Judge Smacks Down NSA Phone Data Collections, FDA Meddles with Antibacterial Soap, FBI Program Directs Potentially Violent to Mental Health Experts: P.M. Links

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    Credit: trekkyandy / Foter.com / CC BY-SA

    Federal Judge Richard Leon apparently missed the National Security Agency's charm offensive on 60 Minutes Sunday night and ruled today that their mass phone record collection is likely unconstitutional.

  • The Food and Drug Administration is now meddling with anti-bacterial soaps, ordering manufacturers to prove that they're safe for long-term use.
  • The FBI claims it has helped prevent nearly 150 violent attacks this year by steering potential shooters to mental health professionals. The Associated Press story doesn't indicate what sort of evidence there was that an actual attack would have happened in all of these cases, though the FBI provided details of what was most likely the most obvious case of a potential shooter.
  • While protesters in Ukraine keep demanding the countries forge ties with the European Union, the country's president is heading to Russia instead, looking for a bailout of up to $15 billion.
  • Even though Reason's webathon is done, please keep us in mind if you win tomorrow night's nearly $600 million Mega Millions jackpot.
  • Two Saudi detainees who had never been charged with a crime were returned to their country from detention at Guantanamo Bay.

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  1. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

    Even though Reason’s webathon is done, please keep us in mind if you win tomorrow night’s nearly $600 million Mega Millions jackpot.

    Neediness is unattractive, Reason.

    1. I’m keeping them in mind if I win the jackpot. I’m going to buy a national TV ad saying they should bring back Lucy Steigerwald.

      1. Certified Public Asskicker

        Don’t forget to go on the cruise, so you can rub elbows with ol’ VP!

      2. Some call me Tim?

        +1 Stagblog

      3. Aloysious

        If yo win the jackpot, can I have a loan?

        1. Aloysious

          *you* – grrrr

      4. Medical Physics Guy

        I vote for the return of Chuck Freund. Awesome columns.

    2. Rufus J. Firefly

      Sheesh. Like the ex-girlfriend you don’t like who still wants to hang around and be friends.

      1. Matrix

        Mine moved in with my grandparents. Well, I didn’t not like her. But after we split up, she moved in with my grandparents.

        1. Rich

          She forced her way in, though, right?

        2. Killaz

          Wow. There’s a story there. Go on . . .

        3. CE

          She’s such a nice girl, Matrix….

        4. Generic Stranger

          Perhaps you shouldn’t have dated your cousin.

    3. Enough About Palin

      Neediness is unattractive, Reason.

      You don’t keep a stable of waifs?

      1. Killaz

        Weird how that was the one type of female that always found me attractive. Not busty, full figured boozy redheads, or six foot tall athletic Amazons, both of which I’m hugely attracted to, it was always the waifs that came knocking on my door. Not that I’m really complaining, but a type definitely had me.

        1. Enough About Palin

          I like my waifs to be like Veronica Lake in Sullivan’s Travels

    4. CE

      +1 Fist of First

  2. The Food and Drug Administration is now meddling with anti-bacterial soaps, ordering manufacturers to prove that they’re safe for long-term use.

    Big Germ is behind this.

    1. Rich

      “You’re *soaking* in it!”

      /Madge

    2. Isn’t all that anti-bacterial stuff leading to an increase in allergies and autoimmune diseases?

      Although, to be honest, I doubt that’s what the FDA has in mind when they’re thinking about long-term use.

      1. “Nice product there, but the boss wants to dip his beak. Just a little taste.”

      2. Rich

        I’m sure the FDA has its, I mean, *our* best interests at heart.

      3. PapayaSF

        To me, this sounds like one time the FDA is doing what it’s supposed to do. Anti-bacterial soaps, AFAIK, are bullshit marketing devices that provide no health benefit, may be directly unhealthy, and yet are helping to breed drug-resistant bacteria.

        1. db

          Is soap a food and/or a drug?

          1. PapayaSF

            If you add anti-bacterial chemicals to it, and sell it as anti-bacterial, I think it counts as a drug from the FDA point of view.

            1. CE

              If you like your soap, you can keep it. For now.

          2. Mad Scientist

            My mother thought it was both of those things whenever I cursed.

            1. Bobarian

              But you had clean smelling breath.

        2. BigT

          This is a fraud problem since the soaps don’t work.

      4. Zeb

        I think that kind of goes along with the vaccination question. How harmful does an idiotic behavior have to be to others before it can be banned or regulated?

        As with vaccination, I’d rather see more education on why vaccination is good and antibacterial soaps are stupid and pointless and possibly harmful than direct bans or mandates. But there must be a line somewhere where your stupid neuroses become legitimately harmful to others.

        1. CE

          Yes, when a stupid, neurotic agency prevents you from buying something you want from someone who is willing to sell it.

          1. PapayaSF

            Except: if something you want to buy is falsely advertised, and actually does the opposite of what it claims, I shed no tears over the regulation of it.

    3. Certified Public Asskicker

      In the meantime, people should continue to be diligent about washing their hands, particularly at this time of year to help protect against the spread of colds and flu. If soap and water aren’t available, an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol should be used, the FDA said

      In the meantime, kill away!

    4. CE

      Soap…. neither Food nor Drug, yet somehow still Administered to.

    5. AlmightyJB

      If 6 generations of a family all use antibacterial soap it’s possible that someone in that family might get cancer. Prove that’s not true and we’ll let you keep that business that you didn’t build.

  3. Archduke von Pantsfan

    LOL: Now You Can Buy an ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Poster on Walmart’s Site

    1. “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” – Vladimir Lenin

      1. Agammamon

        “The Communists will buy the rope they hang themselves with from us.” – Agammamon

        1. BigT

          The communists will not be able to produce the rope and feed the people at the same time.

    2. PapayaSF

      “Curses, co-opted again!”

  4. Archduke von Pantsfan

    Ga. student suspended for year after hugging teacher

    1. Agammamon

      Man, its like you don’t even *read* the articles.

      https://reason.com/blog/2013/12…..or-one-yea

      1. Archduke von Pantsfan

        I can’t be held responsible.

        1. Archduke von Pantsfan is actually Charles Oliver, the auther of the Brickbats.

        2. fish

          I can’t be held responsible.

          You’re obviously a victim.

          1. Cdr Lytton

            Or a fan of The Verve Pipe.

            We were merely Canadien…

      2. Don’t be too rough on him, Agammamon. The Jets are doing terrible, I’m sure he’s drinking way too much.

        1. Archduke von Pantsfan

          OH GOD I was at the game on Saturday. What a gong show.

          1. At least it wasn’t boring!

            1. Archduke von Pantsfan

              It was bobblehead giveaway for Pavelic.
              Getting yanked out of the net on your bobblehead day can’t be good.

              1. JW

                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLlsjEP7L-k

  5. Mad Scientist

    The FBI claims it has helped prevent nearly 150 violent attacks this year by steering potential shooters to mental health professionals.

    And only 150 of those violent attacks were planned by the FBI!

    1. Rich

      “Steering them to”? Meaning “handcuffing and giving them a ride to”?

      1. Bobarian

        They were giving them bomb materials and ammunition and telling them where mental health professionals worked before they arrested them in their sting operation.

        1. Dry_Gin_Wet_Farts

          That’s 150 people created or saved, to you and me.

    2. Just like 150 terror bombing plots have been prevented by the FBI promising incompetent idiots bombs, then arresting them when they show up.

      1. PapayaSF

        I see nothing wrong with applying “bait car” techniques to terrorism.

        1. Zeb

          Maybe if the FBI just subtlety let it be known in whatever criminal underground that terrorists hang out in that they can get some bombs. But in all the cases I’ve heard any details about, FBI agents seem to be the primary instigators of plots and aggressively try to push people with no inclination towards terrorism toward being involved in some plot.

          1. PapayaSF

            Eh, that can happen, but I doubt many people not already pre-disposed to terrorism can be talked into it by an FBI agent.

            1. Zeb

              But the fact is that they do do things like that. And at the very least, I think that means that their claims about stopping terrorism should be highly scrutinized.

              1. PapayaSF

                I’m fine with scrutiny, I’m just not a total cynic about such counter-terror tricks.

        2. Chinny Chin Chin

          Well, if the “bait car” techniques include approaching a guy at a bus stop and saying, “Gosh, you should be driving. Dontcha want to be driving? I’ll teach you to steal a car. And show you a good car to steal. Plus you can screw my hot sister… she likes guys with stolen cars”, then that’s a fair comparison to the FBI’s approach to bombers.

          1. PapayaSF

            Not quite. It’s more: “Hey, want to kill infidels? I can rig up a car bomb for you if you’re interested in being a martyr.” Anyone who falls for that deserves what they get.

  6. Archduke von Pantsfan

    Severed hand kept alive on man’s ankle

    1. waffles

      Is it his or is he just keeping it warm?

    2. Rich

      Wow. Good if the bottom of your foot itches, though.

      1. Pope Jimbo

        Right idea, but you didn’t completely think it through.

        Why not attach the hand to your groin? I’m thinking that long meetings would be ever more enjoyable if you could play pocket pool without being detected.

  7. Rich

    [Judge Leon] stayed his own ruling pending an expected appeal by the government.

    And just keep telling that puppy to stay until the Supremes refuse to hear the case.

  8. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

    Neanderthals were smart enough to bury their dead

    Now an international team of scientists is reporting that a 13-year re-examination of the burials at La Chapelle-aux-Saints supports the earlier claims that the burials were intentional.

    The researchers ? archaeologists, geologists and paleoanthropologists ? not only studied the skeleton from the original excavations, but found more Neanderthal remains, from two children and an adult. They also studied the bones of other animals in the cave, mainly bison and reindeer, and the geology of the burial pits.

    The findings, in this week’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “buttress claims for complex symbolic behavior among Western European Neanderthals,” the scientists reported.

    William Rendu, the paper’s lead author and a researcher at the Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences in New York, said in an interview that the geology of the burial pits “cannot be explained by natural events” and “there is no sign of weathering and scavenging by animals,” which meant the bodies were covered soon after death.

    “While we cannot know if this practice was part of a ritual or merely pragmatic,” Dr. Rendu said in a statement issued by New York University, “the discovery reduces the behavioral distance between them and us.”

    1. CE

      Maybe they just didn’t like the smell.

      1. Yeah, that and/or seeing Mom devoured by thousands of writhing maggots.

        It’s odd that scientists would assume that a hominid species that lived so recently–long after Homo sapiens was considered to have become modern man–would be so primitive.

    2. BigT

      “…claims for complex symbolic behavior among Western European Neanderthals,”

      = They had a common currency

  9. Protagoronus

    Two Saudi detainees who had never been charged with a crime were returned to their country from detention at Guantanamo Bay.

    And nothing else happened?

    1. Mad Scientist

      They’ll watch them like hawks, find out who they interact with, and then drag those people to Guantanamo.

      1. Protagoronus

        Maybe they will travel to a country where our glorious leader can double-tap drone them with impunity.

        1. Cdr Lytton

          No need to. Just plant stories that they’re American agents, sit back and let someone else do the dirty work.

          http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..story.html

  10. …and ruled today that their mass phone record collection is likely unconstitutional.

    Good thing for the government no one enforces the Constitution.

  11. While protesters in Ukraine keep demanding the countries forge ties with the European Union, the country’s president is heading to Russia instead, looking for a bailout of up to $15 billion.

    The money they want to throw at the problem has to come from somewhere.

    1. Why can’t Ukraine just say they want to forge ties with both sides?

      1. Zeb

        I don’t think Russia would go for that.

  12. Archduke von Pantsfan

    A lesbian couple killed a man after luring him to an East Coast beach with promises of sex.

    1. Named “Crystal” and “Krystel”. Nice.

      Gotta love those wacky Kiwis.

    2. Aloysious

      That is some twisted shit.

    3. Apatheist ?_??

      8 years for murder?

      1. Eduard van Haalen

        Are you some kind of homophobe?

      2. PapayaSF

        I wonder how much of the criticism the US gets for locking up so many people is counter-balanced by the fact that other countries often don’t seem to lock people up for long enough.

        Also: Yikes, two lesbians not doing anything to disprove the old stereotype about what lesbians look like.

    4. JW

      They look nothing like the lesbians in the movies that I watch.

      1. I have to assume that they sent photos of some other women.

        1. Crap, he’d already seen them. No accounting for taste.

        2. JW

          “That’s the photo to go with the Wal-Mart story!”

        3. What’s the line from Office Space: “I think it might cost a million dollars to find two hot chicks who would do me at the same time.”

          1. CE

            Luckily, the Mega Millions drawing is tomorrow night.

    5. Rich

      pleading guilty to his manslaughter, as well as to charges of car conversion

      “Car conversion”? How quaint!

    6. Zakalwe

      This probably bore some relationship to the way he wanted to die.

    7. font_of_stupidity

      A lesbian couple killed a man after luring him to an East Coast beach with promises of sex.

      This is not a hate crime.

      1. Rufus J. Firefly

        Minorities are entitled to retribution in perpetuity.

      2. Calidissident

        That depends on why they killed him. If they killed because he was a man or because he was straight, then yeah. If they just used the proposition as an easy lure to kill someone because they get off on that sort of thing, then it’s not. Too early to tell.

        SLD I don’t think hate crimes laws should exist.

    8. Rufus J. Firefly

      I don’t know. If those two propositioned me I’d either vomit or laugh. Or both.

  13. Archduke von Pantsfan

    Champions League draw pits Arsenal against Bayern Munich in last 16

    Man City face Barcelona, Chelsea meet Galatasaray and Manchester United play Olympiakos

    1. Fucking Arsenhole again. I just hope Bayern take both legs seriously this time around.

      And thankfully, they’ve got home advantage in the return leg.

      I’m also sick and tired of emphasis on EPL teams. Fox’s coverage of the Europa League is especially bad in this regard.

      1. Archduke von Pantsfan

        Drogba returns to Stamford Bridge!

        1. Rufus J. Firefly

          I still can’t believe they allowed Juve-Gala to play on such a disgraceful field.

          1. Rufus J. Firefly

            Sorry, for you traditional purists, “pitch.”

          2. I enjoyed USA-Costa Rica from World Cup Qualifying back in March. 🙂

            1. Rufus J. Firefly

              Heh. That was funny but they agreed to play on it.

              I’m reading conflicting stories about Juve-Gala. It’s hard to think Mancini and Conte would agree to play on that. Then there have been suggestions that Juve’s attacking side of the pitch was purposely not tended to.

              Meh.

              They should have squashed Gala in Turin and choked. Mental errors cost them.

              But it’s a good, solid group. They’ll be back.

      2. Rufus J. Firefly

        Arsenal was ONE lousy goal away from being booted out by Napoli.

        If Napoli played some defense they would have gone through. But Benitez refused to adjust.

      3. Rufus J. Firefly

        Ted S. Absolutely agree with you.

      4. Fox’s coverage of the Europa League is especially bad in this regard.

        Yeah, it’s almost as if someone at Fox has a vested interest in an EPL team or something.

        1. Rufus J. Firefly

          They always counter because ‘it’s the most popular league’ but that rings hollow sometimes.

          Put it to you this way, I’d rather watch, Eintracht, Valencia or Fiorentina over Swansea yet the latter gets on TV.

          1. Or relegated Wigan.

            1. Rufus J. Firefly

              Oof. Wigan. Yeah.

          2. And last week they showed Tottenham even though that group was already decided. Show some games with implications for both teams on who advances!

            1. Rufus J. Firefly

              Again. Agree. I was disappointed by that decision because, as you said, they were already qualified.

              In any event, I watch the games I want on the the internet- firstrowsports.

    2. Andrew S.

      Citeh is screwed, and I can’t see Arsenal taking out Bayern.

      (meanwhile, AVB got fired by Spurs today. Not surprising.)

      1. Rufus J. Firefly

        What, beating Anzhi couldn’t save his job?

        /winks.

      2. I’ve got a friend who’s a Spurs fan and originally from Ghana. I told him yesterday that he must love Luis Suarez right about now. 🙂

        1. Andrew S.

          Suarez has to be the best player in England right now, doesn’t he? I’m sure I’d despise him if I wasn’t a Liverpool fan.

      3. Apatheist ?_??

        Depends on their form in February but if they played today City would win.

    3. John

      So two of Arsenal, Bayern, Barca, and Chelsea will be gone by the second round. wow.

      1. I thought Chelsea got Galatasaray and Barca got … [looks it up] Man Shitty.

    4. Rufus J. Firefly

      As an aside, Europa has a deep field this year.

      And…AC Milan drew Atletico. Tough. Very. Madrid is a nice dark horse I reckon.

      1. Archduke von Pantsfan

        PSG has been outstanding too.

        1. Rufus J. Firefly

          Yeah, PSG is good. Ibra is a beast. But I’ll go with a Spanish side. For now, teams from that league are the ones to beat.

          1. Last year’s semis were a thing of beauty.

            1. Rufus J. Firefly

              If you were German.

              1. Rufus J. Firefly

                But it was incredible how they sliced up the Liga squads.

              2. My grandparents emigrated from Bavaria and I still have a ton of relatives there.

                1. Rufus J. Firefly

                  Have you been?

                  Germany is on my ‘hit’ list.

    5. Feck. Pack it in now, Gooners.

      1. Marc F Cheney

        “Now”? I packed it in years ago.

        1. Just because Wegener is determined to sell your best players and keep you comfortably close to the top but not quite winning… wait, that is a great reason to give up while he remains coach.

  14. The Other Kevin

    Federal Judge Richard Leon apparently missed the National Security Agency’s charm offensive on 60 Minutes Sunday night and ruled today that their mass phone record collection is likely unconstitutional.

    He’s not positive. It’s not like he went to law school or has experience in these matters, or anything like that.

  15. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

    The New York Times covers the renegade sheriffs who refuse to enforce gun control

    Colorado’s package of gun laws, enacted this year after mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., has been hailed as a victory by advocates of gun control. But if Sheriff Cooke and a majority of the other county sheriffs in Colorado offer any indication, the new laws ? which mandate background checks for private gun transfers and outlaw magazines over 15 rounds ? may prove nearly irrelevant across much of the state’s rural regions.

    Some sheriffs, like Sheriff Cooke, are refusing to enforce the laws, saying that they are too vague and violate Second Amendment rights. Many more say that enforcement will be “a very low priority,” as several sheriffs put it. All but seven of the 62 elected sheriffs in Colorado signed on in May to a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the statutes.

    The resistance of sheriffs in Colorado is playing out in other states, raising questions about whether tougher rules passed since Newtown will have a muted effect in parts of the American heartland, where gun ownership is common and grass-roots opposition to tighter restrictions is high.

    1. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

      Cue angry comments!

      corruption snifferSuffolk County New York
      Nullification is as old as law itself. It threatens the rule of law and the citizens it’s meant to protect. I really don’t understand this rabid fight to keep making and selling these high capacity magazines. I’m a former US Fish and Wildlife agent and we were tasked with enforcing a federal bullet capacity law during duck hunting season. If you used a pump action shotgun that was capable of holding more than three shells you MUST have a plug inserted so that the gun is only capable of holding 3 shells. Why is that you might ask. Well, logic had it that a five shell capacity led to just too many ducks being slaughtered. So with only three the ducks had a fighting chance to live another day. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had the same concern for humans as we have for ducks. Why isn’t the all powerful gun lobby screaming and fighting to have this great attack on the second amendment ripped apart? Unfortunatly I only have questions not answers but I submit that we should give school kids and other innocents a fighting chance and limit the number of bullets in guns.

      Nothing says rule of law like trampling rights law is supposed to protect.

      1. gaijin

        logic had it that a five shell capacity led to just too many ducks being slaughtered.

        That’s the dumbest thing I’ve read in the last……2 minutes.

      2. Marc F Cheney

        Nullification is as old as law itself. It threatens the rule of law and the citizens it’s meant to protect.

        If no officer wants to enforce a law, and no jury wants to convict under that law, how is it a law?

        Some people think laws are made by legislators. It’s strange.

        1. CE

          Doesn’t Obama roll out the ACA on his schedule, deciding which items to enforce and which to put off for a year and which to ignore? Isn’t it the same thing?

      3. wareagle

        Unfortunatly I only have questions not answers but I submit that we should give school kids and other innocents a fighting chance and limit the number of bullets in guns.

        logic fail. Like ducks, is there a bag limit on kids in Suffolk County?

        1. Pope Jimbo

          Maybe those fat little kids should learn (like ducks) not to decoy right in when they see a bag of candy just sitting out in the open.

          A little personal responsibility please!

        2. Pope Jimbo

          Maybe those fat little kids should learn (like ducks) not to decoy right in when they see a bag of candy just sitting out in the open.

          A little personal responsibility please!

      4. LynchPin1477

        Is he arguing that the ban on high capacity magazines need only apply when one is hunting school children?

        1. Mad Scientist

          When does school children season start, anyway?

        2. Zeb

          Yes, I think he is.

      5. Zeb

        The thing is, that my pump shotgun is used mostly for old junk and not ducks or children. I don’t think that the law needs to offer extra protection for old junk, targets and chunks of clay. The fact that I like having a shotgun that holds 5 rounds, or a rifle that holds 30 is good enough reason for me to have it.

    2. So… if these sheriffs refused to follow the law laid down by the Fugitive Slave Act or Internment Act in WWII they would have been:
      (a) great heroes
      (b) horrible reactionaries

      Either one’s conscience is more important to follow than the law or not. If so, it seems silly to quibble about whether exercise of conscience is about being on the side of “right”.

      1. Elspeth Flashman

        Ditto for the county clerks in states that are debating same gender unions.

      2. CatoTheElder

        Colorado Governor Ralph L. Carr vocally opposed FDR’s internment of Japs. Famous for this line: “If you harm them, you must harm me. I was brought up in a small town where I knew the shame and dishonor of race hatred. I grew to despise it because it threatened the happiness of you and you and you.”

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

        He narrowly lost his next election.

  16. The Immaculate Trouser

    Quantitative Analysis in everything: the curve of Islamic conversion in the Middle East

    1. PapayaSF

      Huh. TL;DR, but interesting.

  17. rts

    Government minister says something intelligent about the role of government, is forced to apologize

    [Canada’s] Industry Minister James Moore has apologized for saying it’s not the federal government’s role to ensure hungry children are fed.

    “In response to a question from a reporter last week, I made an insensitive comment that I deeply regret. I apologize,” Moore said in a statement on his website Monday, referring to his comment to a Vancouver radio reporter on Friday.

    What a stupid country.

    1. Archduke von Pantsfan

      I agreed with him when he said it. He could have said it better, but the sentiment is right.

      1. PapayaSF

        He should have doubled down and said “It’s also not our role to make sure they do their homework, go to bed at night, and get up in time for school in the morning.”

        1. The truant officers’ union (or whatever their called in Canadia) would object.

    2. gaijin

      He clearly hates children.

    3. Rich

      Next: “Former Industry Minister Moore sentenced to ten years in prison for insensitivity”

      1. Juice

        He could have gotten a lighter sentence if he had lured a man to the beach and beat him to death.

    4. Rufus J. Firefly

      “NDP appalled.”

      I’m appalled with the NDP in general.

      You should see the hacks in that party. It’s a freak show.

      1. Isn’t everybody appalled by the New Dictators?

        1. Rufus J. Firefly

          Apparently not given they were given official opposition with my home province insanely tipping the balance.

      2. Isaac Bartram

        It seems I wrote off the NDP a few years ago by saying that the Liberals under Trudeau had so successfully pre-empted their program that the only people left who supported the NDP were the clergy of the United Church of Canada and their spouses, the Sociology Department of the University of Toronto and Kiefer Sutherland’s mother.

        Then the Grits went for one graft scheme to far and almost went the way of the Progressive Conservatives.

        I haven’t followed things that much lately but wasn’t the NDP the official Opposition in the Federal Parliament at one point?

        1. Rufus J. Firefly

          Yup. Under one Thomas Mulcair.

          /shivers.

        2. Long Range Boredom

          It’s the official Opposition now actually.

          1. Isaac Bartram

            Thanks, Long Range.

            Wow the Liberals really did shit the bed.

    5. Zeb

      I made an insensitive comment that I deeply regret

      Insensitive to whom? The federal government?

      1. Winston

        Well the Federal government did vow to eliminate child poverty by 2000. Didn’t work obviously.

  18. gaijin

    Does the Federal Reserve even care if everyone figures out they are a cabal?

    “It’s important that people get our message broadly right,” Dudley said. If the market moves “inappropriately,” it’s more difficult for the Fed to achieve its goals.

    Taper Shmaper

    1. Rich

      If the market moves “inappropriately,” it’s more difficult for the Fed to achieve its goals.

      However, the market may not be not unresponsive to the Fed’s inappropriate touching.

  19. Hyperion

    The FBI claims it has helped prevent nearly 150 violent attacks this year by steering potential shooters to mental health professionals.

    Hey, you been blogging anti-government rhetoric on libertarian blogs and playing violent video games? It’s off to re-education camp for you, free of charge!

    Terrorist attack averted – check

    Wimin and childin safe again on our streets – check

    Mental health industry jobs created – check

    It’s a WIN/WIN!

    1. John

      How did they ever meet these people? Do people contemplating a mass shooting generally call the FBI for help?

      1. Hyperion

        Yes, always, but 1 out of a million times, the phone is busy, like with Sandy Hook, etc…

      2. The same way the ATF finds people to “illegally modify” guns, I’d bet.

        1. CatoTheElder

          Set up a pawn shop. Offer way above market prices for used shit. Befriend retarded customers and encourage them to hang around. Offer free drinks and video games. Teach the retards how to saw off a shotgun barrel. Then, ask them saw off a shotgun barrel for you.

          Roll up the retards. Close pawn shop and repeat process in another city.

          Something like that?

          1. Keep it up, they’ll offer you a jerb.

            1. Bobarian

              what does hanging out in a pawn shop and sawing off barrels pay?

  20. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

    America’s Child Soldiers

    It should be no secret that the United States has the biggest, most efficiently organized, most effective system for recruiting child soldiers in the world. With uncharacteristic modesty, however, the Pentagon doesn’t call it that. Its term is “youth development program.”

    Pushed by multiple high-powered, highly paid public relations and advertising firms under contract to the Department of Defense, the program is a many splendored thing. Its major public face is the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps or JROTC.

    What makes this child-soldier recruiting program so striking is that the Pentagon carries it out in plain sight in hundreds and hundreds of private, military, and public high schools across the U.S.

    Unlike the notorious West African warlords Foday Sankoh and Charles Taylor, the Pentagon doesn’t actually kidnap children and drag them bodily into battle. It seeks instead to make its young “cadets” what John Stuart Mill once termed “willing slaves,” so taken in by the master’s script that they accept their parts with a gusto that passes for personal choice. To that end, JROTC works on their not-yet-fully-developed minds, instilling what the program’s textbooks call “patriotism” and “leadership,” as well as a reflexive attention to authoritarian commands.

    It’s still voluntary.

    1. John

      JROTC is just so like what goes on in Africa. Haven’t you seen the gangs of JROTC members roaming our cities murdering people?

      How do people this stupid feed themselves?

      1. PapayaSF

        This is one of the stupidest leftist equivalencies ever, up there with “seduction = rape.”

    2. Mad Scientist

      as well as a reflexive attention to authoritarian commands.

      Well, at least they’re doing something right. Eh, HuffPo?

    3. Some friends of mine have a son in the JROTC. Dad and uncle are eagerly deprogramming the parts they don’t like. Seems like a win-win. Young man gets some grooming tips and behavior advice that may be valuable. Uncle, a former Army man, is taking the piss out of that “every one who serves is a hero” bullshit with specific examples explored in depth.

      1. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

        Discipline is good for a young man. Blind obedience to authority is not. Shouldn’t be that hard to teach him to see the difference.

        1. The Immaculate Trouser

          A good JROTC or ROTC program should be teaching that distinction in during course of the program. You don’t get good officers if you are teaching your future officers only blind obedience. (For that matter, such is also true of a good enlisted core.) There is nothing wrong with reinforcing that distinction to your child, however.

    4. Hyperion

      “youth development program.”

      It’s probably only in my paranoid libertarian thought process that this sounds just a little Orwellian…

    5. Andrew S.

      Tonight, on “Eye on Springfield”: just miles from your doorstep, hundreds of men are given weapons and trained to kill. The government calls it the “army”, but a more alarmist name would be “The Killbot Factory.”

    6. I would have said its term is “public schools”.

      1. Matrix

        Indeed. I think more damage is done by the whole public school system than JROTC.

    7. Matrix

      It is voluntary, and they aren’t even soldiers. I don’t believe they even train them how to use weapons anymore. They certainly don’t get to carry them around.

      It’s mostly just teaching kids discipline. There are a lot worse things the federal government does with children.

    8. The Immaculate Trouser

      This… this is fucking retarded. They are not soldiers if they are not fighting as part of an organized armed force. They are not even soldiering.

    9. Raven Nation

      Yvan eht nioj, Yvan eht nioj

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kmiw1NmIz0

    10. Irish

      That is retarded. They’re free to leave before they ship out. It’s not like they’re forced to fight when they’re 14.

    11. Tejicano

      Full disclosure – I was in high school ROTC for four years and went directly from there into the military. But I had basically decided on that path even before high school. It was the one clear path to my teenage mind that would lead to me being an independent adult.

      But neither me nor any of the other kids in ROTC were anything close to being “killing machines” and we knew it. Nothing even remotely about the killing part of soldiering came up until I was actually in boot camp and no longer in the ROTC program.

    12. CE

      Unlike the notorious West African warlords Foday Sankoh and Charles Taylor, the Pentagon doesn’t actually kidnap children and drag them bodily into battle.

      For now. But you still have to register with the Selective Draft Board, I mean Service, just in case.

  21. Enough About Palin

    The FBI claims it has helped prevent nearly 150 violent attacks this year by steering potential shooters to mental health professionals.

    Bullshit.

    1. Rich

      Bullshit, “bullshit”!

      They did *too* claim that!

    2. Hyperion

      Not Bullshit, but the secret to success.

      Secret to success =

      – get a bureaucracy created

      – make everything bureaucracy does, top secret

      – grow bureaucracy to monstrous level through ever increasing generous tax payer contributions.

      – make everything bureaucracy does even more secret.

      – make up lies about why now goliath sized bureaucracy is very necessary and refuse to divulge source of proof, because it’s a secret.

  22. Eduard van Haalen

    James Taranto in the Wall St. Journal explores why many men don’t become “reliable husbands and fathers.” Might there perhaps be some “disincentives to male reliability and self-sacrifice”?

    http://on.wsj.com/Jt9foc

    1. John

      Hymowitz would like men to organize their lives around maximizing their usefulness to women and children. Hey, what woman wouldn’t? But in invoking H. economicus, she ends up equating the goal of serving others with individual self-interest–an outright inversion of the latter concept.

      Men used to do that. But that was back in the days when men were given rewards such as social status and economic priority for doing so. Thanks in no small part to modern feminists men receive no such rewards anymore and thus feel no duty to provide for women and children. You want an equal world bitch, have it. But equal means you take care of yourself and can’t expect on men to do it for you.

      I often wonder when I read the really nasty feminists like the ones in Slate if they understand that unless their beloved daughters are lesbian (a possibility but a statistically small one) chances are very good they will some day want to get married and have kids. I would love to know just who exactly they expect their daughters to marry after they have run every boy out of school and industry in the name of “girls rule”.

      1. wareagle

        no, they don’t understand that their daughters are likely to get married. They also don’t understand that all these rotten evil men invented damn near everything that has made their lives comfortable and easy.

        I read where Camille Paglia took down a feminist squabble session on “men being dispensable” by saying the corrolary to that would be women being extinct.

        1. Hyperion

          I actually read that this morning. Some good points included the fact that it’s almost exclusively men who do the dirty and dangerous jobs that make a modern society work.

          So, put women on road and bridge projects and oil rigs, or they can STFU and bake us a turkey pot pie … make us a sammich, or knit us a nice new Christmasy scarf, damnit!

          1. John

            Funny how a lifelong lesbian libertine like Paglia can figure that fact out when apparently any number of straight married feminists can’t.

            1. PapayaSF

              She’s great. I wish she was straight, single, younger, and lived near me.

              1. John

                Me too. Even at her age, her personality and wit make her a lot sexier than she has a right to be. I have to admit I would make a game effort at getting her to switch teams.

            2. Enough About Palin

              She’s bi, John and has said that her attraction to men and women mirrors her menstrual cycle.

              1. John

                Really Palin? I had no idea. I always figured she was totally on the other team. The best I ever hoped for was going out bar hopping and picking up chicks with her.

                1. PapayaSF

                  LOL

          2. CE

            This is why there are no libertarian women…

        2. Enough About Palin

          It’s a Man’s World, And It Always Will Be

  23. JW

    The latest in unfalsifiable claims by the our masters:

    FBI: We’ve prevented 148 shootings, attacks this year

    Saved or created!

    1. JW

      Sigh. Never mind.

  24. Certified Public Asskicker

    Oh Christ: Don’t Call Us Marxist Because We Critique Capitalism — Call Us Christian

    Personally, I agree with Pope Francis’ rejection of Marxism. I spent too much time in repressive “Marxist” countries to believe that “unfettered” Marxism can be a successful economic system. But if Marxism has failed, then we must also dare to say that capitalism has failed.

    Logic, ftw!

    1. Marc F Cheney

      If capitalism has failed, then we must also dare to say that Catholicism has failed.

      1. Eduard van Haalen

        The author is a Baptist minister.

    2. John

      If Marxism failed? I guess maybe the deaths of 300 million people along with the enslavement and misery of countless others might be success in some eyes.

      And Marxism has nothing to do with helping the poor. It is about creating a Utopian society. Sure, that creating that society may have the effect of helping the poor. But helping the poor is not the goal, creating the Marxist Utopia is the goal. If creating that society means murdering a good number or all of the poor, or anyone else, Marxists are perfectly okay with that.

      1. Hyperion

        Do you even know what Socialism Marxism is?

        1. John

          Yes. Do you?

          1. Hyperion

            Unpossible! It’s rocket surgery and only super smart and enlightened liberals know what it means.

        2. Certified Public Asskicker

          Does it matter? It failed! And likewise, so has everything else! (except Christianity)

    3. The Immaculate Trouser

      if Marxism has failed, then we must also dare to say that capitalism has failed. You cannot have such inequality and such continued suffering in the world and declare an economic system a success.

      The most interesting part of that sentence, IMO, is bolded: the level of suffering in developed countries is exceedingly low and easier to escape than in any other society in human history. Yet, that is not a success so long as suffering is a non-zero value. These people really are looking for utopia and won’t settle for anything less.

      1. The Immaculate Trouser

        Worldwide, every three seconds a person dies from extreme poverty.

        Yeah, in countries which don’t even make a pretense at being capitalist. Any guesses as to how many of those children live in the US, Western Europe, and Japan?

        1. The Immaculate Trouser

          There are so many brilliant people who are in finance including some of my most beloved friends and relatives. If all of us together work to end poverty it would be the greatest accomplishment the world has ever known.

          “Surely, comrades, one factory alone could fashion enough shoes to clothe the feet of the world’s poor!”

          History may not repeat itself, but sometimes it stutters.

        2. John

          Color me skeptical about that statistic. Beyond that. There are around 31 million seconds in a year. That means that if statistic is true around ten million people a year die of extreme poverty, OUT OF A WORLD POPULATION OF OVER SIX BILLION.

          Even if his statistic is in anyway meaningfully true, it doesn’t mean what he thinks it does. We now live in a world where you only have a one in six hundred chance of dying of poverty in a given year. When put into historical perspective, that is quite a remarkable level of wealth.

          1. Certified Public Asskicker

            And he still concludes capitalism is at least partially to blame!

            How is this explainable without declaring him an insufferable rube?

          2. The Immaculate Trouser

            Regardless of how you want to square the figure, the victims of extreme poverty are overwhelmingly to be found outside of countries in Western Europe, the US, and Japan. Likewise, the gains of prosperity (and thus, the reduction in mortality and morbidity) have overwhelmingly gone towards the countries which implement economic and judicial systems resembling those in the West. If I were to guess any one country where people are dying of extreme poverty, it would either be N Korea or one of the African fail-states. Guess what all those places have in common?

            1. John

              Yes. The only places I know where people are starving are places with Marxist or near Marxist governments.

  25. The Immaculate Trouser

    Guess who said it?

    Amazon has a program called Amazon Mom that’s a pretty neat way to save some money on common household items. But here’s the thing. It turns out you don’t need to be a mom to sign up. You don’t need to be a dad, either. You just need to be a liar[…]

    You just need to tell Amazon some stuff about your baby?birthday and such?presumably so they can target you with baby-related offers. Except your baby can be fake. My baby, Tim Duncan Crawford, named after my wife’s favorite basketball player and given her surname, was born on Dec. 14. Except he’s just a lie I created to get cheaper soap.

    1. I assume Amazon will be cancelling his account and suing him for advocating fraud.

    2. Certified Public Asskicker

      I can’t believe I am saying this, but a Slate commenter made me laugh:

      Dear Prudence,

      My husband created a fake baby to get soap at a cheaper price, but he doesn’t want to have a real baby with me. Should I feel hurt?

    3. John

      If only poor little Matty knew how to use the soap, we would all have a marry Christmas. Remember people, they actually pay him to write this shit.

      1. The Immaculate Trouser

        Hey, he didn’t say the soap was for him.

        1. John

          What kind of a half wit thinks that “gee you can lie about who you are on the internet and save money” is news to anyone?

          1. The Immaculate Trouser

            The kind who is baffled by his co-workers’ desire to eat outside rather than in their own cubicles.

            1. John

              Yes. The kind who has an extra chromosome, velcro sneakers and food stains on his shirt.

    4. BiMonSciFiCon

      No wonder the left hates libertarians. It’s because we’re anti-fraud.

    5. When the cost of my kid’s diapers go up because of this idiot, I’m flying to New York to see if the face is really as punchable as it seems.

      1. Zakalwe

        He lives in DC, except when he’s visiting daddy.

        #shoppingwithmattyglesias is a thing on twitter.

    6. Juice

      I like this comment:

      I pay my full tax rate and I assume Amazon does not pay theirs so I am completely ok with slipping through this loophole and getting a 5% discount on shampoo. Fair’s fair, big business.

      Aren’t corporate taxes taken out of profits? And Amazon has never had a profit, IINM.

  26. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

    The Tersest Dear Prudence Ever

    Q. Death Around the Holidays: A man I work with and with whom I’ve had an affair the last two months died suddenly over the weekend. I am pregnant with his child. He didn’t know. His current wife, now widow, doesn’t either. How do I broach this subject? His estate is rather large.

    A: I’d say I’m sorry for your loss, but since apparently you aren’t, I won’t bother. For your financial interests, contact a lawyer specializing in family law. I don’t have any advice on where you go to get help for your lack of morals?or heart.

    I guess she’s entitled to child support from his estate? Would sure suck for the wife to have to write out child support for her husband’s bastard.

    1. kinnath

      posted in an earlier thread 😉

    2. kinnath

      posted in an earlier thread 😉

      1. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

        Did you post this in an earlier thread? Well I was busy!

    3. John

      I fail to see how she managed to get knocked up if doing so and cashing in his large assets wasn’t the plan all along.

  27. Cytotoxic

    I heard from somewhere not particularly credible that Norquist was in favor of the current budget deal, going so far as to call Ryan a hero. Is this true? This is very troubling. I like(d) Norquist.

  28. Gilbert Martin

    “The Food and Drug Administration is now meddling with anti-bacterial soaps, ordering manufacturers to prove that they’re safe for long-term use.”

    Exactly how is soap within the jurisdiction of the FDA?

    Soap is neither a food nor a drug.

    1. BiMonSciFiCon

      People who use soap are self-medicating. Ban soap until we can prove it isn’t harmful.

      1. Gilbert Martin

        How about banning the FDA until it can prove it isn’t harmful?

        1. BiMonSciFiCon

          Can we through in the EPA, the DOE and the DOJ?

          1. BiMonSciFiCon

            Jesus Christ. *Throw.*

            1. PD Scott

              We’re all lucky there isn’t a Department of Spelling.

              1. The Immaculate Trouser

                Well, at least John would be guaranteed employment.

                1. Bobarian

                  John would guarantee some prole in a cubicle a lot of work, anyway.

  29. Archduke von Pantsfan

    Minimum-wage workers struggle to survive

    Nope, “upgrading skills” not mentioned as a solution.

    1. What about loosening wage and employment restrictions to allow them more opportunities?

      1. Certified Public Asskicker

        You’re thinking too hard. They just need more money.

      2. #

        Governments could also try stop putting so many regulatory and zoning restrictions on development and watch the cost of living fall as housing becomes cheaper.

    2. Medical Physics Guy

      But children “appeared”! How do you expect them to find the time with all those appearing children?

      1. Andrew S.

        If you’re poor, you likely live in an inner city, where it’s more likely you’ll be hit by a bus. And we know the consequences that has.

        1. Bobarian

          Obamacare?

    3. CatoTheElder

      Why won’t you libertarians understand that there’s no way for him to escape poverty or low wages without a government program?

      Government is us, and we ought to help the poor and the underpaid. They can’t help themselves.

      Of course, I understand libertarians. They were all born on third base and think they hit a triple. Because nobody in Amerikkka can escape the class into which they were born.

      /sarc

  30. Mr. Weebles

    The FBI claims it has helped prevent nearly 150 violent attacks this year by steering potential shooters to mental health professionals.

    Big deal. I stopped over one thousand violent attacks by eating pie on an almost daily basis.

    How do I know this? Well, I ate a lot of pie and those 1000 attacks didn’t happen.

    1. Marc F Cheney

      Because you were too busy eating pie.

    2. Sevo

      And there hasn’t been an elephant on the back porch in several years!

      1. Can I buy your rock?

      2. edcoast

        at least not in my pajamas.

  31. Certified Public Asskicker

    How A For-Profit College Created Fake Jobs To Get Taxpayer Money

    Isn’t that what “real” colleges do?

  32. For Baked Penguin, who claimed there was no MSDS for DHMO.

    1. Mike Royko wrote a column about it back in 1996.

      And it’s not even a PDF!

      My favorite bit is:

      Effects of Overexposure: No effects of overexposure were documented.

      and what Royko says about it afterwards.

    2. Okay, Brett, but you have to admit that they have clearly understated the dangers of DHMO. 0-0-0? When thousands die every year from DHMO inhalation? Please

      1. I agree. It is clearly hazardous upon inhalation of quantity. Also, it is clearly lacking a warning not to use in conjunction with electricity without proper PPE. I am ashamed to have linked to this sub-standard MSDS.

        1. Brett, don’t feel bad; it’s not as if you wrote such a feeble document. Indeed, I’m going to happily share it with friends to show them the sad nature of our government “protectors,” and the ease with which the multi-billion dollar DHMO industry buys them off.

    3. Kid Xenocles

      Non-irritant for lungs?

  33. Winston

    Now that Tom Laughlin is dead does that mean Quentin Hackatino can make a Billy Jack Remake where Billy Jack kills Nixon with the help of Che and Castro and they singlehandedly conquer Saigon all in the name of Pacifism?

    Then he can make a movie about the Irish Civil War where Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Obama’s grandfather and Gandhi blow up Parliament with Churchill in it and reunite all 32 counties of Ireland?

    1. Quentin is a hack?

      If you hated ‘Pulp Fiction’ you hate America and liberty.

      Same goes with ‘Magnolia’ by PTA.

      1. Okay, now you’re just trolling. Magnolia?

        1. Juice

          It was pretty terrible.

      2. #

        “you hate America and liberty.”

        Plug does personally know what that’s like.

    2. Cytotoxic

      Winston confirmed for shit taste.

  34. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

    HBO releases 2014 promo, which includes 5 seconds of new Game of Thrones footage

    Fast-forward to 1:35.

  35. Winston

    So Audrey Totter is dead? I only saw her in The Lady in the Lake. Man what an odd movie that was. I can see why no one really wants to do a whole movie in POV form anymore.

    1. John

      She was a babe back in the day

      http://classiccinemaimages.com…..ey-totter/

    2. See if you can find a copy of The Set-Up, although Totter’s role in it is fairly small.

    3. PapayaSF

      Yeah, it was an interesting experiment, but ultimately unsatisfying. The Grim Reaper seems to have been busy going through IMDB recently: Audrey Totter, Eleanor Parker, Joan Fontaine, Peter O’Toole, and now Tom Laughlin.

      1. Cdr Lytton

        Carrie Underwood put Eleanor Parker in the ground.

        Sorry to hear Joan Fountaine is gone as well, although I liked her sister better.

  36. Sidd Finch

    I bet this has been linked since it’s almost a month old. But I’m not taking any chances ’cause this shit is gold.

    Movember as microaggression

    The pure and charitable sentiment is there ? raising money for prostate and testicular cancer research, and fighting mental health problems among men ? but what once started out as a harmless campaign has become sexist, racist, transphobic, and misinformed…

    Being a man, according to Movember, implies an archaic view of gender that implies that only a male/female gender binary exists, and that you aren’t really a man if you don’t necessarily identify with that binary. The idea of suggesting that men show solidarity with each other by growing moustaches is completely absurd.

    I couldn’t grow a decent mustache until I was 30 or so, and yet, this did not occur to me, Dude.

    Black males are also twice as likely to develop, and die with or from, prostate cancer than white males. This begs the question: who are all these white cisgender men fundraising and growing moustaches for?

    ???

    1. Rufus J. Firefly

      Yes been linked.

      My sister and a few of my friends are McGill graduates. The Daily was always retarded according to them.

  37. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

    Tom Selleck’s competitive equestrian daughter does modeling work

    Nice body but her face is peculiarly shaped.

    1. PapayaSF

      She’s very good-looking, but I think her chin is throwing things off a bit. It’s a little too small.

      1. Sidd Finch

        The overbite is helping.

        1. Sidd Finch

          *ahem* isn’t

    2. John

      She is a total butter face. But we will always have Nigela

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…..areer.html

      1. Rufus J. Firefly

        Ever since she admitted to doing coke, she’s been hot. She must be a crazed one in bed.

        1. John

          And she can cook too. I always figured her for the party girl Giada likes to pretend she is.

          1. Rufus J. Firefly

            Strikes me as hardcore.

            Giada comes off as too goody-goody.

            But Nigella. Come hither with a bunch of basil, bitch.

            1. John

              There was some gossip from the Hotel staff at some high end place in New York that said Giada was known to check in and screw men fairly frequently and that her husband was apparently into her doing such.

              Have no idea if that was true. But it was on the internet, so there is that.

              1. #

                John, you make the fantacy a slight bit closer to reality.

                1. John

                  If it is not true, it should be.

    3. Rufus J. Firefly

      No mustache. That’s why.

    4. Zakalwe

      I’d engage in some penile insertion after drinking a magnum.

    5. With that much makeup on how can you tell anything about her other than she doesn’t have a double chin?

  38. Death Rock and Skull

    Is the FDA on some kind of fuckin power trip lately?

    1. Lately? I think they’ve finally stopped getting off on killing kids with cancer and needed to broaden their killing.

  39. Winston

    And has no one mentioned Joan Fontaine’s Death? Looks like she one upped Olivia again!

    1. John

      That is a shame. I loved her in Suspicion.

    2. PapayaSF

      See above.

      1. Winston

        Curse you!

        Is Warty aware of your scent?
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scent_of_Green_Papaya

        1. PapayaSF

          I am a rare white papaya. Different scent.

  40. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

    Some in California refuse to give up on the dream of high speed rail

    The authority could escape its box and achieve success if it made decisions like private high-speed rail companies do: minimizing construction costs and choosing the most direct route possible. Indeed, the developer of the French national railway, SNCF, made an unsolicited offer to build the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles section, without a revenue guarantee. The authority turned it down flat.
    As the French proposal shows, a profitable high-speed rail system in California is possible, with private investment, but it will require that the authority drop its past political deals and focus on building a workable system. Doing so would also restore public confidence in the future of high-speed rail.
    A high-speed rail route using the I-5 corridor and the Altamont Pass makes sense. Much of the land is already owned by the state. Track along I-5 could be laid at ground level, avoiding the extra expense of viaducts, and the construction would have minimal impact on valuable Central Valley farmland.
    An I-5 and Altamont route avoids cities and could therefore be run at maximum speeds . The shorter length means the door-to-door San Francisco-to-Los Angeles trip would be competitive with air travel times and prices.

    1. John

      But if you let t he private sector do it, it might not “provide a living wage” or “protect the environment”.

      Suck it progs. Yours is a failed and insane ideology. Your forefathers may have been evil, but they could at least build shit and make the trains run on time. You can’t even do that.

      1. Cytotoxic

        What a lot of posters here don’t seem to get is that the progs are already losing it and have been for a little while now. They control so much but can’t hold what they have without controlling so much more.

        1. John

          They basically have never come to terms with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the failure of communism. Central planning fails. But they keep telling themselves that it can work if you only do it a little bit instead of all the way like the communists did. They can’t accept the reality that logical conclusion of central planning schemes is total planning and control.

          On top of that after it was apparent that communism was never going to produce the material wealth capitalism did, the left bought into all kinds of irrational and romantic views like multiculturalism and environmentalism and such. So not only can they not manage the economy, they can’t even build big state projects the way the communists did. It is like Soviet Russia only with the Moscow subway and White Sea Canal never getting past the planning stages because of the various court battles.

          1. CatoTheElder

            Communism’s inability to deliver the goods is a feature, not a bug. For the environment, you understand.

            That’s why old school Marxists are now environmentalists who decry consumerism. After all, the old slogan was “to each according to their need”, not to the satisfaction of advertising-inspired wants.

            1. VG Zaytsev

              Communism’s inability to deliver the goods is a feature, not a bug. For the environment, you understand.

              Except that the commies did manage to cause environmental catastrophes.

          2. Res ipsa loquitur

            The proggies answer to the failure of Communism is easy, the Soviets & others just implemented it incorrectly. Stalin, Castro, Kim, and Mao were not up to the task, lacked the courage to do what is right for the greater good.

            In some cases they just completely overlook the glaring failure, such as in Cuba, N Korea and now in Venezuela. They may even really believe what Maduro and others say, that the Venezuelan economy is collapsing due to the ebil capitalists trying to derail the wonders of socialism.

    2. Sidd Finch

      but it will require that the authority drop its past political deals and focus on building a workable system.

      crazy talk

    3. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

      I mean I don’t doubt that with a much freer regulatory climate in the state a private company could build an HSR line from LA to the Bay Area.

      It’s just in California you can’t even stick a shovel in the ground for a project like this without first doing an environmental impact study and then getting permission from multiple regulatory agencies.

      1. John

        I could see a single high speed line running with very few stops up and down the coast from San Diego to the Bay Area maybe working or least not losing too much money. But as you say, never in a regulatory climate like California.

        1. VG Zaytsev

          Nah,

          The technology is obsolete.

          Air travel and self driving cars are / will be much more efficient and flexible.

    4. Cdr Lytton

      An I-5 and Altamont route avoids cities

      and completely negates the utility of train travel.

      The shorter length means the door-to-door San Francisco-to-Los Angeles trip would be competitive with air travel times and prices.

      So if you end up with a SF-LA only, WTF build a new rail line? Just stick a vibrator under your seat cushion and watch http://www.amazon.com/Golden-A…..ords=train on your laptop during your next flight.

  41. Cytotoxic

    When the hell is Game of Thrones coming to iTunes? I bought my season pass and THERE’s FUCKING NOTHING.

    1. BiMonSciFiCon

      Don’t worry, the dragons are coming. /GRRM

  42. Rufus J. Firefly

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/…..7.htmlpage

    Does Chicago have gun-control that’s finally seeing results or is there some other reason for this?

    I’m guessing the latter.

    1. PD Scott

      There are more dead voters in Chicago in an election year?

    2. CatoTheElder

      Just looking at the chart: mean is about 38 and standard deviation is about 6. Two standard deviations gets you 26.

      Doesn’t seem at all that peculiar. Probably just statistical noise.

      And I seriously doubt that it was a record low.

  43. The Immaculate Trouser

    A little “Socialism with a human face” for y’all…

    From a thousand different directions, we are bombarded with the message that communism was a “nightmare” and “failure.” Go into a bookstore and look at the current titles on Mao, the Cultural Revolution, or socialism in the Soviet Union. Take a listen when commentators on TV and radio say something about communism. Leaf through a standard textbook on political theory or modern history. There’s a highly distorted narrative of socialism in the 20th century, and it goes largely unanswered.

    The truth is that the first socialist revolutions?in the Soviet Union from 1917 until the defeat of that revolution in 1956, and in China from 1949 until the defeat of socialism in 1976?marked a break-through for humanity. These were the first attempts in modern history to build societies free from exploitation and oppression. And they accomplished extraordinary things against enormous obstacles.

    The mission of Set the Record Straight is to factually refute the lies spread in the media, mass-market books, and mainstream scholarship about the Soviet and Chinese revolutions[…] In all of this, we are bringing forward Bob Avakian’s exciting vision of a vibrant communism for the 21st century.

    Poe stands to the side in silence, wondering if now would be a good time to mention his Law…

    1. db

      These were the first attempts in modern history to build societies free from exploitation and oppression.

      But not from state-sponsored mass murder.

      And they accomplished extraordinary things against enormous obstacles.

      By engaging in state-sponsored mass murder.

      1. The Immaculate Trouser

        You can’t make an omelette without liquidating a few cooks.

    2. John

      The truth is that the first socialist revolutions?in the Soviet Union from 1917 until the defeat of that revolution in 1956, and in China from 1949 until the defeat of socialism in 1976?marked a break-through for humanity.

      A break through at the price of a combined two hundred million deaths give or take.

      These were the first attempts in modern history to build societies free from exploitation and oppression.

      Because nothing says free from exploitation and oppression like show trials, cultural revolutions, gulags and a period known simply as The Terror.

      1. The Immaculate Trouser

        I can understand from a leftist point of view why one might want to rehabilitate Marxian economics. There is some sense in which most of what progressives say and believe about people makes no sense in any of the current economic paradigms (including Keynesianism), and Marxism is a somewhat elegant solution. But why one Earth would you even try to defend something like the USSR or the Cultural Revolution?

        1. The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc

          Because they meant well, they just got carried away or were misguided by a few bad eggs.

          No reason to condemn the entire system just because of a few excesses.

        2. John

          Because you are stupid.

        3. PapayaSF

          The answer to your question is here:

          These were the first attempts in modern history to build societies free from exploitation and oppression.

          To leftists, intentions are primary. The fact that scores of millions were murdered is less important than the fact that they tried to “build societies free from exploitation and oppression.”

      2. PD Scott

        Lies! All lies, supported by very convincing evidence manufactured by enemies of the Revolution! Those Ukrainians didn’t starve, a few wandered into the Pripet Marshes and drowned, the rest went looking for them and died the same way! Same for the Cambodians!

        1. John

          I am old enough to remember before the Berlin Wall fell when people seriously claimed all of those things. Stalin never killed more than a few thousand people and most of that was due to his henchman getting carried away. The most Stalin was guilty of was a bit of paranoia and lack management and oversight. I shit you not there were people running around college campuses in the 1980s who believed that.

          1. The Immaculate Trouser

            Yup. I was a Marxist in the 80s during my misspent yute, and even I wasn’t stupid enough to buy that line.

      3. Winston

        After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin assumed leadership?and in the decade that followed, Stalin led the struggles to carry out collectivization of agriculture and to socialize the ownership of industry. The revolution created a socialist planned economy, something that had never been done before. There were important social struggles waged against Russian chauvinism and the oppression of women. Throughout Stalin’s leadership, the Soviet Union faced enormous pressures: counterrevolution, encirclement by hostile imperial powers, and invasion by the Nazis during World War 2. Stalin led people to stand up to this. But in the years leading up to World War 2, Stalin relied less and less on the conscious activism of the masses and more and more on administrative measures. It was necessary to suppress counter-revolutionary forces, but as threats to the revolution grew in the mid- and late 1930s, Stalin repressed people who were just raising disagreements and dissent.

        There were serious problems in how Stalin understood the nature and goals of socialist society, and in his methods of leadership. Bob Avakian points out that if the bourgeoisie can uphold Madison and Jefferson?who played pivotal roles in the bourgeois American Revolution but who were unapologetic slave-owners?then revolutionaries can uphold Stalin while also deeply criticizing and learning from his mistakes.


        1. Winston


          Mao was dealing with the problem of a new bourgeois elite emerging and concentrated within the top levels of the Communist Party. They wanted to bring back capitalism, seizing on bourgeois aspects in society. For instance, on the eve of Cultural Revolution, many factories still had systems of one-person management and competitive bonus systems that pitted workers against each other; and educational and health resources were concentrated in the cities. Mao called on people to rise up against oppressive leaders and institutional structures. Hundreds of millions of workers and peasants were debating questions about the direction of society, criticizing out-of-touch officials, forging more participatory forms of management and administration, and entering into the realms of science and culture. The divisions between mental and manual labor and between urban and rural areas were being broken down. Middle-school enrollment in the countryside rose from 15 million to 58 million. The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 had coherent and liberating goals: to prevent the restoration of capitalism; to revolutionize the institutions of society, including the Communist Party; and to challenge old ways of thinking?in short, to carry forward and deepen socialist revolution.

        2. John

          That is really sickening to read. You want to know what evil looks like, these people are it. It takes a rare level of pure evil to lie that much about such horrors.

          1. CatoTheElder

            I was going to say it’s just a left-wing version of Holocaust denial.

            However, it’s actually worse.

            It’s the left-wing version of a neo-Nazi screed.

            1. Winston

              It’s the left-wing version of a neo-Nazi screed.

              https://reason.com/blog/2013/12…..nt_4192816

              Change a few words and viola, neo-Nazi screeds.

        3. The Immaculate Trouser

          Madison and Jefferson?who played pivotal roles in the bourgeois American Revolution but who were unapologetic slave-owners

          So I suppose that the problem with Jefferson and Madison was that they were unapologetic — god knows that the absolute control the USSR and Communist China had over its citizens was exercised in ways that even the cruelest of slaveowners would have had neither the imagination nor the hatred to implement towards their “property”.

          1. Juice

            Jefferson was a hypocrite on slavery mainly because he was “apologetic.” He said he didn’t like it, but it’s not like he’s going to give up his riches by setting his slaves free. He would only do it if it were outlawed, not voluntarily.

    3. Winston

      Some excerpts On the Great Leap Forward
      http://www.thisiscommunism.org…..rsies.html

      2) The famine that struck China in 1959-60 was the result of unprecedented droughts and flooding. There was a very difficult and complex situation involving a food crisis, social and political struggle, China’s encirclement by Western imperialism, and the Soviet Union trying to punish China, including by withdrawing aid, for challenging and breaking with the Soviet economic and political model.

      The Chinese government and state, upholding and protecting the interests of workers, peasants, and the great majority of society, took measures to cope with the food crisis. These included emergency deliveries of grain and other assistance and changes in the structure of the communes so that they could better deal with economic matters, and scaling back exports to make more grain available.

      3) By 1970, China had overcome its historic food problem. The socialist system was able to provide for the basic nutritional needs of the population. By 1911, the population of Ireland had declined to 4.4 million from 8 million in the early 1840s, the result of the potato famine and mass emigration.

      1. John

        Wow just wow.

      2. Irish

        IMPERIALISM!

      3. Mellow Kitty

        The famine that struck China in 1959-60 was the result of unprecedented droughts and flooding. There was a very difficult and complex situation involving a food crisis, social and political struggle, China’s encirclement by Western imperialism, and the Soviet Union trying to punish China, including by withdrawing aid, for challenging and breaking with the Soviet economic and political model.

        Oh, I’m sure the policies banning farm ownership and forcibly relocating millions of agricultural workers to urban factories had nothing to do with it. Or the adoption of blatantly pseudo-scientific agricultural techniques that were rooted more strongly in abstract Stalinist theory than in botany. Or the government’s refusal to provide aid to its starving people, instead leaving the grain stocks to rot.

        It’s also interesting to note that this author presumes to know the factors contributing to the Great Famine better than the Chinese government itself, which has taken steps in recent years toward acknowledging its dominant role in the deaths of ~40 million people.

    4. Malkavian

      These were the first attempts in modern history to build societies free from exploitation and oppression. And they accomplished extraordinary things against enormous obstacles.

      Hahaha! I grew up in USSR. Those societies were attempt to secure political power for a group apparatchiks backed by incredible amount of violence. And if labor camps don’t count as exploitation and oppression, then i don’t know what does.

      And a lot of the obstacles were the apparatchiks’ doing.

      1. Redmanfms

        Aren’t you the same guy who went about coming up with a convoluted definition of what constitutes a “warmonger” to absolve Stalin of being a warmonger just last week?

    5. CatoTheElder

      “These were the first attempts in modern history to build societies free from exploitation and oppression. And they accomplished extraordinary things against enormous obstacles.”

      This is true by the lights of Marxism. It’s no parody.

      And the systematic murder of 150 million souls and the utter destruction of entire, well-established societies to build a communist utopia truly is extraordinary.

  44. Winston

    Joseph Stalin is routinely portrayed as a paranoid, deceitful despot, on par with Hitler. But in fact, Stalin represented a class, the proletariat, and the system of socialism whose goal is to do away with all forms of exploitation and oppression. Stalin played a decisive role in leading in constructing and defending the world’s first socialist society. Stalin’s achievements and shortcomings as a revolutionary leader are all part of the first wave of socialist revolution in the 20th century that opened new historical possibilities for humanity.

    Um yeah. A real life fan of Lenin, Stalin and Mao.

    1. The Immaculate Trouser

      Obama communications manager Anita Dunn?

  45. Winston

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

    Bob Avakian (born on March 7, 1943) is Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP), which he has led since its formation in 1975. He is a veteran of the Free Speech Movement and the Left of the 1960s and early 1970s,[1] and was closely associated with the Black Panther Party.[2]

    He also part of the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968. I wonder if he got involved with Rothbard in any way and if Rothbard wrote anything about him at the time.

  46. Entropy Void

    Can’t wait until someone 3D prints a Beretta 93R and fires it with their 3D printed hand while wearing Google Glass …

    Well, Here It Is, The First Terrifying Google Glass Gun Range Video

    http://www.buzzfeed.com/charli…..-gun-range

    1. Killaz

      The best thing about that is all the female commenters telling the pearl clutchers to chill out and stop embarrassing themselves.

      One such gem, has this profile, she may be the perfect woman:

      https://www.facebook.com/cynthia.francine5972

      Favorite bands: Tool, Rush, Audioslave

      Favorite games: New Vegas, Duke Nuke’m 3D!?!?!

      Wait, favorite movie, Lethal Weapon? Even Mel Gibson and a very funny Danny Glover couldn’t save that flaming ball of shit. Meh, she’s all yours.

      1. Audioslave? And you’re worried about Lethal Weapon?

        1. Killaz

          His voice is the distilled essence of human frailty transformed into a gleaming diamond.

          1. This. Don’t talk shit about Chris Cornell.

          2. But… Audioslave?

      2. Long Range Boredom

        Oh dear god it’s female Me.

    2. Why does he only have 2 rounds in each magazine in the pistol?

      1. Kid Xenocles

        Probably practicing mag changes.

      2. Juice

        Maybe practicing quick reloading?

      3. Tejicano

        NY SAFE Act?

    3. Killaz

      Cat Crandall ? Top Commenter
      The potential to destroy a life if used irresponsibly is indeed terrifying. This video is not.

      I’m going to assume that the person has a strong objection to leftist ideologies given that has proven to be the most terrifying and irresponsible waster of human life in our history.

  47. Posting this here for you late-nighters. Another teen star gone bad.

    The 39-year-old is famous for playing Longstocking in “The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking” back in 1988. She did little else in the entertainment business after that; however, she did make a move into the adult entertainment biz this past fall with her very own sex tape, TMZ previously reported.

    A little long in the tooth now.

  48. RishJoMo

    lol, Like the NSA actually cares about what some kangaroo court judge says lol.

    http://www.AnonGoes.tk

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