A.M. Links: U.S. Troops Deployed to Chad, Poll Finds 47 Percent of Unemployed "Completely Given Up" on Looking For Job, Supernova Observed

• 

  Avishay Gel-Yam/Caltech

  The U.S. is deploying 80 troops to Chad to aid in the search for nearly 300 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram last month.

• Thirty one people were killed in a terrorist attack in Urumqi, China, that involved multiple explosives and two SUVs being driven into crowds.
• Two Georgia Democrats have joined in the calls for the resignation of Veterans' Affairs (VA) Secretary Eric Shinseki. A whistleblowing VA police officer in Miami, meanwhile, says the veterans hospital there is plagued by theft, abuse, and drug dealing.
• House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi selected Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to serve as the top Democrat on the select committee on Benghazi and made four other appointments.
• Activists and McDonald's workers went to the company's corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, to protest for higher wages; 138 of them were arrested on charges of trespassing.
• A new poll found 47 percent of unemployed respondents saying they've "completely given up on looking for a job."
• Caltech announced that last year one of its telescopes observed a star going supernova.

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Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Two Georgia Democrats have joined in the calls for the resignation of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) Secretary Eric Shinseki.

Up for re-election, I assume.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Hello.

[UnCivilServant]

Howdy

[Slammer]

G’day!

[sasob]

Hola!

[Snark Plissken]

Activists and McDonald’s workers went to the company’s corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, to protest for higher wages; 138 of them were arrested on charges of trespassing.

You’ll get my Big Mac, when you pry it from my warm greasy finger.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

I don’t know how it is elsewhere, but I remember when working at McDonald’s was highly respected because of its excellent training that prepared new entrance into the labor force for future employment. I also remember the service being outstanding – efficient and cordial.

I’ve noticed a slow decline.

I’m kinda getting to see why. Lots of losers with a self-entitled mentality are entering the work place now. Look at those idiots protesting.

I think I’m gonna work on a ‘Loser logorythm.’

[wareagle]

yup…stores had their Hamburger University diplomas posted, indicating a manager or two had undergone some sort of training and that people understood theirs was a service business in a competitive environment.

It was also largely staffed by young folks in their first jobs who wanted to make decent impressions, and a few older people who would show you the ropes. People used to take pride in working and a lot of those older folks had other means of income, too.

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

There is a McDonald’s on Rt 33 in West Point, VA that is better –both food and employees– than any I’ve ever been to. I stop there just about every chance I get. It’s the only McD’s I’ve ever tipped at.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Not far from me. Live there or just pass through?

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

I go through there from one home to the other. Each is about an hour from there.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

I’m in Williamsburg

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

Hey, Neighbor! I get to Williamsburg a lot. It’s just about the center of my job’s usual territory (I train people in the use of assistive devices for hearing impairments) and we go shopping there a fair bit.
Both of my places are “at the corner of No and Where.” One is not far from Richmond and the other is on the Bay near Gloucester.

[sloopyin??]

I’m curious how many were actually employed by McDonalds and how many were employed by a franchise owner or were the “activists”.

My guess: 0 McDonalds employees, 20 employees of franchises and 118 “activists”.

[Andrew S.]

I’d go 0 McDonalds employees, 0 franchise employees, 2 real activists, and 136 union employees paid to be there.

[Raven Nation]

Without comment:

http://www.banjos.com.au/

[sloopyin??]

What kind of a business supports “cystic fibrosis”? Do they also support cancer and AIDS?

I’m not as pedantic as others on here, but what the fuck prevents people from proofing their work?

[Sy]

I’m sure they meant cystic fibrosis research. Unless they meant they support transmembrane regulating proteins.

[Pl?ya Manhattan.]

Also,
http://www.sloopysbeachcafe.com

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

If you try that with my handle all you get are a few crummy t-shirts and an article by Bill Maher that isn’t worth reading.
When I made it up I thought I was being clever, but according to Google I was just being obvious.

[Damned Fool]

I’ve been reading The Faithful Executioner by Joel Harrington and I’ve realized how far modern-day America has fallen. The book mentions that 1500s-1600s Nuremberg was policed by municipal “archers” infamous for corruption and brutality. They were considered so dishonorable that they had to take their annual swearing-in separately from all other new citizens and municipal employees, so dishonorable in fact that the executioner’s assistant was specifically made to swear his oath alongside them rather than respectable people.

Today, our law enforcement also has enough dirt on it readily available to be known for brutality and corruption, yet they are widely lionized as heroes and you can see those ridiculous Policemen’s Benevolent Association license plates talking about honor, at least in NJ. While 1500s Nuremberg did not hesitate to flog, banish, or execute archers who engaged in rape, murder, or theft, our cops who do that get paid vacations.

Why are we more worshipful of authority than sixteenth-century Germans?

[sarcasmic]

Public schools.

[Rhywun]

You know in which other century Germans were worshipful of authority…?

[WTF]

All of them?

[Rhywun]

That is the correct answer.

[VG Zaytsev]

Hollywood propaganda.

[LancelotLink]

roadzz

[UnCivilServant]

From the “No Shit, Sherlock” files:

Royal Mail warns that competition from rivals could hurt its future revenues

Royal Mail fears competitors will be able to provide delivery services to towns and cities, which are considered to be more profitable, and ignore rural areas which cost more to deliver to.

Here’s a radical idea – differential pricing. If it costs more to deliver to rural areas, bill more for it, and cut rates for urban deliveries. There, compeditiveness restored. Oh, wait, this is a quasi-government entity, it finds it easier to have the competition regulated away than do real work.

[Zeb]

Wonder if they will do like the US and ban competitors from delivering first class mail equivalents?

Pricing based on how much it costs to deliver seems like the sensible option. It’s been some time since the mail was a primary means of communication for many people.

[Ted S.]

I’m reminded of the old joke:

Q: What are the three primary forms of mass rapid communication:

A: Telephone, television, tell a woman.

[sloopyin??]

What the fuck is “mail”?

[Ted S.]

It’s a type of armor worn in the time perioud that the overrated show Game of Thrones is set.

[robc]

If you think GoT is set in any time period, you havent watched it enough to know if it is overrated or not.

[Emmerson Biggins]

what are talking about?

Season one starts in or about 298 AL (Aegon’s Landing).

[some guy]

It’s like email, but with ink, paper and automobiles.

Now get off my lawn!

[invisible furry hand]

How nice of you to challenge cis-privilege

[Zeb]

Mail? It’s how you get catalogs, credit card offers, wedding invitations and DVDs from Netflix (I know “what’s a DVD?”).

[robc]

Oddly, the people that oppose differential pricing tend to be the same people who think everyone should live in densely packed urban areas.

Or, at least, there is a lot of overlap in the Venn Diagram.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Activists and McDonald’s workers went to the company’s corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, to protest for higher wages…

Sent there by the automated touchscreen lobby?

[UnCivilServant]

Doesn’t even need to be them given the average economic acumen of a McDonalds front line employee

[Caleb Turberville]

http://www.theatlantic.com/fea…..ns/361631/

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Case for Reparations.”

This article is already getting a lot coverage according to my Twitter account. Here’s hoping it doesn’t become a one-sided debate.

[Caleb Turberville]

One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one’s ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism ? la carte. A nation outlives its generations. We were not there when Washington crossed the Delaware, but Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s rendering has meaning to us. We were not there when Woodrow Wilson took us into World War I, but we are still paying out the pensions. If Thomas Jefferson’s genius matters, then so does his taking of Sally Hemings’s body. If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge. – Coates

[Fr?ulein Nikki]

What if we’re also not remotely interested in being patriotic and think such wrong?

[DJF]

Coates seems to want to blame banks for not giving blacks housing loans and also for giving blacks housing loans.

[UnCivilServant]

Clearly Coates wants banks to just give them houses.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

I don’t give a shit who your ancestors were other than as a point of interesting trivia. It has no bearing on you as a person or your worth. I’ve known plenty of DAR types who were all impressed with their ancestors and thought it reflected on them in some way. I’ve never been complementary to them.

[UnCivilServant]

I just want to know when I get to call myself ‘Native’ American. We’ve been here a lot of generations now.

[VG Zaytsev]

I had a number of ancestors who fought and died for the unions side in the civil war.

Is Ta going to pay me reparations?

[Tonio]

Good one. I’d love to hear someone ask him that in front of a live mic.

[robc]

One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past

Sure you can. In fact, that is exactly what Mises says has to be done, otherwise, you end up in a perpetual loop, as everyone has had “their” property stolen and are the descendants of slaves.

[110 Lean]

First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly. The present generation of Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for it. Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the recent course of the South toward Negroes more nauseating than to the best thought of the South. The South is not “solid”; it is a land in the ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are fighting for supremacy; and to praise the ill the South is today perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn the good. Discriminating and broad-minded criticism is what the South needs, — needs it for the sake of her own white sons and daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and moral development.

[110 Lean]

Today even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is not, as so many assume, in all cases the same; the ignorant Southerner hates the Negro, the workingmen fear his competition, the money-makers wish to use him as a laborer, some of the educated see a menace in his upward development, while others — usually the sons of the masters — wish to help him to rise. National opinion has enabled this last class to maintain the Negro common schools, and to protect the Negro partially in property, life, and limb. Through the pressure of the money-makers, the Negro is in danger of being reduced to semi-slavery, especially in the country districts; the workingmen, and those of the educated who fear the Negro, have united to disfranchise him, and some have urged his deportation; while the passions of the ignorant are easily aroused to lynch and abuse any black man. To praise this intricate whirl of thought and prejudice is nonsense; to in-veigh indiscriminately against “the South” is unjust; but to use the same breath in praising Governor Aycock, exposing Senator Morgan, arguing with Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, and denouncing Senator Ben Tillman, is not only sane, but the imperative duty of thinking black men.

— W. E. B. Du Bois

[MJGreen]

Hello, non-sequitur!

[DJF]

I am against reparations for slavery.

I don’t think that the decedents of former slaves should have to pay the decedents of slave owners compensation for the slave owners loss of property. Its time to move on.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

It’s an evil proposition to make.

Besides, what happens, say, if a contemporary family that once owned slaves is a model one and is forced to pay a black person who has committed crimes? How is that fair on any logical or moral grounds?

What happens if they’re forced to pay Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson reparations?

Let sleeping dogs lie.

[lap83]

Because the model family is only that way because of white privilege and the black person only committed crimes because of the legacy of slavery

(this is what progs actually believe)

[mr simple]

Because the model family is only that way because of white privilege

Same for formal english (language) and work ethic.

No racist. I’ve actually heard progs argue this.

[An Innocent Man]

We should start an org that tells people to moveon.

[Pro Libertate]

I’m 100% for reparations. Those of us with Neanderthal blood demand recompense for the genocide against our people. Compounding this debt over, say, the last 30,000 years. . .say, that’s a lot of money.

[tarran]

We’ll pay you in mammoth meat.

[Pro Libertate]

Like hell, oppressor. Like hell.

[CE]

I believe sea shells were the currency back then.

[lap83]

I’m for reparations too – for the way the Nazis treated my grandfather during the war…passed over for promotion time and time again.

[Fluffy]

LOL.

H&R really needs a comment upvoting system.

Or Reason Gold.

[lap83]

heh, thanks. It’s Jimmy Carr’s joke however. I just found a new context for it.

[CE]

Maybe he didn’t follow orders well enough. I hope.

[Pope Jimbo]

I am for reparations.

I figure we can just use part of the settlement we get from the native americans for hooking us on tobacco to pay off the debt we owe for slavery. And we’d probably still have some left over!

[alittlesense]

I want reparations from the European governments that engaged in religious repressio0n of some of my ancestors, forcing them to leave Europe and come over here. Doesn’t this leave open the possibility of an endless cycle of demanding reparations from some entity, somewhere at sometime, that repressed someone we are distantly related to? Actually, I just want a job doing the paperwork for all those reparations, a 6-figure starting salary would be nice.

[Clich? Bandit]

I demand reparations from the italians cause my Silure ancestors were brutally oppressed and had our government overthrown. And the poor Iceni Boadicea fought with us and lost so they need reparations too. TUSCAN VILLAS FOR ALL!

[CE]

I demand reparations from the District of Columbia, for all the money they have ever stolen from me, and from my parents, and from their parents, and from their parents, with interest, compounded at the prevailing rate per year.

It doesn’t go back farther than that because there was no income tax in the US originally.

[Old Man With Candy]

They gave us syphilis, too. I want my bills for chancre-removal paid out of casino earnings.

[DJF]

“”””Here’s hoping it doesn’t become a one-sided debate.””

Looks like the Atlantic wants it to be one sided since they have closed the comments section.

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

Can you imagine if they succeeded in bringing about reparations? Lynchings would be a daily event on the news. The KKK would become a force to be reckoned with.
Is that what they’re aiming for?

[UnCivilServant]

Yes, actually, they don’t want justice or an end to racial tension, they make their bread and butter stoking racial tension.

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

Well, it sure stoked racial tensions the last time it got to be a big topic.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

Looks like the Atlantic wants it to be one sided since they have closed the comments section.

Par for the course with a Coates article.

For someone who’s supposedly the “greatest commenter on race in our time,” the Atlantic is awfully dedicated to ensuring that no one actually challenges his narrative, given how often negative comments against his work are deleted. White liberals bend over backwards trying to promote guy’s intellectual gifts, but ultimately, his argument still boils down to nothing more than “GIMMEDAT.” I can go into a random welfare office and get this same response from people of any race; it’s not exactly original coming from Coates just because he dressed it up with a grad student’s rhetorical flourish.

Someone here pointed out that you could give every black person in America $100,000 and many of them would still piss it away within a year or even a month rather than use it to build their communities. The pieces in Slate recently on busing and affirmative action were a much better critical examination of race issues from a left-wing perspective.

[CE]

The NYT always pulls that trick. Run a story with a liberal slant, let the liberal subscribers comment for a few hours, then shut the door when the story starts to get out to the general public.

[Caleb Turberville]

For the sake of argument, let’s just accept that the current generation must pay for the sins of their ancestor.

Let’s say that someone’s great-great-great-great grandpappy owned slaves.

Let’s that that same person’s great-great grandfather lost all the family’s fortunes in the 1929 stock market crash.

One would argue that the current family owes the descendants of the formers slaves reparation. But wouldn’t it be cruel to take money from the hands of people who are now just as poor as everybody else, just because their rich ancestor made a living off of slavery?

All the fortune has been wiped out. For all we know, the family’s current fortune has been rightly earned.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Again. What if it’s deemed Oprah gets ‘slave payback’ from a poor white family?

Where’s the justice in that?

[Dances-with-Trolls]

This shit isn’t about justice, it’s about theft, power, and revenge.

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

One fellow I overheard (back when this thing first was brought up) said “OK, here is your 40 acres and a mule…oh, and the bill for the Great Society onward – we’ll take cash or a money order for that”.

[Spartacus]

1. Everyone get in a big circle.
2. Take $10 out of your wallet
3. Pass it to the person on your left.

There! all done. Except for the taxes on the transactions.

[Slammer]

Obligatory.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

What are the damages for living blacks, or whoever “should” get reparations?

It wouldn’t be hard to argue that living in 21st century America is actually an upgrade from living in 21st century Africa. For those who feel differently, perhaps reparations could consist of a one-way plane ticket to the African destination of choice.

[sloopyin??]

Looks like my plan of going long on KFC and Verizon is about to pay off.

[Lord Humungus]

RACISTNSTSNTASR!!

[Ted S.]

Affirmative action is a form of reparations, and it’s been a miserable failure.

[Caleb Turberville]

Correct me if I’m wrong.

But according to Coates, no white person currently living in the United States has rightly earned 100% of their money.

Because of the systemic racism that has persisted in the U.S., it is only moral for every white person to forfeit at least some of their money towards reparations.

Who gets to decide how much money each person should owe? If we are to assume that every white person carries a certain amount of responsibility, surely certain white people owe more than others?

[Bardas Phocas]

The Asians!

[Lady Bertrum]

What’s “white”? Are Jews white? Because I’m 1/8th Jew. According to recent census data some who previously identified as Hispanic or Other are now identifying as white.

I’d agree to reparations as a one time payment as long as going forward any contribution to the federal budget allocated to social welfare programs other than Social Security and Medicare were eliminated.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Are we including sharecropper whites in that formula?

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

Or families that had Union soldiers in them?

[Pope Jimbo]

What about our president? He is only half black and his father came directly from africa. So no ancestor was an actual slave.

What is his cut?

[UnCivilServant]

About neck high, with a guillotine.

[VG Zaytsev]

And his momma’s ancestors were slave owners.

[CE]

I know I haven’t rightly earned 100% of mine. Some days I spend too much time commenting on H&R.

[Fist of Etiquette]

A new poll found 47 percent of unemployed respondents saying they’ve “completely given up on looking for a job.”

Romney feels vindicated.

[waffles]

That number keeps showing up. I’m becoming more susceptible to superstition as I age.

[Zeb]

And just like 23, another number that people think shows up more than it should, it is a prime number two less than a perfect square. Wild.

[UnCivilServant]

Actually the number is 70, it just broke into two parts that float around until they can be rejoined.

[waffles]

I am intrigued by your theories and wish to subscribe to your horoscope.

[Old Man With Candy]

7

[CE]

Makes you wonder what 79 has been up to.

[Pro Libertate]

Holy shit. I wish people would see how bad the current situation is. The only reason we don’t have a massive outcry is because so many are on federal assistance. Which, of course, cannot be sustained since we’re spending far more than we have or can expect to make. . .especially with an increasingly unproductive workforce.

Has Europe taught us nothing?

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Learning from other’s mistakes is not a lesson taught anymore.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Are you saying all of those 47% are content to get government assistance in lieu of working? That maybe they’re voting their own short-term interests in that regard? DO YOU ALSO HAVE BINDERS FULL OF WOMEN?

[Alan Vanneman]

Actually, what the poll “found” was this:

47 percent agree with the statement, “I’ve completely given up on looking for a job.” (7 percent said they “agree completely,” 7 percent “agree a lot,” 15 percent “agree somewhat,” and 18 percent “agree a little.”

If you agree “somewhat” or “a little” with the statement “I’ve completely given up looking for a job,” have you completely given up looking for a job?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Sixty percent of the time it works every time.

[CE]

They agree a little completely? Are these people literate?

[Lord Humungus]

The Case for Reparations

long article – hard to sample

Won’t reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided. The wealth gap merely puts a number on something we feel but cannot say?that American prosperity was ill-gotten and selective in its distribution. What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.

What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices?more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.

[Medical Physics Guy]

Has Ta-Nehisi Coates just jumped the shark or what.

[Ted S.]

I think he did that some time ago.

[Ted S.]

I think he did that some time ago.

[Ted S.]

He did a lot of shark-jumping, it seems.

[Medical Physics Guy]

I actually took Coates somewhat seriously some years back. Then I moved to Europe where the racism is much worse. In Italy they’re throwing bananas at black politicians. And I realized his whole narrative about some uniquely American scourge of white on black racism due to past government policy is totally ridiculous. Only the never ending supply of white guilt keeps him getting taken seriously.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

Yeah, experiencing, well, just about anywhere else on the entire planet is eye-opening for anyone with the wit to see what is in front of them.

[Damned Fool]

Try India sometime. The open sectionalism and religious factionalism is quite amazing. It’s why American identity politics drive me up the wall.

[Damned Fool]

The reparations shark came pre-jumped I believe.

[Caleb Turberville]

I demand reparations for not heeding my original post above.

[Lord Humungus]

get in line, brother.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

So those us who’s families weren’t even in the US at the time will be exempt from these payments, right?

[Caleb Turberville]

According to Coates, no.

See my quote above.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

Shocker.

[Fr?ulein Nikki]

What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.

I don’t have any white guilt, because my people have only been white in this country since 1963, and their biggest family secret is living in government housing and beating their wives and children. No longer a problem, thanks though.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Even apart from that, it still wouldn’t work to banish white guilt, whatever that means.

One thing it assuredly doesn’t mean is that anyone who plays the race card could be told, “Shut the fuck up, you’ve been paid already,” and have people like Coates deem it acceptable.

[Fr?ulein Nikki]

Now, if you could start saying that, it’d be almost worth it. Almost.

[Pope Jimbo]

Sucker. You don’t have to pay.

Walter Williams is giving away certificates of amnesty.

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/gift.html

[Christophe]

That’s kind of cute, actually.

[Pro Libertate]

I don’t have any, either, and I’m descended from slaveowners. Who, of course, I never knew and don’t agree with on the issue of slavery or race in general.

Identity politics is mostly bullshit these days, though we still have inequities. But the big issue should’ve been to stop government from discriminating, not in trying to right past wrongs when the victims are long dead or in trying to rebalance things through additional discrimination.

We’re individuals. That’s all we are. A lot of individuals. All this class and race crap is just that–crap.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

The other piece of this, which sort of hangs over the whole argument, is the fact that blacks are rapidly being usurped in political power by the country’s growing Hispanic population–and many of these folks are self-identifying as “white” now when it suits their purpose.

Coates’ argument seems to reflect a lot of free-floating anxiety that blacks are being pushed down the political totem pole by the sheer demographic mass of Hispanics, and a desperation that this is the last chance to extract some sort of payoff from white Americans before blacks are essentially relegated to irrelevancy outside their population districts.

[Fluffy]

That’s an awful lot of text to blithely engage in the Proudhonistic fallacy in the last three paragraphs of your essay.

For his argument to be true, it’s necessary for all current property relations to be unjust, because of unjust property relations in the past.

For his argument to be true, even property you have that you earned 100% with your own labor can’t be justly yours, because it’s based on prior injustice, and the injustice survives all intervening economic transactions.

But here’s the problem: If his argument is true, it’s ALWAYS be true. It was true as soon as the first injustice happened, back in the Pleisteocene or whenever.

And that would mean that African slaves brought to the US could not have possessed any valid property claim to the proceeds of their labor. If MY labor in 2014 doesn’t belong to me because of prior injustice, THEIR labor in 1800 didn’t belong to them, either.

So what are we repaying them for?

Nothing was taken from them. Nothing they had a right to, anyway.

The only context in which slavery could be seen as an injustice is in the context of self-ownership. And in the context of self-ownership, asking me to pay reparations is a sham and a colossal joke.

[Caleb Turberville]

Yeah, Coates’s argument is a complete negation of property rights, which circles back around and negates any claim for reparations.

Wow, I’ve never seen an argument that destroys itself. It’s like an argument/anti-argument mutual annihilation.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

Like, you’re not suppose to actually think this through, you’re supposed to FEELZ, man!

[Bardas Phocas]

What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.

Spiritual renewal requires money! Take money from the paler people and give it to the darker people equals “spiritual renewal.”

[110 Lean]

If MY labor in 2014 doesn’t belong to me because of prior injustice, THEIR labor in 1800 didn’t belong to them, either.

That slave? You didn’t own that.

[Warty]

Wait, he wants me to give black people money to save my soul? Well, when he puts it that way…what a great guy.

[Fr?ulein Nikki]

Oh, Warty. Your soul can’t be saved. I’m so sorry to have to be the one to tell you.

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

Has it been determined that Warty has a soul? I thought it was expelled to make room for more squats!

(P.S. I am into week two of Uncle Warty’s Squat Program for Great Justice and Might)

[SugarFree]

I’ve seen his squatting and clean and jerk videos online. They are horrifying. He’s a monster. The Mountain That Posts.

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

“The Mountain That Posts”

I rather like that.

[UnCivilServant]

Actually according to the tests we ran, Warty doesn’t actually have a soul, but soul residue from other people he’s come into ‘contact’ with.

[some guy]

I have no guilt because my ancestors were too poor to own slaves. If anything slavery hurt my white ancestors because they were forced to compete against “free” labor. Do I deserve a little bit of reparations too?

[UnCivilServant]

No, because your high wage demands forced the capitalists to import more slaves!

/proglogic

[Juice]

Won’t reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided.

Ha ha. Sure.

[invisible furry hand]

“The parties do not need a judge; what they need is a rather stern kindergarten teacher.”

Awesome squabbling neighbours from Canada

[Ted S.]

If it’s Canada, shouldn’t that be Grade 0 instead of kindergarten? 😉

[UnCivilServant]

The Canukistanis use metric grades? No wonder they’re messed up.

[Ted S.]

My understanding is that where in US English we say something like “tenth grade”, Canadians say “Grade 10”. It was a riff on that, with kindergarten being the grade before “Grade 1”.

[UnCivilServant]

Okay, so you didn’t get my joke either. I guess we’re even.

[Medical Physics Guy]

Theresa May stuns Police Federation with vow to break its power

Perhaps there’s a good trend starting on this side of the pond…

[invisible furry hand]

“It is an attitude that betrays contempt for the public these officers are supposed to serve”

Ouch!

[mr simple]

Huzzah.

That’s what you guys say over there, right?

[Juice]

contempt for the public

Holy shit, this needs to be a concept here. Instead of contempt of cop or contempt of court there is contempt of the public. Any public servant who shows one iota of contempt for the public is immediately thrown into a cell until they can show some fucking respect.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Caltech announced that last year one of its telescopes observed a star going supernova.

It’s been years since Hollywood has observed a star going Chevy Nova.

[Snark Plissken]

Mi Chevy no va.

[The DerpRider]

Was there champagne?

[Slammer]

Obama is angered because he had to find out how angry he was from the newspapers.

[Lord Humungus]

What’s so cute about hamsters’ butts?
Photos of furry rear ends popular in Japan

They’ve called the craze “hamuketsu,” which translates to “hamster buttocks.”

Takeshi Takahashi, whose company Basilico recently published a 96-page book called “Hamuketsu,” tried to explain the trend.

“The great thing about hamuketsu is that it is delightfully cute. I can’t stop smiling when I see these butts,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

[Ted S.]

Careful; you’re giving half the posters here ideas.

(Thankfully, I’m not in that half.)

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

We like hamster butts and we can not lie
You other gaijin can’t deny
That when a small mammal walks in with an itty bitty waist
And a round thing in your face
You get sprung, wanna pull out your tough
‘Cause you notice that butt was stuffed!

/insane Nipponese people

[gaijin]

You other gaijin can’t deny

I cannot deny!

[Elspeth Flashman]

+1 huge rapper hat.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Butts and Asian cultural fetishes

(Lights HM signal)

[invisible furry hand]

While we wait for HM to turn up, an oldie but a goodie

[sarcasmic]

The California hotel that has reached new heights of luxury – by delivering guests their Champagne by DRONE

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tra…..DRONE.html
Is that legal? I mean, it is a commercial use which is banned, is it not?

[waffles]

I would think the drone is far noisier and more annoying than a sharply dressed waiter.

[Jordan]

At least it doesn’t require a tip. Plus you don’t have to put your pants on.

[waffles]

But you can’t have sex with a drone…yet. Let’s just say I won’t be excited until a sharply dressed sexbot is delivering my champagne in my 25,000 dollar hotel room.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

Fisto?

[CE]

Those things have cameras you know. And Internet uplinks.

[sarcasmic]

Terrifying moment police shoot dead man who was swinging pair of garden shears towards them
Footage shows man brandishing a pair of garden shears towards police
Officers follow him along the street in California as he refuses to get down
Were called after reports he tried to break into a resident’s home
Police open fire and shoot the man who is pronounced dead on street

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…..-them.html
“I’ll trim you! I’ll trim you godammit! I’ll fucking trim you!” *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM*

[Ted S.]

How can a dead man swing a pair of garden shears?

[waffles]

These heroes stopped a zombie outbreak and then made it home safely.

[Slammer]

Johnny Depp for the TV movie?

[UnCivilServant]

There is a conflicting video over on PINAC

[sarcasmic]

Well yeah. I was being sarcastic.

Failure to obey.

[Griffin3]

Yep. And I almost got through the morning without receiving a proper nutpunch.

[Injun, as in from India]

This reminds me of the dream sequence in the Big Lebowski where the dude is chased by someone with giant shears.

[sarcasmic]

I never understood the appeal for that movie.

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

[Soros' Wank-noose]

+1 real Reactionary

[Elspeth Flashman]

It’s really good, what are you talking about sarcasmic? It’s a film noire with an unemployed guy in a bowling league as the detective.

[Injun, as in from India]

I did not enjoy the movie the first time I saw it. I thought it was too slow paced. The second time around, I was relaxed and had a few drinks in my system, and really “got” the movie.

[sarcasmic]

Maybe I should watch it again. I dunno. I just thought it was dumb.

[Juice]

I never understood the appeal for that movie.

I’m another one.

[The Late P Brooks]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi selected Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to serve as the top Democrat on the select committee on Benghazi and made four other appointments.

The truth will be ferreted out, come what may.

[Rich]

“I believe we need someone in that room to simply defend the truth,” Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, told reporters

Yes, go on ….

[Pro Libertate]

Defend the truth? That’s an interesting remark. So he knows it already? All evidence presented will be contrary to this truth handed down by. . .well, not God. Who?

[gaijin]

Caltech announced that last year one of its telescopes observed a star going supernova.

Michael Jace?

[sarcasmic]

EXCLUSIVE: Revealed, how the MAFIA helped Ronald Reagan get to the White House. Shocking documentary reveals Mob connections that catapulted him to the presidency – and how a probe was thwarted at ‘the highest levels’
President Reagan owed his acting and political career to Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman, chief of entertainment behemoth MCA, who was in bed with the Mob
An investigation into the relationship between MCA and the Mafia was halted and Federal prosecutors believe it was one of the ‘political favors’ that can be traced back to Reagan’s White House
‘Ronald Reagan is a complete slave of MCA who would do their bidding on anything,’ one secret Justice Department document revealed
According to the producer of the documentary, Wages of Spin II: Bring Down The Wall, one MCA executive had ties to Mob boss John Gotti
‘Reagan’s whole career in politics was subsidized by MCA,’ he asserts, and helped him financially because for a long time he was living above his means
The Mob was probably working Nancy Reagan too, according to the producer. ‘She was a driving force behind Reagan’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…..evels.html
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO *gasp for air* OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

[Pro Libertate]

I read this book. Prizzi’s Glory, I think.

[Ted S.]

Let’s hope I beat IFH to the punch:

Monash Freeway bomb scare: Truck driver arrested with suspicious device strapped to head

Police say a truck driver who sparked a major incident on the Monash Freeway in Melbourne this morning had a suspicious device strapped to his head as he drove at 100 kilometres per hour on the wrong side of the road.

[…]

“After 10 minutes of negotiation he got out of the vehicle. He took his clothes off of his own free accord.

“He removed the device and walked towards police where he did exactly what he was told and surrendered.”

The man, from Caulfield South, has been taken to the Alfred Hospital for evaluation and is expected to be charged after being interviewed by police.

[SugarFree]

He was a fuel-injected suicide machine.

[mr simple]

The busy road was locked down for three hours as police evacuated the area and called in the bomb squad which confirmed the device was not a bomb.

Of course he’ll be charged for confusing the police.

[Lord Humungus]

In dogs’ play, researchers see honesty and deceit, perhaps something like morality

Few people had studied animal play, but Bekoff was intrigued. “Play is a major expenditure of energy, and it can be dangerous,” he says. “You can twist a shoulder or break a leg, and it can increase your chances of being preyed upon. So why do they do it? It has to feel good.”

Suddenly, Bekoff wasn’t interested just in behavior; he was interested also in emotions and, fundamentally, what was going on inside these animals’ heads.

[invisible furry hand]

France spends $20 bn on new trains, then finds they’re too wide for the stations

[UnCivilServant]

Wasn’t that posted in a previous day’s links?

[invisible furry hand]

Probably. I wasn’t here

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

Clocks run backwards, just like drains, in the Antipodes?

[Snark Plissken]

It will cost about ?50 million ($68.5 million) to alter the platforms to fit the new trains by 2016, when they are delivered, SNCF and RFF said.

The Keynesian Krugmansian multiplier gets a 200% bonus when applied to choo-choos.

[The Last American Hero]

That was actually in the original story’s comments in one of the articles yesterday.

[sarcasmic]

Mallory Edens wins the draft lottery! Milwaukee Bucks owner’s pretty 18-year-old daughter steals the show (and hearts) at basketball’s biggest night
Mallory was chosen by her millionaire father Wesley Edens to represent the Milwaukee Bucks at the yearly NBA draft lottery in New York on Tuesday
Thanks to her good looks and charming demeanor, the high school senior amassed tens of thousands of Twitter followers, received marriage proposals and even had a song written about her

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem…..night.html
Youth is wasted on the young.

[CE]

Dang. Someone finished their song before I did.

[sarcasmic]

PAMELA ANDERSON EXCLUSIVE – ‘It’s heartbreaking my daughter couldn’t tell me’: Mother shares her guilt after Baywatch star’s revelation that she was molested by babysitter and raped twice – as police launch formal probe
Anderson, 46, shocked audience in Cannes this week by revealing she was molested by her babysitter and raped twice as a teenager
Her mother, Carol, 65, from Nanaimo, Canada, told MailOnline she had no idea about her daughter’s suffering until her daughter sent her an email this week telling her what she said
Carol said: ‘It’s just terrible to hear this now’ but doesn’t know who would have been responsible
She said it was ‘heartbreaking’ to think that her daughter felt she couldn’t share what she was going through at the time
Pamela’s brother, Gerry, 42, ‘cried for four hours’ when he was told
Pamela sent an email telling her mom ‘not to take it personally, I love you so much’
When MailOnline was with Carol, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police called her saying they had launched an investigation
Carol says she hopes the attackers are ‘shaking in their boots’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…..ation.html
Sometimes I forget that she actually was attractive before she became a plastic surgery nightmare.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Why is it appropriate to announce these things to the world before you tell anyone close to you?

[sarcasmic]

I wanna be like you! Meet Baloo the brown bear who is best friends with Leon the lion and Shere Khan the tiger after the unlikely three bonded as cubs
The three very unlikely friends were rescued from a drug dealer 13-years ago and have been inseparable ever since
The North American brown bear, tiger and lion would never come into contact in the wild
The three apex predators have formed their own special family at Noah’s Ark Animal Rescue Center in Georgia
Live in their own specially designed enclosure and spend the whole day nuzzling up to each other for comfort

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…..-cubs.html
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

[Fr?ulein Nikki]

Darling!!

[John]

I want to go.

[Lord Humungus]

Italian murder trial stopped after judge spots court staff having sex

Witnesses said prosecutor Sabrina Monteverde was summing up the case of Moroccan-born murder suspect Yassin Mahmod, accused of killing a tramp, when Ivaldi heard a strange noise.

She then reportedly looked up and saw the outline of two naked bodies.

“They obviously thought because the glass was dark they would not be seen,” a court source said of the pair, one of whom is reportedly married.

[Pro Libertate]

This is Italy, so the judge stopped the trial and had everyone join in, right?

[sarcasmic]

‘I have a f***ing job, half your mothers don’t!’ Teacher’s expletive ridden rant to students caught on camera
Cell phone footage shows the teacher, from Crawford Long Middle School in Atlanta, unleash on a male student
The tirade begins because he fails to shut the door behind him when he enters class
‘I ain’t f***ing playing with you. You want to play? Stay home with your mama,’ the teacher screams
The video was shot by a female student who had complained about the teacher a couple of months ago to her aunt

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

They said she is on administrative leave while an investigation is undertaken.

Government union member rewarded with a paid vacation.

[John]

In fairness to the teacher, if I had to deal with those little bastards all day, I would have snapped long before this person did.

[All-Seeing Monocle]

I assume the female student who shot the video is suspended and up on wiretapping charges.

[Lord Humungus]

Report: South Florida deadly for pedestrians
South Florida is the fourth most dangerous area in the country for pedestrians. The three areas that are worse are all located in Florida.

South Florida is the nation’s fourth-most-dangerous metropolitan area for pedestrians, according to a report issued Tuesday, with people on foot being run down by motor vehicles at almost triple the average rate for the rest of America.

And around the rest of the state, the numbers look even more dismal, according to the report. The three U.S. cities with worse records than the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach axis: Jacksonville, Tampa-St. Petersburg and Orlando, in ascending order of infamy.

[Andrew S.]

I hate driving in Florida. I’ve driven in big cities all up and down the east coast and driving to work here (Fort Lauderdale) scares me more than any of them.

[waffles]

Old people and crazies?

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

Yup, Florida Man and the AARP crowd – neither can drive, nor do they have any regard for other human lives…

[Andrew S.]

In south Florida, you have a third problem: People from countries in which traffic laws are mere suggestions, who continue to drive like it here.

[KDN]

Don’t forget the tourists.

[Pro Libertate]

SE Florida is the worst. We have traffic issues here, too, but it’s mostly just the usual ALL CONSTRUCTION ALL THE TIME, with the occasional snowbird or tourist to makes things interesting.

[Ted S.]

It’s all the fault of the nearly-blind old farts in their Caddies.

At least the pedestrians are less likely to die, though, since the old farts are only driving at 10mph.

[Bee Tagger]

Caltech announced that last year one of its telescopes observed a star going supernova.

Yeah, that happens like every week on the Real Housewives shows. And don’t try to tell me that reality tv personalities aren’t stars.

[Ken Shultz]

“The U.S. is deploying 80 troops to Chad to aid in the search for nearly 300 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram last month.”

Is there any kind of constitutional fig leaf covering this?

Any kind of congressional authorization?

Did Obama declare Boko Haram effective allies of Al Qaeda and, hence, cite the AUMF?

Or is worrying about the Constitution just completely passe now?

[Dances-with-Trolls]

Deploying a small number of troops to an unstable African country in response to the depredations of a local warlord. What could go wrong?

[Andrew S.]

KONY 2012 2014?

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

Nice.

[Damned Fool]

Blackhawk Up: Back in Action

[Jerryskids]

The U.S. is deploying 80 troops to Chad to aid in the search for nearly 300 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram last month.

Why not just send Clapper over there? Should take him about 5 minutes to find ’em.

[Rasilio]

In fairness deploying a small force to work with the recognized government of a foreign nation for the purpose of bringing a terrorist organization to justice would not under any logical definition be a declaration of war and realistically would fit under the Presidents powers as both the head of foreign policy and commander in chief.

[Ken Shultz]

I didn’t say we needed to declare war.

Was there any congressional authorization at all?

Did the president even inquire?

[sarcasmic]

Where sex workers go after calling it quits: Photos series reveals the fascinating women of a Mexico City retirement home for former prostitutes

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…..tutes.html
Sorry John, the article didn’t come with an address.

[Raven Nation]

Coup unfolding in Thailand:

http://tinyurl.com/ovemhrr

[Pro Libertate]

Will we be sending troops there, too?

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

I think we will just count on the Heroic Mulatto talking some sense in to them, this time.

[John]

So Zuckerman, the President of CNN says “they won’t be shamed into covering Bengazi”. Something like 65% of the country thinks that Bengazi is news and should be investigated. Zuckerman’s statement is a great example of why the major media so deserves to go broke. He is in the “news business”. News is his product. Saying “I won’t be shamed into covering this as news” is the same thing as the President of Apple Computers saying “we won’t be shamed into making products our customers want.”

[Slammer]

I won’t be shamed into watching CNN anytime soon, either.

[John]

You are not alone. The funniest thing is that Zuckerman said “CNN needed to and was going to cover Global Warming more because it is an important issue that just isn’t talked about enough.”

[RBS]

Good lord. Talk about going full retard.

[mr simple]

The only time I’ve even considered CNN was when I was forced to watch it at an airport.

[Fr?ulein Nikki]

The weirdest thing about that was I read that quote right after watching a CNN segment that was just as rough on the Obama admin being a bunch of incompetent douchebags as anything you’d see on FOX News.

[Slammer]

And then the alarm clock went off and you had to wake up?

[Fr?ulein Nikki]

No, it was real. Ever since Erin Burnett had her kid she’s all scoldy about weaselly bullshit. It’s fun.

[John]

CNN can sometimes be pretty good. And Fox News is nothing like its idiot critics make it out to be. It is mostly tabloid and various idiots yelling at each other. It is also not particularly conservative these days. It isn’t what it started out being.

[Pro Libertate]

Back when Ted was around, CNN wasn’t a bad source for news. Now it’s total crap.

Government scandals, even of the merely alleged kind, are HUGE news. Ignoring them or dismissing them for clearly political reasons washes away the few smouldering embers of your credibility.

[Lord Humungus]

Facebook App Knows What You’re Hearing, Watching

Facebook’s mobile app just grew a keen sense of hearing. Starting Wednesday, the app has the ability to recognize music and television shows playing in the vicinity of users.

The feature is designed to make it easier for users to share. When users begin to write a post, the Facebook app will offer to include information about music or shows playing in the background.

“We want to help people tell better stories,” said Aryeh Selekman, the product manager who led the development of the feature. “I hope there are people who love the feature and post more.”

The Warty Rape Room Quartet?

[Dances-with-Trolls]

That’s totally not creepy at all.

[John]

Seems like there was some book some dead racist white guy wrote a long time ago that talked about everyone owning a media device that could monitor what they did. He must have been one of those Tea Baggers.

[Bee Tagger]

the app has the ability to recognize music and television shows playing in the vicinity of users.

If they can just tell me what that other thing was that I saw that actress in so I get back to watching the show, that would be great.

[Fist of Etiquette]

What are you, too good for IMDB?

[Fist of Etiquette]

What, are you too good for IMDB?

[Fist of Etiquette]

What are you too good for, IMDB?

[Andrew S.]

Fist attacked by squirrels? Reason really is in trouble.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Just trying out my comma options.

[Lord Humungus]

OVERLOAD!

[UnCivilServant]

For the third time, yes! I haven’t got time to put up with that site.

[kinnath]

DVR with pause button. Smartphone with IMDB app. Viola.

[Ted S.]

I prefer a cello, thank you very much.

[kinnath]

yo-yo mama

[Ted S.]

Since I don’t have a Facebook account or any of their apps, they don’t know what I’m hearing or watching.

[Jerryskids]

Since I don’t have a Facebook account or any of their apps, they don’t know what I’m hearing or watching.

That’s what you think. If anybody you know has a Facebook account plus your e-mail address and your phone number, Facebook knows the balance in your checking account and how many squares of toilet paper you used to wipe your ass last time you took a dump.

[UnCivilServant]

Can they tell me the balance in my checking account, because I don’t know what it is.

[Jerryskids]

When your sister logs into Facebook, they scrape all of her information, including the contact list on her e-mail program. At some point, your sister has logged onto Facebook with her smartphone and Facebook scraped all the information she had on that phone as well.

They know she has a contact listed as ‘Ted’ at 555-1212, and that she mass forwards e-mail to ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ and ‘Ted’ so they assume the e-mail for ‘Ted’ and the phone number for ‘Ted’ are the same ‘Ted’.

Doing a reverse check on the e-mail address shows them that one of your Facebook-using colleagues at work uses that same e-mail address when he contacts ‘Mr. Simpson’ – Facebook now knows the phone number and e-mail address of Ted Simpson, and from those, the general geographic location of this Ted Simpson.

They’ve got a pretty good guess that your sister is a family member since you get e-mailed along with ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ and that since the guy e-mailing ‘Mr. Simpson’ only e-mails you between 9 and 5 Monday through Friday, that you work at the same place he does.

Now that they know you are Ted Simpson who works at Allied Chemical in Phoenix, Arizona, they can find all sorts of public records on you and of course now have a file on you that has you connected to every other Facebook user whose phone has your number or computer has your e-mail address. Probably including the computers at Netflix and Pandora and Comcast and Amazon and Kroger and Target.

[Jerryskids]

They know what you’re watching and listening to and reading and browsing on the internet and eating and wearing and what brand diapers your 6-month old son is wearing. (Yeah, they noticed that shortly after you bought that home pregancy test using your Shoppers Reward card that your purchases of pickles and ice cream shot way up and that’s when you started buying the ‘New Baby’ books at Amazon. They can put two and two together.)

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

“The Warty Rape Room Quartet?”

Do they open for the “SugarFree Dungeon Singers”?

[invisible furry hand]

They open up the “SugarFree Dungeon Singers”

[SugarFree]

Thus the “singing.”

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

You have to be an idiot to willingly go along with that.

[invisible furry hand]

Four year old dies from massive head injuries after being forced to ride a motorbike that repeatedly crashed

more

[lap83]

That’s very sad. I wonder if the parents were intoxicated.

[sarcasmic]

Welcome aboard the Walk of Shame Shuttle: College student’s ingenious post-hookup ride service is set to become a VH1 reality show

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem…..-show.html

In one hilarious scene, she picks up a friend in her car and chastises her for her antics the night before. ‘You reek of tequila and low self-esteem,’ she says

That could be interesting.

[sloopyin??]

How long before the local taxi cartel helps craft a law that prohibits the ride service?

[Drake]

I love it – the whore even has the raspy cigarette / blow job voice.

[Lord Humungus]

When the Right Turns on America

But it is quite another thing to describe America as the New Left did in the late 1960s, when America itself was spelled with a “k” (“Amerika”) in an effort to identify it with Nazi Germany. Among the young and left-wing academics there was talk about the need for revolution. The United States was viewed as fundamentally corrupt. Once upon a time conservatives fought against this. Today, however, some on the right are turning on America. They employ language you would associate with Noam Chomsky.

Now to be sure, the reasons the left and right are unhappy with America are quite different. But the indictment is still searing and often reckless. It describes an unrecognizable country. Whatever problems America has, we are light years away from Nazi Germany; and to argue that the United States is on the edge of tyranny can only come from those who don’t understand what life in a tyranny is really and truly and hellishly like.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

Is it like forced economic activity? People jailed for harming no one, or irritating the powerful? Unaccountable government actors and dictates? Agents of those in power stealing and killing with impunity? Ignoring the law and it’s foundation in favor of the desired outcomes or financial well being of the elite? Thank bog we don’t have any of that.

[John]

The President of the NRA quoted in the article.

There are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and carjackers and knockout gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all. I ask you. Do you trust this government to protect you? We are on our own.

I can’t really argue with that, can you?

[Fluffy]

Wow, people don’t remain reflexively patriotic when their enemies gain possession of the apparatus of government and use it to fuck them over.

SHOCKING

[John]

They still love the country, they just hate the government. The government is not the country.

[Rasilio]

” Whatever problems America has, we are light years away from Nazi Germany; and to argue that the United States is on the edge of tyranny can only come from those who don’t understand what life in a tyranny is really and truly and hellishly like.”

Yes this is true. However we have been steadily moving in the direction of a tyrannical corporatist dictatorship (or at least oligarchy) for a long time and the government has been laying the groundwork for an immediate switch from what we were to that tyranny.

[Bee Tagger]

A whistleblowing VA police officer in Miami, meanwhile, says the veterans hospital there is plagued by theft, abuse, and drug dealing.

Well now that someone has reported on it the President is on the case.

[Medical Physics Guy]

He’s hopping mad!

[Ted S.]

Single-payer for the win.

[The Late P Brooks]

Vulture capitalism

Standing in the building where the Our/Detroit distillery and bar will open this summer, near the famous abandoned Michigan train station, Caap says she realized bringing vodka to a city facing such socioeconomic woes could be seen as a problematic temptation, but she was reassured that the high prices of the vodka her team was introducing meant that many of the city’s poor would not be able to afford it anyway.

Capitalist pigs, taking advantage of gritty style and low overhead.

The horror.

[Jordan]

How dare they exploit people by providing jobs and services?!

[Raven Nation]

Australian government proposes changes to university funding. University students respond with deep intellectual approach:

http://tinyurl.com/p492her

[invisible furry hand]

Deregulating fees does have one problem as Henry Ergas (I think – or it might have been Adam Creighton) pointed out, just not the one the students think.

Unis set the fees, and students pay them with money borrowed from the Government. If the students don’t pay off their debts because they never earn enough, Government wears it, not the unis, which have already cashed the cheque. So the price signal mechanism is broken.

[Ted S.]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Close to 25 years ago now, when my parents and I first had to fill out a financial aid form, the college determined how much the family would be able to pay, with the rest of tuirion/room and board being made up of a mix of scholoarships and loans. I very quickly figured out that we’d be able to pay the same amound regardless, and if there were more “aid” available, the college would just be able to jack up the prices.

[Jerryskids]

Were you in one of my classes? Back around 1990 we had this same discussion in class over the fact that tuition went up every single year and every single year the University system was lobbying for more tax money because tuition was going up. (I had the good fortune of attending a small school where not one but two of the Econ profs were libertarian. One even wrote a weekly column for the local paper.)

[Raven Nation]

Yeah, I have no doubt that there are problems. I just think it’s hysterical that students are outraged that they may have to pay for their own education.

Full disclosure: when I went to uni, I paid a student activity fee and paid for textbooks and that was it. And, in those days, I would have been on the side of these protesters.

Actually I’m kind of bummed: I’m staying about 4 blocks from UTas and didn’t realize they were protesting there yesterday. I would have gone down to watch the fun.

[Ted S.]

And of course the student union fee goes towards funding political activity many people disagree with.

[Lord Humungus]

Pushing Climate Change as an Issue This Year, but With an Eye on 2016
Tom Steyer Hopes NextGen Climate Gets Voters to Consider Environment

Tom Steyer, a billionaire environmental activist from California, wants to blast the issue of climate change to the front lines of American politics. His “super PAC,” NextGen Climate, will spend about $100 million this year to influence several Senate and governor’s races in which climate change could play a major role.

But the goal, Mr. Steyer’s strategists say, is to pave the way for climate change to become a major issue in the next presidential campaign, by elevating it in the minds of voters in states that will play crucial roles in nominating and electing the next president.

Good luck with that.

[tarran]

Isn’t it lovely how people piss away big fortunes on their futile enthusiasms to remake to world?

[Slammer]

Man beats wife to death after she made him a vegetarian dinner

Defense attorney Julie Clark admitted Hussein beat his wife ? but argued that he is guilty of only manslaughter because he didn’t intend to kill her. She said that in his home country, beating your wife is customary.
“He comes from a culture where he thinks this is appropriate conduct, where he can hit his wife,” Clark said in her opening statements at the Brooklyn Supreme Court bench trial. “He culturally believed he had the right to hit his wife and discipline his wife.”

[Raven Nation]

Perhaps a Vegemite sandwich would have been better…

[Andrew S.]

Alternative replies:

1. It doesn’t sound like the guy comes from Australia.

2. Now that would be justifiable homicide.

#2 was terribly wrong. I’m so so sorry.

[Raven Nation]

No need to apologize. We get used to it (genius is often misunderstood).

And, I know my comment didn’t quite but, for some reason, the line “she just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich” leapt into my head.

[Medical Physics Guy]

Mark Steyn, call your office

[mr simple]

I didn’t know Hussein was an Irish name.

*rimshot*

[Rich]

$1 Million Bounty to Be Offered for ‘Smoking Gun’ in IRS Targeting Scandal

Easier than winning the lottery, folks.

[Andrew S.]

Reposting myself from the Independents thread last night:

First grade student gets sick and dies at school. Teachers union feels this is a great excuse to complain about staff cuts:

Teachers union president Jerry Jordan said he did not know the circumstances surrounding the child’s death, but said, “I do know that the building is woefully under-resourced. And now we have lost a baby. This is horrific.”

[John]

If there had only been more teachers there to ignore and abuse him.

[Fr?ulein Nikki]

There was a baby in first grade?

[UnCivilServant]

They regard you as an infant until you’re 26 these days.

[Rich]

The Philadelphia Fed president, viewed as one of the bank’s leading hawks, is worried about some $2.5 trillion in “excess” reserves. These reserves are just sitting in the bank system, basically doing nothing.

Could they — I don’t know — be used to pay down the National Debt?

[Jordan]

No, they need to burn those. Actually, burn the whole damn Fed. They’ve already royally fucked over our purchasing power. Enough is enough.

[John]

Don’t worry Jordan, that money won’t be a problem because the banks won’t be able to loan it after the government steals it to pay its bills.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Here’s my analogy:

The economy is a car facing a cliff edge. The Fed is the driver with his foot mashing the gas pedal all the way down wondering why the car isn’t moving yet.

[The Late P Brooks]

“The economic impact of the Detroit brand on the material conditions of the residents of the city is limited at best,” says Bruce Pietrykowski, a professor in economics at the University of Michigan, who specializes in labor, industrial relations and urban political economy.

“What is important to mention is the way in which profit-making ventures ? in some cases the very manufacturing firms that devastated the local economy ? seek to exploit the image of de-industrialization, rebrand it as grit and determination, and use it to sell products at a mark-up.”

Indeed, while Shinola’s marketing explicitly evokes a time when industries produced their goods at home, when skilled, manufacturing, often unionized jobs presented solid pathways to the middle class ? those times, along with America’s economic structures, have most certainly, and irrevocably changed. Shinola jobs are non-union, and starting salaries average around “$12 or $13 an hour” according to Bock, way above the minimum wage, but certainly not in the same bracket as the middle-class, Ford-type union protected jobs the company is trying to evoke through marketing.

the very manufacturing firms that devastated the local economy

Parasites!

Wreckers!

[Andrew S.]

The sheer business incompetence of the US legacy automakers, as well as their inability to manufacture a decent car, wrecked the Detroit economy.

[John]

No the cravenness of the UAW and the government wrecked the Detroit economy. American car makers just moved elsewhere. And foreign car companies built all kinds of plants in the US. Oddly, they never built in Detroit even though there was a ready made supply of skilled workers there. If Ford can’t make money and closes a plant, why didn’t BMW or Suburu take over the plant instead of build a new one in another state?

[Andrew S.]

I chalk the first part up to business incompetence. But the legacy automakers, despite all that, could have survived quite easily had they made good cars. They didn’t, and the foreign automakers stole the business. And it isn’t going to go back. Most people nowadays have no desire to buy a Ford/Dodge/GM car. They’ll buy the trucks, but that’s not what drives the business nowadays.

I’d be curious to see what percentage of legacy automaker sales nowadays are fleet sales to car rental agencies.

[John]

The CAFE standards really fucked them too. The CAFE standards made the US auto makers build small low margin cars to meet the overall requirements. You can’t make money making small cars if you are paying union wages. To make money on low margin small cars, you need low costs. You can only pay union wages if you are making big cars that have big profit margins. GM would be a very profitable company if it just make pickups, SUVs, Corvettes and Cadillacs. The CAFE standards prevent it from doing that and force it to lose billions making shitty small cars that it can’t sell at a break even price let alone for a profit.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Ford cars sell pretty well and get good reviews.

[Raven Nation]

I don’t disagree with this. But, the US automakers were also pretty arrogant in the early 1970s believing they did not have to re-design cars to respond to changing market forces.

[John]

I don’t think that is entirely true. The US Automakers made as much money as they could in the market they were in. They lived in a market before Nixon inflated the country into poverty and before the oil crisis and before clean air standards. In that market, people wanted big cars with no regard to emissions or fuel economy and always wanted a new one every four or five years. Detroit gave that market exactly what it wanted and made a fortune doing so. What sense did it make to make cars engineered to last for a decade or more when none of your customers cared if they lasted more than four?

They never saw the oil crisis coming but no one did. They also got totally fucked by the EPA. Here they are making big engined performance cars and all of the sudden the EPA makes it impossible to build one of those. American cars didn’t start to suck until the mid 70s. And the one of the biggest reasons they sucked so bad was because the emission control systems and detuning required by the EPA made the engines complete rubbish. They didn’t get better until nearly 30 years later when they finally perfected computer controlled injection.

[Raven Nation]

I’m not denying the EPA et al, but the Japanese were putting Corollas on the market in the 1970s. Despite the fact that he’s a douche in so many ways, Frum did a good job on explaining this in How We Got Here.

I think another factor is that, by the 1970s, US manufacturing had lost the advantage it had of being the only major manufacturing power to survive WWII unscathed.

[John]

The Japanese were putting Corollas on the market because that is what their domestic market wanted. The Big Three didn’t make Corollas because there was more money at the time making other cars. Why make a low margin small car when you can make a big margin big car?

The Japanese in many ways got very lucky. Where Detroit does deserve blame, along with the UAW is once the crisis hit and the market changed, they did a horrible job adapting. All of the industrial methods and quality control that made the Japanese auto industry so great were invented by an American named John Demming who went to Japan because the Big Three told him to get bent. They deserve a lot of blame for that. It is though, a more complex story than Frum portrays it as.

[Raven Nation]

Fair enough. My original point is that the Detroit collapse, while primarily due to UAW & horrific government also has a component which can be laid at the feet of incompetent corporate management.

[Drake]

It was a total team effort. Everyone from the lowest line worker, the union leadership, all types of company managers and designers, and our political leaders helped produce complete shitboxes at a loss for the Big 3.

I witnessed it first-hand in the 80’s at a GM plant where I worked in the summers. It was an awesome combination of incompetence, selfishness, and indifference.

[Damned Fool]

W Edwards Deming but yes, very interesting story

[mr simple]

That guy is an economics professor?

B.A. Rutgers University, 1981
M.A. Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, 1983
Ph.D. Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, 1990

Hmm.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

“MAP: The U.S. military currently has boots on the ground in these African countries”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..countries/

[RBS]

It’s all of them isn’t it?

[KDN]

Manifest Destiny part II: African Boogaloo

[Don Mynack]

We have troops in three countries searching for the “Lord’s Resistance Army”, an army that consists of, at most, a few hundred combatants. Good lord.

[Lord Humungus]

Director of Phoenix VA Hospital Where Vets Died from Delays Received $8,500 Bonus in April (Update: Bonus Rescinded)

Sharon Helman, the director of the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care System, “got an $8,500 bonus last month while there was an open [inspector general] investigation into Phoenix,” Chairman Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview Wednesday.

It had been previously reported that Helman received more than $9,000 in bonus pay in 2013 on top of her annual salary of $169,900. The VA office of inspector general began investigating the Phoenix VA for wrongdoing in December 2013, months before Helman received the additional $8,500 bonus.

169K to do what?

[invisible furry hand]

169K to do what?

Kill vets, obviously

[Jordan]

Previously, Ms. Helman received the performance award due to an administrative error.

HAHAHAHA yeah fucking right.

[John]

Yeah. government employees get money by mistake all of the time.

If there is one thing the government is good at, it is signing checks. Once your pay is set, they never fuck it up until you has to change for some reason. It may fail to give you a raise or the right amount service, but it never just randomly gives you a bonus.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

She paid it back, right?

[Auric Demonocles]

long time ago, far away

That’s no supernova!

[Auric Demonocles]

Good news: fever broke.

Bad(ish?) news: back at work.

[UnCivilServant]

Rebuttal to bad news: You’ll get to keep your job

[Lord Humungus]

for now.

[Auric Demonocles]

I still about half a day of work each day I was home…

[Ted S.]

I still you need a verb.

[Auric Demonocles]

I’m only three quarter day today.

[Jerryskids]

Still, stole, stolen.

[Jordan]

Sorry, folks. Time for the morning nutpunch:

Mother, 30, is found naked and clutching a knife in bed with the bodies of her three tiny daughters she ‘stabbed to death’ while her husband was out front working on his car

Jesus christ…

[John]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blog…..a-big-fee/

Apparently there is a hell of a living to be made being the man who destroyed the US economy.

[Jordan]

While I’m willing to believe that Ben Bernanke has driven some folks to commit murder/suicide, I don’t think he’s culpable in this particular case 😛

[John]

Damned threaded comments.

[Jerryskids]

Damn, I thought this might be a reference to Geithner being on Jon Stewart last night.

[Auric Demonocles]

I really don’t want to look into this story, but I’m confused by the scare quotes around stabbed to death.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

I think it’s the reporter trying not to presume guilt, so they put quote marks around police account of the crime.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Time to outlaw moms.

[UnCivilServant]

The Malthusians want to try.

[Fluffy]

Mother kills children because she’s angry and sad – SHE IS OBVIOUSLY CRAZY AND NEEDS TREATMENT NOT JUDGMENT!

Father slaps mother because he’s angry and sad – SEND THAT MONSTER DIRECTLY TO JAIL FOREVER!

[John]

^^THIS^^

Also, wife murders husband and does it because he was cheating and she felt betrayed. She just needs some help. Husband murders cheating wife and he is a monster who gets the death penalty.

[lap83]

I wonder if the woman from the abortion link someone posted yesterday would say this mother had the right to decide that her daughter’s lives hadn’t begun.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

How am I doing?

Irish Archbishop gives 10 Commandments for Catholics on the Internet

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new…..-face.html

[John]

As long as you don’t post on Fridays and say ten hail marries and put a $20 in the poor box every time you do, you should be fine.

[Auric Demonocles]

That actually seems like a pretty positive list.

With the exception of using emoticons. No one wants to listen to a 12 year old girl.

[UnCivilServant]

🙁

[Auric Demonocles]

I’m the young one anymore!

[Auric Demonocles]

Wow, I really am off today.

[Rasilio]

First you’re skipping words, now you’re adding unnecessary ones to the end of sentences. What is wrong with you today man?

[Notorious G.K.C.]

“Israel Seeks to Make Yom Kippur a UN Holiday…

“Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor sent a letter to all U.N. member states saying there are three major monotheistic religions but only two ? Christianity and Islam ? are recognized by the U.N. calendar….

“”It is about time Jewish employees at the U.N. won’t be obligated to work on Yom Kippur,” he said.”

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireS…..y-23749348

[tarran]

What about Robonadon, Robanzaa and Robonnukah? On those days, are human children ferrying people up and down between floors and sucking dirt out of carpets?

No. It is robots!

[Notorious G.K.C.]

?

[Raven Nation]

Futurama+

[Notorious G.K.C.]

Ah.

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

Ahhhh! Refresh, darn it!

[tarran]

You guys have to give it away!

Between that and my mammoth meat comment, I was hoping some of you guys would think that I was tripping on an interesting drug.

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

Bender, Futurama.

[Andrew S.]

Now look here tarran. I respect your diversity to the extent the law requires but you used all your days off when you had that bout of Roberculosis.

[Auric Demonocles]

tarran: Hey, quit it, Auric. It’s Labor Day.

Auric: Labor Day? That phoney-baloney holiday crammed down our throats by fat-cat union gangsters?

tarran: That’s the one.

Auric: Hot damn! A day off!

[John]

http://www.digitaljournal.com/…..cle/384169

People on the Right need to really start shaming college Presidents. Talk about hypocritical oligarchs. And nearly every one of them is the worst sort of faculty lounge Marxist bastard.

[Raven Nation]

It’s not just presidents. One of the biggest problems in higher ed is the proliferation of highly paid administrators.

[John]

Yes. And it is a very few people at the top. My wife works in higher ed as an administrator. She doesn’t really make shit. She is just outside of the big money. You have to be a crony to get the big bucks.

[Raven Nation]

Yep; multiplication of vice-chancellors, assistant vice-chancellors, associate deans, etc.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

It is recognized that the high pay of corporate CEOs is connected to the low pay of the employees.

Lost me with the very first sentence.

[John]

doesn’t matter if it is true or not. The left thinks it is true and it ought to be used against them.

[Damned Fool]

Eh. Executives can have incentives to aggrandize themselves at the expense of the best budget for the rest of the firm. This isn’t an argument for more regulation by government but just something of note to academia and businesses seeking to improve their compensation structure.

[Damned Fool]

But don’t forget that it’s the evil kkkorporations that are bastions of greed.

[John]

http://whnt.com/2014/05/20/new…..l-climate/

Law Makers and New York wonder why Remington Arms left them for a new boyfriend in Alabama. Come on, they only beat her up when she got lippy and was asking for it.

[Restoras]

The headline is a perfect illustration of how stupid the average politician is. They literally can’t think beyond the current election cycle.

New York Lawmakers Complain Alabama’s Remington Win Due in Part to ‘Gun-Friendly’ Political Climate

Gee, ya think? Morons. I am sure they will also be shocked to learn that people are leaving NY for other states that – shcok of all shockers! – let’s them keep more of the moeny they make.

I doubt NY will go the way of Detroit and MI anytime soon, at least downstate, but upstate and Western NY will continue to decline.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Also consider that it is a very difficult decision to move an established company. The savings have to be extremely significant to justify the cost of doing so.

In other words, New York doesn’t just suck, it REALLY sucks.

[UnCivilServant]

Add in the fact that Remington has been in Ilion since the 1820s give or take, and rather proud of their history. So it was even more difficult to make that choice.

[Ted S.]

Somebody needs to make an ad about this to play after every one of those “Startup NY” ads.

[John]

I am pretty sure Buffalo is close to Detroit level if not already there.

[KDN]

Buffalo was Detroit before it was cool.

[Rhywun]

It’s bad but nowhere near Detroit level. I would say more like Cleveland level, or slightly better.

[Ted S.]

It’s nice to see somebody recognize Western NY is not Upstate! 🙂

[UnCivilServant]

Ted, what tiny slice of upstate do you recognize as ‘upstate’?

[Ted S.]

I would say the 518 area code, but my understanding is that the people up in the North Country see themselves as different from the Albany types.

20 years ago when I was in college, there was an Upstate NY Usenet newsgroup, and the Western NY folks (Rochester/Buffalo types) there said that they taking part mostly because they didn’t feel like the rest of the Great Lakes people in the Great Lakes newsgroup, even if they didn’t quite consider upstate to be an accurate descriptor of where they were from.

[Andrew S.]

If upstate is 518, and Rochester/Buffalo is Western NY, what about my old haunts around Syracuse/Utica/Rome/Watertown?

[Rhywun]

Syracuse is in “Central NY” and Watertown is in the “North Country”.

[UnCivilServant]

I’ve lived in 315, 585 and 518 and they don’t feel at all different from each other. Albany reeks of downstate people though, and it gets worse the further down the Hudson you go.

[Rhywun]

I grew up in Rochester and “Western NY” is strictly Buffalo. Rochester is either “Finger Lakes” or just “Upstate”.

[Azathoth!!]

What about Plattsburg?

[Rhywun]

North Country.

[Drake]

I drove up to Cornell through eastern PA a few weeks ago. The northeast corner of PA is scenic and looks pretty prosperous. As soon as you cross into southwest NY state it feels like a third-world country. Shitty houses, abandoned houses, falling down barns, and rusted out cars. Few stores or restaurants.

I laughed last night at the gym when a Cuomo ad come on talking about how awesome NY is doing.

[UnCivilServant]

Don’t forget two things: Cuomo lies, and New York to him does not extend north of the Tappen Zee.

[Fluffy]

Remember that if you grow up in NYC or suburban NYC, that’s what you think ALL of “flyover country” looks like.

It’s what you know.

[Auric Demonocles]

Drake, why were you heading up to Cornell?

Curious as an alum (along with Spoony).

[Drake]

Daughter looking at school and working with Field Hockey coach in a clinic.

[Auric Demonocles]

Does she love tons of stress, or at least other people who are unreasonably stressed and don’t know how to take a break?

[robc]

So, just like any other engineering school?

[Drake]

Yes and Yes. Wants to major in Computer Engineering but insists on taking every damn AP course there is in High School. We try to tell her she might want to enjoy life a little.

[Auric Demonocles]

Wants to major in Computer Engineering but insists on taking every damn AP course there is in High School.

That says nothing to me about being stressed. I did all that too but wasn’t going to worry about it.

[Auric Demonocles]

By which I mean, being busy isn’t the same as being stressed.

[Spoonman.]

The northeast corner of PA is definitely not prosperous, but it’s no Whitney Point, New York (the town you go through when you get off the interstate to get to Cornell).

[AdamJ]

“I have skin like leather and the diamond hard look of a cobra.
I was born blue and weathered and I burst just like a supernova….”

[SugarFree]

Bass explained, “I wasn’t in my right mind. I was still rocking my new pair of elf ears.”

He mistook the car for a shapeshifting demon.

“I hopped on her hood and tried to pierce her tires with my master sword. I was trying to prove a point. Don’t mess with a dark elf,” he said.

[John]

Drugs and nerds should never mix.

[invisible furry hand]

“Last time he dropped acid, he turned into a dragon.”

And with one breath burnt six noble knights to death, but still couldn’t get the girl

[Notorious G.K.C.]

A video started automatically, but the story sure was interesting.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

OK, this time it didn’t.

The reporter recognized the reference to Morgoth!

It’s nerds all the way down.

[John]

Having tried that stuff in my younger and dumber days, I call shenanigans on his claim. LSD does not in mine or my friend’s experience make you think you have polymorphed. It is a powerful drug that does some interesting things but it does not make you think you can fly or that you are a dragon.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

Also, why did he confuse a high elf with a dark elf?

[John]

So not only is he lying about using LSD, he is not even a real nerd.

[Raven Nation]

I thought one of the characteristics of LSD was that it could have wildly different effects on different people?

I ask from true ignorance on the subject.

[John]

I am basing my opinion on a very small sample. But I always thought it did not cause people to polymorph mentally. But maybe not.

[Sevo]

The feds claim there’s less oil available from fracking in CA, therefore no one should frack!
The hell with the people risking their own money; they need to be TOLD:

“Reduced estimates of oil trapped in Monterey Shale”
http://www.sfgate.com/default/…..496353.php

[UnCivilServant]

All the more reason they should open the Marcellus Shale!

[Trials and Trippelations]

North Carolina’s Senate voted yesterday to frack. The House which I believe is Republican controlled still has to vote.

I wouldn’t have known this since I don’t live in NC anymore except an acquaintance on facebook posted that we all needed to tell on legislators to vote NO!!!!

[Notorious G.K.C.]

We need more masked protesters to stop all this fracking.

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thes…..tom_28.jpg

[UnCivilServant]

Can we drill through the protestors? Thin their ranks, maybe use the decaying corpses to produce methane

[Juice]

You just need an Eric Cartman Hippy Drill.

[Sevo]

Could Trudeau be trying to tell us something, or is he immune to the irony?

“If only he’d knock over a bank or something…”
http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury#.U34Dp8oTG64

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Absolutely and totally immune.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

NPR interviewing an American Legion about the VA.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

American Legion spokesperson.

[UnCivilServant]

Aww, I hoped it had started with “My name is Legion: for we are many”

[Raven Nation]

+1 herd of pigs

[Bo Cara Esq.]

Lost in Translation

“Kinki University, named after the region in which it is located in Japan, is trying to go global. The university is a good one, says the Japan Times, and is planning to expand by offering courses in languages other than Japanese. There’s just one problem?its name is Kinki University. The university has apparently given up on the rest of the world being grown-up about this and has decided to ditch the name because, in the words of the Japan Times, ‘the English term ‘kinky’ can denote a preference for peculiar sexual behavior.'”

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the…..dents.html

[Notorious G.K.C.]

We don’t want anyone associating Japan with that sort of thing!

[UnCivilServant]

What, they weren’t willing to embrace the identity of the ‘Kinki Japanese University’ and the market opportunities it offered?

[Damned Fool]

*puts in transfer request*

[sarcasmic]

Do they use a feather or the whole chicken?

[Jordan]

I shudder to think what counts as kinky in Japan.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Non-pixelated copulation

[Jordan]

Or maybe sex where the girl doesn’t act like she’s being raped.

[Andrew S.]

Lets Go Bulls!

[Bo Cara Esq.]

Dear Prudence: Help, I’ve Never had an Orgasm!

“Dear Prudence,
I am a 27-year-old woman and I don’t think I have ever had an orgasm. I have had a variety of sexual partners (both long-term boyfriends and flings) and masturbate regularly. I’ve tried different positions, sex toys, you name it. Sex feels great and sometimes I do feel a sort of release, but nothing as intense as I hear an orgasm is supposed to be. I love sex and don’t really have a problem with the fact that I don’t orgasm (although it would certainly be nice!), but I don’t know how to broach it with my partners. Sometimes men get frustrated or feel like it is something they are doing wrong and it becomes awkward. I’d rather not have to fake it. How do I convince them that I still enjoy sex even without the big finish?

?Am I Missing Something?”

http://www.slate.com/articles/…..rgasm.html

[Auric Demonocles]

Hint: If there is any “thinking” involved, you haven’t.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

Hispanics are becoming Whites!

“One hundred years ago, Italians were considered a separate race of people, distinct from Anglo-Americans in the nation’s racial taxonomy. And fear of their presence sparked violence, discrimination, and strict anti-immigration laws. With time, mobility, and the shared experience of depression and war, however, those Italians began to see themselves as white and mainstream, and in turn, white Americans agreed.

In fact, new research says that’s happening right now. According to data presented at an annual meeting of the Population Association of America, an estimated 1.2 million Americans changed their racial and ethnic identification from “Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin” on the 2000 census to “white” on the one in 2010…

In any case, it’s more than clear that some Hispanics are following the path of previous European immigrant groups, where success breeds assimilation, and assimilation brings whiteness.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/…..ating.html

[UnCivilServant]

Already posted in a previous links, Bo.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

OK, mea culpa.

[John]

Intermarriage is the surest way to end racism. You can’t be racist if you can’t tell who is who.

[Auric Demonocles]

But you might have a mascot that uses to a term used by a group of people to describe themselves, and is considered by up to 9% of that group to be offensive!

[Notorious G.K.C.]

“Intermarriage is the surest way to end racism. You can’t be racist if you can’t tell who is who.”

Alas, look at Latin America and the traditional social stratification with “pure” whites on top, blacks and Indians on the bottom, and the mixed-race in the middle. Of course, there’s been challenging and upending of this, but one can’t say that all the intermarriage has cured racism.

[Auric Demonocles]

Well, it would seem to be moving there. If everyone intermarried their kids would all be “in the middle”.

(Not that I’m proposing that as a great solution)

[Jumbie]

I am. Bring me your white women.

[robc]

IIRC, Paraguay is the closest to achieving this. They had a dictator that required all of the upper class to marry natives, so it was pretty well achieved.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

Sounds like Francia (sp?) – is that right?

[Jerryskids]

You can’t be racist if you can’t tell who is who.

That’s a pretty racist comment.

‘You’ aren’t the one who gets to decide if you’re being racist or not. You’re racist (or sexist or whatever) if a member of a victimized group says so. That you would deny your victims the power to determine their own victimization makes you a victimizer literally worse than Hitler.

[Bo Cara Esq.]

Sadly John I think the author is less interested in seeing racism lessen in that way than in having a growing, self conscious minority to counterpoise against whites.

[Emmerson Biggins]

hmmmm …. I dunno. Humans can always find a way.

See Catholics vs Protestants in Ireland. Maybe that isn’t technically “racism”, but I think it fills the same niche pretty well.

[Azathoth!!]

This isn’t all intermarriage.

[Jordan]

BUT… BUT… LA RAZA! /derp

[mr simple]

100 years ago? Hell, we’ve only been considered white by most within my lifetime.

– half-sicilian

[Calidissident]

The second paragraph is an inaccurate characterization of what happened. He actually gives the correct account in the next paragraph, so I think that one was just sloppily written. A net of 1.2 million people who identify as Hispanic ethnicity (Hispanic is not a racially category, and is a separate area from race on the census) changed their racial identification from “some other race” to “white.” They didn’t stop identifying as Hispanic.

[Jumbie]

Hit AMP Run,

I need your help settling a thorny biology/philosophy question that came up in my Grade One class today…

Kid: “Sir, a werewolf is like a cannibal?”
Me: “No. Cannibals are people who eat people.”
Kid: “A werewolf eats peoples.”
Me: “Yes, but a werewolf isn’t a person.”
Kid: “But you said a werewolf is a person who turns into a wolf, so a werewolf is people.”
Me: “…”
Kid: “So a werewolf is a person who eats peoples. So a werewolf is like a cannibal, right?”

I’m leaning towards, not a cannibal, but I can’t say why exactly…What do you guys think?

[Jordan]

I dunno. I’m having trouble faulting that kid’s logic.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

Just send him to law school already.

[sarcasmic]

The werewolf eats people in wolf form. When in human form it doesn’t eat people. If it ate people in human form it would be a cannibal. Either way it doesn’t eat clowns because they taste funny.

[SugarFree]

This is pretty solid logic, but I do think you need to consider the fact that if a werewolf ate a human, the meat would still be in his stomach after he changed back to human form.

Is cannibalism only the act of eating someone, or is digesting human flesh also cannibalism? Are you a cannibal is you ingest human flesh against your will or without your knowledge? Are the people who attended dinner parties at Hannibal’s house cannibals or not?

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

I know that you call people who eat cannibals Total Coelo, but that’s about as far as my knowledge on the matter goes.

[JW]

But, if they’re fairly hot chicks, does this change the formula for acceptance of this practice?

[BakedPenguin]

No, it just changes what parts you “eat”.

[JW]

SNU SNU.

[Tonio]

Werewolves are not real, hence not people.

If they were real, they are not people when in wolf-form.

There have been real human cultures which have practiced cannibalism.

[Azathoth!!]

A werewolf is something that looks like a person sometimes and a wolf at other times. It is neither.

[mr simple]

You could be in SW: Episode VII!

[shortviking]

“A new poll found 47 percent of unemployed respondents saying they’ve “completely given up on looking for a job.”

I haven’t completely given up but…yeah…

[Matrix]

Brittany Norwood will sue NFL player Arian Foster for child support

In a country where at-will abortion is legal, you deserve diddly and squat.

[Jerryskids]

Adding: ‘Live and learn, I can only hope and pray my son turns out to be the man his mom is.’

You mean you want your son to be the sort of person who has affairs with married men and then is shocked to discover that men who cheat on their wives might be less than the most honorable men around?

[CE]

At least we’re all free from NSA spying now, with the House passing the Freedom Act….. oh wait….