A.M. Links: Holder Held in Contempt by Congress, Bombings in Baghdad, Elections Threatened, Nightclub Shared Scanned IDs with NYPD
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Congress voted to hold Eric Holder in contempt while Democrats walked out in protest. "This is a terrible day for the House of Representatives. What it's about, we can't decide for sure, but it's not about Eric Holder and handing over papers. We don't want to participate in something that has some kind of smell to it," said Emanual Cleaver, apparently unaware of the general smell on Capitol Hill.
- Bombs in and around Baghdad killed at least 20 as the summer starts off violently. The prospect of elections have been threatened.
- Mongolians go to the polls to decide how to spend all the money the country's expecting from new mining projects.
- According to a lawsuit, the nightclub Greenhouse shared information including IDs scanned at the door with the NYPD. Not sure what the patrons thought was happening there? All those cameras were probably on too!
- The Fulton County school district became the largest in Georgia to convert to an all charter school system as the state's districts face a 2015 deadline to re-organize their school systems (or not). Fulton County did refuse to extend by a decade the charter for one charter school over "questionable spending practices," which never happen in public schools, obviously.
- Maine will begin an investigation into a century of forced removal of indigenous children from their families by the state.
- Rafael Nadal lost at Wimbledon to a Czech ranked 100th in the world.
- China's first female astronaut does tai chi in space.
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Congress voted to hold Eric Holder in contempt while Democrats walked out in protest.
Yawns all around.
the US govt puts together a program that has led to the murder of one American, who knows how many Mexicans, more than a thousand weapons unaccounted for, but the CBC says it's racial. If it was the Bush Administration, would it still be racial? And yes, the program would still be just as noxious.
If it was the Bush Administration, would it still be racial?
Yes, but not in the same way. It would a case of the racist Bushitler administration selling guns to Mexican drug lords so that more "brown people" would be killed. Just one of Bushitler's "final solutions to the brown people problem" IOW. /sarc
What I love about this whole thing is that it was a failed Bush policy that the Obama admin decided to replay.
But he's totally different than Bush.
Youths who posted a video of themselves riding down the escalators of Woden and Civic shopping centres are unlikely to have committed a crime, police say.
http://www.canberratimes.com.a.....z1zBacwso2
We CLEARLY need a law prohibiting this dangerous behavior.
/Congress
BehavioUr, dude. It's an Australian article. Stop being so culturally insensitive!
We CLEARLY need a law mandating cultural sensitivity in the spelling of "behavioUr".
/Congress
I feel othered by your spelling Francisco. RPA has noticed I'm Australian, so I feel othered by his male xenophobic gaze. And typing this out has reinforced my feelings, so it looks like I've othered myself too
Of course you mean xenophilic gaze. Xenoerotic?
Duro??
Keep going...all that talk about you othering yourself makes me want to other myself.
We CLEARLY need a law restricting public othering...aw fuck it, this is getting old.
Unfortunately for us, Congress NEVER tires of that game.
If they don't have breach of peace or disorderly conduct or some similar catch-all laws down under then they're missing out.
The ACT doesn't seem to. The Crimes Act has an offence called "Acting with intent to cause public alarm" which might stretch to cover this but it would be a bit tough. The public disorder sorts of offences in Part 17 are quite specific (eg public urination. Fun fact: for many years the worst place in Canberra for public urination was Weedon Place in Belconnen
China's first female astronaut does tai chi in space.
And Astronaut Chi was grateful.
I doubt it. He can't even stand to attention
That just means it was real good.
Zero gravity sex: it's out of this world!
Ejaculating in zero-gravity must be fun. How long did it take the girl to catch all that floating nectar?
This has always been my, uh, sticking point, with space sex. All those fluids and no gravity. Messy sex is fine, but I don't really want to float through a cloud of your messy sex in a shared space.
Santorum is a big proponent of a robust space program.
Ugh. You go too far.
(I know that's not really possible on this board, but still... *BARF*)
Not in my spacecraft, you're not.
Ouch, DB. Here comes my lunch. *Puke*.
Well played, sir.
Being the poor bastard that has to clean the filters probably sucks.
As mission commander my rule would be "whoever makes the "mess" cleans it up afterward. And if I find one trace of floated jizz that's it. No more zero-g coitus. Commander Cockblocker has spoken.
We don't want to participate in something that has some kind of smell to it," said Emanual Cleaver
Since when is the Congressional Black Caucus careful about using the R word?
It's the "T" word. Ends with "ribalism."
Like he's never cooked him some chitlins or something!
Sounds like unwashed upper lips all around the CBS to me.
Shit...Congressional Black Caucus means CBC.
Q:How High is a Chinese Mountain?
A: Yes
David Arquette is a dumbass!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs.....-pool.html
A federal grand jury has indicted a 23-year-old college student on charges of making explosives and possessing illegal firearms in her home.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....-home.html
Notice the bloody lip in the mugshot photo. Who wants to bet she got punched in the face for giving insufficient respect to authoritah.
Looks to me like she just lived in the country and had fun hobbies. There is no evidence she planned to do any harm to anyone. What I want to know is what busy body asshole turned her in?
The article's not working for me. Was she busted by the feds, or was it local law enforcement?
The feds. And she is this smoking hot Georgia chick who lived in the country and had all kinds of cool toys. I read the article and think, where was this chick before I was married?
Grammar school?
I haven't been married that long. I waited a long time to get married.
High school?
clearly, she is part of that domestic terror cabal that Napolitano warned us about. Among her and ex-vets and a few other sideways-looking folks, the threat surrounds us..
Why is it easy to imagine DHS/DOJ making such an argument?
So the federal government is arresting and charging the woman for what amounts to nothing, and she's facing decades in prison for it.
Seriously. Fuck the federal government.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing John....what a hottie and an all around cool girl. Well, except for the meth bit....
Shit, when I was a kid everybody did that kind of stuff. Well, except for the meth bit......
The meth kind of ruins it.
She can't be doing that much, she still has good teeth and adipose tissue.
Forget the meth. It's the pot you should be concerned about. I heard it makes you eat people's faces.
I'd let her eat my face...
She likes meth, making explosives, and her middle name is alchemy...
There is no evidence she planned to do any harm to anyone.
Since when did that matter? She committed crimes against the state. Thought crimes. She used drugs. She shot off guns while being a drug user. She made things to *boom*!
Doesn't matter that she didn't hurt anyone and had no plans to hurt anyone.
She disobeyed authority!
She's lucky she didn't get droned.
How do you know a drone didn't give her that bloody lip?
I don't think that's a bloody lip from the cops. That's herpes. Or a meth pipe mishap.
In a sane world the feds would have politely told her "hey we know you like to have fun and all but that stuff is illegal, let us help you and we will dispose of it and you can maybe find a different hobby"
Instead, she is treated like she is fucking Al Quada.
They recently legalized some fireworks round here.
I had almost forgotten the simple pleasure of laying a firecracker on the ground, putting an empty soup can on top, lighting the fuse, and watching the can sail up into the air.
Good times!
Fun fact: Before 1934, any kid could order a belt-fed machine gun through the mail. And as we all know, gun crime in schools was a true epidemic in those days. FDR saved us from the gun-lovers, too, when he wasn't busy saving us from the capitalist Great Depression.
My grandfather had a tommy gun he bought in the late 20s to shoot coyotes with. It was fully automatic.
In my little corner of 'Merica, guns and independence of action and spirit are still pretty great, considering how ludicrous and vast prohibitionism and nanny laws are today. But I only know one person who owns an automatic. Fuckin' feds.
They tend to be pretty expensive, what with the '86 ban limiting the number of transferables.
A clapped out grease gun is like $5K. And anything decent starts upwards of $12K. It's truly absurd what the feds have done to prices.
I contemplated, briefly, buying all the parts for a Ma Deuce except the magical side plate. But then I found out about the ATF doctrine of 'constructive posession' and decided I'd rather not bother.
Wow. You aren't kidding.
hey, what if Hollywood did this movie where some agency was able to arrest people because they might commit some crime in the future? Nah; no one would buy that, would they...
And of course the system would be perfectly okay until one of the pigs is predicted to commit multiple crimes. Then it's all about how that system is wrong and corrupt.
A convincing argument for the death penalty if I've ever seen one.
You'd make a good judge.
There is no evidence she planned to do any harm to anyone.
Beats all you ever saw, been in trouble with the law since the day she was born.
That's funny! I actually watched The Dukes for a bit last night.
I;m lucky I never got arrested when I was in college. My friends and I made our own rocket fuel grain for a Nitrous Oxide/ HTPB hybrid rocket motor. And a couple of us also owned *gasp* guns. We're lucky the feds never raided us.
Meth
...fucking spam detector squirrels today.
This has come around before, but the pics are better this time. I remember because I thought she was hot before all the sexy pics.
I like the dad said they should let his sweet, little church going daughter go. While I agree they should let her go I'm not convinced she's quite as innocent* as dad thinks.
*As in daddy's little girl ain't a girl no more.
In that part of Georgia, she was probably daddy's girl first. You know the old joke about what the redneck girl says right after losing her virginity, right? "Daddy, get off me, you're crushing my Marlboros."
As opposed to Yankee hippies who fuck their mothers. That should be a more widespread stereotype.
Breastfeed a male through puberty and he gets ideas. Also, I live on the border with Georgia, so its all in good fun. Either that or all the Georgia girls I know could run faster than their uncles by puberty.
I was just adding ideas to the pot. Stereotypes can be great fun. Especially if they effectively irritate race-warriors or uber-feminists.
Which border state Brett?
If Brett were a vapid liberal, he'd say California, since to him everything between LA and NYC would be vast existential darkness populated by roving gangs of hillbillies and mountain people from Wyoming.
FL. I'm in Tallahassee, so we're literally right up the road from GA.
Admit it. You live in Sopchoppy, Brett.
Worm Gruntin Festival, bitches! Then you can go over to the Mullet toss in Panacea and the Blue Crab Festival in Apalachicola.
I don't understand how it can be legal to buy fireworks, but illegal to "manufacture explosives".
I could just buy a lot of fireworks and carry them around in a metal box.
WTF?
Don't bother with the fireworks, they're kind of wimpy. Model rocket motors are much more powerful. You what the difference is between a solid rocket motor and a bomb? The nozzle.
*know what the difference is...
Typing fail.
Meth
http://www.vice.com/en_au/read.....es-on-fire
Meth
Zooey Deschanel is still yummy!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs.....Dance.html
The most overrated chick alive. Get out, Sarcasmic, you hipster!11!
I've been in lust with her since I watched the Hitchhiker's Guide.
Me too. If we can agree on a women, she must be attractive.
She's on my celebrity waiver list too.
My squeeze lusts for her, too. We were watching So You Think You Can Dance and I was saying how vapid and inarticulate she is, and he kept covering his ears and say "lalalala I can't hear you!".
You dudes and your quirky hipster chicks, I swear.
You understand our glands don't understand "vapid and inarticulate", nor do women's if the Johnny Depp love is any indication.
Johnny Depp is gross, man.
And this is why you're awesome.
Actually, I just want to do her character in 500 Days of Summer.
I know she is a total hipster. But there is something about brunettes with big blue eyes. It is just Pavlovian with me. I hat hipsters. But I just can't help myself with her. She is so damned cute.
Oh, dude, don't get me wrong -- I'd do unthinkable things to her if we ever got together, but she's not the prize the International Association of Hipsters Herpa Derp (tm) seem to think she is.
Dude, she's adorable.
She is not Bo Derek, but she's not supposed to be.
She isn't trumping all other chicks at "hot". That's not her thing. Her thing is turning the "Cute" amp up to 11, and then blowing that fucking amp out with Chernobyl levels of "Cute".
Yeah. She'd look good with nothing on but bunny ears and a fluffy bunny tail thong on. In my bedroom.
Notice I used the word "yummy", not "hot".
^This. She's cute and all, but nothing amazing.
There is nothing wrong with hate fucking some hipster sluts.
Sweden won't let Stephen Colbert guest tweet for it because he's a standoffish prick
http://www.thelocal.se/41710/20120628/
Papparazi follows Ali Larter around again!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs.....earls.html
Chinese astronaughts relax in Wal*mart lawn chairs. Is that country pathetic or what?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....eland.html
NASA's ground recovery chairs are custom designed and cost $32,000 apiece, with a 6month refurbishment turnaround that only costs $10,000 per use. Clearly ours is the superior space program.
*note:numbers made up for sarcasm purposes, fake but accurate.
Nah,
Your numbers are way too low.
Declining testosterone levels in men not part of normal aging, study finds
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_.....062212.php
You know, I don't like how this is presented. Declining testosterone levels DO correlate with age in men. The study says they don't have to, but you have to work much harder to have the same amount of testosterone at 60 as you did at 30.
I'm sick and tired of this motherfucking snake on this motherfucking motorcycle!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....-hand.html
Did this guy eat a whole bottle of stupid pills or what?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....ak-in.html
Double-decker cable car with open-air sundeck! (Like that could ever happen in The Land of the Free)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....ndeck.html
Federal nannies would be certain to conjure a whole bunch of retarded safety regulations to prevent that kind of ride here. Fucking federales.
Mongolians go to the polls to decide how to spend all the money the country's expecting from new mining projects.
Hey! There may be some backwards areas in Western PA but that's no reason to call u.... oh this is literally about the country of Mongolia, isn't it?
Now I'm picturing a hoard of lunatics on horseback, wearing Steelers jerseys and waving yellow towels over their heads as they fall upon a defenseless village.
Mongolians, not mongoloids.
Destruction in Colorado Springs. Sad.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....-size.html
Sarc's Daily Fails are complete.
Great! Next time, concentrate on leaving us wanting more, not less.
I keed! You're the best, and that's saying a lot.
Greece's political crisis persists
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....story.html
How did the teachers union let it come to this? How did the state's education officials?
Maybe overly rational people and other such rabble finally got their shit together and butt-fucked the unions into submission on the issue.
Blind stupidity, bureaucratic inertia, greed. Mix and match.
I read that Maryland's teacher's unions okayed ditching their work rules to allow principals to fire under performing teachers. I think that union will probably survive.
However did sarcasmic miss this?
You silly sausage! Mayor outrages her town as her Olympic torch costume is mistaken for something quite different...
I find your fascination with phallic sausages to be disturbing.
Well I am currently watching a documentary about Britain's biggest seller of sex toys...
AKA shopping.
Chief Justice Roberts, activist judge or activist judge?
Both.
judicial activism = decisions i dont like
and you would be whining about activism had 5-4 gone the other way. Weren't liberals warning about the doom of the republic if the vote was 5-4 in the days before it was cast?
It's also funny because liberals wouldn't understand the meaning of "republic" if their life depended on it.
ooo - lemme guess, lesee...
...a republic is where [CORPORASHIONZ] are people too !
Don't take this the wrong way, but whoever came up with the 'triple asshole' explanation for your handle was right on the money.
And by taking it the right way, I believes he means 'take this as the insult it was meant to be'.
noo way?! u mean we werent playing rock paper sissors? gosh...
This is the point I've been making now. They decried the possibility of judicial activism just by having an unconstitutional law found unconstitutional. Now, Roberts single-handedly opens the door for an immense amount of new legislation, and it's not activist in the slightest. What a bunch of tools, liberals are. (Conservatives are tools too, but duller)
Judicial activism = calling something a tax when the legislature specifically said it wasn't a tax.
roberts: "if it walks like a duck..."
Congress specifically removed language calling it a tax and sold it as not a tax. It never would have passed as a tax. The guy who signed it said it was not a tax and laughed at people who called it a tax.
It's not Roberts' job to then call it a tax. Not a tax means not a tax.
"This would be constitutional as a tax, therefore it is a tax even though the legislative branch said it wasn't a tax and the executive branch said it wasn't a tax" is judicial activism, pure and simple.
If Congress tells him that something is not a duck, it's not a duck.
I think Roberts has codified that it is not unconstitutional for the Legislative Branch to lie bold-faced to the American people. That's about it.
The executive has a legislatively enshrined duty to lie to the public. So now we just need to get some reason for the judiciary to lie, and we're set.
Oh, but don't lie to them. They hate that.
He's managed to codify "fuck you that's why" IOW.
so it's NOT SCOUTUS's job to call a duck a duck?
Not only that, but during arguments in March the adminstration claimed it was a tax so that under the Anti-Injuntion Act the case could get thrown out until 2014, when the "tax" would actually take effect. The scotus (ever notice how similar that is to scrotum?) ruled then that it was not a tax so they could go ahead with the case. Now all of a sudden it is a tax. WTF.
Roberts was just looking for a way to uphold the law without touching any commerce clause precedents, but also without stretching the commerce clause any further than it already is. What a fucking putz.
Fuck you orrin, you lying sack of shit.
Rafael Nadal lost at Wimbledon to a Czech ranked 100th in the world.
I heard that before the final point of the match Nadal cried out that he couldn't believe he was losing to a Serb and his opponent yelled out, "That's Czech, mate!"
A+
Everyone, commence shunning.
Shun Sparky, too for encouraging this behavior.
Seconded.
So read the big decision last night. I still think Roberts is playing the fools game. But I at least see what he is doing.
First, the portion of the decision calling Obamacare a tax has very little precidential value. If you read it, the decision makes the distinction that the money people have to pay if they don't have health insurance is a tax not a penalty. If the tax had been really high, it would be a penalty and not a valid use of the tax power. So this case becomes very easy to limit on its facts in the future. If the fee in question is anything over what it was in this case, the Court can easily call it a penalty and strike it down. So the liberals get to keep Obamacare. But they get to keep it without any real precedent going forward. Sure, a future liberal court can just call anything and everything a tax. But a liberal majority could overturn the case anyway. So that is always a danger.
In contrast the commerce clause part and the medicaid expansion parts seem to be real little time bombs slipped into the opinion. So much for Lopez being a one off limited to its facts. And I have reread the medicaid part about four times and it sure looks like to me that it says congress can't extort the states into action by withholding funds. That is a big deal.
Here is what I think Roberts did. He gave liberals Obamacare on a very narrow and limited to its facts ground. Causing liberals to sing his and the court's praises.
Meanwhile he laid the groundwork to revitalize the commerce clause and made it very difficult for liberals to attack the court when the court decides issues like affirmative action in the future.
I still don't totally buy it and would rather have seen the whole act go down. But I at least see what he did. And it makes some sense.
Wouldnt voting down Obamacare have done the same thing wrt the commerce clause? Same 5-4 decision on that issue, but could have been 5-4 the other way on the tax issue.
Sure it would have. And Roberts got intimidated by the liberals throwing a fit. His thinking I believe was totally political. He gave them Obamacare to totally cut their legs out from under them when they start eating the furniture when the commerce clause comes back.
I am not saying he is right. My view is fuck the liberals kill Obamacare and revitalize the commerce clause now. But I really think that was his thinking. I do think he is playing the long game here.
if he is playing the long game, perhaps he should step down and for RNC Chair or a similar political post. I get the argument you're making; I just don't think the chief justice should be the one implementing it.
I think that is the other piece of Robert's thinking; he doesn't believe the Chief Justice or the SC should be the one implementing an over-ride. This decision puts it back on Congress and the upcoming election, while the 'tax ' definition actually makes the repeal easier and more palatable (no filibuster on tax proposals).
The single biggest problem with the Roberts opinion is that dicta isn't binding. So, it doesn't matter what he wrote in support, just what he voted to uphold.
He could write the fucking Magna Carta as the opinion and it's still YAY, FREE SHIT!
Meanwhile he laid the groundwork to revitalize the commerce clause and made it very difficult for liberals to attack the court when the court decides issues like affirmative action in the future.
That all hinges on the idea that some future SCOTUS will respect the great reasoning of Roberts.
And there is no reason at all to believe that.
Here's what happened.
Roberts caved to personal social pressure and was too clever by half in rationalizing that cave in.
He's destroyed his own reputation; turned the SCOTUS into even more of a joke than it was before and discredited the concept of rule of law.
He's a punk ass pussy.
This long game meme is a perverted combination of denial and political hackery.
I am not saying Roberts is right. He is a fool for the reasons you give. He thinks the Court's credibility is in the hands of Linda Greenhouse instead of the public.
I am just explaining his thinking.
he laid the groundwork to revitalize the commerce clause
Why pussyfoot around with "laying groundwork"? He's a Supreme Court justice, so it's not like he has to worry about elections. Just "revitalize" the commerce clause by overturning the law now.
We got a status quo opinion. Congress can still do anything it wants, so long as it uses the IRS to enforce the penaltax. We'll see if the Commerce Clause discussion has any precedential weight, but I think it will be easy to wave aside in future cases if the Court is inclined to do so.
And the strange new respect for federalism is written so that it, too, can be a one-off.
My prediction is that this case won't mark any result in any real limits on Congress doing what it wants going forward, and will be seen as a historic missed opportunity.
This. Standard Libertarian Disclaimers applicable, I don't think this is that bad.
Congress already performs all sorts of social engineering through the tax codes - mortgage interest deduction, electric car deduction, etc. This is no different.
You and I think all of those things are wrong, but I think Roberts was right that this is not an unusual use of the taxing power.
Now, I still think that saying that this isn't a tax for the Anti-Injunction Act is bizarre, and I would have preferred somebody took Wickard and shat down its throat, but since we won't get that, this isn't a big deal.
Except for the other cases, they were specifically written as a tax. As I said yesterday, there never would have been a case if they had written it as a tax to begin with. Of course, in that case, it never would have passed either.
We got a status quo opinion. Congress can still do anything it wants, so long as it uses the IRS to enforce the penaltax
That is just not true. If the tax gets too high it becomes a penalty and is no longer a tax. That is a real limit on Congress. First, they can't make the rule criminal. They can only pass a tax if you don't do something. And the tax has to be limited in nature and can't be coercive. If the tax doesn't serve any purpose other than punish people, it is not a valid use of the tax power. There is a whole area of jurisprudence about what is and is not a tax. Go read it sometime or read the opinion. It is not "congress can do anything it wants". I don't like the decision but it doesn't say what you think it does.
And your concern about future courts would be the same even if he had sided with a minority. We are only as safe as the court we have. A future liberal court could just overrule the whole case and do what it wants. So there is that danger no matter what.
That is just not true. If the tax gets too high it becomes a penalty and is no longer a tax. That is a real limit on Congress
That's bullshit wishful thinking and you know.
There's nothing limiting a future Congress from raising the tax tenfold. When that case gets to SCOTUS some jackass will use contorted logic to claim that this a unique situation and therefor constitutional.
Just like Mickey Mouse will one day be public domain.
As with copyright extension, as long as they bump it up marginally, they can tax as much as they want.
Yeah. Fuck the Mouse for irrevocably destroying the US copyright system.
This.
Mickey Mouse: "You think God is in control here? I'm in control. I've been in control since the '50s, in case you haven't noticed!"
"Ha ha"
There is a whole line of cases that say differently.
There's a whole line of cases that never magically transformed a penalty into a tax either, but that didn't stop the court.
My prediction is that this case won't mark any result in any real limits on Congress doing what it wants going forward, and will be seen as a historic missed opportunity.
You also predicted that it would be ruled a proper use of the commerce clause. Even I got that one right.
So, just got in from out of the country this morning. Did I miss anything?
yep, chief justice roberts has been exposed as a socialist canadian race traitor...mumble mumble (burp)...
nope: the slavers are still beating the slaves.
Didn't they tattoo your new health care ID number on you when you went through Immigration?
... on your testicles?
Didn't you read Farnham's Freehold? They're not going to let you keep your balls.
Another little piece of America died yesterday, and most of what we got here at Reason was standard snarky cosmotarian B.S. mixed in with a strong dose of the rose-colored "it's really not that bad" pollyanna routine.
All in all, it was basically the most horrible day since Obama got elected.
+1.
It pretty much was. But time will tell. One thing about events like this, they have lots of unforeseen consequences. I have learned things are almost never as bad or as good as they first seem.
I'm buying Republicans take the Senate at Intrade. Still on the fence about the Presidential election. Too much can happen.
I'm hoping for a Republican supermajority in Congress and an Obama victory, I guess. It'll probably make them behave better if a Democrat's in the White House.
So Obama can declare a dictatorship? And who exactly is going to keep Obama from getting into wars? You want a Republican President where the Dems can at least filibuster in the Senate.
A Republican Congressional supermajority can skullfuck Obama if it's big enough. But it probably wouldn't be anyway.
Who cares? When the opposition's endgame is totalitarianism and you live in a free-ish society, it was always going to come to violence eventually. The progs' long game has always been to make sure Americans were either dependent on government or disarmed by it so that the inevitable civil war would be a cakewalk. Better to have it now than later.
Well I'm hoping for Gary Johnson in the White House, but I would settle for Republican control of Congress and a Democrat in the White House. Romney winning and the Republicans controlling Congress (or even status quo with just having the House) would be as bad as 10 years ago.
I have learned things are almost never as bad or as good as they first seem.
No, they're usually worse in new and unexpected ways.
Your words resemble not thoughts so much as a constellation of imbecility.
Is it interesting not having to think? I would imagine that each experience is simultaneously exhilarating yet terrifying. Like being a caveman.
Oh, well in that case I stand corrected then. Yesterday was one of the greatest days in American history, right up there with V-E Day and the lunar landing. Thanks for helping me to see the light.
What the fuck Randian?
So, the country is basically a statist nightmare and the court decision paid a lot of lip service to libertarian ideals before going completely status-quo, like every other election or court decision from our point of view, ever. Got it.
Assad says "Stay out of Syria", I guess this means US forces will be going in any day now.
He also firmly rejected any solution imposed from outside the country, emphasizing his own commitment to reform instead.
"We will not accept any non-Syrian, non-national model, whether it comes from big countries or friendly countries. No one knows how to solve Syria's problems as well as we do," he said.
The propriety of the US intervening aside, you would think after what happened to Saddam and Gadafi, he might be a little less bold. Just saying.
What's sad is how bureaucratic and slow the military is. If it had sense, and if it came to an invasion, just burn everything to the ground and leave. But it won't be that way. It'll probably become another shitty occupation.
I was wondering about this, especially after they downed a Turkish (NATO!) jet. He must have some deal with Putin, who in turn, must be pressuring State.
Alternatively, they have paid attention to internal US developments and judged that Obama would not want to get involved in another war right now.
The Russians have a naval base in Syria.
IIRC, it's essentially a couple of dry-docks and a fueling station, but it's a important component of Russia's naval strategy.
A U.S. invasion of Syria would backfire badly - Assad isn't some nutjob giving pointers to the Italian prime minister for hot group sex. It would among other things sweep an anit-american party into power in Turkey, risk armed confrontation with Russia (don't let the second-rate nature of their weaponry lull you into complacency - the Russian officer corps are fucking devious strategists and don't care about taking casualties to anywhere the degree the U.S. military does).
It could also destabilize Irag further, and a Iranian-allied regime would provide the Syrians with an overland supply line from Russia.
It would among other things sweep an anit-american party into power in Turkey,
The Americans coming to the aide of Turkey in a war would really make the Turks hate us. Better to renounce NATO and leave the Turks to stand alone against the Russians and Syrians. That will make us real popular.
What of LSD do you take? It must be some very interesting stuff.
Anti-Americans are already in power in Turkey. Erdogan is an America-hating, Israel-hating Islamist. These guys told us to go fuck off when we decided to remove Saddam Hussein.
Since they were well aware that getting rid of Saddam would increase the autonomy of the Kurds (who have their own province in Turkey, and want to have their own state), there could be more than just "anti-Americanism" at work.
Oh, no doubt that their desire to continue oppressing the Kurds was a big part of it.
But the fact remains that Erdogan is a staunch anti-western Islamist. Very slowly and quietly behind the scenes, he has been conducting a successful purge of the modernist secularists from the Turkish government and military.
The fact that we would actually contemplate helping this guy out is just more proof of how stupid and gullible the people running the west today are.
Actually I was around when that all went down. The Kurds were not really the problem. The problem was Turkish Pride. No army had ever set foot on Turkish soil since World War I. Even letting the Americans transit was too much for Turkish national pride. They were going to get rich off of it. And they knew we were invading and Saddam was a goner anyway. So it wasn't the Kurds. It was pure pride and nothing else.
We'll just ignore the major U.S. Air Force base that had been there since the cold war, shall we?
According to my family members in Istanbul, most Turks saw the Bush pre-war maneuvers as setting the stage for a war of agression by the U.S.
The pride thing came out of Bush's ham-handed attempts to buy permission from the government buy offering them lots of money.
Which is kind of interesting - like most fascist republics - the Turkish economy is lubricated by endemic bribery.
But it's supposed to be kept under the table and not done out in the open.
We'll just ignore the major U.S. Air Force base that had been there since the cold war, shall we?
Yes we will. That is different than an army advancing through the country to invade a neighbor. That is a totally different animal.
And the Turks knew we were going to invade anyway. So all of the war of aggression shit is just that bullshit. They fucked up and let their pride get in the way of getting rich.
Obama's health-care-winboner is going to get him into trouble in Syria, I bet.
He obviously hasn't paid attention to our government over the last 80 years. Nobody knows how to solver their problems better than the Top Men in DC.
Meet the Woman that Farts for a Living
Whatever makes a living.
*Gag*.
Now THIS is capitalism!
According to this, it was a need to pay for her health care that led her to fulltime fetish work. How will America's proud fetish community be replenished if Obamacare removes this sort of incentive?
We should hold this up as a counter-example to Obamacare!
You sexy bitch.
By the way--enjoyed your Shoe Carnival piece. The Money Box. Jesus fucking Christ.
The Money Box.
SQUIRRELS!
In response to SugFree.
After about a year there, they tried me out on the mic stand, rented tux and everything. I was terrible at it. The constant mindless chanting of the same stock phrases. Chasing people out of the store to demand why they hadn't bought anything. Ugh. I was only up there a couple of days.
It was impressive. You should rewrite it as 'investigative journalism' for Mother Jones.
"And this one time... I had to... had to get up on my tippy-toes to reach something!"
[gasp of outrage from comments]
You had to stand up out of your Rascal?!
This was years ago, before I had to float around like Baron Harkonnen.
FTA: Of course when talking to an expert on farting, I have to ask the question, what foods induce the best farts? You'd think it would lots of bean burritos, but no, the key is sugar-free candy.
Mr. SugarFree, do you have anything else to share?
We will not accept any non-Syrian, non-national model, whether it comes from big countries or friendly countries.
So big countries can't be friendly countries? That makes me sad. Big countries need lovin' too, you know.
Uncle Sam needs a hug, eh?
But they gotta pay!
Giggity!
Why do big countries give the best head?
The best "warhead", you mean?
This is clearly unconstitutional.
Woman arrested for holding sign warning of speed trap in Houston.
Obstruction of justice. After all, Brett, if the government can't collect all that delicious revenue, how can it crusade for social justice and Utopia itself?
No. I was thinking that a guy in FL had been arrested for the same (flashing his headlights to warn of a speed trap), but it was overturned on 1A grounds earlier this year.
Should be the same in this case then.
In Roberts' Amerika, she's a tax evader.
In Texas, the Penal Code has a specific defense to interference with public duties if the conduct engaged in by the defendant was intended to warn a person operating a motor vehicle of the presence of a peace officer who was enforcing [speeding laws].
I'm sure that's why the obstruction of justice crap went right out the window once someone with at least a partial clue pointed out that the law in Texas specifically allows people to warn of speed traps.
I've seen that several corn ethanol plants have been idled due to rising cost of materials both in the US and Germany. How in the fuck can a subsidized industry be so unprofitable as to have to idle plants? Also, the spot price on ethanol is $2.20/gal. I'd pay $3.08 for E10 gas today with the federal and state taxes. Reason might want to explore whether the ethanol mandate is keeping gas prices artificially high.
Judge muzzles blogger for exposing corrupt legal system.
It's too bad the blogger caved, because were that me, I'd call his bluff.
This isn't to say that it would have been a pleasant experience, I doubt that it would have been, since we're dealing with a corrupt high official, but seriously, fuck these power-mad fucks. Sometimes, you just gots to take a stand, no matter what the cost.
Emanual Cleaver, apparently unaware of the general smell on Capitol Hill.
When you've been there long enough you probably get accustomed to the smell.
At least they don't have to smell the stench of unwashed proletariat masses. Harry Reid knows what I'm talking about.
China's first female astronaut does tai chi in space.
I noticed in the link above all the photo captions refer to her as the "first Chinese astronaut". I guess all the male astronauts before don't count anymore?
Mongolians clearly don't understand that nothing the government can do with the money will help develop their country.
Even if you give every Mongolian a share of the revenue, that means none of them have the incentive to learn to, say, design microchips. But if you have a bunch of rich people who want to invest their money, you'll have a lot of incentive for entrepreneurship.
Yeah, this reminded me of descriptions of Indian reservations that get casinos. Lots of cash, free money handed out, plenty of free time.
Nothing could go wrong with that, could it?
Well, the Seminole nation did do well enough to buy the entire Hard Rock franchise, so they aren't exactly blowing their money. Of course, they also negotiated free college for all of their members at FSU to allow TK Weatherell to tell the NCAA to get bent. So they seem to have pretty sharp tribal management.
I am curious how the Alaska Native corporations do at getting their members better lives. It seems like a reasonable deal for the tribes to own all of their land.
My comment wasn't meant to impugn all Indian casinos, or state that all tribal leadership is incompetent. But there have been some that have essentially give a livelihood to their members without them having to do any work. The result is idleness combined with a constant supply of free handouts. As you can imagine, drug use and alcoholism are not infrequent under these circumstances.
True enough.
The Florida Seminole tribe also claims to have never been conquered by the US government, which is kinda sorta true.
Yeah. All of their war leaders were captured, but they never signed a peace treaty and the Army quit looking for them after spending about $20M dollars in the 1800s and getting their asses handed to them on a troop-to-troop basis.
OH, GOD-DAMNED MONGORIANS!!
Get in the kitchen and make me some shitty beef
"The prospect of [Iraqi] elections have been threatened."
Consanguinity as a Major Predictor of Levels of Democracy: A Study of 70 Nations
Summary: Iraq won't become a democracy because there's too much inbreeding.
Well, tribalism, really.
No Thor Hushovd in this year's Tour. Me haz a sad. To whom will I *fap*?
Oh nice. I'll be in my bunk.