Sunday Morning Sophisticated Links

by | Aug 15, 2021 | Daily Links | 353 comments

                                 My daily commute.

This is now Week One since our arrival in the rural part of the Empire State. Unfortunately, our furniture and worldly goods are still… somewhere else. So it’s like playing caveman. Wonder Dog is fascinated by woodchucks (which she considers to be rapid turtles) and deer (really fucking big rabbits). At work, I get to run the finger slicer, the foot crusher, and the arm burner. Life is looking up.

And speaking of life, there’s birthdays today, including some short dude; a guy whose name has become synonymous with mediocre baseball; a (((woman))) who will be canceled any day now; a guy who only really had one idea, but it was a really great idea; my goddess; perhaps my favorite actress; a guy who could almost pull off being a clown; one of the reasons I could never be a movement conservative; a guy with fast fingers; a guy who did shockingly original research; a piece of shit in a black dress; a piece of shit in a James Brown wig; and a woman who popularized asshole bleaching.

Now, bleached Links.

 

Do you remember when the Left was anti-war? Or I should say, when we anti-war types were considered Left?

 

We just didn’t deserve such a great man, and we are a disappointment to Him.

 

The guy’s politics are stupid, but the art is brilliant.

 

“We’re just trying to save lives!” Go fuck yourselves. Note that we’ve now completely returned to “cases,” the dumbest and least accurate statistical measure, since “deaths” don’t seem to be cooperating with the narrative.

 

C’mon, idiots, there’s a perfectly good version downloadable and printable in our Forum.

 

Well, THAT was a misleading headline. NB for the non-technogeeks: there is mathematical proof that this cannot actually be solved. Like trisecting an angle.

 

There really was no other possible choice for Old Guy Music today.

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.

353 Comments

  1. Count Potato

    “and a woman who popularized asshole bleaching”

    Really?

    • Old Man With Candy

      Yes indeed. The Fappening photo went viral.

      • Count Potato

        How do you know it wasn’t her natural shade? Ever see Winter’s Bone? She’s very white.

      • Tres Cool

        Considers searching….

      • Tres Cool

        Hell, I thought Winter Bone was an albino pr0n star.

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        I didn’t know Johnny did that kind of work.

  2. Cy Esquire

    LoL “Solved.” Fucking journos.

    G’morning old man.

    • Tonio

      At work, I get to run the finger slicer, the foot crusher, and the arm burner.

      Ah, the joys of commercial kitchens.

      Mandolin for tomatoes or deli meat slicer?

      Floor-standing mixer? Impressed if so.

      Salamander?

      • Tonio

        Threading fail. Need moar coffee.

      • Old Man With Candy

        I can hook you up.

      • Sean

        Heh.

        Good luck with the cafe.

      • Fourscore

        If I was a lot closer you’d have a regular early morning customer.

        “Yeah, the old guy comes in every day alone, drinks one cup of black coffee, gets a free refill and mumbles something about the county planning commission .”

      • Chafed

        Lol. I’m going to resemble that.

      • DEG

        #metoo

    • Suthenboy

      I have begun stocking up before the rush and shortages start.

  3. Count Potato

    Well, there definitely were anti-war types on the left. Definitely during Viet Nam, and the War on Terror when W was President, then most of them shut up after Obama took office. I remember Gore Vidal saying the only good thing about a Republican was that they won’t start a war, so the right was considered anti-war at one time.

    • Cy Esquire

      I wonder i Joe will also throw an additional official “Leaving Iraq” press conference with a neat video… you know? Like Obama did.

    • hayeksplosives

      The Left really need to spin Florida as a disaster lest DeSantis clean their collective clock.

      • Tonio

        They are. Did you know that days after dEfYiNg the wise and benevolent federal government that FL begged the federal government for ventilators? That’s all over my FB from the usual people.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Whew, Orlando in August…drink lots of water.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      If the Feds keep dropping COVID positive immigrants in Florida, I don’t think that’s possible.

  4. Fourscore

    Mornin, OMWC.

    If you are up and working today, be careful of the pickle slicer.

    Miss Schafly’s book was the paper back book most that was used for fire starter in the history of the used book biz, along with Barry Goldwater’s and Jack Kennedy’s.

    • Old Man With Candy

      Conscience of a Conservative was a pretty excellent book. Not that Goldwater actually wrote it, but still.

      Profiles In Courage was cringeworthy. Not that Kennedy actually wrote it…

      • creech

        I’m guessing that the Afghan Army read neither book.

      • Chafed

        I doubt many are able.

    • Zwak, jack off, all trades

      Heh, I think they had all been burned by the time I got into the trade, as I never saw one.

      Did see plenty of Kennedy’s book though, but we wouldn’t buy them when people brought them in.

      • Fourscore

        We “bought” them since the deal was all inclusive but they had a negative value because of the labor.

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        The shop I cut my teeth at never did bulk buys from walk-ins, but we did do them at estate sales. We would get called in to see if we wanted to make an offer, and it was always “we can go through them and pick out the books we want, or for a smaller amount we can take all of the books.” Like you said, too much negative value.

      • mock-star

        When I was in middle school, our lit teacher gave us all options for what the class reading assignments were going to be. One marking period “Profiles in Courage” was offered. “Profiles in Courage”? That sounds badass! Probably a book about WWII (We knew Kennedy was a vet) and PT boats and stuff! So we picked it. Were we ever disappointed.

  5. hayeksplosives

    That Obama worship piece is nauseating.

    “ Will we ever believe a political leader who talks about hope and change again?”

    No. And “we” didn’t the first time, numb nuts. Obama was recognized as the race baiting Marxist he is by roughly half the country. Pound sand.

    • Nah, just Yusef

      And good morning to you…
      I hope….

    • Grumbletarian

      But what happens when a large segment of White America stops pretending it even cares about democracy? What happens when these Americans refuse to accept the results of a presidential election, praise foreign dictators and pass a new wave of voter restriction laws?

      Someone remind me which party used the courts to override the results of multiple statewide referenda on gay marriage in CA to get the results they wanted? Which party refused to accept the results of the 2016 Presidential election? Which party praised actual dictators like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez? Which party used the courts to change voting laws in the middle of election season to make fraud easier to commit?

      Fuck DNN.

      • Rat on a train

        Selected not elected!

  6. hayeksplosives

    “How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?”

    —Julia Child

    • Old Man With Candy

      “Does a vegetarian look forward to dinner- ever?”

      The woman was a treasure.

      • Count Potato

        Wait, aren’t you a vegetarian?

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        I’ll be honest Old Man, I would have thought you were more of a fan of Mollie Katzen.

      • Old Man With Candy

        The Queen of Bland. We don’t often give away books, but we gave away hers. Julia, Jacques, David Rosengarten, Andrea Nguyen, those books we kept and treasured.

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        I know the wife as a copy, but I don’t think I have ever seen her pull it out. But, like you, she does not do bland.

  7. Tres Cool

    whaddup doh

  8. The Gunslinger

    “‘I feel defeated’: Mask and vaccine mandates cause new divides as officials try to head off virus surge.”

    We went to an open house yesterday morning and as soon as we opened the door the realtor asked us to put masks on. Other than the dopey realtor lady we were the only people in the house the entire time we were there. We won’t be buying that house. I almost turned around and waited in the car.

    • Fourscore

      Oddsmakers and insurance companies are missing an opportunity by not cashing in on the virus lottery.

    • Zwak, jack off, all trades

      Yeah, here in OR we have a new indoor mandate and it is going about as well as the old mandate. I see the same idiots taking it off to get a sip of water and others who don’t even bother. Nothing has changed, the same people doing the same thing as before.

    • creech

      Well, duh. You think the seller wants to disclose that seventyeleven lookyloos died of Covid in the house because you wouldn’t wear the Magic Mask?

  9. rhywun

    We just didn’t deserve such a great man, and we are a disappointment to Him.

    I made it a couple paragraphs in. Then I went into the bathroom to vomit, and moved on.

    • Rat on a train

      He was so dreamy. How could you not feel a thrill running up your leg.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        More a trickle down effect for me.

    • creech

      Won’t read it; just another article about the Trump Cult?

      • rhywun

        No, the Obama Cult.

    • Tonio

      They read a gee-whiz article in Popular Mechanics about the all-electric airliner of the future.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The magazine for the technically retarded.

      • DrOtto

        You aren’t kidding. An old girlfriend’s uncle used to run some scam out of the back of that magazine’s ads during the ’80s gas crisis selling plans for 100 mpg carburetors. He charged just low enough people would send money, then would respond something along the lines of “we have run into a problem with the device and are working further on it. If you would like a full refund, please write back and you will be refunded. If you don’t respond, we will rush you the plans once the issue has been resolved.” No one ever responded. No one ever got plans. He rented a nice large commercial garage with the money that came in.

      • blackjack

        Hah! My brother tried that with a flying motorcycle. He got a couple of hundred checks, but I don’t think he ever cashed any. He was scared of mail fraud charges. He once “stored” a box at my house that was half full of unopened replies.

      • Chafed

        You’re joking, of course, but I’m concerned that’s close to the truth.

  10. Tres Cool

    “and a woman who popularized asshole bleaching”

    Once I told ex Mrs. Tres “you should bleach your asshole”.
    Then she poured Clorox on me.

    • Fourscore

      LOL

    • Cy Esquire

      Did you see that going some other way?

  11. rhywun

    Note that we’ve now completely returned to “cases,” the dumbest and least accurate statistical measure, since “deaths” don’t seem to be cooperating with the narrative.

    Yup, I’ve noticed that. Completely tuned out. I don’t believe a single word from them anymore. And I bet much of America feels the same.

    • Fourscore

      …and yet I still see masks in Podunkville. mostly by old people, whom I presume have gotten the SS preservative…

      • Jerms

        In Long Island masks are making a big comeback. No mandate but a big uptick in people wearing them in stores. All the city people out here on the weekend are muzzled up.

    • Homple

      I assume everything in the news about the Wuhan virus is a lie, calculated to scare us into welcoming a dictatorship.

  12. Gender Traitor

    Good morning, Old Man (and CP and Cy and all the lurkers and denizens of the last post who don’t realize AM Lynx are up!) Welcome back to the One True Time Zone!

    Ah, the finger slicer! First job out of college (not counting jury duty) was food prep in a subs/salads/pizza joint owned by ((((two couples – brother & sister & their respective spouses.)))) Every morning we had to slice onions several different ways – for sandwiches, for salads, for pizza, and for o-rings. There may have been a fifth way I’m repressing. Pure torture. Not sure what your arm burner is, but we had the hand burner – the deep fryer for aforementioned o-rings, deep-fried veggies, and cheese sticks. But I did learn how to toss pizza dough, so I guess I have a marketable skill if this whole credit union thing doesn’t work out after 21.44 years.

    • Count Potato

      Good morning 🙂

    • Tres Cool

      sup’ pimp-juice

      Let me know if it rains….thee windows on truck are down.

      • Gender Traitor

        ?

        Finally needed to use my electronic swatter on a skeeter. Fried that mofo!

    • Pope Jimbo

      I bet Christa McAuliffe wished more people had been so conscientious about prepping o-rings as you were.

      • DrOtto

        Too soon!

  13. Ted S.

    Like trisecting an angle.

    Anyone can trisect an angle. You just need a protractor.

    (Yes, I know you meant “with just a straightedge and compass”.)

    • Nah, just Yusef

      Too much math this early, I’m in enough misery,
      / goes back into corner….

  14. Count Potato

    “Man is stabbed in massive brawl between Antifa rioters and anti-vaccine protesters outside Los Angeles city hall

    A man was stabbed and a radio reporter was attacked on Saturday when a massive brawl erupted outside Los Angeles City Hall between suspected Antifa activists and protesters decrying vaccine mandates.

    At about 2pm, a group of people holding American flags and signs calling for ‘medical freedom’ arrived at City Hall for the rally, the Los Angeles Police Department and local media said. Counterprotesters quickly gathered nearby.

    About half an hour later, a fight broke out between the groups of protesters and counterprotesters.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9894631/Man-stabbed-LA-fight-breaks-protest-pushing-against-vaccine-mandates.html

    People against vaccine mandates are not necessarily anti-vaccine.

    People for forcing people to get vaccines are definitely not anti-fascist.

    • Sean

      “People gonna get stabbed.”

      -Sean

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I’m going to a take a wild guess and say it wasn’t any Antifa that got stabbed.

      • rhywun

        They’re not saying.

      • Grumbletarian

        Well, pictures show a guy wearing a dark blue shirt and no helmet, unlike the black-clothed and helmeted “anti-fascist” morons.

      • blackjack

        There’s direct footage of the guy stabbing him. Antifa without any doubt. There’s a bunch of cops in the background, apparently not caring that a guy got stabbed right in front of them. On camera, no less.

    • Zwak, jack off, all trades

      These protesters are gonna need to start using the old union trick of mounting your protest signs on 2×4’s.

    • DEG

      It was a mostly peaceful protest.

  15. Scruffy Nerfherder

    We’ve solved the three body problem!

    Well not really…. but it got your attention didn’t it?

    • blackjack

      I solved the three body problem back in the eighties. Whichever of the two chicks starts to feel left out, you just shift your attention to her. No problem.

  16. The Late P Brooks

    But what happens when a large segment of White America stops pretending it even cares about democracy? What happens when these Americans refuse to accept the results of a presidential election, praise foreign dictators and pass a new wave of voter restriction laws?

    Aaaaand go fuck yourself.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      You sound racist

    • limey

      Praise which foreign dictators?

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      It seems like it’d be easy enough to destroy most of that stuff on the way out if we had to but we must have made the mistake of thinking the Afghan military would put it to good use.

    • Drake

      July 8, 2021 – “There’s going to be no circumstance you’ll see people being lifted off the roof of an Embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. It’s not at all comparable (with Vietnam)” – Joe Biden

      The US Embassy staff fleeing from Saigon (top) and Kabul (bottom).
      https://gab.com/threesevens/posts/106760669857260978

      • Chafed

        I’m glad we are getting out but that’s still embarrassing.

      • Drake

        South Vietnam lasted a couple of years without American troops. It folded when the NVA invaded and Congress cut off all military aid.

        In Afghanistan, we still have troops and were still providing close air support for our allies. History repeats itself but even dumber.

  17. The Late P Brooks

    The painful question abut Obama: why did so many people fall for a tent show revivalist spouting vacuous platitudes?

    • Cy Esquire

      Racism…

      • TARDis

        If anyone thought it would heal racial division, they were mistaken. My kids were young, but my coworkers had kids in HS. Black kids were running up and down the hall yelling, “We got the power now!” Now where did the kids get that from, I wonder? What the kids and their parents didn’t realize was Obama was not chosen to give them power. He was chosen to reduce everyone’s power/freedom through division.

        I didn’t vote for either of the shit stains, and I laughed in the faces of the Cons lamenting the situation. You picked a war mongering entitled asshole and a skirted twit as your choices? That’s on you. Your fake values are clear. Fix your damned RINO party.

    • Fourscore

      Optimism or low expectations…you decide.

      With the government schools having done such a good job it is not surprising that many people expect an election to bring them to the “Promised Land”

    • Q Continuum

      For the same reason so many people fall for actual tent show revivalists spouting vacuous platitudes: there’s a sucker born every minute.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Religion never left, it just changed names.

    • Tres Cool

      Promises of free shit. Remember not paying for your g or mortgage…

    • PutridMeat

      I can understand being tired of the ass-hat Bush in 2008. And being dead set against an even bigger ass-hat in McCain. But to actually fall for a grifter from the Chicago Democratic Party Machine? To fall for the platitudes and not see that he was an empty suit? To the degree the suit had any filling it was of the sort of late 60’s post-modernist disguised Marxism? Don’t get that. It was certainly the start of my complete withdrawal from that other site. Don’t recall the exact chronology and whether I was already seeing signs of decay prior, but the number of writers who, if not outright supporting Obama, fell for or made sympathetic noises about the empty watered down Marxism was a big red flag that something was amiss.

      • Count Potato

        I think a lot of people got excited over first black President.

      • Rat on a train

        Acting on emotion does appear to be the norm.

      • PutridMeat

        In some ways, that’ s an even greater indictment and less ‘forgivable’. If you think the color of ones skin is a more relevant criteria than policy, you’re not a very deep or thoughtful person.

        Those who made the argument that he would be good on the war on terror have a more valid point – naive as all hell, but a valid argument, assuming that, with some justification, you thought that was the most important issue. Phrasing is as “republicans need to be punished” though is not a valid argument – Bailey, you talk like a retard and your shit’s all fucked up.

        Excited over the first black president (1 drop rule? 50 drops rule?) is not a valid “reason” for supporting Obama, and is certainly no excuse for a libertarian, IMNSHO.

      • Suthenboy

        Are you sure I didn’t write this comment? It is hard for me to describe just how let down I was that anyone would fall for that grifter.

    • blackjack

      He’s a democrat. The media told us that he was great, and most people just lap up whatever those hacks say. As a group, they are more powerful now than the government. They decide who wins and who has to resign. The votes are a mere formality.

    • Zwak, jack off, all trades

      They were primed after 8 years of pure BUSHHHHH!!!!! hatred and a still burning need for Kennedy.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Obama was blessed with wretched opponents.

      In the primary, he was a godsend to all the normal Democrats who didn’t want to vote for Hilary. And not only didn’t they have to vote for that shrew, but they got to vote for a black guy and super proved how wonderful they were.

      Then he got McCain in the general election. Once the media stopped covering for McCain and he was no longer “the maverick” people started noticing what a horrible person he was. History also showed that the American people were right to reject that loser.

    • Drake

      He was a empty vassal (other than some highly concentrated narcissism) into which they put all their hopes and crazy ideas.

    • Son of Fourscore

      Because our other choices were John McCain and Mitt Romney? Or was yours a rhetorical question?

  18. The Late P Brooks

    Stupid anti-vaxxers, why so paranoid?

    The L.A. City Council voted this week to draw up a law that will require proof of vaccination to enter public venues, including restaurants, bars, gyms, concert arenas, movie theaters and retailers.

    E pluribis unum? Fuck that. What this nation needs is a caste system.

    • Sean

      People gonna get stabbed.

      Businesses are going to have to issue body armor to “passport” checkers. That’s going to be a high risk job in urban areas.

      • blackjack

        Did you see those protesters? Those were mostly Mexicans from the hood. They put a beating on the antifa assholes. This ain’t Oregon.

    • rhywun

      retailers

      They really are playing with fire, aren’t they.

      • blackjack

        There’s two other times in recent history where this has been tried. At least two in the western world.

      • Grumbletarian

        Leftist mayor: You need a Vax-Pass to get into CVS, but once inside, shoplift all you want!

      • Chafed

        That captures their thinking.

    • DrOtto

      Zoinks!

  19. The Late P Brooks

    Also, from NBC:

    Other observers, including Tina-Desiree Berg, said they were attacked by anti-vaccine protesters.

    Who or what the fuck is a Tina Desiree Berg? Am I supposed to know? At this point, I’m going to assume she probably deserved it.

    • blackjack

      She calls herself, “lefty mclefty face, antifa papparazi” I doubt she’s an innocent journalist trying to objectively document what is happening, so normal Americans can make up their minds.

  20. Count Potato

    “Massachusetts mother-of-three reveals how she quit her job as a neonatal ICU nurse to join OnlyFans where she makes up to $75,000 per month

    In December 2020, Rae faced her first ‘Mean Girls’ moment after six nurses in her unit stumbled across her Instagram account and reported it to her boss.

    Instead of taking care of babies in the NICU, Rae is now selling pay-per-view videos – that cost anywhere between $7 to $30 – of her masturbating and performing sex acts with her husband, as well as $12.99 subscriptions.

    As to her children knowing her line of work, she just recently brought it up with her two oldest children, who are 17 and 18. Their 12-year-old is still in the dark.

    Recalling the moment she told them, she told the Daily Beast: ‘We took the two older kids out to dinner and I told them I was doing some influencer-type work, and they were like, “We got it. We’re good.”‘

    She has since blocked them and their friends on all platforms.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9894949/Massachusetts-mother-reveals-quit-job-neonatal-ICU-nurse-join-OnlyFans.html

    • limey

      People pay for porn?

    • Sean

      I don’t understand paying for porn.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Somebody’s got to pay for the silicon.

      • Count Potato

        Silicone.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I blame autocorrect.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Technically, it was correct also.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I like sandy tits.

        Don’t judge me.

      • Gustave Lytton

        The Val Kilmer documentary is pretty awful. Like the old days of being forced to watch someone’s vacation slides.

      • CPRM

        I actually enjoyed the documentary.

      • Agent Cooper

        The fans aren’t paying for the porn. They are paying for access and a sense of belonging in this person’s life no matter how artificial it really is.

        It’s like joining the Bon Jovi Fan Club or something. Except with more incels and less hairspray.

      • blackjack

        Um, more incels and less hairspray…in the Bon Jovi fan club?

      • Agent Cooper

        I was thinking peak Jovi around 1987.

      • Agent Cooper

        Whoops. F-it. The OnlyFans would have the incels and not the hairspray.

    • Ted S.

      The children’s friends are finding ways around those blocks.

    • Ghostpatzer

      “performing sex acts with her husband”

      And soliciting volunteers to solve the three body problem. IFLS!

      • Plinker762

        The devil’s three body?

    • Tres Cool

      “She and her husband moved their family to Florida after she quit her job at the hospital in March, narrowly missing her doctorate in nursing. “

      Florida, of course.

      And pardon my immediate ignorance, but there’s a Ph.D in nursing ?

      • LCDR_Fish

        There’s a PHD in pretty much anything – it’s just continuing in your area of focus as far as you can go.

      • robodruid

        Probably Nursing education?
        Wife has her masters in it.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Probably Doctor of Nursing Practice, it’s becoming the professional degree for NPs. So they can be Dr Stripper, like PAs.

      • DrOtto

        My dad already calls female Doctors “Nurse doctors”. So I suppose it’s only appropriate it be a thing.

    • Zwak, jack off, all trades

      “Stumbled” across it?

      Sure you did.

    • blackjack

      Shorter: Another one is done haggling over price.

  21. Count Potato

    “Republicans claim to fear left-wing authoritarianism — but there’s no such thing

    The meaning today of the “Big Lie” almost always refers to the false claim by Donald Trump and his right-wing cronies that the 2020 presidential election was somehow stolen by the left and Joe Biden, with the help of foreign agents.

    This article first appeared in Salon.

    Not only is this claim false, it is absurdly false.

    This is hardly the first Big Lie from the right. Not even close. The right has been promulgating Big Lies for decades.

    In fact, lying is the only way the right wing can win elections. After all, its policies are profoundly unpopular with ordinary people because the right-wing favors the 1% rich over the 99% working and middle classes.

    How in the world could 1% of the population ever win elections over the 99%? Simple. The 1% bamboozles the 99%. To win elections, the right must conceal its true intentions from the voters and instead engage in manipulative tactics, like lying and fearmongering.

    The lies are not just little lies.They are whoppers. They are the complete opposite of the truth. They are 180 degrees from the truth. They are the polar opposite of the truth, like from the North Pole all the way to the South Pole. Hence the term Big Lie.

    Yet, shockingly, many of these egregious lies actually work. They take hold. They create a false impression in the mind of the public.

    One of the egregious lies that has taken root throughout society, and remains persistent today, is the false notion that dictatorships and fascism are associated with the left.

    Once again, this is the exact opposite of the truth. Dictatorships and fascism are right-wing, not left-wing…..”

    https://www.rawstory.com/gop-authoritarians/

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Bad stuff is right wing, good stuff is left wing. There, it’s all settled.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Yeah, I saw that.

      The politics of simpletons:

      Premises –
      LEFT = GOOD
      RIGHT = BAD

      Conclusions –
      BAD = RIGHT
      GOOD = LEFT

      But what else do you expect from a dude with no eyebrows.

    • Suthenboy

      Wow. That is so jaw-dropping I was sure it was CNN.

      • rhywun

        Salon was CNN before CNN was.

    • PieInTheSky

      Ceausescu was a fascist apparently

      But just look at the rhetoric of the standard leftist on twatter not violent and authoritarian at all

      • Suthenboy

        “Only the right are violent authoritarians. That is why we have to round them all up, throw them into camps and mass graves.”

        Sounds legit.

    • blackjack

      Before I dropped out of high school, I wrote far better papers than this retard. I give him a c-, and that’s only because he at least was able to get his muddled ideas onto the page, however nonsensical they are. This guy needs to stick with wearing helmets and using shields as he gets his ass kicked at protests if he want’s to help the commies.

      BTW, Trump never tried to forcibly stick a needle in my arm. Or outlaw my car. Or…ad infinitum.

      • Chafed

        You are so right. I’m not sure this would have gotten a passing grade in high school.

    • Ted S.

      Note how the Department of Defense skewed more toward donating to TEAM BLUE than did the actual branches of the military.

    • Q Continuum

      I think it boils down to this: when you make politics your religion it animates every part of your life, and lefties are much more likely to make politics their religion.

    • rhywun

      That’s easy. Because radicals are loudmouths. They want “progress”. They want to “get things done”.

      People who like things the way they are (or were) tend to remain silent. Until remaining silent is no longer an option and then bad things start happening.

      • Son of Fourscore

        People who “like things the way they are” like things the way they perceive them to have been. I have 1,000,000 followers on social media who prove this. And it’s folly, since things 1) will never again be the way you perceived them and 2) the way you perceived them, filtered through your biases, pre-conceived notions, and faulty memory, is likely inaccurate.

  22. limey

    “de Broy”?
    “de Bruy”?
    “de Brolyee?”

    The Aussie “pah-dickles” presenter on Space Time usually says “de Broy”.

    • PutridMeat

      I’ve always used the 3rd.

  23. The Late P Brooks

    The path to Enlightenment is a rocky road

    For years, Wall Street was a top destination for star students like Tashrima Hossain, a class president at Stanford University with ambitions to change the world.

    Hossain had interned for nonprofits and was seriously considering going to graduate school. But she figured a detour to Wall Street would teach her useful skills and provide networking opportunities. And the six-figure paycheck wouldn’t hurt.

    So, she took an entry-level job at J.P. Morgan. Her goal was to do it for two years. But Hossain soon found herself putting in long hours, crunching numbers in Excel spreadsheets and preparing PowerPoint presentations for more senior bankers.

    Seven months later, she quit.

    “I kind of thought about it as a means to an end, but when I started, I realized that it wasn’t necessarily the means to an end that I wanted,” Hossain remembers.

    If you want to change the world, you need good networking opportunities.

    But math is hard. NGO parasites don’t have to crunch numbers, they just have to practice up on their vacuous platitudes.

    • Suthenboy

      You know who else had ambitions to change the world?

      • Shpip

        This guy, evidently.

      • Chafed

        There’s a blast from my past.

      • blackjack

        These guys. But they didn’t know what to do.

      • Son of Fourscore

        Sentient humans who realize that every moment of existence changes the world?

  24. The Late P Brooks

    Dictatorships and fascism are right-wing, not left-wing…..

    Another graduate of the Pee Wee Hermann School of Political Journalisming:

    I know you are, but what am I?

  25. The Late P Brooks

    And the punchline:

    Yet doubts persist about whether Wall Street’s efforts to raise pay and address morale will be enough.

    Hossain, for one, says a raise would not have persuaded her to stay at J.P. Morgan. She says she wanted the opportunity to build things, to feel like she’s making an actual impact.

    Today, Hossain is at Facebook, working on something that interests her more: public policy. As a program manager, she is involved in the company’s efforts to improve election integrity after the company came under intense scrutiny over its actions during the 2016 election.

    “Even if I could have had an increase in salary, I don’t think that was enough for me to stay,” she says. “And largely the reason I left and took a significant pay cut to leave was because I wanted to do work that mattered to me and felt fulfilling.”

    Defense of the narrative is paramount.

    Fuck you, you sanctimonious cunt.

    • The Gunslinger

      What do you want to bet she’s a really smart person and a terrible employee.

      • Suthenboy

        Smart people do smart things. She is not smart.

    • Tulip

      Meh, I don’t understand why this is a story. Woman goes to college, gets job, doesn’t like it and does something else. Big deal. Yes, she dresses it up in smug, self-serving language, but it’s not special

      • Trigger Hippie

        This.

        My sister went to college to become an architect, changed majors to become a graphic designer, graduated, took a job in the field, didn’t like it, decided to reach herself trigonometry, became an actuarial accountant.

        Good for her but this isn’t national news.

      • Trigger Hippie

        *teach

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        Yeah, I have a friend who got an engineering degree, hated it, then she went back and got a second bachelors in business. And now she is very happy and successful.

      • PutridMeat

        Tries to connect trigonometry to become an actuarial accountant. Fails.

        Wanders off.

      • Tulip

        Really?

      • PutridMeat

        Really! Maybe I’m sheltered, but I see actuarial accountancy as spreadsheets, basic math operations. Trigonometry more engineering, physics, etc. But I’m certainly naive about what an ‘actuarial accountant’ does, so grain ‘o salt.

      • Count Potato

        That’s how you would figure out the angle of a line on a graph…

      • Trigger Hippie

        Don’t ask me, she’s the smart one. All I know is she spent nearly a decade after college studying the subject while working her way up the ranks of the profession.

      • rhywun

        I’m not going to read that but I’m guessing it’s “news” because it is a she with a funny name and has the right politics to boot.

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        Left politics, Brah. Don’t you even NPR?

      • blackjack

        This story is supposed to teach us that helping Biden cheat an election is fulfilling and making good money is hollow and empty.

    • Stillhunter

      Influencing public policy is building something? Uh..ok

  26. The Late P Brooks

    What do you want to bet she’s a really smart person and a terrible employee.

    And can’t understand why she should have to do grunt work instead of swishing directly to the top floor and having lunch with Bill Gates and Kindly Old Grandpa Buffett.

  27. The Late P Brooks

    Yes, she dresses it up in smug, self-serving language, but it’s not special

    She’s special. She’s Joan of Arc, standing athwart the battlements at facebook, turning aside the white supremacist terror army. She’s saving the nation from the rot and decay of hegemonic
    patriarchal capitalism.

    Truly a heroine for our time.

  28. The Late P Brooks

    There’s a PHD in pretty much anything – it’s just continuing in your area of focus as far as you can go.

    Until you disappear up your own asshole?

    If only.

    • creech

      You’ll never disappear as long as NBC keeps referring to you as DOCTOR.

    • CPRM

      “Here’s A Comprehensive List Of All The Socialist libertarian Countries That Haven’t Turned Into A Totalitarian Hellscape Where You Have To Eat Your Dog” would be the same article, though for other reasons.

      • Son of Fourscore

        “Here’s A Comprehensive List Of All The Countries That Haven’t Turned Into A Hellscape, Eventually” would be the same article, though for other reasons.

    • Suthenboy

      That depends on how you define success.

    • rhywun

      #metoo

      That’s a fun one.

    • Count Potato

      “Spin it if you like, but President Biden said all these things out loud on July 8 of this year.”

      https://twitter.com/charlescwcooke/status/1426876352989433860

      ““The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese Army, they’re not. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance for you to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan.” – Joe Biden, July 8, 2021″

      https://twitter.com/bdomenech/status/1426874488583565320

      • CPRM

        They’re a JV squad.

      • creech

        Even the JV squad can win when the other side doesn’t show up. You’d think by spending a trillion bucks on the Afghan army, there would have been a few badasses recruited and trained who wouldn’t run the minute a Taliban technical showed up on the road.

      • kbolino

        Why would you fight the people whom you respect more?

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        They’re offering general amnesty for military and government personnel who don’t fight and death to those who do. The smart ones are taking the deal, the dumb ones too looks like.

      • Hyperion

        “The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese Army, they’re not. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance for you to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan.” – Joe Biden, July 8, 2021″

        None of this matters since the democrat owned media changes narrative in real time and the sheeples eat it up.

        I keep wondering if anyone really believes that the legacy media does not still control the unwashed masses? And now combined with the twitterFacebookGoogle mob… It has to be near 100%. Sure, there’s a few stragglers left like those who hang around here, but I doubt we’re even 2% who get their news from alternate sources and try to do our own research. I know very few people, and that includes those who call themselves conservative, who get their news from any sources other than the MSM (which includes FoxNews).

    • PieInTheSky

      I mean Joe just says what he is programmed to. It was obvious 20 years ago w=this would happen so that when the withdrawal should have been

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      LOL. I didn’t know he had said that.

      What a fuckstick.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Reneging on the deal doomed it even though we left in the end. It was almost certainly doomed anyway but that didn’t help at all.

  29. The Late P Brooks

    Thanks, Dick!

    Indeed, the absence of constraints on the dollar and other currencies has resulted in an explosion of debt worldwide, says Jim Reid, head of thematic research at Deutsche Bank.

    That reality has pluses and minuses. It allowed the U.S. and other governments to respond with unprecedented speed to the Covid-19 pandemic. “There is no way we could have locked down economies, and furloughed employees in the pandemic under a gold-based system. Lockdowns would have been highly deflationary and depressionary,” he says in a client note.

    Yet, as economist Robert Triffin pointed out in the 1960s, Washington must have a balance-of-payments deficit to emit the dollars the rest of the world needs for trade and finance. Paradoxically, if the dollar supply becomes so excessive that the world loses confidence in the dollar, it will cease to be the world’s reserve currency.

    That could happen as a result of running huge deficits and printing money to cover them, which Reid posits could be necessary to pay for government actions to fight climate change short of extreme taxation.

    “It might help save the planet, but maybe at the end of it, fiat money might find it more difficult to survive, given the compound effect of the extreme waves of deficits and money printing seen over the last few decades,” he says. “Inflation is very easy to create if you spend and print enough money. What we don’t know is what that tipping point amount is.”

    To MacroMavens’ Stephanie Pomboy, that tipping point feels close. The Fed’s money printing that has helped pay for enormous U.S. budget deficits has resulted in inflation that appears to be more than transitory. She sees that putting pressure on distressed corporate debt, as well as on consumers who have to boost their borrowing to keep up with rising prices, she writes in her latest missive.

    There’s another problem. If the bubble in stock valuations pops, the $6 trillion shortfall that Pomboy calculates in public and private pensions would worsen. After bailing out Wall Street via huge monthly bond purchases, can the government refuse to bail out Main Street by having the Fed print still more money? “How will the rest of the world respond to seeing the reserve currency debased in such a swift and egregious manner?” she asks. Already the dollar’s share of global currency reserves has dropped, from around 72% at the turn of the century to under 60%.

    It has taken us a while to get here, but Rome wasn’t burned in a day.

    • Suthenboy

      I cant read that. I got as far as “There is no way we could have locked down economies, and furloughed employees in the pandemic under a gold-based system.” and I quit.
      No one seems to admit that the lockdowns did jack shit. No one mentions that masks have no effect at all. No one mentions that the cootie bugs are not the worst pathogen going around. That whole thing is such a shit-show that it leaves me speechless.

  30. The Late P Brooks

    And this part:

    That reality has pluses and minuses. It allowed the U.S. and other governments to respond with unprecedented speed to the Covid-19 pandemic. “There is no way we could have locked down economies, and furloughed employees in the pandemic under a gold-based system. Lockdowns would have been highly deflationary and depressionary,” he says in a client note.

    Is that supposed to be a plus?

    Enabling the doomsday cultists’ hysterical economic self-destruction does not appear to me to have been wise policy, in the long or short run.

  31. Hyperion

    Why did I see 70,000 peeps in the stands of Allegiant stadium last night? SOOPER SPREADER WE’RE ALL GOIN DIE!

  32. PieInTheSky

    Have any progressives made a good faith attempt to reason through what their proposed policy of punitive withholding of critical care to the wrong sorts of people would mean in practice?

    https://twitter.com/wesyang/status/1426903957205569538

    • CPRM

      progressives

      good faith

      reason

      hahahahahahaha

      • Hyperion

        progressives made a good faith attempt to reason

        Is there a term for a double oxymoron?

    • Suthenboy

      Why yes, they have. That is why they are withholding critical care from the wrong sorts of people.
      I think there is a word for this….it is right on the tip of my tongue….

      • PieInTheSky

        compassion?

      • Suthenboy

        When I think compassion Margaret Sanger is the first person that pops in my head.

      • PieInTheSky

        life is suffering so one way of preventing suffering is…

      • Suthenboy

        The Cathars approve.

        *I am getting old and my memory is terrible. It was the Cathars that believed life enables sin to exist…was’nt it?

      • PieInTheSky

        the Cathars were complicated but I feel that such beliefs were held by many various sects

    • Ted S.

      That tweet has been deleted.

  33. The Late P Brooks

    Have any progressives made a good faith attempt to reason through what their proposed policy of punitive withholding of critical care to the wrong sorts of people would mean in practice?

    Haha, good one.

  34. Count Potato

    “This is the real-life Handmaid’s Tale. A true cautionary tale for the U.S., which has our own far religious right dreaming of a theocracy that would impose a particular brand of Christianity, drive women from the workforce and solely into childbirth, and control all politics.”

    https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1426619110742532101

    People actually believe this?

    • PieInTheSky

      I am sure there are a couple of hundred people like that, the US is a big country after all

    • Gustave Lytton

      “Now let’s get back to tearing down mores and norms that would facilitate that, because we’ll always be in control.”

    • Trigger Hippie

      Yes. Yes they do. The right leaning people of the U.S. with lukewarm convictions for their preferred form of Christianity that they ignore whenever it becomes inconvenient in an increasingly secular society are exactly the same as piss poor backwater fundamentalists who’s culture hasn’t changed much over the last few hundred years.

      Exactly the same.

    • kbolino

      Islamophobia is okay if you’re a neocon and/or prog.

    • Suthenboy

      Good grief. What idiot let that lunatic have access to a keyboard?

    • rhywun

      Um, hon… it’s not Christianity that they’re imposing.

      That woman is her own special universe of crazy.

  35. The Late P Brooks

    So, what, if anything, could displace the dollar? One response to the proliferation of paper money has been the creation of cryptocurrencies, a free-market response to currencies issued by central banks without the limits imposed by a gold standard. And while Bitcoin is up by more than 50% this year, it also is down nearly 30% from its peak in mid-April. Such volatility makes it a speculative risk asset, rather than a useful medium of exchange.

    No kidding.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      No intrinsic value. Doomed.

  36. PieInTheSky

    My colleague admitted a patient to the hospital recently and asked them if they had a COVID vaccine.

    “Yeah a lot of them.”

    “Like how many?”

    “Probably 20.”

    Turns out he had been finding gift card and other incentive programs and getting shots to get the cash and prizes.

    https://twitter.com/medicalaxioms/status/1426726495511216131

    from the replies

    “over 350 million americans are vaccinated” actually a statistical error. vaccines george, who has been vaccinated over 350 million times, is an outlier and should not be counted

    • CPRM

      See, and he’s just fine. What are you scared of?/

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        “Just one wafer-thin mint?”

      • Suthenboy

        This made me laugh.

    • Suthenboy

      There seems to be no mention of the third arm he grew out of his back or his developing external gills.

    • CPRM

      Have we ever actually heard the percentages of Afghan people who support the Taliban over those who support ‘Democracy’? Have we tracked it over time since we started this shit show?

      • kbolino

        YouGov Afghanistan Poll Results:

        100% of our poll workers sent to the Afghani hinterlands did not make it back alive

    • Nah, just Yusef

      Are the people at State really this blind? or did they just say fuck it, and walk away?
      This seems like it was set up to happen just the way it’s playing out. Kabul went down last, Ghani Flies away,
      too set up,

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        They believed their own propaganda would be my guess, along with being hammered career wise if they don’t join in on the groupthink. In other words they’re deluded.

      • Ted S.

        Yes, the people at State really are that bad.

        Remember that Trump had to do an end-run around State to get the Abraham Accords done.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Don’t worry about him, he’ll retire to a very nice area using money he skimmed from our funding of his nation. The dude’ll be fine.

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        Surly the Lask King of Scotland.

    • Hyperion

      “government approved scare screen”

      I’m stealing that.

  37. PieInTheSky

    So yesterday no one was able to deadlift 505 Kg. Disappointing

    • Cy Esquire

      Do you even lift bro?

      • PieInTheSky

        yes

    • Rat on a train

      I failed to lift 12oz yesterday. I’m making up for it today.

    • Suthenboy

      Good luck with that. Here my raspberry trees ripen in early summer/late spring. The instant they are ripe the redbirds, mocking birds, squirrels, raccoons, possums etc are all over that shit.

      • PieInTheSky

        Here the birds love eating the strawberries but raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and red currants are generally left alone. We harvest plenty anyways.

      • Suthenboy

        No so here. They seem to all ripen at once and last one day. Picking blackberries, raspberries, muscadine etc you will get pecked a few times by covetous redbirds and mocking birds. Also, attempting to find ripe paw-paws is a waste of time. The Opossums and Raccoons check them for ripeness on an hourly basis.

      • blackjack

        This exactly what happens to our fig tree. It’s like the critter’s thanksgiving. They ain’t missing it for nothing. We get to keep maybe a third of them and only after shooing them all out of the way.

      • PieInTheSky

        does redbirds pecking hurt much?

      • Suthenboy

        I have planted a dozen or so in my yard. Half of them survived. I am hopeful.

      • Hyperion

        Raspberry trees? Those things used to grow on vines when I was a kid. I guess I really am old.

      • Suthenboy

        I warned y’all my memory is going to hell. MULBERRIES is what I was thinking, not raspberries. Good grief.

        Is there some magic potion I can take to improve my cognition?

        Oh, look, there is. *pours a vodka*

      • Hyperion

        I guess I’m one of the few people who loves Mulberries. When I was mowing my yard in the Indiana, I’d make stops under the Mulberry trees and pick a hand full to munch while I mowed.

        I can’t dranks a beer yet, wife wants to get a few groceries so the hubby will survive her 20 day long hiatus.

      • Suthenboy

        While you are at it grab more beer.

  38. The Late P Brooks

    You’d think by spending a trillion bucks on the Afghan army, there would have been a few badasses recruited and trained who wouldn’t run the minute a Taliban technical showed up on the road.

    NEEDZ MOAR GURKHA MERCENARIES

    • Hyperion

      It is. But since they own the government, the education system, the entertainment and sports industries, and now the corporate world, I’m not as assured it’s safe to just ignore them and hope they’re going to go away.

      I think soon we will see websites with names like this:

      Twitter.gov, Google.gov, Facebook.gov…

    • Suthenboy

      “I prefer to be referred to as ‘Your Majesty’, fuckwit. Is it ok if I prefer to refer to you as fuckwit?”

      A lot of fun can be had with this game.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Tom @TomGhanini Replying to @OrwellNGoode

      To the male teachers – my preferred pronoun is Dude.
      To the female teachers – my preferred pronoun is Daddy.

  39. Stinky Wizzleteats

    Watching Scott Adams right now: why in the hell is this guy well regarded for his analysis and pontificating? Lord have mercy is the guy tiresome.

    • CPRM

      Because he OWNED THE LIBS!

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        He’s an ill informed conceited manipulative authority worshipping asshole. He has an occasional interesting thought but it’s obvious that he’s trying to mindfuck his audience.

      • Nah, just Yusef

        I left him a while ago, the schtick got old fast, Same thing with Timmy Pool,

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        I’ll still watch Pool depending on who his guest is but the waffling does get old. Adams, on the other hand, I find vaguely creepy.

  40. Q Continuum

    Trump supported withdrawal from Afghanistan and Biden actually followed up on it. Independent of TEAM stupidity, I still think it’s a good thing. Watching the Right try to use this to tar Biden is embarrassing but not unexpected. Watching the Left try to play defense for Biden in spite of ripping Trump over exactly the same idea is equally embarrassing but not unexpected.

    Afghanistan is not a country, it’s a blank spot on the map where other countries aren’t. We could have stayed there 1000 years and the Taliban would have waited us out. The only way Afghanistan ever becomes something other than what it is now is if a large country undertakes wholesale genocide of all opposition and their families and associates. China may just be immoral enough to do that, but I’m glad we didn’t.

    TL;DR: Afghanistan was doomed no matter when we left and PRINCIPULZ R HARD, LETS GO SHOPPING!

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      It’s absolutely a good thing, just executed in the piss poorest manner conceivable.

      • Trigger Hippie

        + 20 years too late and trillions of dollars laundered through the MIC.

      • Suthenboy

        Bingo.

        Very little money actually went to the Afghans. It was never intended to.

      • blackjack

        He sabotaged it. Either Biden did, as one last thing he could blame on Trump, or the generals did to punish us for taking away one of their toys.

    • Hyperion

      It’s because the legacy ‘Right’ are still the Stupid party. Their judgement consists of watching what the left do and doing the opposite.

      WTF? You can predict what the left will do months in advance. But not Turtlehead and Graham. They just wait until the democrats make a move and then rush in to help them and screw over their constituents.

    • Hyperion

      Something I’ve noticed more than a few times in the past 20 years. Often the dumbest person you know will say the most brilliant thing. They don’t know why they said it and don’t understand it themselves, but it happens. This is a lot like that.

      Biden doesn’t know what he’s going, but the difference is, in this case, some evil force is controlling what Biden is doing.

      My opinion is that Obama knows he won’t take the blame for anything. So he wants to create a disaster in the Middle East so he can go back to hunting Americans with drones while playing golf.

      • blackjack

        Imagine Biden, when he figure’s out that it turn’s out he’s really good at killing people.

    • Suthenboy

      “Afghanistan is not a country, it’s a blank spot on the map where other countries aren’t.”
      This is true for much of the world, not just Afghanistan.

      “…embarrassing but not unexpected.”
      This describes all of politics, doesnt it?

      • Hyperion

        It’s a rogue nation. Rogue nation is apparently one that is not doing what China’s new proxy, the USSA says they need to do. They need Western style democracy! Which it’s already been proven is what they want. Just a few more bombs and they’ll get it right!

        Now watch Xiden send in 50,000 troops and get them slaughtered by the Taliban and Trump will be blamed for it. No, Kabul is not Saigon! Biden is not Jimmah 2!

      • Son of Fourscore

        And yet the roads must be paved and the garbage must be taken away. Politics is our imperfect answer to those demands.

  41. The Late P Brooks

    Prepare to be astounded

    Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said on Friday that he believes the coronavirus pandemic will morph into an endemic.

    A pandemic is classified by the World Health Organization as a fast-spreading disease outbreak that covers wide swaths of the world. An endemic is an outbreak in particular regions that’s always present but far easier to predict and control, like the common cold or malaria.

    “We’re transitioning from this being a pandemic to being more of an endemic virus, at least here in the United States and probably other western markets,” Gottlieb said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

    No shit, Shirley?

    • Hyperion

      If we could just isolate out FL and TX and lock them down hard, we’d finally have victory.

    • PieInTheSky

      I mean only hundreds of millions had it I am sure it can be eliminated

      • Hyperion

        To me, common sense says it will keep mutating until it produces something similar to the common cold in terms of symptoms and severity. But I suppose the we’re going to need a separate vaccine for all the thousands of variants and masks forever.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        It’ll continue to mutate and will generally get less severe as far as symptoms go with an occasional worse variant cropping up from time to time.
        See also: the flu.

      • Hyperion

        “It’ll continue to mutate and will generally get less severe”

        This is what I heard my entire life until Covid 19. And then I hear ‘This is the trickiest smartest virus ever!’.

        Umm, ok. Did they know the virus was genetically altered in the lab from the start? Of course they did. They just missed the mark because it was not as dangerous as planned. But they’ve had a little practice now, which is why douchebags like Gates and Buffet are already predicting there will be a worse pandemic soon. They’ll get it right this time?

      • Suthenboy

        ^This, what Hyp and Stinky said^
        If more people understood the dynamics of the relationship between pathogens and hosts these assholes would never be able to get away with what they are doing.

        BTW, it is a cold virus and will do exactly what. you say – mutate to something indistinguishable from what we call the common cold (actually not common, it is a class that contains many variants). You dont usually catch the same one twice.
        I would swear that in my lifetime I have seen the ‘common cold’ become distinctly less severe. I remember the common cold being a real problem to now where people just get a mild fever and a runny nose for a few days. Unless you catch a bacterial pneumonia on top of it it is little more than a nuisance.

    • rhywun

      -1 we’re gonna whip this thing

  42. PieInTheSky

    Are traits like selfishness and greed part of human nature or are they taught and encouraged by capitalism?

    https://twitter.com/LeftyPolls/status/1426914362682392580

    Unfortunately I can’t take a nuanced answer here. Selfishness and greed are a product of scarcity, or the threat of scarcity. Capitalism leverages this through artificial scarcity, but isn’t fully the cause of this behaviour. It exaggerates it, no doubt about that however.

    that damn artificial scarcity strikes again

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      See how a toddler reacts when you take his toy and you have the answer. It’s part and parcel of human nature and capitalism allows those innate traits to be used constructively.

  43. Tundra

    Good morning, Old Man!

    Matt Taibbi took a pretty good shot at The One the other day. Subscriber only, but the snippet tells the tale. I liked the lede:

    On the road from stirring symbol of hope and change to the Fat Elvis of neoliberalism, birthday-partying Barack Obama sold us all out

    Funny, but a lot of knew what he was all along, Matt.

    I’m glad he’s seeing the light, but it sure would save a lot of trouble if people of all stripes would look for hope and change a little closer to home instead of voting for which shade of shit we’ll eat this year.

    Good luck with the rest of your stuff. We slept on an air mattress the first couple nights. Fuck that noise. I need a comfy bed.

    Have a great day, people!

    • Zwak, jack off, all trades

      Do you comment over there, Tundra? I comment under the name Jolly Swagman.

      • Tundra

        Nope. Just recently signed up after listening to him on Bridget Phetasy’s show. He and Greenwald are at east interesting to read. I think they know the answer but just can’t quite make the leap.

      • Suthenboy

        “I think they know the answer but just can’t quite make the leap.”

        The majority of humanity cannot face reality. They lie to themselves and pretend the world is what they wish it was.

        The two most hated things in the world: Truth and Responsibility.

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        I like to keep myself informed of what the other political persuasions think as I don’t want to live in a bubble info-wise, but he is generally a good writer, and as you say, he is getting closer and closer.

  44. Hyperion

    “Afghanistan will be seen as Joe Biden’s defeat. And it may come back to haunt him”

    It actually will not. Because the media are going to spin this as a victory. The left has never been anti-war, but most Americans will believe that they are and always have been.

  45. The Late P Brooks

    the media are going to spin this as a victory.

    They’ll definitely fight to their last drop of ink to pin the blame on somebody else. Republicans. Capitalism. Necromancy.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      They’ll blame Trump. But whatever gets us out finally.

      • TARDis

        Yeah, but where will we go next? Or worse, will they be focusing on domestic terrorists, such as Trump supporters anyone who won’t worship the state and be an obedient subject?

  46. Timeloose

    Good Sunday Glibs.

    I’ve spent the last 2 days driving with my best friend across the country and am 3 hours from our destination in Wyoming.

    We have been plugging away with truck and toy hauler and did 1000 miles yesterday.

    We will hit super spreader Sturgis SD after the damage has been done.

    This is my first road trip in these parts and I can say SD is beautiful.

    We will drop by for a quick look at Mt Rushmore on our way to the campground in Wyoming.

    • Hyperion

      With stadiums in the West filled to capacity yesterday and I assume again today, sooper spreaders will be coming at you from all directions. The surge coming up from the gulf will hit the surge coming from the west and it will be like a film created from bad science.

      • Timeloose

        I will also have to avoid the smug clouds emanating from CO, CA, And NY as they converge somewhere over the US over the rest of the week.

    • TARDis

      Safe travels to you. And… I’m jealous.

    • DEG

      Excellent

    • blackjack

      Somebody’s got to fight for our right to be free from liberty.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        We desperately need to go to a loser pays system here. This kind of shit can wreck companies win or lose.

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        This. Nuisance lawsuits need to be crushed, driven before us, and used to make the women sing lamentations.

      • blackjack

        There’s no bottom to how retarded people allow themselves to appear when there’s a bunch of free money involved.

  47. LCDR_Fish

    At least a short term (hopefully not) sign of normalcy – back to full capacity at Fredvegas Park Lane Tavern for brunch and no masks.

    Chillin’ at the bar waiting for my steak and eggs.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Christ on a cracker, the last thing we need is another grifter in a funny hat.

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        What, you don’t like Texas?

    • Chafed

      I give up. What does it say?

  48. DEG

    Will we ever believe a political leader who talks about hope and change again?

    Go fuck yourself.

    “This is to protect kids [and] protect those who can’t get vaccinated,” San Francisco Mayor London N. Breed said Thursday as she announced the city would require a variety of businesses to demand proof of vaccination — a move that came 10 days after reinstating an indoor mask mandate.

    Go fuck yourself.

    “If you do not wish to receive a vaccine, that is your decision. But don’t order a counterfeit, waste my officer’s time, break the law, and misrepresent yourself. CBP Officers at the Area Port of Memphis remain committed to stopping counterfeit smuggling and helping to protect our communities. But just know that when you order a fake vaxx card, you are using my officers time as they also seize fentanyl and methamphetamines,” Neipert added.

    Go fuck yourself. Wasting your officers’ time is a fine thing to do.

    The “C Jam Blues” is a fine song.

    • Gustave Lytton

      So now all CBP officers are “Border Patrol” Including customs agents? Jesus H.

    • limey

      Is she named London because she was conceived and/or born in one of the Londons?

      • KSuellington

        She was conceived who the fuck knows where and born in SF public housing.

    • Tulip

      That’s….. Horrifying.

    • Hyperion

      I have bitey stingey things in general, but that thing is out of a bad nightmare.

    • limey

      I watched a documentary about scienticians dredging up new species in Antarctica recently. Some pretty strange-looking fish but none of these guys IIRC. Lovecraftian.

      • rhywun

        One of those BBC nature shows went to depths of the Pacific and shone a light on some serious nightmares. Way worse than this thing.

      • Suthenboy

        Once after working like mad half of a day in the woods I took a rest. I laid down on the ground and went to sleep. I was awakened by some noise and an air gust. I opened one eye and saw about a hundred vultures perched in the trees around me and one vulture standing a few feet away from me, staring intently at me.

        It was creepy but yeah, they are harmless.

    • rhywun

      “We call him Bitey.”

    • Suthenboy

      I have seen video footage from beneath the antarctic and arctic ice caps. There is some really bizarro, creepy life forms there. Not surprising as it is the most alien environment to humans.

    • limey

      He’s just a persona who tweets shallow, facile barbs at the powerful people to sell his line of tight underoos. Pretty cool I guess.

    • Suthenboy

      No, he is not.
      We are not a democracy. The founders went to great pains to avoid democracy and made it very clear that that was what they did. Every time I heard that retard Obama claim we are a democracy it made me cringe…and made me angry.

  49. KSuellington

    Damn, certainly a depressing couple weeks in the news front. The fat fuckwit that runs this shithole city has decreed that businesses have to ask me for my papers before letting me in. I got the experimental drug and I am fucking pissed about that. I will resist, anyplace that asks me for proof is getting blacklisted. Fuckthatnoise.

    In regards to Afghanistan, what an absolute shitshow of a withdrawal. After untold trillions spent, thousands dead Americans, tens of thousands maimed for life it takes a couple weeks to topple to the warlords. Now they got some fancy new military equipment to play with, and it looks like we are now bombing our own war planes and helicopters that we gave the Afghan military. What a farce.

    https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/b-52-bombers-head-to-afghanistan/

    • Suthenboy

      We defeated the most powerful militaries on earth in less than 4 years with far less sophisticated weaponry. We cant defeat a bunch of goat herders today in 20 years? Bullshit. TPTB never intended to win in the ME. The whole thing from day one was a sham. Everyone involved for the last 20 years should be exiled to Afghanistan.

      • KSuellington

        And just like how no one who was responsible for being so asleep at the wheel that they let 9/11 happen were punished, no one who let this whole debacle proceed will be. If anything, those who should have stopped the plot, like Brennan, were be rewarded with higher positions of authority. I’m sure the same will happen here.

      • Suthenboy

        Jesus, you just say the name Brennan and the hair on the back of my neck goes up. That guy is one of the biggest POS I have ever seen in govt. Prison is too good for him.

      • blackjack

        Meh, I doubt that 9-11 was predictable. It certainly wasn’t some genius plan. They ruined any chance of continuing to attack the west. They could have kept plodding along, blowing holes in navy ships, hijacking small cruise ships, setting off small-ish bombs here and there and they’d still be doing it now. Ever since 9-11, the best they can muster is fucking up some third world shithole. I doubt that was part of their long term plan. Any couple of dozen people who were willing to die could have perpetrated 9-11 with almost no backing, during that era. They were armed with box cutters.

      • Mojeaux

        No, it means we’re not willing to actually wage war instead of dinking around playing footsie.

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        Indeed. AFPAK is one of those places that would require Total War, a la Sherman in the south. No one in the western world has the balls anymore to do that.

        I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

      • Suthenboy

        It is a bad thing. When evil raises its head we need a Beowulf.

        “The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing” – Some Guy

  50. rhywun

    My supermarket just rolled out some fresh signs with CDC’s latest advisory to wear the feed-bag at all times. I ignored it; nobody said a thing as usual.

    • Suthenboy

      Same here. Signs everywhere, masks nowhere.

      • rhywun

        Oh, there are masks everywhere. I just choose to not play.

    • blackjack

      I’m just waiting for the speakeasies and black market to kick in out here. I’m right at the Burbank border, so until they fall, I can just go there. There’s also Ventura county to the north. I think we can manage to stay supplied, despite the occupation.

  51. Draw Me Like One of Your Tulpae, Jack

    My weekend

    Friday: work, party
    Saturday: party, work, party
    Sunday: work