A.M. Links: U.S. Begins Bombing Iraq, Ebola Declared Global Health Emergency, Tobacco Foes Go After Cigars
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A few days after defending his aggressive use of executive power, President Obama showed he means it by authorizing humanitarian aid to Iraq and targeted airstrikes of ISIL militants there "if necessary." Apparently the Pentagon thought they were: U.S. military planes carried out airstrikes in northern Iraq Friday morning.
- The World Health Organization has declared the ebola outbreak that started in West Africa an "international public health emergency."
- A 72-hour cease-fire in Gaza ended in a blast of Hamas rocket fire Friday morning. Israel, naturally, responded with more airstrikes. Back to business as usual, folks.
- Speaking of perseverance: the anti-tobacco people will literally. never. stop. This time they're after premium cigars.
- Marijuana farmers markets are "budding" on the West Coast (pun courtesy of USA Today).
- Mom calls cops on son for watching porn; cops resist finding a way to charge him.
- Lyft and Uber are both launching carpooling services—will they threaten public buses?
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…and targeted airstrikes of ISIL militants there “if necessary.”
You know who else started a “war” in Iraq?
Timur?
Britain? Though I’m not sure you could call it “Iraq” back then.
The news report that I heard said that the US had dropped 2 500lb bombs.
If true, and I hope that it’s typical media malpractice, this weak ass action is only going to embolden ISIS to crush the Kurds and provide cover to Obama for doing nothing while claiming that ‘we tried’.
This. If you going to do it, do it right. Two F18s with a few bombs each is not likely to make them cower in fear.
Didn’t the USAAF drop a couple of 500 pounds by accident on most flights in WWII?
I’m waiting for the deluge of anti-war protestors to come out of the woodwork.
C’mon, man, giant puppets take time!
I hope you’ve got a lot of spare time.
T. E. Lawrence?
Sumer and Akkad?
Nebuchadnezzar?
A few days after defending his aggressive use of executive power, President Obama showed he means it by authorizing humanitarian aid to Iraq and targeted airstrikes of ISIL militants there “if necessary.”
Oh, dear – I am sure the very remote possibility of the airstrikes being “necessary” never comes to fruition.
Final call for Boston area meetup?
Absoluement. Step it up people. Meetup tonight. BYOM.
Slightly more details: Contact hamilton for full details. Just make sure he can confirm it’s you. He’s paranoid cause Mary said she was coming to the last one.
I wouldn’t say paranoid. Just allowing for the authorizing corrective action “if necessary”, for “humanitarian reasons”.
I’m just gonna squeeze in here and remind everyone about the DC meet up today at O’ Shaughnessy’s Pub in NoVA this evening. Fear not, Mary also told me (under her alias Todd Gakk) that she was thinking about coming to our last meetup. She never showed! Except there was this rather disheveled looking woman who sat in the corner scribbling on a piece of paper the entire time.
I’m sure the BPD won’t mind if you open carry to keep Mary at bay.
Since Mass won’t let me bring my guns into the state, that might be an issue.
I bring *my* biceps into the state whenever the heck I want!
They make me cut them off and leave them in Vermont.
the airstrikes being “necessary” never comes to fruition.
THink of the jobs created or saved replenishing missles, burning jet fuel and serving banner ads on news sites…stimulus!
And…. they’ve become “necessary.”
Yeah, just saw that.
Give him credit people. He waited HOURS for a peaceful resolution to this. Just think how he’d act without the Nobel Peace Prize.
Just think how he’d act without the Nobel Peace Prize.
They say that having a Nobel Prize is like carrying a concealed weapon or earning a black belt in a martial art, in that it imparts a sense of restraint. Indeed, the comforting weight of the Prize hanging around the neck tempers a world leader’s natural inclination to bomb into rubble those who displease him.
“targeted airstrikes of ISIL militants ”
Oh dear, and Mary Ruwart seemed such a nice, non-confrontational woman.
I love how reason meetups always seem to take place in the most thoroughly blue cities. L.A., D.C., and Boston.
Jesus, it’s like we’re all gluttons for punishment living among the progtopians.
Reason meetup in Cabot, AR tonight. I’ll take you on a tour of the house where [well-known distributed defense personality]’s parents live. It’s a house I really want to buy for its surprisingly wonderful view of what is still Arkansas.
What’s that?
(cricket, cricket)
Can we make it Harrison instead? I’ll meet you down at the Dairy Queen.
Marijuana farmers markets are “budding” on the West Coast…
And the DEA thanks you all for gathering in one place.
Finally, something worth reading on Salon
My X-rated reality nightmare: How a couple accidentally sent me their deranged sex tape
It’s only a nightmare if the couple are ugly.
Or if your an A-sexual beta.
No, it’s Salon. They must be right wing. Or Tea Partiers.
That’s true. There was an evil gun involved.
So that’s why it’s “deranged.”
That’s why parodying Salon is so pointless. They’re deeply predictable and follow the progressive Trinity to a tee: Lead with fear, build with Group Attribution Error, finish with violent imprisonment.
That’s sig worthy.
So basically Saloon took the plot of the movie Sex Tape and posted it online for content?
So he seems to think they’re both attractive, yet he’s upset at getting their sex tape?
So he seems to think they’re both attractive, yet he’s upset at getting their sex tape?
I was…uh.. “distracted”.
A 72-hour cease-fire in Gaza ended in a blast of Hamas rocket fire Friday morning.
I never would have guessed who broke it.
The Jews agreed to a cease-fire. Palistineans to a cease. Fire.
That’s unfair. They both agreed to an Israeli cease-fire.
‘Ferocious’ nudist runs for county sheriff post in Washington
Olinger was a marksman in the Second World War
Somehow I think Jesse and Tonio don’t want to see the picture now. :-p
Amps and voltage, amps and voltage…
it’s a formula you can’t disparage…
let me tell you brother….
you can’t have one without the other…
Actually, you can have voltage without amps, if the circuit is open.
“Destiny Savage”
A pr0n star in the Navy?
Destiny Savage? for reals?
oops.
He was suffering an undisclosed ailment
An erection lasting more than four hours, by the sound if it.
Send her to court in India?
the dispatcher probably saved her life because when the cops arrived and saw someone with a gun…well you know the rest of the story….
She ignored the operator’s instructions and told her that she’d put away the gun when the cops got there. In the mean time she managed to scare away the burglars. Had she put down the gun the robbers may have come inside and then there would be a 911 recording of her being raped and killed. That operator is a piece of shit who deserves to die.
yeah, I was keeding
Town council requires all council staff to report back any information posted online to the chief executive officer that may damage the council’s reputation.
http://www.ntnews.com.au/news/…..7017815876
ATTACK WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATCH.
On the right-wing talk show radio station, they have nothing to do on Sundays but play some show about cigars. I would listen every once in a while, if I happened to be in the car, just to hear about a topic on which I’m clueless.
It’s mostly just been a commercial for various cigars from various countries and companies. At some point in the last few years though, the show has morphed into stories about companies getting shut down by the feds, asking for money for a pro-cigar lobbying group, and just a general doom & gloom outlook at crushing federal interference from many angles.
Cigar Dave? That motherfucker knows his cigars. People would call in and describe some cigar they had in 1978 with a distinct rapper, and the guy would go on a rant explaining what type of cigar it was, where it was produced, and the biological history of all involved in producing it.
Used to be my hangover audio on the drive of shame home on the weekends, when I still did that sort of thing.
This time they’re after premium cigars.
You know who smokes premium cigars? People you can’t stop.
It’s not about getting cigar smokers to stop. It’s about extracting more money from them.
Oh, I think it is very much about getting them to stop. Not that they care about the health of “old, white men” per se, but they very much care about control and this is something they can do to “stick it to the man.” You know, culture war.
Also, the stated motive is containment of “public health” costs.
Dancing Grannies Stress Out Panda
I am not sure I wanna click that link…
Dancing grannies
animal cruelty!
the square dancing part, not the fact that they’re grannies
Fremont Sex-Ed Textbook With Topics On Bondage, Vibrators Along With Explicit Diagrams Has Parents Riled Up
Pretty much my 9th grade.
Better that they learn this stuff in a classroom setting than just stumbling upon a comment thread on Hit & Run.
*applause*
Yeah I’m pretty sure they would be awfully confused about sexual dynamics and physiologically scarred for life.
…and worse, they’d be exposed to deviant libertarian thoughts.
And end up with some weird fetish, like fat chicks, super skinny chicks, or gingers.
Sex education seems based on the idea that the teens are going to do it anyway, and if you oppose this you’re some sort of monster.
And yet, if you suggested alcohol education should be based on the fact that the teens are going to do it anyway, people would look at you like you’ve got two heads.
Or responsible gun ownership.
That’s a great point. I have always planned to be the one who introduces my son to alcohol, at around 15 or 16 or so, and be honest about its effects. But I could get in serious trouble for this if the wrong nanny gets wind of it.
You can’t even make the argument that the distinction between the two is that there is a physical urge for sex, and not for alcohol, because if my son inherits even half of my tendency to imbibe…yikes. Also, when I was a teen I would have loved to have sex, but was unable to convince anyone to join in. However I had no trouble sneaking alcohol on my own.
I have always planned to be the one who introduces my son to alcohol, at around 15 or 16 or so
You might think about starting earlier. I was drinking long before that.
We let our kids drink at the table (wine usually) starting whenever. Age 5 I guess. Our policy has been to allow them to have alcohol (a small amount), at dinner or otherwise, if they ask us. So, in the evening when I am hitting the bottle having a cocktail (COCKTAILZ!!!), occasionally one of them will ask me for some, and I will make them a small one.
No interest in cheating and stealing from the liquor cupboard that I can see. The 16-year-old just came back from a trip to Peru where he was old enough to drink. Said he ordered a screwdriver once, and a beer after a day-long hike to Macchu Picchu. Didn’t seem to care too much about it one way or the other.
The side effect bonus is that he can mix me a decent martini.
My first time in the saddle, I got plastered on pilfered Budweisers and woke up next to a lake with frogs on my face.
And I was in my 20s before I made a decent martini.
That may ….explain some things?
Well, American people anyway. Most countries with a drinking tradition seem to treat it very much the way you suggest.
Look, 11-year olds are very mature and should learn all about sex. Over the next 15 years, their brains will continue maturing to the point they can handle freedom of speech.
Teaching ninth graders how to be a slave does seem like it might be a bit more than necessary.
I had sex education with a sex-positive tone. We were served graphic images of STDs and phrases like “no glove, no love” and “the most powerful sexual organ is the brain”. It’s really not that appalling. Anyway the class was optional, many kids had their parents pull them from the class. Why can’t the just do that?
The parents can always withdraw their kids from the “FDR was awesome and those right-wingers and Japs were asking for it” class, so what’s the problem?
Okay so BDSM in a high school class is over the top, but given the choice between abstinence-only and this I say break out the whips.
Let’s just say I’m skeptical of the “don’t do it, and here’s how” curriculum, since they *never* take that approach on any other subject – drinking, guns, driving motorcycles, drag-racing, etc.
Oh, wait, it says the textbook in the story addresses binge-drinking. Perhaps I did them an injustice!
“Now, kids, don’t guzzle your vodka straight out of the bottle, just take a couple sips and then wash it down with a beer.”
“”I don’t think we really need to know about that at this age,” said Judy Le, a senior at Kennedy High School. “I feel like it’s more of like, adults.””
That’s the kind of unenlightened attitude the class is designed to overcome! Asians and their hangups…
“”Knowing high schoolers, they’re probably going to find out anyway, so it’s better to know from a responsible adult,” said sophomore Nicholas Loya.”
Indeed, but what do responsible adults have to do with the adults in this story?
“”I wrote to the author of the book and she said the target audience was college freshman,” [a parent] said.”
Oops.
I didn’t say this was a nonstory. This is indeed a fuckup. Can’t there be some middle way? I do agree that the school running this is showing no semblance of responsibility.
The last few posts weren’t aimed at you, just developing my thoughts. 🙂
Can’t there be some middle way?
Howsabout the fucking schools MYOB and let parents raise their kids, while the schools concentrate on academics? Because from what I can tell, they could stand to put a leetle more effort into things like reading, writing, and math.
Yeah, there are plenty of messages about “safe sex” and such out there. Teach the basic facts of sexual reproduction in a biology class and leave it at that.
Teach the basic facts of sexual reproduction in a biology class and leave it at that.
Hmm, in our current culture this would be problematic. The basic facts do not include the sub group “non-person human individual”.
What?
Okay so BDSM in a high school class is over the top, but given the choice between abstinence-only and this I say break out the whips.
Only if we can use them on the “educational” administrators.
As someone who was interested in such things in middle school, but had no idea why, or that I wasn’t a completely unique freak monster, I kinda disagree.
I’m much happier now that I know I’m part of a large subculture of freaks. 😉
Ha ha only serious, I’d have probably been in a better situation if I’d had any idea that feeling such desires was, if not precisely “normal”, at least vaguely comprehensible.
Well, the information in the sex-ed class is true and pretty uncontroversial.
I got kicked out of my sex education class at the STD part for asking why any dumbass would delay going to the doctor when they had broccoli growing on their genitals.
And how did your doctor treat the broccoli?
Stir Fry.
Forced him to eat it. It’s constitutional.
let me be clear, that I haven’t eaten it since I was a little boy and my mother made me.
From my sex class…
Instructor: “Now, think about it. Is it really worth it? Is it worth the risk of contracting an STD just for those two minutes of pleasure?”
Student in the back: “TWO MINUTES?! You’re doing it wrong!”
“The text also describes how to buy and use condoms”
I read this the first time as how to buy used condoms and was like Ewww
Mom calls cops on son for watching porn; cops resist finding a way to charge him
Not news. If the cops resisted finding a way to shoot him, well, then…
Mom calls cops on son for watching porn; cops resist finding a way to charge him.
No choke holds there.
Some people have erotic asphyxiation fantasies.
Should have just spanked him.
I see what you did there.
Cops should have arrested mom for neglect. That would have been the best (ie most entertaining for me) outcome. Stupid bitch.
?will they threaten public buses?
One summer when I was a young teen I had a friend threaten a public bus with a bottle rocket. The bus stopped for a few moments but was ultimately unimpressed by the display of firepower.
TERRORIZMZ!
I was hit twice by public buses in high school. And I hate them when they pull in front of me when I’m driving. Die, die a horrible death public buses.
Were you in a Tienanmen Square re-enactment society?
I’m not entirely sure about how this happened:
Man carried out sex act on platform of miniature railway
He raped Thomas the Tank Engine!
Percy would have consented.
While Diesel watched, leering?
Why do I fear a SugarFree piece on this?
Toot-toot!
Speaking of perseverance: the anti-tobacco people will literally. never. stop. This time they’re after premium cigars.
Why it’s almost as if the slippery slope isn’t such a fallacy after all.
Remember, this all started as just an effort to ban cigarettes on airplanes.
Yeah, I’ve been trying to explain this to people in my life. Somehow slippery slopes are fallacious but everyone can agree that sometimes if you give an inch they’ll take a yard. Which idiom is right?
Show me someone who claims that the slippery slope is a fallacy, and I’ll show you someone with an agenda beyond what they’re telling you.
Don’t use the term “slippery slope”. No one can deny the reality of incrementalism.
Give them a yard, and they want a swimming pool in it.
Give them a yard, and they want a taxpayer-funded swimming pool in it.
And it will never, ever turn into food policing.
That’s just laughable. What, like they are going to try to ban Happy Meals next? Oh, you libertarians and anarchists are just crazy.
I still can’t believe that people used to be allowed to smoke on airplanes.
It was a crazy, wonderful, almost free time.
Even without government interference, I have to imagine that the airlines would have banned smoking on their planes by now. Personally, I would opt for the non-smoky planes.
I thought I was going to die on a KLM flight from Chicago to Amsterdam in 1979… those people smoked like…the Europeans they were.
And carry guns, don’t forget that. Stupid hijackers ruined it for everybody.
What I’ve always loved are the little ornate brass ashtrays built into some old elevators.
California wine collector jailed for 10 years for fraud
Rudy Kurniawan, once celebrated in the world of fine wines, concocted fake rare vintages in his kitchen and sold them for tens of millions of dollars
I notice it was not the quality of the wine that got him caught but how he faked the labels
One bottle of rotted grape is as bad as the next.
The same seems to apply to art, its often judged to be authentic not by the art itself but by the various auction and sales stickers on the back.
I never spend more than $10 on a bottle of wine – prefer beer or whiskey though.
The $3/bottle stuff at Trader Joe’s is just as good as anything you might buy for $10/bottle.
Seconded.
+2 $ Chuck
Budweiser is the same as Victory Hop Devil.
A better comparison would be to Victory Lager or Prima Pils. But I can actually taste a difference between those beers and Bud. I can’t really discern a difference between the TJ stuff and the $10/bottle stuff from the local liquor store.
Maybe. I’ve had $10-$15 per bottle wine that is not even close to 2 Buck Chuck and for my money is a far better drinking experience. That said, your average $10 bottle may not be much different than 2 Buck Chuck, it depends on what you buy.
The Man Who Wouldn’t Be King
Rand Paul becomes an object of liberal curiosity.
All sounds pretty good to me.
Obama’s rhetoric isn’t soaring, either.
Well, it WAS soaring. Kind of like TWA flight 800. The ending kind of dampened the mood, though.
And I’m sure it’s extremely frustrating to them that he’s not as easily demonizable as they would like.
You know who else rose to power on soaring rhetoric?
New Charlie And The Chocolate Factory Cover Is Horrifying
Roald Dahl’s adult fiction is excellent.
+1 leg of mutton
Raisinet thief says she’s ‘a god’ in Stuart
So Raisinets are food of the gods?
Clearly. In the ancient world if you had access to chocolate covered raisins you would be revered as a god.
Florida Woman?
Olympics: Athens venues lie empty as tenth anniversary nears
bonus: pictures of empty, graffiti covered buildings.
Hey, Stavros, you think we should do something with this building?
Nah, who wants a used hippodrome?
If they were going to have an Olympics they should have stayed in Greece. That way they could reuse the same facilities and athletes would come to Greece between Olympics so they could train in the same facilites and conditions of the next Olympics
But the Olympic committe makes too much in bribes for that to work.
Who’s more corrupt? The IOC, or FIFA?
I think FIFa takes in more loot, but the IOC are more brazen and crass with things like hookers, etc.
DC Area Reasonoids Unite!
Tonight at O’Shaugnessys in Old Town Alexandria. I’ll be there a little after 5. I know a few others are planning on showing soon thereafter. You’re all invited. And that includes the reason staff!
Thanks for putting this together. Keep doing these and someday I’ll make the trek up North.
I’ll give it a whirl, but I think the squeeze is stopping by my place before he leaves for Super Nerd Gen Con.
Okay, I suggest the Boston meetup and the DC meetup each trek towards New York City, meeting up somewhere around 10 for ritualized battle.
I’d say the NYC area reasonoids would tip the battle in favor of one side or the other but I don’t think we’ll show up.
You could loot the corpses, but that’s more of a DC thing.
Or South Side in Chicago…
DC waits to loot corpses?
I’m originally from LA, so I’ll just sit and film the entire thing as you nerds go at it.
Ohio Attorney General: Private University Can’t Hide Police Records From Public
And yet the universities still can’t give defendants due process rights.
The Callow President
Well that seals it, I’m ready for Hillary.
Sadly, I am now ready to admit that she would be an improvement.
Imma say, NO.
As bad as the Anointed is, Hillary would be worse.
Good article.
He evidently has no conception of the national interest larger than his ideology or immediate political interests.
Trying to think of a politician to whom this does not apply…
Toddler Invades White House Grounds
“Throngs of Secret Service agents are always on watch for suspicious packages near the White House gates, and anyone who might be looking to infiltrate the grounds. But Thursday night, they had a slightly smaller-scale security breach to contend with: a toddler who squeezed through the fence in the front of the residence.
The brief kerfuffle as agents scrambled to intercept the pint-sized intruder confirms what most people know: toddlers are sneaky, and fast. This one was promptly returned to his parents.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..y/?hpid=z4
The White House then went back to business, ordering drone strikes which leave less scampy toddler’s dead…
Did they shoot the toddler and his dog?
Kid is lucky he wasn’t shot.
Indeed. Could have been a terrorist, after all. TSA treats them as possible terrorists. Why shouldn’t the Secret Service?
Toddlers on airplanes are terrorists.
I would bet that most Secret Service agents are more intelligent and level headed than your average TSA rent-a-cop?
I interacted with a bunch of Secret Service at an event I worked at that a presidential candidate was attending, and you’re exactly right. I even chatted with a few of them. None were from D.C. that I met. Several that I spoke with were recruited as the best guy from a local police force, but they were nothing like cops.
When we were doing our jobs, cops acted like major assholes and obstructed us at every turn on a whim. One cop yelled at me for walking too close to his bomb-sniffing dog, which was sitting on the floor next to him. I was carrying something heavy and the useless Officer Farvo-looking fuck had positioned himself near what I was working on even though he was just chatting away with someone.
On the other hand, the Secret Service officers, male and female, were always professional in demeanor, courteous, and actually seemed interested in what we were doing. They’re nothing like cops. None of them were fat either.
He could have been a midget! He could have been the murderous imp, Tyrion Lannister!
I’m the head nurse at Emory. This is why we wanted to bring the Ebola patients to the U.S.
But we’ve seen the movies…
+1 sick, bitey monkey
One last thing, since I’m buried today: thanks to all the trolls and idiotic interaction, the thread about black vs white incarceration yesterday was so fucking embarrassing that even the reason writers were ashamed to be associated with some of the commentariat. I went back and looked last night (after seeing ENB’s tweet on it) and was shocked.
I guess I understand now what that greasy Wop Epi means when he says we shouldn’t even interact with them.
Yeah, the racist assholes really came out of the woodwork for that one.
Was the thread that bad?
Do the words “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” mean anything to,you?
Or something like that…my Dante is a little weak.
It really was.
Wowzers. Who the fuck are half of those people? I clearly need to get out more. Or less.
What happened?
I’m almost scared to go back and read it.
It’s 210 comments, I don’t feel like browsing it.
I will defer to sloopy.
Same here, though I’d like a summary of what the issue was.
The post was about a study finding that white people, instead of turning against enforcement of drug laws/things like stop and frisk when they heard they disproportionately affect blacks, actually increased their support for these policies. Some social scientists told white people that tons more blacks were affected by these policies, and the white people became more in favor of them, which some people found surprising. I thought it was typical in-group/out-group shit. And, of course, reprehensible.
Most of the comments were truly vile racist bullshit about how “black blood” just makes them more likely to be criminals, so the disproportionate arrest/imprisonment stats don’t show anything at all. Which didn’t actually have anything to do with the study ENB was reporting on anyway.
It looked like the conversation was mostly dominated by a half-dozen or so racist assholes, most of whom I’ve never seen around here before.
That’s usually how it goes. Something gets posted somewhere else then a bunch of random commenters show up
Yeah, new names with weird views.
Yeah, for sure. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they were regular trolls.
The article was posted on the reason Facebook page, so that’s probably where the unknown trolls came from.
Ah, the source revealed!
Yeah, when the first couple of “black blood” comments popped up I decided to leave that thread alone.
*wonders what sort of oxygen transport mechanism you’d have to use to get “black blood”*
Wow. Messed up.
Thanks Nicole. That was not the worst (your explanation I mean, not the thread).
Hmm, skimming it again this morning, it’s not that horrendously vile. It does look like a few new posters decided to turn the discussion into their hobby horse about black Americans being more violent and deserving to be targeted and imprisoned, but they were generally coy. A lot of it is blamed on “culture” and sometimes welfare.* For instance, “black blood” was introduced as a strawman by Sevo, and several of these new people disagreed with it. A few of them do sound pretty damn racist, though.
*the comment from the main offender, that Jerry guy, about how blacks “have advantages that whites could only dream of” is hilariously delusional
Good on ya for posting this, sloop. ENB’s tweet was well warranted.
Thanks. I look after my wimmins.
*slaps ENB on the butt*
Yeah man, that thread was trolled hard by some serious jackasses.
Where were the squirrels? The one time we could have used the squirrels, and those lazy fucks took the day off.
Are you saying that the squirrels are racist?
Maybe they are more “shit stirrer” than racist?
We attract some serious xenophobes and TEAM RED morons. It’s embarrassing.
The same Elizabeth Nolan Brown that wants people to move to the “back of the bus”?!?
Shall we sic an outraged Jesse Jackson on her?
Al Sharpton’s track suits shiver with anticipation.
Speaking of Big Al, where the hell is he over Eric Garner? I’m not even sure about the whole “Democratic plantation” thing because I remember him giving Ed Koch shit over far less.
He’s too weak from dieting.
I was talking to my friends about this when we took a bus to a race a couple weeks ago. Wouldn’t you want to make people sit at the front of the bus? It’s the cool kids who sit at the back.
Cops Kill Man In Wal-Mart Carrying An Air Rifle That He Might Have Planned To Buy
A man who was carrying an air rifle in an Ohio Wal-Mart told the police officers that fatally shot him that the gun was “not real,” according to a family member.
John Crawford was shot by police Tuesday evening at a Beavercreek store. The Ohio attorney general’s office announced Thursday that he was merely carrying a brand of air rifle that Wal-Mart sells….
He’s black so surely the media is going to get into a tizzy over this, like they did with Trayvon Martin, right?
This isn’t an Onion story?
Holy shit.
Another shopper, 37-year-old Angela Williams, collapsed and died as she scrambled to get away after police fired at Crawford.
Whoa, what the fuck? Am I reading this correctly?
“the police start shooting and they said ‘Get on the ground,’ but he was already on the ground because they had shot him.”
Of course.
Rwandan Man Accused of War Crimes Arrested Crossing Into US
Japanese porn industry extremely short on male actors, as many as 10,000 women against only 70 men
10,000 women against only 70 men? I’m pretty sure that’s been done.
Okay, that is bizarre. I’m no expert on casting for porn but it seems like dick should be easy to sign up for cheap. Isn’t the answer to pay more?
I saw a documentary from the UK on the porn industry on chgaps wanting to get into the porn industry. At least in the UK the producers found that not many men who wanted to be in porn could actually strip off in front of a bunch of people and perform satisfactorily. Perhaps Japanese men are similarly bashful
Maybe *this* will persuade the Japanese that they need to open up their borders to immigrants who will Do the Jobs that Japanese Just Won’t. Either that or do what they’ve done in just about every other field, which is automate the work.
Plus they pixelize your junk anyway, so what’s the problem?
Do you blame them? I wouldn’t stick the SugarWand into something that pixelated. There could be just about anything under all that.
As usual it revolves back to the vagina dentata.
Based on visual evidence, Japanese vaginas are only make out of a couple of dozen shifting blocks. It’d be like trying to fuck a pile of meaty Legos. That doesn’t like like a good time to me.
I’d volunteer to help alleviate the shortage, but I don’t have the rape fetish that seems to be ingrained into Japanese men.
how do you feel about tentacles?
No sir, I don’t like ’em.
+1 Nanjing?
Store Owner Says Bank Accounts Closed Because He Sells Guns
…Williams, who opened up two checking accounts with SunTrust in 2006, was given little explanation for the bank’s sudden decision.
“The only thing that they will tell us is that we have been deemed a prohibited business type,” he told Fox Carolina, adding that he believes his shop was targeted by the federal government because he sells guns.
Williams wouldn’t be the first to make such a claim. Lawmakers and consumer advocacy groups have blamed a Department of Justice initiative called Operation Choke Point for pressuring banks to cut off relationships with customers like Williams.
Operation Choke Point was designed to prevent crooks from using the banking and financial payments systems to conduct their business. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation also created a list of industries which it deemed “high-risk.” Those industries included gun sellers, pawn shops, coin dealers, pay day lenders and about two dozen industries….
Would this really surprise anybody?
True Detective a Plagiarized Work?
“HBO’s crime noir series “True Detective” has won so many critical accolades that it was startling to see an unpleasant story making the rounds, about two weeks before the Emmy Awards: accusations that creator Nic Pizzolatto plagiarized others’ work for his heavily nominated drama series.
On Monday, the Lovecraft eZine posted an interview with Jon Padgett, who runs a Web site dedicated to author Thomas Ligotti. According to the story, Padgett claimed that in “True Detective” scripts, Pizzolatto “appropriated a significant amount of intellectual content and language from ‘The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,’ a nonfiction book by Thomas Ligotti.””
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..e&hpid=z15
Not plagiarism, homage perhaps.
Marcotte: U.S. Won’t Help Child Migrants Because Conservatives Spank Their Kids
from the comments:
“For the Children”
The United States, however, has not ratified the UN treaty, making it the only country in the world besides Somalia not to do so
Libertopia!
Doctors Begin To Refuse Obamacare Patients
Obamacare plans have shrunk payments to physicians so much that some doctors say they won’t be able to afford to accept Obamacare coverage, NPR reports.
Many of the eight million sign-ups in Obamacare exchanges nationwide already face more limited choices for physicians and hospitals than those in the private insurance market. But with low physician reimbursement rates, the problem could get even worse.
For a typical quick patient visit, Dr. Doug Gerard, a Connecticut internist, told NPR a private insurer would pay $100 while Medicare would pay around $80. But Obamacare plans are more likely to pay closer to $80, which Gerard says is unsustainable for his practice.
“I cannot accept a plan [in which] potentially commercial-type reimbursement rates were now going to be reimbursed at Medicare rates,” Dr. Gerard told NPR. “You have to maintain a certain mix in private practice between the low reimbursers and the high reimbursers to be able to keep the lights on.”…
We just need a law to force doctors to take these patients. 20 years in prison, million dollar fine, that should sort it out.
Exactly right. And it will work because there will be no foreseeable and completely predictable consequences.
I’ve still never figured out why 5 minutes of a doctors time costs me $150.
An office visit with no tests or anything is more like $80 around these parts.
Appointments were scheduled every half hour at the clinic I worked at. So an exam room could bring in a maximum of $160/hr, assuming for the moment that everyone has the sniffles and gets a script and leaves. The doctors were paid $80/hr. The rest presumably went to the salary of the receptionist, nurse, building overhead, and losses from people who don’t pay.
Medicine isn’t the lucrative profession it used to be.
You’re forgetting a big additional bill, the team of people responsible for billing medicare and insurances companies; who have to know how to jump through the various hoops needed to get compensated.
It is my understanding that people with that particular skill set are well compensated on a relative basis.
That’s my business, and no, compensation blows at this point. Most of us are paid on a percentage basis. When reimbursement for medical services drops, so does our pay. Also, while rate have dropped, compliance overhead has skyrocketed.
I’ve still never figured out why 5 minutes of a doctors time costs me $150.
You mean a government regulated and enforced monopoly has extravagant costs and poor service? Unpossible.
Study: Climate Models Overestimated Global Warming For The Last 55 Years
Climate models relied upon by scientists and governments may be greatly overstating the warming that has occurred since the late 1950s, argues a paper analyzing the discrepancies between modeled and observed temperatures.
The paper, which was published in the journal Environmetrics, found that observed temperatures differed greatly from modeled temperatures in the tropical lower troposphere and mid-troposphere.
“Over the 55-years from 1958 to 2012, climate models not only significantly over-predict observed warming in the tropical troposphere, but they represent it in a fundamentally different way than is observed,” says Ross McKitrick, economist with the University of Guelph in Canada and co-author of the study.
According to McKitrick, all climate models predict that rising carbon dioxide levels will cause rapid warming in the troposphere over the tropics. But that’s not what has happened, as neither satellites nor weather balloons have detected much warming in the tropical troposphere ? meaning something is likely wrong with the models.
In MD, it has not hit 90 degrees in 15 days, and will not in the next 10.
As somebody who just moved away from Maryland after a decade there: fuck that shit. What the hell?
Obviously the measurements are wrong, because climate scientists are really smart.
/Tony
DENIERS!!! The models are valid! All this has been DEBUNKED!!11!!
Where does the troposphere get off denying its betters.
Bunch of right wing, tea-bagging, rat-fucking, layers of atmosphere.
The burden of being an attractive woman in America, in cartoon form
All of the womplaining* you guys have posted from Jezebel wrapped up in one cartoon. The suggested response at the end is actually decent though, or at least not hysterical and wildly unrealistic like I’ve come to expect.
*Hey if “mansplaining” is a thing, womplaining is definitely a thing.
I’m pretty sure it’s “femsplaining”.
And most of that seems to be under the impression that anything a man says to a women is based on her sex, even if he’d say the same type of thing to a man doing the equivalent.
“femsplaining”
I was trying to combine woman + complaining = womplaining.
doing the equivalent
Walking down the street?
I’m not, like, an anti-street-harassment person, but is that really what you’re saying?
It’s nice that you actually provided examples, Auric, but you clearly didn’t learn anything from the cartoon.
The correct response is, “Believe us! Don’t deny or minimize our experiences!”
So…she wants to shame us into white knighting? Do I have it right?
Yes. Men actually have a way of showing other men they disapprove of their behavior, but it’s more of staying silent and not engaging the guy who is making an ass of himself (to a woman or otherwise).
Should we play “#IfIWereAGirl”? I wonder what sexist stereotypes we could come up with.
And, of course, how they would take it over at the site posted yesterday.
If I were a girl, I could get out of speeding tickets just by flirting with the officer . . . .
womynsplaining
A 72-hour cease-fire in Gaza ended in a blast of Hamas rocket fire Friday morning. Israel, naturally, responded with more airstrikes. Back to business as usual, folks.
Hamas broke the cease-fire, you say? Did not see that coming. At this point, I’m starting to wonder if they even want peace.
It’s not like Israel hasn’t broken ceasefires before in fighting in Gaza, but this one appears to be on Hamas and they deserve the blame for the consequences.
Why would they stop? They fire a handful of crappy rockets injuring a few people – if they get through Iron Dome at all, Israel responds with modern US ordinance killing a hundred or so and making themselves out to be the bad guys. Israel is Hamas’ greatest ally in all of this.
Some interesting observations on the Pali casualties.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28688179
They must be using ageist munitions.
It is almost as if the Israelis are not being quite so indiscriminate as claimed.
Doesn’t fit the meme.
It’s not like Israel hasn’t broken ceasefires before in fighting in Gaza,
At least in this round of fighting, I don’t recall Israel breaking any cease-fires. I could be wrong. Linky?
“proving popular with teenagers”
for rolling blunts.
Mom calls cops on son for watching porn; cops resist finding a way to charge him.
Mother watches son watch porn? That’s some kinky child pornography. They should arrest her.
When will a Gaza cease fire last longer than a Kardassian marriage?
You mean they haven’t already?!
Mercedes-Benz Develops Bulletproof Vehicle That Can Withstand Hand Grenades, Explosives
How does it fare against Doomcock attacks?
Let’s put a really attractive lady goat in one and see.
You at least might appreciate this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..r_embedded
I’d watch the whole movie like that.
It is a massive upgrade.
Hand grenades aren’t explosives?
At least I’m not as bad as this guy.
Not written by Krugman?
I’m more likely to yell, “Get your ass down from the water heater” to my cat first thing in the morning.
arch-fop
heh.
New Delhi Hires Monkey Impersonators to Protect Parliament
The Onion and its crazy articles!
“Who knows, Miss Cat, what fantastical adventures the two of us will have today?”
*Cat hisses, hides under dresser*
The same thing we do every every day – try to take over the world!
Too soon?
That guy is going Greyhound for the rest of his life.
The power of milk
HAHAHAHA! Now that’s some quality trolling.
What if I chug two jugs of chocolate?
Don’t be racist, Tim.
You can have goatmilk.
Then you become Carl Weathers.
Awesome
Chocolate Milk
Carl Weathers circa Predator?
Dem gains, bro.
As Islamic State forces go into Nineveh, the Pope appoints a special envoy to address the situation of the persecuted Iraqi Christians, “bring[ing] them the solidarity of the Church.”
http://www.ewtnnews.com/cathol…..p?id=10508
A few hundred years back, he would have sent an army…
consisting of children
That was Peter the Hermit, not the Pope…oh, never mind.
Unruly child pitches fit at Burger King. Man in line ahead of kid and his mother buys up all the pies in the store to spite the kid
Oh the sweet taste of justice! This is a perfect example of the free market in action. Ingenuity over violence.
Funny. But you can’t blame the mother. The obvious solution is to put the kid in the car and let him be alone for 5 minutes.
But it is now illegal for a child to be alone for one millisecond.
When you’ve got the camps and the train cars and the haz mat suits, every virus looks like a pandemic.
Can’t believe that no one has picked up on the evil those libertarians are making so much trouble.