Saturday Morning Links of Great Irony

by | Sep 12, 2020 | Daily Links | 304 comments

Well, this was one of my odder weeks. And it ended with the (((guy))) who brought me out to Arizona, then fired me, making a pitch for me to come back. My answer: “It’s all about the money. See how much you can come up with.” That ended the conversation, but I did enjoy it a bit.

And I enjoy birthdays, too. And today’s include a guy who was always repeating; my personal hero and the godfather of us all; the first in a long line of dishonest shitheads; the guy who showed Hitler who was the Faster Race; a guy who, despite what one might think, was not a bot; the most punchable face in DC for many years; a pretty decent drummer; and of course, Prime Cancel.

And isn’t ironic that we’re doing the news?

 

It’s a Good Thing.

 

“You ain’t really black.”

 

Trump shows his antisemitism. And of course, after him accomplishing a two-fer, the Left immediately reacts in the stupidest, most transparently mendacious manner possible.

 

Not to be out-done, Team Red shows how unbelievably stupid and contemptuous of the constitution they can be.

 

This just shows dedication.

 

“That 0.2 degree rise makes all the difference.”

 

Old Guy Music is an impromptu show featuring arguably the best living guitarist wailing on a classic John McLaughlin song.

About The Author

Old Man With Candy

Old Man With Candy

Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me. Wait, wrong book, I'll find something else.

304 Comments

  1. Count Potato

    “Martha Stewart has launched a line of hemp-derived, cannabidiol-rich gummies, soft gels and oil drops in partnership with Canadian cannabis company Canopy Growth. She joins a crowded market of around 3,000 brands — which Canopy CEO David Klein predicts will see $10 billion in annual sales by 2023 — at a time when consumers are experiencing higher levels of stress due to the pandemic. While the number of new CBD buyers has slumped in the past year, experts say Stewart’s household name could help attract female consumers in the 46-55 age range.”

    She was such a nice lady until she got mixed up with Snoop Dogg.

    • Nephilium

      She’s never been the same since the South Park episode Red Hot Catholic Love.

      • Fourscore

        She was a beautiful co-ed at UTexas, too.

      • Rhywun

        Zowie!

      • Mojeaux

        She was a model before she was a stockbroker.

      • Mojeaux

        Note to self: RTFA

      • C. Anacreon

        Not surprised to see how she looked at that age. She was still very attractive until about the time she went to prison.

      • Don escaped Duopoly

        I think I’m missing another joke?

  2. Count Potato

    “He’s called Black Lives Matter a “Marxist organization,””

    That’s just crazy talk.

    • Suthenboy

      So did BLM. They can call themselves a Marxist organization but if you do….

      • hayeksplosives

        All you Marxists look alike to me.

  3. Count Potato

    “the Left immediately reacts in the stupidest, most transparently mendacious manner possible”

    Don’t kid yourself.

    • Sensei

      Yes, there is always tomorrow. Or even this afternoon.

    • Cancelled

      Yeah, the party that works to keep black people poor and uneducated in order to fight racism, and works to drive the Jews into the sea in order to fight antisemitism can always find a new height of transparent mendacity

  4. ruodberht

    CBD is a fancy placebo.

    So every time I see record lows, that’s climate change also, right? Because we’ve definitely had record lows here the last few winters.

    • Count Potato

      “CBD is a fancy placebo.”

      Really? I’ve been thinking of trying it for sleep.

      • Mojeaux

        Gave it to XX for her migraines, no change after 2 months.

      • Tundra

        Dose and quality appear to matter a lot. My buddy broke his back in a mountain bike crash and had great success with high-dose CBD for pain/sleep.

        I think there are some sleep studies out there that show potential.

      • Count Potato

        “My buddy broke his back in a mountain bike crash”

        Yikes! Hope he’s better.

      • Tundra

        Oh, yeah. He was back racing in no time.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        I tried it for the same reason and it actually made me jumpy after about a week of taking it, kind of like too much coffee but not quite the same. YMMV though.

      • Fifth Knight of the Derp Table

        You know, guys, one could take all the guess work and debate about the effectiveness of CBD out of the equation by just smoking a damn bowl.

      • Mojeaux

        That is one smell I just can’t abide.

      • Gender Traitor

        Haven’t smelled it in ages, but it would probably take me back to going through a certain back door of my high school.

      • Mojeaux

        It’s just … ugh. No.

      • Fifth Knight of the Derp Table

        *note to self: make sure to hit the vape pin instead of bowl before meeting Mo for our future dinner*

      • Mojeaux

        Also no patchouli.

      • Fifth Knight of the Derp Table

        “Trigger Hippie” is largely a bullshit handle. My one firearm is at my mother’s, haven’t shot a gun in a few years, my hair isn’t long(shaved), I hate folk music, and I usually smell like Lava bar soap and Right Guard…and weed when at home.

      • Tundra

        Very true, but at least for sleep there appears to be some evidence that THC fucks with REM sleep.

      • Fifth Knight of the Derp Table

        After years of smoking, I have a difficult time sleeping at all without it. When I do finally get to sleep sober, I tend to have extremely vivid, lucid dreams. Often they’re nightmares. In rare instances, maybe once every couple of years, I have legitimate night terrors when I wake up screaming, crying, and trashing around. I never forget those dreams. Can’t remember any of my dreams when I go to sleep stoned…think I’ll keep my habit for now. 😉

      • hayeksplosives

        My husband takes CBD oil for arthritis in knees, back etc. He gets the Tommy Chong brand:(tommychong.com).

        CBD has been proven by numerous independent medical studies to be effective in preventing seizures for children with intractable epilepsy. In fact, for some kids who were having multiple seizures a day, CBD was the only treatment that worked. It’s even better if the kid does a keto diet.

        Brains (and the rest of the nervous system) are odd.

      • Viking1865

        One of our dogs is quite old, and has some brain disease that is not called doggie Alzheimer’s, but is basically doggie Alzheimer’s. The CBD oil seems to help a lot with it.

    • Suthenboy

      You fail to appreciate the beauty of unfalsifiable claims. It’s sciency and everything ,dood.

    • Brightfame Overlight

      bullshit!

    • Riven

      CBD is a fancy placebo.

      Lol, OK.

      • slumbrew

        That link is without sweetener.

      • UnCivilServant

        You shouldn’t link while high.

      • TARDis

        Shhh, it’s a placebo too.

      • Pi Guy

        This is a solid reference.

  5. Count Potato

    “Not to be out-done, Team Red shows how unbelievably stupid and contemptuous of the constitution they can be.”

    So legalize child porn? I don’t think it’s protected under the First if you use real children to make it.

    • Nephilium

      For child porn, you don’t even need to user real children. Cartoons and animation can get you busted (or at least got some people busted, for obvious reasons, I’m not doing too deep a search on this for links).

      • Count Potato

        In Australia, I think people can be charged with child porn if an actress of legal age looks underage.

    • Old Man With Candy

      “Shall make no law.” That sounds pretty unambiguous to me.

      • Count Potato

        It’s followed by a list:

        “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

        It doesn’t mean Congress shall make no law against anything.

      • Don escaped Duopoly

        No doubt. That’s the thing about several clauses: depending on what one argues is captured and what is not, the USG should have almost no power or paramount powers.

        Every government and most folk are like that: they argue they are well within the law no matter what they do; every act is constitutional to its author (h/t RMN37).

        For me, therefore, ever wary, I prefer the Constitution be read with the widest liberty for citizens and the briefest powers for government. Otherwise we might as well have stayed in Lincolnshire.

        This is also why I don’t especially defend conservatives: they are no slower to grab a power, to assert a clause in the interest of furthering their private beliefs and thrusting them upon others. There is no defense against usurpers left and right but to consistently read narrowly and reject every inch of growth in government.

    • Drake

      Seconded. Making movies of topless underage girls wasn’t ever recognized as a Constitutional right.

      • Old Man With Candy

        What part of “shall make no law” is unclear?

      • juris imprudent

        If you want to be that literal, then you open 50 doors to how it gets handled.

      • Don escaped Duopoly

        I prefer open doors, of course.

        As for daughters, a girl is defended by her father, not a piece of paper in some other time zone.

      • hayeksplosives

        This. This right here.

        I find child beauty pageants to be distasteful, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some pervs get off seeing a 5yo wearing high heels.

        But if the perv doesn’t mess with the child, he’s done nothing wrong, no matter how icky he seems to us. It’s up to the parents to be smart enough not to enter their kids in competitions that sex them up.

        The Ramseys might not have murdered JonBenet, but they didn’t do her any favors by parading her around in makeup and satin.

      • Mojeaux

        Ha! I saw a cross stitch pattern of her yesterday. Very well done but übercreepy.

      • juris imprudent

        I fully agree with that – the state is never a substitute for parenting (even bad parenting), not even for minors (save the orphans perhaps that escape our mines and workhouses). I have most marveled at the whole Epstein debacle at “where were the fathers of these girls”. Epstein couldn’t have hired enough armed goons to prevent me from getting to him.

        As to the states having the police power to “deal” with this – our police power should not be near as broad as it is currently assumed – particularly when it comes to enforcing moral matters. I too would vastly prefer 50 slightly different approaches to one size fits all.

      • Viking1865

        The spread of loose sexual mores through the media, Hollywood, and the education systems washes anyway the authority of the parents, particularly fathers, when it comes to their underage children, particularly daughters.

        The last decade has really made me reevaluate my take on social conservatism and social liberalism. I fell hook line and sinker for the 2010 era party line of “We just want consenting adults to be able to do as they pleae.” Well, that mark was achieved, and now we’ve got literal children at drag shows, undergoing transgender surgery, and now this Cuties movie.

        Basically, all those paranoid rantings of the Bible Thumpers circa 2010 are the reality of the world in 2020.

      • Mojeaux

        circa 2010 1983

      • Drake

        Naked 11-year-old girls are now “speech”?

      • Homple

        “Shall make no law” is unambiguous. The part where sexually suggestive images of pre-pubescent children is speech, exercise of religion, peaceable assembly, petitioning the government for redress of grievances or the press is a bit less clear.

      • Grosspatzer

        What is a “Constitutional right”? I’m getting a bit long in the tooth, but I have this vague memory of a Constitution which specified the rights of government, not the people.

      • Grosspatzer

        For example, I do not have a right to bear arms because it is granted by the second amendment. That right is inherent in my humanity; the second amendment is an emphatic restriction on the power of government to usurp that right.

      • juris imprudent

        Just to be pedantic – the government is granted powers by the sovereign (the people). The natural law argument is that rights exist only with people, as they precede govt (both the people and their rights, as well as the power they cede), and that a legitimate govt does not transgress against those rights. No part of any level of government has rights.

      • Don escaped Duopoly

        Of course, rights are not granted by the Constitution; some of them happen to be enumerated while most are not.

        How can we get people to read and understand the simple fullness of 9A and 10A? I wish we could sell the country on libertarianism and federalism: it’s right there in black and white.

      • hayeksplosives

        Politics is weird right now.

        Democrats showing fracture lines between their blue collar union ‘Murica! voters and their pro-BLM, anti-west politics.

        Meanwhile Republicans are dividing between social conservatives who persist in thinking that government power must be wielded to compel proper moral (in their eyes) behavior, and those who want a free market and less government intrusion and don’t give two shits about who you sleep with.

        Time really would be ripe for a libertarian party, but few voters know what it is about.

      • Tundra

        The LP has so thoroughly shit the bed, i’m not sure if the term ‘libertarian’ resonates with anyone anymore. Even libertarians.

      • Fifth Knight of the Derp Table

        A conservative Trump supporting friend of mine recently stumbled upon the LP platform and immediately started asking me to defend that shit since he knew I claimed to be libertarian. Explaining the disconnect between the party and (l)’s was irritating. No, it was infuriating.

      • Animal

        Resurrect the Whig party for 2024?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I find it offensive, but I also recognize this is just an election year cultural sop by the GOP.

      Get off your asses and cut spending.

      • Old Man With Candy

        People have difficulty grasping the difference between a crime and pictures or other depictions of a crime.

      • Count Potato

        It’s not legal to commit a crime just because you take pictures of it.

      • Old Man With Candy

        Who argued that? Showing pics of a bank robbery is not criminal; robbing the bank is.

      • Count Potato

        So what is your point?

      • Old Man With Candy

        That child molestation may be criminal, but there is a constitutional prohibition against making depictions of it illegal. I absolutely don’t follow the logic that, if it’s not a crime to show a picture of X, that this makes the act of X legal.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I would just take every opportunity to point out that this is Obama’s network.

    • Fourscore

      Now do two dogs. Animal porn.

      • Suthenboy

        I am tempted to go with OMWC here. Shall make no law means….no law. Ignoring that got us the lockdowns and allowed evil leftist fuck stains to crush our economy.

        A) Fine, the photos arent a crime. Throw the fucker who set it up in jail, not the guy who showed the photos
        B) I dont get why the dog thingy is a crime. I have heard it called abuse of animals…then I remember the old saw about dogs: If they cant eat it or fuck it they will piss on it. If fido feels abused let’s see if he files a complaint.

      • Grosspatzer

        Agree,WRT shall make no law, but that is not what got us the lockdowns and such. That shit does not even have (bad) law behind it, no laws are enacted to impose it. It was done purely by executive orders, in the spirit of President pen and phone.

      • Fatty Bolger

        Good point. Bad laws are bad, but rule of man is far worse.

      • Viking1865

        Dogs are in the basket of “things where my libertarianism gets mushy”. Kind of like national parks. Sure yeah, animals aren’t people, animals can’t have rights, etc etc. I eat meat. What’s the difference between slaughtering cattle and fighting dogs, it’s not morally coherent, etc etc.

        But in the time before time, a man clothed in skins, barefoot, with a fire pointed spear stood his ground in front of a fire, with his woman and children behind him, and a hungry smilodon in front of him, and a dog was by his side teeth bared, snarling defiance. The dog could have run. The man could have run. But neither of them would run.

        So yeah, I’m not entirely rational about dogs. If I ever come across Mike Vick broken down on an empty road, I’ll put two in the back of his head and drive away whistling.

  6. Tejicano

    “My answer: “It’s all about the money”

    One of the things I enjoy about my current job predicament.is that for the first time in my life (OK, maybe not exactly the first time but pretty much close to it) I’m getting paid for my time – and getting paid quite well when I am working. For the first ti the people who pay me are trying to limit the amount of time I am on the clock.

    • Sensei

      But Japan is a culture that is noted for how business prioritize personal and family time for employees! Just kidding….

      I’ve worked for multiple Fortune 100 companies and there is no way I could do the same for a Japanese company.

    • Fourscore

      Salary plus profit sharing plus bonuses plus responsibility to make it happen.

      • Tejicano

        That was all cool until the took the part labeled “Salary”, knocked it down by about 30%, and brought the total back up to what “Salary” had been by tacking on “profit sharing” and “bonus” – both of which were determined by a factor which was primarily how well they were managing against the competition. In effect they cut my salary by about 25% because they weren’t managing it so well against the competition. I was doing my job – even reading articles in biz magazines about how well “we” were doing my part of the business – but getting paid less and less.

      • Gender Traitor

        Reminded me of this fave from back when I worked at a multinational.

  7. The Late P Brooks

    “The weather is changing, and human beings can’t snap their fingers and tell the weather: ‘Don’t change,’” said Brown, who left office last year and now serves as chairman of the California-China Climate Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.. “The weather is changing because of the chemicals that human beings are putting into the air all over the world.”

    If we can’t fix it by snapping our fingers, what if we clap our hands really hard?

    Fly, Tinkerbell.

    • Rhywun

      “But don’t worry, we’re going to have this over and over, with hurricanes, with flooding of subways in places in Florida and New Orleans and Texas,” he said.

      Never mind that there are no subways in Florida or New Orleans or Texas – this guy knows what’s going on.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Not that’s funny

      • Fatty Bolger

        lmao

    • Suthenboy

      When someone uses the word ‘chemicals’ I instantly stop listening to them and my mind wanders to more important topics like….rearranging my sock drawer.

    • invisible finger

      Climate change is real. Been real for billions of years. Try to STOP climate change is batshit insane.

  8. Count Potato

    “The data is self-evident, the experience that we have in the state of California just underscoring the reality of the ravages of climate change,” he said. “Mother Nature is physics, biology and chemistry. She bats last and she bats one thousand. That’s the reality we’re facing, the smash mouth reality — this perfect storm. The debate is over around climate change.”

    Totally calm, level-headed rhetoric.

    • Count Potato

      ““The weather is changing, and human beings can’t snap their fingers and tell the weather: ‘Don’t change,’” said Brown, who left office last year and now serves as chairman of the California-China Climate Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.. “The weather is changing because of the chemicals that human beings are putting into the air all over the world.”

      I mean if you can’t trust the California-China Climate Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        *place that has bad fire seasons every few years has a particularly bad fire season*

        “It’s the end of the world!!!”

        /party of science

      • juris imprudent

        Worse than that. This isn’t even a NORMAL fire season based on the actual eco-system of California. Fire suppression has only a tiny fraction of the state burning compared to what the natural cycle would do. If controlled burns were on the order of 100-200k acres a year, you might be managing the wild-land/developed-land buffer; a decade ago it was 30k acres and more recently down to 13k acres a year. All because the govt can’t actually follow the science of managing the land.

    • Fourscore

      …and he looks so cool in that outdoorsy style jacket. What’s not to like?…

    • Rhywun

      She bats last and she bats one thousand.

      But let’s sink trillions of dollars into schemes fighting that bitch and impoverish the little people along the way anyway.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Just let landowners and the various powers that be clean out the damn undergrowth and the damn brush. There…fixed…that was easy. Oh, and fuck that used car salesman looking fuck.

    • Suthenboy

      The data is self evident. The debate is over.

      Science, ladies and gentlemen.

  9. The Late P Brooks

    Apocalypse porn

    Oregon was preparing for a “mass fatality event” Friday as dozens of wildfires continued to burn across the state.

    “We know we’re dealing with fire-related deaths and we’re preparing for a mass fatality event based on what we know and the number of structures lost,” Andrew Phelps, the state’s emergency management director, told reporters during a wildfire news briefing with Gov. Kate Brown, according to KION-TV of Portland.

    At least eight deaths had been reported in the state and Brown said dozens more people remained missing, including in Jackson County and Marion County east of Salem, the state capital. Oregon hasn’t released an official count of the deaths.

    Maybe they can bring in some of those pop-up morgues and hospitals we needed so desperately to deal with all the plague victims.

    • LCDR_Fish

      *excellent article* (not sure if it was posted back in May)

      Jonah Goldberg just linked it in his weekly update last night. Highly recommended.

      https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/james-meigs/elite-panic-vs-the-resilient-populace/

      Chance didn’t relay everything she’d seen or knew. Her listeners had all gone through traumatic experiences, she later wrote: “To add to it with a description of blood and gore could cause panic. We could not have panic.” In this view, she was at least partly in sync with the officials in the Public Safety Building. For the police, fear of public chaos outweighed, at least temporarily, concern for possible victims. Before dispatching those casually deputized citizens to keep order in the streets, the Anchorage police chief suspended the search for survivors in damaged buildings. “Arguably, the city was protecting its ruins from looters more conscientiously than it was looking for people trapped in them,” Mooallem writes.

      Disaster researchers call this phenomenon “elite panic.” When authorities believe their own citizens will become dangerous, they begin to focus on controlling the public, rather than on addressing the disaster itself. They clamp down on information, restrict freedom of movement, and devote unnecessary energy to enforcing laws they assume are about to be broken. These strategies don’t just waste resources, one study notes; they also “undermine the public’s capacity for resilient behaviors.” In other words, nervous officials can actively impede the ordinary people trying to help themselves and their neighbors.

      Too often, the need to “avoid panic” serves as a retroactive justification for all manner of official missteps. In late March, as the coronavirus pandemic was climbing toward its crest in New York City, Mayor Bill De Blasio appeared on CNN’s State of the Union to defend his record. Host Jake Tapper pressed the mayor on his many statements—as recently as two weeks earlier—urging New Yorkers to “go about their lives.” Tapper asked whether those statements were “at least in part to blame for how the virus has spread across the city.” De Blasio didn’t give an inch. “Everybody was working with the information we had,” he explained, “and trying, of course, to avoid panic.” How advising people to avoid bars and Broadway shows would have been tantamount to panic was left unexplained.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        “trying, of course, to avoid panic.”

        But I bet he jumped on Trump for saying that in the Woodward interview.

        And what the heck is Trump thinking giving a long interview on tape with that vulture-weasel?

        Imagine that. Calling for calm is even bad now. Go straight to Panic. Monopoly should replace ‘Go’ with ‘Panic’.

    • Rhywun

      dozens of wildfires continued to burn across the state

      I wonder how many are arson.

      • Suthenboy

        Barring lightning strikes likely all of them.

  10. Rhywun

    Adlesic’s partner searched for information on the internet about how artificial hands work

    lolderp

    • Fourscore

      “I’d give my left arm to be ambidextrous”

    • Grosspatzer

      Robot HJs FTW!

  11. Tundra

    Good morning, Old Man!

    And good morning to all of You People. You know who you are.

    Martha is looking pretty good. I hope she sells a ton of CBD.

    Mendacious is all the left really knows. Besides, peace in the ME interests them not at all, not when the world is gonna end because OMB/COVID/CLIMATECHANGE, oh my!

    Idiots.

    Just like Tom Cotton.

    And shithead Newsome.

    He said the state must push to more quickly adopt electric vehicles and other non-polluting transportation, and ordered the heads of his environmental protection and natural resources agencies to explore more changes to the state’s industrial and agricultural policies.

    Yes, do that. I’m interested to see what it looks like when you chase the remainder of those businesses to other states.

    Nice Old Guy Music this morning. Although the peeling paint was very distracting.

    I hope all of you have a wonderful day! It’s raining here but hey, no snow yet!

    • Mad Scientist

      He said the state must push to more quickly adopt electric vehicles and other non-polluting transportation, and ordered the heads of his environmental protection and natural resources agencies to explore more changes to the state’s industrial and agricultural policies.

      Surely that will stop these pesky forest fires.

      • Rhywun

        How anyone does not recognize at this point that the whole thing is just a scheme to enrich himself and his cronies is a freaking mystery to me.

    • Brightfame Overlight

      heey Tundra, it’s raining here as well, but 70 by Monday, got my boots ordered and my duster dry,
      going to get cold soon

      • Tundra

        You mean “cold” 😉

        Good to see you, Yusef! I trust you are well?

    • Suthenboy

      “….electric vehicles and other non-polluting transportation…”

      I see.

      • Fourscore

        Just plug them in. Does your coffee pot pollute? See?

  12. Fifth Knight of the Derp Table

    Quin “The sweaty cokehead” Snyder is still around, huh? I thought maybe after he destroyed Mizzou’s basketball program after taking over for Norm Stewart he might have slinked off never to be seen again. Shows how little attention to bball I’ve paid over the last two decades.

  13. Rhywun

    Old Guy Music is an impromptu show featuring arguably the best living guitarist wailing on a classic John McLaughlin song.

    You’re wrong!

    • Old Man With Candy

      And you’re bald!

      • slumbrew
    • Gender Traitor

      About which part? “Impromptu,” “best living guitarist,” or “classic John McLaughlin song”?

      • Rhywun

        See slum’s assist above.

      • Gender Traitor

        Gettin’ a 404, so SOMETHING’s wrong.

      • slumbrew

        Wrong!

        Stupid ipad.

      • Gender Traitor

        Beautiful! Used to love watching that intellectual food fight!

      • Tundra

        “WRONG!

        You can’t leave! All the doors are locked from the outside!”

        Holy shit was that a good group.

  14. The Late P Brooks

    Leadership

    Both supporters and detractors have praised how Wheeler has handled the coronavirus pandemic. Portland was one of the first cities to issue stay-at-home orders, and Wheeler was among dozens of Oregon mayors to pressure Gov. Kate Brown to take those orders statewide.

    In late March, the Portland City Council approved $3 million in emergency funding for its COVID-19 response. The money was used for small business and housing relief. Some of the earliest funds went to Asian-owned businesses that had been discriminated against because of the coronavirus.

    “That was leadership,” Hardesty said. “That was understanding that if we don’t get a handle on COVID-19, our community was going to have severe consequences.”

    Iannarone also praised Wheeler’s pandemic response, saying he would probably be a “shoe in” for re-election if Portland’s woes had stopped with the coronavirus. But Wheeler faltered with the police department and, more significantly, with people calling for police reform, she said.

    This universe is an elaborate, cruel hoax.

    • Grosspatzer

      A shoe-in? Well, he may be getting the boot.

    • Fourscore

      More money would have shown greater leadership. It wasn’t Wheeler’s fault. He just needed more cash, which the tightwad City Council wouldn’t give him. He could have been a contender. Lack of money has caused a 100 day protest, wild fires and a lot of incrimination. Global warming, racism and pandemics cost money and “You ain’t black”

    • Rhywun

      Some of the earliest funds went to Asian-owned businesses that had been discriminated against because of the coronavirus.

      [cite needed]

    • Spartacus

      Panic first, panic hard, panic loud = Leadership.
      Got it.

    • Tundra

      Good ad. The kid is handsome and well spoken. I have friends in rural Oregon who are pretty sick of this bullshit.

      I hope he wins.

      • Gustave Lytton

        He won’t. Defazio has time tested constituent service/just enough populist/not crazy enough so will coast to reelection again.

      • Gustave Lytton

        And Skarlatos is a political newb. He couldn’t even win a county commissioner seat in the last election.

  15. The Late P Brooks

    His nomination of Trump strikes me as preposterous.

    The rest of the words are unnecessary.

  16. Don escaped Duopoly

    Sam Cooke and I were born in the same town; escape remains the principle industry there.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Definitely the best of the old timey soul singers. Marvin Gaye wished he was Sam Cooke.

      • Fourscore

        Great music, I was expecting “Chain Gang”, nice surprise.

    • Gender Traitor

      “Don the Escape Artist”

      • Don escaped Duopoly

        ever . . . by necessity

        You might go down to the Crossroads, but you don’t make camp there. And anyway, I’m Scots Irish, shameless mercenary: have slide-rule, will travel (or so he types only 80 miles from where he was born, only 160 miles from his grave).

  17. The Late P Brooks

    electric vehicles and other non-polluting transportation

    That drives me bonkers. Not even shoe leather is non-polluting.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Battery manufacturing and disposal is nonpolluting magic apparently.

      • Suthenboy

        The entire concept of ‘renewable energy’, ‘green energy’, electric cars etc is magical thinking. All of it.
        ‘Climate Change’ is founded on an absurd, unfalsifiable premise.

        Yep. Science.

      • Fourscore

        If we built more rivers, we could build more dams, more hydro, more free electricity.

      • Don escaped Duopoly

        just drag icebergs across the land to recharge the reservoirs and, voila: renewable energy

    • juris imprudent

      You can bet these are the same people that believe in the mystical clap-trap about how primitive humans are more in tune with nature – the standard Romantic stupidity.

      • Gender Traitor

        +1 Noble Savage

      • Fifth Knight of the Derp Table

        *pssst*

        Don’t tell the Mayans.

      • Fifth Knight of the Derp Table

        Okay, to be fair, the Mayans were far from primitive.

      • Suthenboy

        Nothing says ‘civilized’ like human sacrifice and cannibalism.

      • Fifth Knight of the Derp Table

        And most European nobility at that time seemed to have no qualms with sending armed men into neighboring lands to rape, pillage, and murder the Christian peasants who happened to live there if it gave those nobles more land, money, and power.

        Violence is violence. Some is just more ritualistic than others.

      • Suthenboy

        Correct, and they are still at it, both of them.
        I have been bumbling around trying to write a submission on this very subject.
        Wife on vacation soon with her girl friends….no TV, no other distractions. I will surely be able to knock it out then.

  18. The Late P Brooks

    This isn’t even a NORMAL fire season based on the actual eco-system of California. Fire suppression has only a tiny fraction of the state burning compared to what the natural cycle would do. If controlled burns were on the order of 100-200k acres a year, you might be managing the wild-land/developed-land buffer; a decade ago it was 30k acres and more recently down to 13k acres a year. All because the govt can’t actually follow the science of managing the land.

    Meanwhile, up here, the Forest Service has been trying for years to do various fire mitigation projects, and the ecowarriors (and their battalion of attorneys) have fought them to a standstill. I cannot help wondering if somebody who gets burned out can sue the people who blocked those projects.

    • juris imprudent

      In California you have an alliance of eco-weenies and NIMBYs – no one wants to tolerate the smoke from a controlled burn, or the aesthetically displeasing aftermath*.

      * California has actually institutionalized the absurdity of “view-sheds”, like watersheds.

      • Spartacus

        A watershed can be fairly precisely defined. How do you define something that is a subjective aesthetic value?

      • Fourscore

        Well, they look ugly.

    • kbolino

      For some reason, we still don’t have a lot wildfires east of the Mississippi. I guess nobody let global warming know that it should be more obvious than to keep causing wildfires where they’ve already been happening.

      • Nephilium

        Burn rivers not forests!

      • Grosspatzer

        We get wildfires pretty regularly in the NJ Meadowlands. Nothing like the ones out west, but being fires they burn pretty hot. Another perhaps significant difference is that almost no one actually lives where the fires burn.

      • l0b0t

        Yeah but look on the bright side. The unsolved murders go down as all the mob body-dumps are revealed.

  19. The Late P Brooks

    If an author depicts the brutal rape and murder of a character in a story, should he be tried and convicted of those crimes in real life?

    • Rhywun

      Sure, if he causes or commits it and films it.

      I think the question around those cuties concerns whether there’s some sort of actual abuse going on – not the depiction of it. If there was abuse and it was for the purpose of filming it, well that’s a problem. Otherwise, no problem.

      IMHO.

      • Grosspatzer

        Yup, that is the difference between and a snuff film.

      • Grosspatzer

        Yup, that is the difference between a random slasher flick and a snuff film. (Thanks, WP, that was not meant to be a tag)

      • The Hyperbole

        I think people are confusing the film and the crime, The film isn’t the crime it is evidence of the crime. Like a snuff film.

        Or maybe not, some may actually believe that even if the girls were all computer generated, the film should be illegal, but that opens the whole “I know it when I see it” can of worms.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I guess it raises the question of whether having ten year olds twerk for a filmmaker is abusive or not.

      • Fourscore

        If there is a crime, it’s child abuse by the parents. I’m guessing the parents received some sort of remuneration.

      • blackjack

        Well, it’s illegal to possess nude images of children for purient reasons. I’d guess purient is defined by whether anyone says ” Hey, Buddy, stop doing that!”

      • blackjack

        If you got pulled over and you had the clips on your phone, You’d be handcuffed in a nano-second. If the girl herself had taken the pics and sexted them to another 11 y/o, she’d be handcuffed and registering as a sex offender.

    • PieInTheSky

      only is the character is minority

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      What is it with these judges trying to keep a good black man down? Seriously, it was turned in seconds late, who gives a shit?

      • Gender Traitor

        I know Ohio does their level best to keep the non-D or R parties off the ballot. Probably a lot of that going around.

      • CPRM

        And again, by what clock? My phone and my computer are both supposed to be synced to some world clock, but currently they are almost 2 minutes apart.

      • Rhywun

        And again, by what clock?

        Good point.

        Huh, my desktop and phone are actually in perfect sync.

      • Grosspatzer

        NTP rules!

      • Nephilium

        Most current VOIP implementations wouldn’t work without it.

      • l0b0t
      • Grosspatzer

        Rooskies turned it up to 11, that explains a lot. Also, do NOT view this if you have recently consumed certain mushrooms or a small square of paper on which a very small drop of liquid might have been absorbed.

      • Rhywun

        I’m not in my forties college any more.

      • Grosspatzer

        Probably not the folks counting mail-in ballots in December.

    • Nephilium

      The Ohio Supreme Court already decided Kanye can’t be on the ballot. Surprisingly, he got kicked off the ballot by a Republican:

      LaRose, a Columbus-area Republican, rejected West’s filing last month after his staff determined the signature of West’s running mate, Michelle Tidball, and information on West’s original nominating petition and statement of candidacy did not match the paperwork actually used for petitions signed by voters.

      • kbolino

        If there’s one thing the Ohio GOP loves, it’s fucking with third parties and independents. Long history there.

      • Nephilium

        True that. Though, it’s not like the Ohio Democrats have a deep love and respect for third parties either.

      • kbolino

        I could believe that. Ohio is more politically competitive than my own state, but that doesn’t mean the two major parties want any more competition than each other. There are many ways to manipulate the political system, and many of them are bipartisan.

      • Rhywun

        Ugh the “matching signatures” bullshit again.

        The last time I voted I just barely caught myself in time to use the correct hand to sign the damn book. I haven’t used that signature in a couple decades but it still follows me around everywhere I go.

    • ruodberht

      He offered the world ORDER

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        And lots of extra voices

      • ruodberht

        He are legion.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Damn, thirty six possible criminal schizophrenics out there. How those kids turn out would make a hell of a research study.

    • Agent Cooper

      Maybe he didn’t know he was donating sperm?

  20. The Late P Brooks

    California has actually institutionalized the absurdity of “view-sheds”, like watersheds.

    I think that is one of the primary weapons against a project to the west and south of Bozeman. The opponents depict it as clear-cutting (which is, of course, bullshit) large swathes of beetle kill on a mountainside which people in subdivisions paid good money to look at.

    • juris imprudent

      They prefer to look at dead standing timber that will become a pyrotechnic spectacle, and with any luck sweep down and destroy their domiciles. You have been invaded by Californians along with the bark beetles.

    • Gender Traitor

      Well, yeah! He’s a bricklayer! Just not a very precise one.

    • Tundra

      Her parents need a beating.

    • Grosspatzer

      Coming to theaters soon: Home Alone, the Revolution.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Clara Kraebber, the 20-year-old whose parents own a $1.8 million co-op on the Upper East Side, planned to defend the the properties by tossing bricks off the roof.

      $1.8 million co-op? That doesn’t sound “wealthy” by New York standards.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Family also has a house in CT.

        Child psychiatrists’ children go barefoot, so to speak.

    • PieInTheSky

      I saw that movie

    • Nephilium

      Wow, of all the lessons to take from the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, she went with “We can throw rocks at them”.

    • juris imprudent

      Workers of the world uniteweep.

  21. Rufus the Monocled

    “..Is it given for peace, or for rumors of peace? Do you deserve a prize for maintaining despots, as long as the despots are part of a stable network?”

    I only skimmed the article because it was nauseating but….I’m sure he applied this logic to Obama.

    Douchebag.

  22. Rufus the Monocled

    To be fair, anyone connected to ‘Cuties’ deserves a rich and through beating.

    • straffinrun

      I don’t get the “if you haven’t seen the full movie, you can’t judge it” defense of this stuff. You can’t put shit like that in a movie that is being put out to millions upon millions of people. It don’t give a shit if it’s Taxi Driver or Leon, don’t put children into hypersexualized positions and then film it for mass consumption. The pedos want to have material to do whatever nasty stuff they do and there is no justification for making it.

    • PieInTheSky

      look if you see Sexualization in that it is your problem. Others just see some kids dancing.

      • straffinrun

        Just wait until they come out with the sequel: Squirties. Hopefully, they be of age by then.

  23. Count Potato

    “It seemed strange when a Conde Nast gateway to luxury consumerism became a revolutionary Communist publication.

    It seems even odder that a Murdoch-owned financial markets newsletter is calling for the end of capitalism.”

    https://twitter.com/wesyang/status/1304615503726608385

    • Rhywun

      Ask the likes of Al Sharpton and that Kendi fellow how much money there is wolf-cries of “racism!”

      IOW they’re lying

  24. The Late P Brooks

    If only we had a Democrat as President

    Trump embodied and amplified America’s intuition death spiral. Instead of rolling out a detailed, coordinated plan to control the pandemic, he ricocheted from one overhyped cure-all to another, while relying on theatrics such as travel bans. He ignored inequities and systemic failures in favor of blaming China, the WHO, governors, Anthony Fauci, and Barack Obama. He widened the false dichotomy between lockdowns and reopening by regularly tweeting in favor of the latter. He and his allies appealed to magical thinking and steered the U.S. straight into the normality trap by frequently lying that the virus would go away, that the pandemic was ending, that new waves weren’t happening, and that rising case numbers were solely due to increased testing. They have started talking about COVID-19 in the past tense as cases surge in the Midwest.

    “It’s like mass gaslighting,” says Martha Lincoln, a medical anthropologist at San Francisco State University. “We were put in a situation where better solutions were closed off but a lot of people had that fact sneak up on them. In the absence of a robust federal response, we’re all left washing our hands and hoping for the best, which makes us more susceptible to magical thinking and individual-level fixes.” And if those fixes never come, “I think people are going to harden into a fatalistic sense that we have to accept whatever the risks are to continue with our everyday lives.”

    Accepting risks, and judging how best to mitigate them? That’s crazy.

    Of course, this rambling indictment of America’s response to teh panicdemic relies heavily on interviews with academics who spend their time larping extinction-level simulations in the lab, and contemplating the effects of different responses based on their effects on purely theoretical populations. A “medical anthropologist” is the first person I’d ask for practical advice.

    • Rhywun

      Wait… I thought the current pivot was “the travel bans came too late”.

      I can’t keep up.

    • kbolino

      “It’s like mass gaslighting,”

      It absolutely is a mass gaslighting but it’s not going the way they think. This is a prime example of it, right here. Trump has been talking about this and dealing with it since late January/early February. But he didn’t do what these people wanted*, and they’ve frustrated his attempts to do what he wanted to do at every turn**, and the rest of us are being gaslit to believe that it’s all his fault.

      * = Not that they knew what they wanted until well after the fact, if they even know what they want today
      ** = Not that his ideas were categorically good, but he is the President and in tandem with Congress he should get to enact his chosen policy within the limits of the law

    • EvilSheldon

      “…accept whatever the risks are to continue with our everyday lives.”

      This is what grown-ups do when they get out of bed every morning. You’re probably not familiar with the process.

    • Count Potato

      “If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our ecosystem we take action to protect the community. We suspended the NELK channel from the Partner Program because they encouraged large numbers of people to disregard social distancing guidelines, creating a large public health risk.”

      https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1304574812833091584

    • PieInTheSky

      That seems like one o’ dem far right accounts

    • straffinrun

      Too many buzzwords in the statement.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      YouTube is a walking dead platform as far as political and social commentary go at this point. If you’re into making or consuming edgy content it’s not the place to be.

      • straffinrun

        Of course they are going full censorship eventually. It is interesting to see how those being booted will react? Some are being proactive and going to other platforms but they are being greeted with a mixture of batshit crazy racist and Fed created batshit crazy racists to discourage the migration.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Styx talked about YT pivoting to corporate content and becoming a cable competitor years ago and that buck toothed rascal was right. As for the behavior of those who go to other platforms, of course it’s going to be rough because those with undesirable opinions as far as YT go have nowhere else to go. BitChute’s a pretty good platform if you can live with the ZeroHedgelike comments.

      • PieInTheSky

        Styx talked about – another nazi

  25. The Late P Brooks

    The U.S. might stop treating the pandemic as the emergency that it is. Daily tragedy might become ambient noise. The desire for normality might render the unthinkable normal. Like poverty and racism, school shootings and police brutality, mass incarceration and sexual harassment, widespread extinctions and changing climate, COVID-19 might become yet another unacceptable thing that America comes to accept.

    As a matter of fact…

    I can accept something as “real” without necessarily abandoning the notion that it can be mitigated.

    And this- *Like poverty and racism, school shootings and police brutality, mass incarceration and sexual harassment, widespread extinctions and changing climate* just makes me think you need to take your meds, bucko.

    • hayeksplosives

      “Might, might, might…”

      Yeah, and monkeys might come flying out of my butt.

    • Drake

      Daily tragedy IS ambient noise. I’ve had family members die of disease, murder, and suicide. All tragedies. All background noise to the rest of the world.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Suicide? Murder? Yeesh, man.

      • Drake

        It has been a ride.

    • Translucent Chum

      Shoot. Skip to 9:50. That’s where the music begins.

  26. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Gotta love detailed compatibility reports.

    We detected incompatibilities with changing your PHP version to 7.4. Would you like to proceed?

    SO WHAT WERE THEY?

    • Grosspatzer

      “Our new contextual engine can now determine inappropriate use of the greater than operator, and in appropriate cases will replace it with the equality operator. This may affect the behavior of your application”

  27. Count Potato

    “Here’s how you stop the right wing propaganda machine:

    – the people creating it? Ban them. Forever.
    – the people spreading it? Ban them. Forever.
    – the people mutating it and weaponizing it? Ban them. Forever.

    Fuck your vacation photos, those are gone now. Bye.”

    https://twitter.com/EmilyGorcenski/status/1304498342387474433

    CWAA

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      There ought to be a social cost for actively eroding whatever remaining shared firmaments we have as a civil society.

      Not much for irony is she?

      • Drake

        I noticed too.

      • juris imprudent

        Wondering if she has any clue that she is proposing the CCP social scoring concept?

      • Drake

        She assumes it will always be her people silencing others, not the other way around.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      It’s just stunning how myopic some people can be.

    • Fifth Knight of the Derp Table

      Five years after her dream is fulfilled: “Hey lady, stop doing that!”

      *shocked face*

    • kbolino

      I’ve got no problem with this but people shouldn’t delude yourselves into thinking this is about anything other than enforcing their own political views on the platform. That is perfectly legal and tolerable, but they shouldn’t be surprised when people who disagree take their time and money elsewhere. Twitter is under no obligation to host anything, but if they choose to be discriminating about who can and can’t use it and what they can and can’t say then people will notice. Don’t lie about it, just say this platform is not for people with conservative or right-wing political views. Bam, life goes on, nobody is left with any doubt.

      The problem is that they want to eat their cake and have it too. “Republicans buy shoes too” is still a thing* and Twitter wants to walk a tightrope between keeping their most vocal participants happy (not than many of them ever leave) and keeping enough people on the platform that they’re maximizing their revenue for shareholders. They will marginalize anyone who they can reasonably afford to marginalize but they’re probably not going to kick half the country off just so they can make some subset of the rest temporarily happy.

      * = Apparently this potentially fake quote causes Michael Jordan a lot of distress or something, according to Slate, so I won’t attribute it to him, whiny bitch that this possible feeling may make him seem to be

      • kbolino

        delude themselves*

  28. Scruffy Nerfherder

    MIL calls my wife this morning.

    MIL: “Honey what was the name of that ballet you were in every Christmas? I’ve been up all night trying to think of it.”

    Wife: “You mean The Nutcracker?”

    MIL: “Yes, is that it? Yes, that’s it.”

    She’s gone full Biden.

    • PieInTheSky

      I think there may be a joke there about your wife being a Nutcracker

  29. Semi-Spartan Dad

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/whole-foods-ceo-john-mackey-says-many-wont-go-back-to-food-shopping-in-person-11599833168

    Interesting interview with the CEO and cofounder of Whole Foods. Would not all have guessed he has a libertarian streak based on the typical Whole Foods customer. Liberal WSJ reporter tries to set up softball questions pushing the Covid Panic but Mackey knocks em right back down.

    WSJ: If the U.S. had a national mask mandate, would this make it easier for retailers and their employees to enforce?

    Mr. Mackey: I do not favor a national mask mandate. Think about it: Some places [in the U.S.] never even locked down their economies. You’re going to force the whole country to abide by a mask mandate? That’s a bad idea. That should be done on a local basis, or not at all.

    WSJ: What’s the best approach to helping out-of-work people through the pandemic?

    Mr. Mackey: I don’t have any overall suggestions for what, politically, the U.S. should do about unemployment. If we open the economy back up again, unemployment’s going to shrink. We’ve done tremendous damage to our economy, shutting it down like we did. You have to trust people to make good decisions. They’re the best people to decide about their families, their bodies and their lives, and I have more confidence in individuals than I do in government to make decisions.

    • Grosspatzer

      That’s pretty good, did not know that. Been going to the local Whole Foods for coffee and cheeses since Fairway went under.

    • Tundra

      He was featured many times at TOS.

      • kbolino

        Yep. I’m surprised he hasn’t been ousted between then and now.

      • juris imprudent

        He’s a capo in the Bezos regime now, isn’t he?

    • Agent Cooper

      He’s brilliant because he found a prosperous niche in society to exploit. The same with Paltrow and GOOP — separating rich white women from money.

  30. The Late P Brooks

    Democracy in ruins

    The Democratic candidate who was set to face Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican House candidate with a history of incendiary and conspiracy-spreading comments, dropped out of the race on Friday.
    “I am heartbroken to announce that for family and personal reasons, I cannot continue this race for Congress,” Kevin Van Ausdal said in a statement.
    Citing how “rhetoric has turned into dangerous extremism, like the candidacy of Marjorie Greene,” he continued, “I will put every resource, every bit of knowledge into the campaign that comes behind me to defeat Marjorie and restore hope to the people of Northwest Georgia.”

    ——-

    Greene asserted in a tweet on Tuesday that “children should not wear masks,” comments in sharp contrast with the recommendation of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health professionals. Last week, she posted on her candidate Facebook page an image of herself holding a gun alongside images of Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, and encouraged going on “offense against these socialists.” Facebook removed the photo by the following day, saying it violated the social network’s policies.
    A major flashpoint in the district’s Republican primary and general election has also been Greene’s past promotion of the wild and unsubstantiated conspiracy theory known as QAnon. Although the theory is nebulous enough to invite all kinds of interpretations from its adherents, at its core QAnon claims that President Donald Trump has been secretly fighting to bring down a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles that has infiltrated all levels of the US government and other elite institutions.

    Oh, horror. Maybe the Demos can throw the Angry Black Woman at her, now that she has been passed over for VP.

  31. The Late P Brooks

    Ummmm, wow

    Has Any American Killed More Americans Than Donald Trump?

    So Donald Trump copped to it. He told Bob Woodward that he knew how deadly the virus was—and downplayed it anyway, encouraging MAGA nation to act as if COVID-19 was a cheap Chinese knockoff of the flu.

    “It’s remarkable that in these interviews, the president of the United States confessed to fucking manslaughter,” Molly Jong-Fast says on the latest episode of The New Abnormal.

    The lawyers might debate whether Trump has any criminal culpability. But to Rick Wilson, there’s no question about Trump’s moral responsibility.

    “No American has killed more of their fellow Americans in this country than Donald Trump, except for Robert E. Lee and Jefferson fucking Davis,” he says. “No one has a body count to rival Trump’s. He knew it. He knew it was there. He did it. He let it happen. It is the most unbelievable and horrifying outcome that we can imagine.”

    Seek professional help.

    • Tundra

      Has Any American Killed More Americans Than Donald Trump?

      Yes. Ancel Keys. Next question.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Cuomo has a sad…

  32. Nephilium

    That’s it. We have to shut it all down again!

    CDC study: Adults who tested positive for COVID-19 ‘twice as likely’ to have dined at a restaurant recently

    The CDC study sampled 314 patients, including 154 who tested positive for COVID-19 and 160 who tested negative. They each reported similar activities in the two weeks before to being tested for the coronavirus, such as going shopping, working out at a gym, using public transportation or attending a religious service. But those who dined at restaurants tested positive at a higher rate.

    SCIENCE!

    Of course, considering the track record of the CDC, I’m thinking restaurants are probably safer then staying home. And the editor apparently died of the COVID.

  33. PieInTheSky

    ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Sales of Idaho’s new favorite liquor are ‘off the charts.’

    https://amp.idahostatesman.com/entertainment/ent-columns-blogs/words-deeds/article245572465.html

    Idaho bought $9,234,198 worth of Tito’s Handmade Vodka in fiscal 2020. That’s a mind-blowing increase from $7,267,186 the previous year.

    “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Faraca says. “Its growth is off the charts.”

    I have seen Tito’s Handmade Vodka in Romania as well which makes me think it is produced in massive quantities which makes me doubt the hand made stuff

    • PieInTheSky

      Can be had for 18 USD here

      • slumbrew

        It’s a good, mass produced vodka. My standard go-to.

        $18 doesn’t sound bad

      • PieInTheSky

        anyways you cant get good vodka like this in the US

      • PieInTheSky

        no wait I just remembered I also have a bottle of crystal skull vodka I got as a gift

      • slumbrew

        I’m told the best thing you can do with Crystal Skull is to pour it out and put some good vodka in the bottle.

    • Nephilium

      There was already a lawsuit about the “handmade” part. It’s a decent inexpensive easily found vodka. It’s what I generally stock at home (with the exception of this.

    • Count Potato

      Tito personally dunks his balls in every vat.

  34. prolefeed

    If my wife is at all indicative of the mood of Biden supporters, the Tolerant And Totally Not Divisive Party TM is anything but.

    We were walking, having a nice time, then we ran across the lone political sign in our neighborhood. And then this ensued:

    Mrs. Prolefeed going off on how anyone who supports Trump has bad “core values”.

    Me: ” You sounded like my brother there.”

    A minute or so later:

    Me: If Trump wins, despite being himself, it will be because people saw the lockdowns and their livelihoods being destroyed and said, nope, not Biden.”

    And then it got ugly.

    • PieInTheSky

      And then it got ugly. – do you have a comfortable couch?

    • peachy rex

      My fiancee was a standard issue liberal when we met. Three years later, she’s solidly centre-right – she’s probably more conservative than I am.

      And today, I consider myself the luckiest man in the world.

      • Ownbestenemy

        My wife doesn’t engage in politics but her actions and words put her into mythical libertarian woman status. I was lucky to find her.

    • commodious spittoon

      And then it got ugly.

      Violent, trashy hate sex?

      • prolefeed

        Later. Tonight.

        I won’t TELL her its hate fucking. I’m not an idiot.

    • kbolino

      I heard that the “sorting machines” business “must be political” from someone whom I know to be otherwise intelligent. A cursory bit of research showed that the sorting machines are not used for the same type of mail as ballots, that the decommissioning of them has been going on for years, and that there’s really no reason to expect a disruption to the mail to somehow benefit one candidate or another (that one is more logical inference than researched evidence, of course). I didn’t find it worth it to argue (at the time, I didn’t know about the issue anyway). People have read way too much into politics and they lack creativity and charity where their enemies, perceived or actual, are concerned. The government is almost always more incompetent than evil, and in this case it wasn’t even either. Despite the pervasive belief that Amazon is somehow abusing the USPS, the reality is that the volume of certain types of deliveries through the USPS has declined substantially. We don’t need the sorting machines because there’s not enough mail for them to sort. Normal businesses get to make decisions like this and move on with their operations. But for the USPS every decision has to be haggled over by the legislative branch because it’s not really treated like a business.

    • Agent Cooper

      My wife thinks the lockdowns, et al, are all a bid to get Trump, and she’s usually not very political, nor a conservative.

      I think some of that is true, but are not the sole reason.

  35. The Late P Brooks

    Twitter is under no obligation to host anything, but if they choose to be discriminating about who can and can’t use it and what they can and can’t say then people will notice. Don’t lie about it, just say this platform is not for people with conservative or right-wing political views. Bam, life goes on, nobody is left with any doubt.

    Twatter is a Right, not a Privilege.

    That seems to be what some people think, anyway.

    • kbolino

      I think the fight over Twitter is dumb. Let them eat that damn cake, ban all the right-wingers, lose a fuckton of money, and get consigned to the ash heap. Or not, and maybe they’ll somehow prosper after alienating so many people, but they’ll probably still have to lay off lots of purple-haired whiners anyway. Who gives a fuck? As long as your geographical monopoly ISP, the infrastructure cartel, and the financial services cartel aren’t making it impossible to compete, a specific platform doesn’t matter that much. You can always create a new one. That was the history of the Internet for most of its existence, anyway.

      • juris imprudent

        We will be the kings of the sewer! /progressive-twitter-sphere

  36. The Late P Brooks

    Me: If Trump wins, despite being himself, it will be because people saw the lockdowns and their livelihoods being destroyed and said, nope, not Biden.”

    Steve Bullock is running what seems like hundreds of ads per hour. Some of them are about the plague and how he has stepped up and “supported” Montanans in these trying times. He shut the fucking economy down, and then magnanimously reached out to those few he felt were deserving of assistance. Similarly, he runs ads about how great he has been for rural hospitals, completely glossing over the damage done to them by the shutdown and ban on elective treatments. The nerve of that fucking guy. I can’t believe he doesn’t just burst into flames when he says stuff like that.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      If a politician tells a lie and most of the people are too damn stupid to realize it’s not the truth does it count as one?

    • juris imprudent

      Which is why I wonder – why does ANY conservative really give a shit about twitter?

      • Count Potato

        Because the answer to bad speech is good speech?

      • kbolino

        I don’t disagree but I don’t think Twitter is the place to do it. The people who run Twitter don’t want more/good speech, they want ad revenue.

      • Cancelled

        I don’t think any worthwhile idea can readily be crammed into a tweet. It is unsurprising to me that the social media most loved by the chattering classes is the one that limits users to sound bite length, but the world, and human beings, are complex, and while I love a good epigram as much as anyone, Truth is seldom simple enough to fit the character limits.

  37. The Late P Brooks

    I think the fight over Twitter is dumb. Let them eat that damn cake, ban all the right-wingers, lose a fuckton of money, and get consigned to the ash heap.

    I agree. I am baffled by the time and energy “invested” in Twitter.

    • db

      Social media in general is such a colossal waste of time. The thought of the potentially productive/creative/charitable things people could be doing instead make me occasionally quite sad. The opportunity cost is life. Hours and hours of life. People are free to waste their lives however they want, but it’s still a tragedy, objectively.

  38. Count Potato

    “Nineteen years ago, 2,977 people died in the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. It’s likely that more than half of them had co-morbidities.”

    https://twitter.com/Joe_Gerth/status/1304436004779065345

    “Native Louisvillian. Columnist for the Noble Prize-winning Courier-Journal.”

    Was it the Nobel Prize for Spelling?

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      FFS, our “betters” are morons.

      • kbolino

        On its face, it’s not exactly wrong. It’s more that it doesn’t really say anything of consequence. Not having problems that lead to earlier death will generally result in a longer life. That includes when escaping from a burning building while inhaling smoke. Death is a stochastic outcome.

      • prolefeed

        It’s not the literal wording that’s problematic, it’s the implication that dying because you’re trapped on the 99th floor on 9-11, which is flat out not survivable regardless of health, is the same as COVID. They’re implying that the inflated death count isn’t, and that you’re the stupid one.

      • Akira

        I’ve encountered this mindset too. Someone accused me of a slippery slope fallacy because I said that some unknown number of the Covid deaths are actually deaths from other things. He said, “but you could say that murder is OK because that person would have died from something else anyway.”

        What I was trying to convey is that you don’t get to take 100% of “died with Covid” and assume “died OF Covid”. It must stand to reason that SOME of them died of other things and that Covid was irrelevant, especially in cases where you have multiple overlapping lung conditions and they die of some unspecified respiratory distress.

    • Grosspatzer

      CWAA. I’d like to have a face-to-face discussion with this POS. Discussion, STEVE SMITH style.

    • Viking1865

      The idea that an 85 year old man with diabetes, Alzheimers, and COVID dying in a nursing home is equivalent to a 57 year old stockbroker who was supposed to get a bypass on 9/19/01 dying when a plane flew through the conference room is pants on head retarded.

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      Non sequitur.

      • TARDis

        ^^^
        And bad faith.

  39. The Late P Brooks

    CWAA. I’d like to have a face-to-face discussion with this POS. Discussion, STEVE SMITH style.

    STEVE SMITH style isn’t face to face, is it?

    • db

      NOT UNTIL AFTER STEVE SMITH TWIST NEW FRIEND HEAD AROUND TO SEE FACE EXPRESSION