Reason Morning Links: Ohio Votes to Repeal Collective Bargaining Restrictions and Block Individual Mandate, Joe Paterno Still Appeals to Psychotic Penn State Fans, Fannie Mae Needs Another Bailout

• Tuesday was election day. Here's a snippet of what happened: Ohio voters repealed restrictions on collective bargaining privileges for public sector workers while at the same time, opted out of Obamacare's individual mandate; Arizona immigration law architect Russell Pearce lost his recall to a fellow Republican; Mississippi voted down a "personhood" law; New Jersey passed an initiative allowing sports betting in casinos. 
• Looking forward: Missouri drug reformers will begin collecting signatures for a 2012 ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana for people over 21 and allow the state to levy a $100-per-pound tax on the plant. 
• Despite his awareness that Coach Jerry Sandusky was raping children, and his habit of saying things like, "The kids who were victims or whatever they want to say, I think we all ought to say a prayer for them. It's a tough life when people do certain things to you. But anyway, you've been great. You've been really great," Coach Joe Paterno is still much loved by some number of Penn State students. 
• Occupy Whatever news: A protester was found dead in his tent at Occupy New Orleans; he was in that state for at least two days. Occupy Portland participants have been pushing, cursing, and otherwise harassing local news crews. Oakland blog Hyphenated-Republic takes the temperature of small businesses around Occupy Oakland and finds some of them are doing really well because of the protesters, and others doing really poorly, but not because of the protesters. 
• The NAACP is preparing its own national protest, to oppose voter I.D. laws. 
• Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has announced his resignation; Italy's ten-year borrowing rate nevertheless jumped above the dreaded 7 percent ceiling. 
• Fannie Mae asks for a bailout. A tiny one. Just $7.8 billion. 

New from Reason.tv: "Kurt Loder on Film: The Good, the Bad, & the Godawful"

Comments

[heller]

Cheater

[Suki]

G'mornin' heller.

[Joe M]

Wrong!

[Suki]

That is not heller?

[Joe M]

No, the links aren't labeled 9 AM.

[Suki]

It must be rigged.

[Joe M]

You mike be right.

[Hey]

This is all very interesting.

[heller]

Do not be deceived fellow commenters, these are no Morning Links.

They are merely... Midnight Links!

Riggs is a phoney, a big fat phoney!

[Suki]

Watch out. Riggs might break your thumbs. I would tell you to ask Susan, but that is not possible.

[Quetzalcoatl]

Riggs is Invincible! The Fighter! The Shooter! He Owns the Night! He will inflict Max Payne on your Lovely Bones! He and his Four Brothers will make you the Departed in a Perfect Storm of Fear!

Planet of the Apes!

[Pro Libertate]

It's a madhouse!

[Restoras]

That's a winnah!

[Fist of Etiquette]

First!

Here's what happened on Election Day:

Ohio lost the right to engage in interstate healthcare commerce, and also the right to bitch about state workers and budget deficits.

Turns out Arizona misses the guy who landscapes its lawn.

Mississippi doesn't want to issue in utero birth certificates.

New jerksy wants to destroy the integrity of college basketball.

[Suki]

Nice try. We've been robbed!

[Old Jay Nordlinger]

Get real dude.

[Ted S.]

> New jerksy wants to destroy the integrity of college basketball.

What integrity?

[KDN]

Integrity? NCAA? Does not compute.

[Suki]

No news on how king troll got filtered from the tubez of reason?

[Live Free or Diet]

Attention span of a ferret on crack?

[Suki]

I missed the post or comment of how Reason has improved the commons.

[Live Free or Diet]

I'm figuring that's what happened to the troll: He has the attention span of a ferret on crack. Once he gets bored again doing whatever it is that passes for amusement in his mother's basement -- Golden Girls marathon? -- he'll be back.

[Funny Gambol Guy]

Gambol!

[mad libertarian guy]

Manic behavior is often followed by deep depression.

Dude is bipolar.

[Suki]

First female mayor elected in Knoxville, TN.

[Joe M]

That's nothing. Houston's lesbian mayor was reelected.

[Suki]

Unless she is a spaghetti bender, then this is something.

[Spoonman.]

Barely. Makes me wish I'd bothered to vote for Herrera.

[STEVE SMITH]

I voted Simms, because he wanted to get rid of the red light cameras.

[R]

That's odd. I thought STEVE SMITH was for the RAPING HIKERS candidate.

[invisible furry hand]

"The kids who were victims or whatever they want to say"

Aah, I get it - they weren't "victim victims"

[10-year-old boy]

Some of us get off on buggery.

[Whoopi Goldberg]

It wasn't 'rape' rape.

[Joe M]

Share this article with all your liberal friends: Want Real Change? Occupy the Republican Party

[Quetzalcoatl]

Interesting, but I usually expect better from Conor.

Shouldn't his trendy faux-hashtag be #OGOP?

[MNG]

Wow, this Penn State thing is a mess. I had no idea it was a Catholic college.

[Whoopi]

Despite his awareness that Coach Jerry Sandusky was raping children, and his habit of saying things like, "The kids who were victims or whatever they want to say, I think we all ought to say a prayer for them.

But I don't think it was 'rape rape'.

[Quetzalcoatl]

-1

[Apostle Paul cornholed yngboyz]

A huge Greek gay joke about sacred pederasty is contained within the Bible.

Open up your ass to the word of god, slaveboy!

Even funnier are Xians studiously ignoring it, even though Greek scholars say that it would have been easily recognized as a homosexual joke in the day.

It is as none other than Paul?an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus?that I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, [Onesimus means useful] who became my son while I was in chains. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.
~Philemon 1:9-11

So don't be surprised if Catholics act just like Paul, the Apostle inventor of Christianity, one of several sacred pederasty cults in the day.

Learn more here:
SEX RITES: The Origins of Christianity
The Ritual Use of Sex, Drugs, and Human Sacrifice
http://ancientmeme.blogspot.com/

[Quetzalcoatl]

-99

[You like it Greek?]

[Live Free or Diet]

Interesting how trolls here don't understand libertarians tend to be atheists, or at least what my teenager refers to as apathetic agnostics AKA "I don't know and I don't care."

[Apatheist]

+1

[JEP]

My roommate in college told people he was a "non-practicing atheist"

[Red Rocks Rockin]

Seriously? This is what you're going with to tweak the "HURR DURR XTIAN BIGOTS!!!1!!1!"? A vague scripture that some academic twink desperately needs to validate their confirmation bias?

There's a lot worse than that in the Bible, and best of all, it doesn't even need to be deconstructed with some broken sperglord's desperate emotional need to lash out at his Religious Oppressors.

[Pip]

I got $100 that says this guy dresses up like a nun.

[Mr. Mark]

You've done more to characterize yourself than anybody else.

[John]

Or an Occupy Wall Street event.

[Suki]

+69

[Michael Pack]

In truth,children are more likely to be sexually abused by a government school employee that a priest.

[Catholic League Special Report]

...right after the weather.

[Quetzalcoatl]

Or their own parents.

[John Thacker]

Stepparents, boyfriends, and creepy uncles are more likely than own parents.

[Zeb]

I imagine that is true. But most children aren't Catholic and so don't have much contact with priests.

[Tulpa]

The relevant question would seem to be whether contact with a priest is more likely to result in molestation than contact with a public school employee.

I'd imagine both conditional probabilities are extremely low.

[rac3rx]

Priests who molest children are very rare and thus make news because they are news. It's not memeworthy, but usually the facts aren't.

[Citizen Nothing]

But not as rare as defensive coordinators.

[Tulpa]

TBH, anybody molesting children is pretty rare.

[Lord Humungus]

Romney's Fiscal Awakening
The candidate moves part way toward Paul Ryan on Medicare.
http://online.wsj.com/article/.....70398.html

Mr. Romney's bigger breakthrough is on the growth of the entitlement state, which is now 55% of the government and climbing. On Social Security, he endorsed "progressive indexing," essentially an income test that would slow the increase in future benefits for wealthier seniors. He would also gradually raise the retirement age to adjust for longer life spans.

[MNG]

That's the thing with Romney, whereever you stand at some point in his career he has "moved toward" that position.

[John Thacker]

Yes.

Perhaps the only amusing thing about the general election will be Obama and Romney attempting to make that claim about the other.

Perhaps they'll both avoid mentioning the other's flip-flops, because it will interfere with the preferred attacks of the other for being "extreme."

[MNG]

You're a pretty diehard GOPer for sure but I doubt even you want to argue Obama's flip flopping can match Romneys.

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. ? Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

- Senator Obama

When he ran for president, Barack Obama defended the medical use of marijuana and said that he would not use Justice Department resources to override state laws on the issue.

[MNG]

Nice try.

Obama has failed to follow through on some things and flipped on others, sure. But with Romney we are talking about a man who ran to the left of Ted Kennedy less than a decade before he tried to run to the right of the GOP Presidential nominee field. We're talking every major issue you can think of: gay rights, abortion, taxes, gun control, immigration.

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

Having a pissing contest about whether your boy or the GOP Walking Hairpiece is worse is probably a big waste of time. You'll get down on your knees for The Anointed One in 2012 because you hate the Other Team just that much.

[John]

BRBM,

Of course he will. That is why he is constantly saying I will vote for Romney next year. It is called projection.

[John Thacker]

We're talking every major issue you can think of: gay rights, abortion, taxes, gun control, immigration.

Obama has flip-flopped on gay rights, on immigration, on taxes, on killing people without due process, on spying without a warrant, on transparency, on drugs, on debt (and tax reform like Bowles-Simpson), on the individual mandate, and on trade.

I think that the immigration, tax reform, individual mandate, and trade are bigger issues because the space for political maneuvering is greater. Gay rights, gun rights, and abortion have fewer room for Presidents to affect policy (outside of appointing Supreme Court justices.) Legalizing pot I'd put in the latter category, but crackdowns I wouldn't.

So on significant issues that the President can affect, Obama has flip-flopped more. Especially if you count things like making vague promises to both sides so that everyone thinks that you secretly agree with them-- a tactic of Romney as well, for sure.

But no one really cares about flip-flopping. Didn't hurt Clinton.

[Cabeza de Vaca]

You don't think Obama has flip flopped as muchas Romney has?

[MNG]

No.

You can't run to the left of Ted Kennedy and then to the right of the GOP nominee field in less than ten years and have anyone beat you in flip flopping.

Romney doesn't even had the luxury of the "well the realities of the executive office complicated things." He flip flopped under no pressures at all.

[John]

And Obama was under so much pressure to welch on all of his promises about civil liberties, GUITMO and the wars, you know with control of the House and 60 votes in the Senate for his first two years.

Obama is on your team and thus is excused from responsiblity in your eyes. We get it.

[MNG]

Congress moved to block him on GITMO. I don't think his stated position on closing GITMO has ever changed has it?

Romney's STATED POSITIONS on nearly every major issue has changed.

Take abortion. Pro-choice groups identify Obama as pro-choice then and now, and so does he. Romney has diametrically flipped on this. Or gun control. Noone, including Obama, has ever argued that he is some NRA champion. But Romney has actually gone from gun control advocate to repeated champion of the NRA. Stem cells, immigration, the auto bailout, pretty much everything.

Again, does anyone here want to argue that Obama has ran to the right of, say, Rand Paul and then turned around to be the "most liberal Senator?" Because that is what Romney did in a less than ten year span by running to the left of Teddy and then to the right of the 08 pack.

[Pip]

"Noone"

You consistently misspell "no one".

Ph.D. my ass.

[Field Marshall Gill]

Romney doesn't even had the luxury of the "well the realities of the executive office complicated things."

Science, could you be more full of shit? Romneycare occurred when he was what? Oh, yeah, in the Mass. executive office?

Presidential flip-flopping is so totally different from Governor flip-flopping! Why didn't I see it before now?

[John Thacker]

Romney doesn't even had the luxury of the "well the realities of the executive office complicated things." He flip flopped under no pressures at all.

Obama (like Romney) contradicted himself while running for office in 2008 depending on what group he was speaking to. The "realities of the executive office" simply meant that he had to decide which group to tick off.

The individual mandate flip-flop has had more of an effect on Americans than any of Romney's.

[Proprietist]

Dude, Obama's to the right of Bush on a lot of things he ran to the Left of him on. He's less transparent, has abused the Patriot Act more, escalated the invasive security state and done drone strikes on US citizens (and in nominally allied countries without their permission). He's not only kept Bush's expansions of executive power - he's made them worse.

How about we just say that all politicians are pandering cretins willing to say whatever they need to say to get elected, and Obama and Romney are two specimens of this phenomenon, in all its disgusting glory.

[Pip]

"You can't run to the left of Ted Kennedy"

I'd like a citation for this MNG bullshit. GFY, Minge.

[John Thacker]

I'm not saying I like Romney; I've said before that I think that a GOP Congress plus Obama would likely be better for conservatives and libertarians both than a GOP Congress plus Romney.

But I don't see how you can say that Romney has flip-flopped more than Obama on issues, either.

I just don't think that it matters. Obama is going to want to paint Romney as extreme, not as a flip-flopper.

Obama ran as a candidate on the express concept of being vague and self-contradictory by promising different audiences different things. He flipped and flopped simultaneously (as has Romney, at times.) His comments on trade were one noticeable example.

But that sort of stuff doesn't really hurt politicians; often it helps, especially before an executive has to make a real decision and upset one group.

[R C Dean]

Meh. After a certain point, an argument over who is more soulless and self-serving becomes nothing more than partisan posturing.

Can't we all just agree that Obama and ROMNIAC have demonstrated they have no principles they won't sacrifice on the altar of ambition, and call it a day?

[Pip]

"Can't we all just agree that Obama and ROMNIAC have demonstrated they have no principles they won't sacrifice on the altar of ambition, and call it a day?"

But MNG really, really needs to keep masturbating. Where's your compassion, RC?

[Tulpa]

I've said before that I think that a GOP Congress plus Obama would likely be better for conservatives and libertarians both than a GOP Congress plus Romney.

1. A GOP congress isn't guaranteed. "Voting for gridlock" is a tricky business.

2. I trust that you don't want Obama to be nominating Scalia's and Kennedy's replacements on SCOTUS.

[Lord Humungus]

Republicans offer tax deal to break debt impasse; Democrats dismiss it
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....ml?hpid=z4

Congressional Republicans have for the first time retreated from their hard-line stance against new taxes, offering to raise federal tax collections by nearly $300 billion over the next decade as part of a plan to tame the national debt.

But Democrats rejected the offer Tuesday ? along with the notion that Republicans had made a significant concession that could end the long-standing political impasse ? leaving a special debt-reduction committee far from compromise with less than two weeks until its Thanksgiving deadline.

[MNG]

This casual dismissal is to be condemned. The GOP was willing to compromise, a hard position for them to take given so many past promises in deals to increase revenue for cuts that were never followed up on. For the Dems to dismiss it was awful.

[John Thacker]

Apparently, just as the GOP likes lower rates enough to give up on deductions, the Dems apparently really really want higher rates (to punish the rich?) and care less about loopholes.

[KDN]

Democrat tax policy is fully about what's best for the country, getting the most revenue for the least economic impact, not wealth envy for political gain! How dare you suggest otherwise, wingnutz.

[mad libertarian guy]

This is sarcasm, right?

[John Thacker]

I could live with a lower rates with lower deductions tax code that raises a little bit more money, because lower compliance costs and higher efficiency is worth something.

Then again, I got attacked here for saying that Bowles-Simpson was one of the best plans that could possibly pass.

[MNG]

I'm not sure why people, even libertarians, can't live with lower rates for most people with higher rates for few. If you got to pay taxes it seems like the fewer people paying them the better.

[R C Dean]

I'm not sure why people, even libertarians, can't live with lower rates for most people with higher rates for few.

Something to do with fairness, political stability, giving everyone a stake, that kind of thing.

[cynical]

Because it's a democracy, so it's a good idea to have a supermajority of people who have a vested interest in holding the government accountable for the way it uses the resources it diverts from the individual goals of its citizens?

[Restoras]

To add my two cents, pols desperate for re-election (power) will then say, "Well why shouldn't just a few pay nothing at all?" and that just balloons into 45% of filers paying no income tax. Yes, I know they pay other sorts of taxes, but the fact is, when you visibly see your income confiscated, you tend to care.

[John Calhoun]

If you got to pay taxes it seems like the fewer people paying them the better.

If you've got to pick cotton by hand, it seems like the fewer people who have to do it the better.

[KDN]

I got attacked here for saying that Bowles-Simpson was one of the best plans that could possibly pass.

This is a libertarian site. We are idealists. Therefore, the perfect is always the enemy of the good, or even the practical.

[Mike M.]

The democrats are completely full of it about wanting to increase tax revenue. Obama gave the game away with his pushing for more payroll tax reduction.

It's all about the class warfare for them, which is what Obama's entire reelection campaign is going to be based on.

[Concerned Citizen]

Aren't we guaranteed due process before we can be deprived of life, liberty, or property? The income tax is the biggest scam of the century. Only U.S Citizens have to pay it. And there are several definitions of United States in Black's Law Dictionary. The Devil is truly in the details.

[R C Dean]

Aren't we guaranteed due process before we can be deprived of life, liberty, or property?

No. What makes you think that?

[Greg]

Only U.S Citizens have to pay it [income tax].

Not true. Anyone that earns enough income in the US has to pay it, whether they are a citizen or not.

And there are several definitions of United States in Black's Law Dictionary.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. (And, I'm finding it a little hard to believe, too.)

The Devil is truly in the details.

The White House is details?

[MNG]

Caught Cain's press conference. The good thing for him is that the allegations at this stage are he-said-she said. The bad thing is they are more like he-said-she-and-she-and-she-and-she-and-she-and-said.

[Tim]

Incompetent and incoherent ain't no way to go through life son.

[pure Alabama blacksnake]

[MNG]

It's up to five now isn't it?

Many around here argued that when the number of women accusing that IMF guy went plural that that was strong evidence the guy was what they said.

Surely the same folks will use the same logic now.

Surely.

[cynical]

Yep, he almost certainly did it. The good news is, he's running for president, not CEO, and we've already established as precedent that it's legit for the president to extract sexual favors from his employees.

[Poet Laureate sloopyinca]

You can start that list with me MiNGey.

But his wandering eye in no way should affect how one feels about the guy. In my book, he's still a naive, lazy on policy, race card-playing political hack.

[SFC B]

Based on the number of people coming out giving specific details about specific events Cain is probably exactly what they said he was. The question now becomes whether anyone cares.

[R C Dean]

Based on the number of people coming out giving specific details about specific events

As far as I can tell, there has been exactly one (1) person making specific allegations.

[rac3rx]

And that one person has now been pretty much discredited.

[Tulpa]

LOL. I'll remember your statement next time Bill Clinton's issues come up.

[Dennis Green]

HE IS WHO WE THOUGHT HE WAS!

[Tulpa]

So you're throwing Romney out for failing to have lifelong devotion to conservative ideals, but totally OK with Cain despite the fact that he groped women under his authority and offered quid pro quos.

[Woman #6]

That bastard Cain asked me to dinner!

[Lord Humungus]

Evan Bayh: Another regulation means fewer jobs, less reliability
http://www.indystar.com/articl.....eliability

While I support efforts that contribute to a cleaner environment, the effectiveness of a regulation must be weighed against the economic detriment it will cause through lost jobs and higher costs. This is a particularly bad time to add to the burdens of families and businesses.

[sarcasmic]

Chubby Chaser special:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem.....cheat.html

[Lord Humungus]

*danger* *danger*

[sarcasmic]

Ha ha! Made you look!

[Live Free or Diet]

Come on lady, low carb! Stop eating those empty calories!

[WTF]

You dick! Why, oh why, didn't I listen to Lord Humungus?

[sarcasmic]

Ha ha! Made you look!

[Lord Humungus]

I gave up my eyesight for the common good.

[sarcasmic]

Some things can't be unseen.... Muahahahahaha!

[Restoras]

This shit is too funny.

[Ignore the troll spam]

[T]

Writing on Jezebel.com

Well, of course she was.

[Woman #6]

"Big is beautiful: Jacqueline, who unwittingly features in the ad, believes the marketing material 'suggests, blatantly, that fat people are patently undeserving of love and loyalty.'

Well they're not.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

The whole "fat-positive" movement is an interesting one, because it clashes directly with the "lardo-American" meme that the SWPL masses have been pushing ever since Super-Size Me came out.

Look how hard the entertainment industry is currently pimping that marginally talented landwhale Melissa McCarthy as The Newest Big Thing (ahem) in comedy.

[SugarFree]

A 53-year-old man was found dead Tuesday inside a tent pitched at the Occupy New Orleans encampment at Duncan Plaza across from City Hall. He appears to have been living in the tent inside the occupation zone, said John Gagliano, chief investigator for the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office.

The man appears to have been dead for at least two days, Gagliano said.

Dying alone in a tent, and not found for two days. Shitty way to go, even if it wasn't foul play.

[Tim]

Apparently we have learned how long you have to be dead before any other hippie notices the smell.

[invisible furry hand]

I'm amazed they didn't compost him to help heal Mother Gaia

[Quetzalcoatl]

I'm amazed they didn't try to frame a... what are they protesting down there? Shrimp fishermen?

[Lord Humungus]

apparently patchouli covers up many sins.

[Suki]

I think you mean fowl play there.

[Lord Humungus]

Time to end the occupation

Your movement has also raised interesting political questions about corporate greed that we will all have to grapple with. For example, the financial sector made $427 billion in profits last year -- that's billion with a "B." That's a lot of money.

A friend pointed out to me on Twitter that in 2010, that would have been enough money to keep our federal government running for 45 days and two hours. Which means. ... Wait, what?

Anyway, your movement also spawned the ingenious "I'm Getting Arrested" app. It allows Droid users to send pre-set text messages to the people of their choosing with a single touch of the screen.

From now on, I will load this app every time I start throwing bottles and rocks at police officers, so that I can easily notify my wife of my subsequent arrest without having to fumble with a virtual keypad.

[Lord Humungus]

Can the U.S. drill its way out of its energy crisis? Yes, it can
http://business.financialpost......es-it-can/

U.S. President Barack Obama may continue to believe that the United States 'can't drill its way' out of its energy crisis, but American energy developers are already proving him wrong.

News that Britain's BG Group has become the first company to export liquefied natural gas from the United States, inking a landmark US$8-billion deal with Cheniere Energy, shows how the American North Eastern shale gas revolution could not only allow the U.S. to meet much of its energy needs domestically, but also turn into a strong natural gas exporting powerhouse.

[Tim]

New York is still refusing to allow any exploitation of the gas underneath it's territory.

[Suki]

Does that rule out exploration and the free exercise to sell property in a mutually agreed manner?

[Tim]

This is New York we're talking about, so, yes.

[Suki]

Oops, forgot that all contracts are exploitation there.

[PIRS]

Can someone who now lives in Ohio clear something up for us? Is there something about the collective bargaining law that most non-Ohioans are unsaware? Something that might make a normally reducing state budgets hesitate before supporting this law?

[John Thacker]

One reason why this law did worse is that it didn't exempt cops and firefighters.

A huge percentage of people "in the middle" really want state employees to be forced to contribute more to their health care, etc., but really don't want to take away public union collective bargaining to do it. Even if the latter is the only way to accomplish the former, they don't believe it.

[PIRS]

This might actually come out better for our side in the end. Because Gov. Kasich can say "Well, I guess we will have to make even deeper cuts in [insert worthless government program of your choice] and hire even fewer government workers. Maybe we should look into using more private contractors."

[John Thacker]

In this particular case, the effects will only be on local government. It's the cities and counties which will have to raise taxes or fire people and cut services.

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

*shrug*

I hope so. Ohioans shall reap what they have sown.

[Mr. Soul]

we will

[mike]

You won't see this at the state level as much as at the local level. Kasich balanced the state budget largely by reducing funding to local governments throughout the state. He proposed this law as a tool to help local governments reduce their expenses. They said no thanks. Interestingly, lots of levies (at least in Franklin County, where Columbus is) failed yesterday.

So people said we like our government unions, but we're not willing to pay more for them. And fuck Obamacare. Issue 2 proponents campaigned on the fact that local governments will be forced to reduce staffing to deal with reduced budgets.

[PIRS]

"Issue 2 proponents campaigned on the fact that local governments will be forced to reduce staffing to deal with reduced budgets."

I strongly oppose Obamacare for multiple reasons but it sounds like that ad might almost make me want to SUPPOERT it - almost - I still oppose Obamacare.

[MNG]

PIRS

You don't need any whiny narratives about how people were "fooled" and stuff.

People like unions, they like the idea of unions. The other day fluffy and I were debating what I argued was the better stance of collective business entities like corporations vs. sole proprietorships and I pointed out a point for the former is they are less arbitrary and more rational. Fluffy replied with praise for the arbitrary nature of the latter (the boss can come in and just decide he's "not going to put up with your shit anymore" is how he put it). To most people that is a bug not a feature. Few people enjoy their livelihood to be one where they have little voice and bargaining power save to quit and therefore must live under the arbitrary whims of someone who happens to be the boss. Unions, imperfect as they may be, speak to that.

[Timon19]

People may like the "idea" of unions (which I think is a pretty debatable notion - I hear lots of already non-union people complaining about them pretty regularly), but what they REALLY don't like is the prospect of a POLICE/FIRE APOCALYPSE!!!!! - no matter how overblown and unrealistic. And certainly no matter the fact that policemen and/or firemen will be cut if the localities can't pay for them, so either they "lose" safety services because they can't collectively bargain, or they lose them because the city is broke.

People freak out if they hear that they may be burgled or their house may burn down, no matter how trumped up the circumstances. If the other side cannot effectively counter the fearmongering, guess what people remember?

[Jeffrey]

"someone who happens to be the boss"

It's sad, but I bet people really do see it this way.

[MNG]

Sure they do, because they open their eyes. They see plenty of examples of people who are their boss just because of whose vagina the person tumbled out of, or because the person is a flatterer of the bigger boss or catches the bigger bosses eye in some way.

[Ice Nine]

Or both together.

[Lost_In_Translation]

So you admit that government is an incestuous whore that arbitrarily decides our fate...and you want to give them more power.

Impressive.

[Field Marshall Gill]

They see plenty of examples of people who are their boss just because of whose vagina the person tumbled out of, or because the person is a flatterer of the bigger boss or catches the bigger bosses eye in some way.

When I read such childish imbecility I look at the picture of my wonderful, deceased Mother and say "thank you for teaching me that the world isn't fair. But for you love and wisdom, I could have turned out like MNG" ::shudders::

[Jeffrey]

Working for a boss is voluntary, it isn't something that just happens.

[0x90]

"People like unions, they like the idea of unions."

Sure, and I would argue that to a significant degree, the conversion of their support for the concept of union, into support for what, in this country, is commonly referred to as organized labor, is based in their mistakenly equivocating the one with the other.

Once we sweep that distinction under the rug, then sure, we can make the simplistic claim that 'people like unions.' But on what grounds could any advocate of free association argue with such a general statement? That he supports the concept is a foregone conclusion, so it should be clear that his argument lies elsewhere.

[PIRS]

"arbitrary whims of someone who happens to be the boss"

If you hire someone to do work around your home you are that person's "boss". How much control over the terms of the contract do you think you should have?

[DesigNate]

So wait, are you saying that corporations are less arbitrary and more rational?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!11!!!1!

[cynical]

I kind of the latter for the opposite reason -- it might be totally rational to fuck an employee over, but when you're dealing with them on a human-to-human level, empathy usually nudges people to work things out in a mutually beneficial way. A corporation, because it is (and legally, must be) so rational, is more like an evil AI.

It's inefficient, as well: with a person, you can work based on trust, and just negotiate as needed to keep the relationship working. With a machine, everything has to be defined precisely to prevent it from gaining any advantage over you, because it will (and must) take everything it can. Good for lawyers and shareholders, crappy for society.

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

Easy, PIRS: it included cops, firefighters, and teachers, so the SB5 opponents told us the childrenz would be uneducated and we would all be victims of Joe Biden-style rape.

[Citizen Nothing]

What BRBM said.
Voting for the issue was sold as voting for killing children and voting against the "hero" cops and firefighters. A shitload of union money came into the state to sell this message.

[Nephilium]

And you also had both the firefighters and police saying how it would prevent the departments from hiring "enough" people to protect the people living in the areas. Therefore being responsible for more people dying and higher response times.

[MNG]

Again, you can go through life thinking the "other side" is evil and all those people who voted the way they did are dupes and fools or that there are some things people find positive about things you see only negative in, and maybe the world is more nuanced than might make you comfortable.

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

Feel free to explain how, given what I said above, that Ohio voters are not dupes.

That fat fuck Joe Trumka was here yesterday - Ohio's fiscal future was sacrificed on a bed of identity politics. The magic invocation of "cops, teachers, and firefighters" stood no chance in the face of fiscal reality.

[MNG]

I've already offered my counter-explanation. People like PIRS can believe either that most of the population of Ohio are fools and dupes easily misled by evil folks or that they are people like him with a different take and value on something he sees differently.

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

Support for the Iraq War in 2003 was 73%. Were those people all fools and dupes? My answer is "yes". Yours is a mealy-mouthed mewing about "valuing things differently."

[T]

I can't speak for PIRS, but if you do this:

most of the population of Ohio are fools and dupes easily misled

Than I have to agree. Most people do not spend nearly the time thinking about government, politics and policy those of us here do. I mean, shit, I know more about an issue in Ohio than most people here in Texas know about the Constitutional amendments that were on the ballot yesterday. Most people don't enjoy getting off into the weeds on this stuff like we do, so they find other things to occupy their time, like having a life.

In my opinion, this is yet another reason for reducing the scope of government. If you cut down the number of things people have to keep track of with respect to their government, they might invest the minimal time necessary to keep up. As it is, you have to make a serious investment in time and effort to figure this shit out. We should be trying to reduce the "rational ignorance" effect as much as we can, and one way is to reduce the scope of government.

[DesigNate]

Damn, I totally forgot to vote yesterday. Hope there wasn't anything too heinous here in Texas.

[Citizen Nothing]

Why do you hate Ohio's heroes, Rev. BM?

[Quetzalcoatl]

MNG's point, if I understand it correctly, is that Ohio voters probably made an informed decision to repeal the collective bargaining restrictions, knowing that it would bankrupt the state.

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

Ha - thread winnah.

[Citizen Nothing]

Heroes before Solvency!
(I think this appears, in Latin of course, on the Ohio state flag.)

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

Heroica Ante Solvuntur

?

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

Heroica Ante Solvuntur

?

[Citizen Nothing]

Yeah -- that's the bit.

[MNG]

Perhaps, like me, they don't think this will bankrupt the state. First, many states were able to get significant cuts without attacking collective bargaining. Second, paying employee benefits is hardly the only thing in state budgets.

[T]

Employee costs are, IIRC, the single largest budget item in local municipality budgets. It may vary by city, but it's usually the biggest single line item by far.

[Britt]

Hey MNG you mendacious twat, let's do some fucking math.

My city is Richmond, VA. The annual budget for the city is 700,000,000 give or take a few thousand. The single largest item is Employee Compensation and Benefits, which accounts for 260 million dollars. That's 37% of the total budget. The next highest item is Education, which at 150 million accounts for 21% of the budget.

God, you're such an ignorant little shit.

[Lost_In_Translation]

Second, paying employee benefits is hardly the only thing in state budgets.

Right, we need to stop wasting money paving roads or maintaining parks.

Fully fund those overbloated pensions. After all, we promised!!!

[Timon19]

And for some goddamn reason, they threw nurses in, even though they're mostly not public employees.

It's truly amazing how the unions can argue, with a straight face, that response times will go up. Well, fuckers, assuming fewer employees always == higher response times (dubious), the same fucking thing is going to happen when cities cannot hire (or manage to eliminate) people due to being fucking broke.

[Ice Nine]

And for some goddamn reason, they threw nurses in, even though they're mostly not public employees.

See "heroes," above.

[Mr. Soul]

thats unholy trinity has one common trait - constantly reminding us they are heroes making a difference. They are not. They are simply put the 3 worst type of people in the world.

[Nephilium]

I don't think the "other side" is evil. I do believe that they rarely follow their beliefs through to the foreseeable consequences. Both of the statements regarding being unable to hire, and more deaths due to response times were on mailings I received from No on Issue 2 campaigns.

[Citizen Nothing]

I don't believe they're evil at all. But I do believe their good intentions lead to evil consequences, and I'm certainly not willing to cede to them the moral high ground.

[rac3rx]

I do believe they're evil. The collective left has witnessed throughout recent history their preferred policy positions carried out to their logical ends (i.e. Soviet Communism, National Socialism) and yet they continue to advocate for these same policies. If they're all that fucking ignorant, then they need to be locked away so they don't hurt themselves or others. They all know what they're doing, it is a power play, and it is pure evil.

[Typical Leftist]

It wasn't the ideology at fault, but not having the Right People gambol across their respective political landscape.

[EDG reppin' LBC]

...and maybe the world is more nuanced than might make you comfortable.

Thanks for the reminder! It is easy to get lost in the echo chamber of H&R. Reality is that alot of folks on the other side of the argument earnestly believe in unions. It is up to us as liberty loving, free market advocates to try to point out the flaws in their thinking. I changed my opinions about unions, and so can they.

[KDN]

Ohio's been bleeding population for two decades. If it is anything like NJ, I guarantee this fact has had no impact on the employment numbers of the various departments.

[PIRS]

I am one of the people who left - I couldn't find a job there - 6 years ago. So I moved to Florida and found one the next week.

Today it is hard to find a job even here.

[Mr. Soul]

sadly like "the jacket" I left NJ for OH. Now I have a family here and cant just leave, but i probably will eventually.

[Citizen Nothing]

One of us...one of us...

[PIRS]

I have nothing but respect for fire-fighers. Firefighters actually do save lives and actually have a benevolent job description. Cops, no longer do I have a warm fuzzy feeling about them. They are simply agents of the state. They enforce laws regardless of how immoral those laws are - that and I have seen too many incidents of police abuse.

[MNG]

Hell, I'll go one further. I respect cops, firefighters and teachers, but no more or less than any other profession. Everyone gets compensated for what they do, there is nothing magic or especially heroic about any of the three imo.

For me, union rights is about empowering working people like me, not some heroic ideal of some profession.

[PIRS]

Teachers? PUBLIC SCHOOL Teachers? Compare our joke of an educational system to any other first world country. We are near the bottom. Now compare the graduates from our public schools to home schooled kids and see what you find.

[MNG]

Compare apples to bannanas and see what you find.

The teacher hate is a product of relentless right wing noise machines targeting them simply because they support the "wrong" party. Nuanced analysis of how our public school system does controlling for unique challenges and such paints a much more complex picture than "our schools is terriblez."

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

The teacher hate is a product of relentless right wing noise machines targeting them simply because they support the "wrong" party. Nuanced analysis of how our public school system does controlling for unique challenges and such paints a much more complex picture than "our schools is terriblez."

SSDD.

Teachers talk out of both sides of their mouths on multiple issues.

They talk about how "they make a difference", but those actual difference-making endeavors cannot be measured through standardized tests because "we have 'unique challenges'" and it's all the parents' fault.

Their jobs are "so hard", and yet, there are 100-200 applicants per one open teaching job.

They tell me that they "just want to teach" and they don't care about the money, but they won't go to inner-city schools or take pay cuts.

It has nothing to do with "right wing noise". It has to do with common people being sick and tired of being beaten about the head and shoulders with what fucking Vaunted Saints All Teachers Everywhere are, when the plain evidence to the contrary is staring us in the face.

[PIRS]

RE: Beloved Rev. Blue Moon

+9999999999999999999999999

Great response!

[PIRS]

"Compare apples to bannanas and see what you find."

If I don't like apples I am not forced to buy them. Ditto for bananas. I am forced to pay for the public schools that give diplomas to students who cannot read them.

[MNG]

Yeah, and pretty much every major study on the issue shows that things outside of teacher's control, like family factors, matters most in determining that outcome.

But again, you pay for teachers, sure, but you pay for all kinds of things that don't get nearly as much play in the right-wing outrage machine.

[PIRS]

"Yeah, and pretty much every major study on the issue shows that things outside of teacher's control, like family factors, matters most in determining that outcome."

Ahh, so almost every other western country has no poverty and perfectly stable family structures with no abuse or illness. Every other western country is a paradise for educational absorption and only the USA sucks in this regard.

You are really stretching it here.

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

Yeah, and pretty much every major study on the issue shows that things outside of teacher's control, like family factors, matters most in determining that outcome

Then I guess we do not need them, and I guess they do not "make a difference." And I suppose, then, that if they are not doing anything that matters, we can cut their salaries to that commensurate with a babysitter.

You cannot have it both ways.

[Kant feel Pietzsche]

And here we go again with the "have the yummy cake and eat it too" argument. Pick a meme and stick with it.

Since "pretty much every major study on the issue shows that things outside of teacher's control, like family factors, matters most in determining that outcome", let's fire all the teachers and get a bunch of high-school dropout willing to work for minimum wage to fill in.

By your own logic, the outcome won't be any worse, and we'll save a ton of money.

[Kant feel Pietzsche]

Well, that's what I get for not refreshing.

[#]

"By your own logic, the outcome won't be any worse, and we'll save a ton of money."

Yeah this is what is annoying.

On one hand it is so important to get good teachers - thats why we need to pay them a ton.

On the other hand, we cant do merit pay because everythign is out of the control of the teachers - its all the parents.

So either teachers do have an effect on students and therefore we can do merit pay, or they really dont, and we shoudl just go back to paying them shit and save a ton of money.

They cant have it both ways.

[mad libertarian guy]

Studies done by the educational institution concerning the efficacy of said institution.

No bias there, I'm sure.

[CrackertyAssCracker]

But again, you pay for teachers, sure, but you pay for all kinds of things that don't get nearly as much play in the right-wing outrage machine.

so my problem is "not enough outrage to go around"? Ok. I'll work on that.

[anonymous commenter some guy]

I am forced to pay for the public schools that give diplomas to students who cannot read them.

The final exam for high school should be reading your diploma in front of everyone when you recieve it. Also, you should be able to calculate when it will hit the ground if I throw it upward at a 63 degree angle from the stage, which is 1 meter above the ground, with an initial speed of 20 m/s.

[PIRS]

"The final exam for high school should be reading your diploma in front of everyone when you recieve it. Also, you should be able to calculate when it will hit the ground if I throw it upward at a 63 degree angle from the stage, which is 1 meter above the ground, with an initial speed of 20 m/s."

I wholeheartedly agree. Of course Union leaders will complain that if they cannot read it that is because of bad parents.

[Quetzalcoatl]

working people like me

I thought you had a PhD?

[Woman #6]

"I thought you had a PhD?"

Noone here really believes he does.

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

I have absolutely no opinion on private unions, MNG. Public unions, on the other hand, are the express route to raiding the treasury so that wealthy state workers can live on the tax dollars of their much poorer private-sector counterparts.

[Citizen Nothing]

Private unions -- yeah!
Public unions -- boo!

[Citizen Nothing]

I did hear one coworker (a columnist, natch)today praising the result, but bitching about how Gov. Kasich will just hold the state hostage by refusing to raise state taxes to send to the cities to pay the public workers.

[MNG]

"are the express route to raiding the treasury so that wealthy state workers can live on the tax dollars"

Oh blah, blah, blah. This is so silly. Public employees unionize for the same reason private ones do, to increase their bargaining power to get better compensation and treatment (noone should have to convince libertarians that the government might not treat people well). Sure, they try to get what they can but the exact same thing can be said for any company with a government contract.

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

Public employees unionize for the same reason private ones do, to increase their bargaining power to get better compensation and treatment

Except corporations that overly defer to their unions go bankrupt. See GM, for example.

States that overly defer to their unions just hike taxes on everything, which fall disproportionately on the poor: food, cigarettes, booze, retail.

Also, what RC said. The FIFO system of layoffs it going to hit the younger and cheaper workers in favor of old fuckers who barely show up to work.

[John Thacker]

Glad to know that you think that FDR was "so silly."

Private unions are a negotiation between labor and management, where both sides get hurt if they don't get a deal, and both sides do put aside temporary advantages for long term stability of the company (or else they both lose; the management was also to blame at GM for years of unhappiness.)

Public employee unions involve negotiations where two groups of people agree to screw over a third.

[MNG]

"Public employee unions involve negotiations where two groups of people agree to screw over a third."

This is hilarious stuff. Like there is no principal agent problem in private corporations.

It's statements like this that do more than anything to convince me this stuff is just partisan slinging.

[John Thacker]

Public employees unionize for the same reason private ones do, to increase their bargaining power to get better compensation and treatment

The motives and goals of the employees have nothing to do with whether or not it makes sense as a structure. You're the one comparing apples to bananas.

It's like saying that a developer who buys land on the open market is the same as one that gets governments to use eminent domain and give it to him, because they both have the same goals of development and profit.

[MNG]

Again, this is all hilarious. EVERY government expediture has that structure. Everytimg the government spends money it involves pol or bureaucrat X taking it from Y and giving it to, say, Z. Public employees are no different.

But you don't hear even a fraction of the bitching on the right about government contractors.

[Woman #6]

"But you don't hear even a fraction of the bitching on the right about government contractors."

What color is the sky ijn your world, MNG?

[rac3rx]

Well, given that most of the private industries that are union dominated (automotive, airline, major manufacturing) are either now bankrupt, gone, or so propped up by the taxpayer they might as well be government owned, I would say that private unions are as big a failure as public unions are a racketeering enterprise and money laundering front for the Democrat Party.

It is no coincidence that "right to work" states have better economies than those who force people to join unions.

[R C Dean]

For me, union rights is about empowering working people like me,

To me, the idea that being a union member is personally empowering is a little odd. You give up whatever control you had over your job to a bureaucracy that will inevitably pursue its own interests when they conflict with yours, and that's "empowering"?

How empowered are all the newer hires who get fired to protect the perks and pensions of the old guard?

[Citizen Nothing]

Yeah -- I figure perhaps some folks (in private industry) still need unions. But I'm kind of insulted by the idea I might require one. (Although, perversely, if the Writer's Guild ever tried to organize our shop, I'm sure I'd be high on the list of management's suspected conspirators.)

[T]

I'm sure I'd be high on the list of management's suspected conspirators.

I'm sure you're high on the list of suspected conspirators no matter what the topic is, CN.

[KDN]

Just about everyone I know with a career is a teacher, including my fiancee; it's about the only job you can get anymore in NJ that doesn't involve stocking shelves or selling retirement plans. The education union hate is well justified. They are interested in nothing more than protecting the lavish benny packages and gainful employment of past their prime teachers at the expense of the young and upcoming while simultaneously scaring those they screw over that the whole system would crumble if anything (really, anything at all) ever changed. And because roughly 75% of the state is dependent on said benefits in one way or another, they are incredibly effective at protecting said perks.

[MNG]

"They are interested in nothing more than protecting the lavish benny packages and gainful employment of past their prime teachers"

Do you hold it against every company (like mine) that does business with the government and works hard (including lobbying and political giving) to get the best deal for ourselves as possible?

And do you think there is nearly as much bitching about that on the right as there is about "teh teachers unionz?"

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

Do you hold it against every company (like mine) that does business with the government and works hard (including lobbying and political giving) to get the best deal for ourselves as possible?

Yup.

And do you think there is nearly as much bitching about that on the right as there is about "teh teachers unionz?"

Who cares?

Longer answer: there is not as much of a guilt-trip present with company-government contracts as there is with "the teachers." Some of us are tired of that guilt trip, you know.

[KDN]

Do you hold it against every company (like mine) that does business with the government and works hard (including lobbying and political giving) to get the best deal for ourselves as possible?

Yes, and I used to work for one (if you ever want to get a feel for the behemoth that is the Fed Gov, become one of their vendors; a 1 page standard contract that we would provide for any other client would explode to 50+ when issued to them).

And do you think there is nearly as much bitching about that on the right as there is about "teh teachers unionz?"

No, but it's arguable that there shouldn't be. You are right though that it's two sides of the same coin: bureaucrats and legislators are too lose with whatever fisc they're entrusted with. The public sector unions would have a better case for that union protection is necessary if they weren't pulling the strings for the entirety of one party while holding undue influence over the local election prospects of the other. If we had a government that was only twice as craven as your typical corporate managers (a low bar, imo) then maybe we could talk. Since that is impossible, they can go scratch.

Also, as Blue Moon says, there's a lot of people simply tired of their bitching, especially since many of us feel we can do their jobs better than they can (those that can, do; those that can't, teach).

[MNG]

How empowered? More so than than the worker who is fired under the totally arbitrary whim of management that fluffy was celebrating the other day. To the extent unions combat that people like it, that's what you're up against.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

How empowered are all the newer hires who get fired to protect the perks and pensions of the old guard?

Just look at teachers--every time there's an employee cutback, it's almost always the younger, less tenured instructors that get the axe, because god forbid the older teachers trying to max out their pension or dead-weight ed department bureaucrats should have to start looking for work.

[Lost_In_Translation]

right, and we should empower people like you to take as much taxpayer money from people like me.

[DesigNate]

I have no problem with you as a worker in the private sector banding together with like minded individuals and forming a union to try and improve your working conditions. But fuck you very much if you think anyone in the public sector should be able to do that. There is an inherent conflict of interest for employees of the state to collectively bargain with the people that they help to elect. If you can't see that then there is no help for you.

On second thought, if public sector workers want to have collective bargaining I would be willing to concede but they have to do it with the taxpayers, not the politicos.

[cynical]

The problem is that the other stakeholders aren't similarly empowered. With a normal transaction, the buyer has two aims: spend less money, and make sure you're actually getting what you pay for, and is empowered to realize them through the right not to engage in an unfair transaction.

However, in pubsec negotiations, the former aim is really the interest of taxpayers, and the latter aim is really the interest of service receivers. Neither has the sort of direct representation at the bargaining table the way the union does, so the union's voice is much louder. The union can say "no, this deal sucks", but the taxpayers or the welfare recipients or whatever doesn't have that option.

If you argue that the government represents taxpayers and service receivers, you could just as easily argue the government represents its citizen-employees, in which case normal elections would be the collective bargaining process, and any additional collective bargaining would be superfluous (and, if only one set of stakeholders got direct access to the secondary bargaining table, unfair).

[PIRS, Agents of the CITY-State]

Say it that way, and the cops are on your side, enforcing Gambol Lockdown.

Such is the schizophrenic libertarian belief that the state is bad, but the city-state (civilization) is somehow mankind's benevolent savior.

[PIRS]

The best spoof ever!

Thank you for that, hilarious.

[AlmightyJB]

Union ads were running 20 to 1 telling the sheep that they would not be safe if the police and fireman were not allowed
to negociate staffing levels. So basically, nice house you have, would be too bad if it burned down or got burglerized.

[AlmightyJB]

Btw...this was a reply about Ohio to pirs from like 60 comments before.

[PIRS]

Thanks.

[cynical]

Fearmongering bullshit ads. And the fact that Ohio has so many pubsec union members.

I still wonder how it would have fared if they had only required that any collective bargaining agreement be subject to a popular referendum before taking effect.

[PIRS]

Thanks

[sarcasmic]

Ronnie Wood's girlfriend is younger (25)than his son's girlfriend (30).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs.....nt-25.html

[Lord Humungus]

I'll always think good of Ronnie Wood for helping to pay for Ronnie Lane's battle with multiple sclerosis.

For those who haven't heard listened to Ronnie Lane's (of the Small Faces and the Faces) solo work, check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar3uIUv-874

[Ignore the troll spam]

[RoboCain]

That's because his son isn't in the Rolling Stones.

[Woman #6]

No way she's 25. Bitches all lie.

[anonymous commenter some guy]

Ronnie Wood's girlfriend is younger (28) than his son's girlfriend (35).

fixed?

[Montani Semper Liberi]

Wisconsin school districts erased their deficits virtually overnight and were able to re-hire teachers who were laid off and/or cancel plans to lay off teachers. Naturally, if the public employee collective bargaining bill passed in Ohio, the exact opposite thing would have happened, some how.

[sarcasmic]

Dude has stroke and wakes up gay.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/hea.....ident.html

[SugarFree]

That's how it happened with Episiarch.

[Joe M]

Except the stroke came afterwards.

[mike]

Did his dealings with Miss Rectal get him caught under the ban hammer? Imagine waking up one day, getting your lube and tissues ready and then finding out you're banned. It's like the last scene from Being John Malkovich.

[rather]

Why ban him? Exposure is akin to my free speech philosophy

[Shorter Daily Mail]

Gay dude comes out.

[Lord Humungus]

Among Minorities, a New Wave of 'Disconnected Youth'
http://online.wsj.com/article/.....ketplace_0

The depressed job market means that competition for low-skill positions is fierce, as young dropouts compete with older and better-educated workers who are being pushed down the jobs ladder.

"It was hard enough for people without a high-school diploma before the downturn. Those folks are at the back of the line now," says Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future in New York City.

[db]

As a Penn State grad, I don't know what to say other than a real investigation of who knew what when needs to take place independently of the criminal cases against the three people who have been charged already. I find it very difficult to believe that Spanier didn't know details of this. I find it difficult to believe that Paterno didn't know details. And if they didn't, the very knowledge that there were accusations of such behavior by Sandusky should have caused those in power (paterno, spanier, and others ) to start asking hard questions. They didn't at the appropriate time, so now they get to have the questions asked of them. They failed in their responsibility to the children who were abused. They failed in their responsibility to the student body and faculty. They failed in their responsibility to the alumni, who now feel the diminished prestige of their association with what was supposed and billed to be a great university planted firmly on the moral high ground.

I am disgusted, and while nothing can be done to undo the past, I firmly hope the victims of this horrific abusegain some sort of justice.

[MNG]

Is the problem that Joe Pa didn't contact the police himself or confront Sandusky himself? I'm not sure he did so wrong by telling his higher up. Confronting Sandusky, whom he had worked with for years, would have been awkward to say the least and why can't he assume his higher up would contact the right authorities?

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

Awkward? For child rape?

[MNG]

Yeah. Say what you want, but if you could deal with a co-worker for years on that topic by either confronting them or telling your boss in common, which would you prefer?

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

I prefer the police. Like, the actual real police, not PSU's Keystone Kops.

[Woman #6]

I'f not involving the police is good enough for Zuccotti park, then it's good enough for PSU.

[Woman #6]

Did I mention Herman Cain asked me out to dinner once?

[WTF]

Hmmmm....
"Listen, I understand that you may have been butt-raping little boys...."

I think I would opt for telling higher-up.

[Kant feel Pietzsche]

No, it starts with Mike McQueary. Graduate Assistant or not, how do you witness a man ass-raping a ten year old, and NOT drag him out of the showers all the way to the police station by his hair?

[PermaLurker]

^This^

[DesigNate]

THANK YOU!!!

I'm not making excuses for Joe Pa, but damn it to hell I can't figure out why every single person under the sun talking about this is like "Joe should have called the cops". No! Mike should have called the fucking cops on his way to Joe's office if he didn't want to directly confront Sandusky.

[John]

No you ask the GA "will you swear to this being true before the police?" and if he says yes you call the cops. Sure it is hard. But life is hard. And beyond that, you are not doing your friend any favors by allowing him to continue attack children. Anyone who didn't call the cops is an absolute moral coward.

And if the GA says no he won't swear to it, you fire him immediately and tell him never to come on campus again. And then tell Sandusky you can't prove it but you know who he is and to never come within 10 miles of the campus again.

The answers are simple. They just were not easy.

[MNG]

He knew Sandusky longer than this GA. I don't think this would have appeared simple to him at all.

Why wouldn't he assume his higher up would call the cops?

[John]

So what if he knew Sandusky longer than the GA? How does he know the guy is lying? And if he thought the GA was making up stories of this nature about Sandusky, why didn't he fire him on the spot instead of keeping him and making him a full fledged coach on the staff to this day?

One of two things are true, either Paterno thought the allegation credible looked the other way and didn't call the cops or he thought one of his GAs was lying about the worst possible allegation you can make about someone and kept him on the staff. Either way Paterno is a moral coward.

And Paterno was the most important person in the athletic department. And Sandusky was literally a legendary assist. Sorry but "I assumed they called the cops and nothing was done" defies credulity. He had to have known they didn't call the cops. And lastly, Paterno banned Sandusky from bringing kids on campus. You mean to tell me he never asked Sandusky about this or had any curiousity about it? Bullshit. There is no defending him. There is nothing complex about it. It was just hard to turn in your friend of 30 years and he didn't do it.

[MNG]

And if he thought the GA was making up stories of this nature about Sandusky, why didn't he fire him on the spot instead of keeping him and making him a full fledged coach on the staff to this day?

Because he figured his superior would sort it out and be better able to (after all as you note he knew one person much better).

"So what if he knew Sandusky longer than the GA? How does he know the guy is lying?"

Dude, do you have any longtime friends? A lot of people try to give their longtime friends the benefit of the doubt over people they don't know every well...

[John]

Because he figured his superior would sort it out and be better able to (after all as you note he knew one person much better).

One, he had no superiors. Joe Paterno was the Penn State athletic department. Two, the GA say the guy raping a 10 year old. Yeah, I have lots of close friends. And if anyone came to me and said they saw one of them doing that, I would either think they were lying and never associate myself with them again or I would believe them and call the cops. I don't care how long you have known the person or how wonderful you think they are, you can't let someone just go along molesting kids. And no one in Paterno's position of power has any right to say "I thought my superiors would sort it out". Bullshit. He was the superior. It wasn't like he was a GA or something. He was the head coach.

There is no defending Paterno here. Sadusky lived in Happy Valley. Was on campus as recently as last week. He ran a charity for at risk young boys. For ten years Paterno watched him do that and knew he was probably a monster and did nothing. And now you defend him? What the hell is wrong with you? Are you just so pedantic that you have to argue every point?

[MNG's an Ass]

"Are you just so pedantic that you have to argue every point?"

BINGO!

[Hacha Cha]

Paterno reported it to the guy who oversees the university police, which IS a real police department and has the same exact authorities as any other police department in PA. But the truth doesn't fucking matter, the media wants heads to roll, even if they aren't the right heads. Mike McQueary is the one who saw the crime, he is the one who didn't report it to the university police. This is a failure of the university police and the department that oversees them, and if anyone on the Penn State football staff should have to go after this season, it should be McQueary and NOT Paterno.

[Zeb]

I don't know what a GA is, but why didn't the person who told Paterno about this go to the police? And why is everyone mad at Paterno about this and not the person who told Paterno about it who also didn't go to the police?

[John]

GA is a graduate assistant. And yeah, that guy is a scumbag too. Why did he not call the police that night. I know it is easy to say you would jump in and stop it right there. But seeing that would so shocking, I could understand why someone might run away in horror. I have never seen something like that so I can't say that I wouldn't do that. But once I got my wits about me, I would have called 9-11 and made sure neither Sandusky or the poor kid left the building. Instead this guy runs home and calls his dad. That is pathetic.

It makes me wonder if they didn't know for years Sandusky was pervert. Why not call the cops? Maybe because they knew if they did it would come out that they had been covering up for him before then.

[db]

For the record, "the GA" is Mike McQueary, who is currently the wide receivers coach and recruiting director for PSU football.

[MNG's an Ass]

It's never the buggery, it's the cover-up.

[John Thacker]

Awkward, sure. It certainly is difficult to be the one to go to the place, telling the AD and then washing your hands of it is the easy way out. For someone that is supposed to be a leader of men and teach them about values, blah blah blah, taking the easy way out isn't respectable or honorable.

I'm not sure if taking the easy way out is so bad as to be a crime in most cases, but it is less moral.

In this case, child rape is so bad that I think not reporting it is a crime.

[Scooby]

Not "co-worker"- it was his subordinate. If my direct supervisor was given information that I might be committing a serious felony in the office, it would be his job to not only report it up the chain, but to ensure that action was taken. To just report it up the chain and wash his hands of it is malfeasance.

[db]

Once he brought up with his superiors and saw that no action had been taken he had the obligatiin to find out why not. Whether it had been fully investigated and debunked or whether it had been covered up, he should have wanted to know. This is not a minor pecadillo, and Paterno is not some minor mid-level staffer, who could conceivably argue that the power structure around him would make it difficult to do anything but get fired. This is JoePa. Donor of multiple millions to the university. He has a library named after him. He is one of the most powerful people at PSU.

[John]

Paterno was the most powerful man in the history of the university in 2002. He had no superiors. They were just superiors in name only. They would have fired the President and the entire board of trustees before they fired Paterno. This decision was Paterno's

[db]

Dont throw all the focus on Paterno though. While he had responsibility, it goes all the way up. Spanier, like the weasel he has proven himself to be in the past, is trying mightily to keep this scandal below his level. If he had even an inkling of this going on at his campus he should have been heavily involved in finding out the truth, and not allowed his subordinates to fall on their swords for him or for the University.

[John]

They are all weisels and should be fired. Maybe you excuse Joe because he is old and worked too closely with Sandusky to do the right thing. But that is why you have Presidents and ADs. They were supposed to be above that. And they totally fucked their coach and their University. If any one of them had called the cops, Paterno would have been off the hook.

[db]

John, you need to check your reading comprehension. Where did I excuse Paterno of anything?

[John]

No, you need to check you reading comprehension. When I say "maybe you excuse Joe" I mean the collective you, meaning them at the time. Suppose Joe is just old and really stupid on this. That is when the AD calls the cops and saves Paterno from himself.

I wasn't saying you excused Joe.

[db]

Ok fair enough.

[MNG's an Ass]

Next time try "maybe one excuses Joe".

[R C Dean]

I'm not sure he did so wrong by telling his higher up.

As Step 1, sure. And then, when nothing happened, he had some obligation to follow up. That is where Joe Pa failed. And it pains me to say that, because I was a real fan of his.

[John Thacker]

The test of morality is what we do when faced with hard choices, especially hard choices when no one is looking and we can escape notice by washing our hands.

Whether or not he had a legal obligation (and child rape is so bad that I think he did), he still acted less than fully moral.

Is it a difficult standard to hold people to, one that many, perhaps even most, might fail? Sure. But we can have unattainable standards without expecting that everyone will meet them.

JoPa failed, as many of us would fail. But he still failed.

[Restoras]

'State College' needs to have its football program shut down for a few years. Give it and their minor-league team obsessed fans some fucking perspective.

[Woman #6]

As long as I can still get a red stuffed pizza at Hi Way, I'm okay.

[romulus augustus]

JoePa will get no love from hardly any Penn State fans if McCreary told him
"Sandusky was raping a kid in the shower." But we don't know yet what McCreary told JoePa in 2002. Maybe it was just "I saw Sandusky taking a shower with the kid." Frankly it would be shocking if McCreary's story to the Grand Jury was what he told JoePa and JoePa failed to call the police.

[Montani Semper Liberi]

I agree with what you're saying. We need to know more to pass judgement on Paterno's actions. I'm a WVU fan, so certainly no Paterno homer, but I don't think we know enough to say if he did anything wrong. He reported the incident to his boss and the campus police. If anyone has ever filed a report against a co-worker, you know there is such a thing as right to privacy of the accused. Joe Pa would have no idea what the outcome of the investigation was. It's possible that he assumed either the allegation was deemed to be unfounded or was handled in such a way that Sandusky maintained his job.

[John]

The grand jury report apparently says the GA told them he saw Sandusky in the shower giving what appeared to be a ten year old a blow job. This wasn't one of those "hey I think Jerry kind of wierd" sort of things. The allegation was about as horrible as it gets.

[romulus augustus]

The story circulating in Happy Valley is that McCreary told the Grand Jury that he saw Sandusky ass-raping the kid. If that is what he told Paterno, then Paterno is a monster for not calling the cops. {And so is McCreary if all he did in 2002 was tell Joe.}

[John]

The GA is a monster too. How do you stumble onto that and not call the cops? I can understand why it would be so grotesque that you would just walk away in shock and not beat the guy death. But as soon as you get your wits about you, you call 9-11. This loser calls his dad? And then his dad doesn't say "call the cops right now"? What a sad bunch of people.

[romulus augustus]

And McCreary should have barged into the shower room and stopped the raping even if he was just a graduate assistant and Sandusky a respected coach.

[db]

This is my thought too. Call 911 on your cell and then go separate Sandusky from the kid.

[db]

Im pretty sure you're conflating two different incidents. The shower incident involved anal penetration. A separate incident involved a janitor witnessing Sandusky fellating a boy pinned up against a wall.

[John]

Okay. Wow. How did the GA see that and just forget about it? How did he manage to stay in the same room with him?

[Ice Nine]

In California, medical personnel - and probably anyone - are required by law to report to the police the merest suspicion of child abuse. Failure to do so is a felony. It has been that way for decades; I'm guessing it is the same in most other states.

[Citizen Nothing]

"...report to the police the merest suspicion of child abuse."
What could possibly go wrong?

[Ice Nine]

Well, one thing is that you could conceivably get in big trouble by casually conjecturing out loud whether or not the parents might have been involved in the injury even when you didn't really think so. I never did that for that very reason and I always implored my nurses to not do that around me.

[chris]

After reading the grand jury report, my first reaction is that they need to raze Penn State to the ground. Turn it into an ashheap, and then pour lye atop the acreage to purify it. How can any parent in good conscious pay to send their kid there after this revelation? It truly is truly obscene both in the actions and the response of everyone involved.

I hope this effects enrollment most negatively where Penn State is no longer viable. It would be a first in a public system of education, a situation where public choice actually mattered, but I have no faith in the American people in our ability to rationalize problems and treat them with the weakest, most limpid response.

[db]

That's pretty insane right there. Certainly the people in power need to go, and quickly. That includes Paterno, Spanier, and many others. The University needs to make a thorough review of its culture and understand the factors that contribute to silence in ethical situations. In those respects, the university needs to be razed and reborn.

Suggesting that one of the nation's, if not the world's, top research universities, which has benefited the cause of humanity so much throughout its history, be completely destroyed is simply moral posturing or worse.

[chris]

Too big to fail, eh? No institution is irreplaceable at this juncture of human history. Your logic is quite faulty here. Penn State's previous history of research bares no anchor of claim on future research. If it were blown up today, it would be a blip in the overall continuum of human progress. Not exactly the burning of the library of Alexandria that you rabidly suggest.

[John]

It wasn't the physics department's fault Sadusky was a pervert. That is crazy.

[db]

You fail to provide any justification for the destruction of anything beyond the careers of those involved. Explain how justice would be done, and what bebefit would be had by anyone, by the destruction of the university as a whole.

[chris]

In those respects, the university needs to be razed and reborn.

Just to correct a few of your reading comprehension fails.

One, I never said anything about being reborn.

Two, I described my gut reaction in the first paragraph as the 'my first reaction . . .' should have clued you in on. The second paragraph described what I view as a constructive response; parents actually making a difference against an entrenched public system by voting with their checkbooks. Hardly insane. It would be revolutionary in the most positive sense of the word.

I'm sorry for you that you can not grasp that.

[db]

You stated your wish to see the university become no longer financially viable. Destructive imagery in your "gut reaction" aside, you still advocate the destructiin of the university and its potential to do future good. Later, you describe my position as "rabid." in so forgive my inclination to not take your righteous lust for institutional destruction seriously.

[chris]

When the church scandals first came to light, I did not hear many people that the drop in membership and donations was not an understandable response even if many worthy charities and even scientific research were affected by that occurring. Strange that libertarian loyalty to a public institution with very little oversight would run so much deeper than shown towards a voluntary society.

[chris]

many people stating that the drop . .

[Benjamin]

Chris is just an angry Ohio State fan I'm guessing.

Anyway, here is something I posted on a different forum (www.alternatehistory.com).

"I graduated from PSU (International Politics / History minor, class of 1995) and have family living in State College. They have been keeping me informed of this situation.

From what it seems there were some rumors and allegations floating around about Sandusky and his program to "help" needy children as early as the mid-1990s. But you can't really fire or discipline someone based on rumors. Some efforts were made to limit his contact with younger people but he had his own program that he ran and was given access to PSU sports facilities. At some point Paterno and others decided to take away his keys to the football facilities (unclear as to whether this was prior to his being caught in the act).

In 2002 a grad-student working as an assistant coach walked in on him buggering a 10 year old. Unsure of what to do the grad-student asked his dad for advice and as per Penn State policy they agreed he should go to Paterno. Paterno, again as per the written Penn State policy on sexual assault and harassment, passed it on to the Athletic Director for the university who then told Spanier. Spanier then proceeded to bury it.

As an interesting aside Centre County District Attorney, Ray Gricar, who was in the beginning stages of an investigation into allegations against Sandusky disappeared in 2005. The allegations Gricar was looking into went as far back as 1998. His disappearance is still a mystery with some saying he went to Argentina to live with his mistress, while his family want him declared officially dead to collect life insurance and start an official investigation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11.....stery.html

What it really comes down to is an ignorant school policy designed to protect the school at the expense of the victim. Paterno will go, thrown to the wolves because he is now the winningest coach and ready to retire, which is kind of a shame for him to end his career that way. I met him a couple times, and he was real nice. My grandfather new him from when they were younger. But Paterno is old school and out of touch about how these issues are handled in the modern world.

The real person who needs to go is Spanier because he orchestrated the cover up and shuffled this guy around in a way that would make the Catholic Church proud. As lloyd007 has said this whole affair has brought shame and dishonor to Penn State. Any policy or person who holds the "good name" and media reputation of their institution above the welfare of other humans, especially children, needs to be changed and/or fired.

Benjamin"

[Tulpa]

I graduated from PSU (International Politics / History minor, class of 1995) and have family living in State College. They have been keeping me informed of this situation.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.

Yeah, I'm sure you're getting some inside information.

[Benjamin]

Never said it was inside information bonzo. It's just that the Centre Daily Times and local news stations are covering this extensively. So I think my family might have access to more information than the average reader.

Did I mention I was thinking of also calling the Psychic Friends' Network? So now the jokes on you. (If you want I'll look up your horoscope as well, just to keep you further informed.)

[chris]

Later, you describe my position as "rabid." in so forgive my inclination to not take your righteous lust for institutional destruction seriously.

Your obtuseness is on display. Why do you take yourself seriously, never mind me, if you are not willing to think your predispositions through to their logical conclusions. I believe in a strict separation of education and state which is consistent with libertarianism given no libertarian thinker has ever considered education a product for which only the public sector is uniquely capable of providing, and that is the defining point where minarchist believe public goods should be provided. Then to complain about my description of your post as 'rabid' as an excuse to 'not take me seriously' (the air must be rarefied up their in foppish dandy land) after you called mine 'insane' is just laughably un-self aware.

Get a good look at yourself in the mirror first before you cast aspersions at others so you wont come across as a fool.

[db]

You are clearly having a hard time with this whole concept of proportionality of response. If anyone in this discussion deserves to be characterized as "rabid," it is you. You know nothing about my underlying philosophy other than what your fevered imaginatiin has concocted from a few sentences posted on this site. You make broadthe generalizations based on nothing more substantial than your own prejudices and then proceed to call me unself-aware. The irony of your response iz only exceeded by your absolute conviction of your own rectitude, and the dearth of evidence you have to back up your claims. Be a man and either apologize for your tone and make a real argument, or continue making a fool of yourself.

[chris]

db|11.9.11 @ 4:57PM|#

'I know you are but what am I' may get you the prize on a fourth grade playground, but not likely. Don't just copy what I stated back to me; we have higher standards here, most days.

Instead of building strawmen, address what I actually said, and, no, before you repeat your usual tactic, I didn't build a strawman, myself. You attacked my argument, and I defended it. Nebulous claims of being complex and philosophical hardly constitute a rebuttal worth considering.

[chris]

One last thing, as irrelevant as this tit for tat shit is, it does show extreme myopia on the part of even some libertarians in their faith in public institutions. When the higher ed bubble pops, well if you think the liquidation of Penn State is extreme, you really don't know what is coming down the road. Obama's nationalization of student loans wont even constitute a speed bump for that Mac truck.

[Tulpa]

Maybe it was just "I saw Sandusky taking a shower with the kid."

Did JoePa ask for more details?

Did he conduct any sort of investigation?

Sorry, but an adult man taking a private shower with a ten year old without a parent present is already bad stuff.

[Benjamin]

Exactly. This is a massive failure from the GA who saw the ordeal all the way up to Spanier. But it also seems that Penn State's official policy was horribly wrong. Everyone involved should go. Joe Pa included. But ridiculous claims that the the whole institution should be destroyed are absurd rants.

[chris]

Everyone involved should go. Joe Pa included. But ridiculous claims that the the whole institution should be destroyed are absurd rants.

Pay attention. You are not reading what I'm saying closely enough if that is sum of your assertion (no, I'm not peeved at you, that broadside you made earlier was funny). If what I'm saying in the context of how I am saying it is absurd than libertarianism is absurd because it would mean that no one actually believes in applying the minarchist standard in any meaningful way except a few loons like myself. Just admit you are Republicans who want the government to let you keep a little more of your own dough but otherwise it is doing quite swell.

[SugarFree]

Ketchup Fountain

Oscillating between "ew" and "ok, sure."

[Tim]

Who says the US has lost it's edge?

[SugarFree]

Go ahead and laugh, but we are at least 20 years ahead of the Chinese in ketchup spewing technologies.

USA! USA! USA!

[Suki]

Great. Next thing you know, Obama will be buying it as an option on the new bullet trains.

[Ice Nine]

In spite of the Mac and fries featured, one place you won't be seeing that E. coli dispenser is in any MacDonald's.

[Devil's Advocate]

Agreed. I am the world's biggest ketchup fan, and that thing is disgusting.

[Ignore the troll spam]

[waffles]

show me one that can handle maple syrup and now we're talking

[MNG's an Ass]

I've heard tell that you can't handle your maple syrup, waffles.

[db]

What else happened on Election Day 2011?

Incumbents generally reelected across the country.

Nothing else happened. What is wrong with people?

I for one did my part to give Barack Obama a chance to win election as a township supervisor . I figure he needed a boost to his resume.

[John]

The Republicans apparently clobbered the Democrats in Virginia.

[Suki]

My home state still needs to get rid of at least one Republican during the primary season.

[MNG]

Dude, they outspent the Dems in VA by a serious factor and won a majority in the Senate in an off year election by 80 votes. The GOP down there hardly thinks that is a satsifying victory today... The Obama team is extremely happy with what happened down there.

[John]

I am sure he is estatic to see the Governor, LT Governor and both houses of the legislature go Republican in an alledgedly swing state.

Come on MNG. Really, that is some sorry partisan spin there.

[John]

Even NPR was admitting this morning last night was a bad night for both the VA Dems and Obama.

[Britt]

MNG is being an ignorant ass, surprise.

The VA State Senate could be the most gerrymandered elected body in the country. The VA House is 60 percent Republican, but the Senate somehow manages to stay evenly split, due to the way the districts are drawn.

[CrackertyAssCracker]

If you could come up with units for measuring gerrymanderingness then we could pass laws to counteract it. That'd be cool.

[MNG's an Ass]

"Dude, they outspent the Dems in VA by a serious factor and won a majority in the Senate in an off year election by 80 votes. The GOP down there hardly thinks that is a satsifying victory today... The Obama team is extremely happy with what happened down there."

You are one funny fucker, MNG.

Republicans outspending Democrats in VA shows an underlying Republican weakness and a dumb electorate.

Unions outspending opponents of collective bargaining in Ohio by 20 to one shows how smart the Ohio electorate is and how much they love unions.

Or to condense it down to MNG's level: Northerners are smart. Southerners are stupid.

[Don Mynack]

Will Ohio now be honest (in budgeting) about how much allowing silly unions to rep state employees actually costs them? Will future pension costs now have to be a budget line item, and subject to veto? Can/will Kasich just cut pensions and bennies now, across the board? How about firing all their asses?

[Beloved Rev. Blue Moon]

Layoffs are coming. Ohioans are simultaneously shoring up the profligate unions and rejecting increased taxes. There are only three ways to alleviate debt: increase revenue (rejected), borrow more (not possible), and decrease expenditures. The State Employees Union cannot protect against general layoffs.

[Tim]

The sci-fi term : "a willing suspension of disbelief" comes to mind.

[sarcasmic]

Who wants to play 'Guess that ass'?

http://www.celebuzz.com/photos.....guess-who/

[Ice Nine]

That isn't an ass, son. Come over here; we need to talk.

[sarcasmic]

There are some arrows on that page. Use them.

[Ice Nine]

Yes, I know. My people call that a joke.

[sarcasmic]

Your people?

[Ska]

Frozen numbers of the world unite!

[sarcasmic]

Dyslexics of the world untie!

[WTF]

No way, not twice in one day.

[sarcasmic]

Trust me.

http://www.celebuzz.com/photos.....a-am-need/

[WTF]

Damn, that almost makes up for the first link!

[sarcasmic]

I been in lust with her since Dark Angel.

[WTF]

She is definitely top shelf hottie.

[Restoras]

Indeed. Yes indeed.

[JW]

Now I see why you like that link so much.

http://www.celebuzz.com/photos.....ing-162-2/

[T]

Bag of antlers.

[sarcasmic]

Here's one just for you.

http://www.celebuzz.com/photos.....ny-bikini/

[Benjamin]

She goes beyond camel toe... all the way to apatosaurus toe.

[MNG's an Ass]

It's Coco. What do I win?

[Restoras]

Sarcasmo...fight you for this.
http://www.celebuzz.com/photos.....rom-tvs-2/

[Juice]

In the Portland video, that is one patient cop. Kudos to him for not going ape.

[STEVE SMITH]

SOMEONE SAY...? NEVER MIND.

[Tim]

Steve, next thread deals with meter maid humping, check it out.

[Res Publica Americana]

http://www.opposingviews.com/i.....war-terror

Obama Combining "War on Drugs" with "War on Terror"

"
When Barack Obama became president, many people expected a new approach to drug policy. While running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama said during a campaign event that he favored marijuana decriminalization. And the appointment of Gil Kerlikowske, then chief of the Seattle Police Department as "Drug Czar," gave many people hope given Seattle's emphasis on harm reduction policies instead of prosecution for drug offenses. In fact, one of Kerlikowske's first acts as Drug Czar was to call an end to the term "War on Drugs." How people change. Today The New York Times has a story on how the Obama administration has deployed D.E.A. commando-style squads to Central America and the Caribbean to fight drugs cartels."

[Got Copypasta?]

[Tim]

We need to build our own Mecho Godzilla to go and stop and burn those fields. Raytheon would totally back that.

[Res Publica Americana]

Who needs Mecho Godzillas when Barack's got in under control with his paramilitary forces?

[Tim]

Duh, billions in appropriations, cost over-runs and upgrades. Godzillas could be the new supercarriers.

[Res Publica Americana]

Don't be hatin' on the Nimitz and Gerald R Ford -- necessary or not, they're awesome as fuck, and China can EAT IT

[Tim]

Not hatin', the ARMY needs some giant weapon all it's own.

[Res Publica Americana]

AT-AT walkers?

[Tim]

How bout the Nimitz sails up to the CHinese coast, launches planes, then sprouts arms and legs, marches ashore and knocks shit down. All the while roaring and breathing fire.

[T]

That would be fucking awesome. It'd be like live action Robotech.

[Res Publica Americana]

That's just racist, man.

[Old Soldier]

Give me Bolos! I want to drive a planetary siege unit bolo the size of the superdome up out of the ocean and crush shit under my giant treads.

[Res Publica Americana]

http://www.opposingviews.com/i.....unprovoked

Occupy Protester Shot by Oakland Cop, Unprovoked [video]

In a video recently uploaded on YouTube, an unidentified protester holding a video camera, filming a police line during the early hours of Thursday, Nov. 3, was shot with a rubber bullet or a beanbag round after repeatedly asking police officers: "Is this okay?" The unnamed protester wrote on his YouTube page: While filming a police line at Occupy Oakland after midnight on Nov. 3 following the Nov. 2 general strike, an officer opens fire and shoots me with a rubber bullet. I was standing well back. There was no violence or confrontations of any kind underway. At 0:31 seconds you can see a tall officer in the front raise his weapon and then fire. This is the full clip of the incident.

----------------

That cop's obviously a total amateur -- when people pull out their cameras, it's TIME TO CALL SWAT!

[Double down on Copypasta?]

[Spoonman.]

Dipshit, it's a Morning LInks thread. I enjoy LH's links, if you don't use your scroll button.

[Res Publica Americana]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45.....nd_courts/

IL: Mom, 2 others killed picking up daughter's birthday cake

"What should have been a quick trip to pick up a 2-year-old's birthday cake turned into a triple murder over the weekend, when gunfire tore through three people inside a vehicle outside a Chicago bakery, reports say.

Chanda Thompson, 21, was picking up the cake for her daughter when she and friend Cortez Champion, 21, were gunned down Saturday afternoon. A man described as Thompson's boyfriend, but whose name was being withheld, was also killed.

"People are always getting shot or robbed in this neighborhood," an employee at a fast-food restaurant next to the bakery told the Sun-Times."

-----

God bless the Lincoln State, that bastion of liberty and prosperity we all love so dearly!

[Suki]

See what happens when the Supreme Court strikes down gun control?

[Res Publica Americana]

Are you a troll, or what? I'm not familiar with you.

[Quetzalcoatl]

Where have you been?

[Res Publica Americana]

I keep seeing Suki post "Good morning" at the start of many comment sections, but that's about as far as my knowledge of her goes -- what's up?

[Suki]

Whatever.

[Res Publica Americana]

No shit, by the way -- I honestly wasn't sure whether you were a troll or not, so my apologies

[tarran]

Suki is a sock-puppet maintained by some hack writer named John Taglieferro who was flogging a book he wrote last summer.

He was John the Baptist to Rather's Jesus.

[Suki]

Looks like Epi has not lost all of his handles yet.

[tarran]

LOL! John T, the people who don't like you don't like you because you're an annoying, vapid hack, not because they are sockpuppets of MNG Episiarch, whomever you think is the Moriarty whose machinations are purposed to marginalize you.

As I said to you a year ago:

John, sweetie, you are a relatively new H&R poster, so let me explain something to you.

I don't post under multiple handles, and I don't spend my days breathlessly hitting refresh on H&R.

You may be surprised to know that I genuinely don't care about you. I don't think about you. You are nothing to me.

Until, that is you make a thread annoying with your inane postings which are
a) remarkably content free,
b) add nothing to the conversation.

I suppose you expect that people will click through to your blog and eventually buy your book.

I would be very surprised if that is actually happening. I can tell from your posts that you are a fundamentally self-absorbed and uninteresting writer.

Granted, my exposure to the writings of sugarfree has left me with jaded tastes regarding erotic fan fiction. Thus it's possible that you are a passably good writer who can hold someone's attention despite telling an improbable story involving Iran threatening western civilization.

But then wouldn't there be people complimenting you on your fine book? A few reviews on Amazon? The silence is deafening...

[Suki]

Dude, you are weird.

[MNG's an Ass]

"He was John the Baptist to Rather's Jesus."

I think The Beast to rather's Whore of Babylon, is a better analogy.

[Suki]

Have been here for a couple of years and your sarcasomometer must be broken.

[Res Publica Americana]

Yeah, stupid fucking sarcasomometer

[Tim]

WHen did you become a polarizing figure?

[Suki]

Only happens when my jokes are taken too seriously.

[Mooooaaaaarrrrrrrrrr Copypasta]

[Ice Nine]

The back-cracking became a ritual at bedtime.

Despite his awareness that Coach Jerry Sandusky was raping children, and his habit of saying things like, "The kids who were victims or whatever they want to say, I think we all ought to say a prayer for them. It's a tough life when people do certain things to you.

Like "crack-backing" - or whatever they want to say.

[Res Publica Americana]

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech.....milestone/

U.S. Navy's Incredible, Sci-Fi Railgun Fires 1,000th Bullet

Navy scientists with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) hit a new milestone, successfully firing their electromagnetic railgun for the 1,000th time as the state-of-the-art weapon edges closer to real world deployment.
A theoretical dream for decades, the railgun is unlike any other weapon used in warfare. And though still in testing, it's quite real, as the U.S. Navy proved in a record-setting test Monday, Oct. 31, in Dahlgren, Va.
Rather than relying on a explosion to fire a projectile, it uses an electomagnetic current to accelerate a non-explosive bullet at several times the speed of sound. The conductive projectile zips along a set of electrically charged parallel rails and out of the barrel at speeds up to Mach 7 [ca. 7,875 fps]

[Suki]

If only the the New York Tribune had this technology in 1863 we would have a free press today.

[Tim]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlWFjJhlRSc

[Quetzalcoatl]

I'm no electrical engineer, but doesn't it require a prohibitively large battery?

[STEVE SMITH]

THAT WHAT YOUR MOMMA SAID QUETZ!

[Res Publica Americana]

Yeah, the power source has to be ludicrously enormous -- I remember watching a documentary that stated if there's one thing that might prevent the railgun from efficient deployment in the future, it's the problem of supplying it a power source small enough to be worth the benefits and costs

[SugarFree]

Microfusion cells. Duh.

[Tim]

You just made that up.

[SugarFree]

Citation

You just FACT PWN'D, mofo.

[Tim]

(shakes fist)

[Res Publica Americana]

Microfusion cells? I fucking wish

[Fatty Bolger]

Dilithium crystals will totally work, though.

[SugarFree]

Dilithium crystals contain and regulate the flow of antimatter and are not a source of energy in of themselves.

FACT PWN'D!

[Quetzalcoatl]

Of course, it might be the sort of gun that you only need to fire once a week.

[Zeb]

Yeah, it's pretty hard to beat good old explosives for compact energy storage.

[R C Dean]

I think its being developed as a naval weapon, where they can hook it up to shipboard reactors.

[Res Publica Americana]

I would be interesting to see the development of infantry weapons of the same type, though

[Suki]

Marines could carry them.

[Quetzalcoatl]

The only thing better than railguns standard on every battleship would be nuclear reactors standard on every battleship. Nothing could go wrong.

[db]

Big big big capacitors. Batteries don't cut it because the energy needs to be discharged almost instantaneously.

[Tim]

I believe that these things may become possible in the future, something about nano tech and energy storage I read somewhere, maybe PopSci.

Of course I'm not sure the civilian market is ready for a rifle that can take out an Abrams with one round. Somebody shoots somebody in LA and the round comes to a stop in San Francisco.

[Res Publica Americana]

If it takes out PETA's headquarters as it stops, I'm all for it.

[Suki]

A big giant energy source is needed to power up the capacitors.

[T]

The test shots at my university used caps 2 stories tall and about 6 feet in diameter. Those things were farking huge.

They were working on a device called an air core compulsator for use in land vehicles. I can point you to papers, but you have the google. It's pretty dense reading, though.

[T]

Also, the issue with land vehicles is that for a direct fire weapon, (think tank cannon), we've pretty much reached the end of the road. The 120mm on the Abrams is a 9.7 MJ system. It's very hard to get much past that with conventional weapons because recoil becomes too much of a bitch to manage. The Soviets never did manage to get the 135mm (which supposed to replace their 125mm) to work correctly.

[Suki]

A little unobtainium will do the trick.

[Brett L]

Or you could hook it to a capacitor bank wired to the nuclear reactor that comes standard on the ships they intend to mount this on. Electrical power is not the limiting factor for the nucular navy.

[John Carmack]

Wished I could get 7,875 frames per second on rail gun shot sprites.

[Res Publica Americana]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....l?ITO=1490

UK: Antique firearms collector with more than 140 guns is jailed for two years for owning four air rifles without licence

An antiques firearms collector was jailed for two years after he was found to have four air rifles and ammunition without the correct licences.

When police raided Karl Blennerhassett's luxury flat in Up Holland, West Lancashire, they found more than 140 guns, including racks of rifles and revolvers, a court heard.

--------------

[John]

I weep for Britain.

[Res Publica Americana]

Wrap up all the bad things about the American culture and people you can possibly think of, multiply it by 100, smother it in the bloody guts of baby otters and Gulag victims, and it'll still be a magnificent slice of glorious paradise in comparison to that island.

[John]

I am a total anglophile. And sadly, you are right.

[sarcasmic]

In Heaven the cars are German, the police are British, and the chefs are French.

In Hell the cars are French, the police are German, and the chefs are British.

[John]

My version is

In heaven, the mechanics and cars are German, the lovers are French, the police British, the cooks are Italians and it is all organized by the Swiss

In hell, the mechanics and cars are French, the lovers Swiss, the cooks British and it is all organized by the Italians.

[Res Publica Americana]

In my world, everybody is Asari. Beat that.

[Kristen]

the lovers are French

Ewwwwwwwww!!!

[John]

Maybe French men don't do it for you Kristen. I am not on that team so I can't say. But wow do the women work. I would take a whole society of Catherine Deneuves and Audrey Tautaus.

[sarcasmic]

The French women I know are Canucks.
Short, fat, and with more facial hair than myself. No thanks.

I'll take the German ladies thank you very much.

[John]

Having been to both France and Quebec Sarcasmic, I can tell you your sample is not representative. Montreal and Paris both have a lot of beautiful women.

[John]

And I agree with you about German women. But I found German women to have fantasitcally curvey bodies. With your obsession with skinny pencils, I am not sure you would like German women as much as you think.

[Restoras]

I've had four au pairs from Germany live with us over the past five years, and three of them were tall and slender. Just sayin'.

[John]

They are tall and thin, but they have bodies. That is why I like them. I am thinking sarcasmic will think they are fat.

[sarcasmic]

I am thinking sarcasmic will think they are fat.

And if I didn't you would insist that I did anyway because you're obsessed with the idea that anyone who finds Kate Moss to be attractive is a closet homosexual.

I think you're projecting.

[sarcasmic]

your obsession with skinny pencils

Whatever. Thin ladies need lovin too, and I'm more than happy to give it to them.

[MNG's an Ass]

I get tired of peeing on the German ladies.

[Kristen]

As far as Europeans are concerned, just by looks alone, I'd have to go with "in heaven, the [male] lovers are Icelandic..."

[Sophie M.]

Bonjour, John.

[John]

Hello Sophie, did you bring Eva Green with you?

[Res Publica Americana]

Mel Gibson got to screw Sophie Marceau

[Alpha Mel]

I'm an Alpha Mel.

And girls want to...

[MNG's an Ass]

Chicks dig Italian guys.

[Quetzalcoatl]

Hott Fuzz did it.

[Ice Nine]

Has anyone ever seen Kurt Loder and Eric Roberts in the same room together?

[SugarFree]

Yes. And it is a sight I wish I could forget. [shudder]

[chris]

Zeb|11.9.11 @ 9:24AM|#

I imagine that is true. But most children aren't Catholic and so don't have much contact with priests.

Joining the priesthood was the original beard marriage.

[Greg]

Want to work at the peelers? Let's see those biometrics! I'm more disgusted by the columnist's response, the Sun is usually better on civil liberties than this

http://www.torontosun.com/2011.....-the-start

[MNG's an Ass]

Anyone else read that as Fingerpainting strippers just the start? Cause I'd go to that strip club.

[RoboCain]

"Owners, Jim and Susan Colley, had permits for entertainment and to serve food. In Sanford, those permits are issued with the caveat that sex acts are prohibited."

http://www.wcsh6.com/news/arti.....ngers-club

[sarcasmic]

Directly across the street from there is a polling place where I cast my vote at least five times.

[RoboCain]

"Town Manager Mark Green said that the town has decided not to use Mousam View Place as a polling location during the upcoming November election. In light of the activities there, the town has decided to combine Ward 7 with the Ward 3 polling location at St. Ignatius Gym at 25 Riverside Avenue, according to Town Clerk Sue Cote."

http://www.fosters.com/apps/pb.....-1/SANNEWS

[sarcasmic]

I guess if I was still living in Sanford I would have gone somewhere else to vote.

[Alter Boy]

They're moving the polling place to a Catholic School gym, so I guess the sex acts that offend them are between consenting adults, not sex acts in general.

[Res Publica Americana]

http://www.opposingviews.com/i.....-who-right

Cop vs. Cop in Florida -- Who is Right?

Topic number one among police officers all over the country is the confrontation between two cops in Florida, with one of them arresting another one. On October 11 Florida State Trooper Donna Watts saw a Miami police car speeding on a highway, Thinking the vehicle might have been stolen, Watts gave chase -- at speeds of up to 120 miles an hour. Instead of a car thief, Miami police officer Fausto Lopez was behind the wheel. He explained he was speeding to an off-duty job. Watts did not show any professional courtesy; rather, with gun drawn, she screamed at Lopez, handcuffed him and tossed him in the back of her squad car. He was later charged with dangerous driving.

[sarcasmic]

Any news yet on the charges being dropped?

[Res Publica Americana]

I'm expecting a promotion for A DEMONSTRATION OF CALMNESS ABOVE AND BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY, or something along those lines -- you know, he didn't empty his magazine into the statie.

[Tim]

I was disappointed that a guy with a cool name like FAUSTO wasn't seven feet tall with a sinister mustache. Just some skinny kid.

[Res Publica Americana]

"Fausto" makes me picture some badass gangster in Miami Vice, or Vice City. With an 80s signature tux and shades.

[R C Dean]

How is this the least bit controversial? The guy was speeding, big time, while not on duty.

Hell, there's probably additional violations because he was using a cop car to break the law. And maybe for using it for personal use.

[Res Publica Americana]

Law and reasonable deduction don't mean shit -- the guy's a cop. That's why I found it interesting -- that it's even considered news worth reporting that some dipshit got caught speeding.

[sarcasmic]

The reason the guy was charged was because he was a local and the one who pulled him over was state.
Had it been the other way around I bet it would have been a non-incident.

[Brett L]

Staties tend to be the boy scouts of cops. When the trooper tells the guy "you wouldn't catch me doing this" as he complains about being handcuffed, she probably means that she literally would not do it.

[sarcasmic]

I remember one restaurant I worked at where there was this one regular who would get plastered every night before driving home. Turns out he was a state trooper. The local cops knew what he was doing and gave him a pass.

[Res Publica Americana]

http://www.foxnews.com/enterta.....ing-in-la/

LA: 'Vampire Diaries' Star Sean Faris Grew Up With Guns in Texas, Loves Shooting in LA

"I enjoy shooting. We shoot clays down in Texas, I hunt as well. And I have a couple of guns for home security," Faris told FOX411's Pop Tarts column while promoting his new role alongside Christina Hendricks in the forthcoming EA game "Need For Speed." "I'm from Texas. It's the way I was raised. Everybody's got one. My girlfriend for the first time started shooting a couple months ago in Louisiana too. We call her dead-eye butterfly because she hit the bull's eye, no scope, from about thirty yards out with a rifle, which is pretty good for her first time ever shooting."

Cue half the Hollywood subculture and all its fans going apeshit over what an awful role model the guy is, how guns slay autistic babies in the night, and how [one of a million retarded notions here].

[chris]

dead-eye butterfly

Props. Truly a beautiful nick.

[RoboCain]

Yet, ultraliberal Sean Penn has a CCW.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

That's about his only redeeming quality.

[rac3rx]

"Vampire Diaries star"? I actually watch this show on occasion and couldn't place him so I IMDB'ed the dude. He was in 3 eps last season. The dude was basically an extra with a couple of lines. He only got a story b/c he lives in LA and likes guns. This is retarded.

[cynical]

I saw it once while my wife was watching it. I couldn't follow the plot, because I couldn't actually tell any of the characters apart.

[Res Publica Americana]

http://www.jsonline.com/news/c.....37318.html

Nik Clark, president of gun rights group Wisconsin Carry Inc., thinks no one should have to wait months or go to court to get back their lawful property, even guns.

...

He cited the case of a group member who was arrested and his gun seized because someone saw him wearing it at a gas station. He wasn't charged, but after he petitioned to get his gun back, he was cited for having worn it within 1,000 feet of a school. In 2010, he sued in federal court, and the city last month agreed to pay $6,500 to settle the case. But police still have the man's gun.

-----------

$6,500? What is this, Portugal?

[RoboCain]

That 1,000 feet of a school law is the most retarded thing ever.

[sarcasmic]

If you're looking for an excuse to confiscate weapons then it is a brilliant idea since you can't go much of anywhere in the average town or city without being within 1000 feet of a school.

[RoboCain]

Then every morning they should roll dice and pick a different kind of building -- gas station, hospital, whatever.

[Res Publica Americana]

http://online.wsj.com/article/.....38760.html

Justice Faces 'Sting' Grilling

Top Justice Department officials have settled on a strategy for explaining a botched gun-trafficking probe that includes blaming the now-ousted U.S. attorney in Phoenix.

The department has spent much of the year dealing with questions about federal agents' use of investigative tactics that resulted in the smuggling of firearms into Mexico. The issue is coming to a head Tuesday, when Attorney General Eric Holder is set to answer questions at a Senate hearing.

-----------

Who's willing to bet these Senate hearings keep taking place ceaselessly and without results until anybody and everybody involved dies of old age?

[R C Dean]

It'll be the House hearings where the gloves come off.

The clips I heard of the Senate hearing were pathetic, all around. Holder bobbing and weaving: "Yes, I'm responsible for everything that happens at Justice, but not responsible responsible.

"Sure, those memos came to my office, but shit, man, I can't read that stuff. I've got people for that."

"The fact that lots of guns made it to the cartelswhen current laws were set aside by federal agents, proves we need more laws."

[John]

Holder has never been held accountable for anything in his life. As much as he deserves to be indicted for lying to Congress over this, he knows he won't be. He will serve out his term. The whole hearing was Holder saying "fuck you what are you going to do about it?"

And people like MNG continue to defend and excuse him and always will.

[Res Publica Americana]

You forgot "AND THOSE FUCKING RUBES NEED MORE GUN CONTROL"

[John]

Remember. The whole thing wasn't a stunt to make the case for gun control. Yet, Holder is doing exactly that in front of Congress.

[Res Publica Americana]

You're just saying that because Holder's black, aren't you? You've obviously suffered the taint of the darksp... Tea Party, and must be cleansed of demonic influence by participating in the performance of a song dedicated to Dear Leader --

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLprurE7EVI

Fuck me, that's disgusting

[T]

We can't know intents so we can only judge by actions, John. Holder getting up there and pimping for gun control during his testimony means I don't have to give anybody the benefit of the doubt anymore. F&F was about pushing gun control, because that's how the FUCKING ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE US IS SPINNING IT.

So, MNG, cordially piss off on the subject.

[Res Publica Americana]

http://www.jconline.com/articl.....dyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p

IN: Conviction in dog shooting irks owner of property

""We presented the evidence, and jurors believed it was a crime," Smith said.

He argued that Yerk had a duty to retreat, rather than shoot.

Indiana does have a standalone self-defense statute, which states a person is justified in using reasonable force -- and doesn't have to retreat -- to protect himself or his property. But that applies only to reasonable force against another person, Schumm said."

Really, Indiana? Really?

[RoboCain]

Even if the dogs are trespassing?

[R C Dean]

So, if I've got this right, in Indiana you have no duty to retreat from a person, but have a duty to retreat from a dog?

[Res Publica Americana]

Governments and their laws make so much sense sometimes, don't they?

[John]

I like the rule. I know a lot more people who need shooting than I do dogs.

[cynical]

Wait, if you're attacked by a person, you can kill them, but if it's a dog, you have a duty to retreat? Winning the future, guys.

[PermaLurker]

Whoops. Guess I better stop shooting that damn beagle that keeps shitting in my garden. Note I shoot him with a BB gun so no permanent damage, but damn if his owners can't keep that lil bastard tied up, one of these days... I just hit him with my car! Take that Indiana lawmakers 😛

[Sweet!]

Time-lapse video captures 12,225-mile road journey across America... in just FIVE minutes

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....z1dDrfQIHH

[Res Publica Americana]

http://www.thelantern.com/camp.....rdzhbKAZ8E

A third armed robbery in a week in the Ohio State campus area prompted the OSU Police Department to send out another Timely Warning to the community Saturday afternoon.

A female OSU student was walking in the alley on Norwich Avenue between Waldeck Avenue and Tuller Street at 5:15 a.m. Saturday morning when two black men approached her, one with a black handgun, according to the warning.

-------------

Guns on campus would just make things worse, after all -- students would be shooting each other in the corridors

[R C Dean]

one with a black handgun,

So racist. Its sad, really.

[Res Publica Americana]

It's all Sarah Palin's fault

[Ice Nine]

A gun of color. All better now.

[Colonel_Angus]

Ohio: unsurprising for a state that has already been killed by unions.

[Res Publica Americana]

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/.....nsive.html

In recent years, the offensive tool of America's national pastime has become a defensive weapon of choice in China.

Though baseball has barely made a dent in the consciousness of Chinese sports fans, bats are a familiar accessory in a country where the pursuit of money at all costs and a weak faith in law enforcement have led many people to take matters into their own hands.

...

Before mass urbanization took hold and most Chinese lived on farms, people protected themselves with the family shovel, rake or hoe.

Today, city dwellers have few options. Guns are outlawed. Daggers and machetes require permits. Shanghai and Beijing even require buyers to register their names to buy a kitchen knife.

---------

Prediction -- baseball bats get classified as weapons in the near future

[RoboCain]

Afaik, they're already banned in England.

[Res Publica Americana]

1) Amazon UK has stopped selling them at the request of the shitsticks in Westminster, but I don't think they've been banned

2) That country is a lost cause -- I've shut it out of my mind

[RoboCain]

True, just check out what their Olympic team has to do just to practice shooting. Sorry, I don't have any links handy.

[Res Publica Americana]

Yeah, they have to practice in Switzerland -- that almost made me shit bricks when I heard about it a while ago

[Colonel_Angus]

Children under age 29 shouldn't be allowed to witness the competitions, either!

[Res Publica Americana]

What the hell are you, a Tebagger? 39's more like it!

[RoboCain]

"Schoolchildren in London are eligible for 125,000 free tickets for the 2012 Olympics next sumer, but any event that involves a firearm will be excluded from the massive giveaway."

http://www.theblaze.com/storie.....ic-events/

[T]

On the plus side, that should make the next Operation Sea Lion much easier to carry out.

[CrackertyAssCracker]

Did they ban boards with nails in them too?

[rac3rx]

Bat Control!

[P Brooks]

Moderate voters reject radical Republicans!

The votes on Tuesday reflected a certain caution about radical change. Many Ohioans sympathized with core elements of the Republican law restricting public employee unions, yet overturned it because of concerns that it went too far.

The Ohio law called on public employees to pay more for their health care, and to have their pay and job security tied more to performance rather than seniority. But it also would have stripped unions' rights to strike and the ability of unions to collect dues from public employees who benefit financially from collective bargaining but do not join the union.

That's, like, insanity! That's exactly the same as forcing children to work 20 hours a day in a burning coal mine for a scrap of bread!

[Res Publica Americana]

Fuck Ohio -- another state to add to the un-American scrapheap

[Colonel_Angus]

"ability of unions to collect dues from public employees who benefit financially from collective bargaining but do not join the union."

Mandatory union membership for public employees- no civil rights violations or conflicts of interest whatsoever in that.

[P Brooks]

ultraliberal Sean Penn has a CCW.

You certainly cannot expect him go among the mouthbreathing teabagsterdz hordes without a means of defending himself from their wanton and unconstrained murderousnesses!

[rather]

Who the fuck does this remind me of?......

[MNG's an Ass]

Good morning, Ms. Goatse.

[P Brooks]

one with a black handgun

He evidently couldn't afford the gold-plated version; another tragic victim of America's income inequality.

[Res Publica Americana]

Lmao

[Funny Gambol Guy]

Gambol!

[John]

Today from the lying scumbag political desk. For US attorney for Arizona admits leaking memo smearing Fast and Furious wistleblower but says it wasn't his intent to smear the guy.

http://dailycaller.com/2011/11.....le-blower/

[Ice Nine]

According to his lawyer he's "a stand-up guy and is willing to take responsibility for what he did,"

Mistakes were made.

[T]

As long as taking responsibility is limited to saying "I take full responsibility", sure. Any actual negative consequences from his piss-poor behavior? He's not willing to stand up that tall.

[R C Dean]

You can always tell the stand-up guys. They're the ones releasing confidential memos which are selectively redacted in order to smear whistle-blowers.

[RoboCain]

"Presidential Candidates Explained Through Dungeons and Dragons Character Sheets"

http://www.funnyordie.com/list.....ter-sheets

[Grummun]

Vapid. Purile. Insulting on every level. Which would not be so bad, except it's not even a little funny.

[Mr. Mark]

One day, I might understand fans and followers.

This is not that day.

[RoboCain]

The Easter Island "Heads" Have Bodies

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/106129

[Elspeth Flashman]

The Supreme Court justices were decked out in their usual black robes today for U.S. vs Jones, a case involving the question of whether police need a warrant to attach a GPS tracker to someone's car.
http://abovethelaw.com/2011/11.....heir-cars/

[Proprietist]

Here's a story I would have rather not seen. Now I get to share it with you all, so you can enjoy it as little as I did.

[Devil's Advocate]

What has been seen can't be unseen. Nevertheless, this struck me: The species included mares, cows, pigs and chickens, among other animals.

CHICKENS?!

[Pip]

If I understand correctly from yesterday, the chicken sticks it's beak in the man's urethra and then fills the bladder with air.

[Pip]

BTW, that cow pic is priceless.

[Joe M]

That made me laugh a long time.

[Devil's Advocate]

Haha yes, speaking of things that can't be unseen.

[Dilma Rousseff]

"35% of men from rural Brazil have had sex with an animal, study finds"

I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!

[Brett L]

I had a boss who graduated from TAMU in the early '80s. He related to me that at that time, the prof who taught the senior level abnormal sex class cited the statistic 1 in 4 farm boys. You can imagine how uncomfortable the dinner conversations were in groups of 4-7. At least with eight the two zoophiles could compare velcro gloves vs. rubber boots.

[cone crusher]

As long as taking responsibility is limited to saying "I take full responsibility", sure. Any actual negative consequences from his piss-poor behavior? He's not willing to stand up that tall.I had a boss who graduated from TAMU in the early '80s. He related to me that at that time, the prof who taught the senior level abnormal sex class cited the statistic 1 in 4 farm boys. You can imagine how uncomfortable the dinner conversations were in groups of 4-7. At least with eight the two zoophiles could compare velcro gloves vs. rubber boots.

[cindy111]

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[cindy111]

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