Sunday Morning Sweating So Hard Links

by | Jun 13, 2021 | Daily Links | 175 comments

“Christ, what an asshole.”

114° out. Heading to 118. Street temps have been hitting 170. Brutal. Shvitzing doesn’t even describe it because the sweat evaporates as quickly as it forms, leaving behind crusted cakes of Lot’s wife. The chafe in my thighs would make Chafed proud. We get pit stains but no actual moisture.

Well, the mountains are lovely.

Birthdays, lest we forget, and there’s many of them today. The Holy Roman Empire managed to get two real winners in a row; a guy who took “get bent” literally; the last man who knew everything; a guy whose equations weren’t actually his (but was still the equal of Einstein); a guy you’ll remember the next time you see a concert; the REAL Sherlock Holmes (at least until Jeremy Brett came along); the British Mary Avara; a real polymath who figured out what happened to the dinosaurs; a guy who could tell you what your life was all about; the center square; a guy who walked the fine boundary between genius and madness; the guy who inspired generations of TPers; a candidate for the dumbest and least effective member of Congress; a guy who never quite shook off Alex deLarge; a piece of shit who was far less entertaining than his cousin Keith; an actor who is a real dick; and another two for one BOGO.

Whew. Now we’re ready for Links.

 

Breath of fresh air. America is back. Whatever.

 

How conveeeeeenient.

 

Wait, you mean my employer might have rights to see the shit I do that they pay me for? Horrors!

 

Those, poor, poor things.

 

Those poor, poor things.

 

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

 

Old Guy Music is something easy and mellow to go with the heat-induced torpor. This guy is good. They ought to name a guitar after him.

About The Author

Old Man With Candy

Old Man With Candy

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

175 Comments

  1. Count Potato

    “Heading to 118”

    Seriously? WTF

    • Old Man With Candy

      Seriously. 117 is the lowest we’ll get this week.

      • Count Potato

        Damn. I just put on a sweatshirt. Not that it’s that chilly, I didn’t feel like eating this morning.

        If it makes you feel any better it hit 98% humidity this past week.

      • Sean

        I’d sizzle like bacon. ?

      • Ted S.

        +1 bacon-magic

    • Not Adahn

      Yeah, seriously? What kind of desert only heats up 4 degrees over the course of a day?

  2. PieInTheSky

    Stupid weather. Rain Rain and more rain. Gonna spoil the cherry just as they ripen

    • Tonio

      Isn’t that how it’s normally done? Asking for a friend…

      • Not Adahn

        Sometimes horseback riding incidents or gymnastics are involved.

      • Trigger Hippie

        So, the Roman Polanski of weather patterns?

      • Tres Cool

        What goes into 13 twice ?

        Roman Polanski.

      • Trigger Hippie

        Hot Tub Crime Machine

    • Sean

      Break out the water wings.

  3. Not Adahn

    Related to heat, and last night:

    The New York sun is weak and pathetic. I can be out all day and only (possibly) get a sunburn on my scalp.

    I am turning ethnically ambiguous, as all Oklahomans (who are all part Cherokee) do.

    • robodruid

      spring is definitely over in OK
      Very quiet Tornado season.

    • rhywun

      Ethnic privilege? I cannot be out all day without turning beet red.

  4. Tonio

    Regarding the Pulse nightclub massacre. The alphabet soup has been conspicuously silent about the shooter’s affiliations, too.

    Also, since this sets a precedent does that place in Vegas also become a national monument?

    • Gender Traitor

      ::blinks, tilts head like confused Irish Setter:: WHAT place in Vegas?/willfully oblivious

      • rhywun

        I believe he’s referring to that redneck concert some guy shot up. It was memory-holed by the media so the details aren’t fresh in my head.

      • Gender Traitor

        In that case, who cares? Don’t all redneck concerts get shot up? I mean, with all those gun-loving hicks, it’s amazing (and unfortunate) that there are any deplorables left!/prog journalist

    • Count Potato

      “Omar Mateen had no idea PULSE was a gay club. He spent the prior day looking at Disney locations, but they were too secured. He entered “Club, Orlando” in Google – not “gay club” – to find it. He never uttered an anti-LGBT syllable, saying his motive was US bombing in Iraq/Syria.”

      https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1403781486768115712

      • EvilSheldon

        I love you Glenn, but this seems like a bit of a reach. This was a period, you’ll remember, when AQ was actively exhorting their followers to attack ‘degenerates,’ in their online newsletter and through other information channels.

        Mateen’s primary motivation was to select an enclosed, crowded indoor target with limited entrances and exits, that would give him good control of the killing ground and prevent his victims from escaping or sheltering behind cover. But attacking a nightclub was a bonus. To a committed Wahabist, *all* nightclubs are hotbeds of deviancy and perversion, and Disney is pretty questionable…

      • Chafed

        Right. What’s missing is any information showing homophobia was his motivation. You are right. So is Greenwald.

    • Not Adahn

      There is a persyn that frequented the same internet hangouts as me claiming at the time that the shooter was a conservative republican. No matter what the news reported, she “knew” what “really” was going on because of her trans-powers.

      • Chafed

        The shooter had a gun. Obviously he was a conservative Republican.

  5. The Late P Brooks

    One bright side for those now worried: JPMorgan doesn’t typically take the more cumbersome step of reading the messages unless there’s a reason to, according to a person with knowledge of the process.

    Just think of the vast trove of sexual harassment litigation just waiting to be explored.

    • EvilSheldon

      So he’s saying that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear?

      • Trigger Hippie

        +1 Goebbels Financial

  6. Tres Cool

    Been in the high-80s/low 90s here with soupy/swampy humidity. Ohio in the summer.
    But for some reason, we’re getting a couple days this week only in the 70s, with lows in the 50s at night.

    Back to a/c during the day, boiler @ night.

    Ohio.

    • Gender Traitor

      Tranquility Base is still tolerable…so far. As long as I’m in my summer-weight jammies and a thin cotton shirt (a shirt that was about all I could stand to wear some years back after getting poison ivy trying to help my sister clean up her yard and avoid further fines from the city of Dayton.)

      PSA for Tres: If you’re trying to stay low-carb, stay away from the bakery vendor at the Shiloh Farmers’ Market. I went yesterday for the first time this year (second market day of the season.) Strawberry danish and little bitty apple fry pies (like homemade Hostess fruit pies.) Oh. My. God. TT had two of the latter.

      • Tres Cool

        I fell off the wagon yesterday and drunkenly tore into White Castle. The Dozer got most of the buns, but I had a couple. And some onion chips.
        I held back more gas @ work last night than Iran did to the US during the hostage crisis in the 70s.

        /Lord hear my prayer

      • Sean

        ?

        Dude.

      • Gender Traitor

        Any trip to Lowe’s is likely to turn into a cheap, tawdry excuse to drive through White Castle.

        And cats don’t eat buns.

      • Tres Cool

        No, they just gnaw @ your face after you expire from the coronary you got from eating too many sliders.

  7. Sean

    Morning y’all.

  8. Count Potato

    “Currently, most k-12 students already learn a kind of Confederate Race Theory, whereby the Daughters of the Confederacy long ago imposed a version of history wherein slavery was not so bad and had nothing to do with the civil war, and lynchings and violence never happened.”

    https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1403471521876779011

    Slavery was not so bad? Where is this taught? Woodrow Wilson Junior High?

    • leon

      It’s Joy Ann Reid. Truth never stopped her from saying something.

    • Don Escaped Texas

      This is the great American failing of my lifetime: the retreat from intellectual honesty. The irony would be lost of them, of course, that, in attacking a group whose goal arguably includes a good deal of historical revisionism, they themselves have, congruently, departed from honestly representing what is happening today.

    • Tonio

      Currently, most K-12 students…”

      It’s not 1964 any longer, Ms. Reid. I believe this was the version of history taught in the 1960s in Virginia, but was gone by the time I was in HS. I remember a history teacher referring derogatorily to the “happy little children” view of slavery that had been previously taught. So, yeah, sixty years ago in the South, but today not so much.

    • Grumbletarian

      This seems to suggest that currently most K-12 teachers are racist.

    • rhywun

      I must have been out sick that day. ?

    • Spartacus

      I went to school in 1970s Florida. My parents were from Alabama and my dad was a die-hard George Wallace supporter.
      I NEVER ONCE heard anyone make such a claim. I call super-duper bullshit.

    • zwak

      I went to school in the 70s and 80s in a left coast college town, and was never taught ether way about slavery. It was just mentioned casually, not as bad nor as good.

      Funny that.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      If it’s Joy Reid, you can rest assured that it’s bullshit.

  9. Fourscore

    Great links, OM, and my kind of music. LP and MF were the dynamic duo of a much younger Fourscore. The 5 tube Arvin would sometimes get the mega station from Del Rio after sundown and we might get lucky and occasionally hear the whole song before the fading started.

    Looks like Biden is learning that being President is hard. Have to stay awake and stuff.

    • Gender Traitor

      I’ll add two club thumbs up for the Old Man Music. I never understood why Tom T would balk when I’d beg him to add How High the Moon to our repertoire.

      • Old Man With Candy

        SP and I want to cover it. Only problem is, I can’t play it.

      • Gender Traitor

        That was TT’s lame excuse. What’s so hard?/drummer-chick singer 😉

      • Fourscore

        That was what I expected from the Dynamic Dou, when they popped up.

    • Old Man With Candy

      The fun thing about All American Fives was playing Russian Roulette with chassis grounding.

  10. The Late P Brooks

    “In the coming days, I will sign a bill designating Pulse Nightclub as a national memorial, enshrining in law what has been true since that terrible day five years ago: Pulse Nightclub is hallowed ground,” Biden wrote.

    We’ll keep these bodies around forever, to ensure we’ll have a place to stand when we need one.

    • rhywun

      OFFS but entirely predictable from this administration.

  11. The Late P Brooks

    Instead of talking terrorism, however, Biden leaned on the old Democratic standby that the attack was part of the larger problem of the “epidemic of gun violence” and launched into a laundry list of policy proposals like new gun control measures and LGBT rights legislation.

    Institutionalized defenseless infantilization made this nation what it is.

    • EvilSheldon

      Sadly, since the public health racket has been working so well with Covid, they’re going to continue trying to medicalize everything…

      Anyone who refers to an ‘epidemic’ of anything that isn’t a communicable disease is playing you for a sucker, full stop.

  12. The Hyperbole

    Woo-hoo, I guessed three of the birthdays correctly, a new personal best!

    • Sean

      *Hands Hype a small unicorn plushie*

      • Not Adahn

        Speaking of personal bests — “Starting holstered and loaded, wrists above shoulders. A the start signal engage T1 – T8 with at least two rounds each and S1 -S3 with at least one round each. Scoring best two on paper, steel must fall.”

        That’s 11 targets, 19 rounds, with a reload. I fucked up and needed 4 shots to knock down the 3 steel plates.

        10.24 seconds

      • Not Adahn

        While it was the fastest, it didn’t win because I got a -1 and three (3!) -3s.

        Fast, but sloppy (that’s what she said).

      • Old Man With Candy

        Is this USPSA stuff?

      • Not Adahn

        Sort of. Kayaderoserras rules.

        Speaking of — Kayaderoserras 2 day match next month — come and win fabulous prizes, like a gift certificate to Calamity Jane’s Firearms and Fine Shoes.

        The gift certificates will probably be worth the gas you’ll need to redeem them!

      • Not Adahn

        Damit, that is a real place!

        https://calamityjanesfirearms.com

        It’s the hobby store of the wife of the local tractor dealer.

      • EvilSheldon

        That place actually looks pretty cool.

        One of the guys in my D&D group is a gun guy as well, and he’s often said that if he had a gun store he’d combine it with a tabletop game store – “I’d sell both kinds of RPGs!”

        I told him that while it sounded like fun, it might not be a sustainable business model, combining the two stores most likely to have weirdos hanging around not buying anything…

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        There used to be a Guns and Guitars shop in San Diego, complete with AK-47s that looked like Fenders.

      • Gender Traitor

        Oh, Lordy! If TT ever found that place, he’d never leave. And he’d spend every dime he had.

      • Sean

        Stll, I guess that merits a prize from the next shelf up.

        *Hands Not Adahn a Squirtle plushie*

      • EvilSheldon

        Good work!

        Except for those -3s. *shakes head* A -3 hit adds three seconds to your time. Is there any shot that you couldn’t make up into a -0 in under three seconds? I’ll bet there isn’t…

        Still, good work. Just schedule yourself for ten lashes with the rattan cane, one for every point down.

      • Not Adahn

        Yeah. Gotta follow the rules of the game you’re playing.

        Two of them were sufficiently far away that I couldn’t see the impacts, but I can only assume the reason I didn’t see the third is I was already looking ahead to the next target. This happened on a shoot-on-the-move stage where I missed the second shot on a close target completely, but -0’d the target ten yards past it while walking.

  13. The Late P Brooks

    Journalists are often subjected to racist or sexist slurs, vile insults and threats of rape, dismemberment or other violence from online readers.

    Online harassment is hardly unique to journalists. But the visibility of reporters makes them particularly vulnerable to attack, said Viktorya Vilk, program director for digital safety and free expression at the literary and human rights organization PEN America.

    Fryer, who covers auto racing, said she “was in tears daily” over online abuse she received for coverage of a noose found last year in an Alabama garage stall used by NASCAR’s only full-time Black driver. She said the only time she heard from the company about harassment was when a manager remarked that Fryer had gotten a lot of it.

    More of that rhetorical jiu jitsu. Whycome them mean old hicks call me out for my insults and stupidity?

    Journalists should be free to blurt out any imbecilic nonsense which might pop into their heads, engage in egregious mudslinging, torture the language unto incomprehensibility, and be utterly free from criticism or correction?

    Fuck off.

    • Tonio

      I’d like to see how many of those texts/tweets/emails were actual, specific threats (“I’m going to come to your house and stab you”) vs mere abuse (“you’re a lying POS, die in a fire”)?

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Very few if any I guarantee.

      • The Hyperbole

        While I get there is a legal distinction, I don’t see how it makes a difference on the “don’t be a douchebag” scale.

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      Viktorya Vilk, program director for digital safety and free expression at the literary and human rights organization PEN America.

      You know my shtick by now. Why the fuck should I care what this person has to say?

    • Grumbletarian

      Journalists: “Racist white supremacist MAGA-hat wearing teenager sneers hatefully at innocent indigenous war hero! Here’s his name and where he goes to school!”

      Also journalists: “The online abuse we receive is ruining our lives!”

  14. The Late P Brooks

    The 5 tube Arvin would sometimes get the mega station from Del Rio after sundown and we might get lucky and occasionally hear the whole song before the fading started.

    “Well, get the damn ionosphere off the air.”

  15. The Late P Brooks

    Women and minorities usually have it worse. Vilk believes the preponderance of white men in management has contributed to the industry’s delay in reacting.

    Some members of the AP’s race and ethnicity reporting team approached their editor, Andale Gross, following Wilder’s firing with concerns over whether the company would support them if their stories or tweets proved controversial, he said. Racist slurs and threats happen frequently to the reporters he supervises, who include Blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans, and AP security has responded to a number of them, he said.

    The team’s story two weeks ago about racism in the military provoked many hateful messages from people who said they were in the military — essentially proving the article’s point, he said.

    “I don’t want people to think it should be accepted or tolerated,” Gross said. “But it comes with the territory of the things we write about. We know that every story we produce, we can be dealing with an onslaught of racism.”

    So tedious.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Vociferous disagreement doesn’t racism make. They want the ability to lie, slander, and libel without any backlash.

      • rhywun

        essentially proving the article’s point

        Yeah, I’m betting this ↑ is complete horseshit.

    • leon

      If you can’t do the time don’t do the crime

    • EvilSheldon

      Dunno, have they also banned bicycles from public roadways?

    • Not Adahn

      It’s theft, which is one of the two specialties of the state.

      “It was very loud. The gas was, ‘vroom, vroom,’”

      I can see why Philly is trying to protect their three year olds.

      • rhywun

        The nuisance is real. I don’t have an answer barring any way to ban assholes.

        I do suspect the issue would largely go away if the government stopped paying shiftless young people to not work.

      • Not Adahn

        I’m sure it is annoying. But in an urban environment, I don’t know of any way of not having annoying people near you without going full Singapore.

      • rhywun

        Yeah. I will only note that this was not a noticeable issue the first 20 or so years I have lived in NYC. The trend of driving (and sometimes racing) extremely loud vehicles through residential neighborhoods started two or three years ago and shows no signs of slowing. I know I’ve been bitching about it here for about that long.

      • Not Adahn

        Huh. I wonder why. Have off road vehicles become cheaper? Was there some movie/TV show that popularized them?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Avoidance of licensing and personal property taxes

      • rhywun

        Around here it’s not off-roads but dirt-bikes and cars with modified mufflers or engines or whatever the fuck they do to make the vehicle as loud as possible. The intent literally is to be a giant asshole.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        That’s why God gave us sugar for gas tanks.

    • blackjack

      We just want to be free to ride our machines without getting hassled by the man. And we want to get high.

      • Threedoor

        At some point when o was away playing army Idaho changed the rules. You used to be able to run forest service roads with no lisence and insurance on your bikes and quads. Now it’s horn, mirror, insurance, plates. It’s a real pain in the ass and a big expense if you only take them out a couple times a year. Enough so that I quit riding three years ago. The paperwork pisses me off.

      • Threedoor

        Couple that with the Clinton administration making all the forest service jerks cops and you have to look over your shoulder constantly when you’re in the woods.

  16. The Late P Brooks

    “My obsession with race proves your racism.”

  17. LCDR_Fish

    We got a ton of rain Fri – thankfully nothing additional yesterday although it was forecast. My backyard is flooded again – while I’m still waiting on the willow I ordered. Hopefully it shows up this week.

    • Fourscore

      Drought Chez Moi. We checked the honey flow yesterday and there isn’t much. No flowers, dry grass, no rain in the 10 day forecast. TX is stealing MN rain, damned democrats.

    • Not Adahn

      Lol, they include a picture of the ceramic rabbit.

      • Gender Traitor

        Thrown through a window and apparently unscathed?

        That’s one bad-ass bunny!

    • EvilSheldon

      And then the housebreaker took a shower. I got twenty bucks that his BAC was over 0.2%.

  18. Count Potato

    “There was a mass shooting overnight in an entertainment district of Austin, Texas. 13 were injured. One suspect, described by police as a slim black male with dreadlocks, escaped the scene.

    Liberal newspaper Austin @statesman says it refuses to print the description of the mass shooting suspect for ideological reasons.”

    https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1403794410920370179

    • Trigger Hippie

      Suspect described as: Sentient Organic Matter scuttling about across a thin layer of dirt, rocks, and sand on a small planet somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy. Possible solar system: Sol.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Austin TX aka San Fran East, what a joke.

    • Rat on a train

      Better round up all the elderly women for questioning.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        *TSA intensifies*

      • creech

        No, it obviously was an Amish white supremacist wearing a straw hat with bison horns.

  19. The Late P Brooks

    The end justifies the means

    ProPublica obtained the tax returns of the richest Americans and discovered what every informed person already knew: They don’t pay as much in income taxes as some people would like them to. This is being called a great scandal by many Democrats and liberal journalists.

    Meanwhile, that these returns were almost surely leaked by someone at the IRS seems not to bother a lot of the same people. There’s no way ProPublica got this information from dozens of high-priced accountants and attorneys. Barring the possibility that this was a computer hack — which itself would be a monumental scandal — this is outrageous. Weaponizing the IRS for political purposes is not just a crime; it is a long-term political disaster.

    But rich people are icky.

    • rhywun

      I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that these returns “leaked” just as Biden is spinning his global tax fantasies.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I’d just start firing IRS employees until someone fessed up.

      If nobody confesses, that’s even better.

  20. Rat on a train

    So the geniuses at VDOT are proposing replacing intersections with roundabouts in a 55 MPH zone.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Out: T-bone collisions; In: high speed rollovers into the weeds. Make sure you have good tires.

      • rhywun

        *cue that video of the guy flying his car over a roundabout*

      • Not Adahn

        Can confirm. Good tires + roundabout = fun.

      • Plinker762

        + turn off traction control

    • PieInTheSky

      I like roundabouts better than most intersections

      • Not Adahn

        I first heard them called “traffic circles.” Now most people seems to either say “roundabout” or “rotary.” The people here call them “roundy-rounds.”

      • PieInTheSky

        Here the word is rond

      • PieInTheSky

        well officially “sens giratoriu” but unofficially rond

      • rhywun

        They are called “traffic circles” where I grew up in WNY.

      • l0b0t

        If properly implemented, I prefer them to a normal intersection. There is one by Prospect Park however, that is really bad; there are stop lights for the exit lanes so the whole circle jams up tight at rush hours.

      • Old Man With Candy

        Unfortunately, one element of “properly implemented” is “used by drivers with at least minimal competence.”

      • l0b0t

        Indeed… Asking the average Knickerbocker to negotiate this Devilry might be a bridge too far.

      • Rat on a train

        I don’t mind when they are used in the right location. They have them in some low speed areas around here. Putting one in a 55 MPH zone is asking for trouble. It is like someone went off to some conference and now wants to apply the new thing everywhere.

      • Not Adahn

        Exactly how big is this roundabout planned to be?

      • Gender Traitor
      • Not Adahn

        I-610 in Houston is basically an 80MPH roundabout.

      • Rat on a train

        Dominion Raceway is on the wrong side of I-95 to tie into US-1.

      • LCDR_Fish

        I’ve seen several new ones on VA 20 – one replaced an intersection that had a few accidents (only 2 stop signs) and has a slow down pretty far out.

        Saw a crapload of new ones when I was in Columbia MO a few weeks ago. Guess they’re cheaper than traffic lights and don’t slow folks down when there’s zero traffic.

      • Threedoor

        They are made out of concrete and use more land. They are a lot more expensive than traffic lights.

    • Chafed

      PI attorneys should order their ads now.

    • zwak

      They have them all over the PNW, sometimes two right next to each other. Often you have to do lane changes in the middle of going around the fucking things. Just as stupid as can be. I don’t mind them in places were they are kind of organic, such as England, but they just get squeezed into places were a normal, well set up traffic light would work so much better.

    • Threedoor

      Washington is doing that. On HW14 they have put in four of them. Three in a busy section which leads to traffic jams three or four miles long.

      I’m in road construction. The Obama administration changed the rules to get federal funding for intersection rehab. Cities ect had to put roundabouts as one option. The HINT was that to get the federal money for the project they had to choose the roundabout and that funding is usually 90-95% of the cost.

      Sadly the trump administration didn’t remove that rule.

  21. The Late P Brooks

    So the geniuses at VDOT are proposing replacing intersections with roundabouts in a 55 MPH zone.

    Don’t lift.

  22. PieInTheSky

    WTF is wrong with youtube algorithm? I mean I did not get the first time I got barber ASMR videos and dog grooming videos but now I got hoof trimming videos. A guy who takes cows and trims the hoofs. I though you just shoot them if lame. Also wtf is a whiteline lesion? Also there is a lot of hoof to trim. weird

    • PieInTheSky

      Also why does the cow not struggle more thrash about or something.

      • Not Adahn

        Quaaludes.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      You’ll know you’ve reached the time to clear your history when they start autoplaying boil and pimple lancing/draining videos. Why anybody wants to watch that stuff is beyond me.

      • Gender Traitor

        TLC (formerly misnamed “The Learning Channel”) has at least one series devoted just to that.

        No, I don’t watch it. I’m just subjected to the promos on the other “Discovery family of channels” channels.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Watching any kind of grooming or skincare vids on YouTube always eventually leads to those for some reason. I don’t know if some people get off on it or what but I just don’t get it.

      • Mojeaux

        It’s an OCD thing.

    • Not Adahn

      I wish there was a way of excluding tags. I have never licked on a Minecraft or an Among Us vid, and never will.

      • PieInTheSky

        licking things is gross

      • Not Adahn

        This is why you don’t have a girlfriend.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        I don’t like the taste of them,either never Licked one myself,

  23. The Late P Brooks

    I’m tempted to watch the IndyCar Detroit pre-game show, just so I can laugh at that whinging little crybaby Will Power.

  24. Tundra

    Good morning, Old Man!

    Wonder Dog must be pretty unhappy. Poor pup.

    Great video. The Listerine ad in the middle was perfect. “It takes more than that to thaw out a husband.”

    Not much more, actually.

  25. Grosspatzer

    Great links, as usual. And Old Man Music was… breathtaking.

  26. Old Man With Candy

    Can we get a soccer guy to stay dead this time?

    • PieInTheSky

      now now where is your sportsmanship?

    • KSuellington

      I’m just amazed they knew something was actually wrong. I guess it was because when he went down he wasn’t screaming in agony and rolling around.

  27. The Late P Brooks

    Economic wizard
    TW: Robert Reich

    It seems Republicans have finally found an issue to run on in the 2022 midterm elections. Apparently Dr Seuss and Mr Potato Head weren’t gaining enough traction.

    The GOP’s tortured logic is that the unemployment benefits in the American Rescue Plan have caused workers to stay home rather than seek employment, resulting in labor shortages that have forced employers like Chipotle to increase wages, which has required them to raise their prices.

    Hence, Chipotle’s more expensive burrito.

    This isn’t just loony economics. It’s dangerously loony economics because it might be believed, leading to all sorts of stupid public policies.

    ——-

    In fact, evidence suggests that workers who are holding back from re-entering the job market don’t have childcare or are still concerned about their health during the pandemic.

    Besides, if employers want additional workers, they can do what they necessarily do for anything they want more of but can’t obtain at its current price – pay more.

    It’s called capitalism. Republicans should bone up on it.

    When Chipotle wanted to attract more workers, it raised its average wage to $15 an hour. That comes to around $30,000 a year per worker – still too little to live on but double the federal unemployment benefit.

    Oh, and there’s no reason to suppose this wage hike forced Chipotle to raise the prices of its burrito. The company had other options.

    Chipotle’s executives are among the best paid in America. Its chief executive, Brian Niccol, raked in $38m last year – which happens to be 2,898 times more than the typical Chipotle employee. All Chipotle’s top executives got whopping pay increases.

    So it would have been possible for Chipotle to avoid raising its burrito prices by – dare I say? – paying its executives less. But Chipotle decided otherwise.

    I’m not going to second-guess Chipotle’s business decision – nor should the NRCC.

    By the way, I keep hearing Republican lawmakers say the GOP is the “party of the working class”. If that’s so, it ought to celebrate when hourly workers get a raise instead of howling about it.

    Everyone ought to celebrate when those at the bottom get higher wages.

    And when that “pay raise” is rendered meaningless by inflation, we can just complain about living wages some more.

    Do I, as an American stockholder, think executive pay is out of control? Yes. Yes I do. But I sure as Hell don’t want people like Robert Reich and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to step in with their preferred “solutions”.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      I make about 30k a year, I live frugal but well, RR is a fool like water is wet,

    • rhywun

      What a lying sack of shit. Too many instances to cite.

    • Not Adahn

      Reich is an under-credentialed Krugman with a Napoleon complex.

      • zwak

        So, you are saying he comes up short?

    • Q Continuum

      “Everyone ought to celebrate when those at the bottom get higher wages.”

      Except when it’s caused by the policies of OMB because then those wages are racist.

      • Chafed

        Indubitably

    • Grumbletarian

      When Chipotle wanted to attract more workers, it raised its average wage to $15 an hour. That comes to around $30,000 a year per worker – still too little to live on but double the federal unemployment benefit.

      Math time!

      https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CMG/chipotle-mexican-grill/number-of-employees

      Chipotle had about 88,000 employees in 2020. At an average of $31.6k ($15/hr for a full time employee) per year, that means they spent $2.78 billion on wages. If you enslave Brian Niccol and divide his $38 million-per-year pay amongst the workers, they’d each get $431 for the year, or %8.31 a week, or in a forty-hour week, an extra 21 cents an hour.

      • rhywun

        Thank y’all for doing the math. I somehow suspected Reich was being disingenuous on that point.

    • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

      Now discuss Biden’s rush to let in a bunch of low wage labor. Tell me how that makes sense, Mr. Reich.

  28. westernsloper

    114° out. Heading to 118.

    18 above perfect!

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      72 and low humidity, perfect.

    • 61North (south of Animal, though)

      53 and going up to 70, feels good.

  29. Q Continuum

    “By Saturday night in England, it was beginning to look like the White House had been a touch over-confident in just how far the charms of Biden would take him in persuading other G7 leaders to swallow all of his policy positions.”

    Whaa???!!? You mean adversaries aren’t going to be like CNN anchors and roll over supine just from the brilliance of the (D) after his name?!!?

    • Not Adahn

      They found it a little insulting that they didn’t get planeloads of cash too.

    • creech

      You’d think they’d be a tad more grateful that the President of the U.S. wasn’t “mean tweeting” them?

  30. The Late P Brooks

    it was beginning to look like the White House had been a touch over-confident in just how far the charms of Biden would take him

    *outright, prolonged laughter*

    • 61North (south of Animal, though)

      The White House staff? No. The media? Yes.

  31. DEG

    Unfortunately, the world is a little more complicated than that. By Saturday night in England, it was beginning to look like the White House had been a touch over-confident in just how far the charms of Biden would take him in persuading other G7 leaders to swallow all of his policy positions. Even though he isn’t Donald Trump.

    Biden? Charm? Huh?

    Rupert Murdoch has written down the value of the Sun newspapers to zero as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic helped to fuel a £200m loss at his flagship tabloid titles.

    I think the real reason was the end of the Page 3 feature.

    Old Guy Music is good.

    • rhywun

      Biden? Charm? Huh?

      TMITE was going on about how all the Euros were getting a tingle up their leg over Biden, overlooking the fact that what they really think is they will just walk all over him and they’re probably right.