Policing in Baltimore 'Explicitly Discriminatory,' Soylent Goes Caffeinated, Shots in Ferguson After Protester Hit by Car: A.M. Links

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Soylent.com A U.S. Justice Department probe of policing in Baltimore finds black residents are more likely to be subject to unlawful stops and searches and more likely to be victims of excessive police force than white residents are. It also found that Baltimore police "supervisors have issued explicitly discriminatory orders, such as directing a shift to arrest 'all the black hoodies' in a neighborhood."
- A protester in Ferguson, Missouri, was hit by a car Tuesday night, leading to gunfire from fellow protesters trying to stop the car from fleeing. Ferguson police spokesman Jeff Small said the driver's actions did not appear to have been intentional, and no one was hurt by the gunfire.
- The folks behind everyone's favorite creepy-survivalist-Slimfast, Soylent, are now offering the beverage in caffeinated form; the new drink also contains the nootropic L-theanine.
- How the U.S. Navy and Marines are preparing to accept transgender recruits.
- CRISPR isn't the only way to edit a genome.
- Oklahoma state Sen. Kay Floyd (D-Oklahoma County) is pushing the state to conduct a study on the "monetary and nonmonetary ramifications of filing unconstitutional legislation."
- "Why those headlines about Ivanka Trump's maternity leave policies are bullshit."
- For a Harvard Medical School graduate, why is Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein so opposed to science?
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CRISPR isn't the only way to edit a genome.,/i>
Microwave oven with the door open?
HOW EMBARRASSING FOR YOU
REAL LIFE.
WE HEARD YOU.
But did you listen?
Hello.
D00d.
Buon Giorno, Rufus.
Fisty, what is it with you and html tags, recently?
I'm trying to start a thing, like when the kids purposely mistype the as "teh" as a way of showing they don't give a fuck.
Edgy. I like it.
kek
Haste is the mother of error.
LIKE YOU COMMENTING BEFORE KNOWING ALL THE FACTS.
You say bug, I say feature.
CRISPR isn't the only way to edit a genome.
Can I 3D-print a gene, yet?
I think they've had that technology for a while.
You wouldn't download a gene!
You wouldn't?
*quietly stops trying to shove USB cable into arm*
I'm pretty sure this morning's download contained genetic material.
Ferguson police spokesman Jeff Small said the driver's actions did not appear to have been intentional, and no one was hurt by the gunfire.
How lame Ferguson has become!
Al Bundy strongly disagrees.
From the Deep Cuts comment collection.
I guess you can add poor Seth Rich to the democratic party's endlessly growing list of assassination victims!
You can call me naive but I honestly just think Assange is trolling at this point. Also at this point it doesn't appear that there was anything in the DNC emails worth killing anybody over. But it is an interesting claim none the less and will get less coverage than the actual content of the emails did.
If this guy is the DNC leak and if he is mysteriously shot in the street a couple weeks after the leak, that is interesting to say the least.
Not to the media. Not even worth mentioning.
TRUMP'S HAIR IS LOCKED AND LOADED.
-MSM
TRUMP'S HAIR IS LOCKED AND LOADED
YUUUGE CALIBER ASSAULT WEAPON
Even seen a gangster movie? Organized criminals have never needed a great reason to bump someone off.
They do it largely to intimidate, to send a message, and because they can.
Also at this point it doesn't appear that there was anything in the DNC emails worth killing anybody over.
We haven't seen them all yet. Somebody playing this game well would be holding back the worst ones.
*Alleged* assassination victims, thank you very much!
Animal rights activists are lobbying to change the name of a bay named after Bacon and Eggs to a more vegan-friendly alternative.
PETA Australia have written to Tasmania's Huon Valley Council calling for the Eggs and Bacon Bay to be renamed as Apple and Cherry Bay because it encourages poor dietary choices.
Come to think of it, the name "PETA" encourages people to eat pets.
There is a pet boarding/grooming place near my office called Pet Galley.
"You exist to serve this ship Therefore, row well...and live."
*Woof*
"RAMMING SPEED!"
'...meow'
I'm assuming "eggs and bacon" is a euphemism.
Or Cockney rhyming slang.
Want to come up for coffee and breakfast?
Right. I think they should rename it Twig and Berries Bay. Everybody wins!
Oh, well played. I hope they do this.
Or, perhaps, "Bay McBayface".
Should reflect indigenous cuisine.
Dirt Dingo Bay.
The folks behind everyone's favorite creepy-survivalist-Slimfast, Soylent, are now offering the beverage in caffeinated form...
Soylent green is jittery, gassy people!
Why is a Harvard Law School graduate and Constitutional Law professor is so opposed to the Constitution?
Because Obama knows his enemy?
Why is a businessman so opposed to business?
Why is a lawyer so opposed to following the law?
Why is the Judge asking so many questions?
Oklahoma state Sen. Kay Floyd (D-Oklahoma County) is pushing the state to conduct a study on the "monetary and nonmonetary ramifications of filing unconstitutional legislation."
Cheapest alternative would seem to be to never rule anything unconstitutional. Try to argue with that, budget hawks!
You have to pass it before the courts decide what's in it!
You know what else you have to pass to find out what's in it?
I'm still waiting for the morning's "blessed event," thanks.
*narrows gaze*
Are you having a brown baby?
*reports self to racist re-education camp*
I prefer "bend a fresh biscuit."
"Dropping the kids off at the pool"
Giving birth to a Hillary supporter.
God, that's why there are so many of them.
"Here I sit with butt cheeks flexin', givin' birth to another Texan"
/Oklahoman graffiti
"Making a lieutenant."
That minivan up ahead?
Old people, Mexicans (Old Mexican?), stay at home mom...
*stands to applaud*
Ha. Good one, Rich.
Not supposed to judge this, but kudos for not loafing your answer.
A U.S. Justice Department probe of policing in Baltimore finds black residents are more likely to be subject to unlawful stops...
Does the report say anything about how the law breakers perpetrating those stops should be dealt with?
Placed into a large sack with a civet cat, and then thrown into a river?
Good waste of a civet.
I like my coffee exotic.
There are serious privacy concerns about this year's census in Australia because it will be connecting census answers with other information via a linkage key. So what happens this year? DDoS attacks which crashed the servers on census night. Coincidence?
The Bureau's chief, David Kalisch, said people were more likely to tell the truth if they had to provide their names.
*And* the names of their loved ones, right? RIGHT?!
Here's the thing about Baltimore, though. It has a majority black police force, black police chief, black mayor, and majority black city council. It has for a long time. I don't deny the blatant discrimination, but what the hell are evil white Republican racists supposed to do about it?
It's all due to internalized racism caused by white supremacist libertarians?
Accept responsibility. Duh.
^THIS^
Baltimore is at the mercy of those evil white Republican racists. Someone on Facederp said so and got several likes, so it must be true.
An argument I've read is that "well, there must be a white man somewhere up there, so ... racism."
Which is part of why I say white privilege is un-falsifiable.
I read an article saying so, and the commentators pointed out that it was BS. The authors response was argument by assertion and "Na-Na-Na I can't hear you".
I can't find the article, sorry.
No, here's the thing about Baltimore. Baltimore has good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods. The good neighborhoods pay high taxes and subsidize the bad neighborhoods, and city council and police leadership know it. Therefore, because the police are people who are responding to incentives. the difference in policing is stark, so when somebody get's mugged and their cell phone stolen in the affluent white neighborhood of Roland Park, the police department goes absolutely ape-shit to respond to the community concerns, whereas they basically yawn when somebody get's murdered in West Baltimore. Because of all this, the police end up treating people in the good neighborhoods like customers while they treat people in the bad neighborhoods like cattle, who need to be contained and kept out of the good neighborhoods, and there ends up being a big division in treatment by the police that falls largely (but not entirely!) along racial lines.
That's a really long winded way of saying it's not so much about race as it is about class. Class divisions and racial divisions are similar but not exact. Baltimore city government lives in absolute fear of middle and upper class flight to the suburbs. Anyways, they need to just merge the city and the county and be done with it.
what the hell are evil white Republican racists supposed to do about it?
Win a few elections so they can be properly blamed?
"The gender identity of an otherwise qualified individual will not bar them from joining the Navy or Marine Corps"
"Xi, yes, Xi!"
::golf clap::
*drops and begins push ups*
The anti-von Trapps?
But fences don't work?
They do in a pass in the Alps. They don't covering a thousands mile long border.
Penn and Teller have covered this extensively.
The hills are alive with the sound of muslims?
+1 ululation
Military will still have binary genders, just a process from to go from one to the other now.
Midwife given suspended jail sentence after nearly starving her baby to death
It was later discovered the mother, 33, who is also a maternity ward nurse, was practising a raw food diet and fasting which almost caused her breastfeeding baby to starve to death.
But she had only decided to go on the strict diet allegedly on the advice of Leppington naturopath Marilyn Bodnar, 60.
Lol
Did she at least lose her licence? SLDs about licences, but since they exist...
I'm glad they suspended the sentence. Starving your child because of your insane dietary beliefs is crazy, but locking her in a cage isn't going to make any of that better.
It would ensure that she couldn't do that again, and it sends a message to the other whackos that abuse is indeed a crime.
It sounds like the completely accidental and hard to detect abuse, though. She was feeding her baby. She was unaware that her diet meant her baby wasn't getting enough nutrition from her breastmilk.
If she were some random hippie chick, perhaps she wouldn't know. But this woman was a nurse, specifically an OB/GYN nurse with additional midwife training. One expects that sort of person to know about the proper care of infants.
Her baby boy had been vomiting for up to a week, had sunken eyes and was hardly moving when a mother finally decided to take him to a Sydney hospital.
Doesn't take long for them to become dehydrated and malnourished at that age (8 months). This woman was clearly negligent even by the standards of laypeople, grossly negligent by the standard of a practicing medical professional. Hell, most moms would be camped out in the ER after the first day of vomiting.
It sounds like the completely accidental
No, pretty sure that diet wasn't accidental. And, given her profession, its not unreasonable to say she should have known it would be bad for her baby.
Plus, of course, starving babies generally let you know they are starving, so there's that.
I use L-Theanine to help stop "gerbil brain" when I'm trying to get to sleep. What the Hell, Soylent?
stop "gerbil brain"
These euphemisms are getting out of hand too much ....
+1 Richard Gere or whoever that was who supposedly something something
It's probably in there to offset the caffeine induced "gerbil brain".
I'd think L-Tyrosine would be better for that. Whatevs.
Whisky.
Oklahoma state Sen. Kay Floyd (D-Oklahoma County) is pushing the state to conduct a study on the "monetary and nonmonetary ramifications of filing unconstitutional legislation."
How can you put a price on oath-violating good intentions?
Octogenarian accused of drugging and robbing pensioners she met through lonely hearts ads
Clever. Probably sold the jewelry that was allegedly stolen too.
Paging Oscar Wilde...please call your agent.
Better reopen Jack's case. Not Rose's first theft.
+1 Arsenic and Old Lace
How the U.S. Navy and Marines are preparing to accept transgender recruits.
"We responded in true Marine Corps fashion. We salute, do an about face, double time back to the boom-boom garbage dump where we get the clap, and the drip, and the crabs and a generally poor attitude towards the female of the species."
Nice.
Looks like the taxpayer will get the bill for "transition"
(2) The Military Health System will be required to provide transgender Sailors and Marines all medically necessary care related to gender transition, based on the guidance that is issued.
http://cdrsalamander.blogspot......ecnav.html
So, that's a lot of downtime for surgery, recovery and counseling and even more time on restricted duties. That's a significant chunk of time out of a two-year hitch. Basically if you can pass the initial physical you get a free pass and lots of surgery, and earn the resentment of your fellow servicepeople who are there to learn a useful skill or save for college. This just turned the US military into a social justice policy fulfillment org.
Plus their fellow service people are having to do the job that the trans is not doing. Yeah, extra hours and days of work without pay or other compensation.
+1 fragged tranny
I can only hope Clint becomes the first human to live for a thousand years...
Florida Cop Kills Woman In Training Exercise to Show Police Restraint
Dammit. I was about to post this.
Can you say Negligent Homicide?
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha!
Yeah right.
And nothing else happened.
Officers chose Knowlton to role-play a lethal force scenario
"We strive for the utmost realism in our training."
I nominate that woman named for the famous mountain climber to role-play.
That'll teach her to cooperate with the cops.
Police judgement was in fact demonstrated.
Exactly.
intended to demonstrate police judgement in pulling the trigger
Well, I don't think you can make an argument that they weren't completely successful in doing that.
Ho do we know this wasn't a justified shooting? She might have barked and put the officer in fear of his life
Why the fuck was there even a loaded weapon during a training exercise?
Because the average cop is a drooling fuckwit?
Oh, it's easy to sit there playing armchair quarterback while they are putting their lives on the line!
How dare you second guess their split-hour decisions!!!
"split-hour decisions"
*prepares trophy and garlands for tarran*
/Instructs his orphan slaves to follow him around the room repeating, "Remember. You are mortal."
That hero went home safe. That's all that matters.
They were supposed to be loaded with blanks according to the article.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....rcise.html
I figure the only punishment the guy will face will be for failure to follow policy. And that is only if there is something in the union contract that says they must use blanks for these exercises. Otherwise nothing else will happen.
Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to load the gun with ANYTHING? Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to use a real gun in the first place?
Aren't those against, like, the most basic rules of using a gun? Always assume the gun is loaded and never point the gun at anything you don't want to destroy?
In the military, we used blank firing adaptors on the barrels. If tried to fire live ammo, you would blow your own stupid hand and face off.
Well, that would mean the officer didn't go home safe, wouldn't it?
Once again, we say that a dead serf is preferable to a wounded cop.
Radio newscasts characterized the cop as "devastated" and the police chief is "saddened". Don't forget the real victims in all of this, not the furtively moving librarian, not her family, but our heroes in blue.
They are the only ones that matter. After all, they serve the public. And the public is everyone except any individual. So she doesn't matter. She's just an individual.
A lot of LEO orgs require the use of a "red gun" in these scenarios - a red plastic model of a gun with no moving parts.
Correct. In training for the Canadian RPAL, only simguns were used during the lectures. I find the use of a real sidearm in this situation to be totally unfathomable.
Had to look that up. That's the training for a pistol license in Canada and appears to be conducted by the Mounties.
To be pedantic, sidearm and/or other restricted weapon. And anyone can do the training ? it's offered under the auspices of the RCMP, but my trainer was a CBSA agent, and one of the most libertarian guys I've ever met in this country.
It just had to be Florida, didn't it?
More training is needed, obviously.
Hendersonville, Tennessee: Father Told Police He Fatally Shot Daughter, 11, After She Scared Him, Records Say
If only he'd thought to declare it a training scenario.
"Sir, that defense is only available to our heroes in blue*
"Well, Officer, I was wearing my blue Three Wolves Moon T-shirt, is that not enough?"
He told police he shot her when she "yelled and scared him,"
Dumbass should have said he was engaged in a training scenario demonstrating the proper use of lethal force when he shot her.
Dumbass should refresh before posting his "witticisms".
Should have put his cop costume on first.
The totality of the circs.
Let the record show that this did NOT happen in Florida.
Why Lots of Millennials Will Never Be Homeowners
It's kind of tough to buy your own home when you don't have a job!
It's not quite like it was ten years ago when they were signing off on a mortgage for any schmuck with two nickels to rub together.
Don't worry, they're working on it.
They don't seem to want to get a driver's permit let alone own a home!
A driver's permit? Go back to CANADA.
Already there. Beauty of the Internet, and all that...
Don't worry, they can inherit a house or, like my millennial co-worker, buy the house that he grew up from his parents.
Of course he was suckered into getting a house with a shot foundation - thanks, dad!
Please Stop Shaming Bernie Sanders for Buying a House
It is true that Bernie Sanders, a former presidential candidate, is a public figure. However, he is also a 74 year old man whose real estate decisions need not be evaluated on the basis of his campaign platform.
"To me, democratic socialism means democracy. It means creating a government that represents all of us, not just the wealthiest people in the country," Sanders said at a fall debate.
Sanders' campaign platform focused on income inequality via regulating big banks, reforming campaign finance, and making healthcare and college more affordable. These jabs use a misapplied pop-cultural caricature of socialism to portray Sanders as hypocritical, but miss the point that his democratic socialism never called for "taking people's stuff," or preventing people from doing well enough to buy houses.
Sanders wanted to change the system that leaves regular people mired in debt when financial institutions crash the economy, and he hoped to eradicate the burden of student loans that prevents many young people from buying homes.
We all misunderstood his message it seems.
"Stop expecting us to live by the rules we expect others to follow."
^THIS. 🙂
I don't know what's worse: Bernie's hypocrisy or his followers' gullibility.
There are much better things to shame Bernie for than his expensive vacation home.
Like his economically ignorant and destructive positions.
Like his ignorant and socially destructive political positions.
Like his support for dictators and dictatorships.
The house is just icing on the cake. Clearly this self-absorbed twat defending him can't see the cake for the icing.
While that may be true, Shirl, this is a hugely tangible issue.
However, he is also a 74 year old man whose real estate decisions need not be evaluated on the basis of his campaign platform.
"However, he is also a sac of compounds whose chemical interactions need not be evaluated on the basis of his campaign platform."
If we would get rid of the home mortgage deduction and stopped suppressing the interest rates to screw anyone who saved money, it wouldn't matter. But we can't have that.
his democratic socialism never called for "taking people's stuff"
Bullshit.
Ahem. I daresay he never used that exact expression.
At the very least, he didn't want people taking his cool stuff.
As a life-long public employee, wasn't he "taking people's stuff" in the form of taxes to pay for his houses?
That is, if the money didn't come from the Clinton Global Initiative.
Taxes are totally voluntary. If you don't like them, you can move.
/arguments I've actually been told.
Bernie knows progressive policies lead to lots more people buying $600k homes. Just look at San Francisco where the average home-owner lives in a house worth twice that. And when they're done, we'll all be so rich we'll be buying thousand-dollar loaves of bread. Don't ask what meat's gonna cost. (Hint: "An arm and a leg" won't be just a figure of speech.)
Isn't this his third house, as well?
Yes.
Regarding the Harvard article taking Stein down. I didn't realize just how much of a quack she is.
Anyway, allow me to single out a sentence in the article:
"...Liberals deserve better than Jill Stein."
No, they don't.
Well, actual classical liberals do; progs and watermelons not so much.
As migrants pile up at Swiss-Italian border, Amnesty warns children at risk
They were just being protected from Roman Polanski.
ZING!
I am sure the Swiss are trembling at AI's "concern about reports".
Ah...the children.
And these children who were not with family. Were they by any chance thirty year old males claiming to be seventeen year old males?
The conditions of John Hinckley Jr.'s full-time release from a psychiatric hospital after a three-decade long commitment are a laundry list of dos and don'ts meant to help him assimilate into society ? he can't own a gun, he must work or volunteer three days a week, and he can't have any overnight guests while staying alone at his mother's home in Williamsburg, Virginia. But one privilege that won't be curtailed any longer is his right to vote ? meaning that come November, the only living man to have shot a U.S. president could register to be among the millions of Americans eligible to cast a ballot in the presidential election.
Why, he could even write in Seddique Mir Mateen!
Not as long as Jodie Foster is eligible for the job
I'm impressed!
I feel bad for Jodi. You get famous playing a teenage hooker and then some creepy guy falls in love with you and shoots the President to impress you, all before you were 20 years old. No wonder she went gay. After that, I can understand why she didn't find men very appealing.
You get famous playing a teenage hooker and then some creepy guy falls in love with you
Maybe he didn't understand why a movie called "Freaky Friday" wasn't playing at the downtown whack-off theater.
I believe he was stalking her and slipping love notes under her door at Yale. He would have been the subject of like three Soave articles if he tried that shit now.
If it happened today, maybe he would have shot the diversity officer sent to investigate her complaints rather than the President.
Vietnam moves new rocket launchers into disputed South China Sea - sources
For a Harvard Medical School graduate, why is Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein so opposed to science?
The linked HuffPo column attacks Stein for not saying that all vaccines are totally safe. The writer is "anti-science".
The other day I was drinking gin 'n' tonics at my favorite dive watering hole - also one of the nation's top dispenser of Pabst Blue Ribbon - and saw that the tv show Inside Edition had a segment on the *Trump kicking the baby out of hall.
That, and the current huzzah about the "assassination" calls makes me realize that the media is 97% in the tank for Hillary. Almost coordinated to the point of tinfoil hat territory.
Were past elections - say 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000 - like this? I know W seemed to have changed the balance the other way, turning journalists into a wild pack of shit-slinging monkeys.
Back then, the Repubs would paint their opponent as tax-raising liberals, nay near communists - and have a good chance of getting their candidate elected. But now, with the age of Obama, it seems that the media doesn't even bother to be evenhanded, or even pretend to be.
I know the MSM respectability / confidence is in the shitter - what 20% approval? - but they still manage to drive the narrative. Why?
* note: not a Trump voter, I'm opting out this year; just commenting on what I'm seeing as flagrant bias.
The vast majority of people don't vet their news sources.
I thought the Obama's primary run, presidential elections and subsequent presidencies and was a watermark in dishonest reporting. I was wrong. Trump is getting the Palin treatment x5 and I wouldn't have a problem with that because all politicians deserve to have the Palin treatment x5, I just wish all politicians got the Palin treatment x5 instead of just the ones on the red team. I honestly don't think it would matter who the Republican candidate would have been the coverage would have been just this bad, from the usual suspects, simply because Clinton is the least charismatic presidential candidate probably ever. It's just a testament to how far the press is willing to go to get a D elected. the real difference between now and the Romney, McCain and Bush elections is that the establishment Republicans hate Trump as much as the Democrats, so it's open season as noone in the establishment press is even willing to run interference for Trump which wasn't always the case previously.
the establishment Republicans hate Trump as much as the Democrats, so it's open season as noone in the establishment press is even willing to run interference for Trump which wasn't always the case previously.
Ah - good point. Reading the NRO Team twitter feed certainly adds weights to that argument.
The #NeverTrumpers may get what they want - President Hillary Clinton. I wish them the joy of it.
The so-called "mainstream media", or the scum in the JournoList, have been dishonest shit-flinging leftard monkeys for as long as I can remember in my lifetime.
They desperately tried to portray Ronald Reagan as a dangerous lunatic who would bring about World War III and the nuclear armageddon. I think some of them even seriously believed this bullcrap. Then the debates happened, and most normal people went "Are you fucking kidding me? He's nothing like what you're saying."
The bad news though is that decades of a deliberately dumbed-down public education system and America being turned into a dumping ground are finally having the desired effect that the Alinsky left have been seeking for almost a century. We're getting dumber by the day, and it's showing in the results.
Cloward-Piven for the win!
I was - oh, blissful days - not into politics at all in the 80s and early 90s.
^^^^This
I'm assuming the average voter doesn't really pay much attention to the campaign news, only occasionally catches bits and pieces of the media stories second- or third-hand from neighbors or friends or co-workers. They know "Benghazi" means something, but couldn't give you a coherent explanation beyond "scandal" or "fake scandal" depending on their pre-dispositions.
It's always been this way, but with the internet now you've got dozens of information sources and different angles on any given story rather than just the one all the major sources have agreed is the narrative and the alternative-press one you have to dig to find so it's only now obvious that the major-source narrative you've always been told is "the truth" is only one point of view. We all trusted Walter Cronkite not because he was the most believable of sources but because he was the only source. And only about ten percent of us actually watched or listened to the news or read a newspaper.
My wife leaves the car radio tuned to NPR constantly to the point that I don't ever bother changing it anymore. Yesterday they had Trump's "2nd Amendment people" comments on heavy rotation. Naturally everyone was completely aghast and were flailing and sputtering on about how horrifying it is and how quickly Clinton's campaign was to denounce him. This led me to realize Trump's genius. He seems to be completely aware of everything you've described about the contemporary media, but instead of trying to mind his Ps and Qs like every other failed Republican candidate he's playing ball and exploiting the fuck out of it to his advantage. When Donald Trump opens his mouth, he talks about Donald Trump. When Hillary open's her mouth, she talks about...Donald Trump. I believe that the advertising buzzword for this is "mindshare", and Clinton and her media lapdogs are delivering it to Trump by the truckload.
And yet his brilliant jujitsu-like approach has him....trailing in the polls by huge margins. Hmmm...maybe it's not so brilliant after all.
It's a death spiral.
Because of the internet, the media doesn't have a monopoly on the "objective truth". They cannot sway voters like they used to.
Because Trump is an expert troll, most of what the media threw at him ended up bolstering his campaign.
The media is becoming aware that they aren't as much of an influence on people's opinions, and they are locked into a panic-mode trying desperately to show that they have ~influence~ by not even putting forth the illusion of objectivity.
It's a tantrum as they fall from their position of power, in a desperate bid to cling to whatever power they can hold on to.
I only recently realized I only know a couple of people who vote or have any interest in politics. Back during the primary debates, my niece asked me who all these people were running for President and I had to explain the primary system to her, that they weren't actually running for President but just the party nomination to run for President. Whereupon she asked me if Obama was a Democrat or a Republican and if he was running for re-election again.
Now, my niece is 40 years old and she's a nurse, she's not a retarded 8-year old, and that's what I think of as the average American. You think all this stuff you and I pay attention to are the same things the average American is paying attention to? Think again.
(My niece also would draw a blank on a word-association test if you gave her "NFC", "Robert Heinlein", "Vichy French", "atomic number", "Marbury v. Madison", "Yellowstone caldera", and a whole host of things we all take for granted everybody has at least heard of. I suspect about half of all people know less than the average person thinks the average person knows.)
That's a comforting thought, really. More people should be divested from politics as a passion, let alone a profession. Maybe the lunatics aren't running the asylum after all.
Were past elections - say 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000 - like this?
My $0.02
note: My first vote was 1992.
Reagan: portrayed as an idiot actor, and he hates poor people.
HW bush, Dole. I don't recall.
GWB: portrayed as an idiot.
McCain was the "Senate Maverick" until he ran for POTUS. Then he was an out of touch rich guy, a racist, and right wing extremist.
Romney was the respected "Massachusetts Moderate" until he ran for POTUS. Then he was an out of touch rich guy who wanted to put black people in chains and rape binders full of women.
Dole was portraying like McCain was, an out of touch, cranky old man. To be fair, that's pretty much what he was.
The way Mitt Romney morphed overnight in the media from a milquetoast northeastern moderate Republican to the Massachusetts version of David Duke was ludicrous. It's even more ludicrous when you now read columnists lamenting that the GOP is now full of crazies instead of sane, sober statesmen like.....Romney. It's the same technique when they go on and on about how Reagan would be an outcast in the GOP now. That would be the same Ronald Reagan who was accused of being a dangerous, warmongering simpleton who had the CIA distributing crack in the ghetto to destroy black communities.
Eisenhower was also portrayed as an out-of-touch, clueless old man once he came out as a Republican. Now liberal historians are revising the conventional wisdom that their predecessors established and admitting that he was a lot more cagey and a better President than people realized, never acknowledging that their fellow Democrats were the ones who set that narrative in the first place out of sheer sour grapes.
And what happens if the GOP base nominates someone in 2020 even more off the reservation than Trump? These same pearl-clutchers lamenting how extreme Trump is now are going to write the same chin-stroking "think" pieces saying that as bad as Trump was, he was a lot saner than this guy!
Perhaps if the MSM wasn't so obviously in the tank for the Democrats this wouldn't be as obnoxious, but they've been playing this same song and dance since at least 1952, if not longer.
It's the same with Goldwater.
I see prog memes quoting him once in a while. Of course in 1964, he was a "racist who'll start WWIII"
The libs and the MSM (sorry for the redundancy) are getting desperate. So the narrative gets scarier and scarier.
Same thing they're doing with climate change.
I'll elaborate.
1996. I don't recall Dole getting attacked. It may have been that no one saw him as a serious threat to Clinton's re-election.
2000. GWB was not only portrayed as an idiot. He was portrayed as an anti-intellectual, draft dodging, christian fundie who hated mother earth. Gore was a super cereal,earnest defender of Gaia and was 20x times smarter than Bush. (even though they both got C's in college)
But yes, I think it's gotten worse since 2008
Much of the media sold out so completely to get Obama elected and re-elected that they can't go back now. They have to believe their own lies, so they do. I don't see any going back.
The Repubs and their donors have played it stupidly, as well. They've blown tens of millions or more fighting the last war, when they should have been buying up media outlets. Fox News gave them the template to break the DemOp oligopoly, and they ignored it. They're just reaping what they have sown.
CRISPR isn't the only way to edit a genome.
It's a bit of a crapshoot but you can try fucking.
What's the libertarian position on B.O.? The air on this train is a tragedy of the commons.
It is an aggression and can be met with deadly force
Almost All Lice Are Now Treatment-Resistant
But enough about the election.
Time to bring back kerosene. They can't really develop resistance to that as it coats their bodies and makes it impossible for them to absorb oxygen from the atmosphere which they do through their skin (no lungs). An equivalent vegetable-derived oil would probably work.
kerosene is very thin, though. I mean, you can make kerosene out of bio-oil, sure. But its cheap. And probably not a significant risk to increase later cancer except in the state of California.
LA cops get into shootout with carjacking suspect, suspect escapes, cops find unarmed, mentally ill man, kill him instead.
Needs moar training!
"Knowing what we know now, do we wish it hadn't happened? It speaks for itself," said Capt. Steven Katz
Hillary-worthy statement, Steve.
It is kind of curious that he never actually answers the question.
It spoke for itself.
The incident is one of three in which deputies have shot unarmed men in the last two weeks.
War. On. Cops.
Shit must be hard out there if people are getting into shootouts over HONDA CIVICS
That's the wrong question. She's the Green Party nominee, so you should know that she "fucking loves science".
Like other environmentalists, she only opposes the development of commercial technologies by capitalists. Capitalists abuse science to develop such technologies to exploit the working class and children. Green Party members understand that such technologies alienate working class men and women and children not only from their work but also from their natural environment. The Green Party exists to restore full autonomy to the working class and harmony with the environment.
The relevant question should be regarding why Huffington Post is bashing a Green Party fellow traveller. Obviously, they're concerned that Jill Stein might draw away too many Bernistas from Clinton.
You have to understand there are those who like and support science and believe in things like risk trade offs and cost benefit analysis and understand that scientists can be guilty of confirmation bias just like the rest of us and that good science is hard to do. Then there are people WHO FUCKING LOVE SCIENCE. They are kind of like the drunken guys who grope unsuspecting women on club dance floors only they grope science, because THEY FUCKING LOVE IT SO MUCH.
The Green Party "fucking loves science" because it can be twisted to bash capitalism and advocate Marxism.
The 20th Century is replete with examples of Marxism's failure to deliver material benefits to the working class. So the argument for Marxism had to change. Marxists used to argue that "scientific history" demonstrated that the working class would establish communism in the interest of its material well being. The watermelons now argue that Marxism is "scientifically" necessary to save the planet. The universal poverty that results when Marxism is applied (e.g., Venezuela) is not a bug; it's a feature.
Yes. The best thing Ayn Rand ever wrote were her essays explains the left's shift from materialism to what can best be called irrational romanticism after World War II. When it became apparent that communist economies could never provide the material well being that capitalist ones could, Marxism decided that if the only way for everyone to have shoes was through capitalism, then history must dictate that no one have shoes and having shoes is bad.
That's a really good parody of green thought, Cato.
Poll shows Trump gaining on Clinton
*gallic shrug*
Trump is trying to bash her head through that glass ceiling.
LOL.
I think most Jill Stein voters are going to panic when they get in the booth and vote for Clinton. So I would expect the actual lead is more 49% to 44%, with the remainder going 6% to Johnson and 1% to Stein.
I don't think so. Some will but probably just as many Republicans who support Johnson will panic over the prospect of Hillary and vote Trump. I think it is likely a wash. You can't under estimate how much the real left hates Hillary. And a lot of them secretly agree with Trump on trade and immigration. Remember, the left hates the trade deals as much as the Trump right does. And though the party line is "open borders" a lot of them don't agree, because they are either hard core greens who want to shrink the population or they are union hacks or activists for the black community. So I don't think that many of them are going to panic and vote for Hillary. They are not going to vote for Trump, but they will vote for Stien.
Is there really any point in worrying about what the polls say until after the first couple of debates? Short of a game-changing October surprise or a Perot-like meltdown, most people are going to have their minds made up by then and the polls actually become more predictive.
There's plenty of time still for Trump to close whatever gap actually exists, and if I'm him, I'd be demanding at least five or more debates singularly devoted to very specific policy questions--healthcare, trade, defense, etc.--simply because the more Hillary talks, the more people despise her.
Historically, a month after the convention ends, the polls predict who will win the vast majority of the time.
If I recall correctly, they begin to have some predictive power around March or April, but the increase isn't continuous (the conventions, particularly in between them, are not a very good time to make predictions based on polls).
I should have clarified that, after the first couple of debates, everything is pretty much set in stone as far as the winner/loser. Ford made a good comeback, for example, but it wasn't enough to overcome the huge gap that was already in place.
That article is misleading. Trump gained on Clinton in this one poll compared to the previous one taken in early June. However, since the DNC Clinton's lead over Trump in polling averages has clearly been expanding.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....-5491.html
No. That article shows the last poll taken show Clinton ahead by just four points, which is closer than the polls that were taken last week. It is not misleading at all.
I understand Cali, Trump is going to lose all 50 states to Hillary and get 25% of the vote tops. That metaphysical reality does not mean every single thing must support it. Reality varies sometimes. Outliers you know.
A U.S. Justice Department probe of policing in Baltimore finds black residents are more likely to be subject to unlawful stops and searches and more likely to be victims of excessive police force than white residents are
White folk live in Balimore these days?
Well, the Koreans are *relatively* white.
Sea World dolphin steals Ipad from tourist
"Now that I got it, how do I @#$% TYPE ON THIS?!"
+1 The sound of a wet flipper slapping on glass
Sexy.
What possible porpoise could an iPad serve?!
Evolve?
How goes the life in Uncle Sam's Big Green Machine?
I didn't have to run this morning because of the ash in the air from the fire in Big Sur. Which is why I'm posting now.
Classes are going well, my GPA is good. The only hiccup is I flunked a tape test last week, so it's been lots of running lately. I started lifting weights again a few months ago and gained a few pounds from that. It's annoying that I can score higher on an APFT with a failing tape test than 4 months ago when I was below my max allowable weight.
No biggie. I had to lose 50 pounds to get this far and I'll be damned if I get kicked out for 8.
Glad things are going relatively well for you, Derpy. Cheers.
Always hated running. How do they feel about cycling?
Never liked it that much. I was big on the elliptical for a while.
What about a rowing machine or Jacob's Ladder?
Jacob's Ladder
Isn't that a piercing?
I *think* so, but it's also the name of a very effective cardio machine. It's basically a ladder angled at ~60? that you can climb forever. ... Or as long as your lungs hold out, anyway
So that's what those are. The gym I go to has like six of those alongside a couple high kicking machines, which is fine except there's only ever two people using them while the stationary bikes are full up. Maybe it's time to change my workout.
I am sure you can do it. Just lose the carbs and you will be fine.
Sounds like a great way to burn muscle during long cardio sessions.
+1 and smell like a litterbox afterward
flunked a tape test
Not long enough?
Its true, even our dolphins are assholes.
I think cetaceans use the term "blowholes."
The wife has an iPhone. I notice it only has one button. I just tell her to push it when she asks me what to do with it.
From when The Onion was funny: Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs
http://www.theonion.com/articl.....thumbs-284
College student in trouble for posting videos of gun-firing, flame-throwing drones
Serious question, do remote operated weapons platforms fall under the general prohibition against booby-trapping your property? I understand I can't rig my front door with a flashbang that counter detonates if the door in knocked open with the lock engaged, but can I have a drone turret in the front hallway if I am operating it remotely?
Not sure, but flamethrowers are legal in 48 states, or at least a certain model is.
Oh, oh:
"On July 8, 2016, 27 year-old Democratic staffer Seth Conrad Rich was murdered in Washington DC. The killer or killers took nothing from their victim, leaving behind his wallet, watch and phone.
Shortly after the killing, Redditors and social media users were pursuing a "lead" saying that Rich was en route to the FBI the morning of his murder, apparently intending to speak to special agents about an "ongoing court case" possibly involving the Clinton family.
Seth Rich's father Joel told reporters, "If it was a robbery ? it failed because he still has his watch, he still has his money ? he still has his credit cards, still had his phone so it was a wasted effort except we lost a life."
"...Julian Assange suggested on Tuesday that Seth Rich was a Wikileaks informant."
Oh, oh.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.co.....t-dead-dc/
That serial killer just happens to target Washington victims who are all in the Clinton's way. I think we call those people hitmen.
No one is being offed around Trump...but the media acts like that's happening!
Don't worry, this story will be swept under the rug...
speaking of - the killing of those Dallas police officers and the Nice truck attack seemed to have gone down the media memory hole.
Yeah didn't you hear? Baltimore with it's black police chief, black mayor, black city council and largely black population is a South Africa style apartheid state. Oh and Trump said something icky. THAT IS NEWS PEASANT.
Wikileaks offered a $20,000 reward for information on the murder of DNC staffer Seth [Rich]
, the money to be delivered on a pallet via an unmarked airplane.
*applause*
Let's just be clear: the murder took place after a scuffle. It doesn't strike me as unbelievable that his would-be mugger would flee from the scene without taking time to rifle through the poor sod's pockets.
Yeah, but Trump kicked a baby, and had 2nd Amenders shoot it in mid flight.
It was bad enough when he insulted the Pulse nightclub shooter's dad for speaking at the Democratic Convention.
Was there a deadbeat in the deceased's mouth?
* dead rat
Stupid auto correct .
You win!!!
+1 Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid Party
We're for the compulsory serving of asparagus at breakfast, free corsets for the under-5s and the abolition of slavery.
Mary Stack found a new playground!
Teenager invents super-absorbent polymer to help combat water shortages
That's pretty awesome.
What a nice thing to read in the midst of this electoral sh1t show.
Spot the Not: Wesley Clark
1. I like Hilary Clinton. I think she's - she's a fantastic leader.
2. I think that President Obama has the strongest record with veterans among any president in my lifetime.
3. Five-year-olds have an uncanny way of getting into your psyche, your self-esteem.
4. When Bill Clinton ran in '92, and I listened to him, and I had of course known of his record from Arkansas, I found him extraordinarily inspirational, and I voted Democratic.
5. Sometimes it's more important to consider others before yourself. It's what I'm expected to do.
6. Everybody in the military has a reputation, and usually it doesn't come out to the public.
#2...?
You will groan in agony and possibly narrow your gaze when you learn the truth.
Only 3 and 6. don't the word "I" in it. Not an answer, just noticing.
#4 is a much more complex statement than the others. It stands out. It's also not mindbogglingly stupid.
I can't believe anyone who uttered it would recklessly order an attack that could be the spark that ignited World War III.
Thus #4 is likely the not.
#6. The rest display the political toadying and lack of self-awareness that made Clark famous.
Ima say #6
Totally not disgraced former journalist Dan Rather takes Trump to task
No need to append the "former," journalism is disgraceful enough.
fight hyperbole with hyperbole!
OT: Enjoy
http://www.checkmyprivilege.com/
Your privilege level is SHITLORD with a score of 135
I'm a level 150 Shitlord. Suck it.
The same responses as an affluent black man rather than a poor white man gets a Privileged level of 55.
Sounds about right.
I always suspected I was a shitlord, but it's good to have documentation.
Damn!
"Your privilege level is SHITLORD with a score of 210"
I scored 110 BECAUSE I WAS HONEST ABOUT MY LOOKS.
I selected ugly face and still got 155. I'm so privileged that I don't even need to be attractive.
I'm hanging around Swiss Servator so I look oppressed by comparison
NOT FAIR. I need redistribution from you overprivileged mofos.
"Your privilege level is Advantaged with a score of 30"
Okay, I took it again and unchecked India and marked my country as only the USA.
Here's the updated score: I still need redistribution!
"Your privilege level is SHITLORD with a score of 130"
-40 Do I get a prize
No actual prize, but rest assured that you'll never have to pitch in if all the Hit and Runners go out for pizza.
Your privilege level is SHITLORD with a score of 170.
Fuck that, I scored 180!
I am a Shitlord God!
Huh?
What if you're between 30-45K/y, 65-100K/y, or 250-1000K/y?
And why is a million written 1,000,000/y and not 1000K/y?
Also, what about all of us between 250 and a million? I want to know my actual privilege so I know how many Hail Marys to say as a penance.
From when The Onion was funny: Marxist Apartment Microcosm of Why Marxism Doesn't Work
http://www.theonion.com/articl.....-does-1382
"How the U.S. Navy and Marines are preparing to accept transgender recruits."
I'm guessing it's not "with open arms."
or open legs.
Based on the sailors and marines I know: drinking heavily, sighing, and making jokes after making sure no one easily offended is in earshot.
Life on the submarine is about to get a lot more interesting.
I was thinking about the Wikileaks thing. It never made any sense for the Russians to have been the source. Obtaining information is only half of what intel agencies do. The other half is making sure that the people you got it from don't know you have it. They must have come from an insider. They could have been hacked but why would a hacker have known to hack the DNC server?
If it came from a staffer, that staffer was willing to risk his entire career to leak those emails. Murder theories aside, if you are the guy who leaked the DNC emails, you are done in politics and a lot of other places. So, what would be bad enough to cause a life time Democrat activist of the type who works at the DNC to risk his career and turn on the party he has spent his entire life and career supporting?
Remember, Assange says there is more to come. So whatever the answer is, it isn't the DNC cheating for Hillary to beat Bernie. It is something worse.
I never bought it either.
The notion that the Russians would prefer an erratic and manipulable Trump to the steel resolve of Clinton is laughable. She sold them control of a significant chunk of the U.S. Uranium industry. And, as bribes go, it was a rounding error in the budgets of the guys doing the bribing!
If I were Putin, and I had scandalous blackmail-fodder, I'd want Hillary to win.
Everything the left media says is nearly always the opposite of the truth. The Russians want Hillary for the reasons you give. And don't forget they almost certainly have those 33.000 deleted emails and all of the blackmail material contained them. Hillary would be the most compromised and easily manipulated President in American history and perhaps in all of modern history. The idea that the Russians would prefer a loose cannon like Trump over Hillary is absurd. Trump would be impossible to bully or blackmail. The guy is immune from press criticism and doesn't care what the various "talking heads" think of him. No way do the Russians want that.
So, the question is what is going to be the October surprise in those emails. Assange never bluffs. And he is a master in the art of parceling out leaks to ensure each one has a maximum effect. So if he says more and worse is coming, you can bank on that being true. Whatever it is, it was bad enough to make a DNC staffer have pangs of conscience and risk his entire professional life and being a complete pariah to release. It must be very interesting whatever it is.
I don't *want* Trump to win. But, the prospect of Hillary humiliated by losing in a landslide does bring a sort of feral smile to my lips. My wife having to buy me a sundae is just the icing on that sweet, sweet cake.
Here is the Libertarian case for Trump. The biggest obstacle Libertarians face is the power of the mainstream media. The media ensures that Libertarian ideas are never taken seriously and can be dismissed out of hand. Libertarians never get to make their case because the media makes their ideas out of bounds for serious discourse. If Trump were to win, the power of the mainstream media would be finished. He would prove once and for all that the media can't stop you unless you let them. Once that happened, other politicians of all persuasions would follow his model and just stop caring or apologizing over the latest "gaffe" or whatever. That would kick the door down and finally allow Libertarians the opportunity to have their ideas heard. All it would take would be someone with the flair and courage to do it.
Libertarians can hate Trump all they like. But they are foolish if they don't understand the opportunity he is creating for them.
I don't share your optimism John.
If Trump wins, the MSM will just double down. Every bad thing that happens will be blamed on him, and Team Red by association. Then Team Blue takes congress in 2018 and Trump gets impeached.
I think that argument is weaker than the potential deadlock a Trump+Dem congress would create. Also a Much better chance to stay out of wars since the anti war left will rise from the grave.
Good points Horatio. Short term, it's good.
The problem as I see it is that many people will not look at it as "The POTUS has too much power."
They will see it as "The wrong people were in charge."
The MSM will use it as "Trump and Team Red were wrong, so Team Blue is right by default."
A Trump-congress deadlock won't help long term, because most people will learn the wrong lesson.
The uproar and wailing in the mainstream media if Trump wins, the shedding of huge, oily slicks of salty ham tears, would be such an euphoric pleasure as to pretty much make me immune to what happens after.
^THIS^
George F. Will is obsessed with Donald Trump's tax returns and their potential ties to hidden funding by Vladimir Putin or his cronies. I am pretty darned sure the Koch brothers are involved too. And the Jooos, they're waste-deep in everything. I am not done. Kuwait was horizontally drilling into Iraq's oil fields. Some of these statements are true.
I don't know about any of that. I do know that Assange says he has emails and they are more damaging. There is no reason to think he is lying. What those emails say, is anyone's guess.
It doesn't matter a damn what those emails say. It will all be dismissed as a fake scandal and what difference at this point does it make?
One of the Koch brothers is #neverTrump
Ella . you think Victoria `s storry is astonishing... on saturday I bought themselves a Car after bringing in $7899 this - 5 weeks past and-more than, 10-k last munth . it's by-far the best-job I have ever had . I began this 8-months ago and almost straight away started to earn minimum $77
?????????? http://www.factoryofincome.com
storry? munth?
Your Englimush is so badder then mhine.
Kuck Williamson makes a good case for voting Trump: he doesn't mean a single thing he says.
How many cucks would a cuck cuck if a cuck could cuck his wife...
Cuck Orgy!
This bit:
"Just ignore all the times that Republicans flaked out on cutting the size of government over the last 60 years and you'll see how badly Trump looks when it comes to keeping his promises!"
Christ. Trump's renting so much space in his head that a conservative Republican, in 2016, actually typed this out:
Want tax cuts? He'll promise you enormous, huge, fiscally irresponsible tax cuts.
It only took Trump one primary season to get National Review to abandon a core plank of the party since the Goldwater days.
That "fiscally" ain't sitting there as decoration.
I think they have been totally corrupted and taken over by the Washington establishment. NRO in particular freak out over Trump shows that they were always ling about their support for immigration controls and they care more about doing the bidding of their big money donors on trade than they do about anything else. I understand why liberals are freaking over Trump. That is what they do. Every Republican is the next "Hitler" according to them. But the freakout by the beltway conservatives has been very revealing. Basically, all National Review gives a shit about is international trade and all places like the WSJ and Weekly Standard care about is endless US intervention and enforcement of some Wilsonian international order. It has been as revealing as it as been pathetic.
It hurts my feelings that you don't bother reading my links. Half the article is a critique of entitlements and unfunded liabilities, and lamenting the electoral reality that touching these third rails is political suicide. If you want to blame someone, blame geriatrics who are terrified of losing their privileges. In absence of that, what the fuck can we do to rectify our spending issue? Starve the beast is a great ideal if conservatives plan on never holding office again. I get that you'd be fine with that, but let's not pretend Trump is serious about addressing it.
So, it's your standard Williamson article.
Half the article is a critique of entitlements and unfunded liabilities, and lamenting the electoral reality that touching these third rails is political suicide.
Granted, but it's a bit rich for these types to be going on and on about "MUH PRINCIPLES" if they aren't going to have the stones to back someone who will put their ass on the line to radically reform the system already in place. This half-assed approach is why their base got so frustrated with them to begin with.
Put it this way--Goldwater got his ass handed to him in 1964, but he established a political philosophy on conservatism that lasted for 50 years and resulted in his party winning most of the Presidential elections for the next 40 years. Because his philosophy was shared by most of the party's base and it gained wider appeal as the Great Depression/WW2 generation struggled to deal with the ramifications and consequences of the US becoming a world superpower.
If there's still a place for the kind of limited-government conservatism that Goldwater preached, then it will probably require someone taking the bullet first so that others can carry that agenda forward. But if that isn't possible anymore, then the folks at NR and other GOP establishment media organs need to be honest and fully admit it to their base, even if it means getting their clocks cleaned.
Williamson has never been a fan of income tax cuts. One of his go-to lines when discussing our $80t+ in unfunded liabilities mocks supply-siders for relying on the growth fairy to make their math work.
That doesn't surprise me. The thing about Williamson is that he is kind of the Ezra Klein of the right. He has no qualifications to talk about any subject. He has no advanced degree in economics or any experience working in government or the private sector. He is one of those millenials who went to college, got a liberal arts degree and managed to make his entire career getting paid to talk out of his ass about subjects he knows just enough to be dangerous about. The fact that someone whose entire life experience and education consists of getting a literature and linguistics degree at UT and then being the director of the media program at GMU is listened to as some kind of authority on anything and is given a platform with the readership and influence of National Review says everything you need to know about how broken our political and media culture is.
He is just an appalling half wit. But he makes up for it by being a craven hack.
He is just an appalling half wit.
One whose actual text you refuse to actually engage. You have a mythos built up in your head about these people because you cannot square reality with your confounding love for Trump or whatever you think Trump represents.
I don't have a mythos at all. I know a mediocre mind when i see one. I don't claim to be the smartest person in every room but I am smart enough to know smart when i see it. And these people, not Williamson, Goldberg, or any of them are that.
Starting in the 1990s, it became virtually impossible to make a living in journalism. The big papers stopped hiring. That meant two things. First, journalism became one of the worst paying degrees. People who get teaching degrees have better job and income prospects. Just like the quality of law school applicants has gone through the floor now that the bottom has dropped out of the law market, the quality of journalists in the 90s and 00s dropped like a rock. Smart people don't go into journalism. There is no money it. The people who go into journalism are the ones who are not bright enough to get an education degree.
Second, since the big papers died, the ones who do never get any real training. They just start out on their own and make their name by talking out of their asses in clever ways. Someone like Williamson in the 80s would have started out writing obits in some big city paper and likely been weeded out of the profession. Today he goes straight to the top, without ever learning how to write, report or hving any real knowledge of the subjects he covers. Everything he says is half right. He always knows just enough to make whatever hack argument he is constructing.
That's what makes him a great journalist. Unlike your Vox snowflakes with journalism degrees, KDW has a econ degree and real world reporting experience.
And remember Anna Merlan, who bragged about having a Master's in journalism from Columbia University? What good did her degree serve?
Kevin Williamson is the antithesis of the credentialism culture in the media, and that's a good thing.
KDW doesn't have an economics degree. He has a degree in linguistics and literature. And his real world reporting experience consists of a few years working in India and running a rag in Philadelphia. After that he went to GMU ad then to NR. He is not a great reporter
You are right. He is not a credentialist. He has no credentials. Sadly, he doesn't have much of anything else. That is the problem.
John, you are a fantasist. The Williamson you're describing, the one who spent years writing for a paper in Mumbai and who ran a paper in Philly before working for NRO, is much older than the Williamson you've invented. Either tell me where in text he's said the things you're attributing, to the extent you've bothered to critique him at all, or quit making shit up.
He writes long articles pointing out the white working class is in a hell largely of its own making. And for that crime he must be crucified.
KDN,
That article confirmed every single drug warrior fantasy. Libertarians have let their cultrual snobbery and TDS cause them to embrace a writer who says that anyone who uses drugs is a bum who deserves what they get. Go reread that article and come back and explain to me how you can square the bullshit generalizations KDW makes without buying into every part of the Drug war propaganda? According to Williamson, only poor people use drugs and the primary reason they are poor is because they use drugs. Let's forget the reality that only about 6% of the population use drugs regularly and that 6% is spread almost uniformly across the income classes. And lets forget that anyone doing a five minute google search can figure that out. And lets also forget the reality that being a drug user doesn't make you unproductive or somehow make any economic misfortune you suffer a moral judgement from God and just pretend KDW is anything but loathsome or in any way friendly to freedom or the truth.
So what? KW is only being judged as "good for a conservative". That's really it.
He doesn't like Trump, which Trumps all good aspects a person might have in your book. Just understand that there are lots of reasons for people who still believe in the system to dislike Trump. If we lived in the sort of America I was taught to believe in growing up, I would probably see Trump as horrible too. Some conservatives still live there in their minds.
Erm, Williamson's like 45. Is the definition of millenial now "anyone that ever used a computer before college"?
Also, he did publish his own paper in Philadelphia for a while (don't remember if weekly or daily). How is that not private sector experience?
Commodius is right, you're fighting the monster in your head.
He's worked for the Indian Express group in New Delhi and has serious insight into how democracies are f***ed by false promises of free sh1t.
And he wrote a really nice book: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism
Another is that taxes on the middle class probably do need to rise if the middle class is going to continue insisting on ruinously expensive entitlements.
But that hasn't been the standard line at NR for decades. The pundits lionize Reagan, but actually talk about abandoning the core plank of his economic platform now that Trump has their party's nomination? Are they actually arguing that "when in doubt, cut taxes" might not have the consistent healing powers they've claimed it did for some many years now?
It's a point Williamson has made with regard to emulating those Nordic socialist paradises. "Are you sure you want to pay the bulk of your income to support a living income for x and y?" and so forth.
And yes, that is exactly what Williamson has claimed. We're no longer living in the Eisenhower world of global reconstruction and endless growth potential. We have a seriously hampered economy encumbered with extraordinary debts. Cutting taxes on corporations is a very good idea, one of Trump's only solid points (sullied in Trump's inevitable fashion by his carried interest increase). But nearly half the country already on net pays no federal taxes. Exactly how much more cutting can we expect when we're already facing fatal shortfalls? And how does that speak to electoral realities for a country averse to either tax hikes or spending cuts? How does Trump expect to pay for all of his promises? He doesn't mean a word of it, of course, but it's not Williamson's fault for pointing it out.
Exactly how much more cutting can we expect when we're already facing fatal shortfalls?
That was the whole point of "starve the beast"--cut taxes enough to the point that people would focus more on consumer spending while government programs would be forced to rein in superfluous programs. Instead, the opposite happened--we have relatively low marginal tax rates but a massively larger government (I've long said I'd accept Eisenhower-era tax rates if it meant Eisenhower-era budgets, which were smaller on a per-capita basis even at inflation-adjusted levels and were bereft of the LBJ/Nixon programs that came afterwards).
Williamson is basically arguing here that tax cuts, which was basically holy writ in the Republican party for decades, is no longer the panacea that his colleagues and predecessors said it was. That's a radical departure from the Republican conventional wisdom.
That is not the best thing you can really say about Trump. The best thing is that he could be impeached and convicted if he were to win. Plenty of Republicans would be happy to join Democrats if he stepped too far out of line. Impeachment would hang over Trump like Damocles' Sword.
Yes. There are two enormous and undeniable positives to a President Trump; he would actually be subject to Congressional oversight and his winning would do grave and hopefully fatal damage to the power of the mainstream media. Williamson doesn't care about that because he is a journalist and cares more about the guild than he does about the country.
Williamson is a conservative who worries about the fate of conservatism. Trump, despite being a flaming lefty, is an albatross tied around the neck of the conservative movement.
Williamson is a third rate hack who has been reduced to writing outrageous crap in hopes of trolling people into page views. There isn't anything "conservative" about him. He writes what the people at NR tell him to write, because he has nowhere else to go.
Not going to read the link, then?
He's rolling, dude.
Williamson is no third rate hack.
And oh, I loved his "Deport Melania Trump" article btw. Great read.
Okay, he is a third rate humorist.
If it came from a staffer, that staffer was willing to risk his entire career life to leak those emails.
This has clich? hollywood corrupt government written all over it. Where is Will Smith and Gene Hackman when you need them?
He might have. But I am not going there. Regardless, I am very open to suggestions about what those emails contain that was so bad it would cause a Dem staffer to upload them to Wikileaks. Democrats never turn. They are like pod people. I am dumbfounded by what could have caused that.
Don't forget that DWS's predecessor and a friend of Kaine also died recently, and is considered suspicious by the conspiracy watchers. I guess you can't rule out a personal vendetta to screw a rival that was met with disproportionate force as a response and a message.
That ain't no nutpunch. Now this is what a real nutpunch looks like:
Baltimore Police Shoot 13-year-old Boy Holding "Replica" Gun
One of the cops said the gun looked absolutely 100% real. I don't see how this matters. Next they'll tell the people who win lawsuits against the cops, for killing their kids, that they should spend their money on "How not to get shot by cops" classes for the community.
I have kids. There's probably a dozen times per year that I go to someone's house and see their kids playing cops and robbers, or kids shooting bb guns, or kids just running around the neighborhood with toy guns. And I somehow managed to never shoot a single one of them.
Cops on the other hand are ostensibly required to put their lives on the line more than the average non-cop citizen and yet it is they who shoot kids with anything resembling a gun out of fear for their lives. "I thought it was a real gun" is no god damn motherfucking excuse for shooting a kid.
Setting aside the fact that cops, unlike regular people, face a greatly reduced incentive to not wrongfully shoot children, I don't understand how anyone can be such a pantshitting coward to decide that a kid's life is less important than the minuscule chance that the kid's gun is real and the even more minuscule chance that the kid will try to shoot someone. There is no fucking excuse for shooting a kid like this. Fuck the police.
Would-be arsonists bungles arson attempt.
He forgot his shoe!!!!
Stop Drop and Roll!!
He forgot the first part, proceeded to the second and third.
Hot Legs
Would-be exterminator bungles extermination. Succeeds at arson.
http://www.oregonlive.com/tren.....or_go.html
"Ah," said Arthur, "so I'm a masochist on a diet am I?"
yo
ciao
*applause*
+42
Daphne and I will get off before the tunnel.
Tracks made of Rearden Steel??
They gave China a good kick in the nuts last time they tangled.
The Vietnamese have been fighting the Chinese off-and-on for about a thousand years.
Some things never change.
Really, a train euphemism? Isn't that a bit of a cliche?
Ugh. You know, not everyone wants to breed, you dumb cunt. What benefit would I get working for a company with a breeder policy? Sounds like more work for me while someone else goes off to celebrate winning their very own fuck trophy.
Now, if a company wants to offer days off for fur - baby owners, sign me up.
"Move to Europe, shithead."
You can't just "move" to Europe, you have to go through a rigorous...oh, right, never mind...
The apparel company only follows the Family and Medical Leave Act,
Those monsters, obeying the law.
More like Atlas Chugged.
Have you ever witnessed Vietnamese when they decide to go to battle. Of all the nationalities/ethnic groups from that part of Asia, they scare me the most. There's this "first guy to bleed to death, loses!" fuck-you attitude to their tactics.
Oh, it's absolutely ludicrous.
I'm constantly irritated at employment policies that provide incentives for having kids because it sucks to be a no-child household as a result. I know it's tough raising kids and working, but it was a choice that the parents made.
And what sort of benefits do I get from an employer as someone with a dog and no kids? I can't call in sick because Brizby's daycare closed for the day with no notice, but someone with a kid can. Then everyone else at work has to shuck and jive extra hard to make up for that person being gone--and to think of having to do that for 6 to 12 weeks? Because, of course, an employer isn't going to hire someone to pick up the slack of the maternity/paternity leave employee, considering they still have to pay them that entire time.
All I want is the odd afternoon off to take my pup to the park.
True enough, and most people understand that. The real push is to get the Feds to start paying for maternity leave as happens in several states. Which, truth be told, wouldn't be the end of the world: in NJ everyone pays $30 per year in income tax and those on maternity / provider care leave can draw up to $3,600 per year. That covers six weeks in line with federal requirements at $600 per week in line with state unemployment benefits. Bump up the requirements to six months and you're looking at $130.00 per year in tax increases - not exactly world destroying.
It's off putting from a philosophical perspective, but as far as bullshit socialism is concerned this is pretty far down the list of things to fight about. I'd be perfectly willing to to concede it for gains elsewhere.
And risk running into some gormless, peripherally blind Pokemon Go player?
Blech. Running is the worst, just...the worst. I'd rather do interval training on a rower or ladder--like two minutes all out, one minute leisurely, repeat until you wish you were dead.
The only outdoor work I do is gardening and walking my dog. Emphasis on the walking as we both have short legs.
Because, of course, an employer isn't going to hire someone to pick up the slack of the maternity/paternity leave employee, considering they still have to pay them that entire time.
This paragraph is why this will end up happening as a Fed program, not a Fed mandate.
My company has unlimited PTO. Daycare is closed? Take PTO. We don't give a shit. Take too many PTO days without documentation and you may get a negative review, but if you're handling your shit, my company doesn't care.
Turnoffs: new taxes, kids, and new taxes related to kids
... plus another $1-200, in direct pay, plus a wad of WIC, medicaid, all the infant programs blossoming like petals of slow wildfire, because as soon as you start subsidizing something you get more of it.
Tundra is right, hill sprints - or "repeats" if you can find a big enough hill to run on - are an awesome, short workout.
I would put the Nepalese above the Viets, but that's because they pride themselves on think ninjas are pussies.
I am a fan of blanket PTO replacing sick time, vacation time, etc
Its really nice to be treated like a responsible adult at work. Want to take a vacation? Great. Clear it with your boss and make sure you give enough notice that people can make plans around it. Need a day because life is happening to you? Great. Take it. Separately, if your attendance problems get in the way of you being a productive employee, those will be addressed individually. Given that most of us are either consultants with a significant billability bonus, or management/sales with other incentivized bonuses, there is ample reason to show up to work most days. But we were specifically told that "unlimited PTO" was to be read as not more than 12 weeks of maternity/paternity leave. I would lose my fucking mind if I took a quarter of a year off for a new kid. But I only had like 8 days of vacation when the last one came, and I knew we wanted to go somewhere for Xmas, so I only took five days. That sucked for my wife.
sah dude?
The increased cost of those programs would likely be negligible. Look around you, the people that aren't having kids because they can't afford to is really quite low. I'm surrounded by married people of child bearing age; it's not even a concern when the subject comes up.
'fur-baby'?
daycare?