Thursday Afternoon Links of Shame

by | Dec 30, 2021 | Daily Links | 193 comments

Hey guys, long time no link. I was actually supposed to cover yesterday, but I forgot. Anywhooo. Here I am doing it today. Gooo me! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season, and Merry New Year if I don’t pop back in here before then. I’ll probably be shouting at a son. I have so, so many to choose from.

Good thing for his parents this guy spent his life in a gym instead of a gun range.

Florida man gets mauled by tiger, local cops get a very special kill to add to their collection.

Florida cop drops shotgun into jailyard. Surprisingly, although the yard was occupied by Florida Men, none picked it up and no hyjinks ensued.

Taking the “cool dad” thing a little too far.

And here’s a little something for the LA contingent —

About The Author

Brett L

Brett L

Brett set out to find America, the real America, the America of strip malls and serial killers, of butthole waxing and kelp smoothies, of cocaine and maggots. He sought it in the most American part of America—Florida: swamp gas and fever dreams, where love arrives on a rickety boat and leaves when it doesn't have the money for its fourth abortion. Oh, where has Brett gone? He’s drinking at the neck of America’s wang, chewing its foreskin and working its shaft. Brett is becoming legend. Brett can never die. Brett can never die. Brett is America, facedown in his own patriotic puke: the red his blood, the white his stomach lining, and the cold, cold blue his gas station slushie, spiked with coconut rum and tetracycline.

193 Comments

  1. Brochettaward

    What’s he that wishes so?
    My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
    If we are mark’d to second, we are enow
    To do our country loss; and if to First,
    The faster, the greater share of honour.
    God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one second sooner.
    By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
    Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
    It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
    Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
    But if it be a sin to covet Firsts,
    I am the most offending soul alive.
    No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from America:
    God’s peace! I would not lose so great a First
    As one second faster, methinks, would share from me
    For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
    Rather proclaim it, Glibertariat, through my host,
    That he which hath no stomach to this First,
    Let him depart; his passport shall be made
    And seconds be put into his purse:
    We would not First in that man’s company
    That fears his fellowship to First with us.
    This day is called the feast of Glibs:
    He that out-Firsts this day, and comes safe home,
    Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
    And rouse him at the name of Glibs.
    He that shall live this day, and see the Firstening,
    Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
    And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Glibs:’
    Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
    And say ‘These wounds I had on Gliben’s day.’
    Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
    But he’ll remember with advantages
    What Firsts he did that day: then shall our names.
    Familiar in his mouth as household words
    The Brochettaward, straffinrun
    MikeS and Tundra, Festus and rhywun
    Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
    This story shall the first man teach his son;
    And Saint Gliben shall ne’er go by,
    From this day to the ending of the world,
    But we in it shall be remember’d;
    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
    For he to-day that Firsts with me
    Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
    This day shall gentle his condition:
    And gentlemen in America now a-bed
    Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Gliben’s day.

    • Count Potato

      tg;dr

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Aw, he named four of youse.

      • pistoffnick

        I’m not a fighter. I’m a lover!

      • UnCivilServant

        I’m not a fighter, I’m a bomber.

      • Fourscore

        Well, I guess that’s it

        /Takes ball and heads for home

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Er, five. Remember the Peanuts character named 5?

        Come back, 4 x20 / Shane!

    • MikeS

      *wipes away single, manly tear*

    • hayeksplosives

      This is sacrilege. Shakespeare, Henry V, and St Crispin are all turning over in their graves. Kenneth Branagh feels a disturbance in the Force.

      • Brochettaward

        I have given them all the greatest honor imaginable. It’s just a shame they aren’t alive to see it. They have been immortalized by this First.

  2. Yusef drives a Kia

    Annie was very beautiful back then,

    • juris imprudent

      We saw her live a few years ago and her voice is still amazing.

      • pistoffnick

        Would you lie to me?

      • UnCivilServant

        Yes, but only if it’s funny.

      • Mojeaux

        Now I feel like I’m walking on broken glass.

      • robodruid

        Lying would be a sex crime.

    • Zwak, All dressed up in his ridiculous seersucker suit

      Wait, who’s that girl?

  3. Count Potato

    “Eko’s killing has prompted outrage online, with many users blaming the man for entering a restricted area. “They shot the tiger for being a tiger,” said one user on Twitter.

    Another user wrote: “Quite literally natural consequences for the human. Absolutely no reason to kill the tiger. Change that tragic policy.”

    “The tiger was just reacting on instinct – should not have been put down for this – the man was at fault,” someone else tweeted.”

    Cat Lives Matter?

    • juris imprudent

      Dicks out for Eko?

      • UnCivilServant

        No. Keep it in your pants.

      • Swiss Servator

        An Eko/Harambe buddy film!

      • MikeS

        It would be a roaring success!

      • C. Anacreon

        Hey now, hey now!

        Eko, Eko a nae.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        ISWYDT.

    • rhywun

      They’re right.

      I hate that policy.

      • R C Dean

        #metoo. Animals should be killed when they are a danger to people. That guy got mauled because he was a fargin’ idiot. The tiger was no danger to anyone WHO DOESN”T STICK THEIR BODY PARTS IN HIS ENCLOSURE.

        Its just stupid.

      • hayeksplosives

        The cop even tried to avoid shooting the tiger. Article says he kicked at the bars in hopes the tiger would let go.

        In general, human life >> animal life, but that particular human is not a great example of humans.

      • R C Dean

        Ah. Didn’t catch that. Yeah, still attacking, shoot.

      • Chafed

        Me three.

    • Not Adahn

      They didn’t kill the tiger that ate the girl’s arm on Tiger King. Well, not for that anyway.

      • pistoffnick

        She was the sanest damn person on that show!

  4. juris imprudent

    More on Democrat death spiral.

    The sturdiness of white college support for the Democrats in their time of adversity is a mixed blessing at best for the Democratic Party. While it is preventing their numbers from seeing a total collapse, it creates a feedback loop which is proving hard if not impossible for Democrats to escape. The more non-white voters desert the party, the greater the dependence the party has on white college grads, a demographic whose policy and cultural interests actively repel nonwhites and working-class voters of all backgrounds. To make matters worse, discourse about future political strategy is driven by a professional political and media caste dominated by this white college elite. Hence the focus on words and issues which only matter to them, such as the belief that the use of “Latinx” is more important to Latino voters than the border or support for Communism in Latin America, or that introducing racial lecturing into the schools is more important than reducing crime or keeping schools open for African American children.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The NPR Effect

    • Tonio

      “Association of Mature American CItizens”

      • juris imprudent

        Wonder if that is a budding competitor to AARP?

      • Chafed

        I believe it is.

  5. juris imprudent

    A body builder and he had a .22 pistol? He would’ve been more dangerous with a hammer.

    • Sensei

      “ Two women identified by Tomassetti as “my girlfriend and my best friend” were in court for his arraignment Wednesday, one wiping away tears.”

      In addition to the one with his kid. Women have their own version of being stuck by crazy too.

  6. DEG

    Welcome back Brett!

    Ryder said Tomassetti wasn’t licensed in Nassau County to own the pistol

    You mean to tell me that gun control doesn’t work? What else are you going to tell me?

    “Preliminary information indicates that the man was either petting or feeding the animal, both of which are unauthorized and dangerous activities,” the Collier county sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post.

    It added that the third-party cleaning service which the man worked for is only responsible for cleaning restrooms and the gift shop, not the animal enclosures.

    “Initial reports indicate that the tiger grabbed the man’s arm and pulled it into the enclosure after the man traversed an initial fence barrier and put his arm through the fencing of the tiger enclosure,” the statement said.

    Darwin nominee?

    The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office report stated the deputy had leaned the ‘less-lethal shotgun against the northern railing of the recreation tower” while sitting in a chair overlooking the yard. The shotgun was placed “within inches of a gap between two railings.”

    /facepalm

  7. Scruffy Nerfherder

    *the face you make when you completely fuck up end of year billing by accidentally clicking on 2022-01-31 instead of 2021-12-31 and now have to manually alter three separate database tables before deleting $45k in invoices*

    At least it doesn’t post to the GL automatically

    • Tonio

      Sorry, bro.

    • Gender Traitor

      Our PEO started 401(k) contributions for some employees who weren’t yet eligible, and I’ve spent the better part of this week trying to get that undone so it doesn’t show up on their W-2s.

  8. grrizzly

    About a decade ago, a tiger in the Calgary Zoo mauled a little bit an intruder. And nothing happened to the tiger. I read the local paper and each and every comment was in favor of the tiger, whose name was Vitali.

    I found the story.

    Bad Florida men. Be more like Canadians.

  9. The Late P Brooks

    Police say the investigation is ongoing. Detectives believe he is evading arrest and officials are asking for the public’s assistance.

    That’s why they get paid the big bucks.

    When I saw the headline for this story, I thought, “Road rage; those guys pissed him off and he followed them into the gas station.”

    • R C Dean

      Father allegedly drove 14-year-old son to store to commit murder, police say

      Love the big smile in the mugshot.

      • Fourscore

        Kid didn’t have a driver’s license.

      • Chafed

        Yup. He’s a psycho. I wonder if his kid ever had a chance.

  10. UnCivilServant

    Am I the only one who has an involuntary eyeroll whenever the polygraph gets treated as anything other than pseudoscience?

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      No.

      I have I.E. quite often. Would Dr. Randy see me as self-pay*?

      *only partly kidding

      • UnCivilServant

        Welp, It’s happened again. The police went and consulted a medium.

      • Fourscore

        Couldn’t have been serious, otherwise they’d have went for a large

    • Fatty Bolger

      I’ve seen detectives on true crime shows who apparently think they work, which is concerning. Others know they are bunkum, but still like using them because some suspects get nervous, and might admit something they normally wouldn’t.

      • R C Dean

        Was it The Wire where they used a copier as a “lie detector”?

      • Gender Traitor

        Years ago, a bandmate who’d been a cop in Miami in the ’70s swore a co-worker of his had done that.

        I’m bummed to think he was BSing me with an old joke….. but he later fired me from the band, so asshole status confirmed.

  11. The Late P Brooks

    the greater the dependence the party has on white college grads, a demographic whose policy and cultural interests actively repel nonwhites and working-class voters of all backgrounds.

    It’s funny ’cause it’s true.

  12. Draw Me Like One of Your Tulpae, Jack

    Capsaicin in the eye!!! Capsaicin in the eye!!!!! AIYEEEEEEEEEE

    • UnCivilServant

      Ouch, how did you find the focus to comment?

      Are you getting treatment?

      • Draw Me Like One of Your Tulpae, Jack

        I’ve been one-eyeing it. Seems to be getting better. It was the Korean fried chicken.

      • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

        I guess one-eying it is easier than one-handing it, IYKWIM.

    • Sean

      My sympathies.

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      Sorry. Been there. You’ll probably recover.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        I would bet on her recovery, OK?

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        (KK. if you don’t recover I will call the Senator for you.)

      • Swiss Servator

        “Dear Senator Paul…”

      • Gender Traitor

        “I never thought this would happen to me…”

      • Draw Me Like One of Your Tulpae, Jack

        “I never thought this would happen to me…”

        I mean, I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating chips

      • DEG

        “but one day I woke up and found myself in Libertopia”

    • MikeS

      Been there. Ouchie.

    • one true athena

      At least you’ll look cool with an eye patch!

      • Draw Me Like One of Your Tulpae, Jack

        Aye matey

    • Tonio

      Was this something you cooked yourself? What type peppers?

      • Draw Me Like One of Your Tulpae, Jack

        No way I can make it better than these folkx https://bonchon.com/

      • Tonio

        Oh, yum. Thanks. They have locations near me.

      • slumbrew

        *starts drooling*

        Bonchon is great.

      • Sean

        It wasn’t a Sean grown pepper. She’d not be posting for a while.

      • UnCivilServant

        Have you thought of getting out of the chemical weapons business?

      • Sean

        Nope. I’m expanding operations.

        I got a heat mat, UV lights, and seedling cups for Xmas.

        Production will resume early next year.

      • Sensei

        Are we still talking about peppers or has PA become more liberal?

      • Sean

        Both?

        It’s legal in all 50 states to make your own pepper spray.

        Not sure I want to invest in aerosol equipment though.

  13. KSuellington

    A few years back a tiger was being taunted by two drunk idiots at the SF Zoo. It managed to jump out of the enclosure and killed one of the idiots and mauled the other. Some people then were complaining that the SFPD killed it. In that situation it was not only acceptable l, but the correct course of action. In this Florida case it was the opposite.

    • Chafed

      I think I remember that story. Honestly, I think the idiots had it coming.

      • KSuellington

        Yup Chafed, it was this time of year as well. The one idiot that lived ended up getting some money out of it from the zoo. Hope he drank himself to death with it.

  14. The Late P Brooks

    Kindly Old Grandpa Buffett is a little less generous with his own money than when he’s telling other people what to do with theirs

    Warren Buffett will not intervene in a steelworkers strike at a company owned by his firm Berkshire Hathaway, he told Sen. Bernie Sanders this week.

    Sanders wrote to Buffett on Tuesday and asked the Berkshire CEO to get involved in talks between United Steelworkers Local 40 and West Virginia-based Special Metals. Precision Castparts, a subsidiary of Buffett’s conglomerate, owns Special Metals.

    ——-

    In his letter to Buffett, Sanders asked him to “intervene” in the talks to “make sure that the workers are treated with dignity and respect and receive a fair contract that rewards the hard work and sacrifices they have made.”

    “At a time when this company and Berkshire Hathaway are both doing very well, there is no reason why workers employed by you should be worrying about whether they will be able to feed their children or have health care,” the senator wrote. “There is no reason why the standard of living of these hard working Americans should decline. I know that you and Berkshire Hathaway can do better than that.”

    Sanders, a labor advocate, has put his weight behind multiple strikes and union drives in recent years. Most recently, he rallied with striking Kellogg’s workers in Michigan this month.

    Buffett, one of the 10 wealthiest people in the U.S., has not been as frequent a target of Sanders’ ire as his peers including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

    In his letter to Buffett, Sanders noted that the Berkshire CEO has “spoken out eloquently on the crisis our country now faces in terms of growing income and wealth inequality.”

    I’ll bet those guys are living hand to mouth. Barely able to rub two crusts of bread together for warmth. Dire poverty is their lot.

    • Pope Jimbo

      They probably pay more taxes than Buffett.

  15. Winston

    https://www.aier.org/article/zombie-marxism/

    A grand strategy to confront the new Marxist threat would need to understand the mutation. It would need to grasp the fact that the new threat relies on organizing people in different environments and then indoctrinating them. It takes place on buses, domestic work, schools, or neighborhoods about to be gentrified. A grand strategy must grasp what is at stake. It’s nothing less than the replacement of the key American idea that “All Men Are Created Equal” with the lie of white supremacy. Such a strategy would have to reckon with what is happening in our schools. It would need to understand that violence will remain central to Marxist success. Dismantling police forces, the prisons, and the court system itself (which Patrisse Cullors calls for in this video) is part of an effort to leave society defenseless. Once enough people are converted, then the revolutionaries need only wait for a moment of crisis.

    Are we in a position to deal with this? The reluctance to be labeled a racist, slaver colonizer says otherwise. As I said before the campaign against the CSA was the first Salvo in their attack on “white supremacist violent settler colony of America” and most people fell for it.

    • Swiss Servator

      My relatives will be leading a tractor blockade of the nearest highway….stubborn rural folks.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      On the bright side, we get to witness something truly historic as the human race jabs itself into oblivion.

      • Drake

        Are the few unvaxxed like me going to be doing a reenactment of The Stand in a few years?

      • Sean

        We have more numbers than the MSM wants you to believe.

      • Brochettaward

        The numbers will only increase as they redefine what it means to be vaccinated from the initial two shots to endless boosters.

      • Sean

        It’s going to be very problematic in places with vaxports.

    • Gustave Lytton

      I’m sure if someone dug far enough, they’d find similar advance purchase arrangements in many countries including this one.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        What could go wrong with universal medicine?

  16. The Late P Brooks

    About 450 Special Metals workers in Huntington, W.V. walked out on Oct. 1. Health care is among the biggest issues in the contract talks as the union tries to avoid paying more for a higher deductible insurance plan, United Steelworkers Local 40 President Chad Thompson said Thursday.

    Pay for our own health care? What are we, slaves?

  17. Winston

    https://www.foxnews.com/us/political-class-is-a-machine-thats-just-devouring-the-city-economist-says-of-nycs-covid-19-mandates

    “It’s like this machine that’s just devouring the city with ever more controls, ever more absurd levels of despotism,” Tucker said of the expanding guidelines the political class and health officials have impose

    Why is that the urban elites and college grads are such huge threats to freedom when in theory they were supposed to the great defenders of freedom?

    • UnCivilServant

      when in theory they were supposed to the great defenders of freedom?

      Who’s theory?

      • Winston

        https://www.cato-unbound.org/2021/09/02/david-owen/free-spiritedness/

        the valuing of liberal education in the education system and most visibly at universities plays a central role in sustaining the cultural commitment to the disposition of free spiritedness and the material conditions for its reproduction. A culture that values liberal education will also value institutions such as public libraries that make the materials of a liberal education available to all and an organization of social life that ensures that there is sufficient leisure time for individuals to have real, rather than merely notional, access to such materials.

      • Winston

        https://fee.org/articles/the-liberating-arts/

        Quite distinct from training and professional schools is the liberal arts college. The student emerges from one of these institutions after four years’ exposure to a liberal arts program with little or nothing in the way of a marketable commodity; if he has acquired an immediately market­able skill, it is usually by extracur­ricular means. This is as it should be, for the fundamental purpose of liberal arts education is to provide genuinely liberating experiences for the persons involved.

      • UnCivilServant

        So a couple of people who’ve apparently decided to ignore reality and not actually talk to academias. Got it.

  18. The Late P Brooks

    President Fix-It

    The Defense Department has announced a $137 million contract to make more of a key component of rapid Covid tests to boost their production.

    The company, Millipore Sigma, plans to build a new facility over a three-year-period to produce nitrocellulose membranes, the paper that shows the results in rapid tests, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. That will support the production of more than 83 million tests a month, the Pentagon said in a statement Wednesday.

    The contract is part of the administration’s effort to ramp up production of rapid Covid tests as the U.S. grapples with the highly infectious omicron variant. Antigen tests, which produce results in minutes, can be done at home, while PCR tests are processed in labs and have longer turnaround times.

    Don’t worry. In three years there will be a new panicdemic to worry about.

    • Count Potato

      Otoh, $137M is nothing.

    • commodious spittoon

      Sometime in the latter half of 2020, the firm I work for was hired to design the structure for a factory producing PPE. We’ve gone through several design iterations as the owners jump between material options, all of which are rising in cost with delivery horizons pushing back further and further, and keep reducing scope as a result. It’s now 2022 and not a single grain of dirt has been disturbed on the land set aside for the project. This was, of course, the brainchild of a government agency with a humongous grant.

      • commodious spittoon

        We were hired on three months later by a private gene testing/ therapeutics company to build a new campus, similar in square footage but much more complex. Our project engineer went out for a second visit last week to inspect the primary structure, all of which is up.

    • rhywun

      This is a perfectly cromulent thing for the Pentagon to be involved in. ?

    • Ghostpatzer

      “The company, Millipore Sigma, plans to build a new facility over a three-year-period to produce nitrocellulose membrane”

      An explosive revelation, to be sure.

      • Fourscore

        DY-NO-MITE!

    • l0b0t

      Isn’t nitrocellulose also known as gun cotton and prone to explosion when treated roughly?

      • C. Anacreon

        Bold strategy there, gun cotton.

  19. Sensei

    Oh good. This will move the Chinese public’s latest outrage from being pissed that SpaceX buzzed their space station to Mercedes Benz.

    Mercedes-Benz removes ad with Chinese model over ‘slanted eye’ backlash

    As Asian women have been accentuating their eyes for centuries in all kinds of ways I’d bet some cash that it even if the ad agency was global this campaign was created within in China by mostly Chinese employees.

  20. The Late P Brooks

    You’re only a hero as long as you’re politically useful

    Several active-duty Marines spoke to Fox News Wednesday and alleged that some of the Corps’ “best and brightest” were being forced out due to the requirement.

    One lieutenant colonel told the outlet the Pentagon was looking to discharge members “as fast as they can and as brutally as they can, damaging every Marine as much as they can on the way out.”

    The officer claimed they were warned by a colonel: “Tread very carefully, this is political, you will be crushed like an ant.”

    “Do I want to continue serving in an institution that crushes people for bringing up reasonable points in defending their faith?” they asked.

    A major with over 17 years of active service in the Marines called the vaccine mandate “an unconstitutional edict” that is “targeted as a political purge.”

    Only insurrectionists refuse the holy sacrament.

    • Brochettaward

      The thing with Democrats is that they live in a bubble. They never believe they have policy problems. It’s only ever a matter of messaging. Just up the propaganda and explain to the idiots in flyover country why everything the Biden administration is doing is great for them.

    • hayeksplosives

      Who the hell does he think he’s kidding??

      Did he look at the economic charts upside down?

      • Mojeaux

        He doesn’t know any better nor would he care if he did. He just reads what his handlers tell him to read.

      • invisible finger

        Basically we have a trained monkey for Presidementia.

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      Carob ration will increase!

      • pistoffnick

        There are a couple of documentaries out there on John DeLorean himself. I thought they were well done.

      • l0b0t

        I’m entranced by this; thanks kinnath.

  21. Pope Jimbo

    I for one am so happy to see solid factual lynx about how bad guns are. I was stewing all afternoon because a) local media is printing blatant misinformation about guns and b) local disadvantaged youths are being arrested instead of being given therapy for the trauma that they were subjected to by guns.

    She says two women heard her and got the attention of a few men who brought their truck and boxed in the attackers’ vehicle.

    She says the two men confronted the attackers and tried to fight them off.

    Edina police say three people were injured in the altercation, including one good Samaritan who suffered serious injuries.

    “And what ultimately stopped it was there was a third community helper who came around and he had a gun, and everything stopped. The fighting stopped. The chaos stopped and the attackers stopped attacking.”

    I can’t even believe they are trying to trot out that tired urban legend about “good guy with a gun”!

    • Fourscore

      one good Scandinavian, I had to laugh.

      There would have been all the ‘sons/’quists/stroms/grens in a heartbbeat

  22. Gustave Lytton

    Just shoot me. Fellow at work cold drops his work item onto another workgroup, is now whining that it went right back to him. Yeah dipshit, that’s why your warm handoff it. “But they didn’t look at the log notes”. Yeah? It’s your work ticket not theirs, why would they bother to dig into it rather than putting right back in your bucket? That’s why you warm handoff, particularly foreign work items.

  23. Winston

    https://www.discoursemagazine.com/politics/2021/12/16/the-case-for-neo-classical-liberalism/

    As I pointed out recently, the ideological coalitions we take for granted today are not permanent. The U.S. has gone through half a dozen major party alignments, and they have tended to last for 30 to 50 years. That means we’re due for a change.

    More important, given the rising challenge of illiberal ideologies, both at home and abroad, a new coalition is necessary to revitalize liberalism.

    Hmm ideological coalitions are temporary yet liberalism is permanent.

    I describe this new alignment as “neo-classical liberalism,” a combination of the most common version of liberalism on the left—the market-friendly neoliberal—and the most common version on the right—the libertarian-leaning classical liberal.

    Considering the “libertarian-leaning classical liberal” was the one that the left despised the most I’m not sure how stable this will be?

    And how will this be different from Joe Biden?

    But there is only one movement right now that is attempting to control the apparatus of vote-counting for the purpose of overturning election results.

    Ah yes election fraud is a fascist conspiracy now. And vote Democrat until they decide to change their minds and leave us alone?

    In particular, it is important for the anti-authoritarian center-left to craft its own independent economic vision and agenda—one that embraces the market alongside the welfare state—rather than merely adopting a watered-down version of the latest utopian vision offered by the radical left.

    Um isn’t a “watered down versionof of the latest utopian utopian vision offered by the radical left” the entire point of the centre left since the very beginning? That is what makes them “centre left”.

    Also not sure how you can get the centre left to embrace spending cuts and deregulation.

    We can argue about what we can do to push back, but the top priority of our foreign policy should be to undermine authoritarian regimes and roll back their advance.

    How do you square foreign policy interventionism with reduced government? And wasn’t this a key flaw of the fusionist alliance?

    • Sean

      I don’t speak Jive.

      • kinnath

        I can’t drive 55.

    • Brochettaward

      Libertarians are just supposed to give the center left their votes and voices in exchange for the occasional invite to a cocktail party.

      • Winston

        They have this vision of some Democrat TOP MAN who will reject the last 130 years and become an ancap because CATO will tell him it will stop Trump.

        And they have this notion that most Democrars are secret libertarians who just think libertarians are too “right-wing”. However as the last two years have shown that Democrats really are a bunch of big spending totalitarians. Their hatred of libertarians isn’t an act…

      • Not Adahn

        I thought CATO, like Niskanen, has dropped the “libertarian” label.

  24. The Late P Brooks

    A contagion in his own way

    The nation’s leading infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci OK’d small, at-home New Year’s Eve gatherings among vaccinated and boosted individuals on Wednesday, but he urged Americans to cancel plans to attend larger parties as conditions become more grim amid the omicron variant.

    “If your plans are to go to a 40- to 50-person New Year’s Eve party with all the bells and whistles and everybody hugging and kissing and wishing each other a happy new year, I would strongly recommend that this year we do not do that,” Fauci said during the White House COVID-19 briefing Wednesday.

    Eat shit and die, you odious little quack.

    • DEG

      He can go fuck himself.

      I’m going to the gym New Year’s Eve. Then grocery shopping. In the evening, I’m heading to a bar. I won’t wear a mask at any of those places.

      • Sean

        This doesn’t change any of my plans. *

        * We fall asleep on the couch. An alarm goes off 11:50.

        We drink champagne at midnight and go to bed.

      • rhywun

        ^ Party at this guy’s house!

      • Swiss Servator

        He has champagne. I am there!

      • DEG

        Plus guns, peppers, and steaks.

        Though I think we have to bring the bourbon.

        Good enough for me.

        I’ll invite myself too.

        😉

      • Sean

        That’s bacon and bourbon, but that only applies to the apocalypse.

      • DEG

        Ahh. Well, I think I should bring something.

      • Sean

        This is a keto household. We always have meats and cheeses too!

        ?

      • TARDis

        I’ll bring my own crackers then.

    • hayeksplosives

      … Dr. Anthony Fauci OK’d small, at-home New Year’s Eve gatherings among vaccinated and boosted

      Uh, he “OK’d” my private plans?

      What an arrogant ass.

      Just for that, I’m going to attend the masquerade party at one of the local wineries with a bunch of strangers.*

      *disclaimer: I already have tickets to do so anyway.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        As bad as it is, there really are a lot of people that make and cancel plans based upon his indulgences and his proclamations. It’s unseemly and stupid but there you go.

      • hayeksplosives

        The disinviting family from weddings and holiday gatherings is the worst. Even if COVID disappeared overnight, those “slights” and insults will not be forgotten.

    • invisible finger

      I hope several thousand people give Fauci the hugs and kisses he deserves. Followed by an ass fucking.

  25. The Late P Brooks

    The advice comes after the U.S. saw a single-day new coronavirus case record of 441,000 reported on Monday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – a massive jump from the previous daily record of nearly 300,000 cases reported in early January.

    Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky on Wednesday said the rapid increase in cases is in large part due to the highly transmissible omicron variant.

    “In a few short weeks, omicron has rapidly increased across the country. And we expect it will continue to circulate in the coming weeks,” Walensky said.

    The frantic push to TEST, TEST, TEST! has nothing to do with it.

  26. The Late P Brooks

    Misinformation kills

    A doctor in Maryland said he had to cancel potentially life-saving monoclonal antibody infusions for about 250 people over the last week after the federal government stopped distributing treatments made by Regeneron and Eli Lilly because they aren’t effective against omicron, even though the delta variant, which the drugs are effective at treating, was still dominant at the time.

    The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response halted the allocation of those two antibody treatments last Thursday amid the rise of omicron, which the CDC had said days earlier was responsible for 73.2% of all new cases.

    But the CDC backtracked on that alarming estimate this week, revising it down to just 22.5% for the week ending Dec. 18, more than a 50-point drop.

    The delta variant, which Regeneron and Eli Lilly’s treatments are effective against, was actually responsible for 77% of all new cases when the federal government stopped distributing those antibody drugs.

    Now, one doctor says the government’s massive miscalculation cost lives.

    “I am as angry as I possibly can be about this,” Dr. Ron Elfenbein, the medical director and CEO of FirstCall Medical Center in Gambrills, Maryland, told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.

    “The fact that these people are so adamant that they’re right when they’re using faulty data and they’re using faulty logic and frankly statistical modeling that has never been correct, ever, throughout this entire pandemic, to look at this, is just beyond the pale…. People are definitely going to die because of this or need hospitalization because [health officials] misread the statistics.”

    OMG cancel him!

    I’m sure Chuck Todd is begging this guy to come on Meet the Press to tell this story.

    • Gustave Lytton

      because they aren’t effective against omicron

      I bet this is based on guessing and assumptions, rather than actually testing monoclonal antibodies against omicron or looking at treatment data.

      • Q Continuum

        Admitting there are any viable treatments undercuts the “ZOMG THE HOLE WURLD MUST GET VAKSUNATUD!!” narrative so effectively lining Pfizer’s pockets.

      • hayeksplosives

        Is all this a trial run to prepare for injecting something far more sinister in us, or is it a money grab?

        So many parties involved, from CCP to pharma to politicians at all levels, companies crushing competitors, military purging questioners—maybe it’s a mix of motives.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Of course the monoclonals won’t work you idiots, omni’s a new variant. Now make sure you get your vax y’all.

      • Sean

        It was re-engineered in a lab and intentionally released.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I think it more likely evolved from an earlier variant that leaked in 2018. I believe Ozy linked to an article in it last week.

      • Sean

        That’s what they want you to think.

        Booster shot sales were languid. Boosters shots are now the magical cure.

        So magical that you need multiple per year.

    • TARDis

      Lots of great H:W ratios there. *chefs kiss*

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Thanks. Bookmarked. I’ll watch this tomorrow.

    • westernsloper

      I do not remember where I first heard that tidbit but………………..holy fuck.

    • Swiss Servator

      Hillary … “sober” ha!

  27. hayeksplosives

    Purdue and Tennessee are tied up at 38 with 3:30 to go…

    • hayeksplosives

      It’s called the Transperfect Bowl. Turns out Transperfect provides translation services for businesses doing international business.

      Before the ad came on, I thought maybe they did surgery to minimize Adam’s Apples on transwymyn.

    • Swiss Servator

      Purdue has done its part to lose.

      • hayeksplosives

        And now the overtime begins…

      • Swiss Servator

        “How to win in spite of yourself”

        /Purdue

      • hayeksplosives

        I gotta say, the Vols TD in overtime was in fact a TD. But, that’s not how it was called, so Purdue takes the win.

  28. westernsloper

    “Preliminary information indicates that the man was either petting or feeding the animal, both of which are unauthorized and dangerous activities,” the Collier county sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post.

    FLORIDA MAN DOES ONLY DANGEROUS ACTIVITIES!!!!

    It added that the third-party cleaning service which the man worked for is only responsible for cleaning restrooms and the gift shop, not the animal enclosures.

    This was written by someone who has never cleaned a public restroom because those are animal enclosures.

    • Swiss Servator

      “This was written by someone who has never cleaned a public restroom because those are animal enclosures.”

      *nods solemnly*

    • The Bearded Hobbit

      Sounds like the scene from Steelyard Blues.

      I thought that it was all edgy and all back when I was 20. Now, I just think, “These people are assholes.”

      Bonus, Hanoi Jane.

  29. hayeksplosives

    https://babylonbee.com/news/trans-woman-wins-jeopardy-proving-once-and-for-all-that-men-are-smarter-than-women?fbclid=IwAR3URQ2QZ873iU616UAwF9EoxXIuJ5TOXcjXjCAyvGPPNuWKZFzhOI4t9Zw

    Babylon Bee on the Transwoman who broke the female earnings record on Jeopardy!

    Trans Woman Breaks Jeopardy Record, Proving Once And For All That Men Are Smarter Than Women

    Audience members were reportedly in awe to find that Schneider’s dress and pretty hair did not negatively affect the functioning of her brilliant male brain.

    • rhywun

      Captures the idiocy of even having a separate “female” category for Jeopardy records.

      • hayeksplosives

        For sure. I didn’t know they even kept a “record” and frankly, I doubt that the Jeopardy producers do so; it’s just some arbitrary thing that watchers keep track of.

        Obviously they don’t recognize an innate disadvantage for females or they wouldn’t have mixed gender competition.

  30. KSuellington

    So I have to revise my earlier comment about the tiger situation after actually reading the article and then watching the bodycam video. The dude was an absolute moron and deserves some punishment besides a ripped open arm. The tiger was being a tiger and didn’t want to let go of its new toy that it was handed. The deputy did exactly what he should have in that situation. He asked if there was a tranq gun available and when he realized the tiger was in no way gonna let go of his new toy he properly took aim and shot it. These guys have the unedited video of it.

    https://www.mediaite.com/news/watch-graphic-video-shows-florida-man-mauled-by-tiger-after-sticking-arm-in-cage-tiger-being-shot-by-deputy/

  31. JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

    Seen on a freeway overpass in San Jose today: “Fauci is a Scrub”.

  32. JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

    Just watched the latest edition of The Hat and the Hair. It gave me flashbacks of Powerpoint presentations that my former boss liked. Lots of flashy icons and effects. Lots of buzzwords. Little actual content. The old if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit strategy.

  33. JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

    It warms the cockles of my heart that the SEC hasn’t won a bowl game this year. It almost makes up for the Pac-10 sucking so bad.