A.M. Links: 9/11 Trials in 2016, Isaac No Fan of the Republican Convention, SEAL Book Surprise
-
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accused co-conspirators are expected to go to trial at Guantanamo Bay in 2016 for their roles in the 9/11 attacks. That's just fifteen years after the fact.
- The Republican National Convention may be postponed by the approach of Isaac, which is clearly a left-leaning storm.
- The Obama administration has been issuing major regulations at twice the Bush administration's already impressive rate. The cost of complying with such regulations is expected to reduce the gross domestic product by anywhere from $240 billion to $630 billion in 2012.
- Amazon's map of political book-buying trends shows conservative-leaning tomes predominating everywhere in the U.S. but a small cluster of states in the East.
- The publication of a book about the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, written by a Navy SEAL who participated, comes as a surprise to the White House — and the rest of the government.
- You know those snapshots of your license plate that Customs and Border Patrol has been capturing? Yeah. They're sharing them with your insurance company.
- An "independent" reviewer of White House energy loans is now an Obama donor. Ah. So that's how it works.
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The Obama administration has been issuing major regulations at twice the Bush administration's already impressive rate.
No shit?
The GOP is the "party of slower government".
It's a good thing Obama issued that edict a few years ago to review the regulatory environment for overly oppressive regulations. Instead of doing away with them, I suspect they were just looking for a roadmap for more.
No No No
They said they were looking for overly oppressive regulations, they just didn't say oppressive for whom.
They were looking for regulations which were overly oppressive to government regulators, labor unions, and a handful of "special" corporations. Ones which were overly oppressive to the rest of us pleebs were of course perfectly fine.
Sense has been made here.
As Jeff Goldstein at "Protein Wisdom" describes it... "losing more slowly"
"DO NOTHING" CONGRESS!!11!
Ina Hughs: Rights come from government, not God
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2.....er=popular
Hmmm. Rights /=/ privileges. Fucking rights, how do they work?
You can't proof that meat is "safe" to eat, you can only proof that meat is unsafe to eat. It's like with cancer, you cannot possible scan your whole body to find out if your free of cancerous cells.
Without government's intervention and participation, how else will we know, for a simple example, that meat at the supermarket is kosher?
Until one of these nanny's answers that question for me, they need to shut the fuck up.
the nannies tend to believe the answer is self-evident - that absent govt inspectors, you have no guarantee of safety because the merchant is inherently evil and does not consider consequences of selling you a bad product.
That doesnt answer MY question. Im not asking about safety, but about kosherness.
pretty much the same answer - in the left's view, you would not know without govt telling you because it is inconceivable to liberals that the maker of the product would claim kosherness, understand the consequences of lying about it, and have some means of verifying the claim.
The point being, a whole lot of leftish jews rely on PRIVATE kosher labeling.
there is no figuring the Jewish vote. Catholics, either. They vote Dem then act surprised when their self-interests are attacked by the folks whom they voted in. I have lost sympathy for both.
You're still missing the point...
IIANM, kosher is regulated by the State of New York. Jews in other states are presumably taking their chances. 🙂
Kosher is regulated by the state? How? Is there an official state interpretation of the Bible? Or does NY just make it a crime to label as Kosher if you aren't?
Some of those comments would make Santa Claus himself want to vomit with rage.
+1 jingle bell of fury
Makes sense. The government is a form of might.
Without government's intervention and participation, how else will we know, for a simple example, that meat at the supermarket is safe to eat?
By thoroughly cooking it, I would imagine.
Can we really depend on the kindness of others to make sure our medications have been tested and come with proper warnings?
If all government testing were as proper and complete as Ina imagines, recalls would not happen.
What about our right to drive highways and interstates
As it was explained to me (by the state), usage of government roads is not a right, it's a privilege, so...WRONG.
knowing others zooming along beside us have been checked out for basic skills, and should someone bash into us,
I'm sure the 32,000 people who died in motor vehicle accidents in 2010 would be pleased to know that they at least had basic skills before bashing or being bashed into. Can't have unlicensed people dealing out death, can we?
Not to mention the difference between US licensing and European licensing.
In Europe, you can count on the person driving next to you to be a skilled driver. In the US, you can count of them passing a fundamentally simple test when they were 16.
The state of the democratic mind in 2012, it is like arguing with nursery rhymes.
We all need a license to kill.
By thoroughly cooking it, I would imagine.
Actually, this is no guarantee. Some forms of microorganisms leave toxins behind, so killing the microorganisms doesn't fix the problem.
This doesn't change the fact that the guy is an idiot.
It is a guarantee. Thorough cooking denatures bacterial toxins in addition to killing the bacteria.
Not ciguatera.
The comment to which you originally replied referred specifically to meat. Not to mention the fact that I referred specifically to bacteria, which are not what produce Ciguatera toxins. Barring those you would have a point.
I'm not sure which is dumber: the assumption that all govt-approved meat is safe (which it obviously isn't, since foodborne illness still occurs), or the assumption that businesses have a rational interest in poisoning their customers.
Amazon's map of political book-buying trends shows conservative-leaning tomes predominating everywhere in the U.S.
I don't get it. Are they buying them to burn them? How do we work Hitler into this, for crying out loud?
Does Amazon sell Mein Kampf? Ebay bans it.
Yes it does
You can't get more conservative-leaning than Hitler!
with the roadZ and the people's car!
The publication of a book about the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, written by a Navy SEAL who participated, comes as a surprise to the White House...
Queering the White House's movie deal with Sony.
Will it give all the details on how Obama parachuted down into Pakistan with a bowie knife between his teeth and took out Osama and his forty henchmen in hand to hand combat?
Queering?
so who's being othered here?
Sounds like the White House...
or maybe Sony, I'm not sure.
Proof you've read too much Jezebel: When Queering takes on a whole different meaning.
Fine, scooping the White House's movie. Or are you all going to tell me that "scooping" has made it into the gay lexicon, too?
Two girls, one scoop
Needs more sauerkraut.
The Cliff the Keynesians Built
Temporary tax cuts created the fiscal threat to growth.
http://online.wsj.com/article/.....on_LEADTop
Can we stop acting as if GDP is a valuable measure? It ALWAYS falls when government tapers spending off even a little bit, because government spending is a part of it.
This is one reason why debt-to-GDP, in particular, is essentially a worthless measure. When you're spending 8-12% of total GDP in deficits to get a 1-2% growth rate, your real GDP is actually negative.
Karl Denninger had a good explanation of this today:
Unless growth in the economy exceeds credit expansion plus population expansion (since GDP is reported gross and not "per-capita") such credit expansionary policies in fact move the common man's standard of living backward, and the more "accomodation" you provide the more backward movement takes place!
The issuing of additional government debt is merely credit expansion conducted by the state.
When you're spending 8-12% of total GDP in deficits to get a 1-2% growth rate, your real GDP is actually negative.
Are you suggesting that my strategy to take out a home-equity loan to pay my mortage is not sound?
+1
It really depends: what's your multiplier?
There's no doubt that the left has gone kind of nuts over the last decade or so, but I don't believe that they've gone so completely around the bend that they're actually going to carry out this threat to drive the American economy over the cliff. I still think they're going to cave at the last minute.
But if I'm wrong and they're so stark raving mad that they're really willing to drive the country over the cliff, then next year Romney and the republicans should really stick it to the bastards and make the current tax rates permanent through reconciliation.
THAT is where you are missing the reality of this administration vs all the others -- you equate the cliff with madness and being over the bend; Obama equates it with being the desired outcome.
Obama is not your garden-variety tax/spend liberal, and it is past time to quit pretending that he is. His vision is far more dangerous, even evil. Look, when you assume leadership of the world's largest economy and wealthiest nation and promise to "fundamentally transform" it, how can the result be good?
I understand completely who this lowlife Obama is and what he's all about; I vetted him myself back in the middle of '08 when most of the Reason contributors didn't have the first clue. Alinsky, Cloward, Piven, Frank Marshall Davis, I know the entire story from beginning to end.
But Obama still has to get reelected! His most evil and malevolent acts await us in his second term, if heaven help us he actually wins again. But he can't carry these acts out if he loses in November, so he has to keep that mask on as best as he possibly can for a little longer.
"Alinsky, Cloward, Piven, Frank Marshall Davis,"
Funny that Al Sharpton was fear-mongering on his show yesterday that we should fear Romney because of Romney's evil mentors.
I'm skeptical.
From what I've seen of Obama so far, he's a 1st class con-man; not some crypto commmie. His only goals that, I see, are to do as little work as possible and grab as much loot as possible for his cronies (and by extension himself) and always avoid responsibillity for everything. Besides, there's serious institutional constraints on what a president can do unilaterally. That is, unless you think he's going to pull off some kind of coup-revolution.
I think they'll cave, but just as the Tea Party began by primary-ing more moderate Republicans who voted for TARP, I think we may see a lefty equivalent that takes out, say, a Nancy Pelosi (or someone else from a heavily Democratic district) for voting for what will be in their words, "Tax cuts for the rich!"
Nanny Pelosi represents a rich district.
Shelia Jackson Lee. Happy now?
She has pretty regular primary challenges by people who don't seem nuts, but as the Third Ward is being depopulated (which I guess shows that blacks in Houston are getting wealthier, which is good) the more netrootsy types in the Heights might decide they'd rather have an effective voice for their stupid views.
This headline promises way more than it delivers:
It's the preposition "in".
Was his mother tragic or just her actions? English: learn it, use it.
Looking at those pictures, just makes you think, that bastard is hitting that, and because he is a Kennedy, he's getting that, and that, and that and probably the little black dude too.
He's 18 and she's 22. When I was in college, the senior females weren't exactly lining up to date the freshman males.
At 18, I dated a prettier red head girl at 21 years of age than Taylor Swift is now so I feel no envy.
Beautiful. Tucille, you're the best writer Reason has added this year, and already you're one of my favorite Reason writers. Once I have some actual spending money, I'm totally going to buy your books.
What the shit? We don't cancel things in FL for a Category 1 storm. It'd be like Buffalo closing over a foot of snow. The out of staters are just going to have to man up and understand that its a warm rain, even if it is coming down sideways at 80mph. Its quite bracing, actually.
It is really big and will affect a big area. But yeah, Florida has its shit together on this stuff. This is not New Orleans.
those impacted by this storm will be rebuilt before those hit by katrina. Hell, Japan will fully recover from the tsunami before NOLA does.
Katrina didn't wreck that City, somebody else did that.
ACOE?
Hey, when you want widespread flooding, make sure you go with the best!
The most important election of our lifetime will just have to wait.
And it is always funny to watch the state of Florida tell FEMA and the feds to go fuck themselves whenever a hurricane hits. They really do know what they are doing and don't let FEMA do shit. It drives FEMA nuts.
Yeah we do! Fuck FEMA!
I remember in 2005 when we got hit by Charlie, the D-one, and the E-one all in the span of like a month. I lived in Merritt Island at the time, and the whole island was supposed to be evacuated, but my parents were out of town so my sister and I just chilled. I got many a hours of FFXI online in that hurricane season.
It might have been Frances instead of D or E... they all really start to blur together after a while.
Charly, Frances, Ivan and Jean. Good times! I was under mandatory evac but rode it out. Everyone thought I was crazy but as it turned out Charly came up behind us and it was all those people who went inland that got the brunt of it.
I wish I could get a series of hurricanes so I could fully explore Skyrim's Dawnguard expansion.
Yep. I expect once the path narrows down, I'll start seeing hundreds of power company trucks staged on the side of I-10 waiting to mulch limbs and mend lines.
one presumes the convention ctr is also an emergency evac center.
The convention center is on the water. Not much use as a shelter if a surge comes in.
Yeah, so is the Times-Forum (which is right next door), where Romney's speech will be.
I agree darius - reason needs to hold onto 2Chilly like grim death.
They're sharing them with your insurance company.
Everyone knows that speed limits have been engineered by insurance companies, so this is a natural extension of the partnership with law enforcement.
I've got your natural extension swingin' right here!
I see you're enforcing the double nickel
An "independent" reviewer of White House energy loans is now an Obama donor.
Could just be a form of apology for doing such a piss-poor job.
I prefer seppuku as a form of political apology, with an elegant death haiku prepared well ahead of time on the finest rice paper.
George Will: Why government needs a diet
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....story.html
it seems to me that Mr. Will has been using more and more libertarian arguments as of late...
He certainly has his moments. I loved when he went on Colbert and mopped the floor with that Obama fellator.
He is a deadly combination in an argument, a smart guy who is also a nice guy.
He has been. And since Will is pretty much always the right wing side of conventional wisdom, perhaps the political winds are changing.
I, unfortunately, remain cynical. Libertarian rhetoric works well against Obama, but come the next Republican president, I feel that the right wing publications will largely fall back into David Brooks-esque national greateness bullshit.
Probably. But the good news is that Liberals will pretend to be friends with Libertarians again.
The bad news is we'll have to suffer through all that pie in the sky liberal-tarian bullshit all over again.
Fuck yeah! Cocktail parties!
I've already begun ridculing liberal friends for forgetting that they're anti-war for the past few years.
Or I should say, former friends. They're not taking it well.
Or maybe I'm just a dick.
Will lambasted GWB pretty regularly, IIRC. He's definitely still an R, but he's a lot more ideologically consistent than the vast majority of columnists and R's in general.
I agree...it's shame he's at Washington Post where most of the readers who comment seem obtuse to anything he has to say.
You should read the comments to Jennifer Rubin's blog on there. Stupid is too weak of a word. But they make up for it by being angry and incoherent.
He's the most synidicated columnist in the country, so his reach expands far beyond WaPo, even in the dead tree realm.
On the other hand, "No fat" and "low fat" are FDA regulated terms that may not have become as successful if someone could just slap them on a package of bacon.
I'm betting that Mr. Will's libertarian side will take a nice nap once the Repubs get back in control, whenever that is.
But as long as there are bureaucrats who consider themselves completely rational and informed, there will be policies to substitute government supervision of individuals for individuals' personal responsibility.
GK Chesterton made a very similar observation in "The Drift From Domesticity":
Pity it's too hot to wear balaclavas in my part of the world:
I rather wear a $800 colored skin mask.
Buffalo Bill, is that you?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic.....masks.html
Now if only he were a German businessman, this might actually make its way to the consumer.
There's nothing I hate more than seeing a great piece of industrial design, then learning that the creator is an artist who has no intention of actually producing it for a consumer market.
Like that keyboard waffle-iron.
An "independent" reviewer of White House energy loans is now an Obama donor.
He saw firsthand just how great Obama's commitment to responsible energy policy is.
Welshman who lives as an Apache Indian wins the right to keep badger paws and eagle wings in his home
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....rican.html
you know who else pretended to be an Indian?
Ward Churchill?
Ben Kingsley?
+1 bowl of curry vindaloo
"curry vindaloo"
Redundant.
Iron Eyes Cody?
+1 tear
Tonto?
Frank Dekova?
chuck conner?
Has there ever been a cooler opening to a TV series than Chuck Conner blasting away with that Winchester?
No
No. I saw him and Johnny Crawford at the Houston Rodeo one year. My little kid self still smiles at the memory.
An SS Harley motor with round heads and the intake and exhaust ports switched?
That is, of course, "S ampersand S". I forgetted about dah skwerlz.
Way to Godwin the thread.
You know who else Godwinned threads?
Godwin?
Hugo Boss?
I'm guessing the Brits decided they didnn't really want to find out how serious his commitment to being an Apache really was.
They had enough trouble with the relatively peaceable Iroquois. I'm sure they want nothing to do with true killers like the Apache.
Thats my kind of crazy!
LL Cool J puts hurt on burglar
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/n.....vr9oHBH4gK
didn't he also play a badass cop of some sort on that NCIS show?
Plus didn't he kick shark ass in "Deep Blue Sea?"
Awesome! I love it when some schmuck breaks into the wrong house.
Except when the shoot the family dog, make the kids sit next to its bleeding corpse, and then search the home and arrest the homeowner anyway
SEAL's Unauthorized bin Laden Raid Book Surprises Feds
It was not vetted by government agencies to ensure that no secrets were revealed.
On the one hand, Team Obama has proven over and over again that there is no message they can't bungle. But on the other hand, their corruption runs incredibly deep. So I don't know whether to bet on this book exposing more lies in the bin Laden raid narrative or upholding the story; with the "oh crap, not vetted" tone conveniently lending the book more credence.
The O! admin is in a trick bag - they complain about not being vetted and they raise the whole spectre of their own leaks, playing tour guide in the "situation Room", etc...they don't attack it as "not credible" and it will deflate the OBAMA STRIDES ACROSS THE WORLD, M240B IN HAND, SLAYING OUR ENEMIES trope.
Is There a Limit to How Tall Buildings Can Get?
http://www.theatlanticcities.c.....-get/2963/
Oh my. If you were to cover one side with asphalt and place some sort of ratcheting mechanism on the other side to allow for lowering into a horizontal position across some body of water, Rachel Maddow may need a change of pants.
Wait, she's really into skyscrapers that double as bridges?
Is this some new stereotype that I haven't heard about?
I thought it was some sexual reference /mind in gutter
She's into Infrastructure! Bridges! Buildings!
The answer, as always, is Dubai.
A Nepali man who was bitten by a cobra snake bit it back and killed the reptile in a tit-for-tat attack
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/nepal.....33410.html
Nepalese are just all around bad asses.
Dude, armed only with his kukri, took on 40 armed men and drove the ones he didn't kill screaming off into the night.
Link
I worked with some Gurkas in Iraq. Those guys were gods. Generally the nicest most trustworthy people on earth. And they were absolute bad ass killers. No one I would rather depend on or go to war with than Gurkas.
I hear they get pathologically pissed though when someone refers to them as "Gurkas".
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor.....paid-leave
en. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said the ATF let the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) official take a paid leave on the taxpayer's dime even as he served as executive director of JPMorgan Chase's Global Security and Investigations Group in the Philippines.
It is good to be a Patrician. And even better to be a Patrician who can embarrass the ruling regime.
What ? me work?
Outsourcing the Oval Office
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/o.....6lRr0XGNiJ
It is the Chicago way. Chicago is a one party state. You win by paying off your cronies and telling the public and your opposition to go fuck themselves. That is all he knows. You can't do that in Washington. The opposition is too powerful. You have to reach out to and co-opt the opposition to succeed.
Has anyone else manged to catch the fun-if-sort-of-unrealistic show Boss?
Its about a mayor of Chicago. The corruption and arrogance I believe, but I feel that nowadays, the mayor of Chicago doesn't order to have peoples life threatened as much as he has a shady, arms length adviser who he just drops hints to. Also, keeping the disease secret would be hard.
They don't have to threaten people's lives anymore. They just have the DA open an investigation on them. They surely broke some kind of law.
Exactly. That's why, although I like Boss, I would have bought it a bit more if it had been set during the 1880s. Plus, then you could just make the horrible disease syphilis!
The late 1800s in the US and the 30 Year War are the two time periods I wish there were more interest in, because I want some video games (*Cough* If Assasin's Creed wants to do religion, why not during Europe's biggest religious conflict ie the 30 Years War? *cough*) and period pieces set during then.
(*Cough* If Assasin's Creed wants to do religion, why not during Europe's biggest religious conflict ie the 30 Years War? *cough*)
$100 says in the next one, you're either assasinating Confederates or Nazis.
30 Years War also degenerated into periods of wide-spread cannibalism. That would make a few nice side-missions.
Goldwater,
I want to see a video game set in Byzantium or Baghdad in say the 14th Century. Greeks versus Turks. Or better yet, Malta during the great siege. Play the Knights of St. John. Not many people know about that anymore. But it was high drama.
Or better yet, Malta during the great siege. Play the Knights of St. John. Not many people know about that anymore. But it was high drama.
There's a scenario in Age of Empires III where you do just that.
It's true, Obama is nothing but Valerie Jarrett's mouth. What's sad is that 90% of America has probably never ever heard of this broad who's running the country.
My friend's got a POTUS and he hates that prick
He tells me every payday
He wants more dinero just to play with drones,
Well my friend, you've gotta say...
Say no way, say no way-a, no wa-a-a-ay
Na na, why don't you get a job?
I won't pay, I won't pay-a, no wa-a-a-ay
Na na, why don't you get a job?
The AM links seem to get closer to Instapundit every day.
"It makes sense that now they have gotten round to bringing this case that there needs to be time for all of the information they have spent 11 years digesting that the defence needs time to digest that."
This is why lawyers get paid the big bucks.
I, for one, am not looking forward to what comes out after all that digestion.
Rabbi is not allowed to perform Jewish funerals in Pennsylvania because he's not a licensed funeral director.
I'm sure he knows a good lawyer.
Pretty sure he can afford one, too.
OMG, racist! Wait, is Jewish a race?
When it's convenient
Damn you, Sammy Davis Jr!
U.S. weekly jobless claims up slightly to 372,000
http://www.marketwatch.com/sto.....atest_news
Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had projected claims would rise to 369,000.
Interesting. The Bloomberg data says the consensus was for claims to drop to 365,000. So it's a bigger miss for Bloomberg economists...or Marketwatch is carrying water for the incumbent (a mere 3K miss)?
Funny how these things always end up "revised upward" its almost as if the DoL doesn't know what it is doing, exactly.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2.....red-video/
Warren new campaign theme based on doctored video.
Talk about a flame out. She was their true hope and is reduced to that.
It shows how insulated and backward they are. At some point you need to bring someone from outside the faculty lounge into the gene pool.
Well, she only needs to convince Massachusetts voters, so normally insulated and backward would play fine.
Warren is what a Rand villain would look like in real life.
She does have the stench of a Wesley Mouch or Bertram Scudder about her.
Weekly Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Rise.
Jobless are like the Spanish Inquisition, they are always unexpected.
+1
Funny, that. Just last week the AP said that a 0.4% increase in gdp was assurance the economy was gaining momentum.
the economy is always "gaining momentum" or "turning a corner" - at least for the past 2-3 years.
Green Shoots! I saw 'em, I swearz I did!
Oh that headline is just Fox News, always carrying Obamas water.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/u.....es-1275013
I have to give Prince Harry credit. If I were made a rich prince of England tomorrow, I can't really think of anything better to do than playing strip billiards with a bunch of showgirls in Las Vegas. That has style.
A night on the town with him, Camilla and Philip would be awesome. At 3 am you'd be spilling out of yet another pub, with Harry blagging weed from a shemale, Camilla smoking it, and Philip weeing on a policeman's shoes
"At 3 am you'd be spilling out of yet another pub"
Not in England, you won't.
Well i was thinking of taking them up the Cross here in Sydney. At some point of course we would go back to some dodgy bloke's and play strip Guitar Hero
Seems like the best type of Englishman to me.
It kind of sucks to be a prince now. You know they were just as big of partiers in the past. It was just back then no one was using their I-Phone to take pictures of the strip billiards. I think the twenties would have been a great time to be royalty.
Fuck that. I'll take the time period where they got to control the Church and behead their wives.
The problem with that is that they sometimes got beheaded themselves. Kingship wasn't so much fun for Richard II, Richard III, and Charles I.
How did you leave Edward II off that list?
Because I was sloppy.
Yeah, but other than Charles, those two were pre-Church Of England.
Actually, clearly the most fun time to be king was the 1890s and 1900s, given the stories that we have about Edward the VII pre-Coronation. That dude knew how to party.
Also, if you were in the 1920s, you had to deal with the whole upper class backlash that WW1 (justifiably) created, as well as the beginning of the Indian independence movement. In 1895, you didn't have to worry about shit.
Very true. Late 19th Century would have been a lot of fun. Funny thing about Edward. He actually had a beautiful wife. Queen Alexandra was this nearly six foot dutch beauty who kept her looks and figure well into middle age. Yet, his long term mistress was short, fat and homely.
Alexandra was Danish and deaf.
And you can judge Alice Keppel's looks for yourself. Although, as her descendant Camilla shows, looks are everything
She didn't keep her looks. She got old and fat. I never knew she looked that good when she was young. I guess she had skills.
Of course Edward turned into a whale. So maybe Alexandra wasn't so interested after she had produced a few heirs.
I read somewhere where a reporter tried to eat what Edward ate for a week. It damned near killed him with the calories and fat.
Her last pregnancy (at 26) was so risky that she was forbidden to risk any more. She had certainly popped out the heir and a few spares by then. There's also a school of thought that says her deafness was caused by his syphilis.
There's a new book out on him: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bertie.....926sr=1-1
I will check that out IFH. Thanks. I am totally fascinated with English monarchs. My favorite is Henry II. Great King with a nagging rock star wife and a bunch of preening, plotting sons, none of whom were half what their father was.
Good call on Henry II - he was also the father of the English court system.
If you haven't read Winter King (on Henry VII) may i recommend it. Really captures the paranoia of his reign
The war of the Roses were hell. And the Tudor's claim to the thrown was pretty tenuous. He had reason to be paranoid. And they think now that Richard III was nothing like history has portrayed him. He was actually a good king, didn't have a hump, and probably didn't kill the two princes. The Shakespeare Play, although great art, was really nothing but Tudor propaganda.
Of course. Henry Tudor was one of history's greatest liars along with Copernicus, Goebbels, and St. Ralph the Liar.
Some people choose a car for speed, some choose a car for comfort John.
Also, just tossing this out there: If you're king, and you can have any woman that you want... maybe the homely woman who gives a good blowjob and makes a mean meat pie and doesn't expect anything of you is what you want, not the leggy blonde shop girl from the high street who is going to want to see Buckinham Palace and get shit for her dear old mum.
Goldwater,
See Henry II for an example of this. He married the most beautiful women of the age and one who gave him possession of the richest area of France as a result. She turned into a total bitch who plotted with his sons to have him overthrown and he ended up having to lock her in a castle to keep her from causing more trouble.
Aquitaine or not, he would have been better off marrying the peasant girl who gave a good blowjob.
My favorite "Big Twist and the Mellow Fellows" song - "I'm built for comfort, I ain't built for speed".
And he learned it all from good old Flashy. What was the bloody thanks Flashman got?
And he learned it all from good old Flashy. What was the bloody thanks Flashman got?
Edward VIII, I mean.
I'm working tthrough the Flashman books on tape, again.
Absolutely brilliant. They are out of circulation, so I was reduced to getting a pirated copy for my Ipod.
Cannot recommend strongly enough. Listening while driving has a certain hazard, though; I've had to pull over from laughing too hard.
Yeah, I've most of them on audiobook. I was really depressed when GM Fraser died and I knew Flashy's adventure's had come to an end. We'll never get to year about his adventures in the Civil War.
He's kind of a Prince Hal type, it seems.
France better hope his brother doesn't die young. Another Henry might decide to put his bottle down and reassert his line's ancient claims.
Hmmmm.. I'd sign up for a chevauchee across France. As long as we raided wine country, that is.
Give me the Aquitaine!!
And this is why I'd rather go to war with France and Greece over the Euro than Iran.
Better food and booze, my friends, better food and booze.
If we are going to have an empire, can we please conquer something that is not a third world shit hole?
Tehran is like Salt Lake City - it would be a really kickass, beautiful place if you just changed the outlook of its residents a bit.
Terhan is beautiful. So is Northern Iraq. It still isn't France though.
Tehran is like Salt Lake City - it would be a really kickass, beautiful place if you just changed the outlook of its residents a bit.
Are you kidding? SLC is filled with mostly hipster Democrats at this point. Temple Square is probably the only real "Mormon" area of that city these days.
The people you're looking to smug over live mostly in the suburbs.
http://images1.wikia.nocookie......Tehran.jpg
I do enjoy the tacit agreement that William is the stately one and Harry therefore gets to be the fun one.
Honestly, as far as royals go, those two seem to get on very well. I feel there won't be a lot of bullshit between them like there has been between so many. Diana honestly did a solid job raising them, as did Charles.
As much as I would like to dislike Will and Kate, they actually seem like reasonably decent and normal people.
The agreement probably has something to do with the fact that Chuck, though he did indeed raise both of them, probably didn't sire both of them.
He did William. But Henry is a bit more dubious.
That's sorta what I was getting at.
Dubious indeed. You ever see a photo of that palace guard or whatever he was that was supposedly coinkin' Di? Dead ringer for Harry as I recall.
They say she fucked around on him first. And that is why he ran back to Camilla. Dianna was a pretty fucked up person. She does not deserve anything approached the praise she gets.
You're thinking of James Hewitt, but she met him after Harry was born. I rather think Harry is legit - he actually just looks very like her side of the family, which isn't odd. Now, if we were wondering if Prince Andrew were Philip's son...
I must admit that I don't follow this crowd terribly closely but I do enjoy propagating foul rumors about them nonetheless.
I am a subject so I have a vested interest
I think Queen Bess II still has 20-30 more years of the other superawesome English stereotype, the competent old matron. Unless the Prince-Consort kicks it.
Unless the Prince-Consort kicks it.
Then she'd be back on the market?
Meow.
You are a sick, sick man.
Certain politicians think they can fix income inequality. If somehow everyone's resources were made the same tomorrow, in one year there would again be rich and poor. Some would use their resources to make more, and some would waste it away and expect more. It will never change.
http://projects.ajc.com/vent/metro/
As it should be. Not everyone wants the same thing. Some people want to be savers and leave some nest egg to their kids. Some people want to live for today. Who is to say either side is wrong?
Apart from the kids of the live-for-today-crowd, no-one
And even them, unless you are handicapped, who says your parents owe you an inheritance? As long as they raise you properly and give you the chance at an education, your parents don't owe you anything but love. Make your own money.
Hey, I'm not disagreeing with you. My jurisdiction allows the most insane challenges to wills. My mother has been told she is perfectly free to cut me out totally in favour of my brothers and I will not challenge it
Oh, and I have also encouraged her to blow all her cash on drugs and fancy men too.
Fancy men? I thought you were into the Jason Statham type. Or is that Kristen?
that's KK. He's a bit of alright, but his chest is too bare
That is why you spend and enjoy your money while you can. There was a great cartoon in the WSJ a few years ago. Two men in suits are talking. The caption is.
Sir, I have set up a financial plan that is guaranteed to bring your peers to envy and disappoint your heirs.
I've been trying to get my old man to buy a corvette or something fun-n-fast, but noooo, it isn't "practical". Why be practical when you're over 70?
Instead he buys land... which will lead to nothing but future legal wranglings.
The other thing Lord is that you don't need that much money when you are really old. When you hit 80, there are just a lot of things you can't enjoy. Unless you are in incredible health, pretty hard to go out and buy and enjoy that track car or take that month long trip to Europe. You should spend your money when you are young enough to enjoy it.
My Dad (who is 85) bought a Kharmin Ghia as a project car three years ago. It looks great now.
Wow. Your dad is fortunate to be in such good health Tulip.
Yes - my family tend to live forever.
About a year ago, he was taking it in for some body work and it died about a block from the shop. So... he and my mother had to push it to the shop. (They pushed it about half a block before one of the shop guys saw them and came running -small town.) Mom was NOT happy and continues to ask if he is sure it is fixed before she will go anywhere in it.
Certain politicians think they can fix income inequality.
To be fair, I think the North Korean Government has actually solved this problem about as well as it can practically be solved.
Meeting Japan's Yakuza
Woven into the tapestry of Japanese society, organised crime presents a real challenge to both legislators and police.
Chan Tau Chou Last Modified: 23 Aug 2012 11:53
Dating back to the Edo era (1603?1868), Yakuza groups were once viewed as mobsters with a code of chivalry; an organization that took in jobless outcasts to help police the criminal underworld. But their deadly firearm assaults, deep involvement in organised crime, and large numbers have become a serious problem for modern-day Japan.
Business links to disaster clean-up
Following the Fukushima earthquake and nuclear disaster in March 2011, major Yakuza groups were linked to the illegal supply of manpower for clean-up and reconstruction, landing lucrative contracts in disaster-hit areas. Even government-linked Tokyo Electric Power Company, owner of the Fukushima nuclear plant, has been implicated in engaging with the Yakuza, showing how far their powerful connections reach.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indep.....49808.html
There is a reason why Japanese gangster movies are some of the best.
For all the praise of French film, the true foreign auters seems to come from either Japan or Italy (I'm excluding England here because of the cultural heritage they share with the US, plus tons of their people come over here to make movies anyway).
I'm just saying, The Bicycle Thieves is just an insanely well done movie, as are things like Rome, Open City. And Italian comedy films translate better across countries than French ones do.
Meanwhile, Japan rules the categories of "Quiet, meditative film" as well as "Thoughtful action" (Think a lot of Kurosawa's filmography).
Yeah. There are some good French films out there. The problem France had was they started subsidizing their film industry in the 70s and got 20 years of vanity bullshit as a result. When they cut the subsidies and people had to make films for the market again, they got a lot better.
I also wonder if Cannes had anything to do with it. Just like Sundance has had a warping effect on American indies (Some are still good, but there has been this "indie look" developed and true indies like Clerks would no longer really make the cut), I wonder if Cannes screwed up French film more than that from surrounding countries.
Also, Japan had an outlet for the truly batshit stuff in anime.
Maybe so. Kind of like what writing workshops have done to fiction.
John, are you telling me that stories of girls from the Midwest who have moved out to New York City returning home to pack up their aging parents belongings before their father, who has Alzheimer's, is put into a nursing home and nostalgically reflecting on their childhood and teenage years (with special emphasis on their awkward, disappointing and possibly rape-y first sexual experience) while simultaneously seeing through the veneer of the cookie cutter American Dream and its failures.. are you telling me that that isn't the height of literary achievement?
I don't understand you sometimes, John.
You have got a real future in writing Goldwater.
What about the novel about being in a creative writing class. Which spawns the novel about writing a novel about being in creative writing class. Which leads to the novel about how you are struggling to write anything except recursive wank-fuckery.
SugarFree, I only give you a book deal if in that creative writing class there is an ethereally beautiful girl who you love but can never have, and if the eccentric professor's foppish veneer is hiding a troubled marriage which you become privy to over some form of cheap drug and/or alcohol that you share with him.
The professor also had one big hit and was never about to finish his second novel.
You guys need to write. We need to do a community fiction project. I bet dollars to doughnuts you could get it it accepted somewhere.
French art films are totally overrated. Check out Henri-Georges Clouzot for some good suspense films. Diabolique is a great film, and Wages of Fear, Le Corbeau, and Quai de Orfevres are all worth watching.
I cannot find the actual quote, but one of the classical French auteur directors said something along the lines of"
"The purpose of movies to convince beautiful women to take there clothes off so we can film it."
The French get it. I'm not sure the Japanese do.
No love for Spanish films?
They do a good job too.
Nice birrding you leconslucting there.
Be lear shame if something happen to it, lound eyes...
Oh, God. Budgepocalypse in not really articulate form from The Atlantic. So changing our net rate of deficit accrual by $500B less will destroy the economy.
On January 1, 2013, America's tax and spending picture changes suddenly and dramatically. Taxes go up by about $400 billion. (The Bush/Obama tax cuts expire, the stimulus tax cuts expire, the payroll tax cuts expire, the business investment tax cuts expire, *and* the health care reform tax increases begin.) Spending goes down by about $100 billion. (The Budget Control Act, which cuts into discretionary spending, coincides with reduced unemployment insurance payments and a sharp drop in Medicare payment rates for physicians.) That's a painful bite for an economy clinging to growth and 8% unemployment.
And when the economy gets better, that will be even worse for these people. Honestly, if it was accompanied by actual cuts in government, I don't care if things go back to the Clinton tax rates.
I say we test the cheaper hypothesis, rather than the most expensive this time. They were off by 3% on the unemployment rate via stimulus. Let's see if we can get inside of that without spending a metric fuckton more money.
metric fuckton...love it! Even if it does smack of Euro-ness.
Much like the regular ton, a metric fuckton is 10% larger than an imperial fuckton.
some folks view the italicized as the cliff; Obama sees it as the goal. There are no "Obama tax cuts" and, for that matter, they're not anyone's tax cuts anymore. They are simply the existing rates.
Obama is not like the other kids. Fundamentally transforming America, as he pledged to do can only have one outcome when you consider that he is transforming the world's wealthiest nation with the largest economy and most powerful military. You don't transform the Super Bowl champion; you try not to fuck it up.
Dogs gone wild! Pack of crazed pit bulls demolish California minivan (cute kitty pic)
http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....z24NQyquje
The kitty survived a pack of pit bulls only to to die at the hands of PETA.
Judge Andrew Napolitano: "Roe vs. Wade has spawned more slaughter than all 20th-century tyrants combined. The consequences of this slaughter are vast lost generations of human beings who were denied by the law the right to live. The economic consequences from which we all suffer today -- entitlements too costly to afford and too few wage earners to pay for them -- are directly attributable to the absence of population growth."
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion.....z24NIiPfyx
There's already an entire thread about that article that you can go dunphy all over.
"you can go dunphy all over"
E v H doesn't know how to use CAPS? Will he have to use the passive voice a lot?
Does this mean he has to label himself an unmitigated force for good?
No, "taking a dunphy" is more about monomaniacally responding to virtually every sub-thread in an article about your favorite hobby-horse.
See this thread for a perfect example...
Eduard has commendable grammar, diction and typing skills as far as I've seen.
Ah - yeah, dunphy was bordering on OCD in the ol' link pasting there.
E v H doesn't know how to use CAPS?
He's also got punctuation forming actual sentences. Obviously has a long way to go.
Give it a rest, dude.
Where's John, I need my dick sucked.
Anytime you like Mary. Are you going to go crazy today and get yourself banned? You are about due to have your meds wear off.
You're the one who spent three days sucking my dick, faux-shilling for Obama and spamming every thread in sight like a meth-head on a bender.
Why don't you slink off in shame and lie about taking a vacation while the heat dies down like you just did?
Oh the meds have definitely worn off. Do you want me to write Allisi now and have your comments deleted and you banned before you go too crazy? Or should we wait and let you go full on nuts and kind of work it out before we do that?
Of course, that's why you started posting again.
Feel free to try.
Oh look, it's H+R's own version of When Harry Met Sally
Sure Mary.
And does anyone else notice just how thin skinned and pathetic John acts over a little ribbing.
He spams the whole board for days, and can't take a little ribbing over it.
"I'M GONNA TELL ALLISI ON YOU"...
See you Mary. And I really do hope you some day get the help you need.
State of Texas publishes interactive maps to see the number of taxing entities by county
Harris County (Houston) has 535.
535?!
And I fume when I see my property tax bill with my county, city, township, library district, stormwater reclamation district, school district, community college district, forest district,etc - but they only add up to 13!
Your average person only pays their property taxes to 9 or so entities. Harris County has a lot of municipal utility districts because millions of people live in unincorporated areas, so every new subdivision means a new taxing entity.
OK, that makes sense - otherwise I would have expected pitchforks and torches.
Hermantown, Minnesota: Man convicted of sex with dead deer charged in alleged assault of police officer
http://www.twincities.com/loca.....er-charged
Gives "It was coming right at me!" a whole new twist.
This somehow slipped by me until recently, SF.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h91V4d9lA6c
I haven't heard them before either. I've been stuck in a loop of absorbing the Craig Finn solo album.
And I missed the third She Wants Revenge album until recently. It sounds like the lost soundtrack to an 80s teen movie you barely remember seeing.
"Must Be The One"
lol, it really does! I guess it is sort of fitting that I like She Wants Revenge the same way I like New Order--two or three specific songs and then I'm good.
My kids have heard so much of The Cure that my young son was able to point out that "that guy you love. . . the one who can't sing?" was singing the intro to Dragon Hunters. Cracked me up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f62TiDtEkL8
Oh, I've got a good idea... Smith re-records "Boys Don't Cry" as an auto-tuned summer dance hit!
Ha! I'd love it. I even liked the cheesy dance-y remix of "Pictures of You" on Mixed Up. My boyfriend at the time thought it was blasphemy. Then again, "The Loudest Sound" on Bloodflowers is one of my all-time faves.
BTW, my kid would love to hear him auto-tuned (and I think it would be a hoot). After hearing "Faith" for the first time, he wondered aloud why Smith would choose to sing the way he does when he can obviously sing. I replied, "Because he's a genius." My son rolled his eyes.
One girl I went to school with had a fiance who called her in the middle of the night crying drunkenly that he had killed a deer, smeared its blood over his naked body and tried to fuck it but couldn't get it up. Of course, she dumped him for being such a cry baby over what was rightfully his in the first place.
Really, have you ever thought there was anything worse than cervanecrophilia?!
(Sugarfree not allowed to answer)
Oh, man... [kicks carpet, sulks off]
"Excuse me, deerfucker! Do you require assistance?"
I once read about a woman who masturbated with a frozen deer tongue. It thawed out and got stuck, so she went to the emergency room, and ended up the subject of a medical journal article on xenolingual auto-eroticism
"xenolingual auto-eroticism"
I sense an Ivy League PhD disertation being written as we speak.
What do these people have showers for if they don't know how to use them?
You do the same thing when you break a Popsicle off, as well.
"Man convicted of sex with dead deer charged in alleged assault of police officer"
Well, if the deer assaulted a police officer it had it coming.
I was told a great story in the early 00's by a corrections agent in MN about a sex offender in a halfway house who admitted to driving around looking for dead dear and having sex with any he found (prior to whatever got him locked up).
I know that I heard that story well before 2005. That means that this Hermantown guy has to be someone else. So there are at least two dead deer fetishists in Sunny Minnesota.
TSA searching people at Paul Ryan event. Not sure how they react to people with legal carry permits - or people who just tell them to fuck-off. I would fall into at least one of those categories.
http://12160.info/profiles/blo.....ryan-event
Not surprising, as the same thing - or something similar - surely happens at Obama events.
It's the wave of the future. America will eventually be a police state, and it'll be a 50-50 chance of either Team being the one to throw the lever.
"Eventually"?
Oh, we're close, but we're not *there* yet. Not until armed tendrils of the state are on every street corner.
If Barry can't pull that off either by the end of this term, or the end of his next term, surely his successor can.
I give it until 2020. And I'm probably being overly optimistic.
If only this were a weapons expo where private citizens could actually buy the equipment, it would be libertopia!
Young girls with fingers on machine-gun triggers, old ladies staring down rifle scopes
I had a beer yesterday after work. I am sitting at the bar and behind me is this group of people. And the conversation was about gun shows and how the people at them were so scary and how anyone could just go buy an assault rifle at those things. I almost choked on my beer I was laughing so hard. You couldn't write a comedy skit any better than what these people were actually saying.
anyone could just go buy an assault rifle at those things
Feature, not bug. Down here, I once ran into my friend the yoga teacher at a gun show. I need to start going back to her class now that the new crop of students are in town.
Fuckin' DC, man. Elitist fucks around here.
Lawsuit over murderer in Michigan who was pardoned but then the gov tried to un-pardon her.
http://www.pardonpower.com/201.....TE.twitter
(the murderer is a he not a she - the post confused his gender with the gov's)
Domestic terrorists.
Henderson, NV (KTNV) -- A few young men saw flood channel rapids as an opportunity for some water escapades as severe weather swept through the Las Vegas area on Wednesday.
The Action News Hawk spotted three people floating down a flood channel on an air mattress in the early afternoon.
The flood channel, near Green Valley Parkway and Windmill in Henderson, turned to rapids after a monsoon dumped heavy rain across Southern Nevada.
The raucous boys cheered and waved as they floated shirtless down the rushing flood channel.
The grayish-brown-colored, fast-moving water was clearly not safe for swimming or floating.
A police helicopter eventually caught up to the boys and an officer ordered them to get out of the dangerous waters.
The boys jumped off, dragging the air mattress to the gravel shores and up onto drier land.
There was no word on whether the boys were cited by police for their escapades.
This is why the police need army surplus Apache attack helicopters!
Needs moar dronz! With Hellfire missiles.
See this thread for a perfect example...
Nice tantrum in that one. Why don't you ignorant civilians just just bend over and submit to the dominance of our baboon army of occupation?
CASE LAWZ IS CASE LAWZ!
hth
Via The Agitator (though not technically Balko) - police harass, intimidate and libel police misconduct activist in one of our favorite Corgi-murdering jurisdictions: Columbia, MO.
I hope he sues the fuck out of them.
Two Colorado academics have developed a model for presidential elections based on economic factors that has accurately predicted every presidential election going back to 1980.
The model's prediction this year? Romney is going to win fairly comfortably.
So they made a model that successfully predicted 8 data points. This is my impressed face. 😐
And yet it's still better than climate models.
The odds of successfully predicting the outcome of eight virtual coin flips in a row: 1 out of 256.
If someone else out there has a better model and track record, I would certainly like to see it. As to whether their model is right a ninth time in a row, I guess we'll find out in two and a half months.
They fit a model to existing data points. My face is less impressed than Warty's.
There are an infinite number of factors you could take into account to use in a model predicting elections. They found some factors that worked for the past. Cool trick, but that's it.
I went to Las Vegas and won twenty bucks at the blackjack table. I is practically BILLIONAIRE!