Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas! And what a fantastic day it always is!
Hunter Biden sought to cash in with oligarchs during first Russian war on Ukraine, records show
Secret Service renting $30K Malibu pad to protect Hunter Biden
‘Big guy’ reemerges in Hunter Biden grand jury: Report
Three Republicans Vote With Democrats In Preview Of Final Jackson Confirmation
BLM leaders ‘secretly’ bought a $6 million mansion
Elon Musk Becomes Largest Shareholder Of Twitter
Democratic anxiety grows over Biden’s dismal polls
Grammy Ratings Spiral to Another Near-Record Low
That’s all I got for today. I’ll leave you with a song and move along with my day.
“Hunter Biden sought to cash in with oligarchs during first Russian war on Ukraine, records show”
Was the secret service tapped to escort him there?
That’s a good question, and if so would generate a paper trail for the agents’ travel and expenses. I’m assuming that everyone was smart enough to have made sure the Secret Service didn’t overhear anything criminal, but you never know and that would create an interesting situation having the agents testify in an HB criminal trial.
Next article in two weeks: “Can Biden Pardon his Son Before Trial?”
I thought I had already seen one of those….
You saw the version that said it would be the greatest injustice in history. When Biden does it, it will be courageous and selfless and done to save the country.
I read “The laptop from hell” and I got to tell you that the secret service doesn’t come off as a non-partisan entity when it comes to the Bidens. In fact, they both provided cover to the crime family whenever someone needed to be scared (the laptop guy in Jersey has one heck of a story about the FBI harassment he got), and managed to “lose” paperwork filed by law whenever they escorting Hunter to numerous shady deals in China and Eastern Europe so people couldn’t connect the dots easily.
When I say Obama weaponized the bureaucracy, making it a woke evil entity, this is what I am talking about. All the top people at every critical entity in our massive public sector bureaucracy were – in good old marxist fashion – chosen for loyalty to the crime syndicate over skill and effectiveness, and they proceeded to convert every organization under them into shitholes. That was done by appointing corrupt partisan hacks – like themselves – to all the major key points driving policy and action by every government entity. This top down takeover allows you to keep any of the people not buying into the corrupt takeover on the ropes (you can not only destroy their livelihood but actually send them to jail if they give you shit) and necessitates only a few of the people on the ground that do the dirty work for the corrupt fucks in charge, allowing them to do their criminal shit with gusto.
That’s why I suspect at this point that we can only restore our republic if the government bureaucracies are dismantled, especially at the top and in every senior leadership post, and drastically shrunk. As long as they have this much power provided by the fact government, through the unelected public sector, has their corrupt fingers in everything, we can never restore a system that isn’t broken and corrupt.
Absolutely right. Remember the SS member who refused to protect Trump? They are far from being a benign protective service. Obama completed the corruption started under the Bush/Clinton years and turned our government into a big Chicago.
We need to get out of the protecting politicians and their loser relatives business.
Especially the criminal ones, which seems to basically be all of them.
With how much wealth they acquire during their time in office, they can afford to pay for private protection if they want it.
Nonsense, they should have to rely on the average local police response times for protection.
Morning, Banjos
“‘Big guy’ reemerges in Hunter Biden grand jury: Report”
They are trying, desperately, to throw Hunter under the bus so they can protect Joe’s criminal administration, thinking “The Big Guy” can just pardon him, but this desperate move is not going to work unless they can completely control the narrative.
“BLM leaders ‘secretly’ bought a $6 million mansion”
Wait a fucking second! Who could have seen that a marxist racket backed and supported by the team blue crime syndicate would end up being criminal with money sent to it by idiots?
To be fair, the donors knew they were giving money to benefit criminals. They were merely misled about which criminals would benefit most.
You would be surprised how many team blue people really believe team blue is on the side of the angels and would never do wrong.. Because they say so..
That applies to both teams, TBF.
Absolutely.. The fact that so many people feel government somehow isn’t subject to all the human frailties they see everywhere else – especially when you hear the marxist/fascist/leftists talk about private sector entities and their malfeasance or team red people about government censoring the things they don’t like with gusto – baffles me. I always get stupid looks when I point out most, serious private sector corruption only happens because government legalized it, encourages it, or turns a blind eye to it when their people are doing it, and that when government steps up to correct things it only gets worse. But at least you have an entity that occasionally can step in to prevent the whole shitshow from going too far. You should see the cognitive dissonance when you point out that when government controls it all nobody in government will be held accountable. They will tell you it ain’t so and then start accusing you of being racist/fascist/sexist/and whatever else, cause they do not want their belief governments are above corruption if the people that peddle marxism run it, to be destroyed.
“Democratic anxiety grows over Biden’s dismal polls ”
The fact that the abysmal polls seem to be blamed on Biden – lets face it, we all know Biden isn’t even deciding what flavor of pudding or ice cream he gets – irks me to no end. This is a reboot of the old Obama agenda, on steroids, as they had planned to do once the Cthulhu mythos entity Hillary got power from their rigged 2016 election, and they are just pissed the tactic of controlling the narrative while shit kept falling apart, which they did with awesome success while Obama was running the shitshow, is no longer working. No wonder they keep blaming Trump. After all, he broke their monopoly on what information was widely distributed and considered main stream by forcing them all to show they were political hacks bought and owned by the team blue crime syndicate.
“Ban all AWFLs”
The crime is that people that have seen real violence allowed snowflake assholes to pretend words were violence. If that stupid shit had been cockblocked, we wouldn’t have to deal with idiots like this pretending they have PTSD because people are mean to them. There should be a law that would allow anyone witnessing any of this “words are violence” idiocies to correct the morons postulating this bullshit dynamic by inflicting real violence on them.
What is an ‘AWFL’?
Awful White Female Librarians?
Partly true but a control group of 1 skews the figures pretty fast
A misspelling
Affluent White Female Liberal.
The 20-something aspirational class who infect local news such that coverage of things like small business only covers the types of businesses they like.
There is a whole group of women out there that are single moms or never been moms that couldn’t get or keep a relationship that have substituted government for that gaping hole in their lives that would be filled by a significant other and children. These are the types that think government solves problems and we need more of it to feminize society. These government sugar daddy women are the ones that shitstorm attack people that remind them of how vapid they are and how meaningless their lives are out of envy. nothing is more destructive than a woman that has her biological entity affirm itself despite her choices to ignore its calls earlier in life.
Blunt but accurate. A major subgroup is 50-something divorcees whose husbands left after 15 years of nagging. They stencil something like “peace, love, and kindness” on their wall, get some generic “meaningful” tattoo and start saying “namaste” all the time because “kindness is everything”. Oh, and they’re reliably the most hateful people on the planet when anything that approaches standards of morality, shame, or conflict arise.
In this particular case, Lorenz is a malicious twat that got her jollies (and her paycheck) by calling down the woke mob on unsuspecting nobodies and cancelling their careers.
If she were tarred, feathered, and strung up from a lamppost, I wouldn’t bat an eye.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Do you think I could post that quote to twitter as a reply to a bluecheck with no consequences?
That thin skinned bunch of pussies would demand your head on a pike for saying out loud what everyone of them worries other people might realize is where the journo class comes from.
You got a purdy mouth!
Where is Ned Beatty – or Indiana Jones, when Spielberg and Lucas found him in their neck of the woods – when ya need em?
The throat veins. Piece de la resistance…
We made the mistake of believing what our parents told us – that if you ignore bullies they’ll leave you alone.
You don’t get rid of bullies by ignoring them. You get rid of bullies by putting them into the hospital for a few weeks.
‘Nuff said – https://youtu.be/I7jGLNZkZJ8
Yo, for those rent numbers, you’d think they would fix that wall.
Daily Quordle 71
3️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
4️⃣6️⃣
5️⃣8️⃣
8️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣4️⃣
4 8
5 6
7️⃣4️⃣
3️⃣6️⃣
5 3
4 7
How does the image posting work? Do you just put in a link to it?
There’s a ‘copy to clipboard’ button. Click that, then paste.
Daily Quordle 71
5️⃣3️⃣
4️⃣7️⃣
quordle.com
⬜⬜⬜?? ⬜⬜??⬜
⬜⬜⬜?⬜ ??⬜??
⬜⬜⬜?⬜ ?????
⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬜⬜⬜?⬜ ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜??? ⬜⬜?⬜?
⬜⬜??? ⬜⬜?⬜?
????? ?⬜??⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜????
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
Aha!
Push the copy to clipboard button on quordle.com.
Pasted into the window here. You’ll get what lObOt has below.
Most people edit it down to the small quad image.
8️⃣6️⃣
3️⃣5️⃣
4 5
6 7
Daily Quordle 71
6️⃣5️⃣
4️⃣7️⃣
quordle.com
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜?⬜?
⬜?⬜⬜? ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬜??⬜⬜
⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬜???⬜
⬜⬜⬜?⬜ ?????
????? ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬜⬜⬜?? ?⬜⬜??
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜??⬜⬜ ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
????? ?⬜??⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜?⬜?
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
7️⃣6️⃣
5️⃣3️⃣
Daily Quordle 71
5️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
quordle.com
⬜⬜?⬜⬜ ⬜??⬜⬜
?⬜??⬜ ⬜?⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜??? ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜???? ??⬜⬜⬜
????? ⬜?⬜⬜⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
⬜⬜?⬜? ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬜?⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜??? ⬜⬜?⬜?
????? ?⬜??⬜
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????
Farg.
8️⃣3️⃣
5️⃣6️⃣
“While I do not expect to agree with every decision she may make on the Court, I believe that she more than meets the standard of excellence and integrity,” Romney said.
This used to be the norm, now it’s a sign of apostasy.
I agree with you but disagree with Romney.
\
And she’s the right tint.
A judge who won’t even state whether she believes people have innate individual rights does not qualify for the bench, let alone ‘excellence and integrety’
This used to be the norm
Only for conservatives
Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork were really the only close partisan votes in the last few decades.
Roberts confirmed 78-22
Souter confirmed 90-9
Scalia confirmed 98-0
O’Connor confirmed 99-0
I should say, prior to the Obama administration…
Both Thomas and Bork were nominated/supported by conservatives. The last time before Obama that the Republicans mounted a serious challenge to a Democratic nominee was during the (first) Cleveland administration.
(and at that time, the Democrats were the conservatives)
I think you are forgetting about Abe Fortas.
A complicated case:
Against counting it: He was already an associate justice, many Republicans supported his elevation to chief justice, and opposition was led by Strom Thurmond, a Democrat
For counting it: Thurmond was a conservative Democrat, the nominator was none other than LBJ, and Fortas “himself called the effort to defeat his nomination, ‘anti-Negro, anti-liberal, anti-civil rights, [and] anti-Semitic.'”
More pros/antis:
Anti: Nominated close to the election, LBJ was very unpopular at the time, and unlike Bork’s case, Fortas’s nomination was never actually “rejected” so much as “expired”: it was Nixon who filled the vacancy
Pro: The opposition was pretty clearly the “conservative coalition”; party and ideology did not align so closely at that time; Nixon also spoke out against Fortas and, of course, nominated someone else
I see Romney is shilling for the fundamentalist Mormon vote or he’s planning on running as a Democrat next cycle.
Biden asks his handlers what he’s supposed to do after his speech, then wanders off to talk to a little girl in the crowd.
Who is the Tres Muffin following behind? Joe needs to know!
How unsteady he is on his feet is what I notice every time I see one of these clips.
I mock him but I’ve had the same problem for the last couple of years. Mind you, I just sweep floors and clean up after Postal workers. Nobody is gonna die if I fuck up.
FAFO.
That was my ray of sunshine for the day.
Yup
Well, that didn’t go quite as planned…
Hah! The lovely Banjos brings the best gifs! Mornin!
What exactly does buying 9.2% of Twitter get you?
Leverage.
Not sure if there are thresholds that would get a shareholder a seat on the board.
He bought it to sit on it. It’s more of a threat than anything. The Sword of Damocles, as it were. Passive shares. He gets to sit and watch. Pretty canny.
He’s on the board as of this morning.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the next meeting.
Pumping and dumping Dogecoin last year got him a lot of extra cash.
Pumping and dumping every morning after a some coffee and a spliff seems to earn him a million per day.
Immunity from deplatforming.
I want to see some muscles clenched and a shit-load of re-platforming.
Significant improvements.
I know some of you don’t like his government contracts and all that, but this is the only famous person who makes me smile on a regular basis.
A guy that does the Rogan show, smokes a spliff and basically tells everyone else to go fuck themselves seems pretty cool to me. He’s also the most wealthy person in the world, so he’s got that going for him…
I need fuck you money.
He’s been an alright guy, mostly. I still remember his blow up at Top Gear. i don’t think he really gave much of a damn about politics until Biden snubbed him during his electric car summit. That set Elon off like a rocket. And we are the better for it. Also all the press to Amazon’s penis rocket was no doubt irritating too. Elon orbited the earth, for chrissakes! No press for that.
Suppressed AKM with RPK drum
Interesting photo.
Yup, still amusing.
Good morning, Banjos!
I’ll leave you with a song…
You know, I know a guy who loves that song. I think you’d like him!
So Twitter wants me to hate Tucker Carlson and some pretty, chunky girl. Okay.
Knowing what I know now, I am more amazed at the manufacture of chain mail than I was before. It’s finicky work.
Right? Scale makes more sense.
Riveted or butted.?
Rivetted is more amazing.
Imagine trying to not lose the rivet in the fire, getting the darn thing in position, and managing to not have it relocate or worse, cool down, while peening.
Pieces of metal that small, I’ve seen them cool almost instantly from orange to black if they touch an anvil. Of course, the anvil for that rivet work is going to be much smaller and have less heat mass.
I haven’t talked to anyone that made riveted mail. But I am pretty sure it is done cold.
Now I’m sad.
Still, doesn’t change the finicky work part of it.
Very finicky.
The links themselves are made with mild steel. Most of the people that I know start with fence wire. You use a drill and a long post to make coils, then snip the coils into links. When they make butted mail, it’s like watching my wife knit. They just keep weaving the links together while carrying on a conversation.
For riveted mail, the two ends of each link need to be hammered flat and have a hole punched before the links get knitted together. Then a rivet is inserted and peened down.
When I worked the renfaire, I’d rear a “mithril” shirt (butcher’s mail — stainless steel 1/4″ links).
You don’t link dirt, oil, and/or rust rubbing off on your gambeson?
I don’t like wearing a gambeson in Texas in the summer. A-line undershirt+jerkin or surcoat FTW!
Yup.
Now I need to build a machine to do hot rivet chainmail.
You might need to anneal it afterwards. You don’t want hardened links.
Who doesn’t want glass-brittle armor?
I can’t do Sloopy’s sports coverage, but here’s the obvious one.
We watched the whole game, couldn’t believe the first half, then couldn’t believe the second half. Great game.
The Sloopster just played that song yesterday.
That’s what makes them a cute couple.
They probably had it playing in separate vehicles simultaniously. So very Glib!
This is worse than roommates having their periods in sync.
Three “Republicans”.
“Bipartison, Bipartison, Bipartison” they all shouted to a rapidly emptying room.
Bipartisan*
It’s a bi party, son. Now grab your ankles.
“It’s bad,” said one Democratic strategist. “You have an energy crisis that’s paralyzing and inflation is at a 40-year high and we’re heading into a recession. The problem is simple. The American people have lost confidence in him.”
Who the fuck ever had confidence in him to begin with?
What I notice is that all these “crisis’s” we have seem to happen in a vacuum instead of because of idiot policies from idiots. After Obama told us “you couldn’t drill your way out of high energy prices”, only to have Trump not just prove him wrong, but expose another racket from the left that hates the poors, all while these crooks pretend to care for them poors, we went right back to more of that “you can’t drill your way out of high energy prices”. and that was so they could again steal massive amounts of tax payer lucre through green energy rackets. Our elites, especially the ones pretending to care about the little guy, are fucking evil.
What I notice is that all these “crisis’s” we have seem to happen in a vacuum instead of because of idiot policies from idiots.
The mechanisms of the economy and the market move slowly enough that cause and effect aren’t readily apparent to the average person.
Whether we like it or not, much of this current situation was sown in the Trump years. Heck, much of it was sown in the Obama years and before, and much of it wasn’t even the sitting president’s fault at the time. However, there are some clear connections between executive decisions the current mess, and we should pillory them for being so stupid.
The purpose of the government lately seems to be to provide top-cover for large corporate* decisions. Trump got snookered into this with COVID and “Operation Warp Speed”. He’s still (though less often now) talking about how the vaccines were his doing. Meanwhile, what actually benefits the average working person is not so much what benefits large multinationals as what benefits small-to-medium shops (which, yes, have their own problems). The President doesn’t hardly set economic policy, but he is nevertheless the face of a massive economic system which is centered around government (formal and informal).
* = By “large corporate” I mean, mostly, the nexus of “publicly owned” businesses, their owners (investment firms, state retirement funds), NGOs, academia, media, state-funded enterprises, and adjacent nonprofits
81 million dead people?
Daily Glib Fit Ray of Hope
Prunes… Lots of prunes…
That and powdered orange drink.
The Prune Tang Diet for the Win!
Another good one, though Ms Jessica is just a little bit too old for me but hey, “Older Women, Younger Whiskey”, right?
“The question is, given a lot of the good news in the country — the jobs numbers, businesses opening, the masks are off, the Russians are in full panic, America is astride the top of the world — can we do better? Can we do better than normal? And I think the disappointment right now is we’re not.”
I need to clean my glasses.
The Hill has removed its comment section, as there are many other forums for readers to participate in the conversation. We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter.
Sad.
They are swimming against the tide. It was always the far-left sites that shut it down. Commenters wandered off. Have they no clue? “Redditors Assemble!”
“We don’t have the resources to censor contrary views. We will offload to others.”
Evil spirits
Gun ownership and violence have been on the rise nationwide for years, but exploded amid the stress of the pandemic and the polarized politics of our times. Gun sales hit an all-time high in 2020, when Americans purchased 22.8 million firearms. Last year was the second-highest year on record, with Americans buying some 19.9 million guns.
Meanwhile, more Americans died from gunshots in 2020 than ever before — some 45,222 souls lost to murder, suicide and accidents, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2021, gun violence increased in Los Angeles and homicide rose statewide. Law enforcement officials blame much of the violence on so-called ghost guns, untraceable firearm kits that are sold in parts without serial numbers.
Other developed nations don’t live like this. The rate of gun homicides in the U.S. is eight times higher than it is in Canada, 13 times higher than it is in France, and 23 times higher than in Australia.
In the aftermath of the Sacramento slaughter, President Biden called on Congress to enact reasonable restrictions on firearms by banning ghost guns, assault weapons and high-capacity magazines; requiring background checks for all gun sales; and repealing gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability. But after years of inaction despite the nation’s mounting death toll, we have no reason to think Congress will suddenly heed Biden’s call.
Guns cause hate and poverty and envy and despair. If we get rid of the guns, people will live in peace and harmony.
Just like the Indians!
Mysore Rockets were just Fireworks!
Kali abhorred the spilling of blood!
Huh. My Kali does not abhor it at all.
The reason the Thugees used strangulation was to provide sacrifices without shedding blood. I forget the theological reasoning.
<– This is my Kali. She does not understand this "sacrifice" thing, but she does like to spill blood. Mostly mine.
Law enforcement officials blame much of the violence on so-called ghost guns, untraceable firearm kits that are sold in parts without serial numbers.
Paid shills shill for pay.
Other developed nations don’t live like this. The rate of gun homicides in the U.S. is eight times higher than it is in Canada, 13 times higher than it is in France, and 23 times higher than in Australia.
Deaths per 1,000 people in 2020:
United States: 8.9
Canada: 7.3
France: 9.4
Australia: 6.6
All this murder, plus COVID, doesn’t seem to be moving those deaths by much.
The US is not even in the top 10 of firearm homicide by population (although Puerto Rico is, so maybe we need to consider making them a state to get our numbers up). Most of the top 10 countries heavily restrict or essentially ban private firearm ownership. We have a hell of a lot more in common with Brazil and Mexico than we do with the fucking Netherlands or Denmark.
Mostly time zones.
Yes, the joyous dance of definition-gaming. Those countries aren’t “developed” which apparently means you should expect to be murdered in the street at any minute. Never mind that many other “undeveloped” countries aren’t indiscriminate murder-zones.
Socioeconomically, the U.S. is like half a dozen Denmarks bolted onto Brazil. The people who live in the Denmarks can’t fathom why anyone would need a gun, and they think the entire country is demographically identical to their neighborhoods (even when obvious counter-evidence appears before their eyes).
Yes, I agree. Although I’d say Brazil itself is like Brazil with six Denmarks bolted onto it. There are enclaves there where gun violence is extremely rare. The entire far south of the country has much lower violence rates than other parts. A city like Curitiba is a different world than Maceio, much in the way say San Luis Obispo is a different world than East St Louis.
We need to do the same thing with guns that we did with drugs, make them illegal and make anyone who possesses one a felon and send them to jail. We got rid of drugs in a short time in this country by declaring a War on Drugs and getting serious. Not only did we almost completely eliminate drugs by doing so, but it was cheap and it gave us the lowest prison population in the world, with an especially low number of blacks incarcerated. We can have just as much success once we just make guns illegal to own, sell or even possess.
Well, you may scoff but the War on Education has been tremendously successful, even without much publicity
These “wars” have not succeeded in no small part because the people who are tasked with prosecuting them are not actually interested in reaching a conclusion. While drugs will never be fully purged (see: drug problems in North Korea), Rodrigo Duterte has shown that an aggressive anti-drug platform (namely, shoot the drug dealers first and ask questions later) is fairly effective. But applying such a strategy here would greatly undermine a lot of power structures closely connected to our government.
Narrator: they’re not using legally-purchased guns.
Scorched Earth
Spanish officials have seized a Russian-owned luxury yacht in Mallorca at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice. It was the first coordinated seizure under the department’s Task Force KleptoCapture, which is tasked with enforcing the sweeping sanctions placed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
The $90 million 255-foot yacht, named Tango, is owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, who heads the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate with interests in metallurgy, machinery, energy, telecommunications as well as others.
“Today marks our taskforce’s first seizure of an asset belonging to a sanctioned individual with close ties to the Russian regime. It will not be the last,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement. “Together, with our international partners, we will do everything possible to hold accountable any individual whose criminal acts enable the Russian government to continue its unjust war.”
I’m still waiting for some rational justification for this. Was the boat used to transport young comfort women to secluded oligarch playgrounds?
Inadvertently admitting the rationale and not even seeing it.
If that boat requires a crew of more than two, it’s misnamed.
“The news from the job market on Friday was that the U.S. economy added 431,000 jobs in March, more signs of a strong economy. Yet those figures have not translated into a boost for Biden.”
I’ve been working this whole time. Prices are going through the roof and the price of gas has almost doubled. People are talking about food shortages. But I should forget about all that because some other people got jobs!
I wonder how many of those recovered jobs are as good paying as the ones that were lost over the last two years. I’m supposing many of those are low wage positions being filled by people who are taking it out of desperation after their business went tits up
I think a lot of the pandemic “pay people to stay home” type programs are finally drying up enough to get people back into the job market. The problem is the workforce participation is still way down,
A lot of people looked around, decided they could do without a job (or do an underground job) and said “fuck it!” And effectively retired. Once you pull out of the noise of modern society you start to realize how little of what you waste money on is necessary. Me personally, I saved a shit ton of money. And it put me within sight distance of retirement by changing bad money habits I had. Hell I would have retired too, if I could.
I bet a not-insignificant number of them are people getting back to work in the service industry.
Just like old times
When former President Obama appears at the White House on Tuesday, Democrats say it will provide a much-needed boost to President Biden, who has been lagging in the polls.
Obama remains extremely popular with the Democratic base, and his return to the White House comes as Biden has struggled to boost his poll numbers in the face of a flurry of challenges, most notably soaring inflation.
“I think this comes at the right moment,” said one Democratic strategist. “We need a jolt of energy right now, and no one brings that more than Obama.”
Biden and Obama will promote the Affordable Care Act, the former president’s signature piece of legislation during his time in office.
Obama has remained out of the spotlight since leaving the White House in 2017, only reemerging in key moments during the Trump and Biden administrations. At those times, he has voiced his support for Biden on issues including the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, Biden’s Build Back Better framework and voting rights.
Maybe some of that polished glamour will rub off.
You can’t polish a turd.
Of course you can. Mythbusters proved it. Carnivore scat works best.
But you can shellac it.
Psha! Marxism tells you that not only can you polish turds, but that the labor to do that is just as important as the labor of, for example, a doctor, engineer, airline pilot, or janitor!
Fuck off with this, already. He threw that maskless birthday party where he invited half of Hollywood. And wrote a book (or two?). And signed a big deal with Netflix. And has given plenty of speeches at various functions. And, and, and…
A quick internet search reveals a plethora of articles starting with words such as “Obama has largely avoided the spotlight since…” which then go on to describe him seeking the spotlight and giving him cover for doing so…starting only 3 months after he left the White House.
If your messiah physically manifested in the world, every day you didn’t hear from him would seem torturous.
Barack “never underestimate the ability of Joe to fuck things up” Obama? That guy?
Obama’s inability to muster any enthusiasm for Biden has been fun to watch, at least.
“Hey there Joe. Good to see you! You’re looking….. What’s for lunch?”
So now that Musk is going to be sitting on the board at Twitter it would be an interesting idea if he could get together a hundred thousand people or so that are in favor of free speech to buy the five grand or so of shares to get voting rights for any of his proposals. I’m betting if he sent out a few Tweets asking for a free speech army it wouldn’t be very hard to accomplish. It’s become obvious that there aren’t going to be any serious competitors to Twitter any time soon, so taking it over is a much better move.
And if it ends up somehow hurting Twitter and putting it out of business, the world will be a better place for it.
I’d like to rub my ass in Dorsey’s face.
Kinky Festus.. Very kinky…
Twitter is not going away anytime soon. It presently doesn’t make a lot of money, but it will not go out of biz, at least in the next decade or so. If Musk can accomplish what he seems to want to accomplish that would actually increase the market share of Twitter.
The Bee knocks one out of the park: Liberals Outraged To Learn 10% Of Twitter Now Owned By African-American.
There is some history between Musk and the Bee. He did a long interview with them recently, and supposedly was pretty angry when they were banned from Twitter.
You are correct.
And this is an interesting twist.
I’m interested in what he’s doing, but I’m curious how he will wrest control back from the Feds.
I think the perverting influence comes from Vanguard, Blackrock, and the other major funds which own stakes across multiple industries.
For example, Vanguard owns 8% of Twitter, 8% of Pfizer, 7.5% of Raytheon, 7% of Disney (ABC), 2.5% of News Corp, etc…
The Feds don’t like to exert direct control, so they go through an intermediary such as the truly fascist equity firms like Blackrock which only exist because of loose Fed monetary policies.
And Larry Fink is a notorious WEF asshole extraordinaire.
I remember history class and learning about the oil barons. A big reason why they were broken up (at least as we were taught) was because they were horizontally integrated as opposed to vertically integrated. Meaning, one firm had their hands in several industries. Surely these mega holding firms run afoul of that, but there’s no political will to do anything about it.
Lessons tech companies learned from the 1990s dot-com bubble bursting: get in bed with government.
Banking and finance were actually ahead of that curve.
Yep. If I recall correctly, Microsoft didn’t have much in the way of a lobbying corps. Then they were trust-busted by the federal government for the Explorer browser. They sure lobbied the hell up after that.
The oil barons primarily existed outside of the government’s sphere of influence. That’s why they had to be broken up. They weren’t beholden to the politicians.
The equity firms exist almost completely because of loose monetary policy and they intertwine with government at multiple levels. It’s an incestuous relationship that nobody in DC wants to end.
The oil barons primarily existed outside of the government’s sphere of influence.
Fun tangent: why did the government go after the mafia so hard?
The government doesn’t like competition.
This is no different. You have a handful of rich and powerful people who think they are smart and wise enough to decide how the world should be run. And of course it always makes them more rich and powerful. But being rich and powerful doesn’t give someone the moral authority to run everyone else’s lives.
Maybe we should start calling them the New Robber Barons?
Like-minded people are starting to work together to fight some of this shit. That’s dangerous, and I love it.
Technically the feds can’t control any of it, correct? So if Biden so much as flexes a muscle (publicly) to inhibit free speech on Twitter it would be a lawsuit. The Feds have only gotten this far because Twitter is voluntarily in lockstep.
“From the historical perspective it does make a nice narrative arc from Obama and Biden passing the law to Obama returning to celebrate how it’s grown and been protected under now-President Biden,” said Democratic strategist Eddie Vale. “And it will be a good event and a good speech as one always gets from Obama.”
That outhouse will look a lot better with a fresh coat of paint on it. You’re still going to want to stay upwind, though.
A black woman looks to be headed for a seat on the Supreme Court. At last, our long nightmare is over.
Let the healing and reconciliation begin.
Now if only we could live in a country that would be progressive enough to elect a black man as president, all our troubles would go away.
What’s the black-woman equivalent of NAMBLA?
Contractionary
Senate bargainers reached agreement Monday on a slimmed-down $10 billion package for countering COVID-19 with treatments, vaccines and other steps, the top Democratic and Republican negotiators said, but ended up dropping all funding to help nations abroad combat the pandemic.
The compromise drew quick support from President Joe Biden, who initially pushed for a $22.5 billion package. In a setback, he ended up settling for much less despite administration warnings that the government was running out of money to keep pace with the disease’s continued — though diminished — spread in the U.S.
“Every dollar we requested is essential and we will continue to work with Congress to get all of the funding we need,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. “But time is of the essence. We urge Congress to move promptly on this $10 billion package because it can begin to fund the most immediate needs.”
This is how you get inflation under control.
I have ten days left on my visa in Korea. It will be interesting how this act of my life is going to end or further.
One fun thing: I’m staying with The Lady. it’s so weird. two ex-s sleeping together without sex nor drama. Just polite cuddles. That…just doesn’t happen. But it’s normal for us. Two people actually breaking up and being close friends? Tres would lose his shit over her, for a couple of obvious reasons.
She’s lovely. We’re going to get her a trip to the US. I told her to think about working there. She’s exotic woman (South African), and isn’t white (she’s colored–don’t dare call her black…those groups don’t like each other there). People would (stupidly) gush to have such a diverse person in their workplace. I planted the seed if that’s something she wants to do. She was receptive, but it’s up to her. We shall see. *Shrug*
Heh. Just realized that I have had not one, not two but three girlfriends named “Nadine”. The first one wasn’t too important unless you count knowing looks and furtive hand-holding and smooching . Her family was JW. Pretty sure her Dad would have torn me asunder if he had known.
Nadine?
Redhead? Inventor? Kind of crazy but surprisingly strong?
Nadine?
Nadine
Nadine!
All sorts. The one that I really fell of the cliff for was a dewy-eyed brunette. Things happen quickly when you are a teenaged boy. Third Nadine and I became as one for a few months. It didn’t work out. I was looking to get her name tattooed on my shoulder.
I should write a short story called “Three Nadines” for this site.
Like in the song?
Um…I know that you’re older than me, but I think that I’d remember such a coincidence.
I’ve had two (1.5, really) girlfriends leave me for a guy named Mohammad. Two Mo’s got two of my girls! I remember that…and I have severe memory issues…
But I’m much younger than you. I’ve only been alive for one Evan. But still. Uh…I remember those events pretty specifically.
First Nadine was a home-room crush that sat beside me once in awhile. It didn’t last long. I’d forgotten about it until the other day. The other two broke my heart.
As a matter of fact, we just received some JW literature in the mail yesterday. I hadn’t given a fig about Nadine#1 for about 50 years but the mailer made me remember. Her older Sister was very much hotter. She used to let me sit beside her on the bus.
Scapegoating
“It’s not worth the possibility or the likelihood that this will happen,” Moore said, “if I’m in a situation where I’m set up to fail.” In the wake of Vaught’s trial ― an extremely rare case of a health care worker being criminally prosecuted for a medical error ― nurses and nursing organizations have condemned the verdict through tens of thousands of social media posts, shares, comments and videos. They warn that the fallout will ripple through their profession, demoralizing and depleting the ranks of nurses already stretched thin by the pandemic. Ultimately, they say, it will worsen health care for all.
Statements from the American Nurses Association, the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, and the National Medical Association each said Vaught’s conviction set a “dangerous precedent.” Linda Aiken, a nursing and sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said that although Vaught’s case is an “outlier,” it will make nurses less forthcoming about mistakes.
There is a distinct lack of commentary about how this might even encourage medical staff to be more careful.
I wonder where all the change.org petitions are for convicted truck drivers who kill people when they fall asleep at the wheel.
What are the odds of the US government “sanctioning” problematic citizens and using this precedent to seize their assets?
Well that didn’t post where I wanted it to…
I give it less than five years. And I’m probably being too optimistic there. It will start with only a handful of people first, but will likely expand.
Who says the young people of today have no work ethic?
https://nypost.com/2022/03/21/onlyfans-model-has-brain-surgery-kept-taking-nudes-in-hospital/
That gash on the back of her head & neck is soooo sexxy!
Is there a word for a county that decides to commit suicide? Nationcide?
EU Proposes Ban On Russian Imports
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/european-commission-pushes-ban-russian-coal-imports
There’s a word for countries that kill their own people, democide.
Yea, this isn’t suicide. The people proposing this will have no trouble getting around or heating their homes.
Whoops, I didn’t read far enough.
Some of Vaught’s peers support the conviction. Scott Shelp, a California nurse with a small YouTube channel, posted a 26-minute self-described “unpopular opinion” that Vaught deserves to serve prison time. “We need to stick up for each other,” he said, “but we cannot defend the indefensible.”
Shelp said he would never make the same error as Vaught and “neither would any competent nurse.” Regarding concerns that the conviction would discourage nurses from disclosing errors, Shelp said “dishonest” nurses “should be weeded out” of the profession anyway.
“In any other circumstance, I can’t believe anyone ― including nurses ― would accept ‘I didn’t mean to’ as a serious defense,” Shelp said. “Punishment for a harmful act someone actually did is justice.”
The patriarchy strikes again.
When the barbarian general enters your city, make him feel welcome
Elon Musk will join Twitter’s board of directors after taking a 9.2% stake in the social media company. The news sent shares up more than 6% in the morning.
“Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board,” CEO Parag Agrawal said in a tweet on Tuesday.
“He’s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term,” he added.
Former chief Jack Dorsey praised the move, saying in a tweet Musk “cares deeply about our world and Twitter’s role in it.”
——-
After he was named to the board, Musk on Tuesday teased he would push for adjustments to the product.
“Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!” Musk said in a tweet.
He might not use your skull for a cereal bowl.
This is pretty funny.
Who is Joe Biden?
Ok, maybe it’s more depressing than funny.
They probably shouldn’t pick me for the Jury when the arsonist of Vizio’s HQ gets tried.
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1648829114
There’s a company to never buy from again.
Eff that.
#TCLRokuForever
I remember playing with that technology back in 2008 for a CES demo. I thought it would become a cool add-on like for fantasy sports or social media feeds…. Of course it became an advertising vector…
It’s behavior like this that makes me remain a (much more tepid than in the ’90s) fan of Kalle Lasn & Adbusters. Here in Gotham, elevators, gas pumps, and taxicabs often have screens, that can’t be turned off or muted, blaring advertisements. It’s intrusive and obscene.
You’re in a cyberpunk dystopia without the upsides.
The obvious solution here is to stop watching TV.
Musk’s investment comes at a key time for the social media company. Agrawal, who took over from Dorsey in November, has said he would focus on metrics and accelerate Twitter’s work to bring new products to customers. He’s also under pressure to reach the company’s aggressive internal goals, including growing Twitter to 315 million monetizable daily active users by the end of 2023. Twitter reported 217 million monetizable daily active users in its most recent quarter.
Ooh, that sounds awesome.
When a metric becomes a target…
That explains why Twitter is shooting themselves in the foot by trying to force logins to read tweets.
Just clear cookies. I haven’t logged in for years.
Clearing cookies doesn’t stop it anymore.
I just abandon trying to figure out what the link is.
I use Brave and AdBlock and have zero issues. I clear my history, etc. every day, though.
I use a private window when I follow a link to a tweet. Seems to work fine on Brave.
There is no content there worth the effort of creating an account, let alone logging in.
AGREED!
*sigh*
Half the deliciousness of panda-k-bobs comes from their exclusivity.
https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2022/03/30/lion-burger-tiger-tacos-meet-the-cell-cultured-start-up-working-in-exotic-meats
Loudoun County Public Schools aren’t giving in yet. Parents have no right to know how their kids identify, but the schools are more than welcome to get involved in the sex lives of minors.
https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:901fdea1-641e-3e60-b7d9-e86eec524385#pageNum=1
Oh, and this…
It’s not going to end until the school administrator (?) is swinging from a lamppost.
What’s the black-woman equivalent of NAMBLA?
BWANA: Black Women Are Necessary Accessories
LOL… Fan-edit of Peter Jackson’s entire Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, splicing together every single scene in all 3 films where female characters interact with each other. https://youtu.be/mt2qCjL6-n4
So… what was the point?
haha!
No wonder it’s my favorite movie series.
PSA:
25% off Thermapen ONE.
Ends today.
Disclosing a student’s gender identity can pose imminent safety risks, such as losing family support or housing.
It’s the Underground Railroad, all over again.
Fucking drama queens.
“Can”
Not “will” or even “likely”
There’s a miniscule possibility that a family may not approve of a child’s identity choice and will react violently, therefore we have every right to not only hide their identity from the people that are legally responsible for the minor, but also promote the behavior which may cause problems.
*ahem*
It’s drama non-binary entities, shitlord!
Awesome! Institute for Justice comes in off the top rope – https://www.al.com/news/2022/04/national-group-sues-brookside-over-its-criminal-justice-system-for-profit.html
I love it when you give an explicit instruction with the exact name of what the user needs to open, and they go somewhere totally unrelated.
In other everyday gripes – why is it my responsibility to organize the goodbye lunch for my supervisor? There’s already too many people, with too many schedules and preferences.
I’m tempted to go “Lunch is cancelled”
Due to a lack of hustle?
That Hunter Biden Ukraine/Russia/Secret Service shit is damning.
But only if the mainstream media says so, and they won’t.
And of course, no reasonable prosecutor…
Kinda feels like they’re turning up the heat to make sure Biden doesn’t run again.
“Secret Service renting $30K Malibu pad to protect Hunter Biden”
They couldn’t find a lower-rent area to put him up? You can rent a modest detached home in western Kansas for a grand a month. Find one in open space on a hill and the Secret Service can see all the bad guys coming. I’m sure drugs could be scored within a half hour drive.
Or, or, hear me out here – you don’t provide protective details to the adult children of politicians.
It’s behavior like this that makes me remain a (much more tepid than in the ’90s) fan of Kalle Lasn & Adbusters. Here in Gotham, elevators, gas pumps, and taxicabs often have screens, that can’t be turned off or muted, blaring advertisements. It’s intrusive and obscene.</em
Blade Runner was a documentary.
Of all the sci-fi dystopias Demolition Man really hit it out of the park in predictions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiG99WmpX7c
Honestly, an exciting new life on the outer colonies sounds pretty good sometimes.
THIS! I firmly believe the type of free society I crave can only exist on an open frontier.
Computer: “l0b0t has died of dysentery’.