360 Comments

  1. Brochettaward

    Ask yourself when you Firsted last? Do better.

    • Ted S.

      I actually post comments people want to read.

      And music links people want to listen to.

      • MikeS

        Now that was funny!

    • Tres Cool

      I was busy finding something for supper.

      • Ted S.

        I figured you would just drink a tall can.

      • Tres Cool

        Thats an appetizer.

      • db

        I thought the short cans were for appetizers; tall cans for the entree and dessert.

  2. AlexinCT

    New Analysis Shows the IRS Audited Far More People at the Poverty Line Than Millionaires

    And I bet the rich people they audited were the ones the state bureaucracy has a beef with.

    • juris imprudent

      Sardines or whales – which are easier to find and catch?

      • Drake

        Which are less likely to have accountants and tax attorneys?

      • Pope Jimbo

        The fate of IRS Auditor Ahab still serves as a lesson as to what happens when you tangle with a whale’s team of accountants.

      • Tres Cool

        Maybe once the (armed) collection bureau of the FedGov starts garnishing wages and ruining the lives of poor* people, they’ll wake up and maybe not vote demo….shit I cant type with a straight face.

        *the poor in this country likely live better than 2/3 of the rest of the planet

      • DrOtto

        I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – what makes America great is we have the fattest poor people in the world.

      • DrOtto

        In this country, the only time you see an honest to God starving child, it’s usually the step-kid pulled out of a basement that he’s been habitating for years.

  3. AlexinCT

    Missiles fired toward US consulate in Iraq came from Iran

    This is happening because unlike Trump-Putin, Biden is not buddy-buddy with the Iranian regime!

    /progtard

    • WTF

      I guess this is Iran’s answer to Biden’s supplication for oil.

      • AlexinCT

        Is this worse or better than just not taking his calls?

    • Brawndo

      Conversely,

      this is happening because Biden is weak!

      /Neocon smooth brains

      I normally hate the “democrats and republicans both suck equally. Democrats have clearly shown to be the worse of the two by and large in my opinion. However, in this situation and Ukraine, there are few on the right who understand the danger of more military adventurism.

  4. waffles

    Missiles fired toward US consulate in Iraq came from Iran

    We should totally buy oil from these guys.

    • AlexinCT

      The best foreign policy is one where you cripple your economy and put immense financial burdens on your productive class’ workers while sending tons of the money you are robbing them of to enemy states like Iran, Venezuela, the CCP, and until recently, Russia, using the argument that energy independence and self-sufficiency will kill Gaia. Because this somehow makes stupid academic class morons say you are a wordily leader and a man of the world.

    • Not Adahn

      Literally ZERO of the news reports I’ve heard about this have added the Vienna negotiations as context.

  5. Tres Cool

    whaddup doh’

    • Rat on a train

      Happy Pi Day.

      • Tres Cool

        Cakes (r) square, Pi (r) round.

      • Rat on a train

        Two pie are greater than one.

      • Tres Cool

        I dont know why people celebrate Pi day.
        Its irrational.

      • AlexinCT

        You don’t like hair pie?

      • Not Adahn

        That’s more of a transcendental longing.

      • Rebel Scum

        I know. This conversation is so derivative.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Its irrational.

        I admit it is hard to square that circle.

  6. AlexinCT

    Hunter Biden’s ‘Laptop from Hell’ Repairman Says Life Upended, Bankruptcy Looms

    He fucking went after the machine, and now the machine is making him an example. Our country is run by evil fucking mendacious cunts that are pissed the unwashed masses demand they be accountable and produce value, and that will not be tolerated from the ungrateful by their masters/betters. The vast majority of the university credentialed class today is downright moronic. and their children are even dumber. But they want a hereditary aristocracy, which means they need to wreck the existing order because the system tends to not reward stupidity and mendacity in the long run, in general.

    • waffles

      I always thought this kind of politically motivated life ruining was anathema to Americans. If there’s any sure sign of rot in the republic, to me it’s this.

      • WTF

        They don’t even try to hide what they’re doing, so yeah, the Republic is dead.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It goes further than that. He’s being harassed by true believers. There is a sizable contingent that believes exposing the misdeeds of our betters is morally wrong.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Only if the betters in question are on the right team. It’s sports fandom applied to politics. The ref is always wrong. The opponent is always a dirty team, and your team’s balls are always fully inflated.

      • Zwak,The Baddest Johnny on the Apple Cart

        This. True believers are the rot at the core.

      • DrOtto

        Unfortunately, this swings both ways. I know plenty of “conservatives” who are just fine with the treatment of Assange and Snowden. Of course those are some of the same “conservatives” cheerleading for war against Russia.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Absolutely

    • Ted S.

      Do we really need that selfie to illustrate the story?

    • juris imprudent

      because the system tends to not reward stupidity and mendacity in the long run

      In the long run we’re all dead. — sort of famous economist and notoriously white dead guy

      Seriously though, there is no time in our history when you point to it and say the govt was well run then. It may have been a cheaper and smaller govt, but not a better run one. I say the same thing about a microcosmic system – the one that produces the officer corps across DoD – it will continue to output what it does because no one who makes it to the summit thinks anything is wrong with it. That can endure a very long time absent some catastrophic shock.

      • Not Adahn

        I think you mean “notoriously white dead guy.” Being dead is generally seen as a positive thing: consider Saints Trayvon, Floyd, Sen Byrd et al.

      • Pope Jimbo

        The fame of sainthood is fleeting.

        The shrine to (minor) St. Duante is coming down after a year

        With the anniversary of the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright approaching, Brooklyn Center officials have informed the family that the memorial erected at the intersection where the 20-year-old was killed would be taken down.

        But now those plans are on hold and Wright’s parents will meet with city staff on Tuesday to come up with a solution that meets the needs of the community and family.

        It isn’t even blocking any streets! Lame!

      • DrOtto

        Can they put it in the center of an intersection and make it one those new fashionable “traffic calming” devices.

      • Pope Jimbo

        They tried that with the shrine to St. Floyd. It might have worked too, but the gunfire from the surrounding neighborhood tended to cancel out any “calming” effects on drivers.

      • db

        What kind of catastrophic shock could possibly happen to a military organization? Hell, even losing wars doesn’t seem to constitute a call for introspection, much less reform.

      • juris imprudent

        The system is a post WWII thing. So even VN doesn’t really count, and GW I supposedly “cured” any remaining problems/doubts.

        The problem is, WWII wasn’t won because we had a good system, and no one now really understands that. We won that war because GEN Marshall cleaned out the senior ranks in order to promote younger men, Patton being the only notable exception.

      • juris imprudent

        Ack, didn’t finish my thought – we haven’t really lost a war, or even a major battle a la Kasserine Pass. When we do (and we will because it really is the historical pattern) then the system will get kicked aside. But like any other bureaucratic thing, it will come back in time.

  7. Claypoolsreservoir

    Morning, Banjos!

    This is a repost from Friday afternoon links for Tonio.

    The Virginia Department of labor and industry is having a public comment town hall today to discuss possibly removing the currently permanent covid-19 workplace safety protocols. These protocols more or less directly coincide with the bogus CNC guidelines/transmission statistics. For instance, today is the first day that I can go maskless since August. Because we have a college in town, that has been playing pass the Covid, our transmission rate has been “high” for the past 8 months… Because 2 people a day tested positive…….

    Anyway. This charade has to end. If you’re from Virginia, or really, even if you’re not (maybe you do business here) please consider dropping by and telling the VDOLI where they can put their rules.

    Ron, no movement on the Daihatsu fuel pump. Weather, work, and chores have stymied progress. Hopefully I’ll have some good news this week.

      • Tonio

        Meeting starts at 10:00 AM

      • Claypoolsreservoir

        were you able to log in? Says the meeting hasn’t started… Unless I missed the meeting (had my own meeting at 10).

    • Claypoolsreservoir

      Heh… CDC not CNC .. Guess I have work on my mind.

    • Claypoolsreservoir

      I was surprised to find this among the public comments. Makes my heart warm.

      March 10, 2022

      Commissioner Gary G. Pan

      Department of Labor and Industry

      Main Street Center

      600 East Main Street, Suite 207

      Richmond, Virginia 23219

      Re: Proposed Revocation of the Virginia Standard for Infectious Disease Prevention of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus That Causes COVID-19, 16VAC25-220

      Dear Commissioner Pan:

      On behalf of the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association’s (“VHHA”) 26 member health systems, with more than 104,000 employees, thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Department of Labor and Industry’s (the “Department”) Proposed Revocation of the Virginia Standard for Infectious Disease Prevention of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus That Causes COVID-19, 16VAC25-220 (hereafter referred to as the “DOLI Regulations”). We strongly support the proposed revocation of the DOLI Regulations.

      Infection prevention and control is a daily, ongoing focus within Virginia hospitals and health systems. Operating under the oversight of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Virginia Department of Health (VDH), and various other accreditation and regulatory authorities, hospitals and our ancillary facilities are required to consistently demonstrate that their patients and staff receive and provide care in a safe environment. This includes development and implementation of comprehensive infection control plans, quality improvement programs, managing supply chain, training employees and caregivers, ensuring employees have the resources they need, planning for future health emergencies, and working with congregate care settings to institute strong infection control practices, among other activities.

      The DOLI Regulations were a duplicative regulatory scheme that introduced contradiction and uncertainty to an already highly regulated industry that has a moral obligation to ensure the safety of its patients and employees, regardless of any regulatory requirement. By repealing the DOLI Regulations, the Department will afford hospitals and health systems the opportunity to once again focus on the safety of their patients and employees rather than compliance with burdensome and duplicative regulations.

      Sincerely,

      Sean T. Connaughton

      President & CEO

  8. AlexinCT

    Tom Brady announces he’s returning to Tampa Bay Bucs

    How much of this is that all he now only gets asks for are erectile disfunction and hair-loss commercials?

  9. DEG

    also to allow for posts in support of the neo-nazi Azov Battalion, previously banned under its Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy.

    I love the flip-flop over the Azov Battalion.

    A nuclear war would be disastrous for the earth’s climate, according to a recent piece in the Atlantic that drew harsh criticism for its focus on the harms posed to the environment by a potential nuclear exchange resulting from the current conflict in Ukraine.

    Stupidity from The Atlantic. I guess it is a day that ends in “y”.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Welcome to the New Left that celebrates Nazis.

      • juris imprudent

        That’ll teach those Russians how unforgivable it is to give up on communism.

      • AlexinCT

        The first fascists, and practically every Nazi, tended to be socialists that had soured on communism.

      • juris imprudent

        Punishment of heretics is always greater than punishment of those not yet believers.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The weird part of this has been Israel’s role. Mark Crispin Miller goes into a bit of detail and links out to several articles on it. There appears to be a significant amount of denial at the governmental level, but a rift is growing.

        https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/on-israel-and-the-nazis-in-ukraine

        What that collusion tells us about Israel—or, rather, Zionism—is, to say the least, uncomfortable, as Meyssan indicates toward the conclusion of his article. He reports that, early in the conflict, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, assured Putin that Ukraine was not in thrall to neo-Nazis: How could it be, when he himself is Jewish? And, on the sixth day of the invasion, Zelensky claimed that Russia had bombed Babi Yar, memorial to over 33,000 Ukrainian Jews slaughtered by the Nazis (eagerly assisted by Ukrainian police)—a charge that moved the Yad Vashem Memorial, Israel’s chief Holocaust remembrancer, to put out an angry statement. “It seemed outrageous to the Israelis,” Meyssan writes, “that Russia would compare the Ukrainian far right with the Nazis of the Shoah and even more so that it would bomb a place of memory.”

        But when Israeli journalists went to Babi Yar to check the story out, they found that it was false; and then Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin, invited Yad Vashem “to send a delegation to Ukraine to see for themselves, under the protection of the Russian army, what President Putin was talking about.”

        “A great silence followed. What if the Kremlin, like the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was telling the truth? What if the Straussian Jews in the United States, the Ukrainian Jewish leader Ihor Kolomoysky and his employee the Jewish president Volodymyr Zelensky were working with real Nazis?”

        Looking for the answer to that troubling question, Israel’s prime minister Naftali Bennett went to Moscow to see Putin, met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Tel Aviv, and called Zelensky, as well as several heads of member NATO states. What he learned we, so far, do not know—his silence due, perhaps, to the explosive implications of the awful truth:

      • WTF

        Jewish Nazis. Sure. I remain a bit skeptical.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        Not so much Jewish Nazis as Jewish Collaborators with Nazis. A tradition in Eastern Europe.

      • Rat on a train

        A Kapo in every hut.

      • DrOtto

        “Name one Jewish Nazi collaborator?” – George Soros

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Like I said, it’s all very weird.

        But there is no doubt that at least two prominent Jews, Victoria Nuland and Ukrainian billionaire Kolomoysky are supporting blatantly fascist groups that hold Stepan Bandera up as their idol. It seems that their anti-Semitic traditions have been mostly replaced (but not completely) with anti-Slavic ones.

        In short, the situation is far more complex than our government is letting on and the Ukraine is a boiling stew of ethnic hatred that we’ve been stirring.

        In February 2014, the “Revolution of Dignity,” also known as “EuroMaidan,” was a regime change sponsored by Straussian Victoria Nuland, assistant to Secretaries of State Hilary Clinton and John Kerry. In this context, a group of hooligan supporters of the Kharkiv soccer club, “Sect 82”, occupied the premises of the oblast governorate and beat up the employees of the former regime.

        Become Minister of Interior, Arsen Avakov, who had been governor of Kharkiv during the former regime and one of the organizers of Euro 2012, authorized the formation of a paramilitary force of 12,000 men, around the hooligans of the “Sect 82” to defend the “revolution”. On May 5, 2014, the “Azov Battalion” or “Eastern Corps” was officially formed under the command of Andriy Biletsky.
        The latter, known as the “White Führer”, is a theoretician of Nazism. He had been the leader of the “Patriots of Ukraine”, a neo-Nazi grouping that supported a Greater Ukraine and was violently anti-communist.

        Andriy Biletsky and Dmitro Yarosh founded together the “Right Sector” which played the main role on Maidan Square in 2014. This openly anti-Semitic, homophobic structure was financed by the godfather of the Ukrainian mafia, the Jewish billionaire Ihor Kolomoysky. Internationally, the “Right Sector” is violently opposed to the European Union and intends instead to form an alliance of Central European and Baltic states, the Intermarium. This is also the project of the Straussians who, since the 1992 Wolfowitz report, consider the European Union to be a more dangerous rival for the United States than Russia. You remember the intercepted telephone conversation between Ms. Nuland and the US ambassador, in which she exclaimed : “fuck the European Union” (sic).
        Dmitro Yarosh is an agent of NATO’s stay-behind networks who organized an anti-Russian congress in Ternopol in 2007 with the Emir Doku Umarov, under the watchful eye of Victoria Nuland, who was the US ambassador to NATO at the time. Yarosh gathered neo-Nazis from all over Europe and Islamists from the Middle East to wage jihad in Chechnya against Russia. Later, he was the leader of “Stepan Bandera’s Trident” (also known as “Tryzub”), a small group glorifying Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis. According to Stepan Bandera, genuine Ukrainians are of Scandinavian or proto-Germanic origin, unfortunately, they have mixed with Slavs, the Russians, whom they must fight and dominate. At the end of 2013, Yarosh’s men and the youth of another Nazi group were trained in street fighting by Nato instructors in Poland. I was heavily criticized when I revealed this case because I had quoted a satirical newspaper as a note, however the Polish Prosecutor General opened an investigation which, of course, never came to fruition because it would have implicated the Minister of Defense [1].

        https://www.voltairenet.org/article215891.html

      • DEG

        The Capos came from somewhere.

      • Zwak,The Baddest Johnny on the Apple Cart

        Those aren’t real Nazis. Real Nazi hasn’t been tried yet.

      • Rebel Scum

        They have long been the fascists that they claim to hate.

    • Ted S.

      Nuclear winter would sure end global warming.

    • WTF

      Hold on, I thought a nuclear exchange would cool the planet and reduce the population, which the climate yahoos claim are good things.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        But the Remnant would be climate wrong-thinkers.

      • Not Adahn

        Yup. Those that survive might use icky fossil fuels instead of trying to rebuild the world along Deep Green economic principles.

      • juris imprudent

        along Deep Green economic principles

        Brutals providing Grain to the Vortex?

      • Not Adahn

        Grain??? What about the gluten intolerant?!

      • db

        Rice is a grain

      • juris imprudent

        I’d rather imagine the Immortals don’t suffer from such maladies.

      • juris imprudent

        Ok, but who baked the damn bread?

      • juris imprudent

        Ah, must’ve forgotten that scene. Which means I was probably pretty baked last time I watched (a long, long time ago).

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Hell, we embraced Al Qaeda and ISIS when they were fighting our supposed enemies in Syria, why not straight up Nazis in Ukraine?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        We’re still arming Al Qaeda in Yemen.

        Our foreign policy is one of creating maximum internal strife in order to weaken opponents.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Ah, the Roman Empire Special then.

  10. I. B. McGinty

    “large increase in federal income tax audits targeting the poorest wage earners” in fiscal year 2021”

    Didn’t read much past here, but if you have a bunch of income, then you don’t have that same level of income, I’m going to guess that raises a flag somewhere?

    • WTF

      Or it’s just easier to run up your stats going after the small fry.

      • Sean

        This would also probably be people without accountants.

      • juris imprudent

        Screw accountants, talk tax lawyers. Acquaintance told me about his run in with the IRS and the substantial amount of money he paid a tax lawyer. He doesn’t like lawyers, but he loved that guy because he saved his ass a lot more than what he was paid.

    • AlexinCT

      It’s easier to penalize a few hundred thousand shleps that can’t afford lawyers to fight the IRS a few hundred dollars, that with interest quickly grow to a few thousand in income, than it is to try to make some guy with an army of accountants/lawyers pay up. Return on investment and all tat. That’s why they want another 80K IRS people to look at more of the shlep’s paperwork.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        ^ yep. Same reason they dropped or are trying to drop the reporting requirement to $600.

      • I. B. McGinty

        Agree here. What’s the cheaper option- paying the $1000 fine or spending 10 times that? The people that relied on cash under the table or used Venmo or PayPal for side income are in for a rude awakening.

        Years ago I did my taxes with TurboTax. I was at a point where if I claimed something I got an additional $2k back. I forget what it was for, but TurboTax said my audit risk was low so I took it. That’s another $2k to spend on booze!

    • Sensei

      My expectation is that most low income filers get a refund whereas most high income filers pay.

      It’s easier to review a simple filing and deny a (portion of a) refund as opposed to chase after a whale which may take significant time.

    • WTF

      So evil they SF’d your link.

      • Rat on a train

        They don’t want you to see the truth.

      • AlexinCT

        I fucking hate HTML. Try this

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      “It is non-inflationary because of the way it is written,” said Pelosi.

      Does that mean she read it and knows what’s in it?

      • juris imprudent

        No it means they put words on paper saying “this is non-inflationary”, and when Congress says so, it is.

      • Rat on a train

        CBO, assuming this isn’t inflationary, will this increase inflation?

      • Fourscore

        She’s running for VP, isn’t she?

    • Rebel Scum

      “So when we’re having this discussion, it’s important to dispel some of those who say, well, ‘Is the government spending – ’ no, it isn’t. The government spending is doing the exact reverse, reducing the national debt. It is not inflationary, A,” she said.

      If I max out my credit cards I’ll eliminate my debt. Seems legit.

  11. db

    Deaths represent 1.3% of side effects reported for COVID vaccines: peer-reviewed CDC study

    What’s the fraction of total doses? An interesting comparison would be (Deaths due to COVID) / (Deaths due to Vaccine Effects).

    Better yet, P(Dying due to COVID|COVID Infection) / P(Dying due to COVID Vaccine|Received Vaccine)

  12. Draw Me Like One of Your Tulpae, Jack

    Everyone in this airport is determined to work my last nerve.

    • db

      Don’t forget to look for the airworthiness certificate!

      Safe travels.

    • Pope Jimbo

      determined to work

      Biden Economy for the win!

    • pistoffnick the refusnik

      Ain’t commercial flying fun?

      I’ll give you $20 if start bleating like a sheep!

  13. db

    Tom Brady announces he’s returning to Tampa Bay Bucs

    They must have laid out their plan for winning the Super Bowl next year, and he thought it had a good chance of success. Why else would he return?

    • rhywun

      Because he has nothing better to do?

      • juris imprudent

        Maybe he’d rather hang around a bunch of beefy guys in the locker room?

      • rhywun

        *takes notes*

    • Certified Public Asshat

      I know it sounds crazy, but he might actually enjoy playing football.

      • KSuellington

        And very well might win yet another Super Bowl for his team.

  14. AlexinCT

    I read this article about why the left’s policies suck so bad, and one thing that constantly stands out about the left’s policies is that they tend to always be based on emotional drivel with very little basis in any reality. When you refuse to actually correctly diagnose problems, issues, or how the world works because every problem has to be presented in terms of social justice grifting, appeals to emotion that give the weak minded their enemies to jeer and their heroes to cheer, your solutions will always be stupid ones. The whole hammer if everything is seen as a nail thing, in a nutshell.

    Now the people on the left making/writing the policies that come from this thinking, damned well know what they are doing will be disastrous, but they have cleverly created some seriously lucrative grifts around these things that in general are profitable to themselves and those connected to them even when they spell disasters for the masses, so they just keep on doing moar of that shit. We after all live in a world where instead of solving problem, they believe they need to solve the messaging. Joe Blow complains that he is getting fucked in the ass from every direction by government created inflation? Shit, tell him he is a moron for not believing that the rich are getting hurt worse than he is, so he should feel that schadenfreude makes it all cool! If that fails, tell him the problem is that government isn’t pissing away enough money it doesn’t have or blame some other entity, But fuck fixing the problems: that’s a quick way to lose some real serious lucrative grifts.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      That presumes that the politicians are actually in charge. I don’t think that’s true anymore.

      They’re allowed to run their grifts so long as they don’t get in the way of the permanent state.

      • AlexinCT

        That presumes that the politicians are actually in charge. I don’t think that’s true anymore.

        I thought it was clear that I was pointing out that the politicians are there to do what they are told by the permanent state which is the one calling the shots. There is a cabal behind the political cadre that tells them what to say/do. That cabal has its hands in academia, the media, culture, and makes sure that those that enter into the upper echelon jobs involving politics, running the country, running academia, and controlling the news are compliant and beholden. Trump, for example, was anathema to them because they couldn’t control him and he showed the people how the state was selling us out to the CCP and the global cabal, which is why they pulled and continue to pull all the stops to get rid of the guy. Mark my words: they will try to kill Trump before letting him again threaten their racket.

      • juris imprudent

        It’s funny how spontaneous order can explain virtuous phenomena like markets, but evil cabals are required to explain dysfunctions.

        Considering Hoffer’s observation that mass movements don’t require gods, but they must have demons, I think the psychology explains itself.

      • AlexinCT

        These demons don’t need complex systems or machinations to explain what is going on. The phenom is simple: they are inept fucks whose sole goal is to keep what they have managed to steal so far, at any and all costs, in a world that is unravelling because of the decisions and actions they take and keep having to take to keep their shit for themselves and their even dumber and inept credentialed offspring.

      • juris imprudent

        Ah, so it is just another emergent system based on human behavior and not some evil conspiracy.

      • AlexinCT

        Human behavior can be evil….. Especially when the people doing it know they are doing it for purely self-serving reasons that by design will harm others…

      • juris imprudent

        But it isn’t a cabal. It is an emergent system rooted in basic behavior. When you treat that as though it were some kind of conspiracy you are invoking the psychology of mass movements – which is not an admirable thing to do (and you rightly condemn it when the ‘other side’ does so).

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Why not both? Conspiracies don’t have to be a group of cabalists twirling their mustaches in a smoke filled room while discussing which strings of which puppets need pulling.

        It can be as easy as presenting at Davos and a couple other similar events.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        Hunter Biden getting paid $500,000 per painting from anonymous donors is enough evidence for me that someone or some organization is out there and trying to steer the US government through bribery (or blackmail) of politicians. I don’t know what else you could describe this as.

        Same with the foundations each major politician seems to have. The anonymous donors aren’t lobbyists trying to get some their company’s name in the lasted Farm Aid bill.

      • juris imprudent

        It is as surely human behavior to fuck people over as it is to organize a mob to wreak havoc on those who fuck over.

        I am a misanthrope for a reason. We are kinda despicable as a species.

    • db

      The right and the left both do it. Create a wedge issue around which to cultivate a constituency, then milk that constituency as hard as you can for power and money and influence. Keep an eye out for tangential issues that can be effective wedges to pry smaller groups off the edges of your opponents’ constituenciesas well.

      • juris imprudent

        *cough* LaPierre era NRA *cough*

      • db

        The NRA for some reason took the odd tack of chipping edges off their own constituency and hanging them out to dry in order to compromise with their enemies.

        Fuck LaPierre.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        for some reason

        Same reason that libertarian think tanks invariably go off the rails. Holding firm against the tides of an unfavorable culture gains you very little. Compromising with the Fabian (and now not-so-Fabian) left gets you cocktail party invitations and prospects for added members who are turned off by hard-line support for principles (of course, those members never seem to materialize).

      • juris imprudent

        They was in it for the money dude.

      • db

        Well, duh.

    • Tonio

      Good article. Thanks, Alex.

      First, let’s be charitable and assume most people on the left want to do good; they just don’t know how. And the reason they don’t know how—the reason none of their policies work—is that their world view is rooted in fantasy. They cannot hope to effect meaningful, positive change in the real world because they don’t live in the real world.

      This is the root of the problem, although I would have put it as their world view is rooted in emotions, not facts an reasoning.

      • Tonio

        Another reason leftists’ policies are so bad is that they subscribe to a perverse notion of moral equivalency. To them, being a Wiccan is just as good as being a Christian (if not better). Oppressive, barbaric regimes like Iran and Cuba have just as much legitimacy on the world stage as the United States or Great Britain. There’s no difference between a man marrying a woman and a man marrying another man.

        ….and he shoots himself right in the foot.

        That paragraph is unhelpful and unneccesary, alienates allies, and plays right into the leftists hand.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        This describes one layer of the issue. The layer on top of it is the particularly damning one. That’s the layer where they cement their current emotions, with a heaping helping of hubris, as God breathed scripture fundamental universal objective truth, all the while denying the existence of God universality and objective truth. When they start burning witches, good faith is out the window.

        Actually, there’s a sub-layer between those two. Having an emotional worldview and voting it be imposed on others.

        I can reconcile someone holding an emotional worldview and them acting in good faith. I can even reconcile someone holding an emotional worldview and them voting (out of ignorance of the violence done to others) in line with their emotions. I can’t reconcile the witch burning we’re seeing now with good faith. At some point one’s conscience has invariably twinged, and ruining people’s lives over wrongthink is well across that line.

      • juris imprudent

        At some point one’s conscience has invariably twinged, and ruining people’s lives over wrongthink is well across that line.

        That isn’t a peculiarity to the modern left. It is a fundamental character of human society and far more prevalent throughout history than our Enlightenment-based values. If anything, we are the oddballs.

      • AlexinCT

        I seriously feel Tonio that leftism appeals to many people because it allows you to do the least amount of work – real work – to think/act like you are doing good. In a world where there is so much capital invested in being/doing good, everyone wants to be there to cash in. People that believe “I am against things that are wrong-think!, hence I am on the side of good”, will not bother to think through the ideas they have because these ideas have to be coming from a good place. That’s how you get someone seriously thinking things like ‘defund the police” or decriminalizing theft under $950 come with nothing but upsides. That’s where you get people that think banning energy independence in the US – meaning letting seriously environmentally shady, if not outright destructive entities, do the energy extraction – makes them warriors in the cause of saving Gaia while they waste massive amounts of energy on their slave labor produced iPhones posting bullshit to tik-tok.

        It’s a world of pretend & manage perception rather than one of accomplishments that have meanings.

  15. Not Adahn

    Lily was rather indignant about having to go to bed an hour early. Fortunately we did enough hiking that the protests stopped after about 15 minutes.

    • db

      *My* body was indignant about having to go to bed an hour early. I left my workshop at 0015 last night and couldn’t sleep until about 0130.

      • Not Adahn

        I drank half a bottle of wine and thee shots of bourbon.

  16. AlexinCT

    Genius…..

    • Not Adahn

      You don’t have to pay salary and benefits to dead people.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Cannon fodder and bullet stoppers don’t need finite contracts. They’d be much more useful infiltrating and causing trouble if/when the Russians take over and try to administer the territory.

      • waffles

        You don’t win a war by dying for your country. But these idiots aren’t even doing that. I have a lot of sympathy for the families they’re leaving at home. Catching a bullet for this is not my idea of heroism.

    • Swiss Servator

      “one of the best armies in world”

      Assumes facts not in evidence.

      • WTF

        Really, I mean, they don’t even have DEI training and proper instruction on pronouns!

      • mindyourbusiness

        Yeah. Think Finland in War 2.

      • juris imprudent

        Uhh, despite a great initial defense, the Finns lost, badly.

      • Swiss Servator

        Badly? They were overrun and turned into a Warsaw Pact satellite?

      • juris imprudent

        They capitulated to Soviet demands. Maybe that doesn’t count as a bad loss say compared to the Third Reich (how is Konigsberg these days?), or even the Third Republic? I wasn’t denigrating them.

      • Drake

        Sort of like Chechnya and I’ll wager, the Ukraine.

      • Drake

        If we go by recent wins and losses, the American army is pretty mediocre. The Afghans the best, the Russians in between the two.

      • Swiss Servator

        Sure, the invasion of Ukraine and the Afghan counter insurgency/”nation” building are the same thing.

        You can roll up in a T-90. I’ll Take the Abrams. You can call some MiGs and SU’s I’ll take the F-16, F-22 and F35s.

      • Ownbestenemy

        I think db said it best, superior skill often beats superior equipment. I am not sure where our skill level is these days given our shift from warfighting to rainbow crayon drawings. With the exception of our SOFs

      • Swiss Servator

        Do you think the Russian Army spends more time training than the US? Do they have the ammo, parts, fuel, etc?

        NTC and JRTC haven’t shut down here, that I can tell.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Speaking ignorantly about it, I know I am. Just the quality of airmen that I have to deal with is so far from what my crop of mates was. Maybe the other forces are faring better.

      • juris imprudent

        F-35? Has one been proven in combat that I haven’t heard about? F-22s have been retired as I recall.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Production of F-22 is retired, they are very much alive in the sky. Israeli F-35s I think got some combat time under the belt in the past couple of years I believe.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The F22 is great if you can keep it flying and fully operational.

        F-22s were available for missions 63% of the time on average in 2015, up from 40% when the aircraft was introduced in 2005. Maintenance hours per flight hour was also improved from 30 early on to 10.5 by 2009, lower than the requirement of 12; man-hours per flight hour was 43 in 2014. When introduced, the F-22 had a Mean Time Between Maintenance (MTBM) of 1.7 hours, short of the required 3.0; this rose to 3.2 hours in 2012.[63][94] By fiscal year 2015, the cost per flight hour was $59,116.[167]

        I met one of the flight maintenance teams way back when it was first introduced. I think it was about thirty people per aircraft.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Its airframe is unbelievable but its true power is in its avionics package.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The company I worked for back in the 90’s helped develop some of that avionics package. I think they stuffed microwave and radar equipment into every available cubic inch.

      • Animal

        We had four F-22’s fly by overhead last Friday.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Anchorage is one of their…special missions.

      • AlexinCT

        An Israeli F-35 just scored the first air-to-air kills for the F-35. yeah, they were a couple of unmanned Iranian drones, but they are kills.

      • juris imprudent

        Israelis are known to modify/improve our designs, so that may matter.

      • Not Adahn

        The Afghans the best,

        Buh?

        It’s pretty easy to “beat” another army when that opponent’s mission is “leave the battlefield and go home.”

      • Plisade

        ^^^

      • Not Adahn

        Quantity has a quality all it’s own.

  17. Scruffy Nerfherder

    You buried the lede on the vaccine report.

    A large subset of young people was almost entirely excluded, however: minors.

    The study only reviewed the first six months of emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, covering 340,000 reports and 299 million doses.

    That time period ends just a month after Pfizer’s vaccine was authorized for 12-15 year-olds and predates its EUA for children 5-11, while Moderna’s vaccine remains unauthorized for anyone under 18. The study’s youngest age range is 16-17, representing 2% of all reports.

    So in the first six months of the EUA, we have 1.3% of reported and recorded adverse events resulting in fatalities. That’s 4,400 deaths by their own admission before we even got to the boosters and certainly underreported by a very significant factor even within that time period. We know that doctors are reluctant to report, do not get paid to report, and there is an accusation that the contracted VAERS case reviewers were formally instructed to “protect the vaccine” instead of “protect the patient.”

  18. AlexinCT

    are the Clintons after em?

    I figured Jussie would be happy like a pig in slop suffering for the cause… are they keeping him away from the gen-pop so he doesn’t get any sweet lovin?

  19. AlexinCT

    I knew the problem had to be us fucking unwashed serfs having it to easy before and now acting all uppity cause the bossman has decided the free ride had to come to an end!

    “Can I just say that is an artificially low price you’re starting from and when you do inflation adjustment, this isn’t the highest price we’ve had in the last 20 years. In fact, George Herbert Walker Bush under the Bush administration we had gas prices, inflation adjusted over $5,” she claimed.

    Get it? The problem was caused by the asshole that made us energy independent when that strategy was not what team blue wanted. See, this made people get used to the cheap gas, and now that the betters are correcting that crime, the crybabies are being whiney.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Uffda. Wonder why a person against drilling in the US is the former Senator from NoDak?

      I bet she is relieved she no longer has to pretend to represent those rubes.

    • db

      Those greedy, profit-grubbing Big Oil companies spent two decades dropping prices on their wares to get everyone addicted to their product. 5D chess.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      God forbid the cost of living should go lower.

      • AlexinCT

        How would that make more people dependent on big government? Can’t have anything that makes people less dependent on government… That’s what is the problem they want to solve.

    • Ted S.

      She claimed *without evidence*.

    • juris imprudent

      Being a Democrat she can’t help being stupid. GHWB wasn’t the Bush administration in the last 20 years; he was 30 years ago.

      However, those gas prices dropping so low (in ’20 to ’21) wasn’t due to some brilliant Republican policy. Nor was the brief spike she is referring to in ’08.

      • Swiss Servator

        ” wasn’t due to some brilliant Republican policy”

        A lot of it was due to staying out of the way. A soon as someone says “policy”, I shiver.

    • The Other Kevin

      The problem is that last boyfriend of yours didn’t punch you in the face often enough.

      • Swiss Servator

        How went the hockey games?

      • The Other Kevin

        See below.

    • Tundra

      Always a high point of the Tourney.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I thought it was funny when he tried to retire and was basically dragged back into doing this every year.

        Even better are the kids who are playing up their flow in the hopes of making it into his video.

      • Tundra

        Duke Cannon donating $15k to the Hendrickson Foundation is pretty damn cool, too.

        The boys lost a tough one. We know a bunch of kids on the team, so it was pretty cool to see how well they did.

      • pistoffnick the refusnik

        I miss my mullet.

  20. Rebel Scum

    Missiles fired toward US consulate in Iraq came from Iran

    It’s good to see that we are commanding respect on the world stage again.

  21. Rebel Scum

    I keep being told Putin is a monster and yet he keeps performing altruistic acts.

    Denazify the interzones.

  22. Rebel Scum

    The Democratic Party is perceived by voters as being both ineffective and out of touch and, as a result, stands to suffer substantive seat losses in the midterm elections, new polling by Schoen Cooperman Research indicates.

    Assuming elections are insufficiently fortified.

  23. Rebel Scum

    Tom Brady announces he’s returning to Tampa Bay Bucs

    His wife is a smokeshow but maybe she’s annoying.

    • WTF

      Smokeshows often are because they are used to men putting up with it due to their looks.

      • Drake

        Six weeks of hearing “I make all the money in this house” was enough to drive him out of retirement.

  24. Scruffy Nerfherder

    This is a new one. I’m receiving tables of price surcharges from suppliers based on the weekly price of fuel. The chart covers prices from $4 to $6 per gallon in ten cent tranches.

    The fuel surcharge will be variable and determined based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Diesel Fuel Index for the East Coast, Lower Atlantic (PADD 1C). Please visit http://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/ for weekly EIA updates.

    Fuel surcharges will be determined by the table below:

    0.75% of the haul rate for each $0.10 increase in fuel price over $4.00 per gallon. Example: A 22-ton truck with a $4.50 per ton haul rate = $99 (total hauling $) At $5.00 per gallon, and 8.25% Fuel Surcharge, or $8.17 for the load, will be added.

    • rhywun

      I have to surmise that this sort of thing is why I’m still waiting on USPS to deliver several packages from Amazon. One arrived unexpectedly on Friday – a week late. And nobody told Amazon, because it’s still sitting on my orders page reading “Running Late”.

      What a shit-show.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Airlines and others have been doing fuel surcharges since the last surge ~15 years ago.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      “I love my job. I love working with kids.”

      Translated: “I love forcing my worldview and personal hangups down the throats of a population mostly incapable of resisting.”

    • Ownbestenemy

      Ok, Groomer

    • EvilSheldon

      You know, it’s not all that hard to avoid being misgendered…

      • Mojeaux

        I dunno. Have you SEEN some of these dudes playing dress-up? They couldn’t pass if their lives depended on it.

        See: the last transperson on Jeopardy Amy Schneider and military historian Lynette Nusberger.

      • Not Adahn

        It’s OBVIOUSLY a feminine neckbeard, you transphobe!

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        I dunno, my 7 year old said “Have a great day ma’am” to the very obviously male cashier at the farm store yesterday. His coworkers burst out laughing, and he joined in after a few seconds.

      • juris imprudent

        YOU AREN’T PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION TO MEEEEEeeeeeeeeee!!11!

      • invisible finger

        “Hello My Pronouns Are” stickers may be in order.

      • Pope Jimbo

        If you have a sticker, your pronouns are “he/him”

  25. Pope Jimbo

    I hate every fucking person in this story about the massive fraud investigation going on here in Minnesoda.

    The backstory is that during the pandemic a bunch of “nonprofits” realized that the govt was throwing money at anyone who said they were feeding needy children. Our entrepreneurial Somali community took full advantage. At least one group was claiming to feed more kids each day than the entire school district of St. Paul.

    Somali American leaders and activists have been scrambling to find answers. They are confused about how such an alleged massive fraud could happen under the watch of the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), which is responsible for distributing federal funds to the program sponsor. Some are worried that the issue will turn the community into a political punching bag in upcoming elections.

    “People are scared,” said Yussuf Haji, an activist and writer who ran for a Minneapolis City Council seat in November. “People are looking for answers, and that has also created some sort of tension in the community.”

    “Hey, the govt was determined to give money away. Can’t blame us for taking it”.

    • Pope Jimbo

      When I said I hated everyone in the story, I meant everyone. Even the poor people who were supposed to be getting free meals are horrible:

      Foos Nur, a Columbia Heights mother of six school-age children, said free meals were delivered to her home early in the pandemic, and sometimes she would go to Somali-owned restaurants to pick it up. She said she stopped taking it because her children prefer American food and did not eat it. Nur said the fraud allegations leveled against some members of the community make her sad because “some people were doing good work and serving the community.”

      “It would have been better if the government had given us debit cards to purchase our own food,” Nur said.

      • AlexinCT

        Debit cards? STRIP CLUBS, CASINOS, AND WHORE HOUSES HERE I COME!

      • juris imprudent

        Which is exactly why we don’t do that – we can’t allow people to spend money the way they want to, they have to spend it how we think they should.

      • Tonio

        Better: some of us don’t want our hard-earned taxpayer dollars giving to allegedly hungry people with no controls. That’s why direct food aid is better.

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        I’m mixed between the 2.

        I definitely don’t want my money going to strip clubs, but I’d also rather the market set food prices rather than government welfare programs pushing greater demand than actually exists, driving up food prices.

        It also disallows the theory that (some/many) poor people are poor because of their own decisions, and not because evil capitalists keep them down.

      • Ownbestenemy

        “some people were doing good work and serving the community.”

        It doesn’t matter if we cheated, stole, defrauded, or wasted the goodwill of the community or government…it was all for doing good work.

      • pistoffnick the refusnik

        Feckin’ kids.
        Minneapolis Somali food is excellent, though the neighborhood is kinda sketchy.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I’m sure all the white proggies would be horrified to discover that their insistence on “culturally appropriate” food for the starving kids is not being appreciated by said kids.

        It wouldn’t make them stop insisting on Somali food for Somali kids. They would, though, start insisting on a new state program that would send counselors out to Somali households to explain to those poor deluded kids why they should avoid the White Man’s food.

    • Ted S.

      They’re Minnesodans. Why would anybody like them?

      • pistoffnick the refusnik

        Because we are nice (in a passive-aggressive way).

      • AlexinCT

        MEAT RAFFLES!

      • pistoffnick the refusnik

        To be fair, ‘Sconnie’s do that too

  26. Rebel Scum

    Listen, Jack. It’s the Putin Price Hike.

    Biden: “I’m sick of this stuff … the American people think the reason for inflation is government spending more money. Simply not true!”

    Print and spend policies have never led to inflation. It is known. ///BidenBudgetBuster

    • Rat on a train

      Seventeen, SEVENTEEN, nobel economists have assured me that we can print and spend our way to prosperity without any negative effects like inflation. It is all the fault of Putin, kulaks and wreckers.

      • Grumbletarian

        I’m sure they’re as reputable as the seventeen intelligence agencies who said Trump and Putin were totally besties.

    • The Other Kevin

      Somehow we went from Truman’s “The buck stops here” to Bart Simpson’s “I didn’t do it!”

    • invisible finger

      To be fair, it isn’t just money printing that causes price inflation. Killing productivity also contributes.

  27. The Other Kevin

    Good morning, Glibs! I am sore and tired after a crazy hockey weekend. I played 4 A team games and 1 B team game, winning 2 and losing three. I had no goals but probably had some assists. Unfortunately we had a late game Saturday, watched the gold medal game, had the time change, then played back to back early games. So no gym and no practice this week and hopefully some long nights of sleep.

    Meanwhile in China, USA blew out Canada to take gold, an China took bronze.

    Have a great day everyone!

  28. The Late P Brooks

    Are any of you familiar with tech for luddites?

    Youtube served me up one of their (her) viddys yesterday, about alternative nuclear plant design. I think I’ll watch some more.

    • Grumbletarian

      The Russian military is having a rough time talking over a small neighboring country, yet we are supposed to believe they’re a global threat at the same time.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Somehow, the answer is to never quit playing world police.

    • Rebel Scum

      Yes, $1 Trillion

      No, dissolve NATO, close foreign bases, concentrate on defending American territory/shipping and slash the budget.

      And ffs stop poking the bear.

  29. Sensei

    Getting Kids to Wear Masks in Class Was Tough, Removing Them Can Be Just as Difficult

    “There’s this ethical issue of do you enforce the law or follow the district mandate?” said Eric Mayer, a physics teacher and president of the district’s teachers union. When he returned to his classroom, he led students in a “restorative circle” to explain that the teachers were upset because the move violated their contract.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Forest Elementary teachers said it is easier to hear students and to make themselves heard without masks. Teaching phonics in particular is easier, they said, as students can see how sounds are formed with their mouths.

      Ms. Vigani said she discovered one student has a serious lisp after he removed his mask this week, and that the boy will be referred for treatment by a speech therapist.

      “It was like hearing a different person talking, without his mask on,” she said.

      Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

      • waffles

        It’s really difficult to know at this point what the long term effects of this will be. It surely won’t be nothing. Those masked years were influential years for many children.

      • Claypoolsreservoir

        CDC has already lowered the developmental milestone metrics for infants/toddlers…

      • juris imprudent

        Was his name Kenny?

  30. The Late P Brooks

    Print and spend policies have never led to inflation. It is known. ///BidenBudgetBuster

    No kidding. I read as far as I could get through some CNN thumbsucker about how people don’t like high gas prices because they’re ignorant slobs.

    Prominently never mentioned: metric tons of helicopter money.

  31. Rebel Scum

    Shocking.

    Pfizer CEO @AlbertBourla tells @margbrennan his company is working “very diligently” to make a covid vaccine that will protect against variants & will protect “for at least a year.”

    • Ownbestenemy

      Oh. Do you mean like the initial bout of vaccines where you and your enablers lied about its efficacy?

    • Sensei

      for at least a year

      The project is called “the annuity” internally at Pfizer.

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      a covid vaccine that will protect against variants & will protect “for at least a year.”

      My company has begun requesting staff upload proof of boosters and has updated all of the language in their protocol from “vaccinated” to “fully vaccinated”. Still voluntary to submit proof, but the writing is on the wall for mandated boosters. Probably annually.

      Time to start updating the resume and responding to recruiters. Which is a real shame because I do like my job, boss, and colleagues. I imagine I could swing an exemption for the booster, but it would kneecap my promotion chances so there’s little point in staying if so.

      • juris imprudent

        Well you might outlive those who are most bullish on the enforcement.

      • Ownbestenemy

        FedGov has begun to use “primary series” to imply boosters are part of being fully vaccinated, without saying you will be required to get boosters. However, we are in full standdown mode with covid protocols at this moment.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    “There’s this ethical issue of do you enforce the law or follow the district mandate?” said Eric Mayer, a physics teacher and president of the district’s teachers union. When he returned to his classroom, he led students in a “restorative circle” to explain that the teachers were upset because the move violated their contract.

    Perhaps you should focus your attention on the ethical issue of coercing your students to adhere to policies based on lies.

  33. Rebel Scum

    *sensible chuckle*

    “If we are to become a more diverse, equitable & inclusive University, we must…[include] the advancement of anti-racism, anti-ableism, anti-Semitism…”

    @UMich’s chief diversity officer accidentally sent an email vowing the advancement of antisemitism.

  34. Sensei

    2022 Lotus Emira: As Good as It Gets

    Dry weight: 3,097 pounds

    At the root of our DNA is Colin Chapman’s obsession with light weight. “Simplify, then add lightness”, he said. It was his philosophy, way before ‘minimalism’ became fashionable. “Adding power makes you faster on the straights; subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere”, was another of Chapman’s premises.

    – Lotus web site.

    And meanwhile a V12 Ferrari from the mid to late 90s weighs 3,300 pounds. The amount of weight required for modern safety and crash requirements in speciality cars is ridiculous.

    • pistoffnick the refusnik

      If you can find it (Discovery+ or some pirate’s bay), you should watch “Radford Returns”. They take an Emira drivetrain and put their own coach on it.

    • Drake

      “…the last of the company’s gas-powered models.”

      That DNA seems to have some defects.

    • Tundra

      I think the Elise was in the neighborhood of 2000 lbs. I’d rather have one of those.

      • pistoffnick the refusnik

        One of the engineers I work with has one. He’s like 6′-2″. It’s kind of ridiculous to watch him get in and out.
        Still, it looks like a fun little street-legal go-cart.

  35. Sensei

    Taiwan’s air force said the pilot ejected from his single-seat Mirage 2000 aircraft in a parachute at 11:26 a.m. local time, more than an hour after it took off on a combat training mission from an airfield in the eastern county of Taitung.

    That’s some quality editing there WSJ…

  36. Mojeaux

    Being generous to Tom Brady, maybe he’s just genuinely lost and doesn’t know what to do with himself. As for the guy who paid an enormous amount of money for Brady’s last ball, that’s a fraud claim in the making.

    • invisible finger

      Or he just saw what Rodgers signed for and got a phone call.

    • WTF

      Fraud by whom? If Brady sold it as his last ball, sure, but if some third party made the representation based on Brady’s retirement, then I don’t see how they should have known he would un-retire.

  37. The Late P Brooks

    The original Lotus seven weighed less than 1000 pounds. That’s Chapman-esque minimalism.

  38. Rebel Scum

    If you stick crazy, crazy might stick you.

    A woman stabbed her date whom she had met online in retaliation for the 2020 death of an Iranian military leader killed in an American drone strike, police said.

    Nika Nikoubin, 21, has been charged with attempted murder, battery with a deadly weapon and burglary, KLAS-TV reported.

    Nikoubin and the man met online on a dating website, Henderson police wrote in an arrest report. The pair then agreed to meet at Sunset Station hotel on March 5, renting a room together.

    While in the room, the pair began having sex when Nikoubin put a blindfold on the man, police said. Nikoubin then turned off the lights, and several minutes later, the man “felt a pain on the side of his neck,” KLAS reported.

    Nikoubin reportedly stabbed the man in the neck “for revenge against U.S. troops for the killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020,” police wrote in a report.

    • Ownbestenemy

      I am so glad I swiped left on that one.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      “I take it that this means we won’t be having sex?”

      • Ownbestenemy

        Must have been lost in translation when she said she wants to stab him. He was thinking he was going to get pegged.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Aaaaaah, I see now how that happened.

        In retrospect, telling her to shove it in to the hilt just made the misunderstanding worse.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Ummm….

      Did she have to wait until she was 21 to buy a knife or something? Why did it take 2 years for her to revenge her Iranian buddy?

      • Ownbestenemy

        Cause it isn’t the reason why and she is just nuts.

        When talking to police, Nikoubin told an investigator “she wanted revenge,” police said. She said she had listened to a song called “Grave Digger,” which “gave her the motivation… to carry out her revenge.”

    • juris imprudent

      So apparently he was un-cut.

      • juris imprudent

        Hey-o, I would’ve expected a narrowed gaze instead of a rapier response.

    • Not Adahn

      While in the room, the pair began having sex when Nikoubin put a blindfold on the man, police said. Nikoubin then turned off the lights, and several minutes later, the man “felt a pain on the side of his neck,” KLAS reported.

      Some women do not respond well to premature ejaculation.

  39. Tundra

    Good morning, Banjos!

    Thanks for the lynx and the brain worm I’m gonna actually enjoy!

    I think Brady is insane. But watch – he’ll fucking win another SB and go out on top, the prick.

    • Ownbestenemy

      A recreation of late 19th century London I see.

  40. The Late P Brooks

    Trollalol

    Elon Musk has apparently made fun of people supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia by sharing a meme on his Twitter account.

    Mocking people who publicly back different causes online, the Tesla CEO shared a popular meme style that features a man holding a Ukrainian flag which was captioned “I Support the Current Thing.” Behind the man, also known as the NPC Wojak meme, are various LGBTQ+ flag designs.

    The tweet sent out to his 77.6 million followers instantly gained attention with both positive and negative reactions. At the time of writing, well over 165,000 people liked the tweet while 13,000 people commented on the post.

    Mockery, and scant regard.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      77.6 million followers

      Wow

    • Ownbestenemy

      It isn’t even mockery. It is true. If a person tosses up a Ukraine flag because Mary Jane put up the Ukraine flag who only put it up because her favorite propagandist social circles did, they are just “supporting the current thing”.

      • rhywun

        Where were the Ukraine flags in 2014?

      • Gustave Lytton

        Or Georgia flags in 2008? Or outrage, other than by minor human rights groups, over Chechnya?

      • Not Adahn

        There is one up next to Old Glory on my drive to work.

      • rhywun

        I’ve seen them at soccer matches and tennis tournament – both in the crowd and on flag-poles and such.

    • Sensei

      And yet he has sent Ukraine battery storage, providing free charging for EVs there and sent them satellite receivers and is providing free service.

      So glad that Twitter captures all this nuance.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Im not gonna simp for her but she hit a nerve with Romney

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I take that to mean Romney’s up to his ears in Ukrainian corruption.

      • Tundra

        Why should he be any different? It appears that every goddamn establishment puke has a family member making bank over there.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        A quick perusal of reddit indicates the hivemind has decided that Tulsi is a Russian asset. Along with Tucker and the entirety of the GOP because they haven’t declared war yet or some lunacy like that.

        Of course, nobody is taking on the claims that we have labs over there in a direct fashion, it is simply asserted that we do not, even though we do and have admitted it.

        We’re through the looking glass here.

      • juris imprudent

        Of course we don’t have them and how dare you compromise their security by talking openly about them?

      • Tundra

        Oh hey, look at that!

        I was wrong. It wasn’t a relative.

      • robc

        When your enemies are Hillary and Mitt, you are doing something right.

    • rhywun

      I’m not a mind-reader; I wonder if has some examples.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        If you don’t accept the accusation at face value you are a Putinista and a traitor.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Man oh man, the replies in that thread. A lot of people have had their brains broken over the past several years.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Or they’re bots.

        I’m curious to know what percentage of twitter is paid service bots meant to create the illusion of consensus.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Some of them are maybe but I fear the insanity du joure has become a feature of politics and people find themselves purity spiraling into dangerously stupid positions.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Wasn’t a deep look into Obama’s have some ridiculous amount of fake accounts? Something like 20 million.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I believe Trump had a massive army of paid followers as well.

      • Ownbestenemy

        For sure. Its all fake up and down. A company pays a click farm or whatever and they are destroyed. Politicians? Nah, no worries that it is all fake as long as the preferred outcome is reached by their followers.

    • Gustave Lytton

      The brainwashing doesn’t fall very far from the tree.

  41. The Late P Brooks

    Redlining

    Amazon announced on Friday that it has decided to relocate office staff in downtown Seattle due to a sustained uptick in violent crime, with other businesses in the area opting to stick with remote work for the same reason.

    The location that office workers are being moved from employs around 1,800 people, the company confirmed to KOMO News. However, it is currently unclear how many are being relocated as many have continued to work remotely since the start of the pandemic two years ago.

    The spike in the city’s violent crime hit a new peak on March 2, when 15-year-old Michael del Bianco was shot and killed at the intersection of 3rd Avenue and Pike Street, which is where Amazon’s office building is located. In order to address the issues plaguing the area, the Seattle Police Department set up a mobile precinct at the intersection and increased its number of patrolling bike cops.

    How racist.

    • The Last American Hero

      Amazon may have an office near there, but there main offices in Seattle are not anywhere near 3rd and Pike.

  42. Pope Jimbo

    What do you do when you have lost nearly a quarter of your customers and the quality of your finished product sucks? Go on strike!

    The number of students attending Minneapolis Public Schools has plummeted in recent years.

    During the 2017-2018 school year, the district enrolled more than 36,600 students. This year, that number is 28,700. The loss since the last school year was steeper than the district anticipated, forcing it to amend its tax levy downward.

    The district anticipates enrollment will continue to trend down by at least 1.5% each year for the next five years.

    Leaders have expressed hope that over time, changes made as a result of the district’s comprehensive redesign — which was approved in spring 2020 and went into effect this fall — will attract more families to the district but said any resulting gains won’t come in the near term.

    The Teachers’ Union argument seems to be that the state has a giant surplus so they should get some most of it.

    • Pope Jimbo

      FYI. There are actually two links there. The first one shows 10% drops in test scores over the pandemic.

      • creech

        PA also announced test scores and they, too, were down. Of course, the reporter(s) couldn’t be bothered to explain by how much, or if it was district-specific or what. Solution, naturally, was to spend more taxpayer dollars and throw at the underachieving school districts where, presumably, the teachers won’t do their job unless their pay is raised. For some reason, raising pay is never explained as “we will fire the underperformers and hire excellent new teachers who command more money.”
        No, it is always assumed the current slackers will just get more money and that will inspire them to teach better.

    • juris imprudent

      So public schools are going to end up like the federal Dept of Agriculture – an inverted many to one ratio (with the bureaucrats on the left side of that)?

  43. robc

    Tonio, Swissy, or whatever powers that be are handling submissions right now:

    I just made a submission, I would prefer an 11 AM time frame so I can comment fully. Note that it says monthly, so I don’t need a regular slot, I am fine with bouncing around to fill an 11 AM spot when necessary.

    • Swiss Servator

      I’ll give it a gander.

      • pistoffnick the refusnik

        Be glad he didn’t give you a goose, robc!

      • Ownbestenemy

        The bill always comes due

      • juris imprudent

        You two are trying to ruffle some feathers.

      • Pope Jimbo

        They should definitely stop swanning around and get to work.

      • pistoffnick the refusnik

        I’m not going down that path.

      • Pope Jimbo

        It isn’t an eider/or situation!

      • robc

        Danke merci.

  44. Gustave Lytton

    For those more plugged into the behind the scenes NRA, what are the least worst options on the NRA ballot? Looks like all of the official candidates are WLP supporters.

    Also noticed that the ex-gov of MO now has a VA residence. I’m sure it’s so he can take care of his MIL or such.

    • DEG

      I’m not plugged into the NRA scene. In general when I vote I vote only for folks that aren’t incumbents and folks that aren’t endorsed by the Nominating Committee. I assume they are part of the problem. I have made some exceptions. One was a guy involved in the lawsuit over NYC’s carry laws.

    • Homple

      Z’s previous career was a comedian, movie and TV star. He is as good as Reagan was at applying his show business skills to politics and media. From Wikipedia.

      “In 2015, Zelenskyy became the star of the television series Servant of the People, where he played the role of the president of Ukraine. In the series, Zelenskyy’s character was a high-school history teacher in his 30s who won the presidential election after a viral video showed him ranting against government corruption in Ukraine. “

  45. The Late P Brooks

    Honest injun

    One option President Biden has not yet explored is working with Congress to fix our incoherent domestic fuel policy to improve fuel efficiency across the board and reduce the amount Americans pay for gasoline. Currently, the EPA regulates fuels and automobiles separately, instead of as a single system. Automakers have the technological know-how to make much more efficient car engines, but regulatory barriers prevent them from doing so because they do not permit the use of cleaner fuels that would reduce carbon emissions and enhance performance.

    The Next Generation Fuels Act – a bipartisan bill sponsored by Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois – would eliminate these barriers and bring American fuel policy into the 21st century. It works by raising minimum octane ratings – which Mercedes-Benz has noted is “the single most important property of gasoline when determining engine design” – to levels that both automakers and fuel manufacturers agree are technologically and economically feasible.

    ——-

    One option President Biden has not yet explored is working with Congress to fix our incoherent domestic fuel policy to improve fuel efficiency across the board and reduce the amount Americans pay for gasoline. Currently, the EPA regulates fuels and automobiles separately, instead of as a single system. Automakers have the technological know-how to make much more efficient car engines, but regulatory barriers prevent them from doing so because they do not permit the use of cleaner fuels that would reduce carbon emissions and enhance performance.

    The Next Generation Fuels Act – a bipartisan bill sponsored by Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois – would eliminate these barriers and bring American fuel policy into the 21st century. It works by raising minimum octane ratings – which Mercedes-Benz has noted is “the single most important property of gasoline when determining engine design” – to levels that both automakers and fuel manufacturers agree are technologically and economically feasible.

    An infomercial for ethanol. Just what we need in these troubled times.

    • db

      Behold: The sort-of-rare Double Wall of Text!

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Yes, of course we should continue to use food for fuel as food prices go even higher.

      The ethanol lobby makes an even more retarded case for their product than the solar/wind lobby.

    • db

      And yes, morons everywhere.

      It works by raising minimum octane ratings – which Mercedes-Benz has noted is “the single most important property of gasoline when determining engine design”

      Pray tell, what might that do to both the costs of engines and fuels going forward? There’s nothing I ever learned about refining in my chemical engineering classes that lead me to believe that it’s *cheaper* to refine to a higher octane number. The only ways to get there are to make the cut thinner, use lighter crude, do expensive reforming operations, or make use of expensive synthetic additives, AFAIK. All of those options increase cost significantly.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Yes, but mandating a higher octane blend creates market opportunities for car manufacturers. That’s what matters here, at least to Mercedes.

      • juris imprudent

        Didn’t tetraethyl lead raise octane?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Yes. Still used in avgas.

      • pistoffnick the refusnik

        For a little while longer…

      • Gustave Lytton

        If you’re already producing engines that require mid grade or premium, it might be nice to shank engines only requiring regular. And eliminate the premium pricing for consumers by not offering that grade of fuel.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Nobody needs three different types of fuel!

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Mr. Gray’s law and strategy firm, Boyden Gray & Associates, represents multiple corn growers associations and other clients interested in fuels policy

    • R C Dean

      improve fuel efficiency across the board

      The federal government is long overdue to set fuel efficiency standards.

      reduce the amount Americans pay for gasoline

      Now, that would be a change in direction. As in, a 180 degree reversal.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Seems to me that all the govt needs to do is:

        1) Mandate that all vehicles get at least 150 mpg
        2) Pay everyone $500K for their cars that don’t get 150mpg
        3) Profit!

        Sure some doubters and haters will say the plan won’t work. Don’t listen to them. If you want something enough, you don’t need to worry about pesky laws (of physics or economics).

    • slumbrew

      We continue on in the stupidest timeline.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      But why?

      • Ownbestenemy

        Think of how entertaining SoCal morning traffic will be!

  46. The Late P Brooks

    Behold: The sort-of-rare Double Wall of Text!

    Haha, oops. The second cut-and-paste failed.

    tl;dr: Ethanol will save us. We’ll have to scrap all the cars built before 2025, but that’s a small price to pay.

  47. The Late P Brooks

    And they always say, a gallon of ethanol is cheaper than a gallon of gasoline, without mentioning the energy deficit which means you burn more ethanol to go the same distance.

    • db

      Yep. They need to sell it in $/Joule.

    • Muzzled Woodchipper

      This.

      My truck can take E85 (flex fuel).

      What they don’t tell you about flex fuel is that despite being about 13% cheaper as of right now), I only get about 60% the mileage per gallon, which means that I’m still spending far more than I goddamn ought to.

  48. The Late P Brooks

    Speaking of technological “advancements” in internal combustion engines, watching the teardowns on “I do cars” and other youtube channels makes me think direct injection (fuel straight into the combustion chamber) may be good for making laboratory emissions numbers, but long term efficiency is adversely affected. All that crap built up in the intake runners and on the intake valve is not conducive to air flow.

    • Sensei

      Toyota’s solution is to have both direct and port injection.

      For everyone else that buys a new car and plans to keep it past the warranty period you’d best plan on having the intake disassembled and cleaned. Also direct injection injectors and high pressure pumps are expensive.

    • DEG

      Yep. My car is direct injection. It’s got about 118K miles on it. The drivetrain warranty ended at 100K miles. So far, no problems, but we’ll see.

  49. The Late P Brooks

    Toyota’s solution is to have both direct and port injection.

    That would be the (an) obvious solution. What would Colin Chapman do?

    I wonder how much parasitic drag there is in the high pressure pump.

  50. B.P.

    In scanning some news outlets over the last couple of days, it seems “it’s complicated” is the new talking point for why gas prices are out of control. I guess “corporate greed” wasn’t polling as well as hoped. Quick! Crank out a bunch of explainers, start using the term “fungible” a lot, etc.

  51. The Late P Brooks

    To Toyota’s credit they change where they inject fuel depending on operating temperature and the like so that they actually try to utilize the port injection to maximize efficiency as well.

    After thinking about it for a good five seconds, I would guess low load cruising would be a good time to run port injection to wash down the runners and valves.

  52. wdalasio

    I’m not sure Putin doesn’t have a point with regard to Facebook. By Facebook’s own standards, and in this case standards that haven’t been particularly controversial, incitement to violence is grounds for a ban. It’s been documented that Facebook has hosted calls to violence against Russians. And it’s been documented that these calls to violence have been brought to the attention of Facebook management. By Facebook’s own standards, it’s hard to see where Facebook doesn’t merit banning.

    • Pope Jimbo

      I don’t think the ban of Facebook will hurt them all that much.

      What is really going to kill FB is the loss of Russian Bot traffic. If that goes away, they will lose untold $$$$$

      Of course, if Russia pulls its bots, that means it is Time For Hillary! Nothing can stop her now.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I would pay cash money to watch a debate between Kamala and Hillary.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Moderated by Zombie Alan Turing.

      • Bobarian LMD

        AKA Chris Wallace?