My weekend was busy again. Since it was my mom’s birthday my Saturday was more or less shot and I spent Sunday making chicken wings, brats, and cheese that’s not yours (you know, nacho cheese) after I got home from the gym.
I fell asleep in the second quarter. That’s the real psy-op, all that hype for such a boring ass game.
Anyways…¡enlaces!
It has been argued by, well me, that Mexico’s recession is indicative of the one they covered up here. At least they aren’t stupid enough to dump money they don’t have into solar panels.
I got it, lets make them arm wrestle.
I got about a paragraph in and then I realized this is The Conversation. I saw it, now you have to. Them be the rules.
ExxonMobil to explore in the disputed area between Venezuela and Guyana. Elsewhere in Venezuela…we captured a plane.
¡Parasito!
A nice puff piece on Milei, who I really hope called the Pope a parasite to his face.
Elsewhere in Argentina, they are embracing stablecoins. For those unaware, a stablecoin is a blockchain that is pegged to a fiat currency, that in effect allows transfers via blockchain in a currency that doesn’t necessarily need to be converted back to fiat since in theory it is worth the same as the pegged fiat currency. Yes, typically that currency is the US Dollar. Which makes sense if the plan is to “Dollarize” the Argentine economy.
Here’s a tune. Have a great Tuesday!
Somebody’s getting pegged for sure.
Damn your nimble fingers, I was going for simultaneous firsts.
That only happens in those blue movies…
He had you pegged.
Huh.
What.
ITS HAPPENING!!!!!!
https://tenor.com/view/excited-ronpaul-itshappening-lights-gif-4724084
Isn’t this a bit early for afternoon links?
Los enlaces prematuros son los mejores enlaces.
Here we are now. Entertain us.
Second First of the afternoon links.
Sing distinctly — we don’t wanna! Buy our album… we’re Nirvana!
A garage band—FROM SEATTLE
Hey it sure beats—RAISIN CATTLE. yeah!
As an ad keeps reminding me, Nirvana has been out for 30 years.
I thought it was horses that tasted like raisins.
I thought it was giant gorillas.
Grape ape has gotten on in years and must be fairly wrinkled by now, after all.
Riveting lyrics:
A mulatto, an albino
A mosquito, my libido, yeah
Real voice of a generation there. Deep.
I didn’t realize there were actual lyrics. I thought it was just randomized slurry vocalizations.
Heroin is a hell of a drug.
Or Courtney Love rots your brain. Who can say? (Okay, probably Dave Grohl has some insights — but he just pities the foo, like Mr. T.)
Man… Swiss may have to fight you for that one.
Say… what’s French for “déjà vu”?
*raises white flag
You will go down with this ship?
Forgot about her.
Id go down on it.
Vu jaDe.
This has never happened to me before . . . .
French First World War post-apocalyptic look
Me: Yes, we just saw that with our own eyes in El Salvador.
Leftists: NO! NOT LIKE THAT!!
Shut up, all of you. SHUT UP.
I know what I did, and I can blame only myself. Sorry Juris.
As long as the beer review is on time Saturday, you will be forgiven.
Um…they’re never on time.
oh well
I’d ask if they’re at least on Miller Time — but you’re usually going for more arty brews than canoe lagers.
Showing up at beer o’clock?
👏 Golf 👏 Clap 👏
Guyana considers the area part of its Essequibo region, but Venezuela has long claimed it as its own, holding a referendum in December which was totally not rigged by the corrupt Venezuelan goverment, we know because they told us, in which so called “voters” supported a push to annex it.
If you can’t vote to take things that don’t belong to you, do you even have a democracy?
You don’t have “Their Democracy”.
When I was in Russia in the 90s it was illegal to price things in a foreign currency. As a workaround many of the finer restaurants and bars listed their prices in “units”. It was merely coincidental that 1 unit = 1 dollar. Sounds like a proto-stablecoin.
I travelled to Moscow between ’94 and ’96. At first, prices and credit card charges were in dollars. The prices were allowed in dollars, but credit cards had be charged in rubles (based on that day’s exchange rate). Then prices could not be shown in dollars, so they were shown in economic units that happened to equal one USD.
I think it has been about long enough — wanted to raise the question: Just what is this happy horseshit?
I mean, yeah — those are all interesting arguments… but there’s one pretty glaring omission from the whole piece from my perspective… Why, precisely, can Europe not defend itself? It isn’t 1946. The Marshall Plan is over. Europe is more than capable of spending money on itself and if they weren’t blowing it all on socialism, maybe they might. That old “guns or butter” problem, after all…
(Setting aside that I don’t buy the evil Ruuskies want to invade all of Europe bullshit either. An attack on Europe (besides the importation of those who seek to tear down their societies) is more likely to be asymmetric and not something NATO would guard against in any event…)
I mean if you want an American Empire just be fucking honest about it, Manic Contrarian.
Comments before full response: our beloved Animal has another piece up at RS I see.
I think there’s a case for some kind of engagement in Europe without standing as a full-blown guarantor of European security. As several folks brought up here during the Trump Administration, the US can’t just bail on treaty obligations. But, they could presumably withdraw – which would be complicated by process outlined in Article 13: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty#Article_13
The other way to do it would be to do what the French have done which is to withdraw from the military command structure. However, I expect the American role in NATO would also make this complicated.
A moral obligation to defend Europe? Maybe, but I’m not sure there’s a moral obligation to defend Europe by ourselves.
Some non-insane hawks argue that a US withdrawal from NATO would lead to nuclear expansion (more weapons for Britain & France + countries like Germany building their own). Not sure about that.
It is probably a relic of my “grew up in the MAD era / Cold War” mindset… but I couldn’t care less if nation states increased their nuclear inventory — and honestly, I don’t care if most nations have the bomb… and assume most/all could if they really wanted to. The only line I really have is with Iran because I think they’re nutty enough to first strike with it.
But the North Koreans? Libya trying? That’s just sanity these days — you get nukes and don’t use them stupidly, the other nations stop screwing with you. Sounds like a plan for most small countries to me. And Ukraine should never have bought the crap line that “Give them up… sure we’ll protect you without a formal treaty!” in the first place. (Ok, they probably couldn’t afford to maintain them, true… but the idea still holds.)
And since bioweapons and dirty bombs are a bigger threat for terrorist organizations or nations anyway, full on nukes don’t really stress me out.
But anyway — I would probably agree on the phrasing that we have no moral obligation to defend Europe if it won’t defend itself (go it alone). I think that holds true for any nation on this planet (or individual for that matter…. at the root, self-defense is your own responsibility as much as we’ve been told we can’t do it / we must rely on the state for it.)
Boy I’m ranty today apparently… sorry.
Don’t necessarily disagree with you on the nuke thing, just noting it as an argument.
TBH, some of the people who make that argument appear to be a little sure of themselves. Some argue, for example, if the US were to abandon treaty obligations in SE Asia, Australia would be one of the countries that would build nukes. Now, long time since I lived there, but there would be significant socio-political hurdles to get over for that to happen.
I don’t remember the details, but were the nukes solely under Ukrainian control or were they still under Russia, with Russian troops on Ukrainian soil?
Since sometime after the war Eurotrash has looked down their noses at us and taunted us with their long paid vacations, short work hours and generous communist bullshit.
Few of them and few of us appreciate how much of that is on our dime. Fuck them. Let them pay their own way. Russia invades? How about we invade and finally get our money’s worth.
This was another one of those cases where Trump, as he does, blew up his own good idea. Yep, pressure the Euros to pay their treaty obligations, but running around the world calling them out in public, not helpful.
He was not governing. He was campaigning. It’s the nature of the beast.
Art of the Deal.
Start from some extreme position so you can tack back toward the center and get everything you wanted.
That is the way Trump operates, EVERY TIME.
Also, the progressive playbook.
Today’s Mardi Gras,
So wear a shirt that just fits
We’ll toss you some beads
If you show us your…
Honestly, Shpip — I don’t think my moobs are anything you’d trade beads for. Sorry.
Silly SDF-7, “moobs” doesn’t rhyme with “fits”. He wants to see your naughty bits.
I almost put in a disclaimer that the offer was for (mythical libertarian) women only.
Then I remembered that we don’t do that kind of casual misogyny around here.
Zits?
But it does rhyme with “lubes”.
Cats?
Tats?
The extremist, far-right, Maga, alt-right, misogynist internet (Critical Drinker, Nerdrotic, etc) told me that The Marvels was terrible.
But…
My girls wanted to watch it.
It came out on Disney… so I sucked it up and watched it with them last night. They bailed about 20 minutes or so in.
I tried to finish it a couple of times. Insomnia kicked in, and I eventually finished it.
It was way worse than I thought.
Not because of “the message” as I had suspected.
This was a Nickelodeon TV show level movie. It even looked kinda like Henry Danger.
There was some “the message” stuff present – all the key characters are women. Suddenly the leader of the Kree is a woman, and she is the big baddie.
It was there, but not really overbearing bad because the writing was kids TV network level.
Nothing they did made any sense. Every choice was dumb. Every move the heroes made made you go “why didn’t they just…” immediately after it happens.
Example: they save a tiny group of the Skrull on their ship… had to abandon most of them to die…. and then Captain Marvel “calls a friend” and immediately King valkyre shows up and takes them to safety on the bifrost. Could just called her from the planet to rescue everybody.
Dumb.
Every 5 minutes, something this dumb happens.
And cringe. Plenty of cringe.
But mostly dumb.
Like, I watched Henry Danger with the kids because I am a dad and that is what you do when you are a dad. It is dumb. It is a kid superhero show. And it is dumb. But it knows it is dumb and leans into it a little. So it is watchable. Not great. But watchable.
The Marvels?
It isn’t She Hulk bad…. it doesn’t go out of its way to offend or to be terrible. It us just bad. Badly written. Badly directed.
Lame.
That is probably the best word. Lame.
Not worth watching even for a rage post or as a stoned ironically funny watch. Just a complete waste of time.
Comic book movies wore out a long time ago with me.
Wokism, as it always does, has killed originality and imagination in our society. They lie next to the corpses of comedy and originality.
Are we doomed to suffer 100 years of Soviet style mind numbness?
That would be pretty brutal.
Especially if it spread into architecture.
It was terrible. There are so many bad plot points in it.
If the greenie scam was good enough for Carter and Obumbles it is good enough for Biden.
This foreign invasion facilitated by the govts of the US and Mexico will not be looked upon kindly by history.
Democracy is shit. It is the rule of tyrants. Our founders knew this and were careful to avoid it and devise a Republic.
I would have expected Venezuela to encourage oil drilling by furriners. As soon as the infrastructure is in place and the oil is flowing they will just nationalize it.
Just as Latin America is appearing to throw off the yoke of Banana Republicanism and the east of Europe has cast off communism we appear to be fitting the American people with saddles. What the fuck?
I am not sure pegging to the dollar is a solid plan.
I am not sure pegging to the dollar is a solid plan.
Compared to the Argentine Peso, it is. You have to go to Zimbabwe or Turkey levels of economic incompetence to see worse inflation.
Desperately seeking relevance
The science around Covid-19 transmission hasn’t changed, but experts broadly agreed after the California and Oregon changes that easing isolation timeframes won’t significantly increase community transmission or severe outcomes, in part because the virus has been circulating at very high levels, even with more restrictive guidance in place.
Some infectious disease experts said the change made sense because it would align with what many Americans already do.
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, cited the latest coronavirus variant, JN.1, as a case in point.
“It’s producing a lot of mild infection. Lots of people are not even testing,” he said.
If they test positive, people aren’t really following strict guidelines for isolation anymore.
The sky didn’t fall. Again. Nobody’s listening.
So they are now running in front of the people and claiming that they are leading the parade?
“People aren’t listening to us, so let’s now say that isolation isn’t needed anymore. That way we can still pretend to be relevant”
Apparently no one in the world has property rights if the U.S. government declares otherwise.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government has seized a Boeing 747 cargo plane that officials say was previously sold by a sanctioned Iranian airline to a state-owned Venezuelan firm in violation of American export control laws.
The Justice Department said Monday that the American-built plane had arrived in Florida and would be disposed of.
The plane had earlier been transferred from Iranian airline Mahan Air — which officials have alleged provides support for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force — to Emtrasur, a Venezuelan cargo airline and subsidiary of a state-owned firm that had previously been sanctioned by the United States. Officials said the sale, done without U.S. government authorization, violated export control laws and also improperly benefited Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
There is probably some kind of an agreement on buying American technology and how it can be used. I assume that is what this is.
OFFS.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/textbased/health/text-13079135/Federal-Government-start-PAYING-peoples-rent-two-states-starting-YEAR-new-Medicaid-program-treat-homelessness-healthcare-problem.html
First thought — this is probably a fig leaf so they can give more benefits to illegal immigrants they’re shipping in and try to cover the sanctuary cities / states with Federal dollars.
Second thought — isn’t most of the homelessness problem drug addiction, especially new forms of meth that dramatically increase mental instability (making it harder for them to get off it, be willing/able to get into shelters or off the streets and helping explain why the homeless seem to be more lunatic marauders over the last few years)?
That 6 months will get extended indefinitely. It allows them time and a social worker to apply for Section 8.
These people dont care about their living arrangements when its handed to them simply because its handed to them. They have no skin in the game.
/Jugsy has a whole career spent in Section 8/HUD/subsidized housing. I hear the stories.
Most of the homelessness problem is mental illness, drug addiction is strongly correlated with that issue. Institutionalization was terrible, but so is this alternative.
But at least they’re free to be mentally I’ll!
There is no good answer. The mentally ill and the junkies have no money. The only money in helping them is from the state.
That creates a huge problem with little financial incentive to fix it aside from straight-up grifters looking for govt lucre so the incentive is to worsen and widen the problem.
Dependency aside, that’d only help with a subset of the homeless, maybe ten percent tops. The other ninety percent are addicts or nuts or addicted and nuts and any place they’re in would get trashed or burned down in short order.
Fuck.
Building the communist utopia one brick at a time.
Not everyone thinks the possible change is a good idea, however, noting that it would just greenlight more transmission of the infection.
“This is a reckless policy change that will only serve to promote more spread of Covid and Long Covid,” Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said in an email. Topol co-authored one of the first reviews of asymptomatic Covid-19 infections.
Wastewater surveillance data published by the CDC suggests that Covid-19 is still circulating at high levels across the US, but the agency notes that “infections are causing severe disease less frequently than earlier in the pandemic.”
Still, tens of thousands of people are hospitalized with Covid-19 and hundreds of people die from the virus each week. There were about 21,000 Covid-19 hospitalizations during the week ending February 3, according to the latest CDC data. That’s about 20% lower than this time last year but more than three times more than the low point from this summer.
They claimed, without evidence.
Stop shitting on their shit!
In more too local news, I wonder if this guy’s union had something to do with it.
Surely DPS wouldnt hire Forrest Gump to watch over “special needs” kids.
Ex-DPS employee seen hitting nonverbal child, picking him up by ankles ruled temporarily incompetent
I suspect there are currently thousands of people in New Orleans’s French Quarter who are “temporarily incompetent.”
Pray for another Katrina.
6 more hours of fun! Or should I say “fun”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ysZ9IrKW8
This seems like whistling past the graveyard. Local commie rag is pointing out that all the cool Minnesoda companies are no longer using Twitter.
Maybe an explanation is that Big Business doesn’t want to rock the boat and piss the govt off by advertising on X? After seeing the govt lean on Amazon to censor books, would anyone be that surprised to find out that the govt had a friendly chat with the Huge Corporations about how unfortunate it would be to find them advertising on Musk’s platform?
Does it even matter? Does anyone decide whether or not to use a giant corporation’s services/products because of Twitter or any other social media? I’m sure they’ve all convinced themselves that those accounts are super important and they have a legion of “social media marketing” people who’s jobs depend on enforcing that perception (who also happen to be the consultants about their own effectiveness.)
I’ll bet you they pulled advertising on Twitter and came to the conclusion that it didn’t effect their business much, erroneously thinking that it’s because Twitter is becoming irrelevant instead of the more likely explanation that social media advertising for big corps was never effective to begin with.
Shortly after coming to power, Milei dramatically narrowed the gap between the official and the market exchange rates by devaluing the peso 54%. He went on to shut down ministries and public offices and lay off swarms of useless bureaucrats. He also passed an emergency decree with 300 measures to deregulate the economy. Among them are the privatization of all public companies, the elimination of rent controls, an open sky policy, cutting subsidies to different sectors of the economy, ending import restrictions, deregulating satellite services and many others. In addition, the reduction of fiscal deficit is moving forward.
During the first month of Milei’s administration, public spending decreased by 30% in real terms compared to the previous year and the previous month.
🙂
Uffda. The local commie rag is really toting some water for Brandon in this story about grocery prices.
Then several paragraphs later…
I’m still skeptical of the claim that grocery prices went down. I don’t shop often, but it sure seems like they haven’t gone down a bit.
Do what the Kiwis did: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-12/nz-appoints-grocery-regulator-as-government-eyes-gst-changes/102679742
That works great. Just go ask Nixon.
Stop rising as fast…wonderful…but that not as fast rise is compounded on the back of the very fast rise that’s already happened. Hope you have a crock pot for cooking dried beans and white rice.
Congress hasn’t gotten around to one of their new bi-annual multi-trillion dollar “emergency spending” bills yet this year. Don’t worry, the inflation will kick back in soon enough.
You can’t cook dried beans in a crock pot.
You’re allowed to add water.
Dried beans need high heat to cook.
TT starts from dried beans, soaks them, then adds more water and other ingredients to make Hopping John every New Year’s Day. In a crock pot which has both a High and a Low setting. It takes time, but it comes out delicious.
Aren’t those peas? I guess they’ll cook it the high setting is high enough.
It’s a ten bean assortment, which includes various beans and some split peas, but mostly beans.
INGREDIENTS: polished black beans, black eyed peas, green split peas, brown lentils, great northern beans, pinto beans, red lentils, small red chili beans, yellow split peas, garbanzo beans
Kavita Kumar is a liar. Grocery prices are still rising.
Kavita Kumar has no idea what the words ‘inflation’ and ‘deflation’ mean.
Meh, around here prices have reverted to the post covid pre Biden inflated by about 20% mark. For years there were things that were right around a dollar- a can of Progressive soup when on sale and you bought 10, chicken whole/lb, a dozen eggs, a loaf of the cheap Kroger white bread, now all that stuff is about $1.19. At the worst the soup never went on sale and was $2.49 the chicken was $1.49 and egg prices as most know were crazy, bread also got up to around $2 for a while. It’s purely anecdotal but in my lived experience we’ve leveled off.
Your blood pressure isn’t high enough
The cop in the video above resigned.
One more about the incident
So the second cop was found to have acted reasonably based on the first guy, who was acting unreasonably. Hm.
Why do you hate the Blue Line ?
“Davos ski shop under investigation after saying it’s no longer renting to Jews
Zurich local councilor Jehuda Spielman had posted a picture of the sign on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday. The sign states, as translated from Hebrew: “Due to various very annoying incidents, including the theft of a sled, we no longer rent sports equipment to our Jewish brothers.”
The signs have been taken down and the shop, which is part of a restaurant on Pischa Mountain, has since reversed its decision.
“It has absolutely nothing to do with anti-Semitism,” Ruedi Pfiffner, the restaurant owner responsible for the sign, told local paper Blick. “The notice was certainly worded incorrectly, and I apologize for that.”
The sign has since been replaced by one in German that did not call out Jewish visitors but stated that guests must have suitable winter clothing and shoes to rent out equipment, per the public broadcasting agency.”
https://justthenews.com/nation/religion/davos-ski-shop-under-investigation-after-saying-its-no-longer-renting-jews
That’s some lost in translation.
The incident that caused that sounds like it could be a Seinfeld episode.
Its a slope about nothing ?
“It has absolutely nothing to do with anti-Semitism, it’s just that we hate Jews.”
“Music executive Russell Simmons has been sued for sexual harassment and battery by a former Def Jam Recordings executive.
The plaintiff, who lodged the complaint in New York federal court on Tuesday, has accused the music mogul, 66, of raping her at his apartment in the 1990s.
She claims in the lawsuit she was invited to his home, where he started ‘wrestling’ with her in a ‘playful’ manner, before the ‘situation escalated into aggression.’
New York-born Simmons, who founded hip-hop and R&B label Def Jam Recordings in 1984 and is worth an estimated $340million, is yet to respond to the allegations.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13079609/Def-Jam-recordings-Russell-Simmons-sued-rape-woman.html
“in the 1990s”
“and is worth an estimated $340million”
Verdict=guilty
$100 million should help her work through the trauma
“Descendants of slaves who built St Louis University have demanded $74 billion in reparations for their ancestors’ years of unpaid labor.
The Missouri university itself only has an endowment of $1.5billion, meaning that the dozens of descendants are demanding over 70 times more than the school has in its assets.
According to economist Julianne Malveaux, the descendants of slaves deserve $365 million based on her calculations that the 70 enslaved people labored for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, between 1823 and 1865.
This $365million, with interest over time, amounts to $74billion, she claims. ”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13079911/Missouri-descendants-slaves-St-Louis-University-reparations.html
CWAC
The Missouri university itself only has an endowment of $1.5billion, meaning that the dozens of descendants are demanding over 70 times more than the school has in its assets.
They’re demanding over $135 billion?
Or did I misread? The math doesn’t make sense.
The author of the article has as tenuous an understanding of mathematics as the retard plaintiffs it seems.
They are demanding $35B less than $105B. Not that it matters.
labored for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, between 1823 and 1865
They didn’t even get bathroom breaks.
74/1.5 is rather less than 70.
“Rachel Dolezal, who pretended to be a black woman and was president of a chapter of the NAACP, is now employed by a Catalina Foothills School District and has an Only Fans profile.”
https://thepostmillennial.com/rachel-dolezal-now-an-arizona-teacher-on-onlyfans-after-losing-naacp-leadership-position-for-pretending-to-be-black
No.
I’d watch that for a dollar.
But only a dollar.
You didn’t mention that she would have to pay you said dollar in advance.
Unless they Photoshopped her head onto someone else her body is way better than I anticipated. Serious butterface though.
She’s totally mental. Off the chart on the crazy matrix.
I bet she would be a blast to bang for about 20 minutes. Find a hotel and use a fake name tho….you dont want that broad to know anything about you.
“Hi, Im Van Jones. We matched on Tinder…”
Maybe there are people who are into inter-racial solo shows.
Nice…
*shwuk skwuk skwuk*
“One-Month-Old Baby Dies After Kansas City Mother Places Her In The Oven for a Nap”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/02/one-month-old-baby-dies-after-st-louis/
I thought Eagles fan celebrations were bad.
She thought she was at a bay-b-q ?
Life sometimes brings gifts. I just found out a band I’ve been wanting to see for quite a long time is playing a show in town around my birthday. Every other time they’ve been in town, I’ve been out of town or had existing plans. Tickets go on presale tomorrow, I’ve already told the girlfriend I’m buying tickets (thankfully, she’s on board because she likes them too).
This is pretty great. Don’t think anyone posted it yet.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/white-house-chaos-susan-rice-slammed-bitch-ass-becerra-over-border-biden-exploded-rage
Sugar Free becomes reality.
What a shitshow.