Monday Afternoon Linkses of 2023 Week 2

by | Jan 9, 2023 | Daily Links | 236 comments

Its good to be back. Last week was kind of shake the dust off, but now I’m starting to get it together. Fun weekend drama in the world this weekend. My congresshottie was part of the debacle around the House Speaker vote. She’s already more fun than Charlie Crist. And now Brazil is having their little boog. Here at home, the littlest one has started attempting to eat solid food. He has the hand-eye coordination of a drunken Parkinson’s patient, but some of the food makes it in. Also, on the 12th day of Christmas, my seven year old broke his new iPad screen. It was kind of an impressive record. That’s his one free. The next one costs him $50.

LOL. Either the prosecutor didn’t try very hard, or Texas juries have an appropriate amount of disdain for their elected officials.

I think he might have been more involved than he told police, how about you?

I wonder if they just called him in his native language. Pigs wrangle pig in Florida.

I love this guy’s brazen crookedness.

I’m thinking its time for a powertrip now that I’m back.

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.

236 Comments

  1. UnCivilServant

    Afternoon, Brett.

    Are you back as a regular linker, or just back in a geographic area?

    • juris imprudent

      He has relieved Swiss on the Monday PM links duty.

      • UnCivilServant

        Thanks. I’ve been otherwise occupied, and probably missed the announcement.

  2. Scruffy Nerfherder

    I see that One-Eyed Douchebag didn’t get chair of the Homeland Security Committee.

    Good

    • The Other Kevin

      The right people are howling about democracy ending and people literally dying, so it seems we’re going in a slightly better direction.

    • juris imprudent

      You know which eye he would’ve used for oversight.

      • Trigger Hippie

        The brown eye?

      • R.J.

        SEA SMITH GIVE OVERSIGHT TO CHOCOLATE STARFISH!

      • MikeS

        His turd eye?

    • SDF-7

      I expect naming his coworkers as terrorists and being named to a committee in charge of working with the IC on pursuing terrorists was a little too obviously a bad idea even for Congresscritters.

      • Pat

        Make no mistake about it, he’d have been the chairman of that committee if McCarthy hadn’t had to make promises to the freedom caucus to get his worthless ass in the speaker’s seat on the 15th round.

  3. The Other Kevin

    Wow, Mrs. Brett looks great after all those kids. Good to have you back on Lynx Duty.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      No kiddin’

      But based on her armament level, Mr. L better behave himself.

    • Brett L

      [i]Looks over shoulder[/i]
      Mrs. L is waaay hotter than that

  4. Rebel Scum

    So I guess we will be sending Balsonaro back to Brazil.

    I condemn the assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil. Brazil’s democratic institutions have our full support and the will of the Brazilian people must not be undermined. I look forward to continuing to work with @LulaOficial.

  5. Tonio

    “Congressperson…” IANAB (biologist), but I’d hazard a guess that the person in the inspiring picture is a woman.

    • SDF-7

      If I wasn’t married, I don’t think I’d mind further investigation into the matter. Since I am… I’ll leave it for others.

      • juris imprudent

        She is married, and may fall on the wrong side of the hot/crazy mix.

    • Pat

      IANAB (biologist)

      Ironically enough, she is:

      In 2017, Luna earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the University of West Florida.

    • SDF-7

      Too Many Secrets.

      • Tonio

        Rat cootie semen.

      • EvilSheldon

        *applause*

        Just rewatched Sneakers for the twentieth time this past weekend.

  6. Tundra

    Hi Brett!

    Congrats on the congresshottie. May she minimize the disappointments.

    He has the hand-eye coordination of a drunken Parkinson’s patient, but some of the food makes it in.

    My dog LOVED that phase of Spawn development. My GSD would rarely even let the food hit the floor!

    • Sean

      What appears to be a gun lies at the scene after the crime.

      No, it doesn’t.

    • R.J.

      That looks like an airsoft gun somebody pulled out of their anus.

  7. Rebel Scum

    Because Stalinists are the good guys.

    @LulaOficial addressing nation, begins by denouncing “fascists,” “vandals,” “nazis, stalinists…no, not stalinists, fascists” and criticizing security shortcomings. Everyone involved, he says, will be tracked down and arrested.

    Political opposition will not be tolerated.

    • The Other Kevin

      That’s the only way democracy can survive.

    • rhywun

      What’s Brazilian for “Ray Epps”?

  8. kinnath

    I ordered a bunch of shit from Amazon. I have prime. Everything ships for “free”.

    I just received notification that Amazon has shipped a single pair of shoelaces by UPS.

    I don’t see how anyone makes money off that transaction.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Tax breaks, kickbacks, regulatory look the other way….someone is making money somewhere

      • R.J.

        I have a friend who wrote up a macro to find items mispriced at one cent on Prime shipping. Then he buys them individually.

    • grrizzly

      I have Walmart+. Once a box grater that cost less than $5 was delivered to me from a local Walmart in a black BMW (Uber).

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      The shoelaces fell off a truck?

      Pretty much any amount is profit when the acquisition cost is zero.

  9. UnCivilServant

    How do ships keep running aground in the Suez? It’s a straight channel. The wind can’t keep catching them all off-guard.

    • SDF-7

      Their navigators are in denial.

      • Tundra

        You magnificent bastard.

      • Tundra

        Several, actually.

      • Fatty Bolger

        You’ll get a tut from Swiss for that uncommonly good pun.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        I thought we were above such Volga humor here.

      • Swiss Servator

        *narrows gaze…and applauds*

  10. Rebel Scum

    Castros are always tryna jail the opposition.

    I stand with @LulaOficial and Brazil’s democratically elected government. Domestic terrorists and fascists cannot be allowed to use Trump’s playbook to undermine democracy.

    Bolsonaro must not be given refuge in Florida, where he’s been hiding from accountability for his crimes.

    You people really need to learn what “fascist” means.

    Nearly 2 years to the day the US Capitol was attacked by fascists, we see fascist movements abroad attempt to do the same in Brazil.

    We must stand in solidarity with @LulaOficial’s democratically elected government.

    The US must cease granting refuge to Bolsonaro in Florida.

    I’m getting 1930s vibes here. The difference is this time it is the commu-fascists vs. freedom-loving patriots.

    • UnCivilServant

      I demand the extradiction of Lula from Brazil to face charges.

      • SDF-7

        I wish we could just send them AOC, Omar and their ilk and take all the folks who stormed their capitol off their hands. Let the socialists have their paradise and have legal immigration for those who don’t want to live there. With a “And you have to shut the hell up for 25 years about this” on both sides for everyone’s sanity.

        Obviously not going to happen… but as long as we’re wishing and all.

    • rhywun

      Are they saying Bolsonaro directed an insurrection from Orlando…?

      • Pat

        He was really in Mar-a-Lago with Drumpf! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

  11. DEG

    The featured image is awesome.

    Deputy Chad Berona and Deputy Austin Dale tracked down the hiding pig

    That was probably easy for them. Takes one to know one.

  12. Rebel Scum

    Looks kinda like a stroke, eh?

    Young CTV News reporter Jessica Robb starts slurring her words, appears to go into medical distress, and looks like she’s about to collapse live on air during the 6pm show tonight.

    • Chafed

      Whatever it is, it isn’t good.

  13. Tonio

    Oi, listen up you lot. Swiss, who is still very much involved in the publishing calendar here, has been stomping up and down the editors’ corridor at Glibs HQ today.

    “Articles, where are zee articles? Zee calendar ist empty…”

    Help us out, folks.

    • UnCivilServant

      How are you with long cliffhangers?

    • R.J.

      On it. Just been doing them on my desktop. New GlibGlub. I heard DEG had another GlibCar.

      • DEG

        I heard DEG had another GlibCar.

        I have pictures picked out. I need to start writing text.

        Tomorrow I start work, so… work on the article will be a bit slow.

    • Tundra

      I’m working on a couple.

    • The Other Kevin

      I have one that’s been out there, that I’m planning on reworking. Should be ready this week.

    • Tonio

      Thanks, lads. I really appreciate that.

    • ruodberht

      “Das war ein Befehl!”

  14. Rebel Scum

    My congresshottie

    We need more like her and Boebert.

      • slumbrew

        The best part of that commercial are the looks from the girlfriends at the end.

    • R.J.

      “The Hat and Boebert.” Light the CPRM signal!

  15. Chafed

    Fantastic music Brett!

  16. Scruffy Nerfherder

    So, who wants to take odds on Manchin leaving the Dems?

    He is arguably one of the most powerful people in DC right now.

    • kinnath

      He has more power as the reluctant Dem than as Ind or Rep.

  17. Pat

    Single-use cutlery and plates to be banned in England

    Single-use items like plastic cutlery, plates and trays will be banned in England, the government has confirmed.

    It is not clear when the ban will come into effect, but it follows similar moves already made by Scotland and Wales.

    Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey said the move would help protect the environment for future generations.

    Campaigners welcomed the ban, but called for a wider-ranging plastic reduction strategy.

    Government figures suggest that 1.1 billion single-use plates and more than four billion pieces of plastic cutlery are used in England every year.

    Plastic waste often does not decompose and can last in landfill for many years.

    Although it might be useful in terms of food hygiene, it can also end up as litter, in turn polluting soil and water.

    The confirmation of the move from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) follows a long consultation, which will be published on Saturday 14 January.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The Brits can go fuck themselves.

      I also see that the Feds are looking to ban natural gas stoves for the children.

      • Ownbestenemy

        “Senator Cory Booker (D., N.J.) and Representative Don Beyer (D., Va.) wrote a letter to the agency last month urging the commission to address the issue and calling the harmful emissions a “cumulative burden” on black, Latino and low-income households.”

        I would expect nothing less.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        This type of thing leads me to believe that Booker and Beyer are being paid by Davos.

        There’s no other rational reason to push this crap.

      • Count Potato

        Pretty sure Black Spartacus is willing to be stupid for free breadsticks.

      • Chafed

        It looks that way. He has tacked waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay left since he was first elected.

      • Rebel Scum

        I think low income people are more likely to have an electric stove.

      • Pat

        Seems to vary regionally. When I was a kid in eastern Washington that was generally the case, because most of the housing stock was very old and a lot of them hadn’t been retrofitted for natgas. When I lived in Las Vegas I don’t think I ever saw an electric stove. Even most of the trailer parks are on natgas. Out here in Pahrump there’s no natgas supplier, so you’re stuck with either electric or propane. Electric seems to be more common, but it’s a pretty mixed bag. The properties I look at in Texas and Ohio seem to lean more gas, and I’m looking at the lowest possible end of the market.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Guess they’re back to eating with their hands, like their medieval forebears.

      • rhywun

        As long as they don’t wash them. Because Gaia.

      • Fatty Bolger

        The dogs can lick them clean.

    • Pat

      Obviously photoshopped. Everybody knows Trump alienated all Latinx people with his racisty racism.

      Also, call me provincial, but I find it disturbing that selfie-taking Instatokbook clout chasers are now serving in congress.

      • Tundra

        At this point it actually seems appropriate.

      • kinnath

        At least she’s not a lawyer.

      • Michael Malaise

        Is it too much to hope for one congressperson to beat another with a selfie stick instead of a cane?

      • juris imprudent

        Oh, the thought of one them breaking and impaling oh, Schumer or Schiff, as he charged the microphones – that’s delicious.

      • juris imprudent

        call me provincial

        Well, if you insist. Complaining about the younger generation is a venerable tradition.

      • Pat

        I’m only 3 years older than she is, I’m just crotchety.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Mr Mayor ran an episode that addressed it..it was really a view into our next 20 years of politics where it isn’t policy but clicks/views/followers that get you elected…sorta like now, just a different medium.

      • wdalasio

        Given the quality of the “respectable”, media-approved leadership class, I’m not so sure this is a step down.

    • R C Dean

      Help a fella out. Which Congresser are we ogling, err, discussing?

      • R C Dean

        Gracias. Oh, and ay caramba!

      • Ownbestenemy

        Oh my…

      • slumbrew

        Rawr.

      • kinnath

        you are welcome

  18. Certified Public Asshat

    Consider drugs and surgery early for obesity in kids, new guidelines say: “Waiting doesn’t work”

    Children struggling with obesity should be evaluated and treated early and aggressively, including with medications for kids as young as 12 and surgery for those as young as 13, according to new guidelines released Monday.

    The longstanding practice of “watchful waiting,” or delaying treatment to see whether children and teens outgrow or overcome obesity on their own only worsens the problem that affects more than 14.4 million young people in the U.S., researchers say. Left untreated, obesity can lead to lifelong health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes and depression.

    “Waiting doesn’t work,” said Dr. Ihuoma Eneli, co-author of the first guidance on childhood obesity in 15 years from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

    Heavily medicated is really the only way to live.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      As if we needed more confirmation that they’re just drug dealers.

      There’s a special place in Hell for them.

    • Count Potato

      How about diet and exercise?

      • juris imprudent

        That would involve teaching the children about that – are you a fully credentialed teacher? You can’t expect parents to do that!

      • Ownbestenemy

        Why are you food/fat shaming?

      • Trigger Hippie

        White Supremacy.

    • The Other Kevin

      Is there nothing that a miracle drug that also happens to make billions in profits can’t fix?

      • Compelled Speechless

        We’re talking about big Pharma. They don’t fix, they treat in perpetuity.

    • Pat

      They’ve already got half the kids on amphetamines for ADHD, you’d think they’d be cranked up enough.

      I wonder what biological illness that can be treated with medication is sweeping the nation making little kids who can’t feed themselves obese?

      • juris imprudent

        Biological? You think public health is constrained by BIOLOGY? Bwahahahahahahaha

    • Drake

      Moving to a farm, giving the kids chores, and feeding them real food is out of the question.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Once we get real communism…

    • Chafed

      AAP is doing all they can to set fire to their reputation.

    • rhywun

      Buy one lipo, get one “gender reassignment” half-price. Think of all the money saved.

  19. Scruffy Nerfherder

    It’s my birthday and I have to shuttle ingrate kids around. I wanted a drink dammit.

    • Count Potato

      HBD 🙂

    • Trigger Hippie

      Happy Birthday!

    • Tundra

      Happy birthday, Scruff!

    • DEG

      Happy Birthday!

    • Pat

      Happy birthday! Take the kids on a field trip to the bar…

    • Ownbestenemy

      Happy Birthday

    • wdalasio

      Happy Birthday!

    • R.J.

      Happy birthday you whippersnapper!

    • Sean

      Happy birthday 🎂🎈🎉

    • Grosspatzer

      Happy birthday!!

  20. Count Potato

    Today, in classy news

    “Four Nashville cops fired for having sex on duty with female officer, also fired, who hosted ‘Girls Gone Wild’ hot tub party with colleagues and their wives where she took off her top and drank heavily”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11615035/Five-Nashville-area-cops-fired-having-sex-duty-female-officer.html

    “The New Jersey gymnast with fame, fortune, and screaming fans to rival the Kardashians: FEMAIL reveals how Olivia Dunne, 20, skyrocketed to online stardom – earning MILLIONS along the way – as she’s swarmed by throngs of teen boys at LSU meet”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11615217/How-Olivia-Dunne-queen-gymnastics-famous-TikTok-star-earning-2-million-age-20.html

    • Gustave Lytton

      Teen boys = other college kids

      • The Other Kevin

        She’s only one year removed from being a teenager herself.

      • Gustave Lytton

        It’s like gun violence for teenagers, and turns out to be 18-19 year old adults.

    • Tundra

      Cops sure spend a lot of time giving each other commendations.

      • Compelled Speechless

        Cummendations

      • Zwak, who has his own double cross to bear.

        And blowjobs!

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      How long till we find out that straight middle class whites are the most recidivist of all?

      • R C Dean

        “According to my model . . . .”

      • Compelled Speechless

        ……..all white people have original sin by virtue of their tainted blood and if released will continue to commit crimes, that while unrecognized by our unjust legal system, cause catastrophic harm that that can’t even be quantitatively or qualitatively measured to all angelic non-whites. The sentence is struggle sessions and hard labor at the gulag until their worthless white asses keel over. Racism solved!!!!

      • Fatty Bolger

        As long as it takes to feed in all of the CRT training.

    • Pat

      That’ll last about 83 seconds before it gets called out for racism.

  21. Pat

    Daniel Shaver and the forgotten victims of police shootings

    As too few Americans currently know, Daniel Shaver was the victim of one of the more egregious police shootings to recently take place in the United States. In January 2016, Shaver was killed in Mesa, Arizona by police officer Philip Brailsford, who was responding to a call about a disturbance involving a potentially armed man in a hotel room. During what became a 10-minute-long encounter between Shaver and a small team of officers, the 26-year-old was ordered in sequence to lie flat on the floor, cross his legs, push himself ‘up to a kneeling position’, ‘keep his hands up in the air’ (rather than folded behind his back) and finally to ‘crawl’ on his stomach toward police. When Shaver moved a hand toward his waistband in response to one of these orders, Brailsford opened fire with his AR-15 rifle, striking Shaver five times and killing him.

    […]

    Shaver matters because his case is an illustration of what police violence against US citizens most often actually looks like – and this fact has been intentionally hidden, to a remarkable extent, for partisan reasons. Simply put, you have probably never heard of Daniel Shaver because he is white. For much of the past decade, the Black Lives Matter movement has argued that near-Holocaust levels of American police violence is inflicted very specifically on young black men.

    As I have pointed out before on spiked, prominent BLM activist Cherno Biko claimed in 2015 – on primetime Fox News – that an innocent and presumably unarmed black citizen is ‘murdered’ by US police about once per day. Elsewhere, attorney Benjamin Crump has penned an entire book, with the provocative title of Open Season, arguing that police violence and white-vigilante violence against black Americans is so endemic as to constitute a sort of ‘legalised genocide’. Many Americans often take these claims at face value. According to the heterodox but respected Skeptic Research Center, the typical American liberal-leftist believes that 1,000 to 10,000 unarmed black men are fatally shot by police every year, and that 60 per cent of all police-shooting victims are African-American.

    In reality, all of this is nonsense. American police do a good job overall, but they arguably do shoot and kill too many people – about 1,000 in a typical year. But what the hard empirical data reveal is a fairly evenly dispersed pattern of police violence against young male citizens of all races. If we simply proceed year-by-year through the Washington Post database of police shootings, we see there were 994 fatal police shootings in 2015, 958 such shootings in 2016, 980 in 2017, 991 in 2018, 997 in 2019 and 1,019 in 2020.

    Across these six years, there were 5,939 victims of police shootings, of which 1,441 were black, around 24 per cent. In no fully recorded recent year did black Americans make up even 30 per cent of those shot and killed by police. It should also be noted that hardly any of these awful situations involve unarmed innocents: the total number of unarmed black people fatally shot by police in 2022 was seven.

    Now, given that American blacks constitute only about 14 per cent of the total US population, we remain over-represented, at 24 per cent, in police-shooting statistics. But this is not the point Black Lives Matter actually makes. Nor is it what many people believe. Rather, they hold that thousands of unarmed people are being murdered by cops annually, and that 60 or so per cent of them are black. Every variation on this argument is unambiguously false.

    More importantly, ‘racism’ is not the primary reason for black over-representation among police-shooting deaths in the US. The American black population is far younger and more urban than the white population. And, partly as a result, it has a crime rate about 2.5 times the rate of the white population – a rate which can be calculated simply from the tables provided in any annual Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) crime report. A simple adjustment for this discrepancy in rates of crime and therefore engagement with the police almost entirely eliminates the racial gap in rates of police shooting. As Harvard’s Roland Fryer has pointed out, running an analysis which adjusts for suspect and police-encounter characteristics actually reveals that white detainees are around 23.5 per cent more likely to be shot by police than are similar African-Americans.

    Not only are most large racial groups represented heavily among police-shooting victims, there is also – as Daniel Shaver’s story indicates – no shortage of tear-jerking tales involving white victims of police violence. In addition to Daniel Shaver, it might be worth ‘saying the name’ of Tony Timpa. He died in 2016 after being restrained in a prone position for nearly 14 minutes by Dallas officers, with a knee on his upper back, despite screaming ‘You’re gonna kill me!’. Or how about Dillon Taylor, who was fatally shot in 2014 by a black officer while reaching for a suspicious ‘object’ that turned out to be his mobile phone? Or Duncan Lemp, who was shot dead in 2020 while very likely asleep during a no-knock home raid?

    All of these situations almost perfectly mirror black-victim cases which became internationally famous. There is a zero per cent chance that this lack of coverage is a coincidence. As I showed in my 2020 book, Taboo, while roughly 25 per cent of the victims of police shootings are black, these cases consistently recieve 80-90 per cent of the media coverage. Similar cases, involving victims of other races, are generally ignored.

    I used to harp on this all the time, but I gave up trying. Even the vast majority of libertarians are so bought into the “racist cops are hunting black people hurr durr” narrative that no amount of data or personal anecdotes about how cops treat white trash will ever convince anyone. Sometimes it’s nice to see some indication that I’m not completely fucking crazy though.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      My kids are whitey white and I tell them to keep their hands in view around cops for a reason.

      • Fatty Bolger

        Same here. I’ve told them that cops see all men they don’t know as a threat, until proven otherwise.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I don’t like Milley, but I think he gets a bad rap.

      This stinks of the FBI/CIA trying to direct attention away from themselves. And those assholes need to burn.

      • mock-star

        I dont know. When he admitted that (the whole “I’ll tip off the Chinese” thing), and then no one cared, I was quite flabbergasted.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Scott Horton addressed that as not being unusual. I had the same initial reaction but he convinced me otherwise.

        And Milley has been mildly rational on Ukraine. There are a lot of warmongers who want him gone.

      • mock-star

        @Scruffy,

        Would you be so kind as to post a link to the Scott Horton thing? Thank you.

      • mock-star

        thank you

      • Gustave Lytton

        Milley is a fat fuck, and should be chaptered on that grounds alone. Syria and the blanket refusal to potentially put down an actual insurrection (antifa) are also sufficient.

      • rhywun

        Suicide by execution for treason?

      • Sean

    • Michael Malaise

      Eh, with all that Congress does to waste our time, this seems like the least detrimental use.

  22. The Late P Brooks

    Shoutout to the Steelers for choosing literally the WORST possible sack celebration this week…

    Holy shit that’s awesome. Well done.

    • Tundra

      It’s funny. But I saw it earlier in the season.

  23. Aloysious

    I approve of ‘congresshottie’.

    Of course, I would also approve of ‘congresslout’ or ‘congresswench’. Or something like that.

    • Ownbestenemy

      She has those “congresscomehither” eyes?

      • juris imprudent

        Come to the boudoir and let us have congress.

      • Compelled Speechless

        I wouldn’t kick her out of my polling booth.

    • Shpip

      I have a youngish (34) congresschick, but unless you’re Tres, well… let’s just say she’s no Lauren Boebert.

    • Pat

      Good piece. And while I’m certain the three letter agencies are all over libertarian organizations, the same way they are in every fringe community, the more likely explanation is simply money. Cato is a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Enterprises, just like the Reason Foundation, AEI, and pretty much every libertarian think tank in the United States. Trump busted the remaining Koch brother’s brain, as he did with so many others, and all of the organizations within his sphere of influence have seemed to reform their ideology in lockstep with his.

      • Pat

        To be fair, there’s always been legitimate debate within libertarian circles about public health issues. I remember going back and forth on vaccine mandates for public schools at Reason and elsewhere 20 years ago, long before “participate in this phase III clinical trial or you’re a pariah” was a thing. It all seems so quaint now. One side pretty decidedly won on that issue, I guess.

      • robc

        Of course, vax for public schools has an easy libertarian solution. Get rid of public schools. Where is the debate?

      • Pat

        That used to be part of the Standard Libertarian Disclaimer, and we’d proceed from there to addressing the issue as it presently exists instead of how we wished it existed. Nowadays, I don’t think you could get many Cato board members to agree with that fundamental proposition.

        The issues of compulsory vaccination and quarantines still exists in terms of immigration and actual rather than pretended epidemics and pandemics, which is trickier. Back in 2014 it was difficult to find a libertarian who didn’t agree with Fauci that quarantines for returning physicians treating Ebola in Africa were “draconian” and unnecessary. A lot of the think tank set were either lying then or are lying now.

    • Michael Malaise

      Boebert’s got that Fred Astaire chin going.

  24. Ownbestenemy

    Okay I am seriously doing this whole FedGov employee thing wrong. I am going out of my way to pick up slack, which I am guessing people have just blown it off by saying they don’t know how to do it, and I am getting it done.

    Seriously, I have never understood the attitude of ‘not my job’ and ‘I wasn’t trained’. It is excessing personal property for the Federal Government. It isn’t building a rocket engine folks.

    /daily rant on day #7 in a row at work.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The clown in the street sewer?

      • Compelled Speechless

        I mean, if you really made me choose between the two…..

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.

    • creech

      Sean, you shouldn’t be surprised. You know Penna, GOP legislators are Charlie Brown, always trusting Lucy Democrat to not pull away the football again.

  25. The Late P Brooks

    I wonder how many NFL players and coaches were secretly rolling their eyes at all the bullshit about the horrific tragedy the league endured.

    • creech

      Didn’t his “concerned” teammates( “family”) blow town while he was still in ICU at death’s door?

    • rhywun

      I know I was rolling my eyes a lot yesterday.

  26. Pat

    John Deere gives U.S. farmers right to repair equipment

    Jan. 9 (UPI) — U.S. manufacturer John Deere has agreed to allow American farmers the right to repair their own equipment, according to a U.S. agriculture industry lobby group.

    The American Farm Bureau Federation, a U.S. insurance company and lobby group, announced Sunday that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with John Deere that ensures any farmer or independent repair facility will be able to repair its equipment.

    Prior to the agreement, owners of John Deere equipment were barred from modifying and repairing their purchased equipment, needing to only use John Deere parts and associated repair facilities to do so.

    The restriction has been met with criticism from farmers while John Deere has argued it is in order to protect the equipment’s safe operation, to ensure emissions compliance and engine performance and warranty validation.

    The AFBF said Sunday that the agreement it entered with John Deere followed years of discussions, and that it addresses long-running issues for farmers and ranchers while protecting the U.S. manufacturer’s intellectual property rights.

    What generosity! You don’t need to have a fucking JD rep travel for days out to your farm in order to input a proprietary unlock code to do basic maintenance when your shit breaks down in the middle of your busy season! I hope those farmers are obsequiously grateful for the magnanimity shown them.

    • Sensei

      I’ve been reading about the underground Deere hacking community for years.

      It’s nuts. I’d love to know the real reason they caved. It sure wasn’t because it was the moral thing to do.

    • juris imprudent

      First, go to Columbia University to lern to journolism.

    • Compelled Speechless

      I’d love to hear her take on when the squad did the same thing back in 2018. I’m sure she was over the moon admiring their bravery and principles.

    • Pat

      According to the representative from Ohio, they dreamed of one party being an ungovernable disaster whose proceedings involved physical altercations.

      Uh, yeah, you historically illiterate twat.

  27. The Late P Brooks

    Pay your fair share

    The House GOP’s first bill out of the gate doesn’t address inflation or gas prices or immigration, but instead zeroes in on the Internal Revenue Service.

    The bill set to be voted on Monday evening — barring a stalemate over approving the rules for the 118th Congress — would reverse much of the $80 billion in extra funding set aside for the agency by 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act.

    While it has little chance of being enacted with Democrats in control of the Senate, the prominence of the issue shows just how much the IRS has become a target of Republicans even though experts say the funds in question would go toward more prosaic concerns like helping the agency chase down tax cheats and refresh its shockingly outdated technology.

    “Our first bill will repeal funding for 87,000 new IRS agents,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said Saturday, just moments after his victory. “Because the government should be here to help you, not go after you.”

    We’re all tax cheats, now.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Repeal that will be shelved in the Senate. Will they attempt to repeal the $600 1099’s? Right…

      • creech

        Are there any vulnerable Dem senators up for re-election in 2024 that might want to try to score points with the voters by voting with the Republicans on this, and other popular measures?

    • IRBE

      Bizarre take on 87K IRS agents==> They are not hiring them to audit tax payers, they are being hired to give away upcoming stimmy checks to buys votes. Giving all that money away last time was not efficient at getting the money to the correct and connected.

  28. Gustave Lytton

    Bloody Mary with V8? Yeah or nay? Door replacement went south and taking much longer than expected.

    • EvilSheldon

      If V8 is all you have, then it’s all you have.

    • Count Potato

      I think tomato juice is better, but it’s OK.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Dash some Worcestershire sauce in it and call it a day

      • The Hyperbole

        and horseradish. and hot sauce

      • Ownbestenemy

        Yep and who cares if V8…

      • R.J.

        Agreed. It’s just fine.

  29. The Late P Brooks

    The claim from McCarthy, which has been echoed by many Republicans, is that the influx of money will lead to a flood of 87,000 new IRS agents who will then harass everyday Americans. Some critics of the agency go even further and claim these new agents will be armed.

    But fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked the claims, and the agency itself pushed back in a Yahoo Finance op-ed from then-IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig in August.

    The viral claims are “absolutely false,” Rettig wrote at the time, adding his agency “is often perceived as an easy target for mischaracterizations,” but he promised the new money will not lead to increased audit scrutiny on households making under $400,000.

    The plan is instead for much of the money to go toward wealthy tax cheats. IRS estimates of the so-called “tax gap” — the difference between what taxes are owed to the government and what is actually paid — is hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

    Show your work.

    • robc

      It has already come out that audits on lower income households have increased instead of the new audits going against the wealthy.

      • Bob Boberson

        Evidentially you can fact check by linking to op-Ed’s too. I guess they teach shamelessness as an entry level course at journalism school.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Wealthy tax cheats like the soccer mom and her side hustle selling on etsy

  30. The Late P Brooks

    The restriction has been met with criticism from farmers while John Deere has argued it is in order to protect the equipment’s safe operation, to ensure emissions compliance and engine performance and warranty validation.

    I can grudgingly accept some part of that argument while the equipment is under warranty. But as soon as it’s off warranty, the owner should be free to fix it himself or take it to whomever he wishes. And use any parts he wants.

    And, of course there is always the “voiding the warranty” option.

  31. Grosspatzer

    That’s his one free. The next one costs him $50.

    Boy, is he strict!

    • Ownbestenemy

      Jamaica is raaaaaaaacist

      • Count Potato

        He looks a bit like Papa Legba, which is Voodoo not Rasta. Maybe the AI confused it with Haiti?

      • Timeloose

        USA looks like a pimped out Eddie from the Somewhere in Time Maiden album.

    • Timeloose

      Somehow France sill looks unimpressive and ready to surrender.

      Most of them are pretty good. India looks like a nearly unmodified elephant.

      • Count Potato

        I thought Russia should have been a bear, not a Siberian tiger.

    • Michael Malaise

      Madagascar is just buff Rocket Raccoon.

      • Count Potato

        Maybe it’s some kind of lemur? Don’t think Madagascar has raccoons.

    • Sensei

      But does it identify as nut free?

      • R.J.

        Bravo. I can’t compete with that.

      • Tonio

        That’s like a Zen koan. Has nuts, but nut-free.

    • Gender Traitor

      Because I can’t enjoy yummy yummy chocolate unless it’s anthropogynecomorphized and looks just like me. 🤦🏼‍♀️

      • Pat

        Making them look like a pack of scolding schoolmarms was excellent marketing as well. When I buy candy based on the cartoon mascots on the packaging I definitely want it to seem like a gender studies lecture hall.

      • Timeloose

        The one with glasses looks like she is about to tell me she isn’t mad.

      • Michael Malaise

        They are so fucking badass I am afraid to eat them. Well done, ladies.

    • rhywun

      The punchline is they’re all trannies.

  32. Ownbestenemy

    This ChatGPT is pretty fun.

    • CPRM

      Finally decided that soon I will find out if I can make Pork Flour a thing and make chicken tenders coated in ground up pork rinds. Tonight I grind the rinds!

      • CPRM

        oops, not meant as a reply. but enjoy some Pork Sword.

      • Sean

        Yes, it works. I haven’t done it in quite sometime though. Tenders are just so lean.

      • CPRM

        The last time I did my own chicken breading I did nuggets, trying to make better than a McNugget. Ground the meat myself, did a tempura. They were really good, but way too much work. I got some tenders on manager special, so that’ll do.