MLK Day Links

by | Jan 16, 2023 | Daily Links | 256 comments

A crazy night

Holy shit, this is crazy. No, I mean it is crazier than  the entire weekend (so far) of Wild Card games.  If you’re not a football fan, you would have become one after those games. Just incredibly entertaining. And one to go tonight still. Oh, and across the pond, there is nothing good happening on the red or blue side of Liverpool.  It’s a shitshow.  And that’s it for sports.

Well…good. Your dumbass actions have consequences, government.

And…bad. Do these idiots not realize this will be viewed as an escalation?

Why is this controversial? It shouldn’t be.

A turd in Boston

What a load of shit. No, not the criticism. That’s valid.

He’s got a point. And I hope there are consequences.

The issue with mandatory minimums. This will be interesting.

Wait, I thought that was the good news. You mean there’s more?

What a piece of shit. He’s getting what he deserves.

For MLK Day. Such a great song.And another one. Enjoy them both.

And enjoy this Monday/holiday/workday/whatever it is for you.

About The Author

sloopyinca

sloopyinca

256 Comments

  1. Count Potato

    Roughing the passer calls are getting silly though.

    • sloopyinca

      They’re all but ruining the game.

      • sloopyinca

        I knew that’s the one you’d post. Even the announcers, who usually find a way to justify any flag, questioned it.
        The headline to that story is accurate. It might be the worst ever.

      • WTF

        Yeah, exactly how the hell is he supposed to tackle the quarterback?

      • slumbrew

        For all the Raider fan complaints about the Tuck Rule Game, that was a correct call (on a bad rule).

        That roughing call was nonsense. And I’m still annoyed by the egregious TD call in the Raiders favor a few weeks back – refs get that right and there is no stupid
        lateral attempt by the Pats…

    • robc

      No hitting below the hemline.

  2. Count Potato

    It just looked like weird modern art to me.

    • UnCivilServant

      Isn’t that redundant?

      • SDF-7

        Only because it is a bit of a dick move.

    • sloopyinca

      It looked like three hands holding a turd.
      So yes, your analysis is correct.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      It’s a bad statue, but I don’t see penis.

      • UnCivilServant

        It’s in the mind of the beholder what that ugly thing looks like.

      • AlexinCT

        You need to look harder…

      • Certified Public Asshat

        My interest has gone limp.

      • rhywun

        Yeah, I see Giger alien turd.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder
  3. Count Potato

    “Aguilera-Mederos was driving an 18-wheeler through the mountains when he claimed his brakes failed as he traveled toward the city. He ultimately crashed into more than two dozen stopped vehicles and four semitrailers, killing four people and hurting at least 10 more.

    The 110-year sentence for Aguilera-Mederos was the result of mandatory minimum sentencing laws that apply to crimes of violence, which are any offense in which a person is killed or suffers serious bodily injury. The lengthy sentence caught people’s attention nationwide and sparked a petition signed by millions.”

    What were his other options?

    • UnCivilServant

      Well, could they tell if the brakes did indeed fail?

      • SDF-7

        Yeah… I have to kind of assume that would have come up at trial if anyone on the jury had more than one neuron sparking. Which may of course be a bad assumption.

        Sloopy covers other options below — too bad the reporting sucks in that little snippet and doesn’t bother giving any details.

        I thought the federal regulations on trucks were getting so onerous that there’d be a black box equivalent if they couldn’t check for a mechanical issue… but that’s just supposition.

    • sloopyinca

      I don’t really know. Was there not a runoff area? Could he not have geared way down and/or used a Jake brake?

      It certainly sounds like he was overcharged if it was more of a negligence than violence.

      • DEG

        uhh… yeah…. there is one… just further up the mountain. The stretch where the wreck happened has none, but engineers want to put one in.

    • Fatty Bolger

      He passed by a runaway truck ramp, that would have been his best option.

    • westernsloper

      He should have started down shifting rapidly when he noticed his brakes were going. The fact he lost his brakes means he was probably in too high a gear and going too fast to begin with. Trucks just don’t “lose their brakes”. They are designed that a loss of air pressure or any other problem the brakes lock up. Unless they are too hot. If he couldn’t gear down for some reason he should have put the truck off the road or drove into the jersey barriers in the median and flipped the thing on its side. He would have caused an accident but it is the better option than driving a truck with no brakes into a congested area where there is no question he is going to kill people. He is a first rate POS and deserves life in prison.

  4. Sean

    The issue with mandatory minimums. This will be interesting.

    I think that link is wrong.

    • SDF-7

      It must have worked for the Noble Tater above… for me it redirected immediately to some Disney Q & A or something. C’est la vie.

      • Sean

        Same here.

    • sloopyinca

      I checked and the link is right, but for some reason it’s going to some other article now. Im working on it.

      • sloopyinca

        I think it’s ok again. I have no idea what happened.

      • AlexinCT

        The machine decided this story was not supposed to be seen by the people they need misinfomed?

  5. Count Potato

    “Prosecutors said that at trial, one victim said Boykin took her to a secluded parking lot after ordering her out of her friend’s car following a traffic stop. She said Boykin then falsely accused her of being a prostitute, threatened to take her to jail and forced her to perform oral sex on him before telling her to run while placing his hand on his gun.

    The second victim testified that Boykin falsely told her she had outstanding traffic warrants and then ordered her out of her friend’s car and took her to the same parking lot, prosecutors said. He was accused in a criminal complaint of demanding she perform oral sex, which she told investigators she did because she was scared.”

    Agreed that he is a piece of shit, but how is that federal?

    • SDF-7

      Shouldn’t be, no… should be Yet Another Sign that they really need to weed out candidates who just want to be Thugs with the biggest gang (government). Not that that will happen.

      I still firmly believe there are good cops out there, in it for the right reasons… but reform is long overdue to trim out the bad ones and dramatically reduce the incentives to abuse power (qualified immunity, asset forfeiture, settlements coming from the taxpayers not the department or perpetrators, etc.) Just another reason all the BLM crap in 2020 was such a f’ing tragedy for actually doing anything for the communities those grifters waved the bloody shirt for.

      • SDF-7

        And I know everyone here knows all that already. Forgive my need for a rant over well trod ground. My weekend surprisingly turned into a “Ummm… we’re going to need you to come in on Saturday. And probably Sunday.” and I’m also annoyed at the current trend (part of “Agile — the team should own the product!”) that software developers are expected to do all the damned paperwork for product management. If we were any good at product management, we’d be doing your job jerks…. grumble bitch moan complain….

      • Shirley Knott

        Scrum drove a stake through the heart of Agile and desecrated the corpse.
        And then this mf-ers at the PMI got involved.

      • AlexinCT

        I still firmly believe there are good cops out there, in it for the right reasons…

        Like politicians going to D.C. and becoming class A crooks, corrupt police systems will have the same effect.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Prosecutors said Friday that a jury found that Lee Ray Boykin Jr., 33, deprived two separate victims of their right to bodily integrity while acting in his capacity as a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper by committing aggravated sexual abuse in one case and kidnapping in the other.

      Mandatory vaccinations say hi.

      • SDF-7

        But… but… but… that’s authorized violations of bodily integrity, serf!

      • Count Potato

        Would you rather: blow a cop or get the jab ?

      • AlexinCT

        DEATH BY BUNTA!

    • R C Dean

      I really hate that when they don’t show a photo of the perp, I assume he’s black. And really, really hate that I always seem to be right.

  6. robodruid

    WRT training of Ukrainian forces in Germany. I am not sure that is the big deal you think it is. Its not a direct confrontation against Russia, and their combat losses @ 100 KIA/day suggest they wont last long.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Took them six years to get Ukrainian forces up to where they were and most of those guys are now hamburger. This seems like pissing in the wind to me.

      • AlexinCT

        Since when did that dissuade the people making money from any meat grinders from going ahead with moar of it?

  7. The Late P Brooks

    Sometimes a statue of a penis is just a statue of a penis.

    • SDF-7

      Oh yay! The Solomons again…. maybe we can get Ironbottom Sound, round 2 going….

      • AlexinCT

        Xi and his CCP gang members are looking for ideas in that sphere/space…

  8. The Late P Brooks

    And the federal office that oversees the student loan system is operating under the same budget as last year

    OH

    MY

    GOD!

    • SDF-7

      Anything below the expected 8%+ increase is a drastic cut!

      Ok, to be fair before any of our resident contrarians come nitpick me — accounting for inflation (especially this year), it is technically a cut… But of course, since the feds had a big role to play in causing inflation and the rest of us have to suck it up (Buttercup), I have no f’s to give here.

      • robodruid

        You cannot believe the amount of “Plus up” money we have been told we have available for new projects.

      • AlexinCT

        I can…

        We just keep printing more.

      • juris imprudent

        Ironic to cite the prime source of inflation as a victim of inflation.

        Fuck that, cut (as in spend LESS this year than you did LAST year) spending.

    • rhywun

      Nuke it from orbit and take the “Department of Education” with it. The Feds have no business in any of that.

      • juris imprudent

        Reagan said he would kill it. I get the impression that Republicans are just liars when it comes to things like that.

      • Fatty Bolger

        Reagan never had that ability, because the Dems still had their stranglehold on the House. But yeah, later Republicans could have done it, but didn’t. Similar to Obamacare, big talkers and passing meaningless bills until they actually had the power to do something about it.

  9. Gender Traitor

    ,,,I hope there are consequences.

    So do I. If any of the students affected do/did miss scholarship or admissions application deadlines, I hope the administrators involved are held personally liable. And fired. And have whatever sort of licenses required for their public school jobs revoked. (Yes – I, too, have a dream.)

      • Gender Traitor

        So this is what I’ve missed because I didn’t have kids?

        Good call. (I already knew I’d dodged the Frozen bullet. 😉)

      • Gender Traitor

        And this would seem to be the ideal time of year for this one, though it would probably be better further north than VA.

  10. The Late P Brooks

    “I think it’s particularly unfortunate for borrowers that the political fight over loan forgiveness has resulted in flat funding this year,” said Jonathan Fansmith, assistant vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, an advocacy group for colleges and universities.

    I find it particularly unfortunate nobody has pushed you face first into a woodchipper.

    • sloopyinca

      Feet first. Always feet first. Then you get to see their reaction.

    • Spartacus

      It’s being held flat… at 2 billion dollars. Not for the loans, just for administering them (along with other grant programs, I assume).
      2 BILLION dollars. That’s 5.5 million every. Single. Day.
      Cry me a river.

  11. AlexinCT

    What a piece of shit. He’s getting what he deserves.

    Using the badge to get some pussy…

    Who would have thunk that…

    • Spartacus

      It was probably part of the recruiting pitch. “Sure the base salary is low, but there’s lots of overtime, and all the free BJs you can extort. Whadda you say?”

      • AlexinCT

        The “love” of a pimp – and a police officer – are not like the “love” of a square…

  12. SDF-7

    ‘Orning ‘ordles… past “Meh” today firmly into “Blech.” Ah well.

    Daily Duotrigordle #320
    Guesses: 35/37
    Time: 06:08.67
    https://duotrigordle.com/

    Daily Quordle 357
    5️⃣6️⃣
    9️⃣8️⃣
    quordle.com

    • rhywun

      Also blech.

      Daily Quordle 357
      4️⃣6️⃣
      8️⃣7️⃣

    • Grosspatzer

      Ow. Tough one.

      Daily Quordle 357
      4️⃣5️⃣
      9️⃣6️⃣
      quordle.com

    • Sean

      Daily Quordle 357
      3️⃣6️⃣
      8️⃣7️⃣
      quordle.com

    • Penguin

      Daily Quordle 357
      5️⃣6️⃣
      4️⃣8️⃣
      Damn 1/2 LR

    • Grumbletarian

      Ditto the blech.

      Daily Quordle 357
      4️⃣5️⃣
      6️⃣8️⃣

    • Tundra

      Daily Quordle 357
      5️⃣8️⃣
      7️⃣6️⃣

      Bleh.

      • Penguin

        Tundra (and other Glib gearheads) – forgot to mention something I saw on one of my walks. Unfortunately, I couldn’t work my phone quickly enough, but here’s something similar.

      • Tundra

        Beautiful. There are some fantastic builds out there.

        Thanks, Penguin!

      • Penguin

        Yeah, I’m not even a car guy, but I can see how awesome those mid-late 60’s Cobras are.

  13. Count Potato

    ““I don’t think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts,” U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl when asked if Biden may have “jeopardized” national security by taking the documents.

    “We have asked for an assessment in the intelligence community of the Mar-a-Lago documents,” Schiff said. “I think we ought to get that same assessment of the documents found in the think tank, as well as the home of President Biden.””

    https://nypost.com/2023/01/15/biden-document-stash-may-have-jeopardized-national-security-schiff-says/

    When you lose Adam Schiff.

    • AlexinCT

      Oh, Scumbag Schiff hasn’t been lost…

      He is part of the effort to pretend they investigated and found….

      Nothing to worry about because Biden didn’t mean anything bad by breaking the law (like Hillary did with her emails).

      But everyone knows that orange fuck is DA DEBEL!

      • juris imprudent

        Yeah, he’s just pretending this matters, just enough to try to save his miserable ass.

    • sloopyinca

      He’s just tying to get his committee assignment back. Once he does, he will do everything he can to be a partisan douchebag and focus on a guy who’s not even in office.

      • WTF

        He’s just tying to get his committee assignment back.

        And the Republicans are just stupid enough to let it happen.

      • juris imprudent

        Hell, if I were in the House, I’d be writing up the resolution to expel him for his demands of Twitter censorship.

      • The Last American Hero

        And his lack of action on the Fang Fang affair.

    • Zwak says Your Husband is a Polar Bear, Skinny.

      Eh, I would bet on him having the fevor for Trump so bad that he doesn’t want this to get in the way.

    • WTF

      Everyone knew they would do it, I just didn’t think they’d say it out loud.
      They don’t even bother trying to hide it anymore.

      • rhywun

        They don’t have to.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Jordan is a stooge for going after the garage docs.

      “I certainly would advise them — if they were willing to listen to my advice — I would advise them to take a very hard line against that,” McCabe said. “There is a clear precedent here of not sharing information from an ongoing criminal investigation with Congress. And I think the DOJ is in a very strong position to resist on those grounds.”

      Yes, the DOJ will use that argument and it will work. The GOP will howl and moan and fundraise. Meanwhile, the real scandals like Russiagate will get ignored. Totally by design.

      I hope DC gets nuked.

  14. The Late P Brooks

    Big changes to the department’s income-driven repayment plans are also in the works, aimed at reducing monthly debt burdens as well as the total amount borrowers pay over the lifetime of their loans.

    The new regulations are expected to cap payments at 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income, down from 10% that is offered under most current income-driven plans. As a result, single borrowers making less than $30,600 per year would not need to make any payments under the proposal, up from the current $24,000 threshold.

    Will interest continue to accrue? Will these loan obligations be passed on to the heirs of the original borrowers?

    • AlexinCT

      How about making the institutions these idiot kids go to with these loans partially responsible for these loans? I bet the number of failures that end up with loans, no degrees, and never being able to pay these off will drop to near zero…

      • Spartacus

        How about making the lenders responsible for eating the cost of a default, as occurs with pretty much every other loan in existence. If you default on a car loan, the bank doesn’t go after the dealer who sold it to you.

        One of the great ironies of our time is that if an 18 year old shows up at a bank asking to borrow $40K for a new car, they’ll be laughed out of the office. But if they show up asking for $40K for college–which has no associated collateral whatsoever–they will get it today.

      • AlexinCT

        I am coming at this problem from the point that I would like to see action to fix it that razes the corrupt indoctrination machine to the ground.

      • Spartacus

        Our president likes to point out that, of our alumni who have been elected to state office, 100% ran as republicans. If we are indoctrinating students to be leftists, we are doing it poorly.

      • AlexinCT

        I think the problem is that the metric you chose to use to evaluate the success/failure of the indoctrination is a terrible one. And which president are you talking about?

      • Spartacus

        I’m talking about the president of the university I work at. And your metrics are worse, if anything.
        Your story and the resulting overgeneralization sounds like the politician in Florida who once had an college student intern who wrote poorly, so he decided there should be a new writing requirement. For everyone. Based on one intern.

        The reality on most campuses (where I spend my days, nearly every day) is that 10% of the students are highly vocal hard-core leftists, 10% are highly vocal hard-core conservatives, and those are the groups everyone hears about. The other 80% are not organizing protests or issuing statements because they are too busy working, have little to no interest in activism, and are trying as hard as they can to remain noncombatants in the culture wars.

        If you want to see some actual data regarding how the indoctrination is going, take a look at this survey. It’s not particularly well designed, but it does make some attempt at gathering data, as opposed to what you read in “news” articles.

      • AlexinCT

        My experience is with the people I interview and my company then hires from these schools. And it is rare they are not heavily indoctrinated and steeped in the marxist idiocy. They also tend to know nothing, but believe they are both smarter and more effective than they are. The one thing that is certain as the product of college education these days is of lower quality than it used to be despite the massively increased cost.

      • R C Dean

        The highly vocal conservatives are getting completely shut out of campus admin and the media, then, because I hear nothing about them and see no university concessions being made to them.

      • R C Dean

        Correction: I do hear about conservative students on campus occasionally, usually when they are being punished in some way. And even then, it’s more for non-cooperation with wokism than what I would consider activism.

        But I tend to avoid any involvement with higher education, so the view from inside the walls is undoubtedly different.

      • Raven Nation

        To add to Spartacus’ take: keep in mind that there are thousands of colleges across the country and we get stories from a handful of them. From the conservative point of view, those stories are usually cherry-picked to find the worst cases (and I’m not denying there are some terrible things going on). But I don’t think most faculty are “indoctrinating.” Nor are most students simply sucking up information without thinking about it.

        The location and type of school also matter. I’m here in flyover country and most of my students not only don’t care about wokeism, they’re also working full-time jobs and taking full-time course loads. They just don’t have time for any kind of political stuff (even on their side of things). They just want to pass their classes and get a good job.

        Alex: if I recall correctly, you’re in the northeast? I suspect if you were interviewing students who graduated from my part of the country, you might have a different experience.

        This is a brief take: I’m actually thinking of a piece for Glibs which looks a little more in depth at some of this stuff.

      • R C Dean

        Never forget the Two Questions, especially when you see something that confirms your priors:

        (1) Who wants me to believe this?

        (2) Why do they want me to believe this?

      • Brochettaward

        I’d probably guess that about half of the colleges and universities are infected with the woke cancer with a significant portion being run by people highly sympathetic to it. The students may not all be crazy SJW’s gearing up for glorious revolution.

        But the students who are at the worst institutions are the ones at the most highly influential schools in the country. The ones who are part of the pipeline to the media and government.

      • Zwak says Your Husband is a Polar Bear, Skinny.

        Who is issueing the student loans, and under what program? What are the controls for this issuance? Do universities profit off of the numbers of kids who get a loan vs. those who pay full freight?

      • Pine_Tree

        Note also that they don’t have to “show up asking”. The colleges’ systems make it where applying for their loans is the virtual default – you have to put in a good deal of effort to avoid “automatically” getting financial aid. And before that, you even have to be savvy enough to realize that’s what the system is defaulting you into.

        So yeah, they are definitely active aggressors in this.

      • R C Dean

        “these idiot kids”

        They are not children. They are adults.

      • AlexinCT

        That’s where I disagree. I have met people amongst these young ones that in their twenties were dumber and less informed than people of my generation were before they turned 10. There is a reason the marxists want to lower the voting age to 16 and wreck the public education system. Real life kind of frags any and all of the fantasies that this crowd of morons tend to end up believing in.

      • R C Dean

        So they are dumb and stupid adults. That doesn’t make them children.

      • AlexinCT

        The people demanding changes to the existing system sure as hell acts as if they are…

      • robc

        But most are making the decisions when still 17. I was 18 by the time school started, but all the important decisions were made while I was underage.

        That is no excuse for quadrupling down on any mistakes and repeating them another 3 years. But they are kids initially.

      • Mojeaux

        Depends on the day at Reddit. The pattern isn’t consistent but some 19yo are adults and some 16yo are CHILDREN and some 25yos’ brains haven’t fully developed so they’re as good as children.

  15. The Late P Brooks

    I still firmly believe there are good cops out there, in it for the right reasons…

    Until those so-called “good cops” start doing something about the bad cops, they’re all bad cops.

    • WTF

      Hey, nobody wants to get “Serpico’d”.

      • juris imprudent

        That kinda raises the question about how prevalent the corruption is. I can imagine a clean PD (rank and file, and leadership) not tolerating this and kicking them out. I wonder though when the rot sets in – is it from the top down? And how much self deception does a cop in a dirty department have to engage in if he’s still clinging to being clean? Serpico is the perfect example – the department was pretty much rotten through and through; anyone clean was fighting against the real system of rules/control.

  16. SDF-7

    Oh, for God’s sake… I guess they’ll always try to trot out “security methods” as an excuse to keep information they want concealed from the public. But that’s just pathetic.

    • AlexinCT

      NATIONAL SECURITY!

      Been a defense of the indefensible forever…

      • juris imprudent

        See Reynolds v. United States, wherein the USAF classified an accident report that contained no classified information and the Supreme Court allowed them to do that.

    • Count Potato

      Yes, it’s a danger to their narrative.

      • juris imprudent

        They can’t release all of it (and even if they did – who would watch all of it), so it has to be edited. And the editorial decision making process is going to slant one way or the other. They know that, and so do you.

      • Count Potato

        “They can’t release all of it ”

        They could just put it up on the internet.

    • The Other Kevin

      Openness and transparency are where democracy goes to die.

  17. AlexinCT

    I think this is not the whole story, I hear the cost of feed has tripled because of scarcity too, but this weekend I paid $15 for a container holding 2 18 count large white eggs which I buy every other week at BIs (my kid goes through eggs like I go through bourbon). The last time I bought that was 2 weeks ago and I paid $7 for the same content and that was already at a high. And there was a sign up telling people they were only allowed to get one container per customer. Most of the eggs were untouched and I am thinking a lot of people are just skipping eggs at that price.

    • SDF-7

      I assumed it was CA poultry regulations (didn’t some XXX amount of free range space kick in last year? Granted, hard to keep track of them all…) and non-CA producers deciding to go ahead and keep a presence in the market.

      Combined with inflation, feed costs, transportation, etc. of course.

      • AlexinCT

        That would not impact me where I live. Most, if not all, of our eggs come from a couple of huge enterprises in the NE.

      • Brawndo

        Massachusetts has a new law for chicken raising as well. What SDF says is true, unfortunately. It just takes one shitty state to enact a dumb law and businesses match their production standards to that instead of having different standards for different markets.

      • WTF

        All of that combined with Avian Flu running rampant as well.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      Chicken prices are down though, so just eat chicken for breakfast.

    • slumbrew

      95 is a good run. A long and interesting life.

    • R C Dean

      What a babe. The harem girl pic shows where they got the famous “slave Leia” costume from.

      • slumbrew

        That first shot of her in the sundress is scorching.

      • Zwak says Your Husband is a Polar Bear, Skinny.

        Si! Si Bella!

    • AlexinCT

      Is this a Tres page/shout-out?

    • WTF

      “Paging Q. Q to white courtesy phone.”

    • Sean

      This is what happens when you allow Q to choose the form of the destructor.

      • SDF-7

        You;re implying her bosom decided to stay puffed?

      • Penguin

        Q “I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us. Boobies!”

      • Penguin

        Q as Ray Stantz, that is…

      • Mojeaux

        LOL

  18. The Late P Brooks

    Experts say

    Republicans have sought to compare the Biden documents case, which involves material from his time as vice president, with that of former President Donald Trump, who faces a federal criminal probe of how he handled classified documents after he left the White House in 2021. But legal experts say there are stark contrasts between the two cases.

    There is apparently no need to elaborate on this claim, aside from some vadue handwaving about something or other. Everybody knows Trump bad, Biden good.
    Associated Press: serious journalism for serious people.

    • The Other Kevin

      It’s been entertaining to watch people trying to convince themselves that this red apple is TOTALLY different than that slightly redder apple. I love the “Trump’s is more serious because the feds are investigating him.” LOL

      • WTF

        Never mind that Trump had authority as president that Biden did not have as V.P., and that Biden had stored docs at the Penn Biden center, funded by the CCP, and at the house which was Hunter’s residence, while he was receiving funds from CCP and Ukrainian entities.

      • The Other Kevin

        Agreed. Biden is arguably worse. The other thing I’ve seen is that the number of documents makes a difference. As if they would have given Trump a pass if he had just 10 documents.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        Even if Trump had the authority to declassify documents, is there still some process that he needed to use to do so, or is it like a Muslim divorce where he just needs to say “I declassify you” three times?

      • The Hyperbole

        I don’t get why Presidents (or any public office holder) are taking boxes of official documents with them when they leave office, classified or not they are still the governments property not your personal keepsakes.

    • Raven Nation

      I have no idea which is worse or the details, but the most hilarious take I saw early on was along the lines of “we don’t have any details of the Biden documents or what was going on there, but we can say this is not as bad as the Trump case.”

      • R C Dean

        Or, “we don’t what is in the documents, but we know for certain it wasn’t nukular secrets!”

  19. The Late P Brooks

    How about making the lenders responsible for eating the cost of a default, as occurs with pretty much every other loan in existence. If you default on a car loan, the bank doesn’t go after the dealer who sold it to you.

    And run the risk of being fined hundreds of millions for “discriminatory” lending practices for not shovelling money at every sad sack deadbeat who walks in the door?

  20. robc

    My High School grades were bad, so I didn’t get much in the way of scholarships. But what I did get came from National Merit. So fuck Fairfax County.

    • juris imprudent

      You and your meritocratic privilege. Sheesh

    • The Other Kevin

      My youngest is graduation this year. The first two failed out of community college, but this third one is a very serious student and is planning to go away to school next year. If this happened to her, I’d lawyer up in a heartbeat.

    • PieInTheSky

      scholarships – sounds like scrounging. Pay your way.

  21. Nephilium

    Oh I love password expiration day. Try to change them for the four domains I access on a regular basis (I’ve given up on the fifth one that I never log into), and keep them at least similar. With different complexity and no re-using passwords for X number of changes, it’s not really possible.

    By the end of the week, the muscle memory should take over and I’ll be done with this for another 2.5 months.

    • AlexinCT

      Write them on a piece of paper and attach it to your monitor…

      • WTF

        Which is what people actually do when they have to continually update passwords that require complexity to be considered valid. That shit actually makes for less security.

      • AlexinCT

        Speaking of….

        Says it was less that 6500 people impacted, which is a small fraction of their base for sure, but still…

      • AlexinCT

        I have repeatedly shown people how password rotation policies are idiotic. People either write it down and leave it lying around, or worse, generate passwords that follow a pattern, which makes it easy to hack them if you can compromise old records/storage.

      • Nephilium

        Work did change from doing push notifications for MFA to requiring the PIN be entered. Because people were trying to bomb authentications hoping someone would just approve the push notification.

        /leaves out the part that once you’re at that point, the password is already compromised.

    • SDF-7

      I’ve resorted to a non-Cloud iOS app password generator on my phone that keeps lists. That way I can generate fairly random crap, and I have the list with me, secured by the phone security and only I know which ones in the list (having made extras) are valid and where I am in said list. (And of course I don’t trust it in the cloud).

      Given the frequency and mandated symbols, etc… it is about the only way I can keep track at this point — especially after a vacation or whatnot where I don’t have to type it every day.

    • PieInTheSky

      I have a 3 digit number in the middle which I change but my company now requires that once a year

    • Penguin

      I usually use movie quotes, along with a short list of numbers I’ll remember. Recently I’ve turned to insulting statements about political figures I dislike.

      • westernsloper

        Recently I’ve turned to insulting statements about political figures I dislike.

        Good thinking! I shall start doing that too.

  22. The Late P Brooks

    You can’t kill a government program. That would affect people you know. People you see every day on the Metro, and in those nice lunch spots in town. You’d be throwing the parents of your children’s classmates into the gutter. You’d be taking food out of the mouths of the ladies your wife plays tennis with.

    No, it’s always better to just put the screws to a bunch of nameless faceless plebs out there in the wasteland and keep the beltway machine humming.

  23. DEG

    “If you had showed that statute to anyone in the ’hood, they’d have been like, ‘No, absolutely not.’ “

    In order to do that, the folks in Boston would have to go past the train station at the edge of Podunk. That’s scary. There be dragons out there.

    • R.J.

      Putting on my to foil hat – What if the statue was deliberately made shitty so someone would be tempted to vandalize it or tear it down?

  24. DrOtto

    The truck driver’s story is over a year old. He had his sentence commuted to 10 years by the governor, I believe.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Yes, it was.

  25. juris imprudent

    Democrats believe the economy is a fixed pie and what is most important is being in charge of slicing it up.

    • AlexinCT

      Democrats believe the US is the Titanic. The drove it into an iceberg on purpose. It is now rapidly sinking. So they tell the low level crew to organize deck games for the passengers while the senior crew steal every valuable that isn’t bolted down and would take too long to dislodge, loading that loot into the only functioning life boats, and preparing to sail away the second it is clear the ship is capsizing or going under.

    • PieInTheSky

      any economic growth can only be the result of exploitation as such it is bad. it is better to eat the rich.

  26. The Late P Brooks

    Speaking of chicken feed…

    I wonder what effect the Great Ukraine War Grain Market Disruption might be having.

  27. The Late P Brooks

    The reality on most campuses (where I spend my days, nearly every day) is that 10% of the students are highly vocal hard-core leftists, 10% are highly vocal hard-core conservatives, and those are the groups everyone hears about. The other 80% are not organizing protests or issuing statements because they are too busy working, have little to no interest in activism, and are trying as hard as they can to remain noncombatants in the culture wars.

    This pleases and comforts me.

    • WTF

      I just don’t really believe that there’s an even split of leftist v. conservative.

  28. Certified Public Asshat

    they stopped talking about that Herd Immunity prophecy at the exact time things got profitable— Michael Malice (@michaelmalice) January 16, 2023

    Solid observation, when was the last time you heard the phrase herd immunity?

  29. PieInTheSky

    In local news, apparently last year was the year with fewest children born in Romania since 1880

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      Stop snatching the babies.

  30. PieInTheSky

    Would Martin Luther King be anti-‘woke’?
    There’s something off about conservatives claiming his legacy

    https://twitter.com/edwest/status/1614982022602100736

    I assume he had some amount of profit / grifter gene, like most activists, even the honest ones, to go woke if it suited him

    • WTF

      He seemed to really believe in the idea of judging people by the content of their character and not some racial classification they belonged to, which is the antithesis of woke.

      • Negroni Please

        I think if MLK had lived he’d be indistinguishable from the BLM grifters. He said stupid shit like bystanders are just as morally culpable as the perpetrators of oppression. Sounds like anti-racist claptrap to me. He defended rioting and looting before he died.

        How much veneration for MLK comes from martydom? If he was alive today what makes anyone think he’d be categorically different from Sharpton or Jackson?

      • Fatty Bolger

        Who knows what he would have become, but he was a great orator compared to those hacks.

      • creech

        Character judging, yes. However, for all his belief in non-violence, it didn’t extend to allowing private businesses to discriminate nor allow you and I to decide how to spend our income without having some Federal agent produce a weapon and demand a shilling for the King.

  31. PieInTheSky

    How about stop building statues.

    • Penguin

      C’mon, PIE, you can’t just post that without the soundtrack.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    It’s a shithole

    New York City Mayor Eric Adams said migrants should be warned there is “no more room” in the Big Apple for them as he called on increased coordination from the federal government to handle this “national emergency.”

    Adams was speaking in El Paso after checking out conditions in the Texas border city. The mayor slammed federal leaders for not helping cities across the nation taking in scores of migrants.

    He said he learned Sunday that websites are giving asylum seekers the “false impression” about what they can expect in New York, including that they would be living in hotels when actually it will be shelter housing.

    We have all of your kind we need. Go to California instead.

    • R C Dean

      NYC has about 2.5% of the population of the US. Based on the 3 -4MM illegals who have arrived in the last two years, their pro rata share would be 75,000 – 100,000 illegals. I wonder how many they actually have? I would bet its nowhere near that many.

      • R C Dean

        Put another way – approximately 1% of the people in the US right now have come here illegally in the last two years. If 1% of your population isn’t illegals, then you aren’t carrying your share of the load.

        Note also how the complaining about illegals contradicts the narrative that they are a net plus for the US.

      • WTF

        They are a sanctuary city until they actually have to take care of illegals.

    • creech

      Adams and other big city mayors ought to be in Wilmington pounding on Joe’s Corvette and demanding the leader of their Party do something about the border crisis.
      Noooo…it’s all about “stunts” pulled by Govs. Abbott and DeSantis.

    • rhywun

      including that they would be living in hotels when actually it will be shelter housing

      I guess we’re just not talking about the hundreds (thousands?) of hotel rooms already rented out to illegals anymore.

      Jesus what a turd he is.

      But watching the Dems go all SYNTAX ERROR over their double-thought is kind of amusing.

  33. PieInTheSky

    “Tate galleries have shared guidance urging teachers to use gender-neutral pronouns in class, and have primary school pupils draw pictures relating to their “bodies and sexualities”.”

    https://twitter.com/TonyDowson5/status/1614569584258056192

    Unrelated to Andrew Tate

    • rhywun

      draw pictures relating to their “bodies and sexualities”.

      OK, groomer.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Yeah that…uh…is fucking sick

  34. The Late P Brooks

    I usually use movie quotes, along with a short list of numbers I’ll remember. Recently I’ve turned to insulting statements about political figures I dislike.

    J0ego@tfucker24?

    • Ownbestenemy

      10rightmeows23

    • Gender Traitor

      You ladies take the rest of the week off.”

    • Nephilium

      Reducing supply always reduces prices!

      • Penguin

        No, you goof. They have to pass a law making sure they keep prices low, along with a law to make sure they provide them. That’ll do it. Because it’s a law.

    • Grosspatzer

      Where is Milo Minderbinder when you need him?

      The exact size of Minderbinder’s syndicate is never specified. At the beginning of the novel, it is merely a system that gets fresh eggs to his mess hall by buying them in Sicily for one cent, selling them to Malta for four and a half cents, buying them back for seven cents, and finally selling them to the mess halls for five cents.

      Problem solved.

  35. Ownbestenemy

    These are the bills that McCarthy and friends need to being to the floor and show how insane some of these lawmakers are.

    https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/01/16/democrat-introduces-legislation-to-make-white-people-criticizing-minorities-a-federal-crime-n689270

    https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/61/text/ih?overview=closed&format=xml

    “To prevent and prosecute white supremacy inspired hate crime and conspiracy to commit white supremacy inspired hate crime and to amend title 18, United States Code, to expand the scope of hate crimes.”

    • creech

      Without control of the MSM, this would probably backfire spectacularly on the GOP. “GOP endorses Hate Crimes, etc. etc.”

      • WTF

        Yeah, voting against that monstrosity would be portrayed as voting in favor of white supremacy.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Which I am assuming is the goal considering she didn’t introduce in previous Congress

      • creech

        Maybe not – Dems controlled Congress then and could have just as easily embarrassed the GOP members. It is probably no more than a campaign “stunt” to brag about to her constituents (not that she’d ever lose her seat or anything).

      • Sensei

        I’m assuming drunk?

        I like how it takes everybody a few seconds to process what happens before going over to help. I always wonder if this simply people processing things or thanks to movies and TV (and terrorists) people expecting explosions and flames after auto crashes.

      • PieInTheSky

        Not in the news… speeding like hell though. 21 apparently. Daddy bought him a fancy car like it often happens in Romania. These guys drive like maniacs even when not drunk.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It’s people processing things and waiting to see what everyone else does.

        Like they do with everything else, we’re herd animals.

    • Michael Malaise

      Why does the woman in the car stop? If she keeps turning left (from the wrong lane but we will let that go), nothing happens.

  36. The Late P Brooks

    How much veneration for MLK comes from martydom? If he was alive today what makes anyone think he’d be categorically different from Sharpton or Jackson?

    So what you’re saying is- only dead men are incorruptible?

  37. The Late P Brooks

    “We need to halt all egg production until prices come down. The Egg shortage is not solved my laying more market rate eggs.”

    Please tell me that’s sarcasm.

    • R C Dean

      *bangs sarcometer on desk*

      Nope, the needle’s not even twitching.

  38. The Late P Brooks

    Idiots in cars Romania version.

    Missed his braking point.

  39. PieInTheSky

    Yotube moved on from recommending Italian beauty show to straight up pole dancing

    POLESQUE SHOW 2019 | Valeriya Amarena

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1KqN4QdTOg

    nsfw maybe i dunno

    • DEG

      Not bad.

  40. The Late P Brooks

    Maybe we need to start dumping milk down the storm sewers, like they did during the depression. That will show the free market who’s boss.

  41. The Late P Brooks

    Today’s idiots in cars.

    As usual, there is not enough footage to really tell what was going on. Generally speaking, it is inadvisable to be on the limiter when you’re riding your motorcycle in town.

    • Sensei

      If you start from the beginning you can see that the cager comes from the right should across what appears to be two lanes of traffic.

      Gentleman biker could have easily slowed down and allowed dipshit cager to cut him off. However, he decided it would be better to rev the shit out the bike (aka loud pipes save lives). Cager goes WTF and appears to stop mid intersection.

      Hilarity ensues.

      • Sensei

        right should = right shoulder

      • tripacer

        I got the impression that he may have grabbed the clutch instead of the brake.

      • Michael Malaise

        I’m not sure he’s revving, but engine braking.

        Also, the idiot in the car (who I now have decided is the bigger idiot) STOPS instead of continues her turn.

  42. Count Potato

    “Some have been asking me to repost the video that got me banned and sued.

    Okie Doke.

    *Heads up Twitter, I WON the case, you can’t ban me again for reposting.”

    https://twitter.com/CarpeDonktum/status/1608313485938524160

    Amazing he got sued over that.

    • Brochettaward

      Those boys hugged.* One or both clearly identify as female and need to start hormone blockers ASAP.

      *Normal gayness is completely out of style, they’ll hardly have any victimhood status just being gay.

  43. The Late P Brooks

    21 apparently. Daddy bought him a fancy car like it often happens in Romania. These guys drive like maniacs even when not drunk.

    Like that kid who thought his dad’s Tesla could corner like a Lotus, despite the fact it weighed at least twice as much.

  44. The Late P Brooks

    If you start from the beginning you can see that the cager comes from the right should across what appears to be two lanes of traffic.

    I almost included a “Unless this happened in Limeyland…” observation. The car took all the road and then some.

    • R C Dean

      Kicking in the windshield was ill advised. Technically assault at some level. And there is a non-zero chance the driver will get out and kick your ass.

      • Sensei

        Pretty much any sympathy for the biker evaporates at that point.

  45. Mojeaux

    My mom’s knee replacement gave out this morning, so here I am in the ER with her, after having had to wait for her to get dressed nicely and clean half her house on the way out the door. *rolling eyes*

    • Sensei

      Damn. Hope she feels better and your ER experience is as painless as possible.

      • Mojeaux

        I can’t see a scenario where they admit her for that. Just give her a shot and tell her to get an appt with her ortho, but she’s prepared to be admitted. No, Mom, that’s not emergent.

    • Count Potato

      Sorry, hope she’s OK.

      • Mojeaux

        Well, she’s old and in pain a lot. She keeps hoping that soon her soul will say, “Fuck this noise” and go on its way, but until then, her joints will keep breaking down and her bones will keep breaking. Her mind is fine. She has no illnesses. Just bone and joint pain. That’s old age for you.

    • DEG

      Sorry. I hope for the best.

    • Grosspatzer

      Oh boy. Hope everything works out – spent the morning with Mrs. Patzer while she was getting the first of many pre-certs for her hip replacement next month.

    • Sean

      Sorry Mojeaux.

  46. B.P.

    It’s Davos time again, so here come all of the conspiracy theorists. It’s not like the stuff these high-minded change makers talk about ever trickles down to the level of affecting actual people or anything.

    https://www.9news.com/article/news/nation-world/davos-conspiracy-theories/507-a1b09f03-322b-49ab-bb9a-65d1d880565f

    “While some people offer legitimate criticisms of the forum — namely that it hosts wealthy executives who fly in on emissions-spewing corporate jets — others spread unverified or baseless information as fact.”

    It’s awfully generous of the author to note that someone’s opinion on an issue might have merit.

    • Brochettaward

      Modern journalism…where speaking truth to power means running cover for the wealthiest and most influential people in the world gathering around a table to talk about how best to run your life for you.

    • The Other Kevin

      Scott Adams was on about that today. He until recently thought it was all conspiracy theories, until it was pointed out the the WEF has tons of investments with zero transparency. So they want to enforce ESG on everyone else, requiring others to report everything, while the WEF does not disclose where their money comes from. Same with old Klaus, we know he’s rich but have no idea where he gets his money.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Old European money, really old money, in really old banks.

        The kind of money that survived two world wars, but is now afraid it won’t survive the coming fiscal implosion.

        Money from the kind of people that would put you in gulags and harvest your organs without a second thought.

    • rhywun

      Reporting their own words is so crass and irresponsible.

  47. R C Dean

    So, one story that popped this weekend was that Hunter was supposedly paying $50K/month in rent on year to live in the family house (I think, not clear exactly which of the Biden’s houses it was). Saw this morning that apparently Joe neglected to claim that as income, which is just delicious. Now, there are a number of scenarios/questions in my mind:

    (1) Hunter never paid any such thing, and this was just him trying to scam his way out of child support by claiming expenses. IF I was the family court judge, I’d be looking into this possibility very hard indeed, assuming this showed up in his court papers.

    (2) Hunter did pay a hugely over-market rent. The question nobody is asking is, why? He could have easily rented a very nice place for a fraction of that. I can’t think of any reason to pay that much to his father, except to launder the Big Guy’s 10%.

    (3) Where, exactly, did Hunter get $600K just for rent?

    • The Other Kevin

      #3 we know. He was being paid as a “consultant” or whatever by companies in Ukraine and China in industries where he had no experience.

      • The Other Kevin

        Or perhaps from the sale of vastly overpriced paintings that mystery people bought.

    • B.P.

      I seem to recall one story where Hunter was paying circa $11K per month for a place in southern California. It was probably the place where the pictures surfaced of him playing grab-ass with a bunch of ladies around a pool with a slide. It sure seems like his income was far greater than that which is shown on pay stubs for his “legitimate” gigs (Burisma, etc.).

    • Gender Traitor

      Joe never charged Hunter rent – he just asked him to do some chores around the place. Like cleaning out the garage.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Ties in with Hunter complaining to his daughter about having to give 50% of his money to daddy. Wah wah, it’s so hard being the bag man for the Biden crime family.

  48. The Late P Brooks

    (2) Hunter did pay a hugely over-market rent.

    Based on the photos I have seen, Joe’s casa isn’t exactly a thatched roof hut.

  49. The Late P Brooks

    My full comment got server-errored repeatedly, so I’ll just toss this in the hopper.

    The Democrats have issued an unequivocal refusal to negotiate on the debt ceiling.

    NOTHING TO CUT!

  50. Mojeaux

    And oh, so my husband won a trip to Mashville to see Dan and Shay (no idea who those people are) in a private concert for 10 people. No other details.