Good morning one and all to another incredible day and to the morning links!
Biden Admin Demands Texas Relinquish Control of Border Following SCOTUS Decision
Biden urged to seize control of Texas National Guard as state defies Supreme Court ruling
Arizona GOP chairman resigns after leaked audio of him offering Lake cash to stay out of Senate race
Democratic AG tries to ban pro-lifers, gun makers from federal court, ’emergency’ appeal says
Over Half of Democrats Support Aborting Babies with Down Syndrome
California homeless people are found living inside caves 20 feet below street level
California county bills man $23K to build house on his property now SCOTUS to decide case
Oregon Finally Rethinks Drug Decriminalization
That’s all I got for today. I’ll leave you with a song and move along with my day.
Biden Admin Demands Texas Relinquish Control of Border Following SCOTUS Decision
Texas should mind their own business and not interfere with the great leader
Weak. Try again, with better trolling.
Weaker. Skip the grade D snippiness.
Weakest. Needs more cat butt.
The Weakend: is a chubby dude who sings pop songs.
Biden Admin Demands Texas Relinquish Control of Border Following SCOTUS Decision
Tell the feds to fuck off.
I believe Abbot has done just that. I haven’t read the SCOTUS decision, but unless it says that, not only can the feds cut the razor wire, but TX isn’t allowed to put up any more, well, that’s a loophole that just begs for malicious compliance. For that matter, unless it says the feds are allowed to confiscate the razor wire, I’d just have teams following behind the feds preventing them from removing it and repairing what they cut.
I’d say the best way to proceed is to use this to press the legislature to put secession on the ballot.
If Biden does nationalize the Texas National Guard it would put all those servicemembers in a bad position wrt mutiny and desertion charges. The Biden administration would love to have another group of people to make examples of, and we have seen their willingness to do so with the J6 people.
Depends on who brings the most guns to the party. Federal agencies by themselves can’t outgun the guard. Would need to use federal troops to try to enforce in the face of resistance by Texas. And that shit really would kick off Civil War 2.0. Would US Army/Marines actually obey orders to fire on Texas Guard?
F-16s!
“Would US Army/Marines actually obey orders to fire on Texas Guard?”
If I had to bet, I’d say yes, they mostly would. The COVID culling would help. Being exposed to punishment for mutiny would help even more.
Would they flee when exposed to return fire?
If I had to place bets, I’d wager the DEI army would be routed by the Texans.
the DEI army
I dunno man. A bunch of dudes with injected estrogen and access to munitions? PMS will have never been so violent!
I don’t think Texans could muster 50%+ votes for secession. They barely fended off that gungrabber O’Rourke.
They could not. 30% in favor would be peak.
Abbott did write a strongly worded letter. I wish I could find the actual content of said letter.
https://nypost.com/2024/01/24/news/greg-abbott-declares-texas-right-to-self-defense-supersedes-any-federal-statutes/
If he writes enough strongly worded letters, maybe Biden will change his mind.
The letter is in the link I posted below.
The letter isn’t for Biden. It’s for everyone else.
Biden urged to seize control of Texas National Guard as state defies Supreme Court ruling
Again, tell the feds to fuck off.
Sounds like a great way to kick off Civil War 2 (Craptastic Boogaloo). So that’s probably what they’ll do. Yay.
Yup:
Looks like things are about to get interesting.
I don’t think he’s at all wrong there. The Constitution is supposed to be a contract between the States — and if it wasn’t for Lincoln I don’t think there’d be any question that if the Fed is flat out refusing to do one of the basic tasks, the States have the right to take matters back into their hands.
My mind was flirting with an emergency Constitutional Convention equivalent if we had enough states pissed off — but that probably just puts us back into 1860 in a lot of ways.
but that probably just puts us back into 1860 in a lot of ways.
That seems to be their goal. I’m not sure what they would be doing differently if they were actually trying to start another civil war.
The could always reenact slavery.
Dems/Proggies want everyone enslaved to the gov’t.
He is wrong: the verb should be “lend”, not “loan”. :-p
Before Lincoln, Calhoun argued – correctly – against the Whig economic program which favored the Northern States at the expense of the Southern ones. That isn’t the job of the federal govt, but they did it anyway. Because Democracy!!!
You know, if Abbott writes enough strongly worded letter, Biden’s trash can may spontaneously ignite from the fury of the words.
What would you like him to do, right now?
He also deployed the national guard and had them build more temporary fencing.
The letter was “screw you, we are not stopping, and here is why”.
Heh. Fell for my trolling.
Well that would be a mostly peaceful protest.
Yay – the reaction of Texas NG soldiers to federal orders could be interesting.
That was my first thought.
The border patrol union has already taken sides. They supported Abbot in this one.
So we know where the rank and file are. The only people on the other side are the political class.
Doesn’t federalization of the National Guard require an act of Congress? I know, pen and phone.
Esienhower Federalized the Arkansas National Guard with just an executive order. So there is precedent.
Texas, like many (all?) states, also has a non-federalized militia, as well.
Is it only support units like the Virginia Defense Force?
Support units can still run barbed wire and repair fences.
I think Schlichter summed up my thoughts on the topic, including the frustration that these idiots keep trotting out these “compromises”. I’d love to see his solution (TL;DR – Congress actually uses its one real power: the purse and cuts funding until the Executive starts enforcing the laws we have, no need for new ones).
My compromise for the border:
1) Three months amnesty for anyone here illegally to leave the country
2) Allow work permits to anyone who wants to work in the country. Work permits only allow the alien to work, there are no federal benefits that can be claimed with it.
3) Create two paths to citizenship, one for those getting a work permit (slower process) and those applying to immigrate (faster process). Note, even the slower process would have to be faster and more streamlined than the current process. Marriages grant permission to enter the country and stay indefinitely, but do not come with citizenship nor work permits (but both can be applied for).
4) If you are found to be here illegally, immediate deportation with a 25 year ban on citizenship, and a 1 year ban on work permits.
I know there’s a lot of fuss (especially in these circles) about documentation to work — but I think you need to have some strict penalties on businesses knowingly hiring illegals without a work permit. Hopefully (2) will cut down on it — but I think there will still be some looking to exploit illegals by threatening them with ICE and all, so they should take a severe hit if caught so they don’t just try, try again.
Otherwise, that’d probably work for me too, yeah.
I agree with punishing the business as well (especially if work permits are broadly granted). Thinking a bit more, perhaps add some minimal restrictions on the work permit (ex: no violent felons).
If you don’t prohibit federal grants to NGOs, which are the main channel for spending federal money on illegals, illegals will continue to get federal benefits.
This was focusing on just the immigration problem. I’m pretty sure we all agree on cutting federal grants.
Sounds like RICO could be used here, but to them that’s just the name of some of the men crossing the border. (I’m not a lawyer)
That’s pretty damn good, right there. On multiple fronts.
My compromise for the border:
1) Citizenship at birth is only gained if the child has one confirmed citizen parent at birth (can be rebutted genetically)
2) Any NGOs, private citizens, or Government Agents who assisted illigal entry of foreign nationals is guilty of treason, ran and file may be commutted to life in prison, but those giving the orders are to recieve death by firing squad.
3) One month for those who are not legally allowed in the country to leave.
4) Illegal entry becomes a death penalty offence under the assumption that they are hostile foreign agents.
5) No visas except tourist visas are to be issued for a period of twenty years so that legal immigrants already in the country can assimilate.
6) After the moratorium, immigration is capped at 1% of the birth rate of existing citizens.
7) We do not grant asylum. This is not a safe country.
My version of #2 is a 330-day work permit. You then have to leave (you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here) for 30 days before starting a new 330 day permit. It entirely kills the H-1B process, which is a good thing.
And not only would this permit not come with benefits, it wouldnt have a citizenship path like you mention in #3. You could go down the other path (which would be faster, agreed) at the same time, but they would be unrelated.
So, basically, agree on all 4 points, just with a tweak on #2.
You could go down the other path (which would be faster, agreed) at the same time
I’d remove the “at the same time” part. Door number one is a work visa. Door number two is a path to citizenship. To enter door number two, you have to go back through door number one (emigrate back to homeland) and wait in the back of the line.
Some soft, bipartisan-curious GOP senators
Good line.
OMG. What a glutton for punishment.
https://www.geeksaresexy.net/2024/01/24/the-legendary-jon-stewart-is-returning-to-the-daily-show/
Bring back Kilby
Come and take it.
The Party of
ScienceEugenics!They really are monsters. What’s next, aborting babies because they don’t have blue eyes? Or maybe because it’s a girl and you wanted a boy.
Well, they do have their Great Leader Behind The Scenes Xinnie the Pooh to look to for how that works out.
The Davos crowd does want a population collapse.
More like because they are likely to be straight, or male.
The Party of SugarFree?
I don’t know why I think “blockquote” but type “a href=” some mornings. Sigh.
And once again the Stupid Party is scared about the impact of abortion in national races. How about you start running campaign ads featuring people with Downs and calling this out? How about you shoot footage in a NICU against “clump of cells”? How about you get the ASPCA folks to run a show with babies that weren’t aborted? How about footage of the Cynthia Nixon “shout your abortion” against a cute montage of little kids playing together?
They won’t ever win if they don’t start changing opinion.
Or just drop abortion as a big national issue. One of the examples of Trump’s political instincts being right.
Arizona GOP chairman resigns after leaked audio of him offering Lake cash to stay out of Senate race
And threatening her with the cartels.
Senate Republicans Sound Off On Leaked Border Deal Proposals, Say They Will Absolutely Not Vote For Them
“Provide amnesty to a “documented Dreamer” class, taking care of 250,000 people whose parents replaced American workers under the deeply flawed H-1B guest worker program.”
I doubt all people on H1B “replaced” American workers
All? Probably not. Most? I wouldn’t want to take that bet — there’s a reason the tech industry is always lobbying for more H-1Bs, after all.
Russian strippers?
No free shit, much less of a problem.
I know, never gonna happen.
That is my solution.
Eminently simple and it would stop this in its tracks.
Yet the establishment will continue to spin a fantasy about how “immigrants built this country” as if showering them with goodies was the norm 150 years ago.
The ease with which they pivot from “stolen land!” to “immigrants built this country” is . . . disturbing.
OT, but of potential interest to some of you (especially Sean and CPRM). Hulu has released a docuseries about superhot peppers, the growers, competitive eaters, hot sauce makers, and a bit of the culture (that I’ve seen so far). The people on the show are at a whole other level, doing things like eating 20+ superhot peppers in under 30 minutes (with the rules of no food, no beverages, nothing can leave your mouth, and you have to hold them all in for 5 minutes after the last one).
And folks say there aren’t shows about the insane anymore…..
I first read that as “superhot preppers”.
That would be a good show!
That would be a completely different show. 🙂
Although the queen of hot peppers isn’t too bad on the eyes (the docuseries has a story arc following her quest to make it to 100 consecutive eating competitions, and has gone 10 years without losing a competition).
Gunthots are already a thing tho.
🙂
I don’t do Hulu though.
As of yesterday, I have sprouts!
So far:
Apocalypse scorpion
Chocolate bhutlah
Reaper x Jay’s Peach Ghost Scorpion
And maybe a Bubblegum. The last batch was not accurate. I got Pepper Joe’d.
“I got Pepper Joe’d” – isn’t that a prison thing?
Question: do the seeds of a pepper produce their parent plant(s) or are they like apples where they sport?
AFAIK, for stabilized/isolated type plants you will get the same as the parent plants. You can cross pollinate though, which is why there are so many new and exciting variants out there. I’m only a couple seasons into saving/recycling my plant seeds and also still using some vendor bought seeds. I don’t isolate my plants and let them co-mingle. So far, I haven’t seen any unexpected results using seeds from fruits I’ve grown. (Chili pepper flowers will self pollinate.)
To my knowledge, all pepper plants can cross pollinate with each other. So unless you’ve maintained strict pepper segregation, if you’re planting seeds from home grown peppers, they’re likely a cross breed. For some of the individual strains, people grow them completely isolated and control the seeds to the point where they will not allow a full pepper pod to leave their property.
It can also lead to some confusing fun. At one point I had a bell pepper plant that had cross bred with a hot pepper. It looked exactly like a normal green bell pepper, but had a kick hotter than a jalapeno.
Do you still have any seeds from the hot bell?
I do not. I only got a couple of fruit from it, and didn’t realize what I had until after it had been cut up and prepped to be used in meal prep.
Darn.
For now I’ll focus on the one houseplant I’ve been trying to get to grow.
Any day now It’ll sprout… (18-30 days germination 🙁 )
The current framework under consideration would drastically change immigration law in the U.S.
Because Democrats want a serf voter class.
Not really, they just want the numbers to gerrymander with – count ’em for representation but don’t need their votes.
There is that but they are already voting in federal elections if this is to be believed.
I don’t know if I believe that is significant but yeah.
Maybe the GOP should suggest a 3/5 compromise.
That works in California but how does giving more residents to Texas help Democrats?
No, there will not be.
Pelosi said, “Well, let me say that no one in our country is above the law. And that certainly applies to someone who wants to be president of the United States. And many of their transgressions that the president has engaged in our about his integrity, but it’s also about our security. People, his base, it doesn’t seem to care about some of that in those states in any event. But the fact is they have to know what it means in their lives, that they’re no longer going to have affordable care, that there will be a national ban on access to an abortion. So, the elections are about freedom, democracy, yes, at large but it’s also about your personal freedom and your lives.”
They’re going to keep waving that bloody coat hanger until it stops working.
It would be less convincing if you didn’t have a strident, vocal minority in favor of exactly that – banning all abortions.
Somehow the strident, vocal minority in favor of abortions up to delivery doesn’t have the same effect the other way.
I would imagine they can live with a compromise that leans toward them. It is the anti-abortion crowd that cannot accept a compromise, except as an interim step to total abolition.
If abortions were limited to rape, incest, life of the mother, there would be no abortion debate. Just a random state legislator in deep red district here or there that would occasionally propose an outright ban.
Limiting abortions to just those three things? Oh, there would still be one hell of a debate, and the right would lose.
That isn’t the teaching of the Catholic Church.
People who believe abortion is murder aren’t going to accept murder in those circumstances.
People who believe abortion is murder aren’t going to accept murder in those circumstances.
Correct. Killing babies is killing babies no matter whether the mother was victimized by a third party.
Life of mother is a fine exception so long as it is treated in good faith.
I’m leery of even life/health of child concerns based on how many regular healthy people I know whose mothers were encouraged to abort based on some signs on ultrasound or whatever.
Hey Mrs. “Have to Pass it to know what’s in it” Dipshit — have you seen the rate of inflation and the cost trend of medical care since your party fucked it royally up the ass in favor of your medical insurance providers and nurse union buddies? I think you’re overdue to visit a house in Kansas anyway.
Schrödinger’s austerity: when government spending is simultaneously very high and very low.
https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1750491423768539453
Western governments are spending incredible amounts of money – none of it on things their people want.
Most probably goes on pensions healthcare and welfare which are things people want
If that were only it… They sure aren’t in favor of welfare and healthcare for an infinite amount of immigrants. Or billions in foreign aid and forever wars. A simple of recital of federal agencies and their budgets makes most Americans queasy.
“Kind of”
When voters are presented with the idea of “free” healthcare they support it by like a 60% margin.
When the cost is attached and the question is asked, they suppport it by a 40% margin.
Indicating they don’t really pay much attention and it’s about the framing.
PPP arrives at my airport today. As per usual, everything is fucked during the hours of his arrival and departure. Nobody can be on the tarmac during those times, no outside work whatsoever gets done.
/ I complained about the same thing when OMB came here, too. I am an equal opportunity hater.
Shit you own an airport? Damn that must be worth some scratch
Not as much as you would think. It’s real noisy and there are literally thousands of people milling about on your property all day. There’s even federal agents controlling access to the property.
Britain isn’t a free country
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/britain-isnt-a-free-country/
Take, for example, the story of a singer called Louise Distras who was arrested by police and questioned about comments she made on GB News about ‘trans-right extremists’. According to the Mail story, officers appeared at her door and proceeded to take her fingerprints and DNA. She said she had not committed any crimes and was later told no action would be taken against her.
Or the six former police officers convicted of sending offensive Boomer memes in a private WhatsApp group called ‘Old Boys Beer Meet’, private messages deemed to be too outrageous for the fragile public to see for themselves.
They were lucky to escape jail. Last year another British citizen was sentenced to 20 weeks in prison for sending offensive jokes in a WhatsApp chat with friends.
Or consider the case of police in Edinburgh turning up at the home of a parent who had complained to the school about a teacher ‘being allowed to impose her gender ideology on a classroom of little kids’.
Or the teenager prosecuted for posting the lyrics of a rap song on her Instagram, because the music in question included the N-word. The 18-year-old girl, who has Asperger’s, was given an eight-week curfew and had to wear a tag, though the conviction was later overturned.
Shocking revelation. I would not have expected.
Because arresting people for crimethought is easier than arresting them for child sex slavery.
MAGA extremists are just trying to fool you.
Democrat presidential candidate Dean Phillips went to a Trump rally and found out that Trump voters are thoughtful, kind, diverse, hospitable and generally awesome people who feel like no one is listening to them but Trump. He now says Dems are
delisiomal.liars.They are. Unfortunately Trump is none of those things and they’ve been had.
Read that as “adopting” babies and thought that was fairly surprising but welcome news. Oh well…I don’t think you could get over half of Dems to advocate for adopting typical babies considering how far into the sewer they’ve gone.
Pwnd.
Glenn Greenwald calmly explains to Destiny and the Krassensteins that January 6th wasn’t an insurrection, and Donald Trump did not attempt a coup.
People that refer to J6, 2021 as a coup or insurrection are either lying or stupid.
Embrace the power of “and”.
Child obesity in pandemic could have lifelong effects, study says
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-68068199
I blame Americans for exporting their obesity to England.
Apparently the English kids didn’t wear masks and social distance when the fat American kids were around.
Ben Shapiro vs Destiny Debate: Politics, Jan 6, Israel, Ukraine & Wokeism | Lex Fridman Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYrdMjVXyNg
I get that Destiny is one of the few lefties willing to actually debate the right, but why does he have a reputation other than complete retard?
Because only a leftie retard would attempt to debate. The smart ones know they can’t.
I mean guys on the right give him praise for being honest and willing to have a debate. But he never has anything interesting to say. Also a literal cuck.
A neo con and a shitlib? *Yawn*
Kenya discovers coltan deposits – Mining Minister Salim Mvurya
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68090482
A good chance for former LA Times writers to learn to mine.
China must be overjoyed.
You are one of the most dishonest cuntes in a cesspool of dishonest cuntes.
Governor Greg Abbott is using the Texas National Guard to obstruct and create chaos at the border.
If Abbott is defying yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, @POTUS needs to establish sole federal control of the Texas National Guard now.
The Brandon regime invites the chaos at the border. And how do you think it will look when TX guard defies the federal gov’t?
The chaos on the border is not what that asshole thinks it is.
Simple 3 step process for solving abortion:
1. Determine a universal definition of personhood
2. Using the definition determined in step 1, determine when a fetus is a person.
3. Codify that the same justifications for any other homicide apply to unborn persons.
Determine a universal definition of personhood – I say 14
Fourteen and above, or just fourteen? And are we using Standard or Metric age?
“That fetus had a gun and was coming right at me!”
If the fetus is going to kill the mother, then it depends on the state whether or not a mother can get an abortion. In FL she would, but in NY she’d have a duty to retreat unless the fetus was engaging in arson.
“I’m gonna burn this pussy down!”
– BLM Fetus
Love to see how that accounts for miscarriages, which have always outnumbered abortions.
Miscarriages are accidental deaths.
Miscarriages are, medically speaking, “abortions.” They are “spontaneous abortions.”
I’m not going to mix doctorspeak with legalese and the vernacular – that would be incomprensible.
In a discussion of common person understanding of law as it should be – indroducing another layer of jargon is going to foster confusion.
My bright line for this conversation: abortion == intentional removal of life from an unborn child; miscarriage == the unintentional loss of the life of an unborn child
Not sure how miscarriages fit in here. Unless you’re trying to say that criminally negligent homicide would also apply to the unborn person?
I mean, you’d need a lot of proof to establish this, though someone with a social media feed demonstrating rampant abortifacient drug use. belly stair surfing, etc might cause enough of an uproar for a DA to bring a case.
A miscarriage represents the death of a person under the idea of universally defined personhood.
Yes… And people do bury their stillborn children.
It is not a simple issue. It defies slogans or extrapolations to argumentum ad absurdum.
I agree, and would find it odd that you could have a death without a birth. But that would be the implication.
Ah, well that’s only because we recognize a c-section as a birth and not being “from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped”
Stillborn is technically a birth (which is why statistically, they do sometimes call them live births), a miscarriage isn’t (since it is before full term).
….yes? People die all the time.
Miscarriages are, essentially, acts of God. Not even accidents. Certainly not the result of intentional medical interventions. If you die on someone’s property from a lightning strike, nobody files charges. Doesn’t even occur to anyone to do so. But if you die on someone’s property because they shot you, well, charges are definitely in the picture.
I’ve always thought conflating miscarriages with abortions was misguided, when not intentionally misleading and mendacious.
They are not statistically or logically part of deaths now. If we are going to treat life as starting before birth, then you are going to get deaths for which there was not a birth. Maybe that makes sense, but it isn’t intuitive to me.
If we are going to treat life as starting before birth, then you are going to get deaths for which there was not a birth.
Correct, and that’s basically a tautology. “Birth” doesn’t mean “coming to life”. It means “coming into the world”.
I don’t see death before birth as any wierder than death before graduating high school or death before learning to walk.
Good luck with that. They can’t even figure out what a woman is.
Not just for slicing 🔪and dicing.
This kitchen island harbors a secret stairwell, leading to the basement.
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1750513343087993281
That’s cool!
This is a person that needs to be high up in the Pentagon.
Ways, means and ends. If they aren’t accounted and balanced, then military action is futile at best. The national leadership (civil and military) did no such accounting before Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, hell even the Balkans. Throw in what Hackworth called the “perfumed princes” aka FOGO class having no accountability for failure to balance before hand or demand it happen during then we get where we are- even before the DIE and LBGTQAZKTD+++ bullshit.
Go ahead leaders. Come up with a good elevator speech (no more than 20 seconds) on for Mr and Mrs Flyover Country on why their kid or grandkid needs to die defending UKR or TWN.
Every O-6 and higher that claimed the ANDF was capable and prepared to defend the Karzai govt needs to be summarily busted to 2nd LT.
“Texas saw an estimated 26,313 rape-related pregnancies during the 16 months after the state outlawed all abortions, with no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.”
https://twitter.com/KatiePhang/status/1750328864360771974
seems a lot tbh…
“Because to our knowledge no recent reliable state-level data on completed vaginal rapes (forced and/or drug/alcohol–facilitated vaginal penetration) are available, we analyzed multiple data sources to estimate reported and unreported rapes in states with total abortion bans (Table 15). We also estimated the number of resulting pregnancies based on findings from prior research on rape-related pregnancy rates. n the 14 states that implemented total abortion bans following the Dobbs decision, we estimated that 519 981 completed rapes were associated with 64 565 pregnancies during the 4 to 18 months that bans were in effect”
I would have guessed the rape pregnancy rate would be under 10% if you had asked me… Maybe a lot of younger women are raped and become pregnant because plenty of people try for a while for a pregnancy
Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on that one. And
“unreported rapes”
In other words, we made it up.
So… a quick search shows a total of 50 forcible rapes per 100,000 people, which going with a population of 29.5 million, would mean just under 15,000 forcible rapes for the state of Texas in 2022. It seems… unlikely that there was a huge spike in the quarter before or after that, and that they would all result in pregnancy.
estimated the number
According to the model…
Don’t worry, somebody will quote that number in earnest, and it will become gospel like “1 in 4 college women are raped”.
Alcohol facilitated vaginal penetration – so basically every party attended by a woman in her early 20’s, including but not limited to college parties, company holiday parties, offsite work training event mixers, and gatherings at a friend’s apartment involving 10 or more people.
The obvious answer is that women need chaperones, and, equally obvious, women can’t be held liable for their actions.
Thus, they should only go out in pairs, have no coed habitation buildings, and other actions as necessary to preserve their precious bodily fluids.
Hijabs
Even if true, the solution is stopping rapes, not killing babies.
^^
“after the state outlawed all abortions”
No, no it did not. There are exceptions for pregnancies less than 6 weeks and to protect the life or health of the mother.*
When you start with a lie, I tend to stop reading.
*pretty sure these are the exceptions. I know for a fact that Texas has not passed a law saying “no abortions under any circumstances whatsoever”.
No vacancy
As the Harvard report notes, U.S. homelessness rates hit a record high last year. The Biden administration and housing experts link that squarely to a severe housing shortage that has helped drive up prices.
“We simply don’t have enough homes that people can afford,” says Jeff Olivet, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. “And when you combine rapidly rising rent — that it just costs more per month for people to get into a place and keep a place — you get this vicious game of musical chairs.”
——-
The upshot is that millions more people qualify for federal housing subsidies. But those have been chronically underfunded, and the amount available has fallen further behind the need.
We just need more housing vouchers. That will fix it.
Pay no attention to the policies you wholeheartedly support which cause exactly this problem.
JFC they are dumber than shit.
Only dumb if you believe their stated goal is the same as their actual goal.
“The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, ‘See if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.”
― Harry Browne
Maybe we should send them all to detroit. They are shutting down whole sections of the city and bulldozing entire neighborhoods because of low demand.
So if houses are the problem….
You think they would have the money to cover the delinquent property taxes on those Detroit properties?
It’s not stupidity, it’s on purpose. They are evil.
Stupidity really is more common than evil.
Among the political class I would say it’s in equal measure.
Yeah. The left truly believes in a command economy, and hates with the fires of the sun what Regan showed actually works. They don’t think this is evil, in fact it is the other way. They believe that what actually creates housing will cause poor, deserving people will be thrown out of their homes.
Assuming that this is done for evil is every bit as blind as the lefts reactions to bottom up economics. It comes down to competing visions of what is important.
If only we had laws that prevent tens of millions of people from streaming over the borders creating all that new housing demand….
link that squarely to a severe housing shortage that has helped drive up prices.
Ask your friends at Blackrock about this.
data on completed vaginal rapes (forced and/or drug/alcohol–facilitated vaginal penetration) are available
Gotta get those numbers up.
College kids hardest hit.
“Impact fees” is why my home is still too small and has not been upgraded.
I was going to add a master suite to the small 3 bedroom house, and then put on a second floor. The net would be to have a master and an office on the main and 3 bedrooms upstairs.
The city wanted an “impact fee” of $45,000. This is for additional traffic, water and sewer.
“I pay for water and sewer, and it is going to be the same family living there. What traffic are we talking about? The roads have been the same for 60 years since the house was built. They are not changing, no matter how big the house is.
So my dream went away and I live in a house that needs upgrading but is uneconomical to upgrade.
As luck would have it – exactly that bullshit is going before the SC. You might be in good shape before the year is out.
With ACB going full Roberts lately that outcome is in doubt.
It’s not a bribe, it’s just a cost of doing business
The U.S. ambassador to Turkey said he anticipates that President Tayyip Erdogan will give a final sign-off on Sweden’s NATO membership within days, triggering rapid steps toward U.S. Congress endorsing a sale of F-16 fighter jets to Ankara.
In an interview on Thursday, Ambassador Jeff Flake said that once the formal ratification document is received in Washington, the U.S. State Department will immediately send Congress notification of the $20 billion F-16s sale.
Turkey’s parliament ratified Sweden’s NATO membership bid on Tuesday, clearing a major hurdle to expanding the Western military alliance after 20 months of delay.
Erdogan needs to sign the legislation, which would be published in Turkey’s Official Gazette. The instrument of accession for Sweden also needs to be sent to Washington.
Asked whether he expected this “within days”, Flake, a former U.S. Republican senator, told Reuters: “Yes, I do.”
Jeff Flake is Ambassador to Turkey?
He might be Ambassador to Lockheed-Martin.
It boggles the mind that Turkey is needed to sign off on a North Atlantic treaty for Sweden.
I wonder if our high school geography classes have new maps showing where the “North Atlantic” now stretches?
Sure, by the same people that found navigable waters in the U.S. that don’t connect to any ocean.
So, anything you can put a boat on has to run to the ocean?
Got to be able to sail up from the ocean, which means it ceases to be navigable at the first fall line. The connection is with the U.S. having jurisdiction over territorial salt water rather than the states.
“Got to be able to sail up from the ocean”
Why? does it say so in the Federal Register that the only navigable waters have to flow to the ocean?
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/04/21/2020-02500/the-navigable-waters-protection-rule-definition-of-waters-of-the-united-states
Looking at it, it only states that oceans are, along with lakes and rivers, navigable, and not necessary as a destination.
They are in the northern hemisphere and they are a member of NATO. If you are being expected to defend another country, it makes sense that you should have to approve their membership.
“”The result should be no different where, as here, the state administrative proceeding is a subpoena backed by the threat of existential sanctions,” the motion says, noting that New Jersey law “makes disobedience of the subpoena itself punishable,” unlike Mississippi’s.”
I looked at the ruling and wondered that as well. Because the ruling itself doesn’t say that the case could be taken to court for enforcement, unlike the Google case, but rather for contempt proceedings. Seems like a corrupt ruling using a questionable legal doctrine anyway, ripeness, which acts as of actual laws and threats from the state are nothing to be litigated over.
Sure, Anybody else would just about be guaranteed time behind bars.
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/british-billionaire-joe-lewis-pleads-guilty-to-insider-trading-9a8c6475?st=jy1a7i91dkepmfk&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
“tipping off pilots, personal assistants and romantic partners about companies in which he invested”
I’m not entirely clear on how that is insider trading. The people he “tipped off” weren’t insiders, for starters. Unless he was a fiduciary for rather than/in addition to an investor in those companies, I don’t see any basis for insider trading at all.
Martha Stewart ring any bells?
Exactly who I was thinking of. A celebrity scalp for a federal prosecutor, but not guilty of insider trading under any sane definition.
When your insider trading laws choke off legal trading on anything except press releases vetted by lawyers and filed with the federal government*, you are not helping the markets to function.
*slight exaggeration, I know.
The fact that a “billionaire” will be investing and that that it will become public and something like a 13F or press release will be filed is material non-public information.
I would say, it depends (I hope, securities law isn’t my specialty). I would expect that billionaires routinely buy and sell publicly traded stocks in their massive, diversified portfolios. Surely the vast majority of those trades are never filed with the SEC or the subject of press releases. I mean, yeah, you hear about the trades that affect control or are in or out of companies they have a role in running, but those must be a pretty small percentage of the trades that go on in their accounts.
Elon Musk’s brokers rotate him a few percentage points out of large cap exposure and into bonds, say. Dozens of trades are made. Is it really a crime if a press release announcing “Elon Musk, who owns .1% of company X, reduced his position to .05% of company X” isn’t filed with the SEC?
Depends on the vehicle they use and the percentage of ownership.
So Musk’s family office won’t file any of those holdings if he buys.05%.
OTH, Musk buys 10% interest in development stage DeanCo is going to be material. Normally Musk’s office will also try to bury the fact that 10 of his entities may or may not hold 10% of DeanCo. That’s a whole separate game that the rich play that you and I can’t.
The process is the punishment, especially for an 86 year old, for whom a ten year sentence is likely life without parole.
As I understand it, you don’t have to be an insider to be convicted of insider trading, you just have to knowledge about stuff going on that everyone else can’t discover on their own.
Highly subjective, and thus can be abusive prosecution.
On drug decriminalization…..
Why can’t we try full legalization? Instead of this weird halfway that keeps everything black market, go with legal products and full product liability.
Addictive news and quality control are two of the biggest problems (resulting in overdose deaths), so make it a legal product with normal liability concerns.
Pot would be easy. Other drugs… Less so. But make getting high an approved purpose for drugs, and someone will solve that problem.
For some reason, nobody ever tries that answer.
What? Allow people to make decisions about their own bodies for themselves? Madness!!!
I just wonder why we keep taking the worst possible path. Legalizing possession and taking drugs while criminalizing selling them creates the problem.
The same goes for illegal immigration.
Illegally bring on millions of people. But make it illegal for them to work. Now what? Genius move. You just created an underclass of tens of millions…. A huge market for forged documents and a huge underground economy that encourages exploitation of workers without legal status.
They couldn’t be more evil if they tried.
I just wonder why we keep taking the worst possible path.
Duh – democracy!
Accidental overdose? Contradiction.
“I accidenaltly got drunk”
Uh-huh
When purity is unknown, I can believe an accidental overdose. Imagine a person grabbing a light beer and finding out it was 151 after finishing it. Yes… I know in this case the person would probably notice the difference, but for some of the drugs in question, the line between fun times and dangerous overdose are much slimmer.
Voluntarily taking the drug, regardless of expected outcome, is not accidental.
Kinda like, there are no accidental discharges, only negligent ones.
And break the medical and pharma industries’ control?
So if I get a sinus infection, I could just order a generic Z-Pack and decongestant that works? Without paying a doctor, running it through insurance, and getting the atest fancy new full-priced drug?
Fucking madness.
https://www.twc.health/products/emergency-preparedness-kit
But look at all the people that are killed by black market alcohol in the US!
During Prohibition or after?
They’ve tried something like that in Portland OR.
British billionaire Joe Lewis pleaded guilty Wednesday to securities-fraud charges, resolving an insider-trading case in which prosecutors accused him of tipping off pilots, personal assistants and romantic partners about companies in which he invested.
Were they kicking some portion of the proceeds back to him?
Probably just being nice to people close to him. Tipping them off on what is happening without informing the general public first… Or at all.
Probably happens all the time, everywhere.
Anybody with access to it or that works with Wall St or client access has insider trading laws beat into them.
Usually idiots and little guys get busted. He knew exactly what he was doing and he knew it was wrong.
I don’t agree with a good chunk of the regulatory and legal environment, but I have no sympathy for him And some trader at a random brokerage that did the same thing would be in prison.
Yeah, our insider trading laws have drifted very far indeed from actual trading by actual insiders on actual non-public information.
No “probably” about it. You don’t think folks like the Bidens or Clintons or Pelosis or Bushs get rich off their hard work and industrious minds do you?
Mr. Brooks, instead of me paying your annual bonus I’m going to give you a guaranteed stock tip…
Your call on if this was beneficial to him or not. He also loaned these people money for the purchases.
Now you are inching toward proxy purchases.
Also common in the political game. Company needs a senator to go to bat. Company CEO attends a fundraiser with a bunch of senior managers. he gives them all checks to hand over at the legal limit.
My bookie sells me hot tips
/Broke slowly then all of a sudden
Aberrant, as in I don’t like him
IF YOU FOLLOW politics or regularly consume the news, you might feel like Donald Trump is all around you. As you read this, you might well be imagining, with unsettling precision, the former president’s voice billowing filth and invective in your brain.
Chris Hayes, the MSNBC primetime host, thinks about Trump a lot — and he’s sick of it. “It’s a kind of prison,” he tells Rolling Stone of his, and the nation’s, preoccupation with the former president.
Yet, Hayes says, the media needs to cover Trump more.
The host of “All In with Chris Hayes” realizes that is a “counterintuitive take” — but he might also have a point (or two).
“The feedback I get from viewers is, why are you covering Trump so much?” he says. “Because he’s the most singular threat to the American constitutional order since the Civil War. That’s my answer to that question — which is, I think, absolutely true.”
The second argument, one which defies conventional wisdom about how nonstop media attention aided Trump’s rise, is that Hayes believes more media coverage is what’s necessary to end his hopes of winning another term as president. “He is fundamentally an aberrant individual who has never won a majority of voters for a reason,” says Hayes. “He has very high unfavorables — because he’s aberrant. And any time the attention is mostly on him, his political standing erodes.”
He’s a cockroach. Shine a light on him, and he’ll scurry away. Nobody really likes him or agrees with his vitriolic filth. That’s why there is never anybody at his rallies.
Because he’s the most singular threat to the American constitutional order since the Civil War.
OMB is going to invade his own country to impose an economic agenda?
who has never won a majority of voters
Not relevant to the presidency, but you know that.
Speaking of punchable faces.
WATCH: @marthamaccallum repeatedly holds John Kirby’s feet to the fire over Biden’s border failures and is left STUNNED by some of his answers.
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 01/25:
*23/23 words (+3 bonus words)
⏱️ In the top 26% by speed
I played https://squaredle.com 01/25:
*50/50 words (+6 bonus words)
📖 In the top 14% by bonus words
🔥 Solve streak: 123
I was reading a typical Bryan Caplan education post, which is always good, but nothing new in it, but I liked the first comment (excerpts below):
College degrees that start with calculus improve earnings
College degrees that involve programming improve earnings
College degrees that result in licensure (Accounting, Nursing) improve earnings
College degrees that don’t do 1 of the above barely nudge earnings at all.
https://betonit.substack.com/p/the-case-against-education-makes
There is some overlap. That accounting degree already has 1 and 2.
Technically I tick all three, but my licenses are expired. And as we’ve all discussed licensing is many times a state enforced monopoly so it’s not surprising it improves earnings outcomes.
Yeah, and any engineering degree involves one and two (and 3 if a Civil). But his point was that there is a bimodal distribution on college and average salaries. From a followup response from the same person:
no HS Diploma: $18k
HS Diploma: $24k
Low-$ Degree: $36k
High-$ Degree: $100k
He was criticizing the typical, getting a college diploma takes you from $24k to $58k advice. The point is, the $58k is rare, its either $36k or $100k. What major you choose in college makes a big difference, college itself isnt enough.
A quote from Caplan in a 10 year old article of his that was linked in that piece:
“College is a great investment for great students, a mediocre investment for mediocre students, and a bad investment for bad students.”
What time frame is that $ value calculated at?
No idea. I think it is some sort of lifetime average.
Looks like it may be “Median earnings of full time employees age 25-34”
At least, that is a table Bryan refernces in his article, but doesnt appear to line up with the commenters numbers, so no idea where his come from, but they seem ballparkishly correct.
25-34, I was around that $58k range.
I’ve also explained to people that either pay the big bucks to go to a prestigious school or go to the cheapest school that gives you the degree that qualifies you to do the work you want to do.
Paying big bucks to some small liberal arts school to be a public school teacher will result in a negative NPV. OTH, going to the least expensive accredited school possible and becoming a teacher will have a positive NPV.
You pay the money to go to a prestigious school for the connections you make and the doors it opens. That it qualifies you for the work is merely table stakes.
I guess it’s time to do a purge of the networking schools and their alumni.
Who you know is no way to run a society.
Another interesting comment (from someone else) was that there is an uptick in people getting accepted to a top tier school, putting that on their resume, and skipping college. “Acccepted to Harvard” or “Accepted to MIT” as a credential and then getting a high paying Silcon Valley job based in part on that credential, but skipping the whole giving money to Harvard/MIT part.
That’s the advice I gave my kids. If you get into an expensive private school or out of state college that has a great reputation for what you really, really want to do, I’ll pay for it. (In reality, my parents paid for it, but that’s another story.) Otherwise, you are going to an in-state college. They both stayed in state.
But his point was that there is a bimodal distribution on college and average salaries.
This is very much true in law, and the two humps are not evenly distributed.
There’s a spike at the big law standard salary ($200k?) that contains roughly 10% of graduating law students (highly biased towards top 25-50 schools). Then there’s almost nothing until the larger hump that peaks around $65k.
I had no idea about this.
‘The Counterfeit Countess’ Review: Fake Title, Real Courage
A Jewish mathematician in World War II Poland aided thousands of imprisoned Poles—right under the noses of Nazi commanders.
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/the-counterfeit-countess-review-fake-title-real-courage-621bf4aa?st=rx163r58kzf5s9f&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Greens want to fuck over Europe.
And if it hurts our own economy that is just a side benefit.
If there was ever a question of the threat level posed by Trump, Hayes says the debate was “definitively” resolved by the former president’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump whipped thousands of his supporters into a frenzy before many of them violently stormed the United States Capitol, just as lawmakers were preparing to certify Biden’s victory.
Now, Hayes says, Trump “is running to finish the job of Jan. 6,” adding: “He clearly, to his cells, does not believe in democracy, he believes in dictatorship by him, and that is the explicit project of this campaign. He says it every day.”
——-
“Precisely the level of narcissism, malevolence, cruelty, and unfitness that was documented all along exploded in a moment of crisis in precisely the way that the most hysterical anti-Trumpers warned,” he adds. “Now, we all have the benefit of having lived through that. What do you think is gonna happen again?”
Even more hysterical paranoiac squawking?
Personally, I’m hoping for mass suicides among the media and civil society advocacy mob.
It is the only honorable thing they can do.
I had a good idea that there weren’t a lot of thoughts actively going in Mr. “Thrill up my leg”, but I think I overestimated him.
He clearly, to his cells, does not believe in democracy
Instead of midichlorians he has midifascisms.
he believes in dictatorship by him
Says someone who supports a regime that has thousands of political prisoners, is persecuting political opposition, wants censorship and disarmament, etc.
narcissism, malevolence, cruelty, and unfitness
But enough about Biden-Harris.
This bitch can’t open her mouth without lying.
Pelosi said, “First of all, he has a cognitive disorder. It wasn’t that he just had a slip of the tongue of using a name one time for another. Anybody can do that. But he was making a case. But really more dangerous than than getting us mixed up, more dangerous was his charge that we were not accepting his troops. We begged him for hours and hours. Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, to send the National Guard and he wouldn’t do it. His his underlings, the Secretary of the Army and the Acting Secretary of the Defense wouldn’t do it.”
He offered in explicit and official terms and left a standing authorization in the days prior that you and the mayor refused because you wanted a false flag, you dishonest p.o.s.
This was well documented at the time. Pretty brazen to change the story now.
Memory hole what you thought before comrade, this is the correct (and current) narrative.
Do you think anyone will hold her to account?
It’s easy to change the narrative when the corporate press will happily repeat it for you.
Shit appears to be working. Latest poll in Penna. shows Biden up by 7.5% in this important swing state. Sure, Biden practically lives in Pennsylvania, and there is still about 10% undecided, but this can’t be good news for Mr. Trump. And the attacks and smears, and the reminders of Trump’s vulgar and unsavory personality will just ramp up as TMITE puts Dr. Jill’s husband up on a pedestal with the best presidents in American history.
Um yeah. Trump is going to lose every swing state .
It’s why we Republicans were dumb to stick by him after ALREADY LOSING TO BIDEN.
What was the alternative? The GOP either destroys itself by ignoring the candidate with a vast majority of internal support or it goes with Trump and likely loses in another sketchy general election.
There’s no winning play for them.
There is a winning play – assassinate the current vote-counters and get their own people in place.
I don’t know if there’s an alternative. Just saying Republicans are dumb.
To be fair, so are Democrats.
If either party jettisoned their candidate, they’d win in a landslide.
The thing is, with junk mail voting and thus utterly insecure elections in just bout every swing state, I don’t know if any Republican could beat any Democrat in the electoral college. The flood of unsecured ballots makes it just too, too easy for the vote counters in high-count/urban/Dem-controlled districts to cheat. And that doesn’t even get to the kind of shenanigans we are seeing with in-person voting.
Our elections are a farce. In no universe do they show what the actual ballots cast by actual legal voters actually want. Yeah, a lot of the signals are masked by the abysmal quality of the candidates, but that doesn’t change the underlying reality that our elections are a farce.
America Is Planning to Withdraw From Syria—and Create a Disaster
Don’t end the forever war!
News I could have used a few years ago.
The other day I was bitching that search engines anymore don’t recognize query expressions like ‘-‘ or ‘NOT’ in order to exclude words.
Just did a search (!) for this issue and it was confirmed that this is broken in Bing, Yahoo, and Duckduckgo. Someone expressed annoyance that it only works in one search engine, without stating which one.
So I tried, and… yes, it works in Google. Maybe it was always only Google and I didn’t notice because I haven’t used Google in over a decade. That will probably change.
Now that new pisses me right off.
I want to filter out trash results, and something should switch a keyword to negative to throw away the stuff I know I don’t care about because it happens to share words with what I’m looking for.
From memory, I think it was AltaVista that first started allowing expressions.
They had a very robust regex system.
Eliminating that was actually an advancement for the proles. I say bring back LISP mode…..
Does “-” the minus sign work?
Assuming you mean − (\u2212)… it does not work.
I figured that out just yesterday when I had to search a specific phrase.
Where does all this fear and paranoia come from?
But in Monahan’s world, he had to shoot. He’d called 911 before and waited agonizing minutes for police to arrive, Frost detailed. So Monahan assumed it would take law enforcement at least 15 minutes to get to him, by which time these imagined robbers would have already completed their looting.
Monahan lives in a reality where the cops are useless, apparently. So he did what in his deluded sense he thought he must.
——-
Now there’s just a numb sense of emptiness.
“Why are we sitting in this courtroom listening to this?” Brian Walsh told me during a break in the trial proceedings Tuesday. It all felt surreal, completely avoidable, he said. “It just beats you up.”
Sadly, Monahan is hardly the only misaligned soul among us, ready to shoot at any hint of perceived trouble. Let’s remember that Gillis’ death came two nights after a Black teenager was shot in suburban Kansas City when he mixed up addresses while trying to pick up his younger brothers.
Too many of us are living in distorted realities, and the presence of guns only makes it all the more explosive and lethal.
“The gun’s purpose is violence,” Gretchen Schmidt, a criminologist and the department chair of Public Administration and Leadership at Excelsior University in Albany, told me in April after Gillis’ murder. “The ‘weapon effect’ is that the presence of guns alone has been found to increase aggressiveness in some. You kind of work this all up in your own mind, and it feeds into your aggressiveness and your paranoia.”
But maybe the Monahan verdict can serve as a kind of warning shot to anyone prone toward fear and violence.
Is there anything so stupid and pointless it can’t be made worse by people eager to use it to push their political agenda?
That is a whole lot of stolen bases.
Gretchen Schmidt, a criminologist and the department chair of Public Administration and Leadership at Excelsior University in Albany,
Go away!
Goddammit!
You were saying?
I had to make sure the guy with the dashcam didn’t make contact. Some nice satisfaction for the angst of avoiding the collision.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/19eigbb/oc_said_he_couldnt_see_me_over_the_snow/
Yeah, a lifted pickup can’t see over a snowbank that doesn’t reach to with windows of the truck.
Thanks, Edit Fairy!
Yeah, a lifted pickup can’t see over a snowbank that doesn’t reach to with windows of the truck.
On second viewing (knowing what to look for), the side window of that truck was clearly visible from the dashcam. I don’t know why the guy in the truck even bothered to turn.