Winning! (the fourth round replay)
OK, another day down and it’s almost the weekend.The Chiefs fans are taking a five-day weekend after their parade yesterday was a drunken nice-fest of middle America. Don’t they know you’re supposed to loot and riot? There were only two hockey games yesterday. The Rangers and Bruins won them. And across the pond, Spuds beat Southampton to advance in the FA Cup. And they both played most of their first team, which the FA will like.
One day I’ll tell you the 5 D’s of the links
The last of the Ming emperors, Chongzhen, was born on this day. He shares it with Queen Anne Stuart, dueling master Aaron Burr, confederate general J.E.B. Stuart, Murder Inc’s Louis Buchalter, actor and President Ronald Reagan, German actress Eva Braun, actor Rip Torn, “news” anchor Tom Brokaw, reggae legend Bob Marley, rocker Axl Rose, Buckeye legend Tom Tupa, and epic trollster Rick Astley.
Some good company there. Now on to…the links!
The impeachment trial is finally over. But the politics goes on, as Schiff plans to subpoena Bolton and the Senate opens an investigation into Burisma-Biden connections. Also back to the usual trolling and triggering. Will these people ever learn?
That’s some quality environmentalism
Thanks a lot, you watermelon assholes. Now we need you to fix it before we take your schemes seriously.
A problematic high school in Chicago got a new leader after the former heads were removed for corruption. Aaaaaaaaand she’s gone too. Maybe they need to close their government schools and just let these kids roam the streets. It would be safer.
Huh, I thought they ended this kind of stuff when they left boarding school. I guess he just couldn’t quite move on to sheep-shagging.
As election results from Iowa pour trickle in, the race tightens up. Seriously, at this point can anybody have faith it’s not being completely rigged by the Dem party?
TRIGGERED!!!!!
Twitter user numbers up, but profits are down. I blame Russian troll farms. Fuck it, that’s easier than real analysis of what happened.
Here you go. Hey, don’t blame me if you don’t like it. Blame the calendar.
OK, fine. Here’s who you were all expecting, I bet. Enjoy.
Now have a great day, friends.
The secret is to be triggered all of the time.
Then you run out of ammo. Keep your powder dry and only strike when the moment is right.
I can’t believe you just said that.
Did you really just…
#BelieveAll
I hardly noticed it had started.
“Free at least, free at last….”
I feel something like a sense of accomplishment that I got past the entire kerfuffle and still have no idea what the meat of the charges was about. I know the truth is that they just don’t like his style but I expect that they had some sort of structured argument that he went beyond the normal, accepted actions of the president but I still don’t have an idea what those actions were.
It was the Impossible Burger of impeachment. Looked like real charges, but no actual meat.
Trump tried to investigate blatant corruption committed by one the elites. The charges against him are essentially the corruption charges that should be leveled against Biden. It’s surreal to the point of being a parody.
Article 1: He tried to get the Ukraine to investigate (true) the son of a political opponent (to be determined after Dem primary a year later) for political gain (facts not in evidence) or he would withhold approved aid (not true).
Article 2: he obstructed congress (true) illegally (not true) from investigating him by telling witnesses not to testify (true) without authority to do so (not true).
He obstructed Congress by exercising his due process right to judicial review of subpoenas.
But the House has the sole right to impeach, so the courts don’t have a right to weigh in on House impeachment inquiry subpoenas and claiming executive privilege is obstruction of Congress.
-Schiff (for real)
This is probably the cleanest summation I’ve seen.
I’d like to see it with true/false color-coding instead of the tags, but otherwise, yeah.
Yeah, I didn’t get the whole “trial” thing. If there’s no statutory crime that’s clearly defined and its commission needing to be proven, then it all comes down to opinion – do you *like* whatever he did or not. They could have impeached him for drinking coffee. Even if they proved in the House that he did drink coffee, what good would a “trial” in the Senate do? It’d just be to remove him from office if that’s what you’d prefer to happen, regardless of whether or not a crime was committed.
Well, many people have pointed out that Trump was not even being accused of any statutory crime. So all the bleating about ‘high crimes and misdemeanors” was blatant bullshit.
That’s the part that bothers me. I cant imagine a president going forward who doesnt get impeached if (and usually when) the other party controls both parties. It changes the balance of power between the three branches in a very dramatic way.
if (and usually when) the other party controls both parties
*applause*
He has an R after his name.
And is in danger of exposing the blatant corruption of the deep state and Team Blue.
Something something, credulous boomer rubes, something something.
That’s what they do. That’s ALL THEY DO!
The only people who use it are journalists circle jerking each other, and they are impoverished slaves to the truth so they don’t make good fodder for the advertisers.
“Maybe they need to close their government schools and just let these kids roam the streets. It would be safer.”
What about all the white guys with bleach and MAGA hats roaming the streets? Why do you hate the children?
They only attack Subway customers at 2am when it is below zero temps…
The hate keeps them warm.
::smiles::
::single-handedly folds butterfly knife::
I’m not seeing anything like a firing offense without knowing a lot more.
Scottish Minister texted “I like ewe”?
Pls snd upklt pics
Who gazes at the narrowed gazer?
To prevent catastrophic climate change caused by burning fossil fuels, many governments and corporations have pledged to use only clean energy by 2050. Wind energy is one of the cheapest ways to reach that goal.
Panic first, analyze later.
“Pledged”
Tucson update: trip cancelled. CIO, rightly, thinks we should be able to do the work via remote meetings instead of face-to-face.
Sux, bro. Thanks for the heads up.
Amazing how much grifting can be extracted out of a little word.
Like, with a Lemon? Well, and a cloth?
I know that the default “libertarian” position is to be all “FUCK BIRDS [sic]” about wind farms, thus having been played in 4D chess with some reverse psychology into a contrarian defense of wind farms by being against some sort of enviro-NIMBY concern for wildlife, but really, I’ve always been “FUCK WIND FARMS” because A) it tends to be bats who are most adversely affected by the turbines, and B) because fuck slavers pouring tax dollars into “sustainable”, “we should do something!” schemes, obstinately ignoring any foreseeable consequences or costs. These costs include taking up vast tracts of land, and sea, and billions invested for something that is vastly less efficient than nuclear, and what’s more (yeah I’m going to NIMBY out HARD right now) they are a scar on the horizon, the landscape. They are just a big, highly visible reminder of the stupidity and shallowness of the TOP MEN (and TOP WOMEN) who decree that these things shall happen and they shall be good. Fine, basics will immediately dismiss these concerns as “reactionary” or whatever, but conversely I am hugely in favor of innovation and all the new ways to generate energy, but not fucking wind farms. Solar, geo-thermal, hydro-electric, whatever – I can’t comment on the efficacy of those things, but whenever I see a wind farm I just know that my arguments against, almost anywhere, will just be shouted down and dismissed inaccurately.
In summary, fuck wind farms.
Whjere did you get that from?
And don’t get me started on infrasound (because I don’t have my reference links handy)
I had read it many times on TOS comments [citation needed]; arguments focusing almost entirely on refuting the “birds dying” thing. It’s stupid.
One of my earliest objections was the tendency to chop flying animals. The tendency to collapse, to not operate at most wind speeds, to catch fire, produce infrasound injurious to nearby residents, and being serious eyesores makes me opposed to windmills, even old windmills for grinding grain.
It is a piece of shit tech that made the connected companies that made it a lot of money at tax payer’s expense. It’s not accidental that the windmill producing companies all have incestuous relationships with government and government types. See GE. The new soft fascism at it’s best: no camps but social scores for the unwoke instead.
Right on – except the old windmills thing. I like old windmills, and tide mills. Tide mills are cool. Sorry if I seem a little panties-bunched on occasion. In my mind I’m sometimes still on the internet battlefield, out there, with the hordes of bad faith sociopaths and genuine morons. I’m still getting used to life in Glibertopia.
The fact that you FUCK BIRDS is totally unrelated?
SIV confirmed
The infrasound thing is new to me. I have a traintrack about a mile away from my house. First two years living here, I kept having the sensation that a truck would park out front and sit there. I’d get up after 5mins of “wtf are they sitting there for” only to find no source of the sound. Eventually I connected it to the train whistle, but I have to be outside in order to hear that.
I’ve wondered about how the local geology (thin topsoil, close water table, lots of rock though I don’t know if it’s really “bedrock”…) might channel the rumble far more effectively than the whistle carries over the air.
It’s a racket. That’s the only reason I need to be against them.
Just bury the turbines in the Chinese strip mines where the rare earths are being harvested. Out of sight out of mind.
Just need a fiberglass recycle bin.
The fiberglass can be recycled into stocks for all the assault rifles that are being produced in people’s garages.
Maybe we can finally use that Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada?
To house the watermelons?
Now you’re thinking outside the box man…
Ooh, yes we do!
Ooh Yucca Dew.
Acquitted and now back to his trolling that he will never leave office.
Lol. Eat shit, Jim.
What government functionary hasn’t texted a cute sixteen year old boy hundreds of times and offered to take them out for “a rugby match and dinner”? Granted, the “rugby match” usually happens after dinner, but still.
I have never done such a thing. Can’t speak for my co-workers though.
You just haven’t met the right sixteen year old boy yet.
Keep hope alive, my friend.
https://youtu.be/jJdWn6zEO6g?t=100
“David?!”
Ha!
HOLY MACKEREL! That girl is funny.
we also would have accepted “I consider myself more of a ‘government dysfunctionary’.”
Wind Turbine Blades Can’t Be Recycled, So They’re Piling Up in Landfills
Green energy. It spends a life of use killing thousands of birds and then it can’t be recycled.
Peaceful leftist politely disagrees with Republican opposition. Nah, just kidding.
He seems well adjusted.
If he was 30 years older, he would have been beat up a few times and maybe would have adjusted.
If he was 30 years older, he’d be a public school teacher about to get his pension after brainwashing kids with his propaganda for more than a generation.
“It was also a time when Republicans and Democrats debated civilly and went for drinks after. There was a Democrat law professor there who debated me on the college radio station once after a particularly scintillating editorial I wrote (mocking the editor) and he and I became good friends. Neither of us agreed with the other about affirmative action, which was the topic, but he found me fun and charming and I found him interesting and intelligent. He wrote to me for a long time after that, because people were NORMAL then. We did not scream obscenities and death threats at each other. Instead, we laid out our best arguments, poked holes in our opponents’ arguments, and then called it a day and hung out like friends and countrymen.”
That was before the interwebs.
Thinks we’ll emerge victorious after bringing a knife to a gun fight, huh?
Good luck with that.
He knows they have guns and knives right
In my sleep mode malfunction earlier, I turned on This Old House. They’re building a monstrous “barn house”. A little while go they were rambling on about the custom copper gutters, but for some reason they declined to say, “You viewers out theah- these heah gutters cost more than youah caah.”
The best part is the owner, a woman who looks like she’s about 29 years old. I’m surprised she can find time to tear herself away from her self-loathing-billionaire-heiresses struggle sessions to talk to these yobs about self-guided coffee makers.
“self-guided coffee makers”
Is that part of some sort of early morning defense system?
after sundown it launches Irish Car Bombs?
This old house has always skewed a bit yobbish, but it’s getting worse. Every house has to have weird technology shoved into it and gargantuan additions tacked on.
It’s gotten much better, but sometimes is still ridiculous.
Pinnacle was some dot.com DINK couple in MA with the $20k bathroom tile job.
It used to be less posh when Bob Vila was there. More for the everyday home owner.
Now it’s more Life Styles of the Rich minus the famous. Those reno jobs are high end.
I remember one year where they went to a marble quarry in Vermont run by a guy from Carrera, Italy because the couple were buying the marble direct.
When I watch those renovations and the ages of the people I wonder what I’m doing wrong sometimes.
I really liked the episodes in Charleston, SC though.
You got born to parents who weren’t stinking rich. I doubt many, if any, of those people are self-made.
And if they didn’t inherit it, they likely grifted it.
But really, in Rufus’s case, it’s because he’s Canadian. and made of felt.
“Girl, 5, dies from crystal meth poisoning ‘after drinking water from mum’s bong’ when she became thirsty in the middle of the night
Alvarado, 26, had lost her job at a dental office due to her drug use. On the night of her daughter’s death on December 10, she and two cousins Daniel Alvarado, 27, and Bertha Karina Ceballos-Romo, 28, had been smoking the crystal meth at her house.
Daughter Sofia went to bed at around 10.30pm before awaking in the night thirsty and came across the bottle containing about an inch of the toxic water. She immediately noticed the taste was wrong and spat some of it out, saying ‘yucky’.
Sophia began hallucinating but rather than seek medical help, Alvarado and the two other adults prayed and read her passages from the bible, court documents allege.
One of the adults read a passage out of the Bible about ‘taking a spirit out of a possessed boy,’ the affidavit said.
Alvarado also wrapped her daughter in a blanket and gave her milk, fearing reprisals if the emergency services were alerted.
Her condition deteriorated and after losing consciousness, Sophia was taken to another apartment and given oxygen through a tube before they finally took her to Grand River Hospital, where she was pronounced dead in the early hours of December 11.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7973143/Girl-5-dies-crystal-meth-poisoning-drinking-water-mums-bong.html
That’s fucking awful.
And today I learned that meth can go in a bong?
I had no idea.
Look, they were high. Can you really blame them for making mistakes?
What kind of society do we live in when a 5 year old kid doesn’t know any better than to drink the bong water. The absolute state of modern parenting…
Little early for nut punches, Count.
What kind of junky would let that much product accumulate in the bong water? Potent enough to kill a kid with just a sip? More than potent enough to get high off of while waiting for the last re-up to come through.
Just bury the turbines in the Chinese strip mines where the rare earths are being harvested. Out of sight out of mind.
In Africa.
In the European Union, which strictly regulates material that can go into landfills, some blades are burned in kilns that create cement or in power plants. But their energy content is weak and uneven and the burning fiberglass emits pollutants.
Circle of life, dude.
“strictly regulates material that can go into landfills”
Dump the blades in the ocean, a turtle ain’t gonna get his head stuck in one of those. Artificial reefs, its for the fish
Can you create an artificial reef with fiberglass? What would the degradation rate be relative to steel? Would the degradation lead to micro plastics getting in fish?
I doubt the hippies have even looked into it, but that would be the first series of questions I’d ask.
I’d think they’d be encrusted before much degradation took place. Seems to me like an even better artificial reef material than steel ships; excess iron in the water is going to cause algal blooms.
What is it with Europeans and giant ovens for getting rid of what they don’t want?
Well, they could make showers out of the fiberglass instead…
One start-up, Global Fiberglass Solutions, developed a method to break down blades and press them into pellets and fiber boards to be used for flooring and walls. The company started producing samples at a plant in Sweetwater, Texas, near the continent’s largest concentration of wind farms. It plans another operation in Iowa.
“We can process 99.9% of a blade and handle about 6,000 to 7,000 blades a year per plant,” said Chief Executive Officer Don Lilly. The company has accumulated an inventory of about one year’s worth of blades ready to be chopped up and recycled as demand increases, he said. “When we start to sell to more builders, we can take in a lot more of them. We’re just gearing up.”
And this work is done by Mexican children using tin snips and hammers, I suppose. Because that “recycling” process doesn’t sound energy-intensive to me. Not in the least.
Notice that all this is premised on the future.
“started producing samples”
“It plans another operation in Iowa.”
“When we start to sell to more builders”
Can always convert ethanol plants, I smell taxpayer money…
And in a few decades it will be determined the fibers cause disease similar to asbestosis.
However, it could provide another source of funding to the class action bar and be extension Team Blue.
The company started producing samples at a plant in Sweetwater, Texas, near the continent’s largest concentration of wind farms.
Another example of who really leads the clean energy revolution in America.
Someplace other than Texas? Because clean energy comes from Uranium, not wind.
Actually, Thorium is the new Uranium.
Subsidy slurpers?
Good morning, Sloop!
Excellent lynx. I like the ones that get my rage going early. And the wind turbine one absolutely did it.
Road to Hell and all that. Solar panels, batteries and now wind turbine blades. Fuck these people.
I will take 1st gen GnR over Bob every time. I recognize the need for some stoners to have an excuse to toke, but he never did anything for me.
Have a great day, people!
But at least that fiberglass won’t break down into methane in the landfill, producing more CO2!
Forest of obnoxious children?
offered suggestions of reusing them as links in a border wall
Oh please make it so.
Speed kills!
Well not really. But it does cause property damage and result in a surprisingly-small fine.
At what point is Klopp forced to take the FA Cup seriously if the kids keep winning?
If they win their first leg against Athletico handily and win their next three league matches (they should), and Man City drop any points at all, I think he might take it seriously enough to field some of the first squad for the Chelsea match. At that point they’ll be going for the treble.
But he may be out to smash the EPL points record while defending his CL championship, so he might not care about the FA Cup at all. He’s been pretty clear that the league was the priority. But he’s on the verge of locking that up. Once that’s done, I’m interested to see if he chases all three competitions or if he chooses to go after the points record instead.
Canned answer.
“You look at Buttigieg, you look at Sanders, they seem to be at the top of the field. What does that mean for you here in New Hampshire?” host Chris Cuomo asked. “What do you need here as a result to prove that you are in that top tier?” …
“You know, look, I see this as just getting out and talking to people. I’ve been doing that in town halls in New Hampshire. I did them out in Iowa, I’ve done them in Nevada and South Carolina,” she explained. “But it’s about talking to people and listening to people and trying to build a grassroots movement.”
“I made the decision right at the beginning that I was not going to spend my time in closed-door fundraisers. I was not going to sell access to my time, to millionaires and billionaires and corporate lobbyists,” Warren said, clearly referencing Buttigieg and his “wine cave.” …
“We’ve got 55 more states and territories,” she said. “I’m in 31 states now with people on the ground as paid campaign workers, as organizers, field organizers, because I believe in fieldwork, because I believe we have to build a grassroots campaign.”
*spits out coffee* What?
Unlike Obama, she corrected added on the “and territories”.
But are the territories relevant to the election?
To the primaries, yes.
Big operation in American Samoa, the Northern Marianas and Guam, eh?
Hank Johnson is her Guamanian point man.
I’ll give Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant to include “and territories” but he just had a brain fart. However, if a Republican said it, it would have been repeated over and over again as evidence of stupidity.
I can’t remember offhand how many territories we have, but that might add up to 55. Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands… I can’t think of any more.
American Samoa, DC, North Marianas Islands.
1 more and we are at the 57.
Populated ones also include:
Midway Atoll (pop 60)
Palmyra Atoll (20)
There are 7 more without population.
Oh, so they don’t get a say just because no one lives there?!
Dont give the Dems any ideas!
Fry : So let me get this straight. This planet is completely uninhabited?
Bender : No, it’s inhabited by robots.
Fry : Oh, kinda like how a warehouse is inhabited by boxes.
Nothern Mariana Islands was the one I missed. But I did remember Samoa.
Yes, just think to yourself, “I can only remember a few territories ” then we’ll give you Samoa.
The information superhighway tells me Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa are territories as well, so Warren gets the PolitiFact seal of truth for this one. Obama came up with 57 somehow.
And here come all the smartasses to name then while I’m still typing.
You type slow. I even had time to look up populations.
pls no bully
DC.
I thought one of them tipped over?
Turns out there was land on the other side too, so we just kept using it.
And that side wasn’t all full of disposable plastic bags or vipers!
Oh, look. Now we’re at a not-for-profit organic farm, harvesting flowers and herbs
I hate these people, and I hope their house burns down.
Are there people who still don’t realize “not-for-profit” means “ghost payroll scam”?
How so?
Don’t these people have jobs?
Anti-Trump protestors gathered outside the Capitol building Wednesday urging senators to convict President Donald Trump in the impeachment vote by screaming through a grate.
As the senators prepared to cast their votes on whether to remove the president from office, several attempted to reach the senators by screaming through an electrical conduit tunnel east of the Senate building. …
A capitol hill security officer at the site said there was no way anybody in the Senate building could actually hear the protestors through the tunnel.
That is their job.
The monster Mookie Betts trade may be on hold pending medical exams. As a Red Sox guy, I think it’s a good move. Get some young talent before Betts leaves anyway, and get Price off the payroll.
As a Yankees fan, I am very happy to see Betts depart Boston.
Unlike the Yankees, the Red Sox are trying to stay under or at least not blow completely past the salary cap.
Study: People Tend To Tune Out By The Fifth Threat To Our Democracy Per Day
Sublime. Flawless finish.
“He started his career researching the effects of random electrical shocks on the moods of monkeys, and now does similar research on Twitter and people.”
I larfed.
Me two… I like the cut of your jib BTW..
Romney sent a signed note to every Senate Republican explaining his vote
Sanctimonious prick.
Howie Carr: Pierre Delecto strikes again … or is it Pierre Defecto?
It makes me smile to read a really mean Howie Carr column.
I’m not sure whether to file this under “elections have consequences” or “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
Either way, New Yorkers are about to find out.
Don’t worry, there’ll be a national injunction within a week.
Even more NY stupidity.
Guy is gonna testify agains some MS-13 fucks, protective order gets nuked via the new laws, witness list is released, dude is whacked.
And do you think they will blame their idiot policies or orange man for this?
I’m really hopeful at least one regulatory body will get its power curtailed.
Missed a couple important birthdays. Spawn 1 is 20 (damn, that went fast!) and the incomparable Gord Downie (RIP)
It’s ladydoom’s birthday, too!
Apparently a good day for cool people.
How’s your little girl doing? Sleeping?
She’s great! We have one or two nights a week that aren’t fantastic. Last night she was asleep 5 or 6 hours. She’s doing lots of push ups, seems crazy strong for being under 2 months old.
Excellent. She’s a beauty, too!
Must take after mom, huh 😉
I’m happy for you, man. Go back and read what I wrote about my kid and enjoy the hell out of this!
Excellent. She’s a beauty, too!
So she’s a one in a million girl?
ADORABLE!!!!!
Tundra’s right, it’s mostly mom genes.
Ditto! Congratulations again Papa Doom!
“Spawn 1 is 20 (damn, that went fast!)”
Tundra is either old as dirt or he started early.
Mine just turned 19 a couple of weeks ago and I feel old.
Meh. It’s a number. My hero 4Score makes the calendar his bitch.
My youngest turned 41 last month.
My oldest grandkid just turned 22.
And fourscore reminds me that I am not old yet.
It’s all in the mind gents.
And the mind says “Why the fuck do my knees hurt every day? I’m way to young for this shit.”
It’s OK, Kinnath, I can’t remember when my knees didn’t hurt. ‘Course, I can’t remember yesterday either.
You don’t look that old in real life, Tundra. Is that youngster adopted?
The real reason.
And my suspicion was it was not so much about President Trump, but taking the Senate. And my counterpart, Senator Schumer, pretty much admitted that’s what this was all about. It was about taking the Senate and trying to bog us down in this. And to try to have my guys have a lot of tough votes. So, I am proud of my colleagues were seen through that, even though if you ask a typical voter if there should be witnesses in a trial, they say sure, there ought to be witnesses. But it was not about the President. We all knew he was not going to be removed from office. But trying to take the Senate. So I am proud of my members for resisting the temptation to go down that path and also preventing the second strategy. iI is pretty clear if democrats cannot win this one to embarrass the Chief Justice in the way that could’ve been done was with a 50-50 vote whether he would’ve been accused had he chosen not to rule I can imagine he would have, it’s pretty clear that what a drag the Supreme Court right into the middle of the maelstrom as well…This is a political maneuver from the beginning to the end.
I’m sure that was a factor. I’m also sure that Glenn Reynolds was right – all the impeachment stuff from the beginning was designed to distract from the massive abuses of power committed by the Obama administration working in concert with Hillary.
They are all playing 5-D chess, but for some reason that dull idiot orange guy keeps beating them. That’s cause he is playing 7-D chess!
They are playing two-up. He is maybe playing checkers. There is no chess being played. None of them are Lord Vetinari
At some point, you aren’t stumbling from win to win, you are winning because you are not an idiot. Hindsight and all that, but Trump has done a pretty good job of alternately goading the Dems and giving them enough rope so that they are now in a very bad place politically. It ain’t the Dems holding him back so much as the Repubs and the Deep State.
That said, there are a slew of cases at SCOTUS right now regarding his tax returns, claims of privilege, etc. The end of this session is going to be very interesting. Roberts will likely be the swing voter on a lot of those.
I’m a grudging fan of Trump at this point, but let’s be real about this. He has not done anything brilliant in baiting them. They react so predictably and with so little restraint that it is like teasing a dog by fake throwing the ball.
It could be just fortunate circumstances, but what Trump has done is not only bait his “enemies”, but emboldened and made new “allies”. Would anybody have predicted Lindsay Graham would be a Trumpster?
It’s not the way I like to interact with other people, but I can’t deny it’s been pretty damn effective.
Germany AfD: Thuringia PM to quit amid fury over far right
If people don’t vote correctly, they get scolded and have to do again until they get it right.
I hope the protonazis troll the hell out of them by voting for the winner each time.
It won’t matter. This is atrociously explained in the BBC article, but my guess is this “upset” was caused by the fact that nobody outright “won” the state election despite the BBC’s editorializing. So the guy who eventually got chosen only got in thanks to AfD support. In the future, the election will be adjusted to ensure that can’t happen again.
So the vote counters will wise up?
For now, they’ll just run a scare campaign and try to boost turnout in various ways. Some of the parties might even decline to run to prevent splitting the vote. They just need to get somebody over the 50% mark to avoid AfD having any role in the final outcome.
Another example of who really leads the clean energy revolution in America.
If they were putting that plant in California, they’d be about 15 years (and 127,000 pages of applications and legal filings) away from breaking ground.
It’s ladydoom’s birthday, too!
Did you bake her a cake?
He put a bun in her oven. Does that count?
There’s a frosting joke in there somewhere…
Or batter at the very least.
Wait, that’s how this happened?!
You see, Doom, when two people love each other very much…
Hate fucks work also…
I thought that the love of a square was very different than the one from a pimp?
Labour MP Tracy Brabin dresses poorly and has to clear things up.
Damn – girl pretty fly for 58. Would (over a wheelie bin).
But you wish you were, you dirty, dirty girl.
Some of those alternatives are oddly specific. Also, definitely would.
NSPCC urges Facebook to stop encryption plans
We must kill encryption for teh childrunz
Back in the 90s, there was a (small) movement to encrypt/sign emails using public/private keys.
In didnt catch on, most email programs didnt support it natively, and it was a little too late.
There are lots of problems with email protocol, but adopting that would have fixed a bunch of problems.
I mean just only exchange emails with other people who roll their own PGP solution. Duh.
There are lots of problems with email protocol, but adopting that would have fixed a bunch of problems.
PGP or S/MIME?
If S/MIME, are you encrypting or digitally signing the email? Don’t pick the wrong certificate. Do you trust the sender’s CA? Oops, key escrow got breached, so much for that confidentiality.
If PGP, who do you trust? Were they compromised? Do you trust your friends’ circles of trust? Are you using “real” PGP, OpenPGP, or GnuPG? Oops, sorry, that extension is not supported by your client.
There’s a reason it didn’t catch on.
Let’s let the people who don’t understand technology make rules for encryption… what could go wrong?
You know what else gives offenders a place to hide? Houses. This is the tech version of the gun control argument, i.e. a tiny minority of the population will use this for evil, so let’s take it away from the overwhelming majority who would use it to protect themselves. Sort of a “lesser good” argument, really.
“HE PINNED THIS. YOU THINK THIS IS A JOKE, DON’T YOU? IT’S NOT. HE MEANS IT. HE WILL CHANGE THE RULES AND HIS ENABLERS WILL LET HIM. IF HE WINS AGAIN, HE WILL RULE YOU UNTIL HE DIES, YOU DIE, OR BOTH. THEN…YOU’LL GET IVANKA.”
https://twitter.com/BetteMidler/status/1225264869663965184
Good Lord that woman lost her marbles years ago.
Clearly, she’s doing fine.
When these are your enemies, you’re winning.
“THEN…YOU’LL GET IVANKA.”
*pulls lever*
I don’t particularly like her policy views. She often sounds like the pre-woke democrat platform.
pre-woke democrat platform
Isn’t that largely what Trump is?
Tax cuts and deregulation?
“The era of big government is over.” – Bill Clinton (although off the top of my head I can’t recall much actual deregulation)
There was also a tax bill that had some cuts he signed.
I still maintain that, policy-wise, Trump is basically Clinton with a bad haircut. Even his immigration policy, absent the bloviating on the wall and the migrant convoy crisis response, is pretty much Clinton. The exception might be spending/the deficit, where Clinton at least went along for the ride when the Repub Congress got closer to a balanced budget, but Trump lacks a Repub Congress that gives a shit.
Which lever you pulling RC?
You have more than one? Have you considered a career in adult entertainment?
^ #metoo
All caps is how you keep the Lizardmen from reading it.
THEN…YOU’LL GET IVANKA.
I’m ok with that.
Going way off topic here, but I just finished reading Starship Troopers. It was an enjoyable read and I was surprised by the reasons I liked it. It’s not so much an action/adventure novel as I expected (my only reference being the movie which I saw maybe half of over 20 years ago). But it is written in a way that was enjoyable despite the lack of a compelling plot. It’s hard to describe, and it probably doesn’t help that I don’t read much fiction.
Anyway, I know the book (or more likely, Heinlein himself) is popular in libertarian circles, but the reason for that wasn’t apparent to me. I’m curious what y’all think about it.
I found the politics detracted from the story.
Herpa derpa space fascism derp durrrrr
I enjoyed it, but you can’t talk about it without some asswipe doing that ^
I’m a big fan. Keep in mind that the movie was Starship Troopers in name only. The director admitted to never reading the book, and they licensed the book just to avoid any issues with similarities between their bug invasion and the book. I feel bad for how badly the Heinlein novels have been translated to movies.
Heinlein was probably one of the biggest influences on me going libertarian.
The Puppet Masters isn’t terrible.
It’s an essay on Heinlein’s political beliefs put into a SF story and set in an utopian future and written for teenagers. His ideas on citizenship, service, government, and personal responsibility. Some of the ideas are really very old – the early Roman Republic required honorable military service prior to entering politics.
Heinlein is popular in libertarian circles for his more directly libertarian works (“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” being the obvious one). I think ST is popular because it is a good read.
ST has been my favorite Heinlein book so far, but I think it was 1/3 too long. He really sucks at ending a story, and out of the ones I have read, ST was the least bad.
I don’t dislike Heinlein as a writer, but I don’t understand his beatification by some.
ST was pretty short. Too long seems a strange complaint for it.
I admit to possibly mixing up my complaints about his books
You might be thinking of one of the later tomes. Pretty much everything from I Will Fear No Evil onward is a doorstop.
It’s a great book.
The movie was a lot of fun, pancake-titties notwithstanding.
pancake-titties
I would like to know more…
I liked several things about the movie. I can completely believe that in the future unisex everything becomes the norm. I can also believe that future high schoolers will play that sort of music at the prom.
I also thought that the baliset in Dune fit the movie.
That “toss a coin” song seems so out of genre for The Witcher that it anoys me.
Ha I forgot Picard was in that.
Armor by John Steakley is basically all the action scenes that Starship Troopers did get around to.
Southern girls are fun.
Trump brand flamethrower.
Moichendising, moichendising – where the real money from the presidency is made!
Hawt.
I watched the SOTU on youtube.
Honestly, the Democrats are a disgusting, sour, dishonourable and disrespectful bunch of assholes.
Those idiots in white in particular. Did they applause any piece of good news?
And I want to smack those notes out of that whack job Pelosi’s hands. She looked like such a fool. Even when that solider came out to surprise his family she kept looking down on her notes. That said a lot about her. She wasn’t in the moment.
Did they applause any piece of good news?
No. But they said Trump was lying so that’s that. No need to actually refute any claim he made.
Which is funny because much of the speech was just a recitation of facts regarding unemployment, the economy, etc.
And the dnc operatives with bylines & the team blue asshats were furious that he used that national form to report the shit they have been hard at work hiding or undermining.
To be fair, there was a fair amount of claiming of credit for things that he’s not fully responsible for. For example, lowest average unemployment rate for the first three years of his term. That’s easy to achieve if it’s low to begin with when you come into office. Or signing bills into law. Great, but Congress had to pass those bills.
Of course, he’s hardly the only politician to do that.
I’ve heard a few takes to the effect that the Democrats so completely miscalled the SotU that their little hissy-fit not only went a long way to guaranteeing Trump gets another term but will likely nudge a few more vulnerable Dems out of Congress. They really did look like petulant children. Pelosi in particular did not look like a leader so much as a confused old lady who’s had a few too many.
Whoever posted that link showing the Girl Scouts were making a chocolate chip cookie this year was full of lies.
The Girl Scouts haven’t made their cookies in ages. It’s Keebler, and last I heard they had at least one chocolate chip cookie in their catalog.
LIES!
I received my first email to buy coworker-daughter cookies of the season. At least there’s an order online capability now. No chocolate chip, but there is a glurten-free option.
Okay. Do as you will. But $1.99 a box is a better rate than what those little grifters charge.
Listen. If you’re going to perpetuate the patriarchy, you’ve got to start inculcating them early. Getting little girls to associate “bringing baked goods” with “getting rewarded” is a worthwhile use of funds.
I am so stealing that and using it. Thanks NA!
Chips Deluxe® Rainbow™Chococolor LGBT+ Pride CookiesThe Girl Scouts sell different cookies based on region. Each region picks the cookies they want to sell out of a selection of available options. If you know someone who works for the council in your area, you can also (or at least were able to) buy cases of cookies at a discount after the orders were fulfilled.
So you’re saying I should blame the Girl Scouts of Northeast New York?
I can go with that.
Either that, or they didn’t have the chocolate chip cookie option available to them. Doesn’t look like they’re available in my neck of the woods either. There’s some toffee ones, lemon ones, and s’mores ones in addition to the standard five (trefoils, thin mints, tagalongs, do-si-dos, samoas).
You might appreciate this:
My grocery store had a sign out “For a limited time! Pazcki!” I was like “that’s not a limited time thing, those are jelly donuts.” Then I thought to myself “come on now, surely the people here know the difference,” so I bought one.
It was a jelly donut.
Still, +1 for the marketing.
There is some difference between the standard jelly donuts and paczki (paczki use a richer batter then jelly donuts), they’ve started showing up in the grocery stores here already. Leading to quite a few people pointing out that it’s too early for paczki, as they’re a Fat Tuesday item traditionally (I live in an area with a large number of Poles and other Eastern Europeans).
I’ve eaten 2 boxes of Tagalongs and 1/2 a box (1 sleeve) of Thin Mints in the last 2 days. I like to sublimate my pain in baked goods.
I read that initially as “2 boxes of Tagalogs” and was horrified for the poor Filipinos/Filipinas.
/refills coffee
The never-ending struggle against the Bolomen continues.
Filipinas deserve oral too!
We had S’mores GS cookies here this year. Horrible. Didn’t taste like their name at all. I gave them away.
I’m old. Vote for me.
Ted Nesi✔
@TedNesi
.@MikeBloomberg bristled when I asked about fears he may split the moderate vote, hurting Biden or Buttigieg
“Am I not as important to this country? I’ve been an American for longer than Mayor Pete has. I’ve been an American for longer than Joe Biden has” https://www.wpri.com/news/politics/vp-raimondo-bloomberg-gov-keep-the-door-open/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_TedNesi …
Dude is a megalomaniac.
Yes, he is.
He does some good with his money on occasion, but he’s a bigger narcissist than Trump.
Christ, what a petty asshole. Biden was born the same year as him.
But Bloomers was born on valentine’s day and Gropey Joe wasn’t born until November 20th!
Mike, if you’ve got to tell people how important you are…
Well, if were using “how long” someone has been an American as a metric…
Keep posting those GnR music links Sloop. You are doing dog’s work.
I have to bail on This Old House. Those people can build whatever they want, in accordance with their desires. And bank balance.
But they keep wrapping themselves in the rainbow flag of environment-friendly self-justification, and it’s getting under my skin. Two or three people are going to live in a 20(50?) million dollar 18,000 sq ft house, but as long as they use certified sustainable materials and recycled corrugated tin in the upstairs hallway, and put government subsidized solar panels on the faux slate roof, they have their indulgences covered.
Get back to me when you’re living in a house made of re-purposed windmill blades, honey.
This has gotten me, too. “Oh, were installing a $45k geothermal HVAC system so that we don’t have to pay an extra $20/month in carbon credits to assuage our guilt”
I’m not against energy efficiency, but at least show the tradeoff. Don’t hide the price tag.
“Don’t hide the price tag.”
But simultaneously DO highlight the various federal, state and local subsidies that are available.
I have a buddy that is installing a 30k solar system to save money. He said “assume your power bill is $500 a month”. I said mine was $125 last month. Then he said “yeah, but assume $500 a month…”
Some people are bad at math.
Assume a can opener…
A spherical cow with a radius of 1 meter?
That’s a pretty big cow. You’d need something like three cows of matter to make that cow.
That’s irrelevant to the close-packing configuration for an ideal cattle transport.
Wouldn’t the ideal cow for packing be a hexagon?
No, two dimensional cows don’t produce thick steaks.
Damn pedants out pedanting me. Ok, imagine a cow that is a hexagonal prism.
Felix Unger enlightened me as to what happens when we assume.
I said mine was $125 last month.
Winter in Florida, sigh.
Many years ago I did an online calculator from a solar company to calculate the payback. Most of the benefit came from an expected increase in value of my home, which did me no good since I didn’t plan to move. I did end up getting solar from Solar City and I estimate it saves about $350/year, but that’s because we purchased a hot tub that uses lots of electricity.
Agreed on This Old House. I much prefer Ask This Old House now. Small home owners having to deal with small home owner problems.
The show has been an infomercial from day one. Ask This Old House isn’t too bad.
Only a handful of children have been diagnosed with the coronavirus — and experts have a few guesses as to why
*Puts on tin foil hat*
China designed the virus to kill off the elderly who are a burden on their medical system…
Yup. That was the biggest flaw in HM’s debunking of “coronavirus isn’t a Chinese bioweapon.” He was assuming it was designed to NOT be used on the Chinese.
Does a claim based on nothing but internet speculation need debunking?
I read one article (on the internet, true) that seemed legitimately sourced and legit, that claimed that, if memory serves, said genetic analysis found four HIV markers in the virus, and argued that it was highly unlikely, although not impossible, that something like that would happen naturally. IOW, if you were trying to weaponize HIV, this is the kind of thing you might try – make it much more easily transmissible.
There’s also some very hinky stuff going on, where a Chinese broadcaster (I think) has posted much higher numbers of infections and especially fatalities, that disappeared and were replaced with the “official” numbers.
My question is: what kind of idiot puts a bioweapons lab in a heavily populated area?
Remember: ChiComs. Don’t ever think “Oh, nobody would ever do that” when its ChiComs.
Disclaimer: I follow these kinds of theories mostly for entertainment. If this really is an escaped bioweapon, we will never know.
One other thing: the autists at 4chan have decided to estimate the number of fatalities by looking at changes in air pollution, since they are burning the bodies.
I’ll take their estimate over anything the ChiComs tell us.
Uh… FedGov and the US Army? Isn’t Ft. Detrick only an hour away from both DC and Baltimore?
I am perfectly willing to stipulate that the FedGov and US Army are run by idiots.
If you must have one, put it at White Sands.
The Dems really have become a parody of themselves. All they really had to do was act like the adult in the room, and they couldn’t even manage that.
The good news is I’m seeing posts on FB (mostly by Dems) about being tired of the theatrics and bickering. People are realizing they’re being played.
But they still want all the socialist shit.
Until they have to pay for it. Then they flee rinse and repeat
Did they think throwing a temper tantrum would be good optics for 2020?
I saw some of the base lap it up, but I think a wider swath of the moderate left is just embarrassed each day.
Maybe the preripped SOTU speech was the straw that broke the llama’s back because that was transparently ridiculous.
I think for some that really crossed the line. It came across as petty and immature.
How odd would it be to have a sapient book as a character in a fantasy novel?
Harry Potter has books that were animal-like.
Don’t forget the sentient diary in HP&tCoS.
Hewlett Packard & the Computer of Silicon?
Correct
How about in a real book. /sarc
The idea was a tome able to decypher any written language, but also fully self-aware and intelligent, communicating mainly my changing the test on its pages. Right now I’m thinking its ‘eye’ is a star corundum set into the cover. The idea is still percolating about its construction and backstory.
It should write its own backstory, in itself, and it should be constantly changing.
That would make for some interesting ‘dialog’ sequences.
Was thinking Book as the protagonist. Making itself important. Being forced to do things when threatened with fire, bugs, etc. Trying to get under a princess’ pillow – you hold me close to your chest and through osmosis you become…etc.
Hrmm… *strikes thoughtful pose*
Sounds a bit like “Bob the Skull” in the Dresden files.
You would crawl across broken glass nude to sell that many copies and you know it. 🙂 Rowling didn’t write the best books, but she didn’t write the worst ones either and the market spoke. She obviously filled a need.
I don’t understand. The one I read was so unmemorable, I can’t even tell you which one it was.
Honestly I don’t really understand either. I read heavily in that genre and her books are not bad, but certainly nothing all that special. But she has sold half a billion books. Literally 500,000,000 copies. Which is simply unreal.
If you’re not familiar with Holocrons in the Star Wars EU, that might be a good springboard analogy. A detailed description of the construction method is in the Darth Bane trilogy.
It’s easier for me to not know.
*in terms of actually getting stuff written and on the page. Elsewise I’m fretting that I’m copying.
Discworld had one, didnt it?
Discworld had all of it’s magic books have a level of intelligence. And they had sapient pearwood, which could be made to create items (such as luggage) that had the intelligence of a smart dog.
So, not odd at all. Got it.
Keep in mind, using Discworld as not odd may not be the best baseline. The first couple of books were all about deconstruction the standard fantasy tropes, the later books were satire in a fantasy setting, while still building on, lampshading, and deconstructing tropes.
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other fantasy stories with intelligent books (actually… depending on the definition, the book of Destiny in DC comics may fit). However, I’m fairly certain that items such as that have been a staple of tabletop RPG’s that use magic. Usually rare, powerful, and self-serving.
Well, of course it’s self-serving. It’s an intelligent entity potentially with no means of locomotion that needs to make sure its in the company of people who’ll take care of it.
Didn’t Diamond Age have something like that?
Depends on if you consider advanced AI to be sapient. It’s “smart paper” driven by nano-technology.
Sapient in the sense of wise or intelligent? Or sapient in the sense of self-aware? Because IIRC Diamond Age concluded pretty firmly (in line with Stephenson’s thoughts on the matter) that no matter how advanced an AI becomes it is never truly self-aware because it can never generate entirely new ideas, or something along those lines.
If that’s your litmus test, most humans fail too.
I’m ok with that definition.
What UCS said. There is nothing new under the sun.
Humans are capable of coming up with ideas and solutions to problems that build on what went before, but a wheel is still a wheel and a mousetrap is still a mousetrap.
I read DIAMOND AGE long ago so I don’t remember much of it at all.
I would think sapient means having the ability to think about thinking AND gaze at one’s navel.
hrmm… Linty.
Agatha Christie has a sad.
Stephenson’s take–it’s not just his, but he’s the guy I associate with it–is that an AI can never have independent, creative thoughts because even the method in which it thinks is reliant on instructions given to it. All AI, even the most advanced, are just Turing machines.
That makes sense to me. I can’t come up with any counterexamples. But like you and UCS say, the same things can be said for humans. And there’s the issue of whether or not you would know if you had a truly original thought in the first place, which leads you to the question of whether a sufficiently advanced AI would know that it’s an AI, and whether at that point it would be “A” in the first place.
THEN…YOU’LL GET IVANKA.
I wonder if Bette was one of the morons breathlessly mooning over the “Chelsea Clinton, America’s Princess” narrative which was in vogue a few years ago. As far as that goes, I wonder how hard she’d fall for a President Michelle Obama campaign.
New Michael Malice on the Dave Rubin show:
https://youtu.be/MWuY9JJ_JZE
Interesting interview…
I’m going to listen to that one again, in fact, I liked it so much.
Good morning everyone. I would like to know which one of you miscreants pulled the fire alarm at 4am on the nineteenth floor if my hotel in Vegas.
The walk down was stimulating. But it was a little much that we couldn’t go thru the employee service are to get to hotel reception, but instead had to navigate the under construction underground parking lot for a quarter mile in our jammies.
But I was reassured by the professionalism if the hotel staff, who were completely unaware there was a fire alarm going off in the building and were only slightly concerned when a mob of pajama clad and hungover zombies shambled into their casino.
At least we looked like locals.
Just be glad you’re not at home. All the fucking rain is driving me bonkers.
I always try to ignore fire alarms. Sooner or later it stops. I’ve been inconvenienced by a gazillion of fire alarms in this country. Every single one of them could be safely ignored.
Tommy Tiernan agrees.
I attended some project management class where we discussed the way that groups behave. One of the examples was a case where several dozen people died in a restaurant. The alarm was going off and smoke was filling the dining area, but apparently no one wanted to be the first people to leave their tables in the middle of their meal.
Nuisance alarms kill people — eventually.
Did they think throwing a temper tantrum would be good optics for 2020?
I saw some of the base lap it up, but I think a wider swath of the moderate left is just embarrassed each day.
Who doesn’t want the world to be run by a bunch of spoiled, petulant, self-obsessed children?
Anybody here do rallycross or autocross? If so, any preference of SCCA or NASA. Thanks.
I’ve gone to some scca events, and I’d like to dip my toe in a bit.
I haven’t seen any NASA stuff, maybe they aren’t as active here?
I see more SCCA in Central Florida, but I didn’t want to snub NASA just for poor marketing. I’m thinking about buying a cheap project car for rally/auto cross, but I don’t like to dive into purchases blindly. I was originally think wrx, but those cars really hold their value. Now I’m leaning towards mazdaspeed 3, if I can find one for a reasonable price.
Old GTI, old (new) mini?
Certain Jettas/GTIs will work too, I’m told.
I have a bias against VW because I hated working on my wife’s Jetta. I found a cheap Toyota Matrix, but I’m not sure how much room it has to go. The Toyota 86 is also tempting, but it’s still too new to pickup cheap.
E36 is probably the best way in if bmw. 30’s have a lot of appreciation and I find them to be more expensive than 36s almost every time.
The Miata roll cage seems easy enough to get in.
Spawn 2 runs a Miata in autocross and regularly turns better times than far more expensive cars. He also looks like he’s having fun while the guys in the Porches are fighting their cars the entire time. If running SCCA be careful what mods you make. It doesn’t take much to bump yourself into a modified class where you will be competing against purpose built cars.
I was looking over the rules. I like that there is a stock class so you don’t have to spend any money other than the car to get started. Prepared looks like the level of work I’d be willing to put in on weekends. Modified is way out of my class.
Thot Thursday sez you can’t acquit these peaches.
http://archive.is/WztXD
Democracy
Results from Monday night’s caucuses in Iowa are still coming in. As of now, 92 percent of precincts are reporting and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg is currently in the lead, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in a close second.
Many of us have wondered what the hold up is and why the math is taking so long to calculate who came out victorious.
According to Lulu Friesdat, the founder of SMART Elections and a writer for The Hill, it looks as though there are rounding errors in the precinct math worksheets.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Rounding errors?
Is the 3/5th’s rule still in effect for Democrat caucuses?
If they have Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology for elections they really shouldn’t be having these problems.
From my understanding they’re claiming the data was correct and the glitch just prevented them from reporting. So why the hell does it take so long for a district to manually look at the data and call it in?
How odd would it be to have a sapient book as a character in a fantasy novel?
Isn’t the Necronomicon in Army of Darkness sentient?
https://freebeacon.com/politics/busted-bloomberg-used-box-to-boost-height-as-nyc-mayor-investigation-finds/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
5’6? He’s practically Danny devito
Huh, a quick search says Devito’s 4’10”. Bloomberg’s a giant next to him but it isn’t his stature that makes him so unpalatable.
It’s just interesting to witness such an obvious Napoleon Complex in action.
I’d prefer Danny DeVito.
I still can’t believe he ever told anyone he was 5’10”. I’m 5’7″ and people would laugh in my face if I tried to pull that off. Guess the billions made it more plausible or something.
Slick Mitt
I can’t see how anyone other than Bloomy is the Dem nominee at this point. The DNC will kneecap Bernie and no one else is viable. It will be interesting to see how they rig Sooper Toosday to give Bloomy the lead; Pubs should pay close attention because they’ll likely use the same strategy for rigging the general as well.
The Young Pioneers would do everything they can to sabotage Bloomberg in the general in that case.
He wasn’t even in the top 5 in Iowa. It feels like he started too late.
Funny that the party that hates Jews has two Jews leading. Maybe America is ready for a heavy dose of self-loathing, but I doubt it.
Bloomberg will fall flat on his face. He doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell. And I don’t mean like how Trump didn’t have a chance because nobody could imagine voting for him and then, surprise!, he won. I mean, Bloomberg is a billionaire who spent his time as mayor banning soda sizes, hates gun ownership with a passion, is both boring AND unlikable, and doesn’t even manage to hit any good demographic boxes.
In his favor, he’s probably the only not-Communist running.
Which is not a point in his favor for a sizable chunk of the Dem base.
Anybody here do rallycross or autocross? If so, any preference of SCCA or NASA. Thanks.
Not familiar with NASA. Are you looking for single car timed runs?
Unless you’re in the middle of nowhere (like Montana) an SCCA autocross group shouldn’t be hard to find.
Yes, single car timed runs. Starting in stock and if I like it, jump to prepared.
Whenever I hear about someone giving up caffeine I fail to understand why.
https://www.greenwichtime.com/news/article/Caffeine-has-been-a-boon-for-civilization-15031811.php
Wait til you get old
I did it briefly when I was first put on high blood pressure meds.
Perhaps…
You can have my caffeinated coffee when you pry it from my dead, cold hands.
It’s pretty simple, if it disrupts your sleep, then don’t drink caffeine close to bedtime. Problem solved.
A pot a day minimum since I was 12. I’m 6’2″ so if it really does stunt your growth, thank God. I come from a family where my grandfather would come in from mowing the lawn in mid-July sweating like a slave, plant his ass in his easy chair, and drink three cups of hot, black coffee before getting back to work. Growing up there was basically always a pot of coffee on if someone was awake.
Throw everything against the wall to see what sticks.
https://freebeacon.com/politics/chris-matthews-floats-adam-schiff-as-dem-savior-in-brokered-convention/
pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease
There’s no way the universe would be so kind to me.
OH GOD YES.
Even Democrat commentators don’t have a clue. By all means, give it to Schiff.
Literal LOL
He really has some weird survivor’s guilt.
I don’t think he realizes the followers he has only follow him to mock him.
He’s just a garden-variety grifter.
The 275,000 confederate white bois Lincoln dispatched were all good though.
Just do the world a favor, Piglet, and throw yourself off the nearest tall building. Don’t you want to clear space for black and brown bodies??
It’s weird to have survivor’s guilt about something you weren’t really ever in danger of.
I’ve been shot. A bullet went into my flesh and shattered bone and shredded meat. He was in a closet in a different building. Man up, you fucking milksop.
Were you the intended target?
No, they were shooting at the cans.
It was an accidental shooting. I do a very entertaining performance art piece about the incident at parties.
Ah, ok.
Steve Smith (the actual person) finally caught up to Sugar Free.
But the 650+ thousand that died in his war
to free the slavesfor economic plunder was a-ok.The wypipo who scolded you are not any more or less indigenous than you are.
I believe this is called getting what you vote for good and hard.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/seattles-liberal-reckoning/
I hate to be that guy, but Seattle and the other liberal enclaves are more or less implementing the libertarian ideal in terms of criminal justice reform, bail reform, immigration, and homeless policy. I understand they aren’t doing so in vacuum, but I doubt it’s the soda bans and rent control causing street shitting and property crime.
I think it’s more the anti-business bend that annoys me. Also: in libertopia, ordinary citizens would be armed and empowered to fight back against chaos and they are decidedly not.
I’m more of a eliminate victimless crimes Libertarian, not eliminate all crimes. Also what Q said.
I’m happy to be the guy that calls you a dumbass as far as “libertarian homeless policy”. If the liberal enclave wasn’t so anti-business and anti-property-rights they’d have no need for a homeless policy.
Every civilization since we have the written word has had homeless people, so color me skeptical that libertopia is going to be the first one to eradicate it. In the context of a modern city in a liberal western country, I just don’t think the libertarian approach to commons is tenable as it regards the homeless population. You can’t lock them up until they maim or kill somebody and an open commons becomes a magnet for encampments that ruin the space for everyone else. And yes, I know, just get rid of the commons…
This is one of the issues where I became more comfortable thinking of myself as a classical liberal rather than a libertarian. I believe that a community can hold property in common via some sort of civic government (not necessarily anything more than an ad hoc agreement between neighbors) and the community as a body can determine the rules of that property’s use, including preventing its use by people outside the community. No absolute human right exists whereby, for instance, a random person can sleep overnight on a bench in front of your house just because “he isn’t bothering anyone” and it’s public property. “Public” really ought to be replaced with “civic” as we’re referring to property owned in common by the tax-paying residents of a polity, not simply unoccupied space with no interested parties.
^^. I’m pretty close to that way of thinking.
Same here. If I ever have the time and energy, there’s a post brewing in the back of my head about the fatal flaw og (ideological) libertarianism being its denial of any legitimate civic or community interest. Too much libertarianism is purely transactional, and that’s not how people or sustainable societies are built.
I don’t think libertarian philosophy shuns cooperative endeavors in any way.
I do think it argues that there is no public/civic endeavor that covers a large community that isn’t coercive in nature.
The contradiction is believing a corporation employing 50k people is truly cooperative while the government covering a village of 100 people is coercive.
@kinnath: I think that in any group endeavor you’re going to wind up with a situation where 2 of 3 people want to do something that 1 doesn’t, at which point 1 either goes along or leaves the group. It becomes more difficult when leaving isn’t an option. Coercion seems to be more likely (and more effective) in that scenario as the group gets larger, for a number of reasons, but with small groups there’s plenty of opportunity for horse trading and compromise as it’s more likely the majority will have personal ties or obligations to the minority, or the minority’s participation might be necessary.
The contradiction is believing a corporation employing 50k people is truly cooperative
Yet still governed by majority voting, meaning, not everyone gets every single thing they want every single time. Sure, its easy(ier) to leave, but that’s the rub – situations that are hard to leave still require some rules that people comply with (or else).
In fact, the difficulty of exit cuts both ways. A group of more than 200 cannot be sustainable if it is purely voluntary/governed solely by social, as opposed to legal/governmental, rules.
@RCDean: I put my thoughts on the topic into article form a while back. I’d personally be very interested in hearing another point of view on the topic.
The Seattle City government is going to spend over $10k per person next year. That’s in addition to the over $5k per person being spent by King County, and over $7k per person being spent by Washington State. Then the federal government will round it off with over $13k per person. All told, it’s about $36.5k per person.
Whatever this is, libertarianism ain’t it.
I was talking about those particular social policies specifically. Their fiscal policy is another story.
I don’t think you can extricate them that easily. That money is going somewhere, and it is at least in part fueling both the “problem” and its government “solutions”.
While neoliberalism* can rightly be credited with (or blamed for, as your opinion may hold) the salvation of the welfare state from being crushed under its own weight, it also led to liberal government without meaningful constraints. Of course you can embark on decades of wasteful and indirectly harmful policy, there’s always more money to prop up the failing policies and then fund new policies to “fix” the problems of the old policies and thus perpetuate the cycle and expand the bureaucratic fiefdoms.
Seattle is not running a libertarian program. They are on a coke binge. Libertarians tolerate libertines, but the two are not synomyms.
* With apologies to Gilmore, wherever he may be
criminal justice reform
I don’t think effectively decriminalizing theft is very libertarian.
bail reform
Possibly, but turning accused criminals loose also has knock-on effects (more violent and property crime) that isn’t libertarian. Still, this is a tough one.
immigration
I would say there is a distinct lack of consensus on what a libertarian immigration policy should be. Wide open borders are superficially libertarian, but I remain unconvinced that libertarianism requires the surrender of national sovereignty, which includes control of borders.
homeless policy
Massive taxpayer subsidies and government programs, elimination of property rights to allow homeless people to camp where they want, and ignoring public health threats, none of that sounds libertarian to me.
It was never clear to me why opposing cash bail is the more libertarian option. Granted, in some places, they’ve decided to do away with the concept of pre-trial detention entirely along with cash bail. That can be called libertarian, in a sense, but it has knock-on effects that can result in less libertarian outcomes (at the least, more bounty hunters, or more likely, more unaccountable and overpaid cops and other justice system functionaries).
There are problems with cash bail, but the basic concept of “trust but verify” that underlies cash bail seems to be pretty libertarian to me, in the way that it treats people as adults and individuals but also acknowledges that they might not always be honest (then again, I’m also in favor of corporal punishment over jail in many cases for similar reasons). It says, we’re going to let you out, on your word/oath, but if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain, there will be consequences.
None of what’s going on in Seattle, New York, etc. is about reform – it’s identity politics in the guise of “reform”.
the libertarian ideal in terms of criminal justice reform
________________________________
I’m not exactly sure what the libertarian ideal on criminal justice is, outside of the obvious “victimless crimes should not exist.” I think theres a huge variance outside of that.
I’m in favor of harsh, even draconian punishment for actual crimes against people and property. But I also think that prison is a giant government punishment on the law abiding, because it steals their money in order to give criminals a postgraduate course/advanced seminar in criminality from career criminals. Some combination of corporal punishment and direct restitution to victims is how I would structure The Viking1865 Criminal Code.
bail reform
__________________
Bail reform cannot be disentangled from the monstrous system that exists. In a minarchist polity, if someone shoplifts a 200 dollar item at 10 AM, the local cop drags him down to the local magistrate, the shoplifter can hire one of the attorneys that hangs around if he wishes, but the shopkeeper has video of him slipping the item in his pocket and walking out of the store, then breaking into a run when the inventory control system alarmed, before the cop walking down the street tackled him.
So the magistrate views the video footage, asks the defendant if he wants a full trial by jury which would entail either a stay in jail or a posting of bond, and the defendant refuses, takes his three licks from the Cane O Matic 2000 in front of the courthouse, and gingerly walks off down the street before lunch. But theres no money in that system for the lawyers, and the lawyers are the politicians who make the rules.
immigration
__________________
As long as there’s a welfare state, immigration will be a divisive issue among libertarians. Subsidized immigrants are no more a libertarian position than subsidized agriculture, industry, or anything else.
and homeless policy
_________________________
Same thing with the immigration thing: you get more of what you reward and less of what you punish.
One day I’ll tell you the 5 D’s of the links
Duck, Dive, Derp, Deepdish, Dickskin.
Ducklips?
just need a replacement for ‘Dive’ now. I didn’t want to use ‘democrats’. wait, no, I got it….
Derp, Ducklips, Deepdish, Dickskin, Derp
That’s “Dickens”.
A wind turbine’s blades can be longer than a Boeing 747 wing, so at the end of their lifespan they can’t just be hauled away. First, you need to saw through the lissome fiberglass using a diamond-encrusted industrial saw to create three pieces small enough to be strapped to a tractor-trailer.
How’d they get there in the first place?
And is there really a need to bury them in a landfill rather than just pile them up? Seems like a waste of good landfill space.
They should make new buildings out of them.
Like giant yurts.
Put a nuclear pile in each yurt and we’ll have plentiful clean energy in no time.
If they could get the cut down small enough, they could be sold as fence posts. I know a guy who shelled out quite a few dollars to put in fiberglass fence posts (recycled from something) on his 3rd gen family farm. He expects the posts to last centuries.
On big, long tractor-trailers with an entourage of pre-runners and chase vehicles that clog up the highway when I’m trying to get to work!
Doloot is a shipping port
I neglected to use the facetious font there.
I was just voicing my frustration at truckers who decide to start their long journey with over-sized cargo DURING RUSH HOUR!
My father knows one of the guys that hauls the blades and/or builds the rigs for hauling them. The blades are transported on a custom rig that has no market other than moving the blades. There are only enough rigs in existence to move the blades from the factory to the installation site.
There is no reason to build rigs to move retired blades. Just cut them up and load them on standard rig.
Ahhh, I didn’t understand they came in in one piece, I thought there was some assembly happening on-site beyond just attaching them to the shaft.
I’m still not gonna start reading the articles.
dammit
I’m thinking about buying a cheap project car for rally/auto cross, but I don’t like to dive into purchases blindly. I was originally think wrx, but those cars really hold their value. Now I’m leaning towards mazdaspeed 3, if I can find one for a reasonable price.
Rear wheel drive is where it’s at.
This is true. BMWs can be found for cheap, and if you’re just gonna drive it like you stole it, who cares if it breaks?
Well if it breaks so that it doesn’t brake…
I also want cheap parts for upgrades. A lot of people race E30 or E36 bmws.
Miata was also on the list but will need a role cage or a hard top. The upside is you can also race spec Miata.
Don’t Focuses do well in rally?
I hate to be that guy, but Seattle and the other liberal enclaves are more or less implementing the libertarian ideal in terms of criminal justice reform, bail reform, immigration, and homeless policy. I understand they aren’t doing so in vacuum, but I doubt it’s the soda bans and rent control causing street shitting and property crime.
(Probably) Most of those people living on the street are out-and-out-nuts, but there are a lot of liberal policies which not only do not incentivise self-sufficiency, they actively penalize it.
Being harmlessly nuts should not be a crime, but terrorizing the neighborhood is not something you want to encourage.
Man up, you fucking milksop.
Dude, you’re demeaning his imagined experience. Not cool.
Fuck wind farms, they are unsightly as all hell, an environmental disaster and poor producers of energy. We were in Maui last September for the fam vacation and from one of the most beautiful beaches on the island you could see across the water to a huge set of ugly white windmills that came from the sea to the top of the west Maui mountains. All those dead bats and birds, and all that visual pollution in order to power 18k homes. I can only imagine how much money was pissed into making them. I’d love to see a side by side comparison with the cost of their power plant that is about 10 miles away.
They’re a vanity project/sacrifice to Gaia. They were never capable, or even designed, to actually produce viable levels of power.
Even if they could there’s still the matter of storage and demand scaling. Of course, Elon Musk is rapidly invalidating the laws of physics to build us city-sized batteries.
Miata was also on the list but will need a role cage or a hard top. The upside is you can also race spec Miata.
They’re plentiful, which is a big plus. And there are lots and lots of aftermarket tuning parts.
That’s exactly what you need for a track day, bro.
Bro! You know it, bro!
Great review! Dude is hilarious. The Miata is a great car. I was looking at them before I bought the Triumph. I may still get one.
Some history:
THE ORIGIN STORY OF MAZDA’S ICONIC ROADSTER
Fun cars are fun.
Nancy Pelosi✔
@SpeakerPelosi
Our Founders put safeguards in the Constitution to protect against a rogue president. They never imagined that they would at the same time have a rogue leader in the Senate who would cowardly abandon his duty to uphold the Constitution.
Because impeaching on dubious terms must result in conviction and removal otherwise you are not upholding the Constitution. . .
You impeached. The Senate voted. The Constitutional process was followed.
“The process is only legitimate when I get what I want!”
“The process is only legitimate when I get what I want!”
__________
I mean, that’s been the Democrats POV for years and years now.
Whatever they hold is The True Source of Virtue and Justice.
Whatever they don’t hold is Obstruction, Corruption, and Racism.
POTUS is either The Direct Voice of the American People Using All the Tools At His Disposal To Get Things Done or a Vicious Autocrat Trampling Our Sacred Constitution With Unilateral Decrees.
The House is either The People’s True Representatives, The Beating Heart of the Nation or a Mob Of Reckless Firebrands Installed by Special Interests.
The Senate is either An August And Principled Deliberative Body of Wise, Thoughtful Policy Makers or its an Out of Touch Undemocratic Collection of Rich Old White Men
The Judiciary is either Principled, Thoughtful, Intelligent Seekers of Truth and Justice or an Unelected Ideologically Biased Group of Radicals Dismantling Democracy.
The senate is 0 for 3 on removing presidents from office after impeachment. If the founders meant for impeachment to result in automatic removal, they fucked up big time it seems.
Don’t take her so seriously, it’s just the Two Buck Chuck talking
They never imagined that they would at the same time have a rogue leader in the Senate who would cowardly abandon his duty to uphold the Constitution.
She seems determined to leave no bridge unburned.
52 of them voted to betray that oath
I wonder, did the Dems who voted to acquit her husband also betray their oath? I mean, there was no real doubt that he at least broke a law.
*Sigh*
Part of me almost feels bad for poor Nancy. Part of. Almost. She knew the whole impeachment thing was a loser. She’d said as much. And she got outflanked by the (even more) left in her party. So, she signed aboard. And it’s been an utter failure. And now that it has failed, they’re doing nothing to have her back. Even though it was their demand.
Hillary Clinton✔
@HillaryClinton
As the president’s impeachment trial began, Republican senators pledged an oath to defend the Constitution.
Today, 52 of them voted to betray that oath—and all of us.
We’re entering dangerous territory for our democracy. It’ll take all of us working together to restore it.
*rolls eyes*
Oh, go siphon some more Haitian recovery donations, you bitter old hag!
Says the woman married to the perjuring sexual predator.
MoveOn, bitch.
Is moveon moving on?
Declare already woman, you’re starting to make me doubt myself.
Clinton in a brokered convention who chooses Schiff as a running mate?
I love how dictatorship and voting are only one sentence apart in all of these complaints about our “democracy”.
Huh, I thought they ended this kind of stuff when they left boarding school.
The age of consent is 16 in Scotland, so it wasn’t illegal, but I can see why they sacked him as it’s not a good look to have party leaders chasing school boys.
Thanks a lot, you watermelon assholes. Now we need you to fix it before we take your schemes seriously.
I wonder why they make them out of fiberglass instead of something recyclable like aluminum. Probably cost. As has been discussed here before, no serious “green” energy plan should include wind or solar. Nuke & hydro is the way to go.
Nuke is scary and hydro MUH FISHIES!
Got your shocked faces ready?
CNN Excludes Tulsi Gabbard From Town Hall That Includes Lower-Polling Candidates
Why are they so scared of her?
Honestly, I think she’s their best shot in November. The rest are no-hopers. I think she’s the only one could actually keep Trump up at night.
I thought that as well. She checks all the immutable characteristic boxes and is ideologically pretty much what leftists claim to want.
Agreed. She’s pretty, she’s young, she’s dynamic, she has no baggage in terms of record of failure and corruption, she’s got some fresh ideas that depart from the consensus, she’s a veteran. Trump could slam Hillary because no one actually likes her, slamming a pretty young veteran who has not yet grifted 100 million dollars out of politics is a lot tougher.
The thing with the Democratic leadership/field of candidates is that they’re all hothouse flowers, politically speaking. There’s not a single one of them from a purple or red state. Bill Clinton was reelected in 1984 by 20 points in a state Reagan won by 20 points. Every single one of the Dem candidates, and all the senior Democratic leadership are in deep blue situations.
Sanders from VT, Buttiegg mayor of a college town, Warren from MA, Bloomberg from NYC. I mean, the closest thing they have to a purple/red state Democrat is Biden from Delaware, which last voted GOP POTUS in 1988. They can’t actually win an election except by progging harder, because prog harder wins you the Dem primary, and once you win the Dem primary in MA or VT you just need to not commit a felony before Election Day. They’re like a guy who shadow boxes 2 hours a day walking into a bar and trying to get in a real fight.
Every single one of the Dem candidates, and all the senior Democratic leadership are in deep blue situations.
To be fair, the same thing could be said of Gabbard. Hawaii isn’t exactly a GOP stronghold.
Oh sure, but Gabbard doesn’t have decades of political baggage like Hillary. Gabbard would be Obama 2.0 in terms of being young and exciting and in not having much of an actual record to run against. Sure, shes got votes on record but she didn’t even get to Congress until after Obamacare passed.
Per Stinky’s link above, Michael Malice addresses this very point.
I thought it was because she’s a Russian asset.
Our Founders put safeguards in the Constitution to protect against a rogue president. They never imagined that they would at the same time have a rogue leader in the Senate who would cowardly abandon his duty to uphold the Constitution.
Prove your nonpartisan credentials by doing exactly what we want!
STFU, cunte.
Jumpin’ Jiminny! These people need a sense of perspective. I’m pretty sure Vice President Burr was on the payroll of the King of Spain, with the aim of subverting the Louisiana Purchase and establishing a Spanish hegemony over the western half on North America. The Short-Fingered Vulgarian is but a piker compared to our politicians of the past.
The Empire Strikes Back, again.
There’s an actual statute, even. I suspect she would get off on the technicality that what she tore up wasn’t the “official” copy, or that she’s not a “public officer”, but the statute refers to
Yeah, nothing will come of it, but if you say “nobody should be above the law” . . . .
I say let them keep having temper tantrums. When your enemy is destroying himself, don’t interrupt.
Yea, plus it’s just bad optics for Team Trump. The Leftists will be able to say that he’s “prosecuting political opponents for making public gestures of opposition”.
That is just funny.
This must happen. MUST! Picture, say, a 24 hour period on CNN following the announcement that Nancy Pelosi is going to be brought before the Ethics Committee for tearing up a courtesy copy of Trump’s speech. Tell me that’s not quality television.
She’s lost the plot.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fired back at President Trump on Thursday morning as the two political titans clashed the morning after the president’s historic acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial.
“You’re impeached forever, you are never getting rid of that scar,” Pelosi declared at a press conference, even as Trump is effectively on a series of victory laps.
She pointedly lashed out at Trump over claims in his State of the Union address that he inherited failed economic policies from former President Barack Obama and reversed them to bring about a blue-collar boom.
“It was appalling to hear him try to take credit … and call what President Obama did a mess that he inherited,” Pelosi said.
And she cited his battle against ObamaCare in decrying his vow to protect patients with pre-existing conditions
“That misrepresentation was appalling and so clearly untrue,” she said, calling the address itself a “manifesto of mistruths.”
“I SAID IT THEREFOR IT IS.”
Madoff requests release from prison – I wonder how the property crime isn’t really crime liberals feel about this?
Bernard Madoff says he is dying and is asking a judge for compassionate release from prison, where he is serving 150 years for orchestrating the largest Ponzi scheme in history, according to a Wednesday federal court filing.
Madoff, 81, has terminal kidney failure and a life expectancy of less than 18 months, according to the filing.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/bernie-madoff-asks-for-early-release-claiming-hes-terminally-ill/ar-BBZI7es
Let the motherfucker rot.
Reminds me of the Lockerbie terrorist who was given compassionate release for health reasons and immediately went back to Libya (?) and started living large.
Tough shit. The compassionate accommodation should be expanded family visitation.
Hmm. Well, we’ll let you know our decision in a year and a half.
I don’t know about beer, but “if she smokes, she pokes” has always seemed pretty accurate in my experience.
https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/relationships/no-beer-drinkers-probably-arent-any-more-likely-to-have-sex-on-the-first-date
Ugh, the mouth that tastes like an ashtray is a bit of a putoff.
Yeah, I hate it when my dick smells like menthol.
/trying to act cool
Thomas Friedman to the white courtesy phone please.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2020/02/06/the_political_effects_of_chinas_biological_chernobyl_115024.html
I’m suspicious of sites with “Real Clear” in their name.
What’s their reputation?
Murky, at best
There are innumerable useful idiots in the West who still believe in the Chinese ascendance.
Just like there were with the Soviets.
One of 2 things is a lie, and I’m not sure which one I want it to be.
https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1225429678816669698?s=20
Ugh