Well I’m starting to wonder if all the drama in baseball is gonna happen in the NL. We have about 50 games left in the regular season, and the closest divisional race in the AL is 4.5 games (AL West Astros up on the surging Athletics). Meanwhile, in the NL, the Cubs are enjoying the largest divisional lead at 1.5 games (over the Brewers) while the NL West is at 0.5 games (D-backs over Dodgers with the Rockies only 2 back) and the East its the Phillies 1 game up on the Braves. Not only that, the three division leaders are only 1.5 games apart from top to bottom for best record in the NL. And that has some implications as well. I’m not necessarily ready to pick the division winners in the NL, but if forced to make a call, I’s day I think Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles will end up pulling through, with Chicago ending up pulling away with the best record in the league.
And with that, yesterday’s winners were: Cleveland, NY (NL), Miami, NY (AL), Seattle, Chicago (NL) , Colorado, Arizona, Anaheim, and the World Champion Houston Astros. A full slate of games today. Let’s see if it tightens up those races any more than they already are.
South Africa says “hello”
Anybody born on this date? Well if so, you share it with: Hungarian serial killer Elizabeth Bathory, German spy Mata Hari, guitarist George Van Eps, pitcher Don Larsen, sci-fi author Richard L Tierney, radio personality and #metoo victim Garrison Keillor, deep-stater Robert Mueller, rocker Kerry Chater, musician Jacquie O’Sullivan, lovely actress Charlize Theron, and hockey star Sidney Crosby.
Its also the date on which Francis Drake returned to England after a year of kicking Spanish ass, Macbeth was performed for the first time, George Washington created the Purple Heart, the US created the Department of War and Lighthouse Services (which is probably now 6 different cabinet departments), Walter Johnson got his first, of 416!, wins, Jacquie Kennedy becomes first First Lady to give birth since the Cleveland admin (The baby dies three days later.), US Congress approves Gulf of Tonkin resolution, Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s home run record and Operation Desert Shield began.
OK, let’s get into…the links!
When you’re old, sometimes its fun when you’re living after midnight.
I’m sure Akron taxpayers feel the same way after getting the bill for your “philanthropy”
LeBron James is a hell of a philanthropist…with the money taken from the taxpayers of Akron. $8m a year is a pretty hefty bill for one school with a couple hundred kids in it. One wonders if perhaps a private school would be a better fit for someone’s “charity”. You know, like Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf have been doing for over a decade without any fanfare or public ass-kissing in Las Vegas. LeBron will be contributing around $2M a year when the school is at full capacity.
I wonder who’s next?
Apple, Youtube and Facebook delete all content posted by Alex Jones, citing “hate speech”. Conservatives bristle at the action as do any free speech advocates with a spine. The ACLU have remained silent, best as I can tell, what with all their energy going into the sanctuary cities defense and their efforts to follow France’s catcalling ban. You know, because free speech isn’t important anymore.
Mueller’s prosecutors in the Paul Manafort trial continue to piss of the judge in the case and get a 10-minute scolding. Meanwhile Manafort’s “partner”, who was given immunity, admits to breaking the law.
California really knows how to make use of those high taxes. You literally can’t get an appointment for a drivers license at the San Francisco DMV for the next three months. Meanwhile, the state’s former teachers and police officers are seeing record high pensions.
Chicago mayoral challengers pile on criticism of Emanuel after the most violent weekend the city has seen in years. Huh, they aren’t blaming Indiana. That’s actually surprising. What’s not surprising is that the police aren’t having any fingers pointed at them for their systemic failure to maintain order and to not act like the biggest gang in town that operates above the law in such a way that undermines the trust of there residents.
Truth in advertising
Man, Wells Fargo continues to be the United Airlines of major banks. What are they gonna do next, find a way to kill the puppies of account holders?
Missouri voters face an important vote today. I’m curious to see how the recent Supreme Court ruling sways people, if at all. Either way, this will be touted as a defining moment by whichever side wins.
Don’t blame me. Blame the lack of people banging on November nights several years ago.
Have a great Tuesday, my friends!
You have a great Tuesday too, Sloopy!
I will. I’ve got about 32 more hours before my parents arrive for a four day visit. My stress level will increase each of those hours I’m not on a golf course. Oh, and I’ve got two auctions in the next ten days, one in a new market segment I’ve been working to get into for a while, So free time will be rare. And Thursday is already shaping up to be a hectic day of personal responsibilities (which I will share on Friday in case anyone is interested).
So yes, I will try to have a great Tuesday. Because I need it.
Being an adult is no fun sometimes.
So is your mom getting any justice?
If I didn’t know the backstory I’d say that was an innuendo. *drinks glass of milk
They haven’t even set a court date. They keep asking her to agree not to sue in exchange for dropping the charges otherwise they’re gonna go to the mat on this one.
She will get justice eventually. Not sure if it happens through the courts or not though.
Speedy trial demand, answer ready for trial….run out the clock on the State.
It’s mostly the only leverage they have. Still a stressful position for her and the family.
Absolutely sorry to hear the whole thing.
The Wheels of Justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine.
I don’t know how the court case works out, but I am sure of the wisdom in that statement.
Best of luck with everything. It sounds like you have a very full plate.
>>was performed for the first time,
It’s the Scottish Play!
related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h–HR7PWfp0
Love that show.
Or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uOngXn0CGI
whoops – supposed to have been “Mr. Macbeth’s a naughty man . . . doo doo toodoo.”
Was it performed in the original Klingon?
What’s not surprising is that the police aren’t having any fingers pointed at them for their systemic failure to maintain order and to not act like the biggest gang in town that operates above the law in such a way that undermines the trust of there residents.
To be fair, you can’t expect them to do their jobs properly so vastly under-staffed and under-funded.
Good point
RahmPat.Gangbangers are getting pretty bold too. In Coatesville, PA recently, two cops were in the street talking to residents when a gangster starting firing a pistol at the other end of the block. And the cops didn’t catch him. I wonder if SWAT teams on every street would even work in some neighborhoods. ‘Course the SWAT teams would probably shoot more innocents than the gangbangers did.
To Kvetch or not to Kvetch, that is my question this morning.
It’s all petty shit anyway.
Go ahead. We know its probably killing you to not start your day with a “grinds my gears” mini-rant.
UCS has no gears. He is a CVT of discontent
lol.
*applause*
Now that I’m caffinated and have made it past the various physical barricades to where I was trying to reach, it doesn’t seem worth the bother of bitching.
It’s like life has lost it’s flavor…everything tastes like wood. Try eating some bacon.
Everything is better with BACON!
I did it for him.
Double, double, toil and trouble. You aren’t going to be King of Squatland mixing plays up like that.
Do it tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow, as life creeps in this petty pace from day to day anway….
Meet the slaver of the week and his young apprentice.
– Councilman Jason Dominguez
Sounds kinda familiar.
Maybe we need to regulate duplicate comments.
urge to kill rising
If I were on a city council and a 9 year old came pleading to me to regulate something or other, I’d be sure to ask them extremely pointed questions in order to humiliate the kid’s parents and let the world know that retarded-ass shit like letting kids plead cases in order to make people smile should be strongly discouraged.
And I would never get reelected, but I wouldn’t care. That shit’s retarded.
You’d get my vote.
I think I’d be like, “What are you, nine? You’re struggling with long division and you think you’ve seen enough of life to tell everyone else what to do? Go pick up a rake and do something useful. Oh, and there is no Santa Claus, so be extra nice to your parents.”
You forgot, “And stay off my lawn.”
You know who else had an Apprentice?
Donald Trump?
The Frugal Gourmet?
The universe tried to take out an Air Force base with a kinetic strike.
cues music from The Thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meU2gAU7Xss
I was taught that it’s ‘meteorite’ when it hits the earth.
Obviously, you didn’t go to journalisming school!
I though it was a meteortight if it comes down from earth’s ceiling and a meteormite when it grows towards earth’s ceiling.
I think the latter is called a mountain.
“Who is this fool who does not know what a mountain is? “
Rocks fall, nobody dies.
Was it the universe, though? Or a test by Mr. Lizard’s people?
STEVE SMITH EXPERT AT KINETIC STRIKES.
We are gonna need that Space Force armed with Raid because it’s bugs.
Speaking just as a person who works in a timely unionized industry and is largely ignorant of important legal issues, fuck the unions. Nuke them from orbit, just to be sure.
Somehow “mostly” became “timely”.
All unions, or the public unions specifically? While I have no use for a union personally, I can understand the appeal of voluntary unionization in the private sector for some people. What I find is a criminal thing are public unions. Unaccountable government employees are a scary thing. Ones also protected by a union lead to shit stories like this. Ptotecting incompetence and criminality in this manner is just wrong.
Having worked in a private sector union shop I cannot.
Fuck you I do not want a collectively bargained salary and benefits package because I am smarter and more competent at this shit than 90% of you losers and I expect to be compensated accordingly.
Did they allow you to opt-out? I thought private unions were opt-in anyway, and they couldn’t take your money unless you had wanted to be part of the union…
It was in Alabama, a right to work state, so no they couldn’t force me into the Union. However the Union could and did force the company to agree to paying everyone according to the same union scale and applying the same working rules to everyone.
I actually had guys one the line coming up to me warning me to not work so fast because then the company would expect that out of everyone. Thing is I was going at what I considered a pretty leisurely pace and could easily have worked faster if it was called for.
Then when I accomplished something that had literally never been accomplished at that factory and caught up to the guys behind me in the line(I was responsible for sanding excess welding material off the assembled frames before they went to the paint line, I got caught up to the welders and had nothing to sand) I did the unthinkable, I left my station to find the super and asked him what he wanted me to work on next. The Union schmucks were both shocked and pissed off at me for that.
“I actually had guys one the line coming up to me warning me to not work so fast because then the company would expect that out of everyone.”
Sounds par for the course for union or government work.
Here in dear old Mizzoura the unions have spent a huge amount of money to try to vote Right to Work down. I hope people will think of it as a choice issue but I’m afraid they probably won’t.
The two old guys at the metal festival makes my day.
Anybody born on this date?
*raises hand*
Happy birthday… Mr. Mueller!
I thought he was Tulpa?
Do you want anybody to make a fuss? You might wrangle some ‘happy birthday’s, but we are not likely to throw you a party.
PS, happy birthday.
The day the Gulf of Tundra resolution was enacted. Happy birthday!
*drops gloves*
*shakes Tundra’s hand*
Happy birthday, ya hoser!
Happy birthday, Tundra!!!!!
Happy b-day – enjoy some time tearing through the corners in yer little car.
Thanks, all!
LH, I just put some new shoes on it – what a difference! The old tires looked fine, but they were impossible to balance and rode weird. The new ones are just amazing. Getting tough to find 13″ tires, though.
Happy birthday!
Happy Birthday!
Never raise your hand, you might get picked.
But Happy Birthday anyway
Celebrate in your special way ! Happy birthday!
Happy Bday, bro! Have a great one!
Happy Birthday! May the day spare you a STEVE SMITH visit.
Happy birthday hockey bro!
Happy birthday
Happy birthday, hockey dude.
There may be more victims. In its filing, Wells did not rule out uncovering additional problems, noting, “This effort to identify other instances in which customers may have experienced harm is ongoing, and it is possible that we may identify other areas of potential concern.”
Mistakes may have been made.
Every foreclosure I’ve seen has been after a year or more of no mortgage payments. I can’t imagine a computer fix that would have magically changed any of them.
I can’t imagine not even making one payment for a year and still being in the house.
My wife and I marveled as it was going on in our neighborhood. I’d be pumping gas or cashiering at the 7-11 instead of sleeping. We had several families that just said fuck-it and lived in the house rent free for a year +, then finally left when the Sheriff kicked them out.
Now that their all gone, maybe our home will regain some value.
My cousin moved into a house that was in foreclosure, with this hair-brained idea that he was going to rent to help the owner catch-up on payments, and then ultimately buy the house (I didn’t get into all of the details of this rent to own scheme).
He ended up never making a rent payment and lived there for a year.
When I was home shopping for a house – 2007ish – there were a few places that we tried to look at, but they were foreclosed properties with tenants still there. Needless to say they were always “too busy” to have someone stop by to look at the house. As far as I can tell they were just living
rentmortgage payment free.Every one of them I saw left the house a wreck. Assume you’ll be replacing or repainting every surface in the house.
I bought five houses during that time. Every one of them needed a ton of work. One in particular was being rented out to a bunch of kids who punched holes in all the doors and wiped shit on the walls when they finally got evicted. It was crazy.
I mean if you are a woke fuck living for free in some place wouldn’t you feel entitled to “resist” when the man shows up to kick you out of your crib?
^Pretty much.
As far as I can tell, these were people already facing foreclosure who tried to modify their mortgage through taxpayer largess and were denied. Wells Fargo is getting raked over the coals for this?
depends, if they qualified for a program that lowered their interest rates and stretched out the payments some so that an unaffordable monthly payment could be made affordable long enough to get a family through a rough patch and onto more secure financial footing. The problem here is all of these people qualified for such programs but were either explicitly told they didn’t or never offered the chance for them.
Some of those people likely would have eventually ended up in foreclosure anyway but many of them could have avoided it
Fixed it for you, you piece of shit scum
/Former Wells Fargo victim
RE: Lebron’s school. This is one thing that always bugs me about these big money athletes that start a foundation (usually named after themselves). If you are so dedicated to curing cancer/ending poverty/providing school children with free hentai…whatever, then give your money to an already existing charity! (like Aggasi/Graf) By creating a new foundation, all you’ve done is create a new bureaucracy to eat up an “acceptable” amount of overhead. Find a charity that does good work and call a press conference to brag about how much money you are giving them. Get someone to make up one of those oversized checks. Whatever it takes to feed your ego, but we don’t need 183 different foundations fighting cancer simultaneously and separately.
*steps down off soap box and goes back to work*
Or, or, this is a radical thought, do charity anonymously. For the good of it.
That’s not how narcissists work.
The only people I have to tell about my charitable donations (and then provide receipts to prove that it is true) is the fucking IRS. Nobody else should know what I give unless I only do so to virtue signal.
But if you give anonymously, what’s the point of the oversized check?!
Look, Mike, have you ever tried cashing one of those? It doesn’t feed through the check-reading machine at the bank, and the tellers get very unhappy with you.
Perhaps I’m overly cynical, but there isn’t a single charity in this country that I can think of off-hand that I’d donate a dime to if I struck it rich. Any of the big ones are worse than useless and usually contribute to perpetuating the problems they ostensibly exist to solve. Want to do something impactful? Call up the billing department of your local hospital and tell them you’re paying the entire remaining balance of X number of patients on charity care. They’ve already been vetted for low-income. 1 in 10 of them probably isn’t a drug addict or irresponsible shitstain, and the other 9 will still appreciate being out from under the debt.
Institute for Justice. They rock.
Institute for Justice? Innocence Project? United Negroni College Fund?
Forgot all about IJ, that’s one I’d definitely consider.
Third one in for the Institute for Justice.
I’d also contemplate Project Gutenberg and the EFF.
They are my Smile account Charity
Salsa’s school for the gifted, talented and highly attractive.
I’ve heard good things about them.
You are overly cynical. There are many great ones – many of the ones that provide care for mentally disabled adults when their elderly parents are too old to provide care for them, for example. Those folks are doing God’s work, taking care of those who can’t take care of themselves, often on a shoestring budget. There are many others that do great work – Ronald McDonald House is another.
Shriners. St. Judes.
I vouch for them because of personal experience.
Or just start one yourself without taxpayer funds and get a bunch of people to get onboard without being paid.
Like this group.* They’re given over a million dollars for wounded vets, have paid for the training and donation of several service dogs, have four children of soldiers that were killed in college for free, have given three full tuition scholarships to veterans who lost limbs, and have given away multiple homes (in conjunction with builders) to disabled veterans.
And not a single person involved has ever taken a dime for their work. Not a dime.
*After this group’s first year, the Wounded Warrior Foundation sent them a cease and desist on their name (which they changed) because it was similar to theirs. This group gave WWF a $20k check and told them they’d never give them another dime. The WWF people didn’t give a fuck. They were more concerned with their brand (and fat salaries) than giving money to vets. They can eat shit.
Absolutely. If you can make it work, that’s the way to do it. But groups like that are few and far between.
And while that group looks like great, they look more like a clearing house for donations…like a middle man. So, unless all the groups they give to are also all volunteer ran, money is still being wasted. Maybe not much, but still…
They are. That’s in their bylaws. They do direct payments for the scholarships and homes and everything else is funneled through a PGA partnership and the first requirement is that they’re all operated without any salaries.
No. If you want a well run not for profit, people have to get paid. The biggest problem the NFP sector has is this insistence that everything be run by volunteers or people paid a token wage – this works well if you are doing a soup kitchen run out of a church. It works horribly if you are trying to cure a disease, provide education, clean drinking water, or get people out of homelessness. You don’t get the best and brightest and its hard to get people that are dedicated and hardworking when you don’t pay them.
Bingo.
Possibly the most eye-rolling one I saw was local. A local news anchor’s brother committed suicide. Years later she’s making decent coin being a talking head. In honor of her brother, she starts a foundation to help suicidal people…and names the thing after herself instead of him. SMDH
You got something against competition?
Nope. But pooling resources and reducing overhead is a worthy goal, no?
If they are trying to achieve the exact same result…maybe.
Sometimes lots of small scale independent projects achieve better results.
Well, now we know the S stands for “Sanders”.
we don’t need 183 different foundations fighting cancer simultaneously and separately
…however, I am in no way, shape, or form suggesting that the government -or anyone else- should limit the number or functions of said foundations.
I notice that very few of these philantropists just send their checks to the government. No, they want personal control of their money while it is perfectly fine for the rest of us peons to have our charitable impulses largely co-opted by taxation.
Or you know, you could go into a poor neighborhood and reach out to a local minister of some sort, no not one of the big name political guys, someone who actually spends his time ministering to a poor community, find out from him what the community really needs, who really needs help and will actually benefit from it and then give that help.
If you aren’t a megastar then you could do the same, look around your own community, identify families and individuals who need help and won’t just waste it with poor life choices
But how would he keep his posse employed?
Some businesses are refusing to hire DACA recipients. They are fighting back.
So now they think they have a right to a particular job as well as a right to remain in the country they entered illegally?
The balls on these fuckers!
Sweet. I’m heading down to Little Caesar’s arena to get my Wings jersey and dump my gear in a locker.
You’re probably more consistent than Jimmy Howard. Go for it.
>>are suing US employers for denying them jobs because they aren’t citizen
Only in America!
YOU OWE ME A FUCKING JOB BASTAGES!
And I want CIO/CEO/CFO level pay too.
FUCK.
YOU.
You can’t deny someone employment based on immigration status if they are legally allowed to work, you can deny them employment based on a ton of other things, or by offering no reason at all so if the recruiters told them that directly they are idiots.
Precisely. And corporate America, especially in prestige industries, is tripping over itself to signal its progressive bona fides to the world. There’s no reason whatsoever to believe the applicants.
So I’m sympathetic to DACA people whose parents brought them here and have only ever known life in the US. But here’s the thing: they aren’t citizens. Maybe they should be; I think they probably ought to be. But they aren’t until they acquire legal status. They were old enough and capable enough to apply for college, likely get grants and loans, and theoretically pass classes. They were able to get a DACA work permit, so they’re familiar with the system. Get a permanent status. You’ve had two years at least.
Maybe they should be; I think they probably ought to be. But they aren’t until they acquire legal status.
Only literal Nazi’s think like this.
I know, that’s a totally hateful and unreasonable position to take.
On the employer side, I would be very wary of a DACA hire because you just don’t know how long they will be legal and thus how long they can work. With a real green card, you know how long its good for, renewals, all that. With DACA, they could be gone in a month.
The Space-Man, Bill Lee!
Fuck you Greg Nettles.
Bill Lee is a Communist and Graig Nettles is awesome. My favorite bat when I was a kid was a Graig Nettles model.
Greg Nettles got away with the cheapest cheap shot in baseball history. He tried to pretend he was a tough guy but he was a fucking coward.
Pfffffft……Lee liked to run his mouth. A lot. Even his teammates didn’t really defend him. Nettles took care of business with that Commie bitch.
Image a third-baseman breaks a pitcher’s throwing-shoulder with a sucker-punch tonight. How long do you think he’d be suspended? Months? Years? Once that pitcher’s lawyers got done, how much of his salary would he ever see again?
If he was such a tough-guy, he could have confronted Fisk, Hobson, or Rice but he would have been digesting his teeth.
Image a third-baseman breaks a pitcher’s throwing-shoulder with a sucker-punch tonight.
Not quite what happened.
Bingo. Nettles went after Lee because Lee never stopped yapping about the Yankees, and his arm was already injured before Nettles decked him.
Look, Nettles was an asshole. No argument there. Just saying fuck Bill Lee, that’s all.
His other arm was injured.
Twitter suspends Ron Paul Institute executive’s account, one day after Big Tech blocks InfoWars
TW: well-known Russian Fake News Site RT
Did the executives at Twitter secretly buy stock in Minds, Gab and Bit chute?
I hope not
/Early investor in Minds.
Yeah, that’d be a terrible thing to waste.
Honestly, the chances of success for any of these competing networks is pretty nil. The incumbents have the userbase. Even if you decide you want to switch to New Wizbang Social Network, unless all of your friends and family come along with, at best you’re going to be maintaining a parallel presence on Old Legacy Social Network, which means you’re still part of the userbase and the advertisers have no incentive to switch.
I remember the days of Myspace – and suddenly, for whatever reason, all of my “friends” began moving over to FB.
Even though Myspace, for all it’s stupidity, was a lot more fun (and anonymous and raunchy)
True, but even at its peak MySpace didn’t have as sizeable a userbase or (more importantly) advertiser network. And it tolerated a level of anonymity not typical of today’s social networks (which is what made it way more fun and raunchy and chaotic, as you say). Users are the product for social media companies, advertisers are the actual customers. Privacy-conscious social networks are at a colossal disadvantage there because advertisers don’t want to serve blind ads to anonymous users like they did in the web 1.0 days. So your customer base is going to be Alibaba re-sellers and fraudulent dick pill sites willing to blast out 100,000 ad impressions for $.000003/click, and your userbase is going to be a bunch of basement dwellers running TAILS who have been using adblock since 1999 anyway. Best case scenario is you make it a couple of years until you become an acquisition target for one of the privacy-raping networks, and they re-centralize your meager userbase back into the borg.
So it’s obviously “free speech for me, but not for thee.”
Hmmm….
If you ban Jones, you can take out a whole school of small fish under the cover of outrage and who’s gonna notice it’s coordinated?
Well, if such a conspiracy exists, picking Jones is certainly both effective and cheeky method.
Alternate headline: “Mob of Angry White Gentrifiers Assault African-American Woman and breakfast companion in Philly”
https://www.phillyvoice.com/antifa-protesters-charlie-kirk-candance-owens-philly-restaurant-turning-point-usa/
All they have is shrieking and harassment, because they can’t win an actual debate on facts. I wonder what Jim Acosta thinks of this?
This shit is going to get violent.
But the violence will only get media attention if they can blame it on the right. Notice how the Steve Scalise shooting and the Rand Paul attack were quickly memory-holed.
“But the violence will only get media attention if they can blame it on the right.”
Anyone doubt that if it gets violent that the dnc operatives with bylines will blame the enemies of the left for it regardless of the truth/facts?
See Giffords, Gabby.
See also JFK.
It’s an old playbook.
It was pretty surreal watching them scream “Fuck White Supremacy” at Owens.
Proving to the world what mindless idiots they really are.
I bet everyone of these turds is someone with rich parents footing the bill for their extravaganza looking to provide meaningless lives some form of meaning by thinking shit like this makes them important in the grand scheme of things. Spoiled brats and products of our self-esteem uber alles society. I would tell the lot of these idiots to go home and clean their momma’s basement and make their fucking beds if they wanted to do something that would provide meaning to their lives.
Or Soros money washed through a couple of foundations.
I want to know how they support themselves. What are their day jobs?
Academics, Non-profit employees, unemployed living off someone else’s money, things like that.
“Jobs” HAHAHHHHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Trustafarians
^^^THIS^^^
They are paid protestors in some cases it has been reported.
As a tactical matter, I just don’t get this behavior. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I don’t see this bringing independents to their side. And it will only serve to motivate Republicans to vote.
“But we’re doing something!”
/Activist
It’s exciting, and it makes them feel like edgy rebels (no offense). Seriously, have you ever been part of a group of people doing naughty things and loudly telling everyone that you don’t care? It makes you feel dangerous and powerful and sexy and cool. Now look at the people in these groups. None of them ever get to feel that way in their day-to-day lives. They’ve accomplished absolutely dick in their lives, and they desperately need something to make them feel good about themselves. So they run around and misbehave in ways that will get them attention in a nice, safe herd so the risk of negative consequences are fairly minimal.
Here’s the thing. (early, inconclusive) Research has shown that extremists (of any movement) are recruited and motivated by the breaking of social norms. These people are the extreme of their position. They were recruited and are motivated by this kind of in your face, violent, fire starting, car flipping shit.
But, they also think that non-extremists can be recruited and motivated in the same way they were motivated. This is incorrect. The marginal centrists is much more motivated by demonstrations that are within the bounds of existing social norms.
(lots of well established research has shown that ) This was used to great effect by the civil rights groups in the 60’s. They had their gun-toting combat vets in the back, because they needed them to keep violent counter-protesters and cops at bay. But they put the families of young black men in suits and young black women in conservative dresses and white gloves in the front, where the cameras were (and knew to stay.) Everyone on the ground knew that Jerome, the Korean war vet wearing a dashiki and carrying a poorly-concealed rifle, was right around the corner should he be needed.
Pulling this off required a powerful centralizing force, which orgs like the SNCC provided. Antifa, being a chaotic mess that thinks their lack of hierarchy makes them strong, has none of this. Action is started by the most intemperate. Those who would behave more within social norms move slower because walking hand-in-hand with photogenic youth is slower than burning a trash can. Its like a weird protest version of Gresham’s law.
Linda Jun, senior policy counsel for Americans for Financial Reform, called the new findings “more pieces” that “just keep getting added to the piles of evidence that Wells Fargo has systematically wronged consumers.
“It’s entirely consistent with their repeated pattern of abusive and deceitful practices,” she said. “What’s needed is both real recompense for people’s losses and suffering, and a whole different level of accountability for Wells Fargo, and for the individuals in senior management.”
Man, the banking industry is just a totally unregulated laissez faire shitshow, isn’t it?
Yeah, this stuff is just mind boggling. Some nanny-state government types create a system that forces lenders to give money to high risk people (or else!), then pass laws to allow them to create a very dubious scheme to somehow make money of these terrible loans so the lenders don’t rebel, run this scam for years, until they need an economic crisis to skew an election in the favor of the party not in power and crash the market, wiping out trillions and screwing over millions, then demand the right to “fix” the crisis of their own making, and proceed to do so by creating the exact same system – based on the same bad economic policy we had before that led to the crisis and collapse, but now on steroids – and pretend things will this time go well, after sticking the productive tax payer with the multi trillion dollar bailout bill?
What is the definition of insanity again?
Coincidence? Feinstein Employed Chinese Spy For 20 Years as Her Husband Raked in Millions in Chinese Business
This would be a career-ender for anybody from a normal state.
holy shit. that’s worse than even the headline sounded. Fuck career-ender this kind of thing is generally a freedom-ender and occasionally a life-ender.
Only wrong-thinkers like Jim Jordan, Urban Meyer, and Trump have to prove that they didn’t know.
How was she supposed to know, she’s only a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
I bet you this spy has a case against her for making him work so hard for the info. She should have set up a nice email server in someone’s bathroom, and this would all be totes legit.
Don’t forget to mention the number of CIA operatives the Chinese have caught and killed in that time. Isn’t it something like 30 people while she sat in the Senate Intel committee?
Just a coincidence, I’m sure. Anyway, what difference at this point does it make?!
No more coincidental or remarkable that the Clintons raked in hundreds of millions of dollars while Hillary served as… you know what? Quit asking questions, you fucking misogynist.
Let’s not forget that this splashes on our vaunted Intelligence-Industrial Complex as well.
Ex-teacher who served time for sex with students back in court
It’s an overreaction either way, but the story leaves out one relevent piece of information. Were the students boys or girls? Few are the equal-opportunity offender in this area.
Today in fat-shaming. Bride-to-be shamed by personal trainer on Twitter — and her response is perfect. Based on the pics, I’m perfectly fine with her weight. (Thicc!) But come on. ZOMG, personal trainer tried to sell his services to someone that could use it, the horror!
Based on the pics, I’m perfectly fine with her weight.
John?
Is it thic Thrusday already?
Hey, she looks pretty cute. The fat is pretty well spread out across her body.
Cute face, hideous body.
He was a bit pushy but this isn’t really a story worth publishing. A couple of people exchanged words on Twitter is what it amounts to.
Sounds fishy, too.
>> I’m perfectly fine with her weight
Wut?
Yeah, that’s not OK.
I’m fine with it too. As long as I don’t have to see her with fewer clothes on or crawl on top of her.
That chick is F-A-T: fat!
Like with moped, friends will not let friends be seen ridding fat chicks.
ridding fat chicks
Woah, now, we’re talking shedding pounds, not her mortal coil.
De gustibus non est disputandum
I’m sorry, that phrase makes me violent.
*bludgeons Pat with dull edge of a machete*
Seems I was mistaken. In matters of taste, there are machete fights.
Does the original Star Trek Pom Far fight music play when these are happening? Cause that would be cool…
Well, I mean, you do you boss, but for me, I think she’s cute but she could benefit from losing some fat. And I say this as someone who firmly (ahem) believes that there are some women who look good big.
Yeah she is well into the would camp.
Sure the toothpicks most of your prefer maybe pretty to look at but they ain’t the most fun kind to play with.
Whole Lotta Rosie
I’d disagree with the “might be pretty to look at” part. I don’t think the toothpicks these guys like are pretty to look at. Women like the above gal though, very pretty to look at. Cute face, nice big soft body.
West Hollywood is so stunning and brave!
That’ll teach that evil Drumpf!
No word on Kevin Spacy’s or Harvey Weinstein’s stars.
Sexual predators are a longstanding Hollywood tradition, they’re not going anywhere. But being Trump is beyond the pale.
I keep telling people that this pretense that somehow nobody knew that business as usual required pretty women to do couch interviews with the movie moguls and that these women had no choice smacks of stupidity. It’s not like all the pr0n movies out there about this exact scenario are based on someone’s fantasy.
Does Roman Polanski have a star?
Not sure, but this guy does.
They’re taking his walk of fame star?
I guess he’ll have to settle for just being President Of The United States Of America then.
President Of The United States Of America WITH a supermodel wife, you mean.
Don’t forget the billions of dollars in the bank.
Trump should show up for the ceremony.
Oh man would that be fun.
I wouldn’t put it past him to talk about this at his next rally while pointing out the sexual predators and rapists that still have stars. The left just keeps handing him ammo.
I sure hope he does exactly this. We should be humiliating these woke resisters for their stupid shit.
The City Council doesn’t pay for the stars — it’s usually private citizens or groups. Who paid for Trump’s star?
Russians?
I’ve started a new amplifier project. I hope to have the first one done by tonight
Stuffing the circuit boards: Pic
Pic 2 – assembling the chassis
Mmmmm the smell of Flux…..!
where da springs for the vibe?
/shows age
I’m concerned that not every link was about Manafort/Russia/Trump/End Times
/npr listener
all four of them say they were denied jobs, even though they had valid work permits because they are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA.[…]
“You owe me!”
I don’t think that’s correct.
Hey Sloopy, you still coming to Richmond?
In October? Yes, that’s still the plan.
Aha….I thought it was sooner than that. Oh well, see ya then.
Rosie O’Donnell leads anti-Trump Broadway sing-along at the White House
“Let the president know in no uncertain terms that we are alive, awake and we are woke,” O’Donnell said to the crowd, part of an ongoing anti-Trump protest now on its 22nd consecutive night.
After warming up their voices with “America the Beautiful,” the performers sang several show-tune favorites, such as “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from “Les Miserables,” “Let The Sun Shine In” from “Hair” and “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” from “The Sound of Music.”…
Protesters gathered Monday with an array of anti-Trump signs, many focused on alleged conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Two of the most popular chants of the night were “Lock him up!” and “Putin’s puppet!”…
“Every person who cares about switching over this administration, about having a Congress that’s going to hold them accountable, every person needs to be getting more than themselves to the polls,” Mink said. She had the word “vote” shaved into the side of her head.
Jim Obergefell, the named plaintiff in the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling that made gay marriage legal across the United States, warned against Trump’s latest nominee to the Supreme Court.
“Brett Kavanaugh should not sit on our highest court. He is a danger to every marginalized community,” Obergefell said. “Our president – well, not my president, someone else’s president — is a threat to every marginalized community.”
That is sure to draw people to your cause. I know, why not do another PSA while you’re at it. Those have proven to be quite effective.
Some people really need a hobby
Jim Obergefell, the named plaintiff in the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling that made gay marriage legal across the United States, warned against Trump’s latest nominee to the Supreme Court.
This guy is either blissfully unaware that Trump was in favor of gay marriage back when Obama still claimed to be against it, or he is just a dishonest shit.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
I bet he knows but since what they want is to spread a narrative that makes orangeman, don’t really feel they need to be bothered with truth, facts, or reality.
Also, marginalized communities? I’m reminded of the line, “It used to be ‘the love that dare not speak its name’; now it’s ‘the love that won’t shut up about it.'” I’m happy for the LGBTQOMGWTF community being out in the open and all, but I’m just sayin’ “marginalized” to me would imply that there’s some big secret, and it sure as hell doesn’t seem that way.
As long as you don’t treat them as if they were super special, you are marginalizing them. This is all about attention and a desperate need to be validated. As my gay uncle likes to say to these people: shut the fuck up already, as you are not helping anyone with that shitty attitude.
Marginalized? The equality movement has been led by regular people changing their minds voluntarily. The reason they changed their minds is because the gayz did a great job of persuading the rest of us that it was the right thing to do.
The supreme court rulings were a lagging indicator. They merely rubberstamped what the majority of citizens were coming around to and prevented the die hard socons from using govt power to stop progress.
That’s exactly right. By the time the Obergefell decision came down it was already a fait accompli, and that was the case because a critical mass of people came to the conclusion that, at a minimum, any issues they had with gay people getting married weren’t worth going to the mattresses over. That means you’re not marginalized. “Marginalized” isn’t when people outside of your particular community fail to hold parades every Saturday to celebrate you.
And like Alex says above, they’ve gone from winning the battle to burning bridges in an astonishingly short time.
The crazies aren’t happy with equality anymore. Now they are demanding cakes and other special preferences.
It almost makes you wonder if some of the nuts weren’t happier being a marginalized group than being accepted. Being a victim has to be sexier and more exciting than being just another normal jerk going about his business. Goddamn straights stealing your fantasy of living on the edge of society as a super heroic person.
It almost makes you wonder if some of the nuts weren’t happier being a marginalized group than being accepted.
Obligatory (NSFW?)
What they need is one of those clever ads with celebrities repeating the last word of a sentence several times to really punctuate just how super serious they are.
He’s your president, Jim. If you’re an American citizen, he’s your president just as much as Nobel Peace Prize Winner Barack Obama was mine.
Climate change: ‘Hothouse Earth’ risks even if CO2 emissions slashed
I wonder if they’ve fully thought out the implications of hysterically screeching that we can’t mitigate the climate apocalypse even if we institute their draconian policies and send 1/2 of the planet back to the stone age. If your offering is a lifetime of misery it better goddamn well come with the benefit of salvation.
Every successful religion has a path to redemption
BUY YOUR SALVATION HERE!
Psychosis
Former President Obama deserves more credit for the strong U.S. economy than President Trump, according to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.
“Yeah, it’s a strong economy,” Scarborough told “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski. “But Mika, this is not an economy that Donald Trump gave us. This is an economy that’s part of the seven year ongoing recovery.”
Scarborough also said this “isn’t the greatest economy ever” and that it “isn’t close to the greatest economy ever.”
“Barack Obama had more people getting jobs his last 16 or 18 months than they had jobs during Donald Trump’s first 16 or 18 months,” he said.
Okay, Joke, we get it. Your love for the Ascended One is neverending and allconsuming. The world will never be the same without Him in the White House. Try to soldier on.
Poor Joe, Mika makes him beg for it all the time.
“The seven year ongoing recovery”
Funny how it dramatically revved up once Chocolate Nixon moved out.
It was Bush’s economy until January 20, 2017. Now it is Obama’s economy.
according to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough
Pass.
Do you think he says these things because Mika has his balls in a rhetorical vice grip and it’s the only way she’ll sleep with him?
Also,
Brzezinski
Speaking of Russian collusion…
Polish, but whatever.
Like there’s a difference…
I’m guessing you don’t know any Poles.
Tongue-in-cheek and said as someone of Ukrainian descent.
I guess I never will because you shitlords won’t let the NEA pay for that troupe of dancers to go on a tour of our country.
From Contractor to Employee: California Ruling Poised to ‘Decimate’ Uber, Lyft
Nice work, California. I’m sure all the people who use these services will appreciate your efforts on their behalf.
Fuck off, slaver.
So, which one of them is more likely to just leave California? I’d guess Lyft, although (after some quick searching) Alphabet (Google’s parent company) owns a stake in both of them.
So I’m out of it. Why is the new CEO of Uber on tv all the time apologizing and groveling?
Everyone I know LOVES Uber. Am I living in some bubble and don’t hear about the awful things Uber has been doing? Because a lot of the Uber love I hear is from youngsters who are a lot more proggie than I am.
Because apparently their IT staff was so heavily male dominated and their corporate controls so lax their development centers operated like a bit of a frat house and some chick got their panties in a twist over it.
Doesn’t help that their founder and original CEO was an aspie who was leading the toga parties
Hmm, my millennial BIL hates Uber with a passion. I wonder if that’s why. He was unable to articulate his reasons, other than calling them assholes, when I asked him why.
He’s also one of their best customers.
Josh Hawley is the clear choice for Missouri Republicans in U.S. Senate primary
“Libertarian-turned-Republican Austin Petersen makes a persuasive case that the state GOP has sidelined his platform of radical freedom by effectively backing Hawley before primary ballots have even been cast. But while Petersen’s Second Amendment absolutism and situational Trump love may play well with voters, many of his dogmatic ideologies — his calls to eliminate compulsory K-12 education and the Food and Drug Administration, for example — are best left to theoretical discussions in academia, or ignored altogether.”
“ignored altogether”
If your arguments ultimately don’t hold water pretend the other guy’s counter arguments don’t even merit a discussion. If his arguments are so ridiculous they should be easy to refute.
Today is voting day. Mr. Mojeaux and I are filling in the little black dot for Petersen.
It just doesn’t have the appeal of “pulling for Johnson” though….
Petersen has a strong following among the young adults. It gives me some hope for the future.
Yes. Husband said, “I haven’t seen one ad for Petersen.” I told him he was doing it all on FB and Twitter. Prolly Instagram too.
Also voting for right-to-work.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… no wonder I’ve never heard of the candidate in question.
It’s a guy who gave GJ a prop gun as a gesture of good will when Garry beat him for Presidental nomination in 2016.
Gary threw the prop into garbage.
That and fact he’s a right-wing shitlord is all I know about Peterson.
Every time I’ve seen a clip of him somewhere, he’s seemed like a super annoying douche. Not sure what it is about him but man he annoys me.
I follow him on insta. It’s my only social platform. Dude is pure fire on social media.
Is it me or have the ads been pretty quiet in Kansas City. I’m guessing they’ll start picking up towards November.
Just you. They’re plastered back to back, especially that cunt McCaskill.
are best left to theoretical discussions in academia, or ignored altogether.”
Or provided strict scrutiny against the Constitution. For instance nothing in the Constitution provides for a federal Dept. of Education. The same standard should be applied to any other federal dept.
After warming up their voices with “America the Beautiful,” the performers sang several show-tune favorites, such as “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from “Les Miserables,” “Let The Sun Shine In” from “Hair” and “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” from “The Sound of Music.”…
Grapeshot would be completely justified, under these conditions.
+1 Napoleon (a whiff of…)
I think I’d rather have a root canal than listen to a live concert involving Rosie O’Donnell.
I don’t understand this case. LaVoy Finicum was lured out and executed by the FBI and Oregon State cops. But now they are in court becuase it sounds like the FBI wanted it to look like the staties killed the guy.
What a clusterfuck.
Officer 1 said he knew he hadn’t fired the shots in question because investigators found only 24 rounds remaining in the magazine of his AR-15 rifle, which he said he loaded with 29 rounds.-
Seems fishy. Why load 29 when you can load 31? That’s a difference of 2 rounds, which is exactly the number of shots being disputed.
29 rounds seems exactly wrong.
1 less than 30 to avoid potential jams from tight spring.
Maybe that is a thought, but I’ve never had a problem with pmags.
I’ve got an AK one that I use on a Norinco SKS (they’ll take AK mags) and now and again it’ll jam on a full load.
How’s that for a euphemism?
what bacon-magic said.
underloading mags to deter FTFs is a thing. maybe not a wholly rational thing, but a thing nonetheless.
I never got more than 28 in the old metal mags.
Hmm. I have some metal mags and haven’t had any issues, but it sounds plausible, but I doubt these cops with multi million dollar budgets can’t afford a $15 magazine
Or he meant that the 30th was in the chamber instead of the mag.
Officer 1, which the local newspaper still won’t identify despite being named in open court, is a longtime member of the state police SWAT team with multiple officer involved shootings including at least 3 fatalities. He judgement in the use of force is compromised imo, but state police have successfully managed to sweep his record under the rug with the use of ‘officer safety’.
The point that really sticks in my head is May 2012 when he was involved in two separate shootings in the very same month. So the post-shooting investigation, counseling, pysch eval, were all rushed through, he’s returned to duty, and shoots another person and it was business as usual.
I’m puzzled by this. If he knows the mag had 29 rounds in it, and the investigators found only 25, what happened to the other four? How does having four missing rounds get him off the hook?
I’m sure they extend this courtesey to other accused individuals.
For those that like him, Razorfist on the Alex Jones banning:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/u_eavMuTfr0/
Massive, voracious lizards are invading the southwestern US
I, for one, welcome our lizard overlords.
Are they tasty?
https://petponder.com/facts-about-tegu
Uh, Florida is in the southeastern US.
Oh. Never mind. Read article before posting.
I for one welcome our
new supplier of moving targets for pistol practice.
“I, for one, welcome our lizard overlords.”
Well I’m glad someone does
no offense intended, sir
Our iguana was nearly 4 feet long. I don’t see why this is so different, other than these have a broader range.
Whether they will “take over” or not depends on what they eat, and what will eat them. Coyotes may find them really tasty, especially in cooler weather when they can’t get away.
Sounds like the killer bees that have been moving up from Mexico ever since I was a kid and were supposed to be everywhere by now. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Your school population has dropped by a third in the last decade. The last few superintendents have done absolutely nothing to stop the migration or fix the schools. You have a violence problem so bad the teachers’ union negotiates more on adding safety to the school than for pay raises. What do you do?
Of course you ask for more money! $30M more. You get extra points for brazenly campaigning for $12M of a shell game.
Maybe ask me for money once you fire not only the director of govt relations, but everyone who works for him as well.
Every time I look at how much is spent on students every year I get more pissed. I spend around $300 a year on curriculum for our homeschool efforts (for the first year, other kids are cheaper).
I know it’s not apples to apples there as our house is our school and the wife doesn’t get paid (shitlording done right!). Still upsetting as I know a bunch of the money is just going to admin type positions that don’t truly benefit the kids and the kids just get stuck in bigger classrooms.
Socialism’s Downfall
With the unexpected success of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries and Democrats swooning over the newest face in the crowd, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, socialism – or its latest euphemism, “Democratic Socialism” – is the new hot-button issue of the American left and its Millennial allies, who are enamored by its egalitarian rhetoric. Socialism has been ruinous everywhere it has been tried, yet this cabal is just the latest in a long line of true believers throughout the Western world, convinced that they are so exceptional that they can succeed where so many before them have failed. Their naïveté oozes from every pore as they mindlessly rail against capitalism and tout the theoretical benefits of socialism.
Why has socialism failed everywhere it has been tried – and why does it continue to do so – despite the best efforts of the die-hard true believers in the United States and the rest of the world? The original and current proponents of socialism fail to take into account one basic and immutable factor: the fundamental nature of the human race…
The Founding Fathers of the United States, one of the greatest confluences of brilliant minds in the history of mankind, understood the basic nature of human beings. They accordingly set forth a form of government and a written constitution to limit those who seek hegemony over the people, especially those seeking unlimited economic security from an all-powerful central government. They recognized that only the individual free to pursue economic happiness would result in a society wherein all benefit on a sustained basis.
The latest generation of the proponents of socialism in the United States have never endured any national adversity, as this country has experienced unprecedented peace and prosperity for nearly four generations. Far too many, because of a desire to be part of the in crowd as well as outright ignorance, are captivated by the egalitarian theory of socialism-Marxism without realizing that it is no more than a vehicle for others to seize power by exploiting the foibles of human nature in order to control and manipulate the people, including many of those currently and ignorantly espousing its so-called virtues.
It’s almost like it is better to utilize human nature (capitalism/free markets and limited gov’t) rather than change it (socialism/communism).
Almost?
split off the cities that want to try this into little nation-states. after NYC, Philly, Detroit, Newark, Baltimore et alcollapse into starving, murderous chaos, point and laugh and then pave over them and say, “see, dumbasses. now don’t try that shit ever again.”
Allow immigration from those cities, on the condition that nobody who immigrates to the Real US from its Socialist Shitholes can every vote. Ever. In their life.
I’m open to allowing their children to vote. Maybe. But only the ones born after they left the Socialist Shithole.
This would only delay the agenda the left has. These people’s children, brought up in an ever expanding nanny welfare state (the US) would end up voting more of it, and then reversing the policy where the ones here illegal are not allowed to vote to boot.
When you’re old, sometimes its fun when you’re living after midnight.
FTA:
Sounds like a good time was had.
now that’s living. what they’re doing at the home is not living.
The Commie Pope declares St. Thomas Aquinas, the Bible, and God wrong.
Ohhhhh you’ve done it now. *lights Just Say’n signal.*
He’s over at TOS doing battle in a Robby virtue-signal article.
Jeez, talk about an enormous waste of time. TOS is a lost cause. 90% of the posting now is tedious bitching back and forth between Hihn, Tony, the new crop of leftist trolls like that Rev Arthur Kirkland cretin, and the influx of hardcore MAGA types.
1 – Apparently the writer is unaware that Catholicism doesn’t follow Old Testament Law to the letter. This is why we are allowed to eat bacon and aren’t stoning adulterers anymore.
2 – The feelings of half of American Catholics on the issue are irrelevant, as they don’t get to make Church Law.
3 – Making law based on the whims of the family of murder victims is a really bad idea. They don’t quite have perspective on things. Perhaps we should let the family of someone killed in a drunk driving accident decide that we should reinstate prohibition.
This isn’t really a change in doctrine. The Church already only allowed for the death penalty in very limited circumstances and post-WWII has long held that the incidences in which the death penalty may be permissible is exceedingly rare.
This is like writing an article “The Catholic Church Comes Out Against War”. I mean, technically the Church allows for war, but the standards by which a war would be permissible under “Just War Theory” is so stringent and limited that virtually no war in recent memory would have met those qualifications.
Obviously, the fear among many Catholics is that this method of nudging doctrine beyond existing limitations will be employed by this pope to justify apostasy. Which is a fair concern. He is a Jesuit, after all
So. Question here from a lapsed catholic. What’s the deal with a priest being able to excommunicate someone? I know in olden times they’d throw that around and people would freak out about it. Did a regular priest really hold that much power to deny someone they didn’t agree with the chance for heaven?
You don’t have to be part of the Church, necessarily, to be afforded Heaven. The Church holds that it is possible to be granted salvation without being part of the Church, so long as one shows “grace” in their life (which is a loosely defined term that couples “good works” with “righteous thoughts” and so forth). “Faith alone” is not a tenant of the Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church.
I don’t know how it worked in olden times, but only the hierarchy can approve of an “excommunication” now. It’s similar to being granted the authority to perform an exorcism. The local priest needs to make the case to the bishop and it goes further up the line where it is ultimately decided by the Cardinals and the permanent bureaucracy.
To my recollection, the Roman Church wielded significantly more secular power in the Middle Ages than now, to the point that it might have been said to be the ruler of all Western Europe. So in those days, an excommunication, aside from the denial of spiritual privileges, would carry heavy political consequences — in some cases, it could deprive you of the protection of the local laws, leaving you open to confiscation of property or worse; in some others, if you were a ruler, it could encourage rebellion among your subjects by painting you as unworthy of the right to rule.
Antipope! Antipope! Antipope!
I’m sure even Macron at this point would be “yeah, you can have the old palace in Avignon, until we work something out with Merkel.”
I love the fact that Prager thinks that logic can be used when arguing with a Pope.
Note to Prager: Us popes are infallible. That is the fucking deal. If you believe in the Church, then you have to believe that the Pope is infallible. So if he changes the catechism, it is because God told him to.
This is the socon version of trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Don’t bring logic to an argument with people who are in charge of an institution built on the notion of an invisible sky daddy.
At least for the Catholics, it doesn’t quite work like that. The Pope is only infallible when he’s speaking ex cathedra, which is not used regularly.
Us popes are infallible. That is the fucking deal. If you believe in the Church, then you have to believe that the Pope is infallible. So if he changes the catechism, it is because God told him to.
This is the socon version of trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Don’t bring logic to an argument with people who are in charge of an institution built on the notion of an invisible sky daddy.
It’s usually better to know what the fuck you’re talking about before you go on a condescending rant about invisible sky daddies.
Fuck that. The only good kind of condescending rants are ones built on a tower of ignorance surrounded by a moat of intolerance.
My parents allegedly came very close to breaking up over papal infallibility. My father had converted to Catholicism so that he could marry my mother. Sometime after they got married, he let it slip that he thought that papal infallibility was stupid. My mother got super pissed off that he wasn’t a true convert and had only converted to make things easy.
Later she broke with the church over a number of issues and the rest of us were allowed to be heathens.
So daddy lied so he could lie with mommy?
SIN!
Fuck that. The only good kind of condescending rants are ones built on a tower of ignorance surrounded by a moat of intolerance.
LMAO
Thanks. I didn’t mean to come out like a condescending twat. I just think that Prager and his stupid “I’m so logical” approach to shit is silly when you are railing about a guy in a silly hat and a dress.
Fuck, I call myself a nonbeliever because I think too many atheists are jerks who are just as tethered to the doctrine that “there is no god” as any church going believer.
I’m too lazy to care about the big questions. My unexamined live of snark, beer, fishing and hunting is fine with me.
Pope Jimbo has my pope vote.
I say this as an agnostic wobbling back and forth between atheism and Episcopalianism, so take it for what it’s worth, but I think you’ll find that in a lot of the theological treatises of Catholicism, particularly in the early church, there’s a tremendous deal of logic employed in arriving at various conclusions. Aquinas, for one, was a huge admirer of Aristotle and employed a lot of his reasoning in the formation of his Summa Theologica. I understand the same is true of a lot of the Jewish and Muslim philosophers, but I’m not as familiar with their works. Maybe because of the metaphysical nature of the topics being discussed, the use of logic in argument takes on a greater significance.
Yes. However, Aquinas is distinctly Catholic. I’m not familiar with other Christian faiths using his work, but, as you note, early Christian writers also employed philosophical justifications for the Church’s positions. Justin Martyr used Stoicism. St. Augustine borrowed from Plato. These speak to the logical basis for nearly all Christian faiths that trace their origins to the early Church
Its Tuesday!!!!!!!!
FAKE NEWS. It’s Wednesday at least.
Fraud? Nannyism?
A local couple is in big trouble for selling some crazy “How to make $20K/mo by selling shit on Amazon” classes. Allegedly they were able to get people to pay them $15M for such advice, despite the fact that “Few if any of Sellers Playbook’s customers achieved such results, and the defendants had “no adequate basis” for making such profit claims, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.”
They are being charged with violations of the federal Consumer Review Fairness Act and the Minnesota Prevention of Consumer Fraud Act.
I’m generally curious about the rest of the mob’s opinion on when something like this turns from taking advantage of the derp supply into fraud.
Bah. This has been going on forever in real estate. They sell a program that could conceivably work – often times has worked for a select few – and rock n roll.
See also MLM. Not fraud if the customers learn the ‘secrets’. I can’t believe they were dumb enough to promise some quantifiable success.
UP to $20k/month and we’ve got no issue. Otherwise there is a reasonably solid fraud case here
But enough about Trump University….
Precisely.
Reminds me of Don Laupre. Remember those commercials?
Oh yeah. They went after him really hard. Killed himself in prison.
In his tiny one room prison cell.
*wild applause*
I’m generally curious about the rest of the mob’s opinion on when something like this turns from taking advantage of the derp supply into fraud.
Making specific promises that go unfulfilled. Which is why every one of the 10 million scam artists running this same job use vague copy and have a page of fine print something along the lines of “These results are not typical. You may earn substantially less, or you may lose money. All business ventures entail risk of loss. Etc etc”.
“German spy Mata Hari”
Just want to clarify that while she did spy for the Germans leading up to WWI, she was a Dutch citizen.
How silly have things gotten?
The latest brouhaha in Mpls attempts to find a limit to nonsense?
On a contentious vote, all the women* voted on one side and the men on the other side. When asked about the split a local pol joked that it was because the new mayor is so handsome. The guy who heard the joke tattled and now the women are all demanding a head on a pike.
*2 of the three women on the council are actually transgender
I’m generally curious about the rest of the mob’s opinion on when something like this turns from taking advantage of the derp supply into fraud.
Something something fool and his money.
At some point, personal responsibility enters the picture. To be honest, I have more respect for both the sellers and buyers of get-rich-by-working programs (scams?) than I do for the lottery and the dupes who play it. Obviously, details matter, but teaching somebody how to provide a good or service to willing buyers is far nobler than telling them they should sit around waiting for money to fall out of the sky.
sit around waiting for money to fall out of the sky
Dad buys tickets every week. He knows he’ll never win big. He still wakes up early and goes to work. He has no illusions about it. But for a few bucks a week he gets the fantasy of winning and a few minutes of borderline excitement as the numbers are called.
That’s interesting, and i think i agree in principle.
however, i’ve seen some of these most-common “MLM get-rich-sales-scams” from up close … or at least close enough*, and i’m not sure they always did the ‘teaching how to provide a good or service’ bit.
There are certainly some basic “How to sell” (anything) skills that a person will learn on their own no matter what it is they’re selling, but most of the ‘get-rich-quick’ scams tend to emphasize churning+burning / flipping product, pushing volume at expense of ever developing any mutually beneficial relationships… basically, “burn every customer, then teach them to burn others, maximize your burn turnover!” The MLM world tends to attract/reward a persona of ‘psycho sales asshole’ who would never actually be at all good in any real corp sales position, and would more likely end up selling Time Shares in earthquake-prone 3rd world countries.
(*one of my earliest corp clients who paid well and kept coming back for more was Amway; i worked for corporate guys and never dealt with the creepy sales model, i just generally helped them w/ emerging-market product research stuff; but i went (almost accidentally) to two of their recruiting events where i witnessed the whole song-n-dance they do to recruit people + pump up these crazy pyramid-scheme instant wealth ideas.)
Man, those MLM schemes were thick on the ground back in the ’80s and ’90s. I was in sales and would get calls from people all the time who had a ‘business opportunity’ that they wanted to discuss. It was fun to fuck with them at first, but after while it became tedious. Gee, all the worst parts of sales and management, all rolled up in a neat package? How can I say no?
*barf*
Man, those MLM schemes were thick on the ground back in the ’80s and ’90s.
They still are. I know one girl from high school who goes to the big Mary Kay conferences, so maybe she is actually making something selling make up. But everyone else selling shakes, fitness dvds, yoga pants, those stupid stomach wraps, etc. don’t seem to realize everyone else is doing the same thing,
I remember when my mom got sucked into a MLM scheme – Silpada jewelry, in her case. She STILL has boxes of that stuff in her garage that she couldn’t unload, over a decade later.
What was that club in the mid to late 90s that had people peddle their products to their friends hoping to become rich? Can’t remember the name, but I used to get at least one or two calls a week from people that figured since I was gainfully employed they could pity shame me into buying the junk they peddled to help them pay their rent.
AMWAY! That’s what it was called. Is that shit still a thing?
If Amway/Alticor were still 1 company (they split in 2000) they’d be doing ~$20bn in sales annually and be one of the top 10 largest US privately-owned companies.
you see them less in the US because a lot of their MLM business has pivoted to Asia / Latam. in the US they actually do huge business just selling same products as private label goods to boutique retailers/big box stores.
if you stripped away their goofy MLM distribution/marketing business model… they’re really just like “Procter &Gamble” at root. A very large personal care product supplier makes 100s of products.
I remember about 10 years ago when I was desperate for work. I was laid off the month before my son was born, and the only thing I could find at the time was a $9/hour security job. I got an email about a sales job. It was very vague, but I figured, what the hell. I went to the “job fair” and it turned out to be some scheme selling pre-paid legal services. Ugh.
I had the same thing happen back in the early ’90s. I had a crappy job and got fooled into showing up for what I thought was going to be a better job. But like you, it soon became clear that it was a mlm deal selling photos or something.
The person giving the presentation must have seen the look of disgust on my face when I figured it out. I had planned on sneaking out during the first break, but the presenter called me out for rolling my eyes. Something along the lines of “hey you, don’t you want to be here?”
I stood up and told them that I was pissed that I had been tricked into this stupid meeting and no one with any brains would join their stupid party and walked out. I don’t think that was the response the asshole giving the talk expected.
Oh. Never mind. Read article before posting.
NEVER.
Emails Reveal High School Teachers Plotting To Hide Their Political Bias From Parents
He typed this reply: “I am concerned that the call for ‘objectivity’ may just inadvertently become the most effective destructive weapon against social justice,” and sent it to the members of Newton North’s history department.
News media, entertainment media, education, and bureaucracy. When you have control of these things, you have control of a society.
It’s Newton. I’m amazed that they could find a conservative parent to complain.
One of my wife’s best friends lived there for a couple of decades and she is as Trump deranged as they come.
Probably because she went to a school where the people responsible for educating indoctrinated her, like these fucks are doing?
I think she lived in the area so long that she adopted the culture.
People are desperate to fit in and don’t want to make the other clique members come at them, so this shit does happen. Lucky for me I could give a rats ass what people think of me, so I remain immune of this mental disorder.
A movement so just it requires a conspiracy, so popular it can’t survive the scrutiny of public opinion, so obviously correct it can only be promoted via propaganda.
People always do things that are contrary to their own well being..
/progtard
the environment here is progtown too. it’s fun disassembling what my kids have been taught.
BURN IT DOWN.
Well, internet is out at work. When the internet’s away, trashy will play.
Midget Lot Lizard pron?
Meth is a helluva drug
Don’t normally care about celebrity news but as a child of the 90s… Damn that’s rough.
Has he been court ordered to coach a pee-wee hockey team?
lol. It’s eightball puck time.
He lost the weight AND kept it off!
Holy shit. He’s 39? That is rough.
Yeah, he looks to be mid-50s at least. Yeesh.
Lord have mercy…poor guy
“Weiss’ manager”
Uh … what?
Huh
Third, a few short-term data points are often inadequate for analyzing the effects of an economic policy like the tax cuts. Sometimes an economic policy can have a dramatic and rapid effect, but sometimes the effect takes place slowly, over the course of several years. In the case of Trump’s tax cut, it might take businesses several quarters to start handing out raises in response. Also, at short time scales, swings in real wages or GDP are heavily affected by swings in gasoline prices that have little to do with policy.
What a spoilsport. We need a narrative (or something which supports the narrative which conforms to our pre-existing biases), and we need it now.
which conforms to our pre-existing biases
They really are going strong on the “it’s delayed benefits from Obama’s policies” angle. It’s shameless, but it works. I know because the gf falls for it. I try to fix the damage the propaganda does, but it is difficult because her parents are card carrying progressive Dems that worship CNN and always want to discuss the latest Trump “outrage”. And I’m not kidding, occasionally it is the first topic of convo. when they are on the phone together.
https://twitter.com/hmsromano/status/1026559388704800771
Tariq Nasheed
Verified account @tariqnasheed
No one was “attacked” in that video. And my sister Candace was with a known suspected white supremacists there. She is hustling those white supremacists, and I love her for it
“known suspected white supremacist” made me laugh.
it’s pretty clear from the video that a protestor put a bull horn in her ear and activated it.
Nasheed is approaching Nation of Islam levels of insanity.
I thought he actually IS a member of Nation of Islam?
Wouldn’t take him, too much of a crackpot.
Candace is your sister? Thanksgiving’s gotta be rough around your place.
Musings re welfare recipients and people who stay in a foreclosed home mortgage-free for a year.
In economic terms, we talk about “rational actors.” What does a rational actor do? Given a set of choices, he will choose the one in his own best interest.
On a moral/ethical basis I can sneer at people who take what they can get without shame.
On an intellectual basis, I can acknowledge that these people are acting rationally.
On an emotional basis, I feel like a chump.
On a moral/ethical basis I can sneer at people who take what they can get without shame.
On an intellectual basis, I can acknowledge that these people are acting rationally.
On an emotional basis, I feel like a chump.
This this this
I agree on the first two.
On the third, I try not to feel like a chump for doing the right thing. I don’t feel like a chimp when I take something to the lost and found instead of keeping it, for example, or for not stealing things when nobody is watching.
The distinction is that the mortgagee (as Don mentioned below) is allowing this to happen.
It means that the non-payee is valued more than the payee.
And if they’d handled the refi as they should’ve, they’d still be getting money. Therefore, to the bank, getting no money was better than getting some money.
payor*
I never feel like I need to have an opinion in this space.
There are, of course, some good reasons to never leave a house empty.
Anyway, the mortgagee manages his situation however he pleases; he is also a rational actor: let him sink or swim based on his own managerial decisions.
My mother used to have her own tax preparation business. She had a similar complaint about her clients who would get busted for never paying taxes. Once they were caught they’d hire her to help negotiate some settlement.
Normally the IRS would try to get as much money as they could, but would be pretty lenient in most cases. She said she felt like a chump because not paying your taxes and getting busted occasionally is a much more “rational” choice because you save a ton of money.
A buddy of mine realized that his tags had been out of date for so many months that he was looking at a free year on the road soon. The fine for being caught wasn’t much different from the price of a year’s tags, so he kept rolling untaxed.
Mr Religion had opinions about everything, but he never brought up rendering to Caesar again in my presence.
I’m genuinely surprised they didn’t catch this when he went to renew the following year, and charge him for the prior year plus a penalty. Protecting their “revenue” is the one single thing that I generally expect them to be able to do right.
Mississippi would: you can leave a car rusting in a field for ten years, but if you try to tag it after that all the previous years’ taxes come due.
Texas government is a certain sort of circus; I prefer the bears on unicycles to the clowns, but you get more clowns.
A movement so just it requires a conspiracy, so popular it can’t survive the scrutiny of public opinion, so obviously correct it can only be promoted via propaganda.
Excellent.
This Parasite Drugs Its Hosts With the Psychedelic Chemical in Shrooms
Ban cicadas.
He only thinks he’s being funny:
The joke here is that the DEA would tase him instead of killing him.
Those bugs do always look like they’re trippin!
TW: Buzzfeed. But teh replies are GOLD
https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/1025765009295638528
You mention Elizabeth Bathory and fail to link to the ode honoring her? For shame, sir!
Elizabeth by Ghost
I’m sorry, sir. This is the true ode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbldM7JEIeE
reminder:
that Welch, Woods, Malice show broadcasts @12:30PM today
i believe you can listen if you activate free trial @ Gas Digital
https://gasdigitalnetwork.com/gdn-show-channels/your-welcome/
and then just cancel it afterward
or you can wait a few days and it just goes up for free on Youtube/or there.
Trump has sent Welch completely off the reservation, so this should be interesting.
I sometimes wonder how disappointed Welch circa 2005 must be of “newly woke” Welch
In fairness he’s done that to everybody though. This is the first time I can recall that a republican president has actively fought a cultural war and called the left out on their bullshit and the people I thought would cheerlead for this absolutely hate him for it. I kind of get it because he such an asshole but the guy to finally throw their game back at them was always going to be a shameless asshole who could care less about being a hypocrite because that’s the game.
I wouldn’t say completely off, but he does seem to have a great deal of trouble admitting to benign explanations for Trump’s decisions. His tut-tutting with Kmele in particular is nauseating. It reminds me of a friend I had to quit for being condescending about my libertarianism. He had an insufferable undertone of oh you poor dear in his responses.
I have a hard time listening to that show now. Kmele is the most interesting coherent thinker besides maybe fisher but Monyhan is all over the place in a way that isn’t very interesting me and Welch just needs to move to europe already.
This is fucking gold.
Back in the days of the 976(?) pay numbers, I contrived a scheme to bilk the gullible. I was going to put vaguely worded ads in newspapers directing people to call for the “keys to success”. The plan was to play something like Herbert Hoover’s inaugural address to them, while charging an exorbitant per-minute rate.
I never did it, though. Not cutthroat enough, I guess.
I’ve been seeing ads on tv for telephone psychic readings lately. I’m a little surprised that’s a thing again.
More ban news: Tommy Robinson banned from Instagram
https://metro.co.uk/2018/08/07/instagram-bans-tommy-robinson-as-social-media-companies-purge-far-right-7807413/
Is it just me or does anyone else find this stuff really unsettling? As stated upthread, there will eventually be competitors, but right now Google, Twitter, and Facebook have a pretty solid monopoly on information.
It is an unsettling and coordinated purge of people that don’t toe the line and it’s going to continue.
Agree. I would find it distasteful either way, but the apparent coordination is even uglier.
However, I’m glad – in a way – that it’s now happening in a way that everyone can see it. The platform owners can’t continue to deny that they are censoring whatever they don’t like, and I think that will give rise to competitive platforms in the long run. I’m sure they’ll continue to try to minimize the backlash by making it look like they’re only censoring the lunatic fringe, but I don’t think people are going to buy it. Too large a percentage of the public have become aware that the large media companies are actively aligned against them and their views.
I have my own opinion, but there’s a theme that I think I notice here: tons of schadenfreude when free market unhappiness happens to progs but defensiveness and lapses of consistency when short run situations are unfavorable for socons, reactionaries, and Trump apologists. I’m not saying that’s who you are; I’m just saying I get a sad when that happens here on my favorite website.
Now to my opinion: I don’t care now in this case, and I won’t care when it happens even to folk I favor; I don’t think anyone has any right to make IG bake this cake even if it is a monopoly. For me, consistent faith to first principles is the only point; frictions would need to be epic before I would weigh them or let them move my emotional needle.
And as a practical answer, do these people have any trouble getting AM air-time, publishing a website, or selling op-ed pieces? I don’t think they’re being tarred and feathered even if several sites won’t carry their material.
I’d be defending these people if they were leftists but that isn’t who’s being banned. Name one and I’ll defend him.
Lefties are constantly having to backtrack, apologize for, or clarify comments they make on social media. That’s pretty much identical to corporate censorship. And criticizing journalists violates their First Amendment. Trump is suppressing the free press by condemning CNN on Twitter.
I agree that the social media giants have the right to determine every bit who they do and don’t want to publish. My problem is that the law exempts them from liability other publishers have for their content. The supposed justification for this was that they weren’t acting as publishers, but as open forums. But, taking a political editorial stance means that claim is absolute bunk. That means they should be subject to the same liability laws as any other publisher. They have a right to decide who and what to publish. They don’t have a right to be exempt from the same laws as other publishers.
^^^THIS^^^
I agree with your position I just don’t see too many people who are complaining about this particular de-platforming advocating for IG cake baking that seems to be far more prevalent with the people cheerleading for this. I also don’t think bemoaning or criticizing this decision is being hypocritical to free market principles.
“I also don’t think bemoaning or criticizing this decision is being hypocritical to free market principles.”
Oh: I don’t agree with the decision, either. I think it’s extremely regrettable; I’d prefer an open platform.
Tommy Robinson was jailed.
It is unsettling but in a liberating sort of way.
These companies are doing to themselves what their competitors, heretofore, have been unable.
Yes, which is why I just sent a donation to Bitchute.
I’m going to do the same
Scott Horton (antiwar.com); Peter Van Buren (dissident former intelligence agent in The Nation and The American Conservative) and Daniel McAdams (Ron Paul Institute) were all banned from Twitter the same day as Alex Jones.
I think they might have misinterpreted a lack of censorship as being a substantial cause of the disappointing earnings and resulting stock price bloodbath we saw among the tech firms recently. Doesn’t account for Apple though.
“Please kill us last.”
Is Gab public yet?
is the answer jury or cartridge?
It’s time for the Courts to dispense with the “content-neutral forum” nonsense with the social media giants. They’re private companies and can determine their own editorial line. But, that means they should take responsibility for it.
They’re publishers and should be treated as such.
Yup. Of course, that means an epic boatload of hurt for them in terms of contingent legal liabilities, but they chose that route.
Can you explain a bit more? I’m wholly ignorant of those legal liabilities.
Basically, because they claim they’re content neutral open forums, they are exempt from all the things that publishers re usually liable for. If a reporter for the NY Times says that wdalasio likes to rape babies, I can sue the living hell out of the reporter for slander. I can also sue the living hell out of the Times for publishing the claim. They share liability. I think similar rules apply to fraud and even harassment. By taking an editorial stance, the social media are (or at least should be) putting themselves in the position of the Times. They aren’t the equivalent of a bulletin board where people leave messages. They’re the equivalent of a magazine that publishes articles.
that explains why Youtube’s lawyers didn’t say they had a problem with Alex Jones’ libel, slander, and/or defamation. they’re not trying to lose their protection as just a dumb content-neutral public forum.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/opinion/alex-jones-infowars-facebook.html
Yup. Not familiar with the law, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t list companies by names, but instead sets the standard. These companies are going to get sued, and a court is going to decide whether they still qualify or not.
In fact, I’m surprised they haven’t been sued already. An enterprising plaintiff’s lawyer could use yesterday’s purge to set up the argument they are liable as publishers, and I expect it would be no problem at all to find somebody defamed on these platforms as the test case.
it would be no problem at all to find somebody defamed on these platforms
and that’s where the too big to fail legislation comes in to protect them and their market share.
“Polish, but whatever.”
I think it’s in Bluebeard that Vonnegut has this Polish character in WW2 who
* fights the German invaders but is captured
* adopts the name and wardrobe of a Russian co-prisoner as the Russians overrun the POW camp
* is “liberated” and becomes a “Russian” regular and posted to guard or fight Germans
* spends the rest of the war killing Germans as his formal job
* spends his nights sneaking around killing his Russian comrades at night
Perfect Polish life: getting to kill Germans AND Russians ?
When I was stationed in Germany, I had a little room in a rezidenz in Heidelberg; the landlord was a little Greek guy, George, who had a live-in Polish girlfriend. George spoke English, German and Greek; the girlfriend spoke Polish, Russian and German, so they conversed in German.
One evening over beers at the bar George also owned, I asked the girlfriend through George about Polish humor. This took some circumlocution, but I described the “Polack joke.” Turns out that Germany and Greece also has Polack jokes; the girlfriend didn’t care about that. But I asked her “so, in Poland, who do you tell jokes about?”
I know enough German to understand her answer: “Oh! Russians.”
Every sane American needs to take a good look at this trial if they want to see the kind of kangaroo court that Mueller and his acolytes envision for anyone they don’t like. It almost doesn’t matter whether Manafort is guilty or innocent at this point.
I’m becoming a big fan of that judge. Looks like Meuller and his crew assumed everyone else would go right along with his personal crusade to stop “Literally Hitler” and this trial would be a cake walk.
Much like charging a bunch of Russians means the case is settled and collusion-by-association sealed. God forbid any of them show up in court to defend themselves.
They’re approaching this case as if it is being tried in the court of public opinion and not in a court of law. We can count our lucky stars that judges like this one still exist, because mob justice seems to be gaining popularity these days.
tried in the court of public opinion
The Orville has a relevant episode.
Sitting Senator calls for tech companies to ban more content creators-InfoWars not enough:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/survival-of-our-democracy-depends-on-banning-sites-like-infowars-democratic-senator-says
Anyone with enough smarts to pound sand can figure out what this asshole thinks the next step should be.
This asshole Murphy from the People’s Republic of Connecticut would love to control what people get to hear. To save our “democracy”, of course…
Yesssss, yes. Let the hate flow through you. Keep ripping those masks off.
“Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it,”
1) Republic, not Democracy
2) “We have to destroy it to save it”
3) Keep up the anti-freedom of speech, anti-2A, and pro-high taxes positions. It will be fun watching the ///BlueWave turn into a ///CrimsonTide.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., is calling on other tech companies to ban more sites like InfoWars, and says the survival of American democracy depends on it.
“Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it,” Murphy tweeted Monday.
Right you are, Chris. Anything which impedes our progress to a one-party socialist utopia is undemocratic.
Someone should tell these communists that they keep using the word “democracy” but know not what it means…
The greatest civic virtue such people envision is everyone in the community coming together to pull the lever deciding which among them is murdered for the good of the State.
While this is funny, I’m gonna have to go ahead and disagree with the characterization of Michael Ian Black as an “intellectual”.
I have no sympathy for Rahm Emmanuel, but I find it endlessly amusing that one day he takes shit because such “nasty” jobs as warehousing/distribution/logistics, asphalt, etc. are moving to the South Side, and the very next day he takes shit for not doing enough economically for the South Side. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t – and that’s what the mayor of shitbirds deserves.
Just a friendly reminder that past military service makes one immune to any future criticism:
https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1026789081580224514
If that were the case, we all owe Benedict Arnold an apology for making his name a byword for treason.
Eat shit Mueller, you partisan hack.
so Mueller *volunteered* to fight in Vietnam?
And Hitler won an Iron Cross in WWI
I have no sympathy for Rahm Emmanuel, but I find it endlessly amusing that one day he takes shit because such “nasty” jobs as warehousing/distribution/logistics, asphalt, etc. are moving to the South Side, and the very next day he takes shit for not doing enough economically for the South Side. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t – and that’s what the mayor of shitbirds deserves.
My philosophy, which explains why I am not a member of the species Rattus politicus, among other things, is as follows:
You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but why fucking bother?
Someone help me:
is there a short, simple, solid* argument somewhere which explains the purist-libertarian argument as to why regulation which discourages monopoly/cartels is Very Bad?
(*i mean, i know the “but the regulations do more damage than the monopoly/cartel to market-efficiency” hand-wave; what i’m curious is if this argument actually has proof that the ‘cure is always worse than the disease’, or if that’s simply *assumed* and is basically question begging instead of actually ‘demonstrated’ in real case-examples)
what i am looking for isn’t some doctrinaire explaining their philosophy to me: i know the philosophy. I’m more interested in “practical economic examples” that show how in small, medium, and larger-scale economies, that monopolism and cartels are either a) “Not really a problem” (because they eventually fall apart, or something), or b) how regulation preventing their formation is *in all cases* worse than the problem.
The reason i ask… is because i already think the argument is true…. in *most* real-world case-examples. But that there are some cases, in some market conditions, where the self-regulating conditions don’t spontaneously emerge.
the answer i’ve gotten so far on that last problem, is, “well, maybe, but they *eventually* do”.
How long is “Eventually?” 10 years? 20 years? 100 years? They shrug and say “why does that matter?”
and at that point it seems like a motte/bailey thing, where they’re not really talking about ‘real world examples’ anymore, and retreating to this, “well, in principle it always fixes itself….’eventually'”…. where “eventually” is really just another way of saying, “in theory” . It feels like cheating.
I don’t have an answer for you, but pretending we have a free market and believing that said market will correct itself is rather like playing craps with loaded dice and thinking that given enough rolls the luck will even out.
No. Doesn’t exist.
Well, let me couch that. Not that I’ve seen. And I’ve looked. And I asked my relative. Who has a PhD in econ from a top 5 school. And who’s worked in Washington on policy. Some of it related to this field (not the libertarian part of it.)
One of the main reasons is that the market changes too fast, and the courts move too slow. By the time anti-monopoly action is completed, there’s a different White-House full of different economists with a different theory of why anti-monopoly regulation works or should be done. And by the time the action is completed, the original target is rarely a monopoly any more anyway. My relative is a professional technocrat, and even he thinks that there is no way to have coherent anti-trust policy. Every action is a one-off.
Inconsistent one-offs are basically impossible to study for those kinds of answers you are looking for. You can do case studies, and those exist, but nothing systematic.
This is an argument i’m familiar with, and i think its a good example of what i already believe = e.g. why in MOST cases, there is little/no benefit gained from anti-trust/anti-monopoly enforcement efforts.
it still doesn’t address the point about scale or timeframe or (probably the most important) the possibility that self-correction isn’t necessarily inevitable in every set of conditions
i agree that the history of anti-trust enforcement is a history of “random bursts of badly reasoned and inconsistent legislative spasms” sort of thing.
But again, i think this ‘history’ is maybe besides the point – its more a critique of “Enforcement” rather than the dissuasive effects of existing law.
iow, trusts/monopolies DO NOT FORM in many cases because of enforcement concerns. You can’t really measure the negative impact, i suppose, but my own experience w/ financial market regulation is that markets are very sensitive to potential-risk in ways people really don’t understand outside of ‘effect on visible prices’.
iow, regulation ‘as incentive’ rather than as ‘cudgel’
i’m not trying to sell anyone on the idea of ‘regulations are therefore good’; i’m just suggesting ‘how they work’ can’t be measured simply by looking at the efficiency of enforcement.
“random bursts of badly reasoned and inconsistent legislative spasms”
If only. Along with insider trading, most anti-trust is judge-made law, never mind the fact that we nominally don’t have common law in federal cases.
Can’t help you out any more though. Sorry.
I found the lectures associated with this article.
Trying again.
I found the lectures associated with this article pretty good.
This lecture… for example.
thanks
Voter fraud never happens!