pack for NA beer. There’s a company that just started distributing here in Cleveland, it’s hopped tea. I figured I would try a can. It was $3 for a 16 oz can, at the same store I picked up two 16 oz cans of Imperial Stouts to send off as gifts which cost less.

      • Bill (Door) Baggins (a Skellington)

        As someone who doesn’t drink, I have been interested to try NA beer, just to see if I would like it. I am intrigued by the concept and some of the processes.

      • Bill (Door) Baggins (a Skellington)

        As someone who doesn’t drink, I have been interested to try NA beer, just to see if I would like it. I am intrigued by the concept and some of the processes.

      • Bill (Door) Baggins (a Skellington)

        Dammit. Why am I double posting so much today.

      • cyto

        I cannot imagine anyone in Ireland buying that. My trip to Ireland had 1 constant. You are having a Guinness. Most pubs did not even have an alternative as we traveled the countryside. The boys at the pub in Galway even insisted that my 6 months pregnant wife had to have a Guinness. “It’s good for the baby!”

      • robc

        UK docs used to recommend 1 Guinness per day for pregnant women. It was a good source of zinc in the days before multivitamins.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        I tried to convince my wife that she wasn’t gonna kill the kid if she had a beer every once in a while, but she went for the non-alcoholic stuff.

        She has a 6 pack of a local brew waiting in the fridge for the day she gets back from the hospital. Her push present to herself.

      • Claypoolsreservoir

        haha I went to Ireland last year and cannot wait to return! There were indeed quite a few regional beers but it was funny to drive and hour down the road only to ask about the beer we had at the other pub in (insert town here) and the bartenders we completely befuddled by there being a beer down the road that wasn’t on their own taps.

      • Agent Cooper

        Guinness in Ireland is soooooo much better than Guinness here.

        Same with tea. I’d drink tea daily if I lived in the UK. Here, it’s awful. I do not think they brew it hot enough in the states.

    • juris imprudent

      2020 just isn’t letting up, is it?

    • Shpip

      “Low-alcohol wines and spirits are also proving attractive to consumers, and it is estimated there are about 70 no-alcohol spirits brands in the UK, up from zero in 2014.”

      WTF, Britain? Y’all becoming a nation of nancies?

      • Nephilium

        Becoming?

  24. Certified Public Asshat

    So that new Electric Hummer…GM Hasn’t Actually Made a Complete, Working Hummer EV Yet

    “Interestingly enough, we don’t have a vehicle yet,” Hummer Chief Engineer Al Oppenheiser told Green Car Reports. “We’re building our first test vehicle as we speak; the vehicle you see in the video is our display vehicle.”

    • juris imprudent

      So the one shown in motion is just CGI???

      • Fatty Bolger

        No, it runs on those horrible fossil fuels that Biden will ban soon.

      • Tejicano

        Why do I get a tiny chuckle out of the idea of a fossil banning fossil fuels?

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Yeah. It looks a lot better than the Cybertruck, so it has that going for it.

  25. The Late P Brooks

    I saw a clip of Biden this morning, talking about trade with China. I can’t recall the specific wording, but it decoded in my head as, “We’ll resurrect the Trans Pacific Partnership just as soon as we are able!”

    That’ll help. Get us back to sweetheart “managed trade” deals with the CCP.

    • PieInTheSky

      I am starting to doubt my free trade credentials when it comes to China

      • juris imprudent

        There are rules to free trade – that both partners are supposed to abide by. If one doesn’t, it isn’t free trade.

      • PieInTheSky

        There are rules to free trade – are there?

      • Swiss Servator

        No barriers, subsidies, etc. Nobody follows them.

      • PieInTheSky

        I though the standard libertarian position is unilateral free trade irrespective what the other country does.

      • juris imprudent

        Of course there, just as there are rules to free markets. As unbelievable as it is to statist-progressive-fucktards, human beings can have rules without governments. The governments can be useful for fair enforcement of the rules, but sadly, govt is actually far better at subverting those rules for the benefit of political power-players, ultimately corrupting markets (and trade).

    • Fatty Bolger

      Of course they will. It’s already been paid for, after all.

    • cyto

      That was the “shoot the foot!” moment in the debate. We all have heard him say it repeatedly.

      The better clip showed Biden challenge Trump to put it on the website, then the run of Biden saying exactly what he said he never said.

      Ok, I overstate. The other big “shoot the foot” moment was when he opened up the China corruption thing. That brought both barrels, and he had nothing. Trump blew his line though… Biden said he had a “secret bank account” and Trump did say it was on the disclosures, but should have emphasized that Biden lied about it being a secret. That entire can of worms was something that team Biden had carefully worked to keep off the debate stage…. and sleepy Joe opened the door.

    • PieInTheSky

      they are just shilling for BIG ACME

      • Tejicano

        Ha!

      • Mostly Peaceful JaimeRoberto

        OK. How does the Romanian come up with this joke? Impressive.

      • UnCivilServant

        Believe it or not, one of our big exports is media.

      • Mostly Peaceful JaimeRoberto

        I know, but when I lived in Europe I didn’t see Looney Tunes anywhere. Heck, most kids today in the US wouldn’t get the reference.

    • KOVIDKristen

      Twitter is fun today with all the coyote talk

    • Fatty Bolger

      You miss a lot when you think you already know everything.

    • Count Potato

      Because they are idiots?

  26. Mojeaux the Melancholy

    Mornin’, Banjos! Everybody!

    Beautiful (read: cold, rainy) morning for a quiet breakfast with Messiah. I just realized how fucked up my music filing and tagging system is for classical because it doesn’t account for multiple performances of a work by different orchestras. Filing by “Handel” (x4 performances) or “Orff” (Carmina Burana x5 performances) makes everything a hopeless jumble. First-world problems, amirite?

    • Festus' Mustache

      Mornin’ Mojo! Been awhile for AM talk!

      • Mojeaux the Melancholy

        Yep. Weird combo of drugs that help me sleep a reasonable amount of time the hop up and get right to it.

        I have an evening gig now, though, so I won’t be able to join Zoom anymore after 8 central. I’ll miss that.

      • TARDis

        Awww. 🙁

  27. Rebel Scum

    The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump political group, appears to have helped an Iranian disinformation effort go viral.

    Election interference is ok when it is to hurt Trump.

    • cyto

      The more interesting bit was how it was covered. I saw coverage on ABC and NBC. Both heavily implied that Iranian interference with the fake “proud boys” emails was designed to help Trump – their take was that it really was an attempt to intimidate democrat voters, not to create a false narrative that Trump supporters are racist and trying to suppress the vote.

      Here’s my cake! And I can eat it too!

  28. Rebel Scum

    Maybe because cuntes like you do not report on relevant information that might hurt your party’s candidate.

    Todd said, “I thought when he would talk about certain things, that issue and a couple of other things, I felt like he was speaking the language of Fox prime time. If you watch a lot of Fox prime time, you understood what he was saying. If you don’t, you have no idea. I’ll be honest with you, people said, what is that? I don’t understand this. And I simply said, well, you don’t speak that language. And I do think that was part of the president’s problem. He did speak to folks who already understand what he’s saying.

    He continued, “Did he actually talk to anybody who’s vacillating in the middle tonight? Did he make a pitch to bring them back to him? I did not hear that kind of pitch. When he went after Biden personally and when he went after that Hunter Biden stuff, if you didn’t follow it closely, you probably don’t know what the hit is.”

    • cyto

      That is a brilliant take!

      “We have successfully hidden this story from the public! So bringing it up means you are not trying to reach the public!”

      There is a surprising amount of circular logic happening these days.

    • WTF

      The balls on these fucking people!

    • Fatty Bolger

      Who knows, maybe some of those confused people looked up Hunter Biden after the debate and learned a little something. Something the MSM has been working overtime to hide from them.

  29. Pope Jimbo

    I’m not sure stupidity like this is worth 2 years in the clink

    Ex-sheriff is facing 2 years after being convicted of sexual harassment in a Lex Luthor level scheme.

    Documents obtained by WCCO-TV show Duncan allegedly told a female employee that fall that he received a series of blackmail letters from an anonymous third party, who had the alias “Control Freak.”

    The letters required him and a female employee to both go to a training together in Bemidji, as well as stay overnight in a hotel together, among other things. One of the letters said that something may happen to the both of their families if the instructions were not followed.

    Duncan allegedly implied the letter writer would possibly want him and the employee to have sex, and that the letter writer was crazy enough to follow through on threats to their families.

    The female employee later met with the sheriff and told him she would not follow the instructions, and that she would take her chances. Duncan allegedly said he would try to draw the letter writer out.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      It was a brilliant plan!

      • Pope Jimbo

        Brilliant? Or cunning?

      • Claypoolsreservoir

        Cunnildingus

  30. Tundra

    Holy shit! I can’t believe this got published over at AG.

    The Police and Us

    Not even gonna quote any of it. It’s succinct and shocking.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Damn

    • Pope Jimbo

      I’m sure a bunch of the cop suckers who read AG are spitting their coffee all over their computer screens right now. Good on AG for running that.

    • leon

      Holy Shit. That was a good article.

    • Drake

      I was thinking some these thoughts yesterday at the range as the county SWAT was livefire practicing basic leapfrog advances.

    • db

      Excellent

    • PieInTheSky

      good piece

    • Raven Nation

      That’s pretty good although there is the implication that policing in America has only become a problem in the last 6 months or so.

  31. PieInTheSky

    i posted about 25 links about the effects of minimum wage increase on employment (or lack thereof) and how higher taxes are good and my friend straight up said i dont care my lowes store manager told us a higher minimum wage would be bad

    https://twitter.com/kyleposting/status/1319525891974795265

    • PieInTheSky

      The Employment Effects of a $15 Minimum Wage in the U.S. and in Mississippi: A Simulation Approach

      https://irle.berkeley.edu/the-employment-effects-of-a-15-minimum-wage-in-the-u-s-and-in-mississippi/

      We estimate a very small increase in employment growth, relative to what would occur
      without the minimum wage increase: 90,000 more jobs by 2024, which corresponds to 0.1
      percent of projected 2024 employment. By comparison, census benchmark revisions of
      annual employment have averaged 0.3 percent over the past decade and the Congressional
      Budget Office projects that employment in the U.S. will grow 3.15 percent in the same time
      period.

      studies….

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I made a computer model!

        SCIENCE

      • PieInTheSky

        one of the studies he links in the thread actually said employment may be reduced but this is compensated by an increase in perceived fairness

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It’s foolproof! It’s got lots of variables and shit!

      • leon

        Sadly, this is the state of science.

        You know who else made complicated models?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Andy Warhol?

      • robc

        Economists are pretty clear…the only way a minimum wage can actually increase employment and etc. is in a monopsony condition, where there is only one buyer of employment.

        The argument is totally over whether and where monopsony conditions exist. I am in with the group that says its very rare and pretty much only a thought problem.

      • Cancelled

        So the argument is:

        1. With the minimum wage increase growth will create 90,000 more jobs by 2024, an increase (over 2 years not one) of .1%
        2. The comparison number, which we won’t calculate out but state as a percentage, is either 3.15% (around 280,000 additional jobs, or 190,000 more than with the wage increase), or 6% (3% per year for 2 years = 6.09%) (540,000 additional jobs, or 450,000 more than with the wage increase)
        3. So since 90,000 is more than zero minimum wage increase leads to more jobs!

        Remember how all those silly prudish people from old books used to talk about how lying was bad? We are reaping the harvest sowed by deciding that lying was no big deal. You cannot have science, reliable news, or reliable business dealings in a world where lying to get your way is normalized.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        In a postmodern framework there is no lying. You have your truth and I have mine.

        The only metric left for resolving a dispute becomes power.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      Trump is now arguing against a federal minimum wage. LOLLLLLLLLL #Debates2020— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) October 23, 2020

      It’s funny because we also bitch about Bezos getting rich during a pandemic.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Krystal is an idiot. She ran for local office here and lost miserably, but she was attractive enough to get a commentator position on TV and willing to say whatever they told her to.

      • leon

        I used to watch Krystal and Saggar to get a feel for what the left was thinking. I’ve stopped because they have become so self assured in their own narrative that workers just are absolutely fed up with business.

        Maybe i’m too bougie, but i don’t see it. Minimum Wage Workers make something like 1% of the workforce, if that.

      • Viking1865

        My wife went back to being a retail manager for a couple months during the lockdown. The starting wage at her company, and it’s the shittiest pay in the whole strip mall made up of 10 national retail chains, is above minimum wage.

        Raising min wage a couple bucks would have very little affect because the actual prevailing low wage jobs pay more.

        But raising it to 15 or 20 would of course make every fast food company go to touchscreen ordering.

      • robc

        2017 chart I found:

        2.3% of employees make minimum or lower (I assume or lower is wait staff).

        5.6% of of 16-24 year olds make minimum, ie, people getting started.

        1,4% of 25+ year olds.

        And the sub-breakdown of 16-19 years old was 8.3%.

        Basically minimum wage workers are teens. Because, duh, get some experience and you won’t be a minimum wage worker any more.

      • robc

        Had to do math to extract the result on the 20-24 group, 4.4%.

        So, final table:

        16-19 8.3%
        20-24 4.4%
        25+ 1.4%

      • Viking1865

        Yeah and I bet if you drilled down you’d find the majority of places paying min wage are in low COL areas.

        Wife had issues getting good people because they could walk to one of the 10 other chains and apply for a higher wage.

        Maybe if retail peons didn’t have to kick 16% of their income to their grandparents who had decades to save for retirement…….Oh wait that’s crazy talk.

      • robc

        Yep, even entry positions pay more than minimum in cities and other high COL areas.

      • Agent Cooper

        My son already makes almost $4 per hour above minimum wage. He’s 17. It’s his first job.

  32. Pope Jimbo

    Today is a good day! Enemies of goodthinkers are being punished.

    The trucker who was attacked after driving into a massive protest on the Interstate 35W bridge after the killing of George Floyd was charged Thursday with two criminal counts from the May 31 incident.

    Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman’s office charged 35-year-old Bogdan Vechirko of Otsego with threats of violence, a felony, and criminal vehicular operation, a gross misdemeanor, saying the driver admitted to investigators that he was “kind of in a hurry” and the investigation showed he sought to “scare” the protesters out of his path.

    Vechirko drove onto the bridge as hundreds of pedestrians protested the death of Floyd, who had died six days earlier in the custody of Minneapolis police. Vechirko said he was returning from a fuel delivery in south Minneapolis and didn’t intend to drive into the protest or aim to hurt anyone.

    The criminal complaint said investigators reviewed cellphone videos showing that Vechirko should have known something was occurring on the bridge because “in addition to the large crowd, there were multiple vehicles stopped on I-35W northbound as the road approached the bridge and that a number of vehicles were driving the wrong direction up an entrance ramp.”

    In a re-enactment with a similar semi-truck, investigators found Vechirko’s “line of sight would have given him sufficient time to stop his truck after viewing the crowd.” But he didn’t stop until someone stumbled in his path, the complaint said.

    WTF? I thought charges had been dropped against this guy shortly after this happened. After it was revealed that the state patrol fucked up the closing of the highway and he hadn’t driven by any barricades. I guess the lesson is Don’t Stop.

    • AlexinCT

      It’s about making sure people know defending yourself and interfering with the agenda of the masters will not be tolerated…

      • Pope Jimbo

        Well it is also a safety issue. Can’t have people in trucks and cars go around thinking interstate hiways are there for driving on. Where would protesters be able to gather if it wasn’t for 4-lane hiways?

    • Rebel Scum

      attacked after driving into a massive protest on the Interstate 35W bridge

      Why were these people on the bridge on the interstate that is made for automobiles? They should not have been there. End of discussion.

      • pan fried wylie

        All Interstates must meet federal standards such as having controlled access

        Controlled Access: In countries following the Vienna convention, the motorway qualification implies that walking and parking are forbidden, and they are reserved for the use of motorized vehicles only.

      • pan fried wylie

        Just to drive your point home.

  33. SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

    Antifa, of course, is far more than an “idea”—even as ideas, themselves, can be serious threats with which it is necessary to contend. But it is also far more than just an organization. Even as it traces its origins to pre-war Germany, one might think of “Antifa” as a relatively new product line from a larger industry that has existed for decades. That industry is the giant ecosystem of left-wing direct-action and organizing, with its own history, pedagogy, institutions, as well as tens of thousands of career professionals operating in the open, and funded every bit as well as the staid network of establishment conservative think tanks and magazines that tend to cluster along the Acela corridor.

    IMO, this understates it by an order of magnitude, if not more. Big Non-profit is up there with the media and public education as the pillars of American destruction.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      In general, if you’re with a non-profit, particularly a large one, I assume you’re a parasite anymore.

  34. Drake

    If this is true and converts to votes, there will prog tears on election night.

    President Trump’s Approval with Black Voters Soars to 46% After Debate Win Over Joe “Predator” Biden

    • Urthona

      Don’t think there’s any way to get that fast.

      • Urthona

        *get data that fast

      • Festus' Mustache

        Urthona = Debbie Downer… Geez, let us have one.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        Looks like its a daily poll released this morning, and it looks like a substantial outlier. Color me skeptical, too.

      • Urthona

        I mean how many people even watched the debates? .02%?

      • Viking1865

        Trump’s play is to get black and brown men to vote like white men. The Republican Party, because they are useless, feckless, worthless, and weak has allowed the Democratic Party for 40 years to gobble up the single women vote without making the corresponding move of gobbling up single men. A black single guy who works in the private sector is in the same position a white single guy who works in the private sector: he works his ass off to fund the lifestyles of bastard children and useless college educated bureaucrats.

        That’s the plain facts in America in 2020: Single men are net tax payers, single women are net tax takers. But only single women vote accordingly, single black and brown men still aren’t wise to the con. But there is movement.

        From Pew

        “Among Hispanic voters, majorities of women and men identify as Democrats, but this is especially the case among Hispanic women (67% identified as Democrats vs. 58% of Hispanic men in 2018 and 2019). Similarly, Black women (87%) were more likely than Black men (77%) to identify as Democrats, even though large majorities of both did so. In 2018 and 2019, the gap between Black women and Black men identifying as Democrats was the widest it has been since measurement began.”

        That’s the wedge right there, that’s the play.

        “You’re a working man. You deserve to keep your money. That’s why you should vote Republican. You don’t owe spoiled white women a cushy government desk job with annual increases.”

        I was talking with the guy at the burger place. His kids have been camped out at a corner table for three months doing their “online school”. He’s pissed off. He’s gotta keep an eye on them the whole day, his boss is cool right now but how long will that last? He doesn’t understand why the schools can’t open. He’s been working for months now, and no one’s gotten sick. His kids are fucking around on the computer for two hours, and then the middle class white people in the school system log of Zoom and collect their fat checks.

      • Urthona

        good points

      • peachy rex

        Let’s not get too crazy here, dude – my fiancee is a white woman with a government desk job getting annual pay increases.

        She’s also very good at a useful job – if not one that *needs* to be public sector – and is a proto-glib. Many of her colleagues, now… I own a micro business, and I’m not entirely joking when I threaten from time to time to create a waste & inefficiency watchdog group to monitor their organisation.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      It doesn’t have to convert to votes. If large enough portions of Philadelphia don’t vote, Joe is done.

      • creech

        Biden will be picking it up in the suburbs according to GOP’s own internal polling. On the whole, educated white suburban women cannnot stand Donald Trump: he reminds them of that hated ex husband or boyfriend that was so full of shit he had to be dumped, even if the next guy was a bad boy too.

      • Viking1865

        Eh, we’ll see. They don’t need to go to MAGA rallies or boat parades. They can bitch about him all day every day, but in the voting booth, are they really so dumb as to vote for a return to economic malaise and 4 bucks a gallon gasoline?

        Maybe yes. Maybe no.

      • R C Dean

        Regardless of whether large portions of Philadelphia don’t vote, their votes will be counted nonetheless.

    • cyto

      Won’t matter.

      They have their plan in place in the battleground states to steal those elections. Pennsylvania will be voting for 3 days after the election. The fix is in in Arizona as well.

      Unless the numbers are completely wrong, they have this locked up. We live in a world where “99% of young people survive” is misleading, because it is really 99.9%. We live in a world where Biden bragging about his corrupt acts, the son clearly getting paid, a bunch of emails detailing how Joe will get paid and the testimony of one of the schemers all adds up to “unconfirmed allegations”. Nobody will even allow reporting on irregularities in the elections. If they need a state or two, they’ll be able to steal it with impunity.

      The only path to victory for Trump is a wave of revulsion at the democrats and a landslide victory by more than a few percent. If his supporters and those of us who are terrified of what a win for the propaganda machine will do to the country don’t show up in huge numbers, that won’t happen.

      • Festus' Mustache

        I hold onto a ray of sunshine, namely that my ultra prog cow-workers have made nary a peep about OMB for the last few months. Granted, we don’t vote in your elections (or do we…) but the revulsion seems to have fallen off a cliff since Corona Panic.

      • Viking1865

        “Pennsylvania will be voting for 3 days after the election.”

        It’s absolutely absurd on its face to say that pandemic that has been going on since March somehow requires the extension of Election Day past November 3rd.

        Fuck John Roberts.

      • Trials and Trippelations

        Unless the SC intervenes north carolina allows up to 9 days to record votes. Ballot must be post marked on election daybthough

      • Swiss Servator

        That is a lot of days to find trunks full of ballots!

      • R C Dean

        I would imagine that members of the postal workers union know how to reset the date on the postmark machines, as well.

        If its not delivered on Election Day, it shouldn’t count. Don’t want to run the risk that your ballot will get delayed in the mail? Vote in person.

  35. westernsloper

    Ok, who is going to make the Biden Po Boy meme? It needs to be done.

    • The Other Kevin

      I’m looking for a montage of “Come on!”

    • PieInTheSky

      the production of memes needs to be nationalized

  36. PieInTheSky

    Just got an email from @expensify
    CEO telling users to vote Biden. Business justification: “Expensify depends on a functioning society and economy; not many expense reports get filed during a civil war.”

    https://twitter.com/petesweeneypro/status/1319507898989309954

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The tech/currency boom has created an entire generation of overpaid, arrogant asshats who think that because they made a mobile app they’re mentally gifted.

    • leon

      Translation: “If you dare elect Trump, we will go to war with you.”

      I think making people understand that the people talking to you are threatening you helps solidify their reslove to say “FUCK OFF SLAVER”

      • leon

        Alas i am vanquished by this mans counterpoint.

        https://twitter.com/rfarc9/status/1319622536674615296

        If Trump wins, our democracy is toast.
        This wannabe dictator has been trying to corrupt DOJ & FBI in order to frame political enemies!
        This is extremely dangerous & typical tyrannical behavior.
        Turn off FOX & smell the Hitler, cult fans.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Moral certainty and tribe affiliation is a hell of a thing.

      • Festus' Mustache

        Hmmm. Words of wisdom. I’ll need to cogitate.

      • Viking1865

        “Democracy” just means “Democrats win”. Nothing else.

      • Idle Hands

        Democrats protecting the rights of the minority with will of the majority since the parties flipped sometime during Nixon or something.

      • R C Dean

        trying to corrupt DOJ & FBI in order to frame political enemies

        You mean, the FBI and DOJ that had Hunter’s laptop for months and did nothing with it? The one that declared Hillary Clinton’s illegal email server non-prosecutable? The one that ran an investigation of Trump for months based on known disinformation, after they had concluded there was nothing to the Russian collusion story/ The one that hasn’t prosecuted numerous high-ranking FBI and DOJ officials that signed false affidavits, leaked confidential information to the press, destroyed their own phones (and who knows what else)? That FBI and DOJ?

      • AlexinCT

        Unwinding the weaponization of the bureaucratic machine done by Obama to create a cesspool beholden to the dnc is corrupting them to go after political enemies…

        Yeah…

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        done by Obama

        LBJ?
        maybe FDR?
        maybe even Woody Wilson?

        Obama didnt do much except exploit the system that was handed to him. It makes him no less evil, but plenty less diabolical.

    • Apples and Knives

      “Just give the terrorists what they want and they’ll leave us alone. Is that so hard to understand?”

    • Tundra

      LOL!

      The Nickleback sticker is perfect!

  37. leon

    So Gun Nuts. I had a fantastic deal fall through recently and have been looking around at getting a rifle. I see that many rifles are chambered in 5.56 NATO, rather than .223. My understanding is that 5.56 should still be able to fire a .223, Is that correct?

    Same with 7.62 and .308?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      My understanding is that 5.56 should still be able to fire a .223, Is that correct?

      Yes (usually). But the reverse is not necessarily true.

      It’s best to stick with the gun manufacturer’s guidance on ammo compatibility.

      • Trolleric the Goth

        look for a .223 wylde chamber – it works with both, optimally.

        arguably there’s an accuracy reduction shooting .223 rem through a 5.56 chamber, and 5.56 is too high pressure for a .223 rem chamber

      • Drake

        This – although good luck finding one right now.

    • db

      7.62x51mm and .308 Winchester are not necessarily compatible!

      7.62x51mm is a lower pressure round than .308. Firearms chambered for 7.62x51mm are designed with slightly different chamber dimensions and will not necessarily tolerate the higher pressure of the commercial .308 Win indefinitely.

      • leon

        Huh. I had just assumed the 7.62 had more pressure. Thanks!

    • PieInTheSky

      no one needs two calibers

      • leon

        If i could purchas 155mm, you might be correct, but unfortunately they don’t seem to be on the civilian market.

      • Festus' Mustache

        My dream purchase is an M-2 with about a million rounds and some spare barrels. Fuck off, leave me alone! Sadly, this will never happen.

      • Plinker762

        Quad mount or GTFO

      • Swiss Servator

        I was awful with that thing. The M240B is like a magic wand, however. Point at enemy, they fall down go boom.

    • kinnath

      5.56 NATO chamber can shoot .223

      .308 chamber can shoot 7.62 NATO.

      But always best to shoot what the rifle is chambered for.

    • EvilSheldon

      In general, a 5.56×45 NATO chamber should be able to safely chamber and fire all 556 and 223 ammo. In general.

      It’s actually pretty tough to find an AR barrel with a .223 Remington SAAMI chamber these days. Your mostly find them on bolt guns.

    • Claypoolsreservoir

      Plenty of answers on caliber assuming by “rifle” you mean an AR configuration. But I’ll reiterate, If you want a 223 caliber, the new standard is 223 Wylde as it works best for both 223 and 556. For an AR10 configuration, the .308 is standard, but there are other fun calibers to be had such as the 6.5 creed and 7mm-08.

      The AR-15 configurations are super easy to make. I recommend Aero Precision M4E1 components for quality and ease of assembly.

      The AR-10 configurations require a bit more research to make sure components fit together as there is no Mil-Std. In general, sourcing major components from the same vendor is ideal. Again, Aero is my go to. The M5E1 is the ar10 based model.

      My next build/purchase will be a 300 blackout AR pistol. 300 blackout works with all ar15 components save barrel and is ideally suited to shorter, suppressed barrels. The Brownells BRN-180s is super intriguing as there is no external buffer assembly.

      If you’re interested in assembling your own, I can go into greater detail on what you should and should not buy based on what you want.

      • Florida Man

        I went PSA 300 “pistol” and a sandman Ti can for my home defense solution. Can’t say enough good things about PSA ARs.

      • R C Dean

        I’ve been thinking about getting my NFA license, mostly to get a suppressor for the .45 (which is naturally subsonic). The .308 is already heavy and bulky enough, and I have real doubts it would cycle with subsonic ammo.

        I just hesitate because the NFA folks will be first to have their doors kicked in when confiscation starts.

      • dontreadonme

        I have the same setup as my primary HD er ‘pistol’. I added a higher quality BCG because I saw some early wear on the standard, but otherwise love the PSA.

  38. leon

    CBS is “Undeterred” from airing the 60 min interview with Trump. Which i wonder if they will still edit to make him look bad/worse. It’s kind of like when you pre-empt an argument and the person doesn’t know what to do so they go ahead with the argument you just destroyed.

    • juris imprudent

      The raw footage was interesting – you hear all of the staging discussion. You end up realizing how artificial the final product is. It’s like the State of the Union speech – with the multiple cameras and cutting to audience members.

      It is nothing like the PM’s question time in Parliament (in the UK).

    • Festus' Mustache

      It’s more like when you hear the cat going “Hurk Hurk Hurk” and you’re just seconds away.

    • Festus' Mustache

      It’s more like when you hear the cat going “Hurk Hurk Hurk” and you’re just seconds away.

      • Festus' Mustache

        Fucking Grandpa sweater.

    • cyto

      Every news article also says that this is unprecedented.

      Unprecedented means, you know, without precedent.

      CBS has a policy at 60 minutes. They do not allow people to film their interview separately. The reason? Because they were doing a hit piece on a company several years ago and they preemptively released their own version of the interview, edited to make them look good.

      So when the 60 minutes hit piece came out, it looked hopelessly biased.

      Their solution to this? Make sure nobody else can do the same thing. It might have been a better lesson not to do hopelessly biased editing, but you know, biased guy going to biased.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        It should be SOP that each party gets a full copy of the entirety of the interview, unedited, as they walk out of the room.

      • leon

        If you agree to do an interview where you are not allowed to record… I don’t know what else you can expect but to have a hit piece done against you.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I learned it from you FBI!!!!!!!

      • Festus' Mustache

        It’s a good thing that I’m going to bed soon otherwise I might have some nightmares about what our reality has become. No worries, Cthulu is not verified.

    • Pope Jimbo

      I look forward to watching the 60 Minutes reboot of the Trump interview. Like Lucas, I think they will add a lot of CGI extras to make it more interesting. I expect at a minimum for them to put devil horns on Trump and have him sitting on a throne atop a pile of dead babies.

      Hopefully Leslie Stahl will not be shown in a slave girl bikini.

  39. leon

    I”m glad that we had two debates and a townhall and that Joe Biden has had no questions about Foreign Policy. I’m sure that since Foreign Policy and being chief diplomat is one of his only constitutionally delimited duties as a president, we really shouldn’t need to know about it.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Pfffttttt…. the State Department should be setting foreign policy anyway.

      • leon

        -1 O5

    • Urthona

      I think a combination of “Look, fats” and “Come on man” should be enough to tame North Korea and Iran.

    • Festus' Mustache

      Come on, man!

    • creech

      You’d think there would be some questions related to foreign policy. After all, Trump is accused of sucking up to dictators and destroying U.S. goodwill with our friends around the globe. How about some questions to Joe about what banning fracking would do to the price of oil and how that would benefit Putin and the Russian economy?

      • Urthona

        He’s now denying that he ever supported banning fracking so it would go nowhere.

      • juris imprudent

        Truth is – most people in this country don’t care about foreign policy. That is a plaything of the elite. When the common person does care is when things have been so thoroughly fucked up by the elite that the resulting mess is actually impacting the life of the common person. That was part of what got Trump elected. Given that he has been pretty limited in what he’s done about that doesn’t bode well for re-election; unless of course the problem has receded from the view of the common person. I think our summer of unrest in the cities may have accomplished that. Congrats Dems – you took what could’ve been a winning issue and shat all over it.

    • Mostly Peaceful JaimeRoberto

      Nominating judges is another constitutional duty, but he hasn’t been pressed on court packing either.

  40. PieInTheSky

    The British music industry should drop the “outdated and offensive” term BAME, the body representing record labels and musicians has urged.

    A taskforce set up by UK Music said the widely-used term for black, Asian, and minority ethnic people was seen by many as “misleading and inappropriate”.

    Taskforce chairman and record shop owner Ammo Talwar, described it as a “careless catch-all acronym”.

    The move comes ahead of the launch of UK Music’s diversity study.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54641786

    • Festus' Mustache

      Nice gig if you can catch it.

    • Nephilium

      So… world music? Or R&B and World music?

  41. The Late P Brooks

    The Employment Effects of a $15 Minimum Wage in the U.S. and in Mississippi: A Simulation Approach

    FUCK YOU AND THE COMPUTER MODEL YOU RODE IN ON.

  42. Sean

    https://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-nws-biden-trump-election-bucks-county-20201022-3j6xnrhhorfn7aocgfcjuwkw2i-story.html

    Shit, I might go.

    “I haven’t gotten the details, but we are about 99% sure it’s happening,” said Jim Worthington, owner of the Newtown Athletic Club and founder of People for Trump. “There is a whole country out there, and he’s coming to Perkasie, Bucks County. That is huge. It tells you how important where we live is to this election. We are at ground zero — one of the Top 8 places in the country he’s showing up at.”

    • leon

      Well i bet the grapes there are sour.

      :Kicks rock in federally forgotten wasteland:

      :remembers that federally loved locations brings in leftists:

    • juris imprudent

      Oh please. See this is the sad state of humanity – he’s coming here, we must be important!

    • Urthona

      My county is Bucks and I like to Fucks.

      • Cancelled

        Poor Keith Ramsey.

  43. PieInTheSky

    To add to the discourse, because a lot of you gays stepped into the conversation to add absolutely ZERO value……

    The twink trope is rooted in pedophilia.

    patriarchy.

    Understanding this role men have perpetuates their resentment of bodies seen as non-controlable.

    Much like imperial or ‘traditional’ feminity, bodies that are in proximity to whiteness, youth, and historically controllable groups are immediately fetishized.

    https://twitter.com/ayynicko/status/1319361597232402432

    • leon

      I don’t know what is being said, but i know the sayer thinks she’s smart.

    • juris imprudent

      My derp meter just pegged.

      • Festus' Mustache

        Kinky!

    • Fatty Bolger

      On the other hand, maybe people just like what they like.

    • Urthona

      I mean it’s true that there’s a stereotype that gays like young boys and this was used early on to justify keeping them out of schoolteacher roles and such.

    • Cancelled

      The point seems to be liking youthful appearing lovers = pedophilia, except for the whole having sex with someone too young to consent and thereby harming someone part. With a dollop of butch gays are enacting the patriarchy on their non butch lovers. I’m not sure how most of the gay couples I know fit into this, because none of them appear to me to be Butch guy and Femme guy pairings. I know one couple where both members are fairly femme and a couple couples where both present as just ordinary dudes, but YMMV.

      • Urthona

        Oh is that the point? ok.

  44. Rebel Scum

    Luntz

    My focus group’s words to describe Trump tonight:
    • “Controlled”
    • “Reserved”
    • “Poised”
    • “Con artist”
    • “Surprisingly presidential”

    Words to describe Biden tonight:
    • “Vague”
    • “Unspecific”
    • “Elusive”
    • “Defensive”
    • “Grandfatherly”

    • leon

      Washington Post reporter @MFFisher
      asks my group of undecideds about character.

      Similarly as before, they say Joe Biden is a more decent person, but they side more with Trump’s policies and how they affect their daily lives.

      Interesting. I don’t know how Luntz found these mythical “Undecideds” but id be interested in knowing.

      • Fatty Bolger

        they say Joe Biden is a more decent person

        If they only knew.

      • R C Dean

        Well, except for the groping kids part.

        And the part where he used his surviving son as the cutout in an illegal bribery/influence peddling scheme.

        But other than that . . . .

  45. The Late P Brooks

    :Kicks rock in federally forgotten wasteland:

    Public lands! Nature! Ecology! SCIENCE!

    *ghost of Woody Guthrie sings*

    This land is your land

    This land is my land

    • leon

      Well in this part of “your land and my land” the federal government had decided to test chemical weapons.

  46. Rebel Scum

    Serves the truant little bastard right.

    Mark Mastrov says he was stunned when his family received a letter threatening his 7th grade son, Merek, with arrest for missing three 30-minute Zoom sessions that were marked as unexcused absences.

    • leon

      Cops! Sure we’ll let the mob burn your house and buisness and murder you in your sleep. But we’ll be damned if you skip your 30 min indoctrination session.

      • Pope Jimbo

        To be fair to the cops, those mobs can be dangerous. They might set your ass on fire if you confront them.

        Nope. The better way to be sure you go home safe at night is to go threaten the non-threatening suburban family who has demonstrated that they are no threat to anyone.

    • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

      Withdraw him while you still can! There are affordable private school choices that are better than the status quo.

    • mrfamous

      Gonna guess the Mastrov family originally fled the Soviet Union to get away from this sort of thing…

    • The Gunslinger

      Nope. Voluptuous model.

  47. Rebel Scum

    NPCBS haz a sad.

    “The White House’s unprecedented decision to disregard their agreement with CBS News and release their footage will not deter 60 MINUTES from providing its full, fair and contextual reporting which presidents have participated in for decades. 60 MINUTES, the most-watched news program on television, is widely respected for bringing its hallmark fairness, deep reporting and informative context to viewers each week. Few journalists have the presidential interview experience Lesley Stahl has delivered over her decades as one of the premier correspondents in America and we look forward to audiences seeing her third interview with President Trump and subsequent interview with Vice President Pence this weekend.”

    Is it not more fair to be able to see the full context of the exchanges in the interview?

    • Trolleric the Goth

      well, it’s not more fair to them…

    • Pope Jimbo

      Context. I don’t think that word means what you think it does.

      Context is when you pre-chew the narrative so that any poor rubes who watch the segment don’t have to worry about doing too much thinking on their own. If 60 Minutes didn’t edit those exchanges, you might get confused and ask why couldn’t that lap top be verified, or why don’t they ask Biden any hard questions. They are doing you a favor by cutting that stuff out. Now you can save those brain cells.

    • AlexinCT

      The answer is that they will never admit it because then their charade to make the Obama admin sound scandal free would be burned to the ground.

    • AlexinCT

      60 minutes cuntes: HE RAILROADED OUR FAKE INTERVIEW INTENDED TO RAILROAD HIM RIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTION…

      /cry like a bitch…

  48. Shpip

    Weird. Typically when I comment here, I have a couple of buttons above the comment window: Link, Bold, Italic, Blockquote. They’re not here this morning. Something with WordPress that I shouldn’t worry about? (And yes, I should learn to html — but I have become used to the crutch).

    Chrome for desktop Version 86.0.4240.77

    • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

      Did you recently change anything? Those are monocle buttons, so perhaps your Monocle install got corrupted.

      • Shpip

        Rebooted, so new version of Tampermonkey is all.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        Were you using Monocle (buttons across the bottom of the screen) or Eyepiece (buttons along the side of the screen)?

        I’ve heard of people occasionally running into issues where tampermonkey updates screw up their install.

        I’ve included links to the current version of each, above. First thing to try is simply clicking the appropriate link and seeing if the reinstall fixes it.

        If not, uninstall the existing script in tampermonkey and then click above to reinstall.

    • Nephilium

      L

      • Tundra

        I

      • Cancelled

        .44 is a good round.

      • Cancelled

        $%^&*UI(O

        supposed to continue but I have not heard of a .54 before.

  49. cyto

    I will say this, the Biden campaign on television has been a master class. They have the Republican pack running anti-trump advertising that is vicious. They have several packs running advertisements that could be Trump advertisements talking about manufacturing, the middle class and tax cuts.

    They have short clips of Biden saying things forcefully.

    And it looks like they are outspending Trump down here in South Florida four or five to one. Maybe more.

    • leon

      I’d like Trump to win, just as a fairytale ending for the corrupt donors to biden and the deep state to get a loss. But i still don’t think it is going to happen.

    • Viking1865

      The straight up lying they do is definitely something. They had one talking about lockdowns in Michigan and blaming them on Trump. That MAGA Bitch Grethchen Whitmer.

      • RAHeinlein

        The Republicans are living-up to their stupid party image – no push-back on the BS, no message.

        The retirees are going to fuck all of us this election cycle given Covid and the SS/Medicare scare-tactics.

      • R C Dean

        The Republicans are living-up to their stupid party image – no push-back on the BS, no message.

        I remain convinced that the Repubs could win solely by running clips of Biden and Harris. Biden calling black people predators. Harris laughing about locking up pot smokers. Both of them vowing to shut down fracking and cripple the oil and coal industries.

        Maybe supplement those with ads showing the Dem platform – gun grabbing, Green New Deal, tax increases, etc.

        Deep down, I think they prefer being in the minority – all the perks, none of the work.

      • Idle Hands

        According to my buddy in Michigan the ads are basically straight saying vote blue or the beatings will continue because Trump is causing this. Although he’s pretty horrified that “noone’s actually burnt that cunts house down” (not that anyone’s endorsing such disgusting behavior to our fantastic elected officials yet so probably not a good sample for the standard voter.

  50. leon

    https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/10/22/what-do-these-never-trump-losers-think-is-going-to-happen-to-them-n2578482

    Now, you’re always talking about how you’ll be at the vanguard of the insiders who will rebuild the Republican Party after its four-year flirtation with effectiveness and actually conserving stuff. The clinical term for this kind of fantasy is “delusional.” Name someone awaiting the return of the people who got us into Iraq, put up McCain and Romney as willing sacrificial lambs, and who went full Dick Morris toe-slurping on the left the second they realized conservatism had left them behind? Maybe its one of those doughy geebos you find for your insufferable Lincoln Project vids about how “I was a Republican until Trump started actually doing conservative stuff and I couldn’t handle it”? With Trump grabbing about 95 percent of Republican votes, actual Republican Never Trumpers are as rare as Bulwark staffers who can do a push-up.

    Yeah, they are reserved to the Token Conservative who holds all leftist views Job at the media outlets

    • Gender Traitor

      At the risk of sounding like Gary Johnson, what’s a geebo?

      Or am I happier not knowing?

    • juris imprudent

      Trump started actually doing conservative stuff

      Um, what stuff exactly was that? See, this is stupid – he’s played a straight populist agenda, and populism doesn’t bend very conservative (or progressive for that matter).

      • juris imprudent

        Owning the libs? How many fucking trillion $ has he signed off on?

      • juris imprudent

        And I’ll note, this is exactly what keeps me from voting for Trump – these fuckers aren’t my tribe either.

      • Cancelled

        ^This. 2016 was Oafish William Jennings Bryan vs. Pantsuit Mussolini. 2020 is Bryan vs. Kerensky, with Madame Lenin in the wings. Conservatism is dead.

  51. Idle Hands

    https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/inside-campaign-pizzagate-hunter-biden-n1244331

    The New York Post published an article on Oct. 14 that it said was based on leaked private photos from Hunter Biden’s personal hard drive, including photos that appeared to show the younger Biden sleeping and screenshots of unverified emails claiming that he had used his position on the board of an energy company to set up a meeting with his father, then the vice president. Both Bidens have denied any wrongdoing, with Joe Biden recently calling the allegations a “last-ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family.”

    NBC News requested a copy of the hard drive, but Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, who had possession of the hard drive, has yet to respond. The New York Post article did not include any of the child abuse rumors.

    But the child abuse conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden that emerged from the fringes of the internet began swirling before the New York Post article and can be traced to associates of former White House aide Steve Bannon. They are now reaching a fever pitch less than two weeks before the election, in which Trump trails Biden in most national and many battleground state polls.

    IF giuliani’s claim isn’t true where’s the libel/defamation lawsuit? Seems like that would be an open and shut case. Also pizzagate has aged far better than russiagate.

    • leon

      Just this. I have to agree with Dave Smith a bit where there is something weird that we are supposed to condem people who find CP and Padeophila abhorrent.

      • Idle Hands

        I don’t know nothing would surprise me at this point.

    • Viking1865

      “NBC News requested a copy of the hard drive, but Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, who had possession of the hard drive, has yet to respond. The New York Post article did not include any of the child abuse rumors.”

      Jack Probosiec on Twitter was @ing Jake Tapper of CNN, offering him a copy of the HD. Tapper, of course, didn’t take him up on it.

      • Idle Hands

        I really want some brave soul to go on these shows and just start throwing printouts at the reporters with the emails on them.

      • pan fried wylie

        Printing out emails. Even for this. SMDH.

    • Gustave Lytton

      unverified emails claiming that he had used his position on the board of an energy company to set up a meeting with his father, then the vice president

      Fact check: false. Hunter used his position as Joe’s son to set up a meeting with his dad.

      • R C Dean

        unverified emails

        Bzzt. False. Some of the emails have been verified. None have been denied. Independent sources also verify the content of the emails, and go into even more detail about the pay-for-play and Joe’s involvement.

    • juris imprudent

      The Bee of course.

      The FBI is reporting they’ve discovered no incriminating material, pornography, or any other illicit materials on Hunter Biden’s laptop. All they could find was a 400-gigabyte folder named “HOMEWORK.”

      “Yep, nothing bad on here,” said one agent as he clicked around on the laptop. “It’s squeaky clean — the only thing he had on here was tons and tons of homework. Seems like he was a really studious individual.”

  52. PieInTheSky

    Sargon And Shoe0nHead Are Both Wrong

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpdP2aQQJGA

    I don’t know if there are people still on this board who believe Shoe0nHead is not a complete moron.

    • leon

      I don’t know, but for a while there a bunch were willing to overlook it cause she’s moderately attractive. But that voice tho. :tears out ears:

    • Count Potato

      Shoe isn’t a complete moron. She is right about many things, but has no understanding of economics.

    • juris imprudent

      This is the govt we deserve. I hate to say it, because of course it isn’t so true of this immediate group, but as a country, as a whole…

  53. Rebel Scum

    Dissolve NPR.

    Why haven’t you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story? Read more in this week’s newsletter

    • Tres Cool

      Terry Gross looks like a bug. Change my mind.

    • Gustave Lytton

      From the comments, NPR only receives 2% from federal sources.

      So won’t be an issue to cut that minor amount, right?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        *cough* bullshit *cough*

        They funnel it thru other organizations first.

  54. TARDis

    I have done my civic duty on behalf of the Banana Duchy of Georgia.

    Heil Drumpfler!

    *Clicks Heels*

    This is the first time I voted for two senators in one election.

    • leon

      This is the first time I voted for two senators in one election.

      Ahh so you’ve never been bused across state lines to vote in another election huh?

      • TARDis

        Soros wouldn’t pay my fare.

  55. mrfamous

    You see the meme “so and so DESTROYS so and so” on Youtube a lot and the video turns out to be a little less ‘destructive’ than advertised. But I have to say, this John Lee guy from the UK really does destroy the concept of lockdowns in this Youtube video from a show in Ireland:

    https://youtu.be/Qgn4B2Iq2cg

  56. Hyperion

    “Biden in last night’s debate says he “would transition from the oil industry“.

    All of the green cronies are lining up for their handouts.

    The only serious viable renewable energy is fusion. And it’s still 25 years away. Same as 25 years ago. Still not as far away as true AI, but still 25 years away. Drill, baby, drill!

    • leon

      Fission is completely viable.

    • pan fried wylie

      Nothing is renewable, entropy always wins. Fusion and Fission will eventually result in iron that cant be Fissed or Fused any further. Renew that.

      • Hyperion

        Is that before of after the sun goes red giant? In my way of thinking, I’m not worrying myself too much until that point approaches.

      • pan fried wylie

        If we’re doing all the fusing, probably before.

      • prolefeed

        The sun will go red giant in about 5 billion years, when it runs out of hydrogen and starts fusing helium into carbon.

        Iron only comes from supernovas, when the unfuseable iron collapses.

    • ruodberht

      True AI is two computers playing chess with kings only until the move counter overflows.

  57. leon

    Poll find Trump +15

    I’m trying my whack at being part of the “factual but not truthful” media.

  58. pan fried wylie

    The pantry always has … an unopened olive oil

    Just reached for mine last night roasting some eggplant slices. Need to replace shopping this weekend.

    • AlexinCT

      They believe people want a corrupt economy destroying asshat more than to have chances at prosperity for their families…

    • R C Dean

      I wonder how much money it really takes to move those odds. I suspect it is not too much for people who are spending considerable sums on polling, and would view the betting sites as just another poll.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        Or are just paying the bookmakers directly to set the desired odds with the agreement that they’ll cover the bill when due.

  59. Hyperion

    We aren’t paying crap

    We need more people like this to beat back these self appointed dictators.

    • Hyperion

      “Mangano, however, told PennLive the restaurant wouldn’t shut down its dining room — or even pay the fines: “There’s absolutely no fear here. We’re going to continue to come to work, and the governor ain’t going to do anything about it.””

      • pan fried wylie

        “Bada-bing!”