Friday Morning Links

by | Jan 5, 2024 | Daily Links | 283 comments

Tons of action!

The final weekend of the NFL season is upon us. I hope the Ravens sit their entire team. The transfer portal is still going crazy and it looks like Ohio State has found their QB for next year. Let’s hope Ryan Day remembers how to coach one that can leave the pocket and run. More FA Cup action on tap. Tons of it, in fact.  Oscar Pistorius has been released from prison. That was a really weird case. And that’s pretty much it for sports. On to…the links!

Talk about a shitty situation to find oneself in. I bet he cleans up in trial.

“Welcome to Dunkin’ Donuts”

This is some absolute lunacy. Does this guy think it should be illegal for people to move freely around the country? Or is he just a big, fat hypocrite?

This was pretty damn funny. It’s as if Mark Cuban wants to rebrand equity as a meritocracy. And diversity as well. And I couldn’t even parse what he was claiming as inclusion because it wasn’t even coherent.

Welp, the law is the law. You can still live in denial, but you gotta be honest about who you are.

I don’t doubt this at all. And I will also bet none of it is investigated by law enforcement.

OK, sure thing. I have a hard time believing any of this rubbish.

No any more, you’re not.

How long before the whole place is burned to the ground? After all, if you don’t let people live and shoot up in the park, you’re pretty much running a fascist state. Once the kids get back to school next week, expect it to get more retarded.

The writer of this piece is economically illiterate. And that’s putting it mildly.

Let’s rock this morning. That song should do it. So should this one. Although the video makes no sense whatsoever.  Anyway, enjoy them both.

And enjoy this lovely Friday and weekend, dear friends.

About The Author

sloopyinca

sloopyinca

283 Comments

  1. SDF-7

    This is some absolute lunacy. Does this guy think it should be illegal for people to move freely around the country? Or is he just a big, fat hypocrite?

    I’m going for Door Number Two. He doesn’t seem stupid enough that we need to embrace the power of AND here.

    Morning, Sloopy — morning all. Was that “remembers how to coach one” or is coack some new sports thing?

    • UnCivilServant

      I’d be willing to float a compromise position where people legally allowed to be in the country have freedom of movement, but people who came illegaly do not and are promptly sent to whatever country they came from originally.

      • sloopyinca

        Why is deliberately ignoring immigration law at the federal level and even using NGOs as proxies to foster illegal immigration not considered “insurrection” for ballot access purposes?

        Let’s go, Ken Paxton. Make that argument.

      • juris imprudent

        BECAUSE COMPASSION FOR THE UNFORTUNATE YOU HEARTLESS LIBERTARIAN FASCIST BASTARD!!! [It is just a happy coincidence that this increases our political power.]

      • sloopyinca

        I guess their compassion for those unfortunate people ends when they cross the Texas border and head north or east.

      • juris imprudent

        Their compassion is always satisfied with other people’s money and effort. God forbid they do a fucking thing themselves.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I said it yesterday, but if NYC can sue the bus companies, why not have Texas sue the NGO’s for the same reason?

    • Nephilium

      “These companies have violated state law by not paying the cost of caring for these migrants,” Adams said.

      So… anyone able to tell me which law the bus companies are violating?

      • sloopyinca

        I’m gonna take a trip to the big Apple and demand United airlines put me up in the Ritz Carlton. It’s the law, after all.

      • Rat on a train

        Take a bus to New York. Free room and board for life!

      • Pope Jimbo

        As long as you wear a sombrero, you should be fine.

      • Not Adahn

        Chicago passed a local law that passenger busses must apply for a permit to discharge passengers two days prior to arrival. They’re using violations of that to seize the busses. Undoubtedly NYC did something similar.

      • Tonio

        And now the bus companies are dropping them off just outside the city limits.

      • Rat on a train

        Obviously, Chicago needs to update the law to make that illegal as well.

      • Trigger Hippie

        Nah, just do what Kansas City did and expand the city limits right up to cow pastures and soy fields dozens of miles away from the actual city. Plus, just think of all the extra income and property taxes they could pilfer from those areas without ever providing a measurable service!

      • Rat on a train

        Why not both?

      • Rat on a train

        The closest I got to KC was Leavenworth. I wanted to visit KC but didn’t have a car.

      • Rat on a train

        My reserve unit did an AT supporting a command exercise at the Army Whatever-it-is-named-college. We provided intelligence reports base on scripted events. My favorite part was slipping in unscripted units to see if anyone noticed. They eventually asked about the 7th ChiCom Horde we had on the map in the reserve area.

      • UnCivilServant

        I’m surprised you spotted them, the 7th Horde is a sneaky formation.

      • Rat on a train

        They asked for a report on their composition and expected movements. We stated it was a formation of Chinese 1000 x 1000 with sharp pointed sticks that will be used to exhaust our ammunition. I was surprised we received humorous feedback instead of a reprimand.

      • Mojeaux

        They did that a lot back when city employees had to live inside the city limits. They would want to hire someone high-quality who would refuse to move within the city limits, and then KC would annex where they lived.

    • Brawndo

      The process is the punishment. Even if it’s a slam dunk case for the bus companies, they have to spend time and money defending themselves in court while this costs the mayor essentially nothing.

  2. Lachowsky

    “These companies have violated state law by not paying the cost of caring for these migrants,” Adams said.

    Jesus. I hope that law isn’t actually on the books.

    • UnCivilServant

      It’s not.

      Once the carriers drop off their passengers, their liability for them ends.

    • Nephilium

      Great minds Lachowsky… great minds…

      There was another story on this I saw that brought up that the bus companies were being payed ABOVE AVERAGE ONE WAY PRICES to carry the “refugees” up to NYC. I personally think Texas should start lobbying for direct Amtrak routes to use to transport the migrants.

      • Ownbestenemy

        FMCSA operating authority – check
        Insurance requirements met – check
        Drivers have CDLs? – I would assume a check

        So, will be interesting on exactly how the State of NY or NYC has any standing to sue.

      • sloopyinca

        They don’t need standing in the traditional sense. They just need to shop the case to a retarded judge in their own city willing to let them proceed with the case and cause financial harm to the companies by causing them to rack up hefty legal fees defending themselves.

        They know they can’t win. They just want to financially pressure them to stop doing the runs.

      • Ownbestenemy

        I wonder how ACLU is putting themselves into a pretzel to remain out of this. This should be right up their alley with immigrants being denied travel.

      • rhywun

        They’re too busy advocating for child porn in elementary school libraries.

      • Rat on a train

        Groomers have rights!

      • Brawndo

        Shouldn’t they be defending *Americans’* civil liberties? And not, you know, non-Americans?

      • Ownbestenemy

        They might limit their defense to just Americans, since they think our rights are born from legal means and not because we are human. The thing is, we allow the State to dictate travel, even if it is these illegal aliens, it won’t take long until they impose on citizens (well…in a way 2020 they did).

      • Not Adahn

        There is no direct route, but there is one from HOU to NYC via CHI. IIRC it takes two days.

      • sloopyinca

        They’re coming from El Paso. So add about 50% of the distance from NY to HOU on to that journey. It’s three days by train with two transfers and probably 50 stops. Which is a lot less efficient than taking a direct charter bus that probably has two drivers and stops four or five times for gas and food.

      • Not Adahn

        It would be better if they had a route that drove the length of Nebraska. Especially this time of year.

      • Not Adahn

        *thinks back to Venezuelan complaining about the weather in Denver*

      • Nephilium

        Local news is all excited that Ohio got chosen for an Amtrak expansion (as a reference, I didn’t even know there was an Amtrak station in Cleveland until 2020). They’re talking about having a route that will go from Cleveland to Columbus by September 2030.

      • UnCivilServant

        Cleveland’s station would have been shut down if it weren’t on the NYC-Chicago route.

    • Rat on a train

      Could you give me a ride?
      No. I don’t want to take on the responsibility of caring for you.

  3. SDF-7

    It’s as if Mark Cuban wants to rebrand equity as a meritocracy.

    Isn’t that typical motte and bailey argumentation (or whatever you call it)? “Oh no — you don’t realize what I mean by this… it is really INSERT_SOMETHING_NO_ONE_SANE_WOULD_DISAGREE_WITH — so you must actually agree with it! Ignore all the things we’re really doing with it…”

    Anyone claiming that they’re hiring the most talented people regardless of race by defending a system that sets racial quotas is pretty blatantly an evil liar, frankly.

    • rhywun

      Musk throws truth-bombs and Cuban responds with hackneyed talking points that were clearly fed to him by some DEI flunkie on his staff. TKO to Musk.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      JD Vance made the same comment about the Mavericks roster and Cuban just responded with stupid point! I hire women in HR within the organization (loose paraphrase).

      Looks like with Musk, Cuban linked to a 2013 article where he said he would draft Brittney Griner IF she was the best available player. Very brave of him.

      • Fatty Bolger

        Why does she have to be the best available? According to Cuban, she only has to be be qualified for the job. Is he saying Griner isn’t qualified to play basketball?

      • Certified Public Asshat

        He didn’t even sign her when she went undrafted.

      • Zwak says the real is not governable, but self-governing.

        You know he would just hire her for her sammich making and catering skills. “Griner brings the grinder!”
        2

      • Zwak says the real is not governable, but self-governing.

        You know he would just hire her for her sammich making and catering skills. “Griner brings the grinder!”

    • Pope Jimbo

      Sort of like when DEFUND THE POLICE changed meaning?

      No, we didn’t mean slash the police budget. We meant the police should be working differently.

  4. SDF-7

    How long before the whole place is burned to the ground?

    I know it isn’t very libertarian of me — but my patience for all these “protestors” and people trying to block property owners (or just people going about their lives) from using their property / doing what they need to do is pretty much exhausted. I’m not saying go full Kent State on them, but mass arrests or some vigilante beat-the-crap out of the idiots has been due for some time so the lunatics know they can’t make the rest of the world their asylum.

    Or maybe I’m just pissy these days… who’s to say. Being powerless, I can vent my spleen without effect, after all.

    • Nephilium

      I’m not saying go full Kent State on them

      You mean only shoot four of them?

      • SDF-7

        I was thinking “Start shooting until they disperse”, not hard quotas honestly.

    • Atanarjuat

      I find it pretty funny that homeless people are protesting the building of more housing.

      • UnCivilServant

        “This roof is going to spoil my view of the sky!”

      • Trigger Hippie

        Just goes to show that many, many homeless people prefer being homeless and a lot of that housing will either go unused or simply overran by squatters and turned into a flophouse that will rapidly deteriorate into a mess of busted windows, broken walls, and ripped up floors with a healthy layer of trash and piss to coat the whole thing.

      • Tonio

        I think you’re confusing a flophouse with a squat. A flophouse is a very low-end rooming house, often with the owner in residence; those owners don’t put up with property destruction. A squat is when a bunch of bums move in to an abandoned property and live there, often destroying it.

      • Trigger Hippie

        I know what a flophouse is. Hell, I’ve lived in one before.

        But yes, poor choice of wording on my part.

      • Not Adahn

        There was a greybeard activist saying that the housing should be built somewhere else because “there’s only one People’s Park!”

  5. SDF-7

    The writer of this piece is economically illiterate. And that’s putting it mildly.

    The snarky part of me thinks “Put up a Constitutional amendment then, assholes — because you have to have one”. The pragmatic part of me thinks of the insanity evident in the sub-30 crowd with “gender fluidity” and “anti-colonizers” and realizes that they probably aren’t far away from being able to push one through demographically. Hellfire and damnation, to quote ole Thomas Covenant.

    • sloopyinca

      I don’t even think they represent a majority of people under 30. They’re just the loudest faction of that age group, amplified by progressive politicians to gain their own power.

      • SDF-7

        Maybe — but it sure looks like the indoctrination over the last 10+ years in the education system has worked and worked well. And 2022 makes me think there are a lot of people willing to vote for things that are against prior common sense (tank the economy… huge inflation… soaring gas prices… who cares!) and that they damned well vote. And there’s no sign that they lost the lunacy when they go out and get real jobs like college kids used to — they just push to try to make the real world into college campuses and make the rest of us suffer.

        I will certainly not complain if the pendulum starts swinging back — because if it doesn’t, I don’t think we’ll last long as a country / society / civilization… but it sure never seems to be.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        I will certainly not complain if the pendulum starts swinging back — because if it doesn’t, I don’t think we’ll last long as a country / society / civilization… but it sure never seems to be.

        You and me both, but I think pendulum theory is one of those theories derived from the shared worldview of the 20th century. Pendulum theory implies there’s some force pulling back towards the center. I see no evidence of such a force existing anymore. There is no shared worldview. There is no compromise position between sanity and insanity.

      • Ownbestenemy

        There is no shared worldview.

        Yep.

  6. Rat on a train

    the very richest households live lavishly off capital gains
    I have a solution. Eliminate corporate taxes and then tax capital gains as income.

    • SDF-7

      I’d prefer the solution of “Stop thinking the government owns all the wealth and people only keep what you feel like letting them keep” combined with “Fuck you, cut spending” — but that’s not surprising in these parts.

      • Lachowsky

        seconded

      • Rat on a train

        Out in derpland, anyone bringing up the debt is bombarded with “REPEAL THE REPUGLICAN TAX CUTS!!!”. Pointing out spending was jacked up 50% in one year gets “YOU WANT TO BALANCE THE BUDGET ON THE BACKS OF THE POOR!!!”

      • Atanarjuat

        Only the truly insane can look at the numbers and think the situation can be fixed neatly. Even in the article, the central point is that there is $8.5T being held by the wealthy. Well, the entire amount barely makes a dent in the $34T deficit, which is constantly growing. Solution: some goofy tweak to tax rates! Then we can all stop thinking about it, because the situation is totally sustainable.

      • SDF-7

        When people aren’t willing to even entertain returning to pre-COVID budgets, I know they’re not even vaguely serious. I remain completely unconvinced that any of that spending that was “emergency” and they’ve now baked in is vital, essential or probably even wise — 2019 was bloated enough, but getting back to those spending levels with the revenue growth at least gets us to killing the deficit (I think — I haven’t dug up the recent numbers). And yeah — the debt and the interest is growing – but the only way to handle that is to get the budget back in the black and start shrinking it instead of borrowing more all the time.

        And at this point, I’m pretty sure it will simply never happen. There’s no political will in DC, they’re happily driving us off the cliff (because they’ve got theirs or something).

      • Rat on a train

        I have rough numbers. If spending for FY20-FY22 increased at average percentage for the previous 20 years, the deficit would have been $4.9T less.

    • UnCivilServant

      I have a better solution – eliminate income taxes.

    • sloopyinca

      It’s funny that these complainers look at the productive class and demand they have their wealth taken.
      Meanwhile, the people who could pass that legislation, most of which have never produced anything of value in their life, perform well above the market with their investment portfolios through insider trading and get rich off the backs of the taxpayers.

      • SDF-7

        And then we wonder why they consider us chumps. Sociopaths with no sense of morals or ethics are going to be drawn to the jobs, after all.

      • juris imprudent

        Well, a considerable portion of our electorate is that stupid. Enough to keep the grifters in office.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Stupid AND morally compromised.

        I forget who said it and what the exact quote was, but the principle stuck with me.

        A scam starts with the victim being offered an unearned gain. It’s the greed of the victim that puts their foot in the snare.

      • Nephilium

        One of the first rules of the con. Once you get past short changing and the like, every con that I’m aware of requires the victim to make a jump out of greed/personal interest.

  7. Lachowsky

    Unrealized gains are by definition gains that you haven’t made yet. They may become unrealized losses in the near future. If the state wants to start taxing unrealized gains, there will be no such thing as investment anymore and that won’t end well.

    • UnCivilServant

      “But their numbers go up!”

      /commie

    • Ownbestenemy

      That whole article is battlespace prep for FedGov to claim they can balance the budget I would wager if they could just tap into it.

      • Lachowsky

        The feds really really want your 401k. I have seen a number of articles over the past few years hinting around about all that wealth that could be used to do this that or the other thing.

      • juris imprudent

        And that is when the ballot box is given up and the ammo box opened up.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Ever since the student loan playoffs went through (the first time), I’ve de-emphasized 401k investment for this exact purpose. In my retirement, 401k is not going to be what it is now. I don’t know how exactly they’re going to change it, but I do know they will extract substantial value.

      • Mojeaux

        We’ve kept our 401(k) leveraged for years (as much as possible) over this possibility. Started when the Cypriots’ bank accounts were seized.

    • SDF-7

      And since just like the income tax — there’s zero chance it will be limited to “Just the top 1 percent of wealth!” or whatever happy horseshit they trot out, just imagine the pure fucking hell it will inflict on anyone who owns stock. Getting the paperwork right for selling vesting options or grants now can be a pain — imagine having to do it for every fucking point of interest you earn on savings, every potential stock you own, every property that gains in market value (that one really should kill it — state/country property tax is bad enough… this opens the door to an arbitrary federal property tax based heavily on market flux — which is a really good way to push us towards “owning nothing” because that can easily tax people out of their homes because of “hot markets” when they have no intention of selling.

      • juris imprudent

        In fact, the top 1% will have mechanisms built in to protect them, and maybe even the top 5%. Below that – game on.

    • DrOtto

      See my rant within the last day or two in regard to Kodak and taking a big hit on a stock loss and having to spread out the loss in my taxes over several years vs. if it was a gain, it’s all due same year. The idea of taxing unrealized gains is insanity.

  8. Rebel Scum

    In a stunning and unexpected move to stop Texas Gov. Greg Abbott from shipping busloads of asylum seekers to New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has filed a lawsuit against 17 charter bus companies used by the Lone Star State.

    I though NYC was a sanctuary city. Amusing as this may be, sending illegals to the blue areas that claimed to want them, I am against the practice of bringing them further into the country. They should be turned away at the border or deported immediately if they get through.

    • juris imprudent

      The downside is that increases the population the census will count in those blue districts.

      • Rebel Scum

        I don’t see how illegal aliens could or should count in the census.

      • Not Adahn

        Because it doesn’t specify “citizen” in the census text.

      • rhywun

        SCOTUS could easily read a penumbra that says it does – they do that all the time on other issues.

      • Rebel Scum

        Seems like common sense since only citizens can vote.

      • juris imprudent

        Common sense would be to count them as 3/5ths of a person.

      • Urthona

        They are receiving a tiny amount of illegal immigrants.

        Probably would benefit red states to count them in the census.

  9. rhywun

    The university has sought to build student housing on People’s Park for years. In addition to student housing, the People’s Park housing complex is slated to provide up to 125 apartments offering supportive housing with onsite services for unhoused and low-income residents

    Where do I sign up? Because who doesn’t pay thousands of dollars on room and board at college in order to be housed next to junkies?

    • SDF-7

      I can’t be arsed to go searching for it — but I’m pretty sure one of the myriad CA state laws is that any housing development has to set aside units for unhoused / low-income residents, so “Everyone in California these days” is probably your answer there.

      I expect the next push to be for brutalist architecture — they’re already trying to override local zoning to force multi-story “apartments” where they currently aren’t allowed, dictated solely by Sacramento.

  10. Rebel Scum

    Musk responded with a pointed question about the makeup of the Mavericks’ roster.

    “Cool, so when should we expect to see a short white/Asian women on the Mavs?”

    Swish.

  11. R C Dean

    “The transfer portal is still going crazy”

    I can’t figure out why the NCAA would open the transfer portal while there are still games to play. Doing so pretty much wrecks the bowl games and championship series, which you would think would be their most lucrative games. Why adopt a system that takes your best players off the field for the biggest games?

    The timing just baffles me. If you just hafta do a transfer portal, why not wait a couple of weeks to open it?

    I’m not a big fan of allowing transfers between schools the way they do, anyway, as it just further dilutes the college football experience/brand. I’m also not a big fan of all the fifth, sixth, and seventh year “seniors” I’m suddenly seeing, either, for the same reason.

    • sloopyinca

      They do it now because the overwhelming majority of schools start their spring semester in the next week or two. It’s so the players can transfer and enroll on time.
      Because the NCAA cares about education first and foremost, lol.

    • Lachowsky

      with NIL and unrestricted transfers, The amateurism of College football is dead. May as well let the NFL absorb it as a G league, since that is basically what it has become.

    • Nephilium

      Right here with you on this. I’m not even a fan of college football, and see the damage that allowing transfers part way through the season. Hell, even the NFL does their trade deadline about halfway through the season.

    • UnCivilServant

      You haven’t graduated in five years? No more sportsball for you.

      I would say four, but there were real and serious five year STEM degrees when I was at college, and am willing to give some benefit of the doubt.

      • sloopyinca

        There’s guys in the portal that will be seventh year “seniors” next year: Four playing years, a redshirt year, a medical redshirt year, and the bonus covid year they gave everybody.

        They should be wrapping up their masters at that point, but some of the ones I’ve seen aren’t even grad students yet.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        It makes me more fully respect the guys who are 5th year seniors getting ready to wrap up their master’s in some actually useful program. You hear about them from time to time, and it warms my cold, dead heart.

    • Drake

      Yes. Everything that made college football a more pleasant experience is gone. It’s now the same mercenary commercialism as the NFL, just on Saturday.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        ^^

        FCS and D2 is where it’s at if you’re a “for the love of the game” type like me. I got to watch the D2 champs play this year and it was quite enjoyable.

      • rhywun

        A local school won Division 3 which I only know cause the coach and the QB have appeared in a car dealership’s commercials.

  12. Rebel Scum

    The agency reported that “a few hours after the implementation of the operation, the Zionist regime ordered the ISIS caliphate to accept the responsibility for this action.”

    Yeah, sure…

  13. Rebel Scum

    How soviet.

    During my police career, I usually appreciated citizen help. “Usually,” because sometimes people use the police to settle personal scores. In these chaotic times, it appears they’re using the police to settle political scores as well, as PBS revealed in a broadcast transcribed as “How citizen investigators are helping the FBI track down Jan. 6 rioters.”

    • Ownbestenemy

      I have linked that site, they fancy themselves as Nazi Hunters really. It has gotten little to no mentions in news except right after Jan 6 and but it borderlines on stalking in my opinion.

    • Atanarjuat

      Sandy, Citizen Investigator: In the beginning, it was intense. I would drop my children off at school, I would come home, and I would be on it almost like a workday. And then once the kids were in bed, I was up until 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, and then waking up a couple hours later. It takes its toll, definitely.

      Hilarious waste of time. The Federal Air Marshal Service has already been taken off protecting flights from hijackers and reassigned to surveilling every person who flew into Washington DC in January 2021. It’s called Operation Quiet Skies. This dumbass is wasting their life duplicating work the Feds already did.

      • Lachowsky

        What a sad, sad, woman.

      • R C Dean

        I was thinking more vicious and spiteful.

      • Brawndo

        Por que no los dos?

  14. SDF-7

    Been long enough — two links I thought folks round these parts might enjoy:

    Anti-Semite Karen of the Week

    And — even as an amateur military history buff — this makes me realize what a watered down understanding of the Revolution I actually have. Nice write up.

    • Atanarjuat

      Neat, will leave as an open browser tab to read at some unspecified future point.

    • juris imprudent

      I can see him coming off George III a lot better than George Washington.

      Maybe he can derail his campaign before it even gets rolling?

    • Atanarjuat

      Am I a tard? The Vietnamese connection went straight over my head.

      • PieInTheSky

        I assume Buu Nygren sounds like a common vietnamese name Nguyen

      • Not Adahn

        Buu is also a VN name.

      • PieInTheSky

        as a term of endearment for thicc viet chicks?

      • Not Adahn

        …I don’t actually know if VN names are gendered. Ask 4×20. But it was the name of my male coworker.

      • Fourscore

        Buu Thi would indicate feminine

        Buu Van would be the masculine.

        Of course with all the various punctuation/diacritical changes Thi and Van may not be there

        Mrs F was Mai Thi ——given name before she was married. Her given name in English is White Swallow,

      • PieInTheSky

        White Swallow, – must resist obvious jokes

        thanks for the info

      • Fourscore

        Her sisters’ names are White Orchid and White Dove. Of course the family just used Orchid, etc

    • juris imprudent

      Human sacrifice to appease the Sun God!!!

  15. Rebel Scum

    CWAA.

    Nearly three months ago, a Charlotte County, Florida judge told Lisa Marok that if she didn’t renounce her Second Amendment rights, give up her Florida Concealed Weapon or Firearm License and remove every single firearm and every single round of ammunition from her home, her husband would be sent to a state prison for 19 months. If she complied and relinquished her civil rights and her firearms, her husband would walk out of the courtroom a free man.

    “You have a choice,” Circuit Judge Shannon H. McFee told her. “Your husband or your guns.”

    Critics — and there were more than a few — described Judge McFee’s decision as illegal, unconstitutional and possibly even criminal.

    • Not Adahn

      Is the jury box the second or third?

      • Nephilium

        Third from memory (soap, ballot, jury, ammo).

    • Atanarjuat

      The husband randomly shot into their neighbor’s home and car because he was so out of his mind on drugs he thought he was in a scuffle with imaginary attackers. If anyone needs to be given the choice between jail or having no firearms around him, it’s that asshole. I suppose if she could prove they were locked in a way that the husband couldn’t access that would be acceptable. Also not releasing them to the son who is out of state is excessive.

      • UnCivilServant

        It is reasonable to ask that the firearms be moved out of the house.

        It is unconscionable that the government ever be the one to hold them.

        That judge should not be permitted in a courtroom save as a defendant.

      • R C Dean

        Requiring no firearms in the house is collective punishment of his family as well as him. Hard pass from me.

      • UnCivilServant

        “ask” as opposed to “order”

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        I hate the plea bargaining from the bench. That should be illegal. If it has made it to the sentencing phase, hand down a sentence and be done with it. None of this door 1, door 2 bullshit.

      • R C Dean

        Well, just about everything a court does can be framed as “we’re asking you to do this, and if you don’t we’ll punish you.” This goes further by “asking” a non party family member and threatening to punish their relative/spouse if they don’t. That’s some real Soviet/ChiCom shit.

      • UnCivilServant

        That would be disingenuous framing. A real ask has no implied stick. Once there’s a stick, it becomes an order.

      • sloopyinca

        There should be no either/or. The dude did the crime, he should do the time.

        There should be way fewer laws. But the ones on the books should be punished to the point people think twice before violating them.

    • juris imprudent

      She should’ve let him do his time. Maybe that would sober him up.

    • juris imprudent

      Governor Ron DeSantis appointed Shannon McFee to the Circuit Court of the Twentieth Judicial Circuit on December 19, 2019. Judge McFee took the Bench on February 3, 2020.

      From the court website.

  16. Rebel Scum

    (((They))) want more thoughtcrime laws.

    Among the measures that Georgia’s General Assembly will take up in the 2024 legislative session is a bill that will make antisemitism a hate crime. Similar legislation last year passed the House but died in the Senate. In 2023, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “lawmakers couldn’t agree on how to define antisemitism and what kinds of criticisms of Israel are unacceptable.”

    Opponents of the 2023 legislation held it up because they believed that it would limit criticism of Israel. At the time, Murtaza Khwaja of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said, “What this bill does is conflate antisemitism with critiques of the state of Israel.” At the same time, a handful of Republicans had reservations about the bill because they believed it could suppress free speech on college campuses.

    But in 2024, there’s an added urgency to making antisemitism a hate crime. The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel is an obvious catalyst, but long before that heinous act of terror, individuals left hateful antisemitic flyers in neighborhoods throughout suburban Atlanta. While the Peach State didn’t see widespread antisemitic activity after the Hamas attack, Emory University fired a professor for pro-Hamas rhetoric.

    “The legislation would add antisemitism to the state’s existing hate crimes law that allows harsher criminal penalties against those who target victims on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, sex, national origin, religion, or physical or mental disability,” the AJC points out. “The measure could also apply to discrimination cases in colleges and government agencies.”

    None of those other things should warrant extra punishment for speech/thought either.

    • R C Dean

      How is it not already covered in the existing hate crime statute? Those things usually list race, religion, national origin, sex, etc. Does the one in FL currently say “but not those Jews”?

  17. SDF-7

    Not my best day.

    I played https://squaredle.com/xp 01/05:
    *23/23 words
    🎯 In the top 9% by accuracy

    I played https://squaredle.com 01/05:
    56/56 words (+7 bonus words)
    🎯 In the top 9% by accuracy
    🔥 Solve streak: 171

  18. sloopyinca

    I’m shocked Pistorius is getting out after only 9 years. He didn’t have a leg to stand on in that trial.

    • Nephilium

      Had to sprint back here to make that joke?

      • sloopyinca

        I had to do something before Swissy put his foot down and said no puns allowed.

    • The Other Kevin

      Watch out or they’ll start disabling comments on the links.

    • Not Adahn

      He got off lightly because he was a Brade Runnah. Otherwise he’d be little people.

  19. Common Tater

    “Vanessa Joy of was one of four transgender candidates running for state office in Ohio, largely in response to proposed restrictions of the rights of LGBTQ+ people.”

    Four?

    • Common Tater

      “But as Joy found out Tuesday, a little-known 1990s state law says that a candidate must provide any name changes within the last five years to qualify for the ballot.

      Since the law is not currently listed on the candidate requirement guidelines on the Ohio Secretary of State’s website, Joy didn’t know it existed.”

      Clearly, there were mistakes on both sides.

      • Atanarjuat

        I wonder how long ago Nimrata changed her name.

      • R C Dean

        I think you mean his name.

    • Nephilium

      Yes. There are four, all newcomers to politics, all in deep Republican areas, and all of them “were inspired to run due to HB 68“.

      DeWine vetoes HB 68, and the legislature is preparing to override his veto.

  20. Sensei

    I’ll bet good money that the Tesla driver camped in the left lane had the “autopilot” set and could give a shit that that they were blocking traffic. Doesn’t excuse the Honda driver, however. I’m amazed nobody was hit on the other side of the highway.

    When egos collide

    • sloopyinca

      Do those cars with autopilot go with the flow of traffic or do they peg it at the speed limit and hold everybody up? I’ve never been in one or known somebody who drove one, so I have no idea how that works.

      • Sensei

        In typical Tesla fashion there are multiple marketing buzzwords.

        Autopilot is just self adjusting cruise control with lane keeping. Many new cars have exactly the same system. You can set it to any speed up to 90 MPH. Naturally if somebody is in front of you it will follow at that person’s speed plus your set following distance.

        What Tesla has the most others don’t is “Full Self Driving”. That is where the vehicle drives itself and changes lanes automatically. It not especially fast in changing lanes, but it actually WON’T camp in the left lane. It eventually gets over.

      • sloopyinca

        Ah, ok. I thought autopilot was self-driving mode.

      • Sensei

        You can also set the full autopilot speed to at least 15 MPH over the speed limit. I don’t have it so I don’t know the exact number.

        However, an issue with it is that if it reads some random sign like a 45 MPH exit sign but misinterprets it as the highway speed it will slow down to 45 MPH. FSD is remains completely half baked. Tesla charges you like $12k for the privilege of being an alpha tester.

      • Sensei

        I meant Full Self Driving – not full autopilot.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        I have a tangentially related issue with the adaptive cruise in my Chrysler minivan. It detects when brake lights are on and give additional cushion to the vehicle in front. That’s all well and good when the vehicle is stopping in the lane. It’s annoying when they’re slowing down to move over into a turn lane. It is very slow to detect that the vehicle is not in my lane anymore, often resulting in the panic brake system engaging.

        Aside from that particular quirk, im actually quite happy with the system.

      • Atanarjuat

        Yeah, I have a 2014 Mazda, which I bought used and discovered that feature when my car jarringly panic-braked me because of something that was happening 2 lanes over, but the road curved gently to the left, so they were sort of in front of me.

      • robc

        I have an issue with adaptive cruise. It has forced me to change the way I drive.

        With normal cruise control, I would set my speed, drive in the middle lane, and if I was closing on the car in front of me (due to them driving slower), I would change to the left lane, pass, and get back over.

        With adaptive cruise control, I dont close on the car in front of me. So unless it is a drastic speed difference, I dont notice immediately that I am driving slower than my cruise setting.

        Not a fan.

      • UnCivilServant

        My one run-in with adaptive cruise control was on a rental. Its distance to begin slowing down was further than my “do I want to pass” decision point. As I’m contemplating, I’d feel the car start losing speed. This was even worse on those instances when I had a slow car in the left lane in addition to the one in front of me, and if it hadn’t cut me off, I’d have been able to safely shift over in front of the slow left lane vehicle before it got too close to the slower right lane vehicle. Instead, I found myself waiting out the sloooow passing of the other cars.

        It did not endear me to the concept.

      • Ownbestenemy

        I have way too many control issues to even use cruise control while driving.

      • kinnath

        I had a rental with adaptive cruise control. I turned it off immediately.

        While I dislike the performance of adaptive cruise control, the real issue was to not become used to it, because none of my vehicles have it, and I didn’t want to unlearn any bad habits from relying on automation.

      • UnCivilServant

        We turned off the adaptive cruise control on the rental when we remembered to. The problem was there was no way to set the car to “default off” and had to disable it every darn time we started the engine. We forgot sometimes. It was a road trip, and we were more focused on the vacation than the foibles of technology.

      • Sean

        I have adaptive cruise on both vehicles. It’s OK and has some legitimate uses on longer, boring drives. But I rarely use it.

        I read on another forum someone complaining they used it A LOT and had super premature wear on the rear brakes because their system used the rears to slow down with the cruise control. YMMV.

      • Sensei

        In metro NYC non adaptive cruise control is useless.

      • UnCivilServant

        Why would you use cruise control in an urban area? Conditions change too often.

      • Sensei

        Adaptive cruise works in light to moderate.

        It also works in stop and go traffic, but I don’t trust it. Sadly many others do.

    • PieInTheSky

      I dislike people doing the testla thing but would not have gotten in that accident if I was driving the honda

    • juris imprudent

      The car sped up to deny the Honda. It shouldn’t result in an accident, but the driver deserved it.

  21. Common Tater

    Any reason the sidebar is still there?

    • SDF-7

      Sloopy wants to get a ruling without biasing the jury?

  22. Common Tater

    “A Louisiana teacher allegedly sent a 15-year-old boy nude photos, inappropriately touched him in her car with her young child present, and told the teen she was worried she wouldn’t be the one to take his virginity, according to authorities.

    Tatum Hatch, 32, was arrested Wednesday after she and the teen exchanged indecent messages for about a year and a half in which she suggested he come through her bedroom window to have sex with her, court documents allege.

    About a year ago, the pair met up near the victim’s home, where Hatch allegedly touched the boy’s genitals while her infant was in the car, court docs said, KTVE reported.”

    https://nypost.com/2024/01/04/news/ex-teacher-tatum-hatch-allegedly-sent-sexual-messages-to-louisiana-teen/

    Classy.

      • SDF-7

        Ha! That was great — hadn’t heard it before, thanks!

      • Ownbestenemy

        Seconded. That was great.

    • PieInTheSky

      High schools should at least implement the “if you did not get laid until grade 11 a hot teacher will bang you” if this keeps happening.

    • Not Adahn

      A mouth like that and she only gave him a handy?

    • SDF-7

      Hatch left her job at West Monroe High School on Dec. 26 after she was placed on administrative lead on Dec. 15,

      I see the Post can’t afford editors. Maybe they’re hoping AI can finally have a spell/grammar check that works as well as your average Bachelor of Arts.

      • sloopyinca

        You’ll still get nonsensical typos here when I do the links. I promise you that.

  23. Rebel Scum

    What a hack.

    TAPPER: I know that the position of the Biden White House, which he used to belong to, is that, boy, they’ve done more on the conservative side of things than any Democratic president in recent history, keeping the COVID era rules in for as long as they could, in their view. You know, tightening up asylum laws to the point that they’re being sued, and this is, you know, with a — with a very important Latino base.

    “If I’m elected, surge the border.” – J. Biden

  24. Sean

    I played https://squaredle.com 01/05:
    *56/56 words (+19 bonus words)
    📖 In the top 8% by bonus words
    🔥 Solve streak: 103

    I played https://squaredle.com/xp 01/05:
    *23/23 words (+6 bonus words)
    📖 In the top 4% by bonus words

  25. Common Tater

    “”During the interview she said that there are just two biological sexes: male and female – though she made a concerted effort to say that sex is a category separate from gender and that all gender identities should be treated with respect.

    ‘We can treat people with respect and respect their gender identities and use their preferred pronouns, so understanding the facts about biology doesn’t prevent us from treating people with respect,’ she said.

    Her words caught her in the crosshairs of director of her department’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force.

    ‘This dangerous language perpetuates a system of discrimination against non-cis people,’ wrote the director, Laura Simone Lewis.

    ‘It directly opposes our Task Force work that aims to create a safe space for scholars of ALL gender identities and races.'”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12928109/Harvard-UPenn-Claudine-Gay-anti-Semitism-nonbinary-gender.html

    Laura Simone Lewis looks exactly like the asshole she is.

    • rhywun

      *attempts several comments, erases them*

    • Rebel Scum

      gender identities

      Tedious nonsense that I am not playing along with.

      the facts about biology doesn’t prevent us from treating people with respect

      There is no chance I am adhering to gender bending pronoun nonsense. You appear male, you get he/him. You appear female, you get she/her. The end.

      • juris imprudent

        The real issue isn’t treating the person with respect – since you don’t use pronouns in first person conversation. It is about abetting their personal insanity with other people.

      • Common Tater

        It’s also about knowing whom you are referring — the basic function of pronouns. “You appear male, you get he/him. You appear female, you get she/her” makes sense.

      • UnCivilServant

        I only debate what pronouns to use when in email and I run across a name that makes me go “What the *bleep* language is that?”

  26. PieInTheSky

    Measuring “Wokery”

    https://iea.org.uk/measuring-wokery/

    People on the woke, progressive side of the Culture War are not simply trying to convince us that their side is right, and that we should join them. Rather, they are trying to deny their own existence. As the writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsch puts it in the Guardian:

    “[T]he “anti-woke” […] define themselves in opposition to an identity that doesn’t actually exist. They are anti-woke, even though there is no “woke”. […] [T]he person using the word is likely to be a rightwing culture warrior angry at a phenomenon that lives mainly in their imagination.”

    According to people on Hirsch’s side of the argument, “the Culture War” is being artificially and needlessly stoked by a financial elite, in order to distract people from the country’s economic problems (or, in the more overtly Marxist version, to divide the proletariat, in order to stave off a socialist revolution). Making people angry at an imaginary “woke elite” that is supposedly attacking their history, their values, and their lifestyles, is, in this view, a well-orchestrated diversion tactic.

    The problem with phenomena like “wokery” or the “Culture War” is that they are necessarily somewhat nebulous, and difficult to define precisely, let alone measure. Nonetheless, some aspects of it lend themselves to proxy measurements. And these suggest that “wokery”, far from being a made-up moral panic over nothing, is a very real phenomenon.

    • PieInTheSky

      To Be Fair ““the Culture War” is being artificially and needlessly stoked by a financial elite, in order to distract people from the country’s economic problems” – this is not completely wrong

      • rhywun

        Meh. Wokery is the direct cause of many of our economic problems. We need to be paying more attention to the culture war, not less.

      • PieInTheSky

        I am not saying we should not pay attention, but it is clearly amplified for various interests. The transgender thing went from almost none3xistent to ubiquitous in a awfully short time

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Agenda setting is one of the primary tools wielded by the regime media. That said, the tranny thing has been ramping up since the 90s. Mostly as a hanger-on as gay relationships, gay marriage, and pride were sequentially normalized, and now as the headliner. This wasn’t a “from nothing to something” story. This was 30+ years in the making.

      • PieInTheSky

        I do not remember being aware of it before 2010

      • Ownbestenemy

        It was there, but as a deep sub-culture to the gay scene.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        To OBE’s point, it was really when the pride stuff got govt and corporate force behind it that the T part of LGBT gained promenance, but the T had been there for a long time. .

      • PieInTheSky

        I did say almost nonexistent and I should have clarified I meant in the mainstream not deep subcultures

      • Common Tater

        The gay orgs wanted to keep the money and power going after they achieved their goals, so they moved on to trans stuff.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        To emphasize the point, Musk’s 80% reduction at Twitter shows how much dead weight is being carried around by many large companies. That dead weight is potentially productive labor being burned off in a way that impedes productivity, if anything. It’s a double whammy of removing productive labor from the market and undoing productive labor within the company via buraucracy.

      • juris imprudent

        You assume that the parasites can ever transform into a productive purpose. They’ll just seek out different hosts.

      • B.P.

        Dave Smith goes into this idea in one of his podcast episodes….

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WexqPLTNHa8

        He notes that mapping the use of certain terms in the major, influential media outlets shows an impossibly large spike in certain woke terminology showing up in 2012

      • Not Adahn

        Written by a no-kidding commie moral nihilist.

      • Common Tater

        Is he a moral nihilist? Never got that from his writing.

      • juris imprudent

        You can pull over on the highway to hell, but it doesn’t mean you’ve changed direction.

      • Not Adahn

        Yeah. His entire justification for communism is that people have no agency and therefore there is no such thing as right/wrong deserving/unworthy. Therefore everybody should have the same material comfort.

      • creech

        Sounds like many mainstream religionists. Accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior on your deathbed and you’ll go to Heaven no matter how much of a scumbag criminal you were all your life. Next time I get a chance, I might ask one of those pastors if Hitler would have gone straight to Heaven if he accepted Jesus just before he pulled the trigger.

      • UnCivilServant

        Well, there’s a problem with his case – by committing a mortal sin as the final act of his life, he would have undone any repentance from immediately before that.

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      Good on him for not getting flustered, but what a pathetic excuse for “journalisming”

      • Ownbestenemy

        Others have said it on other news sites, he would probably do good as Press Secretary and it would be glorious.

    • The Other Kevin

      He did this 2 or 3 times this week. You can see he’s well informed and thinking on his feet, while the interviewer just recites pages out of their catechism. This is really entertaining.

      • Ownbestenemy

        These are believable. Not that his townhall moments on the campaign trail aren’t, its just they fit perfectly and he wins them all the time. A rabid trans will not sit and think “You know, he’s right, I will listen to him” as some of his videos have shown.

        This is straight into the mouth of the lion to pluck a lamb from it’s teeth kinda stuff.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Looking at him purely as a politician, that is seriously impressive. He’s getting a lot better and losing the “slickness” that I think was off-putting for a lot of people.

  27. The Late P Brooks

    I guess the world would be a better place if everyone lived paycheck to paycheck. Accumulating wealth is evil.

    • Not Adahn

      I guess the world would be a better place if everyone lived paycheck to paycheck. welfare check to welfare check.

      • juris imprudent

        …to each according to their needsdictates of the party.

  28. Ownbestenemy

    I might listen to a replay of this

    On the coming anniversary of January 6 (Saturday), ZeroHedge will present the second debate in our inaugural series aimed at bringing long-form dialogues back into the ideologically-siloed and echo-chambered media landscape.

    We will host an in-depth discussion on the various aspects of that fateful day in 2021, allowing people with all perspectives a chance to present evidence and make their argument.

    Our panel will include such media luminaries as Alex Jones, Darren Beattie, Glenn Greenwald on one side, and Ed and Brian Krassenstein, as well as YouTuber “Destiny” on the other.

    Not sure about the Alex Jones angle, but I am sure Greenwald could hold the floor against the Krassensteins and whoever “Destiny” is.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      Destiny is that leftie who bragged about letting his wife bang other guys because he is an enlightened man.

      She is divorcing him.

      • Rebel Scum

        No one likes a cuck.

      • PieInTheSky

        She is divorcing him. – and asking him for money it seems

      • Common Tater

        I saw the YouTubes with Destiny with Blaire White, and he seemed reasonable.

    • Rebel Scum

      AJ was there telling people not to enter the building.

    • Not Adahn

      I knew a stripper named Destiny.

      3 7 8A whole lot of them actually.

      • UnCivilServant

        Sounds like they were destined for the role.

      • Not Adahn

        That link ends in “jklol”

      • Rebel Scum

        I had a date with Destiny once. But that may have just been her stage name.

  29. The Other Kevin

    While things can get depressing lately, I do enjoy Elon and Vivek out there saying things nobody else will, and making people’s heads blow up.

  30. The Late P Brooks

    “Wokeness” is simple common sense and moral clarity. If you’re against that, you’re wrong, and a bad person.

  31. PieInTheSky

    “Teens arrested after man attacked for his Canada Goose jacket

    “Transport for London’s security chief warns of a surge in thefts of expensive coats”

    https://twitter.com/TonyDowson5/status/1742855458950377850

    is this why people hate Canada geese, because they are expensive?

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      We’re a bit sad in the trashcan this week. We promised each of the kids a cat, and after a tragedy in the fall that involved having to bury the 3 year old’s cat, we have now lost the 3 year old’s new cat.

      We were heading over to church on Wednesday night, and we set the cat out in the garage with a bowl of food since it was going to get cold and we didn’t want her freezing outside. Best we can tell, the cat got scared as the car pulled out and, instead of running to one of her hiding spots in the garage, she either ran out of the garage and was eventually gotten by a wild animal or she ran to a hiding spot under the car. This is now the second cat (including the aforementioned buried cat) we’ve lost due to what we expect is car related trauma and/or displacement.

      I’ve had cats kept in the garage for 30 years and never had an issue with them getting into the undercarriage of cars, but this appears to be 2 in 3 months. 😢

      • Ownbestenemy

        Damn trashy that sucks.

    • UnCivilServant

      That electoral map is incorrectly showing the Falklands as part of Argentina.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    Headline numbers look great

    The U.S. labor market closed out 2023 in strong shape as the pace of hiring was even more powerful than expected, the Labor Department reported Friday.

    ——-

    A more encompassing unemployment measure that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons edged higher to 7.1%. That increase in the “real” unemployment rate came as the household survey, used to calculate the unemployment rate, showed a decline in job holders of 683,000.

    The labor force participation rate, or the share of the civilian working-age population either employed or looking for a job, slid to 62.5%, down 0.3 percentage point to its lowest since February and down 676,000 on a monthly basis.

    The report, along with revisions to previous months’ counts, brought 2023 job gains to 2.7 million, or a monthly average of 225,000, down from 4.8 million, or 399,000 a month, in 2022.

    ——-

    The hiring boost came from a gain of 52,000 in government jobs and another 38,000 in health care-related fields such as ambulatory health-care services and hospitals. Leisure and hospitality contributed 40,000 to the total, while social assistance increased by 21,000 and construction added 17,000. Retail trade grew by 17,000 as the industry has been mostly flat since early 2022, the Labor Department said.

    On the downside, transportation and warehousing saw a loss of 23,000.

    Thank goodness for the welfare industrial complex.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Nearly a quarter of the total is government sector jobs…geesh.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Check out my post below. Hiring like crazy in Minnesoda.

        I’m sure everything will turn out well….

  33. Dr. Fronkensteen

    Huggy Bear says the word on the street is that David Soul the actor who played detective Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson passed away at age of 80.

    RIP

    • Sensei

      Driving that Torino in the sky. RIP.

  34. PieInTheSky

    If you like paintings of the ocean then you’ll love Ivan Aivazovsky — he was the most famous seascape artist of the 19th century.

    What made him so good? Aivazovsky realised that the key to painting the sea wasn’t the waves…

    https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1743081556896313595

  35. The Late P Brooks

    December’s jobs report showed employers added 216,000 positions for the month while the unemployment rate held at 3.7%. Payroll growth showed a sizeable gain from November’s downwardly revised 173,000. October also was revised lower, to 105,000 from 150,000, indicating a slightly less robust picture for growth in the fourth quarter.

    Damned revisionists.

    • The Other Kevin

      All the prior months were revised but THIS TIME WE GOT IT.

      • Nephilium

        Curious how the downward adjustment to past reports always seems to happen during Democrat presidencies.

  36. Rebel Scum

    You think this is a free country?

    Looks like Amos Miller’s farm is being raided.

    With all of the problems in society today, this is what the government wants to focus on?

    A man growing food for informed customers, without participating in the industrial meat/milk complex?

    It’s shameful that it’s come to this.

      • Sensei

        +1.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Don’t be the nail that sticks up, you’ll get hammered down. The gov is out of fucking control.

  37. PieInTheSky

    The idea of sustainability, I think, is a terrible mistake. It is a hyper-optimistic view, ironically, of what humans are and what humans can do. The idea is that we can find a way of life which will not be dangerous and will not be threatening, and will not require any further creativity or progress in order to solve it. Now, I take the opposite view to that. I think that problems are inevitable and that any kind of stasis is bound to end in catastrophe. So, the only thing that’s sustainable is actual progress, and what we need to do in regard to global warming, but even more in regard to the things that are coming up that we don’t yet know about, which might be far more dangerous for all we know, is to build up knowledge—scientific knowledge, and also technological knowledge, and also wealth—to be able to deal with unforeseen problems when we discover them and, alas, also to recover from disasters that we fail to foresee.

    https://twitter.com/DeutschExplains/status/1742948880935755875

    • R.J.

      Boy that’s a great paragraph.

    • Urthona

      Nicely said.

  38. The Late P Brooks

    At their December meeting, Fed officials released projections that indicate they could enact three quarter-percentage point interest rate cuts this year.

    Enact?

    ENACT?

    [unintelligible shouting]

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      It’s good to see the fed finally drop the pretense and just move onto artificially fluffing up the economy for short-term political ends.

    • creech

      Cool. Maybe my bank stock can recover to where it was in 2008.

  39. The Late P Brooks

    The idea of sustainability, I think, is a terrible mistake. It is a hyper-optimistic view, ironically, of what humans are and what humans can do.

    It is an inevitable manifestation of leftists’ obsession with stasis.

  40. Drake

    Okay, that is bad ass.

    Chechen soldiers laugh as their trench is machine-gunned and mortared.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      There’s a fine line between badass and crazy I guess.

      • UnCivilServant

        It’s more of a Venn Diagram with the overlap being “Crazy Awesome”

  41. The Late P Brooks

    Performative neutrality

    When Joe Biden talks on Friday about US democracy on the brink, there’s no doubt that it will be a campaign speech. Maybe the most important one of his life.

    But the speech will be more than that. It’s intended as a warning and a red alert, delivered on the anniversary of the violent January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

    The date was chosen for good reason – to make the point that more mayhem and more flagrant disregard for the rule of law and fair elections, are just around the corner if Donald Trump is re-elected.

    Can the political media in America get that reality across? Or will their addiction to “horserace” coverage prevail?

    ——-

    “The choice for voters,” Rodriguez said, “will not simply be between competing philosophies of government. The choice will be about protecting our democracy and every American’s fundamental freedom.”

    That’s where the media gets tripped up. In a constant show of performative neutrality, journalists tend to equalize the unequal, taking coverage down the middle even though that’s not where true fairness lies.

    If only the press would choose to be on the side of all that’s just and good, and get over their fear of a full-throated defense of democracy.

    • creech

      “rule of law and fair elections”
      Yeah, the nerve of those extremist MAGA people taking the leading candidate off the ballot in Colorado and Maine.

    • Rebel Scum

      Maybe the most important one of his life.

      Here’s to hoping he keels over mid-speech.

      The date was chosen for good reason

      To keep trying to make fetch “J6 Insurrection” a thing.

      rule of law and fair elections

      These things no longer exist in the US.

      The choice will be about protecting our democracy and every American’s fundamental freedom.

      I’ll be voting for the mild reform populism that is MAGA to protect any semblance of freedom (among other things).

      • juris imprudent

        Here’s to hoping he keels over mid-speech.

        Thinking of how much fun could be had by hacking the tele-prompter.

    • The Other Kevin

      I love the picture they used. Somehow they found one that makes it look like the capitol is in flames.

  42. Pope Jimbo

    Minnesoda had a $17B surplus. We are now raising corporate taxes because we have a “structural imbalance” (NOT A DEFICIT, just spending more than we are collecting). But how could that happen?

    One of the primary state agencies that oversees Minnesota’s climate and clean energy programs is expanding its staff by nearly two-thirds, fueled by new state and federal funding opportunities.

    The Minnesota Department of Commerce’s Division of Energy Resources, which plays a central role in Minnesota’s clean energy transition, has added 64 positions to its roughly 90 employees at the start of the year. Of those positions, 42 have been filled and 22 are in the hiring process.

    The department oversees programs related to energy conservation, solar for schools and colleges, weatherization, energy assistance and other associated areas.

    The hiring spree is being paid for with new funding from state and federal legislation.

    Some of the new hires are already helping bring in additional federal dollars to the state. Since July, the division has secured over hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding for utilities and communities under the Inflation Reduction Act and other programs.

    “Bringing in hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, requires dedicated staffing,” Gransee said.

    How can we complain about using a one time surplus on hiring new employees – who need to be paid every year – when they are making BILLIONS for us? Sounds like something insurrectionists would say.

    The stat I’d love to see is the ratio of people who believe this green energy bullshit vs the number of people who are in on the racket.

  43. The Late P Brooks

    In an NPR interview, former Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron laid out the facts clearly:

    “He’s the only politician I’ve heard actually talk about suspending the constitution. He’s talked about using the military to suppress entirely legitimate protests using the Insurrection Act. He’s talked about bringing treason charges against the then-outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He’s talked about bringing treason charges against Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC. He’s talked explicitly about weaponizing the government against his political enemies. And, of course, he continues to talk about crushing an independent press.”

    And, as Baron concluded, no editorializing is necessary because “all of those [threats], by nature, by definition, are authoritarian”.

    YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT THESE THINGS.

    It’s unprofessional. You do them on the sly.

    • The Other Kevin

      Never mind what’s actually happening, in this guy’s mind he imagines Trump maybe possibly doing really bad things! Who you gonna believe, your own eyes or his fevered imagination?

  44. The Late P Brooks

    We’re all survivors, now

    In a news conference commemorating the third anniversary of the insurrection, Matthew Graves, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said it was “likely the largest single-day, mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation’s history.”

    “One hundred and forty officers guarding the Capitol that day reported physical injury, but we know from talking to the hundreds of officers guarding the Capitol that day that this 140 number undercounts the number of officers who were physically injured, let alone those who have suffered trauma as a result of the day’s events,” Graves said.

    Too many victims to count. Cops all across the nation were terrorized by the sight of widespread disrespect for government authority.

    • kinnath

      dishonest or delusional?

    • Not Adahn

      I seem to remember a few other clashes involving large amounts of police…

      Admittedly, I doubt any Chicagoan in ’68 would have ever admitted to suffering from “trauma.”