El Nino has come in full bore- we’ve only had one snowfall this winter and it only lasted for a day or two. Haha, we’re about to get hammered this weekend. I’m already getting warning texts from my cable company and the electric folks. So of course, I fled to a place even closer to the Lake and am writing this from Rochester. I may not be able to escape. However, being locked in with Tomb Raider is not the worst fate I’ve had…
Today is one of those days rich with significant birthdays including the inventor of the French fry; the enabler of the Wizard of Oz; the inspiration for our own P Brooks; the guy whom I would choose to clean my house; a pioneer of making poems not rhyme; one of the prime architects of the Big Brother state; a major contributor to college students pseudo-profundity; a decent man who cursed us with a less-than-decent daughter; and speaking of pseudo-profundity…; hmmm, pseudo-profundity seems to be a theme here; a guy whose work actually WAS profound; a strong advocate for combination of church and state; a guy whose name has become synonymous with his instrument, but that’s probably white colonialism; a guy who perfected time travel; a guy who was famous among Little League fans; a redhead who always made me feel funny in my bathing suit area; a psycho who was psychedelic; another incredible talent who was truly nuts and flamed out too soon; a prime candidate for the woodchipper; a great talent who actually wasn’t nuts but was certainly tough enough; a guy who really has a lot in the old bean; a cook mostly known for dairy; proof that you can put a pair of glasses on a dummy and people will think he’s smart; a pariah who actually IS smart; and a guy who makes you long for the clean play and good sportsmanship of Draymond Green.
On to Links, then.
My vision is “Pile of rubble,” pour discourager les autres.
Half-hearted attempts to restart the panic are half-hearted.
Then again, you could have tried this.
“We’re the government and we’re here to protect you.”
Yes, a new law will fix this. It always does.
I guess Jimmy Carter wasn’t the only one who wanted to revive involuntary servitude.
Here’s an idea to increase sales: lower your fucking prices.
Old Guy had no choice today, given birthdays.
Morning.
Thank you for not adding good. This f’ing state hates me (never had as many allergy related migraines until I came West…. and I grew up in a state where the pine pollen in spring would make all the cars the same shade of yellow until a good rain…)
When my dad was drafted (thank you, fucking peacetime draft), he told the Army doctors he had a ragweed allergy. So they sent him to White Sands in New Mexico, where he served with distinction keeping the missiles out of the hands of Ernst Blofeld and illegal immigrants from Mexico.
But he also found out he had an allergy to tumbleweed pollen.
Hill country of TX? That was on the news a couple of days ago – the clouds of cedar pollen.
Northeast Georgia.
No, I meant now.
Oh, now — Central Valley of California. Orchards around the town, so either their pollen or something they’re spraying — or the little bit of rain we’ve had made the native plants go wild as they do (because that’s how they have to work when it is dry 11 months out of the year and all).
Despite being a native, I usually don’t think about the Valley and how different it is.
That’s where I grew up. I now live in Massachusetts and suffer from spring time allergies just as bad as when I was a kid. Can’t catch a break.
cedar
mountain juniper doesn’t bother me, but live oaks do; that said, there aren’t enough trees in Texas to bother me….while the same trees in Georgia knock my dick in the dirt
Ashe Juniper is not “cedar”, people. Any real cedar would die in Central Texas without massive intervention.
And since that species of juniper is the dominant tree here – deal with the pollen or move.
all the cars the same shade of yellow
oh yeah, but I could breathe my 20 years in Texas. Growing up in the corn fields of west TN, everything about me was swole shut: I took pills and shots and who knows. Fort Worth cured me. Texans would complain about humidity and pollen and just leave me in stitches: ya gotta be kidding.
Back in TN, I’m not as bad as I was, but it’s definitely harder for me here.
I wonder if it has anything to do with childhood exposures, local honey, autoimmune, diet? I will say this: I breathe easy in northern Europe.
Yeah — I fully expect some acclimation to the allergens we’re used to growing up makes a difference. Though the whole Valley Fever thing worries the hell out of me some days.
One of the things I miss about Nevada was how well I breathed there in the desert.
Here in WA state, I struggle to keep my SPO2 above 90%. Maybe a pulmonologist can put me on something good.
The desert’s good for allergies, eh? I’ve had allergy problems my whole life and when I retire before too long I want to go somewhere I can actually breathe without having to dose up on Zyrtec. Maybe that’d be for me, I can handle the heat.
Do not move to Phoenix; you need to move to a real desert, not an urban island of stupid humanity that created a source of pollen.
Every time I drive I-40, I clear up remarkably around Flagstaff — I assume the higher elevation or something. I always assumed being a college town and likely home for snowbirds it would be too expensive / too annoying, but if I were thinking about retiring in Arizona (which I’m not), that’s probably where I’d look around.
How about Winslow? From what I hear it’s such a fine sight to see.
Mornin’.
OMWC and Tomb Raider, riding out the storm.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd9cyLb2ybw
Huh… I was expecting this.
This.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyS_Kg5MvXI
“Haha, we’re about to get hammered this weekend.”
Spud is visiting?
Better than the SMITH family….
*adjusts glasses*
Speaking of half-hearted, that link goes nowhere. 😉
It loads for me — just takes a little time. Archive link to spare us the WSJ paywall. Just don’t scroll down to the comments unless you want to further lose all hope for humanity.
DuckDuckGo is telling me a server with specified host name can’t be found.
*shrugs, carries on with life*
I’m detecting a pattern. And I await a certain side of the aisle defending the practice as “protected speech.” 🙄
What — the groups that have demonstrably ignored all norms, conventions and proprieties when it comes to what they see as “protest” over the last 6 years or more — and have been given a pat on the head and a cookie from the power brokers and gatekeepers of society might be harassing their political opposition in a way inconceivably evil?
Why… I do declare GT — you’re going to give me the vapors!
The pattern I detect is that SWATting has been a problem for years, but Our Masters didn’t give a shit about it until it started happening to them.
DC delenda est.
Of course, very few people will question the existence of or need for those Special Forces LARPers in the fist place…
I damn well do and have here. One of the few times I disagreed strongly with my parents over the last few years — the “toss a smoke grenade into a crib” incident I cited as yet another sign the police needed to stop acting like they’re storming Hitler’s bunker on no-knock raids for minor issues… and my father actually was fine with it. Don’t get it then, don’t get it now…. I suppose he’s still in the “they wouldn’t be calling if there wasn’t crime going on” — which I think has been proven sufficiently bullshit (wrong address, bad informants, just unconstitutional searches, etc.)
I wouldn’t care if it was Hitler’s bunker – when you throw a smoke grenade into a baby’s crib… CONGRATULATIONS, you are worse than Hitler.
The most I can give those jerkwads was that I assume they didn’t mean it explicitly — just throwing in the grenades willy nilly before storming the house, not knowing there was a crib there.
But that’s the sort of thing that can easily happen when you storm people’s houses and maybe you should be more fucking careful in the first place and look for police methods that don’t involve storming in in the middle of the night and all?
Like firing randomly into a neighborhood, it’s reckless. There’s a 99% chance no one’ll be hit but sooner or later someone will by sheer chance and it should be studiously avoided. They should implement other tactics if they have to do those kinds of raids.
The whole “Gear up, boys! There’s a local grocer selling questionable heads of lettuce!” thing is a bit of an eye roller as well.
I remember an incident where some cop killer was on the loose. I think he may have been a LEO himself or military or something. But the police were so on edge they were shooting at cars that simply matched the description. Fucking cowards.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dorner_shootings_and_manhunt#Police_shooting_of_unrelated_civilians
Brawndo: Was that the San Bernadino case? Where the cops lit up two people in a car because it kind of matched the description of the perps car?
@neph and slumbrew, that sounds right
It wasn’t a smoke grenade, if memory serves. It was a flash-bang.
You’re right. Mea culpa I really don’t want to go dig up articles on it and get the vein in my forehead throbbing just now.
There are multiple cases. Aiyana Stanley-Jones and Bounkham Phonesavanh are the 2 that come immediately to mind for me.
Remember, even Stalin’s NKVD had the courtesy to knock.
In fairness, the NKVD (and the Gestapo) never had to worry much about getting blasted in the doorway when they did knock. So there is a flaw built into that comparison.
If they don’t smash down the door, the criminals will flush tons of drugs down the toilet before they open the doors to our boys in blue!
I don’t think they even bother with that old excuse anymore. Now it’s all about the shock-and-awe takedown – for officer safety of course.
No talent ass clown:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12932251/Michael-Bolton-reveals-brain-cancer-diagnosis.html
I’ve seen vids of the Ukranian draft and it’s not so much some poor guy getting a draft notice as it is a bunch of masked guys with weapons surrounding a gym or a bar who cart off the ones who don’t fight and beat up and the ones that do and cart them off anyway. A very sad situation really.
And how’d that happen? My bad…as for Michael Bolton, I celebrate his entire catalogue.
Any relation to that Office Space guy?
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 01/06:
*20/20 words (+8 bonus words)
📖 In the top 5% by bonus words
I played https://squaredle.com 01/06:
43/43 words (+12 bonus words)
📖 In the top 16% by bonus words
🔥 Solve streak: 104
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 01/06:
*20/20 words (+3 bonus words)
🎯 In the top 18% by accuracy
I played https://squaredle.com 01/06:
*43/43 words (+3 bonus words)
🎯 In the top 7% by accuracy
🔥 Solve streak: 172
Swatting has been around a long time. In junior high some girls called in a death of a school teacher. Caller ID hadn’t been invented yet so the girls gave the teacher’s real phone number. The police/morgue returned the call (to the teacher’s number) wondering if the body was ready for pick up. Little/nothing was said in school, figuring it might result in more prank calls.
Probably not a bad idea.
That case we were talking about, where the judge had the wife’s guns seized as a condition of not jailing her husband? It’s worse than I thought.
She also had his son’s guns seized and refuses to release them to him even though he lives in another state.
https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2024/01/04/denied-rights-felony-n79004
I’m not gonna read that. 😠
DeSantis appointed judge! I get that the husband must be a real asshole, but the judge is proving he can be a bigger one.
Maybe if SWAT teams didn’t kick in doors without warrants and shoot people that are asleep or reach for a gun because they think they’re being robbed people wouldn’t try to call SWAT on their enemies.
It’s basically the libertarian argument for smaller government. Give it less power so it’s not profitable to buy politicians.
That’s my solution; why do these PDs need SWAT teams in the first place? Why do SWAT teams even exist? Because a shootout happened in Miami in the ’80s? Get rid of SWAT teams and the problem disappears.
More because there was a cool TV show in the 70s.
First off – it is an accountability problem. When they fuck up – because they will – are they held accountable or not? When you don’t hold them accountable, damn, you just get more and more of it because why not – there’s no punishment.
Second, they had a reason to exist, but not enough to justify as many of them as there are – so, EXPAND the mission!
There are enough bombed out husks of homes to demonstrate the palpable lack of accountability.
Hell, there’s no sign of accountability for department financing literal highway robbery.
And that’s why Philadelphia became the city with the most accountable police force evar!
Knew what it was before I clicked. Can’t believe this isn’t more common knowledge. Maybe it is in Philly, but nobody in my neck of the woods has heard of it.
Accountability is white-supremacist-cis-patriarchy-fascism and that is why no one wants to live with it.
Silicone Saturday will not SWAT you.
https://archive.is/aGvqD
I’ve seen vids of the Ukranian draft and it’s not so much some poor guy getting a draft notice as it is a bunch of masked guys with weapons surrounding a gym or a bar who cart off the ones who don’t fight and beat up and the ones that do and cart them off anyway. A very sad situation really.
Press gangs. It worked for the British Navy.
SWATting isn’t a problem until it happens to politicians.
But they’ll never ban dynamic entry because officer safety.
♫♪ Bad boys, bad boys ♪♫♪
I give you a shout-out and…. nothing. Hmph.
Reason has a weird one…. the New York teachers union is suing to stop congestion pricing tolls, saying they were too rushed.
https://reason.com/2024/01/05/teachers-union-sues-to-stop-new-york-congestion-pricing-plan/
The real weird part is suing in federal court under state law, unless I read it wrong. Apparently the statute in question allows ANYONE standing.
Clearly designed to be used as a weapon.
What could possibly go wrong? ™
I’m assuming it’s because they haven’t been given a carve-out yet.
Not buying that they give a shit about “environmental reports”.
Never forgive, never forget
In the follow-up to their 2018 bestseller “How Democracies Die,” authors Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky write about three rules that political parties must follow: accept the results of fair elections, reject the use of violence to gain power and break ties to extremists.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, they write, only one U.S. political party “violated all three.”
Saturday marks the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and Donald Trump, the former president, is far-and-away the leading Republican candidate in 2024. He still refuses to acknowledge his earlier loss to President Joe Biden. Far from rejecting the rioters, he has suggested he would pardon some of those who have been convicted of violent crimes. Rather than distance himself from extremists, he welcomes them at his rallies and calls them patriots.
Note the specificity of “those who have been convicted of violent crimes”. He won’t just offer mercy to those dupes simply caught up in the moment who went where they should not have been, he will pardon the ringleaders and the lynch mob who maimed and murdered dozens of good people defending our holy temple of democracy.
The AP, ladies and gentlemen- that’s how you journalism.
Nope. No one on the left side of the aisle ever said anything untoward about the ’16 presidential election. All of them, to the last breath, swore fealty to the process.
I wonder how this is playing with the rubes. We have seen it since before 2015, even as we have been amazed at the growing brazenness. But the rubes missed it, trusting that there was secret intelligence from the Kremlin that showed that Trump was a Putin puppet.
But now? Does anyone know that the Whitmer “plot” has been exposed and that exposure validated by a jury? Do they know the same people were involved in Jan 6? Do they understand that all of the swing states *still* have illegal changes to election procedures that enable various forms of vote rigging?
Heck, for that matter, do they even see that the DNC have openly rigged their primaries, chasing prominent challengers like Kennedy from the party? Do they even see the attempts to keep Trump off the ballot as corrupt?
It is so hard to tell. My “everyman” is my wife, and she largelt sees the corruption, but TDS prevents her from fully acknowledging the reality and consequences.
The rubes are still believing that Trump and his Nazi cabal attempted to steal the 2020 election in a straight up coup attempt.
I don’t see how this is possible, but I fear you are correct.
If someone lives in a media bubble where no other narrative is even mentioned, of course they’re gonna believe the only thing they’ve heard.
You’ve met my coworker who thinks the Clintons are a hard working centrist couple who are unfairly savaged.
I see two groups who are buying in.
The first is the boomers and early gen x’ers who still have a nightly appointment with the regime media for their indoctrination (and/or use the constant drip version from the regime media’s socials). Their response to the truth is “I don’t believe you”.
The second is the morally corrupt millennials and Z’ers who genuinely don’t care about the “higher principles” and will do and support anything that gives their side power. Their response to the truth is “I don’t care”.
As a proxy for leftists everywhere, Mrs. Prole feels the CO attempt to keep Trump off the ballot is “obviously constitutional” because the definition of insurrection is so clearly applicable to what he was alleged to have done. To which I asked if due process is also constitutional. Then we switched to a non-political topic.
“reject the use of violence to gain power and break ties to extremists”
Oooooh, now do the Floyd riots…
The extreme gasslighting is a new phenomenon. I thought standing in front of the burning building saying “mostly peaceful” was the peak, but they have even surpassed that level.
The white house was still talking about Jan 6 riots killing police officers yesterday. It really is remarkable…. Ramaswamy was getting gasslit in real time with the “refused to denounce white supremacy” gambit this week, just as Trump was.
It is so weird. I was stunned when people couldn’t remember what Clinton said 2 weeks later, but this new stuff is in the same sentence… literally less than 10 seconds after he says it.
[George Orwell looks down and shrugs]
In the follow-up to their 2018 bestseller “How Democracies Die,” authors Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky write about three rules that political parties must follow: accept the results of fair elections, reject the use of violence to gain power and break ties to extremists.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, they write, only one U.S. political party “violated all three.”
And before you deplorables even mention the 2016 election, obviously that one wasn’t fair because Herself lost.
Raskin envisions a time when there will be a Capitol exhibit, and tours for visitors, to commemorate what happened Jan. 6, 2021. Five people died during the riot and the immediate aftermath, including Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police.
All told,140 police officers were injured in the Capitol siege, including U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick who died later. Several others died later by suicide.
Worse than the Bataan Death March.
That AP article runs under the heading of Politics, not Opinion, by the way.
I would have expected “Entertainment”.
I wonder if the AP has ever interviewed anybody who characterized January 6 as unfortunate, but hardly the end of the world.
But- why would they?
Or as “peaceable assembly for redress of grievances”. I’ve yet to see any TMITE source even mention that some deplorables view Jan 6 that way.
You are not of The Narrative.
Doomsday eve
President Joe Biden commemorated January 6 as a day of American infamy, marking the third anniversary of the 2021 insurrection with a call for Americans to join him in defending US democracy from former President Donald Trump, who by comparison has promised to pardon the insurrectionists.
In a Friday speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where the Continental Army spent the frigid 1777-78 winter, Biden said the democracy those Americans fought for is under threat.
“Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time,” he said.
If people vote for the wrong guy, democracy is kaput.
If the wrong guy is even allowed on the ballot, instead of someone the ruling party has chosen to be the token opposition, or better yet no opposition candidate at all, Democrat-cy is doomed!!!1!
I thought the democracy they fought for included enslaving other people, exterminating Indians, and keeping women in their place birthing babies and making sammiches?
Nice little coating of snow here along the Mason-Dixon line – supposed to be 2-3 inches before turning to wintry mix and then rain. Just a lovely day – I’ll enjoy the snow while we have it.
*waves at OMWC*
Got your snowshoes all waxed up?
“We all know who Donald Trump is,” Biden said later. “The question we have to answer is, who are we?”
I know you are, but what am I?
“No, seriously, what’s my name and why am I talking into a microphone?”
The pretense is nauseating. Can it be 2025 already?
Already looking forward to the ’28 election cycle?
No I just want this one to be over.
Look, Fat..Im-m-m-m just askin jack!? Whwho am I? I honestly don’t remember.
“Alaska Airlines flight makes emergency landing after window blows out mid-flight as child who sat near hole loses shirt”
https://nypost.com/2024/01/06/news/alaskan-airlines-flight-makes-emergency-landing-in-portland-after-window-blows-out-mid-flight/
I read that as “shit”.
“window panel”
LOL, it’s an emergency exit door. Good thing it happened ay a relatively low altitude. The DC-10 is a testament to how bad things can get when a door blows open mid-flight.
Dang, they were at 12k feet! Nevermind on the low altitude thing. That’s the same level as the DC-10 incidents.
The hard democratic truth is Trump could win
There is evidence that a democratic majority of American voters won’t mind that Trump tried to overturn the last election.
Maybe some of them even suspect Biden and the Democrat apparatus successfully overturned the 2020 election.
Fortified, not over-turned.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/01/the-week-in-pictures-gay-times-edition.php
Three Keys to Success
OMG!
Yeah, one and done.
I generally avoid covers on Facebook (particularly of this song). But I found that I really enjoyed this one.
Stairway to Heaven, if it were written by Dire Straits
There have been more than 890 convictions in connection with the insurrection, according to the Department of Justice.
And the overwhelming majority of those were for crimes roughly equivalent to disobeying a “Keep Off the Grass” sign. But go ahead and portray it as a murderous heavily armed rampage, CNN.
Just another lie the media puts out there. Last night, my local NBC affiliate news told watchers “the 14th amendment bars certain people from appearing on the ballot.”. Read it, asshole: it bars serving in certain offices if 2/3 of both Houses don’t decide otherwise. So the people can nominate and elect anyone they desire, with Congress having the last say, not some judge, state officials, or intern news writer.
Note the careful lie in the wording: how many people were convicted of insurrection. Zero. So, legally, no evidence of an insurrection.
That Hydroxychloroquine article is absolute bullshit. That stuff is available over the counter in half the world and harmless unless taken way beyond recommended dosages. People in tropical countries take it constantly as a malaria preventative – one reason covid was much less severe in the tropics.
A big-pharma front group does a study to manipulate data so you buy their crazy expensive stuff instead of the generic stuff that actually works.
Was it? I literally have no idea because the media have shown zero interest in the question.
There were some articles at the height – probably all memory-holed now – expecting half of India and Africa to die. Never happened probably because of vitamin D and chloroquine drugs.
Probably the biggest difference though is the average person who died in the west was over 80 years old.
The third world doesn’t have as many elderly on their death beds to hospitalize and pretend died of covid.
Martyr
“She was targeted partially due to her race, but as part of the larger, extremist, right-wing push to reverse social progress under this banner of anti-wokeness,” Lily Zheng, a DEI strategist and best-selling author of DEI Deconstructed, told Yahoo News.
——-
Zheng says that DEI efforts have historically been about “eliminating discrimination, creating fairness” and building organizations and universities that work for everyone.
“There are articles from Harvard themselves essentially admitting to, in the past and in the present, the social networks of these kinds of prestigious universities have been typically rich white men, building social, political and financial connections with other rich white men that weaves the fabric of America’s political and corporate landscape for decades to come.”
Zheng added that this model of Ivy League institutions needs to change.
Burn it all down. Kill whitey.
LOL bullshit and their problem is that Joe Sixpack knows it.
A day after stepping down, Gay penned an op-ed in the New York Times in which she said she was “called the N-word more times than I care to count,” in her short six months at Harvard.
Sounds legit.
“how many of those people calling you that were black?”
Nutcase? I could see that. Narcissist? also plausible.
Already looking forward to the ’28 election cycle?
Aren’t you? Trump will have annulled the 22nd Amendment via Executive Order, and banned opposition parties, by then.