Tuesday Morning Links

by | Aug 4, 2020 | Daily Links | 414 comments

Don’t expect to see this anytime soon.

The Big 12 has set their football plan in place, and that’s all five power conferences.  The ACC and Big 12 are the only ones playing an OOC game, one out of necessity due to the number of teams and one probably out of opportunism to pad their schedule with scrubs like The Citadel and Charleston Southern.  But hey, I ain’t complaining. The PGA Championship starts in a couple days and I am predicting Justin Thomas or Jon Rahm will win. I know those aren’t exactly bold picks.  Meanwhile, across the pond, the most valuable game in the world is taking place today. Of course it isn’t nearly as much fun when there’s nobody there. And that’s sports.

Rocket Man

Birthdays today include poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, luggage maker Louis Vuitton, Queen Mother Elizabeth Bowles-Lyon, auto racer and engineer Ernesto Maserati, jazz great Louis Armstrong, baseball player Wild Bill Hallahan, legendary great hockey superstar (and that’s still an understatement) Maurice Richard, rental car pioneer Warren Avis, gaming magnate Sheldon Adelson, baseball player Cleon Jones, actor Billy Bob Thornton, heavyweight punching bag Gerry Cooney, Chicago machine politician Barack Obama, hurler Roger Clemens, race car driver (who would have broken all the records if they hadn’t changed the Cup rules) Jeff Gordon, and man-breaker Meghan Markle.

Long list there. And now…the links!

You know, this kind of article pisses me off to no end. Especially after virtually all of the MSM were banging the lockdown drum for months at the expense of seeing any of the downstream effects of them. And now let’s talk of the economic effects and the psychological trauma we’ve inflicted on children…because I suspect they’ll outstrip the medical impact of The Corona by orders of magnitude.

::laughs in Dr Hibbert::

I suppose The Simpsons will be drafting a “Help Wanted – must be minority” ad in the near future. Because they surely, surely, cannot tolerate this kind of insensitive common sense. I applaud his stance.

Looks like stupidity is more contagious than The Corona. At least when it comes to educators.

I have a way to make these police officer safer. Don’t let them work second jobs while wearing part or all of their police costume. You work your shift as a cop and then you are done dressing in cop shit for the remainder of the day.

Speaking of cops, the British aren’t immune to problems within their ranks. Poor Dicks.

Protesting in a large group in the name of safety. ::smdh::

“Putting us in classrooms with a handful of kids is gonna kill us!”, they said while marching together by the hundreds. But they care so much about the kids, right?  No. No they don’t.

These assholes in Chicago are doing the same thing. I mean, do they not see how bad the optics are when they march by the hundreds surrounded by strangers to protest being put in a room with the same couple dozen kids each day? Or do they simply not give a fuck anymore since their unions have the politicians from these cities in their pockets?

I guess she missed the people getting tossed in a police van for writing with chalk the other day.

Sharick said that she wanted to teach her three-year-old daughter about the Black Lives Matter movement, and never expected this response to the chalk. “I was in shock because since I’ve been here since 1993,” she told KRON4. “I’ve never dealt with racism within my neighborhood.”

Newsflash: you still haven’t dealt with racism in your neighborhood, you stupid asshole.

Women Persons with cervixes can now bring their own tampons to take the Texas Bar exam.

“Without doubt, many people taking bar exams in the coming months—women, transgender men, and nonbinary persons—will be menstruating,” the letter said, citing that menstrual products are not ‘one size fits all’. “It is critical that they have access to their own menstrual products during the exam as opposed to only unknown and likely uniform products that are provided by a state board in a restroom.”

LOL, ok dude, whatever.

Enjoy rocking out.

Now go have a great day, friends!

About The Author

sloopyinca

sloopyinca

414 Comments

  1. Count Potato

    “Tuberculosis kills 1.5 million people each year. Lockdowns and supply-chain disruptions threaten progress against the disease as well as H.I.V. and malaria.”

    HIV and malaria?

    • LCDR_Fish

      3rd world problems.

      We must maintain the lockdown until not one person risks getting wu flu!

      • Rhywun

        We must maintain the lockdown until not one person risks getting wu flu anything!

        FTFY

      • juris imprudent

        We must maintain the lockdown until not one person risks getting wu flu resists our commands!

        FTFY2

      • leon

        We must maintain the lockdown until not one person risks getting wu flu resists our commands! is left without a boot on their neck, forever!

        FTFYAll

    • Count Potato

      “Malaria season has begun in West Africa, which has 90 percent of malaria deaths in the world, but the normal strategies for prevention — distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets and spraying with pesticides — have been curtailed because of lockdowns.

      According to one estimate, a three-month lockdown across different parts of the world and a gradual return to normal over 10 months could result in an additional 6.3 million cases of tuberculosis and 1.4 million deaths from it.

      A six-month disruption of antiretroviral therapy may lead to more than 500,000 additional deaths from illnesses related to H.I.V., according to the W.H.O. Another model by the W.H.O. predicted that in the worst-case scenario, deaths from malaria could double to 770,000 per year.

      Several public health experts, some close to tears, warned that if the current trends continue, the coronavirus is likely to set back years, perhaps decades, of painstaking progress against TB, H.I.V. and malaria.”

      It’s not the coronavirus. It’s the lockdowns, you idiots.

      • sloopyinca

        Read the comments. Lots of “well, we’re overpopulated anyway so this is a net positive for the world” garbage. And lots of blaming Trump.
        I guess Trump is responsible for shutting down production and supply chains of these products from China to Africa.

        I swear, for a newspaper that claims to be intellectually superior, the readership of the NYT is full of retards and sociopaths who cheer mass deaths.

      • Count Potato

        You didn’t know that Trump is King of Africa? He also invented mosquitoes.

      • AlexinCT

        I KNEW this guy was behind the animal responsible for the largest amount of dead things in creation!

        Literally Hitler-Putin!

      • Gustave Lytton

        Walter Duranty approves.

  2. LCDR_Fish

    Work closed due to weather. Course I got woken up by a tornado watch phone warning 2 hours before my “reset” alarm (stayed up late) – so I’m up for the rest of the day.

    Guess we’ll wait and see whether my sports medicine appt in cville is canceled or not – 2 hr drive – assuming weather will be better after lunch.

    • LCDR_Fish

      Getting a bad feeling that I should have had the foresight to sandbag the door to my crawlspace. Hope this doesn’t come back to bite me – I do see a lot of water outside in the yard, but I know I have a few inches of space…..may wind up needing to borrow a shop vac from a coworker after this.

      (Is a sump pump likely to suck water out of the crawlspace or does it depend on depth/location? I’ve heard it running like normal, but I don’t have a good grasp of this stuff yet – very different than my previous houses).

      • UnCivilServant

        The sump pump moves whatever drains into the sump. If your crawlspace drains into the sump, it will pump that water. If it does not, it will not.

      • UnCivilServant

        Note – I am used to having a half-basement, half crawlspace. My sump pump is fixed in the basement half and does nothing for the other.

        I don’t tend to think of portable pumps as sump pumps.

      • sloopyinca

        Do you have a hole for a sump pump in the lowest point of your crawl space? If not, you’ll have to get one without a float and operate it manually.
        The biggest issue will be sediment clogging it, if you have a lot of loose soil. My advice: wait it out as most will just seep into the ground pretty quickly.

      • LCDR_Fish

        Well, I’ve been in there a few times and the crawlspace is actually completely lined in plastic sheeting – seemed pretty flat too, so may not be much actual drainage. Guess it can probably wait till tomorrow either way.

      • sloopyinca

        If it’s lined, you should be good to pump it out. Put it at the lowest point and don’t use it without monitoring it or you’ll burn it out.

      • LCDR_Fish

        The sump pump was already installed when I bought the place – I hear it regularly during rainy days – and obviously all day today – wasn’t sure if it was specifically for below-house ground water or also the crawlspace. We’ll see.

        Wish I could keep the spiders out of there – irritating having to go down there to check stuff out. May also see about getting a better/fitted door/hatch in the future too.

    • Idle Hands

      Not bad at all in Nova. Easternl MD looks like it’s getting hammered.

  3. RBS

    Fucking teachers.

    • UnCivilServant

      Isn’t that a recurring article?

      • pan fried wylie

        You’re thinking of the Teachers Fucking articles.

    • sloopyinca

      I wish there were at least a few teachers willing to announce that their priority actually is the kids…by resigning and offering to administer homeschool programs for groups that could pay them enough to match their earlier salary.
      But they won’t, since they probably don’t exist.

  4. Swiss Servator

    Hey teacher’s unions…. enjoy every single referendum for moar tax moneys going down in flames for years to come.

    • Sean

      Defund the teachers union!

      • Nephilium

        But, won’t someone think of the children?

      • Sean

        OMWC has that covered.

      • sloopyinca

        Just decertify them since they’re not meeting the obligations of their contract. Put “Help Wanted” signs up in all the schools, and watch people line up to apply.

        The ability to break the teachers unions stranglehold on education has never been greater. It’s a perfect time to show the parents of these kids, especially the poor minority parents, who black lives really don’t matter to. Because teachers unions couldn’t give two shits about educating right now…especially the ones in urban areas where minority students are over-represented.

    • leon

      My you are optimistic about the voting populace, aren’t you?

    • straffinrun

      Open the schools with no teachers. It’s worthy experiment.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Weird, test results are the same.

      • AlexinCT

        I bet you that the kids learn just as much as they would with them there…

    • R C Dean

      Not to worry. In AZ they got their multi year double digit increase locked in last year. Red4Ed FTW!

    • Apples and Knives

      The thing is, some of them will have to go back, and then that will just be more evidence that they’re the “real” heroes who will take a bullet or face certain Covid death for the sake of your thankless kids.

      By the way, if you’ve never heard the bootleg of Norm Macdonald fucking with a heckling teacher because she thinks she’s a hero, check it out.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAg9M-O9wGo

    • commodious spittoon

      Given how much support Lockdown Forever enjoys, public schools will come out the end of this with massive bailouts for… something.

      • pan fried wylie

        Foreclosure homeless shelters.

  5. The Late P Brooks

    Sharick said that she wanted to teach her three-year-old daughter about the Black Lives Matter movement, and never expected this response to the chalk.

    I’m right about everything. Why would somebody disagree with me?

  6. Count Potato

    “”I have a very simple belief about acting. The job of the actor is to play someone who they are not,’ said Shearer, who has also appeared in multiple movies including Spinal Tap and The Truman Show.

    ‘That’s the gig, that’s the job description.'”

    Amazingly, he actually has to explain that.

  7. Nephilium

    Back from vacation. Thankfully have the day off today, as I learned that the ice maker in our freezer froze over and stopped working. So I’ve got that going for me today. For schools, there were protests through the state (and specifically outside the Cleveland Catholic Diocese) pushing for in person schools when they’re supposed to start up in a couple weeks. If we are able to have college and pro football this year, no fans are (currently) permitted to be in attendance.

    There were lots of pictures taken, which will be hopefully be put into an article by the end of the week. We had a couple of clear and beautiful days, and one day of rain the full day. No Cedar Point, as it was raining on the day we had penciled in to go.

    • UnCivilServant

      Post the rainy day pictures.

      • Nephilium

        There are a couple, with the girlfriend in the cheap blue poncho she bought. She got to learn what “DONT GIVE UP THE SWING” means (the apostrophe is not there in the original either), The #ThisMaskDoesNothing mask was also a crowd favorite out and about.

        In mildly related news. Viva Las Vegas for next year has already been postponed from April until potentially September (or it may be cancelled all together). If restrictions are eased by the end of this year, they may do a small scale gathering in April

    • robc

      Ice makers and water dispensers are the most common points of failure in a refrigerator. They rest of it can run pretty much forever. They are super convenient, but ice trays and pitchers are much, much more reliable.

      Note: This isn’t advice, as I go the convenient route too. But if you want to get a refrigerator that will last forever, go the simple route.

      • R C Dean

        That’s my plan when we replace the current one. Our ice maker has been useless for a couple years. It’s not hard to make ice manually. I fucking hate replacing capital equipment, so simple and bulletproof is my thing.

      • Don did not Escape Spring Training

        I’m generally of this mind, too, but: it’s an ice-maker: $50 and 50 minutes to replace. Sack up, boys

      • R C Dean

        Its a combo of not working for shit and taking up a chunk of valuable cubic for me.

      • pan fried wylie

        I just don’t like the ice my icemaker makes. Then I let it fill the bin up and don’t use a lot of ice for a bit so it sits there and gets defrost cycled and clumps up and gets tossed after a couple weeks, or I don’t let it make enough and end up waiting on it when I do want ice so I could’ve just filled up a tray and waited on it myself.

        After struggling to make good hospital ice for years, I want the GE Opal “sonic-style ice” machine now, I just haven’t settled on a city-water cleansing option for filling it up. I’m not using chlorinated water to make fancy ice. Don’t want to go pitcher, shopping up an undersink solution turned into a whole thing…RO seems excessive and I don’t really want to waste all that water.

      • R C Dean

        I just haven’t settled on a city-water cleansing option for filling it up

        Our water has . . . interesting stuff in it. Including heavy metals. All in “acceptable” trace amounts, of course.

        We got a Berkey filter. Manual, but its not terribly hard to dump a couple pitchers of tap water in it once a day. Makes a noticable difference. We use it for ice (also made manually), drinking water, basically anything we actually ingest.

      • Rhywun

        Huh. I hadn’t thought of filtering my water before sticking the trays in the freezer before – will try! I just got those trays that make the giant cubes, like 2 inches on a side. I love those cubes.

      • Nephilium

        To get the really clear ice, you also need some way to get the air bubbles out of the water, and freeze it slowly. I’ve got a mold that does spheres, and it’s a lot of work to get them really clear. I usually keep a Britta pitcher in the fridge but that filter was ready to be replaced when we got home Monday.

        I’ve done phase one of trying to fix the ice maker (we had lost power for a couple hours in the morning last week. That froze up the water in the line the reservoir, the cube maker, and left a nice forearm sized chunk of ice frozen to the back wall. All of that has been cleaned out. In good luck, for some reason the girlfriend’s hair dryer has a blue light on the front. That made it much easier to see what I was doing with the fridge unplugged and trying to clean out the back corner. If it still doesn’t work, then I’ll try to take it out (without damaging it), and letting it completely melt and dry before putting it back in. Still doesn’t work, try to find a replacement.

      • UnCivilServant

        The companies that make ice for sculptures shake the freezing water to dislodge the air, and routinely change the still-melted material to get rid of dissolved solids. It’s not easy, and not worth it.

      • R C Dean

        Yeah, its not filtered water that makes clear ice. Its slow freezing with water below the ice that the freezing process can force air into.

        My clear ice maker takes 24 hours per batch, and there’s a lot of unfrozen water in the bottom. Which goes into the dog’s bowl – its the only cold water they get about 8 months of the year.

      • Rhywun

        I was thinking about taste too but yeah I’m not expecting crystal-clear cubes.

    • Rhywun

      No Cedar Point

      🙁

      That would have been my highlight.

      • Nephilium

        It’s an hour away. They’ve got some pretty draconian restrictions in place, are running reduced hours, have quite a few rides closed, and neither of us have been there in years. We may try them one of these weekends coming up, but they haven’t even been getting 5,000 people in the gate since they re-opened. So at least the lines should be short…

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Yeah, daughter wanted to do Hershey Park for her birthday in July. No way was I going to wear a mask all day when it is 95 outside.

  8. Count Potato

    “KNOCKING COP Woman police officer, 28, facing sack after ‘performing oral sex on married sergeant, 40, with foot fetish many times’”

    That’s some headline.

  9. Sean

    PC Jemma Dicks is facing the sack

    *snicker*

      • Idle Hands

        Cult of Fauci wing of the branch covidians only exists to further a certain narrative, soon as he publicly starts defying that he will become a false prophet. OF course many of the pro (and for that matter the anti fauci) people seem to just read the headlines of what he says rather than what he actually says. That said the man is an fucking attention whore wop leprechaun who deserves to be quarantined on some desolate island for his remaining years after this is all over.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      There’s a sign: I teach poetry. Not paediatrics.

      My God.

  10. Tundra

    Good morning, Sloopy!

    And thank you for the retarded lynx. The teachers have really gone around the bend. The thing is, though, I think they are losing people. Even reliable proggies in my world are beating the ‘time to open schools’ drum.

    We’ll see.

    I’m taking my youngest off to college next week, where she will live in a dorm room with another human and presumably behave like college students have since caveman days.

    Which is nice.

    Nice like Jeff Lynne, actually. Excellent song choice for a beautiful Tuesday morning!

  11. JD is in the United Karendom

    Oooooooooooooooooh a panduin!

    Mornin’ Sloop.

  12. Count Potato

    “Because of the spike in COVID-19 cases, the Texas Supreme Court canceled the two-day in person exam for the month of July and added an alternative exam online for the month of October.”

    Two days?

    Anyway, couldn’t they just schedule it twice in the same month?

  13. Rufus the Monocled

    I think those of us in Northern parts can relate to this homage to Maurice Richard.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZyDsF-Gp3o

    i used to see him at the club where I used to play squash back in the 90s. He played racquetball. I would always nod a hello to him and he’d humbly nod back. nThis was way before cell phones and I never had a camera. It’s just a thing stuck in my memory. Richard was a call up in 1944. The rest is history. The dynasty of the Habs started with him and 45 year run of sheer excellence.

  14. Rhywun

    Dateline September 2020: Springfield Is All-White and Here’s Why That’s a Problem

    • Count Potato

      Yellow

      • Rhywun

        Yellow is the new white.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Here’s Ten Reasons Why The Explaining Trend In Journalism Needs To Die

      • Rhywun

        Number Eight Will Shock You!

  15. robc

    The Citadel and Charleston Southern

    Ooh…the pyramid…let me guess the category…

    Schools from a state OSU has never beaten a team from.

    Did I get it right?

    Also, the primary reason for the ACC OOC rule was to play the rivalry SEC matchups: FSU-UF, GT-uga, Clemson-USC, UofL-UK. Which is why the rule required the OOC game to be played in the home state (but not necessarily home stadium) of the ACC team. With only 1 team in SC, both The Citadel and Charleston Southern weren’t getting a game. Neither would have except for the SEC wimping out on those games.

    USC was the only vote against the SEC banning OOC games.

    If we play an OOC now, I guess it will be Georgia St. Easy travel, the GSU players can take Marta to GT.

    • sloopyinca

      Ooh…the pyramid…let me guess the category…

      Schools from a state OSU has never beaten a team from.

      Did I get it right?

      That’s unnecessarily harsh.

      • robc

        No, that was absolutely necessary.

        You picked the schools, not me.

      • sloopyinca

        Yeah, maybe. But still.

      • Agent Cooper

        Well, Bellisari and company fucked up against USC in that stupid bowl game a long time ago, too.

  16. The Late P Brooks

    But based on advice from health experts, and in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus on campuses, Superintendent Walt Griffin said he’ll recommend that all students keep their face masks on for most of the school day.

    “Please use the next two weeks to get your student comfortable with properly wearing a mask,” he wrote in a message sent to parents Monday.

    Maybe you should spend the next two weeks re-working your resume.

  17. Rhywun

    Looks like stupidity is more contagious than The Corona. At least when it comes to educators.

    I saw a snotty commercial last night (from the AdCouncil, which means you probably paid for it) hectoring Americans to stop bitching about wearing a mask for hours on end. I really need to stop screaming at my television; it can’t be good for my health.

  18. Rufus the Monocled

    Teachers are supposed to be pillars of our society. They’re supposed to lead.

    Corona obliterated that myth.

    Compelling kids to wear masks angers me like little else.

    I want to throttle every single politician and educator.

    Son of a bitches.

    • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

      Compelling kids to wear masks angers me like little else.

      My wife was looking for a preschool for my 3yo daughter, and that was question #1. If they planned on making the kids wear masks, they were crossed off the list.

      The idea that a 3, 4, 5, 6, however old child is going to 1) wear a mask for an extended period, and 2) wear it in a remotely sanitary way, is insane.

      Setting aside the fact that we should be encouraging these kids to pass covid around, they don’t understand, and they, more often than not, feel like they’re being punished by having to wear the mask.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        For now, Quebec has kept its bearings about that. U-12 no masks. But I still say 12-17 should also be exempt.

        LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE YOU ASSHOLES.

      • Idle Hands

        They just tossed 100 years of learned behavior and how we are supposed to fight virus’s in a matter of months. Seperate the vulnerable, let it go through the people it’s not susceptible in burn through and move on. This magical thinking that we can somehow avoid this is fucking retarded hubris at it’s worse.

      • Ted S.

        They *are* being punished.

  19. Rebel Scum

    ‘I have a very simple belief about acting. The job of the actor is to play someone who they are not,’

    One would think this was common knowledge.

  20. Rhywun

    Newsflash: you still haven’t dealt with racism in your neighborhood, you stupid asshole.

    Does spreading racism count…?

  21. The Late P Brooks

    And-

    Parents who are “not comfortable with increased mask use in our schools” can also choose to have their children take part in live, online classes instead, he added.

    School choice!

  22. robc

    I saw Hallahan and thought you intentional left off Clemens, which I was okay with.

    But you missed today’s HOF birthday: Jake Beckley! Admittedly, he probably shouldn’t be, but 9 of his top 10 in similarity scores are also in the HOF, so he is far from the worst player there. He was a poor man’s Roger Connor.

  23. The Late P Brooks

    I really need to stop screaming at my television; it can’t be good for my health.

    You’ll pop your stitches.

    • Rhywun

      Heh. But all the staples were removed the morning I left the hospital.

  24. Rufus the Monocled

    Australia has lost its damn mind. Apparently, if this round hard and drastic lockdowns don’t work, Andrews promised to triple down with even more lockdowns.

    How spectacularly stupid do you have to be? The virus isn’t going to get eradicated this way. Why destroy everything around it under the false hope of ‘suppression’? It’s beyond the pale.

    And I can’t be too critical because that’s the playbook here in North America.

    Quebec and Ontario are certainly taking notes.

    • PieInTheSky

      What is the basis to believe a virus of this class that is this extensive can be eradicated ?

      • Rhywun

        Faith? I mean, Science!

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Trick question.

        Imma say no basis.

        Dr. Tegnell, correctly I reckon, concluded this thing isn’t going anywhere hence the decision for Sweden to choose a sane and logical approach.

      • beer league keeper

        Perhaps the successes of vaccines against smallpox or polio?

      • PieInTheSky

        Meh those are not the same type of virus. Flu vaccines have less success and cold vaccines do not exist…

      • juris imprudent

        Burn the heretic!!!

      • Rebel Scum

        Flu vaccines have less success and cold vaccines do not exist…

        ^

      • beer league keeper

        fair enough

    • Idle Hands

      It’s beyond anything I ever thought was possible. I just don’t understand how everyone has access to the same data and has for months and thinks this is something we should put off till flu season. We should have had all the young people get exposed to this already and kept moving as a society. These people have overturned pretty much all the viral knowledge and practice of the last 100 years in a couple of months because of the need to feel in control of something they can’t control.

      • grrizzly

        Is Immunity a Case of Rothbard’s Lost Knowledge?

        My next question: why is herd immunity a taboo topic in the 21st century? Perhaps this is a case of Rothbardian-style lost knowledge, similar to how humanity once understood scurvy and then didn’t and then had to come to understand it again. Somehow in the 21st century, we find ourselves in the awkward position of having to relearn the basics of immunology that everyone from 1920 to 2000 or so seemed to understand before that knowledge somehow came to be marginalized and buried.

    • PieInTheSky

      Well Chinese did have that special word for western leftist crap? baizou I think

    • Rhywun

      Sounds like he immigrated when he was 6. He’s as American as you or I.

      But yeah, I hope he sues the fuck out them and takes his winnings to another school that respects free speech.

  25. Rebel Scum

    Jemma Dicks

    You can’t fool me. That’s her pr0n name.

  26. PieInTheSky

    Was this covered?

    This is a screenshot of people saying 2+2=5. You read that right…2+2=5.

    Among them are teachers, educators, and professors who plan on teaching this stuff to your children. So let’s talk about what’s going on here, why they’re doing this, and how we can stop it.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Take your white cishet mathematics tricknology elsewhere. Also, Orwell was a piker.

      • Nephilium

        Well, 2 + 2 can equal 5 for sufficiently high enough values of 2. I doubt that’s what they’re trying to say though.

      • PieInTheSky

        Well there is no imaginable need to redefine + and 2. Any humans in history that new how to count to 10. If you put 2 apples and then 2 more apples and asked how many they say 4.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        They have a need.

        The dominance of subjectivist and relativistic epistemologies in academic philosophy thus provided the academic Left with a new tactic. Confronted by harsh evidence and ruthless logic, the far Left had a reply: That is only logic and evidence; logic and evidence are subjective; you cannot really prove anything; feelings are deeper than logic; and our feelings say socialism. – Hicks

      • juris imprudent

        I have as evidence a bullet. Logic says that if I fire it from a gun aimed at your forehead, it will kill you. Do your feelings dispute that? If so, then let us do the scientific thing and test the hypothesis – after all, you believe in scientific socialism, no?

      • Don did not Escape Spring Training

        What you cis-scalar shitlords will never understand are the intangibles of love and energy in the village created by the geometric escalation of love and support, in the cross-matrix multiplication of perspective and understanding. Now pay yur ferking taxes so I can give it to . . . . .

        #ItTakesABushel

      • robc

        The need is presented in the link. You can’t break a person who can stick to objective truth.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It’s not trolling. Deconstruction started in the English departments and has worked its way thru the universities primarily via the schools of education which seek to foment their bullshit on the up and coming generations.

        The author (if you can call a multi-tweet threader that) correctly points out that their theory is more subtle than crazy. They simply take postmodernism assumptions to their absurdist conclusions. This makes it more difficult to argue with them.

        I will admit that math is simply a language by which we communicate ideas. And like the rest of language in a postmodern academic setting, the meanings that we ascribe to the symbols are under attack by those who primarily wish to create confusion in order to rewrite the system for their own goals.

      • leon

        ^^^

        And like the rest of language in a postmodern academic setting, the meanings that we ascribe to the symbols are under attack by those who primarily wish to create confusion in order to rewrite the system for their own goals.

        Pretty much this. From even the most generous take on postmodernism given by Thaddeus Russel, i do not see it being anything more than “well we can’t know the truth, because we are all stuck in our minds”. It’s entirely unprofound bulshit, being spun as incredibly insightful. It’s sole purpose is to create confusion, and then shoehorn in the desired range of “truth” into the discussion.

      • straffinrun

        Thaddeus uses it more as a thought experiment. He claims he lives his life as if objective truth is possible, so he’s navel gazing as far as I can tell.

      • leon

        That’s the feeling i get everytime i hear him talk about it. I haven’t listened to his debate with Bob Murphy yet.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        When you remove all objective truth, the only metric left is power. Agreement and compromise become impossible unless you can share a reality.

        Feelings are a shitty substitute for logic and reason.

      • PieInTheSky

        I would say maths is more universal than an average language. Yes it can be seen as a language but it is less malleable and the formalism can be understood by humans irrespective of language culture etc.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        All the more reason to destroy it.

      • Rhywun

        *ding ding ding*

        There will be no truth but what they tell you.

      • AlexinCT

        And it will change whenever THEY want it, and you better catch on quick, or else…

      • PieInTheSky

        except those people who count one two many off course.

      • Rebel Scum

        “2, factories, 2 machines each and half of parts to build another one” is not 2+2=5. It is 2+2+0.5+0.5=5.

        Miss me with that nonsense.

      • leon

        I also see “2 +2 = 10 in base 4”

        Yeah and 10 in base 4 !+ 10 in base 10. That isn’t terribly insightful. that is just saying 4 = IIII in tally marks.

    • Idle Hands

      You can’t argue with these people. You can’t they are religious. All you can do is mock and laugh at them.

      • juris imprudent

        Actually taking exactly what they say – and restating it in Judeo-Christian terms is wonderfully instructive.

  27. The Late P Brooks

    SEE? Shut it all down.

    Two teenagers in Florida have died from Covid-19 complications, according to data posted by the Florida Department of Health. The teens were between the ages of 14 and 17, the department said.
    This brings the total number of minors who have died in relation to the virus in Florida to seven. The others were a 9-year-old girl from Putnam County, an 11-year-old boy in Miami-Dade County, an 11-year-old girl in Broward County, a 16-year-old girl in Lee County, and a 17-year-old boy in Pasco County.
    In a telephone interview with CNN’s Randi Kaye on Monday, Florida Education Association President Frederick Ingram says news that two additional teenagers died due to Covid-19 complications is “tragic” and “part of what we are going to have to deal with as well when you talk about student and children’s mental health.”
    “Their classmates are getting deathly sick. Grieving for a child can be traumatizing, especially in a school setting. This is devastating for a child trying to make his or her way through grade school,” Ingram said

    ——-

    So far, more than 4.6 million Americans have been infected and nearly 155,000 have died, Johns Hopkins reports.

    Three percent of *known* infections?

    Keep ringing the alarm bells.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      So it’s still less than half the count of average flu deaths in Florida for a given year.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      I really do hope it does all sink.

    • Don did not Escape Spring Training

      the goal is simply to enjoy a game without political reminders

      it me

    • Rhywun

      “Opening day games aside, I haven’t noticed any political content in the [baseball] broadcasts I’ve watched.”

      That’s interesting.

      MLS has been a full-court press for BLM at every match for weeks now. Even the NHL is joining in the fun.

  28. leon

    I know i’ve been beating the polling info (for what little it may be worth), so i’d be remiss in not hitting it on the other side.

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/trump-vs-biden-top-battleground-states/

    It certainly seems like Trump is re-rehabilitating his standings in the battleground states, though Biden doesn’t appear to be loosing the ground he has gained. However looking at favoribiliyt polls does show a small trend of Biden faltering, where Trump has surged in just the past few weeks.

    • Don did not Escape Spring Training

      Trump’s 2020 curve seems to have found a bottom (very near the 42% someone referred to before).

      The question seems to be how well have the unfound Trumpsers been modeled. +4 or 5 wasn’t enough for HRC to cover in 2016 in MI WI

      • Tundra

        I think he wins here. Once you clear the city limits, it’s a different world.

      • Viking1865

        Yeah the supposed BIDEN SURGING trend never made any fucking sense, no matter how hard the Never Trump “right” and the media tried to push it. Jonah Goldberg and David French each have one vote, they don’t command millions. They should not be listened to, they should be mocked.

        The conventional wisdom is “bad economy costs incumbents the election.” Problem is this bad economy is caused by COVID and lockdowns, and at the end of the day nearly 80% of Americans blame China for COVID. Which obviously helps Trump because hes been a China hawk for decades, compared to Biden.

        So the senile and decrepit Joe Biden needs to make the case that the best economy in 30 years was ruined by the Chinese virus, so we should clearly toss out China hawk Trump and elect Joe “commie stooge” Biden. That’s the issue here: the economy didn’t die because of tax cuts or “under regulation” or whatever typical leftist bullshit. It died because of a new virus that came from the country that Donald Trump has loudly warned about for years.

      • Don did not Escape Spring Training

        that’s all irrelevant

        all that matters is whether suburban women in WI think Trump is an asshole after four years of watching him

        he is or he isn’t

      • Idle Hands

        It really is going to come down to the suburban white mom vote is pretty shitty given how ridiculously hysterical and irrational that cohort has appeared to be on social media.

      • Don did not Escape Spring Training

        no doubt

        the vote of any drooler in Kenosha is worth 100 of mine

      • egould310

        Social media is not real life.

      • Idle Hands

        @egould, this is true but the polling isn’t exactly good either.

      • Viking1865

        Look, I don’t believe that the American people, in general, do a detailed policy analysis on voting. I’m not claiming that. But it’s not 100% about image and optics. Policy matters, if not in a white paper way, but in a propaganda and fearmongering way.

        Are Midwestern suburban women not super happy with Mean Tweet Man. Yes, absolutely. But if you make the case that it’s Mean Tweets or 401k Confiscation coupled with Little Johnny having to pay reparations for the sin of being white, well, I think Suburban Woman will vote for Mean Tweets.

        Oh, and I know a lot of people are are sure that the American people will swallow DEBATES TOO DANGEROUS right down. I disagree. I think if Biden bitches out of the debates, he will lose in a landslide, because the basic, plain old common sense American voter will not want a President who can’t even stand on a stage with Donald Trump for 2 hours.

        Oh there’s a saying that applies to both men and women, but it applies especially to women

        “Ignore What They Say, Watch What They Do.”

        Suburban Mom absolutely hates arrogant assholes, and she’s hated them her whole life. She hated them in high school when it was the QB copping a feel in the hallway and she hated them in college when it was the douchey frat VP who wouldn’t be exclusive with her, and she hated them in her 20s when it was the hotshot sales rep at the office who cut a swathe through every single woman. She hates Mr. Darcy, and she hates Christian Grey. She just can’t stand that kind of behavior. It’s terrible, it’s awful, so rude, so uncouth, we need a Nice, Kind, Quiet President.

      • Don did not Escape Spring Training

        Suburban Mom absolutely hates arrogant assholes

        This isn’t a bad observation; it asks the same question I do: what moves the needle.

        What can change is how many folks are bowled over by bluster. Lots of folks are confused by a clinical narcissist: he exhibits some of the same characteristics that desirable leaders do. When first met, generous and optimistic folk project all manner of their own preferences onto MAGA.

        Men continue on that arc; women are constantly taking the temperature of the room. Trump has a problem: he has squandered the good will he had with women who once did not know that he was an asshole.

        Speaking of assholes, HRC was one; lots of women hated her. DJT is now running against someone that few women think of as an asshole. The springboard of the HRC gap is gone.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        the complicating factor is that the virulent left has gone too far. there are a lot of women who are not big fans of Trump and his arrogance, but they have been dealing with the bullying arrogance of the social media left in their personal life. That’s the potential equalizing factor. If they connect the dots between Karen McBLMMask and Joe Biden, it puts these suburban women in play with Trump.

      • leon

        It would be interesting to see. White women have been particularly demonized in the past few months, and i wonder how much that moves the needle.

      • WTF

        These oh so easily offended women will prefer gropey Joe Biden? Seriously, that makes no sense.

      • R C Dean

        Trump has a problem: he has squandered the good will he had with women who once did not know that he was an asshole.

        I think that group is pretty small. Its always been very clear who Trump is.

        Speaking of assholes, HRC was one; lots of women hated her.

        I wonder how many. The women who I’m pretty sure I know how they voted, I would say two voted against her (Mrs. Dean and probably Mater Dean) and at least a dozen who voter for her (First Woman President!!!).

      • Jarflax

        WI, PA, FL, , AZ, NC, NV, get to vote

        MN, MI, OH, and GA might get to vote according to some polling data

      • Viking1865

        The explicit racialization of the Democratic Party is gonna cost them, I think.

        They used to talk about the poor, and the working class. Now it’s all racial and genitalia based. It went from Marxist to Cultural Marxist. It used to be, you went to white working class people in the Midwest and talked about good union jobs, and corporate fatcats cutting shifts while they cashed bonus checks. You bashed NAFTA and China.

        Now, maybe people are that stupid, maybe people really do look at Joe Biden and think he’s a moderate blue collar Democrat. Maybe they will ignore everything hes actually promised this year. I don’t know.

        Oh, and we keep acting like the American people are fine with Joe hiding in his basement until he comes out to take the oath of office. I don’t think they are, I really don’t. At some point, he needs to debate, or at the very least campaign. These softball interviews with friendly journalists aren’t enough.

      • leon

        Now, maybe people are that stupid, maybe people really do look at Joe Biden and think he’s a moderate blue collar Democrat. Maybe they will ignore everything hes actually promised this year. I don’t know.

        What i don’t get is why he has bent more left since he has clinched the nomination by the fact that everyone ceded the field to him. Even granting that he isn’t running the campaign, the people behind the scene should know that pivoting more radical would be a bad move. The only thing i can think of is that they are trying to secure the progressive wing of the Dems in the vote, which seems like a terrible strategy, since most have already said that they will vote for whomever has a D after their name.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        They’re assuming it’s a turnout election, and that riling up the prog-socialist base will get more votes to the polls.

        I think its the right strategic move on their part, but it comes down to whether the moderate/conservative bloc can hold its nose tight enough to vote for the boor.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        The only thing i can think of is that they are trying to secure the progressive wing of the Dems in the vote, which seems like a terrible strategy

        They’re going to try to steal the election through mail in ballots. That will include encouraging progs to fill out their elderly relatives ballots as well as local Dem officials finding cases of ballots in car trunks. Biden needs to generate excitement among the hard left to pull this off on that kind of scale.

      • R C Dean

        Not nearly as many voters outside the city limits?

      • leon

        (very near the 42% someone referred to before

        Hmmm. Did Leap at the Wheel say something about that?

        The question seems to be how well have the unfound Trumpsers been modeled. +4 or 5 wasn’t enough for HRC to cover in 2016 in MI WI

        Yeah, there does seem to be some evidence for an inability to track trump/gop votes, but how much is the question. The pollsters claim that they have fixed the system, but i haven’t really seen anything to show that that is the case, other than their word.

  29. Rebel Scum

    Teachers brought along visual aids, including handmade coffins and a guillotine, while protesting Mayor Bill de Blasio’s schools reopening plan in Lower Manhattan on Monday afternoon.

    I don’t get the guillotine but whatever. It’s wonderful that they can protest with all these other people but they can’t do their jobs while still being paid, ain’t it?

    • leon

      They are proto communists. That’s the link to the guillotine.

      Who is more high on their own belief in their goodness? Cops or Teachers?

    • AlexinCT

      I don’t get the guillotine but whatever.

      French revolution. They want blood and to see heads roll, because marxism is always violent and vindictive in nature. I mean, it is literally an ideology born out of taking advantage of the fact that the mediocre and slothish people far outnumber those that accomplish things, honing in on the envy and jealousy of others and what they have, felt by those they call “disenfranchised” as a means to garner power.

    • Tundra

      Wow. Lots of chafed vaginas in that thread.

    • leon

      When i first read this, i thought it was a parody of gun control or something like that.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Parody is dead.

      • Count Potato

        LOL

    • Certified Public Asshat

      Brodozers are stupid, and most modern trucks are hideous with their giant grills.

      But Jesus, easy on the takes little guy.

      • R C Dean

        What’s funny is, the regulators required large flat grills on cars for pedestrian safety.

        And now large flat grills are designed to kill pedestrians.

      • Don did not Escape Spring Training

        let’s try small, sharp grills

        the French firm I worked for spelled it grille, which, internally, is fine, but: get that shit out of the cut sheets I’m distributing

  30. Rebel Scum

    Teachers, activists rally to keep CPS schools closed during COVID-19 pandemic

    Which will be forever because coronaviruses do not go away.

    • AlexinCT

      That’s a winner.

  31. Rebel Scum

    “I was in shock because since I’ve been here since 1993,” she told KRON4. “I’ve never dealt with racism within my neighborhood.”

    And you still aren’t.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    Knuckleheads’ revolt

    Alarm bells went off in New Jersey on Monday as a state that appeared to have successfully flattened the coronavirus curve saw the number of new cases spike by 175 percent in the last two weeks, an NBC News analysis of the latest figures showed.

    As of Monday morning, New Jersey had reported 185,537 confirmed cases and 15,836 deaths, according to the latest numbers. The state’s rate of transmission had climbed back up to 1.48, equal to the levels in April when the pandemic was at its worst in the state.

    From July 20 through Aug. 2, New Jersey logged 5,070 new cases and 134 deaths, the NBC News figures showed.

    Gov. Phil Murphy responded Monday by tightening restrictions on the number of people who can gather at indoor venues or parties from 100 to 25.

    “Limiting indoor gatherings to 25 people is a pretty meaningful step,” Murphy, a Democrat, said. “We knew as we reopened we’d take on more risk.”

    The governor on Friday conceded that the state was “standing in a very dangerous place” and he placed the blame squarely on the “knuckleheads” who fail to follow the rules.

    “Everyone who walks around refusing to wear a mask or who hosts a house party is directly contributing to these increases,” Murphy said. “This has to stop, and it has to stop now.”

    We’ll keep you alive if we have to kill you to do it.

    • leon

      If you’re plan is requires the participation of knuckleheads, but also is susceptible to them being knuckleheads, maybe your plan was a bad one to start out with.

    • Idle Hands

      My biggest fear is them figuring out they can track the flu this was and this hysterically for the same result.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      Let’s keep playing whack-a-mole.

      smh.

      No more words.

  33. Pope Jimbo

    Great White Doctor has spoken! Minnesoda needs to dial up more lockdown because our daily infection rate is almost up to 5%!!!!

    Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also said a pause on reopening is worth considering. Minnesota’s seven-day rolling positive case average is 5.1 percent, up from 5.0 percent this weekend and 4.9 percent on Wednesday. The rate has generally increased slowly since June.

    Said Fauci: “It’s become clear now as you look back at the states in the southern region that have surged up … that prior to the surge you could detect an early increase in the percent positive for any given state. Even if it goes up by 1 to 1.5 percentage points, and it continues to go up. It generally does not spontaneously come down.”

    State officials, he said, “may need to pause” reopening or “drop back a little bit.”

    “I don’t think you necessarily have to revert to going all the way back to closing but you’ve gotta intensify what I consider five or six fundamental things that we know from experience help to blunt resurgences and can prevent resurgences from occurring,” Fauci said.

    Fauci is asshole! Various charts showing our progress in Minnesoda The last time we had over 10 deaths was July 2. Then it was Jun 20.

    • Idle Hands

      How is there noone who follows up and asks this leprecaun what percentage of that equates to hospitalization numbers and what % of ICU beds need to be open to facilitate this and how are to what end are we supposed to be hiding from something that’s going to get herd immunity one way or another. New Jersey has an IFR of .026% for the past month that’s a flu strain this guy needs to get fucked.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Our hospitals beds are about half of what they were during the peak and we were not overwhelmed then.

        So yeah, why we need to dial back is insane.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        The damage Fauci is doing is incalculable.

    • Pope Jimbo

      And don’t sell our local health commissioner short. She is spouting just as crazy shit as any fancy pants from DC

      Malcolm added that case investigations have found a lack of compliance with existing guidelines and don’t suggest that Minnesota’s current restrictions are insufficient. One source of noncompliance appears to be bars and restaurants. Not only is indoor dining and drinking a common point of COVID-19 transmission, Malcolm said MDH has received 370 complaints between July 10 and the end of the month about potential bar and restaurant COVID-19 health violations, including 24 on Friday alone.

      And she said health officials remained concerned about large gatherings like the rodeo in Effie and the planned Sturgis motorcycle rally in Sioux Falls. (While a person who was infectious with COVID-19 attended the North Star Stampede in Effie, health officials said they have found no other cases tied to the event, though it’s possible they have not been detected yet.)

      It makes me sad that there are 370 tattle tales in Minnesoda that need a beating. And those poor Karens really need more of those rodeo deplorables to catch the Vid or their whole story is gonna sound lame. Especially since our AG is gearing up to sue the organizer for $25K per instance of not following guidelines.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      I can’t bring myself to watch, but it looks like both sides are claiming victory.

  34. Rebel Scum

    Didn’t end up getting the wind we were supposed to (not surprising), but got a lot of rain. Two of the three paths I have to the highway were flooded. One was marked with cones a ways from the actual low point and I came across the other one while cruising down the road. 2-3 feet of water pouring over the road from a flooded stream. Fun commute.

  35. The Late P Brooks

    Said Fauci: “It’s become clear now as you look back at the states in the southern region that have surged up … that prior to the surge you could detect an early increase in the percent positive for any given state. Even if it goes up by 1 to 1.5 percentage points, and it continues to go up. It generally does not spontaneously come down.”

    What if we stop testing?

    • R C Dean

      It does not spontaneously come down? This guy is supposed to be an expert and he doesn’t know that every pandemic ever follows a bell corvette no matter what we do?

      • Count Potato

        GM made your spell checker?

    • Idle Hands

      This making a difference in the long term depends on how much they can sell this for. If it has generics I don’t see this being anything but controversial.

  36. The Late P Brooks

    But it isn’t hard to find evidence that people in New Jersey aren’t being as safe as they could be.

    At popular outdoor venues like The Waterfront, in West Orange at the South Mountain Recreation Complex, dozens of strollers walking around the reservoir could be seen on Saturday afternoon ignoring signs to wear masks and follow trail directions, and there were no police officers or park workers in sight to set them straight. Nor did there appear to be anybody policing the packed playgrounds where mostly mask-less parents mingled with mostly mask-less children.

    And while beaches up and down the Jersey Shore were requiring sunbathers to don masks to enter, once they hit the sand there did not appear to be much effort to make sure that the masks stayed on, or that visitors were social-distancing on the sand and in the surf.

    OH

    MY

    GOD!

    • leon

      But it isn’t hard to find evidence that people in New Jersey aren’t being as safe as they could be.

      CITIZEN! You were not maximally safe this past week. Prepare to be terminated.

  37. Pope Jimbo

    Yaaaaay, the crazies are hassling my state senator at his home (which is about a mile from me)

    Warren has been better than I could hope on civil liberties and guns, but he is still pretty much a squish. Nice guy (I have met him several times), but maybe this will wake him up to the fact that you can’t compromise with these fools.

    • PieInTheSky

      he probably has it coming. they all do

    • Tundra

      I would like to know where the everloving fuck he has been during this Walz-fest. I got a text from his campaign saying I need to help so that we can “prevent Ilhan Omar and the Minneapolis Dems from defunding the police”.

      I wrote back that I don’t give a damn about Omar, I want to know where the goddamn opposition to the lockdown has been.

      Oddly, I received no follow up.

      • mrfamous

        “Cultural Republicans” are the worst. They have no governing principles, no interest in reducing the scope of government. Their only concern is virtue signaling of the red state variety: “We support the police and the troops and God, etc.” Big Government Republicanism

      • Pope Jimbo

        Yeah for a guy who fought as long and hard against Real ID here in Minnesoda, he has been an absolute failure on taking Herr Walz on.

        Also, Warren is a nice guy but his wife has always annoyed me every time I’ve run into her.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Lots of stupid replies there. It’s actually good to see the Aussies have their Twidiots too.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      Smashing car windows to remove people from their cars? for not wearing a mask, in a FUCKING CAR!

  38. Pope Jimbo

    Best troll ever?

    How many urban hipsters will be mauled trying to remove that sticker?

    • Hyperion

      “How many urban hipsters will be mauled trying to remove that sticker?”

      Not enough.

      • AlexinCT

        ^^^THIS^^^

    • leon

      Animal Cruelty. Why doesn’t Trump condemn this?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Ashville hippies will never be able to sneak up on it. Bears can smell their patchouli from miles away.

    • Tundra

      I’m curious how it was placed in the first place.

      • UnCivilServant

        Well, the bear was tranqed to be collared. So I’d imagine whoever was tagging the bears put it there.

      • Tundra

        For a writer, that really isn’t a fun explanation…

      • AlexinCT

        HOLD MUH BEER AND WATCH THIS!

        Is that a better explenation?

      • Pope Jimbo

        I’m sure that there are two interns from the F&G Dept who are laughing hysterically about what they did and simultaneously scared shitless they are going to get caught.

        Definitely sounds like something a 20 year-old me would have done.

    • straffinrun

      Fitting he didn’t put it on a bull.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      What do you want to bet one of the HAB people is responsible (for the outrage clicks and coverage of course)? Short of tranquilizing the bear with some rather specific equipment and drugs that just isn’t going to happen.

    • Rhywun

      “We have so many places in this world to put stickers and express our political views,” Chapman says. “Using a wild animal for that is cruel and inhuman. It’s not OK.”

      Now do toddlers at “protests”.

      • AlexinCT

        Remind me to not mess with you Rhywun…

      • Agent Cooper

        “is cruel and inhuman”

        No, it’s not. The bear has no fucking clue there’s a sticker on there, or what it says, and doesn’t care.

        The level of hyperbole in modern commentary is unsustainable.

    • Mostly Peaceful JaimeRoberto

      Mine like to do the breast stroke.

  39. Hyperion

    The hurricane is sitting right on top of us, with there ferocious 10mph winds. It’s a monster!

  40. The Late P Brooks

    Preposterous slander!

    An intelligence report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) states that anti-fascist activists (Antifa) are being investigated as possible terrorists with affiliations to Syria, even though no self-identified members of the loosely-affiliated Antifa protest movement have either been proven to commit any murders or carry out any terrorist attacks.

    The July 14 report, entitled “The Syrian Conflict and its Nexus to the U.S.-based Antifascist Movement,” states “ANTIFA is being analyzed under the 2019 DHS Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence,” according to a copy of the document obtained by the progressive political magazine The Nation. It received a copy from someone who previously worked on DHS intelligence.

    The report details more than half a dozen people identified with various far-left causes who have personally visited Syria to fight alongside Kurdish factions. The factions include the YPG, the People’s Defense Unit; the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party; and the Peshmerga, military forces that provide security for Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region. None of these organizations are currently listed by the U.S. as terrorist groups.

    “There appears to be a clear connection … between ANTIFA ideology and Kurdish democratic federalism teachings and ideology,” the report stated. “(U.S. Customs and Border Protection) concern about and interest in these individuals stems from the types of skills and motivations that may have developed during their time overseas engaged in foreign conflicts.”

    ——-

    A terrorist attack, according to the Patriot Act, must be “dangerous to human life” and “a violation of the criminal laws of the U.S.” in seeking to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population,” “influence the policy of a government” or “affect the conduct of a government.”

    The autonomous groups that make up the Antifa movement generally oppose neo-Nazis, fascism, white supremacists, racism and other types of extreme right-wing ideology.

    While some Antifa members have engaged in vandalism and physical violence, they have not yet been linked to any killings in the U.S., according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Other known hate groups that have committed murders in the 21st century haven’t been designated as terrorist organizations by the United States either.

    They are opposed to Bad Things! They are American patriots! Why would you be investigating them?

    • leon

      An intelligence report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) states that anti-fascist activists (Antifa) are being investigated as possible terrorists with affiliations to Syria, even though no self-identified members of the loosely-affiliated Antifa protest movement have either been proven to commit any murders or carry out any terrorist attacks.

      Damned by your qualifications.

    • Rebel Scum

      Antifa movement generally oppose neo-Nazis, fascism

      No, they aren’t. They are the fascists they claim to hate.

      racism and other types of extreme right-wing ideology.

      Racism is only “right-wing”? Seems to me to be a type of collectivism.

      • AlexinCT

        These are also the fucking idiots that will tell you the Nazis, whom got their name as a contraction of their political party’s name (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), and clearly are socialists, are right wing… Cause anyone right of Mao/Stalin, and with a lower body count per capita, is a right wing asshat…

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I figured they would have closer connections to their German counterparts.

    • leon

      While some Antifa members have engaged in vandalism and physical violence, they have not yet been linked to any killings in the U.S., according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

      Sure they are violent, and burn shit and destroy property. But they haven’t killed anyone yet.

    • Drake

      It has always been a communist / bolshevik front group. They ran around in the streets wearing black shirts in the early 30’s – and got the shit kicked out of them by the fascist Brown Shirts. Same idiot ideology, same worthless assholes out there under the same flag today.

      • creech

        At least one wasn’t worthless, the commie who shot Horst Wessel in 1930.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        ohhh, that really calmed things down, didn’t it?

    • Not Adahn

      no self-identified members of the loosely-affiliated Antifa protest movement have either been proven to commit any murders or carry out any terrorist attacks.

      Other than the Dayton mass shooting, you mean.

    • kinnath

      Just another day in Iowa.

      • Not Adahn

        Well bless your heart.

        /Oklahoman

  41. Not Adahn

    Harry Shearer, the voice of Dr Hibbert, Mr Burns and Ned Flanders on The Simpsons, has spoken out about the show’s decision to stop white actors playing characters of color.

    CANCEL LeSHOW!!!

    (Seriously though, cancel it. That POS is terrible. )

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      I concur: It used to be brilliant and I still love watching the old ones but it’s terrible now.

      • Not Adahn

        “I’m going to read newspaper headlines about subjects I don’t understand in a snarky voice. I’m a genius!”

      • Gustave Lytton

        *hits NA with rolled up LA Dog Trainer*

    • Rhywun

      Enh, as long as Family Guy still exists they won’t feel too bad about the quality of their show.

      • UnCivilServant

        I thought that got cancelled.

      • Rhywun

        It has been renewed for season 19.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Le Show is Harry Shearer’s personal radio show. Originates from KCRW in Santa Monica, the home of the homeless.

      • Count Potato

        Is the dog voiced by a dog?

      • Rhywun

        No, a tedious prog.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Oh great…

    • leon

      But it also contains radical changes to America’s employment laws that have little to do with race. Under his plan, even the tiniest employers with only one or two employees will face unlimited liability in lawsuits, for things like discrimination, or harassment committed by an employee.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      That’s a tough one

    • leon

      “Am I dying? I think I am dying,” Christina recalls Peyton saying.

      It’s not clear if he said this before, or after she took off her top.

    • PieInTheSky

      Meh plenty moms topless on Romanian beaches with kids around even without death in the cards

    • Pope Jimbo

      Iowa Mom?

      Worst pr0n category EVAH!

    • juris imprudent

      You used to love seeing mom topless, you just don’t remember.

      • Rhywun

        I think I got the bottle. That might explain a few things.

      • R C Dean

        I still get the bottle. Every night.

        What kind of bottle you got as an infant, I couldn’t say.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        lol, that would be an interesting study to conduct. not because I expect that or even care whether there’s a correlation between breastfeeding and sexual orientation, but because it would probably be a fast path to wealth as panicked mommies try to make heads or tails of it.

      • leon

        Oh geeze. You would rapidly see breast feeding in public fall out of favor, as it is a sign of homophobia.

    • Agent Cooper

      “Is this heaven?”

      “No, it’s Iowa.”

    • CPRM

      The kid has a pretty nice smirk on his face. I thinking we can guess his pornhub viewing habits.

  42. The Late P Brooks

    Lawyers, not workers, would be the winners.

    Stop it.

    You’re killing me.

  43. kinnath

    Thanks for the ELO. That is one of my favorite tunes.

    • leon

      I thought Reddit had banned all the murderous ideology subreddits

    • PieInTheSky

      All the free market capitalism in Africa and Asia I assume

    • CPRM

      PLEASE REMEMBER THAT LSC IS A SAFE SPACE FOR SOCIALIST DISCUSSION.
      LSC is run by communists. We welcome socialist/anti-capitalist news, memes, links, and discussion. This subreddit is not the place to debate socialism. We allow good-faith questions and education but are not a 101 sub; please take 101-style questions elsewhere.

      This subreddit is a safe space; we have a zero-tolerance policy for bigotry. We also automatically filter out posts containing certain words and phrases that some users may find offensive. Please respect the safe space, and don’t try to slip banned words or phrases past the filter.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      GAH!

    • Drake

      I vaguely remember that show – hot chicks. I was still watching this stuff.

  44. The Late P Brooks

    No justice, no sportzballz

    The players associations of the major US professional sports leagues are opposed to what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says is a must-have component of any new stimulus legislation.
    The executive directors of the NFL, NBA, NHL Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer players associations all signed onto a letter raising concerns about the liability protections included in the Senate Republican proposal introduced last week.
    The Republican proposal, put together by McConnell and GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, is designed to provide a temporary legal safe harbor for businesses, schools, health care providers and nonprofits that make reasonable efforts to comply with public health guidelines and don’t demonstrate gross negligence. Defendants would have the right to move suits to a federal court, which would cover the period from December 2019 until 2024.
    “We question whether any such type of special immunity is warranted at all, as there has been no showing that state laws are inadequate,” the players associations state, according to the letter obtained by CNN, which is addressed to the top four leaders of Congress — including McConnell. “There is still much that is unknown about this disease, how it spreads, and the long-term consequences of exposure. It makes little sense during these uncertain times to both ask employees to return to work and, at the same time, accept all the risk for doing so.”

    The letter comes as negotiations between Democrats and Republicans on the next coronavirus relief legislation remain at a standstill — and as the sports leagues grapple with the difficulties and realities of attempting to return to the field and court in the middle of a pandemic.
    The players associations took issue with the structure of the proposal.
    “The introduced language by Senate Republicans, as we understand it, would federalize all COVID-19 work claims and provide employers with an immunity that is so broad that not even egregious behavior would be actionable,” the letter states.

    Go work at Burger King, you fucking worthless prima donnas.

    • Rhywun

      Glorified HR departments espouse entirely predictable politics. I am shocked.

    • leon

      :stares into the abbyss:

  45. The Late P Brooks

    “We understand there are no perfect solutions, at least not yet,” the players associations wrote. “At the same time, we also recognize the importance for the country for many of us to return to work, and to find ways to return to the office, the factory, and arenas and stadiums. We do not believe, however, that the risk of doing so should be borne exclusively by employees.”

    How will the world survive without you?

  46. The Late P Brooks

    Fuck you, lady

    The obituary of a Texas man who died of the coronavirus includes an ominous warning: “May Karma find you all.”

    David W. Nagy’s obit has been shared widely on social media since it was published in the Jefferson Jimplecute newspaper on July 30 — in part for its fiery tone.

    “Dave did everything he was supposed to do, but you did not,” the obit reads. “Shame on you and may Karma find you all!”

    The obit also lays the blame for 79-year-old Nagy’s death at the feet of politicians, including President Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

    “Family members believe David’s death was needless,” it reads. “They blame his death and the deaths of all other innocent people, on Trump, Abbott and all of the other politicians who did not take this pandemic seriously and were more concerned with their popularity and votes than lives.”

    Also to blame, the obit adds, are “the many ignorant, self-centered and selfish people who refused to follow the advice of the medical professionals, believing their ‘right’ not to wear a mask was more important than killing innocent people.”

    The impassioned remembrance was penned by Nagy’s wife, Stacey, who said she wrote it because “I don’t want his death just to disappear.”

    Maybe karma found your husband. Or maybe shit just happens for no reason at all.

    • PieInTheSky

      I never got the politicians have all the blame things for not enough lockdown. Surely people can isolate without there being a law forcing them

    • Tundra

      Or maybe death was preferable to being around that fucking harpy.

    • leon

      if only he had lived in New York.

    • Negroni Please

      He was only 79. He clearly had decades of life left at least….

      Maybe the thought of spending more years with his bitch wife is what finally made him succumb to the vid

    • juris imprudent

      Get it right bitch – your anger is with God, not government.

    • mrfamous

      In the original Twitter thread someone asked Mrs. Nagy if her husband was wearing a mask when his mom died of influenza back in 1992.

      I’m really depressed about this. The pushback has to start some point soon or we’re gonna get buried by this line of thinking. Bad things happen. People die when they don’t deserve to. It’s rarely the fault of some amorphous collective, and often nobody’s fault at all.

      And there’s more to life than mere survival.

  47. Evan from Evansville

    From Animal’s spectacular article on Annie Oakley, I noticed this…

    ‘robc on August 3, 2020 at 1:24 pm
    South of Indianapolis is more like KY than the rest of the midwest, unless you get too far west. Evansville is Cincy Jr.

    I resemble this remark. *Squint amplifies*

    I actually agree, though it’s been quite a while since I’ve been in Cincy. I also grew up on far east side, which is middle class at ‘lowest’ and ultra upper class in many pockets. I know the poorer areas in town, but it’s a fairly bland and safe city. The parts that I might describe as (slightly) rough aren’t even that bad, though it’s also true that I never had any reason to go into the worst parts of the city.

    Safe and boring is good. Growing up in the 90s we still, as opposed to now, had all sorts of freedom. It’s arguable that it was end of the “Go out and be back by dinner” style of upbringing. That’s a shame and isn’t healthy for kids.

    • robc

      It wasn’t really an insult, it was just both are old in areas and very germanic. Louisville is a slightly less germanic version that fits in between them (geographically and population). And, of course, all are river cities.

      Memphis is similar in many ways too.

    • leon

      Where the hell are you guys getting the money to buy 1.7 million guns a month. I need to diversify my Orphan Mining operations.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        I can’t realistically buy another gun for at least 6 months. One of the unpleasant side effects of a 6 month delay to get my TX driver’s license.

      • PieInTheSky

        don’t forget to be financially responsible buying guns

    • leon

      For some reason, a throng of TV’s talking heads have boarded a bullet train in vilifying the AR-15, even though other rifles can do similar damage — and despite the fact that they’ve been absent in some of our worst shootings (Columbine, anyone? Virginia Tech? Fort Hood?). Furthermore, the vast majority of total gun deaths — and deaths by active shooters — are accomplished via handguns.

      So on the topic of guns. What do you think? It seems very clear to me that the next opprotunity Democrats have the AR-15, as a platform will be banned. Maybe they won’t succeed, but they will try. So does one buy one now, and hope they get grandfathered rather than confiscated, or just go to a similar but different platform, like the Mini-14.

      • kinnath

        I bought a mini-14

      • Drake

        I’ve always had a mixed opinion about the AR. Good accuracy for the price, but I hate the direct impingement. If I lived in a free state and could find one at a reasonable price, I might buy one. Given how the AR platform has multiplied and diversified, I don’t know how they ban it without banning all semi-autos.

        If you were going to drag a rifle through the mud and fight an insurgency, there are far better modern alternatives.

      • juris imprudent

        I have a KelTec – it was even CA legal (at least until I left) that uses AR mags, but otherwise does not offend. Just as a plinker.

      • Rebel Scum

        without banning all semi-autos.

        VA Dems want to do exactly that.

      • Sean

        Buy an AK. Steel cased 7.62×39 is still available and not at the retarded prices 5.56 is currently at.

        Alternatively, you could just buy a stripped lower now.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        I bought the AR when Gov’nuh KKKlansman started agitating for gun control. I got it on sale (sub-$400 if I remember correctly). No regrets at all. It’s fun to shoot.

      • leon

        Damn that’s a steal.

        Yeah i don’t own an AR, but they are a lot of fun to shoot, i just have that regime uncertainty around it.

      • EvilSheldon

        The next Federal-level gun control that goes down will be a blanket ban on any semi-automatic rifle that can accept a detachable magazine. You can pretty well take that to the bank.

        I don’t think there will be door-to-door confiscations. Going door to door is a high-risk, low-reward occupation.

        So my advice is to get something common, in a common cartridge, extremely reliable, and easy to repair. That pretty much means an AR.

      • R C Dean

        Yup. They’ve learned that their lists of models and cosmetic features don’t do what they want.

        With Roberts on the Court, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next run at gun control is excise taxes on guns and ammo.

      • leon

        Yeah Roberts “the court must not be political” is so stupid, because it explicitly ties his decision to the political views of what those decisions will mean.

      • Tejicano

        I’ll say it here because I don’t expect they will notice – but I expect they will add semi-auto rifles to the NFA. That would mean that “you can keep your AR-15” but you have to do the paperwork and every time it is sold that next guy has to do the same paperwork. At some point the $200 transfer tax will get bumped up to $500. Then $800.

        That wouldn’t outright ban anything – just make it very expensive and tracked in minute detail with draconian penalties worked in to the deal.

        Then do handguns.

      • R C Dean

        Interesting. Since the NFA is “Constitutional”, I don’t see why it can’t be expanded to cover more kinds of guns.

      • leon

        Yeah, just make all guns under the NFA, and now you have universal registration.

  48. The Late P Brooks

    NOOOOOOOOOOO!

    Sturgis is on. The message has been broadcast across social media as South Dakota, which has seen an uptick in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, braces to host hundreds of thousands of bikers for the 80th edition of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

    More than 250,000 people are expected to rumble through western South Dakota, seeking the freedom of cruising the boundless landscapes in a state that has skipped lockdowns. The Aug. 7 to 16 event, which could be the biggest anywhere so far during the pandemic, will offer businesses that depend on the rally a chance to make up for losses caused by the coronavirus. But for many in Sturgis, a city of about 7,000, the brimming bars and bacchanalia will not be welcome during a pandemic.

    Though only about half the usual number of people are expected at this year’s event, residents were split as the city weighed its options. Many worried that the rally would cause an unmanageable outbreak of COVID-19.

    “This is a huge, foolish mistake to make to host the rally this year,” Sturgis resident Lynelle Chapman told city counselors at a June meeting. “The government of Sturgis needs to care most for its citizens.”

    In a survey of residents conducted by the city, more than 60% said the rally should be postponed. But businesses pressured the City Council to proceed.

    Profitz over peepul. The Festival of Dirtbags must go on!

    • Pope Jimbo

      How much you want to bet that Lynelle is employed by someone not in the tourism industry? Double payout if you want to bet that she is employed by the state or fed govt.

  49. The Late P Brooks

    He was only 79. He clearly had decades of life left at least….

    Yeah, the first thing I did was to check to see how old he was. A life cut tragically short.

    • juris imprudent

      He must’ve been the rare man worth more alive than dead.

      • R C Dean

        I think you’ve put your finger on it. She’s pissed she only gets his SocSec survivor bennies, and not the whole thing any more.

  50. The Late P Brooks

    More Sturgis:

    Rod Woodruff, who operates the Buffalo Chip, said he felt he had little choice but to proceed with the rally. He employs hundreds of people in August and a smaller full-time staff.

    “We spend money for 355 days of the year without any return on it, hoping people show up for nine days,” he said. “We’re a nine-day business.”

    “That job business model sucks. I’d rather see you starve.”

    • JD is in the United Karendom

      Actually, Simba. Little baby Trumpba.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Who the fuck voted for Mufasa? And even if he did garner the consent of the other animals to lead, why would any of that authority be transferred to Simba? Just because he popped out the right lioness twat he gets to rule?

    • juris imprudent

      The myth of the rightful ruler never had a better treatment. What is fucking scary is how many people really believe in it (mostly without even realizing so).

      • leon

        I’ll push back on this slightly. I think there is certainly a sense of legitimate leaders. As long as humans exist, there are a large group that do not wish to lead, but to follow. The key is that legitimacy comes from the constant consent of those in choosing their leader.

  51. Idle Hands

    Just a horrifying reminder about how stupid all this is but the current global lockdown policy is the brainchild of a 14 year old’s science fair project from 2005. I found this out this last night and it’s the most horrifying retarded detail of this entire thing.

    https://www.aier.org/article/the-2006-origins-of-the-lockdown-idea/

    https://www.abqjournal.com/1450579/social-distancing-born-in-abq-teens-science-project.html

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distancing-coronavirus.html

    How that idea — born out of a request by President George W. Bush to ensure the nation was better prepared for the next contagious disease outbreak — became the heart of the national playbook for responding to a pandemic is one of the untold stories of the coronavirus crisis.

    It required the key proponents — Dr. Mecher, a Department of Veterans Affairs physician, and Dr. Hatchett, an oncologist turned White House adviser — to overcome intense initial opposition.

    It brought their work together with that of a Defense Department team assigned to a similar task.

    And it had some unexpected detours, including a deep dive into the history of the 1918 Spanish flu and an important discovery kicked off by a high school research project pursued by the daughter of a scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories.

    The concept of social distancing is now intimately familiar to almost everyone. But as it first made its way through the federal bureaucracy in 2006 and 2007, it was viewed as impractical, unnecessary and politically infeasible.

  52. UnCivilServant

    Does anyone know a good source for finding out which areas of countries are their prime agricultural districts?

    • PieInTheSky

      google? or duck duck go…

    • leon

      Are you looking for “Where is agriculture most done” or “Where is the best land for agriculture?”

      • UnCivilServant

        Yes.

        Either will do, as I’m trying to model how much of the occupied territory of a fictional country is good for food production to feed the refugees.

      • PieInTheSky

        well that depends on country geography. Find one similar and Wikipedia it.

        Also you are not getting your hands on my countries best agricultural land.

      • UnCivilServant

        Wikipedia, shocklingly, does not seem to tell me where in any given country they farm.

      • PieInTheSky

        Well where is less important I would say than how much…

        What % is mountain/swamp/desert?

        People usually farm in plain with water available. Or in valleys usually along rivers. So that is where.,..

        First you need to know what % of your country can be farmed. This depends on climate, geography etc

        Romania has about 65% agricultural land, and it usually is in all the places which are not mountain or delta.

      • UnCivilServant

        Well where is less important I would say than how much…

        Romania has about 65% agricultural land, and it usually is in all the places which are not mountain or delta.

        I’d say that means if you’ve only got a third of the land, knowing where you’ve got matters for how much farmland you’ve got.

      • PieInTheSky

        No it means 2 thirds. And you can look at a map and you see in the center a bunch on mountains. Everywhere not that.

        I am not sure what your research is trying to achieve. In most countries where is simply plains or mountain valleys with sufficient water, either rain or rivers. Research won’t find much different.

        There are a few with suitable mountain plateaus or terraced areas, but those are exceptions, usually in the Andes or southeast Asia.

      • Rhywun

        I have a number of old atlases that provide this information.

      • UnCivilServant

        Middle ages? I’m asking about today.

      • leon

        Well i assumed the time period.

        In modernity then use the climate models, and pretty much anywhere that you can get fertilizers into should be ok to grow crops.

      • Mojeaux

        Middle Ages?

        *raises hand*

        That’s me.

      • R C Dean

        Does it matter today? Trains and trucks can haul food anywhere.

      • UnCivilServant

        In the story, there’s a war on. Trains and trucks get blown up. I’m trying to figure out how much of a famine there is.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        Think Germany invading the USSR to get the Ukraine wheat fields, check out that map, 1941-44, Barbarossa

      • CPRM

        Flood plains, both ancient and current will yield the best crops without modern fertilizer. This can go so far as areas that were flood planes before human existence. Silt and loam buildup can last a long time.

  53. JD is in the United Karendom

    Please define “prime agricultural districts”. Do you mean most productive in terms of volume, or most profitable, or prime as in “primary” i.e. one area in which agricultural activity is most densely concentrated, and therefore, is it purely a measure of land usage within a (loosely?) defined area, regardless of productivity? Ya gotta be more specific, dude.

    • JD is in the United Karendom

      Fuck. Squirrels.

    • UnCivilServant

      The more data of any kind I can get my gubby mitts on will work. In the research phase, I err on the side of more information and cull the most useful from it.

  54. The Late P Brooks

    It’s narcissistic sociopaths, all the way down

    Former President Barack Obama on Monday issued his first wave of 2020 down-ballot endorsements and backed more than 100 Democratic candidates with the goal of helping Democrats keep control of the House of Representatives, win a majority of the Senate and win at the state level ahead of redistricting.
    Obama endorsed 118 Democratic candidates from 17 states running for federal, statewide and state legislative offices. He endorsed 51 US House candidates, five US Senate candidates and more than 50 candidates for state legislative office.
    “Our country’s future hangs on this election, and it won’t be easy. But pandemics have a way of cutting through a lot of noise and spin to remind us of what is real, and what is important,” Obama said in a statement. “Elections matter. And we need Americans of all political stripes to get involved in our politics and our public life like never before.”

    Messiah craves validation. Don’t let him down.

    • leon

      Oh man… I thought for sure he would back some republicans.

    • PieInTheSky

      Poor AOC was snubbed

      • leon

        Why doesn’t Barack care about POC?

      • PieInTheSky

        Billy Clinton would have endorsed her for a small favor

    • Rhywun

      Obama endorsed 118 Democratic candidates

      GTFO

    • Rebel Scum

      Elections matter.

      Because they have consequences, or so I am told.

  55. kinnath

    oh no

    Bad Orange Man might cheat this fall!

    It is the late evening of Nov. 3, 2020—Election Day. The race is tight. It’s come down to the three states that President Donald Trump barely won in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Most in-person votes have been counted, and Trump holds a small lead in each state. But there are millions of mail-in ballots that election officials have not yet processed. Hundreds of thousands of voters dropped their ballots in the mail days ago, but they haven’t been received. Meanwhile, thousands of ballots that were mailed in time have been rejected due to alleged technical defects. The outcome of the election turns on all these outstanding votes. But Trump, on the basis of the results so far, declares victory and dismisses the remaining mail-in ballots as fraudulent and illegitimate. The Republican-controlled legislatures of all three states agree, assigning their electoral votes to the president. Trump has secured a second term in the White House.

    These people are delirious.

    • leon

      Cheating by Mailing in is unpossible, but cheating by not belieiving the mailing in ballots is totaly legitimate. Also Russian changed vote tallies in 2016.

    • Rhywun

      I have doubts that the election will be called before Inauguration Day. Welcome to the world of vote by mail.

      • leon

        If you are voting in such a vast place that people need to mail in ballots, i think maybe you ought to rethink the size of your country.

      • Sean

        I have doubts that the election will be called before Inauguration Day.

        Dude. Not cool.

    • Viking1865

      Trump won PA by 44,000 votes, MI by 11,000, and WI by 23,000 votes.

      If he posts similar numbers on election night, and then this deluge of mail-in ballots that break ~65%+ to the Democrats comes in, why should he accept those results?

      • leon

        Has anyone done an analysis on the breakout of mail-in ballots vs in-person ballots?

      • Viking1865

        I know in every close election I’ve ever paid attention to, the Democrat always seems to make up ground on the mail-ins and “found ballots”

        Like, if Trump on E-Day is +20,000 in MI and then 50,000 mail-in ballots come in, with 27,000 of them being Democrat, OK, fine swing the state. Either its legit, or they did the hardwork of faking a ton of ballots, so give it to them.

        But in any kind of battleground state, you statistically should see a 55/45 split on the mail in ballots, and probably tighter than that.

        Trump won FL by 113,000 votes in 2016. Let’s say Biden really is SURGING JOE VERY POPULAR, and Trump on E-Day is +30,000 in FL. Well,if Broward County drops 45,000 mailin ballots on us, and 40,000 of them are Democrat, that’s fraud.

      • Pope Jimbo

        only 65% for the Dems? I think it is cute that you think they will even try to pretend

        Every single “adjustment” in the Franken race went in favor of Franken. Every single one.

      • Viking1865

        That was the one where they had actual 100% proven fraudulent ballots in the amount greater than the margin of victory, and everyone just shrugged and said “Oh well, Franken is the Senator.”

        Voter Fraud is not some rightwing conspiracy, and it’s not a BOTH SIDES DO IT thing because the GOP doesn’t control any large urban machines where you can manufacture the large numbers needed.

        I have been receiving leftist literature and GOTV texts ever since 2018, I am 100% convinced it’s because my identity was used to cast a vote for the Democrats.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        If he posts similar numbers on election night, and then this deluge of mail-in ballots that break ~65%+ to the Democrats comes in, why should he accept those results?

        I don’t see that ending well. Who else besides Dems would accept a Dem president in such a scenario? The Dems would never accept a Repub president either if that happened.

      • Viking1865

        Yeah and that’s when you get into the media insanity. I saw my proggie mom for the first time in a month, and we ended up talking politics and such. She knows, for a fact, that FL is doing worse than NY with COVID. Now, never mind that that is objectively false, all of her TV and news feeds say its true. She believes it.

    • Idle Hands

      The mail in ballots are interesting because either way it works for the Dems. On one hand no matter the result they will claim fraud because Trump. It’s such and obvious trap. If he wins they are going to conduct impeachment hearings on whether he cheated by directing the Post office to conduct endless investigations and stretch out the delivery of the election results as long as possible because of the incompetence of the USPS.

      • Rhywun

        Yup. It will be a shitshow for the ages.

    • R C Dean

      Even aside from the obvious security issues, the simple failure rate of mail delivery (both ways) assures a high percentage of disenfranchised voters.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      There is no claim for blocking the upper frequencies – particularly 60 gHz which is deadly, and while I’ve seen a graph showing a rolloff with higher frequencies, I don’t see any technical reason that would make the clothing less than valuable.

      NOT 60GHz!!!!! OH JESUS WE’RE FUCKED NOW MAN GAME OVER MAN GAME OVER!!!!

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsx2vdn7gpY

    • cyto

      There was actually a preprint paper that was accepted and then withdrawn purporting to prove that 5g caused covid. It reads like one of the social science hoax papers that got published. A bunch of technical sounding nonsense mashed in a word salad.

      Nobody has come forward and admitted a hoax though. Current theory is it was a scam to sell protection from 5g waves.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The “science” surrounding 5G conspiracy theories is so far out in crazyville it’s amazing.

      • Jarflax

        You probably believe in the spinning ball in space lie as well don’t you?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        There are spinning balls in space?

        OH FUCK NOW WE’RE SCREWED

      • Idle Hands

        Well the brainchild behind the lockdown strategy was from a 14 year old science project.

      • cyto

        I thought that was the plastic straw ban. Lockouts too?

      • Idle Hands

        yes. Type it into your search bar it’s horrifying, New York Times articles and everything.

      • Rhywun

        No, that was like an eight-year-old.

    • leon

      Here’s the thing that gets me about conspiracy theories.

      Its the speed with which people are willing to accept them once it is realized that they are true, and think that anyone who rejected it was a moron. For example, in 50 years if some file was unclassified that showed 5G caused the coronavirus, everyone then would immediately accept it as true, and think anyone living now was a moron for not realizing that these guys were telling the truth. All the while mocking their future time conspiracy theorists.

  56. The Late P Brooks

    Middle ages? I’m asking about today.

    CIA Factbook?

  57. The Late P Brooks

    You shot your own balls off, and now you’re bleeding to death? Who could have seen that coming?

    The lapse of enhanced jobless benefits amid a record-breaking crush of applications is exposing the flaws and shortcomings of how the U.S. provides unemployment insurance.

    The economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic has torn holes in a federal safety net woven by individual systems for every state plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. More than 30.2 million Americans were on some form of unemployment insurance as of mid-July, with the Labor Department reporting a growing number of new applications in subsequent weeks.

    Friday’s expiration of a $600 weekly add-on to state benefits plunged those vulnerable Americans into financial peril.

    Congressional Democrats and Trump administration officials are now deadlocked over negotiations for a broader coronavirus-relief package that’s expected to include some form of federal unemployment benefits.

    But short-staffed unemployment offices across the U.S. grappling with outdated technology and unprecedented demand would face challenges from implementing a scaled-down or more complicated approach to the weekly payments.

    ——-

    The unprecedented size and speed of the pandemic-driven economic collapse has posed a brutal challenge for state unemployment agencies. After 10 years of steady economic expansion, the labor market quickly went from the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years to the highest level of joblessness since the Great Depression.

    Why didn’t you make your unemployment systems sufficiently robust to survive a sweeping government-created depression?

    • leon

      The lapse of enhanced jobless benefits amid a record-breaking crush of applications is exposing the flaws and shortcomings of how the U.S. provides unemployment insurance.

      See i thought paying people more than what they made working would be considered a flaw of unemployment insurance. But I just hate poor people.

      • R C Dean

        But totally not exposing the flaws of an unsustainable economic lockdown. Nope, not that at all.

    • LCDR_Fish

      Yeah, I was thinking about this last night listening to a few other podcasts. The US is far and away the most populous country to be dealing with this that even has any kind of social safety net (no dice China and India). All the other countries are vastly smaller and less populated but for some reason it’s always and apples to apples comparison across the board.

    • Jarflax

      Economy collapsing due to shortsighted government policies Trump’s Plague? Unemployment money running out, and you really want to order Lockdown II Suicide Boogaloo? Have no fear MMT is here! Back in the colonialist racist white ruled past we accepted the vicious lie that printing more dollars didn’t produce more wealth. Obviously that is stupid and evil fearmongering by (((Whites))) who want to enslave the noble BIPOC. Fortunately a wise honorary Latinx named Krugalez showed us the truth. If you want people to be wealthier you just give them more money! Duh! A mere 350 quintillion dollars printed can allow every man woman and child in the US to experience the billionaire life!

  58. Idle Hands

    Just a horrifying reminder about how stupid all this is but the current global lockdown policy is the brainchild of a 14 year old’s science fair project from 2005. I found this out this last night and it’s the most horrifying retarded detail of this entire thing.

    https://www.aier.org/article/the-2006-origins-of-the-lockdown-idea/

    How that idea — born out of a request by President George W. Bush to ensure the nation was better prepared for the next contagious disease outbreak — became the heart of the national playbook for responding to a pandemic is one of the untold stories of the coronavirus crisis.

    It required the key proponents — Dr. Mecher, a Department of Veterans Affairs physician, and Dr. Hatchett, an oncologist turned White House adviser — to overcome intense initial opposition.

    It brought their work together with that of a Defense Department team assigned to a similar task.

    And it had some unexpected detours, including a deep dive into the history of the 1918 Spanish flu and an important discovery kicked off by a high school research project pursued by the daughter of a scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories.

    The concept of social distancing is now intimately familiar to almost everyone. But as it first made its way through the federal bureaucracy in 2006 and 2007, it was viewed as impractical, unnecessary and politically infeasible.

  59. Idle Hands

    Just a horrifying reminder about how stupid all this is but the current global lockdown policy is the brainchild of a 14 year old’s science fair project from 2005. I found this out this last night and it’s the most horrifying retarded detail of this entire thing.

    https://www.aier.org/article/the-2006-origins-of-the-lockdown-idea/

    How that idea — born out of a request by President George W. Bush to ensure the nation was better prepared for the next contagious disease outbreak — became the heart of the national playbook for responding to a pandemic is one of the untold stories of the coronavirus crisis.

    It required the key proponents — Dr. Mecher, a Department of Veterans Affairs physician, and Dr. Hatchett, an oncologist turned White House adviser — to overcome intense initial opposition.

    It brought their work together with that of a Defense Department team assigned to a similar task.

    And it had some unexpected detours, including a deep dive into the history of the 1918 Spanish flu and an important discovery kicked off by a high school research project pursued by the daughter of a scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories.

    The concept of social distancing is now intimately familiar to almost everyone. But as it first made its way through the federal bureaucracy in 2006 and 2007, it was viewed as impractical, unnecessary and politically infeasible.

  60. leon

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-evidence-that-voting-by-mail-gives-one-party-an-advantage/

    That final point is a crucial one, too, in trying to anticipate what the effects may be on the general. Voters rely on parties for cues on how and when to vote. So if mail ballots are going to be a part of 2020 (and beyond), campaigns will adopt strategies to educate and encourage voters to request and fill out ballots — even if they don’t like the rules. And in a fluid voting environment like the one we expect for 2020, whether Democrats or Republicans benefit more will almost certainly have less to do with the actual rules, and more to do with which campaigns most effectively organize their voters to take advantage of their ability to vote from the comfort of their homes.

    Interesting article from 538 about voting by mail (trying to answer my question from up thread about the break out of ballots by mail vs in-person). But i find this concluding article interesting. I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out. In particular, i think the practice of Ballot harvesting is absolutely antithetical to free/fair elections. But if that is the rule, then, as we may have seen in california, both parties can play at that game.

    I’m not a fan of in-mail voting because i do think it makes it a bit easier to “find” ballots, but as we have seen, the practice of “finding” cartons of ballots is not uncommon, and they would do it anyway.

    • Urthona

      There was an article in conservative slanted American Spectator yesterday arguing that voting by mail may actually give an advantage to Republicans. He argued the people more likely to want to avoid going to the polls in person are Democrats and ballots are frequently getting lost.

    • Rhywun

      Regardless of any of that, vote-by-mail should be rejected for the common-sense fact that nobody ever intended elections to go on for weeks and months.

      • IntraveneousWoodChipper

        “Nobody ever intended elections to go on for weeks and months.”

        No, see, we don’t care what the greatest collection of political minds in the history of human civilization wanted when they wrote the Constitution. They’re just a bunch of racist property-owners!

        No, we must trust the modern prog-educated Youth that can’t tie their own shoes! They know best.

      • leon

        Yeah, that is my big problem with it. Having an election, and then not knowing the results for days or weeks is bad. It offers a lot more time for extra electoral politiking.

    • R C Dean

      I think vote by mail and vote harvesting creates incremental opportunities for fraud, including losing ballots likely to be for the wrong candidate, and highjacking ballots to be used for the right candidate.

      Look at what happened in CA in 2018. It wasn’t just vote harvesting, but there was a shitload of that, and waddayaknow, historic Repub losses.

      • Urthona

        My mother received someone else’s ballot in the mail last election. Could have easily cast that in addition to her own vote.

    • R C Dean

      The spinelessness of the Repubs in not blocking vote by mail and insisting on electoral security is appalling. I think they really are so stupid they don’t realize it will result in a one-party state, and they won’t be that party. Simple self-interest should make this a non-starter in any state that isn’t controlled by Dems.

      But here we are. In AZ, a Repub-controlled state, ballot harvesting swung a statewide election last time around. It could easily do so again.

      • Nikkodemus

        I no longer think the Republicans are stupid. I think they are complicit.

  61. Sean

    Power is out at work. Today blows.

    • PieInTheSky

      got yourself a hooker while you wait?

      • Sean

        Nope ?

    • leon

      Cuomo definitely played it well to end up the lefty “Hero” of the year. I mean freaking Newsome did better, and he didn’t get the praise Cuomo did.

      • Urthona

        I swear it’s those daily little press conferences he gave where he came off as a charming dude while every New Yorker was locked in their homes and eagerly awaiting news and instructions. Like a war time leader.

      • CPRM

        It’s the pierced nipples. Chicks (and non-binaries and genderqueers and…)love em.

      • Rhywun

        he came off as a charming dude

        Or the media pretended he did. I sure as hell didn’t see it.

    • Idle Hands

      This is the bet all the blue state’s are making and why they are fine with the riot damage and the municipal fallout. If Joe Biden win’s we’ll see another Obama style bailout funneled directly into the blue uni’s while the redstates are told to fuckoff.

      • leon

        This is the bet all the blue state’s are making and why they are fine with the riot damage and the municipal fallout. If Joe Biden win’s we’ll see another Obama style bailout funneled directly into the blue uni’s while the redstates are told to fuckoff.

        Yup. Blue state politicians need Biden to win. Otherwise they will have to continue the charade for 4 more years.

    • Rhywun

      New York faces a budget deficit of $30 billion over the next two years thanks to the COVID-19 crisis, and @NYGovCuomo said it’s up to the federal government, and federal taxpayers, to fill it.

      I really, really hope Trump stands firm against this.

      • leon

        But why won’t you pay your part so that New Yorker’s can have tax funded abortions?

      • R C Dean

        @NYGovCuomo said it’s up to the federal government, and federal taxpayers, to fill it

        *clears throat*

        Fuck off, you fucking fuck.

        This money printing is going to end in a pile of smoking rubble. Plan. Accordingly.

    • leon

      Worst take:

      https://twitter.com/ElyteFaeva/status/1290280105353207810

      And guess what’s happening now….people from these new hotzones are visiting NY again which will cause NY to spike again. Until we get a strong national response and strategy, it’ll continue to be like water in a bathtub.

      This is all caused by an incompetent President.

      • R C Dean

        *checks DIVOC*

        Nope. No spike. NY state, at least, is declining or flat as a pancake for new cases for months.

    • Agent Cooper

      I think they should raffle off the giant Q-tip.