¿Martes ota vez? Claro que sí. ¡Enlaces mexicanos!

by | Apr 5, 2022 | Daily Links | 204 comments

At the gym on Sunday I asked the manager how long before they would hang the punching bag back up.  They said it was a D-Ring that needed to be replaced and they needed to locate it, and couldn’t tell me when.  So I asked if I brought them one, if they would rehang it.

They were genuinely surprised when I showed up a few hours later with two of them.  I guess nobody really expects people to follow through.

 

Now for some links!

US Ambassador to Mexico tries to get Mexico to side with Ukraine after his Russian counterpart gets a bit cozy.  Maybe a bit too cozy.

Speaking of Ukraine, apparently there’s a bunch of refugees stuck in Mexico.  I can’t help but wonder if Mexicans are thrilled with being a waypoint for everyone trying to get to the US.

I don’t know who these people were, but they’re dead now.

Yeah….Good luck with that.

PRISON RIOT!

Need a white pill for today?  Costa Rica elected a conservative economist as their new president. For our sake, hopefully he’s as entertaining as Bukele and Bolsonaro.

Since prison riots are the theme of the day…here’s a tune.

About The Author

mexican sharpshooter

mexican sharpshooter

WARNING: Glibertarians.com contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. https://youtu.be/qiAyX9q4GIQ?t=2m22s

204 Comments

  1. Ted S.

    Speaking of Ukraine, apparently there’s a bunch of refugees stuck in Mexico. I can’t help but wonder if Mexicans are thrilled with being a waypoint for everyone trying to get to the US.

    Hold Back the Dawn is definitely worth watching.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Makes you wonder if we are saying we are going to take refugees from Ukraine why aren’t we bringing them in. My guess, it wasn’t formalized by the State or Congress so best way? Illegally through Mexico and then shrug your shoulders and play the heartstrings.

    • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

      Way back when I was trying to get a green card for my wife, I said we should just fly to Tijuana and sneak across the border. It would be easier than doing it the legal way. She didn’t get the joke then, but she does now.

  2. Shpip

    Pope Francis’s long-awaited apology to Canada’s indigenous community for more than a century of abusive residential schools, many of them run by the Catholic Church, should be followed by millions of dollars in compensation and the release of residential school records, survivors and indigenous leaders said.

    Isn’t this what the outrage was always about?

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      ” FTA: If Jesus came on the planet now, I think he would tell them to fix it.”

      Would Jesus tell them to give the money to them? I don’t know other than to tell the Church to sell the lands and artwork and in general to give to the poor but that’s different than what the tribe is asking for.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        I’m pretty sure if Jesus came back that would signal the end of days.

      • juris imprudent

        It would be the end of climate change, so the Apocalypse has that going for it!

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        I must’ve missed the part of the Bible where Jesus told the Jews to financially support foreign nations who have been wronged in the past.

        Rather, He seemed to have a thing for developing relationships with individuals and being extraordinarily giving to those individuals, no matter their lot in life. Foreigner, widow, orphan, downtrodden, poor, neighbor, friend, brother, stranger, etc. He was also for churches doing the whole mutual support thing with other fledgling/struggling churches.

        Of course, in that culture, if they had mistreated those orphans, they may have ended up stoned to death, so a few million may not be so bad.

    • kbolino

      The correct response:

      Ignore the “indigenous leaders”, find any priest/bishop/cardinal who thinks this is a good idea, invite them to a lavish dinner in Rome, and mysteriously nobody ever sees any of them again

    • Tonio

      Open the damn records.

      • Tundra

        ^^

      • Gadfly

        That’s the only reasonable ask in that list of requests, IMO. I’m assuming the statute of limitations has expired on any purported crime, so let the sunlight in. If the Pope was truly sorry, he’d do that much.

  3. pistoffnick the refusnik

    At the gym on Sunday I asked the manager how long before they would hang the punching bag back up. They said it was a D-Ring that needed to be replaced and they needed to locate it, and couldn’t tell me when. So I asked if I brought them one, if they would rehang it.

    They were genuinely surprised when I showed up a few hours later with two of them. I guess nobody really expects people to follow through.

    Easy there, Will Smith!

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      Will Smith’s follow through was weak. He leaned back on it so his whole weight wasn’t in the slap.

      • Plisade

        ^^^

    • mexican sharpshooter

      I’m almost insulted you compared him to me.

      • Gadfly

        It is insulting, in this day and age. Will Smith used to be a suave actor, and any comparison would have been a compliment, but now he’s a washed up cuck. It’s sad.

  4. Shpip

    I don’t know who these people were

    Musical Youth covered their biggest hit, to far greater international success.

    • Tundra

      After changing the words so that all of a sudden they were passing a cooking pot.

      Good cover, though.

    • mexican sharpshooter

      Oh pass the dutchie? I know who they are now.

  5. Ownbestenemy

    I guess nobody really expects people to follow through.

    You work for the government or tryin to work with them? Internally, we get “wow, we didn’t expect an answer for x amount weeks!” Well, I don’t want to waste your time and I don’t want you to waste mine.

    • Bobarian LMD

      Usually the answer that comes back adds weeks and requires resources.

  6. slumbrew

    That’s a great tune.

    • Tundra

      The other inmates are a little rhythmically challenged, however.

      Reminds me of this!

      • MikeS

        +1 poor black child

  7. Tundra

    I haven’t been paying attention to Costa Rica. A dude I knew was talking about moving down there and has since said fuck no.

    Why can’t we have nice things countries?

    • Chafed

      I blame the commies.

      • Tundra

        They appear to have been with us longer than the Bolsheviks/Marxists/Fuckwits. What were commies before they were commies?

        Loved the GlibFit article this week. I’ve been sporadically working on a ‘hiking primer’ (equipment, apps, etc). Now I need to get it done!

      • Gadfly

        +1 to this.

        In reading about the French Revolution, I was surprised to learn how commie it was before communism was even invented. The ideology was indeed long-brewing before it was codified and named.

      • juris imprudent

        One of the things that chaps my hide is idiot lefties complaining about capitalism before capitalism had come into existence. Like the 16th century slave trade, sure you had Europeans with ships – but they were just buyers in the slave markets in Africa.

        The rightie version is calling everything they don’t like – communism.

      • MikeS

        The rightie version is calling everything they don’t like – communism.

        Are you saying it isn’t? Whatever, comrade.

      • Tonio

        Please do, Tundra.

      • Ted S.

        If you want to do Tundra, be my guest.

      • Tundra

        Yes, please do Tundra.

        Thanks, Tonio!

      • Chafed

        Thanks for your kind words. You are welcome to take over GlibFit for a few weeks to post your multipart primer.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        Hiking with an app? O.K.

      • Ownbestenemy

        There are useful apps that don’t take away from the experience…

    • kbolino

      The current President of El Salvador is pretty crazy (in the good, McAfee kind of way) and is a shitposter extraordinaire, but as with any “democracy”, you’re only ever one election away from reversion to establishment control.

      • kbolino

        How did I miss that he’s mentioned in the links?

        /slap on wrist

    • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

      It’s a nice place, but lots of petty crime that would probably drive me nuts after a while.

  8. MikeS

    Great tune, Mexi. After listening to that one I always have to follow it up with this one (also a great video)

  9. The Late P Brooks

    What were commies before they were commies?

    Rousseauians?

    • mexican sharpshooter

      Hobbseians?

    • rhywun

      Never change, The New York Times.

    • Drake

      The local SC news has the legislature debating how much to cut the income tax, whether to ban dudes from women’s sports, and now convicts on death row can request a firing squad.

  10. kinnath

    More painted ladies please.

    I can do painted laides

    • Scruffy Nerfherder
    • kinnath

      Thanks

    • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

      So that’s the full picture. I kind of preferred it when she was a mystery.

      • SandMan

        Yep, zooming in didn’t do her any favors.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Girl on the front page has such a fantastic smile

    • Aloysious

      ?

  11. Fourscore

    “Social Democratic Progress Party”

    That’s a long name to mean communist.

    • grrizzly

      Number 2 is incitement.

    • Fourscore

      Seriously, I never called my wife nor did she call me except for emergencies. Emergencies meaning a car accident or something of that nature.

      • slumbrew

        Sadly, those days are largely past for most of us.

    • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

      #4 is actually pretty useful.

  12. The Late P Brooks

    “The Russian ambassador was here yesterday making a lot of noise about how Mexico and Russia are so close. This, sorry, can never happen. It can never happen,” U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar said in remarks at Mexico’s lower house of Congress on Thursday.

    “Defy Uncle Sam..” That’s hilarious under the circumstances.

    Fucking spheres of influence- how do they work?

    I went to college with Salazar. I thought he was a fucking useless idiot, then, and he doesn’t seem to have changed.

    • grrizzly

      The lack of self-awareness among the US ruling class is stunning.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It does leave one wondering how much is delusion and how much is cynicism.

      • juris imprudent

        You mean cynicism as they know better? Nope. They are 100% deluded as fuck. Even their delusions are deluded.

      • kbolino

        One need only look at the neocons, scarcely a generation away now, who seemed to think that “liberal democracy” can just be transplanted anywhere in the world, and doesn’t require decades of brainwashing “education” to even be fathomable, as an example of how the U.S. ruling class can’t hold a candle to its own past self.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The Kristol/Horton debate illuminated just how shallow the intellectual pool is among the proponents of “muscular liberalism.” They’ve been arguing by assertion amongst themselves for so long that they’ve lost any capacity to provide an actual rationale for what they’ve already done, let alone what they propose to do.

      • kbolino

        The total insulation from any consequences they enjoy helps.

      • Compelled Speechless

        That’s an outrageous accusation! Kristol has faced many consequences for his positions. Usually in the forms of extremely large checks from military contractors.

      • kbolino

        Patronage doesn’t bother me as much as lack of skin in the game.

      • Gadfly

        That was shocking. Horton’s not even a very good debater (many of his points are paper thin) yet he wiped the floor with Kristol. It became painfully obvious that the neocons live in an echo chamber and are rarely challenged to think things through, or how else could Kristol be so unprepared and vapid?

      • juris imprudent

        Turns out intellectual masturbation isn’t very persuasive. Who knew?

      • Ownbestenemy

        So what are the articles for in Playboy then? I was killing two birds with one stone but you make me question everything!

    • B.P.

      Back when Salazar was Secretary of the Interior, I came out of my house one morning and he was shoveling my neighbor’s walk. The neighbor was a local Dem operative who had advanced cancer, so I thought that was nice.

  13. The Late P Brooks

    “I remember very well that during the Second World War there was no distance between Mexico and the United States, both were united against what Hitler was doing,” he added.

    Sure, Ken. And that has fuck all to do with Ukraine today.

    • R.J.

      Akshually, there was a river between the US and Mexico…

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      Funny how he chose WWII as the line of demarcation. I wonder why he wouldn’t go further back. Maybe it has something to do with Zammermain… no… Zombieman… uhh… Zatarain… ehm… One of those white Hispanic “Z” names.

      • Name's BEAM. James BEAM.

        ZORRO!

    • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

      Mexico sent troops to Europe?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Remember the Ansbach!

      • mexican sharpshooter

        Europe? No, but they did send some to the Pacific.
        https://www.history.com/news/mexico-world-war-ii-surprising-involvement

        The Aztec Eagles (including 33 pilots and more than 270 support personnel) arrived in Manila Bay in the Philippines on April 30, 1945. Over the next few months, they flew 795 combat sorties and logged almost 2,000 hours of flying time, including conducting bombing missions over Luzon and Formosa and providing support for U.S. airmen. Seven pilots from Squadron 201 died in the conflict; the surviving members returned to a heroes’ welcome in Mexico after Japan’s surrender. The squadron played an important symbolic role, inspiring national and cultural pride among Mexicans at home and helping to keep them invested in the war effort.

      • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

        Huh. I’ll be darned. I had no idea.

      • UnCivilServant

        Well, it’s not a particularly large investment of forces. Then again, they haven’t historically had large sealift capabilities, so I imagine any large deployment of Mexican forces would have been on US ships. Also, it didn’t make a lot of sense and probably would have bankrupted Mexico to try to commit more.

      • Gadfly

        Me neither. Cool thing to learn. I had always thought Mexico was a neutral nation in that conflict.

  14. The Hyperbole

    DAILY QUORDLE ROUNDUP
    #71
    Men’s division
    Champ(s)
    Scruffy Nerfherder 19

    kinnath 20
    Ted’S 20
    Grumbletarian 21
    Sean 21
    Grummun 22
    Name’s BEAM, James BEAM 22
    l0b0t 22
    Tundra 22
    MikeS 23
    Raven Nation 23
    The Hyperbole 24
    Trshmnstr the terrible 25
    Not Adahn 26

    Chump(s)
    rhywun *15

    Women’s Division
    Champ(s)
    No entries, they must all be busy making sammiches

    Scruffy with a nice sub 20 takes the top spot, rhywun brings back the * after 2 days without a Glib miss (a reported Glib miss, that is)

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      I still prefer doing +18 for misses (keep or leave the asterisk, I have no preference) so that we don’t have completely different scoring systems for people who miss versus those who get all the words.

      • MikeS

        +25

      • kinnath

        +99

      • MikeS

        Sure. Or a total score of zero.

        The simple fact is that if you get less than 4 words, you lost.

      • The Hyperbole

        Yes, but we need to differentiate between people who only lost by one word not two words. Some losers are more losier than other losers.

        kinnath’s idea could work, but make it 100 for each miss, the asterisk becomes a 1,2,3,or 4 easily identifying the misses but keeping everything in a numerical range.

        I’m sticking with the * anyway so it’s a moot point.

      • MikeS

        I’m going to keep playing under protest and I reserve to whine about the scoring from time to time.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Fuck you and your confined notion that we need this contrived and obviously bias scoring system

      • MikeS

        100 points per miss does sound like a damn good idea.

      • The Hyperbole

        You could try identifying as female and maybe you’ll place higher.

      • MikeS

        How about I just identify as a

        1️⃣2️⃣
        3️⃣4️⃣

        everyday?

      • MikeS

        X means you lost. You must solve all four words to win the game.

      • MikeS

        And why would it be more impressive? You got super lucky and got one right on your first guess. Luck/skill to get another one in two. You can’t get the fourth word in nine attempts? Pretty major #fail

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Nerd cred is all I need.

      *struts*

      • MikeS

        *bows down

      • Tundra

        I seem to spend a lot of time in the middle of the pack.

        Me.

      • MikeS

        +1 dog doo

      • Compelled Speechless

        Yes! Daryl’s House is incredible.

      • The Hyperbole

        Ugh. That’s the “Jump” of the Joe catalog, miles better than VH’s “Jump” but I still have to cringe at the synth riff (And Joe is my fifth or sixth all time favorite rocker)

    • rhywun

      I’m never playing near the end of the work day again. Holy shit my brain was mush.

      • Tundra

        Yeah, I’ve found that between my first two cups of coffee is the appropriate time.

      • MikeS

        I usually make the opposite mistake and play to early in the day. Still half asleep and make stupid mistakes.

      • rhywun

        I prefer later after I’ve shaken out the cobwebs from work but I wanted to make it into the roundup so… there it is. ?

      • The Hyperbole

        I can hold up the Roondup until 7 or 8pm if that will get more people in, past experience implied that most people entered during the morning links, if there are people that want/need to enter later, I’m cool with that.

      • rhywun

        Nah, do your thing.

        I am not a morning person is all.

      • The Hyperbole

        Got it, the Daily Quordle Roundup©™ will now post a 7:55pm. Last call for entries shall be 7:45pm.

  15. kbolino

    Juris, it seems your article dropped at noon, instead of this evening. Sorry I missed it at the time. Some thoughts in response:

    First, a republic is no more (but perhaps less) than an elected oligarchy. The theory is/was that election provides accountability, and oligarchy instead of pure democracy alleviates passions of the masses. This system was perhaps “ideal” in some vague sense but the locus of power (inevitably?) moved without. Even by Lincoln’s day, the abolitionists were the tail wagging the “democratic government” dog. Bloody Kansas essentially thrusts the country headlong into a war few at the time wanted. Buchanan’s “inaction” likely had the country’s spirit, while Lincoln’s victory seems one of the strongest early examples of the media willing a man to power. The mythology that is built up around the war, much of it “post-hoc” (the victors write the history books, but they start writing before the war is done), makes it nearly impossible to assess the structural impacts of the war and its surrounding circumstances beyond slavery. The original republic nevertheless pretty clearly suffered mortal wounds at Fort Sumter and was buried at Appomattox. The country thereafter no longer drew its political leadership exclusively from a pre-Revolutionary WASP aristocracy as it had mostly done before. The oligarchy that emerged maintained the basic appearance but not the selective membership criteria of the one it replaced. The Pendleton Act, part of the Civil Service Reform you note, cemented this fact.

    I think it is very easy to draw a line directly connecting Lincoln and the progressives. The Republicans of his day were the radicals, Reconstruction is basically Progressivism the beta version (upon a mostly hostile population no less), and no progressive of any stripe since has ever demeaned any of these persons or programs, except perhaps to say they didn’t go far enough or were ended too soon. Moreover, Lincoln set up the “expertise” notion of government well before Wilson, if Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals is anything to go by. Only Lincoln’s assassination stops the nascent proto-progressives from getting their way starting in the 1860s instead of the 1890s.

    Apart from Andrew Johnson, who was neutered and served less than one term, the reaction post Lincoln never really came, at least not at the national level. Grant was pilloried for “corruption” but that seems mostly to be the media dragging an insufficiently radical successor. Wilson was undoubtedly more aggressive than his immediate predecessors, sans perhaps TR, but the country moved steadily leftward from the day Johnson left office. Arguably, this too is a reflection of a sort of “republicanism”: nominally elected oligarchs doing what they want, not necessarily what the people want, but it increasingly seems like the government is moved by an external force more than is doing the moving (e.g., Andrew Jackson didn’t ask permission or forgiveness for anything he did).

    The election of Wilson does I think represent a different transition point. He was essentially an injection of “The Cathedral” as it existed then directly into the halls of (government) power, and he differed greatly in appearance from Lincoln’s folksy country-lawyer schtick and TR’s adventurous past and big stick. The old republic was already dead, but the one that replaced it still relied on the appearance of strength and popular appeal. With Wilson, the possibility for a new aristocracy of the intelligentsia begins to be fully realized. Huey Long’s murder I think marks the end of any pretense that the academy and media can’t control the government. FDR’s success seems to be down to cooption and cooperation more than straight dominance of these now very powerful forces.

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      nascent proto-progressives

      Washington Gladden, just to name a name.

      • kbolino

        In the specific realm of education, the names Horace Mann and John Dewey (the latter lived long enough to be a full-on progressive) also come to mind.

      • juris imprudent

        Lasch traced a line of criticism of American education straight back to Mann, though he appreciated Dewey (thus showing even he wasn’t perfect).

        Really, if you want to make that argument, then the American Whigs were the ur proto progressives.

      • kbolino

        Really, if you want to make that argument, then the American Whigs were the ur proto progressives.

        Yes, absolutely. The left-right dynamic was firmly established by the Whigs and “Burkean conservatism”, i.e. doing what the Whigs/liberals wanted yesterday instead of what they want today. Whig history is the foundation of all leftist historical models today; from Marx to the 1619 Project, all of history has been recast as evolution from “bad” to “less bad”, the only differences between different factions being the positive/negative balance on the view of present and future.

    • juris imprudent

      Yeah, I had been guessing that I’d get the same slot. Oops.

  16. The Late P Brooks

    Summary judgement

    President Biden on Monday called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to face a war crimes trial.

    “You saw what happened in Bucha,” Biden said. “He is a war criminal. But we have to gather the information. We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue the fight. And we have to gather all the details, so this can be an actual … have a war crime trial,” he said.

    Send in the black-baggers, Joe.

    • kbolino

      If the U.S. expects to be taken seriously on this point, shouldn’t it have, you know, eliminated Assad by now?

      If the security establishment can’t off an earlier, weaker target, why should Putin fear them?

      • mexican sharpshooter

        You might think that, but there is no way to fail upwards by exterminating an inconvenient despot.

      • kbolino

        Smh, we can’t even muster the competence to pointlessly kill foreign leaders and plunge the countries they led into chaos anymore.

    • Ownbestenemy

      So SloJo yappin his mouth calling another world leader a war criminal is less dangerous than us meeting with Lil Kim?

    • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

      I wonder what they think will happen if we remove Putin from power. What makes them so sure someone better will replace him?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        They don’t think that far ahead.

      • Mustang

        Our perfect track record picking replacements?

        Hahahahahahahahahaha, I’ll show myself out.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Or our halfway palpable puppets that we will eventually let fall when it serves our purposes. *side-eyes Ghaddafi’s corpse*

      • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

        Don’t forget Mubarak.

      • one true athena

        I’m sure stealing all the assets from his potential replacements is going to make them our friends!

      • UnCivilServant

        What? Not going to install a Romanov?

      • grrizzly

        The Deep State wishes it could install Navalny.

      • kbolino

        Took me several pages (at 500 edits each) to get to a pre-Trump version of his Wikipedia, and it still read like a puff piece. Much activity there, very suspicious.

      • rhywun

        With Trump gone, they need Putin to remain the personification of pure evil. Who are they going to blame the world’s ills on after we install someone else?

      • Ted S.

        Viktor Orbán?

      • rhywun

        Enh, they had a mini-orgy of hate for him yesterday but he’s small potatoes. He’ll go back to being completely ignored for another four years.

      • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

        Nem tudom. Magyarorszag tul kicsi.

      • juris imprudent

        if we remove Putin from power

        I’m fascinated. Just how is that going to happen?

      • JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

        I have no idea, but that seems to be Biden’s goal. I’m guessing they would like to spark a color revolution.

    • Gadfly

      Putin is a war criminal in the theoretical sense, but not in the legal sense. No one has jurisdiction over him to try him, and to claim so is to espouse a dangerous imperialism. As a general rule, only those who have been defeated in the political sphere (and in this, I am including war) get tried as war criminals. Who’s going to defeat Putin?

  17. Ownbestenemy

    Holy Majoli mamma

      • Tundra

        She may have just overtaken Salma and Liz.

        Nah. Now it’s a trio of diet, exercise and amazing genetics.

        Thank you brother!

      • Ownbestenemy

        Best smile out of the three but I will settle for any or all

      • MikeS

        Jonny Gato (水猫 )
        @critical_codger

        Walking like an Egyptian is really good exercise

      • one true athena

        Goodness what a palate cleanser after the hideous nightmare Madonna’s become. That latest post making the rounds a few days ago was pretty horrifying.

      • MikeS

        I noticed multiple replies about how much better she looked than Madonna. I didn’t want to ruin my Hoffs-buzz by going to look.

        So, I went looking for more pics of Susanna. It seems that maybe the pic in the tweet is 8 years old. Couldn’t find a newer pic of her (didn’t put a lot of effort into it), but I’m sure she’s still looking great.

      • MikeS

        Thank you for enacting my labor!

        Would Bangle

      • Ownbestenemy

        For you Happy? Annnnnyyyyything

      • Tundra

        Oh my.

      • slumbrew

        Damn. Cocaine apparently is a preservative.

  18. The Late P Brooks

    Back when Salazar was Secretary of the Interior, I came out of my house one morning and he was shoveling my neighbor’s walk. The neighbor was a local Dem operative who had advanced cancer, so I thought that was nice.

    Good for him. And I mean that sincerely. He wasn’t a bad guy. He was the sort of person who you could tell had dreamed of a career in liberal political activism as a child.

  19. The Late P Brooks

    Just think of it. Biden somehow manages to deposit Putin (or some valuable surrogate), bound and gagged, on the steps of the International Criminal Court. What happens then?

    Better check the batteries in your geiger counter.

  20. The Late P Brooks

    Smh, we can’t even muster the competence to pointlessly kill foreign leaders and plunge the countries they led into chaos anymore.

    You can’t be thinking of that Diem character, can you, Shirley?

    • kbolino

      Backing a Catholic in a Buddhist country does seem to have been stupid from the start, but yeah not the best look for U.S. treatment of the country’s “allies”.

  21. JaimeRoberto (shama/lama/ding dong)

    A prison riot in Latin America? Is it Tuesday already?

  22. The Late P Brooks

    Even the “doves” are spooked

    Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard, who normally favors loose policy and low rates, said Tuesday the central bank needs to act quickly and aggressively to drive down inflation.

    In a speech written for a Minneapolis Fed discussion, Brainard said policy tightening will include a speedy reduction in the balance sheet and a steady pace of interest rate increases. Her comments indicated that rate moves could be higher than the traditional increments of 0.25 percentage point.

    “Currently, inflation is much too high and is subject to upside risks,” she said in prepared remarks. “The [Federal Open Market] Committee is prepared to take stronger action if indicators of inflation and inflation expectations indicate that such action is warranted.”

    It’s hard to keep that helicopter money under control.

      • Ownbestenemy

        A lot of her best are memory holed. I am trying to figure out if it is her or Current that has done it. She does one about feminine products that is about the funniest thing next to Betty White jokes I have ever seen.

      • slumbrew

        First I’ve seen it – she’s great!

        I strongly suspect I know what your youtube handle is now…

      • Ownbestenemy

        Whaaaa…heh

  23. Gadfly

    For our sake, hopefully he’s as entertaining as Bukele and Bolsonaro.

    Bukele is literally the only politician I follow on Twitter. We need more in this mold.

    • R.J.

      Who here thought that said Bukkake? Anyone? Just me?

      • Ownbestenemy

        well now I did. thank r.j.

      • Gadfly

        LOL. Someone spends a bit too much time in certain corners of the internet, methinks.

      • R.J.

        CNN?

      • C. Anacreon

        *holds up hand*

    • Gadfly

      Reason does good work, but Malice is a man more suited for the times. Cheers to him, and the fact that in another six months he’ll probably lap them.

      • kbolino

        The good work to utter dreck ratio is getting worse over time, not that it hasn’t been bad for a while.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        When quite a few of them voted for Obama over Ron Paul, I knew it was over.

      • MikeS

        I wasn’t reading Reason then. That seems beyond the pale. How could you possibly defend that decision and call yourself a libertarian?

      • The Hyperbole

        You had to take him seriously not literally.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Reason does good work

        Meh. Remy and Stossel at Reason TV do good work. Hit & Run or whatever their glorified blog is now called is garbage.

        The entire enterprise will get nary a red cent from me.

    • slumbrew

      CNN’s version of liberty, @reason

      That’s gonna leave a mark.

  24. Ted S.

    Inflation update: went grocery shopping today. Deli meats were ridiculously expensive, with the roast beef at $14.99/lb. Last time I checked, I think it was $12.99.

    Store-brand stuffing was up 10 cents, to $1.39 a box.
    Store-brand yoghurt was unchanged.
    English muffins were also the same price as last time, but they only had regular, not whole wheat or multi-grain.
    Once again the store was out of store-brand plain Oreo equivalent. Double stuff and the other flavors were in stock.

    Nothing to do with inflation, but every express self-checkout was taken by someone with more than 14 items.

    • kbolino

      Express self-checkout? What witchcraft is this?

    • Ownbestenemy

      We went from 4 to 8 checkout lanes and the same thing occurred and the line tripled.

    • MikeS

      Are all the self-checkouts express, or are there no-limit self-checkouts? I’ve never seen an item limit on any self-checkouts around here.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Amount of self bagging stations usually deters my amount I will take through it. Give me a turnstile and an ability to mark the bag as ‘in the cart’ and I will do self checkout daily.

      • l0b0t

        Stop & Shop self-check kiosks all have a keep in cart button. They all also have an Express Lane – 12 Items Or Less lighted sign that can be switched on or off; it’s rare that they are turned on and even rarer that they are acknowledged.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        Ours are all no limit, and free bags for picking up your dog shit, nice folks.

      • Ted S.

        They all say express self-checkout, which to me means they should be the same limit as a regular express lane.

        And people with stuff they have to weigh, as well as not bagging stuff as they go along.

      • MikeS

        Do the regular express lanes give an item limit?

      • Ted S.

        14 items or less.

      • MikeS

        And no such sign on the self-checkouts?

      • Ted S.

        It says express self checkout, but doesn’t say 14 items or less.

      • rhywun

        The self-checkouts available at one of my supermarkets require you to carefully place your items on the scale to prove you’re not stealing anything. There was no explanation of this or where to put your stuff etc. and the guy was yelling at me that I wasn’t “doing it right”. I did what he said and fucking thing still didn’t work.

        I will never use the self-checkout at that supermarket again.

      • Ted S.

        The stations at Hannaford have an annoying computer voice telling you, “Please place your bag in the bagging area [next to the scanner] and press done when finished” before you start scanning. They’re also monitored by camera. Set your bag(s) up, start scanning, and place each item in the bag as you go along. Unless you only have one item and don’t need a bag.

      • rhywun

        place your bag in the bagging area

        My “bag” is a fish-net thing. It doesn’t “place”. The dude was telling me to place my bag there before scanning anything, and apparently I was supposed to fill it with items without touching it again.

      • Ted S.

        The Hannaford doesn’t have people watching you like a hawk, just the cameras, so that probably wouldn’t be a problem, considering the way people just put their items in the bagging area and then fumble for the bags after scanning everything the way old farts fumble for coupons.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        The local Walmart has both self-checkout kiosks and self-checkout lanes. People self sort based on convenience.

  25. LCDR_Fish

    ADVChina normally puts out their podcast on Fridays – they just put out an “emergency” one on the insane covid lockdowns that restarted in China (where there are no covid cases).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7_INVdia0s (a lot of disturbing footage again)

  26. juris imprudent

    Interesting how Louisiana caught this at the time, and virtually no one else did.

    The lawsuit, State of Louisiana v. Center for Tech and Civic Life, originated in October 2020. That’s when Louisiana, through Landry, sought a court order declaring that “private contributions to local election officials and the election system in general are unlawful and contrary to Louisiana law.” Landry’s lawsuit followed attempts by the Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life to dole out millions in targeted grants to election officials throughout the state.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I wonder what the proponents of that scheme would say about private citizens directly funding police departments or a pharmaceutical corporation directly funding the FDA…. oh wait….

  27. The Late P Brooks

    It says express self checkout, but doesn’t say 14 items or less.

    That just means the self-checkout is much much faster than the cashier line.

    I crack myself up.