Administration To Revamp Economic Team, French Jobless Rate Soars, U.K. Terror Law Misused: P.M. Links

• 

  Jean-Marc Ayrault

  The White House is reportedly planning a shake-up in its economic team, including a new head of the National Economic Council. Shocking.

• The number of jobless in France has hit an all-time high. Never before have so many residents of that country actually not been paid for not working.
• Hold on, says the man who wrote the law under which David Miranda was detained. That's not what it's for.
• The IRS is busy busy busy once again — this time in court, dealing with lawsuits over its politicized behavior.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture spent $20 million creating plans for the eventual inspection of…catfish.
• Not that anybody thought they were open to a visit, but the Israelis warned the Syrian government to keep its distance.
• Federal prosecutors dropped efforts to force a child pornography suspect to decrypt his hard drives. But they'll be back!

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Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Hold on, says the man who wrote the law under which David Miranda was detained.

Then stop writing vague legislation.

[NeonCat]

Why do you want lawyers and legal pundits to starve, FoE?

[Fist of Etiquette]

I think they call them solicitors and barristers. And yes, I do want them to starve.

[Enough About Palin]

What do you call 10,000 lawyers bound in chains at the bottom of the ocean? A lackluster effort.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

When "Congress shall make no law..." is ignored, vagueness isn't the problem.

[PapayaSF]

The UK doesn't follow the US Constitution.... (Neither do we, I'll admit, but they aren't supposed to.)

[Night Elf Mohawk]

It was an illustration of how vagueness of laws isn't the problem when the government does whatever the hell it wants because they do whatever the hell they want no matter how specific the language is. Sorry to give you the impression that I thought the UK was part of the US.

[NeonCat]

We should have made those feckin' Limeys adopt it when we occupied them in WW2. Allies, sure, whatever. Biggest empire in history and they couldn't beat one damn central European country (and, to be charitable, its feckless allies) without help?

[Alex]

Vagueness of laws is unavoidable:

http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj.....ythWeb.htm

[Fluffy]

I read that piece and I am more convinced than ever that the fact that civilizations (or in some cases dynasties) no longer fall eventually will doom justice.

The longer legal precedents accumulate, the more likely it is that we will reach a state of being where for every precedent there will exist an opposite precedent, and all law will be the will of the powerful of the moment.

We need a moment when all law is swept away and we start over with a blank piece of paper.

Unfortunately I don't see a non-apocalyptic scenario where that happens.

And yes, I know that such a moment is what the French revolutionaries dreamed of, and look at how that turned out yadda yadda yadda. But if I had a one-in-three chance of developing a clean legal regime with clear and just precedents with no ambiguity, and a two-in-three chance of getting Robespierre, I would probably roll the dice.

[Atanarjuat]

and a two-in-three chance of getting Robespierre, I would probably roll the dice.

Yikes.

Of course, there will always be the possibility of Moon is a Harsh Mistress-style space-based independent legal regimes.

[Juice]

Why doesn't the author think that an IRS regulation isn't law? And in any case, if an executive agency has the authority from Congress to abridge your freedom of speech/press then Congress made a law that abridges the freedom of speech/press. Same thing goes for the president's executive order question.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

The number of jobless in France has hit an all-time high. Never before have so many residents of that country actually not been paid for not working.

Can you believe there aren't any jobs in France that don't expect you to work more than 30 hours a week?

[LynchPin1477]

I can't believe there are any jobs in France at all.

[Lady Bertrum]

I hear the French Military will be hiring soon.

[Pi Guy]

Why take away in job _with significant risk_ when you can eat (and drink and be merry) without working at all?

[Pi Guy]

Why take any job*

Preview, preview, preview...

[CE]

Are you sure they're not getting paid?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Federal prosecutors dropped efforts to force a child pornography suspect to decrypt his hard drives.

They didn't want a precedent going against them, I assume.

[Auric Demonocles]

The number of jobless in France has hit an all-time high. Never before have so many residents of that country actually not been paid for not working.

Sure, but they don't pay for healthcare at the time that they use it, so they are better than us. Duh.

[NeonCat]

Rose Cohen, Goth Lingerie Model, accused of setting car fires.

In Florida, BTW.

[LynchPin1477]

Goths have lingerie?

[T]

Only in black...

[Tonio]

Wait, are we approving or condemning this? Or standing firmly for due process?

[CE]

We're demanding video evidence. At least I am.

[The DerpRider]

That is just about the right amount of crazy.

[Brett L]

Way on the wrong side of the hot/crazy line. 18 year olds that hot are nearly as prolific as roaches in that part of Florida.

[Fist of Etiquette]

That sounds like a job for Florida Man.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Deceased fan asked for Browns pallbearers so they can "let him down one more time"

[jesse.in.mb]

Did he grow up watching Golden Girls?

[NeonCat]

Will a DVD box set of the Golden Girls and a portable DVD player accompany him on his voyage into eternity?

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Do you have pictures from the golden girls in her casket?

[fish]

You know the difference between Bea Arthur and an old shoe don't you....?

You could eat an old shoe if you absolutely had too!

Bada bing!

[Generic Stranger]

Welcome to one month ago, dude.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

http://youtu.be/xECUrlnXCqk

[Longtorso, Johnny]

The Browns sucking is eternal.

[Goldwyn]

Tell that to Paul Brown!

[CE]

I thought they said wormholes and time travel were still theoretical.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Hitler Was Beta

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

heartiste is the modern-day equivalent of a horoscope writer.

[Episiarch]

Shhhhh, don't ruin the dream for him. It's all he has.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Epi never learned Game and thus has to masterbate to Warty/SugarFree slashfic.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

The fact that you capitalized "game" tells me all I need to know.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

I also capitalized Epi. Which is worse?

[jesse.in.mb]

Wait...is that not normal?

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Epi is involved - nothing is now normal.

[KPres]

Horoscope writers consistently present studies that support their ideas? Not to mention conform to common sense?

[mr simple]

I should have scrolled down to see your warning before clicking on that junk. Article claiming others are betas but of course they're alphas because negging or something stupid with neo-nazi comments. WTF is he linking to?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Wait, does this mean Eva was the meistermind?

[rts]

Sales tax can fund transit expansions, bloggers say

Amongst a lot of other sophistry, this slip of the tongue was revealing:

"This will actually end up saving people in the long run. Once people south of Fraser have the choice, they might have to get rid of vehicles."

"Have to", eh?

[playa manhattan]

Also, "choice"

[jamesrk]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture spent $20 million creating plans for the eventual inspection of...catfish.

That the FDA already inspects.

[Irish]

MSNBC host hangs up on Hugh Hewitt because she refuses to answer whether or not Alger Hiss was a communist.

Hewitt welcomed Finney with a clip of her on MSNBC comparing Ted Cruz's "paranoia" and "fear-stoking" to Joe McCarthy. Hewitt immediately asked Finney about actual communist infiltration of the government. She dismissed the "hysteria" of the time, but Hewitt didn't let her off easy there. He said, "It's an easy question! Do you think Alger Hiss was a communist?"

Isn't comparing Ted Cruz to Joe McCarthy paranoid and fear stoking and therefore, I don't know, McCarthyesque?

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

Karen Finney is, and I know this will be hard to believe, a terrible anchor even by MSNBC standards. She's up there with whatsherface We Own Your Children and Ed Schulz. Really, really bad, and also pretty clearly a moron.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

McCarthy's actions were totally out of bounds and contrary to the Bill of Rights, but he was right, there were commies in upper echelons of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.

How else do you think the Russkies got the A-bomb so fast?

[Episiarch]

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg?

[PapayaSF]

They helped, but there were others.

[NeonCat]

Klaus Fuchs?

[KPres]

"How else do you think the Russkies got the A-bomb so fast?"

Same way we did. Aliens.

[CE]

Yup. I've seen the video of the disc they captured in the Soviet Roswell on TV.

[Finrod]

Richard Feynman got into the safes that the A-Bomb paperwork was being held in by guessing the combination, which was based on the mathematical constant e: 27-18-28.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Odds are she doesn't know who Alger Hiss was and didn't have google available to her.

I, for one, am proud of sharing the same alma mater as Mr. Hiss. The man showed true motivation and enthusiasm for his chosen profession.

[Gbob]

McCarthy is one of the reasons I'm a libertarian. As a young punk who drifted in far left circles, I would often hear the argument that even if the USSR was bad, we did terrible things as well. They would then jump right to McCarthy.

McCarthy was a shit, but the worst the enemies the communism seemed to be able to do was to make it slightly harder for screenwriters to find work, while the communists managed to murder millions of their enemies. I had trouble with any moral calculus that made the two things equal.

That, and I stopped doing as many drugs, and grew up enough to realize that no matter how hot the chick was, it wasn't worth sitting through a two hour diatribe on Marxism just to get into her pants.

Point is, fuck McCarthy, but if he's the best you got as a boogey man, perhaps you need a better enemy.

[Episiarch]

The IRS is busy busy busy once again ? this time in court, dealing with lawsuits over its politicized beehavior.

Which we all actually pay for.

[NeonCat]

Is beehavior when the IRS tries to make honey out of 1040 forms?

[T]

No, they use the 1040s to build their buzzing industrious hive.

[Tonio]

Both coming and going...

[Pro Libertate]

Since the IRS is clearly out of control, we don't have to pay taxes this year, right?

[jesse.in.mb]

The number of jobless in France has hit an all-time high. Never before have so many residents of that country actually not been paid for not working.

But will they riot over it? Will they flip a Citro?n for the cause?

[kinnath]

The number of jobless in France has hit an all-time high.

People that can't be fired, can't be hired.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The number of jobless in France has hit an all-time high.

All-time? That remains to be seen, but all I'd say no.

[Brandon]

The number of jobless in France has hit an all-timeheretofore high.

Better?

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture spent $20 million creating plans for the eventual inspection of...catfish.

Mr. President we cannot allow a catfish gap!

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Salon: School is a prison ? and damaging our kids
...Schools as we know them today are a product of history, not of research into how children learn. The blueprint still used for today's schools was developed during the Protestant Reformation, when schools were created to teach children to read the Bible, to believe scripture without questioning it, and to obey authority figures without questioning them. The early founders of schools were quite clear about this in their writings. The idea that schools might be places for nurturing critical thought, creativity, self-initiative or ability to learn on one's own ? the kinds of skills most needed for success in today's economy ? was the furthest thing from their minds. To them, willfulness was sinfulness, to be drilled or beaten out of children, not encouraged.

When schools were taken over by the state and made compulsory, and directed toward secular ends, the basic structure and methods of schooling remained unchanged. Subsequent attempts at reform have failed because, though they have tinkered some with the structure, they haven't altered the basic blueprint. The top-down, teach-and-test method, in which learning is motivated by a system of rewards and punishments rather than by curiosity or by any real, felt desire to know, is well designed for indoctrination and obedience training but not much else....

[jesse.in.mb]

Mmmm Prussian education system.

[Irish]

I'm glad Salon published this, but I notice that they left out the progressive authoritarian roots of the modern school system. They blame the religious but not the socialist forces that also turned schools into anti-intellectual indoctrination camps.

Hint: Kindergarten just might mean something in another language, and this has some relevance to the history of public schooling.

[np]

Both the religious and socialist forces largely overlapped at the time in progressivism's roots though.

See also the story behind the pledge of allegiance for example, created by a socialist baptist minister

In Francis Bellamy's recollection of the creation of the Pledge, he recalled "At the beginning of the nineties patriotism and national feeling was at a low ebb. The patriotic ardor of the Civil War was an old story...The time was ripe for a reawakening of simple Americanism and the leaders in the new movement rightly felt that patriotic education should begin in the public schools."[13]

pic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....ce1899.jpg

[Matrix]

which is why I consider public schooling to be akin to child abuse

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

All of it forever? That's a bit strong.

[CE]

Never send your children to an institution. Don't let them get on the bus.

[Finrod]

Weird Al warned of the dangers of that a long time ago, with Another One Rides The Bus.

[Lady Bertrum]

Some ones been reading John Taylor Gatto.

[Clich? Bandit]

This article is AWESOME! About teaching math...Check It OUT!!!

[Pi Guy]

SFed the linkie, I thinkie.

And I was so looking forward to such an article...

[db]

My prediction: "Limited Strikes" will be primarily targeted (although maybe not at first obviously) at softening Syrian air defenses. And the path from there is clear. Unless we know with great certainty the locations of all Syrian chemical weapons depots, I can't see what, other than a decapitation strike on Assad himself, will be achieved by "limited strikes" than to prepare the battlefield for aerial attack and possibly ground operations.

[PapayaSF]

Also, Obama can try to save face regarding his "red line" remarks. Of course, he then loses face regarding the Nobel Peace Prize thing.

[Killazontherun]

Ever notice how elven Serena William's ears are?

http://cdn.wwtdd.com/wp-conten.....ork-LB.jpg

Not sure if she is better suited for the next Hobbit movie or Pumping Iron 2.

[Heroic Mulatto]

I can't believe you wasted the opportunity for a Drow joke.

I'm disappointed, man.

[Killazontherun]

I don't see race or color in other people. I try to see the humanity inside -- okay, you've been around long enough to know that's bullshit. I'm disappointed in myself too.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Woah...woah...woah...I was referring to the fact that Drow women tend to be larger and stronger than the males. Also, the fact that Serena worships the evil spider goddess Lolth.

What do you think I was getting at?

[Killazontherun]

Not even a twenty on the roll would save me now.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The IRS is busy busy busy once again ? this time in court, dealing with lawsuits over its politicized [behavior].

Let's call them reverse audits.

[Pro Libertate]

Preemptive audits.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Researcher becomes the first person to remotely control another person's body

On Aug. 12, University of Washington researcher Rajesh Rao sent the finger-flicking brain signal to his colleague, Andrea Stocco, in a first demonstration of human-to-human brain control, according to a university announcement.

A video of the experiment released on the lab team's website shows Rao observing a cannon-firing video game while wearing an electrical brain-signal reading cap. By imagining his right finger flicking during the game, he triggered the actual motion in Stocco, who sat in a distant lab, wearing a cap designed to send magnetic stimulation signals to his brain. In effect, Rao's thought was transferred across the campus, via the Internet, to trigger the motion in Stocco, who described it as feeling like an involuntary twitch, according to the announcement.

What the video doesn't show: "Quit hitting yourself! Why you hitting yourself?"

[Brett L]

This is definitely going to expand the field of teledildonics.

[CE]

And assassination by patsy.

[fish]

What the video doesn't show: "Quit hitting yourself! Why you hitting yourself?"

At the end of a painfully mundane day this actually made me laugh out loud and scare my office mate!

I am in your debt sir!

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

The element is highly radioactive and exists for less than a second before decaying into lighter atoms.

TWSS.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Highly radioactive but ultimately unreliable?

They should call it Obamanaium.

[NeonCat]

Amandabynesium.

[Generic Stranger]

Call me when they get the thing to stick around for more than a few nanoseconds.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

Sony warned that anyone posting plot details from the GTA V ahead of its release would be temporarily banned from its community.

[Slammer]

Maybe they can give those players permanent 5 Wanted Stars for a while.

[Ska]

But getting 5 stars is an achievement...

[Slammer]

Is it? I think you're right and I'm wrong. Maybe SURVIVING for a time with 5 stars is an achievement...it's been awhile.

[Ska]

I was messing around. The achievement is for lasting a minute or five minutes on five starts and then getting back to no stars without dying or getting bagged.

[Corning]

For GTA 4 It is 5 min on 6 stars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1F8YXp9HTg

There is another one for getting 4 stars and losing it.

[CE]

Plot details? It's an open game -- you can make the plot whatever you want it to be.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The White House is reportedly planning a shake-up in its economic team, including a new head of the National Economic Council.

Sounds like someone's poised to pivot!

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

He'll probably appoint Andy Stern

[Calidissident]

Yesterday was the first day of the academic year for my school. I'm taking a class called "Gender and Minority Health" (in case you're wondering why, it was the only class that would fulfill a university Diversity requirement while at the same time fitting in with the rest of the schedule I wanted to take). Here are links to the readings (the first one is pretty short and the second shouldn't take to long to skim to get the main idea)

http://www.cirtl.net/files/Par.....apsack.pdf

http://www.scribd.com/doc/8805.....-Chapter-1

[Calidissident]

To clarify, these are just the readings for the first day. Should be an interesting semester

[Episiarch]

That doesn't seem interesting to me. You actually have a Diversity requirement? That's hilarious.

[Calidissident]

If you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic

[Clich? Bandit]

We all should say a small prayer to FSM or whomever for poor Cal. I fear his should will be mush and his mind blackened with destroyed brain cells in a matter of weeks...that or he will be serving 20-life for mass murder.

[Marshall Gill]

Interesting? As in the curse "May you live in interesting times"?

I am not even perusing the second one. The first was nothing more than a projection of group guilt. I actually started to pass out sometime around "reason I feel guilty for being born white" #35.

[Calidissident]

Yeah, read my reply to Episiarch

[hamilton]

A "university Diversity requirement"?

[Calidissident]

Yeah. And I go to a school that has a reputation for being conservative by California standards

[playa manhattan]

Yup. I had 4 "diversity" requirements just a few hundred miles north of you.

[Calidissident]

What school did you go to?

[playa manhattan]

Berkeley. Or "Cal" if you are a privileged white male.

[Calidissident]

Is that actually a thing up there? "Cal" is a term used by privileged white men?

[playa manhattan]

Yes. You can only use the term in sports bars and at football and basketball games. It is frowned upon elsewhere on campus...

[Calidissident]

Well I thought "Cal" was only really used to refer to Berkeley in an athletic context. At least, that's how it's been used 99% of the time in my experience. I still fail to see how it would be racist, sexist, or whatever, regardless of context.

[playa manhattan]

It is the athletic context that upsets academia up there. People think that D1 sports pulls funding away from important research in such fields as ethnic studies, women's studies, and queer studies (their name for the department, not mine).

I was asked by professors/TAs to remove my Cal hat more than a few times....

[Calidissident]

Wow. I did not realize it was that bad. And of course only white men can like sports? It's not like most of the guys playing on Cal's football and basketball (or the women on the women's bball team) teams are black, right?

Does Cal's football program make money? My guess would be that the biggest drains on the athletic budget are not that or basketball.

[Jordan]

My school had that shit too. Hell, we had a Vice President of Diversity. And I went to a very conservative school (Texas A&M).

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Sweet Jesus.

NOTHING. LEFT. TO. CUT.

[Calidissident]

Think Johnny Football is gonna play?

[Night Elf Mohawk]

If he does, either the NCAA is done or it's going to have to split into (even more) explicit pro and amateur divisions.

[CE]

I thought the SEC was already the pro division.

[Pro Libertate]

It is in caliber of play, but it's not any more or less pro in pay than the other conferences.

[Drake]

We may never know since they don't play other D1 conferences.

[Brett L]

Let me know when y'all get cheerleaders without y chromosomes.

[Apatheist ?_??]

Go Owls!

[jesse.in.mb]

Haha, you might want to go get your medical mj card now, Cali. Remember unchecked hypertension can lead to all sorts of nasty things down the line.

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

Oh, the invisible knapsack! My favorite! Make sure to ask, when you go over this, whether anyone thinks the woman who composed the list has ever heard of poor people, or of white people who live places where they aren't actually the dominant group.

[Irish]

I once read an article from a progressive about checking her privilege in Uruguay. It never occurred to her that the Irish might not be a privileged group in a nation that is 97% Spanish, Mestizo and Amerindian.

[playa manhattan]

She didn't know that Rigoberta Menchu was a fraud? Oh, wait, that didn't matter in academia.

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

Is it wrong that I want to send people like that to hang out at, oh, I don't know, say 63rd and Dan Ryan? Not to get hurt or anything, just to get racially hated on. For apparently the first time in their lives.

[Irish]

These people have to live in all white neighborhoods. I've been to some poor black neighborhoods and they treat white people like shit. If you're a poor white kid or a poor Asian and you're living in a low-income black neighborhood, you are sure as hell not privileged.

Educated black people that live in predominantly white communities are treated far better than poor white people who live in predominantly black communities. But liberals want it to be 1963 forever and refuse to admit that things have changed drastically.

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

Yes, exactly.

[Calidissident]

Guess it depends on where you live. I go to school in South LA, and the area around the school is about 99% Hispanic and black. In the over two years I've lived here, I've never been called a slur or ever been harassed or felt disrespected because of my race. The neighborhood does have a high crime rate (though it's significantly lower than it was 20-30 years ago), so students (and really anyone, of any race) have to be smart about getting around, especially at night, but most people will be fine as long as they're not stupid. The vast majority of interactions I've had with locals since I've been here have been positive.

[playa manhattan]

Your athletic department does quite a bit for the locals, though. I think I paid a guy $120 to park in his front yard a few years ago for an early season game. Everybody else seemed to be making money in the neighborhood that day too.

[Rhywun]

Guess it depends on where you live.

Yep. If you're a poor white kid in a depressed city like Buffalo or Rochester, you will get a very different experience.

[Warty]

The most recent time I was racially hated on was a couple months ago, when I was ignored at an Amish gun shop for not speaking the right language. Which was TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME, now that I think back on it.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

Fuck the Amish. One day I will stand atop the ruins of Lancaster Pennsylvania with my foot planted in some cocaine-addict beardo's chest saying SIC SEMPER PLAINFOLKUS

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

NLK, will you let me know when you do that and give me all the quilts? I mean, I'll help and shit, but I want the quilts.

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

So do Amish gun shops sell only the kinds of firearms the second amendment was really designed to protect?

[Brandon]

According to the Discovery channel, the Amish have either remote or timed explosives and AR's.

[Pro Libertate]

Is there even the slightest grain of truth to that show, or is it 100% fiction? I'm thinking the latter.

[Brandon]

No idea. Never seen a single second of it, just the ads for it that are shown during Duck Dynasty. I assume it's about as truthful as that Megalodon show on Shark Week a couple of weeks ago.

[Warty]

Judging by this gun store, Amish fucking love ARs.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Just throwing this out there. For travel expenses and a 1,000 dollar honorarium, I would be willing to travel to any of these SWJ homes and racially abuse them.

For diversity's sake.

[Dweebston]

I can offer you a Red Lobster gift card and a Klondike bar.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Deal.

[Atanarjuat]

SWJ?

I am too dumb/impatient to figure this out from 5 seconds a'googlin'.

[Thane runs off sobbing]

It's SJW, and it stands for Social Justice Warrior.

[Dweebston]

What, you doubt their capacity for guilt?

[Calidissident]

That is hilarious. The average Uruguayan is something like 90% white (and that's the mean - if you took the median, it would probably be even higher). That's like saying one should check their privilege in Australia or New Zealand

[CE]

Amerinidian? Is that half Italian (like Amerigo Vespucci) and half Indian (like from India?) I guess I graduated before the diversity requirements hit.

[Calidissident]

It's a term to refer to natives of all of the Americas. I don't really have a problem with it, Native American could be confusing if you're using it to refer to entirety of the Americas, because of the name of the USA obviously, and there already is a group of people called Indians, who are actually, you know, from a placed called India.

[Calidissident]

*place

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Looks like my law school employment discrimination class. I pissed off the prof every single day for the entire semester and then wrote airtight answers on the exam and basically dared her not to give me an A. I think it was both the worst and best time I had in law school.

[playa manhattan]

Yeah, but there is tons of money to be made in discrimination (employment) law if you are admitted in the right state. I'm not saying it's right, but....

[Raston Bot]

I expect tears, screaming, and rending of weaves. Nothing less.

[Damned Fool]

Warty is teaching the class?

[Warty]

He has been miseducated and misled by an ideology, a mythology, a set of officially-certified nonfacts and respected untruths, and this ideology - which has been infused into the very cells of his brain - prevents him from seeing

Oh, awesome, he's about to rant about how the schools suck. Right on!

the process of victimization as a total picture.

...Oh.

Shit.

Also, you're a fucking moron for picking a school with a diversity requirement.

[Calidissident]

Most schools have em nowadays. Even Texas A&M, apparently. And I'm sure the ones who don't probably have a lot of drawbacks that outweigh taking one diversity class. I really don't care, I won't enjoy the class, but it's hardly a good reason to regret my choice of colleges.

[DJF]

If you are a White Male could you just wear a T-shirt with "I Am An Evil White Male" and get a automatic pass?

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

You have to carve it into your flesh.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Speaking of that...the funniest/most pathetic yahoo! answers question ever:

I need help with the ending of The Scarlet Letter.?
ok so how did the minister die? i don't understand first he is talking bout somin and next thing he is dead!?
what ever happened to pearl?
wat is a scaffold and what happend to hester?

please help old english is hard to comprehend!

OLD. ENGLISH.

[Dweebston]

All those vowels and consonants! By the look of it, whatever passes for the lingua franca of his home life may be a stretch for this kid.

[CE]

You don't need to wear the t-shirt, it's already assumed.

[lap83]

"I am an Evil White Male"
that would be good for a line of libertarian t-shirts....although needs moar monocles

[jesse.in.mb]

Maybe something like this?

It's the cover art from James Adomian's (very funny) comedy album.

[fish]

WANT ONE!

Goddammit Jesse you can play Santa this year with that shirt!

[lap83]

That is awesome.

[Drake]

Tell the Prof you Tourette syndrome and you can't help shouting ethnic slurs.

[PapayaSF]

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

That's an example of several terrible things, but none of them are "white privilege."

[Joe M]

"They may say they will work to women's statues, in the society, the
university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's."

That illiterate nonsense is an official part of the course?

[Joe M]

More:

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there are most likely a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected.

Blather.

[CatoTheElder]

The above is a correct quotation from the white-privilege paper cited above.

It's amazing what passes for scholarship these days.

[Calidissident]

Both of these are old writings. But still a part of curriculum

[Joe M]

When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

So, are we supposed to change history or ignore it? It's amazing that this kind of blatantly racist nonsense is held up as some kind of tolerance. Who cares what race or sex or whatever the people who did amazing things were? All that matters is that they did amazing things.

[Pro Libertate]

The way I look at it, if I can breed with it, it's human.

[Brett L]

Drug scare in South Ehfricah.

This has all the signs of OMG!Hysteriaz! and being false.

[playa manhattan]

Heroin cut with HIV drugs? Sounds more expensive than need be...

[Raston Bot]

They'll lose out to the gang that cuts it with milaria drugs.

[playa manhattan]

Finally, drug dealers who care about their customers!

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Oregon teen found dead in wilderness had a fixation on 'Into the Wild'

An Arizona teenager found dead near his abandoned SUV in the woods of southern Oregon had been intrigued with the movie Into the Wild about a young man who goes into the wilderness, according to his father.

The body of Johnathan Croom, 18, was found Monday about 1,000 feet from where his vehicle was found last week in Riddle, a town of 1,200 people just off the state's main north-south thoroughfare, Interstate 5, Douglas County sheriff's spokesman Dwes Hutson said in a statement.

His death is being investigated as a suicide, the statement said.

Hutson said that text messages between Croom and a friend indicated the teenager wanted to run away and "leave his current life behind."

Henry David Thoreau claims another victim.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

Alexander Supertramp?

[Mad Scientist]

The body of Johnathan Croom, 18, was found Monday about 1,000 feet from where his vehicle was found

It must be some hellish wilderness if it kills you in less than a 1/4 mile.

[T]

It's Arizona in August. If nature boy didn't take enough water with him and couldn't find any, he'd be screwed in short order.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

They found him in Oregon, he was from Arizona.

I misread the headline.

[fish]

He was walking to Oregon from Arizona because he heard there was water there. Probably should have stopped in Nevada.

Still though....sucks for an 18 yr old to check out like that!

[Night Elf Mohawk]

It wasn't even Australia.

[Heroic Mulatto]

I'm guessing the kid had no idea about proper land navigation and ended up walking in circles. Then it started raining, and he got wet. He probably didn't know what to do when the wood is wet and you need to start a fire, so he died of hypothermia.

[Warty]

Look at you, Blaming the Victim. You need to unpack your knapsack and read Calidissident's links.

[Slammer]

Strippers to the rescue!

We feel this is the third leg of the Atlantic City triangle: gambling, alcohol and adult entertainment. It's a natural."

[Episiarch]

I don't think that'll be enough to save AC.

[T]

I thought the Donald was supposed to save it. I guess that didn't work out so hot?

[Episiarch]

Nothing can save AC, dude. Not unless it somehow declared itself the ultimate party town, legalized drugs and prostitution, and put strippers in every casino.

[Pro Libertate]

We should lobby for one city to be allowed to test this theory. I nominate. . .Washington, DC!

[jesse.in.mb]

Why would you sully good whores by putting them in DC?

[Pro Libertate]

I was thinking it might help clean things up if they legalized all the whoring going on there.

[thom]

You can't even drink a beer on the Boardwalk. What a crap hole.

[Warty]

NOW THERE'S TROUBLE BUSSING IN FROM OUT OF STATE

[hamilton]

Is it racist if you don't want a white person making your sushi? Standard liberal answer: it depends on what you were thinking at the time and who the owners of the restaurant are.

Mashiko, which has a Japanese owner, should not be accused of cultural appropriation. But if, hypothetically speaking, a group of white Americans opened a sushi restaurant and hired an all or mostly white staff, would race still "not matter"? In that instance, race would matter, and quite a bit, because the owners would be capitalizing off of others' culinary traditions and their own white privilege at the same time. It sounds great to say that everybody is equal or that you don't see race, but it minimizes the persistent systemic racism that favors white people over everyone else.

I'm beginning to lose track of the whole set of arguments here.

[Irish]

In that instance, race would matter, and quite a bit, because the owners would be capitalizing off of others' culinary traditions and their own white privilege at the same time.

What if you live in an area that's 95% white and have very few Asians who can work at your sushi restaurant? I like that liberals just assume that everyone lives somewhere with demographics identical to New York City.

[Auric Demonocles]

Actually, didn't that dot map thing that got posted last week show that NYC is incredibly segregated?

[Heroic Mulatto]

The map showed that NYC, like most cities in America, was segregated, but I wouldn't use the term "incredibly" compared to the "holy fuck!" I experienced upon seeing Detroit's map.

[Irish]

New York isn't that badly segregated compared to most major cities. Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit and LA are all worse.

[BiMonSciFiCon]

Hey now, Milwaukee is only segregated if your definition of segregation means "neighborhoods are almost exclusively the same race." Which is crazy talk, if you ask me.

[Lady Bertrum]

Neighborhoods in NYC are really tiny and the map probably wasn't scaled appropriately for density.

[Brandon]

Denver is extremely integrated. All 75 of our black people are fairly evenly spread around the city.

[hamilton]

Or what if you just have some talented sushi chefs who are white?

I never understood why the formula was not, simply, this: if you replay the scenario and switch the races around, and in any version/combination of races you say "hey, that's racist", then ALL of your versions are racist.

[Mickey Rat]

That's why you ignore them and not play their game, as it always is heads they win, tails you lose.

[T]

Yeah, the number of Japanese immigrants in Houston willing to work as sushi chefs is kinda low. So many sushi places have a Japanese head guy and the rest are... drumroll, please... Mexican.

[Coeus]

My favorite sushi chef is a Mexican.

[fish]

CAPITALIST PIG!

Always looking for cheaper labor!

[Calidissident]

When are people going to realize that race and culture are not the same thing? Culture is not encoded into DNA morons

[Marshall Gill]

Thomas Sowell has a fascinating book Race and Culture which I highly recommend.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

I'm beginning to really not give a shit. As far as I can tell, this sort of endless navel-gazing is engaged in by the losers of life, not the winners. Winners open restaurants despite what the losers have to say about it.

[Episiarch]

Yes. Why so many people want to link to and read the ravings of reality-challenged idiots is beyond me. It makes you stupider.

[hamilton]

But it feeds my libertarian smugness!

[playa manhattan]

I made sushi for my family last night. The "white privilege" is what made it so delicious and wrong.

[hamilton]

Did you serve it on top of a beautiful naked street urchiness?

[Calidissident]

As an Italian American I hereby declare that nobody of non-Italian descent shall ever open an Italian restaurant or ever make pasta or pizza. It's offensive to my culture.

Did I do that right?

[Episiarch]

That's a-spicy meat-a-ball!

[Generic Stranger]

Bobbida boopy? Bibbity boopy badaba!

[PapayaSF]

As an American of (mostly) English descent I hereby declare myself offended that so many people of non-English descent have appropriated my language without proper consent, and therefore declare all other cultural appropriations canceled out.

Now everyone can get on with their lives.

[lap83]

The funniest thing about this was how you couldn't use an English example that involved food.

[BuSab Agent]

Yes. And may I suggest you go after the Greeks attempting Italian cuisine first. What a Greek does to spaghetti is an abomination before all Gods and Men.

[Damned Fool]

If it tastes good, just eat it. Good sushi is one of the best things in this world. Don't let SJWs spoil it.

[tarran]

I'll derpsplate it into English:

It's OK for a Japanese guy to open and operate a Sushi restaurant, because he is Japanese. It's not OK for a white guy to do it, because I don't like white people owning things, particularly things that I think are appropriate only for specific ethnic groups, for example, Sushi restaurants should be exclusively owned and primarily operated by Japanese people. My views aren't racist, because I don't believe that the racial discrimination against white people that I engage in to be racism; white people are bad and deserve to be discriminated against. When I am made uncomfortable by the race of a person doing a particular task it's because it's genuinely wrong for the person to do that task, not because it's racism.

[Matrix]

Perfectly tanslated.

[DesigNate]

The thing is, their views are doubly racist for basically saying that only Japanese people should do this or only Hispanics should do that.

[Mad Scientist]

It's no fidderent from saying only women should do laundry, or only men should fight fires.

[Mad Scientist]

Fidderent? Grrrr.....

[DesigNate]

I'm so used to reading typos I didn't even notice it the first time I read your comment.

[CatoTheElder]

I thought it was intentional.

[Slammer]

I don't know, do people want old Japanese dudes making their Deep Dish pizza, or even real pizza for that matter?

[Cascadian Ephor Xenocles]

I don't want anyone making deep dish pizza.

[CatoTheElder]

They can make it. Just don't call it pizza.

[Matrix]

So if Mexicans opened up a Chinese restaurant or an Italian restaurant, does race matter? (Though it does not happen often that a Mexican owns the restaurant, many restaurants employ Mexicans)

and -9000 for using "white privilege"

[John]

There was a Mexican chef on food network the other week who runs a Koshar Mexican joint in la. Now that is AMERICA.

[Dweebston]

That's not "America," double-Hitler. That's Mexican-Judaic, and we're blessed to have him exposing uncouth Americans to his unique, diverse culture. Quite trying to appropriate it.

[Brandon]

The resort I stay at in Cozumel has an Italian executive chef who runs Mexican, Japanese and Italian restaurants in addition to the open-air grill. Nobody tell this guy that, I don't want to have to go through a picket line on my next vacation.

[playa manhattan]

The owner of one of the top sushi restaurants in NYC (Momofuku) is Korean. Is that OK?

[Enough About Palin]

Worse still, most Indian restaurants in the US are owned by Pakistanis.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Worst of all, those institutions of white culture, the 7/11 stores, are mostly owned by Pakis. It's a travesty.

[Cascadian Ephor Xenocles]

Isn't 7/11 a Japanese model?

[fish]

No...you're thinking servern erreven.

[Tejicano]

That should be "sebun irebun"

[Tejicano]

7/11 was originally an American chain but got bought out by a Japanese corporation. Japan didn't even have convenience stores when 7/11 first started out.

Now the current logistics blueprint might be based on a Japanese model - but bits and pieces of that are pretty much strung together from lots of different business management ideas.

[CE]

No wonder they're not very good. The only good Indian food I've had was in Canada.

[Matrix]

This is the thing that pisses me off about morons like them. Every culture has appropriated something from another culture. EVER LAST SINGLE CULTURE IN EXISTENCE TODAY has done this!

Cultures share things all the fucking time! It's how they grow and adapt!

I mean, fucking seriously! They can't find anything else to be rightly outraged about that they have to start nitpicking at issues that are not even a problem in the slightest sense of the word?

Seriously, this writer must be trolling us.

[Mad Scientist]

Sushi was invented by the Chinese and appropriated by the Japanese.

[PapayaSF]

And the Japanese are descended from Koreans, anyway.

[jesse.in.mb]

Have someone film you saying that to a group of Japs. Then upload it here.

pleeeaaaseee

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

ROR

Everybody knows Japs are directly descended from Princess Brilliant Blossoms

[PapayaSF]

It's true, and it did cause some distress when this was discovered years ago, because many Japanese do look down on Koreans.

[jesse.in.mb]

many Japanese do look down on Koreans

HAHA, that's an understatement. I got a ton of flak in Japan when they found out I was visiting from teaching English in Korea.

[Calidissident]

Hell if you wanna go down that route, everyone is descended from East Africans

[Mad Scientist]

Sicilians!

[CE]

Everyone on the planet is descended from Africans, but that somehow hasn't stopped racism.

[Enough About Palin]

Cajun sausage was first made by Germans in Louisiana.

[Brandon]

I thought sushi was invented in Vietnam?

[Calidissident]

Exactly, and it's especially true of American culture

[thom]

There seem to be a lot of people who genuinely want this to be our "pencils down" moment.

[tarran]

Let me guess, Italian restaurants with their racially insensitive use of pasta, expropriated ruthlessly from the Chinese, are yet another example of white privilege oppressing other, less fortunate races.

I'll bet the guy has a heart attack every time he passes an Olive Garden, or even worse a Red Lobster with the logo of slave food!

[PapayaSF]

And don't forget that they stole the tomato from Native Americans!

[Pro Libertate]

That's probably a myth that the Italians got pasta via the Chinese. Certainly, the Marco Polo story is nonsense, because the Romans ate pasta.

[Cascadian Ephor Xenocles]

A major derivative of SJW thought is that cultures belong in ghettos, never to mix. If you like something from another culture you're stealing it. Also, culture is 100% heritable.

[Dweebston]

Apparently you're unaware of what "stasis" means to these people. It doesn't matter how things came to be, only that they stay there, forever.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

DERP

[Enough About Palin]

"But if, hypothetically speaking, a group of white Americans opened a sushi restaurant and hired an all or mostly white staff, would race still "not matter"? In that instance, race would matter, and quite a bit,"

This is why there is no sushi in North Dakota.

[Brandon]

http://kobescuisinegroups.net/

[B.P.]

In a previous thread, I noticed that someone in Japan capitalized off of "others' culinary traditions" by creating the pizzaburger. Goddamn systemic racists.

[BigT]

Sign in McDonalds: Scotsman wanted.

[Palin's Buttplug]

The number of jobless in France has hit an all-time high. Never before have so many residents of that country actually not been paid for not working.

If only they had elected Romney.

[sgs]

If only your father had the sack to push your mother down the stairs.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Hey, I've been told Romney had a jobs plan! Of course there is no evidence of such.

[Enough About Palin]

Hey, I've been told Romney Obama had a jobs plan! Of course there is no evidence of such.

[Marshall Gill]

Oh, yes there is plenty of evidence. That evidence leads one to believe that the plan was to eliminate jobs, but you can't say he didn't have a plan.

[CatoTheElder]

Indeed, he planned to eliminate some jobs, but that was only a small part of the plant.

More importantly, he planned to make all the other jobs part-time.

[Finrod]

Insert the Joker's speech from The Dark Knight about how as long as there's a plan, everything is ok, even if the plan is horrible.

[lap83]

Nobody gives a shit about Romney

[lap83]

(that was to PB)

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

If 'Game of Thrones' wanted to have an upbeat, happy ending

[Fist of Etiquette]

NO SPOILERS.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

DEAN NORRIS SPOILS EVERYTHING

[Fist of Etiquette]

I'm not clicking any of these links. In fact, I'm leaving altogether.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Hey everyone, if we want to evict Fist from the PM links just label your links as Game of Thrones spoilers!

[Raston Bot]

kinda funny how a song about dancing has the worst dancing ever.

[Raston Bot]

Factoid: despite being purportedly about safety, everyone in that video died. Which was deemed "for the best" by investigators.

[Episiarch]

Fry: Hey, buddy, I'm from the same time as you. Remember that song, Safety Dance?

That Guy: Sure do! We can dance! (hums Safety Dance)

Fry: Y'know, that dance wasn't as safe as they said it was.

[Mickey Rat]

I didn't know Tywin's kids had a band.

[Finrod]

A groaner of a joke:

Did you know that the author of Game Of Thrones can't use Twitter? He's already killed 140 characters.

[CE]

If you think it ends happily, you haven't been watching.

[Mike M.]

Markets plunge, now back down to where they were two months ago.

I don't think Bernanke has enough printing presses at his disposal to be able to offset the effects of what's likely to happen to the fraudulently inflated global markets once we get involved in this stupid war.

[Palin's Buttplug]

You're really hoping for a market disaster, aren't you? And I doubt you are short a dime.

TEAM RED ALL THE WAY!

[CatoTheElder]

Nothing like an contrived exogenous event to take the blame for a bear market.

It's all Assad's fault.

[Auric Demonocles]

I've got a customer that is finally getting around to upgrading versions of our software. We release twice a year, and they are moving from one of the ones in 07 to the one we released this spring. I actually had to install the old version on my computer specifically for this project because it was so old. And I forgot how awful it was. It's crazy to see how far software has come in 6 years... What else that I remember fondly from 2007 sucks ass?

[NeonCat]

Senator Obama?

[Auric Demonocles]

I remember him from 07, but not fondly. I'm not a Reason editor.

[NeonCat]

Well, hell, dude, how are *we* supposed to know what you remember from '07 at all?

[jesse.in.mb]

The song Fergalicious?

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Market failure! Millions of Americans live in a food desert

Considering the significant impact that food deserts and food swamps have on the nutrition of residents in low-income communities, the SNAP to Health report provides a list of key recommendations to improve health and nutrition for people enrolled in this federal food assistance program. These recommendations include increasing access to healthy foods, establishing stronger food stocking standards for SNAP retailers, consideration of restricting the purchase of certain junk foods and beverages, and providing incentives to buy fruits and vegetables. Additionally, more grocery stores should be built in areas currently classified as food deserts, but until this happens, the "swamp" aspect of these communities must be addressed. Retailers that accept SNAP benefits but stock junk foods must improve the quality and variety of the foods that are sold. SNAP vendors should be incentivized or even required to sell produce, milk, and other healthy foods. Some may argue that these changes would ultimately reduce the number of SNAP retailers in areas with already limited access and resources, but the success of other federal food assistance programs and local initiatives that adopt this strategy suggest this would not be the case.

Unless it involves Wal-Mart, because fuck Wal-Mart, even if it offers healthy foods.

[T]

Wait, WTF is a food swamp? What did I miss in progressive victimization while I was working?

[Heroic Mulatto]

A "food swamp" is a supermarket that sells food liberal, Upper Middle class White women don't approve of.

[T]

They must be who keeps the 'organic' section of my Kroger in business, since I never see anyone in those aisles.

[playa manhattan]

It sounds delicious.

I was at a bachelor party in Portland this weekend and there was an entire square block of food trucks right next to the hotel. That must be what they are referring to....

[Slammer]

Retailers that accept SNAP benefits but stock junk foods must improve the quality and variety of the foods that are sold.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Listen. When the assistant Surgeon-General tells you, you must do something, you do it.

Don't make her put on her sailor suit!

[PapayaSF]

And even if that happens, who is going to make sure they store and cook things properly when they get it all home? I think the federal government should get more involved. Perhaps advisors can be stationed in grocery stores and go home with people and give them food advice there.

BTW, in CA SNAP benefits can be used at fast food restaurants now.

[CatoTheElder]

Why not just establish a separate barracks society for EBT beneficiaries to ensure that they eat correctly?

[Michael S. Langston]

lol - my guess is they will literally stock anything that makes money. That's why they call it a market.

Forcing them to stock things their customers do not want is idiotic.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

They're still banging on the food desert drum?

[CatoTheElder]

If Susan Blumenthal, M.D. wants to build a business selling healthy food in "food deserts", she should have at it.

"Retailers that accept SNAP benefits but stock junk foods" probably do so because fresh vegetables tend to rot on the shelves in the markets they serve.

Why not go back to the old system and pass out free vegetables with the free cheese and bread?

[Brandon]

Millions of Americans live in the middle of a desert, a food desert that is.

Holy shit, this is something that was actually published on HuffPo? I know I shouldn't be surprised by their standards, but somehow, I constantly am.

[Brett L]

So, 10 year old girl was charged with rape after playing doctor with a 4 year old boy. Sure am glad we involved the police.

Whatever you think of the charges, this is clearly illegal:
"It's a nightmare even having to go through something like this, because that's my baby," her mother told the station, adding that she was not allowed to observe the 45-minute questioning of her daughter.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Not that I hope it ever matters, but I'm pretty sure if the cops did this to my kids they'd get nothing but silence, "I want my Dad," or "I want a lawyer." They know that nothing they are told will be the truth. They'd cry, but I'm about 90% sure they wouldn't talk.

[Brett L]

I'm starting this project while the first one is still enwombed. I whisper "don't trust police, ever. Don't talk to cops without your dad or mom."

[Juice]

Hey, so that's what Quanell X has been up to.

[Coeus]

Social justice movement continues to dissapoint.

"Holder is taking a fairly plausible approach to reducing the U.S. incarceration rate at the level where he can effect it. But that's not the level that matters most, and if we were to get serious about reducing the state-level incarceration and admissions rates, we need to talk not just about reducing sentences for drug crimes but also about reducing prison admissions for drug offenses, and perhaps also lowering sentences for property crime and even violent offenses, particularly robbery."

[PapayaSF]

Yeah, less punishment for robbery, that will makes things better.

[Coeus]

As the Jenna Six and George Zimmerman debacles have taught us, this country will never be truly free until young black males can jump people with little consequence.

[Enough About Palin]

Socialism justice movement continues to dissapoint.

[Tejicano]

"Social justice movement continues to dissapoint."

I'm not dissapointed. You have to have positive expectations to be dissapointed.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Pat Robertson Claims Gays Deliberately Spread AIDS Using Sharp Jewelry

http://livewire.talkingpointsm.....liberately

[jesse.in.mb]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Pat Robertson doesn't really represent the religious right anymore. I know plenty of crazy evangelicals who really want him to STFU and go away forever (although they phrase it in a much nicer way).

Also he is hilariously cray-cray.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Pat is a thieving POS whose used his wife to smuggle diamonds into the country. He pushes for charitable donations to his ministry while driving open-top Corvettes. If there is a Hell, he's headed straight for it.

[playa manhattan]

Last I heard of him, he was blaming the Haitian earthquake on the devil (as opposed to plate tectonics).

[Enough About Palin]

WELL WHERE DO YOU THINK HELL IS, DIPSIHT?

[NeonCat]

From the BBC: Gay Pakistan, "where sex is available and relationships are difficult"

FTA:"...My father is a gentleman but I wouldn't put it past him to put a bullet through my head. I'm all for being 'true to myself' but I don't want to die young," she says.

[John]

I keep hearing all of the people bitching a out the Russian gay laws and the Olympics next year. You know the World Cup is in Qatar in 2018. Their gay laws are pretty harsh last I looked. But none of these people so angry about Russia seem to care.

[NeonCat]

If the Russians want to be taken seriously/not be criticized they need to have suicide bombers, behead people, etc.

And no, I am not saying all Islamic people are like that, but the rep is sufficient to minimize criticism by vocal Westerners.

[John]

They need to be victims of imperialism.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

World Cup for Qatar is 2022.
2018 is in Russia

[Apatheist ?_??]

Yep and I have heard complaints about this. But in general less, but also less than the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Why? Because the Olympics are in a couple months.

[jesse.in.mb]

Ha, I was hit on by a Pakistani fellow at a Korean sauna when I was living over there. He kept talking about his Korean wife (and encouraging me to marry a Korean woman) and I sort of missed that he was hitting on me until after the fact.

[John]

My wife works with a gay Palistinian. Very nice guy. His parents back in Gaza would behead him if they ever found out.

[jesse.in.mb]

Cleopatra's Wedding Present is a recounting of a British guy's travel through Syria. He ends up traveling around with a former "freedom fighter" and he recounts a bit on a bus where some older Syrian guys are joking around with the Syrian guy that it was good he got himself a British boy to fuck because they would do things good Syrian girls wouldn't.

Middle Eastern sexual mores are so categorically different from Western ones that it's hard for me to wrap my head around them.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Middle Eastern sexual mores are so categorically different from Western ones that it's hard for me to wrap my head around them.

It's quite easy. It's not "gay" if the following conditions are met. A.) You are on top, always. B.)The bottom doesn't have a beard.

[jesse.in.mb]

Yeah, part of the joke in the book was that the Syrian guy was actually primarily acting as the bottom in the relationship.

He might have been a Palestinian "freedom fighter" who had moved to Syria...I feel like I should reread this book now.

[John]

Yeah. The same people who will murder someone for being gay will engage in pederasty. Pederasty is pretty common. But homosexuals are to be stoned to death. They in many ways more gay than sailors. I don't get it.

[Goldwin Smith]

So shouldn't Manning change his name to Wommaning? Manning (and Zimmerman for that matter) are such sexist patriarchial names.

[T]

You're late with teh jokez. I thought 'Chelsea Demanning' was funnier, anyway.

[Outlaw]

Chelsea Womynning

[John]

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimbal.....e-edition/

Anyone else seen the video of OKeef trying to give a copy of his book to the former us attorney now assistant dean of Tulane Law school? It is priceless. Here is the fucking picture of our ruling class. Except that this asshole can no longer terrorize people. And am. Is he bitter about it. His tears and important rage are yummy.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Wal-Mart announces it will extend benefits to same-sex couples, progressive gay activist still nitpicks

But don't worry?Wal-Mart's newfound magnanimity isn't due to a sudden appreciation for gay rights. According to a memo sent to employees by Sally Welborn, the company's senior vice president of benefits, and leaked to Joe.My.God., the move is "a business decision, not a moral or political decision." Welborn claims that following the Supreme Court's invalidation of DOMA, "states are developing different definitions of marriage, domestic partner, civil union, etc. By developing a single definition for all Walmart associates in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, we are able to ensure consistency for associates across our markets." (Translation: Anthony Kennedy made us do it.)

We shouldn't undervalue Wal-Mart's decision, inevitable as it may be in light of DOMA's demise: The move will undoubtedly bring significant new benefits to thousands of gay couples across the country. Still, Welborn's emphatically apolitical reasoning is a little strange. Most American companies seize on their gay friendly policies to attract the LGBT crowd, even engaging in a little pro-gay activism and marketing to corner the LGBT market share.

It's not enough to be equal, people must also like gays and want to march in pride parades!

[John]

If you do it to make money it doesn't count. Shame on gay people for letting socialist assholes speak for them.

[Coeus]

Still so very committed to the lie.

I'm sad I missed this when it was first posted for the June anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, but the wage discrimination infographic below is too great not to highlight, whatever the month. The chart is remarkably clear, comparing the "full dollar" earned by a white man to the lesser compensation provided to white, black, and Latina women for equal work ? and, perhaps perversely, Emily Nemens' design is also quite beautiful.

[DesigNate]

I love that the one comment on the post is bitching about them leaving off Asian women. Haha, bitten in the ass by her own "white privilege".

[Coeus]

I love that the one comment on the post is bitching about them leaving off Asian women.

Problematically, they make more than white males. But it's never been about equality (even of outcome). It's about bringing white males down in the rankings.

[Calidissident]

I know Asians on average earn more than whites, but do Asian women really earn more than white men?

[Coeus]

Probably not across the board. The chart I saw was for age 40 and under.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

What do London Underground stops taste like?

[Atanarjuat]

Phew, it's just a guy who can taste words. I thought it was going to be some Steve-O type licking a bunch of subway stops.

[NeonCat]

When/if you get tired of 3D printing firearms: fossils you can print.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

I am excited for the UEFA Champions League group Stage draw.
NO SPOILER

[Res Publica Americana]

Soccer is Satan's game.

[thom]

Satan would find soccer soft and pointless. Don't like the result at the end of the game? Just add extra time! This is actually my number one issue with soccer and the reason I do not take it seriously as a sport.

[CE]

It's sort of like real life though. You're never quite sure when it's going to end.

[Finrod]

Personally I call it metric football.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

Looking for link, but last night on the radio a reporter berated a Nestle rep for bottling water and selling it for a profit.
How dare someone make a profit off a basic human need!

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

John Challinor, of Nestl? Waters Canada, responds to the criticism over the cash flow his company gets from selling millions of litres of water that it draws for free from Hope, British Columbia. Last week Sheila Muxlow of the lobby group The WaterWealth Project told us that the practice is perfectly legal. Now the province has said it will reconsider its water use rules.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Ever wondered what your state's porn preference is? Texas loves teenagers while Californians like the Asian girls based on Pornhub searches

[Matrix]

Suth'ners love them ebony girls.

[John]

California has more tech geeks who tend to have the Asian fetish.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Georgia likes the ebony.

[Episiarch]

Someone put out a more detailed version of exactly that, but they listed the top 10 searches per state, so it showed a little more nuance. I can't remember who did it, though.

[Irish]

It was a world map and I recall that Icelanders had a bizarre fetish for Native Americans.

[Episiarch]

Yeah, I think that was the one. Did it break down the US by state, though?

[Irish]

Yes. It broke up the U.S. by state but the rest of the world by country.

Personally I think that's hilarious.

"The only place on Earth with regional differences is America! People in one part of Germany are just like the people in every other part of Germany!"

[Pro Libertate]

You'd think people would know better. For instance, Germany as a politically unified nation is a recent phenomenon, both when considering the recent unification of West Germany and East Germany and the unification of the German states in the 1800s. So there's a shitload of cultural variation there.

[Calidissident]

I believe it was Romania that had some pretty fucked up incestuous fantasies.

Was that map based on data from Pornhub?

[jesse.in.mb]

Global Internet Porn Habits Infographic

The below interactive infographic shows the top 10 most commonly searched terms on porn sites over a 6 month period. You can check out every state in the U.S. and then see what other countries around the world are searching for.

Romania's top response was "mom and son"

[Irish]

Israel's apparently really into prostate pornography.

This confuses and disturbs me.

[jesse.in.mb]

This confuses and disturbs me.

Now we know what Irish will be fapping to for the next few weeks.

[Irish]

HAHAHAHAHA!

Nigeria's number 3 is "Things I jack off to."

[Heroic Mulatto]

Nigeria's third most searched for link is my personal blog?

When did this happen?

[jesse.in.mb]

Nigeria's third most searched for link is my personal blog Tumblr?

Get with the times man!

[Calidissident]

Irish, I made the same observation the last time Jesse posted this. I guess they get right to the point (no pun intended) over there

[Sidd Finch]

I'd guess most of that is "Romanians."

[Pro Libertate]

Where's DC?

[Irish]

They don't need to search for porn online since most of them just masturbate to the pictures of their swearing in.

[Pro Libertate]

I find its omission odd, nonetheless.

What does Canada have as number one, Mountie porn?

[jesse.in.mb]

Too filthy to show.

[Pro Libertate]

Good point.

[Enyap]

Jesus Christ, Hungary is fucked up!

[Heroic Mulatto]

We, here in New Hampshire, prefer "compilation" because as frugal Yankee-types, we believe we're getting more for our money and/or saving time.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Kentucky likes hentai. Damn, that is embarrassing.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

What the hell is an 'anita queen' and why is it so popular in Nevada?

[Heroic Mulatto]

Are you saying you don't recognize the star of such masterpieces as Lesbian Prison, Big Titty Lesbians, and Big Natural Tits 9?

[jesse.in.mb]

Or the global version, which I may have linked to previously.

[Episiarch]

That's the one I was thinking of.

[Gbob]

You notice that every state north of Texas likes creampie. Except Nebraska, which likes POV. Given that Nebraska is a flat and gray horizon of never ending purgatory, my guess is that they're searching for any point of view that isn't the one outside their window. Like trees. Or hills. Anything. Any point of view that isn't Nebraska is terrible erotic for them.

[Palin's Buttplug]

The absence of bukkake is noteworthy.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Are Antidepressants Ruining American Women?

[Longtorso, Johnny]

...Multiply this effect a hundredfold in the homeland of the SWPL: The big blue whitening cities of the coasts, where every vibrantly atomized lawyercunt and her bovine cockblock are hopped up on happy happy happy pills. No joke, I'd bet 80% of Obama Country college-grad white chicks are dazed and confused with the help of Big Father Pharma. That percentage jumps to 99% when you expand the age range to include spinsters with two or more cats aka alpha male substitutes....

[Cascadian Ephor Xenocles]

That made as much sense as a Jezebel clipping, but in a different way. Then I saw Heartiste in the URL.

[Coeus]

That site was going downhill before I started reading it 5 years ago. All the good stuff was in the archives from a few years earlier.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Yes.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Marcotte's crusade against common sense continues:

There are many, many sleazy things about the relentless sex panic that conservatives return to when trying to wiggle out of facing the ugly racial disparities caused by their preferred policies, but the truth-lover in me keeps returning to the underlying dishonesty of concern trolling "unwed" mothers. There's a statistical sleight-of-hand that conservatives use to make the situation of women not being legally wed the day they give birth seem more dire than it is. They reference the greater economic and time management problems facing women who are raising children by themselves and imply that this group is identical to women who aren't legally married when they give birth. And there's a side dose there of implying that most to all of the women who aren't legally married when they give birth just got knocked up by some random dude that they don't have an ongoing relationship with[...]

A lot of single mothers broke up after a cohabitation situation, making them legally never-married, but it's dishonest to suggest they're markedly different than the married-than-divorced group.

This is so brazenly silly I'll let it stand on it's own without commentary.

[Irish]

This is idiotic.

One of the primary reasons liberals give for the need for legalized abortion is the damage caused to the life of a young woman who has a child before she is ready, particularly if she is unmarried.
How can these mendacious idiots claim that privileged white feminist princesses, most of whom have a support network, will have their lives ruined by unplanned pregnancy, but somehow poor African Americans living in neighborhoods where no one has any money to support them can have unwed pregnancies with no dire consequences?

And there's a side dose there of implying that most to all of the women who aren't legally married when they give birth just got knocked up by some random dude that they don't have an ongoing relationship with

No you fucking idiot. If someone gets knocked up by someone they have an ongoing relationship with but they're both sixteen years old, then the fact that they are boyfriend and girlfriend is irrelevant. In a poor neighborhood where no one has the money to support her, the girl's life is still going to be ruined and she is likely to spend the rest of her days in poverty.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Yup. Besides, who the hell cares what a 16-year old without any meaningful life experience considers a meaningful "ongoing relationship"?

Sure, you could argue that 16-year olds in the past had the maturity and pragmatism to determine such things, but in this society that means fuck-all. College, getting a first job, and getting a first career are all significant life markers that will dramatically change what that little girl wants out of life and her boyfriend. Somehow Amanduh doesn't quite connect the 16- or even 19-year old single mother's maturity level with the fact that most of these relationships are highly unstable and lead to the parade of boyfriends common to the situation of single-motherhood.

[Derpetologist]

Feminists: Making comedy easier since 1920.

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

What's so silly about saying there's no appreciable difference between people who broke up after getting a government permission slip and people who just broke up all on their own?

I think she has a good point that single mothers != unwed mothers, and throwing out statistics as if they are the same is pointless.

Of course, I also think she's wrong to diss on George Will for making a big deal out of the actual single parenting problem.

[Episiarch]

Now, this is the one thing I can get behind with the Marcotte links: nicole can't help but read the whole thing--because she is the worst--and then she'll go and torture herself and parse the whole thing out for us. It's sort of a win/lose/win thing.

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

It's a curse, wanting people who are generally right not to get things wrong so they don't fuck their whole argument and allow people like Marcotte a retarded in that they don't deserve.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Aww, thanks, nicole. With that kind of attitude, you might start fooling people into thinking that you really aren't the worst.

[Episiarch]

Don't fall for it! She only does it because she's the worst!

[Episiarch]

I don't think Marcotte can get anything other than a retarded in, mostly because she seems to be retarded.

[Killazontherun]

It's how Nikki puts a check on her own privilege.

[Irish]

It's irrefutable that unmarried people who have children tend to have much worse outcomes than those that don't. Places in this country with high levels of poverty tend to stay that way because people have kids too young and are therefore never able to build a nest egg when they're young or get a good job before the kid becomes their primary focus.

Pretending otherwise is idiotic but Marcotte doesn't care because she's a prissy little white liberal and doesn't have to worry about the real world. She gets to discuss her little feminist theories while other people suffer.

Fuck her. She's a miserable little harpy nesting in filth and is undeserving of anything but our scorn.

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

It's irrefutable that unmarried people who have children tend to have much worse outcomes than those that don't. Places in this country with high levels of poverty tend to stay that way because people have kids too young and are therefore never able to build a nest egg when they're young or get a good job before the kid becomes their primary focus.

That's great. So talk about some stats on people who have kids at a young age, without savings, without being established, and without being in a committed relationship. Not about stats that equate the 15-year-old who got knocked up and was too stupid to get an abortion with a 35-year-old divorcee living comfortably on her I-banker ex-husband's alimony.

[Irish]

When people are talking about unwed mothers in poor communities, I have a feeling that very few of them are 35 year old divorcees living comfortably off a banker's alimony.

He was in no way equating those things. He was talking specifically about low income black communities and single parents in those areas. Bringing up the fact that there are rich socialites living off an investment banker's alimony is ludicrous because he was talking about a specific community that investment bankers don't tend to frequent.

[John]

That is what pi wraps don't get. Vice is something only rich people can afford. If you are some top shelf white girl with mommy and daddy to put you through college and send you checks if need be, you can afford to get knocked up or go through four husbands. If you are poor you can't do that. And liberals never can accept that reality that the poor, since they have so little margin for error have to be more responsible than the rich. It is just racist to ever point that out.

[PapayaSF]

Supporting traditional marriage (for non-gays, at least) for the sake of the children would be seen as a step backward for lefty feminists like Marcotte. It would contradict too many of their messages: that conservatives are always wrong, that poverty is the fault of capitalism, etc.

[John]

That is because idiots like her think everyone should be able to be as irresponsible as she is.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

I think she has a good point that single mothers != unwed mothers, and throwing out statistics as if they are the same is pointless.

How many people do that? The stats I see are unwed mothers -- they weren't married when the kid was born -- not single mothers.

The issues often end up being pretty similar, in the aggregate, don't they?

[Nikkis enthusiastic dissent]

I have no idea how many unwed mothers are in committed cohabitative relationships, or how many will be by the time the kid is a toddler, or how many will be married as soon as they lose the baby weight, etc.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Either very damned few or it doesn't make a helluva lot of difference statistically (i.e., it is just as suboptimal).

[sgs]

I agree with his answer.

[John]

Very few single moms live with the father.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Don't single mothers by definition equal unwed mothers?

Less pedantically, there is significant overlap between single motherhood and unstable households -- much more overlap than is the case with married couples. Similarly situated cohabiting couples have similar stats; we're agreed on that. Most single mothers aren't similarly situated to your average bourgeois married couple -- as a general rule, they don't get pregnant at the same age, they don't get pregnant in a stable relationship, and they don't get pregnant in a situation where they can be expected to maintain themselves and their child. Married couples mitigate some of this risk -- and since marriage tends to happen a little later in life when both parties have at least some meaningful life experience, a married couple avoids some of the heartache of early pregnancy. It is a proxy for discussion of stable relationships.

To expect this long digression in a TV roundtable interview is stupid, and the only reason Amanduh engages in it is because, like most feminists, she sees single motherhood as a perfectly fine Fairytale Princess fantasy insofar as it's the Right People engaging in it, and sees objections to it as another front in the War against Women. (Until it's time to talk up the benefits of abortion, anyways.)

[John]

For the right people single motherhood is great. For everyone else it is the oppressive result of not getting an abortion.

[DesigNate]

There are many, many sleazy things about the relentless sex panic that conservatives Democrats return to when trying to wiggle out of facing the ugly racial disparities caused by their preferred policies.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

More Amanderp:

Tuesday morning, Fox and Friends decided, for reasons that are hazy at best, that their latest attack on Obamacare should be on one of the most noncontroversial provisions in the law: the ban on gender rating for insurance premiums. Dr. David Samadi came on the show to argue that because women use more health care?mostly because they live longer on average, tend to see doctors for checkups more, and because child-bearing is expensive?they should be required to pay more[...]

He had what he considered a perfect solution to fix all the problems with the health care system: You don't get health care unless you have the cash to pay for it. While he made an exception for accidents and other emergency room costs?he supports a catastrophic insurance system?his solution for all other health care was nutty even by Fox News standards: "When it comes to your CAT scans, X-rays, doctors, you have to come in with your credit card or cash and say, 'I'd like to see the doctor.' "

People paying for what they use?! Horrors! Will the depths of Rethuglican depravity never cease?

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

But it's okay for car insurance providers to charge men more than women based on their statistical likelihood to get into an accident.

[Agammamon]

Actually, to these people its *not*. The thing is, its *men* being oppressed and they can wait - you can be sure the sorts of 'egalitarians' will be back as soon as they stop getting mileage out of 'women's issues' to try to scrape the last bit of coercive power out of the barrel.

[John]

Feminism is a out shielding privileged white girls from the consiquences of their actions. It is funny how they always scream about privilege when the most pampered creature in society is the middle or upper class educated white women.

[Generic Stranger]

Is your "B" key broken? That's the second time I've seen you type "about" as "a out".

[Gbob]

john is trying to keep us from his big secret. He's really Canadian. If we hear him say "about" like "aboot" we'll be on to him.

[John]

I am stuck waiting using a smart phone and the b key is next to the space bar.

[Calidissident]

I assume he accidentally hit the space bar, since it's right below the B key

[Calidissident]

Didn't see John's post before I made mine

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

And the attack on catastrophic insurance (a redundant term anyway) continues apace.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Cheap high-deductible plans will continue on though.

But yes, the old ones are being larded up a bit.

[Agammamon]

'Cheap high-deductible plans will continue on though.'

How, when the new regulations require health 'insurance' to cover things that current 'cheap high-deductible plans' don't?

How are they going to instantly switch to providing *more* coverage for the same price?

[Sidd Finch]

Has she ever complained about car insurance disparities?

[Coeus]

This newfound enthusiasm for strict economic fairness between men and women sadly did not lead Fox to also advocate that men stop getting paid more than women for their work, even though they had a perfect opportunity to do so on Monday, which was Women's Equality Day.

And again.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

High school teacher gets 30 days in the pokey for rape of 14 year old student

A Yellowstone County district judge Monday ordered a former Senior High teacher convicted of raping a 14-year-old female student who later committed suicide to spend 30 days in jail.

Judge G. Todd Baugh sentenced Stacey Dean Rambold to 15 years in prison, with all but 31 days suspended, for sexual intercourse without consent.

The judge's sentence was not received well by the girl's mother, who repeatedly screamed "You people suck!" and stormed out of the courtroom.

Auliea Hanlon testified earlier at the hearing that her daughter's relationship with Rambold was a "major factor" in her suicide, and she begged the judge to order Rambold to prison.
[...]
Baugh said he listened to recorded statements given by Morales before her death and believes that while she was a troubled youth, she was "as much in control of the situation" as Rambold.

The judge also said Morales was "older than her chronological age."

[Coeus]

Odd, they've been screaming about a similar case in England, except the girl is unharmed. But nothing about this one.

Oh, yeah, the adult was a man. Guess it makes sense now.

[Coeus]

Colorlines is so desperate to scream "cultural appropriation", that they're putting the Miley Cyrus performance on black people.

Also, this:

Last night, as Cyrus stalked the stage, mugging and twerking, and paused to spank and simulate analingus upon the ass of a thickly set African-American backup dancer, her act tipped over into what we may as well just call racism: a minstrel show routine whose ghoulishness was heightened by Cyrus's madcap charisma, and by the dark beauty of "We Can't Stop" ? by a good distance, the most powerful pop hit of 2013.

Is there a black stereo type of lesbian analingus I'm unaware of?

[Palin's Buttplug]

Whoopi Goldberg?

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

You finally made me snicker

[Cascadian Ephor Xenocles]

I once heard a joke about the similarity between walking a tightrope and getting head from Whoopi Goldberg.

[Tejicano]

I read somewhere - implied between the lines somewhat - that Whoopi had at one time been a junkie prostitute. My first mental reaction was "I guess it would be hard to support a habit given what she had to offer".

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Salon outrage is just so meta

Actually, Ingraham is so wrong, she's sort of right. Liberals did co-opt King's radical, anti-corporate and antiwar agenda long ago. The King we commemorate today is a friendly shadow of his challenging, radical, visionary self.

Which is why Obama will commemorate King tomorrow and bomb Syria the next day. Dr. King would have been so proud!

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

But that's not what the ignorant and vicious Ingraham was saying. She's pretending King was some kind of conservative hero whose message of colorblindness ? and that wasn't his message at all ? has been co-opted by liberal race-baiters and whiners and malcontents, who just won't accept that Bobby Jindal is right when he talks about the "end of race," because a first-generation Indian immigrant's experience of racism is identical to that of people who were enslaved for hundreds of years, and he gets to decide when racism is over. Ingraham's co-opting comment was just dumb. Typically dumb. What was unusually vicious, even for the often nasty radio host, was that she decided to interrupt an audio clip of the heroic Rep. John Lewis, the youngest person to speak at the march 50 years ago, speaking on Saturday, with the sound of a crackling gunshot.

A gunshot. After the assassinations of Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King, after the gunning down of so many civil rights workers over the years, Ingraham thought it was funny, or clever, or provocative, to "symbolically" cut off Lewis' speech with the sound of a gun.

Guns are bad, mmmkay?

[PapayaSF]

whose message of colorblindness ? and that wasn't his message at all

So that "color of their character" thing was just all a big misunderstanding?

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

It's weird, they want to embrace King's crazy socialist ideas--he hated that we spent money going to the Moon instead of spending it all on welfare--while distancing themselves from anything he said that would require blacks and other minorities to take personal responsibility for themselves.

[Goldwyn]

Sarcasm?

[Mickey Rat]

They are saying the big take away line from the "I Have a Dream" speech, well MLK lied about that.

[NeonCat]

"We have guided missiles and misguided men."-MLK

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

The posted "fine" for swallowing the toe was $500.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Nope

[Goldwin Smith]

Trigger warning: Rape Culture

This attack on Obama is some serious microagressive shit, like that time some guy looked me, you nihilist lunatic libertardians should check your privilege, like Leo Frank, and stop you mansplaining, gendered logic that is a sociopolitical, linguistic, ethnological, etological, entological, teleologocial, physiological, ecological construct of dead white straight euro male cis privilege rape structures that are deeply embedded in the persistent bedrock of white male cis privilege to cultural appropriate foreign cultures without permission from Obama and is steeped in linguistical otherings and immanitized constructs of our ecologically corrupt cis bipriviliged rape culture with its white male cis science, white male cis logic and economics that are little more than apologists for Romneyite and Paulite rapists. Newtonian physics is another rape privilege machine. Economics is rape, rape is oppression, economics is oppression, oppression is trauma. Science, logic and economics are cis biprivileged othered gendered rape machines to traumatize us and are so embedded in our cis birape culture that we need Obamacare and to invade Syria. By not invading Syria we are violating the freedom of Syria to be free from Assad. Also I get raped 20 gazillion times a day when I step out of my room and am required to shower and put on clothes. PATRIARCHY! Rape Culture!

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Wow. Did you just stream of consciousness that onto the page or did you work on it for a while?

[Killazontherun]

Bicist!

[Agammamon]

You know, adding 'trigger-warning' to any post here (when its not part of something quoted) is a one-way ticket to no-one ever taking you seriously again.

[Goldwin Smith]

Even as parody?

[Goldwin Smith]

Did anyone of you get permission to eat pizza? Fast Food is cultural appropriation of the worst kind. Did Italy, Germany and Greece give us permission to eat those foods? And did the Emperor allow you to eat sushi?

[Hyperion]

The White House is reportedly planning a shake-up in its economic team, including a new head of the National Economic Council

Look, dummies, your leftist economic policies will not work, no matter who is in charge. Wow, you really cannot fix stupid.

[Goldwin Smith]

Well the US needs another war to save the economy. It worked in WWII but not in Iraq because of BOOOOOOSH!

[John]

Jay Carney is saying the goal in Syria will not be to overthrow Assad. So why are we bombing his forces? It is like Bush's retarded little brother is President.

[Sidd Finch]

Neil?

[Lady Bertrum]

We're bombing because if we don't Obama loses face over his red-line statement. This is really lose-lose for him now. If he doesn't bomb he looks weak, and if he does bomb he looks reactive - like he's responding to a provocation out of pride rather than policy.

[John]

And when he does bomb and Assad is still in power he looks even worse.

[Lady Bertrum]

And that's why Carney made the statement. Pre-emptive ass covering.

[Slammer]

Did you see his weak stumbling answer when they asked him how chemical weapons use poses a threat to he United States?

[Hyperion]

Was it anything like all the other of his weak stumbling answers? I can actually visualize it, though I am trying not to.

[Hyperion]

Well, he told the truth for once. It's to distract attention from all the non-scandals here at home.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Little Matty explains his job:

Slate pays me to create value for Slate through a mix of attracting readers, being helpful to colleagues, and, in some larger sense, being part of the Slate brand. To the extent that I'm able to do those things, it makes sense to pay me. If I started taking half the year off, my traffic would plummet and I'd have a problem with the bosses. Not a "too much vacation" problem exactly but a "not delivering the goods" problem.

By the same token, right now I'm not expected to work weekends and in fact usually don't do any work on the weekend. But if I had a great idea for a newsy post, it'd be extremely foolish of me to simply refuse to do it until Monday morning. If I get it done and it's good, then that reflects well on me and it's worth my while to take some time out of the weekend to do it.

God, that makes me feel terrible for mocking him. Hell, I won't even make a joke about how sad it is that he spends weekends coming up with his drivel; it's just pathetic to imagine Yglesias in his basement on Sunday typing away while saying "MATTY MAKE GOOD STORY THAT MAKE JOB LIKE HIM"

[Cascadian Ephor Xenocles]

If they pay you by the hour, you don't work off the clock. If they don't, you work when you need to be and/or are productive. It's that simple.

[John]

He really is so stupid that he thinks having an idea and working on it on a weekend is some kind of new thought that only he has ever had. That column reads like it was written for second graders. There is something so not right about him. God he just gives me the willies.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

He really is... touched, in some sense. One has to imagine that Slate's thought process in hiring him was not dissimilar from the impulse that had autistic youths serving in court as the king's fool.

[Res Publica Americana]

http://reason.com/24-7/2013/08.....-constitut

This rapper and his cohorts just keep sounding better and better.

[Res Publica Americana]

But listen to what the authority-worshipping fuckheads at TMZ say about it:

"But the driver refused to let cops on board -- and according to the police affidavit which was just released, one of the bus' passengers actually held a physical copy of the U.S. Constitution against the bus window ... "as if challenging officers" with his civil rights.

Fact is: the police DID have probable cause to enter the bus because they smelled pot and saw smoke inside ... but the rapper and his entourage decided to assert their non-existent civil liberties anyway.

In the end, officers towed 2 Chainz' bus and its passengers to a police lot -- where it sat for hours while cops obtained a search warrant -- and everyone was eventually arrested, 2 Chainz included.

The United States Constitution ... it doesn't work that way."

[Hyperion]

That's awesome!

[AuH20]

Anyone else having Wag the Dog flashbacks, re:Syria and the whole NSA thing?

[Goldwyn]

Funny that the book was a jab at Bush and the Gulf War yet it seems the Dems are the ones most aping the plot.

His Huffpo blog hasn't been updated in a while.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-beinhart/

[Goldwyn]

Also I'm sure the Argentine behaviour in the Falklands is more comparable to Wag the Dog then Thatcher's.

[Tejicano]

Not so much me but I can see Obama with the remote control in his hand, skipping back and forth through that movie, trying to make sure he's doing it right.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

My alma mater to offer online 'The Walking Dead' course

The zombie craze in popular culture has seeped into higher education as UC Irvine has announced an online course based on "The Walking Dead."

The university is partnering with AMC, which has aired the zombie-themed hit since it premiered in 2010, and Instructure, a provider of online academics, to create the online course. Students will view scholarly subjects such as social science, public health, mathematics and physics through the lens of a hypothetical zombie apocalypse, using examples from the one portrayed in the series.

The eight-week course will be free and open to the public around the world, and it will be hosted through Instructure's Canvas Network program. UC Irvine has tapped professors Zuzanna Bic, Joanne Christopherson, Michael Dennin and Sarah Eichhorn, spanning a variety of disciplines, to teach.

The massive open online course, or MOOC, is being developed through UCI Extension with no public funds used.

[Lady Bertrum]

That actually sounds really cool and I'm signing up. (yes, I'm a loser)

[Slammer]

Linkie no workie

[Agammamon]

Are they going to have lessons on how to be idiots that always do the worst possible thing in any given emergency and get people killed?

How about a writing class on techniques to make *every* character in your fiction so unlikeable that you end up rooting for the zombies.

How about studying the camouflage techniques of that series' zombies who can sneak up on someone down an empty street in broad daylight completely unnoticed as long as the camera doesn't look at them.

[Sevo]

"Some school districts quit healthier lunch program"
"After just one year, some schools around the country are dropping out of the healthier new federal lunch program, complaining that so many students turned up their noses at meals packed with whole grains, fruits and vegetables that the cafeterias were losing money."
http://www.sfgate.com/news/med.....to-5102734

[Lady Bertrum]

Not enough protein and fat. Growing kids need fat, but not sugar.

[Hyperion]

We all need protein and fat in our diets. Not so much sugar, a little carbs.

[Hyperion]

Also, some people are allergic to whole grains, like me.

[Pro Libertate]

I stopped eating school food by my junior year and ate fast food almost every day of the school year through graduation. Arby's KFC, and BK. Strangely, I gained very little weight the whole time.

[jesse.in.mb]

My school lunch ladies were Croatian. They had blocks of lard all over the kitchen and getting a sandwich "grilled" involved them throwing all of the ingredients on the griddle with copious amounts of lard and frying it until the edges were crispy. I miss my turkey croissant sandwiches...

[Pro Libertate]

One nice thing about going to school here was that we had arroz con pollo and Cuban sandwiches, so that accounted for two days a week. And I've always liked salad bars, which we had in high school.

[Fatty Bolger]

The number of jobless in France has hit an all-time high. Never before have so many residents of that country actually not been paid for not working.

This calls for one of my favorite demotivator posters.

[Ken Shultz]

"The White House is reportedly planning a shake-up in its economic team, including a new head of the National Economic Council."

Yeah, because the problems with our economy aren't because of Barack Obama's stupid policies. It's because he's got the wrong people on his team?

Even if he didn't know anything when he took office, you'd think he'd have learned something by now. Barack Obama is an ignoramus.

[Ken Shultz]

"The number of jobless in France has hit an all-time high. Never before have so many residents of that country actually not been paid for not working."

And they call us selfish. The people who get paid to do nothing all day in record numbers? THEY call US selfish.