Tuesday Morning Links

by | Sep 14, 2021 | Daily Links | 339 comments

Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas!  And what an amazing day it always is!

 

Finally! Our grass was starting to die.  I really need to get our sprinkler system fixed.

 

FBI fires lead agent on Whitmer case, not for entrapping people but for wife beating.

 

This is going exactly how I thought it would.

 

This is going exactly how I thought it would.

 

Enemy of the people.

 

One of the most accurate polling company for the last two election cycles finds that the majority of Americans do not support Biden’s fascistic vaccine mandate.

 

State Department silent for a week as congressional office asked for help evacuating Americans.

 

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

 

I have mixed feelings on Democrats going completely batshit. I have great sympathy for them, but it makes our inevitable divorce a lot easier.

 

TikTok eclipses YouTube.

 

That’s all I for today (damn, it’s a lot).  I’ll leave you with a song and go enjoy the downpour of sweet glorious rain.

About The Author

Banjos

Banjos

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

339 Comments

  1. AlexinCT

    “FBI fires lead agent on Whitmer case, not for entrapping people but for wife beating.

    Doing the deep state’s work requires people of this caliber, but they can’t be blemished by getting caught doing these sorts of things the left likes to blame their opponents of…

    [EF fixed your FUBAR EM tag.]

    • AlexinCT

      I bow to the mighty Edit Fairy!

  2. AlexinCT

    I have mixed feelings on Democrats going completely batshit. I have great sympathy for them, but it makes our inevitable divorce a lot easier.

    Why would you be worried about people this stupid? Yeah, I get that these are morons that have their opinions assigned to them by what passes for the media but is really a dnce operative with byline shitden, but most of them would be mad at you for showing them the truth and harshing their stupidity.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Will it be a divorce or a one of those murder suicides where the house gets burned down and even the dog gets shot?

      • AlexinCT

        Your guess is as good as mine, but at the risk of stereotyping, I bet team blue is going to behave like the crazy woman that has spent here days in the union sitting on the couch eating bonbons watching crazy morning TeeVee shit that has wrecked her brain that is pissed her hubby caught her being bad and wants to punish him for not worshipping her despite all of the trouble being of her making and the fact that the house is now a shitshow.

      • waffles

        Or they stay together and we just fume at each other while self-harming.

      • AlexinCT

        That’s gonna make for some awkward sex…

      • waffles

        In my experience it’s either no sex at all or an insane amount of it. No in between. You’re either wishing you’d get fucked or wishing you would stop getting fucked.

      • Festus

        The mutual hate-fuck can be rather intense, especially when you both remain physically attracted to one another but nothing good comes of it. It’s like scratching a mosquito bite until it becomes septic.

      • Ted S.

        No more awkward than your usual sex.

      • AlexinCT

        How do you know about my usual sex Ted S.? Are you spying on me?

      • Festus

        :Starts trying to mount her navel:

      • db

        “Ow! My cervix!”
        “Sorry, Honey.”

        “Ow! My cervix!”
        “Sorry, Honey.”

        “Ow! My cervix!”
        “Sorry, Honey.”

        “Ow! My cervix!”
        “Sorry, Honey.”

        “Ow! My cervix!”
        “Sorry, Honey.”

      • Tonio

        Stop bragging.

      • AlexinCT

        THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID!

      • Lackadaisical

        You gotta massage it, not hit it. Should make her toes curl.

      • db

        word

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Ah, the old psychological abuse until someone hangs themself in the closet relationship. That’s the worst one.

      • waffles

        No one wants to do the hard work of actually separating or actually destroying the country. That’s why I think we are set upon decay, degradation, and gaslighting that what you see all around you isn’t decay and degradation.

      • db

        Yep. There’s too much that needs fixing, and too few people willing and competent to do such fixing. Decay and degradation, while the ones who want to make a go at something new and valuable head to Mars, or somewhere.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        Mars! is where all the cool kids are headed,

      • Festus

        Those Cuntes can gallivant off to Mars. This place seems pretty comfortable to me.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
        In fact it’s cold as Hell

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        GET YOUR ASS TO MAHS

      • juris imprudent

        Decay and degradation smothered in denial.

        He’s just pining for the fjords!

      • Festus

        I’ve actually felt much like a dead parrot glued to his perch for a number of years now. Wonder if IoBot is getting some? Sure hope so!

      • Tonio

        They wouldn’t let us go. Remember that they want to force their beliefs on everyone else.

        Also, there is the practical issue of how to split up things like nuclear arsenal, aircraft carriers, etc. They’d shit themselves at the thought of Texas having its own nukes.

      • db

        Yeah, that’s a big one. No pun intended, splitting the legitimate functions of government up is the very hard part. Perhaps the worse part would be splitting up the illegitimate functions of government that one side would still want the other to pay for.

      • Pine_Tree

        Already got Pantex…

      • OBJ FRANKELSON

        Fifth or sixth century Western Rome is probably the most likely trajectory, IMO. The central government will just stop being able to govern portions of the country and they will fall away into their own entities.

      • Animal

        I can live with that.

    • The Last American Hero

      1) They aren’t batshit crazy, they are evil.

      2) Trumpers do pose a bigger threat to them and their political plans than the Taliban. The Taliban are a bunch of goatfuckers that can kill people, but can’t conquer the US or exert influence outside of their borders. China is the America they want to live in (and rule). It’s also going to collapse under its own weight in a couple decades.

  3. Stinky Wizzleteats

    “the majority of Americans do not support Biden’s fascistic vaccine mandate.”
    I really hope that’s the case. If it isn’t we are done but it is good to hear. For most provax people even there’s a big difference between “it’s a good idea to get vaccinated” and “the government is going to force companies to fire you if you don’t get vaccinated.” The latter just reeks of authoritarianism.

    • AlexinCT

      You really think they care about what Americans care about Lamont?

  4. Fourscore

    Morning Banjos, Wish I was in Katy, go surfing with y’all. Hope all is well, just another day in TX, I guess.

  5. Tonio

    The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s office said equipment was “replaced” at the polling center and that provisional ballots are a “failsafe option” for these kinds of glitches.”

    “Crikey! They’re on to us. Bring out one of the undoctored machines for a while.”

    • AlexinCT

      It’s not accidental that the people that love the statists worship at the same altar as this guy…..

  6. Rebel Scum

    The FBI agent credited with thwarting the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been fired from the agency after domestic violence allegations were levied against him.

    “Thwarting”, “plotting”. “Tomayto”, tomahto”.

  7. Rebel Scum

    Some self-identified Republicans claim they arrived at their polling center to cast their ballots in the California recall election only to be told they had “already voted.”

    Funny how this sort of thing only seems to ever go one way*.

    *Granted I am open to the possibility of it also going the other way and I suspect we would hear about it if it did.

    • Sean

      Voter suppression in CA?

      Unpossible!

    • db

      Frankly, it seems like it would be pretty easy to send in a mail-in ballot and then show up and make a big deal that you were denied in-person voting, but it’s something you could be easily caught at. If they even tie the records together in order to prevent double voting at all.

      • AlexinCT

        How are you gonna be able to prove some crackhead stole all 5 ballots mailed to you and dropped them off, with Newsome votes to boot, in a state that allows ballot harvesting legally? My bet is that what you will see is the government accusing people whom had been wronged by the crackhead ballot harvesting effort and demanded their in person voting right, of cheating and going after them for interfering with their shenanigans…

  8. CPRM

    The voters who experienced this issue were offered and provided provisional ballots – the failsafe option to ensure no one has turned away from voting,” the statement said.

    “Provisional ballots are regular ballots and once the eligibility of the voter is verified, they are processed and counted. After troubleshooting the issue, the equipment at the locations was replaced and voting continued.”

    Just trust us.

  9. Tonio

    “Neither tweet was deleted as of Monday evening, but the New York Times article was changed without any editor’s note, which happens in the media business.”‘

    Not the way it’s supposed to work. Any time you make a post-publication change you’re supposed to say that you did that, ie:

    [This article has been changed to correct the spelling on Lech Znpincz’s name. NYT regrets the error.]

    You will note that Glibertarians dot com always acknowledges changes either as above, or in the comments. We’re better than that.

    • AlexinCT

      Your mistake Tonio, is to have morals/scruples, and to take ownership when you have done wrong like you expect others to do. I firmly believe our media and a large swath of our political class took Johnson’s whole political tactic of falsely accusing his opponents of fucking sheep and not caring about it being a lie, because the damage would be done, and the truth would come to late to matter… Besides, Corrections shmorrections!

      • OBJ FRANKELSON

        They were mostly upset that they got caught, not that they did it.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Stealth editing FTW. He who controls the present controls the past: See, we were always right.

    • Festus

      Yes. Yes we are.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      They’re not journalists. They’re propagandists.

      Propagandists don’t maintain a history of their mistakes.

    • Mojeaux

      Lech Znpncz’s name is still misspelled. There are no vowels in that name.

      • OBJ FRANKELSON

        Have you seen Western Slavic names? Vowels are rarer than principled politicians.

      • Mojeaux

        Yep. Tonio put a vowel in the name and I was riffing off that.

      • whiz

        Reminds me of baseball journeyman pitcher Marc Rzepczynski, affectionately known as “Scrabble”.

    • Zwak, jack off, all trades

      Changing the scripture after events fail to materialize in just Best Practices!

  10. CPRM

    The Great Legal Minds of the USA:

    Breyer said, “Why was it? Because they didn’t bring a case, I guess, that met the normal criteria for being heard. When we decide to take a case, there has to be four votes to take it, so I can’t go beyond that. What we do know is that there were not four votes to take it because it wasn’t taken. There are criteria, and if we don’t take a case, you know, the reason in all likelihood is that the criteria weren’t met.”

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Breyer is a third rate intellectual and a complete sack of shit apologist for the unchecked State. I think he is more corrosive than Ginsburg was.

      • Festus

        Not “Roberts” bad?

      • Rat on a train

        Breyer is worse for outcome, but Roberts is like the person that pretends to be your friend but fucks you over when given an opportunity.

      • Festus

        He’ll be glad to pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today!

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Much worse than Roberts. Roberts is disappointing in that he became a Kennedy-style swing vote representative of the “right side of history”, but he can at least write an opinion that makes sense and where the conclusions follow from the (flawed) premises. Breyer is a hack who would’ve been run out of TMITE for being too obvious if he had gone into journalism instead of law. I’ve never read a Breyer opinion that I respected, and I can’t say that about Sotomayor or Kagan.

      • Zwak, jack off, all trades

        Stupid and evil is no match for smart and evil.

  11. Rebel Scum

    Americans’ inflation fears hit another record in August as the price of consumer goods continued to surge, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey published Monday.

    Sounds like a good time to raise taxes and print a few trillion dollars.

    • waffles

      That’s what’s so crazy. Nothing in this plan makes sense, at all. It’s a wishlist of authoritarian technocratic control. It’s all bullshit that will actively harm the average American. Enemy of the people.

    • AlexinCT

      Our checkbook is still full of checks!

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Just think of it as a way to give out handouts to favored constituencies and enact a stealth tax on the middle class and it all makes sense. It’s just another means of wealth redistribution.

      • waffles

        Yeah it’s looting. It’s looting on a scale almost exactly 10,000 times the sum total of all BLM antifa looting. It’s a shakedown and a heist.

      • AlexinCT

        It’s always about making it easier for government to be the one that picks the winners & losers…

  12. Rebel Scum

    The New York Times quietly deleted its assertion that an October article from the New York Post about the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son Hunter was “unsubstantiated.”

    Well, of course anything that does not tow the party line is “unsubstantiated” or “without evidence”.

    • AlexinCT

      What is galling is that nobody is calling out all those ex-intelligence big wigs that came out to swear this shit was all Russian disinformation. At a minimum one would worry about the character of people that run the shady organizations that can spy on anyone and ruin people’s lives with the power of the government willing to do something like they did, but I find most team blue people are fine with this shit (and far worse) as long as it benefits them. When you remind them that historically those of them now enthusiastically clapping for these fucking evil abusers will avoid the first two waves of people put against the wall and shot when the “revolution” starts, but they will all be part of the next unending waves of derailing with enemies of the state (and by state I mean the people in power abusing it).

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Brennan and Clapper deserve the boats.

      • Tulip

        Glenn Greenwald does. He’s largely unpersonned though.

      • waffles

        I’d think the future of America could be rosier and winnable if the FBI and the CIA weren’t dedicated to actively pushing DNC narratives and attacking the American people. The cabal of state power is deeper and more sinister than politics alone.

      • AlexinCT

        If the totalitarians win the day these deep staters will have real fun and interesting jobs and very little resistance to ruling the serfs with an iron hand: a thing they desperately want, because they see us as problems to them being allowed to do whatever they wanted (and benefitted them personally instead of the country).

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The intelligence agencies don’t care about DNC goals. They care about the DNC providing political cover for their own goals.

        The grifters at the top of the DNC know this and exploit it, as well as many at the top of the GOP.

  13. Festus

    Whelp. Just spilled some cat food from a tube on my fingers. It’ll smell like old times now!

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      a tube of cat food? what madness is this?
      /Howdy

      • Rat on a train

        It would be madder if he doesn’t have cats.

      • db

        The world outside the US is like the Internet: it’s all just a series of tubes.

    • Ted S.

      You could always eat it.

  14. AlexinCT

    NO WAY! People that capitalize politically on selling an idea that involves depriving the serfs of protection (and one of the few jobs the state should legally be doing according to the constitution) have the means to pay for a lot of security for themselves……

    • whiz

      They’re not all bad; they also support ending qualified immunity.

  15. db

    Pet Peeve:

    When my laptop connection to our corporate VPN times out overnight, I have to re-log in in the morning. That’s no biggie, should be expected behavior.

    The peeve comes in with Outlook. Once the machine is connected to the VPN, Outlook continues to stare blankly at the user and not update anything. Most of the time, it displays a little clickable box in its bottom status bar that says “Need Password.” If you click on this, does it ask you for your password? Nope. Never. It just uses whatever hash it has saved to reconnect to the server and then goes about its business.

    Why does it require human intervention to allow Outlook to use a hash it obviously already has stored to reconnect to the server? Because we are using AD, all our passwords are the same, so whoever managed to log in to Windows, then log in to the VPN, clearly has my password, which would get them into Outlook anyway, but I have to click a button, and it doesn’t even ask me for the PW again.

    Seriously annoying.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      Compared to what? pen and paper? a typewriter?
      /first world problems

      • db

        I said it was a pet peeve, not a catastrophe.

        But yeah, I guess.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        I say that to people when their tech doesn’t work exactly right, people have no clue as to how complex and wonderful our tech is, and most take it for granted.

      • The Last American Hero

        Now talk about the Office Ribbon.

    • rhywun

      I like when I have to change my password, everything works fine until I have to log in to Outlook twenty-five or thirty times before it takes the new password.

      • Grummun

        My favorite is when Outlook keeps trying to authenticate with the old password until AD locks the account. Then when help desk unlocks the account, you get to pick yet another password. Yay!

      • Ownbestenemy

        I just thought it was the shitty government build of Win7 I was running

    • Gustave Lytton

      Have the same thing. I think either the client or the server is detecting that it’s connecting over public IP initially and demands authentication but doesn’t over private corporate network but outlook isn’t smart enough to recheck until you click the need password box. If I don’t connect to the vpn, it does require reentering my password to connect.

      • db

        Huh, that makes sense. Our Outlook is prevented from connecting to the server at all somehow if it (or something) detects that it is not on the corporate network or VPN, but the functionality of asking for the password is still there, I guess.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Good ole Outlook. Our IT allows public connections and I think that was the case before they migrated to Exchange Online/O365.

      • EvilSheldon

        I will bet you a cold beer that your company Exchange admin has different internal and external hostnames assigned to the virtual directories on the client access server.

        There are reasons to do this, but it usually causes a bit of a mess.

    • Lackadaisical

      I have the same behavior on my work setup. It kinda works, so I don’t complain.

    • EvilSheldon

      Outlook just sucks at credentials management.

      I mean, Outlook sucks at everything, but it especially sucks at credentials management.

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      We had something similar with our database web interface. SSO was set up so it would automatically log in using a certificate, but we’d get “session expired” with a button to click. Simply clicking the button logged us back in without any credential entry.

      Thankfully it was fixable via user script. The DB company wanted a lot of money to fix it.

  16. Rebel Scum

    Democrats see Trump supporters, unvaccinated as more dangerous than Taliban, China

    MSM propaganda runs deep.

    it makes our inevitable divorce a lot easier.

    These people mean to rule you. There will be nothing easy about it.

    • juris imprudent

      Yeah, they don’t want a divorce – they want the spouse to cave in to their every demand/whim.

      YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME!!!

      • Fourscore

        Boy, howdy! Went down that road, fortunately it was a long time ago.

        “You wouldn’t know what to do without me”

        “Oh, you mean, like be happy?”

      • EvilSheldon

        The comparisons between Progs and abusive partners gets more apt every day.

    • Lackadaisical

      Yup, they’re not content to just oppress those who want it, it has to be everybody. They seem willing to burn the house down rather than let us be free.

  17. Drake

    Mainstream news rarely allows comments any more and when they do it can backfire spectacularly.

    This station asked Facebook followers for stories about unvaccinated people dropping dead from covid, Instead they got thousands of comments about vaccination injuries and deaths.

    • robodruid

      We don’t want to know about that.
      Makes us feel icky

    • juris imprudent

      I love this about Taibbi’s substack – he actually engages with his readers/commenters.

      • robc

        Like Cavanaugh used to do at H&R.

        Most of the authors at econlib do too. Scott Sumner and I have a long running debate over whether Paulson was lucky or had insight. He is on the side of luck.

    • PutridMeat

      Log into facebook?!?!? What fresh hell is this?

  18. Rebel Scum

    Honk honk.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) rallied supporters in Long Beach on the final night of campaigning in the California recall election, telling them that a vote for his main opponent, Larry Elder, is a vote against “diversity” and “racial justice.” …

    He also claimed Elder believed that slave owners should be paid reparations for their freed slaves. (Elder, in a discussion of reparations with Candace Owens, mentioned that the United Kingdom had compensated its slave owners when it abolished slavery to avoid conflict over the issue, using that example to make the point that reparations was a complicated topic.)

    Both diversity and racial justice were “on the ballot,” Newsom said.

    • rhywun

      You’d think he’d be plugging all his “accomplishments”.

      • DEG

        Yeah. This doesn’t sound like the behavior of someone that is confident he will win.

    • db

      I’d say that Newsom’s slimy ass is on the ballot, primarily. The fact that there is a ballot at all in his case is evidence that a large number of people dislike him and his policies enough to make it even possible.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        ^Yeah this and it was always a long shot anyway.

    • CPRM

      Literally voting for diversity is literally voting against diversity. Literally.

    • Endless Mike

      Somehow every comment Spike Cohen makes on Facebook ends up hitting my notifications – usually, this would be quite annoying, but lately, it’s become my favorite part of Facebook…

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Don’t ever trust a guy carrying a wheeleless bike.

      • Festus

        Or riding a kid bike and carrying the other. Also, never trust a scruffy-looking person wearing a backpack in an urban area.

      • Jerms

        Never trust a grown man riding a kids bike either. Always up to no good.

      • Festus

        This is known.

  19. Rebel Scum

    Zero self-awareness.

    NEW – Democrat Rep. AOC wears a “Tax The Rich” dress at #MetGala, where a ticket costs $30,000 to attend.

    • db
      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Look at it this way. She’s going to make it into the history books, just like Marie Antoinette.

      • Atanarjuat

        I’d say they’re very self-aware. Elite liberals know that the only way they can get away with being so ostentatious and not being called out by the left is to plaster pandering slogans everywhere.

      • Ownbestenemy

        ^^^ I missed it by that much. She knows what strings it will pull on the national stage. TMITE will gush and engage its protective bubble, while saying shit like “in a bold statement at a fundraiser…”

      • Q Continuum

        ^^^Exactly. And it works very well until it doesn’t. Eventually the mob turns on you, but probably not until after it’s too late to stop the snowball rolling downhill (see: French Revolution).

      • The Last American Hero

        Bullshit. You want to lay odds she’s in office until she croaks of old age in 50 years?

        Before you place the bet, take a look at her district’s voting habits.

    • Rat on a train

      It was a mistake. It was supposed to say “Eat With The Rich”.

    • Ownbestenemy

      To us it appears as zero self awareness. She knows exactly what she is doing and is well aware it will generate more positive press from friends and fodder from the alt-press.

    • R C Dean

      Looks like she’s wearing a Chick-Fil-A ad.

      • Lackadaisical

        I’d eat at that restaurant.

    • Festus

      Does “Tax The Rich” mean that I get to tap three times on her fine ass?

    • Mojeaux

      She needs better tampons.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        I assume she probably thinks those should be free.

    • Drake

      Their most useful idiot. Beats tending bar if you have the stomach for it.

  20. wdalasio

    That’s why I think we are set upon decay, degradation, and gaslighting that what you see all around you isn’t decay and degradation.

    Perhaps. But, I am somewhat skeptical. The problem with decay, degradation and gaslighting is that it isn’t an equilibrium. And maintaining a status quo uses up increasing amounts of energy, even as the system itself decays. And when the imposed status quo breaks, it breaks catastrophically. And, it’s increasingly obvious in our national politics. It isn’t disagreement. It isn’t even two different peoples with two different ways of life. It’s increasingly hatred. It’s increasingly white hot rage. No matter how much people try to hold the system together. It’s increasingly obvious that neither side can stand the idea of the other’s rule. And they probably shouldn’t.

    Absent separation, I only see one of two possible outcomes: civil war or conquest. And civil war is only a bloody means to separation or conquest.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      It all hinges on the dollar.

      If the dollar fails, so does the union.

      • wdalasio

        If the dollar fails, pretty much the only real justification for the union is gone. So, yeah.

      • R C Dean

        It’s not that so much as correct collapse = economic collapse = social collapse.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The stuff that comes along with it is highly unpleasant, absolutely.

        But the dollar is the glue in the federal system. So long as the feds are able to buy off the states and localities, there will be no real push to divorce from them.

      • Fourscore

        when the dollar fail..

    • db

      The logical and peaceful way would be for both sides to recognize that they cannot and should not attempt to control everyone. That hey, those libertarians have the right idea that a government powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to be used to take everything you value away from you. That, maybe, if we backed off and reduced the size and power of government, everyone would be less afraid of their opponents getting control of it.

      • wdalasio

        Well, yeah. But, doesn’t that sort of beg the question? I mean, if men were angels, there’d be very, very little need for government. I’m all for a revival of federalism. I’m all for keeping the government limited. But, this hardly seems a priority for either side and one side seems openly opposed to the idea.

      • db

        There are two ways to get to limited government: The first is to have an educated and principled population and political class that recognizes its benefits and strives to maintain it. The second is to suffer a catastrophe caused by bitterly opposed factions fighting tooth-and-nail to gain control of an unlimited government and either have enough people realize it is the power in itself that is destructive or have the survivors realize that excess government power caused the catastrophe and they become the people in the first option.

      • EvilSheldon

        The Eastern Europe option?

      • juris imprudent

        The problem is the two sides may have deep social fissures, they don’t cleave the geography in any real way.

        But even the fissures are something of a figment of the media. Kill the media (mass and social) and make people go back to more actual face to face living, and I’d venture about 90% of the stupidity goes away – which leaves a pretty manageable social environment.

      • wdalasio

        I’ll concede your geography point, to an extent. But, a coastal/interior divide probably accounts for about 60-70% of the distinction.

        And I do think the fissures are real. I think media has just uncovered them. More than social media, I think it stemmed from the rise of the counterculture in the 60s and 70s. That counterculture became, for much of the country, the culture itself. But, wide swaths of the country never really embraced that. At the same time, you saw what I’ll call the traditional classes economically buffeted by both technological trends and government policy. There’s a reason “Learn to code” has become an insult thrown at media downsizings.

      • juris imprudent

        I tend to agree with Murray about the geographic divide (urban vs. non-urban) which makes it pretty much impossible to divvy up the county. NB: the book reviewed in the link is going on my reading list.

        The traditional American civic virtues are alive and well in small-town and small-city America. Those communities are beset by some of the new problems that afflict the nation, especially increased drug addiction and family breakdown. But they are approaching those problems as Americans traditionally did and local institutions continue to function as they traditionally did. I will repeat what I have written elsewhere, because it has been my dominant thought for the last decade: The great divide in the United States is not political or racial. It grows out of the immense difference between daily life in the big cities and daily life everywhere else. That difference amounts to a chasm dividing Americans’ experience of their country. It also lies behind the political polarization that is tearing us apart.

      • juris imprudent

        I’ll elaborate on why I think the social fissures are more myth than reality (which isn’t to say there isn’t some kernel of truth in it).

        I believe our media consumption is doing to our minds what modern cleanliness of our environment does to our immune system. We haven’t evolved to keep pace, and in the case of our immune system, it gets expressed as allergies. That immune system has to have something to do, so by god, it does. Well, at a social level, we are overwhelmed with media input, so our minds have to make sense of that overload. In this case, the mind reverts to tribalism since the world is too big and complex to otherwise understand.

        Most people refuse to believe that chaos is natural. We believe in order, very, very deeply. Along with order is the notion that someone/something is in control, even if we don’t see it directly. The idea that control is something that doesn’t really exist – a chimera – that is anathema.

      • Fourscore

        You may not believe in chaos, but chaos believes in you.

        Running late, “Damn it, a broken shoe lace. What? I told you to put gas in the car yesterday. I’m supposed to drop the baby off at day care? ”

        Normal day in some homes…

      • waffles

        THE MEDIA IS THE ENEMY.

        Anyone who has spent any decent amount of time traveling outside of urban America would find most people incredibly decent. Anyone telling you otherwise is trying to control you. It even applies to city folk. A small vocal minority of Americans are ruining us.

      • wdalasio

        Anyone who has spent any decent amount of time traveling outside of urban America would find most people incredibly decent.

        I completely and totally agree with you about that. In fact, that’s at the core of what I’m arguing. I don’t think it’s a fight of good versus bad. It’s just two different peoples with two different cultures. Belonging to one culture versus the other doesn’t define one as decent or not. No more than being Canadian, Mexican or English versus American. But, the cultures do have incompatible drives and imperatives. And imposing rule by either on the other is only a recipe for misery, resentment and hostility. And trying to resolve the matter by re-imposing some long-dead national culture isn’t going to resolve it for either.

  21. robc

    If you showed a mid-80s english soccer fan the top of the Premier League Table they would first ask, “Whats a premier league?” But after you got past that, they would say “Looks about right.”

    Also, I was thinking that if at the start of the PL you had told some fans that about 30 years later a midlands club would win the title, I don’t think Leicester would have been the guess. Probably 5th choice after Villa*, Birmingham, Nottingham Forest, and Derby County. Maybe 6th behind Coventry too, but Coventry ended up exactly where everyone expected.

    *except no one expects Villa to ever actually win anything.

    • Drake

      The average Brit from the mid-80s would look around and have a lot of other questions. They would probably assume they lost a war to the communists or some Islamic power. (They did)

      • robc

        Just sticking to soccer, the questions would be huge…why are tickets so expensive? Where are the english players? What do you mean I can’t stand in a pen? Where are the pre and post match fights occurring now?

        For that final question, the answer is “Millwall.”

      • juris imprudent

        If nothing else, Millwall is a bastion of tradition.

      • robc

        I saw someone wearing a Millwall jersey in the US once. I kept my distance.

      • robc

        I just looked it up, they are currently sponsored by a Swedish Chocolate company. That seems so wrong.

  22. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Twice yesterday I was out and about and overhead people shit-talking about the “unvaccinated” and how they’re making life harder for everyone else. One was a blowhard older guy at a restaurant and the other was a middle aged mom who was just so concerned about it.

    I got my BP checked last week and it 106/66. I doubt it’s that low today.

    • Banjos

      The good news is that corporate propaganda has drastically lost its effectiveness for the majority of the population. The bad news is the propaganda has been ramped up to Naziesque levels and those still stupid enough to follow it (Democrats) have completely lost their fucking minds.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I’m beginning to doubt my capacity to hold my tongue in public.

      • Sean

        Then don’t.

      • Atanarjuat

        Most people are incredibly weak in the face of social pressure so if you just made it clear through body language that you feel those dipshit should stfu, it might shame them into silence.

      • db

        Ask the server to re-seat you away from the offensive conversation. Make sure they hear you.

      • creech

        If you are with a like-thinking buddy, start talking loudly about how fascism is so terrible and then weave in how you think the Dems are the real fascist threat.
        Let the assholes overhear that.

      • Q Continuum

        Query: did a majority of German citizens support Aktion T4 and the Final Solution? My guess is no. It’s just that a loud enough, fanatical enough minority rammed through that stuff and the plebes and NPCs went along to get along (or because they were afraid to speak up).

      • creech

        ….and when they came for me, there was no one left to speak up.

      • AlexinCT

        In most cases they didn’t find out about it until after the fact….

        The rabble didn’t need to know. And we have a lot of that today as well..

      • waffles

        I think you’re right. The disturbing parallel for me is that those were public health measures too.

      • Ownbestenemy

        We are at a point where the government could whisk away a family (like mine) and say ‘they were unvaccinated’ or ‘they supported Jan 6’ and no one would bat their eyes at it except a few in the media.

      • Festus

        Gold stars for the vaxxed up here. The rest of us are shit out of luck. Remember how much you hated those kids when you were 9-10 years old? Not the unfortunate ones, the golden children. The ones that never had holes in their socks. The ones that pointed and laughed at you. They are playing a dangerous game.

      • Fourscore

        Oh, you mean, all the other kids? Yeah, I remember. And I laugh. And go to their funerals.

      • Akira

        The bad news is the propaganda has been ramped up to Naziesque levels

        Yep.

        Jimmy Kimmel made a statement (it was framed like a joke, but wasn’t really a joke at all) that unvaccinated people should be turned away from hospitals and left to die. The audience just cheered. Not laughed, but cheered in hateful agreement. I’ve since heard many people say that it’s just “common sense” that unvaccinated people should not be treated.

        If they’re gleeful about letting unvaccinated people die, what makes anyone think they’d object if Fauci sent some goons to round them up and put them in concentration camps quarantine facilities for their own safety?

      • R C Dean

        unvaccinated people should not be treated

        And the people cheering for this will turn on a dime and say that health care is a human right.

      • juris imprudent

        And in fact that you must be compelled to participate in that health care, and pay for it — all for your own good of course.

    • Atanarjuat

      Fuckin’ wreckers, man.

      • Festus

        I’m not a wrecker, I’m a Kulak!

    • Certified Public Asshat

      The people who don’t want to lord over you are making life harder for everyone else. I know we all realize this, but saying it out-loud might help?

    • Atanarjuat

      Interesting on several levels. First, the use of “far left”, which I don’t see often, and also the sheer number of typos. But then this: one of the terrorists was a “former field organizer for Washington state Democrats”. I wonder how much overlap there really is between the DNC and Antifa.

      • Q Continuum

        “I wonder how much overlap there really is between the DNC and Antifa.”

        The Venn Diagram is a target. Profa are the enforcement arm of the Dems.

      • WTF

        Yeah, that’s sort of like saying “I wonder how much overlap there really is between the Nazi Party and the Brown Shirts”.

      • kbolino

        In both cases, it’s not 100%. The NSDAP wasn’t the only far-right group in Weimar, and even among the NSDAP, they weren’t all supporters of Hitler (though he took care of that problem).

      • juris imprudent

        Hitler gave Ernst Rohm the sad. Wonder who actually put the knife in his back?

  23. PutridMeat

    Re: main article pic. I guess that’s what’s meant by “Don’t bother children when they are skateboarding”. Dangerous as hell – also to bystanders which complicates it – but also exhilarating and symbolic of humans pushing boundaries. Yeah, maybe this guy dies, but maybe the next guy discovers faster than light travel.

  24. Rebel Scum

    Your opinion is violence.

    This goes to show that despite the outrage by the student body and despite the fear that Case for Life instills, the university continues to refuse to take action. To put it simply, CWRU does not care about its students. If they actually cared, they would have immediately considered concerns about the student body’s immediate safety and the broader school-community impacts, and they would have easily determined this organization to pose a danger. Case for Life may have voiced their opposition to sidewalk counseling through an Instagram Direct Message (even though there is nothing to hold them accountable to that); however, they do not contest participating in protests outside of clinics or other forms of imposing their views on vulnerable people within and surrounding the CWRU community. Case for Life says its mission is to “protect and promote respect for all life,” and they commit to a “nonviolent approach in all that [they] do.” But protesting outside of an abortion clinic is inherently violent; preying on vulnerable people who, no matter the circumstance, have chosen to do what is best for their life violently threatens their privacy and their right to make that decision. This organization does not value the pregnant person’s life.

    We used to call these people “women”.

    • Rat on a train

      protesting outside of an abortion clinic is inherently violent
      What if they keep it mostly peaceful?

      • juris imprudent

        What if they keep it mostly peaceful?

        You mean like burning the clinic down?

      • WTF

        That’s when the peaceful protest intensifies.

      • The Last American Hero

        It’s just a women going to get a parasite removed, according to them, so what’s the problem with protesting? I mean, if some tree huggers were outside the wart-removal clinic would any of the patients give a shit?

  25. Scruffy Nerfherder

    This may be the most totalitarian COVID opinion piece I’ve read yet. Consider yourself warned.

    https://www.fayobserver.com/story/opinion/2021/09/13/richard-a-s-hall-get-tough-anti-vaccine-people/5720607001/

    Concluding paragraphs:

    A true conservative, moreover, takes a dim view of human nature. For example, the 17th century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, believed that human beings are inherently rapacious — “man to man is an arrant wolf,” he famously said and advocated the establishment of an absolute political power to constrain their rapacity. And the 16th century Swiss theologian and Reformer, John Calvin, thought that all human beings are congenitally depraved and redeemable only by the free grace of God.

    The conservative position is that citizens must be constrained by governmental regulations to rein in their worst impulses thereby enabling them to be truly free. This is a conservative principle, but not now a Republican one.

    Admittedly my prescription for dealing with our domestic terrorists is draconian, though justified, because what is at stake is nothing less than life and death.

    • Ownbestenemy

      “Now obviously people with medical exemptions should not be vaccinated.”

      Okay Boomer. You destroy your whole notion about biological terrorist walking about with that one sentence. If they are all a threat…then even medical exemption should be ignored.

      Fuck off

    • Rat on a train

      Richard A. S. Hall is a professor of philosophy at Fayetteville State University.
      Keep in your lane, asshole.

    • Gustave Lytton

      There are domestic enemies, but they’re mostly sitting in the halls of power and the cubicles of the bureaucracy.

    • Rebel Scum

      Admittedly my prescription for dealing with our domestic terrorists is draconian, though justified, because what is at stake is nothing less than life and death.

      So you are saying that we should arrest 90+% of Congress?

    • Q Continuum

      Pretty talented to prove both Hobbes and Calvin correct about human nature by example in one shitty editorial.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        He’s definitely in the “We had to burn the village to save it” camp.

      • Ownbestenemy

        No different than a deacon preaching that unmarried women that bleed are witches that need to burn

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        What’s striking is that a supposed “conservative” is using utilitarian arguments to promote what is essentially a totalitarian state.

        If a comparison to Hitler was ever deserved, he qualifies.

  26. Sean

    So, today’s irresponsible urge is to get one of those forced reset triggers.

    *sigh*

    We’ll see how long I can stave that off.

    • PutridMeat

      Reading the article linked above your comment (28), my ‘irresponsible’ urge for today is to go spend $1000 on some more ammo.

      • Sean

        Yeah, I did that a couple weeks ago.

        The night of the Russian ammo import ban.

    • EvilSheldon

      Interesting trivia – the Browning Auto-5 shotgun has a forced reset trigger.

      They’re kind of a gimmick though.

      • Sean
  27. Brawndo

    I’m not sure what’s more retarded; Democrats thinking that unvaccinated people are the greatest threat facing the nation, or Republicans thinking the Taliban is the greatest threat to the nation.

    • Q Continuum

      ^^^This. Everyone’s brainwashed, just in different ways.

      Apparently not on the list (or at least not near the top):
      – Inflation
      – National debt
      – Erosion of the BOR
      – Indoctrination in public schools

      Y’know, the things that are actually likely to fuck over the average Joe six-pack and lower quality of life.

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      I’m not sure what’s more retarded; Democrats thinking that unvaccinated people are the greatest threat facing the nation

      Are they wrong? If your goal was to transform the nation in a banana republic, who would you consider the greatest threat to your new nation? I would consider the greatest threat to be the group of people who are mostly likely to actively resist the transformation, are armed, and are the most prepared for protracted conflict. While unvaccinated people who do not wholly consist of this group, the Venn diagram overlaps quite a bit.

      We have to get out of the mindset that everything is just idiot politicians and MSM as usual. This is calculated. There is a reason Facebook is flagging canning groups and other completely non-violent preparedness groups as potential terrorist threats. It’s not idiocy… it’s an accurate identification of potential threats and the first steps towards neutralizing them.

      • Brawndo

        I’m not sure your typical Dem voter wants America to become a banana republic (even though it already is). Typical Dem politician? Absolutely.

        Anyway, I think when most of them say the vaccinated are the greatest threat to the nation, I assume they mean “those unvaccinated people will are going to infect and kill us all”, not “those unvaccinated people are going to implement policies that threaten the country.” I think it’s an important distinction.

        And after I’ve finished my coffee, I’ve made up my mind. Thinking the Taliban is the greatest threat to the country (or even any threat at all) is more retarded.

      • AlexinCT

        Your typical politician, but especially those in team blue crime syndicates, are only concerned with keeping power and the benefits that conveys on them. That’s why you have statists like that asshole Boosh jr. telling people that Americans that don’t want to bend the knee so his group can keep power while selling us to China are the enemy, and not the Chinese or the people selling us out to them.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        I wasn’t clear if you were talking about voters or politicians. The politicians and MSM set the messaging, and know very well it’s not true that the unvaxxed pose a health risk. If you’re talking about voters, I can agree that’s retarded. Although, I’ve noticed that Trump supporters, 2nd A supporters, unvaxxed, and domestic terrorists are becoming synonymous terms among the Dem hoi polloi .

        I used to think that the typical (or a sizeable percentage) Dem voter didn’t want a banana republic here. The past 5 years have ripped my eyes open. If you frame the question as a banana republic or fascism, of course they would say no. But they support all the characteristics of one. Take approval among the average Dem voter for locking away the Jan 6th “domestic terrorists” in solitary with no trials. Or eviction bans on rentals. Or government imposed lockdowns and curfews. I bet it’s fairly high on all of these things. I also assume it’s moderate to high support on things like packing the SC and removal of the 2nd A.

  28. Rebel Scum

    Gotcha!

    The UK government has insisted that vaccine passports will remain an integral tool in fighting the spread of COVID just a day after health secretary Sajid Javid asserted that they had been completely scrapped.

    During his media rounds yesterday morning, Javid said that vaccine passports represented a “huge intrusion into people’s lives,” adding, “I am pleased to say that we will not be going ahead.”

    However, within 24 hours, the government has indicated that the system will in fact form a “first-line defence” against a winter wave of coronavirus.

    “No 10 said checks on the vaccine status of people going to nightclubs and other crowded events remained a crucial part of the government’s winter Covid plan due to be unveiled by the prime minister tomorrow,” reports the Times.

    It continues until there is mass noncompliance.

    • Drake

      I like how the are planning ahead for the ” winter wave of coronavirus”. This will never end.

      Has there ever been a winter in Britain without coronavirus (colds)?

  29. Q Continuum

    I’m beginning to think that the vaccine mandate stuff was set up as a distraction. Even tyrant Obama-era lawyers must know it’s almost guaranteed to get nuked by the courts. I see it two-fold: divert attention away from Afghanistan, but more importantly to divert attention away from the $3.5T “infrastructure” calamity. I’m typically loathe to make grand apocalyptic statements, but IMO if that bill gets rammed through we are well and truly fucked. For real. It’s not just the spending; it’s federalization of elections, amnesty for illegals, kulturkampf atrocities permanently codified in the permanent bureaucracy and G-d knows what else. It’s over 10,000 (!!!) pages making Zero-care look like a brief pamphlet. I honestly do not think the country could ever hope to recover if that bill is passed.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      This

      It’s the most cynical type of political maneuver. Distract from your failures by pitting the populace against itself. If the country bleeds out in the street as a result, it doesn’t matter. These are truly vile and evil people.

    • Rebel Scum

      guaranteed to get nuked by the courts

      You are more optimistic than me.

      • creech

        Agreed. The AP stories all seem to say stuff like “while the Biden mandates have their critics, many legal experts agree they are constitutional.”

      • Sean

        If you tell a lie often enough…

      • Not Adahn

        Nah, there ARE many legal “experts” who say it’s constitutional. People who say it isn’t are fringe outlier trumpalo partisan definitely not experts.

    • The Other Kevin

      I think it’s a distraction too. Biden’s been terrible at historic levels and his poll numbers are already tanking. But he always did poll well in his handling of COVID, so why not double down on that? This also gives the media (both sides) something to talk about instead of, say, showing pictures of people being beheaded in front of a US tank in Afghanistan.

      I recently heard someone say that Democrats are really good at identifying problems, but really bad at understanding human nature. And I also think they tend to act like they will never lose another election.

    • AlexinCT

      I’m beginning to think that the vaccine mandate stuff was set up as a distraction.

      Everyone sure as hell forgot quickly about this bungled Afghanistan withdrawal that benefitted China in so many ways it is a dead giveaway that was the intent, yo..

      Think of it. We left China a bunch of hardware they would love to reverse engineer (those Apaches & Blackhawks), weapons so the Taliban could keep the population down (and China’s CCP will not care if they brutalize their the people in order to benefit China) while letting China come in to milk the country’s rare metals, and I bet you our nomenklatura class is getting payment for this from China in some way as well. Maybe it is just about paying off the CCP because Trump had the audacity to accuse them out load of foisting this bioweapon on the planet, and embarrassing the mandarinate’s masters.

      • db

        The Apache is 40-plus-year-old technology (first flight was in 1975). The Blackhawk first flew in 1974. Maybe there are some systems aboard that China would like to get, but they’re most likely not the most modern. The US probably doesn’t hand out the latest gadgets to client states, especially not ones like Afghanistan.

        There’s certainly some tech that China wouldn’t mind getting a look at, but if they haven’t managed to get their hands on a couple of 40 year old helicopters already, they’re not doing super well. They probably have access to better, more modern rotary wing designs already.

      • AlexinCT

        The Apache is 40-plus-year-old technology (first flight was in 1975). The Blackhawk first flew in 1974.

        The electronic suite in both platforms had/have been upgraded numerous times, and some of the ones we left there have better equipment than the Apaches we sold our NATO partners (and are going to be far, far better than anything China has managed to copy up to today). People make the mistake of thinking that a platform is old it is obsolete. The B-52s of today, for example, some 60 years old, only look like the older model did from the outside. Inside the beast is a completely different monster than the old one.

      • db

        That’s why I mentioned the possibly advanced “systems aboard.” I would bet that the US doesn’t allow export of avionics, targeting, and similar electronics to countries like Afghanistan that we provide weapons to. The Apaches we provided to the Afghan army are different than the ones we took back with us. Presumably any with advanced electronics that were left behind either had them removed or destroyed before being abandoned.

      • Not an Economist

        Anything really advanced or classified probably got yanked by the support contractors when the US forced them to leave.

        The loss of support contractors is really why the Afghan army collapsed. We trained them to fight a certain way and then we removed their ability to fight like that. I really would like to know who ordered that.

      • juris imprudent

        It was stupid to train them to fight our way and not in a manner native to that culture.

  30. Rebel Scum

    It’s not ok to be white.

    Campus Reform obtained a copy of the syllabus.

    It reads, “I am a Caucasian cisgender female and first-generation college student from Appalachia who is of Scottish, British, and Norwegian heritage. I am married to a cisgender male, and we are middle class. While I did not ‘ask’ for the many privileges in my life: I have benefitted from them and will continue to benefit from them whether I like it or not.”

    At the end of her statement, Duncan Lane apologizes to students for the “inexcusable horrors within our shared history.”

    “This is injustice. I am and will continue to work on a daily basis to be antiracist and confront the innate racism within myself that is the reality and history of white people,” Duncan Lane writes in the syllabus. “I want to be better: Every day. I will transform: Every day. This work terrifies me: Every day. I invite my white students to join me on this journey. And to my students of color: I apologize for the inexcusable horrors within our shared history,” the instructor continued.”

    This person has no context of history.

    • Q Continuum

      “Duncan Lane apologizes to students for the ‘inexcusable horrors within our shared history.'”

      Fuck off you mentally ill cunte. I’m part of the most hated group in history; more people have tried to exterminate us more times than anyone else and I’m not an oppressed victim. I also don’t view those around me through some sick lens of oppression hierarchy, I view them as individuals. If your life is such a non-stop horror show of guilt either get medicated or kill yourself.

    • juris imprudent

      She was given a male name, so apparently her parents didn’t want a girl. Doesn’t that count for any victim points?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      “Virginia Tech’s Department of Human Development and Family Science”

      I think I see the problem.

    • Q Continuum

      Was there ever any doubt?

    • AlexinCT

      Did you really expect people that know they can’t win an honest election but absolutely don’t want to take the risk of the opposition taking power and exposing their criminal activities, let alone lose power, not to cheat when the system was configured to allow cheating?

    • Festus

      ick?

    • The Gunslinger

      Nope. Posing coquettishly.

  31. Count Potato

    Huh, arrows came back. Now they have alt text, but still don’t work.

  32. Festus

    Argh! I want to keep spouting off but if I keep drinking, I’ll never make my shift tomorrow. No fair! Good morrow, Glibs!

  33. DEG

    Mornin’ Banjos

    In Houston, officials worried that heavy rain could inundate streets and flood homes.

    Will it be the fault of their lack of zoning? Climate change? All of the above? Something else?

    According to The Detroit News, Special Agent Richard Trask was fired last week while awaiting trial on charges of assault with intent to do bodily harm and allegations that he beat his wife’s head against a nightstand following an argument caused by a swingers party they attended.

    Their life sounds like a shitshow.

    The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s office said equipment was “replaced” at the polling center and that provisional ballots are a “failsafe option” for these kinds of glitches.”

    “Failsafe”. Interesting.

    The median expectation is that the inflation rate will be up 5.2% one year from now, the 10th monthly consecutive increase and another new high for the gauge, and up 4% three years from now, the highest level since August 2013, according to the New York Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Expectations.

    Seems a bit low to me. On the other hand, I’m certain the Fed’s Magic Wand will solve the problem. On the gripping, want to buy a tiger repelling rock?

    A new surge of Republican governors, 27 so far, have announced their opposition to Biden’s mandate. Several lawsuits are reportedly in the works among Republicans.

    I looked at the linked story. It includes this:

    The governors who’ve expressed opposition include those from Arizona, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

    That’s not 27 governors, and Kansas has a Democrat governor who locked the state down hard. I did a little digging, and all I can find about Kansas’ governor is a quote in this article, which doesn’t sound like opposition to me. Also note Kansas’ Chamber of Commerce, unlike the NJ Chamber of Commerce linked in the comments on Yusef’s story, opposes Biden’s action.

    The U.S. Department of State for a week failed to respond to a Republican congressman’s request to help American citizens and others trying to evacuate Afghanistan, according to emails obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

    Nothing to see here, move along.

    • juris imprudent

      “Failsafe”. Interesting.

      If it fails, we are safe. Tada!

    • R C Dean

      The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s office said equipment was “replaced” at the polling center and that provisional ballots are a “failsafe option” for these kinds of glitches.”

      In the highly unlikely event that it was an equipment problem, yay.

      If their mail-in ballots were stolen or somebody otherwise voted in their name, this is utterly meaningless. Here’s the deal: the “first” ballot(s) will be counted, and the provisional ballot tossed, for one very simple reason: they have no way of pulling the exact ballot(s) that were stolen out of the pile to discard them.

      The idiot Repubs need to go all in on stopping mail-in balloting for anyone who doesn’t pick up an absentee ballot in person. Junk mail voting is completely and utterly insecure, and it doesn’t matter whether its theoretically possible to make it secure. Its insecure by design, and the people running the elections have zero interest in running a secure election. If they did, they would have never gone with junk mail voting.

    • Fourscore

      Puts Post It note on monitor, to remind self to order a tiger repelling rock before DEG runs out

  34. waffles

    Random thought: I think people under the age of 40 who have to look at a keyboard to type are functionally retarded. Caveat is that they need to use a keyboard for work at least 5 hours a week. I also think younger generations who interface with smartphones and tablets more than computers are at a distinct disadvantage. At some point tech stopped making us smart and started making us more tarded. That is, collectively. You’re all geniuses.

    • Q Continuum

      I’m committed to not letting my daughter have a smartphone as long as she lives under my roof. Social media, constant stimulation and surveillance-in-my-pocket are cancer.

      • The Other Kevin

        Mine youngest didn’t get hers until she turned 16 this year. The other two were even older. We had to put up with years of “But I’m the only one in school who doesn’t have one!” I do not regret that decision, especially when I see kids in preschool or younger glued to videos all day.

    • CPRM

      I think people under the age of 40 who have to look at a keyboard to type are functionally retarded.

      Like look down at it constantly or just glance down at all?

      • waffles

        I glance infrequently. Usually to begin typing. But never glance mid-sentence.

    • juris imprudent

      At some point tech stopped making us smart and started making us more tarded.

      So recently I read Postman’s Technopoly* and he stressed throughout the tradeoffs that technologies always involve, even though we often don’t see what we lose (since we focus on what we gain).

      *I had been looking for his Amusing Ourselves to Death but found this instead.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Online shit posting taught me and now my teens how to type. Yahoo Chat FTW!

    • Akira

      At some point tech stopped making us smart and started making us more tarded. That is, collectively. You’re all geniuses.

      I’ve pondered this as well. It seems like technology of the past obviated the need for rote, repetitive tasks (calculators, word processing software, etc) and allowed us to accomplish more work (and more complex types of work) whereas more recent technology is replacing the need to think altogether (GPS that speaks directions to you. I’ve seen people absolutely panic because the GPS voice stops working and they have to actually look at the map and use spatial reasoning to tell where you are and where you need to turn.)

      I know these modern things are convenient, but I really do wonder if humanity is becoming collectively stupider. We became less physically fit when labor-saving devices removed much of the need to move around and lift heavy stuff; I wonder if a similar thing is happening mentally. If algorithms do all the thinking for us, what happens to our thinking muscles?

      • Fourscore

        I write in cursive but no one knows how to read it.

  35. Count Potato

    Tweet above, but still…

    “America’s No.1 champagne socialist AOC defends going to $35k-a-ticket Met Gala with boyfriend because her Tax the Rich dress ‘sent searches about our f-ed up tax code soaring’ – AND it was her ‘duty as a working-class woman’

    While AOC and Bill de Blasio mingled with celebrities inside the star-studded event, Defund the Police protesters were arrested outside. Both de Blasio and AOC championed the Defund the Police movement and led to the NYPD having $1billion of its budget cut”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9987913/AOC-slammed-hypocrite-donning-custom-Aurora-James-dress-TAX-RICH.html

    Also, all these skimpy outfits look quite tasteless:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9987265/Met-Gala-2021-Stars-arrive-red-carpet-fashions-big-night.html

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The people wearing them are tasteless. Surprisingly, the only one wearing anything with any kind of relevant social commentary was Kim Kardashian.

      • Count Potato

        Not Cara Delevingne was wearing a shirt saying “Peg the Patriarchy”?

    • wdalasio

      A bunch of mostly-interchangeable “celebrities” I have, at most, a fleeting awareness of dressed up as clowns to pat themselves on the back about how “stunning and brave” they are for trotting themselves around for an adoring press.

      Frankly, I’d rather watch the fishing channel.

    • Count Potato

      “The essence of the Met Gala is that ultra-rich people pay huge sums to meet and be photographed with celebrities … and then deduct their night out from their taxes. Why has no one pointed out that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez wore a “tax the rich” dress *to a tax shelter*?”

      https://twitter.com/asymmetricinfo/status/1437779767219179537

      • Ed Wuncler

        It’s because they don’t give a shit about the lower classes. They’ll advocate for policies that will harm the ability for the lower classes to climb out of their situation but will drink their champagne and wear expensive dress while having their tax accountant find ways to lower their tax liabilities while pretending that they are caring. It’s a giant fuck you.

      • Akira

        See also: millionaire Bernie Sanders’ tax return where he itemized his deductions to minimize the tax he has to pay even though he has built his career on saying that millionaires should pay more taxes.

    • juris imprudent

      Did she pay for her own ticket to the event? $35,000, right – or was that paid by someone else?

  36. Rebel Scum

    That’s a lot of gibberish to say “we are going to teach children to be racist.”

    New York Times journalist and Howard University professor Nikole Hannah-Jones has founded the 1619 Freedom School, targeted to elementary school students in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa.

    “The school’s mission is to help children develop a love of reading and books through liberating instruction centered on Black American history and will serve low-income students with the widest disparity in their reading scores,” the school’s press release states.

    Sheritta Stokes, a local teacher and friend of Hannah-Jones, is the organization’s co-founder. The pair aim to deliver “intensive literacy instruction and a culturally responsive curriculum to bridge the academic opportunity gap among low-income public school students.”

    The 1619 Freedom School’s curriculum will utilize “a literacy curriculum built around Black history,” which will also be available as “an open sourced, free resources for communities across the country.”

  37. Count Potato

    “On 1/6/2021,

    9/11/2001 ceased being the worst thing that happened to America in my lifetime.

    It’s really weird and painful to process and say that.

    But it’s the truth.

    And quite frankly… it’s not even close.”

    https://twitter.com/PamKeithFL/status/1436676637463097345

    CWAA

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      “It’s really weird and painful to process and say that.”

      What a load of horseshit. It doesn’t pain her at all, she relishes it.

    • Ghostpatzer

      *Takes deep breath* Father forgive them for they know not what they do. And forgive me for the rage I am currently experiencing.

    • juris imprudent

      He killed it for me quick enough…

      Taxis had been a reasonable business in D.C., and the drivers had middle class lifestyles, but there was a tipping point, and the industry collapsed.

      Taxis were a local govt monopoly broken by Uber. If he can’t figure that out he can’t explain shit about economics to me.

      • Q Continuum

        Yeah I couldn’t get into it either. I got “monopolies and shortages are a problem”. Sure, with you so far. But the read-between-the-lines solution seems to be that Big Daddy should regulate everything.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        We just have the wrong top men.

        Some people are never going to get it.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      He’s spot on.

    • Ed Wuncler

      I used to always foolishly believe that the Left for many of their flaws were fellow travelers when it came to civil liberties but as time went on, it was obvious they only cared about civil liberties when it was some dude with an R next to their names. If the government turned on “wrong thinkers”, they would cheerlead that shit with the quickness. As Suden would say, keep that powder dry.

      • Q Continuum

        The irony, of course, being that the definition of “wrong thinker” changes on a daily basis. Eventually everyone gets targeted (just ask Robespierre).

      • Tundra

        They are called “Iron Laws” for a reason.

      • waffles

        Me today, you tomorrow.

        If only there was some way to teach people about these Iron Laws.

      • Ed Wuncler

        Whenever one of my liberal friends touts out some authoritarian law, I always ask, “Is this the kind of power that you would entrust Donald Trump with?” They can never quite muster up an answer to that but the more honest ones usually respond with, “Well that’s why we should make sure that someone like Donald Trump shouldn’t be allowed to run for office.”

      • waffles

        Why do people think they can break the iron laws?

      • R C Dean

        Something Gods of the something something Headings.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Why do people think they can break the iron laws?

        Pride. Pure, unadulterated pride. “I’m special, so nothing could ever go sideways on my watch”

  38. Ed Wuncler

    “If you’re an anti masker anti vaxxer posting about how grateful you are for the first responders from 9/11 but you’re not doing simple things to protect our present day first responders and make their lives easier when we lose the equivalent of 9/11 every day? You’re a hypocrite. I said what I said. You can hide behind medical choice, bio individuality or whatever the shifting goalpost of the week is, but you’re a hypocrite. Full stop.”

    Saw this on a friend’s FB post the other day. She’s an upper class white woman who sits at home all day arguing with people over the internet about politics.

    • Rebel Scum

      You can hide behind medical choice

      It’s called “freedom”.

    • Q Continuum

      Great. Now do abortion.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      How does she feel about the first responders who don’t want the vaccine?

    • Fatty Bolger

      Ah, “Full stop.” I see that a lot these days. I read it as somebody putting their fingers in their ears and saying “LA LA LA LA LA LA I can’t hear you!!!!”

    • R C Dean

      Not considered: the implications of treating everyone who exposes someone else to a virus or germ as a violent criminal.

  39. Count Potato

    “.@JoyAnnReid responds to @NICKIMINAJ’s tweets on the #COVID19 vaccine: “For you to use your platform to encourage our community to not protect themselves and save their lives… As a fan, I am so sad that you did that.” #TheReidOut #reiders”

    https://twitter.com/thereidout/status/1437557324361633796

    “The two white men sittin there nodding their heads cuz this uncle tomiana doing the work chile. How sad.”

    https://twitter.com/NICKIMINAJ/status/1437575751490891782

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I’m going to need some help translating.

      • Count Potato

        Joy Reid was responding to this tweet:

        “My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied”

        https://twitter.com/NICKIMINAJ/status/1437532566945341441

        Then Nicki called her a “homophobic coon” etc.

        tl;dr: retard fight

      • juris imprudent

        Someone get these bitches off Twitter and hand them some knives!

  40. Tundra

    Good morning, Banjos!

    I give you Rain.

    Have a wonderful day, everyone!

      • Tundra
      • kinnath

        Thanks for that.

      • Surly Knott

        Quite welcome. I’m very fond of that whole album.

  41. Sensei

    Nothing makes me grin more than the Top. Men at Ars Technica. Loved this comment.

    Basically, Mark Zuckerberg is hard right-wing, and he’s trying to spread the misinformation. It’s not a bug, it’s a deliberate design decision.

    Facebook is trying to hide that they’re deliberately spreading lies to strengthen conservative viewpoints, but that is what’s actually going on. They pretend to be neutral to the media, but in actual fact are biased very strongly in favor of conservatives, and are making as much noise as possible to confuse this issue.

    Leaked documents reveal the special rules Facebook uses for 5.8M VIPs

    • AlexinCT

      Anyone not left of them or Marx is a “Hard right wing” type to morons. Note how with team blue people, anyone that deviates even in the slightest from the ever changing talking points is right wing? They expect monolithic adherence, and your views MUST immediately change when the narrative changes. Deviate even once, and you get in trouble. Their self policing is quite effective…

      • Sensei

        Yup. The thing is that many of the faithful buy this without a question.

      • juris imprudent

        Isn’t that the whole point of faith?

    • kbolino

      Keeping “hard right-wing” people around, even in ghettoes, keeps money flowing and eyeballs glued to screens. If you alienate people too much, they will go elsewhere. I say this with no good feelings attached; it probably would be better if Facebook and all the other social media sites got super ban-happy. The Internet is not the world, and social media is not a healthy replacement for socializing with real people. But doing so would hurt their bottom line and they know it.

      The current goal of woke capital is to keep the vast majority of regressive deplorables around, while signaling to the progressive right-thinkers that they’re not doing exactly that. The solution they’ve come up with for now is ghettoization. The deplorables get a reduced, but still mostly functional, user experience. The engagement between people inside and outside the ghetto is greatly limited to maintain appearances. Misinformation flags get thrown around on ghetto content all the time, but both sides know they are at best useless and at worse tantalizing, like “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content” was to music in the 1990s.

      The next phase is either going to be open economic warfare or capitulation. “There is only one color that matters: green” is as true today as it was in the Jim Crow era.

  42. Count Potato

    “Our Most Reliable Pandemic Number Is Losing Meaning

    A new study suggests that almost half of those hospitalized with COVID-19 have mild or asymptomatic cases.

    If you want to make sense of the number of COVID hospitalizations at any given time, you need to know how sick each patient actually is. Until now, that’s been almost impossible to suss out. The federal government requires hospitals to report every patient who tests positive for COVID, yet the overall tallies of COVID hospitalizations, made available on various state and federal dashboards and widely reported on by the media, do not differentiate based on severity of illness. Some patients need extensive medical intervention, such as getting intubated. Others require supplemental oxygen or administration of the steroid dexamethasone. But there are many COVID patients in the hospital with fairly mild symptoms, too, who have been admitted for further observation on account of their comorbidities, or because they reported feeling short of breath. Another portion of the patients in this tally are in the hospital for something unrelated to COVID, and discovered that they were infected only because they were tested upon admission. How many patients fall into each category has been a topic of much speculation. In August, researchers from Harvard Medical School, Tufts Medical Center, and the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System decided to find out…”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062/

    • Count Potato

      “The study found that from March 2020 through early January 2021—before vaccination was widespread, and before the Delta variant had arrived—the proportion of patients with mild or asymptomatic disease was 36 percent. From mid-January through the end of June 2021, however, that number rose to 48 percent. In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.

      This increase was even bigger for vaccinated hospital patients, of whom 57 percent had mild or asymptomatic disease. But unvaccinated patients have also been showing up with less severe symptoms, on average, than earlier in the pandemic: The study found that 45 percent of their cases were mild or asymptomatic since January 21. According to Shira Doron, an infectious-disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, in Boston, and one of the study’s co-authors, the latter finding may be explained by the fact that unvaccinated patients in the vaccine era tend to be a younger cohort who are less vulnerable to COVID and may be more likely to have been infected in the past.”

      • Gustave Lytton

        Additional explanation, increasing numbers of non-covid visits (from hospitals & patients no longer delaying/avoiding care) + mandatory testing = increasing number of with covid cases.

      • Urthona

        This is absolutely the case.

        Also note that this summer hospital beds have taken up with more kids with COVID, but also way more kids with RSV. RSV has been particularly bad because kids were wearing masks for a year and not allowed to go to school.

    • R C Dean

      I think our experience is pretty typical. What’s going on is this:

      (1) The number of actual COVID patients is pretty low – around 5 – 7% of our patients are COVID patients, although they do take up a chunk of ICU capacity.
      (2) The number of non-COVID patients is shockingly high, and they are sicker than we used to see for our patients.
      (3) There is a tremendous shortage of nurses – we used to have around 1100, and we’re down to 850 -900 now. This is the true limiting factor on hospital capacity.

      If the COVID patients disappeared entirely, the hospital capacity problem would be completely unchanged. We are turning away patients. One night, we turned away as many as we had for COVID.

      When asked why we have so many patients who are sicker, our medical executive committee (the boss docs in the hospital) said as near as they could tell it was three things – postponed care, drug abuse (including alcohol), and general stressors in people’s lives. The unwittingly identified the hysterical overreaction to the pandemic as the cause of the current public health problems. Exactly, I might point out, as some of us predicted, since the two biggest drags public health have long been known to be economic distress and social isolation. And they never connected the dots.

      • Mojeaux

        Tangentially related: This is fishy.

      • R C Dean

        The family of a man who died of heart issues in Mississippi is asking people to get vaccinated for COVID-19 after 43 hospitals across three states were unable to accept him because of full cardiac ICUs.

        Its not the Unclean who are clogging up the cardiac ICUs. Vaccinations won’t do a damn thing about that.

      • Mojeaux

        Yep, noticed that, but that’s not how they worded it on the news. I’m starting to yell mutter at the TV now. I think my husband’s getting tired of it.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Vaccinations may well be increasing that particular load.

      • Pine_Tree

        RC, what is your perception of the following:
        – There’s lots of memes around saying basically “nearly all these folks in the hospital and ICU are unvaccinated”.
        – If I were a hospital trying to create data to push the “you have to get the jab” meme, it seems relatively easy to do that with admissions criteria.
        – Like 2 patients come in with same symptoms, but one’s vaxxed and one’s not. So I’m evaluating them and ask…
        – You got the vax? Well, go home. You didn’t? OH YOU HAVE TO BE ADMITTED.

        ???

      • Pine_Tree

        On your #2: I have heard the words “walking pneumonia” more times in the last 2 weeks, just in our little small-town circles, than in the previous 5 years. Seems like now everybody’s getting it. No idea what’s going on.

  43. Rebel Scum

    Cleanest. Election. Evar.

    “Shenanigans”? KABC-TV reports Riverside County, Calif., voters are worried after receiving multiple ballots, with some receiving five ballots.

    “Is this a very small scale problem? Or is it maybe a little more substantial than we think at first glance?”

    • Urthona

      I would assume that the system won’t count more than one of those, but yes I’ve been reading lots of stories of this.

      My cousin, who is a registered Republican, received a ballot with a part of the envelope cut out so you could see who she voted for. My uncle, unregistered, received multiple normal ones.

      • Rebel Scum

        I suppose she is voting Democrat now.

    • AlexinCT

      Fuck Nina…

      No, really…

  44. Sensei

    Where the hell is Snake Plissken? Even Manhattan has now gotten crazy.

    Violent motorcycle gang carjacks NYC BMW driver

    A gang of motorcycle-riding robbers forced a Manhattan BMW driver out of his car at gunpoint, then beat him before driving off in his pricey ride early Sunday, according to police and video of the heist.

    The suspects pulled up to the 23-year-old driver on their bikes at about 2:30 a.m. on Riverside Drive near Henshaw Street in Inwood, police said.

    • db

      Just another way of taxing the rich.

      • AlexinCT

        They must have watched AOC making her statement,….

    • R C Dean

      If a bunch of people on motorcycles try to force me off the road, I’m taking advantage of the fact that I am driving a two-ton vehicle and am completely ensconced in metal. And they’re not. Who the fuck lets a motorcycle run them off the road?

      • kinnath

        Sheep

  45. Annoyed Nomad

    Huh, arrows came back. Now they have alt text, but still don’t work.

    Now when you click on them, you’re just indicating your sexual preference (top vs bottom). TPTB will be sharing the results in a future post.

  46. Sensei

    Hypothetically, one may have used life size posters, stencils, chalk and variety of other methods in the dark ages pre widespread computer usage and the internet.

    These little wallflowers can’t figure out how to print out a double sided card cardboard card grab a Bic and copy their existing card while changing the date of birth.

    The Fake Vaxx Card Next to You In the city, counterfeit proof is easy to buy as weed.

    The bouncer made it clear why: The birth dates on their IDs and vaccine cards didn’t match…

    According to Henry, they were left with no alternative but to forge proof of vaccination that corresponded with the birth dates on their fake IDs.

    It wasn’t long before Henry was put in touch with a doctor who sold him a CDC card with his real name and a 21-year-old birth date for $200.

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      I think it’s even more disturbing that people are required to show their ID to gain admittance to stores in NYC, the vaccine card aside. I think it’s in Australia that businesses are required to log the names of all customers. How long before that comes here?

      • R C Dean

        Business opportunity – shopper for the Unclean.

      • rhywun

        people are required to show their ID to gain admittance to stores in NYC

        We’re not quite there yet. It’s “only” for restaurants*, gyms, stadiums, and one or two other things that might have occurred to Deblasio when he was sleeping late that morning.

        *I have yet to actually witness this in action. I think “enforcement” phase has already started but not quite sure because I don’t eat in restaurants.

      • Sensei

        Which kinds of businesses will be affected?

        Here is a full list from the city of which kinds of businesses will be required to ask patrons and employees for proof of vaccination.

        Restaurants, bakeries and coffee shops
        Catering halls, cafeterias, event spaces and banquet rooms
        Bars and nightclubs
        Dining spaces in grocery stores
        Fast food restaurants
        Movie and performing arts theaters
        Live music and concert venues
        Museums, exhibition halls and galleries
        Aquariums and zoos
        Sports arenas and stadiums
        Convention centers
        Bowling alleys, pool halls, game centers and arcades
        Gyms, fitness centers, workout classes and pools
        Dance studios
        Casinos
        Adult entertainment venues

        https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2021/08/13/what-to-know-about-the-city-s-vaccine-passport-rules-that-start-monday

      • Rat on a train

        What proof of identification is needed for logging names? Because Mikhail Mysh gets around.

  47. Rebel Scum

    Al Gore, you are wanted at the courtesy phone.

    Less than 10 years remain before the oft-claimed “tipping point” for the planet, but sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is the highest it’s been in nine years, increasing more than 30% from last year, while the Antarctic’s level is well above normal.

    That’s according to the Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility’s High Latitude Processing Center, pointed out climate-change skeptic Tony Heller.

    He noted the Arctic Ocean gained a record amount of sea ice during the first week of September.

    “Most years the Arctic loses ice, but this year ice extent has increased” more than 77,000 square miles, he wrote on Twitter, adding the news likely would not be reported by CNN, BBC News or the New York Times.

    Meanwhile, the sea melt this summer was the lowest in 15 years, and the expanse of Antarctic sea is well above average.

    • Akira

      Anything like this gets treated like good news about COVID: “Well, uh… There’s um, a lot that we don’t understand about this, and our models said that uh, it would… Um… Ooooh, look over there, DOOOOM!!!!”

    • rhywun

      Good. Will polar bears stop bitching now?

    • Rat on a train

      Like fusion power, the tipping point is always a few years away.

  48. juris imprudent

    Well I can answer Mr. Cooke’s question. The staff were there to serve, and they knew their proper place.

    • Rebel Scum

      +1 3am ballot dump.

  49. Rat on a train

    The Army Ten-Miler will be virtual this year.

    How long do I have to complete the 37th Annual Army Ten-Miler, Virtual Edition​​​​​?
    Participants do not have a time or pace requirement to complete the virtual event. We ask that all participants complete the ten miles between Sunday, October 10 to Monday, October 25, 2021. For example a runner may run 1 mile per day over the course of 10 days (between Sunday, October 10 to Monday, October 25, 2021).

    I would participate if it didn’t cost anything. I could do it in 1 step segments over the two weeks.