Wednesday Afternoon SugarLinks – OMG

by | Feb 17, 2021 | Daily Links | 363 comments

‘I will not make that happen’: Biden declines Democrats’ call to cancel $50K in student debt

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he would not eliminate $50,000 in student debt, shooting down a proposal that prominent Democrats introduced this month, but that he is open to some level of loan forgiveness.

“I will not make that happen,” Biden said at a CNN town hall in Milwaukee, his first event outside Washington since he took office, in response to an audience member who called on him to commit to cancel at least $50,000 in debt.

Biden, listing off the six-figure debts he said his children incurred attending private universities, said that he understood the burden of the student loan crisis but that he did not believe he could eliminate $50,000 on his own without congressional action.

And if they do any of this, they’ll pretend not to understand the anger of the voters who already paid off their loans. They will call the 2022 midterms “Black November.” And then that will be called “racist.”


 

It’s Getting Harder for Hallmark to Avoid Politics

There’s a large fan base of people who love to watch Hallmark movies, maybe a little ironically, or maybe with sincerity, or maybe sometimes a little bit of both. Tressie McMillan Cottom is one of them. She’s a sociologist who mostly studies serious stuff, but when it comes to Hallmark movies, she has a weak spot.

“Nobody ever asks me about something like Hallmark. I do this all day. All they ever want me to come and talk about is the end of the world. I’m like, ‘I would really much rather talk about Hallmark,’ ” Cottom says. “One of the things that Hallmark does give me is I get to turn my brain off.”

Hallmark has made hundreds of these movies, and it cranks out a few dozen more each holiday season. With every passing year, the Hallmark Movie Universe, as Cottom calls it, seems to get more cultural traction. It’s become the focus of adoring tweets and blog posts and podcasts. “Like every good cult, does anybody know when they signed up for the cult? Just one day, you live on the compound,” she says.

Too. Fucking. Bad. Welcome to the WokeMachine.


 

I really like New York City. Honestly. Food, nightlife, cabs. But shit like this makes it real hard, Ringo.


 

Look here Marsha, I’m not sayin’ this just to be nasty
I sincerely want to fuck the taste out of your mouth
Can you relate?

About The Author

SugarFree

SugarFree

Your Resident Narcissistic Misogynist Rape-Culture Apologist

363 Comments

  1. Rebel Scum

    but that he is open to some level of loan forgiveness.

    At the stroke of a pen?

    • Rat on a train

      or some hair

    • DrOtto

      $10,000 is the limit by pen, it’s right there in the constitution!

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        That’s essentially his argument.

        He can’t do $50k because he doesn’t have the authority, but $10k is totes fine.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Look fat… push-up contest right here, right now!

      • rhywun

        I tried to make sense of that and gave up.

      • Rat on a train

        see DACA/DAPA

      • Pope Jimbo

        Fuck that crippling govt austerity!

        Fight For $150K

  2. Count Potato

    “And then that will be called “racist.””

    I’m just surprised they were able to find a hall in Milwaukee that hadn’t been burned down.

    • SugarFree

      Hall, pest tent, basically the same thing.

  3. trshmnstr the terrible

    She’s a sociologist who mostly studies serious stuff

    Haaaahahahahahahaaaaaahahaaaaaa

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      MUH SHITTY STATISTICS

    • Muzzled Woodchipper

      Some of the stuff sociologists study is serious.

      It’s just mostly isn’t useful.

      • Tonio

        And their methodology is stolen from psychology but implemented poorly, their experimental design crap, and they don’t understand statistics more complicated than an arithmetic mean. But other than that…

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        ^^ this. The flaws in non-experimental social science are many.

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        It’s a massive exercise in pro level Confirmation Bias.

      • Rat on a train

        Peer review, man. It doesn’t matter if your peers are hacks.

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        Yeah, fucking their pseudoscience. And perhaps I’m waxing romantic here, but that’s not what I remember from my many sociology courses in the late 90s.

        I remember reading and discussing stuff like this.

      • slumbrew

        Cool link, bro.

        (though I could figure it out)

        Looks interesting – I know Buford from ‘Heat’ and my wife is reading ‘Dirt’ now. I didn’t know about his non-food stuff.

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        I have no idea why some junk is getting inserted in to all my links. They all have it, and I’ve been extra careful to watch them before submitting.

        *EDIT FAIRY BLESSES YOU*

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        He basically became a soccer hooligans of the most infamous kind in order to study them. Very cool book.

  4. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Purple Prince is Best Prince.

    • The Other Kevin

      Agreed.

    • dontreadonme

      He is a god amongst, er, gods.

    • Hyperion

      Well, there was da purple rain in the Minnesoda, am I right?

  5. Scruffy Nerfherder

    That first reply to deBlasio is the winner.

    “doing the OA dance until you leave office”

    • Sean

      I never did watch season 2.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I couldn’t bring myself to hate-watch it.

    • SugarFree

      That was a worse ending than that Matthew McConaughey erotic thriller where it turns out he is a character in a video game.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I missed that one.

        How could I have missed that one?

      • dontreadonme

        Yeah that was some weird sad shit.

  6. Rebel Scum

    Have I mentioned that I loathe Brian Stelter?

    Stelter introduced the obituary by saying, “A pioneer of conservative media and a deeply polarizing figure, Rush Limbaugh became the most prominent political radio host in modern American history.”

    After showing Rush’s struggling with pain killer addiction and highlighting his short NFL announcing job among other controversies, Stelter said, “A conservative media icon whose legacy will always symbolize division.”

    He added, “The home page of Rushlimbaugh.com now proclaims, ‘In loving memory of Rush, the greatest of all time.’ And that is very much how he will be remembered in right-wing media and by millions of fans who listened to him every day. In the obituary, we’re talking about the many controversies and scandals in his career, many others we left out. But you think about the daily relationship he had with listeners, and that is really what Rush Limbaugh was about, that daily relationship talking to people who were driving in their cars, turning on the radio at noon Eastern Time every day in their homes wanting to hear from him every afternoon. The content was very polarizing. I would argue oftentimes, it was all about grievance culture-making conservatives out to be the victims. Yet, he had an incredible connection to his fan base with those daily themes day in, day out. It’s that kind of connection that made him the most prominent broadcaster in right-wing radio for decades.”

    You are just mad because you have a Sunday show that no one watches.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Stelter is a moron. A doughy, unattractive moron.

      • Chipwooder

        I still don’t have the faintest idea how he has that job. I mean, as much of a clown as, say, Anderson Cooper is, he at least looks the part, with the silver hair, pleasant voice, the glasses. Brian Stelter is a fat little bald man with a high pitched voice and a tendency to sound hysterical. He’s a thoroughly ridiculous figure.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        No kidding, he’s dense, transparently hyperpartisan and dishonest, snaggletoothed, fake as fuck, has a soulless smile like Jared from Subway used to have, and he probably smells funny too. I don’t get the appeal.

      • SugarFree

        He pauses while speaking like someone is going hit him and when they don’t, he continues.

        -2 Charisma

      • mexican sharpshooter

        Maddow speaks with the same cadence.

      • BakedPenguin

        Is that his total, or just his modifier for being a goblin?

      • juris imprudent

        You mean he’s a real life George Costanza?

      • Not Adahn

        He looks like he smells worse than Jason Alexander.

      • rhywun

        I still can’t believe he scored the cute-as-a-button weather chick that I had been watching every morning on cable news for a decade before she married him and another seven or eight years before I knew who that fat fuck actually is.

      • rhywun

        weather traffic

      • SugarFree

        He took care of the cute-as-a-button part.

      • R C Dean

        Both of their kids look like they are blinking “save me” in Morse Code.

      • Count Potato

        Well, obviously they were stolen from baby carriages, because there is no way that goblin has working genitalia.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        Wait…he married….a woman?

      • rhywun

        Both of their kids look like they are blinking “save me” in Morse Code.

        LOL

      • Yusef, Disturbed, do not operate while intoxicated,

        Ellsworth Toohey, think about it….

    • rhywun

      whose legacy will always symbolize division

      Yeah, OK.

      Tell us how much you hate deplorables again, Bry.

    • Raven Nation

      The power of narrative. Affirmative action, high welfare spending, communists are misunderstood, Democrats run Congress. These all make up the acceptable narrative. Any disagreement with these things is divisive.

    • R C Dean

      What vile people CNN employs. What a vile institution it is. They can’t even do an obit on someone they dislike without turning it into a hit piece.

    • Hyperion

      “Have I mentioned that I loathe Brian Stelter?”

      Why would you have to? Is there anyone who doesn’t loathe Humpty?

      • The Hyperbole

        Me, only because I have no idea who he is.

      • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

        If you’ve ever seen issues of The National Enquirer or The World Weekly News in the checkout line at your local supermarket, you’ve probably seen headlines on either of those pubs referring to “BatBoy,” typically with a picture.

        Stelter’s the model for BatBoy. Also mendacious, with that sly, feral intelligence that only the truly debased display. For normal human purposes, he’s got the IQ of a microcephalous amoeba. Fortunately for CNN, he only needs the feral part whilst on-air to be a loathsome, Lovecraftian horror.

  7. Count Potato

    “True to the very end: Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh’s final Facebook post two weeks before his death was a dig at Biden – hours after his last show where he said: ‘I wasn’t sure I would make today'”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9271027/Rush-Limbaugh-dies-aged-70-lung-cancer-battle.html

    “Trump uses tribute to ‘legend’ Rush Limbaugh on Fox News to claim he DID win election and that ‘there would have been riots if it had happened to a Democrat'”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9271253/Donald-Trump-uses-tribute-Rush-Limbaugh-claim-DID-win-election.html

  8. Rebel Scum

    Kayleigh McEnany
    @kayleighmcenany

    Signing off with a final notable quote from Joe Biden during his town hall this evening:

    “Everyone knows I love kids better than people.”

    Listen, Jack. Kids are people too. Even the poor ones, which happen to be just as capable as the white ones. Some will even grow up to be clean, bright and articulate.

    • bacon-magic

      Sniffs creepily.

      • SugarFree

        Mumbles about how they smell like butter.

    • zwak

      Apparently, his son did too.

    • Hyperion

      We’re bringing back entertainment to the city. For me and muh friends. No one else can afford it, because we’re not bringing back jobs.

  9. Count Potato

    Today, in pointless virtue signalling

    “Congress holds hearing on reparations for slavery first time since BLM protests rocked the nation with Democrats pushing for bill to ‘consider a national apology’ to African-Americans”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9270567/Congress-holds-hearing-reparations-slavery-time-BLM-protests-rocked-nation.html

    “New York principal sends parents pamphlet asking them to rate their ‘whiteness’ and urging them to be ‘white traitors’ who ‘dismantle institutions'”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9268585/NYC-principal-sent-parents-pamphlet-asking-rate-whiteness.html

    • KromulentKristen

      dismantle institutions’

      I mean, we’re trying our best to dismantle the public schooling institution

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        Others too, but I’m sure we’re on a list or 5 for that.

      • KromulentKristen

        Somehow I get the feeling that the institution of public education is important to this particular person.

        Somehow I get the feeling that if I showed this comment to that person, the response would be “well, not that institution!”

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        Without doubt. But I also get that a person such as this would probably also complain about bringing down the institution of the FED, or of any office, department, or outreach group. They don’t want to take them down. They want to weaponize them against the rest of us.

      • Hyperion

        “I mean, we’re trying our best to dismantle the public schooling institution”

        Best idea I’ve heard in a long time. Where do I sign up?

    • Raven Nation

      Democrats 4/2021: following the BLM protests in summer, 2020 we recognize the need to formally apologize to African-Americans.

      Democrats 7/2021: we do not understand why all these rednecks keep invading our local headquarters.

    • pistoffnick

      “…rate their ‘whiteness’…”

      As a Person of Pallor, I rate myself a big …”Fuck Off With Your Race War”

      • OBJ FRANKELSON

        Well, I am an Irishman that was raised in Iowa. Not sure how one can get whiter than that. Ohhh, they mean, “white”, not pale.

      • OBJ FRANKELSON

        Always. Although the opposite is good too.

    • kinnath

      The Irish weren’t white until sometime in the 1900s. So barely white.

      • Mad Scientist

        Off white. Sort of a cream cloak white.

      • Rat on a train

        sometimes ginger

      • Gadfly

        Yeah, there’s not really much in the way of logic with the whole white privilege thing. Sure, a bunch of European nations colonized a bunch of the world, but at the same time a bunch of other European nations were being colonized, so even accepting the idea that privilege is heritable there would be no basis for saying that all European ancestries are equally privileged. Much of southeastern Europe was colonized by a non-European power (the Ottomans) at the same time that the Europeans were colonizing the Americas. Ireland was a colony of another European power until the 1920s, and in fact much of eastern Europe was colonized by another European power until the late 1980s/early 1990s, which is well after most African nations had already been decolonized, and those were some of the last nations to be decolonized.

    • Rat on a train

      If I rate as Navajo white, do I get a free pass. Clearly the people with the most privilege would be antique white or champagne.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I think you mean Navasexworker you shitlord!

    • Animal

      “New York principal sends parents pamphlet asking them to rate their ‘whiteness’ and urging them to be ‘white traitors’ who ‘dismantle institutions’”

      All my kids are grown now, but had I ever received one of these pamphlets, I would have run it through the shredder, sent the shredded paper back to the school with a hand-written note saying “Go fuck yourselves.”

      • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

        We’ll just mark that down as White Supremacist. Check your privilege and fragility.

      • Animal

        I will devote to that “check” all the time and attention it deserves.

    • Rebel Scum

      BLM protests rocked the nation

      That’s a strange way to say “riots that caused millions upon millions in damage and dozens of deaths”.

      • Rat on a train

        rock you like a hurricane

    • grrizzly

      The pamphlet quite literally advocates for genocide against white people.

      • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

        No, you misunderstand. Just as Defund the Police didn’t really mean defund, abolition doesn’t mean abolition. It means, um, dismantling or something.

      • zwak

        It means vote Democrat.

        Nothing else.

    • Gadfly

      Democrats pushing for bill to ‘consider a national apology’ to African-Americans

      If the Democrats want to apologize, that’s fine, as their party still bears the name of the party that fought for slavery, white supremacy, and Jim Crow. But no one else should be party to the apology, and it would be foolish for any Republican to join on, considering the whole point of the founding of their party was to fight slavery, so they are supporting no legacy that deserves apologizing for (on this topic, at least).

      • rhywun

        it would be foolish for any Republican to join on

        Which means of course that every one of them will go along with whatever happy horseshit the Democrats come up with. They might quibble over the number of trillions of dollars that will inevitably form part of such an “apology” but not for long.

    • R C Dean

      a national apology’ to African-Americans

      Why should I apologize to Michael Jordan and Oprah Winfrey?

      • mexican sharpshooter

        To be fair, I booed Mike on a few occasions.

    • Hyperion

      “consider a national apology”

      OK, here’s mine. Fuck off you racist cuntes.

    • Count Potato

      “Then, on January 6, as Congress met to certify the presidential election, a deadly mob stormed the U.S. Capitol with clothing mocking Nazi death camps; flags celebrating the Confederacy and Donald Trump; and insignia of white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys and militia groups such as the Oath Keepers.”

      I’m glad I’m not smart enough to be a scientist.

      • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

        Mocking Nazi death camps? Did I miss something?

      • Count Potato

        I think there was one guy with sweatshirt that read something.

    • Count Potato

      “Congress should also enact an antilynching law.”

      Because murder is legal?

      • Rat on a train

        What if some state decided it was? The impact on interstate commerce would be tragic.

      • Animal

        Proposal: An acceptable affirmative defense to homicide if the defendant can produce ten people who are willing to testify, under oath, of the decedent that “…he needed killin’.”

      • Don escaped Qanon

        what? that’s already the law ’round these here parts

    • Suthenboy

      SciAm was skin suited by commies a decade or more ago. It is just gibberish now.

      • Raven Nation

        I used to subscribe to their news feed but gave up when about 90% of the articles were about climate change. My problem wasn’t with the arguments about AGW itself but, seriously, that’s the ONLY scientific news going on every day?

      • Animal

        ^ This. Someone could literally clone a Neandertal and SciAm would ramble on about how the cold-adapted hominid would deal with all the global warming produced by eeeevil capitalists.

    • Hyperion

      SCIENCE!

  10. pistoffnick

    “I really like New York City.”

    Uh-huh, this town’s full of money grabbers
    Go ahead, bite the Big Apple, don’t mind the maggots, huh
    Sha oobie, my brain’s been battered

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNJETLKB70c

    • Chipwooder

      When I was a little kid on Long Island, I adored our frequent jaunts into the city to visit – and this was the early ’80s when it was still a hellhole. Didn’t matter to young me – to me it was exciting, vibrant, almost exotic. My dad’s father was born and raised in Manhattan, my mother’s parents in Brooklyn. NYC always had a special place in my heart, and continued to do so for a very long time. I grew up dreaming of living there. As an adult, however, I realized that the NYC I idealized was the mental picture I had of my grandparent’s city – blue collar, Irish and Italian, old-fashioned hard nosed people. It was not what NYC was by 1999 when I considered moving there.

      Now, it’s more like an open-air loony bin.

      • pistoffnick

        I like to visit. I liked people-watching at the open-air looney bin; The acrobatic thugs and the topless lady with the painted on Supergirl costume at Times Square. The hairy- chested freak wearing the pink camisole and high heels (I feel pretty) at the swanky used clothes store my daughters wanted to go to. The artist who arranged a bunch of chairs facing a movie projected onto the wall at MOMA (and then forbade anyone to sit in them because they were “art”).

        I liked the street corner hotdogs and the coal fire pizza.

        I liked the frenzy.

        But I could never live there.

      • Mad Scientist

        So, it’s much like L.A.

      • rhywun

        old-fashioned hard nosed people

        My current neighborhood is closer to that than to “loony bin”. It is pretty much ignored by those types which is fine by me.

      • Chipwooder

        But the suburban scumbags, they don’t care
        They just get fat and dye their hair

      • BakedPenguin

        I’d have thought if you were going to pick one of their songs, it’d be “More Beer”

  11. Muzzled Woodchipper

    Trump already throwing punches after a slim margin in the third round….

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was silent Tuesday night into Wednesday morning after former President Donald Trump lit into him in a lengthy statement calling on Republican senators to abandon McConnell and threatening primary challenges to incumbents.

    “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again,” Trump said Tuesday. “Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First.”

    Trump also attacked McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who was Trump’s transportation secretary but resigned after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. He said, “McConnell has no credibility on China because of his family’s substantial Chinese business holdings.”

    • SugarFree

      he didnt read the hat and hair
      he is not of the body
      not of the body
      eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      McConnell penned a particularly spineless Op-Ed in the WSJ a couple days ago attacking Trump.

      In a sane world, the Op-Ed would have just been about the ridiculousness of the Dems and their impeachment circus. McConnell is trying to purge the party but it’s not going to work. GOP swamp leadership couldn’t be further apart from their voting base and we’re going to watch the GOP split apart. A Quinnipiac poll (yeah yeah take it for whatever its worth ) reported 75% of Republicans support Trump leading the GOP and 89% absolved him of responsibility for the Jan 6 events.

      • Gadfly

        GOP swamp leadership couldn’t be further apart from their voting base and we’re going to watch the GOP split apart.

        The thing is, democratic political systems only effectively support the existence of two coalitions that can hope to achieve power, and in a first-past-the-post geographical representation system those coalitions are most effectively formed before the election as opposed to afterwards, which means there is only room for two effective political parties. If the GOP splits, it won’t be into two equal parties, it will be into one party that survives and one that dies, and if history is any guide dies rather quickly. If the GOP leadership doesn’t like where their base is going, they can consider going Democrat or biting their tongue and putting up with their base, as they don’t have another viable option (well, they could always retire from politics, but that’s not going to be a popular option).

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        Agreed.

        If the GOP were to split, it’s the GOP that will lose that battle.

        Whatever party is formed in the wake of that split is what will become strong.

      • DEG

        If the LP weren’t full of idiots, they’d take advantage of the opportunity.

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        Yep.

        But they have even bigger idiots than the GOP.

        I’d be happy with the party of Rand Paul, but that’s a fucking pie in the sky.

      • creech

        Meanwhile, right after the split, the Dems will seize control (absent clever gerrymandering) in states like Penna. Already, Gauleiter Wolf is proposing a 50% increase in the state income tax. If suburban voters continue to be put off by icky Trumpsters, the Wolf proposal will eventually pass. Then the voters will get pissed. But, as you all know, the ratchet is pretty much one way so all, or most, of the Wolf tax increase will stand even when a new conservative party regains control.

      • Gustave Lytton

        The ratchet is one way because the opposition is phony. Purge the RINOs and offer an actual alternative.

      • Gadfly

        This. While the ratchet seems one-way at the national level and in blue (and many purple) states, the ratchet does in fact turn the other way at times. Gun control is a major issue in which the ratchet has turned back at the state level. And taxes, too. In TX, the Rs, out of an abundance of caution that this state is turning from red to purple, a few years ago made it much harder for any future government to institute an income tax in our income tax free state. Some politicians actually make the right move, sometimes.

      • Gadfly

        If suburban voters continue to be put off by icky Trumpsters, the Wolf proposal will eventually pass.

        Well, if losing more of their money is worth it to them not to deal with icky people, I guess that’s a price they’re willing to pay. The Trump era has been eye-opening for me to the fact that many of the informed voters are just as shallow as the low/no-info voters. Binning your professedly preferred policies just to distance yourself from uncouth rabble is not a rational position unless you are shallow (this is a general “you”, not directed at anyone here, FYI).

      • rhywun

        Well, the Dems hate most of the people whom they claim to represent so it’s fitting if the Swamp-Pubs do the same.

      • Gadfly

        True.

      • Hyperion

        Good ol boys club is not coming back, Cocaine McTurtlehead. You and Mittens should join the dems.

  12. The Late P Brooks

    Welly welly well…

    Just blasted my way out of the drive. For a grocery run. It’s a good thing I put those big knobbly tires on the truck. Quite drifty, and with the relative increase in temp, the snow is getting a little heavy. I never could have gotten out on the old tires.

    My dumb fuck retarded monkey neighbor, who i refer to as the “plowboy” because he obviously derives some sort of intense psychosexual stimulation from running his goddam plow truck up and down the road. Except he pushes the snow to the upwind side of the road, so the bank makes the drifts worse. He piles the snow from his driveway across the road to a spot perfectly situated to make a big drift at the top of my driveway which never used to be there.

    Blah blah blah. Waah waah waah. With any luck, this will have been my last winter here.

    Better news: I successfully did my grocery run (out of milk, I had to go) maskless. saw a few other people also barefacing it. You gotta like that.

  13. Muzzled Woodchipper

    Listen here, bitch. You will stop your censorious bullshit.

    Social media companies that censor users or remove posts for ideological reasons could soon face fines in Poland in a world-first attempt to curb the power of Big Tech through legislation.

    Speaking to Fox News, the architect of the law, Deputy Polish Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta, said social media companies have for too long been targeting conservatives, Christianity and traditional values by banning them and removing posts and the Polish government is saying “enough!”

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I was hoping for the Wonder Twins.

      • Nephilium

        The first time those words may have ever been uttered.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        That would have been:

        “I was hoping for Gleek.”

        Of course, Rule 34 exists so……

    • SugarFree

      And when a Daddy virus loves a Mommy virus very much, and within the bounds of traditional marriage, they come together in an act of love and nine seconds later a brand new virus gets pooped out of her lady anus.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        After last night’s restaurant thread, I’m thinking it ended up half on an unopened roll of toilet paper and half on the wall in a Denny’s bathroom.

      • SugarFree

        I have a public library story worse than that entire thread.

      • Gadfly

        Please tell me you are going to make a post about it. That teaser is too intriguing to just leave hanging there.

      • Mad Scientist

        The Janitor Comes at Midnight!

      • Tres Cool

        Was there shit on the outside of the torlet?

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        I have a bad Golden Corral story that’s worse too.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Nothing compares to working in an amusement park.

      • SugarFree

        At the Lexington Public Library, one of the many homeless men who stunk up the furniture all day or masturbated to painfully slow 1998 porn, took offense at something, probably tried to Biden in the children’s department, went into the bathroom, wedged the door shut, shit on a towel and meticulously covered every surface with a thin layer of bum shit, even little bum shit kisses with the towel against the ceiling tiles by jumping up at them.

        It took almost half-an-hour for the police to show up (they are literally two doors down the same side of the street.) They got the door open and dragged him out of there, pantless and cackling.

        Two hours later, as the library higher-ups were trying to figure out a plan (the janitors had threatened to quit and go to the newspaper rather than clean it,) the police called and told them the bum was positive for Hep B. Eventually they brought in one of those businesses that cleans crime scenes and they did it in full moon suits, throwing away everything but the tile, fixtures, and porcelain, and blasting that with steam at close range to sterilize.

      • Mad Scientist

        This bum had the right idea, but he got Hillary’s address completely wrong.

      • Count Potato

        wow

      • B.P.

        I hope the library gave the bum a stern warning.

      • B.P.

        Also, I’d go ahead and cast Crispin Glover in the bum’s role in the movie.

      • SugarFree

        Hands were wrung, tsks were tsked.

        Eventually, the library called the police because a crazy was waving around a knife. The police told them to call the homeless shelter and never bother them again unless someone is bleeding.

      • Gadfly

        That’s a crazy story.

      • Mad Scientist

        I’m concerned that the library invalidated that homeless man’s interpretive art installation by removing it, rather than charging the hoards $10 a pop (all profits will be donated to the local homeless shelter, of course) to come admire it.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Ok, I thought my bathroom stall smeared shit story with a used rubber left in the pile was the best, but you win.

      • SugarFree

        The condom is a pretty classy touch, tho.

      • OBJ FRANKELSON

        Pfft… I have a violating federal law in a secure government facility story.

    • Not Adahn

      Needs that meme with the black bear and the polar bear Fu-Sion-Ha-ing into a panda.

    • juris imprudent

      the viruses must bump into each other

      That is how you SCIENCE motherfuckers!

    • Suthenboy

      Yeah. I dont think that is how that works.

    • J. Frank Parnell

      It’s not gay unless the viruses touch.

  14. Rebel Scum

    It is never going to stop until we as a populace simply ignore these tyrants.

    “When do you think this pandemic is — I mean, when are we — when is it going to be done? When are we going to get back to normal?” CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Biden, who explained that experts have warned him to refrain from making such predictions.

    “They tell me, be careful not to predict things that you don’t know for certain what’s going to happen because then you’ll be held accountable. I get that,” Biden said, adding that he has hope that the vaccines will continue to “diminish” the spread of the disease, creating herd immunity.

    “And now they’re saying, somewhere around 70 percent of the people have to constitute, some people said 50, 60, but a significant number have to be in a position where they are — they have been vaccinated and/or they’ve been through it or … and have antibodies,” Biden said before offering his vague prediction.

    “So if that works that way, as my mother would say, with the grace of God and the goodwill of the neighbors, that by next Christmas, I think we’ll be in a very different circumstance, God willing, than we are today,” he said.

    • Chipwooder

      “Dr. Fauci now recommends tying an onion to your belt to ward off the virus….”

      • Tonio

        [golf clap]

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        I want one of those medieval dick pins, to be honest.

      • OBJ FRANKELSON

        Hey, hey, hey… hey now, you are horning into, “Not the Bee”‘s beat now.

    • Tres Cool

      “So I don’t want to overpromise anything here. I told you when I ran and when I got elected, I will always level with you,” he said…”

      Thats some “No mother-fuckin’ Malarky” RNS right there. Gramps keepin’ it 100

    • Certified Public Asshat

      “When do you think this pandemic is — I mean, when are we — when is it going to be done? When are we going to get back to normal?”

      This man speaks for a living.

    • Gadfly

      They tell me, be careful not to predict things that you don’t know for certain what’s going to happen because then you’ll be held accountable.

      LOL. Like you’ll ever be held accountable for anything. Why would they start now?

      • B.P.

        Then he went on to make a prediction anyway.

    • Hyperion

      Here’s the deal.

      The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

      H. L. Mencken

      There is is, it’s all there is.

    • Mojeaux

      Wait, what? Is there a plant there in the darkness that’s supposed to be blazing with light?

    • Tonio

      Margaret Bourke-White, is that you? Nic pix, bro.

    • Mad Scientist

      Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

    • Tres Cool

      Nuthin’ sadder than a cold hot-mill.

      Or a broke pimp.

      • Gustave Lytton

        You know what would add some spice and liven up the place?….

    • Ted S.

      I get an error message.

    • JG43

      Looks like you got some condensation there. Is that a forge in picture 3?

    • Yusef, Disturbed, do not operate while intoxicated,

      Hand goes up..

    • rhywun

      1. It’s not as cold as Texas
      2. We still use natgas (and heating oil!) but Cuomo and friends are trying their hardest to impose the same green bullshit that got Texas into the mess it’s in this week
      3. Ergo… give us a few years and we’ll be shivering too

      • db

        Seems like the farther south you are, the more likely the local governments are to get suckered into “renewables” since the insolation is higher and typically the ice-related problems with wind turbines don’t need to be considered as much.

        How do they handle icing on wind turbines in North Dakota? I seem to remember an incredible number of them there when I visited. Maybe they just plan on keeping the coal fired plants running and to hell with the wind in the winter.

    • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

      Where I live, “real cold” starts at about -30° Celsius (-22° Fahrenheit).

      Most of the greenies I’ve met in my life have been in the Lower Rainland™, where “real cold” might start at 0° Celsius and “green” energy solutions might actually have a hope in Hell of dealing with that kind of temperature.

      That’s not real cold, that’s a nice spring day, dipshit.

  15. Gadfly

    I really like New York City. Honestly. Food, nightlife, cabs. But shit like this makes it real hard, Ringo.

    If your streets are empty enough to serve as a stage, your city is not making a very good comeback.

    • Hyperion

      And $5800 a month for a 1000 sq ft apartment. Oh joy, I wish I could live there!

  16. Suthenboy

    Keep electing commie shitbirds NYC and see what happens to your art and culture.

    • SugarFree

      I imagine he’s driven enough people out to be re-elected in a landslide.

    • Hyperion

      It means you’ll be free to be an artist, because there are no jobs! Get with it Suthen, you square!

    • Rat on a train

      First Lady Doctor Jill Biden!

      • juris imprudent

        Doctor First Lady if you please.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Ahem, it’s HERR DOKTOR HIGHEST OF HIGHEST FIRST OF ALL FIRSTERS THE GODDESS-QUEEN JILL BIDEN ESQUIRE, CME, PRN, DDS, ACE, CPA

    • The Hyperbole

      Why the fuck are you reading Allure?

      • Sean

        Maybe he doesn’t have a tv.

      • bacon-magic

        He wants to be pretty. Don’t you want to be pretty?

      • Mad Scientist

        Oh we’re so pretty
        Oh so pretty
        We’re vacant

      • mexican sharpshooter

        Lingerie ads.

      • Ted S.

        He’s hoping for Demi Rose stories?

    • Sean

      Doesn’t look like they’re double masking.

      Fucking Grandma killers.

  17. The Late P Brooks

    Work after 3 days of no gas.

    Those look like icicles.

  18. Tres Cool

    “They will call the 2022 midterms “Black November.”

    The preferred term is “November of Color”

    • Rat on a train

      I don’t know why I thought of this.

  19. Rebel Scum

    Shoot it.

    A massive river monster has been found in Florida.

    According to NBC2 News, an Arapaima was found in Cape Coral by Jaycee Park. What is an Arapaima? It’s a gigantic monster found in the Amazon River, can reach lengths of 15 feet and weigh nearly 450 pounds, according to National Geographic.

    Despite being from South America, this one somehow made its way north. You can watch a report from NBC2 News below.

    • bacon-magic

      It’s a dinky.

    • Tres Cool

      Im picturing arapaima nuggets breaded in cornmeal, fried, and served with some mac y queso, greens, and slopped in Big Boy® tartar sauce.

  20. DEG

    “My point is: I understand the impact of debt, and it can be debilitating,” Biden said. “I am prepared to write off the $10,000 debt but not $50 [thousand], because I don’t think I have the authority to do it.”

    Serious question. I’m too lazy to put Google to work. How does he have authority to erase any debt? If so, why only $10K?

    From the Capitol riot to LGBTQ representation, reality is intruding on the company’s traditional, conservative fantasy.

    I tapped out here.

    • The Frostbitten GT

      It’s not about what he has official authority to do. It’s about what he can get away with doing.

      • DEG

        Ah. He’s bullshitting. That should have been my first thought.

    • Gadfly

      My point is: I understand the impact of debt, and it can be debilitating

      Given how much he’s been a booster of more government spending, causing more government debt, I’m gonna have to doubt this claim.

    • slumbrew

      Shoe, on the other hand, is pretty great.

    • B.P.

      This is what she comes up with when she has a little time, because she’s not standing directly in front of the person asking the question?

      • Gustave Lytton

        Her circling back is actually the buffering symbol.

  21. kinnath

    Regarding the lawsuit by Rep, Empty Suit against Orange Man Bad, doesn’t this die quickly because of sovereign fucking immunity?

    • Tonio

      That’s a good question, one which we’ll have to wait and see to get an answer. There’s also the issue of whether Rep. Empty Suit has standing – something courts always seem to grant to politicians and bureaucrats on the flimsiest excuse, but so often unobtainable by us ordinary people. I suspect this will end up at SCOTUS on at least one of those issues. It’s going to be long and messy unless the District Court bounces it. Remember, that a filing fee is pretty de minimus (affordable) for people like him. And the mere act of filing the suit, however frivolous, gives him the Doing Something merit badge.

      • Gustave Lytton

        I’m still waiting to join the forthcoming class action lawsuit against each and every member of Congress for fraud under this new scheme established by Rep Shitforbrains

    • SugarFree

      One day we’ll look back on her clueless drivel as quaint and charming.

      • Animal

        You misspelled “nausea-inducing.”

    • Sensei

      Because the green lefties in CA have mastered reliable electricity.

      • Gadfly

        And our wind turbines are not built for winter storms, because we literally haven’t had a storm like this since they started installing turbines on a mass scale. I didn’t realize things were as bad as they are here in TX, because I have fortunately not had any power outages during this storm. Fortunately, the weather reports that this weekend will bring above freezing temperatures, so all this mess should be over soon.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Cause those windmills were cranking out 1.2 gigawatts when the flux capacitors froze.

    • kbolino

      Things I learned from reading that thread:

      Texas has an entirely private power grid that is owned and operated by Republican government officials.

      I’m not entirely sure what they think “privatized” means, but I don’t think I agree on the definition.

      • Suthenboy

        My father explained it to me once. He lives over there. I can’t remember how their byzantine system works but I remember thinking “That is pretty fucked up”.
        Your description may not be far off. I think the power generators sell to brokers who then sell to consumers. No doubt the brokers are all cronies of politicians. It goes something like that.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Is the Texas grid interconnected to others or is it completely independent?

      • Gustave Lytton

        Read through the ERCOT releases and there is interconnection (to some extent), but other grids are also at emergency so not able to provide juice.

      • db

        There is almost always some interconnection, but because of geography and the size of TX, I recall that its grid is one of the more isolated ones.

        TX only has four nuclear units, two at Comanche Peak southwest of Fort Worth, and two at the South Texas project for a total of 5170MW. Both are Westinghouse 4-loop PWRs, pretty large units, but compare that to other states, such as PA, which until TMI shut down, had 7 operating units. There are still 6 operating nukes in PA for a total of 7090 MW.

        TX has a population of 28.99 million; PA has only 12.8 million.

      • Don escaped Qanon

        I’m An Asshole Exhibit 407985jfa;dfa;lfkj 23re

        A buddy in DFW was whining: needz moar power! Why no power!

        I suggested it was because of all the new out of state folk; maybe he could go back to PIT?

      • Gustave Lytton

        Back of envelope, so would need ~40 nukes for the lost capacity.

    • R C Dean

      Of course, what’s really funny is that TX has a big chunk of its grid fed by wind turbines, and one of the reasons its grid is failing is so many of those turbines are offline.

      The other piece of this is that new baseline generators were not built because they weren’t competitive with the subsidized wind turbines.

      IOW, if you are looking for why TX is having is having problems, its because of exactly what she proposes.

      • Mad Scientist

        I’m struggling to understand how AOC can believe that iced wind turbines would, like, totally not be a thing with the Green New Deal. I assume it has something to do with the joke about how communists illuminated their houses prior to candles.

      • Suthenboy

        She doesnt believe that. She is lying her ass off. Communists universally deliberately try to fuck you. The economy may not be a fixed pie but power definitely is. The less power you have, the more they have so. they try to cut your legs out from under you every way they can.

      • rhywun

        Apparently she, like every other green idiot, is ignoring the tens of billions of dollars you need to spend on batteries in order to avoid the kind of thing that is happening in Texas. And that only gets you past a few hours of non-generation. Days? We’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars on batteries.

      • J. Frank Parnell

        The turbines iced up because we didn’t invest enough money to make turbines that don’t ice up.

    • rhywun

      Ignorant person is ignorant. Film at 11.

    • Rebel Scum

      The “green” infrastructure is the part that is failing…

      • The Hyperbole

        The Natural Gas lines didn’t freeze ? and the Nukes weren’t shut down because of the cold? Blaming the problems in Tejas on anything other than extremely rare weather is telling.

      • Count Potato

        The boiling point of methane -257°F. This is Texas, not Pluto.

      • Hyperion

        I used to work with a lady who had lived in Central North Canada. I can’t remember the town, but it was so cold there, that if you didn’t have
        a heated garage there, you had to leave you vehicle running 24/7 or the gas lines would freeze up and you could not start it again.

        Not so much in TX.

      • Gadfly

        The cold is the culprit, and there were many sources of power failure due to it. But, the green sources did fail disproportionately hard (half of the turbines failed, which while it only accounted for 13% of the power failure is disproportionate considering the wind turbines are only relied on for 10% of power generation in the winter), so to say that the green new deal offers any sort of solution to the Texas woes is laughable, which is what the AOC post in the OP claimed.

      • Hyperion

        What are you talking about? There is no cold, not anywhere. Al the glaciers have melted and it’s 11 hundred degrees hotter than it’s ever been, ever, all over the planet.

  22. KromulentKristen

    TOK & other Battlebots fans: did you know T. Massie’s kid is in the tournament??

    • The Other Kevin

      What team?

      • KromulentKristen

        Uppercut

    • The Other Kevin

      Oh I see, it’s Upper Cut. Ranked #4. That was my pick to win, until they fought Hydra, and couldn’t get in a hit because Hydra’s too low.

    • SugarFree

      Taking over Rush’s radio program, just like he would have wanted.

      • db

        I wasn’t really a fan of Rush Limbaugh, but I’m not sure that replacing him with Trump would be any kind of improvement as far as ideas go. Like others have said, Trump is a ’90s Democrat, and Limbaugh earned his salt fighting them.

      • Raven Nation

        My guess is that, if the show keeps going (there was a contract extension about a year ago but I don’t know for how long), Mark Steyn will probably take it on.

      • Rebel Scum

        Never listened to Rush’s show except for tidbits i’d hear on occasion. I see stuff from Steyn here and there too. He seems entertaining and gives zero fucks what leftists think. He could take over the time slot.

      • Raven Nation

        I think Steyn leans a little more libertarian than Rush or most of the other guest hosts.

      • robodruid

        TBH M. Steyn has been the best of a poor lot.
        None of them have the same spark Rush had.

      • Don escaped Qanon

        I listened to Rush learn wtf he was talking about one show at a time. He was funny in 1988; it was worth it. I guess I could listen to Trump’s education for kicks.

        When Limbaugh started, he knew considerably less about economics and politics than 23 year old me did. I was astonished that such a rube could command so much audience. He learned: free markets, free trade, good investing. He still never knew anything about guns and didn’t even own one when the NRA made him MotY. He learned enough to know that there was nothing economically mature about candidate Trump or president Trump, but, like good Team Redsters everywhere, he learned when to kneel and slobber.

        Trump is suitably ignorant such as to to restart that magic. Go for it, Donny.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        I’d prefer Mark Steyn but they could do worse I suppose.

  23. KromulentKristen

    How many portable chargers should I have ready in case this storm actually materializes in NoVA? I have 2 fully charged & 1 charging. I have a couple more available.

    • db

      *thinks about battery powered appliance joke, holds down backspace key*

      • KromulentKristen

        Those things are “nice to haves”, not “have to haves”.

    • Suthenboy

      All of them. When Laura knocked power out for 2 weeks here we had to resort to car chargers.

    • db

      If you’re really concerned, go buy a new car battery (you’ll need one eventually anyway) and a charger if you don’t have one already and one of these: https://smile.amazon.com/NOCO-GC017-Adapter-Socket-Battery/dp/B00G8WLX78/ or similar. They may even stock them at the auto parts store.

      If you think you’ll be out of power a long time, get a deep cycle marine battery and charge it up.

      • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

        You can also go get a gel cell (the kind of battery that goes into a UPS). 6V and 12V are the most popular voltages, and they come in many different Ah ratings.

      • KromulentKristen

        In 20 years in my house, the power has gone out a handful of times, no more than about 12-14 hours for the longest one. Most of the outages were during calm & clear weather. I only recall one storm-related long outage (the 12 hour one), and that was the 2012 Derecho.

        So, nah. Not at all worried. Just taking a few extra precautions. I’m really bad about having my chargers fully charged.

        I like the idea of taking another day off work, though. No power, no telework!

    • Rebel Scum

      I have a single Anker power bank that holds 3 phone charges . . . and a jump-starter that doubles as a compressor and triples as a power bank . . . and a solar power bank that holds, idk, many phone charges . . . and an emergency radio that doubles as a flashlight and triples as a charger that is also solar powered…

      I have gadgets, I guess.

  24. Count Potato

    “Changes to Sharing and Viewing News on Facebook in Australia

    In response to Australia’s proposed new Media Bargaining law, Facebook will restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content.

    The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content. It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter.”

    • KromulentKristen

      Я думаю, ты странный, и ты мне очень нравишься?

    • J. Frank Parnell

      What’s Russian for Die Antwoord?

      Little Big

      • Pope Jimbo

        Yeah, way more of a Die Antwoord vibe from these guys. Those first posers were way too clean cut.

  25. C. Anacreon

    Hi all, thanks for all the kind words and prayers! I’ve been really out of it for the past 24 hours. I’ve been in excruciating pain and sleeping most of the time. Looks like I will need to stay at least another day in the hospital, I’m still barely able to eat, and that’s only clear liquids — and there’s not much worse than sodium-free beef broth, why was that even invented? Hadn’t had jello in many years, that’s not so bad, and is now the highlight of my day.

    The surgeon came by and told me a bit ago that the operation ended up taking a lot more time and was far more complicated than he anticipated. They took out a chunk of my small intestine and sewed the loose ends together, then stitched back my belly skin — so lots of pain points added to the chronic pain from my crushed spine.

    Hoping I can be home tomorrow and back to work on Friday, we’ll see. Nice to be alive, even with severe pain it beats the alternative.

    • KromulentKristen

      I missed what happened…glad you are OK & mending

    • db

      Dude! what happened? I missed it.

      Glad to hear you’re getting better, but sorry to hear you had a problem in the first place!

    • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

      If Bill Cosby delivers the Jello, be afraid.

    • Count Potato

      So sorry 🙁

      Hope you are feeling better soon.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Back to work on Friday? You must work for the taskmaster from hell.

      (Also, huzzah!)

    • Suthenboy

      I am sorry to hear of your suffering. I certainly hope you have a speedy recovery.

    • DEG

      Good that you pulled through.

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      Oh man doc. I saw your post afterwards but have been thinking about you. I’m glad to hear you made it through and are doing okay. Be on alert that something’s wrong if you start losing your appetite.

    • The Frostbitten GT

      Thanks for checking in! Hope you can get some good drugs for the pain. Don’t rush getting back to work – just work on healing. Work can wait!

    • Sensei

      Glad you’re back! Get well.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Uffda. I missed something.

      Still hope you get better as fast as possible. Tell the nurse that if your jello doesn’t contain any fruit chunks you will be filing a complaint.

    • Mojeaux

      Wait, WHAT?! What happened? Crushed spine?!

      • slumbrew

        Man, he’s such a drama queen – “crushed spine”. As if. His spine merely collapsed six inches.

        (not recently – I’ll let him tell his story or I’ll provide the broad strokes if he’s back to chasing nurses).

    • slumbrew

      Happy to see you still with us, Doc – I’ve been thinking about you since you let us know about the surgery.

    • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

      Good for you.

      My whole fam’s got intestinal issues stretching back generations, and both my older brothers have had extensive ops for their guts. If you’re still in pain, request — Hell, demand — more pain relief. You as a medical professional of all people should know there’s no excuse for inadequate pain management after major surgery, and the chance of someone actually becoming hooked on opioids that they need to manage pain is virtually non-existent. Moral panics have no place in post-operative care.

      Our family had to use words like “lawyers” and “sue” and “alert the media” in order to get the medicos to pay attention, but it worked. Good luck, d00d.

      Oh, and what other people have said? I’m with ’em — don’t go back to work on Friday.

      • Pope Jimbo

        You know people who have hereditary problems with their intestines should maybe think twice before having chitlins…

      • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

        They’re not totems that have sympathetic magic, mang.

        At least I hope not.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      #Firstworldproblems

    • Tulip

      I’m glad to hear you’ll be home soon. Heal fast!

    • JG43

      Glad to hear it.

      I still like green jello. Even after that incident in college.

  26. Count Potato

    “Let’s talk about how the young black man is loving a white woman with Blonde hair
    Woman, blond haired

    … and then how the Black woman is loving herself. #WhiteSupremacy”

    https://twitter.com/theangiestanton/status/1361275953138323458

    “This graphic was tweeted by @UN_Women
    for #ValentinesDay.

    The Black woman is alone. The Black man isn’t loving her—this depiction eradicates the Black family, a goal of America for 400 years.”

    https://twitter.com/TalbertSwan/status/1361284520293634051

    • Suthenboy

      There really is no winning with racist fucks.

      • Count Potato

        Especially considering how ridiculously woke @UN_Women already is.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Twitter outrage addicts vs the UN…meh, I hope they both lose.

    • rhywun

      Also a goal of Black Lives Matter for, what, ten years?

    • Pope Jimbo

      Is that Mike Pence looking dreamily into the eyes of a disguised Trump (he can wear a fake beard, but the orange skin is a giveaway)?

  27. Pope Jimbo

    Well I sure hope those NYC dancers had a permit!

    NO PERMIT, NO ART! So sayeth we all.

    An ice sculpture that brightened moods in a St. Paul neighborhood has been removed because city officials deemed it unsafe and the artist did not have a permit to install it on park property.

    St. Paul Parks and Recreation crews on Tuesday morning removed the mobile ice sculpture from a boulevard on Summit Avenue near S. Griggs Street.

    “It presented a strong safety risk,” said department spokeswoman Clare Cloyd, referring to heavy steel beams that were not properly secured. And “it was placed there without our permission.”

    I actually think the real bad guy in this situation was Artists Local 78. Can’t have people putting up free art in parks! Gotta get paid Holmes.

    • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

      That sucks, but on the other hand if some moron managed to hurt himself with that, the city would be liable.

      • Pope Jimbo

        It would be nice to know how sturdy that installation was.

        I can see kids trying to swing on it and having that big steel bar come down on a bystander. But I still think that them fuming about not having a permit is funny.

        If they had just said, “We were really worried about that steel beam conking someone on the grape” and left it at that everything would have been fine. But they just had to add “it was placed there without our permission”.

    • The Hyperbole

      An ice sculpture that brightened moods in a St. Paul neighborhood

      Bullshit, nobody’s mood was brightened by that. At best a few people may have thought “oh, that’s odd”

      And while I’m at it how the fuck is that “whimsical”?

    • Don escaped Qanon

      In response to New Ulm’s Hermann the German, Al Franken suggested that Minneapolis should have a Stew the Jew sculpture.

      • KromulentKristen

        Is Jon Stewart even from Minneapolis?

      • Don escaped Qanon

        Stewart sounds like he’s a member of the Manhattanite tribe to me

        but I’m not an expert at janqui stuff

      • KromulentKristen

        (was a dumb joke…Jon Stewart = “Stew the Jew”)

      • Don escaped Qanon

        oh, got it

        I thought Manhattanite tribe was an interesting play, so I piled on

      • KromulentKristen

        LOL…well, I guess one of us here is dense, and it ain’t you.

      • SandMan

        I read that with “stew” being a verb.

  28. The Late P Brooks

    If you’re really concerned, go buy a new car battery (you’ll need one eventually anyway) and a charger if you don’t have one already and one of these: https://smile.amazon.com/NOCO-GC017-Adapter-Socket-Battery/dp/B00G8WLX78/ or similar. They may even stock them at the auto parts store.

    If you think you’ll be out of power a long time, get a deep cycle marine battery and charge it up.

    If you go that route, Harbor Freight (and many others) sell small 12V solar chargers, for RVs. Depending on what you’re running, you’ll probably want an invertor to 110AC.

  29. Pope Jimbo

    MIghty fine police work there Lou.

    MINNEAPOLIS — The announcement sounded significant. “Forty-six arrests and 69 felony-level charges,” announced by the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office after they and Minneapolis Police spent three days in late January, along with the State Patrol helicopter, targeting robbery and car jacking suspects.

    Sheriff David Hutchinson told KARE 11 News on Feb. 2 that a lot of those arrests were specifically for carjacking-related crimes.

    But now, three weeks after the arrests, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office says it has only received 12 cases from investigators.

    Of those, only five could be charged.

    And of those, none are related to carjacking.

    “All five of the men charged were charged with some form of a drug offense,” said retired Judge Daniel Mabley, who is consulting with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office on carjacking cases.

    For some reason we are having a huge crime spike in the Twin Cities. Lots and lots and lots of car jackings. Mostly by teenagers. The rumor is that most of the car jackers are bored kids who should have been in school but instead are roaming the city boosting cars. There have been at least three incidents where they have stolen idling cars with kids in the back seat.

    So when they announced that they had made a ton of arrests it was seen as a good thing. Now we find out that all the violent charges have been dropped and all that are left are drug charges? Uffda.

    • Suthenboy

      The whole purpose of Soros buying DA’s who let criminals walk is that commies love them some high crime. It keeps people beaten down and dispirited. That makes it easier to get your boot on their neck. I am not sure if that is what you are dealing with or not, just the first thing that popped in my head.

    • J. Frank Parnell

      69 felony-level charges

      nice.

    • Count Potato

      What/who is that?

      • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

        Another model who’s graced my studio. Lovely young lady. Met up in the Lower Rainland™.

    • mikey

      Very nice.
      A simple cartoon of the lighting would be cool.

      • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

        Not necessary.

        For this shot, a single 22″ beauty dish almost directly overhead and forward of the model.

  30. Pope Jimbo

    Sadly when I leave Minnesoda for better climes, it won’t be because of our stupid high levels of taxes or any of a million other good reasons. I will leave because of our stupid liquor laws.

    Bills that attempt to change Minnesota liquor laws run into two interconnected obstacles. One is the requirement by legislative leaders that lawmakers will only weigh in if the entire industry comes to an agreement. This is usually described as a need to have “peace in the valley.”

    “With everything on our plate, it’s gonna be hard to do things that there isn’t pretty broad consensus,” said House Commerce Committee Chair Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids, who said he preferred to focus his committee’s time on general business relief for the hospitality industry to help with the pandemic.

    “Making permanent changes to state liquor laws is certainly one way we could help them, but I don’t think it’s the only way we could help them,” said Stephenson, who said he supports limiting fees charged by food delivery apps, for example.

    This brings up the second obstacle: There can be no peace if the legacy industries — liquor wholesalers and private liquor stores — are OK with current law. In 2011, they supported the so-called Surly Bill, which allowed brewers to sell beer in their taprooms to-go, beer in growlers and 32-once cans known as crowlers. In 2015, craft distillers got similar if more limited sales authority. And in 2017, the legacy players ended their opposition to Sunday liquor sales.

    But further changes, they argue, would upend Minnesota’s post-Prohibition method for regulating alcohol, a three-tier system that splits up the manufacturing, distribution and retail sale of booze.

    Yes, yes, leave our corrupt 3-tier system in place so you can focus on … delivery fees? Yeah, I totes agree that it will take so much time to interfere with food delivery that you won’t have time to simply allow breweries and distilleries to engage in voluntary trade with their customers (without allowing the distributors to wet their beaks).

    • Pope Jimbo

      Why would young healthy service members want to take the vaccine? They are at 0% chance of dying. Getting the Rona is probably a week of light duty. On the flip side if you get the vaccine you are gambling that there are no long term side effects.

      I just had this argument with a coworkers. She was upset with the way that vaccines are being rolled out. She is in a May – December marriage and her husband actually qualified for the vaccine due to his age. She being much younger did not.

      She was upset that not only could she not get the vaccine but that their young kids couldn’t either. According to her, the entire family should have gotten the shot. I tried to point out to her that giving kids the vaccine is damn near child abuse. The odds of them having an adverse long term impact on their health is way higher than the kids dying from the Rona.

      Nope. She wasn’t having any part of it. She is going to come up with some scheme to get her kids the shot as soon as she can.

      As a bonus she also told me that there were no long term side effects from the vaccine. When I asked how she knew she said that people have been getting shots for months now and no one is dying from it. Yup. Long term all right.

  31. The Late P Brooks

    Buying their love votes

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers have reached a spending deal on small business grants, stimulus checks for individuals and housing for farmworkers infected by the coronavirus, Newsom said Wednesday.

    It includes a fresh $24 million for a program that puts farm and food processing workers up in hotels if they contract the virus and have no place to isolate, Newsom said as he spoke at a community vaccination clinic in the Coachella Valley, a region that’s home to many farmworkers.

    “It’s candidly been underutilized, and we recognize that,” Newsom said of the farmworker housing program. “And the purpose of this new appropriation is to maximize its effectiveness.”

    ——-

    “We’re helping to ensure that we not only talk about equity, but more so that we deliver a solid plan and act on that plan to make sure that the vaccine is equitably administered to the people of color, and that our communities have a chance to survive and prosper,” Coachella Mayor Steven Hernandez said.

    He’s the most awesomest governor ever. Who could possibly want to cut his reign short?

  32. The Late P Brooks

    Refuseniks will be dealt with harshly

    A New York City waitress was fired from her job after she told her supervisors that she wanted to wait before she got the Covid-19 vaccine.

    Bonnie Jacobson, of Brooklyn, said she was unexpectedly terminated from Red Hook Tavern on Monday, days after she expressed concern about how the vaccine affects fertility.

    Jacobson said she and her husband had recently started trying to have a child, but their plans were put on hold after she lost her job in April due to the coronavirus pandemic.

    After she began working at the tavern in August, she and her husband once again began planning for a child.

    “I do support the vaccine. I’m not, as they say, an anti-vaxxer,” Jacobson said in a phone interview on Wednesday, telling NBC News that she feels there is still a lack of research about how the vaccine affects pregnant women.

    How dare she? The public health SCIENCE-tists would never steer her wrong.

    • The Hyperbole

      She can’t have a kid if she’s not waitressing?

      • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

        Jesus, d00d!

        She can’t afford a kid if she’s not waitressing. (Also, I don’t blame her.)

      • straffinrun

        No. She needs the tip.

    • Gustave Lytton

      A waitress with supervisors plural? Why would she tell them one way or another, other than none of their business?

      • rhywun

        “Public health”. That means your health decisions are everyone else’s business.

    • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

      She’s 34. She must be so far down the priority list that she doesn’t have to worry about it for a long time.

      • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

        As usual, the mistake was in expressing an opinion out loud.

        So much pain in my life can be traced back to that one simple (and oft-repeated) mistake of mine. If only I’d learned the beauty of the phrase “I have no opinion” back in my late teens/early twenties.

      • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

        As my dad used to say, sometimes I open my mouth before God has a chance to put her hand over it.

      • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

        Yep.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      That seems like lawsuit territory.

      • Drake

        Yes – And the lawyers might argue that if it is mandatory, the employer takes responsibility for any side-effects.

  33. The Late P Brooks

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that “the actual risks of mRNA vaccines to the pregnant person and her fetus are unknown because these vaccines have not been studied in pregnant women.”

    How will the CDC get that data if they don’t force pregnant women to get the shot?

    • grrizzly

      These vaccines were tested on pregnant rats. The vaccinated group lost pregnancies at the double rate of the control group.

      • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

        But because they were rats, the researchers put those results in the “win” column.

      • grrizzly

        They said that the pregnancy loss rate for the vaccinated group was still within the normal range for rats.

      • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

        “WinkwinknudgenudgeknowwhatImean?saynomore!”

    • Suthenboy

      Mostly what I have heard about the cooties are lies and people talking out of their asses. At this point nothing the CDC, experts, The WHO, etc is reliable. I dont believe a goddamned word they say.

      • straffinrun

        Not being able to see how it’s fascistic for a govt agency to buoy it’s public support by appealing to one political ideology and as a result line the pockets of multinational corporations. Welcome to the new world order.

    • But Enough About [this space intentionally left blank]

      I’m sure they were all deplorables, so it’s okay.

    • Suthenboy

      Jesus, will that fucking thing die already. Star Wars # 49….the first one was ground breaking and amazingly entertaining to me…as a child. It has been down hill from there. Go away already.

      Cant those Hollywood types come up with anything original?

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        I saw the first three in the theaters as a kid and you’re right, they were absolutely groundbreaking (I remember people giving the first one a standing ovation after it was over), but it’s been downhill ever since.

  34. Ownbestenemy

    It looks like my travels to OKC and going unmasked, sitting next to strangers, sharing classroom with persons from around the country resulted in no illnesses. Image that. One day people will decide to breathe the free air once again, I just don’t know when that will be.

    • straffinrun

      You’ll get it sooner or later.

    • KromulentKristen

      I was in the Wall Drug rabbit warren maskless in Oct. Surely, I must be dead by now.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Are you sure you aren’t a symptom free modern day Typhoid Mary? Better forcibly quarantine you just to be sure.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Ann Coulter’s looking less not attractive now that she’s put on weight.

  35. westernsloper

    That is not how David and Mick danced in the streets.

  36. Chai Girl

    Almost done with The Entertainer lessons on Piano. 🙂

    • BakedPenguin

      Well done. 12/8 time is tricky.

    • Mojeaux

      Ragtime is hella fun to play!

  37. Hyperion

    Did the rover land or did Trump do something today that makes that not news?