A.M. Links: Senate Passes Internet Sales Tax Bill, Lauryn Hill Sent to Prison Over Tax Bill, UN Now Not Sure of Any Chemical Weapons Use in Syria

• 

  Reason

  By a vote of 69-27 the Senate passed an Internet Sales Tax Bill. It is now headed to the House.

• Former Governor Mark Sanford and Stephen Colbert's sister face off in a special election to fill the House seat vacated by Tim Scott.
• Chris Christie's aides confirm the New Jersey governor had lap-band stomach surgery. For the children.
• Lauryn Hill was sentenced to three months in jail for not paying taxes on several years' worth of earnings after pleading guilty last year. She's paid more than $900,000 in the last few days.
• No cemetery is willing to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
• The UN now says it's not sure whether rebels or the Syrian regime have used chemical weapons.
• The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bomber that killed 25 at an election rally by an Islamist party.
• North Korea is moving its missiles away from their coastal launch sites.

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Comments

[Matrix]

Steve Smith has been executed! 'bout time too!

[Brett L]

You can't kill him anymore than Jason Voorhees.

[eddy820]

Start working at home with Google! It's by-far the best job Ive had. Last Wednesday I got a brand new BMW since getting a check for $6474 this - 4 weeks past. I began this 8-months ago and immediately was bringin home at least $77 per hour. I work through this link, http://www.Mojo50.com

[Lord Humungus]

ha - it's just a trick to lull us into a false sense of security.

[Lord Peter Wimsey]

This makes my day! I wish he had been raped to death, like something out of Deliverance, only worse, but a date with Mr. Needle will do just fine.

[Zeb]

Two wrongs don't make a right.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Chris Christie's aides confirm the New Jersey governor had lap-band stomach surgery. For the children.

"US taxpayer, fix my storm damage for me! Doctors, fix my weight problem for me!"

[some guy]

I got no problem with the surgery, so long as he paid for it himself. But I'm sure it was covered by his taxpayer-provided health "insurance".

[mad libertarian guy]

While I agree, it seems to me that the comment was directed at the surgery doing all of the hard work rather than the fat fuck getting the surgery.

He'll lose weight because he has a mechanism that won't allow him to eat very much at any one time, not because he actually worked for it and stopped eating so goddamn much out of sheer will.

[some guy]

True, but if he paid for the surgery out of his own pocket, then he did do the work to stop eating, just indirectly. It's a division of labor. He obviously enjoys eating and is probably productive at other things. I got no problem with him paying someone to solve a personal problem that he clearly has trouble solving on his own. Just like I have no problem with someone who has PTSD getting therapy.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

I see what you are saying but it still isn't as good as working to lose the weight. Physical activity isn't just for weight loss.

The guy will still be an unhealthy, clogged artery statist, just won't be as fat. He likely will still be overweight and out of shape.

[mad libertarian guy]

He . . . is probably productive at other things.

Citation needed.

[Bobarian]

"For the children."

He's going to stop eating children?

'Get into my belly!'

[WTF]

The fucker wants to lose weight to run for President in 2016, I just know it.

[Jerryskids]

The question is - can he beat Hillary in the primaries? Or will the Dems have somebody better than either one of them in '16?

[mad libertarian guy]

Isn't he a Republican?

[Alack]

HAHAHAHAHA

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

Looking at his current political trajectory he won't be come 2016.

[WTF]

He is a New Jersey republican. So, he's basically a democrat most other places.

[Pro Libertate]

I so loathe redundant names.

[BakedPenguin]

Joey Joe Joe!

[BigT]

WTF!

[some guy]

I know right! ...What are we talking about?

[db]

There's plenty of affordable housing in Cleveland.

Seriously, Warty, WTF is wrong with that place?

[Ted S.]

It's not Michigan?

[itsnotmeitsyou]

At least we're not Detroit.

[Warty]

Did you see the interview with the rescuer? Best interview ever. The Puerto Rican biker in the background is the best part.

[WTF]

"There was nothing exciting about him - well, until now!"

[db]

"You don't look at 'im because he's not doin' nothin' but average stuff. There was nothing exciting about him. Until today!"

[Auric Demonocles]

Anyone else find it weird that newscasters are acting like this guy is a hero. Are they saying they wouldn't help a screaming girl trying to get out of a house who says she has been kidnapped?

[invisible furry hand]

he was in the middle of eating some tasty McDonalds. He risked indigestion by rushing to help her.

[Auric Demonocles]

I think he was risking that by eating McDonalds in the first place.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

You have to be careful when rescuing maidens in distress. You could sprain a wrist and be forced to take disability. And what if she didn't provide you with ADA compliant access to her prison? Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen if you ask me.

[db]

Who in Cleveland isn't already on disability?

[Ted S.]

Didn't the cops pretty much let Jeffrey Dahmer get away with one of his victims?

[tarran]

They returned the victim to Dahmer and joked about it afterwards on the radio, the recording of which later turned up to haunt them.

[mr simple]

Well, for a bit, in classic police fashion:

John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, the two police officers who returned Sinthasomphone to Dahmer, were terminated from the Milwaukee Police Department after their actions were widely publicized, including an audiotape of the officers making anti-gay statements to their dispatcher and laughing about having reunited the "lovers." The two officers appealed their termination and were reinstated with back pay. They were named officers of the year by the police union for fighting to regain their jobs. Balcerzak would go on to be elected president of the Milwaukee Police Association in May 2005.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

Sigh. Never knew that little factoid. How disgustingly... typical.

[Stormy Dragon]

Even worse:

As president, he was criticized for failing to protect officers from mandatory overtime and not supporting African-American officer Alfonzo Glover, who was charged with homicide and later committed suicide.[3][5] By June 2006, the union vice president had resigned because of disagreements with Balcerzak's "style of leadership". A petition to remove Balcerzak was filed and a recall election was held in August 2006. The results were 213 for a recall and 397 to retain him. At an October 9, 2009 trustee election, John Balcerzak was not re-elected as a trustee, thus having to vacate his position as president on December 31, 2009. [6] Michael V. Crivello took his place as President of the Association.

They can overlook helping someone rape and murder a 14 year old, but you better not let overtime pay get reduced, or your career is through!

[Kaptious Kristen]

Lots of people would look the other way. That limo fire where those 4 women died in CA? There is cell phone video that was clearly taken from a car driving by, and there were no cops or rescue on the scene yet. I'd like to think if it were me, I'd put the damn phone down and see if anyone needed help (in fact, I have done so at an accident scene in the past).

[mad libertarian guy]

While I agree in principle, there are simply too many opportunities to be sued. Grief stricken people will lash out if shit goes wrong.

I once declined to help a man who was having some kind of serious problem (he collapsed at a Denny's in Tampa) because it was 5am and I was stoned to bejesus. The last thing I needed was to be blamed for killing because I was stoned. I called 911 instead.

[WTF]

Most places have 'Good Samaritan' statutes that protect ordinary citizens trying to help.

[mad libertarian guy]

They didn't have one in FL until recently, and either way, being a dumb and very stoned 19 year old, I was in no position to judge the legalities of the situation.

[Kaptious Kristen]

Someone here posted a while back that they could see how more government often equals people helping each other less often. They cited an example of some Chinese dudes out for a bike ride, and one of them was injured or something, and his companions just kept riding because they figured that was the government's job. I tend to agree and I hope we never go full retard to the extent that we don't even help our own friends because the government is the ultimate provider of all aid and comfort.

[jesse.in.mb]

They cited an example of some Chinese dudes out for a bike ride, and one of them was injured or something, and his companions just kept riding because they figured that was the government's job.

Ye gods, the Chinese seriously picked the wrong neoconfucian horse when they went with the Legalists instead of Mencius.

[John]

I like that guy.

[Lord Humungus]

oh look:

https://www.facebook.com/ariel.castro.10888938

Ariel Castro shared a status.
May 2
miracles really do happen, God is good 🙂

[EDG reppin' LBC]

That's pretty fucking crazy.

[invisible furry hand]

San Francisco Finally Able to Ban People Who Shit on Their Subway

http://gawker.com/san-francisc.....-493219170

[PapayaSF]

Every now and then, common sense happens here. But I await the inevitable lawsuits in the name of homeless rights.

[Lord Humungus]

Bill Ayers defends Weather Underground bombings
http://www.ohio.com/news/bill-.....s-1.395109

The United States is the most violent country that has ever been created, Ayers said.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., committed daily war crimes in Vietnam "and I get asked about violence when what I did was some destruction of property to issue a scream and cry against an illegal war in which 6,000 people a week are being killed," Ayers said. "Six thousand a week being killed and I destroyed some property. Show me the equivalence. You should ask John McCain that question ? I'm against violence."

"To conflate a group of fundamentalist people [in Boston] who are nihilistic in some way with a group of people who spent their lives trying to oppose the murder of 6,000 people a week ? and still the killing went on. And still the killing went on. What would you have done?" Ayers said. "There's no equivalence [with Boston]. Property damage. That's what we did."

[Matrix]

his bombings were good because he wasn't a crazy right-wing America hater. He was is a crazy left-wing America hater. There's a difference!

[robc]

What would you have done?

Peaceful protest?

[a better weapon]

Make and respond to sarcastic insights to current events on Reason comment boards?

[PS]

From the inability to form coherent sentences I'm guessing Mary.

[a better weapon]

Nope, sorry.

I have my coffee now though, so I should be better.

[some guy]

The United States is the most violent country that has ever been created, Ayers said.

Ayers needs to review history a little closer methinks.

[tarran]

What was Pol Pot, fried chicken?

[Virginian]

Seriously. I mean, you could make the case that we are unusually warlike. We have an awful lot of wars for such a short time of existence.

[John]

Any more than France, the UK, Germany in the same time? I don't think so. And we certainly have had fewer wars than those countries did in the two hundred years before the creation of the United State. Most nations in history have spent most of their lives at war. War is the more natural state of man than peace.

[some guy]

Insert obligatory Steven Pinker link here.

[mad libertarian guy]

War is the more natural state of man than peace.

Which is hardly a justification for war.

[John]

No. But it doesn't mean having wars makes you any more warlike than anyone else.

[Slammer]

"I'm against violence"

Uh, no you're not

[Virginian]

Wait he actually said that?

[Chris Mallory]

The lefties think that as long as you are only destroying, or meaning to destroy, property then you are not committing violence. Over on Counter-Punch, they have posted essays saying that the eco-thugs who burn car lots and subdivisions aren't committing terrorism because no one got hurt and it was just a bunch of SUVs and million dollar homes that burned.

[sasob]

It never occurs to these cretins that all those things are products of someone's time and effort - that they represent a chunk of someone's life. How do you replace a piece of someone's life? It's just gone.

[db]

If he were against violence he'd be out on Pennsylvania Avenue protesting Obama's drone war. Or using his, you know, direct connection to the President to oppose it. And, in the tradition of a tru anti-violent radical, he would loudly proclaim to the public Obama's unwillingness to abandon violence.

But no, Ayers is not against violence. He is merely against violence perpetrated by his opponents.

[Virginian]

He's not antiwar, hes just on the other side.

[John]

I am thinking being anti-war means not wanting to blow up a bunch of draftees attending a dance at Fort Dix.

And worse, he is a coward and a bully. Congress and the President were the ones who started the war. But Ayers didn't go after them. That would have been too hard and involved too much risk and sacrifice. So instead he tried to blow up a bunch of kids who had no effective say over the war and were just trying stay out of jail, alive and go on to live their lives in peace. But blowing them up would have been easy. They didn't have Secret Service protection.

[db]

This is what makes his response so infuriatingly dishonest. He caused property damage. Never mind that he intended to kill people. He claims it's different because he only caused property damage. Oh, so now is when liberals think outcomes, not intentions, are the important consideration.

[John]

Him and his people openly talked on FBI wiretaps about the desire to kill millions of Americans. Millions. They wanted to create the Khmer Rouge in America.

But now he claims he only wanted to do "property damage". What a pig.

[Fatty Bolger]

"Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at." - Bill Ayers

[sasob]

Simply put, the man was and is a criminal - he has the psychology of one. He was also one of Obama's good buddies - what does that tell you about our illustrious president?

[PS]

Anyone who died because of Weather Underground was collateral damage, just as any kids who die from Obama's drone strikes. It's not violence when you have good liberal intentions.

[Eduard van Haalen]

The Islamist terrorists are very much like Ayers. They, too, pretend to be Very Concerned about American violence. I mean, they're all freakin' humanitarians.

[sasob]

Nothing says "we care" like butchering someone's head off with a large knife.

[VG Zaytsev]

"There's no equivalence [with Boston]. Property damage. That's what we did."

Only because of their incompetence.

They were planning on bombing an ROTC dance.

Fuck you Ayers, you don't get a pass for being incompetent.

[Enough About Palin]

DIE IN A GOD DAMNED FIRE, AYERS, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT.

[sasob]

The only real problem Ayers has or had with the war in Vietnam was the fact that it's purported purpose was to stop the spread of communism. He and his cohorts were communist sympathizers. End the draft? Lefties have no problem with either a military draft or with universal service - so long as it serves their ends.

His most preposterous claim is that The United States is the most violent country that has ever been created. Is that supposed to be some sort of sick joke? Communist China's Great Leap Forward easily gives the lie to that claim. Human life has always been cheap throughout most of the world's history, but it was worth less than asswipe any place communism was instituted.

[Fist of Etiquette]

No cemetery is willing to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Surely someone could make money burying him under a urinal and charging admission.

[Rich]

Can't they just dump him in the ocean like you-know-who?

[some guy]

All proceeds (minus operating expenses and my salary) will go to the victims of the bombing.

[$park?]

Apparently people are afraid of his evil spirit leaking into the ground and corrupting the populace of wherever he may end up.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

This seems unlikely to be the reason.

[$park?]

It's as good as any other dumb reason people will come up with.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

It's as good as any other dumb reason, but it's not as good as a simple "I don't want the headache of dealing with having that fucker buried here."

[$park?]

And what would cause a headache?

[mad libertarian guy]

Dumb fucks who would go and continuously desecrate his grave.

[$park?]

Because of the leaky evil spirit. See, not so ridiculous.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I want to be buried near to him. Let his grave be the lightning rod, leaving mine untouched by haters!

[T]

We'll find your grave, so you can give up that vain hope.

[db]

The point, park, is that anyone burying this douche in their ground is likely to have disruptive shit going in in his graveyard which is likely to piss off other customers. There's real damage here; regardless of whether you think it's ridiculous to desecrate a grave, or to revere a symbolic hero (and there will be some sick fucks who would do this), it causes real disruption to the cemetary's operation and the satisfaction of its customers.

[$park?]

The point, park, is that anyone burying this douche in their ground is likely to have disruptive shit going in in his graveyard which is likely to piss off other customers.

My initial point is that shit like this will happen because there are enough retards in the world who still attach some kind of weird evilness to a fucking corpse. I KNOW that kind of shit would happen, that should have been reflected by my initial comment on the matter.

[db]

But your initial comment seemed to ignore that it is not the cemetary owner's belief in some supernatural corruption that causes him to reject the body, but his concern for others' possible disruptive actions.

[VG Zaytsev]

Take his body to an empty lot, douse it with a couple of gallons of gasoline and burn it until the fire stops of it's own accord.

Then throw whatever is left into a composter.

[Fist of Etiquette]

IF IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR HITLER!

[$park?]

It's stupid enough that the uncle can't just bury it his back yard, if it even needs to be buried. Fuck, throw it on a bonfire if that's easier. At this point it's just a body.

[sasob]

Ship it back to Russia. Send his goddamned mother with it.

[Mike M.]

Put him on the next boat heading out of Boston and dump him in the fucking ocean like Bin Laden.

[db]

Just use it for lobster bait.

[Auric Demonocles]

Nobody wants those lobstah.

[deified]

Important reminder: Michelle Obama is a fat-assed hypocrite. Behold:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.co.....7-11-.html

[a better weapon]

The article is from July, 2011 so who knows? Maybe she cleaned her act up.

[Bee Tagger]

By a vote of 69-27 the Senate passed an Internet Sales Tax Bill. It is now headed to the House.

Does this affect online petitions?

[Auric Demonocles]

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

[Alack]

It's not a bill to raise revenue, it's a bill about fairness. Why do you hate fairness?

[mad libertarian guy]

But that document is, like, a hundred years old or something.

[DesigNate]

And written by white slave owners.

[sasob]

Teh government is still run by a bunch of slave owners. They aren't all of them white anymore, but they still think they own our asses.

[Stormy Dragon]

The bill doesn't raise revenue itself, it just grants states authority to pass laws to raise revenue.

[Andrew S.]

The White House petition site now takes 10% of your signatures via taxation, so you need 111,112 (rounding down!) signatures to get to 100,000 post-tax signatures and get a mealy-mouthed, worthless response.

[invisible furry hand]

White House petition calls for merger of United States, Australia, to form 'Ameristralia'

[Ted S.]

But do we actually want you Aussies?

[Fist of Etiquette]

At least we get top billing.

[Matrix]

The Aussies are still under the queen. We threw off the monarchy centuries ago.

[robc]

I personally have no problem with them applying for statehood, but that is a first step.

First, overthrow the queen.

Then, maybe we will consider, but there will be no name change.

[mad libertarian guy]

And all their statist bullshit, particularly concerning forearms, would have to fucking go. Somehow I don't think the Aussies would want that.

[WTF]

What do they have against Popeye?

[Restoras]

Nobody is taking my Popeye's Spicy Fried Chicken away from me!

[itsnotmeitsyou]

And all their statist bullshit, particularly concerning forearms,

*squints eyes* can't tell if typo or "bare arms" pun.

Either way, I approve of your statement.

[Jerryskids]

Yeah, we're a theocracy now.

[db]

Oh no. We're not falling for such a transparebt attempt to export your venomous gerbils and razor-backed kittens and raptor-clawed hopping toads and all those other crazy dangerous fauna. You keep that shit in the murderous bestiary God intended for them.

[robc]

For the horned frog isnt originally from Australia I dont understand.

[robc]

s/for/how/

[some guy]

Yesterday I saw a picture of a giant snake eating an adult kangaroo. It was taken in an elementary school playground. No thank you.

[Matrix]

wtf?!

Damn, nature! You scary!

[Brett L]

In Florida?

[BakedPenguin]

They just want us to fix their drop bear problem.

[T]

We can do that with drones, right?

[BakedPenguin]

Once the bears are Ameristralian citizens, sure.

[db]

Plus, it's OK to torture a captured drop bear to find out if there are any more sleeper drop bears in the area.

[Ted S.]

We should replace their drop bears with pedobears.

[$park?]

Wait, they're different?

[Bobarian]

Pedobears attack from the rear.

[JW]

You;d think that they'd want to ally themselves with China, who would be more than happy to digest their cane toad problem.

[LynchPin1477]

You may, however, export your crazy hot women.

[mnarayan]

Then where would we send our undesirables?

[Eduard van Haalen]

There are several possible punch lines here, but I'll go with New Jersey.

[Rasilio]

Can we throw Canada in there too?

Then we could be Ameristralada, the super group of ex British colonies.

[Rich]

Ooh, ooh, can we adopt the Euro as our currency?

[UnCivilServant]

Only if Europe give it up first.

[Auric Demonocles]

False. We would still be America. We would just have 52 states.

[Pro Libertate]

Exactly. Canada has the population of California; Australia the population of (roughly) New York or Florida. States. Very nice states, but states.

We will, of course, let them keep their languages.

[Auric Demonocles]

Well having an official language is fascist anyway.

Though if you choose something other than English you clearly hate freedom.

[Pro Libertate]

And we'll merge the national anthems. No, strike that. We'll dump all three for AC/DC's "For Those about to Rock."

[db]

You're missing the obvious solution.

[Pro Libertate]

Well, I suppose we could have multiple songs, like we have "The Star-Spangled Banner," "America the Beautiful," and "Free Bird."

[Auric Demonocles]

Kirk should teach Kahn the Constitution.

[Pro Libertate]

Yes, that would be awesome. E plebnista!

[Auric Demonocles]

I think the pun for the episode title is obvious.

[Pro Libertate]

If it's not "The Khanstitution" I don't even know you anymore.

[Art Vandelay]

"Can we throw Canada in there too?"

Of course! Just not those fuckers from Quebec.

[Jerryskids]

Encul?s, s'il vous plait!

[Fist of Etiquette]

Lauryn Hill was sentenced to three months in jail for not paying taxes...

People who don't pay their taxes should be deported for treason, or given a cabinet position.

[some guy]

...or given a cabinet position.

Only if they are clever enough to avoid prosecution until the statute of limitations has expired. Only those who can beat the system are qualified to run it.

[Rasilio]

So you could now say this is the Reeducation of Lauryn Hill

[EDG reppin' LBC]

Hardee harr harr!!

[Butts Wagner]

This prosecution will get her Back in the Habit of paying taxes....

[Don Mynack]

Did she blame it on Turbotax, like Geithner? That always works, I hear.

[mad libertarian guy]

No she blamed it on the slavery-like conditions forced upon her by the mean music industry.

[Enough About Palin]

20+ million albums sold is not really representative of slavery-like conditions if you be axin me.

[Lord Humungus]

Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comm.....fbi-boston

"All of that stuff" - meaning every telephone conversation Americans have with one another on US soil, with or without a search warrant - "is being captured as we speak".

On Thursday night, Clemente again appeared on CNN, this time with host Carol Costello, and she asked him about those remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before but added expressly that "all digital communications in the past" are recorded and stored:

[robc]

RedPhone.

Problem (maybe) solved.

[Bee Tagger]

Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

No wonder Hillary was so concerned about being woken at all hours of the night by the phone.

[Bee Tagger]

Just don't let it fall into the hands of Arvin Sloane!

[Matrix]

Nothing to hide; nothing to fear!

/statistard

[T]

I cannot honestly see what good this does them. They don't have the filing systems in place to manage all that, plus there's no way they could analyze even a fraction of it. I don't put it past them to be doing it for some reason, but I can't see it being of any practical use.

[Ted S.]

Because fuck you, that's why.

[Jerryskids]

Bureaucracies know that information is power and power is an end in and of itself. Hoarding information becomes pathological, like the cat lady who has 12 million plastic grocery bags packed in her house because she can't bear to throw something potentially useful away.

This is why I don't get too concerned about the flap over whether or not the government knew ahead of time about 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing - sure they had information on it, but it was stored with millions of other bits of information on thousands of other persons of interest. After the fact it's easy to see what information was important, but it's useless beforehand.

Useless except as a token, a talisman, a fetish. As useful as a four-leaf clover.

[Stormy Dragon]

I think this guy is just making stuff up to get himself on TV. I'd believe that they have ability to listen to any particular phone call, but to actually record EVERY single phone call would require too much storage to be feasible.

[Gray Ghost]

but to actually record EVERY single phone call would require too much storage to be feasible.

I would have agreed with you, until I crunched the numbers on some estimates. Per the BLS, the average American spends .16 hour per day dealing with telephone calls, mail, and e-mail. At ~300 million people in the country, assuming all of that time is dealing with phone calls, and at 3MB of data per minute of phone conversation, I get a required storage per day of 8.64 x 10^15 bytes per day, 3.15 exabytes per year. Storage costs vary, but googling around yields a close enough estimate of $50 USD/TB. At 3.15 million TB per year, I get a cost of around 150 million dollars per year.

NSA's budget is classified, like everything else about them, but their new Utah data center alone is going to cost ~$2 billion.

It's easily within their capabilities to intercept and store every domestic electronic transmission. Collate and search, maybe not, but it's a little scary, isn't it?

[Virginian]

http://www.city-journal.org/20.....DE.twitter

This article for me bolsters my belief that when the GOP talks about budgets, taxes, and other things in that nature, they win huge. Their stupid SoCon bullshit and warmongering is what makes them weak on the national level.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

I don't understand why they don't understand this, or at least see that SoCon garbage is not going to win them any national elections.

The Republicans are just a dumb political party.

[mad libertarian guy]

I don't understand why they don't understand this, or at least see that SoCon garbage is not going to win them any national elections.

Because despite being on the edge of fiscal ruin, it's really the fags that are the biggest threat to civilization.

The Republicans are just a dumb political party.

No dumber than all of the others.

[DesigNate]

They aren't called the stupid party for nothing.

[Gadianton]

They need the social stuff because that's part of their base. That part of their base doesn't see the disconnect between "get government out of my life," and "I find what you're doing to be morally objectionable, we need government to control people like you."

As a recovering conservative, I can say that I didn't see the disconnect either until a friend pointed it out to me.

[some guy]

No cemetery is willing to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Incinerate him and send me the ashes. He can do some good for garden if nothing else.

[Zeb]

Does Islam forbid cremation? Because that seems like the obvious solution. Cremate him and dump him in the ocean, or your garden or something.

[Matrix]

flush him down the toilet

[some guy]

I don't care what imaginary friends he kept or the rules they imposed. If his family cares enough they'll deal with it in a way they deem appropriate. Otherwise we have no obligation to guess at or respect the beliefs of an evil person.

[Zeb]

The uncle has taken custody of the body, I gather. So it's more a matter of what he will accept at this point. I don't care. I think all dead bodies are just garbage to be disposed of, whatever the former occupant may have done.

[some guy]

Agreed. If the uncle is paying for the upkeep of the body now, then who cares what happens to it. If I owned a cemetery, though, I would demand a lot of money and contracts vowing secrecy before I took the thing.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Is this the same uncle who criticized the deceased in a TV interview?

[sasob]

I believe so.

[Emmerson Biggins]

feed him to pigs

[Rich]

The UN now says it's not sure whether rebels or the Syrian regime have used chemical weapons.

I'm now not sure which of the UN spokespeople are sheep fuckers.

[Ted S.]

Which of them aren't sheep fuckers?

[Enough About Palin]

We fuck children. Frightened, helpless little children, not sheep.

/UN Peacekeeper

[Rasilio]

Not sure if it is a comprehensive list but I'm pretty sure that the Scotts and Kiwi's at a minimum are in that group

[Raven Nation]

Ahem, Scots.

[Zakalwe]

Scott? He's a dick.

[Lord Humungus]

Reid calls Sen. Cruz a 'schoolyard bully'
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-th.....yard-bully

"My friend from Texas is like a schoolyard bully," Reid added.

"He pushes everybody around and is losing and instead of playing the game according to the rules, he not only takes the ball home with him, but he changes the rules that way no one wins except the bully who tries to indicate to people that he has won."

Cruz, a Tea Party darling whose rhetoric has sometimes raised eyebrows among Republicans, shot back that "I wasn't aware we are in the schoolyard."

[Virginian]

I would only ever refer to Harry Reid as Pat Geary, were I in the Senate.

[$park?]

I would be pretty funny to call him by a different wrong name every time you see him.

[$park?]

*IT would ...

[BakedPenguin]

I'm pretty sure Reid kills his own hookers.

[Ted S.]

Watch Congressional committee hearings and ask yourself which members of Congress aren't bullies.

[Brett L]

"Politics ain't checkers, you fucking baby."

[Live Free or Diet]

In politics they can't draw a square. Has anyone ever looked at a NC district map? NC-1 is nightmare enough, but look what's around it.

[Raven Nation]

Even a lot of conservatives think Cruz is a dick:

http://www.americanthinker.com.....bully.html

But coming from Reid it's a joke.

[VG Zaytsev]

A lot of conservatives are pussies.

[$park?]

He probably is a dick. But give him a break, he's just trying to fit in.

[sasob]

All dicks are just trying to fit in. 🙂

[Restoras]

Pissing off everyone is a good start.

[DesigNate]

Boo hoo, he doesn't play by their bullshit rules.

Hey Republicans: FUCK YOU! If you're going to play teams then that means you support your teammates.

Hey Democrats: DOUBLE FUCK YOU! We don't need taxes to be raised again and you shouldn't be able to change a bill that's already been voted on after the fact.

[Eduard van Haalen]

"former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson said that Cruz cannot be "defined" as Hispanic"

"Richardson" doesn't sound too Hispanic to me, either.

[sasob]

What? Is he too white?

[PapayaSF]

You haven't noticed that, in the eyes of leftists, having a non-leftist ideology magically removes ones ethnic minority status? It also makes conservative and libertarian women not really women.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Former Governor Mark Sanford and Stephen Colbert's sister...

Seems sexist to keep referring to the candidate as "Stephen Colbert's sister." Surely she's done something of merit on her own.

[Virginian]

I mean her whole campaign is based on it.

[RBS]

Yes. I haven't heard anyone here (SC) actually mention anything about her other than she's Colbert's sister. The whole race is basically Colbert's sister vs Mark Sanford's ex wife.

[RBS]

What I mean is young Charleston Proggtards love Busch because she's Colbert's sister and since she hasn't done anything else the rest of the Progtards keep harping about Sanford's affair and what his ex wife has to say about it.

[Drake]

Without looking it up, I bet she was against it.

[Stormy Dragon]

She spent most of her life working in the sales and marketing side of shipping industry, eventually rising to senior executive positions at Orient Overseas Container Line. In 2008 she left to take a Director position at two university research centers at Clemson university.

Seems to me she's "done more" than Mark Sanford who's only real "job" has been investing the millions of dollars his dad gave him.

[invisible furry hand]

not much

[Virginian]

I mean, the minority party in a safe seat is always a joke candidacy. I live in VA-3, which is the majority minority district. Check out a map, it's quite amusing. When the Republicans do have a candidate, it's often some weird dude.

[Fist of Etiquette]

There's something to be said for keeping a career politician out of office, although I doubt she would be an outsider for long.

[Live Free or Diet]

Didn't it used to include a piece of Eastern Shore too?

[Raston Bot]

That's a ridiculous district map.

[Virginian]

I like how the river connects the three islands of inner city black folks so that Bobby Scott can have a nice cushy position for the rest of his life.

[Kaptious Kristen]

Same with VA-8. It's a welfare district so Jame Pee Moron can have a job. Dog knows he has no real skills. He doesn't even have any goddamn "people skills" as far as I can tell, which I always thought was the #1 "must have" for a politician.

[Brett L]

Its not any one politician. The VRA as interpreted by the Supreme Court has made very clear that electing fewer blacks after a redistricting is racist. Putting all the blacks in one district that already has black representation is not.

[mad libertarian guy]

Former Governor Mark Sanford and Stephen Colbert's sister...

Seems sexist to keep referring to the candidate as "Stephen Colbert's sister." Surely she's done something of merit on her own.

Seems.

It is. But because it's proglodytes all the way down, it'll be completely ignored and/or rationalized. And of course it will be the Republicans who are still accused of waging a war on the wimminz.

[Chaucer]

She's the first person to run on The Working Families Party (ACORN) line here in SC. That has to count for some statist cred, right?

[Lord Humungus]

Autopsy reveals Michael Jackson's secrets
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/07/.....?hpt=hp_t2

Dr. Christopher Rogers noted in his autopsy report that Jackson's lips were tattooed pink, while his eyebrows were a dark tattoo. The front of his scalp was also tattooed black, apparently to blend his hairline in with the wigs he wore.

The autopsy confirmed what Jackson told people who questioned why his skin tone became lighter in the 1980s. Jackson had "vitiligo, a skin pigmentation disease," Rogers said. "So, some areas of the skin appear light and others appear dark."

[Rich]

Jackson's lips were tattooed pink, while his eyebrows were a dark tattoo.

*Damn* it, man -- what *color* were the eyebrows?!

[Kaptious Kristen]

He may have had vitiligo, but I don't doubt he bleached the shit out of his skin to "even it out".

[sasob]

But what people really want to know is did he have any working testicles left in his ballsack?

[Lord Humungus]

The Lies You've Been Told About the Origin of the QWERTY Keyboard
The QWERTY configuration for typewriters can be traced, actually, to the telegraph.
http://www.theatlantic.com/tec.....rd/275537/

The researchers tracked the evolution of the typewriter keyboard alongside a record of its early professional users. They conclude that the mechanics of the typewriter did not influence the keyboard design. Rather, the QWERTY system emerged as a result of how the first typewriters were being used. Early adopters and beta-testers included telegraph operators who needed to quickly transcribe messages. However, the operators found the alphabetical arrangement to be confusing and inefficient for translating morse code. The Kyoto paper suggests that the typewriter keyboard evolved over several years as a direct result of input provided by these telegraph operators.

[Ed]

http://reason.com/archives/199.....ing-errors

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Sounds like bullshit. Wouldn't it be more efficient for EASTONRL to be used by the index and middle fingers?

[Warty]

Does anyone here use a Dvorak keyboard? I've been tempted, but the transition cost seems higher than the efficiency gain would be worth.

[robc]

That is what every study I have seen has suggested.

[PS]

I didn't waste ten years of my life learning how to say a proper ? just to turn around and learn a a keyboard from some cunt named Dvorak.

[Pro Libertate]

And it makes you insane to attempt to switch.

[Joe M]

I've also been tempted, but yeah, it would be very difficult to unlearn QWERTY.

[Pro Libertate]

It's going to turn out that all of the terrorists, mass murders, and other psychopaths all have one thing in common--they gave up QWERTY.

[Pro Libertate]

Mass murderers, that is.

[Raven Nation]

"The Lies You've Been Told"

Why is it always "lies"? Why can't it be incorrect assumptions or inaccurate research or something less evil in intent?

[Jerryskids]

Big Keyboard has been hiding the truth.

[Bee Tagger]

Grammy-winning singer Lauryn Hill stood in federal court Monday and compared her experience in the music business to the slavery her ancestors endured before a judge sentenced her to three months in prison for failing to pay about $1 million in taxes over the past decade.

The music industry doesn't seem to be the one declaring the power to lock her in a jail cell.

[Zeb]

Well, she's a weirdo with a chip on her shoulder. Too bad, she has a hell of a voice.

[mad libertarian guy]

Nor do I remember slaves being paid to the tune of $1M for their efforts (though surely she's received more than $1M through her career).

I empathize with her on the whole taxes thing, but the whole crying about becoming a millionaire in the slave-driving music industry is bullshit, and an affront to the horrors that slaves had to endure.

[playa manhattan]

Slavery: Forced, and uncompensated. 0 for 2 on her comparison to the music business... She doesn't even understand who the bad people are in this situation..

[mad libertarian guy]

Deliverance
Laughing at me

A truly epic Opeth song, with perhaps one of the most epic endings in all of heavy metal. This is the title track from the album Deliverance (2002), which was the first in a 2 album series (Deliverance and Damnation). Both were produced and mixed by Steven Wilson. Deliverance is arguably Opeth's heaviest album, and some would argue their best.

[gaijin]

good choice!

[Rich]

Jay Carney: "unimpeachable"

He's pretty calm for a dud trying to keep Benghazi from unraveling.

[deified]

According to climate scientist James Hansen, generating energy from nuclear power rather than coal saved 2 million lives.

http://nukepowertalk.blogspot......-coal.html

Economical, efficient, environmentally friendly and freedom-enhancing: no wonder the federal government makes opening a new nuclear power plant damn near impossible. Seriously, Uncle Sam: fuck you.

[tarran]

James Hansen tends to exaggerate wildly, and is more a wild-eyed prophet than a scientist.

I wouldn't be surprised if after checking its figures the actual number turns out to be 2 lives.

[deified]

You're from Ed Markey's Massachusetts, aren't you?

[tarran]

Yep, I even live in the shitbag's congressional district.

True story, when I was in the Navy between training schools, I was stashed for a month in a recruiting office. I fielded a phone call from Markey where he wanted special consideration for a niece who wanted to go through the Navy Nurse ROTC program.

I was very obsequious, collected the information and arranged for the packet to go out. Comically, the Navy was so hard up for nurses that if little niecy had called herself and requested a packet, we would gladly have sent it to her; the recruiters were getting waivers for marijuana use like Papal Indulgences in pre-reformation Italy in order to almost hit their targets.

[deified]

I despise Ed Markey -- mostly for his employment and touting of Greg Jazcko, who ultimately ended up at NRC.

I am (naively?) optimistic that Gabriel Gomez will hand his ass to him in this upcoming special election.

When I was in Massachusetts, I lived in Jamaica Plain, which is barely to the right of the People's Republic of Cambridge. Nevertheless, I miss JP; I miss Mass; I miss snow; and I want back. Is my libertarian decoder ring hereby revoked? I almost don't care.

Were you deployed/stationed anywhere interesting when you were in the Navy?

Either way, thanks for your service. Seriously.

[tarran]

Don't thank me.

I did nothing praiseworthy. I worked for an abusive, dysfunctional organization that was busily carrying out nonsensical yet expensive tasks.

People in the military deserve less respect than plumbers IMHO.

[UnCivilServant]

I have a great deal of respect for plumbers - they deal with a lot of shit I don't want to.

[$park?]

they deal with a lot of shit I don't want to.

I see what you did there.

[Art Vandelay]

deified - where do you live now?

I escaped MA in '97, and haven't looked back. Of course, I moved to California, so I'm still surrounded by statist scum. But at least the weather is amazing.

[deified]

Florida, for now. I hate the weather. I'm here due to family obligations, not choice.

NorCal is one of my favorite places.

[Zeb]

And to even make the argument for nuclear to someone who thinks it's scary and dangerous, you usually have to convince a true believer that wind and solar are not at this point viable alternatives to coal or gas.

[mad libertarian guy]

Exactly. Two hurdles need to be jumped, both convincing them that nuclear is safe, as well as convincing them that alternative renewable energies are a fucking economic pipe dream.

[Rasilio]

They are not just not viable at this point, there is no point where they ever will be, the energy is just not concentrated enough.

Solar could be a solution in the future if we get launch costs down low enough and start building Solar Power Satellites which transmit the energy down via microwave, but in order to make that realistic on a large scale it would require close to an order of magnitude drop in launch costs. Outside of that, we will always use either Nuclear or Fossil Fuels as the bulk of our energy generation and Wind and Solar will just be suppliments in a few places where they make sense

[itsnotmeitsyou]

Solar could be a good supplementary energy source, but neither wind nor solar are reliable enough to be a primary energy source.

The problem with solar right now is twofold. One, it's ridiculously expensive and ROI just isn't very good. Two, it's still wildly inefficient. I think the best commercially available cells are 16% efficient.

If we get above 40-50% efficiencies at cheap manufacturing costs, they won't be able to keep solar cells in stock.

Until then, we're going to rely on fossil and nuclear, we might as well start building better fossil and nuclear power plants.

[LynchPin1477]

transmit the energy down via microwave

I suspect the efficiency of such a system would be quite low. The atmosphere is pretty opaque at most microwave frequencies.

As you said, the problem with wind and solar is that the energy density is just too low. Even under optimistic assumptions you would need to build generation facilities that are a substantial fraction of size of the area you want to power. Good luck with that. The same people that go on endlessly about the need for a green revolution fight tooth and nail when someone tries to put a few windmills on a mountain ridge.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Gotta' protect their viewshed

[Rasilio]

Um, no the atmosphere absorbs almost no microwaves (at least compared to wavelengths like visible light), that is why we use microwaves for long range communication.

You also do not need to have a very large area for your rectenna array because microwaves can be collimated into a tight beam like a laser. Further, since the microwave energy density inside the reciever array would not be high enough to be dangerous (~25 mW/CM^2) you could place turn the area into a greenspace garden or even nature preserve (just with no trees taller than the antennas) and cause no harm to humans or wildlife in the area.

Alternatively you could make an entire city the reciever with the antennas on top of every building

[LynchPin1477]

Um, yes. Visible light has high transmission (when it isn't cloudy). You need to have very low water vapor content to transmit microwaves from space to the surface, except in certain narrow band frequency ranges. Perhaps those frequencies are practical from a transmission point of view, but what sort of efficiency can you get? You need to collect the energy, transmit it as microwaves, collect it, and then convert it into electricity for either immediate distribution or storage. It just seems to me that there are a lot of opportunities for loss along the way, and they are multiplicative. Maybe I'm wrong.

[Zeb]

It is my understanding that lower frequencies have better transmission through the atmosphere. MW power transmission probably has some of the problems you list, but it is more efficient than visible light or IR would be.

[Rasilio]

Oh there would be losses at every step, they just would not be as large as the losses in solar energy basing the panels on the ground and then converting to electricity.

At the very least you eliminate the issues with clouds and nighttime because the transmitter can be tuned to provide optimal power delivery for any given atmospheric conditions and being in geosynchronous orbit there would be almost no such thing as night (as little as a couple of hours a year in the earths shadow depending on the exact orbital geometry).

[sasob]

So. Giant laser-like microwave transmitters on satellites orbiting the Earth and using entire cities as targets antennae. Cool! What could possibly go wrong?

[Zeb]

The same people that go on endlessly about the need for a green revolution fight tooth and nail when someone tries to put a few windmills on a mountain ridge.

I think those are actually different people for the most part. The fans of wind power that I run into generally seem to think that rows of windmills along ridge lines look great.

[Gray Ghost]

Perhaps those frequencies are practical from a transmission point of view, but what sort of efficiency can you get?

85-88 percent, expressed as "the percentage of transmitted power from the satellite antenna incident upon the ground rectenna," if this report from NASA in 1981 is correct. IEEE has some papers on Japanese research to improve that number.

I think you'd need to settle the Moon first, and send your construction materials from the Moon to LEO. I'd have much rather seen the $1 trillion from our GWOT spent instead on Gov't trying to develop this tech. Imagine the telescopes you could make in LEO.

SLD, of course.

[Gray Ghost]

Here's another paper on beamed solar power, from IEEE in 1992.

[mad libertarian guy]

I'd have much rather seen the $1 trillion from our GWOT spent instead on Gov't trying to develop this tech. Imagine the telescopes you could make in LEO.

SLD, of course.

If we're intent on spending the money no matter the consequences, I'd settle for decent fucking broadband.

SLD. Of course.

[sasob]

I've always liked smokestacks myself.

[sasob]

That was meant as a reply to the windmills on a ridge comment.

[Zeb]

I think it all looks like shit, but I don't own the whole world, so it doesn't really matter what I think.

[mad libertarian guy]

Solar could be a solution in the future if we get launch costs down low enough and start building Solar Power Satellites which transmit the energy down via microwave [. . .]

But MICROWAVEZZZZ BEING TRANSMITTED THROO TEH ATMUSFEAR!!!!!!!!

/envirotard/health nanny

[Enough About Palin]

"They are not just not viable at this point, there is no point where they ever will be, the energy is just not concentrated enough"

Does't matter. The city of Boulder municipalized it's electricity and will be adding more renewables to the mix. Of course the price will more than double. But hey, if nationalizing industries worked for Hugo Chavez, than certainly municipalization will work for Boulder.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Wind and solar suck balls simply because the cost of storing the energy during high-production periods for use during low-production periods is expensive and not feasible in most situations.

Nukes for everyone. At least until we're able to extract the vacuum energy.

[sasob]

Not only the cost of storing power, but every wind installation generally needs backup generating capacity that spends much of its time just sitting there. That adds a great deal to the cost of wind generated energy.

[Brett L]

I wouldn't trust him if he said the sky was blue on a sunny day.

[Don Mynack]

The Federal government doesn't make nuke plants impossible - nuke plants would not exist without massive gov't subsidies. Once they stopped subsidizing, the plants stopped being built.

"While the nuclear industry in the United States has seen continued improvements in operating performance over time, it remains uncompetitive with coal and natural gas on the basis of price. This cost differential is primarily the result of high capital costs and long construction times. Indeed, building a nuclear power plant in the United States has cost, on average, three times as was originally estimated."

Source: The very publication you are reading now.

http://reason.com/archives/201.....lear-power

[Rasilio]

And what drives those long construction times?

Oh right envrionmental regulations and interest groups nuisance suits. Two things which government could put a stop to overnight.

[Don Mynack]

Partially correct. But the high cost is mostly necessary for safety purposes.

Again, from Reason:

"Many Americans argue that government regulations are the real reason why nuclear power is so expensive. As evidence, they point out that in France, where there is more opportunity to build nuclear power plants, nuclear power is safe and affordable.

It is true that France gets about 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. It is also true that the country has avoided a large-scale disaster due to the many safety regulations it has imposed, most of which are similar to regulations enacted in the U.S.

However, producing nuclear energy in France is not any cheaper than it is here. The chart above shows, in U.S. dollars, the parity between the costs of generating nuclear power in the United States (which has a relatively strict regulatory regime) and France (which has a relatively loose one).

RTFA.

[Rasilio]

Wait you think I'm talking about safety regulations?

No I am talking about the various environmental impact studies you need to conduct at every step of the process beginning years before the first shovel goes into the ground until after you are up and running, none of which has a damn thing to do with the actual safety of the plant, just ensuring that you are not encroaching on the only known habitat of the endangered green toed tree frog, which by the way is genetically identical to the red toed tree frog that is so common it is considered a pest, just with different color toes.

The safety regulations are a completely and utterly different issue and by and large do not cause schedule overruns

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

The design can be completely finished and proven, but the NRC will take 10 years to okay the construction.

This is the problem.

And I would bolster to say the NRC makes the industry less safe. The NRC makes it a massive issue for a nuke plant to change anything. A plant wants to install fission product filters on vents? The NRC needs to run a study taking years at the cost of the plant. Plants keep old tech because the NRC is so inefficient that changing anything isn't worth it.

Here is a great story about the inefficiency of the NRC:

When I was touring the Cooper Nuclear Reactor in Nebraska a few years ago, for example, we arrived at one of the entrances to the administrative offices inside the fence and there was a tricycle sitting outside the door. I asked my guide what purpose that served. He told me that Nebraska winters got very cold and since no cars were allowed inside the compound, staff members had often found themselves walking long distances between buildings. A few people had finally asked if they could bring bicycles inside the restricted area to get around more easily.

"The NRC considered the matter for seven months and finally came back with a ruling that bicycles were too dangerous," my guide told me. "But they would allow a tricycle. So that's what we have."

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

continued...

This is the general manner in which things get done in the nuclear industry. Three years ago there were almost 25 proposals for new reactors filed with the NRC. Political pressures finally dictated that Southern Electric and South Carolina E&G be allowed to build, since they seem to like nuclear so much down South and have little opposition and lots of Navy veterans down there. But most of the other applicants have now packed up their tents and gone home. They saw little hope of ever getting through NRC licensing procedures. Now, apart from reviewing a few uprates and license renewals, the NRC spends its time trying to micromanage the nation's 104 existing reactors.

link

[Gray Ghost]

Smilin' Joe, while I agree that nuclear power should be more widely used in preference to solar or wind, what effect do you think positive governmental subsidies like Price-Anderson have on the market? IOW, without P-A, would the astronomical contingent liability ceiling from a accident like Fukushima make insurance economically infeasible for the industry?

Of course, nuclear operators could adopt a West, Texas approach to their general liability policy limits... (It still amazes me that TCEQ went through the plant and didn't notice they were storing AN in amounts grossly exceeding their permit, nor that their umbrella liability policy was capped at $1M USD. For a fucking anhydrous ammonia plant sitting next to a middle school!)

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

China vs. US:

The US cost estimate for new nuclear is being revised upwards by close to 40% from 2010 to a value of $5,339/kW by the EIA, while China is stating that it expects its costs for plants under construction to come in at less than $2,000/kW and that subsequent units should be in the range of $1,600/kW [Ref: Nucleonics Week, Dec 2, 2010]. And to facilitate the comparison, both estimates are for the AP1000 design. This would mean that an AP1000 in the US will cost about 3 times more than the same plant built in China.

Link

[T]

Yeah. Every hippy nationwide comes out of the woodwork to file lawsuits when they announce a nuke plant.

[Zeb]

Mass produced modular reactors seems like the way to go. Seems like a big part of the problem with the older power plants is that each one needed so much engineering.

[T]

TRIGA reactors seem like they'd fit the bill.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

This. Reinventing the wheel every time you build a reactor is stupid.

[PS]

One of the excuses the Austrians have for hating the Czechs is the Temelin power plant. Threats of blocking the Czechs from the EEC were soon forthwith. I'm proud of the Czechs for sticking to their guns and building it anyway.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

Nuke plants are not subsidized, in the strict sense of the word. They are given loan guarantees which they pay back. Southern Company started building their plants with no loan guarantees.

Please look to China for nuclear power costs. They are building the same AP1000's that are being built in SC and GA for about half the price and much quicker.

[Stormy Dragon]

They are subsidized in that they have no way of safely disposing of their waste products and depend on billions of dollars of tax payer funding to manage that.

[PapayaSF]

Also, their liability is limited by federal law.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

I don't agree with limited liability for nuclear plants.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

Not true. Utilities pay into a fund that is supposed to pay for storage. It is factored into every cent/kWh you pay for nuclear power. Who do you think funded the billions of dollars poured into Yucca Mountain before Obama and Reid ended it?

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

But Stormy, who pays for fossil fuel waste? They just pump fine particulate that is radioactive it into the atmosphere.

Coal plants just pile up their ash into ponds that have little regulation. That stuff will never disappear and is very toxic. Who's paying for that?

Nuclear "waste" (which is not waste at all) is solid ceramic fuel rods inside sealed zircaloy tubes which are then put into almost indestructible casks.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

Also, over a lifetime cost analysis, a nuclear plant provides cheaper power than coal or natural gas. This all while being under the most oppressive, political regulatory body in the worlds.

Nuke plants hurdle is the massive initial capital cost. But operational and fuel costs are minuscule. Fossil plants have low capital costs but high fuel costs. The longer a fossil plant runs the less advantage it has over a nuke plants.

Forbes article

[Enough About Palin]

"Source: The very publication you are reading now."

So not trustworthy then?

[Lord Humungus]

Senator Inhofe: Obama administration trying to 'dry up' ammo supply
http://dailycaller.com/2013/05.....ply-audio/

On Aaron Klein's weekend show on New York City's WABC radio, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe accused the Obama administration of buying up ammunition at an unprecedented level to bypass the Second Amendment so gun-owners "can't even buy ammunition because government is purchasing so much."

[Rich]

Try telling that to the little kids whose field trips were cancelled due to the sequester!

[Raston Bot]

The bullet market will meet demand. The Feds can tweak the trend a little but they can't effect change* without prohibition. New producers blah blah capitalism blah blah.

*not the change they're looking for

[Drake]

I'm hoping that the big government ammo buys move the supply side of the curve way the hell out - so that prices eventually crash and I can go back to shooting cheaper than ever.

[Lord Humungus]

Why Older Minds Make Better Decisions
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ne.....decisions/

As we age, we become more selective about what we remember, says Dr. Alan Castel of UCLA, one of the study's lead researchers. In an earlier study, his team tested older and younger adults' ability to recall a list of words. The initial findings, as one would expect, showed that younger subjects remembered more of the words. However, when the two groups were provided the same list, but with some words assigned a higher number value than others, older participants were better than younger subjects at remembering the words assigned high scores and ignoring those with low scores.

It appears that as we age, we may become better able to differentiate between important and less important information. "While memory tends to decline as we get older, it seems that older adults selectively remember more important information," Castel says.

[$park?]

Uh huh. Nice try, old man.

[Brett L]

Who am I? Why am I here?

[UnCivilServant]

That's still better than the last time I started asking questions. Mine came out "Why am I? Who am I here?"

[Lord Humungus]

I can remember the brand of speakers my best friend had in high school, but I can't remember my wedding anniversary.

[Rich]

it seems that older adults selectively remember more important information

Actually, it just *seems* that info is important.

[$park?]

In any case, it's a retarded study. All it shows is that if you tell old people what will be important beforehand they will only remember the stuff you told them is important. Now all old people need is someone to follow them around telling them what will be important facts and what won't.

[sasob]

I don't know about old people, but women definitely have a selective memory.

[a better weapon]

Lauryn Hill was sentenced to three months in jail for not paying taxes on several years' worth of earnings after pleading guilty last year.

Lauryn Hill - I Get Out (...in 3 months)

[Ted S.]

That's an interesting link.

[a better weapon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HdzTvH8mvw

It is, indeed.

[Mike M.]

By a vote of 69-27 the Senate passed an Internet Sales Tax Bill. It is now headed to the House.

Every sorry-ass republican senator who voted Yes deserves to get his ass kicked.

[SugarFree]

Yes, and the boot doing the kicking should be fired at them at orbital speeds.

[Gbob]

They really are the stupid party, aren't they? I mean, this one is a slam dunk. I don't see a great deal of pent up demand for more taxes on the items consumers buy. I know congress critters have pretty safe seats, but voting for this seems like you're handing the person you're running against the perfect issue that even a low information voter can grasp.

[Pro Libertate]

I don't get the GOP at all on this one. It's an easy way to vote against more taxes and to point the finger at the infinite money-hunger of the Democrats. Granted, some businesses favor these taxes because they're annoyed at the on-line exemptions, but the politicians will be damned by a lot of retailers either way they go.

[Fluffy]

I think some of them feel the need to suck up to local brick and mortar vendors in their home states.

Those guys are big Chamber of Commerce types.

I think they're counting on this dying in the House, rendering their vote meaningless.

[T]

I think they're counting on this dying in the House, rendering their vote meaningless

After BCRA, I no longer trust that strategy. If it's a bad bill, vote against it. Don't assume somebody else will do your job for you.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

I think some of them feel the need to suck up to local brick and mortar vendors in their home states

It's not just the brick-and-mortar "Main street" suckup nonsense--Amazon and Walmart are actually lobbying for this because it will put a tremendous amount of compliance pressure on their mid-size competitors.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Next up, VAT.

[invisible furry hand]

The Swedes invent cerebral palsy beer

[mad libertarian guy]

There is deep prejudice in me . . .

From the second of their 2 album series, Damnation (2003), "Windowpane" really sets the tone for the record, an almost entirely acoustic affair. When interviewed not long after the album's release, Mikael Akerfeldt, Opeth's frontman, claimed that they would not release another album like it. After Heritage, many wish that they had done so.

[Rich]

Thorough analysis of Obama's commencement speech

Excellent (albeit long) intro to Obamaese.

Props to General Butt Naked.

[Ted S.]

Anybody got a text pr?cis of the analysis?

[invisible furry hand]

93 year old arrested on suspicion of having taken part in the mass murder in Auschwitz

[Warty]

I Appear Missing

[Rich]

Typically topical. Thanks, Warty!

[gaijin]

sweet!

[Virginian]

Game of Thrones subthread. Go easy on the spoilers people.

I did not see that death coming at all. I mean, the way they were using that character, I thought that character was actually safe.

[Brett L]

Welcome to GRRM's world!

[SugarFree]

--- was not in the books at all, nor was --- a stand in for another character or series of minor characters, so --- didn't have much plot left in --- anyway (easy to see if you have read the books.)

[Virginian]

Yeah but her whole role in the show was to let people talk to her, thus revealing their inner thoughts. That was her entire purpose. Plus obviously she was naked a lot.

[SugarFree]

thus revealing their inner thoughts

It was a superfluous narrative crutch. I think we all figured out Littlefinger was evil before he had an eighth "I'm so evil" beard-stroking session with Ros. All they had left to hit us over the head with was for him to leave a girl tied-up on some train tracks while he foreclosed on her crippled father's farm.

And Joffery. Geez. They went after that characterization with the subtly of a pillowcase full of doorknobs.

[Virginian]

I don't remember Joffrey being so fucking evil in the books. I remember him as being totally nuts and full of rage, but I don't remember him personally torturing whores.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

I think we all figured out Littlefinger was evil before he had an eighth "I'm so evil" beard-stroking session with Ros.

I've never really seen him as evil in the sense that Cersei is evil, just extremely Machiavellian. He's got the same chip on his shoulder that a lot of people who were looked down on yet still built themselves up from nothing seem to have, and he knows how to play the political game.

The fact of the matter is that truly honorable, forthright people don't have a long lifespan in Martin's novels. It's the weasels and the snakes who manage to stay under the radar and survive.

[Libertywolf78Z]

Basing this upon forums and podcast, but Ros seemed to be the most hated part of the show by those who had read the books. Add in the fact that she wasn't needed to push along any part of the plot, so killing her off was probably an easy decision for the tv show creators.

In the books it seems like it is hinted that Joffrey could be heading towards Mad King status, but the show, and Jack Gleason with his great acting, pretty much are saying yes, this kid will be Mad King II: Lannister Boogaloo.

[Dr. Frankenstein]

The quote by Theon's torturer was telling. "If you think this story has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention."

[Apatheist ?_??]

It is getting pretty hard not to spoil who the torturer is for my wife. In the books not only do we know but we have the whole backstory of that family to pick up the clues the show is throwing in your face. I finally broke down and said see that fucking banner in the background, what does it look like?

[Warty]

Have you read the books? Just wait a couple weeks.

[Virginian]

Yeah I'v read them, but since they made that one up for the show, and were using them as kind of a way to show people's inner thoughts, I didn't think they would kill the character off. Know what I mean?

[Live Free or Diet]

I read the first two. Simply haven't had time to read the others. They're terribly thick for fiction, and I read a lot of what my wife calls "textbooks."

[Ed]

I wasn't surprised they were killed at all. I thought the episode was kind of slow and full of filler

[Live Free or Diet]

Setting up the dominoes...

[mad libertarian guy]

I did not see that death coming at all. I mean, the way they were using that character, I thought that character was actually safe.

As did I.

But the worst part is that the absolute best pair of titties in the show (of which there are many excellent titties) are gone forever.

[Live Free or Diet]

I'm sure the actress will stay busy.

[NoVAHockey]

I just finished book 3. taking a break before 4 just to process what happened.

[kinnath]

So the guy with the eye-patch, every time I see him I think of Buck, the one-eyed weasel in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

[Raston Bot]

My general gripe so far is w/ the actor portraying Jojen Reed. Too much swagger. That boy was an undernourished anemic in the books while the creepy stalker from Love Actually is strutting around all cocksure.

[SugarFree]

The Ex

[Virginian]

Trolling hard in the paint.

[invisible furry hand]

"In addition to the Ex Girlfriend Zombie, we currently sell 15 male zombies, 5 animal zombies & 2 aliens? to discriminate against Women by not having them represented in our product selection would be just plain sexist," the company states on its website.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

I got the older daughter some zombie deer targets for Christmas. Shh... don't tell her.

http://images.doba.com/product.....635_lg.jpg

[db]

Why? To what people is that kind of statement even remotely funny? Why do these morons insist on supporting the stereotypes that liberals have of gun owners? These fucking morons do more damage to the reputation of the shooting community than anything else.

[robc]

Bah.

I dont get it either, but to each his own. Are you some kind of collectivist that cant distinguish between different members of a community?

[db]

No, I am not. My political opponents, on the other hand, smear gun owners with shit like this all the time. I wish other gun owners would stop handing them shit in nice big buckets.

[Rich]

Reminds me of a bumper sticker:

"I still miss my Ex.
But my aim is improving!"

[UnCivilServant]

Over the past seven years thirty two New York pols have been arrested on corruption charges more pending.

Why do I get odd looks when my reaction to the legislature is "kill it with fire"?

[itsnotmeitsyou]

Why do I get odd looks when my reaction to the legislature is "kill it with fire"?

Because fire is not sufficient to vanquish evil that comes from the pits of hell. You're going to need an old priest and a young priest. Also, you'll need to find 4 sciencey types with unlicensed nuclear accelerators strapped to their backs. That might do it.

[Ted S.]

And Eliot Spitzer isn't among them. 🙁

[UnCivilServant]

I don't regard prostitution as a crime. So unless there was something else (other than the general scumminess that comes from being a NY Pol) I can't really get riled up at that one.

[Ted S.]

Having the state troopers spy on Joe Bruno?

[T]

I can get riled up about a guy who puts people in jail while he's doing the exact same thing himself. Fuck Spitzer.

[UnCivilServant]

I guess it's a matter of having so many horrible people to deal with that simple hipocracy didn't register that much.

The strategm seems to be "wear out the public's capacity for rage through sheer audacity".

[BakedPenguin]

"The audacity of crap"

[Live Free or Diet]

Chris Christie's aides confirm the New Jersey governor had lap-band stomach surgery.

What a shame. The diet they will stick him on is low-carb. Since hunger isn't based on how full the stomach is, the diet's probably the reason lap-band even works. Hell, I averaged about 3500 calories last week and lost 5 pounds.

[mad libertarian guy]

Chris Christie's aides confirm the New Jersey governor had lap-band stomach surgery.

You can't be a fat fuck and run for Prezident. People generally refuse to vote for someone who actually looks like what they are.

[Live Free or Diet]

The shame is the surgery doesn't appear to the part that causes the majority of the weight loss.

[The Late P Brooks]

the New Jersey governor had lap-band stomach surgery.

They should have put the thing around his neck.

[Kaptious Kristen]

I think I just stirred some shit up in the office. Mwahahaha.

[invisible furry hand]

Do tell...

[Virginian]

She probably just let a beer and chili fart go.

[Kaptious Kristen]

Not enough people in the office to make that worthwhile.

A colleague of mine, who has no knowledge or experience with WordPress (a system which I've been working with for 4 years, at the request of my boss), was named the lead developer for a WordPress project. He doesn't even have a clue what this project is even about in the first place.

So I said to him "let me know what info you need from me to get your documentation done...". This startled him a little bit as he hadn't read the email where he was named lead dev. Then he sent an email saying he was not going to be the lead dev, and that I would be driving the train.

Now I'm sitting back to see what kind of reaction that gets from a couple of people...

[Rich]

Fess up, Kristen.

It was *you* who hacked the email naming him lead developer, wasn't it?

[Fluffy]

What are the odds that they'll leave him on the project as the official lead developer, but make you do all the work, and then give him the credit and not you?

[Kaptious Kristen]

What are the odds that they'll leave him on the project as the official lead developer, but make you do all the work, and then give him the credit and not you?

I would never let that happen, believe you me.

[sarcasmic]

'I have a right to know': The moment a 12-year-old boy demanded a cop's badge number after he parked illegally to buy a soda

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....othie.html
Pig not only refuses to give his badge number, but asks the kid for ID.

[mad libertarian guy]

But Sarcasmic: I've been assured by Dunphy that there is no double standard.

[itsnotmeitsyou]

Obviously, there will need to be an inquiry into why this child's teachers haven't indoctrinated him with the proper respect for the noble, enlightened, paragons of virtue that are the police.

God help them if they find out his parents were responsible for this petulant child's insolence.

[sarcasmic]

Ridiculous buildings in China.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....China.html

[Rich]

The new Beijing headquarters of the People's Daily newspaper is worth the price of admission.

Have they no shame?

[Lord Humungus]

have you ever seen the Ypsilanti water tower?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xst6.....167237.jpg

[Rich]

Good grief.

That *may* be NSFW.

[Rasilio]

This one is better...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peachoid

Nothing funnier than driving through the middle of the bible belt and seeing a giant ass 40 feet in the air

[sarcasmic]

A colossal supercell thunderstorm cloud over Montana and other astonishing photos of the massive storm systems

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....stems.html
Pretty cool.

[sarcasmic]

BREAKING: European Commission to criminalize nearly all seeds and plants not registered with government

http://www.naturalnews.com/040.....ation.html

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Fuck you, that's why.

[Rich]

Take *that*, unknown species!

[Andrew S.]

On the one hand... fuck, that's dumb.

On the other hand, if Natural News told me that the sky was blue and the sun rises in the east, I'd have to go outside and check. Fuck that site.

[Fluffy]

I think that the best way to examine any piece of legislation is to find the most paranoid and unreasonable subject matter expert available and have them go over the text with a fine tooth comb.

Because whatever they find, no matter how crazy or extreme, is how the legislation will ultimately be used.

Based on this principle, if Natural News is as bad as you say, that counterintuitively makes them the best possible news source for this matter.

[PapayaSF]

They link to the text of the proposed law.

[Zeb]

They're going to start scouring the country side, locking up unauthorized trees and shrubs not on the list.

[Not a Libertarian]

I have somewhat purposefully been not following the SC race but..

Due to Mr. Sanford's personal issues is it actually likely that Ms. Colbert Busch will actually win this special election?

[Rich]

Ima say "Yes".

"Hiking the Appalachian Trail", indeed.

[Not a Libertarian]

Actually :-/

[Virginian]

Well Sanford is +1 last I saw. So it is possible. Who knows....I doubt they have a model for this.

[Not a Libertarian]

A model?

Will one of these do http://www.tourist2townie.com/.....argentina/

[Night Watchman]

I'll be in my bunk.

[John]

What personal issues? Stanford was unhappy in his marriage and fell in love with another women. Tough thing to go through for all involved. But it is something that happens all of the time and doesn't mean the people involved are bad people.

It pisses me off to no end that Weiner, who was just a deviant pervert who stalked coeds on twitter is given a pass while Stanford who did nothing that millions of other Americans have done is considered to have "personal issues".

[T]

Yeah, sending unsolicited pictures of your dick to random coeds strikes me as worse than having your marriage fall apart.

[Zeb]

I agree on the "personal issues", but he did lie about where he went and sort of disappeared. I don't really care, but I can see how people think that that is bad form for a sitting governor.

[John]

Yes. And he resigned for it. And it is less bad form for a House member who is not a chief executive. He made a big mistake because he didn't have the balls to leave his wife and was sneaking around. Not good. But he paid for it and I think the issue is over.

[Chaucer]

His wife and children knew he was seeing another women for 6 months before the story broke in the media. They actually kept it private for quite a long time.

[Zeb]

Which makes it even stupider of him to lie about his whereabouts.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

Let's not forget that Weiner lied and tried to claim that it was "the point of al-Qaeda's sword" when he mistakenly plastered his own sword all over the Internet. Now that's leadership.

Of course there was no pearl-clutching about this or him slandering the poor Muslims because left-wing intentions grant moral absolution when it comes to all evil and dishonest acts.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Of course there was no pearl-clutching about this or him slandering the poor Muslims

Well, he does have the perfect "some of my best (fuck) friends are..." defense.

[a better weapon]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....ALIVE.html

At a press conference on Tuesday morning, authorities revealed that Child Protective Services had been sent to the home in 2004 but after knocking on the front door and getting no response, did not make contact with Castro - and did not return.

Rage. Increasing. You mean this shit could have potentially been over 9 years ago if CPS showed a little pep in their step? Jesus Christ, I loathe those people.

[John]

They were too busy checking on reports that some parent might own a gun or have let their 11 year old walk to school.

I think we need to close down CPS. If neighbors or family report abuse and the police find it, then prosecute it like any other crime. But what is the point of CPS besides being a jobs program? They consistently miss the cases of the worst abuse. Every case of major abuse I can recall went on for years under the nose of CPS. And meanwhile, they try to make up for it by terrorizing innocent parents or any parent that is just the least bit different from the norm.

Fuck CPS.

[Auric Demonocles]

What this case is telling me is never answer the door for CPS.

[John]

That is just it. Real criminals don't. Real criminals know how to deal with law enforcement and CPS. So CPS leaves them alone, that is until a body or a missing girl shows up. Meanwhile innocent people answer the door and talk to CPS. What a surprise they are the ones that CPS makes a case against.

[Tim]

The thing about the surveillance state is that after the shit hits the fan we find out that red flags were ignored or leads just dropped. Meanwhile normal people get the shit harassed out of them.

[John]

The surveillance state doesn't even make us safer. The government is not competent to act on the information it has. And the more information it collects, the less likely it is to act on any given piece of information. So we all lose our privacy in return for less not more security.

[Zeb]

I agree with this. If there is real abuse going on, then the police need to find probably cause and make an arrest. Having kids should not make it easier for the state to poke into your private affairs.

[John]

Yes. And he resigned for it. And it is less bad form for a House member who is not a chief executive. He made a big mistake because he didn't have the balls to leave his wife and was sneaking around. Not good. But he paid for it and I think the issue is over.

[Zeb]

But what does he think about CPS?

[Rich]

Hey, if they save *just one* child ....

[Andrew S.]

CNN sez 2011, not 2004. Still incompetent though.

[UnCivilServant]

The same CPS we're telling to fuck off in other threads? Makes it a little hard to both be proactive and assertive and fuck off at the same time. the CPS agent never knows the facts behind the door, so how are they going to know which ones need to be followed through on?

[a better weapon]

Either fuck off, or be a pain in the ass to everybody and not just the good folks who cooperate and give you an opening to fuck their lives up.

If we have to live with their bullshit, is it too much to ask they actually stop real offenders while they're at it?

[Zeb]

"is it too much to ask they actually stop real offenders while they're at it?"

Apparently, yes. These are mostly social workers, and that might be dangerous.

[Tim]

It's like they should be trained or something. Thinking is hard.

[UnCivilServant]

Just disbanded. I'd wager they cost more than the abuse they prevent.

[T]

I deal with CPS a lot. Two case workers, once a month for each one. They are well intentioned people and much like cops, they deal with the scum of the earth. So the ones that have been around a while have a tendency to think everybody is scum, because that's who they deal with.

The other problem, frankly, is that they are average people doing a shitty job. You aren't getting a lot of potential brain surgeons who decided to go into social work instead. It's a mess sometimes, but what's the solution? Let the cops handle the kids that get taken into state custody?

[PapayaSF]

I know of a recent case in which CPS, discovering an abused infant, exonerated the parents and instead suspected the nurses or someone else at the hospital. For months everyone there was under suspicion, work rules were (expensively) tightened to prevent anyone from being alone with the kid, and basically everyone was made miserable for months. Then the infant was transferred to another facility, released to the parents, the father finished killing the infant and bolted, probably south of the border.

The hospital then gives an informal "Oops, sorry!" apology to the medical professionals they had under suspicion and tells them not to talk about it. As far as I know, the CPS people involved are still on the job.

[Loki]

By a vote of 69-27 the Senate passed an Internet Sales Tax Bill. It is now headed to the House.

What was the bill called? I'd like to go see how CO's shitweasels voted (though I can probably guess). Although it doesn't really matter, they already lost my vote when they showed themselves to be gun grabbing walking ban boners, but still, more fuel for the fire always helps.

[Virginian]

The Market Fairness Act I believe.

[robc]

Here are the Nays:

NAYs ?27
Ayotte (R-NH)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Baucus (D-MT)
Coburn (R-OK)
Crapo (R-ID)
Cruz (R-TX)
Flake (R-AZ)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Heller (R-NV)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kirk (R-IL)
Lee (R-UT)
McConnell (R-KY)
Merkley (D-OR)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Paul (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rubio (R-FL)
Scott (R-SC)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Tester (D-MT)
Toomey (R-PA)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wyden (D-OR)

[robc]

Both Ds from Montana and Oregon. The one D from NH (the R also voted Nay).

Thats it. So what do Montana and Oregon have going on internet-wise for both to go that way?

[John]

Wyden seems to be the only sane Democrat in national politics.

[Pro Libertate]

They buy a lot of stuff on-line and don't have massive retail presence in-state?

[robc]

They buy a lot of stuff on-line and don't have massive retail presence in-state?

That was my guess for Montana. I suppose it could apply to OR too.

[Zeb]

NH values it's no sales tax status a lot. I think that the most lefty progressive from NH would vote against as it would piss of pretty much every business in the state.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

Montana and Oregon have no sales tax.

[Gbob]

Both Rand and Coburn deserve some props for trying to poison pill this crap with amendments.

[Kaptious Kristen]

Nice to see NH Senators, even the D one, are sticking to the tradition of low taxes. Yet another check in the "pro" box in the battle between whether I should move to VT or NH in the future.

[BakedPenguin]

Move to Littleton or Claremont. NH taxes / laws, VT adjacent.

[Heroic Mulatto]

I love Littleton!

[DesigNate]

Well, I'll be sure to vote in the primary to get the dumb fuck from texas who thought it was okay to vote for this.

[sasob]

Senator John Cornyn, Republican from Texas, said he would have voted against it, but he couldn't make it back to Washington from the border in time due to flight cancelations. Oh, sure.

[Loki]

Nevermind, found it. And just as I suspected both ass clowns voted yes.

[robc]

The thing is, every state with a sales tax has a use tax also, I think. So that sales tax on out-of-state purchases, internet or otherwise, is already being paid.

[Auric Demonocles]

Well, it's supposed to be paid. None of it's actually being paid.

[robc]

Enforcement of state taxes isnt the FedGovs business.

[Auric Demonocles]

I didn't say it was.

[widget]

The elephant already has its trunk in the tent with a national sales tax of gasoline/petro. We have accepted this! The House will reject an internet sales tax this time, but they'll cave later. We are doomed.

[Zeb]

I'd take a national sales tax if it were to completely replace the income tax (like repeal the whatever amendment authorized it). But that's not happening either.

[John]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....e-theater/

Helen Mirren is fucking awesome. If there is a more annoying for of life than hippies banging on trashcans, it is hard to think of one. I don't care if she is in her 60s. I love that woman. And dressed as the Queen too.

[EDG reppin' LBC]

I'd do Helen Mirren. I fucking hate hippies and Euros. Why do they always beat on trashcans? And why do you need 30 people beating on trashcans? Get some proper instruments, for fuck sake! Mix in some trumpets, a couple of trombones, and some saxophones. Two tubas, and a proper drum line to hold down the rhythm. Now you got yourself a band.

[John]

Here is the thing, actual bands with people who can play instruments are almost never that loud. The louder something is generally the more it sucks.

And I would totally do Helen Mirren. She still looks good. And despite what the man code says, there is more to a woman's attractiveness than her looks. Her personality and style make her very attractive.

[mad libertarian guy]

The louder something is generally the more it sucks.

Clearly you're unfamiliar with Meshuggah.

[John]

I said generally not always.

[mad libertarian guy]

That said, I'd bet you think Meshuggah is noise too. In fact, most people would. But that's mostly because most people are idiots.

[Loki]

Get some proper instruments, for fuck sake!

Play proper instruments would require them to have some actual talent. Banging on trashcans doesn't.

[Zeb]

I can think of lots of more annoying things. But Helen Mirren is awesome.

[OldMexican]

Helen Mirren when she was even more awesome

[John]

My God did she have a body.

[sasob]

And to think she once played the role of Ayn Rand.

[itsnotmeitsyou]

Chris Matthews is an idiot. In other news, water is wet.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/k.....s-n1589877

[Rich]

"president of color who has some antecedence in Africa"

WTF?

[itsnotmeitsyou]

I really can't figure out if he's being a mendacious asshat or if he really is brainwashed so badly that he can't fathom any other reason that someone might disagree with black jesus.

[Emmerson Biggins]

Thats been his schtick since 2008, at least. He's been very consistent.

[The Late P Brooks]

Weasel Alert!

Republican Sen. Jeff Flake told CNN he is willing to reverse his opposition to expanding background checks for guns if the Senate sponsors change on the bill's provision dealing with internet sales.

--------

Some Republicans opposed the measure out of fear that expanding background checks would put the country on a path to a national gun registry, but Flake said that is not his concern.

"I know that is not what this bill does, just the opposite," Flake said.

During last week's congressional recess, Flake was the target of gun control group protests.

One group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, sent a woman whose son died in the Aurora movie massacre to try to see Flake in his Phoenix office so he could see the "pain in her eyes."

What happened, Flake? Did you get a stern scolding from McCain?

[Virginian]

Holy fucking shit why cannot a single one of these fucks have a fucking backbone.

[John]

I think it is because they honestly worry about how people in Washington view them. I know that sounds cliche and like a repeat of the old "cosmotarian" line. But I think it is true. These guys get to Washington and there is a whole social scene around Congress. And that social scene is fun. People want to fit in. They want to be liked. But that scene is driven by the establishment and the media. And being a heretic on some issues is just not allowed. I really think that people like Flake desperately want to be considered reasonable and acceptable people by the social scene and Washington. And to do that, you have to at least be for "reasonable gun control". Washington is in many ways a bunch of grownups reliving high school.

[NoVAHockey]

Isakson too. said yesterday he was open to voting for it.

[John]

And remember too. In Washington going along with the consensus and telling your constituents to go fuck themselves is considered "political courage". Representing the interests and desires of your constituents and telling the establishment to go fuck themselves is considered "cowardice and partisanship".

[itsnotmeitsyou]

Mayors Against Illegal Guns

The name of this org misses me off to no end. I had a co-worker down in DC that joined this group early on. I hadn't heard of it, and the guy started talking to me about it. At first, he made it sound like the name implies, that they were trying to do something about the black market guns that are everywhere.

Of course, once I did the slightest amount of research, I found out the truth of the matter is that these people think ALL guns should be illegal, or at least it should be illegal for most people to own them.

[Somalian Road Corporation]

There are a lot of idiots in this state who still think Gabby Giffords was the victim of an attempted rightwing political assassination ordered by Sarah Palin, and a lot of Republicans who would vote for Karl Marx if he ran under a Republican ticket and made angry noises about immigration.

It's a bad combination.

[Tim]

From 24/7:

Shawshanko Redempski:

"A man charged with double murder has escaped from a maximum security jail in Moscow - apparently by digging a hole in the ceiling of his cell with a spoon."

[John]

They say in Georgia the Black Sea has no memory.

[The Late P Brooks]

I'm sure part of it is a "desire to be liked by the cool kids" but I think it is primarily because they live in such a bubble of consensus they completely fall for the assertion that "everybody" wants more gun control.

I am exposed to conflicting political and economic opinions all the time. I spend a lot of time (as do all of us) surrounded by people who believe idiotic liberal bullshit, but I don't really give a shit what those dummies think.

I couldn't get elected dogcatcher.

[John]

But if you are a politician, you have fund raisers and consultants and such who are supposed to keep you informed of what the truth back in your state and district actually is. I find it difficult to believe that any sitting Senator of either party doesn't know things like the 90% support poll are complete bullshit.

How can you be a professional politician and mistake consensus in Washington for consensus in the country at large? That is major league stupid if that is what is going on.

[The Late P Brooks]

So what do Montana and Oregon have going on internet-wise for both to go that way?

Montana has no state sales tax; I have no idea if that was a factor in Baucus' or Tester's vote. I am not aware of any significant base of internet merchants in the state.

[robc]

Same for Oregon and NH.

Huh.

[OldMexican]

Ohio women rescued after being abducted 10 years ago. Three men arrested.

Three women who vanished as teenagers about a decade ago were discovered alive in a house in Cleveland, and the home's owner and his two brothers were arrested, police said on Tuesday.

In totally unrelated news,

Thinkprogress totally spins Elizabeth Smart's explanation about why she didn't try to escape her rapist/abductor and turns it into an anti-abstinence education tirade

"Elizabeth Smart: Abstinence Education Teaches Rape Victims They're Worthless, Dirty, And Filthy"

I guess the three Cleveland women were also taught abstinence-only sex education... Yeah, that makes sense.

[John]

Telling kids to wait until they are older to have sex is totally the same thing as telling rape victims they had it coming. Rarely does a piece of writing live up to the term "offensively stupid" as that Think Progress piece.

[Zeb]

How the hell is Smart a "human trafficking" victim? She was kidnapped and raped, not bought or sold. I guess that's the new term to apply to everything since "rape" and "racism" are all used up.

The article has a bit of a point hidden in the bullshit. Cultures that shame women who have been raped are pretty fucked.

[John]

Sure they are. But to conflate that with anyone who thinks that their kids ought to be taught to wait to have sex until they are older or married is offensive and stupid.

[itsnotmeitsyou]

John, consider the source. It's think progress derp. Pretty much anything coming out of it is going to be stupid, and most likely offensive to anyone with a basic understanding of logic and reason.

[Heroic Mulatto]

The author of the Thinkprogress post.

The fuck? Wait until you graduate from the 5th grade before you rant about High School subjects, girl!

[The Late P Brooks]

Hey, look over there!

The FBI says it has foiled a terrorist attack being planned in a small Minnesota town, and it believes "the lives of several local residents were potentially saved."

An agency spokesman says a search of a mobile home in Montevideo (mont-uh-VIHD'-ee-oh) uncovered a cache of explosives and weapons, leading to the arrest of Buford Rogers.

The FBI is offering no details about the targets of the attack or a motive. But police in the town say a homemade sign in front of the mobile home where the 24-year-old lived bore the letters "BSM," a reference to a local anti-government group called the Black Snake Militia started by Rogers' family.

"We are the FBI, and we are totally hard at work protecting the nation from crackpot hillbillies, America!"

[John]

You have to have something to do while you are ignoring various tips about Islamic terrorists.

[Jerryskids]

Any word on how many members of the Black Snake Militia were undercover FBI? And was the funding for and the source of the cache of explosives and weapons that same FBI?

[Zeb]

At some point, there is going to be a foiled terror plot where every participant was an FBI plant and none was aware of the others.

[widget]

The FBI should have just called Billy Jack. Billy knows how to take care of a Buford.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v325wdgoFH4

[0x90]

I found it mildly interesting, that though when I first read the news about what happened Cleveland last night on the telegraph, they were playing a 2m 54s video, what you find there currently, is a truncated 1m 37s clip. Here is the original video, starting at 2m 19s.

[itsnotmeitsyou]

"I knew something was wrong when a pretty white girl ran into the arms of a black man. dead giveaway! deaaad giveaway. Either she homeless or she got problems."

How long till we see the autotuned version of that on youtube.

[itsnotmeitsyou]

Nevermind... just searched. It's already there, multiple times.

We are doomed. DOOMED I tell you.

[Matrix]

Nimoy and Quinto in a mildly amusing car commercial

[$park?]

Is the Old Timer's disease kicking in? Did you forget you already posted this comment?

[H. ReardEn]

Old coots are always repeating the same story, over and over.

[Lord Humungus]

..such was the style of the time..