A.M. Links: Trump vs. Cruz, Hillary vs. Bernie, Two More Suspects Charged in Brussels Terrorist Attack

• 

  Credit: Gage Skidmore / Foter.com / CC BY-SA

  Donald Trump is upset about the process that allowed Ted Cruz to score all of Colorado's Republican delegates. Cruz says Trump is "whining."

• "Hillary Clinton on Monday hit Bernie Sanders on immigration, she hit him on guns, and she claimed that there's a 'growing level of anxiety' in the Vermont senator's not-quite-so-long-shot campaign for the White House."

• Belgian officials investigating the terrorist attacks on the Brussels' airport and metro have filed charges against two more suspects.

• The Zika virus "seems to be a bit scarier than we initially thought," says Dr. Anne Schuchat, deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• According to a New York City police officer, Mayor Bill De Blasio is directly to blame for the dramatic rise in traffic tickets. "Mayor de Blasio wants us to give out summonses, OK? Alright?" the officer says in a video recorded by a driver in the Bronx. "I don't know if you voted for him or not," the officer continued. "I don't live in the city. I wouldn't have voted for him because this is what he wants. He wants us to give out summonses."

• American Airlines: "TSA is our No. 1 problem right now, and it's only going to get worse."

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Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Donald Trump is upset about the process that allowed Ted Cruz to score all of Colorado's Republican delegates. Cruz says Trump is "whining."

Winning.

[Tonio]

Heh.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Hello.

[Jerryskids]

Whining is one of the top New York Values.

[gaoxiaen]

Bitching is number two.

[MSimon]

Trump reads Ayn Rand

I wonder what Cruz reads.

[Injun, as in from India]

National Enquirer's Appendix Section listing the DC Madam's Call Log.

[CampingInYourPark]

What books, authors, or conservative-themed books, influenced your political philosophy and outlook on life?
The Road to Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
Free to Choose, by Milton Friedman
Bureaucracy, by Ludwig von Mises
The Law, by Frederic Bastiat

http://www.conservativebookclu.....rBES2.dpuf

[commodious spittoon]

No wonder this guy polls so low. What a dork.

[MSimon]

Maybe who owns him has something to do with it.

[OneOut]

Who owns him ?

[Citizen X]

Your mom.

[Notorious UGCC]

Favorite Movie: The Princess Bride
Favorite TV Show: Criminal Minds
Favorite Food: Cheese
Favorite Drink: Guinness
Favorite Music: George Strait
Favorite US Senator colleague(s): Mike Lee
Where do you get your news from primarily? Twitter
If you could meet any person, dead or alive, who would it be? Reagan, Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr.
What do you do for fun? Take my daughters to the park
Favorite activity you like to do with your daughters? Ride bikes, swim in the pool, go to the Aquarium

[Crusty Juggler]

Twitter? Good God.

[Mainer2]

Ride "bikes", "swim" in the "pool", go to the "Aquarium", "sell" girl scout "cookies"

[Jerryskids]

Huh. Not what I would have thought.

Favorite Movie: The Greatest Story Ever Told
Favorite TV Show: Veggie Tales
Favorite Food: Communion Wafers
Favorite Drink: Water
Favorite Music: Handel's 'Messiah'
Favorite US Senator colleague(s): N/A
Where do you get your news from primarily? The New American
If you could meet any person, dead or alive, who would it be? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
What do you do for fun? Read the Bible
Favorite activity you like to do with your daughters? Praying

[Bee Tagger]

According to a New York City police officer, Mayor Bill De Blasio is directly to blame for the dramatic rise in traffic tickets

He don't drive 55?

[Just a thought not a sermon]

163) I laughed and laughed at this item in the Washington Post today:
The year: 2005. The city: New York. The place: a nice restaurant ? the kind with bathroom attendants who hand you a towel after you finish your business. I was having dinner with some LGBT colleagues when I excused myself and headed to the facilities ? one labeled for men, the other for women, facing each other across a small hallway. Between them stood an employee, who looked me up and down and opened the men's room door for me.
How polite? Hardly. Instead of thanking him, I explained how presumptuous he had been in deciding my bathroom preference for me."
Heh. Good Lord, can you imagine going out to dinner with a SJW?

[SugarFree]

Especially considering they are probably also a gluten-free vegan with an imaginary bean allergy.

[Hamster of Doom]

Of course I can, I grew up Baptist. Sounds like every sanctimonious church picnic ever attended.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Maybe it's not about your preference.

[Rich]

Nice, um, catch.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

"ConcernedCitizen255
7:44 AM EDT
Last year I happened into the Men's Room at the main train station in Berlin, Germany, which has an admission fee of about 50 cents. I noticed an unusual sink, and tried to snap a picture of it, but an attendant stopped me, "no photography." The attendant was a woman."

I totally see David Cross starring in this sketch.

[SugarFree]

I noticed an unusual sink

Urinal or bidet?

[commodious spittoon]

Mop.

[John]

Beyond how miserable it must be to be around these people (and God it must be unimaginable), imagine how miserable it must be to be one of these people. It is hard to think of a bigger hell on earth than going through life with the single purpose of finding ways to be offended and angry. I mean Jesus, even in the Gulag they told a joke once in a while.

[Zeb]

They must secretly (or not so secretly) really like being all offended and angry.

Or maybe they are that miserable. I really can't claim to understand someone who looks at the world that way.

[John]

I think it is a negative feedback loop. Being miserable is where they get their sense of identity. And the more miserable they are, the more they feel justified in having the imaginary grievances that made them miserable in the first place. If this sort of thinking wasn't cloaked in acceptable politics, people who suffered from it would be considered in need of clinical treatment.

[jarflax]

when your currency is oppression you seek it out.

[Mainer2]

Someone recently linked to a woman complaining about chivalry. The idea that it is an expression of male power and privilege to extend care and courtesy to women. That really struck me, how someone could take offense, and then write an essay about how horrible it was that someone held a door open for her.

[John]

There are so many really awful things in the world. So many legitimate reasons to be miserable. I can't imagine trying to be miserable and worse using people doing something nice for me as an excuse.

[Catatafish & Woodchips]

First date after moving to L.A. this shit happened to me. I miss the coast at times but it's much nicer in Virginia and Texas where generally you aren't upbraided for doing nice things for people.

[Zeb]

Yeah, that is dumb and annoying. For one thing, I hold doors for men as well as women and see lots of people do the same. It's hardly even about chivalry anymore, it's just a nice thing to do when you are around other people.

[Hyperbolical]

When I went to college in the 1980s I was fresh out of the Navy and had been taught to show respect to others from birth. But I found many young women on campus hostile to me holding the door open for them. Even merely pausing to avoid slamming the door in their face ignited their ire. So, I stopped holding the door for women, but continued to hold it for men in the normal, courteous way that I'd been brought up.

[Overt]

I had a friend in the 90s who was vegetarian. I swear she found meat in EVERYTHING she ate. And if she didn't find meat, she noticed that they were preparing meat too close to her veggies. And if it wasn't about meat, it was about the wait-staff looking at her funny. It got to the point that no one would invite her to dinner because they didn't want to spend an entire evening engaged in a conversation about how insensitive this restaurant (and by association, the person who chose that restaurant) was.

Essentially, she was a sign of "You Must Accommodate" crowd in its infancy. Today even the most strident vegans I know are actually pretty low key. If you challenge their views, they'll defend themselves, but they don't have to announce to the whole table how disappointed they are in the vegetarian menu, or pointedly and loudly ask the waiter whether their food is appropriately prepared. No, the perpetual outrage has moved on to these SJW types.

[Zeb]

Most vegans and vegetarians, in my experience, understand that they are the weirdos in most situations and have to make do with what is available when eating out with people who don't share their dietary preferences. But there is that subset who has to make it a big deal at every opportunity. No one made you be a vegan, you chose to restrict your eating choices all on your own.

[Injun, as in from India]

$19 TRILLION in the hole, and the most important issue of this election is going to be Federal Pissing Policy.

F*** these people.

[Krabappel]

Math and finance are hard. Better to not think about it.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Apparently.

Professor wants to get rid of algebra. He makes decent points but...

http://phys.org/news/2016-03-a.....hools.html

[Overt]

If he thinks Algebra is so hard that it is forcing kids to drop out of high school, how does he think teaching statistics is going to help? First, a lot of statistics requires algebra. Algebra is necessary to just figure out simple problems like what number is missing or how to reformat an equation so that you can get that missing number. Second, among most of the math/science people I know, Statistics is actually one of the harder classes- so I don't see a switch making high school easier on kids.

[Injun, as in from India]

1) Ban algebra
2) Lower the voting age to 16.
3) ???
4) Idiocracy!!!

[Lee G]

How To Lie With Statistics

If there's only one book on statistics kids should read, this is it.

[Scarecrow & WoodChipper Repair]

If he means basic statistical knowledge, like correlation not meaning causation, or how to not freak out over randomly pulling the ace of spades from a deck, I'm all for it. That kind of knowledge is far more practical than solving equations.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

I don't know that he means statistics as in an actual rigorous statistics course. It could be something more like a number sense or numeracy class covering the way stats are used to bullshit and mislead people.

I think there's plenty of room for a non-college track curriculum that doesn't include algebra, among other things.

[Zeb]

Yeah, it wouldn't be weird at all for some dude in a suit to use the ladies' room.

My rule for proper trans bathroom etiquette would be that you use the facility that would be least disruptive. If you are dressing and presenting yourself as a woman, use the ladies' room. Otherwise, don't.

Of course private businesses should do what they want.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

"Of course private businesses should do what they want."

I've been informed this is horribly bigoted and suspect you would have liked Jim Crow.

[Catatafish & Woodchips]

Stop trying to get people to sign up for your newsletter, Irish, you filthy 88er. 😉

[Hyperbolical]

Maybe there should be restrooms marked "Gay", "Cis", and "Trans" just like the Jim Crow South differentiated between "Colored" and "White". Seems like a progressive move to me.

[Hamster of Doom]

At this point, I am fine with private businesses all deciding bathrooms are employee-only. Everyone else can jolly well hold it until they get home.

[Zeb]

That might not work out too well at certain drinking establishments.

[Hamster of Doom]

It's going to be nothing but pissing and a bunch of crap either way they go.

[Eternal Blue Sky]

Not sure where you live, but at least in my state, the law /requires/ having two bathrooms available for customers, one for men and one for women. Fun fact: I've seen one place in my state where a sign is posted on the bathroom door, begging SJW types to please, please stop complaining about how the bathrooms are segregated to male and female bathrooms, because the law requires them to do that, and they have no power to change it.

[Mickey Rat]

I presume this person was dressed in men's clothing, like a jacket and tie and otherwise looks like a man. With a attendant made a reasonable assumption was dealing with a man and not a pompous ass.

[Zeb]

Judging from his picture on the Post, that is probably how he appeared.

[Notorious UGCC]

*This* is why we need to raise the minimum wage for restaurant workers - they need to be compensated for all that aggravation.

/sarc

[Mustang]

Telling, isn't it?

This guy presumably supports all sorts of "programs" to help the poor. He knows what's best.

This poor, slovenly individual, whose only role in life is to hold the bathroom door open for patrons in a restaurant he probably can't afford to eat at, should be grateful for such a man.

Thank God for this enlightened gentleman. Without men such as him to educate us and lead us poor slobs, there would be total chaos.

[ant1sthenes]

So, while your country is increasingly impoverished by your kind (leftists, mind, not whatever victim group this asshat belongs to), you complain about the presumptuousness of the servant in the "nice" (i.e. expensive) restaurant attempting to cater to your bathroom needs. Sounds suspiciously like "let them eat urinal cakes".

[Suell]

I can imagine that it would be quite...problematic.

[Fist of Etiquette]

"Mayor de Blasio wants us to give out summonses, OK? Alright?" the officer says in a video recorded by a driver in the Bronx.

de Blasio is determined to punish everyone for voting for him.

[Rhywun]

Too bad he's punishing more than the 17% of voting age people that voted for him.

[Bee Tagger]

Cruz says Trump is "whining."

The country is WINE-ing over the poor presidential choices. Can I write for Mark Russell, now?

[Lord Humungus]

Men Are Creepy, New Study Confirms

The study surveyed 1,341 people from different countries who were an average age of 28. The results concluded that creepiness is tied to unpredictability, suggesting a potential threat rather than an actual one. The researchers asked about which professions are the creepiest?clowns, followed closely by taxidermists and then sex shop owners. It also found that failures to respond to social cues were high predictors of creepiness; these included standing too close, "not looking the interaction partner in the eye, asking to take a picture of the interaction partner, watching people before interacting with them, asking about details of one's personal life, having a mental illness, talking about his/her own personal life, displaying too much or too little emotion, being older, and steering the conversation toward sex."

looks suspiciously at SugarFree, OMWC, oh.. fuck it... everyone!

[Rich]

watching people before interacting with them

Right.

[WTF]

So libertarians are creepy, we get it.

[gaoxiaen]

Well, thanks.

[Tonio]

Personally I find professional busybodies who approach random strangers to ask damn fool questions to be creepy.

[Rhywun]

This. I have developed a highly sensitive radar for people on the street holding clipboards.

[SugarFree]

So you should be a sexless, young, perfectly-even emotioned blank slate who is sane, not really interested in your life, non-watcher who looks you in the eye and doesn't want a picture to remember you by.

Good luck, men of America.

[Old Man With Candy]

Aren't you even slightly offended that we've been lumped together. God knows I am.

[invisible furry hand]

And yet someone, somewhere, will be aroused by the thought of you two lumped together.

[SugarFree]

Rule 34 is absolute.

[Elspeth Flashman]

Wocka a chicka - wow -wow

[SugarFree]

Your just a run-of-the-mill pervert, whereas I am the premiere emetopornographer of my age. Of course I'm offended.

[Just a thought not a sermon]

"emetopornographer"

As in emetic, I assume?

[SugarFree]

It's nice to find at least one educated person in here.

[Hamster of Doom]

"My dear, it appears that Ringo is an educated man. Now I really hate him."

[Hamster of Doom]

"My dear, it appears that Ringo is an educated man. Now I really hate him."

[WTF]

To be fair, he could have guessed just by reading your prose.

[jarflax]

So you just started your chunderfic career? permier(e)

[jarflax]

d'oh premier(e)

We need a named law to describe the universal experience of having a grammatical or typographical error in any post criticizing grammar or spelling. Maybe the Law of Grammer?

[SugarFree]

It already exists:

Joe's Law
Any reply criticizing someone's spelling or grammar is more likely than not to contain a spelling or grammatical error itself.

[gaoxiaen]

Tour pea dough thaet eyedeal.

[Auric Demonocles]

Don't forget the most important part:

attractive.

[SugarFree]

They wouldn't say that. That would tip their hand.

[This Machine]

So you should be a sexless, young, perfectly-even emotioned blank slate who is sane, not really interested in your life, non-watcher who looks you in the eye and doesn't want a picture to remember you by.

FITTER. HAPPIER. MORE PRODUCTIVE.

[Brett L]

Just be at least as attractive as the person you are conversing with and you're not creepy. That's why American Psycho was genius. Sure, this Bateman character is weird, but he's rich and good looking. Murdering and occasionally eating people is imply an eccentricity. His real crime was verbatim quotations from Rolling Stone on music.

[PBR Streetgang]

Spot on WRT the Clowns. True evil.

[Lord Humungus]

I've run into some creepy girls... in high school I had my own "fan club", two girls - a skinhead and punker, who made t-shirts of me being hung. And they would stalk me at parties. Also a few women in college who would bluntly walk up to me and ask if I had a girlfriend. And if not, would I like one?

[straffinrun]

You need to clear up that "being hung".

[Lord Humungus]

As in noose around the neck. Neither got to see my proud man member, though the punk rock girl tried.

[straffinrun]

I got trashed with some punk rock girls back in Uni. Drank too much 151 and passed out in the elevator of my apartment building. They decided it would be funny to take my pants off and let me ride up and down. I loled.

[Mickey Rat]

That is what "hanged"means.

[Lord Humungus]

first one then the other

[Swiss Servator]

"They said you was hung!"

"And they was right!"

[Notorious UGCC]

"Also a few women in college who would bluntly walk up to me and ask if I had a girlfriend. And if not, would I like one?"

Wow, I've been lurking around the wrong colleges.

[WTF]

Some colleges were notorious for women who were there looking for their MRS degree. I was a graduate student at one back in the 80s, the F/M ratio was at least 60/40, and alot of the girls were pretty aggressive.

[Jerryskids]

"Women" in college. There are certain neighborhoods in any major city where there are the same sorts of "women" who will walk right up to your car and ask you if you would like a girlfriend. You would be well-advised to check under the hood if you plan on getting into that particular ride, if you know what I mean.

[Lord Humungus]

Now, now, JK, no reason that a Quasimodo such as yourself can't get a woman. 😉

[gaoxiaen]

I'm a real Modo.

[gaoxiaen]

Downtown San Diego?

[sloopyinTEXAS]

Speaking of creepy clowns.

[invisible furry hand]

It's crazy clown time!

[Zeb]

They should have just said "John Waters".

[Karinka]

Want to meet a girl? come on http://goo.gl/mxiosK
the Best adult Dating site!

[Juvenile Bluster]

Adult dating site? Sorry, OMWC.

[Old Man With Candy]

We already did that gag in an earlier post. Keep up, man, keep up!

[Just a thought not a sermon]

Oh, Karinka. What country is the suffix .gl for? Are ladies in your country known for their beauty?

[tarran]

It's Greenland. The women are hardy and adapted to the cold.

[gaoxiaen]

Frigid?

[Bee Tagger]

Gulliblestan?

[Just a thought not a sermon]

.gl = Greenland, it turns out. Quite a ways to go for a date, Karinka.

[Monty Crisco]

Soooo, turns out Sean Payton is a cocksucker. I knew he was an asshole for licensing his Defensive Coordinator to commission bounties from his players on opposing players (and INTENTIONALLY injuring them, which is the definition of playing dirty), but I didn't know he was a liberal dipshit as well.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_.....mith-death

What a dick. But I have to say I agree with him on one thing:

"But there are places, like England, where even the cops don't have guns."

If you want to disarm the police, Sean, I am ALL FOR IT.

By the way, Britain is the most violent country in Europe with violent crime rates about 4 times those of America?.

Christ, everyone in that fucking article puts it at the doorstep of "guns". What goddamn simpletons they are. As if the dude who murdered Will Smith has no agency whatever, but was commanded by the gun to do it. HE CERTAINLY ISN'T TO BLAME!!!

Also, Payton says about the type of gun used to kill Smith (a 1911, I'm guessing):

"We could go online and get 10 of them and have them shipped to our house tomorrow."

Odd that someone who has an FFL would despise guns so much, but whatever?

[LynchPin1477]

By the way, Britain is the most violent country in Europe with violent crime rates about 4 times those of America?.

I'd be interested in seeing the cite for that one. Seems like a good data point to have if it holds up.

[Overt]

Seconded. I have heard similar claims in the past so I wouldn't be surprised if it is technically accurate. However, I have also heard that this is because UK is more urban. If you take US violent crime rates from only the areas of the US that match UK population density, we are still worse.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Well, if we're going to match population density, let's also match demographics.

[WTF]

If you want to get really technical, eliminate the 5 or 6 worst urban centers in the US from the crime stats and the US is now safer than Europe.

[Mr Lizard]

The sports talk mammals were muttering something about the case being more of a self defense angle. Apparently there is video of Will Smith doing a hit-and-run first and the other guy chased him down. Me thinks this narritive may unravel a bit.

Also good on a guy for carrying some classy shit for a change (possible 1911)

[WTF]

Also, the shooter apparently waited calmly for the police to arrive.

[Eternal Blue Sky]

"By the way, Britain is the most violent country in Europe with violent crime rates about 4 times those of America?."

Eh. I'm no fan of the Brits, but the statistics used to come to that conclusion are questionable. They take the rate of "violent crimes" reported by Britain and by America respectively and just compare the two. The fact is, the Brits tend to overreact to certain things, and have a broader definition of what constitutes a "violent crime". Flashing someone in Britain is considered a violent crime, for example. The statistics make it SEEM like the Brits are more violent, but in reality the Brits are just bigger sissies and consider silly things to be acts of violence.

[Lord Humungus]

Man says too much music, masturbation caused him to vandalize Largo home

When police arrived at the home, they say they found William Timothy Anderson Thomas, 25 on the property, shirtless and covered in dirt.

According to an arrest affidavit, a trailer tire had been flattened, a window on the house was broken, and a mailbox, a real estate sign and a garden angel were completely destroyed.

Police say Thomas admitted to willfully and maliciously damaging the property. "He also stated he had listened to too much music and masturbated too much and he felt like going out and destroying stuff," said the arrest affidavit.

[Just a thought not a sermon]

We've all been there.

[invisible furry hand]

Music, masturbation and mayhem - a night the poets dream of

[Trouser-Pod (The blowhard)]

The Three M's may very well lead to the Three B's.

[Rich]

You can relax now, William -- soon you'll be getting *real* sex in prison.

[Old Man With Candy]

The Three Ms: Music, masturbation, and marijuana.

[Rich]

she claimed that there's a 'growing level of anxiety' in the Vermont senator's not-quite-so-long-shot campaign for the White House.

Bernie beating her in New York would be 'UUUUUUGE!

[Tornado16nb]

I hope not. The progs will then be highly motivated to tax the hell out of the country.

[Rich]

Not to mention the changing indictment dynamics.

[WTF]

Nothing's changed, there will be no indictment no matter the evidence.

[Rich]

Oh, you're probably right.

But it's still possible leaks and FBI resignations will derail H once she's the "inevitable" nominee.

[CatoTheChipper]

This card-carrying Libertarian actually wants Bernie to win his party's nomination. Bernie is far less of a war-monger than Hillary. And I want Trump to win his party's nomination for the same reason. Of the two I prefer Bernie because, when the economy inevitably slips into depression, we can unambiguously point to socialism as the cause.

If it were Bernie v The Donald, Gary Johnson would stand out as the only sane candidate.

[WTF]

Of the two I prefer Bernie because, when the economy inevitably slips into depression, we can unambiguously point to socialism as the cause.

Oh, you poor, naive man. It will be the fault of the obstructionist Rethuglikkkans in congress.

[kbolino]

Indeed, we can all point to how the famines in the newly minted Soviet Union, which could clearly be blamed on the destruction of capital perpetrated by the communists, led to its swift demise. You know, 70 years later.

[Lord Humungus]

Spokane County spends more on legal pot than wine, bread or milk

The amount of money spent on legal marijuana sales in Spokane County last year was larger than the retail sales of wine, bread or milk.

That's according to sales numbers from the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board and a survey of household expenses conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Monthly sales of pot topped $5 million in Spokane County for the first time in March, which is on track to top receipts at area bookstores, museums and live music venues, according to figures released by the Washington Department of Revenue.

The Spokesman-Review reports that Spokane County marijuana retailers reported just over $43 million in sales in 2015, according to the state Liquor and Cannabis Board. That's an average of $225.64 per household.

[Tonio]

Yeah, because a gallon of milk is only a few bucks and lasts most people at least a week, so $16-20 per month (less for smaller, all-adult households). Also, very few people coming from out of state specifically to buy milk.

[Rhywun]

And I presume the state taxes the shit out of it.

[Tonio]

That, too. In some states groceries are not taxed, or taxed at a lower rate.

[Zeb]

What about beer?

[sloopyinTEXAS]

Happy Equal Pay Day!

And now for some retardation.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

Rather than sit in my cubicle and stew, I can do something about it. The calculator allows you to generate an anonymous e-mail to your employer. Just supply the address.

And

Do I dare to send an e-mail to Globe owner John Henry?

Done and done.

I love the idea of being able to say something in a nonconfrontational way, and if enough workers do so, our employers might start to take a closer look.

I wonder how she and the Boston Globe in general feel about anonymous political speech.

[WTF]

I wonder how she and the Boston Globe in general feel about anonymous political speech.

Fine for them, bad for anyone they disagree with.

[Just a thought not a sermon]

"I love the idea of being able to say something in a nonconfrontational way"

I love the idea of passive-aggression that doesn't really change anything but lets you feel all self-righteous and victimy.

[Auric Demonocles]

Well obviously that's different because people have nothing to fear from saying political things, as progressives would never respond negatively to that. Unlike an evil employer who would fire you, there is no chance that saying something political could get your pizza place closed down or your concert cancelled.

[Bee Tagger]

Happy Equal Pay Day! Find out how underpaid you are.

That might be the baitiest click bait of all time.

[WTF]

It's a symbolic date that represents how far into the year women must work to earn what men made in the previous year.

I'm sure they mean women with the exact same job with the exact same qualifications, experience, and work hours. Because otherwise they would just be dishonest.

[Auric Demonocles]

Being stupid and wrong doesn't necessarily mean dishonesty.

[WTF]

It does when this dishonest bullshit has been thoroughly debunked ad nauseum and they still continue to promote it.

[Auric Demonocles]

You're not giving them enough stupid credit.

[Zeb]

Plenty of people seem to honestly believe it. People don't believe debunkings that they don't want to believe. The people coming up with the bullshit statistics have to be deliberately dishonest, but I'll give the regular people who buy their bullshit the benefit of the doubt.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

All I know is that she could have spent her time more wisely by making a man a sandwich instead of writing that piece of shit.

[invisible furry hand]

Shut up and kill 'n' grill me some meat

[Zeb]

Happy Equal Pay Day!

And now for some retardation.

I already heard about some bakery only charging women 79% of full price today, so I don't know if I need any more.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

I heard a comedian, I,think, explain why men do and should make more than women.

It basically said for the simple fact that we are eligible for the draft and can essentially be enslaved to die in a war we don't agree with, we should make more than women. Until women can also be drafted and forced into combat roles, they can deal with it.

[Hamster of Doom]

What does that have to do with how well you perform your job?

[sloopyinTEXAS]

Nothing. I think, since he was a comedian, it was meant as comedy. The audience were laughing and everything.

[Hamster of Doom]

Oh, good. For a second, I was worried you were serious.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

Good God, no. But I do have a dream. Oh, I have a dream.

I have a dream that my four five little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin sexual organs they have, or,the ones they identify as personally having even though they don't, but by the content of their character.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

In other words, freedom of contract and association should be our goal, not legislating "equality".

[invisible furry hand]

Tough shit sloops, I'm judging them by their kickass names

[sloopyinTEXAS]

So I'm safe, right?

[jarflax]

What does their confusion about what bits are attached say about their character?

[dantheserene]

Bill Burr does a bit about deserving a dollar more per hour because if the ship is sinking the men will be expected to make way for women.

[Rhywun]

Does she really think complaining about it is going to get her a raise?

[sloopyinTEXAS]

But she's doing it anonymously! That makes all the difference and ensures her employer will take it seriously.

[Rhywun]

Or, her husband will get a demotion once the lawsuits start ramping up.

[Monty Crisco]

Also, this blew my mind ? everything you know about the monstrously racist Ty Cobb is wrong:

https://ricochet. com/podcasts/ty-cobb-terrible-beauty/

From a guy who wrote a recent book about him. Turns out, Ken Burns is almost as lazy a hack as Al Stump.

Ty Cobb in 1952, on the integration of the Texas League:

"The negro has a right to play professional baseball and he should be accepted wholeheartedly and not grudgingly. And who's to say he does not have the right to play?"

Dude got a bad rap due to some sensationalistic dipshit hack reporter back in the 60's?

Anyway, I didn't know any of this shit? kind of amazing.

Also, progs HATE it when you point out that Jackie Robinson was a Republican:

BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA?

[Just a thought not a sermon]

If that's true, I don't think Ken Burns is guilty of anything more than restating the received wisdom. But didn't Ty Cobb go into the stands and beat a fan who called him a n_? Seems like that would be a historical incident that couldn't be faked.

[DJF]

If the word is so bad you can't write it here then maybe its so bad to beat then beating someone up for calling you that name might be reasonable.

Also I don't think anyone is saying that Cobb was even tempered.

[Just a thought not a sermon]

I don't care about writing it. I'd really rather not trip whatever software my employer may be using to see if employees are getting in trouble on the internetz.

[Homple]

You care about writing because your employer makes you care about writing it.

[CZmacure]

Naggers?

[Crusty Juggler]

He was far from the only player of that era who beat up a fan.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

The point is Ken Burns put together an epic documentary and you would think he would kinda consider putting that in, no? If he knew about it - and given the scope of the project and research involved, I find it hard to believe he didn't come across it - and didn't mention it, I consider this disappointing - if accurate of course.

[Just a thought not a sermon]

No time, he had to fit in another anecdote concerning the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry.

[WTF]

Wait, I thought attacking people who use the "n-word" was considered a righteous thing?

[Just a thought not a sermon]

Ty Cobb, a prog ahead of his time!

[Just a thought not a sermon]

From Wikipedia: While, "[s]tories of Cobb's racial intolerance were well documented", during his playing days, after Cobb left the game he appeared to have a change of heart regarding race.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

This is why studying and reading history is tricky and why documentaries are not always what they're cracked up to be - that is, they're still vulnerable to subtle or overt bias. We seem to pick and choose who will be given the benefit of the doubt over time. In the case of Cobb, it seems chroniclers of the game are determined to maintain his racist image while giving little thought or credit to the possibility a person can change over time.

[Tonio]

^This. Also, Ken Burns is a POS.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Why is is a POS, To?

[John]

To really know or understand history, you have to read multiple books about the same subject. If you just read one book, you are trapped in that author's perspective.

[Lee G]

Howard Zinn is the only historian you should read.

/Damon

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

ZINN IS HISTORY.

[Zeb]

progs HATE it when you point out that Jackie Robinson was a Republican

So they forget that the Democrats were the party of segregation at the time? How many black Democrats were there in 1947?

[Azathoth!!]

So they forget that the Democrats are the party of segregation?

FTFY

[Notorious UGCC]

To be fair, Robinson was a fairly liberal Republican, IIRC.

[Notorious UGCC]

I guess we call them "moderate Republicans" today.

[Lord Humungus]

something something Chemtrails

Bank Robbers Wrap Up Head-To-Toe In Aluminum Foil For Heist

Bank robbers in southern Brazil donned a highly unusual disguise for a heist.

The duo covered themselves from head to toe in aluminum foil for the early Saturday morning raid on the Banco do Brasil branch in Praia Grande.

Police said the two believed their improvised outfits would beat the bank's alarm system and stop it from sounding.

"They wanted to make sure the alarms didn't detect their presence by using the aluminum foil," a spokesman for the Santa Catarina state's military police told Brazilian national newspaper O Globo.

Astonishingly, the robbers' plan appeared to work.

[straffinrun]

If they only had a brain.

[Old Man With Candy]

The duo covered themselves from head to toe in aluminum foil for the early Saturday morning raid on the Banco do Brasil branch in Praia Grande.

Be on the lookout for Chuck McGill.

[WTF]

+1 Saul Goodman

[Old Man With Candy]

That's it, I want to bear all your children.

[ant1sthenes]

I never heard the word "bear" used that way before.

[Tonio]

Switzy....???

[Swiss Servator]

*narrows gaze*

Been really busy around here...

[B. Woodrow Chippenhaus]

Have they never watched Mythbusters?

[Eternal Blue Sky]

"Astonishingly, the robbers' plan appeared to work."

WAT??

[Bee Tagger]

He wants us to give out summonses."

And look at this, he's making me say this downright silly word to you right now.

[Lord Humungus]

120-pound Great Dane rescued from tree

How does a 120-pound Great Dane get in a tree?

In Kora's case, she likely tried chasing a squirrel or raccoon, Wes McGuirk, the dog's owner, told KETV.

Better yet, how do you get a dog that size down when it's 20 feet up?

"I would have never thought it was possible. Not a Great Dane," McGuirk told KETV. "I could see a cat getting stuck in a tree, but never a 120-pound dog," he told WOWT. "Never."

[invisible furry hand]

How does a 120-pound Great Dane get in a tree?

Levitation while in a religious ecstasy?

[Citizen X]

Hitler?

[straffinrun]

Flood his country with immigrants?

[ant1sthenes]

Running from a ghost?

[Rich]

How does a 120-pound Great Dane get in a tree?

Any way it wants to?

[Fist of Etiquette]

...she claimed that there's a 'growing level of anxiety' in the Vermont senator's not-quite-so-long-shot campaign for the White House.

Anxiety that the country will never get a true socialist in there to fix all our problems.

[Lord Humungus]

LSD's impact on the brain revealed in groundbreaking images

A dose of the psychedelic substance ? injected rather than dropped ? unleashed a wave of changes that altered activity and connectivity across the brain. This has led scientists to new theories of visual hallucinations and the sense of oneness with the universe some users report.

The brain scans revealed that trippers experienced images through information drawn from many parts of their brains, and not just the visual cortex at the back of the head that normally processes visual information. Under the drug, regions once segregated spoke to one another.

Further images showed that other brain regions that usually form a network became more separated in a change that accompanied users' feelings of oneness with the world, a loss of personal identity called "ego dissolution".

[Mr Lizard]

Agile Cyborg is laughing at us rubes

[Bee Tagger]

Hillary Clinton on Monday hit Bernie Sanders...

Did he have it coming?

[PBR Streetgang]

You know who else 'had it coming'?

[straffinrun]

Stephen King's publisher?

[Citizen X]

King Joffrey Baratheon?

[Just a thought not a sermon]

The cowboys in the Unforgiven?

[WTF]

"Deserve's got nuthin' to do with it."

[invisible furry hand]

Venezuela energy crisis: President tells women to stop using hairdryers and go with 'natural' style to save electricity

[Juvenile Bluster]

Damn wreckers and kulaks causing an energy crisis in one of the top oil producing countries in the world.

[Hamster of Doom]

Yeah. That'll fix everything.

[Doctor Whom]

My prog friends stopped acknowledging the existence of Venezuela a while ago, except for the occasional no-true-Scotsman.

[Injun, as in from India]

I *love* Venezuela, now that the USSR is toast.

Everytime some Bernie-bot says "democratic socialism" and points at Sweden, I point at Venezuela.

The usual comeback is: "but it's not democratic"

And then I show them this: Jimmy Carter says: "Election Process in Venezuela is the Best in the World"

And then, of course, the Bernie-bot quietly slinks away, and repeats "democratic socialism" behind my back to another unwitting, gullible fool.

[Monty Crisco]

But when did they ever make the "look at the standard of living in the USSR" as a truly valuable way of discrediting socialism and communism?

I remember growing up in the 80s and I knew that I wouldn't want to live in the USSR but I don't remember the left ever having to answer - or even really being posed the argument - for the utterly shameful standard of living in the USSR.

I think everyone just accepted that was the way it was and our systems were different and that was that. But in no fucking way did people ever have to live that way...

Venezuelans deserve their fucking lot....

[kbolino]

It's not that they were called to answer for it in some kind of tribunal or whatever, it's rather that they knew better than to peddle their bullshit in mixed company. They could sniff each others' farts in private but praising socialism/communism outside of their own enclaves was a faux pas.

Of course, this effect was less prominent in Europe than in the US, where they adopted crippling socialist policies with much less reluctance. I can think of some explanations for this apparently paradoxical mentality (they were much closer to the USSR, after all) but none of them are satisfactory IMO.

[DRM]

The odd thing is not the popularity of socialism in Europe, but the unpopularity of socialism in the US. Some sort of explicit socialism was a major political force everywhere it was not suppressed by an authoritarian government from 1889-1989, except the United States, where it was persistently unpopular outside of a few pockets.

I mean, in 1925, you had Labour with 24% of the Commons in Britain, Labor with 31% of the Commons in Australia, assorted flavors of socialist forming a majority of the National Assembly in France, the Social Democrats being the largest parliamentary party in Germany (with the Communists controlling a sizeable fraction as well, etc.) . . . while the US had three Farmer-Labor and one Socialist in Congress.

Wherefore the term "American exceptionalism" was coined.

[ant1sthenes]

Just ask them what the D in DPRK stands for.

[Jordan]

Venezuelan women are feeling the bern.

[Injun, as in from India]

Is that chlamydia or bad yeast?

Or maybe just democratic socialism...

[Trouser-Pod (The blowhard)]

President tells women to stop using hairdryers and go with 'natural' style to save electricity

"Fuck off, Vidal Sassoon!"

[Lord Humungus]

UnitedHealth Makes Good on Threat to Pull Out of Obamacare

UnitedHealth roiled the market last November when it revealed that it was considering exiting Obamacare after incurring hundreds of millions of dollars in losses related to ACA business. Then UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley confessed to investors meeting in New York in December that the company should have stayed out of the program a little longer to better gauge its profitability potential.

The company had cautiously tiptoed into the market in January 2015 after sitting out the first full year of Obamacare operations in 2014. "It was for us a bad decision," Hemsley admitted to his investors. "In retrospect, we should have stayed out longer."

So it wasn't a huge surprise on Friday when UnitedHealth spokesperson Tyler Mason confirmed to The Washington Post that the company, indeed, was pulling out of Georgia and Arkansas, two relatively small states that proved to be highly unprofitable terrain for the company.

You know who else had to pull out of Georgia...

[Auric Demonocles]

I wonder how long it takes some progressives to cheer at southerners losing an option to this "right".

[Tornado16nb]

Yea for sure. They are so caring.

[Hamster of Doom]

Either UnitedHealth are a bunch of wreckers and kulaks who need a good dose of the gulag to fix their lack of fellow feeling, or Georgia and Arkansas consumers were just stupid rednecks who fucked up this glorious plan handed to them on a silver plate.

[Tornado16nb]

But those greedy insurance company profits are the ones driving healthcare costs!

[PBR Streetgang]

Mr. O'Keefe?

[Citizen X]

Josip Vissarionevich Dzugashvili?

[Swiss Servator]

*applause*

[Lee G]

+1 Soso

[straffinrun]

Florida man?

[Injun, as in from India]

You know who else had to pull out of Georgia...

Every man with a girlfriend named "Georgia"?

[Lord Humungus]

The Obama Administration Is Now Apologizing For America Winning World War II

Of course, revisiting Japan's 70-year-old offenses at a G-7 Summit would be ridiculous and counterproductive. As is the compunction of Obama's officials to "acknowledge" or apologize for the alleged sins and moral deficiencies of the U.S. every time they get on an international flight ? a grating habit since 2009.

After all, Kerry could have said that Hiroshima was "a reminder of the depth of the obligation every one of us in public life carries to stop extremist regimes like Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons." Or he might have said Hiroshima was "a reminder of the depth of the obligation every one of us in public life carries to ensure that we are well prepared for the next force that threatens peace."

Instead our motto the past eight years has been, "Strength Through Moral Equivalence."

[Tonio]

You know who else was pissed that the Allied Powers won WW2?

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Progressives?

[Monty Crisco]

Kerry stopped short of actually apologizing for using the A-bomb, though, and thank god. That would have been a bridge too far EVEN FOR THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION!!

[WTF]

Although it's sickening enough to go along with the Japanese acting as though they were innocent victims in WWII.

[Eternal Blue Sky]

Equally sickening to pretend America were innocent victims in WWII. Pretty much everyone in that fight was an asshole. Obvious fascists and war criminals on one side, communists, socialist warmongers, and a campaign of intentionally bombing civilians on the other.

[Monty Crisco]

IF you want to get into WHO started bombing civilian populations first, lets have that discussion (it was the Japanese and the Franco Fascists - see "Guernica"). And if you would like to morally equivocate between the allies and the Nazis and the Empire of Japan, feel free. But realize that that makes you a loathsome despicable asshole.

[Eternal Blue Sky]

"And if you would like to morally equivocate between the allies and the Nazis and the Empire of Japan, feel free. But realize that that makes you a loathsome despicable asshole."

Okay, ya know what?? Between my family having our land seized by USSR, having one member of the family killed via exile to Siberia, having the rest of 'em having to flee their home country under threat of Siberian deportation, after having them make their way through Germany, bribe their way out of Auschwitz, smuggle themselves through the German railroad system, and them surviving the Dresden Firebombing, I really don't care what you think. Both sides of that war were SHIT. The Brits burning the refugee-packed, non-military target of Dresden alive was shit. Stalin's purges were shit. The Holocaust was shit. Japan's entire Sino-Japanese war was shit. America's president manipulating the population to erode pro-isolationist sentiment was shit.

My family lived through the shit of both sides of this fight, and I see NO FUCKING REASON to ignore the shit of one side just because YOU want to think the shit of one side was worse. Why the fuck should I pretend one side was the good guys in this?? The side that threw us in the work camp, or the side who tried to murder us twice?? Fuck that, war is hell and if you want to excuse Stalinist scumbags because they were are allies, or play apologist for Allied war crimes, I'd say YOU are the "loathsome despicable asshole".

[Eternal Blue Sky]

"IF you want to get into WHO started bombing civilian populations first"

It was the Brits, who started the practice long before WWII.

[kbolino]

The US absolutely manipulated the shit out of the situation. FDR wanted war and he did what he could to ensure it happened.

... and this fact in no way establishes moral equivalence between the Western allies and the Axis powers.

We forced Japan's hand by restricting their oil supply. Oil that they were using to find new parts of Southeast Asia to rape and pillage.

We forced Germany's hand by reinforcing the UK and the USSR. Without such resistance, the Germans would have killed even more Jews and other undesirables, not to mention their whole plan to colonize Eastern Europe. How do you colonize a place that's already inhabited? By eradicating the population.

[Monty Crisco]

Soooooo... it was the US that was responsible for WW2? By forcing everyone's hands?

[Eternal Blue Sky]

And with the Allies backing the USSR, you enabled the Soviets to pillage the shit out of my relatives country, steal our farmland, and enabled them to murder some of my relatives. GOOD JOB!!

Germany and Japan were terrible, but that shit don't excuse helping and cooperating with the fucking USSR. Their shit was quite possibly worse.

[bacon-magic]

Your blame game is awe inspiring. Do you have a news letter that I can subscribe to?

[Auric Demonocles]

Yesterday I got a survey from the ACLU. It was probably 15-20 questions long, asking what priority I placed on a "variety" of issues for the ACLU. Exactly two of the questions had anything to do with the government (police discriminating on religion, and regulations regarding abortion). Almost all the questions were about someone "interfering with other's religious freedom" by not providing them with something (free contraceptives, wedding services, etc). What the fuck?

Even worse, not a single question about alt-text!

[Crusty Juggler]

Those commie bastards!

[Tonio]

More likely a "survey". I used to get those with fundraising letters, but never completed or returned one (no surveys, ever, for anyone). I'm not sure if they actually tabulate the data or do anything with it. Seems like the most useful application for that data would be to target fundraising letters more accurately. You respond that your highest concern is free contraception and they would target you with fundraising materials highlighting the "access to contraception" cases they've brought.

[Injun, as in from India]

Speaking of the ACLU and abortion:

Court dismisses attempt to force Catholic hospitals to provide abortions

[Notorious UGCC]

I linked the story yesterday, but thank you.

[Auric Demonocles]

God the ACLU sucks.

[CatoTheChipper]

But they do tabulate the data. That's how many incredibly stupid survey statistics are born.

I get lots of progressive junk mail since I've supported a few drug legalization and sentencing reform organizations. I always return their postage-paid envelopes.

[Auric Demonocles]

There was a fundraising letter included. I wrote in a paragraph explaining how this survey had convinced me that not only should I not donate, but they are not fighting for my rights after the question "Won't you donate to help us fight to protect your rights?"

[Injun, as in from India]

Did they list the Second Amendment anywhere?

[CatoTheChipper]

Or the 9th or the 10th?

[Auric Demonocles]

No. Somehow guns didn't make the list of things that people are "denying you access to" if they don't provide them to you free of charge.

[Injun, as in from India]

LOL. That's a good one.

[ant1sthenes]

The AC stands for Anti-Christian now.

[Lord Humungus]

Driving While Black: Cops Target Minority Drivers in This Mostly White New Jersey Town

Just south of Bloomfield lies East Orange, which is over 88 percent black, and Newark, which is 53 percent black and 34 percent Latino. Newark and East Orange are ranked the fifth and sixth poorest towns in New Jersey, respectively. Bloomfield's other bordering towns ? Glen Ridge, Nutley, Clifton, Montclair, and Belleville ? are almost entirely white, and relatively affluent.

The researchers found that black and Latino drivers were being disproportionately ticketed, accounting for 78 percent of court appearances for traffic violations despite comprising roughly 43 percent of Bloomfield's population. Drawing on a database of tickets issued by Bloomfield Police between September 2014 and August 2015, they determined that almost 84 percent of 7,110 traffic tickets with verifiable addresses had occurred in the areas around East Orange and Newark.

[SugarFree]

The darkies just commit more crime with their criminal hands and their twisted criminal hearts. There's no way the brave peace officers of New Jersey would ever selectively enforce traffic laws based on race.

[WTF]

I live in Clifton. And yes they would.

[SugarFree]

[cough]iwasmakingfunofsomeone[cough]

[WTF]

[cough]Irish[cough]

[Rhywun]

I'm sure the coming color-based quotas won't have any unintended consequences at all...

[kbolino]

The police are intentionally targeting people who don't live in their jurisdiction--i.e. people who have little to no say in their conduct--and yet all you can do is harp on about race.

The level of willful disregard of Occam's Razor is stunning.

[Lord Humungus]

I knew this (white) audiophile tube freak who had a really ancient Dodge station wagon that was rusted out in several spots. He would often visit his friend, who lived in one of the wealthier suburbs. He got pulled over so many times by the local police that he stopped visiting his friend.

[Injun, as in from India]

Something similar used to happen to a white friend of mine in Wisconsin. He used to drive a crappy car to visit his wealthy parents. He got pulled over just about every trip.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Hell, I never, not once, got pulled over on my motorcycle once I started putting my hair in a ponytail and putting it up inside my helmet. The tickets I got while leaving it out were legion. Anecdote, blah, blah, but it seems quite unlikely indeed to have been a coincidence.

[dan'o en barrel]

Lived in Morris Country in the late 90s as a youngin' and drove a shitty 88' K car as my personal vehicle. I was pulled over and searched a dozen times in the Chester/Mendham area during a two year period (I was too scared and dumb to refuse.) The overwhelming majority of my driving was for my job with a livery service that had a fleet of Caddies and Mercedes- I was never pulled over in those vehicles despite driving the same way. Since it was on the heels of the "Turnpike profiling" story I was convinced that economic profiling was going to be the next big story. It wasn't.

[WTF]

Shitty cars in upscale neighborhoods do draw alot of attention from the cops.

[Drake]

The former head of Britain's Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Trevor Phillips, has admitted he "got almost everything wrong" on Muslim immigration...

http://www.breitbart.com/londo.....wn-better/

[Jordan]

They put a mass-murdering psycho on their human rights commission?

[Drake]

Ha! I didn't realize that was GTA Trevor's last name!

Things would probably be a lot better in Europe if he was in charge.

[Suthenboy]

Looking at various places around Europe and Asia where there are minority Muslim populations and have been for centuries a reasonable person would be tempted to conclude that the Muslim 'immigration' into western Europe will be a failure.

[Injun, as in from India]

Agree. Instead of Europe changing the muslim immigrants, the muslim immigrants will change Europe.

[Notorious UGCC]

"Liberal opinion in Britain has, for more than two decades, maintained that most Muslims are just like everyone else? But thanks to the most detailed and comprehensive survey of British Muslim opinion yet conducted, we *now know* that just isn't how it is." [emphasis added]

Right, two decades ago there was no evidence to contradict the liberal narrative, so of course it's not his fault that as a nice compassionate leftist he simply assumed the best about people, unlike those prematurely-accurate conservatives.

He's embarrassed at how wrong he was, and now that reality has made its way inside his thick skull, he wants to pretend that he's responding to Shocking New Evidence instead of belatedly acknowledging what non-retards had already known.

[Notorious UGCC]

And let me guess...to make up for being wrong in the past he's going to endorse restrictions on the civil liberties of innocent Muslims.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

California legislators actually do something that's not totally stupid.

Now if they'd just find a way for the people getting it to pay for it themselves...

[OneOut]

Making them have to pay for it is denying them access to iI thought you new this sloop

.

[Lord Humungus]

Led Zeppelin Are Going to Trial Over a Copyright Claim on 'Stairway to Heaven'

Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," that eight-minute odyssey long been praised by fans and critics as one of the greatest songs of all time, has been hit with a copyright-infringement claim.

According to the Guardian, a U.S. judge ruled Friday that the song's opening acoustic guitar passages are similar enough to a progression featured in the instrumental "Taurus" by 1960s American band Spirit to warrant a jury trial. Led Zeppelin's lead singer Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page are scheduled in court in May.

A trustee of Randy Wolfe, Spirit's late guitarist and composer, brought the claim, alleging that Page may have lifted the music while his band toured with Spirit in the late '60s, the Guardian reports. The defendants deny these allegations, arguing that Wolfe was a writer for hire and that the chord progression was too commonplace to copyright.

[Rich]

the chord progression was too commonplace to copyright.

Unlike, say, software algorithms.

*** ducks ***

[WTF]

You can't copyright a chord progression (probably half of all rock songs are 1-4-5). You can however copyright a melody, and the opening to the Spirit song does sound very much like the opening to Stairway. Whether it's similar enough for infringement, I guess a jury will decide.

[Zeb]

Stupid. No one is buying Stairway To Heaven as a substitute for "Taurus" or confusing the two. That's all that should matter.

[bacon-magic]

Funny how the composer of the song dies and then someone complains. $$$

[Tornado16nb]

Why is Sanders so popular? I don't get it. I don't see him as genuine or authentic. He seems angry and going senile to the point of pure conspiracy kook...Koch brothers made VA bad, Koch brothers want open borders to make America poor, oligarchy, economy only works for billionaires, middle class is being destroyed. So his solution?

Give him all this money via taxation and power so he can "help" you.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Free stuff. Or promises thereof.

[Tornado16nb]

Yea my bad i meant to say that is the only thing i can see. Especially if his supporters don't really pay taxes

[Doctor Whom]

Have you talked recently to a typical American voter, particularly a young one? Many of them really do reason at that level.

[Auric Demonocles]

Cause a lot of people are dumb.

[Lee G]

Because he identifies a lot of the correct problems. His solutions to those problems suck, but a significant portion of the electorate can't see the problem with his "free pony" answers.

[Injun, as in from India]

When you send your kid to a government school for 13 years, followed by the Leftist Echo Chamber that is the modern university, expect them to come out brainwashed.

[Jerryskids]

Why is Sanders so popular? You know he's been dead for 35 years and those are just actors in the KFC ads, right?

[Eternal Blue Sky]

From what I see in internet posts of various millennial acquaintances, there are a good number that are pro-Sanders because they have been conditioned to vote for the D Tribe, and they, unlike older D Tribesmen, are not blind to Hillary's blatant corruption. Probably not representative of all millennial Ds, but the ones I know seem to be under the impression that they have no other option than to vote for Sanders, because he is the only non-Clinton D left standing. I don't see them posting any reasons to support Sanders, just reasons NOT to vote for Clinton and especially not to vote for Republicans.

[kbolino]

While your "anti" explanation definitely accounts for some share of his supporters, I have seen plenty of "pro" support as well. Paeans to "democratic socialism" and appeals to the greatness of Europe and/or the 1950s (minus the racism, of course) are quite common.

[Lord Humungus]

Chernobyl: A Vacation Hotspot Unlike Any Other

Their brochures advertise the trip as having all of the innocuous thrills of a haunted house and all of the invisible danger of a deeply irradiated environment stripped of everyday human life forms. No doubt, this combination of ruinous landscapes and extreme radiation levels has kept the nuclear tourism industry thriving. Exact numbers are hard to come by, as there are at least two dozen national and international operating tours and the Chernobyl Zone Administration controls admission to the zone. Yuri Kovalchyk, a spokesperson for Chernobyl Tours from UkrainianWeb, said that summer is without a doubt the busiest season, although the zone's many prodigious photographers love to come in the fall, when leaves don't obstruct the views.

Strange sounds populate the Zone: a lack of birdsong, glass crunching underfoot, cameras constantly clicking beneath the beeps of Geiger counters. Visitors sometimes carry personal counters, beeping at levels 20 times higher than average background radiation, along with their cameras, and eat lunch inside the former power plant's cafeteria. The experience even stays authentic at night, with bleak Soviet-style hotels in the zone.

[MSimon]

Background is about 200 mREM a year. For Nuclear workers the limit is 2 REM a year. A few days in the zone is not likely to be a serious health hazard.

[Lord Humungus]

Last weekend I watched this documentary on Chernoybl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS3WvKKSpKI

Interesting, especially the helicopter pilots, miners, and soldiers who were part of the cleanup.

[Just a thought not a sermon]

" a lack of birdsong"

Is this true? I thought Chernobyl had actually become an unintended animal sanctuary in the years since the area was abandoned. And it's not like animals are dropping dead left and right there, just that they have higher-than-average incidences of cancers and mutations.

[Notorious UGCC]

I've been hearing glowing reports.

[Rich]

THE number of missing migrants in Germany continues to grow with authorities now saying nearly 9,000 children are now unaccounted for.

including hundreds of children under 14 years, according to the interior ministry.

Emphasis added. Europe is toast.

[Tonio]

They are children, Rich. Children. Why are you afraid of a few children? /progderp

[ant1sthenes]

If 9000 people can bring them down, they were going to be toast eventually, no matter what.

[Eternal Blue Sky]

Yeah... if you can be taken down by 9,000 children, then I don't think you deserve sovereignty.

[Brett L]

Have they checked with the UN Blue Hats for new brothel workers?

[Jerryskids]

Trump vs. Cruz, Hillary vs. Bernie, Two More Suspects Charged in Brussels Terrorist Attack

Why oh why couldn't it have been all four of them (plus Kasich) getting charged with terrorist attacks?

/checks to see which two of the four got charged, is yuugely disappointed

[MSimon]

One of those candidates has peculiar reading tastes:

Trump reads Ayn Rand

[Doctor Whom]

It sounds as though The Donald follows Ayn Rand as well as he follows his other favorite reading material, Two Corinthians.

[MSimon]

Corinthians

Obviously, bought and paid for Ted is a much more serious follower of that verse.

[John]

I am still not convinced it is toast but there will certainly be a blood bath at some point. Never forget reason celebrated Merkel for letting the refugees in and said the US should do the same. Of course now that it has turned into a complete disaster, Reason doesn't seem to want to talk about the subject anymore.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Blood bath and toasts kinda go hand in hand, Johnny.

[John]

Nah. Europe survived the world wars. It will survive ethnically cleansing the Muslims, which is where this is likely to end.

[Rich]

A lotta guy might say that "ethnically cleansing" a billion Muslims may be tougher than surviving the world wars.

[Lee G]

Muslims are still only ten percent of the European population.

[Rich]

And your point is ??

[Lee G]

They're a minority. They don't control the government institutions. They don't control the corporations. They don't control the military or the police.

They are highly vocal and have a violent subset of their population. That, however, is not enough for them to resist a pogrom if the native populations commit themselves to it.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Only? 10 is not that small a number; especially considering the low birth rate in Europe.

Mix in their shitty assimilation track record and you got yourself a whammy, pal.

[R C Dean]

Demographics is destiny. By the time the Muslim birth rate levels out, they will be a very large minority indeed. The Islamification of Europe is virtually guaranteed, absent some catastrophe. Of course, to what degree and how are up in the air, but unless there is a dramatic and currently unforeseeable reformation of Islam in the near future, I doubt anyone not a Muslim will think its a positive development.

[Free Society]

I doubt anyone not a Muslim will think its a positive development.

You're forgetting the legions of multicultists and lefties in general who celebrate the decline of white political power and culture.

[R C Dean]

They are under the delusion that they won't feel the effects of Islamification.

When they do, they won't like it nearly so much.

[Free Society]

Nah. Europe survived the world wars. It will survive ethnically cleansing the Muslims, which is where this is likely to end.

Not sure that's been decided yet. I mean yes, technically Europe didn't sink into the ocean and Europeans didn't all simultaneously drop dead after the world wars, but their ultimate fate stemming from those wars is still unfolding. The experience has certainly unmanned the Germans as a society and that same sort of self-loathing syndrome has spread throughout the West, because of their guilt of having been so influential and powerful historically compared to the rest of the world.

[John]

True enough. I just don't believe that a group of societies will collectively commit suicide. At some point things will become urgent enough that people will throw out the multiculturalists and take matters into their own hands.

[Free Society]

At the moment, the EU institutions are forcing those societies to undergo an irreversible experiment. I don't think it's ever been more important for the survival of European civilization to disband the EU. Europe's strength was built on it's historical decentralization. EU seems to be custom built to destroy everything that made Europe great in the first place.

[Zeb]

Well, survival is a low bar. I'd say they definitely survived. And while they have lost some of what made them great, I think that it might still be better than the nearly constant war that there was before the world wars.

[Free Society]

Prior to the world wars, the previous large scale war was about a hundred years prior in the Napoleonic wars. Moreover, it was with the world wars and the preeminence of democratic-republicanism that large wars became total wars. There were some religious wars of course that were total in nature, but those conflicts were comparatively rare and a product of the times in which they were fought. Whereas the world wars ushered in an age when war became more ideological than strategic, thus more bloody and the civilian population more involved.

Europe was on a path to becoming more peaceful prior to World War I, it didn't usher in a period of peace.

[Zeb]

Europe was on a path to becoming more peaceful prior to World War I

Not a very effective one, it would seem.

[R C Dean]

Its really odd. On the one hand, there were increasing economic, political, and dynastic links between the European countries, to the point where many thought war was impossible.

At the exact same time, there was a pro-military and pro-war, well, hysteria, seems like the word. Many people were eager for war.

[Free Society]

At the exact same time, there was a pro-military and pro-war, well, hysteria, seems like the word. Many people were eager for war.

Especially the democrats and republicans (note small 'd' and small 'r').

[Zeb]

So, are you coming out as a monarchist?

[Free Society]

I'm an anarchist who recognizes that different forms of statism result in differing levels of extortion, time preference and relative prosperity. And yes, monarchy ranks ahead of democracy by those metrics.

[Free Society]

Not a very effective one, it would seem.

The world wars were, to be sure, an aberration of the trend that was already underway, propelled in large part by the international gold standard that limited government spending. It started off as a political conflict and ended up turning into an ideological one, that of monarchy versus democracy and fueled by central banking.

[ant1sthenes]

I'd say they definitely survived.

So far. But put a society driven by people who believe they are meant to rule the world, versus a society driven by Nikkis, and the former will win every time.

Europe has got about one generation before it's too late to do anything but be trapped in a never-ending cycle of violence that will eventually favor the side with better birthrates.

[Zeb]

So far.

That's what survival is. Nothing lasts for ever and everything changes.

[Rich]

Let's just say you may want to visit Paris sooner rather than later.

[WTF]

Well, Shikha talks about it, if only to note that if the Euros just gave the Muslim immigrants decent jobs all troubles would be solved.

[Suthenboy]

Be fair John. No one could have seen this coming.

[John]

No one. Cytoxic assured us that this was going to make Europe more free.

[Drake]

Am I getting old and grouchy? Every news story I see these days just seems loaded with stupid.

France has pledged to cut its reliance on nuclear energy from more than 75 percent to 50 percent by shutting 24 reactors by 2025.

So burning fossil fuels is better than the power source that has killed 0 people ever (from radiation) in commercial plants?

http://phys.org/news/2016-04-l.....-nuke.html

[Tornado16nb]

It shows me progs don't really care about global warming and will never be happy until everyone is as miserable as they are.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

"Germany demanded last month Paris shutter its oldest station, Fessenheim, which sits near the German and Swiss borders."

You know, between their aggressive bank stance, Merkel's immigration policies and stuff like this about the environment, I'm starting to get the worried and distinct feeling Germany is doing its bit to push their luck and usher in some serious fighting in Europe.

[kbolino]

So the author of that headline/statement thought it best to use a metonym for only one of the countries involved, and moreover the one which is most confusing when used in the context of the sentence. Bravo, idiot.

[Tonio]

Progs will point to Chernobyl. Which sorta counts as a commercial plant in that it wasn't military and given that there was really no such thing as private enterprise on the scale it would take to build and run a power plant in the FSU.

[Lee G]

Chernobyl was the perfect example of a communist government in practice.

[Injun, as in from India]

^THIS.

Eat Plutonium, Progtards.

[Tonio]

Chernobyl was the perfect example of a communist government in practice.

^This. And I always bring that up when discussing energy policy with progs. They fucking hate that.

[Drake]

The Soviet government engineers were running the stupidest experiment ever and disconnected the emergency safety systems and its power-regulating system. I hope somebody said "watch this" before they pushed the button, The reactor core and control rods literally ended up in the parking lot as the Soviets didn't bother building containment domes (or even a non-flammable roof).

I don't think the Frenchies are running those kinds of half-assed experiments in their commercial reactors.

[Tonio]

"Yuri, hold my vodka..."

[Injun, as in from India]

Vodka? You think they were rich bourgeois?

"Yuri, hold my mouthwash..."

[Swiss Servator]

Mouthwash? What kind of Kulak are you?

"Yuri, please to hold can of brake fluid..."

[Injun, as in from India]

How's it going Tonio? I'm back after another big break. 🙂

[Idle Hands]

So burning fossil fuels is better than the power source that has killed 0 people ever (from radiation) in commercial plants?

Did you even see the newest Godzilla? The French probably did.

[Drake]

How about The Day After Tomorrow? I thought the Progs believed that one.

[Notorious UGCC]

Remember how the French created Godzilla in the 2000 version, and it was French agents who had to step in to save the day?

[Eternal Blue Sky]

That wasn't Godzilla. That was some other lame monster that Godzilla kicked the ass of in a later film. No really, that's what the Japanese did with the canon of that film after they got the rights back.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

Chicago Alderman wants residents to pay almost $5M in another brutality case.

Internal review "reopened" once video surfaced. Officers still getting paid.

[Juvenile Bluster]

I'm done feeling bad for the taxpayers when they have to pay out settlements like this. They vote in the politicians that allow this and they "support the police". They deserve what they get.

[Tonio]

^This. Except it sucks when you're one of the taxpayers who want to hold police accountable.

[Rhywun]

Or who didn't vote for the assholes in charge.

[Free Society]

The magic of democracy knows no bounds. 51% even gets to determine the moral culpability of the other 49%.

[Free Society]

I'm done feeling bad for the taxpayers when they have to pay out settlements like this. hey vote in the politicians that allow this and they "support the police". They deserve what they get.

And those people at the Brussell's airport deserved what was coming to them because in all likelihood they voted for politicians that support attacks against ISIS.

See how moral equivalencies work? Stupidly.

[Brett L]

Let me know when the non-voters start lynching their aldermen in protest.

[Free Society]

How many government officials have you lynched in the name of justice?

[Eternal Blue Sky]

Twelve and a half. Don't ask about the half... it was... awkward.

[R C Dean]

They deserve what they get.

At some point, they do. Especially when you consider how easy it is to move out of Chicago.

When does "If you don't like paying these settlements, elect a different ruling class" get to be wrong?

[John]

According to a New York City police officer, Mayor Bill De Blasio is directly to blame for the dramatic rise in traffic tickets. "Mayor de Blasio wants us to give out summonses, OK? Alright?" the officer says in a video recorded by a driver in the Bronx. "I don't know if you voted for him or not," the officer continued. "I don't live in the city. I wouldn't have voted for him because this is what he wants. He wants us to give out summonses."

I have had many conversations with Progressive friends about the evils of traffic fines and traffic cameras and their effect on the poor. Not a single one of them has ever thought these things were anything but great and necessary to an orderly society. They all of course think of themselves as caring about the less fortunate. Then they turn around and support a government that does little beyond preying on the poor and using the money to pay off the politically connected. The level of cognitive dissonance never fails to amaze me.

[Rich]

They all of course think of themselves as caring about the less fortunate.

They *do* care, John. It's just -- that's as far as it goes.

[Tornado16nb]

De Blasio strikes me as a control freak in the realm of Lizzie Warren

[MSimon]

Or the Republican Party. Republican Party Insiders

[Crusty Juggler]

He strikes me as an empty suit who uses his position of power to blatantly enrich himself and his friends.

[Just a thought not a sermon]

Lizzie Warren took an axe
and gave the 1 percent forty whacks
and when that job was neatly done
she gave the taxpayers forty-one

[Notorious UGCC]

Lizzie Warren took a tomahawk
Gave rich people forty chops
Her aim was so bad, when she was done
She'd given the non-rich forty-one

[ant1sthenes]

Lame.

Lizzie Warren took her tax
And snatched the one-percenters' stacks
And when she saw that wealth was fun
She grabbed the rest from everyone

[R C Dean]

Needs less . . . snatch.

*retches violently*

[Drake]

Seems like De Blasio and Bloomberg have that instinctive Prog hate of cars. If they had their way, NYC would be a auto-free city and the peasants would only be allowed to move about in publicly provided transportation.

Living in NJ, I do mt part and never drive in NYC (or enter it all).

[John]

I have to admit I like going to Manhattan on occasion. I have not been there in about a year, however. I really only know the Gulliani, Bloomberg New York, which was expensive and crazy but also one of the safest cities in the world. From what I am reading, De Blasio's New York is not like that. That all of the aggressive beggars and muggers and other scum that Gulliani ran out have now returned to terrorize the unarmed population because JUSTICE.

[WTF]

It's not nearly as bad as it was pre-Giuliani, but some of the shit is starting to return.

[Rhywun]

That's what the NY Post would have you believe but it's complete bullshit. Overall crime is still dropping, FFS.

[John]

I am glad to hear that.

[Injun, as in from India]

I once saw a truck with a NY plate that said "AR15NRA".

It was awesome trolling.

[Pat (PM)]

Utah polygamy ban restored in loss for 'Sister Wives' family

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ? A federal appeals court restored Utah's ban on polygamy Monday, handing a defeat to the family from TV's "Sister Wives" and other polygamists who say the ruling could send plural families back into hiding out of fear of prosecution.

Others cheered the decision that they say will help authorities prosecute people for crimes tied to the practice, such as underage marriage and sexual assault.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a 2013 ruling that struck down key parts of Utah's law against bigamy, or holding multiple marriage licenses. U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups had found the state violated polygamists' right to privacy and religious freedom.

The appeals court ruled that Waddoups should not have considered a lawsuit from Kody Brown and his four wives because they were never charged with a crime and there was little chance they would be.

The decision brings back a rule forbidding married people from living with a second purported "spouse," making Utah's law stricter than those in every other state and creating a threat of arrest for plural families. Like most polygamous families in Utah, Brown is legally married to one wife and "spiritually married" to the others.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

"Others cheered the decision that they say will help authorities prosecute people for crimes tied to the practice, such as underage marriage and sexual assault."

We need gay sex to be illegal because that would make it easier to prosecute priests who abuse altar boys.

This argument is really, really stupid. Especially since the FLDS managed to operate basically with impunity within Arizona for decades while constantly engaging in statutory rape, despite the fact that polygamy was not legal in Arizona.

[Tonio]

Statutory rape (child brides) and child abandonment (unwanted teenage boys). Yeah, those are some upstanding citizens, there.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

And they did this throughout Warren Jeffs' entire tenure, while polygamy itself was totally illegal. If polygamy laws made it easier to prevent those kinds of things, one would think the FLDS would have been shut down years ago, yet it's still operating.

[Tonio]

I hear that the local and state authorities in those areas turn a blind eye to FLDS as long as they keep it on the Q-T. Outsiders only learned about it when the news about all those abandoned boys started making the news.

[Citizen X]

Wait a minute. Are you implying that criminals break laws?!?

There oughta be a law agin' that!

[John]

If there is a "right" to gay marriage, there ought to be a "right" to polygamy. The only reason there isn't is because the gay marriage right was found because the court decided virtue signaling was more important than the rule of law. Right now at least, there is no virtue signaling value to defending polygamists.

It should also be pointed out that polygamists are in a much worse situations than gays were before marriage "rights". Gays were free to get married and make whatever arrangements they want. They just couldn't get the government to recognize their marriages or force other people to do the same. Polygamists in contrast face jail for practicing polygamy. Yet, the same people who claimed the denial of a marriage license was the worst social injustice since Jim Crow, don't seem to concerned about polygamists, despite claiming people should have a right to marry whomever they want. I guess "2" is some kind of magical number.

[Zeb]

Yup. If we are to have marriage laws, they ought to recognize what people actually do, not attempt to socially engineer.

[John]

All laws are to some degree social engineering. Even something as basic as the law against murder. Because we have a law against murder, no one can be a Pagan and engage in human sacrifice as part of their religion. That is just as much "social engineering" as saying no one can have five wives.

Unless you want to be an anarchist, you are necessarily endorsing some degree of social engineering. The question is how much of it do you want.

[Zeb]

If you consider basic punishments for harming other people social engineering, then that is about how much of it I want. I think there is a line to be drawn between laws that punish people for doing harm to others and laws that restrict what people can do because they might do something bad or socially undesirable. Murder falls clearly into the first category and laws against polygamy into the latter. By "social engineering" I mean laws that do more than just punish people for doing something bad to other people.
Marriage laws are unnecessary as far as I am concerned. But if they are to exist, the broader they are and the more relationships they potentially apply to, the less social engineeringy they are.

[Eternal Blue Sky]

"Because we have a law against murder, no one can be a Pagan and engage in human sacrifice as part of their religion."

You tell me this NOW?!

AFTER I held the blot?!

[Tonio]

making Utah's law stricter than those in every other state and creating a threat of arrest for plural families

Funny how there are more laws regulating pet snakes in Florida than in, say, Alaska. Polygamy was only a "problem" in areas with lots of polygamists - the mormon belt. The mainstream Mormons did a deal to get statehood.

[Drake]

Whew - I was worried that somebody was going to have to make a polygamy cake.

[Tonio]

That would be a brilliant troll - find a lesbian baker and ask her to make a cake for your second wedding. Lesbians (feminists) hate them some one man, many women domestic arrangements.

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

'making Utah's law stricter than those in every other state and creating a threat of arrest for plural families.'

Good going Utah you morons.

Since Springsteen is into human rights, will he ban Utah from his tours too?

Don't answer that because polygamists aren't LGBT.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

This link is for Heroic Mullato only.*

*He's the only one here that would want to hear about a Mexican elementary school teacher being fired for winning a twerking contest (with the video!), right?

[Zeb]

Was it the dancing or the trying to mount the dude in the front that got her fired?

[sloopyinTEXAS]

That's pretty tame to me. But it's edited, so there may be more to it.

Either way, that looks like it's not,worthy of being fired over.

[Zeb]

It is pretty tame. I wouldn't have fired her for any of it. Just wondering.

[Pat (PM)]

Yahoo is for sale; bidders line up; Marissa Mayer is toast

Yahoo is for sale, and bidders are lining up to grab their own, ever-shrinking piece of Internet history.

The once-great Internet pioneer is entertaining offers...reluctantly. CEO Marissa Mayer would like to see Yahoo through its struggles, but impatient investors are looking for a way to cash out.

Yahoo (YHOO, Tech30) has reportedly given interested parties until April 18 to make their offers. The company is expected to fetch something like $8 billion for its core Internet business.

[Hamster of Doom]

*inserts Facebook for Yahoo*

*sighs*

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

I heard The Daily Mail was considering buying Yahoo, in which case we should get ready for lots of Yahoo articles about hot 17 year olds.

[Idle Hands]

I don't think there will be a time where pictures of hot 17 year olds doesn't sell.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

Even after the global caliphate?

[Tonio]

Particularly after the global caliphate. You'll just have to go to a really bad part of town and pay like $100 for a centerfold from a 1982 issue of Playboy.

[Free Society]

Particularly after the global caliphate. You'll just have to go to a really bad part of town and pay like $100 for a centerfold from a 1982 issue of Playboy.

Why would I pay $100 for a porn mag when I could spend $150 on a dhimmi sex slave?

[sloopyinTEXAS]

See, ^^this^^ kind of outside the box thinking is why libertarianism will triumph in the end.

[John]

Remember, Woman have to lead from the front and go out and demand what they want. Nothing says "leadership" like demanding your workers stop teleworking while using company funds to build yourself a day care center for your kids right next to your office.

[WTF]

If a man did that he would be celebrated!!11!!!!
/progfem

[Krapulent Kristen]

Yahoo really fucked up Flickr. Fuck Yahoo.

[Trouser-Pod (The blowhard)]

Yahoo really fucked up Flickr almost everything they touched. Fuck Yahoo.

My apologies, I just found that scope too narrow.

[invisible furry hand]

New data reveals the high number of guns per person in Australia's richest suburbs

Cue conniptions despite the fact that, as the article admits, these are legal guns and illegal gun ownership accounts for 90 per cent of crimes involving a firearm.

[Tonio]

But those guns could be stolen by criminals. And don't forget toddler access to those guns which progs are sure that each and every one of which is unlocked with a round in the chamber and the safety off.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

I'd like to know how many crimes are committed in these scary, rich suburbs in Australia.

"Between them, Point Piper and Darling Point overlooking Sydney Harbour, are Australia's most expensive suburbs and include Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as a homeowner. But they also have 324 registered firearms to people in the suburb or 0.044 per resident.

In contrast, Birrong in Sydney's west, which has some of Sydney's cheapest housing within 20km of the CBD, has just 159 guns or less than half the number per resident in Point Piper."

I'd like to compare the crime rates between these two towns. I suspect you'd find that crime doesn't correlate with gun ownership.

[John]

Remember Australia had the infamous forced buy back program where they allegedly confiscated all of the guns in the country. This statistic just shows they more or less disarmed the poor. The right and well off didn't need the money and thus were not tempted by the cash and have few interactions with the cops and were thus not worried about being caught with their guns. Poor people in contrast likely had their guns confiscated.

[Zeb]

Sounds like most of the guns are legal and registered. Which I guess it how they get such precise numbers for each town.

[Tonio]

Of course. I would imagine that anyone with an unregistered weapon would be smart enough to not talk about it.

[Zeb]

Particularly not when gun ownership is so low. Not even one gun for 20 people.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

That's my favorite part of the article. They have 0.044 guns per resident in an area with virtually no crime and for some reason this is an important news story.

[R C Dean]

But they also have 324 registered firearms to people in the suburb or 0.044 per resident.

That's pathetic. Not even one gun for every twenty people.

I know one guy, for sure, who owns that many, and maybe one other. And that's from a small sample.

[Zeb]

I was expecting to see some significant proportion of households owning guns or something. That's just a joke. I doubt there are many places, even with severe gun restrictions or bans, where people don't have that many guns. Of course, these are just the legally owned and registered ones.

[Suthenboy]

I live in a parish that has nearly the highest rate of gun ownership of anywhere in the world. Also, I see people open carrying more frequently these days. I have seen a dozen in the last two weeks: two in Walmart, two in the local gas station, one in a liquor store...etc.

We also have one of the lowest gun crime rates of anywhere.

[WTF]

Funny how violent crime goes down when potential victims are armed.

[Monty Crisco]

Somebody might want to mention that to Sean Payton. And Drew Brees.

[Lee G]

The Zika virus "seems to be a bit scarier than we initially thought," says Dr. Anne Schuchat, deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Perhaps they could redirect some budget away from their bullshit initiatives like diabetes, smoking, teen dating violence, suicide, and fatties, and get back to their original mandate of contagious diseases.

[John]

We spend how many millions or billions on this thing called The Center For Disease Control? And thanks to Progressives destroying it in the name of totalitarian politics we can't respond to an actual public health threat. But we know lots about they dynamics of obesity among Lesbians and the prevalence of "teen dating violence". Isn't progressive government grand?

[Lee G]

The CDC is the perfect example of an actual government entity with a defined mandate that addresses real problems associated with "the commons" that has been completely and thoroughly corrupted by mission creep.

Director of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden, elaborates on the biggest public health challenges facing the U.S. and the world today.

These include infectious diseases like HIV and the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and noncommunicable disease issues like blood pressure, obesity and tobacco use.

[Monty Crisco]

DON'T FORGET PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF GUNS!!!

[Brett L]

It would be nice if they would quit
A) Trying to apply epidemiology to things that don't have a self-replicating organism as a vector
and
B) Quit fucking the dog(literally)

And do the wealth of excellent work that they became reknown for doing. I worked for a state bureau of epidemiology and respect their intelligence and education, but they are as guilty of fitting all of their observations to a successful model as anyone. Like mass shootings. They have no statistical epidemiological weight. But the CDC atill wants to put an epidemiological slant on them even though incidences remain flat as gun pwnership amd population increase.

[R C Dean]

I vaguely recall during the Great Ebola Knickers-Filling of 2014 that something like 5% of their budget is actually spent on epidemiology and communicable diseases.

[Mindyourbusiness]

Listened to the telepundits on CBS News this morning covering the possibilities of a Zika epidemic. I understand the administration wants to spend over a billion dollars on mosquito control. All sorts of preventive measures got discussed - except for the successful eradication programs (pilots, admittedly) running in Brazil using genetically modified male mosquitoes whose offspring turn out sterile. Maybe my paranoia is turned up to 11, but have the envirocrazies managed to get this possible line of attack vetoed? FFS, the aedes aegypti mosquito is an invasive species.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

And the incoming "gun violence" as a disease to be studied.

[Tonio]

^This.

[Certified Public Asshat]

No, The Gender Pay Gap Isn't A Myth ? And Here's Why

But the argument that "life choices" made by women are the real reason behind the gap is, in itself, an absurd oversimplification. Sure, many women choose to stay home or cut back their hours after having children. But many others don't opt out. They're forced out because they cannot afford child care, or find a full-time job that affords them any kind of flexibility. And, culturally, Americans remain ambivalent about women working outside of the home. A little more than 30 percent of Americans still believe women should stay home full-time to care for young children. These biases, which play out both in the workplace and outside of it, affect how much "choice" some women feel they actually have, and speaks to the types of judgments women face for making said choices.

Sounds like it is about choices.

[WTF]

Womyn shouldn't have to make choices! Everyone should just accomodate whatever womyn want at their expense! Because womyn are capable and strong and the exact equivalent to men!!1!!!

[Krapulent Kristen]

I'm of the school of thought that women need to learn how to negotiate. I went to Turkey when I was 13, and you better believe I learned negotiation tactics PDQ when trying to buy leather jackets and copper trinkets. When I was 21 I went back and cut my teeth further on carpet-buying.

Women are general taught to be conciliatory and accommodating from a young age. I'd rather teach my hypothetical daughter to be a bitch and walk away.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

My wife is a work in progress, though probably ultimately hopeless in this area. When we go to buy a car, I have to tell her not to start crying if I tell the salesman that I won't buy the car at that price or if we get up and leave.

My non-hypothetical daughters don't play like that. Even as pre-teens, they were wrangling the hell out of prices for souvenirs in Ecuador, for example.

[Swiss Servator]

One of my favorite experiences in Afghanistan was watching a black female NCO and a Kabul rug store owner haggle.

When the owner gave the opening price, he got the hand and "Oh HELL NO" and immediate walk away start. He reacted with a mixture of joy and wonder crossing his face as if "FINALLY, something new, and a challenge for once!" ...after suffering through so many guys trying to be all cool, wanting to drink tea and chat and still getting fleeced.

He managed to get out a "Madame!" from behind his growing smile...and she turned around. The next 15 minutes was a wonder to behold. It makes me smile, just to remember Haji Zabiullah meeting his match.

[Krapulent Kristen]

Negotiation is the spice of life!!

[Citizen X]

I went back and cut my teeth further on carpet-buying.

Phrasing?

[R C Dean]

Mrs. Dean is a cut-throat negotiator. She handles all purchases for the Dean Clan. I'm not without a few tricks myself (the dead-eyed stare being a particular fave), but I'm always amazed at the prices she gets.

They're forced out because they cannot afford child care, or find a full-time job that affords them any kind of flexibility.

We seem to be leaving aside the notion that having kids is itself a choice. And, these sound mostly like problems that single mothers would face. I smell yet another choice there.

[John]

Feminists really do hate themselves and other women. Ask yourself, what is greatest power women have? The power of sex and child birth. Obama is the most powerful man in the world. But who does he sleep with? Who is the mother of his children? i don't care how powerful he is, he still has to answer to and deal with his wife.

Feminists have spent going on a hundred years now trying to destroy the family and do everything possible to devalue and take away the greatest power women ever had.

[Drake]

But the entire theme of the DNC platform is that people should not be responsible for their choices.

[Suthenboy]

"Sure, many women choose to stay home or cut back their hours after having children. But many others don't opt out. They're forced out because they cannot afford child care, or find a full-time job that affords them any kind of flexibility."

So...kids.

"how much "choice" some women feel they actually have"

As opposed to how much they actually do have. Either build your career around your kids and have less success or choose not to have kids.

They simply made the case that the gender pay gap is due to the demands of family life and not discrimination by the evil Patriarchy.

[Brett L]

Its only a choice when they abort.

[Zeb]

They're forced out because they cannot afford child care

You could choose not to have children.

[Jerryskids]

The other day I made some reference to my nephew about "home ec" classes in school back in my day and he wondered where that term came from - why home "economics". I had to explain to him that economics isn't just dollars and cents but budgeting resources, with time being the one truly non-negotiable finite resource, and that once upon a time running a household was an actual job. Generally, it was the husband's job to go out and earn a paycheck and it was the wife's job to spend the paycheck. Men, left on their own, would blow all their money on booze and broads and other bad habits and it required a woman to civilize and domesticate him, turn him into a useful member of society. Her job was to make sure the paycheck got spent on supplying a good home and a good household for his family, and for that she needed an education on what that entailed. Back in the day for the upper class that might include managing a whole squadron of servants, for the middle class perhaps only one or two servants and in more modern times the wife herself supplied all the household labor, but you still had to know how to budget your time as well as your money and your effort to create a good home and a good family. A husband and wife were expected to work as a team raising a family and I think a lot of that has been forgotten or neglected.

[Jerryskids]

As much as some women complain about having to "do it all" juggling a career and a family and a personal life so too have men and it kind of defeats the whole purpose of the division of labor to have everybody trying to do all the things all by themselves. It doesn't make much more sense than trying to grow all your own food and sew all your own clothes and build your own house and weld together your own car if your best skills lie in the area of performing open-heart surgery. A lot of things fall through the cracks when there isn't a clear division of who's responsible for what based on who does what best. "Housewife" should not be a derogatory term and it wasn't men who turned it into one. (Not trying to impinge on JATNAS' turf here, but I'm just noting the way society has changed.)

[Zeb]

The literal original meaning of "economics" is basically running a household. The whole idea of economics that we have now is just extending that idea to the broader economy.

[Free Society]

The scientific way to train white people to stop being racist

We've taught similar anti-oppression trainings at Dev Bootcamp, where we worked as in-house psychotherapists and emotional intelligence educators, and we've struggled with similar challenges. In our experience, when introducing the concept of race and oppression, the first defense is usually a diversion led by the students to the topic of the oppression of red-headed people, the overweight, the disabled, or their own immigrant heritages. We aim to explain to the group how although these experiences, while indeed oppressive, are not comparable to the centuries of enslavement, race-based legislation, systematic incarceration, and unequal wealth distribution that is racism in the United States.

So, while it's not your fault that you were born white, and benefit from white privilege, it is your obligation and responsibility to develop awareness of the ways in which you benefit. Whites can and should acknowledge the past and present of their own racial group?the people who look like you (whether you share a hereditary bloodline or not)?and acknowledge how racism preserves today without the need to call into question your own morality. [...] You are not outside unequal wealth distribution by race. No one is.

[Lee G]

So we've discussed "privilege", now what do you want us to do about it? That's the unaddressed portion of the article and the point at which his "not a moral judgement" argument falls apart.

[Drake]

Feel guilty and submit to the SJWs.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

"So, while it's not your fault that you were born white, and benefit from white privilege, it is your obligation and responsibility to develop awareness of the ways in which you benefit. Whites can and should acknowledge the past and present of their own racial group?the people who look like you (whether you share a hereditary bloodline or not)?and acknowledge how racism preserves today without the need to call into question your own morality. [...] You are not outside unequal wealth distribution by race. No one is."

This is so absurd that I almost think it's a parody. Regarding 'unequal wealth distribution by race' how does one explain the extraordinary success of African immigrants to the United States?

"Nigerian-Americans have a median household income well above the American average, and above the average of many white and Asian groups."

"According to Census data, more than 43% of African immigrants hold a bachelor's degree or higher?slightly more than immigrants from East Asia. Nigerian immigrants are especially educated, with almost two-thirds holding college degrees?a significantly higher percentage even than Chinese or South Korean immigrants. African immigrants are also very likely to hold advanced degrees, many of which are earned at US universities."

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

^^ I love this fact because it fucks up everyone's narratives. Racists have to deal with the fact that African immigrants make way more money than they do and progs have to deal with the fact that black immigrants do very well economically - which completely destroys the argument that modern America is a 'white supremacist' society.

[commodious spittoon]

"See? America is so institutionally racist, even when we have to let in foreigners we choose only the best. American immigration policy is responsible for brain drain out of developing nations."

[Notorious UGCC]

Good save.

[Zeb]

America was a white supremacist society for a long time. And I think that at least partially explains the disparities between African Americans and African immigrants when it comes to income. For a long time white supremacists did work hard to keep black culture fucked up and unproductive.

Now that is mostly over (though well intentioned welfare programs and other things help to perpetuate the problems). And the problem is not white privilege. Having your basic rights and individuality respected isn't privilege. It's how everyone should be treated.

[Krapulent Kristen]

Because the immigrants from Africa haven't been tainted by SJW culture yet.

[WTF]

Yes, they haven't learned to consider themselves helpless victims of white oppression who are not responsible for their own shortcomings.

[Irish ?s Lauren Southern]

It also helps that they're incredibly well educated, grew up in rich suburbs of Lagos instead of inner city Detroit, and come from families that value education.

I don't think SJWs are the primary problem when it comes to inner cities sucking when it comes to educational and economic outcomes. High crime, bad schools, parents who don't care, and cops who torture the residents are more relevant. It's just that none of these problems are caused by modern day white supremacy.

[WTF]

Some of those problems are however caused by the SJWs and their support for the Great Society bullshit which is at the root of many of these problems.

[Zeb]

Or, if not at the root of the problems, it is perpetuating the problems.

[John]

Whites can and should acknowledge the past and present of their own racial group?

Yeah, I have always thought that the biggest problem we have in this society is that white people don't talk enough about the past and the problems of racism in this country. I mean things like slavery and Jim Crow and racism are just never mentioned.

/sarc

[Drake]

Maybe we ought to teach reach medieval European history. My European ancestors were slaves, thralls, peons, serfs, and peasants. They were owned by Vikings, Romans, Moors, Ottomans, Feudal Lords, and each other. Their relatives were shipped off to Middle Eastern slave markets as recently as the 19th Century.

[John]

Or maybe teach actual African history. You know mention how slavery was endemic to Africa and how western powers just showed up and bought the slaves they needed from already existing slave markets.

[Free Society]

And teach how the Arabs, who were taking slaves in greater numbers from Africa for hundreds of years longer than Euroepeans, didn't have the moral wherewithal to not castrate and murder their slaves and their slave children to such an extent that there is no identifiable group of the descendants of African slaves still alive in the Middle East today.

[John]

You are just punching down. You big racist meanie.

[R C Dean]

Whites can and should acknowledge the past and present of their own racial group?

That would be the racial group that fought wars to end African slavery, outlawed slavery whenever they had the power to do so, and are currently the ethnic group that indulges the least in slavery in the modern era?

Noted.

[Free Society]

Not to mention the group whose societies have offered the most tolerance and prosperity for those outside of their group than any other societies in human history.

[Eternal Blue Sky]

"Privilege" is a fun topic in my mind.

Mainly because the people who talk about it emphasize the privilege one gets from race and gender, which are pretty low on the stack of privileges if one looks at them honestly.

The BIGGEST one, by FAR, is wealth. Nothing opens up more options to you, or gives you more privilege, then being wealthy.

The people who talk about privilege, though, usually NEVER talk about this type, since most of them are upper-middle-class.

For all the talk about how people need to recognize their privilege, they never acknowledge the degree wealth privilege plays, in that it is objectively the best privilege to have, because they all have some degree of it. It's an easier life for a rich, black, gay, transwoman than it is a poor white cishet man.

[Eternal Blue Sky]

Other things I think are atop the privilege charts are kind of nebulous. "Having nice clothing" is near the top, I think, as it is objectively easier to do things like get a cab if you are dressed right. "Being older" is near the top as well, as there is a HUGE amount of age-based profiling that society does, because younger people typically commit more crimes. "Not looking like a Muslim" and "not looking like a homosexual" are somewhere in the middle since some people give verbal or rarely physical abuse to people who look those ways, even if they are not of those classes, like Sikhs or straight metrosexuals. Race and gender are below those. Actually being non-Muslim and actually being LGBT are below race and gender, since the appearance of those is more important for evaluating this "privilege" thing than the actuality of them.

[kbolino]

There is a long-simmering war between the modern SJW types and the old school Marxists. Believe me, there is a sizable segment of the left that very much "gets" your point. And they see the people harping on about "white privilege" and "male privilege" as useful idiots to the bourgeoisie ("storm troopers for neoliberalism" I believe is the phrase).

Make no mistake, there are plenty of people who recognize "wealth privilege" and would gladly see wealth destroyed if given any power.

[Robert]

No, I think there's an enormous amount of guilt children feel for being well-off. They may not talk about it, though.

[Azathoth!!]

When the fuck do they take responsibility for themselves?

We tend to forget that they came to Europe as conquerors and stayed for over 700 years. BEFORE Europeans even really knew there WAS a sub-Saharan Africa.

Why the fuck do we have to pretend that the past of their "racial group" is any more spotless than anyone else's?

[Krapulent Kristen]

When I flew out of DCA on Christmas Eve (not my choice!!), I got to the airport 4 hours early, even though I had Pre Check. It would have taken the same amount of time had I driven to Greenville.

[R C Dean]

I fly a lot less than I would in the absence of TSA, no question.

[DEG]

Highest income tax in the developed world

Warning: auto-play video

Everybody moans about paying their taxes, but Belgians have more reason than most to complain.

Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows that Belgium has the highest income taxes in the developed world.

The average Belgian worker paid 42% of his salary back to the government in income tax and social security last year. That's actually down from 42.4% in 2014.

Back to the government? What fucking nonsense.

[Free Society]

Government is the rightful owner of everything and everyone, but through their gracious benevolence they allow us to keep some of it.

[Monty Crisco]

The problem is that even we here in the US have slowly and subtly been conditioned to - if not actively believe this - to accept this notion passively when asserted by some statist utopianist dipshit. Say, a NYT editorialist.

[ant1sthenes]

Well, I imagine it's literally true for quite a few Belgian workers.

[GILMORE?]

The Zika virus "seems to be a bit scarier than we initially thought," says Dr. Anne Schuchat, deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Translation = MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY

anytime there's a new 'superbug' panic, they get attention & cash.

When's the last time you heard them say, "Yeah... but this Bird Flu/Swine Flu/West Nile shit aint going anywhere, its totally manageable, and people get treatment WAY earlier in the US than they do anywhere else in the hemisphere... so.... no biggie really."

[Monty Crisco]

Rule #6 - all government agencies are underfunded and understaffed.

[DEG]

New Aussie $5 bill

The Reserve Bank of Australia unveiled a new $5 note on Tuesday, eliciting howls and complaints from social media users.

The reviews were decidedly harsh: "Visual vomit," said on Twitter user. "Monopoly money," said another.

"Visual vomit". I like that one.

[invisible furry hand]

Oh it's not that bad.

Although our notes are rather gorgeous, they went to hell when they took a convicted forger off the $10 note

[DEG]

A convicted forger is appropriate for a central bank note.

[Suthenboy]

They have a point. Australia should have taken a cue from Costa Rica.

[Swiss Servator]

What? I didn't see any horrific snakes, supremely venomous spiders, drop bears, carnivorous fish, sting rays, crocs or attack roos!

[DEG]

I saw a snake in Australia. I was walking on a trail to Collins Beach in Manly. I heard some movement in the foliage alongside the trail. I stopped short, and saw a snake sticking its head out of the foliage. It was looking right at me and not moving. I don't know enough about Aussie snakes to identify it. I gave it a wide berth as I walked past it. It didn't do anything except watch me. Not horrific at all.

[Citizen X]

If the snake saw you, you're already dead and just don't know it yet. I'm so sorry.

[Notorious UGCC]

No, the snake *didn't* see you, because you're dead, like [SPOILER ALERT] Bruce Willis in Sixth Sense.

[DEG]

Being dead might explain my shitty mood.

[R C Dean]

"Monopoly money," said another.

No, this is what state-issued monopoly money looks like:

http://www.moneyisnotimportant.....money-kind

[lap83]

"Zika virus seems to be a bit scarier than we initially thought"

Not scary enough to get out the DDT and get rid of those mosquitoes tomorrow. Mother Gaia would not like that. Plus that would be relatively quick and inexpensive. No good

[Zeb]

It shouldn't be ruled out, but I think some people oversell the benefits of DDT and the harms of the ban (which is not total for disease control).

[lap83]

Wiping malaria out of the USA is "overselling"? I'm not aware of any other grand claims, much less false ones

[Zeb]

I mean the benefits it would provide today relative to other available pesticides. Of course it was used effectively in the past. But it has the same problems of developing resistance as other pesticides.

Don't get me wrong, I think it should be used if it is the most effective thing to control a disease vector. But I think a lot of people see it as some magic bullet and if only the bad enviros would let us use it, everything would be great.

What I'd really like to see is some serious trials with those GMO mosquitoes that interrupt the reproductive cycles.

[Mindyourbusiness]

Zeb,

See Ron Bailey's blog back on 4/8 and my comment above. The environuts started screaming and got the FDA to back off testing.

[lap83]

Wiping malaria out of the USA is "overselling"? I'm not aware of any other grand claims, much less false ones

[lap83]

Damn squirrels.

[Mike Laursen]

re: "TSA is our No. 1 problem right now, and it's only going to get worse."

Terrorists don't even have to get through screening and get on a plane anymore. They could kill and maim scores of people just by setting off a bomb in a crowded TSA line.

[sofiyathomas1147]

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[straffinrun]

Cuber Menche.

[PBR Streetgang]

Dammit!

[Rhywun]

Seems like every bathroom will require this the way we're going. Stimulus!

[Certified Public Asshat]

Do people actually enjoy bathroom attendants? Why are they still a thing?

[Rich]

Excellent choice.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

He certainly gave it the ol' college try, though, didn't he?

[Rhywun]

I hate that shit. Just another way to suck more money out of me. It's on par with tip jars at food trucks.

[Jerryskids]

That's why I always bring my own personal craupiere with me when I dine out. His name's Jean, of course.