Glibs Gulch is overflowing with family. Besides the usual WebDom, 10b0t, and Sweet Baby James, 10b0t’s previous two children are here. Add in the ravenous pack of dogs and this has not made for a quiet house. Poor Prime came down to the Gulch for this and I suspect she’s rethinking some of her recent decisions. On the bright side, I plied everyone with pizza and alcohol, so that sort of dulled the pain a bit.
Amidst the cacophony are birthday celebrations, including a guy who wrote stuff we routinely ignore; a guy responsible for “five will get you ten”; a guy who was no Paul Newman; a guy who spent the last week being dumbed down; the Bernie Sanders of his day; “the most hated woman in America,” especially by a few of her employees; a guy who missed by THAT much; the most entertaining comic artist ever; a guy who gave at least some intellectual gravitas to liberalism (and was damned entertaining); a pretty fine wood-pusher; and Dennis the Menace.
So let’s see what chaos Links brings us.
The sense of entitlement is incredible.
Basically, every building in Gaza is a hospital or a school.
Even Yemen is sick of their shit.
It takes a certain kind of evil.
Campuses erupt in protests… oh wait, no they don’t.
More Musk failures, at least that’s what my academic co-workers will assure me.
Every once in a while when the Old Guy grumbles, “Kids today…” he’s being complimentary.
Old Man With Pizza And Alcohol just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
“Sweet Baby James is starting early” was my thought…. Hope the family get together is going well and the dogs got lots of pizza snuck off of unsuspecting plates. Because they’re good doggos…
Our dogs get the crusts from pizza, and if you say the word, you better deliver.
I think mr. Wilson should be brought down for questioning
Even back in the day — we probably would need Edith to answer any real questions.
Happy birthday to whoever has been writing the Microsoft Windows EULA for 40 years?
While that’s a good contender — OMWC made this one too obvious for these parts. I’ll bet everyone will get it.
Happy birthday Ian Watkins?
OMWC is still looking for the guy responsible for “16 will get you 20”, however… (sorry.. low hanging fruit!)
including a guy who wrote stuff we routinely ignore
Happy birthday AM Linkers!
Tread lightly — I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Banjos studied at the rusty can lid academy of SP back in the day…. And Sloopy can just run you over with his race car.
It was more a statement of fact how people don’t read the links than a commentary about whether people should read them.
Happy birthday Wellington R. Burt?
Happy Birthday John Holmes!
I was thinking happy birthday Peter North
aka The Interior Decorator
Lol. I never heard that one.
By the time the mid terms roll around the “trade war” that resulted in the markets shedding enough points to return to their 2024 level for 3 whole days will have their own epoch designation in the ancient history of the news cycle. Being a bunch of incompetent shit stains who spent 2 years with your thumb up your collective asses, refusing to cut spending, or pass any meaningful reforms, or for that matter a fucking budget, will be the cause of your political wipeout.
I was thinking the same thing. Last week’s market will be ancient history in a year and a half.
We’ll see what else DOGE uncovers, if anyone is actually arrested, if the Repubs grow a spine and pass a budget, and how the economy adjusts next year.
if the Repubs grow a spine and pass a budget
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
[ takes long, long pause to try to catch breath ]
Sorry, can’t do it.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAv!!!
https://babylonbee.com/news/republicans-vow-to-get-really-serious-about-cutting-spending-in-like-20-or-30-years
Now I’m picturing TR, Wilson and the other Progressives saying to the nation: “Just the tip! We swear!”
Congress will never cut spending, no matter the party in charge, as it is too decentralized. No congress critter wants to cut any spending that negatively affects his district. They didn’t get elected to do it, they want to be re-elected, and so it goes. Bitching about how the R’s never do it is just wasted energy. Too many rice bowls.
The only person who can do it is the President, and he has to do it like Trump is doing it right now, cart blanche when the voters, in aggregate, want it. DOGE or its likeness is pretty much the only way.
Oddly enough the Dems seem determined at all costs to thwart the Reps usual strategy of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They really seem to have completely lost their minds.
There are some Democrats out there showing a bit of a functioning brain. Josh Gottheimer is running for the Democrat nomination in the NJ gubernatorial race. I’ve seen some of his ads on recent trips to PA. Tax cuts. Though, I suspect bullshit but he seems to understand “It’s the economy, stupid!”.
The problem is most Democrats that can even say “it’s the economy”, they are utterly deluded about what that really means.
They’re probably hoping that if they keep the status quo on big government they’ll avoid pissing off their cocktail friends, OMB will settle things trade wise and that will abate — and he’ll drive fuel prices down for most of the country (depending on CARB interactions with the Fed for the rest of it) improving inputs to the economy and the self-deportations will get housing prices back down a bit enough for the Millenials / GenZ’s to think things have improved.
“Take the most credit with the least amount of actual effort” — that’s the Congress way, after all.
I believe way too many Congressional Repubs (and of course all the Dems) are adopting a strategy of “wait him out”. He’ll be gone in 4 years, after all. Permanently. If they just do some obstruction and delay (which is pretty much their superpower), they can keep business as usual. Until it all burns down, of course.
And no, I suspect they aren’t terribly worried about Elon funding primary challengers. He’d have to come up with a couple hundred ideologically aligned and electable challengers, organize their campaigns, etc. The current Congressholes have safety in numbers.
have safety in numbers
Individually, they are weak like simple reeds, but collectively, and bound tightly together – they cannot be broken.
Individually, they are weak like simple reeds, but collectively, and bound tightly together – they cannot be broken.
What you did there, it was seen.
JI, I believe that was where the term ‘fascism’ came from. Certainly worked for the Romans.
I think you are half right, but that is the trap the D’s fell into. It all falls on the political zeitgeist, which, right now, is not in the status quo’s favor. Waiting him out only makes their problem worse, won’t get them the sinecures they want and used to have.
In other words, they might want it, but the voters are already tired of that, which is why Trump was elected in the first, and second, place.
Completely unrelatedly, Harvard Endowment Jumps to $53.2 Billion, Delivers 9.6% Returns in 2024
Harvard – a Hedge Fund with a Degree Mill Attached!
Talking to a teacher in Boston a couple weeks ago. (My sister-in-law’s beau). He talked about what a same it was that some students lost their Columbia scholarships due to budget cuts. I had to laugh and ask what Columbia’s endowment is. Even he laughed at that thought.
Their attitude reminds me of a hoary old Quaker joke about a woman who became a prostitute to avoid having to dip into the principal.
Humans are not especially exotic as animals go, I’m surprised they took her.
Considering today’s “influencers” are the same goddamn thing as what we used to call “pitchmen” ever since the radio was invented, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Guess we’re just not keeping up with technofashion out here in Flyover Country. The senior management at my employer, who went all in on these as their primary work detention devices, will be devastated to learn that they are no long hip and au courant.
Whatever happened to carnival barkers?
They got Slap-Chopped!
Last month, as the DOGE revolution slashed government waste and Trump’s HHS Secretary RFK Jr. aimed to Make America Healthy Again, several prominent MAGA X accounts suddenly defended using food stamps for junk food products like Coke.
Exploiting a “small government”/anti-authoritarian angle, the campaign was likely buoyed by payments from Big Soda, especially since sugary drinks account for 10% of the USDA’s $113 billion annual food stamp spending and an estimated 20-40% of Coke’s revenue.
For the influencers, it was a misstep that risked their credibility, presuming their audience would gracefully accept that welfare recipients buying junk food with taxpayer funds actually aligned with the finer points of libertarianism.
Couldn’t have happened to a more worthy group of insipid cretins.
I am guessing those are the same right wing extremist megamaga maniacs that have going around drawing poop swastikas and hanging nooses everywhere for the last dozen years?
Tbh, if we’re going to treat poor people like halfwits, then I think it would be better to just have direct distribution of a standard basket of foodstuffs to those who qualify rather than arbitrarily pick and choose which of the 50,000 items on the grocery shelves fall into the “junk food” category and maintain that ever-fluctuating database in the POS systems of every major grocery chain. A 12 oz. can of Coke has 39 grams of sugar. Two tablespoons of Kraft Original BBQ Sauce has 21 grams of sugar. If we’re banning one, there’s no real rationale for not banning the other, and once you start going down that road you’ll have eliminated most everything that isn’t beans and rice.
Who the fuck drinks BBQ sauce?
The problem is that the government is paying farmers to grow corn for syrup, then the government is buying food made with that syrup, and children are getting adult onset diabetes.
adult onset diabetes
Which benefits doctors who prescribe pharmaceuticals to treat that. Why do you hate capitalism?
While that would indeed be the most practical solution, the problem with that is then you run into food allergies (both real and imagined), religion-based food prohibitions.
Include the following postcard in each bi-weekly or monthly distribution box:
“We recognize a wall of separation between the church and state; if you have unique religious dietary requirements please see your local congregation for assistance with resources specific to your beliefs and practices. If you are allergic to any of the foods included in this distribution, you may discard them, sell them, or barter them for other foods compliant with your dietary restrictions.”
Gift horses and all that.
It doesn’t sound practical to add another distribution system on top of the one that already exists. Moving money around is easy. Moving food around — not so much. If the government did it, putting a pound of beans in someone’s hands would cost $10.
IF we’re going to have a welfare system, it would be better to just hand them money.
The recipients would be better off since they can spend that on anything they need at the moment: Food, gas, rent, etc. If we gave them a package of goods and services, they may need new tires for the car, but they can’t spend a basket of food or some health “insurance” card on that.
And the taxpayers would save money since there’s no army of bureaucrats to run a health “insurance” program and all these other things. The only task would be to determine who qualifies and put them on the rolls to receive the payment every month.
The problem is that many poor people will blow the money on cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, lottery tickets, and vacations, then complain that they don’t have enough to get by. The media would run an onslaught of sob stories, and we’d end up back at square one.
“See! This is why we can’t have home schooling!”
Sorry but Missioned Souls is just re-hashed Fanny.
Well, cept for the drummer.
Hadn’t heard of them before. As an all-female band, I guess they meant it in the British sense.
That and I think they were all lesbos.
I thought Fanny were sisters?
Wow, whoever shot that should be in jail.
You got a licence for that?
Luckily, the systematic kidnapping and rape of young girls by “Asian” migrants is not considered anti-social.
Didn’t take them long, did it? Can we just go ahead and say England has become an open air prison?
open air
prisonasylumFTFY
Best of possible worlds! Open air prison AND asylum! With anyone objecting to the prison consigned to the asylum, as was done in the good ‘ol SU!
““The First Amendment does not permit government officials to use the power of their office to silence critics and suppress speech they don’t like,” Andrew Crespo, a Harvard law professor”
Not giving you money is suppressing speech?
Well, yeah! If you don’t give me money, I might have to work for it, and that cuts into the time I can spend running my mouth! Duh!
Money is speech when it’s the government’s $9 billion being pulled from the mouths of Harvard’s underwater basket weaving department faculty. Money is not speech when it’s filthy private lucre financing a movie that says bad things about Hillary Clinton within a year of a presidential election.
Money is also not speech when its being spent by political campaigns.
‘Harvard Law Professor’
I think I see the problem.
the most entertaining comic artist ever
I laughed. That’s a good one.
Devastating attacks on a camp hosting hundreds of thousands of people who had fled Sudan’s civil war have continued for a third day, residents have told the BBC.
One person in the Zamzam camp described the situation as “extremely catastrophic” while another said things were “dire”.
More than 100 civilians, among them at least 20 children and a medical team, have been killed in a series of assaults that began late last week in Sudan’s western Darfur region, the UN has said
Pepperidge Farm remembers when caring about Darfur was hip and the in thing.
One person in the Zamzam camp
Not to be confused with the Zimm Zamm camp.
Seeing that makes me long for a set of Jarts.
Old Guy Music is good.
““Who would not get glam before the flight?” Sánchez remarked. Perry added: “Space is going to finally be glam. Let me tell you something. If I could take glam up with me, I would do that. We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/apr/13/lauren-sanchezs-all-female-space-flight-is-about-to-blast-off-and-will-challenge-elon-musks-spacex
OK?
Hey Jeff, this is why Musk’s company is actually putting things into space and bring them back to earth and you’re building a 10,000 year clock.
Although I gotta say, the 10,000 year clock is a pretty cool project.
https://longnow.org/clock/
As a horology enthusiast, I absolutely love it in all of its utterly pointless glory.
In addition to the suborbital-only New Shepard which will launch this mission (*cough*), Bezos’ Blue Origin company also operates an orbit capable New Glenn rocket which has made one successful flight to date. They also make/sell rocket engines for United Launch Alliance (Lockheed-Martin and Boeing joint venture).
Sure, they’ve got a long way to go to catch up with SpaceX, but the launch sector is growing and robust competition is good.
“Jeff Bezos is blasting his bride-to-be Lauren Sánchez and her “guests” to space on Monday – a plan that might, under other circumstances, contain mixed messages.”
That one just writes itself, doesnt it?
“One of these days, Lauren… pow! blam! Straight to da moon!”
(Alternate Take: B Ark… so we’ll all die of a contact virus on our cell phones soon after…)
So you’re saying their B Ark is worse than their bite?
“Jeff Bezos is blasting his bride-to-be Lauren Sánchez and her “guests” to space”
Euphemisms, anyone?
Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex?
One look at that chick and you just know it’s gonna be an expen$ive divorce. I wonder how many tens of billions the judge will award her for having to sleep with him for a half decade.
“…expensive divorce…”
” Let’s see…a 7500 squillion dollar wedding, then a divorce….hey, engineer guy, tell me again how much does it take to launch one of my rockets?”
Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket blasts off on Monday, with his fiancee, Katy Perry and three others on board. But is it more than just a stunt?
No, The Guardian, it is not.
Spoiler: it’s not designed/programmed to come back.
[golf clap]
+1 GT
Boobs in Space!
Bezo’s knows that this really isn’t some sort of first right? There’s already been a shit-ton of silicon launched into space.
“It takes a certain kind of evil.”
It would indeed, but I would not take the claims of a teenage girl at face value, either. I saw little corroboration in that story. With all the kids this woman has fostered, you would think a pattern of vicious abuse would show up with other kids, as well, but I didn’t see that. The investigation is still in its early stages, though.
Literally every foster family I’ve ever encountered were a bunch of abusive pieces of shit who kept a rotating cast of throwaway kids for no other reason than collecting a government check, so I’m inclined to believe the worst. But that’s how you get satanic panic, which is why we conduct trials.
I was about to say “Ray Buckey raises his hand….”
This story has that feel about it.
“The war – a power struggle between the army and the RSF – has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, forcing more than 12 million people from their homes and pushing communities into hunger.”
No one gives a shit about Africa.
Never out of fashion
I don’t know — there was a girl in my church back when I went to high school who decided it was her mission to do missionary work there.
She really threw herself into it and has been trying to do good for decades now on her own effort (not just soaking money from people). The priest has inserted her and her organization (named after her, naturally) into the post homily prayers even.
So every Sunday… our church at least bless Lorraine’s down in Africa.
Shpip. is that you?
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
There are no more problems in Africa, Michele Obama did a hashtag to stop it.
“Hamas Run Health Ministry” is a phrase that inspires great confidence in the medical establishment
Re-imagining Yorick, Medieval Barber as Hamas Health Ministry, maybe with AK-47s or suicide bombs as ‘treatment’.
“Internet sleuths have found fake private jet studios where influencers pay around $60 to rent the space to create polished illusions of private air travel.”
This is nothing new.
Shit, I have pics of myself as a kid in the ’90s in an airplane interior set on the backlot of Universal Studios.
Were you invited into the cockpit?
“Have you ever been on the set of a gladiator movie?”
Did you get to see a grown man naked?
So kind of like the moon landing.
Venn diagram for OMWC.
“Nikita Casap, 17, was taken into custody last month and charged with two counts of first-degree murder as well as two counts of hiding a corpse, according to ABC News. He allegedly shot and killed his step-father Donald Meyer, 51, as well as his mother Tatiana Casap, 35, in February before he fled the state. The killing of his mother and step-father, a DOJ filing said, “appeared to be an effort to obtain the financial means and autonomy necessary” to carry out the assassination of Trump.
An affidavit from federal authorities said, “He was in touch with other parties about his plan to kill the President and overthrow the government of the United States. And he paid for, at least in part, a drone and explosives to be used as a weapon of mass destruction to commit an attack.”
….
“On March 10,2025, [authorities] interviewed a classmate of Casap. The classmate stated that Casap would send ‘gore edit’ videos that included flashing gory and war images put to Russian music via Snapchat, Casap told the classmate he intended to kill his parents by shooting them but did not have access to a gun. He later told the classmate that he would befriend someone with a gun and then steal the gun,” the DOJ filing added. ”
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-wisconsin-teen-allegedly-kills-parents-to-obtain-financial-means-to-assassinate-trump-linked-to-satanic-cult-doj
He seems unusually motivated.
Just how big was this drone and how much explosives, if it was supposed to be a WMD, anyway?
I have no idea, but it’s not like anyone can just buy explosives at Walmart.
“Murray appeared on the comic’s hit podcast and went back-and-forth with Rogan and libertarian guest David Smith on both the conflict and what Murray believes is Rogan’s platforming of conspiracy theories.
On Thursday’s episode, Rogan – a free speech absolutist – denied that he was treating some of his guests who may provide alternative theories on the past as serious historians, while Murray and Smith were locked in an argument over the Middle Eastern conflict.
After the clash went viral, Trump took to his Truth Social account to promote Murray’s new book.
‘My friend, Douglas Murray, just released a new book, ‘On Democracies and Death Cults,’ and it is quickly becoming a Best Seller! Based on his firsthand reporting, Douglas documents the barbarity of Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel on October 7th, and Israel’s heroic response,’ he wrote on Friday.
‘The Book serves as a strong reminder of why we must always stand up for America, and our great friend and ally, Israel. A powerful read from a Highly Respected author – Get your copy today!'”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14603441/Trump-backs-author-confronted-Joe-Rogan-podcast.html
Smith, Malice, and who knows who else, also did reaction videos.
“Daryl Cooper has said that not only did the Nazis not intend to murder millions but that Winston Churchill is the main villain of World War Two. ”
I’ve never listened or read any of his stuff, but that sounds nuts.
Anyone with half a brain would eviscerate the asshole.
Sounds nuts because he didn’t say that.
He doesn’t praise Churchill as the savior he is generally seen as and thinks he has his share of the blame for WWII, maybe even most. Also makes the claim that the German invasion of Poland was a one-off and they didn’t intend to go further. I find that one a bit – to understate it – dubious, especially given that it’s difficult to separate designated truth from fiction in the here and now, let alone historically.
As for the “did not intend to murder millions” – that comes from a statement about the invasion of the Soviet Union, not the Holocaust as people keep implying. His statement was that, during the invasion, they had no means to handle prisoners of war as they were moving too fast and had minimal supply lines. So the deaths of the soviet prisoners in camps along the way were not intentional/planned, just a side effect of circumstances, and, in his words, murder was perhaps a better alternative than slow starvation and disease in the camps.
Not agreeing with either premise at all. But having it taken as the NAZIs really didn’t mean to Holocaust all over europe and it was just sort of an accident as people are implying is BS and they clearly didn’t listen to the discussion; there’s plenty to refute in his actual statements without having to manufacture click-bait.
Disclaimer:
I haven’t listened to any of his stuff really, so maybe he is the biggest NAZI apologist to ever apologist across the interwebs. But most of the criticism (all?) is based on that one interview (Fridman? – can’t recall) and that’s what I’m basing my response on.
Cooper said the bit about Churchill to get a rise out of his British buddy.
My first question to him would be, did you ever read Mein Kampf? Because Hitler pretty much laid out the program right there, and it didn’t stop in Poland.
It’s also fun to point out that the Nazis got their eugenics from the American movement, which was a Progressive endeavor.
Pat Buchanan made the exact same argument in his 2008 book Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War, packaged into a more succinctly retarded blog post the following year.
I don’t see how Churchill can be blamed for WW II considering he wasn’t even an MP during the run-up, and certainly was not in power at the start. He can be blamed for some of the mishaps and strategic mistakes after was PM. And he let things drift in England to the point the Conservatives were voted out of office.
So he read Pat Buchanan’s book. I did too, I guess I just read it more critically.
‘Serious historians’. *stiffles laughter*
Leftist discovers politics of envy
Already, Trump has waged war on everything that builds prosperity and wellbeing: democracy, healthy ecosystems, education, healthcare, science, the arts. Yet, amid the wreckage, and despite some slippage, his approval ratings still hold between 43 and 48%: far higher than those of many other leaders. Why? I believe part of the answer lies in a fundamental aspect of our humanity: the urge to destroy that from which you feel excluded.
This urge, I think, is crucial to understanding politics. Yet hardly anyone seems to recognise it. Hardly anyone, that is, except the far right, who see it all too well.
——-
There is strong evidence of a causal association between growing inequality and the rise of populist authoritarian movements. A paper in the Journal of European Public Policy found that a one-unit rise in the Gini coefficient (a standard measure of inequality) increases support for demagogues by 1%.
Why might this be? There are various, related explanations: feelings of marginalisation, status anxiety and social threat, insecurity triggering an authoritarian reflex and a loss of trust in other social groups. At the root of some of these explanations, I feel, is something deeply embedded in the human psyche: if you can’t get even, get mean.
Purely an affliction of right wing authoritarian populists.
Does the shopworn Bastiat quote even need to be posted?
Also, wellbeing is not a word. Maybe you should see about a refund on that public education that made your life so fucking merry you clown.
Just to seize on one small part of that moronic paragraph: Why are “the arts” a responsibility of the government, and what has Trump done that moves us towards some barren artless dystopia?
“Liberal Canadian PM Mark Carney Runs on Banning Free Speech if Elected Canadian Prime Minister
Mark Carney: “There are many serious issues that we’re dealing with. One of them is the sea of misogyny, antisemitism, hatred, and conspiracy theories — this sort of pollution online that washes over our virtual borders from the United States… The more serious thing is when it affects how people behave in our society. When Canadians are threatened going to their community centers or their places of worship or their school or, God forbid, when it affects our children. My government, if elected will be taking action.””
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/liberal-canadian-pm-mark-carney-runs-quelling-free/
CWAA
This guy is totes not gonna try to take your freedoms.
He knows exactly where you need to be, when, and what you’re allowed to say. 👍
If Canada is gonna make it, it will have to be up to angry hockey stick bearers and truckers.
Maybe oil men too.
Yes. Currently looking at Plan B.
Good morning everyone!
Holy crap—it’s 38 degrees F out.
I have gotta get out of Seattle. I hate it and the feeling is mutual.
But it’s raining, right?
lol.
Not at the moment. I’m sure we have that to look forward to later.
When I first moved here 2 years ago, a long-timer told me: “Here’s what you need to know about the weather. If you can’t see Mount Rainier, it is raining right now. If you CAN see Mount Rainier, it’s raining tomorrow.”
It been an unusually cold April.
Indeed.
“According to the audit, New York paid $452.8 million to purchase 247,343 items of durable medical equipment (DME), such as ventilators, CPAP machines, oxygen tanks, and other equipment, and received 51 additional items through donations or federal sources. Only three items from the newly purchased stockpile were distributed while around 324 items from the old stockpile were used….
The audit found that after the public health emergency ended, a Medical Stockpile Steering Committee was formed to determine which items should be kept. The committee recommended retaining 51,140 DME items and scheduling preventive maintenance for 4,468 of them. However, that left nearly 200,000 items without any clear plan for future use.”
https://thepostmillennial.com/new-york-paid-millions-for-247000-covid-medical-devices-used-3-of-them-comptroller-audit
These assholes couldn’t run a hot dog cart.
Medical Stockpile Steering Committee
I’m sure their first conclusion was they needed more money.
Starmer and his minions suggest there’s nothing they can do: wealthy people are already taxed to the max. As private jets and helicopters cross the skies, anyone can see this is nonsense. Of all the remarkable things I stumbled across while researching this column, the following is perhaps the most jaw-dropping. On the most recent (2022) figures, once benefits have been paid, the Gini coefficient for gross income in the UK scarcely differs from the Gini coefficient for post-tax income. In other words, the gap between the rich and the poor is rougly the same after taxes are levied, suggesting that taxation has no further significant effect on income distribution. How could this possibly be true, when the rich pay higher rates of income tax? It’s because the poor surrender a much higher proportion of their income in sales taxes, such as VAT. So much for no further options. So much for Labour realism.
The one thing that can stop the rise of the far right is the one thing mainstream parties are currently not prepared to deliver: greater equality. The rich should be taxed more, and the revenue used to improve the lives of the poor. However frantically centrist parties avoid the issue, there is no other way.
Bring back confiscatory taxes, and put the rich in their rightful place. Never saw that coming.
greater equality
Paging Diana Moon Glampers, Ms. Glampers to the white courtesy phone!
It surprises me in retrospect that I was introduced to Harrison Bergeron by public school teachers in 6th grade.
It was a “gifted and talented” weekly session so the two teachers were not typical…
Freddie link for anyone who needs to read it. https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
So eliminate the excise taxes.
Welp. Here I am at church.
I’m fresh out of dick jokes.
I hosted a party last night. Had overnight guests, so I woke up and made a huge breakfast.
Had overnight guests
Cue up porn music.
Were they NAZI lesbian vampire-hunters from the moon?
How did you know?
Lesbian Nazi hookers abducted by UFOs and forced into weight loss programs!
That’s what she said?
I don’t have a dick joke but I have an ass joke that should last as long as the sermon.
Guy walks into a bar with his pet monkey. He orders a drink and while he’s drinking, the monkey jumps all around the place.
The monkey grabs some olives off the bar and eats them, then grabs some sliced limes and eats them, then jumps onto the pool table, grabs one of the billiard balls, sticks it in his mouth, and to everyone’s amazement, somehow he swallows it whole.
The bartender yells at the guy, “Did you see what your monkey just did?” The guy says “No, what?” “He just ate the cue ball off my pool table… Whole!” “Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me,” replied the guy, “he eats everything in sight, the little pig. Sorry. I’ll pay for the cue ball and stuff.
He finishes his drink, pays his bill, pays for the stuff the monkey ate, then leaves. Two weeks later he’s in the bar again, and has his monkey with him. He orders a drink and the monkey starts running around the bar again.
While the man is finishing his drink, the monkey finds a maraschino cherry on the bar. He grabs it, sticks it up his butt, pulls it out, and eats it. Then the monkey finds a peanut, and again sticks it up his butt, pulls it out, and eats it. The bartender is disgusted. “Did you see what your monkey did now?” “No, what?” replies the guy.
“Well, he stuck a maraschino cherry and a peanut up his butt, pulled it out, and ate it!” said the bartender. “Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me,” replied the guy. “He still eats everything in sight, but ever since he had to pass that cue ball, he measures everything first.”
🤣🤣🤣
Several elite universities including Harvard have seen their federal funding threatened by Donald Trump’s administration over pro-Palestinian campus protests as well as other issues such as diversity, equity and inclusion programs and transgender policies.
The departments of Education and Health and Human Services, along with the US General Services Administration, on 31 March said that $255.6m in contracts among Harvard, its affiliates and the federal government were being reviewed, along with $8.7bn in multiyear grant commitments.
They should review the utility and repeatability of the “research” which is being conducted.
34 degrees here in sunny eastern Idaho.
Follow-up on local news from the other day. Kid shot by cops was taken off life support and died.
😢
Procedures were followed.
They got home safely.
OTH, that sucks. I’m assuming the strategy will be to claim the other people in the yard were being threatened. Because the chain link fence is going to be a problem that the cops were being threatened.
Currently looking at Plan B.
Prisoner exchange: for each Canadian yearning to be free, we will send ten anti-Trump Californians north.
Spoiler: it’s not designed/programmed to come back.
Did Bezos christen it “The Minnow”?
*hums*
“three hour tour, three hour tour…*
why aren’t people falling for our nonsensical blather?
Scanning the throngs of supporters who packed Los Angeles’ Grand Park and spilled onto the steps of City Hall for the latest stop on Sanders’ “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Neel Sannappa, a senior organizer with the Working Families Party, urged Sanders to help to translate the outpouring of support into a more durable progressive movement in the state.
“Come to the Democratic Party convention, be our guests at the progressive caucus and really stir some stuff up,” said Sannappa, who is running to chair the party’s progressive caucus. “Because we need to be doing something different. It’s very obvious that we haven’t done enough, we haven’t built enough, we haven’t reached out to communities.”
Push your politics of envy stuff harder. People love that.
I feel like the true socialist part of the Democratic Party is in trouble what with the Republicans being socialist now.
Well we all know real socialism has never been tried. Maybe the Republican model will be the one that finally works.
How did America go from reasonable debate to full on socialist demands so quickly?
Or is that just my imagination?
The politics of envy have been around a long time.
This is just a variation on the theme.
‘reasonable debate’ is a myth. Humans are a giant troop of monkeys that, like the Indian monkeys that make a living stealing from tourists, sit around eyeing all of the other monkeys desperate for a chance to snatch what they have. It has always been this way.
But multiple bills to establish a statewide single-payer system fell flat, and Newsom quickly pivoted from his campaign pledge once in office. Statewide rent control, another signature issue pushed by Sanders’ allies, sputtered as voters rejected multiple ballot measures to enact more renter-friendly policies. And progressives came up short in elections to oust many entrenched Democrats — or to punish politicians like Newsom for their moderation. Progressives failed twice to elect one of their own to the top post in the state Democratic Party. They threatened primary challenges to Democrats who blocked single-payer bills, but lost. And in the process, they alienated many voters in the state, who installed a more moderate mayor in San Francisco last year and ousted progressive district attorneys in Oakland and Los Angeles.
Maybe Californian voters aren’t quite as “progressive” as you want to pretend.
Turns out “We are going to take everything you’ve got and everything you are ever going to have” is a tough sell even to virtue signaling idiots.
Go figure.
Because the chain link fence is going to be a problem that the cops were being threatened.
Quote in an article I read: “Did they think he was going to jump that fence and stab them all? He could barely walk.”
My favorite parody of one of the birthday boys.
Re: the above discussion on Daryl Cooper and nazi apologists in general
I had a great grandfather tell me that when his father came back from the civil war and saw what was printed as news about the war when it was going on he said “It didnt happen like that. None of that is true. It wasn’t like that at all”
Same for relatives that fought in WWI. Same for the WWII vets. Same for the Korean vets. Vietnam. Same for the shit I saw.
Mostly what we get as news, especially about war, is propaganda and has little to nothing to do with reality.
It is impossible to fully understand history by reading the comic book versions we are given by people with an agenda.
Something my grandfather said to me once – “You weren’t there. You didn’t see it.”
Liberty magazine’s website is back.