Saturday Morning Road Trippin’ Links

by | Apr 27, 2024 | Daily Links | 95 comments

My mother turns 91 this weekend, so I thought it would be nice to drive down to Baltimore and see her. Tomb Raider volunteered to keep me company, and I (quietly) vowed to set the radio to NPR and keep a running commentary of every dishonest thing they say. This will be an entertaining trip.

It’s not just my mom celebrating (though to be fair, her birthday is tomorrow), there’s a bunch of people who have a birth anniversary today including a guy who presaged Fourier; a woman who fucked around and found out; a guy who didn’t break the code; a guy whose burial place has become a trope; a guy who showed that kids’ music could be better than Baby Shark; a creative ornithologist; a guy who is second only to Mel Ott in crossword appearances; a guy who made his name as a slob; a guy who wasn’t left behind; a woman who had all the right enemies; a guy whose character on Silicon Valley was pitch perfect; a guy who couldn’t even beat an inarticulate senile retard; and some fat chick.

So you read Links while I drive, OK?

 

Here’s a crazy idea: sell them what they want. 

 

Californians ruin a city, move on to the next target.

 

You mean the whole issue is just ginned up by the press? Shocking.

 

TNR’s fainting couch is working overtime.

 

There’s some ideas so stupid that even Team Blue won’t do them.

 

“More funding needed.”

 

Solution: turn the Chinese loose on them. They’ll be dinner in minutes.

 

What could be better than a new song from Sierra Ferrell? A set of four new songs from Sierra Ferrell, that’s what.

About The Author

Old Man With Candy

Old Man With Candy

Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me. Wait, wrong book, I'll find something else.

95 Comments

  1. Grumbletarian

    I (quietly) vowed to set the radio to NPR and keep a running commentary of every dishonest thing they say.

    I also note all the stupid trigger warnings.

    • juris imprudent

      It will keep him distracted from all of the stupid drivers.

  2. Gender Traitor

    A quick trip to a rat infested shithole

    Thought sure you meant NYC.

    Happy Birthday to your mother, and many happy returns! (And I don’t mean your drive home with TR. Will this be her first time meeting Mom?)

    • Old Man With Candy

      Yes. And since at this point Mom is only theoretically aware of who I am, it would be her first time meeting TR at any future time as well.

      • Fourscore

        You’re a good son, OM.

        Every time I have a memory lapse (which is often) I just call it the Biden Disease.

      • ZWAK will kindle all of the dreams it took a lifetime to destroy

        Yep. I had to make those drives a couple times a year till dad passed.

        Now I go visit his widow, as she took such good care of him, even though I don’t really like her.

      • Chafed

        👍

  3. Grumbletarian

    Californians ruin a city, move on to the next target.

    Leftists are basically locust. The ones in MA are doing their best to fuck up NH, and of course the CA ones spread like plague rats, I live in the Austin area now and by next year I figure I will be able to find a decent place for a reasonable price again.

    • Old Man With Candy

      SP and I lived there 2009-12, the north side, right off Parmer. I liked it quite a bit. And even then, everyone was moaning that it wasn’t hip like it used to be…

      • Fourscore

        I worked there in the early ’80s. My son is still there, like a Merle Haggard song.

      • DrOtto

        I’m in Round Rock since ’07 (from Houston). Hard to find a neighbor that isn’t a CA economic refugee. We have more Teslas in my neighborhood than probably any other make.

  4. rhywun

    Californians ruin a city, move on to the next target.

    I’ve been saying for years that no (red) state is safe. The borg will come for your town too, it is inevitable.

  5. Grumbletarian

    When Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Donald Trump’s lawyer, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?”, he replied, “It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that would well be an official act.”

    Hey Sonia, didn’t Obama say he had the power to order the death of anyone he wanted? If he does, then doesn’t every president, or is it dependent on skin color or political affiliation?

    • cavalier973

      Obama did, in fact, order the death of an American citizen.

      Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, a 16 year old.

      • cavalier973

        I guess I should add that it was said to be an accident. The youngling was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

      • juris imprudent

        As if the grounds for the killing he wasn’t supposed to be a part of were any more legitimate.

      • Rat on a train

        The target was also a US citizen and the strike was not in a combat zone, but Obama pondered deeply before ordering the murder so no foul.

      • R C Dean

        Well, not to be contrarian, but a legitimate target doesn’t stop being one because they are an American citizen. If, for example, a group of Americans formed a brigade and fought for the other side, would they be off limits? How would that work?

        The interesting question is whether the President has (should have) the power to order anyone killed (outside of a declared war, of course).

      • juris imprudent

        Where in Article II does the Constitution give that power to a president? Sorry, FYTW clause not acceptable. Fuck the entire notion of kingly/sovereign authority to do so.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I would say that he was only a target if he had been convicted of something first. You can try someone in absentia (or whatever the fancy lawyer term is).

      • R C Dean

        Even a conviction doesn’t result in a “kill at first opportunity” order.

      • Gustave Lytton

        His father was also an American citizen and was specifically targeted and killed.

      • Gustave Lytton

        And Trump killed his sister.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Release the biting møøse.

    • rhywun

      OMG that article… cry harder, bullies.

  6. rhywun

    You mean the whole issue is just ginned up by the press? Shocking.

    Yup.

    The liberal chair on The Five made this point well yesterday. Tens of thousands of students at each given college and maybe 100 are getting all the attention.

    • juris imprudent

      I had a cousin who was at Berkeley back in the day and he said the same thing about it then.

    • The Last American Hero

      And yet nobody thought dei or critical theory would escape the college campus and here Biden is mandating pronouns by fiat this week.

    • R C Dean

      And they’ve pushed the stories about doe-eyed Pali children being butchered by Jews off the front pages. Way to advance the cause, morons.

      • Gender Traitor

        Advancing the cause is not their top priority.

      • R C Dean

        No, it’s “look at MEEE”. Which is sucking the air out of the room for the Palis.

      • Gender Traitor

        They’ve learned the “never let a good crisis go to waste” lesson at a tender age.

  7. cavalier973

    NPR had a bit on bumper music on one of its morning programs—maybe “Marketplace”—that I really liked. They played it near the bottom of the hour, just before a break to ask for support, as I recall.

  8. cavalier973

    I have a book by Tim Lahaye that concerns personality types. He uses the “four humors” model instead of Myers-Briggs.
    Choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, and sanguine. Also, multiclass versions, like “San-Phleg”, or “Mel-Chol”. You can go up to three types (“San-phleg-chol”), but you take an XP penalty.

    • Old Man With Candy

      I contain multitudes.

      • cavalier973

        Since your favored class is Math, and multiplication is a Math feat, I think the DM will houserule that you don’t take the normal penalty.

    • Rat on a train

      I’m using 5e rules for leveling up.

  9. rhywun

    There’s some ideas so stupid that even Team Blue won’t do them.

    All they had to do was recognize the magic word (“racist”).

    Someone’s been running commercials claiming that Big Tobacco advertising currently targets blacks with menthol. Um… how many decades ago was tobacco advertising banned…?

      • rhywun

        encourage smokers to quit

        LOL. That’s an unusual way to say “punish icky poor people”.

        Have they seen who actually smokes anymore?

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        I still smoke cigars, am I one of <<>>?

      • rhywun

        Someone had to chime in 🙂

        But yeah, I see obviously poor people puffing away on cigs… I wonder how they even afford it.

        OTOH, I remember returning bottles for smoke money so yeah.

    • DrOtto

      Well, the most current advertising.

  10. Ted S.

    a guy who is second only to Mel Ott in crossword appearances

    Happy birthday Al Hirt?

    • The Hyperbole

      Brian Eno would like a word.

  11. ZWAK will kindle all of the dreams it took a lifetime to destroy

    Shorter TNR: “howcome Democracy allows other people to make decisions!”

  12. DrOtto

    I suspect Hunter Biden is behind the menthol turn around. I don’t know, but I’ve been told that nothing goes better with a bump of coke than to follow it up with a menthol cigarette.

  13. R C Dean

    Here’s a thought:

    Soros famously worked against Jews in Europe in WWII (‘m a little foggy on the details). This is often explained by saying he was just trying to survive.

    But now he’s funding the pro-genocide protests targeting Jews in the US. Kinda makes you wonder if he really was just trying to survive in WWII, doesn’t it?

    • Drake

      He famously reminisced about how much he enjoyed those days.

      Soros was never a Zionist, he worships a globalist form of communism with the right people in charge.

    • rhywun

      It wouldn’t be surprising in the least if that were just a tall tale.

      • Drake

        The old Soros interviews were disappeared off the Internet. Saw one long ago – he came across as a sociopath.

    • juris imprudent

      She must be a patient of Drs. Elliot and Beverly Mantle.

  14. Drake

    Sell them what they want…

    We sold them Congress.

    • cavalier973

      I wish they would go ahead and accept delivery.

  15. Drake

    New raptor discovery: Don’t we already have decent Utahraptor fossils that are much bigger than even the Jurassic Park oversized raptors?

  16. cavalier973

    Thought experiment:

    Suppose that enough glibertarians were elected to control all three branches of the FedGov.

    What are the first five things that should be done?

    • juris imprudent

      Suspend all future elections – we’re not going to let this crisis go to waste or risk the people wising up.
      Dissolve the FBI – possibly literally.
      Reduce the IC and Military to a fraction of current size.
      Dissolve Depts of HS and of Education
      Dissolve the FRS.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Also, fuck you, cut spending.

        (Not a literal FY JI, just the phrase)

      • Gender Traitor

        Can’t argue with most of those – just concerned about the economic disruption of shutting down the Fed’s various payment systems/services without a similarly streamlined alternative in place.

    • DEG

      Suppose that enough glibertarians were elected to control all three branches of the FedGov.

      What are the first five things that should be done?

      “Should be done” – because we’ll be too busy arguing to actually get anything done.

    • creech

      Q to be placed in charge of the National Gallery.

  17. The Late P Brooks

    The $26 billion in new aid to Israel, passed overwhelmingly in Congress and signed into law by Biden this week, also comes amid a deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and a looming Israeli invasion of the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinian civilians are sheltering.

    The $26 billion in new aid to Israel, passed overwhelmingly in Congress and signed into law by Biden this week, also comes amid a deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and a looming Israeli invasion of the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinian civilians are sheltering.

    I know this is a dumb question, but my feeble little mind has trouble processing these numbers. 26 billion dollars is a lot of money, no matter where you live. Where the fuck is that money going to go? Has anybody (with the possible exception of Rand Paul) made the slightest pretense of breaking it down or auditing it? Are they going to build a wall around Israel made out of two dollar bills?

    • rhywun

      Much of it is going to be spent on vacations in the Caribbean would be my guess.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally were less propagandists than those people. Sorry, not sorry. Your country, even a pseudo country like Gaza, wages war, reap the whirlwind.

    • J. Frank Parnell

      She added that Matthew was at first reluctant to take the leap, but is now fully enjoying polyamory.

      “You want to bring another woman into our bed? And then you want me to have sex with her? I can’t do that, that’s terrible! But okay, if you’re going to twist my arm…”

  18. R.J.

    I figured that TNR article had to be satire. Some statements in it could not have been made by a serious person.

  19. The Late P Brooks

    ideas so stupid even Team Blue won’t…

    In the olden days, politicians could keep their thumbs on the pulse of colored folks’ opinion by consulting the hired help and domestic staff. Now they talk to the activist community, who don’t know any more about anything in the real world than they do.

    • Gender Traitor

      At least all that miraculously preserved body cam footage will help cut down on her opponent’s TV ad production budget.

      • Sensei

        I’d just run it with every ad and flyer.

        Laws are for the little people. I’m guessing she plans to retire and doesn’t care.

      • rhywun

        With a handsome pension… like, why work even.

  20. LCDR_Fish

    Well..goal for this week complete – spread 4 more cubic yards of topsoil in the yard and planters. Need to put out some more grass seed in a few spots this afternoon. Also transplanted some sprouts yesterday – marigolds, morning glories, etc.

    Heading to San Dog tomorrow for a week, back for a day, then up to Newport for 5 weeks. Decent reserve pay and get a few more quals.

    • Fourscore

      Today I’m going to cut some crab apple scions and try to get them to grow. I have one old c’apple tree left and it’s aging, I’ll try some cuttings. The apple trees from seeds are looking good, ready to give away. Someone told me that it will take 6-7 years before there are apples, I said “I’ve got the time”

      The nursery trees may make apples this year, had a few last year. The garden seedlings are doing well in the house, still a month before they can go out to the garden.

  21. The Late P Brooks

    Pause for laughter

    Biden in recent weeks has been flexing an instinct that doesn’t necessarily come naturally to him — a sense of humor — to take on his rival, making fun of his hair; the dropping stock price of Trump’s social media company; and the former president’s new endeavor into selling Trump-branded Bibles to take some air out of the outsized attention and coverage Trump is getting during his criminal trial.

    “I haven’t had a chance to watch the court proceedings because I’ve been campaigning,” Biden told supporters at a campaign reception in New York Thursday, according to pool reports.

    While Biden has delivered many of these speeches before, the stakes for what could be his last White House Correspondents’ Dinner are high. His approval rating is flagging, and voters and donors alike have raised questions about whether his mental acuity is up to the task.

    He’s been campaigning; by shovelling money out the door of the Presidential helicopter as fast as he possibly can.

    Don’t worry, Joe. The legitimate media will faithfully report your zingers and tell the country how sharp and witty you are, and that your asshole still tastes like strawberry ice cream.

  22. Common Tater

    “Hulking autistic boy, 17, filmed battering female teacher’s aide for threatening to take away his Nintendo switch files lawsuit claiming school staff ‘triggered’ him”

    In court documents reviewed by DailyMail.com, the teen’s attorneys argue that school employees were aware of his ‘disabilities, triggers and problem behaviors,’ as well as other incidents where he was disciplined for spitting, shoving an aide, ‘harassing and intimidating the school staff’ and shouting at one of his teachers.

    ‘It should be noted that the school and staff working with him and the district knew that the electronics, specifically the Nintendo and its use on a school campus was a trigger for escalating behaviors,’ the filing reads.

    It describes Depa, who stands at 6’6″ and nearly 270 pounds, as ‘a ticking time bomb’ whose needs, despite ‘concerns and warnings,’ were ‘completed disregarded’ by the district.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13356075/Brendan-Depa-attack-Joan-Naydich-Matanzas-High-School-attack-lawsuit.html

    It’s your fault my client is an asshole.

  23. The Late P Brooks

    When Biden delivered remarks announcing he’d signed critical legislation sending $61 billion in aid to Ukraine and $26 billion in aid to Israel and Gaza, there was a new critic standing by: Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-chair of Biden’s reelection campaign and the onetime chief of content studio Dreamworks.

    Katzenberg has often advised Biden on messaging to donors and voters. This week, he was on hand to see firsthand how Biden delivered scripted material –and to help the 81-year-old president deliver punchlines to the reporters who cover him.

    “He’s the Hollywood guy,” an administration official told CNN. “He’s the entertainer.”

    Administration officials said Katzenberg led daily strategy sessions in the White House residence this week to tweak Biden’s comedy set drafted by longtime speechwriter Vinay Reddy. The sessions spanned hours in the White House residence, where longtime aides Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and Annie Tomasini helped curate material and helped Biden tweak his delivery and tone.

    The nation’s business is their top priority.

  24. The Late P Brooks

    This year’s dinner will stream live on CSPAN, and CNN will air a special featuring Biden’s remarks and Jost’s performance.

    Heavily edited for clarity and content.

  25. The Late P Brooks

    Traitorous lunacy


    At one campaign rally after another, former President Donald Trump whips his supporters into raucous cheers with a promise of what’s to come if he’s given another term in office: “We will demolish the deep state.”

    In essence, it’s a declaration of war on the federal government—a vow to transform its size and scope and make it more beholden to Trump’s whims and worldview.

    The former president’s statements, policy blueprints laid out by top officials in his first administration and interviews with allies show that Trump is poised to double down in a second term on executive orders that faltered, or those he was blocked from carrying out the first time around.

    Trump seeks to sweep away civil service protections that have been in place for more than 140 years. He has said he’d make “every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States” at will. Even though more than 85 percent of federal employees already work outside the DC area, Trump says he would “drain the swamp” and move as many as 100,000 positions out of Washington. His plans would eliminate or dismantle entire departments.

    He wants to destroy the most efficient and productive and benevolent government in the history of civilization.

    • rhywun

      Trump’s whims

      And, you know, the half of the country that voted for him.

    • Grumbletarian

      Obama in his benevolence wanted merely to fundamentally transform the government, but Octavious Von Trumpenhitler wants to declare war on it, OMGOMGOMG!!!

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      Lemme get this straight. He’s such an authoritarian, such a threat to Our Democracy, that he was blocked from carrying out his executive orders? Worst authoritarian ever

  26. The Late P Brooks

    “Almost all Western democracies have a professional civil service that does not answer to whatever political party happens to be in power, but is immune from those sorts of partisan wranglings,” said Kenneth Baer, who served as a senior OMB official under President Barack Obama. “They bring… a technical expertise, a sense of long history and perspective to the work that the government needs to do.” Making thousands of additional positions subject to political change risks losing that expertise, while bringing in “people who are getting jobs just because they did some favor to the party, or the president was elected. And so, there’s a risk of corruption.”

    The anti-President will corrupt the High Priesthood and destroy the holy spirit of the sacred temple.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      How dare the executive be in charge of the Executive Branch.

  27. KSuellington

    California is the only state in America in which you can move to and become a native after just a few years. You don’t move to say, North Carolina or Montana, live there for a few years, move somewhere else and get called a North Carolinian or Montanan. A large percentage of the “Californians” allegedly destroying the rest of the country aren’t natives, Ellison is just one example of the many that are from the East Coast.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      I’m fourth generation Californian and I know very few natives.

  28. Donny Three-Fingers

    Road trip. San Marcos TX to Lamoni IA. My last road trip with dad. Died at home in our dining room Nov 25 2020. Finally, he’s back in his home town. We are planting him in an hour. 13.5 hours, I’m tired. I may not post much, but this place, and everyone here, is and are a second home to me.

    Thak you all.

    OMWC, dad didn’t forget who I was, just when he was. I was variously his brothers, his friends from the Apollo program.

  29. The Late P Brooks

    Tragic inexplicable cruelty

    She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.

    By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.

    Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.

    ——-

    “I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

    “At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

    OMFG teh heartless cruelty! The chicken farmer should have killed that dog with an axe on the spot.

    How many of the people weeping bitter tears over a fucking worthless dog are perfectly content with the idea of unlimited access to abortions of convenience?