Trump Drags FBI Director Comey, No Prosecutions in Alton Sterling Shooting, Getting Honest About Liberal Bias: A.M. Links

• 

  Max Becherer/Polaris/Newscom

  The Justice Department has announced that it won't prosecute two Baton Rouge police officers in the killing of Alton Sterling.

• Here are two posts that pair nicely together, both from liberals (Freddie de Boer and Slate Star Codex) who would like a little more honesty or self-reflection from their side about liberal biases in academia, media, and other cultural institutions.
• "People tell me all the time that my 15 minutes are up," former Blaze TV host Tomi Lauren told Playboy. "Well, my 15 minutes have been a couple years now, and every month I seem to have a viral moment."
• The producers of Netflix's Hot Girls Wanted deny any wrongdoing in the making of their sexploitation docuseries.
• The president has a case of the Holden Caulfields this morning.

FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The phony…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017

• "It's no accident that there is a rise in hate crimes because we're in an environment where the president targets Muslims with his language," Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) suggested during a Congressional hearing on hate crimes Tuesday.
• Republicans may roll back Obama-administration rules for public school lunches.
• Dave Weigel shows some sympathy for Clinton supporters.

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Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The phony...

Now, which is the phony here?

[Bee Tagger]

Didnt @ either of them, too.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Why.....

Hello!

[Chipper Mourning LackOfSerifs]

And now, Hillary is jamming to Too Much Joy.

[Conchfritters]

The one with the spray on tan. The other two belong on the list as well.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Dave Weigel shows some sympathy for Clinton supporters.

OH I'M SURE HE DOES.

[Ken Shultz]

Yeah, is it hard to believe he could do something like that?

Weren't the Tea Party people "rat-fuckers" who should go "set themselves on fire"?

[DanO.]

Nobody carries an eternal grudge quite like libertarians.

[ace_m82]

No, it's just that most others have no memory. If they did have a memory, they'd be libertarians.

[Half-Virtue, Half-Vice]

Dwarves? That's about it.

[Elizabeth Nolan Brown]

I thought you guy would like this link

[Zeb]

Just wait. Domestic DIssident will show up to accuse you of being Dave Weigel.

[WakaWaka]

Weigel, a former writer, posing as a current writer? That dastardly genius

[Chipper Mourning LackOfSerifs]

How did this guy ever get to write for Reason? Has anyone done an expose on this? Who hired him?

[Entropy Drehmaschine Void]

He was roommates with Chapman.

[Domestic Dissident]

No I won't, but I will say I'm not surprised she's linking to Freddie de Boer. When she made up that disgusting bullshit about Eli Lake laughing at dead Arab children, he was the one guy who sort of tried to come to her defense. Every other person said the claim had no credibility or believability whatsoever.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Wait, is this ENB trolling Weigel or trolling us?

[Entropy Drehmaschine Void]

As is oft said 'round here: Why not both?

[Not a True MJG]

I believe the local response to such a question is: Yes.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

ENB is Weigel? My goodness.

[WakaWaka]

He also showed 'sympathy' for victims of communism the other day by mocking the whole concept that there were any victims of communism. Super libertariany

[WakaWaka]

twitter.com/daveweigel/status/857077419802583041

[Domestic Dissident]

It won't be much longer now until Reason starts flacking his piece of shit rock and roll book hard in a hopeless and futile effort to get more than ten or twenty professional fake libertarians to buy the fucking thing.

[Chipper Mourning LackOfSerifs]

Wow, what is Weigel smoking?

[Bee Tagger]

Republicans may roll back Obama-administration rules for public school lunches.

The menu will now be Draconian & Cheese every day

[Fist of Etiquette]

Dictator tots, dummy.

[gaoxiaen]

Titter tots.

[Scarecrow Repair & Chippering]

What, Anthony Weiner is back in the game?

[Libertarian]

With a side of ketchup.

[Conchfritters]

I went to my kid's school for lunch with her a couple of weeks ago, and the food was worse than the shit they serve in jail.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The producers of Netflix's Hot Girls Wanted deny any wrongdoing in the making of their sexploitation docuseries.

They should do a docuseries about the docuseries. Or maybe a porn parody.

[Bee Tagger]

There should be a Rule # covering the idea that if it exists there's a documentary of it.

[Chipper Mourning LackOfSerifs]

It's called Rule 34. Porn is a type of documentary.

[Shirley Knott]

Just curious here, but has Hillary ever, ever, acknowledged that something that happened was her own fault?
Not 'accepted responsibility for', which means 'is somebody else's fault but I'll take the label and none of the heat', but actually acknowledged personal responsibility?

[Fist of Etiquette]

As soon as something is, she will.

[Half-Virtue, Half-Vice]

LOL

[Glide]

"I do feel a little bit sad and sorry that I gave folks the reason or the excuse to be so upset with me, because that is not what I intended at all." - Hillary on wanting to put coal miners out of business.

I dare say that if you stoop as low as to say "sorry I gave you an excuse to be upset" in an apology, you're not going to accept blame for anything.

[Red Rocks Baiting n Inciting]

She really is an older version of Tracy Flick--phony as a three-dollar bill, entitled, credential-obsessed, and utterly unself-aware.

[Red Rocks Baiting n Inciting]

This remark, though, really shines a light on the utter banality of today's "technology is an inherent good" crowd:

giving all American households access to world-class broadband and creating connected 'smart cities' with infrastructure that's part of tomorrow's Internet of Things."

Any progressive who claims to give a shit about the right to privacy should be absolutely horrified by the Internet of Things fetish that incel nerds have been pushing for several years now, because implementing such a system on a national scale would be the absolute death of that right. Not to mention the implicit dangers of hackers taking over things like your automobile and the issues of public safety that come into play.

[B.P.]

Privacy interferes with the common good. Giving a shit about privacy is so very 1980s.

[Philadelphia Collins]

Beaurocratic snafu.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The president has a case of the Holden Caulfields this morning.

The Tweeter in the Wry.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Beautiful

[Rufus The Monocled]

No. Not beautiful.

HE INFLUENCES OUR YOUTHS!

[Chipper Mourning LackOfSerifs]

Yes, it was. I appreciate Fist's efforts.

[Chipper Mourning LackOfSerifs]

Is he gonna go ice skating with Ivanka and stare at her ass?

(Sorry, that is the only part of that boring book that I remember.)

[Fist of Etiquette]

...who would like a little more honesty or self-reflection from their side about liberal biases in academia, media, and other cultural institutions.

When you know you think correctly about everything, why would you need introspection? Waste of time.

[Warren]

Trump Drags FBI Director Comey

What does that even mean?

[OldMexican Blankety Blank]

"Whatever you want to take from that. I'm the president."

[Fist of Etiquette]

It's a Hoover thing.

[Shirley Knott]

"Drag races so we can find out how fast men can run in women's clothing"
Bonus points for identifying what TV sitcom contained that line.

[gaoxiaen]

J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson.

[WakaWaka]

"It's no accident that there is a rise in hate crimes because we're in an environment where the president targets Muslims with his language,"

...well, except for the fact that most of those hate crimes have been proven to be false.

[Entropy Drehmaschine Void]

As per your request ...

[Mickey Rat]

And some Muslims rather spectacularly targeting Westerners with bombs and bullets and such has absolutely nothing with any ill feelings there. It is just President Trump's words.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The idea that we need any intellectual diversity at all invites immediate incredulous statements like, "you're saying we should debate eugenics?!?," as though the only positions that exist are the obviously correct and the obviously horrible.

As deBoer is apparently a progressive, I'm not sure which side is the correct and which side is the horrible in his view.

[Shirley Knott]

That changes depending on which era is in question. It was obviously correct in the early decades of the 20th century, when it was progressive dogma. It is obviously horrible and unthinkable in the late decades of the 20th century and early decades of the 21st, when that is now progressive dogma.
And progressive dogma is firm fixed and unchanging. These are real facts, not 'alternative facts', which only come from 'regressive' sources, as has always been a keystone of progressive dogma.

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

He is self-aware, though, which makes him the cream of the progressive-minded crop.

[WakaWaka]

"Dave Weigel shows some sympathy for Clinton supporters."

And communists the other day, too. He flippantly remarked about 'victims of communism' by saying, 'let's all bow our heads in remembrance of all those who suffer under Denmark's healthcare system'.

He is a good example of a 'Reason libertarian'. All the cocktail parties, none of the icky liberty stuff.

[Zeb]

I don't think he's even tried to pretend he's a libertarian since he left Reason.

[WakaWaka]

Yeah, I guess it was a low blow. Ok, retract. Damn you Zeb and your reasonable demeanor.

twitter.com/daveweigel/status/857077419802583041

[Chipper Mourning LackOfSerifs]

Waka, tag your links.

[Zeb]

Did Reason fix their auto-shortening of links so that it recognizes https yet?

[WakaWaka]

No

[Rufus The Monocled]

Which begs the question, 'how many Wiegels are there at Reason'?

DRAIN THE SWAMP!

[SIV]

In his defense, Weigel never pretended to be a libertarian when he was at Reason. He was hired to cover political campaigns.

[DanO.]

Way to harsh our hate-buzz, HIV.

[Conchfritters]

Ever been to a Danish gulag?

[Scarecrow Repair & Chippering]

Sweet!

[Chipper Mourning LackOfSerifs]

"You vill eat dis pastry, or else no dessert for you! Cheeng-chang-chong, noo tee lie!"

[Entropy Drehmaschine Void]

He is a good example of a 'Reason libertarian'. All the cocktail parties, none of the icky liberty stuff.

Well, isn't WaPo paying his rent?

Go figure.

[WakaWaka]

Yeah, Zeb pointed out that this was an unfair characterization. I retract

[Red Rocks Baiting n Inciting]

Same instance of Stockholm Syndrome happened to Balko.

[OldMexican Blankety Blank]

The Justice Department has announced that it won't prosecute two Baton Rouge police officers in the killing of Alton Sterling.

"The public and summary executions will thus continue unabated until the peasants learn their place."

[Glide]

Political quote of the day:
"Like Monty Python's Sir Robin, [Republicans] have turned and fled from what seems the least bit threatening, with no shortage of people willing to sing their praises for "bravely" doing so."
-Rand Paul

He's such a dweeb, I love it.

[Cynical Asshole]

A Monty Python reference? What a nerd.

[Not a True MJG]

How Cruzian.

[Unreconstructed (Sans Flag)]

While that quote was good, I liked this one better:

In the church of Big Government, every dollar is holy.

[Trigger Warning]

Watching these clowns fail to govern is pretty awesome.

[Entropy Drehmaschine Void]

Here are two posts that pair nicely together, both from liberals (Freddie de Boer and Slate Star Codex) who would like a little more honesty or self-reflection from their side about liberal biases in academia, media, and other cultural institutions.

I posted the link below (albeit it without typo correction) in yesterday's Ante Meridian Linques, point being: media bias.

CNet is owned by whom? CBS is it not? Les Moonbeam's (sic) network featuring John "But I want to know your opinions" Dickerson and Stephen "His Smugness" Colbert?

Nary a response.

Crickets.

Interesting: not one word about hacking attempts on GOP ...

Open question: Did the GOP simply have better cyber security, are the GOP hacks just undiscovered as of yet or was there actual complicity between the Trumpistas and the Puties??

I can tell which way CNet is leaning ...

How US cybersleuths decided Russia hacked the DNC

... and, NO, no Oxford comma here.

[Entropy Drehmaschine Void]

UnSFed Link

[Cynical Asshole]

Maybe this has already been covered in an older Lynx, but oh well, I'm linking it anyway:

Student who worked in Chinese iPhone factory explains why manufacturing jobs aren't coming back to the U.S.

Zeng walked CNBC through his decision to spend six weeks in a factory working 12 hours shifts Monday through Saturday, mostly during the night, and what he discovered along the way.
...
Now that he's seen how a Chinese iPhone factory operates, Zeng doesn't believe that Apple or other companies will be able to build competitive factories in the U.S., no matter what politicians want them to do.

"The first thing I can think of from a labor perspective is that the wages are unacceptable for American workers. So, in the factories, I was getting paid about 3100 yuan, or $450, per month. I don't think American workers can accept those kind of wages based on living conditions and prices here," Zeng said.

Emphasis added. Working 12 hours, 6 days a week = 72 hours per week. $450 a month works out to ~$1.56 per hour. So even at the current federal min. wage of $7.25 an hour it's a non-starter, and that's before factoring in overtime pay, benefits, etc.

"Even if they relocate factories to the U.S. they'd replace workers with robots," Zeng said.

No. Shit.

[Fist of Etiquette]

This can definitely be fixed. Simply place tariffs on iPhones coming into the country so that their cost is the same as or higher than if it they were manufactured here.

[Cynical Asshole]

That seems to be what His Orangeness would like to do.

Part of the problem is that I think a lot of people have a misconception about what "manufacturing jobs" actually are. I think a lot of people envision skilled workers doing welding, or soldering electronic pieces, or some other highly skilled work involving the use of advanced tooling to build shit. While there may be some jobs like that that could be "brought back," most of the kinds of jobs that are/ have been outsourced to places like China - and now Vietnam, Bangladesh and other piss-poor 3rd world shitholes - are jobs that basically involve sitting on your ass (or standing) all day on an assembly line inserting the same piece part into the next higher assembly over and over and over again. IOW, not skilled labor. And the federal minimum wage is simply too high to be competitive without massive tariffs to artificially inflate the price.

[CatoTheChipper]

There's another reason why fedgov counts of mgf jobs has declined since the 70s that gets very little attention: outsourcing -- not to foreign countries, but to domestic contractors. Back in the so-called good-ole-days, corps tended much more than now to hire employees for non-core functions directly. Now they overwhelmingly use contractors for non-core functions. Used to be that janitors, cafeteria workers, security guards, data processing professional and clerical workers, and all sorts of other admin, construction, and maintenance workers were direct employees of manufacturing enterprises, and counted as manufacturing employees. Now they are contracted out, and mostly classified as service employees. There are manufacturing sites in the US where 2/3 of the people who show up for work are contractors.

[Ken Shultz]

Someday, as labor costs in China rise and the cost of automation comes down, manufacturing jobs will disappear from China, too.

[Briggie]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but most disturbing story I have read this week. Hopefully he didn't get any ideas from here:

Man almost gets thrown in wood chipper.

[Chipper Mourning LackOfSerifs]

He didn't get the idea here, because he went with head first.

[Meh.]

On the side, in the Most Read section, another distrubing story that relates to jokes around here

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Sometimes a man has needs.

[geo1113]

From the Slate Star Codex article: "So if we are going to single them out for judgment, force them to account for their support for an "infantile," "bullying," "proto-fascist" "charlatan"?can it not be on the day of their kids' graduation?"

And I have Elizabeth Warren speaking at my son;s graduation next week,,,oy!

[Chipper Mourning LackOfSerifs]

Which reservation?

[Meh.]

Yikes, hope you're able to make the best of it anyway. I went to my sister's graduation this last weekend, and I kid you not, the president of the college managed to work a global warming sermon into his address. It's so pointless, it always seems like these kinds of politically-infused graduation speeches just seem to make everyone double down on what they believe, whether they agree with the speaker or not. The highlighted quote from the complementary article ENB linked really stuck out to me and seems to apply to this situation, "In the halls of actual power, meanwhile, conservatives have achieved incredible electoral victories, running up the score against the progressives who in turn take out their frustrations in cultural and intellectual spaces. This is not a dynamic that will end well for us."

[geo1113]

My older son graduated a couple years ago and was given the right message.

LeVar Burton 2015 Commencement speech

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

Throw peanuts at her.

[Meh.]

^^^ Hate crime

[Crusty Juggler aka "Chad"]

The president has a case of the Holden Caulfields this morning.

The president does tend to revert back to his early teenage years.

[Chipper Mourning LackOfSerifs]

From the Slate Star Codex article:
Any organization not explicitly right-wing will over time become more and more left-wing.

Libertarians know why this is true. It has to do with the psychology of the people that join organizations and claw their way into the leadership.

[Meh.]

That's a really good point. A strong desire to save the world paired with an overinflated sense of self-importance can be a very dangerous thing.

[GILMORE?]

Here are two posts that pair nicely together, both from liberals (Freddie de Boer and Slate Star Codex)

Given that ENB has linked to FDB for years, i think its probably misleading to simply call him a "liberal".

He's a proper Leftist. The thrust of his writing are critiques of how Progressives and Liberals are fucking everything up for the *real*, Class-Politics-focused, genuinely-marxist left. I can't easily find a simple examples since he nuked his twitter earlier this year... but Kevin Drum of MoJo described FDB as "considerably to my left" in 2014. That should give at least a hint.

and as for Scott Alexander.... i think the term 'liberal' is more accurate, but probably in the Classical sense and not the 'squishy lefty' sense. He has frequently articulated principles that i think modern liberals often demand compromises on. Speech being one.

maybe this is semantic, but maybe not. I just think its wrong to try to pretend there's some happy middle-ground where "people who criticize both sides of the political spectrum" live. As though you could take 'cosmotarians, FDB-style commies, and Scott Alexander' and call them all the Smarty-Pants party. Aint happening.