About The Author

Banjos

Banjos

Wife of sloopy, mother to three bright, curious, and highly active young girls. Perpetually exhausted.

367 Comments

  1. Tres Cool

    whaddup doh’

  2. Not Adahn

    FBI running internal investigation into its own Trump-Russia probe

    That gives me great confidence that the malefactors will be identified and punished.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Heide confirmed during testimony that he is being investigated for withholding potentially exculpatory information in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

      *wrist slap incoming*

    • AlexinCT

      I know you were being facetious, but this is the reason we are never going to get a fix. If those that abuse the power they have never get punished for that, and in fact, often are rewarded, we will get a lot more of it. and that’s precisely what the machine wants. We really might have no other option but to tear it all down.

    • Rat on a train

      “We found we did nothing wrong.”

      • ron73440

        Or, they’ll hang it on some low level guy and give the standard “The great majority of agents act with integrity” bullshit.

      • Rat on a train

        “Everyone not involved in this investigation did not violate any standards on this investigation. That is the majority of our people.”

    • Atanarjuat

      Speaking of the FBI (and apologies if this was previously posted, I was doing hood rat shit), they foiled their own plot again:

      Meet the Press @MeetThePress

      WATCH: Plot to kill fmr. Pres. Bush revealed after docs are accidentally unsealed.

      @PeteWilliamsNBC: “This man started to brag to undercovers that he had ISIS connections. … [He] flew down to Dallas, I think the FBI actually paid for that trip” & they went to Bush’s house.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        They’re more of a menace than they prevent at this point.

    • DEG

      Heh.

      They’ll find the malefactors and determine procedures were followed.

  3. AlexinCT

    Border Patrol agent credited with killing the shooter

    Watch them accuse the agent of using excessive force before this whole horrible event gets memory holed because the perp doesn’t fit the narrative.

    • Count Potato

      I doubt that’s going to happen.

      • AlexinCT

        What specifically do you doubt? Because this perp is not one they want to harp incessantly about as it will hurt some other higher priority agendas.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        It’s not going away. This guy is the stereotypical school shooter.

      • juris imprudent

        Pay no attention to the perp – the gun is the problem. //the-narrative today

      • AlexinCT

        If the usual suspects decide to do this, how long is it before someone points out the problem with these evil fucks is that they have mental disorders, and that this particular individual is Exhibit A when it comes to someone with a serious mental disorder? I get they will scream, rend their clothes, and turn on the person making the accusation, but they are not going to be able to hide that from normals.

      • Count Potato

        It seems the narrative is guns. I don’t think the shooter being hispanic makes any difference. The Stoneman Douglas High School shooter was named Cruz (although he was adopted). The Virginia Tech shooter was asian. So I doubt this will be memory holed.

      • AlexinCT

        The shooter was also someone identifying as a trans person….. Odds are that no matter how hard the usual suspects try to make it about guns, someone will point out the issue with people that think shooting schools up is about mental disorders, and that door being opened for people demanding we let people that now say only biologists can define what a woman is, seems like a risk not willing to be taken.

      • juris imprudent

        The shooter was also someone identifying as a trans person

        link/source?

      • Atanarjuat

        Disclaimer: lots of bad information in the first few days after these types of incidents, but here is a photo.

        The Texas school shooter is some kind of latino femboy or trans. This is what abusing children leads to.

      • AlexinCT

        I saw this in a tweet ins Spanish from someone familiar with the perp yesterday that I can’t seem to find right now..

      • AlexinCT

        Atanarjuat has the tweet….

      • AlexinCT

        Note I saw the same images as the tweet Atanarjuat has linked, but the poster was from the Latino community. It was forwarded to me by someone that knew I could read & translate spanish. The language used by the spanish tweeter was not as PG-13 as this tweet.

      • Count Potato

        “Hundreds of social media posts have speculated about the identity of Salvador Ramos, 18, some of which claimed he was transgender without reliable evidence.

        Multiple tweets, many of which have since been deleted, included photos claimed to be of Ramos wearing feminine clothing; these narratives were subsequently picked up by conspiracy media, including InfoWars and some politicians including Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who later deleted the tweet.

        However, it was quickly revealed that none of the photos were either of Ramos or verifiable as him.

        Reddit user, Apprehensive_Ad_995, said one of the pictures attributed to Ramos was actually of themselves, stating: “it’s not me, I don’t even live in texas.””

        https://www.newsweek.com/uvalde-suspect-salvador-ramos-trans-claimswhat-we-do-know-what-we-dont-1709950

        So who knows?

      • AlexinCT

        I wouldn’t be surprised that even if he was gender bending, that fact would be disputed and hidden.

      • juris imprudent

        JFC people – why don’t you look in 4chan and see what they have to say?

      • Count Potato

        “why don’t you look in 4chan and see what they have to say?”

        That was pretty much my point.

      • juris imprudent

        Let’s all take this as a splendid example of just how badly humans can behave – how easily they can be manipulated. Repeating rumors as a form of malicious gossip because it feels good.

      • waffles

        The water got muddied when pics from a reddit account that looked like but isn’t the shooter was included with the photos that were definitely him. I wouldn’t jump on the trans thing beyond saying the shooter was deeply deranged.

    • Sean

      I want to see this turn into a conversation about the school system/culture producing these shooters.

      • Count Potato

        That’s the real problem.

        Also the police were at his home several times before this happened.

      • AlexinCT

        This is what I doubt will happen. The gun grabbers will never admit the problem is not the guns but the fucks that use them to do evil. Pointing out some people are suffering from mental disorders, and that the bulk of them seem to be the same sort of mental people that keep getting catered to, these days especially, is one of those offenses that brings the mob down on you. Hard. I have watched adults, and especially adult women, demand they be seen and treated as fragile victims and children, while the mob demanding we treat them as fragile victims going bonkers if anyone points out that if they are fragile victims, they are not ready to be part of adult society as the mob also demands.

        I get people are schizophrenic, demanding to be seen & treated as fragile victims when it is convenient and advances the cause, then do a 180 and demand blood from anyone that points out if you identify as a non-adult you should be treated as such, but this formula only serves to create chaos and destruction. Accountability is dead. And without accountability, we can kiss any form of an advanced society goodbye.

      • Atanarjuat

        This is somewhat adjacent to what you mentioned.

        Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz
        There’s probably a correlation between the fact that the US is the only nation with a mass shooting epidemic and the fact that Americans are the most aggressively propagandized population on earth.

        If you took any armed population and psychologically pummelled them from birth with narratives about how mass military slaughter is fine while turning them into underpaid, alienated gear-turners and giving them an artificial culture mass-produced in LA, you’d see mass shootings.

        There’s only so far you can warp the human psyche before it snaps. Bash hundreds of millions of people in the brain their entire lives with indoctrination programs telling them madness is sanity and sanity is madness, and a few of them are going to wind up mass murderers.

        I went to the ghetto middle school in my town. There were fights nearly every day. The terribleness of the school system did not help matters.

      • R C Dean

        “the US is the only nation with a mass shooting epidemic”

        Yet somehow, we rank low on the list of nations with mass shooting victims.

      • rhywun

        Yeah, that line is a crock of shit only imaginable by someone who is only familiar with nice, homogeneous European countries.

      • kbolino

        If you put in America in the same box as Western Europe and Japan, it looks bad on all kinds of metrics. But it is an outlier in that box in way more ways than one. America is closer to Brazil than it is to even the UK. It is sometimes a greater wonder the United States doesn’t perform worse on many metrics.

      • Zwak, who counted all his blessings, and counted only one.

        Someone needs to look up Running Amok

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_amok

        In 1849, Amok was officially classified as a psychiatric condition based on numerous reports and case studies that showed the majority of individuals who committed amok were, in some sense, mentally ill.[12] “Running amok,” is used to refer to the behavior of someone who, in the grip of strong emotion, obtains a weapon, which is usually a gun, and begins attacking people usually ending in the murdering of an innumerable amount of people.[13] For about twenty years, this type of behavior has been described as a culture-bound syndrome.[13] According to the DSM-V, the culture-bound syndrome category has been removed, meaning that this particular condition would no longer be categorized as such.[1] Culture-bound syndromes are seen as those conditions that only occur in certain societies whereas standard psychiatric diagnoses are not seen that way regardless if there is some sort of cultural limitation.[1]

        Recent research has revealed that Amok syndrome is not culture-specific but a syndrome that could happen anywhere around the world because anyone could experience an episode of Amok.[14] Throughout history, mass murders have occurred in the United States, such as the Columbine massacre and the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, bringing into question if Amok syndrome is based on mental illness or the simple act of committing mass murder.[14] Amok syndrome, would in turn, be more prevalent in other societies and not only in Malay cultures. In fact, there are other societies like Polynesia, such as “cafard,” and Puerto Rico, “mal de pelea,” that have similar syndromes with different terms.[15]

      • kbolino

        Far too much leftist bullshit in there to endorse it, but there’s a kernel of truth underlying it. The media and education complex play a huge part in this, but not in the way that is implied here. Unless the children are being forced to reenact the Battle of Chosin Reservoir every year, I don’t know where they’d be getting “narratives about how mass military slaughter is fine”. And they are not being turned into underpaid, alienated gear-turners, they’re being turned into overpaid, alienated email-senders. This dovetails with how much teachers contribute to this problem: despite decades of propaganda claiming the opposite, the average teacher doesn’t give a flying fuck about the wellbeing of their students, except for their pets. To wit, they believe things like:

        There are too many bad parents blaming good teachers for their bad parenting.

        Whom do teachers work for? What is their responsibility in society? Parents cannot completely offload the duty of raising their children to teachers, yes, but teachers cannot claim in loco parentis for 7 hours a day then turn around and act like they’re not an approximately equal partner in the raising of the children.

      • Count Potato

        It takes a village.

      • kbolino

        Ultimately all they ever really meant by that is they want all the power of parents and none of the responsibility.

      • juris imprudent

        When my son was young I gave him the choice of video games (with first-person shooter) or actual shooting. He had to make a choice because if I was going to teach him about guns, I was not going to have him taught something different by the game industry.

      • Pine_Tree

        Similarly, my kids don’t do toy guns. Or paintball, airsoft, etc. I never have either.

        They have LOTS of exposure to and use of real ones.

        Mentally, you can’t hold to the 4 rules and really do stuff like that.

      • EvilSheldon

        Sure you can. You just need a good grasp on the difference between reality and fantasy. A lot of people don’t have that.

    • juris imprudent

      an agent rushed into Robb Elementary School without waiting for backup
      and
      I’m told that that BORTAC agent went in with his technical group with other agents.

      Well, which is it young feller?

  4. AlexinCT

    Is housing finally going to pop?

    Considering how the people in charge’s actions, no matter how well intended or the reasoning provided for it is, seem to elicit the worst outcomes possible constantly, the housing bubble going “BOOM” is a question of how soon.

  5. Gustave Lytton

    FBI running internal investigation into its own Trump-Russia probe

    Of course it is. And by internal investigation, mean coverup to make sure nothing sticks to the squeaky clean FBI.

  6. Atanarjuat

    Is there any downside to the housing bubble popping? Lower prices will benefit people who have been saving for a home.

    • Count Potato

      People who were depending on the value of their home?

      • Atanarjuat

        If you’re speculating on the value of your home, you should sell now while the prices are outrageously out of whack. They can’t possibly stay like this forever. Nor will they stay at rock bottom forever, after the correction.

      • l0b0t

        A good dozen “FOR SALE” signs popped up on neighborhood homes in the past week.

      • slumbrew

        You know that. I know that. Most people here know that.

        A depressingly large number of people do not know that and treat their house like an ATM.

      • juris imprudent

        You would be too late.

        Who was it that just cashed out of Jersey a couple of months back, Drake?

      • Drake

        Yes – although the housing market in the Carolinas is still insane right now. So we are just renting and waiting.

      • juris imprudent

        Yeah, but if you can wait it out. Your timing on selling was impeccable.

      • Drake

        Which is good because the timing of our purchase in 2007 truly sucked.

      • Count Potato

        Maybe they can’t move now? Although I doubt housing prices are going to drop below where they were a couple years ago.

      • DrOtto

        Yeah, it’ll just likely pause.

    • Drake

      The people who recently borrowed huge sums of money to buy a basic suburban home are going to be underwater a long time. On the other hand, if inflation continues, all that money they owe won’t be worth much.

      • Atanarjuat

        As I get older, I have less and less sympathy for people who make unwise decisions and then expect to avoid the consequences (this also informs my position on abortion).

      • Drake

        While selling our house a few months ago, we saw some insane offers come in. People with literally no savings living in an apartment and offering way over a half million for a house. One of them wanted us to pay their closing costs because they were so broke.

        A big wave of mortgage defaults and foreclosures is coming in the next couple of years.

      • Grumbletarian

        A big wave of mortgage defaults and foreclosures is coming in the next couple of years.

        This is what I’m saving for now.

      • robc

        We sold our house in Carolina with a waiver of appraisal.

        The offer we accepted was a 50% cash offer, so the fact that they paid way above what it would appraise at didn’t matter.

        Our neighbor who sold a month before us had to accept about 10k less than the agreed offer because of the appraisal.

      • Rat on a train

        Let’s buy the most expensive house we can qualify for.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Yeah housing is really weird at the moment. Inventory is low. Recent buyers have sweet loans (they may have overspent on purchase price, but low rate with high inflation). There’s a lot of cash floating around with no obvious place to park it.

      • Swiss Servator

        Park it in a strongbox, on my front porch…

      • Grumbletarian

        Or they’ll quit paying the mortgage, get foreclosed on and take the hit to the credit. And get rewarded for it by Team Blue idiot politicians again.

    • R C Dean

      Downside? You mean, like the mortgage backed securities market getting crushed, setting off another crisis like 2008 only worse this time with inflation already running hard, the employment market already fubared? How bad could it be without a single policy tool to manage the financial crisis left in the toolkit, and not an adult to be seen on economic policy generally?

      Other than that, I can’t really think of anything.

      • robc

        I am not sure I see the downside there.

        The biggest problem in 2008 was that they didn’t let all the failures fail.

      • DEG

        What could possibly go wrong?

    • Fatty Bolger

      I’m not sure it’s going to pop, when there’s still an actual shortage of housing. Vastly reduced construction for a decade after 2008, plus demographics, has created a perfect storm. And there’s another factor I don’t see mentioned enough, the rise of Airbnb. Many homes and condos (and even rented apartments) are now being used exclusively as short term rentals, and that isn’t likely to change any time soon.

      If anything, news like this about a drop in sales for new homes will make things worse. If new construction slows, that just makes the shortage of existing housing even worse.

      • whiz

        There is a growing trend of local municipalities outlawing Airbnb-like arrangements in some residential neighborhoods.

  7. The Late P Brooks

    Joe Biden makes me tired.

    • Drake

      Joe Biden has been a corrupt liar his entire life never once adding any value to society. Dancing in the fresh blood of children to make incoherent political points is what he does.

      • Atanarjuat

        It’s amazing how much damage he has done. Destroyed a generation of young black men with the crime bill. Championed bombing Serbia and Iraq. Everything he has done to Ukraine. Of course he’s a figurehead for even more nefarious people like Victoria Nuland who work in the background.

      • The Last American Hero

        And the first president in a century to personally administer a beating to a black man and the only one to ever brag about it publicly.

      • The Last American Hero

        Make that 2 centuries.

      • slumbrew

        * sensible chuckle *

  8. cavalier973

    I wasn’t tearing up until I saw the Johnny Cash song

    • Not Adahn

      Johnny Cash can reduce people to tears who don’t even speak English.

      • Fourscore

        Appropriate music for today.

        And I don’t speak english real good

  9. Atanarjuat

    for the first time in more than 40 years, a Bush will not be serving in U.S. public office

    America is a deeply propagandized nation with severe institutional rot, but we do make some right choices from time to time.

    • robc

      It is inevitable.

      How long did the Adams, Harrison, or Roosevelt dynasties last?

      • Rat on a train

        I am fine with the Paul dynasty continuing.

      • Fourscore

        Free at last, free at last, thank god almighty, we’re free at last, from the bushes, anyway

    • Zwak, who counted all his blessings, and counted only one.

      Now, if we can just kneecap Chelsea Clinton and every last one of the Kennedy fuckers…

  10. Atanarjuat

    One of the Based Caucus, maybe Thomas Massie, should create a bill to repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990.

  11. The Late P Brooks

    Or, they’ll hang it on some low level guy and give the standard “The great majority of agents act with integrity” bullshit.

    NEEDZ MOAR TRAINING VIDEOZ

  12. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Jeremy Siegel complaining about the monthly reduction in the money supply yesterday and the risks to the broader markets. It’s an open question as to whether that is the Fed reducing it or it’s because of economic contraction.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGDQ5uVvxmM

    But contrast that statement with this chart: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM1NS

    If the markets can’t tolerate a comparatively minor reduction after the incredibly mind-blowing expansion, we’re in for some interesting times.

  13. cavalier973

    I read that the murderer had a shoot-out with two cops before entering the school. Now, the snotnoggins on Twitter are saying, “See? Good guys with guns don’t work! We need to follow the sensible policy of confiscating every privately-owned firearm!”

      • Count Potato

        I read he worked at Wendy’s.

      • Count Potato

        I didn’t say it was, but if he was living with his parents, got a credit card, etc. it doesn’t sound unbelievable. Although a DailyMail article says he was bullied for being poor.

        So who knows this soon about anything?

      • DrOtto

        My 17 year old recently bought a mint 1991 Corvette on fast food wages/tips. It’s crazy what these “entry level” jobs are paying right now.

      • DrOtto

        And we are a $7.25 minimum wage state. She makes at least $20 per hour.

      • Sensei

        It’s not a ‘Vette if it doesn’t have Cross Fire Injection and the Doug Nash 4+3 transmission.

        God bless GM…

      • DrOtto

        Lol

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      If he had a shootout with the cops prior then why didn’t they follow him in? How did he manage to off 14 kids before they stopped him?

      • Atanarjuat

        If it’s true that a Border Patrol guy stopped him, they seem to have done nothing at all. Best to wait for the dust to clear, of course.

      • cavalier973

        Also it was “a good guy with a gun” who eventually stopped the murderer.

      • AlexinCT

        They will tell you it was a government approved good guy with a gun, and point out that is a very important and clear distinction……

      • R.J.

        Border patrol is not government approved. Biden wants to cancel it.

      • AlexinCT

        In this case they will suddenly claim it is for the narrative…

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        This validates my opinion that in the case of a school shooting, the priority should not be to lock down and wait for your murder, but to get the fuck out in any way possible.

      • rhywun

        It’s 19 kids now.

      • juris imprudent

        The media may be including the shooter as one of those “kids”.

      • Count Potato

        Math is hard.

      • The Last American Hero

        Just for reference, that’s the same body count as Detroit and Chicago combined last weekend.

        I eagerly await the Presidential Tour of the Midwest…

      • Fourscore

        …and it’s every week end in those cities plus many randoms in between…

  14. The Late P Brooks

    Society forced that poor young man into a life of crime and despair. If only he had been allowed to wear a dress and hair ribbons in the fourth grade, all this could have been avoided.

  15. Rebel Scum

    “As a nation, we have to ask, when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name, will we do what we know in our gut what needs to be done?” Biden said.

    “We have to act. Don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage,” Biden added.

    I guess the “gun lobby” is the climate change of political activism.

    • ron73440

      I get to see CNN in the gym(I try to ignore it, but it’s on the TV right by the dumbbell area).

      What I did see was all “guns are bad, m’kay”.

      Then in the car heading home, I hear about “an anguished and angry Biden”.

      Next was the FDA head preparing to answer questions about a year long gap in the inspections leading to the formula shortage.

      I said, “you mean preparing to obfuscate and NOT answer questions”. I could feel my blood pressure rising.

      This is why I don’t listen to any news.

    • Sean

      The whole thing stinks to high heaven.

      The truth will get suppressed and a narrative will be spun upon lies.

    • slumbrew

      If they say “gun lobby”, they can invoke seedy, fat-cat lobbyists, with bags of ill-gotten cash.

      What he means is “gun owners” – i.e., around 40% of the country.

      • juris imprudent

        I guess I’m the gun lobby because I don’t want to be blamed for something I didn’t do, nor were any of my guns involved. I just refuse to be punished for someone else’s wrong-doing.

      • slumbrew

        What sort of shitlord are you, refusing to be responsible for things you didn’t do? You’re in the same group!

  16. l0b0t

    Thanks for the music, Banjos. If we’re gonna have a weepy Johnny Cash day, let’s dive right in. – https://youtu.be/k9IfHDi-2EA

    SP, I love you and miss you… thank you.

  17. Rebel Scum

    Border Patrol agent credited with killing the shooter

    Luckily they showed up with rotten vegetables to solve the problem. What’s that? They brought guns? No matter. We need to disarm all peaceable people anyway.

    • AlexinCT

      Only agents of the state should have firearms…..

  18. The Late P Brooks

    Jeremy Siegel complaining about the monthly reduction in the money supply yesterday and the risks to the broader markets. It’s an open question as to whether that is the Fed reducing it or it’s because of economic contraction.

    Dumb panicky herd animals.

  19. Rebel Scum

    The FBI is conducting an internal investigation into the bureau’s Trump-Russia investigation, also known as Crossfire Hurricane.

    Procedures were followed, etc.

  20. Count Potato

    “We can’t and won’t prevent every tragedy, but we know they work and have positive impact. When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down, when the law expired mass shootings tripled.'”

    Bullshit.

    • juris imprudent

      That’s right up there with his billionaires pay an 8% tax rate – so full of shit that there will be no fertilizer shortage in this country.

      • Count Potato

        Also, Virginia Tech (the deadliest school shooting), Sandy Hook, Columbine, and perhaps most school shootings (I should probably look it up to be sure) did not involve assault weapons.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Lord have mercy, never heard of that one.

      • juris imprudent

        Of course you haven’t – it doesn’t support The Narrative.

      • Gustave Lytton

        I learned about it either here or at HnR.

      • Atanarjuat

        I just learned a new word that I will immediately forget.

        Uxoricide (from Latin uxor meaning “wife” and -cide, from caedere meaning “to cut, to kill”) is the killing of one’s own wife. It can refer to the act itself or the person who carries it out. It can also be used in the context of the killing of one’s own girlfriend. It can refer to the act itself or the person who carries it out. The killing of a husband is called mariticide.

      • AlexinCT

        Here is a new word for ya:

        Adminomania: A delusion that increased administrative and bureaucratic intrusions into people’s lives will actually improve something, fueled primarily by a pervasive blindness to unintended negative side effects. See Title IX.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        I am having trouble finding it, but I think the deadliest mass school deaths was caused by janitor who rigged the boiler to explode back in the 1930s or 1940s.

        Using a firearm to commit mass murder should be ineffective. The counter is having armed citizens that can quickly and immediately put the shooter down before he gets too far.

        If firearms were banned and somehow a mass shooter couldn’t actually get one (pretend it’s a Lib fairytale world), these psychotics would just switch to fire and explosions using everyday materials that have the potential to cause death on a much greater scale without an effective counter.

      • ron73440

        The guy in Nice killed 86 and injured almost 500 with a truck.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        Another good example.

      • Count Potato

        That wasn’t very nice.

      • Rat on a train

        Ds also want to limit ownership of trucks.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        That’s the one from Gustave.

      • Count Potato

        It would cost $7 now.

      • Rat on a train

        Licensing and background checks for gasoline purchases?

      • Fourscore

        Joe can say “Ba Bye” to his cherished heirloom shotgun

      • Not Adahn

        ISTR in Japan and China, their wackos would go into elementary schools and kill children with a knife.

      • tripacer

        Local boy Barry Loukitis used a 30-30 at Frontier JHS back in ’96.

    • Rebel Scum

      The AWB did not even ban “assault” weapons. And there was no discernable effect on crime.

  21. The Late P Brooks

    Maybe I can scoop up a foreclosure next summer.

    • SDF-7

      My fear is that the Fed will funnel money into Blackrock or whatnot and snap everything up as it comes on the market.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I think that if they try, OWS will seem like a minor nuisance by comparison to the reaction.

      • AlexinCT

        When they tell the usual idiot that has not yet figured out government never fixes any problems they are doing this so they can get rental property that they will make available at rent controlled lower rates, the morons will clap like circus seals.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        There is no more dangerous revolutionary than the recently deprived. Those who never had anything tend to be grateful for scraps.

      • Rebel Scum

        My house has gotten ridiculous according to the Zillow/Realtor estimates. Seems to be that smaller house/properties have exploded in cost. I flirted with the idea of selling and living in an apartment until the market “correction” blows over but that would come with it’s own problems (for instance, how do I find a house if massive conglomerates are buying them all up?). So I think I’ll sit it out in this house until after that even though it will reduce my return on the place and stick to the plan of eventually moving and renting it until it is paid off.

    • Mojeaux

      But can you stand your RV that long?

  22. The Late P Brooks

    Border Patrol agent credited with killing the shooter

    Were the cops out in the parking lot hiding behind their cars?

    • R C Dean

      If this comes up at work, my response is going to be a simple “No, you can’t have my guns.”

    • juris imprudent

      Nope, we’ll just get the same old shit they trot out every time – even when it is shown how it would not have mattered in the case at hand.

    • SDF-7

      Because with all its onerous gun laws, California has no shootings, right you sanctimonious weasel trying to score political points before the blood is cold?

      And you’re all about keeping children safe as you kept masking (but not for him or his party guests!) longer than almost anyone else and have various laws looming on forced mRNA vaxing of the children, you evil fuck.

      Going to go take the morning walk I need to resume the habit of and not think about these things for a while.

      And the answer if we did take your crap seriously would be “Then push for a Constitutional Amendment and see how it goes, asshole.”

    • kbolino

      “Why won’t the people whom I constantly and loudly blame for all of the country’s problems fix the country’s problems?”

      • juris imprudent

        “Why do they oppose all of my well intended, poorly reasoned efforts to write laws?”

    • Not Adahn

      NPR had noted scientist and phliosopher David Hogg on to say “if it saves one life, it will be worth it!”

      Then later they played some local senator claiming that by not “doing something” we are implicitly “approving” of mass shooters.

      • kbolino

        Then later they played some local senator claiming that by not “doing something” we are implicitly “approving” of mass shooters.

        Hmm, let’s apply this logic to gangland shootings and related spillover violence…

      • juris imprudent

        Well obviously America approves of our foreign policy – Americans never make the govt change it.

  23. Sean

    Git yer Waffle on!

    #waffle124 5/5

    ?????
    ?⭐?⭐?
    ??⭐??
    ?⭐?⭐?
    ?????

    ? streak: 29
    ? #wafflesilverteam
    wafflegame.net

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      I started off well, but as always happens when I get a 2, there were too many letters left to keep the momentum going. Add in 2 completely idiotic guesses, and yea, Tundra line.
      Daily Quordle 121
      9️⃣2️⃣
      4️⃣7️⃣
      quordle.com

      QuordleBot got hung up on the top left and chumped. It had 2 guesses to guess the top left out of a wordlist of 7 and failed.
      X 4
      6 7

      • Tundra

        Daily Quordle 121
        7️⃣4️⃣
        5️⃣8️⃣

        Bah.

      • kinnath

        Daily Quordle 121
        9️⃣4️⃣
        3️⃣7️⃣

        fuck quordle

      • one true athena

        Daily Quordle 121
        6️⃣4️⃣
        8️⃣5️⃣

        It’s interesting how the starting words make such a big difference. I did three starters and it all clicked pretty well, though not super low scoring of course.

      • MikeS

        Good enough to beat me

        9️⃣3️⃣
        5️⃣7️⃣

      • TARDis

        Daily Quordle 121
        8️⃣3️⃣
        6️⃣4️⃣

    • whiz

      Daily Quordle 121
      8️⃣3️⃣
      4️⃣7️⃣

      Started off well, but the UL and LR had too many remaining possibilities. I got a little lucky as it was.

    • Grummun

      9 5
      7 6

      Repeats mantra: “At least I didn’t chump…. at least I didn’t chump…”

    • grrizzly

      8️⃣3️⃣
      4️⃣7️⃣

    • Rebel Scum

      “I am here on this floor to beg — to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues,” he said. “Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely. I understand my Republican colleagues may not agree to everything I support, but there is a common denominator we can find. There is a place where we can achieve agreement…”

      Let teachers arm themselves.

      He concluded: “What are we doing? Why are we here? What are we doing?”

      Being a hyper-emotional, sanctimonious twat by the looks of it.

      • cavalier973

        Did he literally get down on his hands and knees?

      • Drake

        What you are doing is exploiting the mentally ill in order to strip away the rights of responsible gun owners.

        *Just guessing in the particular case, but I’ll bet either the FBI or local cops knew he was nuts and it was ignored.

      • Atanarjuat

        Let teachers arm themselves.

        I thought I was a gun rights absolutist until I started imagining my obese borderline-retarded goldbricking Florida public school teachers handling a firearm in the same room as me.

        Notice this never happens to homeschooled kids.

      • R C Dean

        to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues

        Pix or it didn’t happen.

    • Not Adahn

      That was the guy who said that not passing new laws meant approving of the shootings.

      • Not Adahn

        Murphy described the U.S. government’s failure to act after such instances of gun violence “a quiet message of endorsement.”

  24. Pope Jimbo

    Sorry, but the SP news has me down. No Daily Ray of Sunshine today

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      ?

    • Raven Nation

      Precedent: “The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, until the time of weeping and mourning was over.”

  25. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Just got this email, sounds legit.

    Hello ,

    Do you have a moment to chat on email? I have an obligation that I
    would like you to complete ASAP.

    I want you to assume responsibility of the
    ownership as CEO in any of the investment we shall delved into with
    share ratio of 60/40% on RoI or for an outright sharing in the same
    ratio above if investment partnership is denied or rejected.

    I shall need your full name, Age, Phone numbers, Address, Nationality
    and occupation. Your immediate reply will be highly appreciated to
    enable me give you more information.

    I await your reply soon to:emmpees0001@gmail.com

    Regards,
    Emmanuel Peterson

    • ron73440

      That sounds GREAT!

      I hope you responded quickly so you don’t miss out.

      You should probably send your full SSN just to be safe.

      • Fourscore

        I’d include my financial account numbers too, just to be safe..

        For a few days recently I was getting almost daily calls on my landlne wanting me to claim my prize. I was very rude, the last call was the I’d won the Publisher’s Clearing House and they needed some info. I told the guy with an Indian accent to “Shove the Prize Up His Ass: Hope I didn’t lose 7K a week for life.

      • AlexinCT

        You are playing this wrong Fourscore. I have had hours of entertainment by giving them incomplete information, changing the information constantly, going back and forth on what they are asking, and so forth. I love talking to telemarketers about the shit they are peddling, then telling them to give me their number cause I had to be somewhere else but promised to call them in the middle of the night to continue the conversation. One of the most entertaining calls involved spending over an hours with some dude that was trying to have me give him access to my windows box, failing miserably despite him trying to get me to let him hack it step by step (while doing nothing and telling him I had), before I blurted out that my computer ran Linux. Man, did the idiot freak out and curse something wicked before he hung up on me.

    • AlexinCT

      Just cut to the chase and give them your bank accounts and access credentials….

    • SDF-7

      Isn’t that how all the major investment funds recruited their CEOs? Those not headed by Nigerian princes, of course.

      Honestly, I’m a little surprised there wasn’t a pivot to “Need to get my funds out of Ukraine, please help!” style emails. Seems the natural con of the year.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        This one was refreshingly different.

      • AlexinCT

        The usual racket by the Ukrainian shysters is either to tell you they hacked your camera during that chatrubate session you had with the bearded dude with tits and will post it to your family & friend’s social media accounts unless you give them $2K in Bitcoin, or that they are the IRS and you need to go buy $2k worth of gift cards and share the information with them ASAP to avoid pound-me-in-the-ass-prison.

      • Rat on a train

        We will seize all your assets and get an arrest warrant if you don’t respond now.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Better than the text I got

      “We are a xompany that knows your house. We will speak to you if your follow this link about making offers”

      • robc

        Don’t mess around with the xompany.

      • Rat on a train

        Is that a trans-owned company?

      • AlexinCT

        Wut? No I am a purdy lady looking for nice man with money to date?

    • Rebel Scum

      Shouldn’t he require your social security number as well?

      • Pine_Tree

        Too obvious. This way some chump’s like “hey, this isn’t asking for SSN… maybe it’s OK to bite”

      • AlexinCT

        I was once told by someone that the spammers misspell and make the emails blatantly obvious to detect as fakes because when they do get a response they know they are dealing with a guaranteed moron.

      • Fourscore

        What?

    • R C Dean

      I shall need your full name, Age, Phone numbers, Address, Nationality
      and occupation.

      Check the darknet. It’ll all be there, plus my SSN and probably my DL number. And no telling how many of my old credit card numbers.

  26. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Now here’s some real concern trolling

    “The mainstream U.S. media has focused almost exclusively on the fact that Jankowicz was attacked and bullied by right-wing media and bad-faith tolls. That attacking and bullying was terrible, but it doesn’t explain why the board’s work was paused—or address how this entire debacle has played out from the very beginning, undermining important work and triggering partisan overreaction on both sides of the ideological divide. It also doesn’t offer any constructive insight into how the government is trying to tackle, or ought to tackle, issues like digital information disorder—the set of social and political pathologies associated with people’s growing dependence on a digital-information-and-communications architecture that wasn’t designed to support democracy, or the kinds of civic virtues it needs, and that often directly undermines them instead: hyper-polarization; extreme partisanship and political tribalism; the erosion of trust in government and public institutions that’s contributed to the rise of authoritarian populism; online radicalization that can lead to real-world harm, as with QAnon and the January 6 riots; and so on. At their current scale, these aren’t routine features of democratic contestation; they’re symptoms of its breakdown.”

    • AlexinCT

      Let me guess. When they invoke “democracy” they mean democrats and the crazy shit they peddle wins?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Democracy is “shit we like,” fascism is “shit we don’t like.”

      • Atanarjuat

        I do think this effort was intended to be innocuous. This wasn’t some top-down effort to start censoring Americans at home, or set rules about truth and falsehood that could be enforced online, though that’s how a lot of bad-faith critics interpreted it.

        Horseshit.

        Even if its intentions were pure (they weren’t), it would be hijacked and twisted to nefarious ends in mere moments.

    • Rebel Scum

      wasn’t designed to support democracy

      Perhaps not Democracy. Because to you “democracy” means getting everything you want politically.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I’ll give them credit for developing a full dictionary of terms that mean nothing but sound really important. They’re nothing more than bullshit artists.

    • Count Potato

      “digital-information-and-communications architecture that wasn’t designed to support democracy”

      LOLWTF that even mean?

      • slumbrew

        LOLWTF that even mean?

        “We need more censorship”.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It means they loathe the idea that people can think for themselves and make their own decisions.

    • R C Dean

      growing dependence on a digital-information-and-communications architecture that wasn’t designed to support democracy Democrats

      Allow me to introduce you to Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook . . . .

    • B.P.

      “…online radicalization that can lead to real-world harm…”

      Like confused kids dropping into chat rooms and then deciding they should chop their genitals off?

    • juris imprudent

      Hasn’t the media been reporting he had a handgun and a rifle?

      • R C Dean

        If so, it’s odds-on that wasn’t his loadout.

  27. SDF-7

    Somehow doesn’t seem like a Quordle day either — but I’m sure someone else would start the scores sub-thread if I didn’t, so here we are.
    And today (continuing the general theme) sucked. Didn’t SDF it, but back to good ole Chumptown for me. Doing the whole ’60s computer dump just to share my gorram pain at the annoying guess pattern and that I had nothing to work with on the upper left.

    Daily Quordle 121
    ?4️⃣
    5️⃣9️⃣
    quordle.com
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ??⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜?⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ?????
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
    ⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
    ⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
    ⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
    ⬜?⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

    ⬜⬜?⬜? ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜??? ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜??? ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜?⬜? ?⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ????? ⬜⬜?⬜⬜
    ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ???⬜⬜
    ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ???⬜⬜
    ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ???⬜⬜
    ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ?????

    • robc

      I don’t play, so maybe I don’t understand, but didn’t you use up 25 possible letters in your first 5 guesses of the upper left?

      How did you not then figure out it was JJJJJ?

      • Grumbletarian

        He used 25 letters that weren’t in that word while trying to solve others, not necessarily 25 different letters.

      • Not Adahn

        At most, he would have used 16 letters getting to the UR, no more than 18 on LL, no more than 21 on LR. Possibly as few as 18.

    • Grumbletarian

      Daily Quordle 121
      9️⃣3️⃣
      5️⃣7️⃣

      Ugh.

  28. Rebel Scum

    Oh…

    The blood of every child that dies of gun violence in this country is on the hands of the Republican Party.

    • AlexinCT

      I so wonder what the obsession with blaming your political enemies for the acts of people suffering from mental disorders really is about….

    • Banjos

      The party of baby murderers is standing on a pile of dead children trying to bully me into giving up my right to defend my children against child murderers.

      • Ownbestenemy

        The new talking point is pro-life people, in any capacity, cannot square with being pro-2nd Amendment.

      • Banjos

        They’re in their hearts communists. All they care about is power. I genuinely believe not a single one of them gives a shit about a single one of those children as the human reaction to this is “my God, that’s pure evil” not political talking points. They can screech all day and every day, it will make no difference as the day of trying to debate them in good faith is long dead.

      • Count Potato

        I remember the outpouring of sheer glee from gun grabbers immediately after Sandy Hook happened.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Agreed

      • R.J.

        “Look, if it were possible, I would give every new fetus a gun to defend itself against abortion. Since that is not possible, laws are needed to protect the unborn.”

      • kbolino

        The problem with retail politics is you have to adopt slogans like “pro-life” and “pro-choice” to make the platform more marketable. Everyone knows, or ought to know, that those terms are just code for “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion” respectively.

        However, you should never let your enemies use your slogan against you. The left certainty doesn’t. You can’t “but I thought you were pro-choice” a leftist into supporting personal choice in matters they don’t care to allow. By the same token, the right should not define themselves too deeply as “pro-life” because that is just a ticket to having a leftist come along and convince them that if they don’t support [leftist hobby horse du jour] they’re a “hypocrite” because [circuitous link between what the leftist wants and a vague interpretation of “pro-life”].

      • banginglc1

        “I see. Therefore, you cannot be against mass shootings of school children since you believe it ok to kill them in utero. i.e. killing children is *totes* cool”

    • Ownbestenemy

      Keep tossing fuel on the fire I guess.

    • rhywun

      The fun part is that that is the bog-standard opinion of 99% of the Hollywood “elite”.

  29. Rebel Scum

    Are you trying to make people rush out to buy more guns?

    “I don’t want to nickel and dime this. I don’t think that that is going to do it. I think we need some really drastic action here. We need a moratorium, perhaps, on gun sales. Who will say on this network or on any other network in the next few days it is time to repeal the Second Amendment? You cannot say that. Well, why not? Why not? I truly believe if Jefferson, Madison and Washington if they all knew that the bullet would be invented — some 50 years after our revolution, I don’t know if they would have written it that way. They didn’t even know what a bullet was. It didn’t exist until the 1830s. They had any idea that there would be this kind of carnage. You have to believe that the Founders of the country would not support it. I support all gun control legislation. Not sensible gun control legislation. We don’t need the sensible stuff. We need the hard-core stuff that is going to protect ourselves and our children.”

    Literally every mention on the topic by those people betrays your retarded, ill-informed opinion.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Not sure and not going to bother to look but I’m just going to guess that the bullet invention claim is BS. Also, they’re mind reading dead people now and advocating policy from it.

      • Rebel Scum

        A bullet is a projectile launched using an explosive. Same with a musket ball. They even made cartridges back in the day that contained the requisite powder and ball to operate the firearms, which are comparable to modern cartridges in that function. So basically Michael Moore is a malicious, stupid asshole.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Yeah, cartridge is what I meant, my bad, and even that claim is apparently nonsense.

    • l0b0t

      That kind of stupid burns my retinas to witness it. James Puckle patented his crew-served, crank-action flintlock in 1715. It was capable of firing round bullets, for use against Christians, or square bullets, for use against the Musselmen. I really need to avoid the tweeters today.

      • juris imprudent

        I really need to avoid the tweeters today.

        And any other day ending in y.

      • rhywun

        I really need to avoid the tweeters today.

        FTFY

    • MikeS

      Who will say on this network or on any other network in the next few days it is time to repeal the Second Amendment?

      The thing is, this is exactly what they should be saying. Stop with all the end-arounds and just do what you really want to do, and push to repeal the 2A. If you have as many Americans on your sides as you think you do, it’ll be easy.

      • R C Dean

        I think the last thing the left wants is a movement to repeal the 2A. It will, of course fail, and in the process bring attention to the fact that our current laws are so obviously and blatantly a violation of “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”.

      • juris imprudent

        Why give up the mostly winning approach of death by a thousand cuts? It isn’t like they are Republicans.

    • kbolino

      The left is totally powerless but also they never feel even the slightest need to treat their enemies as equal partners at the negotiating table. “Fuck you” is definitely how you start asking for things you can’t get without the other party’s cooperation.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Ah, she’s crawled out from under her rock. Wonderful…

    • rhywun

      HOW MANY CHILDREN HAVE TO DIE?

      Oh, that’s rich.

    • Surly Knott

      How many children have to die? Ask Chicago, which has extensive gun control laws.

      • Fatty Bolger

        We need to outlaw guns, that way the gangs that run guns in gun-control cities like Chicago can apply their skills and methods to the rest of the country. I’m sure that will make children everywhere much safer.

      • kbolino

        If we ban guns, we’ll turn into Japan (1 murder/100,000 residents/year) not Brazil (22 murders/100,000 residents/year) through the magic of being a “developed country”.

    • R C Dean

      Fuck the GOP and their obsession with guns.

      Excuse me, but who is obsessed with guns here?

  30. The Late P Brooks

    Blah blah blah health care in crisis

    These staffing and supply problems are all happening at a time when “our hospital capacity is running high due to folks catching up on care and other needs,” Nathan Chomilo, a pediatrician and health-care leader based in Minnesota, told me. And now, in some places, flu and other respiratory viruses that had been almost completely suppressed by widespread masking are back in force. People who were infected with COVID in past surges are returning with heart failure, diabetes, respiratory problems, and lingering symptoms of long COVID.

    ——-

    Health-care workers sometimes feel as if they are living in a different world from those around them. Through the pandemic, they have wrestled with the gulf between the horrors they saw in their workplaces and the casual attitudes they beheld outside. For many, that cognitive dissonance is greater than ever. The relentless surges locked them in a two-year dystopian stasis, from which they are emerging to find that their old lives are unrecognizable. Many callers to Mona Masood’s physician support line have talked about lost friendships and imminent divorces. “We were holding back this wall, and it gave everyone a chance to keep going and get through,” Masood said. But that created a chasm between health-care workers and the rest of society—a pattern that Masood also hears among veterans returning from war. “I feel distanced from my outside-of-hospital friendships,” Marina Del Rios told me.

    Dystopian horror stories are titillating.

    • kbolino

      Somehow the masks “almost completely” suppressed the flu and other respiratory viruses, but not, you know, COVID. Also, how convenient that all the “symptoms” of being a fat lazy fuck can now be attributed to “long COVID” instead.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Not just influenza, but also common food borne illnesses too. Decreased social contact and increased sanitation has effects, not always negative. Who would have guessed? Not to worry, things will return to normal where doctors and restaurant workers can’t be bothered to wash their hands.

      • whiz

        The flu was also suppressed in places without masking.

  31. Atanarjuat

    Disclose.tv reports that people drop the fashionable virtue signaling when the prospect of freezing to death in your apartment looms.

    JUST IN – Germany plans to temporarily reactivate coal and oil-fired power plants by decree in case Russia cuts off gas exports to the country.

    • kbolino

      It’s a good thing bringing a long-dormant power plant back online can happen overnight. I’m sure the people who used to work there will also have been just waiting around for years for the government to call them back.

      • Not Adahn

        Eh, winter is at least a few weeks away.

      • kbolino

        I can’t find 100% trustworthy data, but it looks like Germany’s electricity usage doesn’t really drop in the summer despite residential A/C being uncommon.

  32. Banjos

    Between this and overturning Roe, I pray they’ll finally find the balls to secede. Let them create their communist hellscape. I’ll build an underground railroad for the future refugees.

    • kbolino

      The ones who talk about secession have no power. The ones who have power will accept nothing less than universality. Changing that is a necessary prerequisite to making secession happen.

    • Count Potato

      OK, but remember to take a nice picture of yourself with a gun for when we print the money.

      • SDF-7

        Going to get really confusing when you can’t buy two banjos for less than 10 banjos in the future.

      • one true athena

        I think Banjos is already taken

    • The Last American Hero

      It’s 2022. The phrase will be Underground Hyperloop.

  33. Rebel Scum

    Is this demented, commufascist cunte threatening me?

    Speaking from the Roosevelt Room of the White House Tuesday night, President Joe Biden addressed the horrific shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. An 18-year-old man stormed the school, killing 18 children and three adults.

    During his remarks, Biden didn’t use the time to honor the victims and their families. Instead, he rehashed old jokes about deer wearing kevlar and ranted while reading the teleprompter.

    He also claimed it was time for Congress to “do something,” but did not say what specific law would have prevented the killer from carrying out his heinous crimes. He blamed the situation on “the gun lobby.”

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Deer wearing Kevlar doesn’t make sense anyway. A 30-06 will go right through it, they need at least a plate carrier.

    • R C Dean

      An 18-year-old man stormed the school

      Did he? I thought he was fleeing the Border Patrol and wrecked his truck there.

  34. Rebel Scum

    Que?

    In the wake of the school shooting in Texas, former DHS officials turned CNN flack Juliette Kayyem demands Biden suspend immigration enforcement in the area of Uvalde “because of the political issues in Texas.”

    A few minutes later, Kayyem doubles down:
    “We need the federal government to say right now, everyone is essentially safe harbor right now in terms of immigration status.”
    Again, she suggests it’s because of “all the politics going on in Texas right now” dealing with immigration.

    Tbf it’s not like they have really been enforcing immigration laws anyway.

    • Rebel Scum

      After Jake Tapper read a statement from Texas AG Ken Paxton about making sure there are armed defenders in schools, Kayyem first suggests he’s talking about arming the students.

      She then goes on to scoff at arming teachers (which is a popular program in other states) and seemingly placing guards there.”But that’s so defensive,” she whines. “You’re just going to play defense all the time?”

      What a dishonest cunte.

    • Grumbletarian

      “We need to put out a giant ‘brown people welcome’ sign where we just had a mass shooting” would be considered racist if spoken by a Republican.

  35. Not Adahn

    ?

    Former friend Santos Valdez Jr., told The Washington Post that the two had been close friends until Ramos’ behavior started to “deteriorate.” He said Ramos, who was often bullied over a speech impediment that included a stutter and lisp, once cut up his own face with a knife “just for fun.” Valdez said he first said he was scratched by a cat and then admitted he had done it himself. “Then he told me the truth, that he’d cut up his face with knives over and over,”

    That whole article makes this guy seem like a known bad guy.

    • Urthona

      Also I’m still pissed that his oil tanker spilled.

  36. The Late P Brooks

    Sackcloth and ashes

    If tonight, Americans do turn heavenward in pain and grief for the lost children of Uvalde, Texas, they may hear the answer delivered in the Bible through the words of Isaiah:

    “And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.”

    We will learn more about the 18-year-old killer of elementary-school children: his personality, his ideology, whatever confection of hate and cruelty drove him to his horrible crime. But we already know the answer to one question: Who put the weapon of mass murder into his hand? The answer to that question is that the public policy of this country armed him.

    Every other democracy makes some considerable effort to keep guns away from dangerous people, and dangerous people away from guns. For many years—and especially since the massacre at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School almost a decade ago—the United States has put more and more guns into more and more hands: 120 guns per 100 people in this country. The years of the pandemic have been the years of the greatest gun sales in U.S. history: almost 20 million guns sold in 2020; another 18.5 million sold in 2021. No surprise, those two years also witnessed a surge in gun violence: the spectacular human butchery of our recurring mass slaughters; the surge of one-on-one lethal criminality; the unceasing tragic toll of carelessness as American gun owners hurt and kill their loved ones and themselves.

    Guns make people crazy. Guns cause hopelessness and despair and dread.

    Not a steady grinding drumbeat of hysterical morbid panicmongering from the government and their stenographers.

    • rhywun

      the United States has put more and more guns into more and more hands

      I don’t remember the United States putting a gun into my hands. Did I miss another covid relief mailing?

      • The Last American Hero

        If we can publicly finance abortions and other unenumerated rights, it seems only fair to provide vouchers to help people exercise the enumerated ones.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Fuck limited government, sign me up for my government gunz!

      • Fourscore

        Government guns will be the quality of government schools.

      • juris imprudent

        Pot-metal pistols for everyone!

      • Gustave Lytton

        *looks at Model of 1911A1 and doesn’t comprehend*

    • kbolino

      “If you were a real Christian, you’d support gun control”

      • EvilSheldon

        I’m not a Christian, real or otherwise.

    • Urthona

      What’s interesting is that public support for gun control has been trending down for years. Although there are sometimes spikes right after incidents like this because people want to seem sympathetic.

    • Plisade

      “Who put the weapon of mass murder into his hand? … The years of the pandemic have been the years of the greatest gun sales in U.S. history”

      Since we’re into regressive causality, why stop at the access to and purchase of the guns? Seems like the author is admitting that the pandemic response played some role.

  37. The Late P Brooks

    The lobbying groups and politicians who enable these killers will dominate the federal courts and state governments, as they do today, until the mighty forces of decency and kindness in American life say to the enablers:

    “That’s enough! This must stop—and we will stop you.”

    Democracy is all well and good, until we’re outnumbered by the people who disagree with us.

    • rhywun

      we will stop you

      Oh, they’re banning SUV’s now?

      • slumbrew

        They’d certainly like to.

    • Rebel Scum

      until the mighty forces of decency and kindness in American life say to the enablers:

      “That’s enough! This must stop—and we will stop you.”

      President Puddin Cup is already on it…while demonizing anyone that disagrees. You know, with kindness and decency.

      • Raven Nation

        I see Steve Kerr also had his moment on this topic last night.

      • banginglc1

        Look, if I know one thing . . . it’s that has been mediocre former NBA players should inform me of all my beliefs. They must be smart, they can dribble a basketball

  38. Sensei

    Durham, the Disinformation Board and the 2024 Elections

    One day historians will honestly revisit these matters. Their most gobsmacking discovery will be that, while it was hardly the deepest cause of anything, the predicate for everything was Hillary’s illicit email server as secretary of state.

    I actually think this is on point.

  39. Ozymandias

    I wonder if all of the media coverage and political screeching has any effect on the prevalence of this stuff?

    /asked no one in the DemoOp Media or Camp because self-awareness is an excluding character trait

    My best Quordle score yet.
    Daily Quordle 121
    6️⃣3️⃣
    4️⃣5️⃣
    quordle.com

    • slumbrew

      I wonder if all of the media coverage and political screeching has any effect on the prevalence of this stuff?

      Social contagion.

  40. Festus

    I’ve no heart for snark this fine morning. Lost two beloved people over the last week. A Father figure and someone else that was always willing to kick me up the back-side when I got too Eeyore! Fuck cancer!

    • Warty

      +1

  41. The Late P Brooks

    “Default”

    The U.S. has announced that it will not extend an exemption permitting Moscow to pay foreign debt to American investors in U.S. dollars, potentially forcing Russia into default.

    Up until Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury Department had granted a key exemption to sanctions on Russia’s central bank that allowed it to process payments to bondholders in dollars through U.S. and international banks, on a case-by-case basis.

    This had enabled Russia to meet its previous debt payment deadlines, though forced it to tap into its accumulated foreign currency reserves in order to make payments.

    However, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control allowed the exemption to expire early Wednesday morning.

    Russia has built up substantial foreign currency reserves in recent years and has the funds to pay, so will likely contest any declaration of default on the grounds that it attempted payment but was blocked by the tightened sanctions regime.

    This seems ill-advised.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Certainly the weaponization of the international financial system will have no unwanted side-effects.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        And nothing happened after that….

      • SDF-7

        And Tom and Sally lived happily ever after….

      • kbolino

        The result: Japan lost access to three-fourths of its overseas trade and 88 percent of its imported oil.

        December 7 is a ruse, war was declared on July 26. Han The U.S. shot first.

  42. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Battle of the Billionaires

    https://www.newspageindex.com/05/2022/24/657638

    Alarming evidence shows hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from Bill Gates’ foundation to 11 of the 26 organizations that publicly opposed and attacked Elon Musk’s offer to purchase Twitter and restore free speech on the social platform.

    These 11 anti-Musk organizations signed an open letter last month that warned Twitter advertisers to boycott Twitter if Musk gains control.

    The money was traced back to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through research and analysis using the newly-formed Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO).

    • Count Potato

      “Foundation for Freedom Online”

      OFFS!!

    • R C Dean

      One wonders when a sub rosa attack on a company, funded by someone with a large short position against that company, crosses the line into market manipulation.

  43. The Other Kevin

    I fear we’re going to see more unhinged people shooting people up. We have a mental health crisis in this country, mostly from the Covid nonsense and now due to economic stress. Add to that the division and anger we see all around us, spearheaded by a president who’s blaming every problem on “those people over there”, and who “won’t rest until they’re destroyed.” We desperately need to deescalate on so many fronts and yet we have the rich and powerful ramping it up in an attempt to increase their own power and wealth.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      They’re just shooting the wrong people.

    • Drake

      The states went too far institutionalizing the mentally ill in the 50’s. In the 80’s the Feds stepped in and the state hospitals were being shut down – we are way too far in the other direction now with crazy homeless camping in big cities and known nutters being ignored by authorities until they snap.

    • Tundra

      Huh. Who would have thought that a culture dominated by a nihilistic death cult would produce monsters?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      So much more sane than negotiating.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The Council (C/ES.35) on 10 and 11 March agreed to encourage the establishment, as a provisional and urgent measure, of a blue safe maritime corridor to allow the safe evacuation of seafarers and ships from the high-risk and affected areas in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to a safe place in order to protect the life of seafarers, and ensure the mobilization and commercial navigation of vessels intending to use this corridor by avoiding military attacks and protecting and securing the maritime domain. The Council, in this regard, taking into account the sensitivities of the matter, invited the IMO Secretary-General to collaborate with the relevant parties and take necessary immediate actions to initiate the establishment and support the implementation of a blue safe maritime corridor in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov and keep Member States informed of developments and report to the next session of the Council.

        The Russian Federation has informed IMO that it had established a humanitarian corridor, to provide for the safe evacuation of ships once outside the territorial waters of the Ukraine. Despite this initiative, there remain many safety and security issues which hamper access to the corridor and the ability for ships to depart from their berth in Ukrainian ports.

        Ukraine’s ports are at MARSEC (maritime security) level 3 and remain closed for entry and exit. Sea mines have been laid in port approaches and some port exits are blocked by sunken barges and cranes. Many ships no longer have sufficient crew onboard to sail.

        Ukraine also provided their preconditions for the safe evacuation of ships from their ports. These include an end to hostilities, the withdrawal of troops and ensuring the freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, including carrying out mine-sweeping activities with the involvement of Black Sea littoral states.

        With this in mind, IMO priority has been to support seafarers stranded in Ukraine.

        https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/MaritimeSecurityandSafetyintheBlackSeaandSeaofAzov.aspx

    • Rebel Scum

      British warships could be sent in to protect freighters carrying crucial Ukrainian grain and break Putin’s blockade of Black Sea ports that is threatening to cause a world food crisis

      I wonder what sort of food crisis WWIII is going to create.

      • Drake

        We’re all going on keto diets shortly.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Yeah, if they are actually stupid enough to try to do that they’ll be sunk and then we’ll be riding the slippery slope to Armageddon.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Both the Stark and Samuel B. Roberts are available for ship naming. just say’n.

  44. Sensei

    FDA says senior officials didn’t receive infant formula whistleblower report due to ‘mailroom issues’

    https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/25/fda-whistleblower-report-infant-formula-00034999

    The Top Men version of the dog ate my homework.

    BTW the GMP violations here didn’t line up with the actual bacteria found. So while the concerns may or may not have been valid even if they had been addressed they likely wouldn’t have addressed the specific issue that was sickening infants. But you aren’t going to get stories like that from MSM.

      • Fatty Bolger

        Oh man, I completely forgot that Blue was in that movie. It’s been nearly 30 years, I need to watch that movie again.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Oh bullshit…

  45. Not Adahn

    It’s really hard to keep track of all the different MOGAI and their preferences/interrelationships. But I guess that “hedgehogs” are really into “bears,” but “bears” are not interested in sleeping with “hedgehogs?”

    https://twitter.com/ChannelInteres/status/1527652671150346242

  46. Count Potato

    “Amazon is such a powerful force in online shopping that sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are alternatives to get your goods or order your groceries.

    Take this quiz to find out if you’re getting the most out of your $139-a-year membership:”

    https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1529069770699595783

    Totally non-biased reporting.

    • Rat on a train

      I dropped Prime. I still get free delivery but have to wait a little longer. The delay is normally somewhere between 0 and 3 days.

      • rhywun

        Same, except I’ve never had Prime.

  47. DEG

    President Biden called for changes to gun laws Tuesday

    Fuck off slaver.

    GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, won in GOP primaries. Greene held off five challengers, advancing to the general election to try to win a second term.

    Good.

    Not mentioned: Sarah Stogner lost.

    • R.J.

      Stogner lost decisively.

      • juris imprudent

        OK, I looked and I now hate both candidates and the office they are running for.

      • kbolino

        The myth that Texas is an unregulated quasi-libertarian paradise/hellhole is surprisingly strong given the massive amounts of evidence to the contrary.

      • R.J.

        Yes. Heavily regulated, property taxes are high, etc… On the Cato freedom list Texas is mid-pack. It is frustrating.

  48. The Late P Brooks

    We desperately need to deescalate on so many fronts and yet we have the rich and powerful ramping it up in an attempt to increase their own power and wealth.

    You’re just not hitting it hard enough. I tell you, it’ll fit.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Love it

    • R.J.

      I am good with that. I hate having my location available to anyone but me regardless.

    • juris imprudent

      National security apparatus clanks into action against recalcitrant Dems.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      That’s their reason?

      Fine, whatever….

    • rhywun

      There’s that “pregnant people” again.

      ??

  49. TARDis

    If they find just one more anti-narrative issue (like kiddie porn or a climate change screed) with the Texas psycho, the TMITE is going meltdown beyond recovery. The incoherent babbling will be epic.

    • UnCivilServant

      Radical Post-Birth Abortion manifestos?

  50. The Late P Brooks

    Democracy dies in the ballot box

    Greene’s victory is a loss for Georgia, and the country. She is arguably the purest expression of Trumpism as an ideology in Congress, not to mention the strangest member of the congressional MAGA squad. In a group that includes scandal-plagued firebrands like Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Matt Gaetz of Florida, that’s saying something. She displays no real interest in or skill for governance, but she’s effective at promoting white nationalist and authoritarian ideas, and she has a gut instinct for how to use disinformation and media stunts to stay in the news. Worst of all, the Republican Party establishment seems to have accepted her extremism as the new normal within the GOP.

    Greene hasn’t even completed one full term in Congress, and yet she has gotten more national media attention than many veteran lawmakers do in their entire careers. Her Trumpian tendency to use controversy — typically tied to bigotry and conspiratorial claims — is a big reason why.

    Some people truly ought not to be allowed to vote, I guess.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Did they leave any insults out of that screed?

    • Timeloose

      Why does this sound familiar for some reason???

      “hasn’t even completed one full term in Congress, and yet she has gotten more national media attention than many veteran lawmakers do in their entire careers. Her tendency to use controversy — typically tied to bigotry and conspiratorial claims — is a big reason why.”

      https://www.nickiswift.com/277787/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-most-controversial-moments/

      • juris imprudent

        REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        THAT’S DIFFERENT!!!

    • Rebel Scum

      she’s effective at promoting white nationalist and authoritarian ideas

      Show your work.

      her extremism

      relative term is relative.

      typically tied to bigotry and conspiratorial claims

      Show your work.

      • juris imprudent

        Nick Fuentes – she knows and likes him, talked at his conference! Nick Fuentes – some Catholic Latino type – you know like you’d find at any ol’ KKK gathering.

    • rhywun

      Translation: we tried to pin a bunch of bogus “scandals” on her and this time it didn’t work.

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump

      The continuing fetishization of Trump from the Left and the Establishment Right is one of the key indicators that it’s all one uniparty at the top. To think that the notion that down ballot GOP party insiders won in states that Trump lost was actually put forward as evidence against cheating by the elite.

  51. The Late P Brooks

    Greene has provided a playbook for future hard-core Trump-wing newcomers. Stirring up maximal controversy, spreading disinformation and trafficking in white nationalist ideas can be a winning MAGA formula, especially among Republican voters plugged into right-wing media. Sure, such politicians will only undermine the legislative process and help tilt the country closer to democratic collapse — but in red districts, they will have good shots at re-election.

    Getting re-elected by your constituency? That’s not DEMOCRACY! that cultural genocide.

  52. juris imprudent

    I think the best news of today is that we can put to bed the idea that Trump is any kind of kingmaker in the GOP.

    • rhywun

      Good. Maybe he won’t run in 2024 after all.

  53. Raven Nation

    Odd list of headlines for the short podcasts by Radio New Zealand’s Checkpoint program: there were at least two (maybe three) stories on the Texas shooting, including how the US is once again “grappling” with gun control; a story about PM Jacinda Ardern speaking with Stephen Colbert about gun control; then a story about the wave of drive-by shootings carried out by gang members in Auckland.

  54. Rebel Scum

    First the Land O Lakes chick. Now this.

    The “Cherokee Indian” sat at the corner of Jefferson and Cherokee in St. Louis, MO since it was commissioned in 1985. It grew to be both a symbol of the neighborhood and area as well as a marker for directions for St. Louisans and tourists alike. That is until a group of “progressives”, decided to have it removed. Behind the move was a property magnate, not from the area, and a comic book owner, also not from the area. The store owner, intent on moving his store into the space behind the statue, called a rush meeting to have it removed while feeding the press stories that the community supported its removal – something far from the truth.

    Liz of the Fauxhicans has a sad.

    • Tres Cool
    • R C Dean

      I never cease to be fascinated by how the left manages to fetishize POCs while erasing them from the public square.

      • kinnath

        Too many syllables. Colored people is easier to say and write.

  55. Tres Cool

    | ron73440 on May 25, 2022 at 7:35 am
    | I get to see CNN in the gym(I try to ignore it, but it’s on the TV right by the dumbbell area).

    It’s like the jokes write themselves.

  56. Ted S.

    Daily Quordle 121
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