Syria Signals Willingness to Transfer Chemical Arms to International Control, 31 Million People to Remain Uninsured Under Obamacare, Japan Scrambles Jets in Response to Unidentified Drone: P.M. Links

CBS

• Russia's foreign minister followed up John Kerry's call for Syria to surrender its chemical weapons by urging Syria to transfer them to international control, something the Assad regime says it supports.
• Government projections show up to 31 million people remaining without insurance under Obamacare by 2023.
• Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former Congressman running a long-shot campaign for New York City mayor says he doesn't want to go back to Congress, because the Tea Party stopped making it a place to "solve problems."
• The former deputy chief of mission for Libya who testified in Congress about the 9/11 Benghazi attacks, Gregory Hicks, says he is being punished by the State Department.
• Japan scrambled jets after an unidentified drone appeared to approach the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. The craft did not enter Japanese airspace.  
• A candidate of the libertarian Liberal Democrat party in Australia, David Leyonhjelm, won one of six Senate seats out of New South Wales.
• A group of private equity owners in Canada is purchasing Neiman Marcus for $6 billion.
• If Tropical Storm Humberto doesn't become a hurricane before the morning of September 11, it will be the latest first hurricane of the Atlantic season since satellite tracking began in the 1960s.

Follow Reason on Twitter too, and like us on Facebook. You can also get the top stories mailed to you—sign up here.

Have a news tip? Send it to us!

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

The former deputy chief of mission for Libya who testified in Congress about the 9/11 Benghazi attacks, Gregory Hicks, says he is being punished by the State Department.

Obama, the whistleblower’s champion, is going to be so pissed when he reads what his administration has done.

[Ted S.]

What difference, at this point, does it make?

[db]

The government is just so big he can’t be expected to know everything that’s going on and control it.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Not and still be expected to improve his backswing.

[Irish]

State takes baby for 75 days because mother tested positive for small amounts of morphine after eating poppy seeds.

[jesse.in.mb]

I knew a woman in the early ’90s who nearly got canned for testing positive. One of her coworkers pointed out that she had a lemon poppy-seed muffin for breakfast every day. They told her to knock it off for a few weeks and then retested her.

Moral: if you’re a chronic heroin user, make a point of eating a poppy-seed heavy diet and you can dodge consequences!

[Fist of Etiquette]

And then she tried to get Jerry’s mom to pee in a cup for her.

[Killazontherun]

Hey, who hasn’t integrated a scene or two of that show into their lives. Tough to sort real memories out from the TV or Sound Garden CD induced ones.

[Invisible Finger]

So she was already working there and there was no other reason to fire her except for her breakfast habits?

[jesse.in.mb]

I was 8 when this happened. If I recall she worked for an office that contracted out to the city and so they had a random drug testing policy as a condition of keeping the contract.

[Episiarch]

Like the police or anything else, you create a position like this and the worst possible people are going to gravitate to it. Government is the ultimate negative incentive.

[John]

I am ready to repeal all child protective laws and end CPS. They never save the kids who are really being abused and abuse their power against innocent people at seemingly every opportunity. If we got rid of the entire thing, no more kids would be being abused than already are and things like this would no longer happen.

[NoVAHockey]

this is making the rounds today. but i think it proves your point.

http://investigations.nbcnews……ldren?lite

[PapayaSF]

A nurse I know who works in an intensive care unit for babies went through months of hell because a baby was found to be abused, CPS “exonerated” the family, so the entire unit was under suspicion and new “we don’t trust anyone here not to be a violent child abuser” work rules for months.

Eventually the baby went back to the parents, was killed by the father who fled back to Mexico, and everyone in the unit got a brief non-apology, an offer of counseling, and was told to shut up about the whole thing.

[tarran]

CPS is essentially a modern day version of the witch-finders.

I’ve actually said this to ex-cps workers I’ve encountered, and they’ve either agreed with me or complained that I underestimate how hard the job is.

[John]

My experience with those in the field is that a lot of them are total fanatics who think every child is abused.

[T]

There’s some institutional problems here, John. First off, the actual abuse cases CPS get range from mild to gut-wrenchingly horrific. It’s akin to cop syndrome: sooner or later everyone a CPS worker deals with becomes a lying child abusing dirtbag because that’s who you spend 90% of your time dealing with. Second, CPS gets excoriated when they miss problems, and the kid dies. So they’re going to err on the yank the kid side of the equation every time, because it doesn’t cost them personally to do so.

Flip side, you’ve got to have some mechanism for dealing with these kids better than “hope it works out for you”.

It’s a grossly imperfect system, but speaking as somebody up in the middle of it, I’m not sure how you make a better one.

[Agammamon]

Being one of those kids who *was* saved by CPS, I’m ambivalent.

While you really only hear about the cases where they fuck up, they do a lot of good also. Unfortunately, when they fuck up, they fuck up big (and don’t go home).

And my story isn’t all pro-CPS – the foster-care system has its share of problems also.

[Pro Libertate]

Dude, you better give up those opium bagels.

[Auric Demonocles]

Fuck off, slaver.

[Pro Libertate]

I’m not the one who’ll lock him up for his opium bagels and hallucinogenic tea.

[Auric Demonocles]

tea

Well, treason has been a legitimate basis for imprisonment for centuries.

[Pro Libertate]

What, you don’t like tea?

[Fist of Etiquette]

…he doesn’t want to go back to Congress, because the Tea Party stopped making it a place to “solve problems.”

Like the problem of what to have out when you rock out.

[Slammer]

WAAAHHH!!! Politicians oppose me and don’t let us “solve problems” by doing whatever the fuck we want.

Eat shit, Weiner.

[Goldwin Smith]

You Know Who Else thought the legislature wasn’t going to solve his country’s problems?

[Ted S.]

Nick Gillespie?

[NeonCat]

Everyone?

[Eduard van Haalen]

Abraham Lincoln?

Kidding! Mostly!

[Fist of Etiquette]

Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus Augustus?

[jesse.in.mb]

Pravda: Alexei Navalny can not lose with dignity

Blogger Alexei Navalny has obtained 27.27 percent; Ivan Melnikov (the Communist Party) – 10.71per cent. The leader of Yabloko faction Sergei Mitrokhin – 3.52 percent; Mikhail Degtyarev (LDPR) – 2.86 percent, Nikolai Levichev (Just Russia) – 2.79 percent.

One of the main results of the Moscow elections is as follows: one does not need to resort to manipulation to prove the legitimacy of the authorities. The result of Sergei Sobyanin is a little more than 51 percent.

Reason favorite for Moscow mayor loses. I haz surprise.

[paranoid android]

One of the main results of the Moscow elections is as follows: one does not need to resort to manipulation to prove the legitimacy of the authorities. The result of Sergei Sobyanin is a little more than 51 percent.

What’s Russian for “circular reasoning”?

[Ted S.]

I’d answer that question, but the squirrels are going to have a conniption fit over the Cyrillic characters: it transliterates to “kruglaya argumentatsiya”.

[Agammamon]

What’s that? Russian for ‘argument from Paul Krugman’, AKA ‘Bullshit’?

[grrizzly]

It’s called porochniy krug.

[Goldwin Smith]

Well one can’t be “Russia Ron Paul” and oppose Putin.

[Goldwin Smith]

But he did lose…

[Fist of Etiquette]

A candidate of the libertarian Liberal Democrat party in Australia, David Leyonhjelm, won one of six Senate seats out of New South Wales.

And promptly became mad with power.

[NeonCat]

“…You ever tried going mad without power? It’s boring. No one listens to you!”

[db]

A group of private equity owners in Canada is purchasing Neiman Marcus for $6 billion.

Their offer greatly discounted the chain’s value due to the uncertainty of their cookie recipe IP.

[The Bearded Hobbit]

+ Two-fifty.

(Since no one else was gonna do it)

… Hobbit

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Re: This morning’s UT Longhorn discussion

Freshman Phenom Jameis Winston Wanted To Play For Texas, But They Wouldn’t Return His Calls
The two most talked about college football players of Week One ? Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel and Florida State’s Jameis Winston ? both could have been playing for Texas if the Longhorns had been willing to recruit them.

Winston, a freshman from Alabama who had a perfect QB rating on the road against Pitt on Monday night, said he would have gone to Texas if he could.

His high school coach told CBS’s Bruce Feldman that he called Texas’ football office “four of five times” to tell them that Jameis was interested. He says Texas never returned his calls.

“Bottom line, that [Texas] was the only school that he wanted to check out and they weren’t interested in him,” his coach told Feldman….

[Brett L]

What? This has to get Mack Brown driven out of town with cattle prods seized from Bevo’s handlers, right?

[robc]

4 or 5 of the best QBs to come out of the state recently have the same story.

Luck was another, although he was probably always going to Stanford. But Texas didnt even try.

[Biden's Scroteplugs]

currently Ol’ Butterteeth is going with the Fontes Gambit. fire your coordinators in attempt to stay a step ahead of the posse.

[Brett L]

I think of this as the Rex Ryan Survival Plan, but I know what you mean.

[T]

On the plus side, we got rid of Manny Diaz this way. So, small favors.

[CE]

Johnny Manziel’s high school football stats (almost unbelievable) in 3 years as a starting QB:

7,626 yards passing
76 passing TDs
4,045 yards rushing
77 rushing TDs
582 yards receiving
5 receiving TDs

Mack Brown must have thought he was too small to play QB in college. UT did reportedly want him to play — at defensive back!

[robc]

Common thing. GT gets almost all our QBs because no other major school offers them at QB.

Our backup QB right now was AL state sprint champion his senior year, originally committed to Bama because Saban offered him a chance at QB. Before signing day, Saban signed another QB and told Thomas that he wouldnt get a change at QB after all, he needed to accept being moved. He signed with GT instead.

Honestly, I want him on the field NOW, at A-back or WR. He has crazy speed.

[John]

Like I said below. You can forgive them for missing on any one of these guys. But they missed on all of them. This is the golden age of Texas High School quarterbacks and the state’s flagship school didn’t recruit a single decent QB.

[John]

RGIII, Andrew Luck, Andy Dalton, and Drew Brees all played prep ball in Texas. None of them were recruited by UT. You can forgive one or two of them. But all of them? That is embarrassing.

[Biden's Scroteplugs]

Mack thought RG3 could be a DB. Maybe get a little playing time his junior season and a sales manager position at an Austin Chevy dealer after graduation.

[John]

That is top flight talent evaluation there.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Kinda like the 40-50 D1 coaches at better destinations than Waco, right?

[John]

RGIII was a big deal in high school. It was a surprise when he went to Baylor. He was rated as the number 4 duel threat QB in the country his senior year.

http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaa/f…../rank-1819

[robc]

duel threat

No wonder everyone was passing on him.

[John]

You know, like everyone passed on Pryor. There wasn’t a giant recruiting battle over him or anything.

[Irish]

Here were his numbers that year though.

57% completion percentage, 16 touchdowns 7 interceptions. His rushing numbers were insane, but his passing numbers were pretty mediocre compared to most top flight college recruits. I think I can understand how Texas would whiff on someone with those passing numbers if they didn’t think he was going to improve.

[robc]

Its why all the top schools offered him at something other than QB.

Baylor is like GT. We will offer at QB and give a legit shot and then move you to DB your sophomore year.

[John]

But all of the top schools didn’t offer him at something other than QB Rob.

[robc]

Really? I didnt follow the RG3 recruiting at the time, who offered him at QB?

Obviously, we know Texas didnt.

[John]

Washington State and Nebraska to name two.

[robc]

Im questioning Washington St as “major”.

Baylor is as major as they are.

[robc]

During the college recruiting period Griffin was pursued by Stanford, Tennessee, Kansas, Nebraska, Houston, Tulsa, Illinois, Washington State, and Oregon. Griffin initially committed to play for Houston under head coach Art Briles. When Briles left Houston to take the head coaching position at Baylor, Griffin switched his commitment and eventually signed a letter of intent to play for Baylor,[12] in part because the university also had a top track and field program.

From wikipedia. Depending on what you consider major, I think the only major one to offer him at QB might have been Nebraska. I guess Oregon, but Im questioning “major” for them. Not traditional major.

He originally went to Houston, so he clearly wanted to stay in state and play QB. Im thinking Briles moving had more to do with him switching to Baylor than the track thing.

[CE]

By “not major” do you mean the Ducks that went 46-7 in the past 4 years, with 3 Pac 12 conference titles, 1 BCS national championship appearance, 2 Rose Bowl appearances and 1 Fiesta Bowl?

[robc]

By “not major” do you mean the Ducks that went 46-7 in the past 4 years,

Considering RG3 was getting recruited 6 years ago or whatever, that is specifically what I dont mean.

[robc]

In the 4 years RG3 was in HS, Oregon went 31-22.

Pretty good: Holiday, Las Vegas, and Sun Bowls.

Bellotti was a good coach. But they werent a major power yet.

And major power depends, at least in part, on tradition. And, that, Oregon aint got. Although to kids these days, they have been good forever, so that is changing.

[Irish]

RGIII would have been getting recruited in 2007, which means that he would have had no knowledge of the 46-7 record that the Ducks would compile in the future. They were 8-4 in 2007, 7-5 in 2006, 10-1 in 2005, and 5-6 in 2004. They only won one of those bowl games.

Oregon sure as hell was not a major program until the last 5 years or so.

[John]

Nebraska still counts as “major”. They do get 90,000 a game and have one hell of a tradition.

[robc]

Nebraska still counts as “major”.

Um, yeah, thats what I said.

RIF

[CE]

Hey, Harbaugh offered RG3 a QB scholarship at Stanford, but they already had Andrew Luck. Harbaugh thought they could run a 2-QB system. Just think if they had.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

That’s why RGIII ended up at Baylor, Dalton at TCU, and Brees at Purdue… because USC, Bama, ND, OU, etc., etc., didn’t want them at QB, either. Luck was never going to Texas as told the coaches that.

[John]

Again. They were in his back yard and wanted to go there. He didn’t hit on a single one of them. Not every player has to be five stars. Alabama didn’t recruit them because Alabama doesn’t generally recruit Texas. So how were they to know? Texas does recruit Texas. And then UT misses on that many future NFL players, it is UT’s fault.

[robc]

Alabama doesn’t generally recruit Texas

lolwut?

1 commit for 2014 already.
2 in class of 2013.
1 in class of 2012.

It isnt heavy recruiting, but they arent ignoring TX. They are generally recruiting it, its just not as big a focus as GA or MS.

[robc]

Alabama doesn’t generally recruit Texas

lolwut?

1 commit for 2014 already.
2 in class of 2013.
1 in class of 2012.

It isnt heavy recruiting, but they arent ignoring TX. They are generally recruiting it, its just not as big a focus as GA or MS.

[robc]

The one from 2012? A 3-star QB. So they are even digging deep for QB talent from the state of TX.

The other 3 were 2 4-star guys and a 5-star.

[John]

Picking off a few players here or there is not “recruiting Texas”. When a future all American and HOF quarterback plays in the town you live in, you are probably negligent for not recruiting him.

Why are you dying on the hill for Mack Brown? Just because four future NFL starters including at least one and probably two or three HOFers wanted to come play there and he turned them down, doesn’t mean he did a bad job of talent evaluating or anything.

Really Rob? Really? That is the hill you are going to die on?

[robc]

That is the hill you are going to die on?

Im defending Brown? Im agreeing with you that he is a recruiting moron. I was supporting your position.

Do you have no fucking reading comprehension?

[John]

Sorry Rob. My bad.

[robc]

For some reason, you think if I disagree with a nit in your post, you think Im arguing against your entire position.

I was just picking on the idiotic line that AL doesnt recruit TX.

[John]

It is not idiotic. Alabama will take the odd star. But Alabama doesn’t know Texas players the way Texas does. Alabama isn’t going to come in an get some two star diamond in the rough.

[robc]

I didnt say AL recruits it as deep as TX. But they generally recruit it.

Enough to get a guy or two every year from the state.

AL doesnt generally recruit North Dakota or Maine. If a 5-star shows up there, they might that year, but not in general. They generally recruit TX.

[robc]

Alabama isn’t going to come in an get some two star diamond in the rough.

They grabbed a 3-star out of TX, which for Bama is pretty rough.

[John]

The point is Rob, you can’t hold Alabama responsible for missing on Drew Brees in the same way you hold Texas. They can’t be expected to know every player in America. But Texas can be expected to know something about every player in Austin.

[robc]

The point is Rob, you can’t hold Alabama responsible for missing on Drew Brees in the same way you hold Texas.

I wasnt.

Once again, you have a reading comprehension fail. I merely disagreed with your statement that AL doesnt recruit TX. Nothing more, nothing less.

Dont try to read into it too deeply. There was nothing else implied. Any inferences on your part are projection.

[CE]

3 star guys don’t generally even get on the field at Alabama, except in practice.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

“He was rated as the number 4 duel threat QB in the country his senior year.” “So how were [Alabama] to know?” Pick a side of the argument and stick with it. RGIII can be a big deal or Alabama couldn’t have any way to know about him, but not both.

[John]

We are talking about different players you half wit. RGIII was a big deal. And a lot of teams recruited him. That is why his going to Baylor was a surprise. But Texas, despite alledgedly spending the last ten years looking for the next Vince Young, was not one of them.

Dalton and Brees were both three star recruits and something that Alabama can be excused for missing on, but not UT. Luck was a four star recruit who had offers from both Oklahoma State and Oklahoma. You know, two schools that play UT every year and have been kicking their ass lately. Yet, somehow Mack didn’t think Luck was UT material.

[Invisible Finger]

Isn’t it possible UT keeps bumping up against the salary cap?

[Apatheist ?_??]

I’d like to point out that Winston, the kid in the OP, is from Alabama not Texas, where UT doesn’t recruit. Otherwise, continue on trashing Brown because that’s always fun.

[John]

I would point out that maybe when a QB calls you and you don’t have any good QBs on the roster, you might want to take a look at him? The guy wanted to go to UT and Brown told him no. And Brown isn’t in any way at fault for turning him down?

[Apatheist ?_??]

I think Brown has slipped in recruiting lately and he was never that great of a coach but I think this particular story is a bit silly.

And he did recruit Vince Young and win their first title in 40 years. I can tell you that Longhorn fans will always love him for that. If they do poorly again this year they may think it’s time to usher him into retirement though.

[robc]

where UT doesn’t recruit.

Unlike the “AL doesnt recruit TX” argument from John, this appears to be true. At least no commits from the state to UT in 2012-2014 classes.

Im sure if a stud player from AL desperately tried to contact them, they would at least look at hi…oh wait, nevermind.

[robc]

From another site:

Here’s the Mack Brown coaching tree:
Tim Brewster, Dick Tomey, Greg Robinson, Gene Chizik, and Will Muschamp.

Wow, pathetic.

[Invisible Finger]

Fuck UT. I hope the NCAA slaps 5 centuries of punishment on them.

[Brett L]

This Onion article would have been funnier if Jerry Jones was euthanizing his head coach instead.

[Ted S.]

Wasn’t it John McKay who, when asked by a reporter, “How do you feel about your team’s execution?” responded, “I’m in favor of it?

[Pro Libertate]

It was. He was a very funny coach.

[Brett L]

Pretty sure that was Greg Schiano yesterday.

[Pro Libertate]

Yeah, well, I think he’s probably part of the problem.

[Brett L]

That was a fucking disaster. His offensive coordinator needs to be on notice that everyone executes perfectly every time. Also, the Bucs, Giants, and Lions all need to spend some time watching Alabama football. Somehow, Nick Saban manages to not have his team fuck up repeatedly. Were it I, I would just start benching players. Your depth chart position depends on execution and execution includes not giving away yards.

[Pro Libertate]

My current theory is that they held back too many key players during the preseason. It may be a worse problem than that, but it had that look to it. Whatever the Bucs are, they shouldn’t suck as bad as the Jets.

[Brett L]

Yeah. That last penalty was only partly boneheaded. Obviously the LB needs to know where the boundary is, but Smith had given a shoulder dip at the sideline and broken for another five yards in one of his first scrambles. I’m sure the coaches had put in the defensive player’s head to make sure Geno went out. The fact that it came down to that play and a 15 yard penalty is a much bigger problem. It was a poor decision but not really the knife.

[Pro Libertate]

I don’t blame David. It was a mistake, but the game should’ve been won much more handily than that, even with the mistakes.

[Auric Demonocles]

When the Pats pulled out the win and I switched to the Bucs game I was excited to see them with a lead and only needing one stop to win.

What the fuck was with that idiotic late hit?

[Old Man With Candy]

I gotta say that it’s nice to see people talking about grown-up football. People who care about college probably watch Little League.

That said, I’m glad that the next shot for the Ravens will be the Browns.

Damn, I’m a big Ravens fan, but I just had to be delighted at how great Boldin looked yesterday. Class act, great player, finally got to spend a few uninjured years on first rate teams.

[Pro Libertate]

The Ravens still have some Browns in them when it comes to decision-making, it seems. I’d never ever have let him go.

[Old Man With Candy]

Difference is five straight playoffs, two Super Bowls. Cleveland… not so much.

Stupidest decision was Harbaugh not challenging the “completed” pass.

[Fist of Etiquette]

…it will be the latest first hurricane of the Atlantic season since satellite tracking began in the 1960s.

Fucking AGW, is there anything you won’t screw with?

[John]

Katrina was going to be the new norm. We would get a dozen Katrinas every year.

Now, it is “AGW reduces hurricanes and destroys the world”!!

[andarm16]

That’s what so wonderful about having the media on your side. The narrative can turn on a dime.

[tarran]

The fact is that increased temperatures was expected to reduce hurricane incidences and strength, because the poles would warm more than the equator and it’s ultimately the temperature differences between the two regions that drive hurricanes.

The alarmists were misrepresenting the scientific theories they pretended to champion when arguing that the storms would be worse.

[John]

Warming was supposed to produce more el nino’s which generally mean fewer hurricanes. But don’t bother them with truth or logic.

[wareagle]

you say that as though you believe the alarmists were actually interested in supportable theories.

[Goldwin Smith]

So what you’re saying is that alarmists are more interested in fearmongering than actually proving Global Warming. Way to rebut the “deniers”!

[Goldwin Smith]

Um I meant that this does giver the deniers good reason to be skeptical. Not referring to you tarran.

[JW]

Now, it is “AGW reduces hurricanes and destroys the world”!!

That actually sounds like a TNG plot. “Our world was perfect until we foolishly polluted our atmosphere and stopped the storms! Now we’re all slowly starving to death. Help us, Picard!”

[andarm16]

Isn’t that the plot of 90% of all TNG episodes? (okay, so maybe every once in a while, John DeLancie drops in to say hi, and screw the place up. (Which is why I find TNG insufferable. Roddenberry took the preaching from TOS, and turned it up to at least 15. ))

[Pro Libertate]

You know how the TOS movies should’ve killed off Kirk? They should’ve had him betrayed and murdered during the revolution that overthrew the Federation and replaced it with a fascistic communist state.

[Auric Demonocles]

Not murdered. Just exiled to the 1970s.

[Pro Libertate]

Oh, right. Silly of me. Exactly right, exiled to 1970s New York City with one Khan Noonien Singh.

I don’t know what I was thinking.

[JW]

Will the inconvenience ever stop?

[Pro Libertate]

You know, reality is frequently inconvenient to the left and other statists. Do you think that’s what he really meant?

[JW]

I thought he was telegraphing what he intended for the prols.

“What? You want to drive to the grocery store?”

[Pro Libertate]

Look, I keep telling you people that we need a huge network of pneumatic tubes, which, when coupled with the Internet, will eliminate the need for people to leave their homes. Ever. And all production could be centralized into one gigantic production center. In Detroit.

[JW]

“Ewwww, this broccoli smells like Ndamukong Suh’s jock.”

[Pro Libertate]

I’m envisioning a giant building, hundreds of millions of square feet in size, where all U.S. manufacture (domestic), power production, etc. occurs. It’s distributed via the intertubials in virtually all cases, with items of greater mass delivered by the rail system.

[Mad Scientist]

“What? You want to drive to the grocery store?”

Driving is no different from raping Gaia. You should only eat food you can forage for within a 5 minute walk from your cave. Plant a garden using only natural fertilizers. Step 3: Gambol!

[Pro Libertate]

We should only allow a population to exist that can live in whatever number of natural caves that exist on Earth.

[Mad Scientist]

I was going to suggest teepees as acceptable, but then I realized that they could only be made by killing poor defenseless buffalo, or using synthetic materials which are, frankly, witchcraft.

[CE]

Which explains the shamans.

[Pro Libertate]

Just making up numbers, let’s say there are 100,000 caves on the planet that are large enough and dry enough for people to live in. And let’s just say, making it up again, that, on average, 100 people can live in each cave. So Earth can support a population of ten million people. Everyone else has to go.

[Live Free or Diet]

You should only eat food you can forage for within a 5 minute walk from your cave.

My home is a small farm and I would soon starve if limited to 5 minutes of walking from my house! 🙂

[Goldwin Smith]

So alarmists make bullshit predictions that are not denounced by any major scientists but we shouldn’t be skeptical?

[Stormy Dragon]

Whilst patrolling the neighborhood around the home of his estranged wife’s parents, Saint Zimmerman witnessed two suspicious individuals entering their home. Following them to investigate, he suddenly came under vicious attack by the two suspicious individuals, forcing him to once again reach for his firearm in protection of life and limb.

George Zimmerman’s wife told 911 dispatchers he pulled gun on her

[Irish]

Whilst patrolling the neighborhood around the home of his estranged wife’s parents, Saint Zimmerman witnessed two suspicious individuals entering their home.

Keep fighting that straw man and ignoring the forensic evidence, Stormy! I’m sure you’ll knock it over soon enough.

[Calidissident]

I agree with you that Zimmerman should have been found not guilty (I even think Stormy said that), and based on available evidence, his version of events seems to be more or less the most likely scenario (though I don’t think it’s by any means some ironclad certainty). I will say one thing, though – a lot of people (not so much on this board though there were a few IMO) that tended to scrutinize very aspect of Martin’s life for evidence that he was a thug and using such “evidence” (some of which was legit, some of which was just stupid and totally irrelevant) as proof of his guilt, were more than willing to turn a blind eye or overlook transgressions in Zimmerman’s life that made him look bad as well.

[Irish]

Unquestionably. That’s also true of the leftists who would flat out lie about George Zimmerman’s 911 calls. For example, Zimmerman once called 911 because he saw a black child wandering the street. In the call he said that he was worried about the kid because he was wandering around a busy street without adult supervision. When the spin machine got through with this, Zimmerman was suddenly calling 911 ON black children instead of calling to make sure that black children were safe.

The politicization of the Zimmerman trial was disgusting. He clearly should have been found not guilty though. Stormy’s bizarre obsession with attacking people who argued in favor of acquittal is tiresome.

There’s no way that you can argue that Zimmerman was beatified by his supporters in the same way that Martin was by his. Martin supporters were basically a cult into which no reason could penetrate, and Stormy’s contention that the same was true of Zimmerman supporters is a blatant lie. I don’t recall Zimmerman supporters turning his clothing into a cause celebre in the same way as the Shroud of Trayvon.

[Stormy Dragon]

As I Calidissident noted, I would have acquitted to. My issue is not with the trial outcome, but the George Zimmermna, conservative hero, mythology that grew up around it.

[wareagle]

no one painted him as a hero of any sort other than butthurt liberals in their never-ending pursuit of policizing everything.

[Pro Libertate]

Who thinks he’s a hero? I’m not sure I’ve seen that even once.

[Irish]

I’m sure you could find someone calling Zimmerman a hero, but it is not a common narrative among people who thought he was not guilty. The Saint Trayvon narrative was pretty much bought into by the entire left. There’s simply no comparison.

[Pro Libertate]

I’m sure you could find someone who thinks Zimmerman is from a planet circling Sirius and came here to start a race war to weaken Earth for the upcoming invasion.

[Emmerson Biggins]

Fortunately, that mostly in you head. So cheer up.

[Azathoth!!]

Conservative hero? George Zimmerman? Community activist and Obama voter?

Were you not paying attention at all?

[PapayaSF]

Meh, once I looked into it I realized Zimmerman wasn’t exactly a Boy Scout, but that really isn’t relevant to the shooting. Even a sinner can be sinned against, even a hooker can be raped, even a thief can be robbed, etc.

[John]

Is there any stupid cause you don’t endorse?

[Irish]

It’s hilarious. This has nothing to do with the Trayvon shooting in which all the forensic evidence and the eyewitnesses backed up Zimmerman’s version of events. Somehow Stormy has deluded himself into thinking that Zimmerman’s horrible actions in other situations have anything to do with the Martin shooting.

[John]

IT is. If he went on to cure cancer, would that vindicate the position that he was innocent?

[andarm16]

it’s simple. Zimmerman did X, which means he’s a bad person, and thus evil. Therefore, he murdered that little innocent black boy who was just trying to buy skittles, and drink his iced tea.

[JW]

Obligatory.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

About that 38-year-old woman extracting egg-freezing money as her husband disentangles himself from the marriage that didn’t get her pregnant.
…Professor Althouse, “the best fertility years of a woman’s life,” from a strictly scientific view, are ages 18-24. After age 27, fertility begins to decline and, in your 30s, that decline accelerates. So by the time Lieberman’s client married at 30, she was past her prime….

[Brett L]

No reasonable expectation of breeding.

[Ted S.]

Three generations of imbeciles is enough.

[andarm16]

Even if Syria gives every ounce of chemical weapons that it has, American intelligence will only go about crowing about secret laboratories, and how there is no way that Syria only managed to produce whatever small amount of chemical weapons that they would have turned over. It’s a lose lose for Syria.

[some guy]

Still, it would be very interesting if Assad decided to bail Obama out on this one. Obama’s in a corner. The only way out is if Assad bends over backwards to give up all of his chemical weapons. Now it looks like he might actually do that…

[andarm16]

That it would be. It would show exactly how of the American foreign policy / war apparatus and it’s apparatchiks that Obama controlled. My guess is that very little, at least when it comes to a peace vs. war situation. (there’s no money in peace) The next red line would be drawn, and the story would repeat, with most Americans ignorant of it, or at least suffering only from mild deja vu.

[crashland]

Yeah, but if Putin tells Assad to do it, he’ll do it. Putin can always restock him in the future…

[Fist of Etiquette]

The craft did not enter Japanese airspace.

Mechagodzilla.

[JW]

Just keep showing your ignorance, Fist, of high culture.

[Fist of Etiquette]

RODAN WAS ORGANIC.

[JW]

GAMERA will disabuse you of your pointless pretensions, guttersnipe.

[Brett L]

Oh god, the deep ones are giving their servants hands now.

[Tim]

Nobody needs six claws! It’s some kind of assault lobster.

[trshmnstr]

why why why did i read the comments?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Government projections show up to 31 million people remaining without insurance under Obamacare by 2023.

Pass it to find out the one thing it was supposedly designed to do it doesn’t do.

[Auric Demonocles]

It was never about controlling costs! It was about getting coverage to everyone!

What? Crap… oh…um…

It was never about controlling costs or expanding coverage! It was about increasing the scope of covered procedures!

[Tim]

JUST A LITTLE FUCKING BOMBING AND I PROMISE I’LL QUIT!

[JW]

JUST THE TIP OF WAR.

[Pro Libertate]

Just one more little bomb.

[JW]

I’ll have you know that my drone is smoother than a veal cutlet.

[Slammer]

Girlfriend jumps out of closet to scare boyfriend. He shoots and kills her.

What should we ban first: Pranks or Closets?

[jesse.in.mb]

Maybe we could just license girlfriends.

[Goldwin Smith]

That would really inconvenience you wouldn’t it? 😉

[jesse.in.mb]

*Narrows eyes* I’m not sure what you’re implying, sir!

[Brett L]

We could just apply a penaltax to men who don’t have girlfriends. Nerds and gays have all that money they don’t need.

[Pro Libertate]

We get double for gay men with boyfriends.

[Lady Bertrum]

Common sense girlfriend control laws are needed.

[Brett L]

Holy shit. Lookit her. That was a tragedy. Also, I don’t understand the charges. Did he hand the gun to her little brother after discharging it?

[R C Dean]

Sorry, but at 18 you are no longer a “teen girl”.

[Irish]

Yes you are. That’s why the word TEEN is on the end of eighteen.

Eighteen is definitely still teenaged according to pornography, and I feel like they’d know.

[NeonCat]

Rule 34a?

[Invisible Finger]

No you aren’t. At 18 you are a teen woman.

[Live Free or Diet]

Agreed.

[jesse.in.mb]

Pravda: World Breastfeeding Week 2013

World Breastfeeding Week 2013 is about Breastfeeding Peer Counselling, providing continued community support for mothers to ensure that exclusive breastfeeding carries on after delivery, that alternative systems are provided when a healthcare facility is not available.

Have YOU supported a breastfeeding mother today!?

[Brett L]

No, but as soon as the baby gets here I will be.

[NeonCat]

Umbilical-feeding mother doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?

[BigT]

Those breasts need some pre-birth practice, if you ask me.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

Canada ranks 6th in global happiness survey

[Goldwin Smith]

Free Healthcare!

[CE]

Must be all the beer.

[Auric Demonocles]

They are happy that the constant cold gives them a convenient excuse for their small penises.

[Pro Libertate]

The U.S. is behind Mexico, huh? Did they include the Mexicans living in the U.S.?

[MJGreen]

Lobbing off heads makes for a very satisfied life.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

The rules for the next year are simple: only use technology that existed in 1986, and embrace a style that seems to capture something the modern era has lost

[John]

We talked about that the other day. What a bunch of posers. How about just telling your kids “no” and figuring out how to make modern technology work in a positive way?

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

Saying no and crush the little snowflakes’ hope and dreams? NEVER!

[NoVAHockey]

are they going to drive a car without air bags?

[CE]

1986? Why not 1968? Or 1869? or 1689?

[Matrix]

the dude is sporting a mullet. That’s all you need to know about him.

[Brett L]

He’s Canadian, though. I don’t think you can judge Canadians like that,.eh?

[Matrix]

Fuck Canada!

[T]

You’ll get frostbite that way…

[jesse.in.mb]

Challenge accepted.

To do:
Buy Costco pack of condoms and 55 gallon drum of lube
Buy plane tickets
Fuck Canada, all of it.

[Slammer]

Hypocrite much?

[Long Range Boredom]

The difference being that Assad’s clearly a tyrannical control freak who ignores the demands of his people to engage in horrible conflicts.

Wait…

[John]

http://www.libertylawsite.org/…..an-people/

75% of America object to going into Syria. Voting Syria down would leave Obama wounded and weaker in coming budget battles. Voting against Syria would leave the Democrats as the war party and take away much of their reason for winning in the post Bush era. So what does the GOP establishment want to do? Support Obama on Syria of course.

[Pro Libertate]

Politically stupid, foreign policy stupid, probably morally stupid. Naturally they do it.

[andarm16]

The Democrats can never be the party of war you silly billy. When the Syrian intervention goes tits up, it’ll all be blamed on those horrible mean republicans who forced our brave wise and fearless leader into attacking!

[hamilton]

The critical link between testicle size and parenting.

When looking for potential dads, play small ball ladies.

[jesse.in.mb]

Not Pravda: The Cowboy of the NSA
Inside Gen. Keith Alexander’s all-out, barely-legal* drive to build the ultimate spy machine.

When he was running the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, [Lt. Gen. Keith] Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a “whoosh” sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather “captain’s chair” in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.

*the author said barely-legal, roflmao

[CE]

Did he loan it out for IRS training videos?

[Long Range Boredom]

If I was an amoral public official with way too much of other people’s money I’d base my evil meeting area off of the War Room from Dr. Strangelove.

[CE]

Even better, Dr. Evil. Push the button, lackeys with unwanted opinions fall into the molten lava.

[Long Range Boredom]

If I can’t get sharks with lasers then what’s the point? Damn hippies keep putting the good sharks on the endangered list.

[Ted S.]

Was there supposed to be a link?

[jesse.in.mb]

Hmm, I failed to copy it in. My technique is getting sloppy.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/a…..?page=full

[John]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvs…..miere.html

Sandra Bullock owns the over 45 class.

[CE]

Isn’t that like being the most honest lawyer in Congress?

[tarran]

No it is not. She is competing with women like Ornella Muti.

Keep your limber peroxide russians; I’ll take Sandra any day: there’s a hot woman.

[Brett L]

How old is Jennifer Aniston now?

[Coeus]

She looks more like a tranny than ever.

[Killazontherun]

Figure is great, her face looks like the make up artist tried to scrub the misalignment away that gives her face nice contrast. It’s what I like best about her.

[JW]

I beg to differ.

48 years old.

[Killazontherun]

You win.

[JW]

I wish I could be killed by her jealous husband. It’d be totally worth it.

[Tejicano]

Holy freaking… sky daddy… I’ve always been a sucker for well preserved older women. That one reminded me how deep it is in my genes.

[Marc F Cheney]

Bless her.

I wonder what football team she likes.

[PapayaSF]

She’s certainly a contender, but: Monica Bellucci, Anne Archer, Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts, Gina Gershon, Marsha Cross, Juliette Binoche, Vanessa Williams, Halle Berry, Elizabeth Hurley, Sela Ward….

[Bo Cara Esq.]

Anti-Porn SoCon of the Day: Focus on the Family

-We believe that pornography is highly addictive and destructive material that harms individuals, families and society. There is overwhelming medical, scientific and sociological evidence detailing the destructive nature of pornography. There is no credible justification or rationalization for allowing the continued proliferation and existence of pornographic content in a decent and caring society. As more and more young people are exposed to pornography at younger ages, we will continue to see a tidal wave of sexual brokenness crashing across our culture. For the health and safety of our nation, we must continue to work toward stemming the tide of this harmful content.

We support legislative and enforcement actions to protect individuals and society from pornography. There are two primary ways to attack the spread of pornography: reducing supply and reducing demand. Reducing supply is a law enforcement concern. Strong laws can successfully curb the spread of pornography and reduce the harm associated with it. But these laws need to be consistently enforced in order to be truly effective. Citizens play as much a part in this as the officers of the law. Without visible and vocal public support, many elected leaders will be tempted to deemphasize obscenity enforcement, leaving communities vulnerable.

http://www.focusonthefamily.co…..ition.aspx

[Irish]

There is overwhelming medical, scientific and sociological evidence detailing the destructive nature of pornography.

I love that the porn crusaders never bother with a citation for this wide range of evidence that supposedly exists.

[Rich]

Obviously it overwhelms every attempt to cite it.

[CE]

If only someone could leak the browsing history at their offices.

[Slammer]

Just replace the word pornography with “government” or “moral busybodies” and the paragraph rain’t too bad.

[Matrix]

Those prisons aren’t going to fill themselves!

[Troy muy grande boner]

fap, fap, fap, fap….. wait, What?

[jesse.in.mb]

Reducing supply is a law enforcement concern. Strong laws can successfully curb the spread of pornography and reduce the harm associated with it. But these laws need to be consistently enforced in order to be truly effective.

You’d have to do away with the internet to effectively achieve this goal.

Also, the first amendment doesn’t exist if I find it icky.

[Killazontherun]

Hurricane Humberto? He is going to need to get up to full strength if he hopes to fondle that young, spritely gale force forming off the coast of the Virgin Isles.

[Slammer]

+1 El Nabokovo

[Coeus]

Schwyzer was banging his students all along.

Did anybody really think that a male gender-studies professor would take the job for any other reason?

[NeonCat]

Health care benefits?

[John]

It is almost like such a field would attract sociopaths or something. Like a misogynist who wanted to play on and manipulate women would be drawn to such a field.

[Brett L]

No, its that the field has no method of evaluation other than consensus of feeling, so it is litertally the perfect place for a sociopath to work, because they have no shame in telling people whatever it takes to get what the sociopath wants. Had they any other criteria, like, say, suspicion of a man who attempted to murder his girlfriend, he would have had a more difficult time in finding women to exploit.

[Coeus]

he would have had a more difficult time in finding women to exploit.

I’m not sure I like that framing. Surely you mean with his ridiculous feminist ideals, and not by adults having sex, right?

[Auric Demonocles]

I always find the idea of how these types of inapproriate relationships start to be really intersting. That seems like a very risky move.

[Invisible Finger]

Did anybody really think that a male gender-studies professor would take the job for any other reason?

Does anybody really think a gender-studies student takes the courses for any other reason?

[Coeus]

There’s apparently at least one guy in every class, solely there to act like an asshole by making them elaborate on their concepts and calling out their logical inconsistencies.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

OK, one more from Focus on the Family:

-Where can I turn for help regarding my wife’s problem with Internet pornography? In the files of our home computer I recently came across evidence that my wife has been viewing pornography, including teen pornography. Needless to say, I was shocked ? I’ve always assumed that this kind of behavior is primarily a male problem. How should I deal with this?

It’s true that online sex addiction is more common among men than women ? at least that’s what statistical studies and common cultural perceptions tell us. But this is not to say that porn is exclusively a male issue. According to surveys conducted by internet-filter-review.com, of the 10 percent of the adult population that admits to having a problem with Internet pornography, 28 percent are female. What’s more, there are indications that a surprising number of those women are professing Christians: in a recent poll, 34 percent of female readers of Today’s Christian Woman’s online newsletter admitted to accessing Internet porn. Your wife is not unique, then, but she is in serious need of help.

http://family.custhelp.com/app…..a_id/25613

[Irish]

God! Fundamentalist religion ruins everything. This guy has a wife that appreciates porn, and instead of taking advantage of the situation he throws a hissy fit.

[Brandon]

He doesn’t want her to have any basis for comparison.

[paranoid android]

What’s more, there are indications that a surprising number of those women are professing Christians: in a recent poll, 34 percent of female readers of Today’s Christian Woman’s online newsletter admitted to accessing Internet porn.

Wait right here, I have to get this design for a cross-shaped dildo down the patent office immediately…

[NeonCat]

Obviously you aren’t familiar with the Jackhammer Jesus.

[Apatheist ?_??]

The adult population that admits to having a problem is not the same as the population that admits to accessing but go ahead and try and trick your readers.

[LynchPin1477]

How should I deal with this?

Celebrate, you idiot. You won the lottery!

[JW]

A group of private equity owners in Canada is purchasing Neiman Marcus for $6 billion.

The punch line is that you could buy the same chain elsewhere, for only $4 billion.

[The Late P Brooks]

Congressman running a long-shot campaign for New York City mayor says he doesn’t want to go back to Congress, because the Tea Party stopped making it a place to “solve problems.”

To paraphrase another famous Chicago crook:

“Congress is not here to solve problems, Congress is here to create problems.”

[Long Range Boredom]

Gandalf claims he married Captain Picard, tweets photos of balls in Patrick Stewart’s face as proof.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

‘Beam me up, Scotty!’: The 73-year-old Star Trek star changed his Twitter profile picture to this solo shot in the ball pit

Picard never used that line and even if he did it would be ‘beam me up, Chief O’Brien’. That’s why they call it the Daily Fail!

Congrats to him, though, his wife is hot and he looks 20 years younger than his age.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Oh, thank God you were basically BSing us!

[Long Range Boredom]

Hey, everything I said was completely true. Whatever conclusion you drew was a product of your own sick, SugarFree-destroyed mind.

[Eduard van Haalen]

I said BS-ing, not lying. It was “technically accurate.”

[jesse.in.mb]

Pravda: Boston Fakery ~ An Expose of the Boston Marathon Bombings Hoax

The detonation of the first bomb, near the Lens Crafters shop, lacked the force to damage, or to displace, the nearby wooden fence and the barrier of blue steel scaffolding that separated the sidewalk – an area which was reserved for the Marathon spectators – from the street; nor did the bomb’s mild blast damage the blue fabric screen that covered the street side of the blue scaffolding. The wooden slat and wire snow fence was not damaged by the bomb, but by the men who broke it down after the bomb went off. None of the international flags that lined the street in a long row were damaged, nor displaced, by the blast – which left only a slight, and nearly invisible, stain on the sidewalk. The windows of the Lens Crafters shop were paradoxically blown outward with considerable force onto the sidewalk – toward Ground Zero, rather than away from it.

Paging Jesse Walker, paging Jesse Walker.

[tarran]

This is so stupid:

The bomb was a pressure cooker with smokeless powder: It’s going to produce shrapnel and an assymetrical shock wave that rapidly dissipates since the pressure cooker blows apart before the chemical reaction has completed.

The window probably fell outward because the bottom was destroyed by fragments and the window fell towards the direction it had been installed from as it collapsed.

And what was that thing that rattled my windows that April night it wasn’t one of those bombs?

[jesse.in.mb]

Don’t engage a conspiracy theory with verifiable information! It’s a tar-baby, the more you engage it the more convoluted it gets. Just tilt your head to the side a bit, give the Russians a quizzical look and walk away.

[Live Free or Diet]

Also, explosion effects can be quite counter-intuitive. Fuel-air bomb victims with their lungs hanging out of their mouths, for instance.

[Not an Economist]

Where was George Bush?

[Long Range Boredom]

It’s Pravda. I recall them posting stories about Russian children who can see in X-rays and UFO battles in Siberia during the Cold War.

[Atanarjuat]

I assume you meant “printed” instead of “posted”?

[Cascadian Ephor Xenocles]

Witnesses reported seeing an airplane in the sky sometime before the first blast. Clearly it the blast was a false flag operation set up to target these two innocent boys.

[Brandon]

Who has the most to gain from the Boston bombing?! Kyle! Who was nowhere to be found the morning the bombs went off?! Kyle! Who dropped the deuce in the urinal?! Kyle!

[Agammamon]

“Government projections show up to 31 million people remaining without insurance under Obamacare by 2023.”

Wait, weren’t there something like 15 million uninsured, that number being used as a reason that we *must* have Obamacare?

How long before PB comes along and tells us it would have been worse without the intervention – like we get told the economy would be in worse shape without the bailout?

[Pro Libertate]

My wife corresponds with a woman who lives in Australia, and the crap she’s hearing about wait times, etc. for their socialized medicine is truly frightening. But, by all means, let’s try to go the same direction.

[NeonCat]

Wait, I thought American exceptionalism was the idea that bad ideas that don’t work overseas would work here, because, uh, America, Fuck Yeah!

[Pro Libertate]

Australia is much more homogenous and is a country the size of the U.S. with the population of Texas, yet it’s healthcare system still sucks. Imagine the U.S. doing the same thing with many more people.

[Irish]

I think my favorite recent left-wing talking point regarding Australia is that Australia has a higher minimum wage than America and lower unemployment, therefore the same thing could work here!

Of course, this totally ignores the fact that Australia does not have huge levels of totally unskilled labor due to immigration and an inner city underclass. Minimum wage laws only result in higher unemployment provided that the wage is set above the value of the employee. If you have a better educated and more skilled workforce, you can have higher minimum wage laws without seeing any negative effect simply because your workforce is skilled enough to be worth more than the minimum wage.

On the other hand, what do liberals think would happen to poorly educated Mexican immigrants in the American southwest if the minimum wage was suddenly jacked up to $15/hr? With their skill levels, unemployment would be rampant.

[Pro Libertate]

My wife mentioned some idiot from her high school posting exactly that on Facebook. Completely nuts.

Australia used to have (may still have, for all I know) a very racist immigration policy by U.S. standards. So that’s one area they differ from us quite a bit.

[Irish]

It’s not even like their unemployment rate is particularly good. It’s like 5.7%. Better than America, sure. It’s almost exactly the same as Texas though, despite the fact that Texas has an overall less well-skilled workforce due to very high levels of Hispanic immigration.

[Pro Libertate]

You know, we talk about colonizing other worlds, but we still aren’t colonizing the interior of Australia.

[NeonCat]

Or, if you can’t imagine it, wait for the single-payer fix for the Republican-inflicted deficiencies of ObamaCare.

[Cascadian Ephor Xenocles]

Australians are so stupid. Don’t they know that each state only gets two senators?

[NeonCat]

Obviously a jobs programme.

[Fist of Etiquette]

What do you want from them? They’re all criminals.

[Slammer]

Rodman going back to N. Korea AGAIN. Might coach Nork Olympic Basketball Team.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

I wonder if he realizes that he could be executed for losing?

But I can see this becoming a black comedy, sort of like The Great Dictator meets Hoosiers.

[tarran]

Rodman never struck me as someone who planned particularly far ahead or worried about consequences.

[Invisible Finger]

LOL. NK will lead the Olympics in rebounding but get shut out every game.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Judge rules Abercrombie & Fitch illegally fired a Muslim employee for wearing a hijab

A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled that trendy clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch wrongly fired a Muslim worker who insisted on wearing a head scarf.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said the company violated anti-discrimination laws when it fired Hani Khan from its Hollister store in San Mateo, Calif., in 2010. Rogers issued the ruling on Tuesday.

The company claimed the head scarf violated its policy governing the look of its employees, which it said was part of its marketing strategy. The store argued that deviating from its look policy would affect sales.

But the judge said Abercrombie & Fitch offered no “credible evidence” that Khan’s head scarf cost the company any sales.

Khaannnnnn!!!!

[R C Dean]

How could you even begin to prove that your dress code affects your sales?

[NeonCat]

“Excuse me, I’m not buying these. I saw the young woman wearing a head covering and decided to convert to Islam. These garments are much too immodest for me now.”

[tarran]

It’s simple: they’ll just not hire muslims going forward. Mizzz Khan just scored one heck of an own-goal.

[T]

How could you even begin to prove that your dress code affects your sales?

Same store data. Show sales numbers from similar shifts when she worked and when she didn’t. If it was true (big if, mind you) you should see a correlation.

Just thinking aloud, mind you. Abercrombie should be able to fire her for no or any reason.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Oh, goody, the government is second-guessing a company’s business decisions. What a win for religious freedom! Just ignore the government telling businesspeople to provide contraceptives and sterilization to their employees, contrary to the employer’s conscience. Just forget about the government telling business to sell things they are conscientiously opposed to selling. Just focus on that scarfy Khan rejoice that the government is on religion’s side!

Incidentally, you notice how which it’s *government’s* actions in question, the administration speaks of “freedom of worship” while pooh-poohing the right to act according to religious conscience, while a mere peon businessman is not allowed to make that distinction, and has to respect the actual *practice* of religion.

If Abercrombie were a government agency, the administration would be in court saying, “we’re just enforcing the laws all other employees have to obey! It’s not as if we refuse to let our Muslim employees have their little worship thing every Friday!”

[Killazontherun]

“Okay, fine, judge, to comply with the order, we’ll start a new fashion trend by making all of our female employees wear head scarfs.”

“That is not what I meant!”

“Make up your Goddamned mind then.”

[Coeus]

Oh, my god. They applauded!!!!

I will, however, make this one observation: A lot of discussion about whether PAX is a safe place to be (separate from discussions about whether it’s a decent place to be) has centered around Krahulik and Holkins personally. That’s understandable given both the roles that they hold, as well as their personal influence over which way these sorts of conversations go, within their community.

But I keep coming back to “the audience burst into applause.” The audience cheered for an expression of regret for showing the tiniest bit of compassion for survivors and/or anti-rape advocates.

Irrespective of Krahulik and Holkins, how safe should anyone feel at PAX amongst attendees who delight in belligerent hostility toward people who object to sexual violence?

The audience burst into applause.

I love how they frame it as something other than an attempt at censorship. “They just wanted compassion!!” And what else did they want? How did they want that demonstrated?

“compassionately”

[JW]

A lot of discussion about whether PAX is a safe

It’s not, and now the whole ‘verse will know.

[paranoid android]

Irrespective of Krahulik and Holkins, how safe should anyone feel at PAX amongst attendees who delight in belligerent hostility toward people who object to sexual violence?

Is the author being deliberately obtuse, or does it sincerely not occur to them that the audience members were showing support for a personal hero of theirs who (in their minds) had buckled under pressure after being unfairly maligned by overbearing censors?

No, much simpler to hew to the line that they were applauding “hostility toward people who object to sexual violence”. No need question any of your own assumptions that way.

[Coeus]

Is the author being deliberately obtuse,

Is the commenter not familiar with feminism?

[Long Range Boredom]

The gaming ‘moral’ crusaders are really starting to drive me nuts. I really love how a lot of these people say their whining ‘helps the medium grow’. Um, no it doesn’t, it restricts creative control. In fact, if anything, when they constantly complain about the portrayal of female characters you’re sending a big message to publishers that female protagonists are a risky business venture.

Allosaurus Rex on Youtube did an excellent job calling out these self-righteous hypocrites who talk about rape culture and triggers.

[Goldwin Smith]

I find it funny how after all the leftists going on about how “artists” shouldn’t compromise their “artistic integrity” (especially to moral busybodies) and how they should be transgressive and what not then end up demanding that artists should stop being transgressive and compromise their “art” to appease moral busybodies.

[Long Range Boredom]

It’s particularly hilarious in gaming media considering that the medium just waged a decade-long fight about censorship due to violence. Now a ton of the people who screamed about Christian groups’ complaints and government attempts to treat gaming like pornography are suddenly spouting nonsense about rape culture and self-censorship. They’re completely unaware that they’re arguing from the same position with the exact same amount of evidence (that is to say little or none).

[Goldwin Smith]

I’m sure these people are going to be praising the Production Code and the Comics Code for preventing rape from being shown, right?….

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Nudge, nudge: CDC claims that over 100,000 people have quit smoking due to graphic, image-driven anti-smoking ads and labels

The CDC study, published in The Lancet, surveyed a randomly selected, nationally representative group of 3,051 smokers and 2,220 non-smokers before and after the first ad campaign. About three-quarters recalled seeing at least one of the Tips from Former Smokers ads on TV, and smokers reported 12% more attempts to quit after the campaign than before it.

Since research suggests only about 6% of quit attempts succeed long-term, the study estimates that at least 100,000 of those who tried will probably succeed. It also found that during the campaign, its national toll-free quit line (1-800-QUIT-NOW) got 132% more calls and its website (www.smokefree.gov) attracted 500,000 more visitors than usual.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

President of United Steelworkers: ‘Capitalism Failed; Cronyism and Corruption Rule’

Capitalist theory asserts that CEOs rise to the top based on merit and moxie and deserve million-dollar pay packages. Turns out, though, capitalism doesn’t really work that way. Conniving Jonnies rule the business world. First they ditched the philosophy that corporations are equally responsible to America, shareholders, workers, customers and communities. Then they enshrined CEOs as corporations’ primary beneficiaries, thus golden parachutes awarded to failed and fired executives. In the real world, CEOs rise to the top based on cronyism and corruption.

Thankfully unions and their power hierarchies are immune to such corruption.

Coddling CEOs, especially incompetent ones, is not the function of corporations. Vanderbilt law professor Margaret Blair told the Washington Post the role is much larger: “We build corporations to provide goods and services to a society and jobs for people.”

The IPS report suggests methods to control CEO pay, including actually enforcing provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. In addition, corporations must be required, as they did in the 1950s and 1960s, to serve the nation, customers, workers and communities as well as shareholders and CEOs.

Cronyism is bad, but what’s this ‘we build corporations for X-purpose’ crap?

[robc]

If the unions had used their dues to buy stock in the company instead of spending it on lobbying and wanking, they would have signficant say in the running of many companies.

[Apatheist ?_??]

Steel Unions are some of the cronyist pieces of shits even by union standards.

[CE]

When you’re a Vanderbilt law professor, you’re not part of the “we” who build corporations.

[R C Dean]

Funny, I thought “we” built corporations to provide profits for their owners.

And when was this philosophy that corporations were equally responsible to America, workers, etc. widely embraced, exactly?

[jesse.in.mb]

Pravda: New killer syndrome: Emergency committee convened

How interesting. Is the World Health Organization once again going to sit back and limit itself to informing us of the various phases the disease is going to run through until the final declaration that it has become a pandemic without imposing quarantine, without imposing travel restrictions? This was the case with Influenza H1N1, when the pharmaceutical lobbies rubbed their hands in glee as the illness spread around the world creating millions of new cases.

How many meetings do they need to recognize the fact that nature is trying to create a pandemic based on foci of infection in the lower respiratory tract, as has been obvious over the last decade, which has again proved to be the case with MERS-Co, in which tests reveal the viral load is far higher in this area than in the upper respiratory samples?

The Middle East IS trying to kill you, through personified nature, natch.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Krugman: Conservatism is now a cult

For the truth is that the good news on costs just keeps coming in. There has been a striking slowdown in overall health costs since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, with many experts giving the law at least partial credit. And we now have a good idea what insurance premiums will be once the law goes fully into effect; a comprehensive survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that on average premiums will be significantly lower than those predicted by the Congressional Budget Office when the law was passed.

But do Republican politicians know any of this? Not if they’re listening to conservative “experts,” who have been offering a steady stream of misinformation. All those claims about sticker shock, for example, come from obviously misleading comparisons. For example, supposed experts compare average insurance rates under the new system, which will cover everyone, with the rates currently paid by a handful of young, healthy people for bare-bones insurance. And they conveniently ignore the subsidies many Americans will receive.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

And the point is that episodes like this have become the rule, not the exception, on the right. How many Republicans know, for example, that government employment has declined, not risen, under President Obama? Certainly Senator Rand Paul was incredulous when I pointed this out to him on TV last fall. On the contrary, he insisted, “the size of growth of government is enormous under President Obama” ? which was completely untrue but was presumably what his sources had told him, knowing that it was what he wanted to hear.

For that, surely, is what the wonk gap is all about. Political conservatism and serious policy analysis can coexist, and there was a time when they did. Back in the 1980s, after all, health experts at Heritage made a good-faith effort to devise a plan for universal health coverage ? and what they came up with was the system now known as Obamacare.

But that was then. Modern conservatism has become a sort of cult, very much given to conspiracy theorizing when confronted with inconvenient facts. Liberal policies were supposed to cause hyperinflation, so low measured inflation must reflect statistical fraud; the threat of climate change implies the need for public action, so global warming must be a gigantic scientific hoax. Oh, and Mitt Romney would have won if only he had been a real conservative.

The reality-based community, everyone!

[Episiarch]

The projection-based community, you mean.

[Irish]

This is because of the collapse of state and local employees due to municipal bankruptcies and money being eaten up by pension rolls. The number of people being paid to DO A JOB by government has decreased, but the number of people being PAID by government has not.

Cite: Crazy right wingers at Time Magazine.

All together, those unfunded pension liabilities add more than $2.5 trillion to America’s $16 trillion Federal debt and $2.8 trillion state and local debt. Just as it is vital to reduce government deficits, it will eventually be necessary to bring down this pension funding deficit. One way would be to slash retirement benefits by 20%. Another would be to force employees to pay an additional 5% of their salaries toward such benefits. Or taxpayers could cough up the money, bailing out pension funds as they get into trouble. Switching everyone over to defined-contribution plans, such as 401(k)s, would eventually solve the problem as far as young workers are concerned, but would still leave a huge unfunded liability for those approaching retirement.

We have 5.3 trillion dollars in unfunded pension liabilities, and Paul Krugman thinks the problem is not enough government workers.

[Irish]

There’s also this little tidbit:

Crazy ass right wingers at CNN!

The federal payroll has been expanding since President Bush took office, after declining during the Clinton administration. But it’s still a tad smaller than it was in 1992, said Craig Jennings, a federal budget expert at the progressive think tank OMB Watch.

The federal government has been one of the few areas that’s grown during the economic downturn. The private sector remains down 1.1 million jobs from the start of 2009, while state and local governments have shed 635,000 positions.

So the federal government has still increased in total workers. This supports my thesis that the decline has entirely occurred at the state and local level, likely due to unfunded liabilities and budgetary crunches making hiring impossible. This is why you need to look at Federal workers vs. state and local workers. The way Krugman does it is horribly disingenuous because lumping the two together hides where the decline has occurred.

[paranoid android]

Does anyone have any statistics for contractors working for the federal government? Are they generally counted as government or private sector workers?

[Irish]

Guess what! They’re counted as private sector!

The push to slash federal spending in the name of curbing deficits and getting rid of “big government” could hit the private sector.

The reason: The federal government now spends more than $500 billion a year — or roughly 14% of the federal budget — on private-sector contractors.

That’s more than double what it spent in 2000, said Dan Gordon, a government contracts expert who oversaw federal procurement policy for the White House from 2009 to 2011.
Spending on contractors rose fairly steadily over the past dozen years as government agencies became “dramatically more dependent” on them, Gordon said.

The government spends 14% of its total expenditures paying people who are ‘private sector’ in name only. That also only counts defense contractors, so the real number is probably higher.

That’s a great way to make it look like government has been slashed to the bone. Pay people who are private sector in name only and you get to claim there’s been a decline in government workers.

[paranoid android]

That’s what I suspected, but I didn’t want to make any bold claims without a citation. Yeah, that elevates Krugman’s statement from a weaselly half-truth to an absurdity.

[MJGreen]

Certainly Senator Rand Paul was incredulous when I pointed this out to him on TV last fall.

Wow. Krugman’s so awesome. So brave and smart. Dude’s a hero.

[Irish]

There has been a striking slowdown in overall health costs since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, with many experts giving the law at least partial credit.

This is because fewer people are going to the doctor due to the economic slowdown.

Want proof? How about that hardcore right wing news organizations, the New York Times!

In 2010, people age 18 to 64 made an average of 3.9 visits to doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, down from 4.8 visits in 2001, said the report, which was released on Monday.

If fewer people go to hospitals, that means costs would go down due to lower demand. If the people on the New York Times op-ed page would read the New York Times news section, they probably would make fewer of these mistakes.

[R C Dean]

Bingo. Utilization is down, big-time across the board. Per-unit costs havven’t gone down, but volume has.

As is not unusual during periods of economic weakness.

[Pro Libertate]

So people buy less stuff during economic down times? How shockingly counterintuitive! Hey, wait a second. . . .

[Irish]

For a short period of time when the crisis really hit, gas prices plummeted to less than $2. By Krugman’s logic, the decline must have been the result of Obama’s policies.

For an economist, he sure doesn’t seem to understand the concepts of supply and demand.

[Enough About Palin]

If Tropical Storm Humberto doesn’t become a hurricane before the morning of September 11, it will be the latest first hurricane of the Atlantic season since satellite tracking began in the 1960s.

Hey Al Gore, STFU!

[Coeus]

Demonization of male sexuality continues apace:

“Normally our hackathons are a showcase for developers of all stripes to create and share something cool. But earlier today, the spirit of our event was marred by two misogynistic presentations,” the tech website said in a statement.

Later, developer Kangmo Kim showed off his “Circle Shake” app, which measured how fast a person could shake their iPhone for 10 seconds. Kim proceeded to illustrate how the iPhone game was played by simulating masturbation. His demonstration included various grunting noises.

Have they turned into onanists? Is spilling the seed an automatic example of hatred of women?

[invisible furry hand]

A candidate of the libertarian Liberal Democrat party in Australia, David Leyonhjelm, won one of six Senate seats out of New South Wales.

So where’s my goddam hat tip?

[JW]

Morning IFH!

[Bill Dalasio]

Assad’s willingness to transfer control supports the supposition that he wasn’t behind any chemical attacks. The truth is probably that the liberals were basically right in saying he was a reformer. He’s holding a tiger by the tail and we should probably be working with him to find a way to release it back into the wild, rather than sicking it on him and us.