Thursday Morning Links

by | Aug 15, 2024 | Daily Links | 308 comments

Remember when Aussies had a reputation for toughness? That has long since died. Jeez. This could be interesting. The Astros are hot again. Hopefully they can pull away from the Mariners a bit. But after the next series, they have a tough run of games. We’ll find out of they’re actually back or not over the next few weeks. And that’s it for sports.

Yeah, “War is hell” is a saying for a reason. Also, I’m highly skeptical of taking the word of terrorists at face value.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. She failed to do her job. I doubt she will be missed.

What amazing timing. Now subpoena them and release them to the public, Oversight Committee.

I’m shocked! Well, not really shocked. I’m not even surprised. And this should put to rest any claims that these people are refugees. They traveled through tons of safe countries they could have settled in to get here.

This sounds sketchy to me. ::puts on tinfoil hat:: Almost as if it’s preordained and not just preparation for the unknown. ::takes off tinfoil hat::

I wonder if a lesson was learned. I doubt it. Also, I think I’m just gonna dislike everybody involved in this story.

I can’t believe this is still going on. This guy is getting the Lindsay Lohan treatment on steroids.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. My eyes hurt just reading that.

These guys are polarizing. I still love them. Your results may vary. (Try to) enjoy them!

And enjoy this back to school, here anyway, Thursday, dear friends.

About The Author

sloopyinca

sloopyinca

308 Comments

  1. UnCivilServant

    Remember when Aussies had a reputation for toughness?

    No?

    • Not Adahn

      UCS is a post-Gen X confirmed.

      • Nephilium

        Throw another generation on the barbie.

    • SDF-7

      That’s not a reputation…. that’s a reputation?

      • cavalier973

        Buying bread from a man in Brussels
        He was six foot four, and full of muscles

      • Suthenboy

        Cav – if that is what counted elephants would rule the world.

      • UnCivilServant

        besides, you’re misremembering the words. It was clearly “Full of mussels,” having just eaten a lot of seafood.

    • Cunctator

      —“Remember when Aussies had a reputation for toughness?”—

      Whenever I travelled, if I ran into a group of Aussies, I would find a reason to join them. They were always a long way from home and looking to have fun. A year before COVID, I was planning a trip to Oz. It turned out to be more than I wanted to spend at the time, so I decided to wait a year. Then came the apocalypse. After seeing almost the entire country lay down over the COVID hysteria, I don’t really have much interest in going. The government even set up COVID camps.

      What a shame.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        It could be that the tough, fun, and adventurous ones leave to go travel, which is why you meet them. All the others stay home.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      They had a guy who would wrestle alligators.

      • The Other Kevin

        The 80’s was peak everything.

      • Fourscore

        1967

        Fine people-cute girls and good beer.

        Score and a Half had a great time

      • Not Adahn

        The ’80s believed in “peak.”

      • dbleagle

        The won the America’s Cup in 1987 after the US defended it since 1851.

  2. Rat on a train

    Canadian government warns country to prepare for new virus far worse than COVID
    The gain of function folks have created super-COVID?

    • cavalier973

      It’s a cover for all the mRNA shot effects.

      • SDF-7

        Either scenario seems plausible at this point — though my tin foil compass points more towards “We’ll get the gain of function right this time and kill all the old people (saving pension money) and deplorables we don’t think we need!”

        When the people in charge make it clear that they hate you and/or you’re the carbon they want to reduce — and it fixes the fiscal problems they created? I think you’d have to be a little nuts not to suspect they’d go to these lengths.

      • sloopyinca

        The gain of function folks have created super-COVID?

        It’s a cover for all the mRNA shot effects.

        Both of those.

  3. Pat

    Remember when Aussies had a reputation for toughness? That has long since died.

    Obligatory.

    • SDF-7

      For some reason, I thought it would be this… that seems more obligatory for “tough Aussie”.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I thought it was going to be this.

    • sloopyinca

      I also very much miss when Aussies openly laughed at Kevin Bloody Wilson.

    • Chafed

      I have never seen that before. Hilarious.

  4. cavalier973

    Combatting eye worm with an ear worm?

  5. Not Adahn

    The Pixies are polarizing? Really?

    • Pat

      Yes. You either like the Pixies or you’re a big fat stupid head. Polarizing.

      • The Wrath of ZWAAAAAAKKKK!!!

        AAAAAnd Pat understands.

        They were more influential than the VU, and damn fun to listen to!

      • Homple

        Honestly, do you sophisticated folks just make up band names and pretend to argue about them so as to fool us hicks?

    • Nephilium

      There are plenty of ‘tards out there living really kick-ass lives.

      • Rat on a train

        They can even become President of the United States.

    • sloopyinca

      Oh very much so. There’s lots of people out there with no taste that hate them.

      • juris imprudent

        Why hate on a relatively obscure band?

      • sloopyinca

        Oh boy. Here we go.

      • UnCivilServant

        Objectively, they are obscure enough that it took me a while to realize the conversation was about a band.

        I have no hate and no opinion on them because I’ve never heard of them.

      • juris imprudent

        It’s the ardent fan-boys that are gonna be the issue.

      • Pat

        Doolittle went platinum, Surfer Rosa went gold, and Where Is My Mind? played over the iconic finale of Fight Club, although I don’t think they ever had any major charting singles (in no small part because they mostly refused to shoot music videos in an era when MTV was blowing up; and refused to lip sync on the videos they did make). Perhaps you could call them “comfortably obscure,” or somesuch.

      • juris imprudent

        Comfortably obscure does describe a LOT of good music.

      • The Other Kevin

        Their greater importance is probably the influence they had on a lot of other bands. Like Johnny Cash, every “alternative” musician was totally into them.

      • Nephilium

        TOK:

        Johnny Cash was influential to damn near everyone. I recall he’s one of the few (if not only) to be in the country music hall of fame, songwriter’s hall of fame, and the rock and roll hall of fame. Hell, it’s hard to find a punk band that doesn’t list Cash as one of their influences.

      • Pat

        Their greater importance is probably the influence they had on a lot of other bands.

        Cobain said he wished he’d been in a Pixies cover band instead of Nirvana, and that Smells Like Teen Spirit was his attempt to write a Pixies tune (which didn’t go unnoticed by Frank Black; the line “We went to the store and got something great/that samples this song, from Washington state” from Trompe le Monde is a jab at Nirvana copping their shtick). Pixies and Husker Du pretty much launched the alt rock movement that ended up dominating the charts in the ’90s, too late for either of them to cash in.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      The Pixies are one of the best bands of the ‘80s/‘90s. A few too many incest songs for my tastes but still damn good.

  6. SDF-7

    I wonder if a lesson was learned. I doubt it. Also, I think I’m just gonna dislike everybody involved in this story.

    Yup… that you will.

    And it never ceases to amaze me the absolute petty tyranny dotting the land like pustules of egotistical dictatorship that we call our justice system.

    • R C Dean

      When absolute petty tyranny meets lazy, arrogant entitlement, something’s gotta give.

      I’m firmly in the “hate everybody” camp.

  7. cavalier973

    Maybe if the judge had allowed the poor girl her nap, she wouldn’t have sassed him.

    • cavalier973

      Whatever happened to clearing the courtroom?

      Just kick her out.

      • Sean

        Pffft. Like you wouldn’t flex on a 15 year old girl.

        😉

    • The Wrath of ZWAAAAAAKKKK!!!

      Meh, it is just black on black violence, the kids do this all the time, just like knife fighting!

  8. juris imprudent

    Years ago, Pochettino was supposed to be the next Mourinho – except he never won like Mourinho did. But I will adopt the requisite hopeful perspective.

    • sloopyinca

      He was always a good manager. He just took a job with an organization who bought players without any plan for how they’d complement each other.

      I doubt the US could have found a better guy for the job. I think he’ll do well getting to pick his own personnel. Unfortunately, that cupboard is pretty bare at the moment. If we get out of our WC group, he will have succeeded.

      • juris imprudent

        It will be a fresh take on the team at least, I don’t expect we’ll see so much Reyna if he isn’t playing somewhere.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        He was great at Chelsea (fuck those guys). Had a spot in Europa (until United somehow won FA cup), in EFL final, and FA semis with a team of guys who come to Chelsea for a giant paycheck and no real aspirations.

  9. Pat

    As the founder and former CEO of Megaupload, Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz) was accused by US authorities of having cost film studios and record companies over $500 million by enabling users to share pirated content.

    The studios must use the same auditing firm that does the valuations for the drug busts where 3 kilograms of fentanyl is worth 714 million dollars.

    • Nephilium

      Every pirate everywhere would have purchased everything they downloaded, even the out of print stuff that can’t be legally purchased!

      • UnCivilServant

        The data from the video game world shows that pirates are not part of the customer base. Games without DRM were not negatively impacted in sales

      • Nephilium

        UCS:

        The same trends go across most media types. I forget where it was, but many years back there was a paper that analyzed the different type of “pirates” and grouped them into several categories. Off the top of my head, the main categories were (in the order I recall the breakdowns being):

        1) Collectors – They will likely never even watch/play everything they downloaded, they just want to have a copy of it. These people are like the archivists of the media world, the one who converted shows from old tapes to digital formats and shared them. The ones who will track down one of the lost Dr. Who episodes just to be able to bring it back in the world.
        2) Samplers – This group are the ones who go with try before you buy, they’ll grab something to try it, and if it meets their standards, they will purchase it.
        3) Yutes – This group downloads items because they don’t want (or have) the cash to purchase items. Surprisingly, most people grow out of this group and shift to one of the others.
        4) Media shifters – This group is the people who purchase things, but still want a downloaded copy as well (don’t want to bother with configuring a DVR, don’t want to figure out how to break DVD/Blu-ray encryption, etc.).

      • UnCivilServant

        I’m in Category 4.

        Why should I have to rip the media myself? I already own it, I just want a backup.

      • Pope Jimbo

        No, no, no UCS.

        You need to always buy new media to replace lost or damaged media. AC/DC would starve to death if you didn’t buy the Back in Black album on LP when you were a kid, then a cassette tape (at least three times because it was eaten by various tape decks) and then on CD and finally on Amazon Prime Music to get mp3s.

        That is the only moral thing to do.

      • Rat on a train

        UCS, For me the physical media is the backup. I want it transcoded so I can load it on my media server for easy access.

      • Nephilium

        Pope Jimbo:

        Back in the days of RIAA suing grandmothers, someone smashed out a window of my car, and stole the (then required) binder of CD’s that I had in the car. Since I had all of the jewel cases and liner notes at home, and RIAA assured everyone that a CD was just a license, I e-mailed them to ask how I could get access to my licensed music, and helpfully included that I had the albums converted to MP3.

        For some reason, they never replied.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Neph:

        When mp3s were first coming out, I was working at a company with lots of servers and data storage. Everyone ripped all their CD’s and put them on a file server. A couple guys even wrote some scripts that allowed you to search the file server based on mp3 tags.

        Then the RIAA nightmare started and there was a scurrying to store as much of the mp3 file server to your own CD’s or zip drives before management got wind of what was going on and purged the file servers.

        Go figure that an industry that was dominated by aggressive assholes who preyed on young musicians wasn’t in the best hands when it came to the market disruption caused by the internet.

      • Grummun

        When mp3s were first coming out, I was working at a company with lots of servers and data storage.

        Back when I still worked in telecom, before the bust, the CLEC I worked for “merged with” (acquired) a local ISP. Turns out those guys were running a pirate movie site on the company servers. This would have been in the early 2000s. No idea what, if anything, happened to them. After the tech crash, it turned out that the CLEC was the deadweight and the ISP dumped us.

      • slumbrew

        those guys were running a pirate movie site on the company servers

        Along those lines I know some guys who were working at a hosting company who were secretly running porn sites out of the DC, back in the 90s. They had some sort of streaming thing going with DVD players hidden under the raised floor.

        Only got caught when management couldn’t true-up the bandwidth usage with the paid customers. And then the feds got called in…

        I can’t imagine that went well for them.

    • Not Adahn

      That math is simeple. You just take the number of people that amount of fentanyl can kill, and multiply that with the cost per hit using a competent hitman, and voila! True market value!

  10. Pat

    They traveled through tons of safe countries they could have settled in to get here.

    Look, if you were a refugee and were presented with the opportunity to settle in a safer country where you speak the predominant language and may even have some shared cultural similarities, or trek another 3,000 miles to get into the most viciously racist and oppressive imperialist nation of slavers ever shat upon the earth, you’d make the obvious choice, as they did.

    (THIS IS WHAT THE LEFT ACTUALLY BELIEVES)

    • juris imprudent

      Give us your tired, your poor,
      that we may oppress the hell out of them!

      • R C Dean

        I would like to invest in your business plan, good sir.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Don’t forget that if they had stayed in one of those closer, safer countries they could have lived in harmony with Nature (because that is their noble culture).

      Instead they are now living in a country where the national goal is to raise the temperature of the Earth by at least 10 degrees before next May.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Give us your tired, your poor

      JI that green chick that said that shit doesn’t really believe that. She only got that gig because she was banging James T. Kirk.

      • juris imprudent

        she was banging James T. Kirk

        I know Kirk’s ego was huge, but she was a large one that one.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Kirk wasn’t into body shaming. He liked those big gals too.

      • DrOtto

        So his middle name wasn’t Tiberius, but was actually Trey?

      • Pope Jimbo

        was actually Trey

        Yup. And Mr. Spock wasn’t a Vulcan. He was a Tallcan. Kirk just had a Biden like stutter.

      • Not Adahn

        “Trey” is the nickname version of “Tiberius.” Everyone knows that.

    • WTF

      11-year-old migrant boy arrested as ‘aggressor’ in NYC subway robbery linked to string of Central Park muggings

      “At this point in time, we’re ready to call it: This is a migrant robbery pattern,” NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell told reporters from Seventh Avenue and West 59th Street.

      Police have linked roughly 10 robberies that have taken place inside or along the southern end of the green space to a group of up to 12 migrant boys or young men.

      Asylum seekers.

      • rhywun

        On the road to NYC right now… can’t wait to experience the colorful new arrivals on the subway.

      • rhywun

        Someone is driving a double-wide at 1mph down the Interstate that has been restricted to one lane on the PA/NJ border.

        Fuck me.

      • Not Adahn

        It lets you Glib safely, so there’s that.

      • rhywun

        Oh, I’m not driving, thank god.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        I was in NYC in June. The subway was mostly fine except for one crazy guy in Brooklyn.

  11. Pope Jimbo

    I remember getting trotted down to the county courthouse (our town was the county seat) a couple time. Each time ended up with the Honorable Judge Gaylord Saytree reading us punks the riot act.

    The giggles would start when they introduced the judge. “Dude, his name is Gaylord“.

    Then being junior high punks, the boys would get bored and start pushing, pinching and punching each other. Eventually Judge Saytree would blow his lid and start yelling at us.

    • UnCivilServant

      Sounds like a hanging judge. How are you still alive?

      • Pope Jimbo

        Actually, he was a pretty libertarian judge.

        He was tough on property crimes and violence. He was pretty lenient on other shit. The local cops didn’t like him because he was pretty soft on pot heads and drunks (being near the rez we had a lot of those).

        Dad liked him because if he gave him a pre-sentence investigation report that recommended leniency he would usually follow that. The both of them were also super tough on any domestic abusers. If you hit your wife, you were going to do time.

      • Suthenboy

        Sounds like my kind of judge. I wish there were more like him.

    • Fourscore

      There are some good people out there

      Thanks, Jimbo

    • Ted S.

      I’m surprised the cops didn’t try to arrest her.

      • Suthenboy

        Same here…but that sort of thing is a local phenomena. Every police dept has its own culture.

  12. Suthenboy

    I have zero sympathy for the Palis. You dont get to do what they did and then cry about the consequences…consequences that were calculated to be evoked. Fuck ’em. They wanted to turn their culture into a murder, rape, death cult. They are reaping what they have sown.

    The shit-canning of the Uni President is only a symbolic move. Academia is rotten with commies from top to bottom.

    Even if the Biden laundry is aired no one will learn anything they dont already know.

    The biggest danger we face right now is the open border.

    A scarieriester virus? Really? What ever shall we do. Canada is fast on it’s way to Nk territory. What is funny is that they have already admitted that the measures last time had no effect whatsoever. How will they get around that?

    I see ivermectin is used as a treatment for the eye nematodes.

    • Pat

      I see ivermectin is used as a treatment for the eye nematodes.

      Surely only if the nematodes have infected the eye of a horse, since, after all, iT’s HoRsE PaSTe!!!!

    • Drake

      Same with the Jews in 1930s Germany! Some of them really were assholes who fucked up the Weimar Republic liked we are today – so they all pay?

      • Pat

        If the Jews had created a parallel state within Weimar Germany and then exclusively elected Zionist nationalists who carried out bombing campaigns against the civilian population for half a century, and if the state of Israel were rounding up and systematically mass-murdering Palestinians based on their ethnicity in an effort to remove their bloodlines from the human gene pool, the comparison would hold up better.

      • WTF

        Same with the Jews in 1930s Germany! Some of them really were assholes who fucked up the Weimar Republic

        Well, I had no idea group of Jews invaded Germany and committed horrific murder, rape, torture, etc. killing nearly 10,000 German civilians including women and children and babies after lobbing tens of thousands of missiles into Germany for many years.
        I guess I learned something new today.

      • Pope Jimbo

        If two groups hate each other enough to engage in an actual war, the only way it ends is when one group gives up.

        Most of the time it takes a lot of dead bodies before one side gives up. That is why war sucks and should be avoided.

        Doesn’t matter who is right and who is wrong. A lot of people are going to die.

      • Drake

        I thought I’d get a reaction.

      • Not Adahn

        Drake,

        Sometimes you catch shit. Sometimes you don’t deserve it. But using shibboleths like “Jews = Nazis” or “Holocaust = Nakba” is the reason why you will continue to catch shit.

      • The Wrath of ZWAAAAAAKKKK!!!

        Alsotoo, Don’t Start A War You Cannot Finish!

      • Drake

        My point, obviously, is that I won’t hand wave away slaughter because of whatever grudge the sides have.

        My position will continue to be that we shouldn’t support either side until they are serious about peace negotiations.

      • slumbrew

        “Holocaust = Nakba”

        I recently learned that “Shoah” and “Nakba” _do_ mean the same thing – “disaster”.

        They’ve pulled off a bit of revisionism with “nakba” – now it’s “the displacement of palis” but it was originally used in reference to the Arab military defeat in 1948, which is quite a different spin.

      • Pat

        But using shibboleths like “Jews = Nazis” or “Holocaust = Nakba” is the reason why you will continue to catch shit.

        I took it more as a comment on collective guilt and scapegoating than a direct comparison, and I’m not offended by a historical discussion about Jews not doing themselves any favors by being antagonistic to the dominant culture in their adopted lands, I just don’t find the comparison particularly compelling because the circumstances are only even superficially similar by the most simplistic possible analysis.

      • pistoffnick (370HSSV)

        My position will continue to be that we shouldn’t support either side…

        *stands next to Drake*

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        My point, obviously, is that I won’t hand wave away slaughter because of whatever grudge the sides have. My position will continue to be that we shouldn’t support either side until they are serious about peace negotiations.

        When you are at war, truly at war, peace negotiations come from crushing your enemy. It’s why we firebombed Japan and then nuked them. Why should our drafted soldiers (i.e., civilians forced into fighting) be slaughtered to preserve our enemies’ civilians? Insanity.

        The calculation doesn’t change for Israel. They should be eliminating life in a mile square area from where every single missile is fired from that lands in Israel. The Palestinians should be more afraid of Israel than they are of Hamas. I’m still shocked that the IDF didn’t seize control and eliminate Gaza from further consideration after October 7th. They could turn Iran into a sheet of glass, but they won’t do it. Iran knows this.

        Because Israel isn’t willing to do exactly what the US did to Japan means that there will never be peace.

      • R C Dean

        “If two groups hate each other enough to engage in an actual war, the only way it ends is when one group gives up.”

        A war only requires one group to start it. It can end very quickly if the other group doesn’t fight and gives up. I do think it matters who is right and who is wrong, but it is true that the death, destruction, and suffering aren’t really affected by who is engaging in self-defense and who is the aggressor.

      • R C Dean

        “My position will continue to be that we shouldn’t support either side until they are serious about peace negotiations.”

        Are you saying we shouldn’t support either side until both sides are serious about peace negotiations? Because the Palis certainly never have been, and this approach (if that’s what you mean) would seem to give them a veto over support Israel.

        The Israelis at least have a history of being serious about peace. Of course, calling for what amounts to the unconditional surrender of Hamas parallels the Allied approach in WWII. Its essentially saying we will make peace with your society, but not with the current assholes running it.

      • R C Dean

        “Jews not doing themselves any favors by being antagonistic to the dominant culture in their adopted lands”

        It’s certainly true that if the Jews would just convert to Islam, they wouldn’t be so out of step with their neighbors.

      • Drake

        In this particular case the Israelis certainly aren’t interested in negotiations. They blew up both negotiators from the other side as soon as Netanyahu got back from DC.

      • Pat

        It’s certainly true that if the Jews would just convert to Islam, they wouldn’t be so out of step with their neighbors.

        I meant in terms of 1930s Germany, which was what Drake had referenced, and the history of cultural clashes between Jews and European society goes back centuries further, basically from the Christianization of the Roman empire. It’s an OK topic for some navel gazing, but it has no substantial parallel to the modern situation in the region known as Palestine, where there may or may not be a Jewish state.

        the Israelis certainly aren’t interested in negotiations. They blew up both negotiators from the other side as soon as Netanyahu got back from DC.

        I think they have a fairly good grasp of the terms that are acceptable for their Palestinian counterparts, on account of they’ve done this song and dance a few hundred times since the 1950s, and the official positions of the democratically-elected government of the Palestinian state with regard to the existence of a Jewish state in Israel are not terribly ambiguous. If all you were arguing for was the cessation of American meddling you’d have my full support, but pretending like there’s any meaningful negotiation to be had with Hamas that won’t just be a 4-5 year bandaid until they’ve had a chance to recover logistically on the back of all the international aid and arms for their next incursion into Israel or missile campaign is honestly just wankery.

    • R C Dean

      “The biggest danger we face right now is the open border.”

      I might go with the completely out of control government spending. It’s hard to see how that doesn’t end in catastrophe.

      • Drake

        Our government hands out prepaid cards and free housing to illegals – making sure both problems keep getting worse.

  13. Drake

    “Dotcom, who has spent the last several years pushing various conspiracy theories and digital disinformation…”

    Which all turned out to be true.

    • Suthenboy

      “Which all turned out to be true.”
      That is his crime.

    • Pat

      Factual disinformation is the most pernicious sort.

      • The Wrath of ZWAAAAAAKKKK!!!

        MALinformation, I believe, is the term du jour.

      • WTF

        MALinformation, I believe, is the term du jour.

        Otherwise know as doubleplusungoodthink.

      • DrOtto

        Everytime I see “misinformation” used in legacy media, I assume it’s alleged, but not (yet) proven true. Everytime I see “malinformation” used, I assume it been proven true, but makes them look bad and that’s why they added the prefix “mal”.

      • Pat

        A few years before it became a buzzword during the 2016 election, Romanian intelligence defector Ion Mihai Pacepa wrote a book entitled Disinformation, discussing the Soviet Union’s tactics.

  14. juris imprudent

    Charles C.W. Cooke sees it:

    Despite the doomsday rhetoric from both sides of the aisle, voters don’t seem to particularly care about the coming contest, or even to consider the problems that the country faces to be important enough to shake them out of their long-standing preference for shallow personality contests.

    • mindyourbusiness

      Unfortunate, but true.

      In a reference to the dead thread, I’ll vote for Trump. The only reason I’ll do so is that the alternative is worse.

      Just hope I don’t hurl in the voting booth.

      • Suthenboy

        Yep, that is where I stand. As pols go he isn’t bad and the opposition is unbelievably bad, outright evil really, so here we are.

  15. Ted S.

    BTW, the headline on that story I mentioned in the overnight thread was roughly “Trump may fave FEC lawsuit over Musk interview”, with a link to Newsweek.

    • Ted S.

      So, you can see what dishonest shits the MSM are.

      • Suthenboy

        That is going easy on them. I never thought they would become such outright, bald-faced liars and not give a shit what people think of them. They used to have some semblance of pride even if they were spinning.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Wasn’t it Time that gave the cover to Kamala even though she refused to be interviewed by them?

      • Ownbestenemy

        And presented her views that they decided via editorial decision she needs to have on her platform. Totes okay!

      • Suthenboy

        Sounds like a campaign contribution to me.

    • Pope Jimbo

      How long before Kamala turns down Elon’s offer to do a similar interview with “I’d love to sit down, but I’ve been advised by lawyers that it would be a FEC violation”.

      And no one will ask about the propriety of her glomming onto Joe’s campaign fund before she even has the nomination.

      • R C Dean

        Of course, how an interview with a candidate is an FEC violation is an exercise for the reader.

      • slumbrew

        They spent server resources to do that interview!

        Totally unlike a CNN or MSNBC interview

  16. Pope Jimbo

    Props to this journalo for tying so many important issues together in one story Rez dogs are feeling the heat from climate change

    As global temperatures rise and events like wildfires become more extreme, the stakes are rising for Indigenous communities and their animals. A lack of animal shelters and foster homes are driving higher euthanasia rates while intense heat puts dogs and cats without homes in serious danger. Between the nationwide shortage of veterinarians, underfunded infrastructure in Indigenous communities, and an increase in the animals in need of care, climate change is impacting the beloved “rez dog” in a myriad of ways.
     
    Much of the problem has roots in the COVID-19 outbreak. In 2020, as the virus spread and lockdowns were put in place, animal spay and neuter clinics across the country were shut down.

    If they only could have found a couple trans vets on rez, the story would have been perfect. Or at least worked in some angst about how hard it is to find a foster home for a dog who thinks it is a cat. “Not all cats purr”.

    • Pope Jimbo

      As my Ojibwa slanted world view surfaces, I should note that the story doesn’t mention the Sioux. Why? Because they have been eating hot dogs forever.

    • Pat

      A lack of infrastructure and extreme weather are putting unhoused pets on reservations in danger.

      “Unhoused pets.”

      🙄️

      • rhywun

        The grammar in that sentence is hurting my brain. Don’t they teach English anymore?!

      • rhywun

        lol sorry it was the grammar in THIS sentence

        “A lack of animal shelters and foster homes are driving higher euthanasia rates”

        gahh

      • The Wrath of ZWAAAAAAKKKK!!!

        NewSpeak shall always be taught.

      • Pat

        They’re both poorly constructed. “A lack of infrastructure and extreme weather…” seems to be suggesting it’s a lack of extreme weather putting “unhoused” pets in danger, and merely inverting the order would make the meaning perfectly clear: “Extreme weather and a lack of infrastructure…” Or if, like me, you prefer to set off additional clauses with commas: “Extreme weather, as well as a lack of infrastructure, are putting…” Or if you just stubbornly insist on using a clunky construction, adding the word “both” would clear it up: “A lack of infrastructure and extreme weather are both putting…”

        But I’ve just realized that I have now likely put more effort into examining that single sentence than the author did into writing the entire piece.

    • Sean

      “Not all cats purr”.

      lol

      • Not Adahn

        Ack! Pbbbth!

    • Suthenboy

      “As global temperatures rise and events like wildfires become more extreme”
      I know they know that when they say shit like this it is an easily de-bunked lie.

      “Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” – Theodore Dalrymple

    • DrOtto

      Better yet, dog and cat abortions…

  17. Pat

    Tyranny in the UK – Can it Happen Here?

    As the UK descends into tyranny, where just re-Tweeting something the government doesn’t like can land a person a multi-year jail sentence, Americans are wondering, “can it happen here?” After all, we have the guarantees of the First Amendment.

    But while we shake our heads at UK authorities jailing people for their social media posts this past week, we should not kid ourselves. The answer is that silencing dissent can happen here and it is happening here.

    Here are just three recent examples of how the “deep state” or the permanent government is conspiring to restrict political dialogue in the United States.

    First is the revelation that former US Representative and former US presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard has been placed under the bizarrely named “Quiet Skies” program. As reported by journalist Matt Taibbi based on revelations by TSA whistleblowers, this July Gabbard was flagged as a terror threat, and every time she travels her boarding pass is marked so that she is pulled aside for extensive screening.

    […]

    Next we have the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump. It seems every day brings a new revelation that calls into question whether the massive failure to protect the Republican presidential candidate was just an “honest mistake.”

    […]

    Finally we have the case of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Up until the Trump assassination attempt, the Biden/Harris Administration refused to provide the independent presidential candidate with Secret Service protection.

    […]

    The US government learned an important – and dangerous – lesson from Covid: all you have to do to crush political dissent is to use the weight of the government to force the “private” sector to do the censoring for you. It is only a half-step away from forbidding us from expressing our thoughts on a virus to sending us to prison for expressing other thoughts the government does not like. And maybe worse.

  18. Pope Jimbo

    Those tough Aussies like hearing their bastards being conceived

    A Canberra sexual health organisation has issued a recall for condoms given out in the ACT.
     
    Sexual Health and Family Planning ACT (SHFPACT) said an unknown number of condoms distributed since January 2024 were instead “lubricated probe covers” for medical ultrasound equipment.
     
    “These products have similar packaging and the appearance of condoms but do not provide the same level of protection against pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections,” SHFPACT said in a statement.
     
    “If you have received what looks like a condom from SHFPACT in the past six months, do not use it.”

    • WTF

      The Japanese are weird.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Speaking of which. I’m beginning training here in Japan for the coolest trick you’ve ever seen. I hope to make my American debut at HH 2025!

      A former study found that pigs and mice can breathe through their buttholes.
       
      Humans could, too. Trials begin soon.
       
      Got a blocked nose? No worries. Soon, you’ll have another option to breathe through.
       
      Your butthole. You heard it right.
       
      In studies exploring treatment for people with respiratory conditions, a team of researchers in Japan has revealed that pigs can absorb oxygen through the anus, according to VICE World News.
       
      The scientists discovered that the animals could survive without breathing through their lungs when oxygen and oxygenated liquid are pumped through their buttholes into their intestines.

      So I’m gonna meet some cool scientists, make some side money and learn a cool new trick. What’s not to love?

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Breathing through one’s anus eh? That option stinks.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Colectomy patients hit hardest.

      • Pat

        So I’m gonna meet some cool scientists, make some side money and learn a cool new trick.

        Be careful, Jimbo. They may just be blowing smoke up your ass.

      • The Other Kevin

        Sounds too much like a South Park episode.

        However… interesting implications for deep sea diving?

      • slumbrew

        However… interesting implications for deep sea diving?

        These euphemisms…

      • Pope Jimbo

        TOK is too much of a prude to just come right out and say what he really was thinking about (NSFW) and said “deep sea diving” instead.

        Lucky Mrs. TOK is all I can say.

      • The Last American Hero

        The new CPR classes are gonna be a bit crazy.

      • slumbrew

        Your Holiness, you just happened to have that link handy?

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Still less strange than Japanese young women getting railed by members of the mullusca phylem.

    • The Wrath of ZWAAAAAAKKKK!!!

      Freeze dried mouse turds – B-sides and rarities album?

    • Suthenboy

      “We think the sperm never expected that the day would come when they would be in the mailbox.”
      And I never expected these euphemisms would ever go so far.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Won’t anyone think of the poor mailmen?

        Since everything else is now handled with email and autopay, the percentage of mail that is postcards with some sort of freeze dried animal semen has to have skyrocketed.

        I’m picturing them coming home like some sort of coal miner. Instead of coal dust though, their faces and clothes are begrimed with white freeze dried sperm.

      • Not Adahn

        They will need to alter their screening protocol for mailcarrier applicants.

    • Suthenboy

      It took this long for Jap scientists to catch up to the news media here? Who’da thunk it?

  19. The Late P Brooks

    Please don’t step on the pixies.

    • Pope Jimbo

      The Japanese government really doesn’t like the Pixies.

      There are laws here requiring their videos to be Pixiehated or face steep fines.

      • Suthenboy

        I dont know anything about the Pixies. What is their objection?

      • Suthenboy

        Awww fuck. Never mind. Maybe I have had too much coffee now

  20. The Other Kevin

    Hope all of you with kids have a good school year. Hope your kids do too.

    We had a couple of notable exits from our gym community this week. One is a female college swimmer, one is a college pitcher. We gave them both a special summer rate and they were in the gym a lot. I’m hoping they do well. But yesterday we picked up another female athlete, who does those highland games. She seems fun.

    • OBJ FRANKELSON

      And everyone thought you were a fool to buy that caber toss machine!

      • The Other Kevin

        We don’t have any of that… yet. We’ve been looking into setting up an outside area for people to practice that stuff.

      • OBJ FRANKELSON

        Will you set up a breathalyzer to ensure the minimum blood alcohol level is met before they start training?

  21. Pope Jimbo

    Chickens coming home to roost in Minneapolis

    Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is proposing the largest city levy increase since at least 2008 in next year’s budget.
     
    Why it matters: The 8.1% jump, announced Wednesday, would raise property taxes by around $200 for the median homeowner.
     
    The collapse of downtown commercial property values means a larger share of this year’s property tax burden will fall on homeowners.
    The big picture: Bills are coming due at city hall for inflationary costs and rising salaries as federal pandemic relief funds sunset at the end of this year.
     
    The city also must hire more staff and invest in new infrastructure to fulfill court-ordered police reforms.

    It will be interesting to see if the citizens of Mpls continue to be so blasé about all the proggie hobby horses now that they have to pay taxes. When it was big companies in downtown paying the bill, who cared?

    • Pope Jimbo

      And it isn’t just Minneapolis. Super progressive Melvin Carter (no fines in libraries and guaranteed income programs) is backtracking on rent control.

      Citing a slowdown in housing production, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter is proposing the city change its rent stabilization law to permanently exempt units built after 2004.
       
      The move marks a concession to developers, who have said the city’s 3% cap on residential rent increases hampers their ability to finance projects in an already difficult economic environment.
       
      St. Paul’s first-in-the-Midwest rent control policy was born of a grassroots effort driven by a desire to prevent large rent hikes from displacing tenants, particularly low-income renters and people of color. Voters passed the ordinance in 2021.
       
      A year later, concerned as some developers paused or canceled their St. Paul projects, the City Council amended the law to exempt new construction for 20 years.
       
      Tenant advocates at the time accused elected officials of betraying the will of the voters and caving to scare tactics. Developers said the change was not enough to assuage investors and lenders.
       
      St. Paul has issued permits for only 150 housing units in the first two quarters of 2024, according to data from the city’s Department of Planning and Economic Development — far below the pace needed to match last year’s 1,133.

      150 permits this year? Uffda.

    • Rat on a train

      federal pandemic relief funds sunset at the end of this year
      I’ve seen this in many articles about public transit budgets.

      • Suthenboy

        I am confused. Various government bodies built temporary outside funding into their budget permanently?
        C’mon now, no one is that stupid.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Schools here are also moaning and wailing about the Covid money running out.

        It is like govt agencies didn’t use one time money to pay off one time expenses. Instead they spent it all on new programs or expanded existing programs. Now they can’t figure out how they got in that situation.

        Of course, at a certain point, the pols will cave and send them more money.

        Imagine the horror if we tried to go back to Obama’s budgets. Even though they had giant deficits, they would be deemed to be the worst thing ever.

      • Rat on a train

        There’s a fight in Monkey County MD because the district ended virtual school due to the end of helicopter money. Some parents are considering suing.

    • R C Dean

      And so the doom loop begins? intensifies?

  22. DrOtto

    I love The Pixies, but Here Comes Your Man is probably their least inspiring song. Were you a Clear Channel music programmer previously?

    • slumbrew

      Oh, snap – shots fired!

    • Pat

      This may be controversial, as I’ve seen it referenced as a fan favorite deep track, but I think Silver was proof that Frank Black was correct to shut Kim Deal out of the writing process. It’s the only Pixies track I usually skip when playing an album.

    • Urthona

      daaaaaaaayum son.

  23. The Other Kevin

    Pixies was my first concert. Thanks for today’s music.

    • Nephilium

      First concert I waited in line (at the local Sears, because they had a Ticketmaster outlet) for and bought tickets (with my own money) was for Morbid Angel, Motorhead, and Black Sabbath (Tony Martin was on vocals at the time).

      • Nephilium

        ron73440:

        I will freely and openly admit that I really enjoyed the Tyr album.

      • ron73440

        I used to have Headless Cross on cassette and I have Tyr on CD.

        Can’t find Headless Cross for less than $50 or I would buy it again.

    • Urthona

      My first concert was Huey Lewis and the News.

      I bet no one can guess my age.

      • Sean

        61

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      My first concert was U2 before they sucked. Tickets were $12.

  24. The Late P Brooks

    What else will she pull from Nixon’s playbook?

    Vice President Kamala Harris plans to propose the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries,” her campaign announced late Wednesday.

    “There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets, and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” the Harris campaign said in a statement. “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”

    The proposed ban is part of a broader economic policy platform that the Democratic presidential nominee plans to unveil Friday at a campaign rally in battleground North Carolina.

    Harris will also pledge that if elected president, she will direct her administration to increase scrutiny of potential mergers between large supermarkets and food producers, “specifically for the risk that the proposed merger would raise grocery prices for consumers,” her campaign said.

    She’ll have inflation whipped in no time.

    • Ownbestenemy

      excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business

      Now do taxes and fees for doing “government business”. Fuck off you harpy.

    • slumbrew

      Smart, going after grocery stores and those fat, fat margins of theirs. 🙄

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        We’re going to end up with a nationwide food desert.

      • R.J.

        OMG. $20 gallon of milk, here we come.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I’d be OK with this if we also cut Ag subsidies to farmers. Because they are gonna be rolling in black market lucre if this shit goes through.

        During the pandemic when pig farmers couldn’t get slaughterhouse access and were faced with having to simply kill all their pigs, they turned to Craig’s list and started selling them there.

        I bought an entire pig that had been gutted, skinned and hung in a cooler for $120. Our family had to butcher the whole hog ourselves. We have butchered umpteen deer so it wasn’t hard at all.

        I see a lot more shenanigans like that happening if price controls do go into effect.

        * I bought a second pig the next year from the same guy. Haven’t reached out to him since.

      • The Other Kevin

        All the price increases have been similar in every local store. Are we to believe all the owners of grocery stores got together in a secret meeting and decided the new price points on everything? To be fair, gas stations all have similar prices, but grocery stores seem a bit far fetched.

      • Pope Jimbo

        TOK:

        Are we to believe all the owners of grocery stores got together in a secret meeting and decided the new price points on everything

        The Global Grocer’s Syndicate has the meeting room right after the Secret White Men’s Power planning sessions. I’m surprised you didn’t see them waiting out in the hall as we left.

      • Ownbestenemy

        TOK – they are evil corporations. You know they meet annually on the island that is shaped like a skull to discuss their devious plans.

      • Sean

        All the price increases have been similar in every local store.

        I don’t feel that’s accurate. A bit of shopping around has definitely saved us money.

        The biggest savings I’ve seen has come from getting away from the larger chains (TFM & Wegman’s) and going to more local chains (Weis & Landis).

        My GF will still hit Walmart & Giant for some things where she knows their pricing is better.

    • WTF

      Price controls. What could possibly go wrong?

      • Rat on a train

        Good news, we sell eggs for $1/dozen. Bad news, we don’t have any.

      • Pope Jimbo

        St. Paul has issued permits for only 150 housing units in the first two quarters of 2024, according to data from the city’s Department of Planning and Economic Development — far below the pace needed to match last year’s 1,133.

        Don’t fearmonger! Price controls have never had any negative impacts.

      • Suthenboy

        1. Prosperity – Shop for what you want.
        2. Commies get power
        3. Shop for what you need
        4. Shop for what you can afford
        5. Buy whatever you can find so you can barter it for what you need to survive

        All seems to be going as planned.

    • Rat on a train

      What else will she pull from Nixon’s playbook?
      She has the opportunity to cover up a campaign office breakin.

      • OBJ FRANKELSON

        Too bad we’re out of Afghanistan otherwise she could kick off a Operation Linebacker into Pakistan.

      • Rat on a train

        As if POTUS can’t start a new war when needed.

    • The Other Kevin

      I will predict it now. Price controls will lead to people starving.

      • Ownbestenemy

        And? /Globalist and Marxist

    • Pat

      And it’d be just like those indolent kulak wreckers to close down their stores just to spite our benevolent kween for looking out for the folx.

    • Suthenboy

      Make no mistake, food shortages are one of the top weapons in the tyrants quiver and they all use them. They always go after the food supply. It is no coincidence that full on communist countries always suffer famines.

      *Worth noting the food aid pitches made by musicians, actors, pols, etc are just virtue signaling that enables the greatest evils mankind has seen.

    • Urthona

      But she’s not a communist.

      Just has all the same policies.

  25. The Other Kevin

    Kim Dotcom is one of those people I follow on Twitter not because I agree with him 100%, but because I agree with him 50% and reading an honestly different perspective is good.

  26. The Late P Brooks

    Enemy of the State

    A Russian court has sentenced a Russian-American woman to 12 years in prison for treason after she made a donation of just over $50 to a US-based charity supporting Ukraine.

    Ksenia Karelina, 33, had pleaded guilty to the charges. She was detained in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg earlier this year while visiting her grandparents.

    The verdict was announced Thursday after a closed-doors trial at Sverdlovsk regional court that ended last week. Investigators said Karelina had sent money to purchase equipment and ammunition for the Ukrainian army, RIA Novosti reported.

    That could never happen here.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      American citizen though, right? Unfortunately for her she’s a bargaining chip.

      • Cunctator

        —“American citizen though, right? Unfortunately for her she’s a bargaining chip.”—

        It looks like she already knows this.
        “Ahead of the verdict, Mushailov told Reuters she hoped to be included in a future swap.”

    • Suthenboy

      That was incredibly stupid of her.

  27. Pope Jimbo

    Now that they have admitted that the Boeing Starliner pilots are stuck up there until February, I’m wondering why the press isn’t demanding answers about this fiasco from the Chair of the National Space Council. After all they are in charge of NASA.

    I wonder how the stranded pilots feel about the fact that they will be voting for Kamala this election. Not because they got absentee votes, but because I’m pretty sure someone has stolen their mail-in ballots already.

    • The Last American Hero

      As if Team Boeing would vote for the Musk-backed candidate.

  28. The Late P Brooks

    Karelina’s conviction comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin in April last year increased the maximum sentence for treason from 20 years to life in prison, as part of the crackdown on dissent that has intensified over two-and-a-half years of war.

    Are you taking notes, Kamala?

  29. Tonio

    Canadian government warns country to prepare for new virus far worse than COVID…

    I’ve heard the the RCMP has recently become very, very worried about the possibilities for civil unrest because people are dissatisfied. A plandemic would be just the tool they would seek to clamp down on meetings, protests, etc.

    • Suthenboy

      Or the spark…

      • Ownbestenemy

        The tinder box can only sit and smolder for so long. Humanity is not on a great path in this timeline.

      • The Last American Hero

        The spark that will be squelched when they government shuts down their credit cards. This is a country that has kept Trudeau in office after what he did to the truckers in 2020.

  30. Certified Public Asshat

    Disney wants a wrongful death lawsuit thrown out because the plaintiff had Disney+

    The reason it says Piccolo must be compelled to arbitrate? A clause in the terms and conditions he signed off on when he created a Disney+ account for a monthlong trial in 2019.

    Those terms of use — which users must acknowledge to create an account — state that “any dispute between You and Us, Except for Small Claims, is subject to a class action waiver and must be resolved by individual binding arbitration.”

    Disney says Piccolo agreed to similar language again when purchasing park tickets online in September 2023.

    I can’t believe the headline, having a Disney+ account is you agreeing to let Disney kill you, is misleading.

    • Pat

      The terms of that contract should only be applicable to the use of that particular service and not the entire suite of products and services Disney offers, unless very explicitly stated otherwise, but it seems there’s no such thing as an unconscionable contract anymore, so I wouldn’t be shocked if it held up.

      • UnCivilServant

        A: The terms should only apply to the product they’re associated with.

        B: The agreement expired when the dead guy stopped using the product the agreement was associated with years before his death.

        C: The plaintiff (widow) was not a party to the agreement.

        There is no leg for the argument to stand on. The lawyers should be censured.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        The terms of that contract should only be applicable to the use of that particular service and not the entire suite of products and services Disney offers

        Disney isn’t saying it does, just that he’s agreed to arbitration every time he contracts with them.

      • Pat

        just that he’s agreed to arbitration every time he contracts with them.

        Eh, same principle though. You shouldn’t be able to bind all contracts to arbitration based on one, so long as the terms of the ostensibly controlling contract only cover the use of the specified service. And even if the terms of the ostensibly controlling contract are broad enough to cover all future and potential contracts for other goods and services, those terms should be voided as unconscionable, IMO. But as I said, they likely wouldn’t be. Corpos get a lot of deference; particularly multinational corpos that are extremely politically active.

      • The Last American Hero

        Shouldn’t is a hilarious word to use when dealing with the legal system.

  31. The Late P Brooks

    It’s wishful thinking, all the way down

    U.S. business leaders are “in denial” about Vice President Kamala Harris’ growing lead over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, according to C-suite advisor Tina Fordham, who said Thursday that her clients are still betting big on the former president’s return.

    Fordham, founder of strategic advisory firm Fordham Global Foresight, told CNBC that her client base of institutional investors, board members and C-suite executives continue to view Trump as the more pro-business candidate and their preferred choice.

    “They still prefer a Trump presidency and they still think it’s going to happen,” Fordham told “Street Signs”.

    Harris is seen with a 2.6-point lead over Trump in the latest average of national polls collated by FiveThirtyEight.

    That lead has risen steadily since she was announced as the Democrat’s presidential candidate after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month. Nevertheless, Fordham said many executives were choosing to ignore the findings.

    Harris has definitely gotten the “shiny new thing” bump. Will it last as she is forced to reveal her “program”?

    For that matter, will Trump manage to somehow not blow it?

    • Pat

      as she is forced to reveal her “program”

      Forced by whom? She makes Obama look like a policy wonk, has already as much as stated she won’t debate Trump, and has only gotten accolades for it. Articles like this one are basically pump priming so that we can all pretend it was perfectly reasonable for a woman who got 1% of her own party’s support when she was actually placed before the party’s voters as an option suddenly waltzes to a 50 electoral vote landslide, having carried the half dozen requisite swing states.

      It’s also rather hilarious that we’re going to pretend C-suites are still Republican social networks hankering for that sweet, sweet GOP 2% reduction in the corporate income tax rate, as if 3/4 of Wall Street and major corporate political donations haven’t gone to Democrats for the last 20 years.

      • WTF

        I will admit I am baffled as to how so many people can look at the shit show of the last 4 years and decide they want to vote for 4 more years of the same. I know most people aren’t exactly geniuses, but come on, the evidence of disaster is right there.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        If she pulls this one off it proves that propaganda works and that the mainstream media can do, well, anything.

      • juris imprudent

        the last 4 years and decide they want to vote for 4 more years of the same

        Some people will pay any price to avoid another Trump administration.

      • WTF

        Some people will pay any price to avoid another Trump administration.

        Again, things were pretty good under Trump. Objectively much better than under the current regime. So what if he’s obnoxious? I’ll take the peace and prosperity that went along with it.

      • Urthona

        “I will admit I am baffled as to how so many people can look at the shit show of the last 4 years and decide they want to vote for 4 more years of the same. I know most people aren’t exactly geniuses, but come on, the evidence of disaster is right there.”

        I think people in right wing bubbles just fail to get how universally hated Donald Trump is.

        Harris comes in as a younger blank slate and they can imagine her to be anything.

        I sincerely hope this doesn’t hold, but…. Republicans were kinda asking for it.

      • R C Dean

        “I think people in right wing bubbles just fail to get how universally hated Donald Trump is.”

        I think you have to be in a left-wing bubble to think Trump is universally hated. Somewhere north of 45% of the electorate is willing to vote for him, after all. His non-supporters seem to have a particularly intense dislike of him, true, but it’s a long way from universal.

        I wouldn’t even call myself a Trump supporter, but I don’t hate him.

      • Urthona

        That’s a fair point.

        Only half the country hates him with the fire of a thousand suns.

        The whole game is based on convincing the pittance of “independent” people to vote for your guy, but I think they may not be yugely excited about the rambling octogenarian.

      • juris imprudent

        Again, things were pretty good under Trump.

        They myth of the rightful ruler, who’s reign brings abundance to the fields. Yes, yes, it is entirely possible to fuck up a good thing – and in fact most politicians do. What they don’t do is actually create a better world/economy. And frankly the last year of Trump pretty much undoes the previous three in my book.

        The “pretty good” metric is also mostly self-serving – it’s how did I fare at the time. And if I don’t perceive a material difference in my affairs, then my vote will be determined by OTHER things.

      • Pat

        I think people in right wing bubbles just fail to get how universally hated Donald Trump is.

        I doubt that’s it. The fact that Trump is hated by the sort of people who are supposed to hate Trump is precisely what juices his supporters. And you’d have to be in a left wing bubble to believe Trump is universally hated. Like it or not, even in 2020 he was a cunt hair from his second term, and increased his total vote numbers from 2016. Even Mondale wasn’t universally hated, but it would be a lesser hyperbole to say he was.

        Neither is Harris a blank slate. She’s got plenty of policy positions, going back to her days as Willy Brown’s side piece, nearly universally shitty, which is why she couldn’t crack 5% during her abortive attempt at securing her own party’s nomination in 2020.

        The reality that’s lurking somewhere within all of this is that there’s a relatively stable portion of the population that is actually, no-shit totalitarian left – probably something like 20%. There’s a relatively stable portion of the population that is reliably partisan on the D side, and will “vote blue no matter who,” regardless of which clown the totalitarian 20% in the activist class push to the nomination. And when you add them up, they constitute nearly half of the electorate. On the other side, the GOP coalition is dead, but until Trump shattered the consciousness of the Rockefeller wing, you had a stable portion of the population – chiefly the business class – that craves stability, and the reliable R partisans who would vote for whatever clown the business class put up to make sure the vehicle approaching the cliff at 235 MPH is traveling in a perfectly straight line, cumulatively constituting nearly half of the electorate. And a unaligned ~4-5%, who are too lazy, stupid, or unprincipled to have a strong opinion, residing in a couple dozen closely contested counties in a half dozen closely contested states split the difference every 4 years and decide who gets to helm the federal apparatus for a while, with some amount of bullshittery probably affecting the outcomes in one direction or the other.

        Tl;dr, you get to be governed by whichever fuck face the activist class on the left or the right managed to successfully sell to an infinitesimally small, mostly clueless minority of the electorate in a small number of counties.

      • Not Adahn

        I think you could make the case that Trump did cause good things for the economy because it kept Congress and the courts tied up trying to thwart him so that they didn’t have the time to make things worse.

        I imagine there would be other people sufficiently hateful to the ruling caste that they’d have the same effect, but I don’t know of them.

      • Not Adahn

        There is another site I occasionally visit, and there’s this Swiss guy with rabid TDS. I kinda want to make an account and ask why he’s so emotionally invested, and maybe he should calm down be looking at some seized artwork.

    • The Other Kevin

      It’s going to be fun to see how these protests get pinned on MAGA. I think it’s going to be a shit show, and Kamala’s poll numbers will go DOWN after next week.

      • Common Tater

        I heard she’s good at going down.

      • Pope Jimbo

        100% agree. This will be when Kamala starts to sink.

        The protesters will remind everyone that the Dems are pretty comfortable hanging out with Islamic Nazis (bonus points because our brave and fierce Native American woman Lt. Governor is shown wearing a hajib as she and Walz pander to the Islamicists).

        The other factor will be that Kamala has to actually speak in public. That has never ever ended well for her.

      • WTF

        You assume that the MSM will provide real coverage of the “protests”.
        I do not make that assumption.

    • Pat

      Meh. The Ds have been all-in on the Jew hatred for at least a dozen years. The moneyed Jewish donors are mostly the secular, woke variety who don’t care, and there’s no state where the loss of every Jewish vote would make any difference to the outcome, so it’s a no-risk proposition to pander to the campus radicals and their Islamic pets.

    • Not Adahn

      Didn’t Chicago pass some sort of ordinance empowering them to seize busses they didn’t like?

  32. Common Tater

    “Dog meat has finally been banned in South Korea.

    The upsetting centuries-old tradition was brought to an end with the passing of a bill in January that banned the breeding or slaughter of dogs in dog farms and the distribution of dog meat. It finally went into effect on August 7….

    The South Korean government is now focusing on compensating the 5,600 businesses in the dog meat industry – including 1,500 farms and 2,200 restaurants and shops – that are on the verge of shut down.

    The government will make up for the cost of equipment loss and renovation costs, as well as monetary packages for meat distributors or restaurant owners before the ban fully goes into effect in February 2027.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13745287/Dog-meat-banned-Korea-tourist-tastes.html

    • ron73440

      When my father in law was a child in Okinawa, they were dirt poor as a result of WWII.

      He had a dog for awhile and one day he was told it ran away.

      They had fresh meat, not Spam that night for a rare treat.

      He didn’t figure that out for many years.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Eating carnivores that aren’t fish just seems weird.

    • Pope Jimbo

      lol. Mrs. Holiness is sensitive about this. She will tell anyone who listens that only a few old backwards thinking men eat dog.

      When we got married, my in-laws had a dog on their farm. We came back a couple years later and the dog was gone. I asked about the missing dog and my father-in-law said “he got old and we ate him.”

      I tried once to gently kid my wife about it and it didn’t go well. I never mentioned it again and made very sure I don’t tell that story anywhere she can hear me.

    • Pat

      There’s absolutely no argument for banning dog meat that couldn’t be applied to any other animal. It’s a horrible precedent to set. If you don’t like dog meat, don’t buy it. Proselytize your friends and neighbors with weepy Sarah McLachlan ads. “Be the annoying douchebag change you want to see,” and all that shit. The only time the government should be involved is if someone steals your dog and eats it.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        I don’t know about South Korea, but dogs are tortured to death in parts of China because it’s believed the adrenaline release from the torture makes dog meat tastier. I’m unaware if they do that to other animals, but that would be an argument for specifically banning dog meat if that’s a dog-specific slaughter approach.

        Animals should always be killed cleanly and as quickly as possible.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Certain places do that with snakes too, anger up the blood before they’re killed and fried up or whatever. It’s a cruel world.

      • Not Adahn

        Akshually…

        There is a consistent argument for it, but it leads to some kind of horrifying results. The flip side of the argument is it’s ok to kill bums if nobody cares about them.

      • Pat

        Animals should always be killed cleanly and as quickly as possible.

        I completely agree, although I don’t think I’d be inclined to support a ban on the practice, only because it blurs the distinction of animals as property, and that’s a dangerous road to begin traversing if you’re inclined to support animal slaughter more generally. It’s the camel’s nose.

        The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

        Some portion of people are just going to be pieces of shit. If their piece of shittery is insufficiently risible to get their neighbors to make their life miserable, it’s probably best to leave them to their piece of shittery and decline to participate in it. Despite it violating the same principle, albeit to a lesser degree, I could probably be persuaded to support some form of slaughter regulation.

      • Urthona

        Historically societies tend to ban the consuming of meat from animals that been culturally been thought of as pets after awhile. It can seem arbitrary, but that’s just the way humans roll.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Oh, and referring to my comment above about the Ojibwe and hot dogs.

      Growing up next to an Ojibwe rez, you would always hear them referring to the Sioux as dog eaters because … well because the Sioux did eat dogs and the Ojibwa didn’t.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      Sounds like a business opportunity to smuggle some of those reservation dogs that would otherwise die from climate change

    • Not Adahn

      Fallout hardest hit.

    • rhywun

      Seems like most of the stories back then were coming out of CHOP. I barely remember the MSM mentioning MN at all, which seems odd considering that is where the mobs chose to start the whole thing.

      • Tundra

        There was an autonomous zone for several years afterward. The Twin Cities are in shambles. It’s why all this glowing propaganda about tampon makes me so insane.

    • rhywun

      Yikes. I see the occasional anti-cop graffiti around here – and probably dating from that time – but nothing rising to that level.

  33. The Late P Brooks

    Fordham drew a distinction, however, between the preferences of Big Tech and big banks on the one hand, and corporates on the other. The latter group, she said, are “piling in” on a Harris presidency.

    “They rely upon the U.S. free trade and democracy phenomenon that’s powered global corporation for the last 30 years,” she said.

    A sweeping industrial policy, funded by Modern Monetary Theory; everybody wins.

  34. The Late P Brooks

    Economic terrorism

    During his interview with Elon Musk Monday night, Donald Trump praised the tech CEO for firing organizing workers, drawing the ire of labor unions and those who care about workers’ rights.

    It also reflected poorly on Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who became the first union leader to speak at the Republican National Convention last month.

    “Firing workers for organizing, striking, and exercising their rights as Americans is economic terrorism,” O’Brien said in a statement Tuesday to Politico’s Playbook.

    Forcibly shutting down a business and throwing people who just want to go to work and earn a living into the street isn’t economic terrorism?

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      That’s different!!

    • Ownbestenemy

      I am sure he was also up front on the news back in 2021 explaining how a forced vaccination or lose your job was also economic terrorism right?! RIGHT?!

      • WTF

        The “my body, my choice” crowd really flipped on that one.

      • Nephilium

        I refuse to let them use that slogan. I’ll call them out on all the things that are my body that I have no choice about.

  35. The Late P Brooks

    The Teamsters are one of the only major unions that have not yet endorsed Kamala Harris for president, a surprising stance considering historic Democratic support for labor unions. Pressure is building against O’Brien from within the union’s rank-and-file members, as the Teamsters National Black Caucus voted unanimously to endorse Harris on Tuesday.

    In a statement, the caucus said that Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz have an “unwavering commitment to workers and their families.”

    “Their records reflect a deep dedication to advancing labor rights and supporting working-class Americans,” the statement said.

    Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers has not only endorsed Harris, but also filed federal labor charges against Musk and Trump for “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves by engaging in protected concerted activity, such as strikes.”

    That totally doesn’t sound like it was ghost-written by somebody from the DNC and forwarded to plantation for signature.

  36. The Late P Brooks

    Noted economic policy wonk Kamala Harris

    Harris will instead try to finesse her economic policy message in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday, where she’s expected to explain how her administration would reduce costs for middle-class families and address corporate price gouging.

    The speech could help solidify her surprising rise in the polls against former President Donald Trump when it comes to the economy. Voters have consistently given President Joe Biden weak marks on economic policy, but they’ve been more forgiving of Harris.

    She is renowned for her finesse and rhetorical precision.

    • The Other Kevin

      “Fissures are forming in the economy just as the Fed’s long-running fight against inflation looks to be nearing its conclusion.”

      I hate this so much. Even if inflation went to 0% we’d still have the same high prices we have now.

    • Sean

      She worked at a McDonalds!

  37. KSuellington

    Totally shocking, but I didn’t see anywhere in the news yesterday that it was the three year anniversary of the Taliban win. They had a parade and everything, with a bunch of the military hardware left behind. I remember reading at the time that several of the Blackhawks that were left had just been delivered there weeks before from the factory. They still had that new Blackhawk smell, nothing like it.

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/08/the-taliban-party-down.php

    • The Other Kevin

      Wait I thought all of that stuff was completely useless to them. Don’t tell me we were lied to? *shocked face*

      • KSuellington

        Looks like they are able to use alot of it alright. Giving up Bagram was fucking idiotic.

      • juris imprudent

        I honestly don’t rate them above cargo cultists.

      • KSuellington

        The Papuans didn’t get any useable helicopters, artillery or Humvees tho.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Just like the Iranian F14’s.

    • Tundra

      Spicy!

    • R C Dean

      Is this supposed to hurt her with her supporters somehow?

    • Pat

      That was some big secret? I remember seeing those pics when she got elected.

  38. The Late P Brooks

    Just do what Chuck Schumer tells you to do

    New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy plans to name his former chief of staff — who was a longtime Senate aide — as the state’s temporary replacement to the seat of disgraced Sen. Bob Menendez, according to three people familiar with the decision.

    Murphy will appoint George Helmy, a former staffer for Sen. Cory Booker who is now a health care executive in one of the biggest hospital systems in New Jersey, to the seat following Menendez’s resignation that takes effect Aug. 20. The people with knowledge were granted anonymity to discuss an impending announcement.

    I’m sure he’ll do great.

  39. The Late P Brooks

    I think people in right wing bubbles just fail to get how universally hated Donald Trump is.

    Check your bubble.

    • Sean

      *taps bubble*

      Seems sturdy.

    • Urthona

      I’m in all bubbles, and my favorite part is when they pop.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      I’m not in a bubble. You’re in a bubble.

    • The Other Kevin

      Wait are we still talking about boobs from yesterday?

  40. Common Tater

    “‘No Votes for Bombala’s Genocide’: 14 arrested as agitators crash NYC rally for Kamala, clash with cops

    Agitators wearing keffiyehs set off smoke bombs and some were taken into custody by NYPD officers

    Anti-Israel activists crashed a Democratic rally supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in New York City on Wednesday where Mayor Eric Adams was speaking and went on to trash the afterparty venues, causing thousands of dollars in damage to the nearby restaurant.”

    https://thepostmillennial.com/no-votes-for-bombalas-genocide-14-arrested-as-agitators-crash-nyc-rally-for-kamala-clash-with-cops

    I wonder how big the crackdown will be in Chicago.

    • Urthona

      There will probably be a nice ineffective crackdown, and then no Democrat will ask why Chicago just can’t police itself all the time.

      • Urthona

        er *effective

      • juris imprudent

        You do remember who is mayor of Chicago now, right? The asshole to the left of Kamala.

    • Common Tater

      “Chicago Braces for Chaos: Courtrooms Prepared for Mass Arrests as Chicago Police Expect as Many as 100,000 Pro-Palestinian Protesters During DNC

      The Gateway Pundit reported last year that the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the Pretrial Fairness Act provision of the Safety, Accountability, Equity, Transparency-today Act, meaning that cash bail will be eliminated in Illinois.

      This will result in the release on no bail while awaiting court date of those accused of certain felonies, such as “second-degree murder, aggravated battery, and arson without bail, as well as drug-induced homicide, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, intimidation, aggravated DUI, aggravated fleeing and eluding, drug offenses and threatening a public official.””

      https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/chicago-braces-chaos-courtrooms-prepared-mass-arrests-as/

      WTF?

  41. The Late P Brooks

    Problem solved

    The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday voted unanimously to ban marketers from using fake reviews, like those generated with AI technology, and other misleading practices to promote their products and services.

    All five FTC commissioners voted to adopt the final rule, which will go into effect 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register, the government’s official catalog of rules and notices.

    Typically, rules are published within days of their adoption, meaning that consumers can expect to see the FTC’s fake review ban go into effect starting in mid-October.

    “Fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money, but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement.

    Along with prohibiting reviews written by non-humans, the FTC’s rule also forbids companies from paying for either positive or negative reviews to falsely boost or denigrate a product. It also forbids marketers from exaggerating their own influence by, for example, paying for bots to inflate their follower count.

    Finally. Truth in Advertising.

    • R C Dean

      Honestly, fake reviews generated with AI or by people who haven’t used the product/service are fraudulent, so I got no problem with that. Paid reviews should ideally be flagged as such under a “material omission” theory of fraud. There’s always been a foggy zone between advertising puffery and fraud, but some things do cross the line.

  42. The Late P Brooks

    I’m not in a bubble. You’re in a bubble.

    I prefer to think of myself as being in a bathysphere.

  43. Gender Traitor

    Big outage affecting multiple financial institutions’ ATMs, ITMs, and credit cards. Y’all may want to check if your FI is affected.

  44. cavalier973

    I think people in right wing bubbles just fail to get how universally hated Donald Trump is.

    People inclined toward authoritarianism have certainly expressed dissatisfaction with Trump.

    • KSuellington

      I think the people that view Trump as a savior and those that view him as the devil share more in common than they’d like to admit.

      • Pat

        The people who view him as a savior baffle me more, tbh. He got clowned on by the entire federal apparatus during his administration, had zero control of his cabinet or staff, and used what power he had to affect the permanent bureaucracy by making no meaningful staffing changes and leaving decision making to aides who made no secret of their distaste for him. Dude was kissing the ass of his secret service detail and the LEOs on the scene mere moments after they allowed him to be shot in the ear. For as much as his detractors want to paint him as a radical, he’s just not a rock the boat kind of guy. Nothing is going to meaningfully change on the off chance the media can’t sell Harris and the next assassin is as bad a shot as the last one, any more than it did during his first term. Past performance is still the best predictor of future results.

    • R C Dean

      Which for some reason leads them to call him a fascist.

      Say, weren’t we supposed to get a Giant Meteor ‘o Death by now?

  45. The Late P Brooks

    Honestly, fake reviews generated with AI or by people who haven’t used the product/service are fraudulent, so I got no problem with that.

    I’m pretty sure they are prohibited already. I can’t help snickering at the “magic words on paper” crowd. If we just make a rule, it won’t happen.

  46. The Late P Brooks

    Tl;dr, you get to be governed by whichever fuck face the activist class on the left or the right managed to successfully sell to an infinitesimally small, mostly clueless minority of the electorate in a small number of counties.

    The tyranny of the lunatic fringe.