Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas! And what an absolutely wonderful morning it always is!
Biden delivers angry, partisan speech viewed by thousands of people.
Forensic report claims Dominion error rate of 68%.
John Durham expanding special counsel team.
Ohio guidelines for High School wrestlers: can wrestle, but not shake hands.
That is all I got for today. I’ll leave you with a song and move along with my day.
GMB
Green Man Bad?
Objection!
*glares*
Geriatric Man Bad
Forensic report claims Dominion error rate of 68%.
NO EVIDENCE!!!!!!!
What? One out of three’s not bad!
…of widespread fraud. That’s the new dismissive line.
Look, there was no fraud. And if there was it was not widespread. And if it was, it was not significant enough to change the outcome. And if it was, why do you hate democracy?
This is what I said was going to happen. And why I said what I care about is prosecuting the hell out of the fraud that does exist. If it isn’t widespread, lets make sure it doesn’t become so by making an example out of the fraud that exists.
What avenues are left available? I’m pretty much black-pilled at this point. If Biden gets sworn in on a false premise what is supposed to stand in their way? No Picard here.
I am supposing that Trump is Gowron and Biden is Duras, with Kamala and the DNC being Lursa and B’Etor. Who will be Trump’s arbiter of succession?
Is Hunter Toral in that analogy? Young, foolish, propped up by great power even in his embarrassingly stark ineptitude? I dunno.
What the fuck do I know? I watched that series fleetingly as a very young adult. Everything that I know about your silly “Star Shows” originates in memes. I wear that as badge of honour.
To carry the analogy on, the Arbiter has to be from an external power, supposedly neutral.
I nominate Swiss Servator!
The problem is that the fraud that exists that is most pervasive isn’t designed to help Democrats, it’s designed to help incumbents. So asking the people in power to dismantle the system designed to keep them in power seems a stretch.
What goes on every election is extremely illegal and also near impossible to prove, so therefore completely legal.
Theoretically this problem gets fixed by taking away power from whomever does manage to get their corrupt ass elected, but we’ve seen how well that works as well. The governors in this country are de facto dictators at the moment. In Michigan when the courts slapped Whitmer down, she essentially just ignored them. If they’re not willing to lead her away in cuffs (they’re not), the courts are ineffectual.
Most of the fraud would be quite provable if we didn’t play Catch-22: we’re not going to make the law or process tighter against fraud because there is no proof of “widespread” fraud, even though there is also no mechanism in place to detect and catch such fraud. People have spent half their lifetimes in prison on flimsier evidence than what’s been presented so far.
But you are right that the motivation to avoid change comes from incumbency, and complacency. It is the same reason we rarely visit questions of structure and representation in our government. The most stable system is one in which everyone wins re-election and both parties never have to contest anything except to occasionally pass the baton for who gets to sit on top for now.
And the fraud doesn’t have to be “widespread” – if it changes enough votes in key areas of swing states, that’s enough. It’s not like every single polling place in the nation has to receive a semi truck of fake ballots in order to change the result.
He did his job: protect the institutions and the swamp from OMB. Too bad it took Donnie Two Scoops so long to catch on.
Yup, Barr was always a swamp creature, he did just enough and said just enough to fool Trump into keeping him on board.
This is why the swamp can not be drained. There are too few people available to fill executive branch positions who are both familiar with the workings of the DC bureaucracies and not actually swamp creature themselves.
At this point, the bureaucracies are too big and too entrenched for anyone to do anything. For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth when Betsy DeVos was installed at Education, what did she reform? Dudes who hook up with Basic College Girls who decide that regret after sex = rape get due process protection. Anything else?
Even if you could unleash a hundred equivalents of “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap on DC, it would be like Robert Silverberg wrote in The Alien Years:
“Mouse riding on an elephant, did I say? More like an amoeba piggybacking on a brontosaurus.”
“Dudes who hook up with Basic College Girls who decide that regret after sex = rape get due process protection. Anything else?”
That’s important. Although I’m sure she’s done other things too.
Maybe the collapsatarians are right, the only thing that’ll take care of the problem is going over the cliff financially.
I don’t want to live in that world.
I’m too damn old to start over.
May you live in interesting times.
Good ‘Ol Boredom
Excellent, Pat.
That was fantastic! Added to the mental list. Reminiscent of old XTC.
Neither do I, but it’s the world that we’re gonna get. Prepare yourself accordingly.
It’s interesting, when Trump had to deal with the mafia which you have to do as a NYC real estate mogul he did OK but then he had to get into politics and those people just can’t be trusted. As soon as he let Flynn go he was done because embracing the swamp to drain the swamp was never going to be a dazzling success.
SWAMP THING! Starring Adrienne Barbeau’s gravity defying breasts and Some Random Drunken Asshole as the SWAMP THING!
That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.
We were obsessed with the TV show called “Maude” in the mid-70’s for two reasons. Back then I would have been a dog chasing a shiny hub-cap but I knew what I liked.
God will get you for that Arthur!
It’s interesting, when Trump had to deal with the mafia which you have to do as a NYC real estate mogul he did OK but then he had to get into politics and those people just can’t be trusted.
Of course the government is really just the biggest, most powerful, mob. Without any other rivals available to place any kind of restraint on them.
His biggest failing was not being an original thinker and thinking the government was well meaning but incompetent which led him to embrace some really slimy motherfuckers who backstabbed him at the first opportunity. Then again, I don’t know if reincarnated Augustus himself could beat the entrenched bureaucratic state we have now so maybe he just lost a doomed battle (and, let’s face it, COVID didn’t help).
COVID hurt. That was the point.
Without covid Trump would have won — economy great, Biden couldn’t hide, no fear mongering death toll, no mail ballot chicanery. It almost makes you think the Chinese did it on purpose.
That’s because both inside the Mafia and for outsiders dealing with them, people face consequences from time to time. That doesn’t really happen in politics.
The mafia can be just as bad as a government (and vice versa), but it needs to secure a local monopoly first.
Good morning banjos!
“Under U.S. code, the special counsel would produce a “confidential report” and is ordered to “submit to the Attorney General a final report, and such interim reports as he deems appropriate in a form that will permit public dissemination.””
So it might not go anywhere.
Nobody Who Matters will be prosecuted. It’s a core function of the late stage FBI/DOJ to protect itself by protecting the powerful.
How anyone believes otherwise is beyond me.
Might not? It has no chance of going anywhere. Biden’s AG will spike the report, and announce it contained nothing of note and nothing incriminating. Nothing to see here, move along.
And there will be no “whistleblower” protection of anyone who leaks it to Congress.
Traitorous leakers are not whistleblowers, anymore than hate speech is free speech.
I was just talking to somebody last night who expressed his great relief and joy that we were getting rid of Trump. Because “He’s an asshole.”
I mostly bit my tongue, but I did say a lot of people are going to look back at Trump’s America as the Good Old Days.
^^^THIS^^^
My experience has been that Trump haters tend to be the ones that gobbled up globalism cock and bought into the lies of the last 4 years. Most of them hate the guy because they believe he stole away the historic win for the greatest and most corrupt crook that the establishment ever tried to saddle us with: Hillary Clinton.
Fear not, they found someone who could give Clinton a run for her money this time around. Judging by Kamala Harris’s lack of likeability with the general public, I’d say they found 2 even.
The fact that Donald J. Trump is an asshole has never been in dispute. Ask for specifics next time or wear the mask. It’s really that simple.
Indeed. Trump is an asshole, but he is OUR* asshole.
*Meaning America’s.
Just check out his lips. It’s uncanny.
Trump was a symptom of the disease.
They are not going to like the next stage
Do you know who else took advantage of societal alienation, economic hardship, and middle class angst? I think you do…
Nirvana?
[orson welles gif goes here]
Hard to see this ending well for us.
Hubert Humphrey?
James Dean?
“You’re tearing me apart!”
Wes Anderson?
Well maybe not this last year.
His is an asshole. But that doesn’t matter.
He destroyed the USFL, that is what matters.
You’re nothing if not consistent.
When he revives it, I will consider letting it go.
I hear Hershel Walker is still available.
‘…permitting the wrestlers to compete unmasked but forbidding them from shaking hands afterward and requiring them to wear masks off the mat when not actively competing or warming up.’
Now we’re devolving to putting condoms on after we’ve already fucked levels of retardation. Let’s see how far we can take it.
Wait for hand sanitizer wrestling to become a thing.
Well nude hand sanitizer wrestling already is a thing.
https://kmel.iheart.com/featured/the-sana-g-morning-show/content/2020-03-19-las-vegas-strip-club-to-hold-20-gallon-hand-sanitizer-nude-wrestling-show/
The not shaking hands part is incredibly stupid.
All part of the de-personing of the masses. No faces, no handshakes. Preferably no meeting new people.
STAY IN YOUR BUBBLE!
Retroactive sex education?
Not for sure about wrestling in MO, (assume same) but in football and basketball it is the same. Sweat, tackle, block out, dive on floor etc; BUT after the game? Wave at your opponents. SO. FUCKING. STUPID.
One conference out in BFE land still shook hands after the games, and few masks in sight. One of these teams played a big town team, and after the game went to shake hands. Big town team didn’t know what to do. Was glad to see about 4 players from big town team go and shake hands/bro hug opposing team. I remarked in hearing of big town team coaches that “BFE Conference” still shakes hands. Couldn’t tell from big town team coaches perplexed expression if he agreed with me, or thought it was foolish.
They still get to wrestle, unlike in New York.
The current mask protocol at my gym is that you have to ear your mask near your face while on the treadmill but not necessarily over your nose and mouth if you’re exerting yourself strenuously. That way you can immediately place it back over your mouth when you’re done.
No, I’m not kidding. Apparently people come in and complain to the health department about people not wearing masks on the treadmill.
Unity doesn’t include those Trump supporters. They are Nazis after all
Thousands of people stuck at airports watched Biden’s speech?
see Seans avatar
Can they slap each other across the face?
Mushroom stamps.
Only if they do it like this.
At the end of his petulant address, Biden called on Americans to “unite and heal.” But evidently he expects unity and healing to flow in one direction.
KNEEL BEFORE ZOD.
My shocked face… it’s around here somewhere.
“Susca played a direct role in approving Chinese-funded fact-checker Lead Stories, according to IFCN documents. She was the assessor of three of Lead Stories’ applications for working for Facebook as a fact-checker, and she approved the organization each time.
According to those applications, Lead Stories also receives monthly funding from the Democrat National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for use of its proprietary software that flags Internet activity as it starts to trend.
Lead Stories, which now possesses the power to censor stories on Facebook as a result of Susca’s approval, is also partly bankrolled by Beijing-based ByteDance, according to Lead Stories’ own website. That’s the same Chinese mega-corporation that owns TikTok, which the Trump administration has moved to ban due to its use of Americans’ data obtained through the TikTok app as part of Chinese global surveillance efforts.
The U.S. Department of Justice has labeled ByteDance a “mouthpiece” for the Chinese government and in a publicly released memorandum described how the company “underwent organizational restructuring with the CCP (Communist Party of China) now built into it.” According to the memorandum, it also pledged to follow CCP directives and has signed a cooperation agreement with a Party security agency. It also receives cash from the Big Tech companies that claim their fact-checking outfits are independent.”
So tell me again how Facebook is just a private company?
Lead Stories spiked a story from Mollie Hemingway. The gist of the Hemingway’s story was that Lead Stories alleged fact check of the Fulton County security tape and suitcases of votes was not actually a vindication of anything or anyone.
So Lead Stories got a story criticizing Lead Stories banned from FB because their fact checking process found it to be “False”.
Great. A clip of Biden declaring his win a clear mandate. Yes, Ballgag. Bring it on. Get your pearl handled .32 out and put a bullet in the back of the economy’s skull.
These fuckers are desperate to create legitimacy for this asshole after they spent the last 4 deligitimizing the one that actually won the election they thought they had rigged. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
I think President Harris is a foregone conclusion now.
The only question is whether they’ll remove Biden using legal channels or he’ll suddenly fall deathly ill.
Polonium and blame the Russians?
You know how hard it is to get enough polonium to make that work?
It takes very little.
Relative to the world’s supply of Po, it takes a lot.
I’m sure in the future, polonium is available in every corner drug store! But now, it’s a little hard to come by!
The pro-Harris faction is going to have to get their hands on Joe’s corpse and parade it around DC if they want to get her installed.
Otherwise DR. Jill Biden is going to make Edith Wilson look like a piker and run things herself while pretending that that is what Joe wants.
I’d put it at 50/50 that there will be a legitimate televised cat fight between Jill and Kamala in the next four years.
I’d give better odds than that. Dr. Jill wants to live in the big house. The bigliest house. Striver, climber.
He’ll get moved aside one way or the other around the midterms if he’s still around. They’re dreaming of ten years of Harris and they’re going to get at least two.
They’re dreaming of ten years of Harris
I wonder who actually is though. Dem primary voters certainly did not want her. Bitch didn’t get a single delegate.
Commie-la is definately dreaming of that.
That was when she was just an ex-cop. Now she’s the Annointed One, the second coming of RBG.
or he’ll suddenly fall deathly ill
I believe he already alluded to this.
Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
This is the only answer.
Purely hypothetically, for sake of argument, if the Republicans keep the Senate, and three people accidentally, then Chuck Grassley would be President.
At this point the Republicans will not keep the senate, since there is no way to stop the massive cheating and fraud by the Democrats, since the courts will not intervene no mater how blatant it is.
I don’t want to buy a .32 I wonder if you can get nacre grips for one of the Bond Arms derringers?
True, .25 is the assassins’ caliber of choice.
Knocks about in the cranium for a bit.
“Mossyrock revolts: ‘Off-the-rails’ Mayor of tiny Washington town keeps open its 30 businesses as ENTIRE population defies lockdown and refuses to wear masks”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9052895/Inside-small-Washington-town-defying-lockdown-despite-state-orders.html
I’m no geographer, but I’m pretty sure Washington wasn’t part of the Confederacy.
THE RACISTS SWITCHED SIDES!!!!!
The answer you get from any prog when it is pointed out to them which party supported the Civil RIghts Act and which party opposed it. Or when it is pointed out to them that the Southern Jim Crow states were all run by Democrats.
I bet that Washington town is full of straight white people and everyone knows that they are all latent racists who would be putting black people in chains if the brave governor of Washington didn’t threaten to send the National Guard in.
When they say that the parties switched, I love to point out that progressive icons like FDR and WW were Democrats before the parties switched, and that they hate guys like Coolidge who was a GOP guy before parties switched.
I like to point out that there is no actual evidence of a massive party switch, that guys like Robert Byrd (KKK Exalted Cyclops) remained Democrat, and that as the south became less racist, it became more Republican.
Yes, what happened is that people died off. There were few party switchers, mostly a generational change.
This. The “switch” happened most acutely in the 1980 election. With the old guard of racists dying off and the compromise candidate/incumbent in Jimmah Cahtah being so uninspiring, the identitarian motive for voting “Dixiecrat” didn’t exist.
Awesome we need more of this.
Probably read here, but I agree that we (actual liberty loving people) need to rephrase the argument from “our constitutional rights”, to “our inalienable (moral) rights, enshrined in the constitution”
Washington didn’t fight against the confederacy, either.
(*as a state)
What’s interesting to me is that the town is on the West side of the Cascades, and less than an hour from Olympia.
I know that there are small communities in Eastern WA that haven’t made such announcements and are essentially doing the same thing, but it’s nice to see this happen on the ‘blue’ side of the mountains.
I generally assume that “fact-checkers” are skinsuited by leftists.
That is their modus operandi, assume a veil of legitimacy in order to screw with their political opponents. It’s bad faith all the way down.
Politifact says your claim is mostly false.
Propaganda fact checking propaganda.
More than half a year later, the gym has racked up more than 60 citations from the state authorities despite not having a single case of coronavirus linked to the establishment. The gym has also had their doors barricaded, their business license revoked, and their owners arrested, according to the gym’s co-owner.
In their video posted online, Ian Smith, one of the gym’s co-owners, had written on a placard “Gov. Murphy will see this video and fine us $15k for it. But… Free men don’t ask permission.”
Smith described the attempts to shutdown his gym as “a complete tragedy” and “criminal.”
“You are putting people out of business for good. You are making them reliant on big government. You are taking away their civil liberties under the guise of pretending like you care about public health,” Smith said.
The balls on this guy. Doesn’t he understand he’s nothing more than the chattel property of the State of New Jersey?
At some point some people will be desperate enough that they’ll figure they’re going to die, one way or another, whether it’s through having their livelihoods and savings destroyed, or through outright resistance.
I dearly hope we do not reach that point.
“I bet we beat the paramedics there by half an hour. We’re haulin’ ass.”
Ron White, I assume. From memory:
“How far can we get on one engine?’
All the way to the scene of the crash.
There are positives that will come out of these ridiculous lockdowns.
-More people red-pilled to the nature of the state and its enforcers.
-More people questioning the experts who get big questions wrong, frequently, and it’s becoming obvious.
-More scofflaws
-More people will see the divide between themselves and the sheep who desperately seek to comply with the government. They will be looking for alternative ways of living in order to separate themselves.
All of this will have positive long-term consequences for the culture. It will take time. Patience. We have to seek our own liberty in the gaps until this mindset spreads.
Biden’s Phlegmatic, Divisive Speech Burns Bridges to Trump’s America
Truth and reconciliation. A president for all Americans.
And for the deplorables too! By force…
thicc?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9053777/Demi-Rose-struggles-contain-cleavage-daring-swimsuit-Africa-trip.html
The struggle is real. The tits?
I work from home, upper management does not expect us to return to office until June.
I do not think we can survive as a nation being forced to “shelter in place” that long.
Before the panicdemic, a ton of people in my office worked remotely most of the time. We also have quite a few truly remote workers. The earliest our office might open is this January, but that was before the latest murdernado surge of cases here.
My guess is that our company will consolidate offices/locations to save money and that the IT staff will never truly go back to the office. We’ve been pretty effective working remotely. Why pay for all that expensive office space if you don’t have to?
My company makes most of its money creating and administering year end tests for K-12 students. If Biden’s D of Educ starts handing out waivers for year end testing to the states we are in big trouble. That is our biggest fear.
Of course, now that the Democrats are in power, it is bailouts for everyone!
Honestly, right now I’m having a great time. I come into work since I have to beat recalictrant equipment into submission ocasionally. My boss is staying home since he’s a paper-pusher. Plus he got three kids to keep him from trying to videomanage.
At some point some people will be desperate enough that they’ll figure they’re going to die, one way or another, whether it’s through having their livelihoods and savings destroyed, or through outright resistance.
I dearly hope we do not reach that point.
I have been saying, for quite some time, the notion of violent domestic political upheaval is out of the question, because people have too much to lose.
There are a lot of people who have less and less to lose, every day. One of these days, some public health Nazi is going to get a butcher knife in the neck when he shows up to shut somebody down.
That has been my prediction for some time. The next “Shot Heard Around The World” will be fired by some restaurant owner who plugs some public health official who is trying to shut them down.
?
Solzhenitsyn knew what he was talking about. The current generations coming into power have no fucking clue where their pipe dreams will lead.
Gulag Archipelago is the best and worst book I’ve ever read.
I have never read it…mostly for that reason.
This is also why I have read 1984 exactly once. I want to read it again, but I cant. The ending is what I fear.
At least in Brave New World, there’s a lot of good sex and drugs. Poor old Wnston had Victory Gin and carob.
Everyone says Brave New World came closer to the actual dystopia, but the moral scolds of wokism are definitely more of the 1984 bent.
They were both right. You get Brave New World if you comply and 1984 if you don’t.
When I last searched for this quote I got through “alexander solz-” and the first completion suggestion from the search engine (I think it was Bing) was “-henitsyn lies”. No bias though 😉
He may have been a racist ass, but Lester Maddox ended up Governor of GA. Different cause, different time, but taking a stand can work out.
Forensic report claims Dominion error rate of 68%.
“Error”… But either way, it seems prudent to throw out any state using this system. Take the election to the House and Sleepy Joe can cry and be indignant. Which is why I don’t get why he would be giving a “victory” speech. Has Kameltoe Harries even resigned the Senate?
Take the election to the House and Sleepy Joe can cry and be indignant. Which is why I don’t get why he would be giving a “victory” speech. Has Kameltoe Harries even resigned the Senate?
I don’t think she has. I don’t believe this is over yet regardless of how loud the media screams. Trump has been too quiet and there’s been movement. There was coordination from somewhere for dual electors to cast EC ballots yesterday for Trump in every swing state lost through fraud except for Michigan, which Whitmer herself sent state police to prevent. The That by itself is extraordinary news but not a peep about it from the media. I don’t know what exactly, but I think there will be one last big play between now and inauguration.
I think there will be one last big play between now and inauguration.
I am thinking this as well and am cautiously optimistic that Beijing Biden can be prevented from being rigged in.
One thing for sure is that it will a YUGELY significant historical event if Trump pulls it off somehow. And the leftist/Dem tears will be EPIC. The propaganda machine has deluded and duped some people that it will be 1) entertaining to watch them squirm and 2) possibly dangerous in how they may react. Have your locks tuned, frizzen hard, powder dry and stock up on popcorn because it could get bumpy.
Special Counsel John Durham expanding team, making ‘excellent progress’
*Yawn*
Pfffft, yeah right…
Well maybe not this last year.
I saw a headline yesterday for some nonsensical propaganda piece about how “Trump’s economy” will go down in history as The Worst Ever.
It were President Cartoon Hero what done it.
Good morning, Banjos!
Your relentless positivity is awesome!
Because the news sure ain’t.
I wonder what the state will finally do to the gym owner. Go after his customers? Throw him in a cage? He’s exposed Murphy as a little bitch and we know that won’t stand.
Regardless, good on him. I like people who fight.
ReOpen MN is getting some steam. Some think our fuckhead will cave and reopen as planned on Friday, but I don’t. I think he comes out tomorrow and tries to cancel Christmas. Even as numbers decline and people are getting sick of his bullshit.
Oh, and check this out:
How the Heck Is Minnesota Counting Deaths?
Fucking scam. We can’t make good decisions, even if we thought the virus was that scary, when they’ve done such horseshit numbers-fucking.
Bah.
Let’s take it all back. It’s time.
“Many states are engaged in after-the-fact matching, in which they look at test results and assign CV-19 as a cause of death even if the test was weeks or months before the death. That is how we get bizarre things like several thousand deaths nationally that were suicides, homicides or accidents being listed as CV-19 deaths. Most people have no idea what goes on with CV-19 deaths.”
https://healthy-skeptic.com/2020/10/22/the-cv-19-death-reporting-process/
You would think that some news outlet would task a team of reporters to going through the death certificates for a state and analyzing them for discrepancies like that. There are 3-4K deaths in Minnesoda. A team of 10 reporters could work through that back log in a month and probably come up with all sorts of number fuckery.
Of course that might get the news organization in hot water with their masters over in the Democratic party.
Shit like this is how you know the 300,000 deaths number is bullshit, because you can be sure Minnesota isn’t the only state doing this. Add to that the fact that seasonal flu deaths have somehow magically disappeared.
That Fed doctor lady said in the beginning that they were counting and death “with” convid-1984 as a death “of” convid-1984. The number were, are, and will continue to be a farce.
I think there are a lot of drugs falling out of Banjos’s ass this morning. I blame sloopy.
In today’s SCIENCE! news, Cincinnati is the best city to live in, while Cleveland ranks number 10. The full list of the top 10 cities is:
Cincinnati, OH
Asheville, NC
Louis, MO
Portland, OR
Pittsburgh, PA
Denver, CO
Bend, OR
Madison, WI
Missoula, MT
Cleveland, OH
They’ve got rankings for the top 50 cities in the article.
“Portland, OR”
All credibility lost.
From what I have heard, Asheville is a prog tumor festering on the slope of the Appalachians.
Cincy is yankee* Louisville. As much as I would move back to Louisville, I know it isn’t objectively great if you aren’t from there. And being on the yankee side of the river makes Cincy worse. Plus, its in Ohio**. Blech.
*a few more german catholics, a few less baptists.
**my hatred of Ohio is almost entirely due to the way they drive when out of state. Sitting in the far left lane at the speed limit. We drive faster in real American, hit the damn gas pedal or get the fuck over! I am reasonably patient and hate to right side pass. However, I won’t even slow down to give an OH license plate time to move right, because I know they aren’t going to. I just immediately pass them on the right.
**Also Buckeyes.
It’s amazing how bad Ohio drivers are. This behavior seems to be universal among them.
I have heard it is because of the police ticketing for very little over the speed limit. They know the fastest you can drive in the fast lane is the speed limit and they assume it applies everywhere.
At a company safety meeting a few years ago, we invited a PA State Trooper in to discuss highway safety. In the Q&A afterward, she was asked about speeding tickets (by an Ohio resident!). She said flat out that in PA, a Statie won’t bother to pull you over if you are less than 15 mph over the limit (barring something obviously dangerous about your driving or vehicle condition).
Related story time: Late 80s/early 90s, I was driving back to school. I was in I-75 in North Georgia, middle of nowhere, I was separated from the pack of cars, doing about 85 in a 70 zone. I didnt see the county cop until I was next to him, so no point in breaking. I looked at him pointing a radar gun at me. I figured I had a ticket coming. Nope, he didnt flinch. There would be someone doing 90 or 95 coming by soon enough for him to nab.
South of ATL on I-75 is different, but between Chattanooga and Kennesaw is pretty much the autobahn.
Something that drives me insane is when you get out of staters driving 65 on the two lane 80 MPH Freeway, in the left hand lane.
Those are the assholes from Ohio. Most places won’t ticket you for anything less then 10 over; however, 20 miles over is reckless operation. Anything over 10 MPH over will also get you points on your license (all points are only assigned by a ticket from an officer, not camera tickets). Considering how accurate the radars are…
There’s also several towns that base their entire budget on speeding tickets, and will grab anyone going over in a vehicle they don’t recognize, or with any out of state plates (or out of county plates).
I get your strategy when in Ohio, but you need to adapt when you leave the state.
Here in PA, only the State Police are allowed to use radar. Local cops have to use timed passage or other means to measure your speed. They also don’t have radars connected to their speedometers so they can’t be in motion and measure your speed. We still have way too many speed traps, and I do note tons of them in Ohio. But I really dislike the habit of Ohio drivers of getting in the left lane and running alongside traffic in the right lane for dozens of miles, at a speed differential of maybe 2-5 mph.
Same thing in Colorado and California, with Colorado being even worse. The PASSING lane is choked up with asshole after asshole just sitting there waiting for their exit to come up.
A Fletcher cop (east of Piqua) pulled my brother over for speeding for going the normal country road speed limit of 55 as he was approaching town. When he protested that he was nowhere near the 35mph sign, the cop said “Yea, the sign is here, but the 35mph zone actually starts back there” and points back down the country road.
And people think only the private sector has a profit motive.
One of the few bits of glory that happened on my trip was when driving through AL, I was going excessivley fast, but stuck behind a semi in the left lane. An SUV behind me that I did not realize was high patrol turned on his lghts. I moved into the right lane, whereupon the trooper pulled over the semi ahead of me for going too slowly in the left lane.
I don’t ever think I’ve loved a cop before (except Erin Castleman, but that was a long time ago. I wonder if she’s single now.)
I am having difficulty believing that Missoula has a better craft beer scene than Houston or Austin.
If that was the standard, Fort Collins would be on the list.
They went with a bunch of wonky metrics, such as average number of beers per brewery. One of the Cleveland breweries (Platform – ABInBev) is well known for only keeping a handful of beers around that they make more then once.
Yeah, that is weird. My comment above was not realizing it was a beer article, but I stand behind it. The Cincy craft beer scene is pretty mediocre for a city its size. It took a long time to develop and a lot of what is there now just isn’t that good. They don’t have anything that is a must buy to me.
It looks like Denver is above Fort Collins entirely based on bars per capita. But quality matters more than quantity. I will take Louisville with Holy Grale over, well, anywhere really.
I figured no one would read the article, that’s why I just listed the top 10 and didn’t put the article headline in the post. I know the audience here. 🙂
We’ve got a couple places here that can stand with Holy Grale depending on your beer preferences (a couple specialize in Belgians, a couple specialize in craft, a couple specialize in huge tap lists and frequent cleanings).
I can’t find anything after 2018, but I don’t see any Ohio bars on the Zwanzee Day list.
One of the local places (Lizardville – temporarily closed) would save up their Cantillon allotments to be released during a big event during Cleveland Beer Week in years past.
And I do adjust my driving patterns outside of the state (and I also don’t camp out the left hand lane).
That’s the fourth day of Kwanzaa, right?
Is that like the Winking Lizard?
just giving you shit about the driving
So “St.” is “problematic” now?
Do you know who else took advantage of societal alienation, economic hardship, and middle class angst? I think you do…
Dale Carnegie, right?
The lovely Banjos gave us a promise of dessert after dinner and kept it. It was Jello-mold with suspended carrots. 2020 in a nutshell.
Ohio guidelines for High School wrestlers: can wrestle, but not shake hands.
Civil. Disobedience. Now.
Last night and next Sunday will be the true measure of that. Browns night games, with fans allowed to go to the stadium to watch, but bars must still shut down at 22:00. Fans have been asked not to gather together to watch the games as well. A group of us violated that request last night and watched a painful loss. There are plans to repeat the infraction on Sunday.
“Today marks 8 years since 20 first-graders and 6 educators were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
To honor the lives lost in this terrible tragedy, it’s past time we implement common-sense gun safety reforms to keep our children safe.”
https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1338547416103071744
“Eight years ago today 20 children were murdered at Sandy Hook. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of these parents. Let’s look at gun laws not as partisans but as moms and dads… and find solutions.”
https://twitter.com/secupp/status/1338717904238485505
Well, now that a Democrat is in the White House, it’s time to restart school shootings, false rape accusations, and terrorist attacks.
That reminds me, I was looking at building an AR pistol in 300 Blackout.
I haven’t done the research, but it seems like closing public schools has reduced school shootings.
Ban schools. Save lives.
As far as I can tell, they went down before covid….
I remember when she was considered good on guns.
#moveon
Well, since the perpetrator was mentally ill and obtained the gun by murdering his mother and stealing it, no gun law would have prevented that. However, armed teachers could have stopped him and limited the carnage.
“I’m a teacher, not a police officer.”
I’m something other than that as well, but I am still interested in defending myself.
Like cops have a duty to do anything except tape off your dead body for the investigation.
“Specialization is for insects.”
I am so using that.
It originally from Heinlein.
Gah, that’s such a frustrating encapsulation of the dependency bred by the prog left. God forbid that you hold yourself accountable for your own safety and the safety of those under your care.
Not the dumbest thing you will hear today: Lizzo sparks body debate with 10-day smoothie diet
Ever since Lizzo launched into stardom, she’s been getting hate for simply existing. Whether she’s celebrating her full figure or sharing vegan recipes, there’s always people critcizing her in the comments. But after she recently decided to go on a smoothie diet for health reasons, she’s now experiencing body-shaming from past supporters — and she’s calling out the double standard.
Lizzo took to TikTok to share her 10-day smoothie detox journey, sharing a step-by-step process of the diet and depicting every thing she eats in a day. But the video sparked some surprising backlash when people began hating on her for promoting “diet culture.”
Who the hell is Lizzo?
A morbidly obese singer who prances around in skimpy outfits while everyone is supposed to pretend she’s attractive. I only know this because my wife told me who Lizzo is.
She’s the one who said there are too many white girls using her hash tag and they aren’t fat enough anyway, or something.
I liked the music at first.
But then the narrative was pushed, and I quickly abandoned ship.
Lizzo is a very talented and confident singer with an obese body. She got where she did on talent alone, since very few people would watch her for her body.
Dunno what asinine shite she says off stage – don’t follow such stuff.
My faith in our culture has been shaken to the core in the last twenty-odd years. Please don’t let something so trivial bring the entire Jenga tower down. She’s just a loud mouthed fat-ass with a bully pulpit and belongs in one of those 70’s style fat-farms wherein they made the campers really sing for their suppers.
From happier times – https://youtu.be/aQdZyi6fozY
I spy with my little eye Titty Tuesday.
https://archive.li/t687l
13’s already got the cheap motel room booked, it would be a shame to let it go to waste.
A professor Facebook has empowered to decide who can become a fact-checker is an open political leftist who has expressed animus against all Republican.
FB has no business “fact-checking” anyway.
“Go ahead and flag this tweet for when we do not have that vaccine by the end of the year”
https://twitter.com/JessicaHuseman/status/1260984699784216584
LOLOLOL
It’s not a real vaccine.
The full list of the top 10 cities is:
Cincinnati, OH
Asheville, NC
Louis, MO
Portland, OR
Pittsburgh, PA
Denver, CO
Bend, OR
Madison, WI
Missoula, MT
Cleveland, OH
Are you fucking kidding me?
That reads like the Democratic Socialists’ top fundraising sites. Did AOC commission that “study”?
“Critical to the report is the notion that these errors are a ‘result of machine and/or software error, not human error.'”
Minor quibble, but I wouldn’t call it “software errors”. Sounds to me like the software is working exactly as designed, to rig elections.
Yah, but it should rig them undetectably.
As someone who writes, software, I can tell you that a “software error” IS a human error. Who the hell wrote the software, a badger?
:Sad face:
:Shuts Down Coding Camp for Badgers:
They haven’t been in demand since Digg shut down.
We don’t need no steekin’ badgers?
“A professor Facebook has empowered to decide who can become a fact-checker is an open political leftist who has expressed animus against all Republican.”
Fer chrissakes, just quit using them already! I don’t use Twitagram or Googbook for the same reason I don’t post at DU; I don’t support places that hate me or go places where I’m not welcome. Life is significantly better without mass SocMed anyway.
I’ve never had a social media account. Not even MySpace when I was a kid and that was cool. Nevertheless, those piece of shit sites have fucking destroyed the worldwide web as I once knew it whether I participated or not. Once they gain enough users to obtain market power they end up exerting a tremendous amount of influence on seemingly unrelated websites because the internet is, in actuality, an ad-network of ad-networks.
autodidacticism is antisocial and reactionary, wise ppl seek out teachers even when they are outside the academy. this is why autodidacts often use what they do learn to defend the prejudices of the ignorant. there’s no real knowledge that isnt social
https://twitter.com/mcrumps/status/1338596267413430272
Pie. We worry about you. The tweeters you peruse. It’s hurting you, and the people you love.
Socrates agrees.
Being self-taught is antisocial and reactionary? Bend over and grease it up for the credentialed betters it is then.
What about autofellatio?
Being antisocial and reactionary is good, compared to the alternatives…
m. crumps just publicly demonstrated an inability to think. It would be cute, if people like him weren’t ten a penny.
My company makes most of its money creating and administering year end tests for K-12 students. If Biden’s D of Educ starts handing out waivers for year end testing to the states we are in big trouble. That is our biggest fear.
Tests are RACIST. Ban objective reality.
*sits back, smiles smugly*
“Ban objective reality”
You joke but this is pretty much what PoMo is all about.
Just tell the PoModernists that in your version of reality, their is such thing as objective fact, and then ignore them.
“Tests are RACIST” is one of the reasons my company exists.
By outsourcing the creation of tests to my company big school districts and states can wash their hands of any responsibility when the activists accuse the tests of being racist. “Hey, don’t look at us. We hired those guys to create a test for us. If you think it is racist go yell at them”
^^^RAAAAAAAACIST!!!!
The next couple years are gonna be fun.
Here was Biden’s snide comment to Fox’s Peter Doocy when he again tried to ask him about the Hunter Biden investigation: “Thanks for the congratulations. Appreciate it.”
There is no fucking way he stays in office until the end of 2021. Look at that nursing home shuffle off stage, the guy is on his last legs.
Parkinsonism or just fragile bones?
Multiple mini strokes is my guess.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/09/02/140146620/tiny-strokes-may-cause-the-shuffling-gait-of-old-age
Also explains the dementia-like symptoms.
Makes sense as his leaky veins are well documented.
He has a history of those.
My current theory is they keep him in office until summer of 2022, at least. If the mid-terms are shaping up really bad for them, they’ll use him as a fall guy. Whether he is the titular President or not makes approximately zero difference to their pursuit of their agenda, so no downside in keeping him around.
I am a little puzzled, though, as to the sudden spate of “reporting” on Hunter Biden. That seems like a setup for ditching him immediately, Oh well, if they decide to keep him for awhile, Hunter can just away again. Not like the DOJ is going to drop an indictment on him and force anything.
It sounds rather conspiracy-ey but it seems like the sudden attention to Hunter’s escapades is exactly that. Why else would the fetters have been released? The progs in charge have just had the experience of spending four years delegitimizing and hamstringing a president opposed to their agenda.
One could make an argument that they put the least offensive candidate to the independents up, bolstered him by stoking hatred of the incumbent, and are willing to shuffle him off to the side at the earliest opportunity so they can get their real leadership team in place once he gets them in the door.
Kamala and a MyPillow.
The most ludicrous aspect of this campaign was the painting of Joe Biden, who’s always been a nasty asshole, as some kind of warm, grandfatherly figure.
And i loved how Mitt Romney went in for Biden. The very guy who said Mitt would put black people back in chains.
Gosh I can’t stand Mitt.
Speaking of Moron Mittens.
“The biggest concern that I have is that people here genuinely believe that somehow this election was stolen, and there’s not evidence of that. The president was saying it was stolen even before election day happened! He said if he loses, it would be fraud. Well, no one knows that. I thought I was going to win too when I ran for president in 2012. I didn’t. I didn’t go out and say fraud. We have a process. We count the votes. That’s the way it is.”
No evidence except for all the evidence, including sworn statements under penalty of perjury. And after Biden’s treatment of him in 2012…I did not know that a Mormon could cuck so hard.
I really was hoping that Biden would give him some cabinet position or something, anything to get him out of the Senate.
I guess someone with a brain over their pointed out that Mitt is the squishest of the GOP Senators, and will undoubtedly be replaced by someone less squishy.
It’s a depressing affirmation of the effectiveness of propaganda.
Meh – I’d say the effectiveness of vote rigging. I’ll never believe he got 80 million votes or won any of those states he was losing at midnight of election night.
Partly that too, the appearance if impropriety usually means impropriety, especially when the powers that be refuse to really look into it.
Joe Biden, who’s always been a nasty asshole
*Clarence Thomas nods in agreement*
With that attitude people are going to be screaming “fraud” in his face every time he’s in public.
Oh no they didn’t! No charges will be filed against the pawn shop owner that shot a looter.
George Floyd is weeping in heaven at this news.
Why was there no evidence to prosecute this evil business owner who was trying to stop the equitable distribution of goods?
Didn’t the pawn shop owner end up killing himself?
Also Odds on Rittenhouse? Do you think he ends up getting screwed or do we see more bitching when he is aquitted?
No, that was the bar owner who was attacked by a rioter while he was trying to protect his property and shot him, yet was indicted by a leftist prosecutor.
Rittenhouse will be sacrificed to appease the mob. Honestly worth it for the video of the “shoot me nigga!” LARPing pedo getting domed and the soy grinning dumbfuck who decided to charge a guy with an AR-15 with a handgun and pussied out at the last second squealing like a stuck pig and begging for the cops to come save him after getting his arm blown to bits. I’m not very proud of that part of my nature, but I’ve watched that clip at least a dozen times and laughed my fucking ass off every time.
Hung jury at worst. They wont find 12 in Wisconsin to convict.
I think so. I thought he had a good defense team, but some of them were involved in the very disappointing election challenges, so who knows?
The two with clear video evidence should be a walk for him. The first one, he has a very good argument. And its perfectly legal in WI for a 17 year old to have a rifle in public.
My biggest worry is a compromise jury that convicts him on one or two counts to appease the mob.
I don’t know if you knew this, but he carried a gun across state lines. CNN, MSDNC, TYT, etc. have all been very insistent that I know that piece of information.
Is it a crime for someone who can legally possess a gun in WI to bring one across state lines into WI?
Not that I am aware. But he didn’t do that anyway.
I thought that was deboonked.
It was. His buddy who lived in Kenosha bought it and kept it there. The buddy got charged with being a straw buyer. Gun never left WI. It’s all silly anyway, because he lived right across the border and actually worked in Kenosha.
Local newsperson/adjunct at U Albany just the past weekend said (from memory)
“And this Kyle Rittenhouse, this stupid kid who took an illegal rifle and went out and shot peple who had a different opinion than him about police brutality, the right wing is making a hero out of him.”
I shit you not. Her name is Rosemary Armao. and she’s as hateful a bitch as you’ll ever meet.
autodidacticism is antisocial and reactionary
Round them up and force them to attend real schools! it’s for their own good, you know.
In fairness, the experts rarely make mistakes. If we listened to people like that guy we’d still be living in the Bronze Age.
With No Global Warming!
Bronze age? Do you even know what the negative environmental and health externalities are for smelting???!?
I belong in a camp.
There are people out there who think Joe Biden is a good person. Those people are stupid.
It doesn’t really matter who or what Joe Biden was as recently as 5 years ago, the guy is declining so fast he’s basically a non-entity. He was a stalking horse from the beginning and his feebleness is a feature not a bug.
How could they be stupid huh? The Smart Guys on TV told them Joe Biden was nice. Who’s stupid now dumbass?
There are people that just follow and want to be part of the team they are told is the good guys. Unfortunately these are the people that never understood the saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, and thus, they are going along with the agenda of a crime syndicate.
Well then! They should stop doing that!
“We want the shot to be sexy, but in a wholesome, ‘family’ kind of way.”
(Jane Harker, Christmas pinup.)
https://twitter.com/WhoresofYore/status/1338169720730771456
thicc?
Would.
Absolutely.
I’d unwrap that package.
And, no, not thicc. Back in that day, there was no such thing as modern-day (borderline?) obesity as “attractive”.
First reply – “We wouldn’t want a creepy, little girl vibe, would we?” Some fucking people…
“Apparently, you, at least, are tuned in to creepy, little girl vibes. You should probably think about that.”
The squishiest of tyrants!
Bedtimes are immoral
This is what happens when you perceive all hierarchy as evil.
Damn, this explains a lot…
Ugh, Berlatsky is a utilitarian douchebag with suspiciously pedophilic tendencies.
He’s got a nice self-own at one point where he says his daughter agrees with him.
You’ll get nothing and like it!
Advice on how to sexually attractive to your husband, from “The Physical Life of Woman: Advice to the Maiden, Wife, and Mother”, by George Napheys, (1872)
Smelling “cone-bearing trees” to improve your sex life and not wearing “excessive clothing” in bed.
There are “three classes in regard to the intensity of sexual instinct” in women.
“Marital relations” should be suspended if the husband is intoxicated because it can result in “idiot” babies.
https://twitter.com/WhoresofYore/status/1338080194129780736
WHAT? Now they tell me.
*glares at three idiot kids*
I resemble that remark!
NPR had a tongue bath of FDR this morning, wishcasting that Biden was going to be like him. The most hilarious part was them excusing his racism as him “having to cater to the southern states.”
Well that’s enragingly inaccurate.
FDR was an anti-Semitic racist progressive asshole his whole life.
Later they had a feature about how the FedGov employees are terribly demoralized, unjustly malighed, and horribly underpaid. While also reporitng that job applications outnumber jobs avaiable 50:1.
*steam escaping from ears*
Way back during the Clinton/Gingrich shutdown extravaganza in 93 (I think), NPR ran the sob story of a 17 year career IRS agent who was not going to be able to put presents under the tree because his paycheck was delayed by a couple of weeks.
That was the beginning of my hatred for that steaming shithole of a media outlet.
AND CONGRESS ALMOST SHUT THEM DOWN AGAIN! WITHOUT PAY!
And all those people who won’t take a pause to stop covid are selfish monsters!
This shit is infuriating. Government drones having their pay delayed by a few weeks is just the worst tragedy ever, but people’s businesses and livelihoods being taken away for the better part of a year is no big deal. The media really sucks ass.
Convo with sister-in-law over Thanksgiving touched, for some reason, on shutdowns.
She said it was just awful that federal employees might miss a few paychecks.
I asked her why it was awful for them to miss paychecks, but not private sector employees. Oh, and at most their pay is delayed; they always get made whole when the fake shutdown ends.
We moved on to another topic.
Hmm, southern states like California?
Southern states have a long history of Anti-Japanese Racism.
wishcasting that Biden was going to be like him
A court-packing, tyrannical fascist?
Let’s just destroy everything that makes States separate political entities and shred what’s left of the Constitution.
I believe we should abolish the Electoral College and select our president by the winner of the popular vote, same as every other office.
But while it still exists, I was proud to cast my vote in New York for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Sell New York to Canada
Make the city an independent city-state. Nassau and Suffolk can decide which side of the wall they want to be on, I assume outside.
Sugarfree was glossing over the pure evil that is Hillary.
My god we dodged a fucking bullet with that one.
I honestly don’t think Kamala is any different. She hasn’t had the opportunity to set up an international influence-peddling/money laundering “charity”, yet. But other than that, I see very little difference.
Hillary married the man she used to ride into power?
Not like it really matters since they’ll just cheat no matter what system is used. But I guess that makes it so they only need to manufacture votes in a couple of jurisdictions instead of spreading it over multiple swing states.
I am pretty sure they wouldn’t have to cheat at all under those circumstances. Which is why they want it so badly.
Of course, the president would essentially be selected by NY and LA. No need for cheating.
Sell LA to Mexico
Take California
BREAKING: one faithless elector in NY cast ballot for Hillary Clinton.
Was it Hillary Clinton?
Also, it would be funny if Trump one some court cases that allowed his slates to count ending in a 270-268 victory for Biden…Oh wait, 269-268-1, oopsie!
won
NPR had a tongue bath of FDR this morning, wishcasting that Biden was going to be like him. The most hilarious part was them excusing his racism as him “having to cater to the southern states.”
Won’t that be ducky?
What was FDR’s racism? not familiar with that one.
Topaz Mountain?
ok yes In familiar with that one. is that what we’re taking about? i don’t think that was him having to cater to the south.
Well it was NPR, and so i assume they think all racisim originates from the American South.
“The coronavirus vaccines will probably prevent you from getting sick with Covid-19. But it’s not yet clear whether you can still get infected asymptomatically and silently spread the virus.”
“Why vaccinated people still need to wear a mask”
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1336317129197563905
Oh who could have seen that coming? And we also need to still lockdown too
Silent but deadly.
And away we go…
(but we all knew this was coming)
I thought the continued mask wearing was to cover the palsied face?
Whoever came up with the whole asymptomatic transmission thing should be boiled in oil.
what kind of oil
One with a lot of omega-threes, obvs.
Peanut oil has an incredibly high boiling point but is costly. I say use canola or rape-seed if you want to be a pedant. Slower cooked, more tender.
Caspacin.
The masks are intended to be permanent so the proles know their place. Welcome to the Great Rest, comrade.
Please explain how people with immunity can carry enough of a viral load to be infectious to others? Actual studies and data, please, not assumptions.
To be fair they did not say the person was immune, just that they were asserting without evidence that the vaccene may permit the person to become an Asymptomatic Carrier.
There has been not one single documented instance or actual evidence of asymptomatic transmission.
I didn’t say I believed them.
We have apparently forgotten all we learned about virology, immunology, and epidemiology.
I think asymptomatic spread is a real problem. That’s why you should wash your hands frequently.
Yeah it is clear. You can’t.
I believe we should abolish the Electoral College and select our president by the winner of the popular vote, same as every other office.
I eagerly await the day when there are no more “state” governments, no more “state” territorial demarcations; just one singular monolithic national government in Washington, DC, run by a mandarinate of technocrats.
I sense a ripple in the swamp, like a million swamp creatures splooging simultaneously.
This is a counterinsurgency tactic also done by US intelligence agencies: If you can’t defeat a revolutionary leftist movement in other ways, then infiltrate it and destabilize it from the inside.
The FBI mastered this in COINTELPRO.
Bolivia’s MAS has learned from this history
https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1338850228787695617
So I assume real socialism comes to Bolivia?
Every Communist Purge was justified / Ben Norton.
Every Communist Purge was justified / Ben Norton.- Ben would say “this but unironically”
A new economic study says that if Mao Tse-tung, the communist leader of Chinese independence, and his policies were in place today, China would see a greater surge in economic growth.
Maoist policies, including the total abolition of the private sector and the nationalization of the economy, the authors argue, would propel China’s GDP significantly later down the line.
“Our model is essentially an accounting exercise that allows us to uncover the key factors of growth in China during and after the Mao era,” stated Aleh Tsyvinski, a professor of economics at Yale and a co-author of the report.
“The main point of our findings is that, contrary to common misconceptions, productivity growth under Mao, particularly in the non-agricultural sector, was actually pretty good.”
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chinas-GDP-Would-Grow-Faster-Under-Mao-Era-Policies-Study-20170714-0034.html
Sure they might need to break another 50 million eggs to make that maomelet but it would be totes worth it!
Are they factoring in the lost productivity of 100 million people dead? Or is that a net gain, because you no longer have to feed them?
Individuals are a net drain on society. All you need is *exactly the right* number of laborers, as determined by the five year plan.
Shills gonna shill
Sure, some people starved to death but, hey, whaddya gonna do?
At least the trains ran on time
productivity growth under Mao, particularly in the non-agricultural sector, was actually pretty good
Percentage growth always looks good when you are starting from a low baseline.
Mao was also around for the post-war reconstruction, so, probably not apples-to-apples. Unless China were to get bombed flat and ravaged by invading armies and a brutal civil war.
Maoist policies, including the total abolition of the private sector and the nationalization of the economy, the authors argue, would propel China’s GDP significantly later down the line.
Slavery gets an undeservedly bad rap. Why is that?
You have to remember that these people are in the same intelectual camp as the those who argue that America became an economic powerhouse, because of slaver, rather than despite it.
Interesting. They do seem to believe slavery is the key to prosperity.
Whoever came up with the whole asymptomatic transmission thing should be boiled in oil.
If the devil did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. Asymptomatic spread is the devil we need right now.
“There’s a Red under my bed, and there’s a little yellow man in my ‘ead!”
Destroyer
Horrified to learn that the new language guide for the Victorian public service entreats people to say “Good morning folks”. Folk is derived from the German “volk” a term embraced by the Nazis. Shame.
https://twitter.com/CUhlmann/status/1338598249712611328
lol
And the replies are largely unable to detect any sarcasm at all.
Things are so absurd now it can be kind of hard to tell.
They’ve been tilting at that particular windmill for a couple of years. Before that it was “guys”. When I was a waiter I always used the honorifics “Gentleman” and “Ladies”. What the fuck is wrong with that?
At least its not “Good morning, comrades”.
Yet.
SCSA has put out a call for people to work the World Speed Shooting Championships in Talledega.
On the one hand, I really have zero interest in travelling for a steel match… ever. And then there’s the cost of travel that won’t be completely offset by whatever per diem they offer, AND then I’d have to deal with NY covid fuckery on the way back.
On the other hand, I’d get a chance to flirt with Lena Miculek.
Are Lena and Nubbs still dating?
Good point. I wouldn’t want to be a homewrecker.
Now if you want a steel match worth traveling to, you should try the PSA Shootout. Forgive the awful website.
http://www.psashootout.com/index.shtml
Six stages, 25-35 knockdown targets each, up to five gun divisions, plus side matches and sporting clays. It’s a great time.
That’s only a five hour drive, and with a 2:00 start time I wouldn’t even have to get up early. I think I’ll see if there’s any interest at the club to put a squad together.
And I’m already starting to game things. It says that the start position is safety applied if the gun has one, but no requirement for the hammer to be down (which would be impossible for both to be true on my Shadow 2). So the fastest start would be with the Beretta. But the Shadow 2 acquires faster, which over 30 targets probably overtakes the start.
“Donations to Black Lives Matter-related causes since May were $10.6bn”
https://twitter.com/EconUS/status/1338355226173190144
Wow.
So i guess Reperations were handled privately then? We can stop bitching about that?
Reparations don’t count unless they’re punitive.
They’re looking for tribute not reparations.
That’s way higher than I figured and I figured pretty high.
What a fucking scam.
And that money paid for…
Not a single college or trade school scholarship…
Not one small business loan or bailout…
Absolutely nothing that will make life better for anyone (other than the people who looted that ash).
That’s a lot of shareholder cash going to the grifters.
How can I get in on that action?
I wonder who controls it?
And where it is/where its going?
The DNC.
It’s been hashed over here before in the PM lynx, but here’s an authoritative take on the best mayonnaise.
FWIW, I have Duke’s and Kewpie in the fridge. When I need a touch of acidity, I add a squeeze of lemon juice or Heinz Salad Cream, which only began being sold in the US a few years ago.
The mayo is only there to help the mustard stick. Except in the case of jalapeno mayo. Either way Best Foods/Hellmann’s is the best national brand. Their olive oil mayo is even pretty good for those of us with high cholesterol.
Definitely a Duke’s loyalist here. I’ve bought Hellman’s before but liked Duke’s better.
Well, salad dressing is mayo with more tart. It’s sweeter by a bunch and has more lemon. I like them both. Mayo for spread, salad dressing for mixes like potato or salmon salad.
That is actually correct
1 Blue Plate
2 Dukes
3 Hellman’s
4 Best Foods
Kewpie is good for Asian dishes (including yoshoku)
I finally suppressed my very male tendency to ignore my health, and had all the tests done this last week. I have high blood pressure (who doesn’t these days?), but fortunately everything else looks good. I even had an EKG because of the high BP, and that was “borderline” due to the BP, but nothing to worry about. And despite my very meat and fat-heavy diet, lipids are good. (Take that, food pyramid!)
I don’t!
I’m most surprised, but over multiple checks from different health professionals, my pressure was normal.
Are you married? You must not be married.
*Chuckles then takes my blood pressure medication.
I am not married.
autodidacticism is antisocial and reactionary
Is he necessarily wrong, though? At least from the current progressive mentality? If your assessment is knowledge is credentialed and maintained at the center, someone self-instructing outside of the central narrative is a challenge or problem. I don’t think his conclusion is necessarily wrong, even if I disagree with his evaluation of it.
There is a lot to parse their that is ambigous, that i don’t want to get into. I have never heard of an “Autodidact” that doesn’t pick up a book and learn from the book. So saying an Autodidact rejects teachers is false, because they obviously learn, they just guide their own learning, rather than having it directed by some other person.
Antisocial? What do you mean? because they do it by themselves? I wouldn’t call everything you do alone antisocial.
Reactionary? some of the most revolutionary thinkers were self taught on some level. Newton, etc. And even forgetting that argument, the most Reactionary thinkers are going to be those who were trained in centralized facilities with one set program. If you religously tout what the ruling class has decreed be taught in schools, that makes you reactionary, not revolutionary.
I look forward to throwing out Marx on those grounds.
I agree with you in any sense of the rational notion of the concept of liberal. That’s why I specified “from the current progressive mentality”. Modern progressivsim is inherently illiberal. It operates from the notion of the superiority of centralized, technocratic, authority (hence the credentialism) to best order mankind. The autodidact is fundamentally at odds with that.
Dave Smith had a Debate with some LP Chair in Vermont or NH, and this is a prime example of why i don’t tend to call myself a libertarian anymore (Subject of a pending article).
I havn’t listened to it yet, but i have seen this Archie fellow give his argument before which is: racisim makes you dehumanize people and so then you are willing to treat people violently because you don’t believe they deserve the protection of the NAP.
Look i think the NAP is great, but it is only a baseline, and if you feel the need to derive all your views on morality from the NAP then im sorry, you are expounding the exact kind of thinking on why i don’t call myself a libertarian. There are a lot of libertarians who try to derive other moreal imperitives (like “racisim is wrong”) into violence, either because they think the NAP is the only foundation of morality, or because they want to find a way to legitimize forcing that moral view on others.
Similar to the bastardization of Popper’s views on the toleration of speech.
Honestly, i guess i’ve only ever heard the bastardized view, because i seem to recollect having a negative view of this.
https://fee.org/articles/why-the-paradox-of-tolerance-is-no-excuse-for-attacking-free-speech/
Dehumanizing people isn’t a violation of their rights. It’s a stupid thing to do, and it’s wrong for other reasons, but it isn’t an NAP violation. The only way you can get there is if you think your own mind isn’t your own. A collectivist libertarianism winds up not libertarian at all.
The problem here is not the NAP itself, but a misunderstanding of it. As a base premise, it is fine. If you’re representing this person’s argument accurately, he’s not starting with the NAP, he’s starting with “racism is bad.” If he started with the NAP, then it doesn’t matter how much you hate or how little you respect another sentient being, you don’t do violence to them.
NAP is about individuals, and discussion of racism is inherently a collective argument. I get in this discussion all the time with a friend. It’s two arguments running past each other because we start from different world views: one in which the individual is the basic building block, and one in which individuals only matter in the context of a society.
My opinion is that there can be no society outside of individuals. Others believe (wrongly) that there is some independent entity called “society” that defines the import of individuals’ actions.
Exactly. I have nothing against the NAP, and i agree with it. I just think it’s a baseline.
But i also am disgusted by the set of libertarians who then do as you say: find something they believe to be wrong, and then set out by hook or crook to define why that is wrong via the NAP. It is OK to believe in more moral rules than the NAP, and you don’t have to justify them all from the NAP.
In short i guess i could say the NAP is an important moral Axiom. I don’t think it is the only one, and i get annoyed by the set of libertarians who want to reduce all morality from the NAP.
My opinion is that there can be no society outside of individuals. Others believe (wrongly) that there is some independent entity called “society” that defines the import of individuals’ actions.
“Society” is as real as any other abstraction. We live our lives by abstractions. “Property” – abstraction. “Human rights” – abstraction. Careful you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater – thataway lies nihilism.
then it doesn’t matter how much you hate or how little you respect another sentient being, you don’t do violence to them.
Doesn’t that presume the conclusion? The whole point of dehumanization is to see them as something less than what deserves moral protections and courtesies.
Racism doesn’t always lead to dehumanization. Much(?) of it, at least in America for quite some time, is simply the belief that other races are inferior people, not that they aren’t people at all. That said, its certainly one of many routes toward dehumanizing others.
It takes a special sort of depravity to look at another human being and see an animal. And that goes for “seeing” them via the written or spoken word as well.
An awful lot of base-stealing in Archie’s argument.
This is technocratic utopian thinking.
Racism is bad, but it’s also a problem that government is manifestly unable to solve.
*sigh* The rock that libertarianism foundered on, is the difference between the state making things better, and the state leaving people alone to make things better themselves…
I tried listening but couldn’t finish. Dave won within the first 10 minutes or so because Archie is a complete fucking moron.
I listened to the bitter end. It really reinforced for me why the LP can’t ever get out of its own way.
It was sad.
Good practice for Dave, though. I’ve noticed a concerted effort from him, Quinones, July and Woods to really pound away at the messaging.
Assholes.
Ontario counts suicide victims as COVID-19 fatalities
Helpful in covering up the cost of their horrifying mandates.
Work is having a “Town Hall” right now. Kill me.
Cough a lot. “It’s hot in here.”
If it’s remote, then “sorry, I thought I was on mute.”
There’s 2500 people on the meeting call…everyone is muted. It’s just management droning on and on.
Sounds like our biweekly CTO meeting.
~3k people muted on a webex while a handful of people fail to talk about what anyone actually wants to know about.
I would consider accidentally getting caught masturbating.
”Winston! Bend deeper! You can do it!”
At our company, we have established a tradition that no-one, ever, enables their camera. It’s hilarious when we meet with outside entities/vendors and only they have their cameras on. Sometimes, they blink out slowly over the course of the meeting.
I went one step further.
I don’t have a camera attached to my computer.
So libertarian.
I bet you’re on a VPN right now reading this site while also buying drugs and RPGs on the dark web.
Well, I am on a VPN (to work), my pharmacy takes online refill orders, and Cyberpunk 2077 is an RPG.
But I’m no libertarian.
It’s pretty much like that for my company. Everyone has their camera off.
Oh Town Halls. Hey everyone we lost a billion dollars and we’re gonna have to let half of you go, but let’s talk about the positives!
Ours have turned into HR show and tell hour, followed by 15 minutes of Financials and 15 minutes of canned questions about how we’re going to ESG harder in HR.
Oh.
https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1338800982881341440
Time to go a-warrin’ again! Just don’t do it where the Chinese don’t want it.
Doesn’t the whole “Russia-as-bogeyman” play into just that?
The only plausible counter to China’s hegemonic policies is a determined alliance between Japan, India, Russia, and possibly Australia. Add the USA for remote support. You can bet they’ll try anything to prevent that group from coming together.
These people are cold war and middle east relics that would lose their rice bowl if we focused our attention on China. Hence the trepidation. The system is set up to prevent change at every level. China is the closest thing we have to a military rival and they are a for sure economic rival but these people wouldn’t be the one’s running things if we made that transition they’d lose influence, power and more importantly money.
Explain the Dominion rejection thing that’s happened in several places they’ve looked into.
It sounds different than the original theory.
So the machine rejects the ballot allowing a poll worker to enter their own result and this is subject to political bias? how does this process work?
FYTW
DISCLAIMER: I have no idea because i haven’t read any of this shit, this is just what i assumed from what would make sense to me.
Machines that read paper ballots (Like those that get mailed in) are not going to be perfect. They are probably going to not be able to read a few here and their, requiring manual adjudication of the ballot. My understanding is that there was a certain race (a School Board race if i am to understand right) that the ballot reader did just abysmally at reading, and so 68% of the time the ballots had to be adjudicated by a person.
There was a 5k adjustment in the Presidential race at the same time as the school board one, from what I saw. There was a ballot question that was way off too, and another race that was off by 1, which seems like the normal expected error you would get and need to adjust. However, the legal standard is 1 in 250k, and there was nowhere near 250k ballots in that county, so still possibly a problem, depending on the error rate in other counties.
That fact that there were thousands of ballots that errored out means the machine didn’t come close to the required standard.
Geeze Didn’t you read my Disclaimer? Don’t need to yell.
From what I read in the report (and I could be misunderstanding), the error rate was actually programmed into the machine and the forensics team reproduced the 68% error rate when they ran ballots through themselves . This would mean it was planned for 68% of ballots to be flagged and go through adjudication where a human could determine who that ballot would count for.
…meaning it wasn’t a shitty machine that couldn’t read ballots accurately. The error rate was deliberate to send the majority of ballots for adjudication.
Assuming that this can be proved out, it’s plenty enough for pitchforks and torches. Too bad nobody is gonna do that, though.
And how does the adjudication process work? Does some poll worker get to “decide”? Are they watched? Is there a process in place for that?
Does some poll worker get to “decide”?
Yes.
Are they watched?
You slay me.
I only ask because when I did a deep dive into Georgia’s process curing ballots at least required multiple people to sign off w/ witnesses. That’s still imminently corruptible, of course, but it was at least better than I expected.
The ballots are sent offsite for adjudication. This video was linked in the report. I don’t know the credibility of it, but at least is a start somewhere.
According to the video, the adjudicator can change ballot marks or even replace the flagged ballots with blank ballots and select whichever candidates they want. According to the report, the adjudication logs had been intentionally deleted for the 2020 election. Logs for previous years’ elections were still available.
https://mobile.twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1336888454538428418
The ballots are sent offsite for adjudication
Which totally isn’t an opportunity to substitute manufactured ballots.
Ok so *that* interests me a lot. How the fuck does that work now?
They need to explore that.
Are they watched?
From 100 yards away through a window blocked with cardboard.
Didn’t you answer your own question?
With the threshold that high, up to 68% of the votes can be flipped without anyone questioning it.
Is that true though? I’m unclear how the backend works. Can a poll worker just decide right then and there whom to award the vote?
Sounds like any supervisor. That’s why the threshold is usually below 1% – a ballot comes in that’s messed up, they really can correct it. But that should seldom happen. Setting the error rate that high truly means the counters control who wins.
the counters control who wins
Joseph Stalin agrees.
The gym owners say, however, that they will ignore the fine and stay open anyway as a “f*ck you” to Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, as one occupant can be heard stating defiantly in the background of a video posted online by the gym’s owners.
Fuck yeah.
Their GoFundMe. It’s been up since at least May.
Other gyms are now open in NJ – and most only pretend to require masks. They continue to hound the Atilis owners out of pettiness and spite for questioning the State’s divine authority.
I’m curious what they can do. Can they ultimately make a legal and constitutional challenge from this? Because that would be awesome.
Can they ultimately make a legal and constitutional challenge from this?
Of course. The interesting question is, will the courts recognize it?
As a wise commenter said here:
You Slay me.
Public Health Nazis strike again in Nashua, NH
Despite protests from business owners, Nashua’s Board of Health voted Monday to recommend aldermen set a 9:30 p.m. curfew for restaurants, bars and other establishments.
Aldermen may soon schedule an emergency meeting to discuss the proposal after the unanimous decision.
“We are not out to hurt people or take their livelihood away from them or be the Grinch who stole Christmas or whatever. These are hard decisions to make,” said Dr. Tony Storace, chairman of the Board of Health.
According to the proposal, no indoor activity could take place after 9:30 p.m. at establishments where face masks cannot be worn the entire time, meaning restaurants, bars, nightclubs and select entertainment facilities.
Had to one up the big cities I see and start your
curfew</strike martial law a half hour earlier.Pikers
It mostly comes at night, mostly.
We are not out to hurt people or take their livelihood away from them or be the Grinch who stole Christmas or whatever.
“That’s just pure gravy, Sure, its a totally foreseeable result of what we are doing that makes us moist. Or hard, depending. But we’d do it anyway.”
We are not out to hurt people or take their livelihood away from them or be the Grinch who stole Christmas or whatever.
Uh huh…
The Glib-Fit continues apace. At one of my sites I swept up a kilo of crush, sand and salt in an area less than 4000 square feet and had to mop it twice. I was looking for my step meter but it’s gone into the aether. I’d estimate ten miles a night. That stacks up pretty well against a dozen beers, 30 cigs and whatever I manage to stuff in my maw if I feel hungry. Down to 175 but my arms and legs are like coil springs right now. Kettle balls? Swing a heavy mop and broom for hours. My back muscles are feeling it. Getting too old for this shit.
Leg day was Sunday for me. Haven’t done leg day in about a year. I hope no one saw me get out of my car this morning.
“We are not out to hurt people or take their livelihood away from them or be the Grinch who stole Christmas or whatever. These are hard decisions to make,” said Dr. Tony Storace, chairman of the Board of Health.
However, based on a bunch of completely made up numbers pulled out of our model’s ass, we have no alternative.
If reality does not conform to the model, it is reality which must be adjusted.
Was that little snippet courtesy of The Daily Scold?
I believe that. I really do.
I also believe that you’re simply not rational enough to be making those ‘hard’ decisions. Our social climate of hysterical ass-covering has damaged your decision-making abilities.
The level of contempt I have for these people is too hot for tv.
Making these people give up their paychecks while they shut people down is a moderate position.
Interesting idea. Make all the gov’t drones and higher ups live on 1/10 of their normal salaries. I’ll believe that any of these Governors really “feels the pain” of the common man when he or she has to sell their vacation homes and downsize their lives to the minimum to get by.
Was that little snippet courtesy of The Daily Scold?
DEG’s link, just above.
These Karenoids need to be treated with the scold’s bridle. Maybe the stocks?
We are not out to hurt people or take their livelihood away from them or be the Grinch who stole Christmas or whatever.
Well, I’m sure they’re not out to do those things. But, doing those things isn’t exactly a show-stopper for them.
No evil is ever done in the name of evil. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, etc., all did what they did in the name of righteousness, in their minds.
I’d wouldn’t include Stalin in that list. Theres a ton of evidence to suggest he knew exactly what he was.
As soon as a party says “by any means necessary” (like the Democrats have said repeatedly), they plan to kill for power.
Deep dive
More Americans voted in 2020 than in any other presidential election in 120 years. About 67% of eligible voters cast ballots this year, but that still means a third did not.
That amounts to about 80 million people who stayed home.
To better understand what motivates these nonvoters, NPR and the Medill School of Journalism commissioned Ipsos to conduct a survey of U.S. adults who didn’t vote this year. The Medill school’s graduate students did deep dives into various aspects of the survey here.
——-
Difficulty voting doesn’t appear to be a major reason why they don’t vote. Three-quarters said they think it’s at least somewhat easy to vote.
It’s more that these voters feel a sense of alienation and apathy. They are generally detached from the news and pessimistic about politics, the survey found.
Politics is simply not the way to make change, they said. Two-thirds of nonvoters agree, for example, that voting has little to do with the way that real decisions are made in this country; they are 21 points more likely to say so than people who voted.
——-
Nonvoters also mostly shunned news of the presidential election. For example, only 38% said they followed stories about the presidential and congressional campaigns in 2020 at least fairly closely, compared with 79% of people who voted.
And they were far less likely to have watched the debates or conventions. Less than a third watched the presidential debates, compared with almost two-thirds of voters. What’s more, two-thirds of nonvoters said they didn’t watch the presidential or vice presidential debates or either the Republican or Democratic conventions.
Absolutely horrifying.
Never change, NPR. Keep licking.
This research has been well-known for decades. I took a political science class on this in college.
What’s amazing actually is that 67% of eligible voters (allegedly) voted this time around. That is absolutely insane participation for this day and age when most people think their vote doesn’t matter.
More
Americans votedballots were counted in 2020 than in any other presidential election in 120 years.More than that, its hard to say for sure.
With mass mail-in voting, though, I suspect more people did submit ballots this year than ever before. Of course, you only vote if your ballot is counted correctly.
My 60 year old mom had a Democrat worker show up at her house asking if she needed help with her mail-in ballot. She always votes though and these days its always Republican.
I actually think this is the biggest issue. As long as this mail-in shit continues, the scam is easy. Find pools of old people less likely to vote and “assist” them. There’s no recourse and it’s not truly “fraud” in the strictest provable sense. Just manipulation of the process.
In any sane system, the above would be obvious and clear voter intimidation and would be illegal and the people responsible prosecuted.
Here it’s encouraged. They brag about it on the news channels (IE, the “ground game”). So pardon me on how seriously I take claims that this election (or any other one) is “free and fair.”
The moment incumbent re-election rates drop below 70% get back to me (it was 95% this year).
I’ve detailed my experience with the Democrat electoral machine in the past, but it’s worth summarizing again.
I needed to pick up some volunteer hours to graduate law school. In 2014, the school approved and advertised an election position as an option. The advertisement was for a “official, non-partisan election monitor” position. There were details about what the job entailed (making sure provisional ballots were handled properly), and the date and time for a training session.
I went to the training session and in walks Collin Allred (a senior staff member of the Wendy Davis for governor campaign) carrying a laptop covered in “Wendy Davis for Texas governor” stickers, and wearing additional Wendy Davis paraphernalia. He stepped through a Wendy Davis themed slide deck describing how we were supposed to be cataloging provisional ballots so that the democrats could follow up with them to make sure that 1) those ballots were cured (is that the right term? I forget) and 2) that they had a cataloged list for challenging “voter suppression”. I knew at that moment that Collin Allred was going to be a name that didn’t go away, because he had the exact scumbag personality that works great as a
national politicianscum sucking leech.I bitched out the school’s pro bono dean for letting this shit through under the guise of being non-partisan, and got a perfunctory apology and a “we didn’t know that it would be like this.” Sure. Yet another reason why you fucks won’t see another penny from me.
Anyway, I did the program because 1) I needed the hours and 2) I didn’t want one of my classmates to take my position and actually take it seriously. I spent the afternoon chatting with the election volunteers and generally just screwing around. There was one provisional ballot filed the whole day, and it was for a guy who had recently moved but didn’t update his driver license. *yawn*. Not that I would’ve bothered to record them if there had been more. Fuck Wendy Davis. Fuck Collin Allred. Fuck the Texas Democrats. When you have to lie and use a captive audience to get volunteers, you’re just scum.
Yep. That lost dew-nail will grow back eventually. Cuntes.
Since comment #21 upthread was a couple hours ago, I wanted to leave this here re: Solzhenitsyn’s quote from Tundra (which is a great one):
There was a powerful article yesterday on AIER: Tyranny During Its Reign Is Unrecognized by Its Victims, which I think is more applicable to us.
Solzhenitsyn saw the “obvious” side of oppression: The door-kicking, mass arresting part of it, where he could point and say “there is the tyranny.” For us, I think that we have – for the most part – accepted that we can’t do business, or travel, or congregate, or create, without government permission. We’ve come to believe that it’s actually wrong to engage in these activities without a license (permission).
When this happens, then the state doesn’t need to kick down doors. They simply remove the permission. Then, the bad citizens are identified, as they are the ones acting without proper licensure, and their own neighbors/friends/family will turn them in; it’s just the right thing to do.
What must happen is for people to come again to the understanding that we are free to act in all those ways without asking first. Once that begins to occur, then I think we’ll see a cascade of what will be termed rebellion, but is actually a return to a semblance of freedom.
I’m a regular reader of Cafe Hayek, Boudreaux’s blog. https://cafehayek.com/
Dude’s not much of a Trumper fan and it’s heavy economics and trade focused. I like to look at his perspective.
Yes, Boudreaux’s pretty awesome.
+1 President of the United States government
I’m enjoying his swing to COVID coverage.
But yes, I consider Cafe Hayek an essential site, and resource.
That is a great article. What is the antidote, the pill, the flash of light that will cause scales to fall from the eyes of the tyrranized?
What is the antidote, the pill, the flash of light that will cause scales to fall from the eyes…?
I doubt there will be one.
In 1841, Charles Mackay wrote Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. As he analyzed mass panics like tulips and witches, he noted that
I think it will not be an “event” per se, but a preference and action cascade, where we can look back and see when things began to accelerate, but won’t be able to point to a single point in time where it started. Not that that’s a bad thing. We tend to look for the one big thing, but those are vanishingly rare.
I find it bizarre that Sting used that line in one of his songs
The problem is too much of the economy is directly focused on compliance and enforcement of some type or another it’s an enormous industry. I don’t think we see a significant shift until it collapses or right people start to lose paychecks.
I don’t disagree. So much of any size business’s time is taken up in forcing compliance for the state (sales & labor & income taxes, codes, masks(!)), that it will have to be something major – like the threat of the loss of the business itself – for most people to consider non-compliance.
Establishing a gigantic corps of people who derive their livelihoods from handling the paperwork and bureacracy required to ensure that private entities are compliant with the law was probably an intended function of creating those laws and regulations to begin with. It’s a whole Deep State outside the State.
These 80 million Americans are also less engaged in their communities and have less confidence even in their local governments. They’re also less likely to volunteer or to be civically engaged — doing things like sending letters to the news media and elected officials or participating in marches, protests and demonstrations.
Oh, the pernicious horror of toxic individualism!
When will those apostates be brought back to the One True Religion?
civically engaged — doing things like sending letters to the news media and elected officials or participating in marches, protests and demonstrations.
What an interesting, and narrow, definition of civic engagement. Not counted: any activity in civil society. They are completely hypnotized by the Totipotent State and its handmaiden the Official Media. Anything else is literally invisible to them. Its why, for these people, there is no solution for anything except a government solution.
I witness this first hand with the majority of Burning Man participants and even Rangers – who volunteer to serve the community (you see – what you are doing right now, without govt) and they still cling to their standard issues leftist beliefs. So even when it is VISIBLE to them, and they are actively doing it, it is still invisible because Burning Man is an exception to all other human endeavor, or something.
Honestly, it takes conscious blindness/ignorance to do it. Yet that is a perfectly human thing to do.
Almost like believing the default state of elections is “honest” and requiring proof of it being otherwise.
Burden of proof is a bitch, isn’t it?
Not when you’re the one defining what is extraordinary and what is common sense.
I gave you the numbers of the last 3 presidential elections in PA. You still dream of a conspiracy in Philly controlling the whole state. That is horseshit.
Feel free to quote me on that to refresh my memory. Because I rather explcitkly said I have no idea what actually occurred, since I have no reliable source of information on it.
I mean, you are doing the same thing they are – I’ve got my political narrative and nothing will sway me from it, not even when what I am actually doing personally contradicts it.
If you’re not referring to my belief based on my interaction with the media over the past 30 years that every story in the newspaper or on televsion or radio is more likely than not to be in error at least in some detail, then I have no idea what you’re talking about.
What’s amazing actually is that 67% of eligible voters (allegedly) voted this time around. That is absolutely insane participation for this day and age when most people think their vote doesn’t matter.
Yes. More than half is surprising. I guess that’s what four years of nonstop propaganda can do.
For us, I think that we have – for the most part – accepted that we can’t do business, or travel, or congregate, or create, without government permission. We’ve come to believe that it’s actually wrong to engage in these activities without a license (permission).
Thank a teacher!
Had maybe three good ones. No.
Half of my teachers in high school were goldbrickers hanging in until retirement–most of them retired less than 5 years after I graduated. One was drunk all the time. The English faculty were awful. The only two teachers in my high school that I had classes with who were worth a damn were my chemistry teacher and the director of our music department.
The UK has all but codified a “moral” law, in which great scorn and relentless hammering of propaganda is used to smash people into submission on things like taxes, and their behaviour regarding covid, based not in actual law, but on what people, politicians, and even the police think the law should be. This seems powerful enough to have the intended effect on a large enough scale that actual legislation seems redundant. Sound familiar? Not that there isn’t a vast amount of horrible legislation anyway. My God, you should see what our “elected representatives” try pushing through parliament on a regular basis.
I had good teachers as a child. I liked school, so that helped, but I did have one year when my teacher was a total bitch and I was a total brat (of course, I believe the bitch came before the brat, but that’s a self-serving explanation). However, one year out of 13 hardly taints the bunch. Ditto college, I generally had decent professors, with rare exceptions. Talking with others, this was not universally the case, though some of it seems to be perception and other factors: sometimes, even with the same teacher teaching the same class, what I thought was good others didn’t (classic example: my favorite teacher at community college was a hardass and stickler for rules; I learned his rules early and did just fine, someone I knew lost 2 letter grades on the final exam for not following the rules; I’d take him again in a heartbeat, the other person hated that motherfucker).
In fact, I had such good teachers that I decided I wanted to become a teacher. A math teacher, specifically. So when I started 4-year college, I was a math/education major. That is when I began to see that my experience was exceptional, though even then it took a bit. At first, I had a good advisor and a good mentor. I volunteered at a charter school in Baltimore and I worked under a good teacher. But that didn’t last: my advisor couldn’t advise past a certain point due to department rules, the only person who could advise was the department chair and she was never in the office and didn’t return my calls or emails, my mentor was an adjunct and got laid off, and the teacher I worked with quit (or was fired, never found out which). Charter schools suddenly became declassé (indeed, Diane Ravitch had her great switch around the same time). Education was about mission and purpose instead of teaching and mentorship. And under the heart of it all was that the pettiest, clique-iest, and dumbest sailed through while those who cared, could understand the subject matter, and put in extra effort were sidelined.
We are now at the point where this is not a preview of what’s to come, or an aberration that will be overwhelmed by the good mass, but the state of affairs. Teachers have now usurped cops on the public martyr totem pole (one might even call it a crucifix) and they ride on the coattails of people like me who had positive experiences but never got the same dose of reality.
I went to a private school, so I’ve always known my experience was exceptional. That said, people I knew/communicated with seemed to be just as or more well educated than I was.
There were a lot of things those Southern Baptists didn’t teach that my cohorts’ public schools did: Darwin, evolution, most literature (except the rock bottom necessary for state accreditation), and philosophy. There were a lot of things those Southern Baptists taught that were flat wrong: martial arts is of the devil, the Trinity (apologies to Trinitarians here), rock music is of the devil, but of course, I could blow that shit off.
So when I got to college, I was WAY behind in literature and philosophy (specifically Nietschze) and biology. And also, that martial arts was not only NOT of the devil, it was a PE class. So that’s what I took because FU, people who refused to acknowledge I’d been accepted to BYU.
Also, I never understood what youth in Asia had to do with anything.
I want to a Catholic school, and my biology teacher would always teach evolution with this whole “they may not want me teaching this but it’s my sacred duty” spiel.
Catholics have always believed in evolution, so it was pretty funny that he thought he was fighting the power.
Evolution for Mormons is a non-starter. God may or may not have used evolution as his creationary device so since we don’t know, there’s no real point in discussing it.
Biology class at BYU, however, taught it without any biases for or against.
I think only fundamentalist Christians would even care, because they have to believe in a literal interpretation of the old testament.
In Baptist school, Darwin was referred to thusly: “He thought man came out of apes and how stupid is that.”
That’s it.
because they have to believe in a literal interpretation of the old testament.
It’s even beyond literalism. It’s this diseased view that the only possible interpretation of scripture is the one that the new guy walking in off the street would have after reading the text.
Inerrancy is a form of literalism (every word is chosen and placed in a way that is divinely inspired), but many fundies (and evangelicals as a whole) take it further by assuming that there is no room in scripture for metaphor, anecdote, summarization, sarcasm, literary embellishment, cultural interpretation, etc.
It tosses out 2000 years of church history and embraces a superficial interpretation of multiply translated words written in a completely foreign cultural context.
Acknowledging the need to set the context and interpret the language within that context is not at all in tension with inerrancy, but some can’t wrap their minds around that.
/mini-rant
IMO, it boils down to one thing: most people want simplicity. “God said it, I believe it, that’s all there is to it.” They want rules and boundaries.
Even the New Evangelical Woke has simplicity, rules, and boundaries that are, admittedly, extremely narrow.
I had a Science Prof in college who was so transparently anti-religious. To the point that he would say flat out untrue things to characterize Catholic church as profoundly anti-science during the middle ages.
Like Mocking Aristotle.
I get that mocking Aristotle is a past time of the post-enlightenment scientician, but have some respect for your fore-bearers.
Well now you’ve done it.
:Hides in Bunker:
Is this the New Pineapple debate?
Also:
Pop.
Nothing divides the body of believers like belief in the divided/undivided God.
The county I grew up in was solidly conservative at the time (the influx of DC commuters has since changed that), so we were taught evolution but the teacher disclaimed that you only had to learn it, you didn’t have to believe it. Nowadays, I doubt anyone gives out that disclaimer anymore.
^^ So this is something i’ve mentioned that is so pernicious about Public School. _Never_ or only rarely do students ever get a disclaimer about what they are learning (especially in the historical realm) is largely based off of opinons, and that their can be disagreements about them. No students are taught “facts” and what is taught is unquestionable. This is how you get people to scoff about “Robber Barons” and “Wildcat Banks” etc.
Perhaps it is even more sinister in the scientific realm, though for the most part, high school students are not learning very controversial things in physics.
“The question isn’t ‘who’s going to let me?’ The question is ‘who’s going to stop me?'”
Yep, Ayn. Sure. Be glad you’re dead and aren’t going to live through this a second time.
Republicans are well and truly fucked until the Parties “switch” again. Give it it a cycle or two.
I dunno, will four years of Harriden demoralize the base so much as to depress the vote come 2024? Will Dems continue to slide in the congressional races and lose a House majority in 2022? As far as the second one goes, I think the same people now getting away with the most egregious election fraud ever in a “free” western “democracy” are already making sure that people vote “correctly” to make sure the Ds gain a significantly larger majority than would seem possible otherwise come 2022. What about the Senate? Dems are within a blonde one of a Senate majority these days and the GA runoffs are the turning point in the battle for the Republic. Real, actual fraud, rather than just “gerrymandering” is absolutely achieveable with impunity now. Republicans can kick up an almighty fuss and sign on to toothless lawsuits, always a day late and a dollar short, and that’s about it.
Good. Republican politicians are useless weasels who talk the talk and then sell out everything they claim to stand for. Having zero republican politicians would be preferable to the current lot.
Automation will make them redundant anyhow. You just program the Robopublicans to be a bunch of standard swampy sellouts, flip the switch and watch them go. That is, unless the contract goes to RepublicAndroid who have developed far superior pork-acquiring algorithms.
This is true of both parties, at least at the national level. They both have bases, whose turnout they need to motivate, but whose votes do not comprise any sort of majority. To win any election, one generally has to form a coalition of different voters, and those voters almost always have competing interests. Pleasing some means displeasing others. Republicans can’t win on their base alone, and once in power they can generally depend on their base but still need to keep the “swing” voters from getting turned off. The cause of RINOs (or DINOs, for the socialist progressives) is electoral politics.
Where this stops being the case, e.g. one-party states like California, you have an entirely different dysfunction instead.
Narrow margin in ’16 for the win, and in ’20 for the loss.
I suspect not quite as narrow as that would have you believe.
Possibly, but after all the folderol about Pennsylvania and the fix being in, the numbers didn’t support it (unless of course you now believe there has never been a fair/honest election marred only by normal human incompetence). And you will note, PA didn’t make the list here.
The PA election is still suspect but it’s a lot more diffuse. In the vast majority of PA’s 67 counties, Trump did better in 2020 than he did in 2016 and Biden did worse than Clinton. But in the handful that Biden won, he did consistently better than Clinton, and he also flipped one .
On the other hand, in as far as I can tell every one of MD’s 23 counties, Trump did worse than 2016 and Biden did better than Clinton. So PA’s counties are not consistent with each other, but they aren’t that out of line with other states’ performance. Of course, Maryland’s outcome was a foregone conclusion, though that doesn’t appear to have affected turnout.
Which leads to the biggest problem with this election: the sudden but inconsistent use of way more mail-in ballots than ever before. One thing that can be said with a fairly high degree of certainty is that, relative to 2016, in-person voting favored Trump and mail-in voting favored Biden. While the Democrats have constructed a narrative that mail-in ballots are the choice of smarter voters, who are their remit, I’d be a little worried if I was them because mail-in ballots are also lower effort. Remove the crisis mentality of this year, and things change a lot.
Remove the crisis mentality of this year, and things change a lot.
If a crisis is needed, one will be provided.
You cannot have a perpetual crisis. The revolution eventually eats its own and someone will find the demand for stability and take advantage of the opportunity. Constant crisis begets Caesars and Napoleons.
(or it begets collapse, but either way the crisis-mongers end up out of power)
In other words Chaotic Systems move chaotically until they find an equilibrium wherein the chaos is dissipated.
And Utter Destruction is a form of equilibrium.
Dinosaurs found out the hard way.
I only said it would be done, not that it would succeed in the long run. I certainly don’t believe Our Masters indulge in a lot of long-term thinking.
They don’t need a perpetual crisis, anyway, at least for electoral purposes. One every four years should do it.
And when they do fuck it up, well, it will suck to be us, won’t it?
I ran the numbers side-by-side, taken from Wikipedia (it was in a convenient table) this time instead of Politico, and it looks like Biden did improve in most PA counties (improved in 63 of 67) and more than Trump (improved in 39 of 67). Libertarians and other third parties (Green, Constitution) did much worse in 2020 and that explains how Trump and Biden could have both improved in some of the same counties (35 of 67). Moreover, while Trump gained support in 19 counties, Biden gained support in 48. So, at least according to the numbers on Wikipedia right now, I’d say PA’s results aren’t nearly as suspect as they initially seemed.
(results not suspect != methodology not suspect FWIW)
I did a spot check of a number of counties and Wikipedia has the exact same numbers as the PA Dept of State website, so at least they didn’t make them up or get them from a second-hand source.
However, looking closely at the DoS numbers, holy fuck. The discrepancy between in-person and mail-in is massive.
If the election were decided by in-person voting alone, Trump wins PA with an almost total lockout majority of 66 out of 67 counties and probably 70-30 vote split.
If the election were decided by mail-in voting alone, Biden wins PA in a crushing landslide with 62 out of 67 counties and probably 80-20 vote split.
‘folderol’, he says, while being beaten to death with his own fake leg.
Narrow? I heard Biden had a mandate!
I read that as “Biden had a manatee”
You live in Joe’s head?
My theory: a closely divided electorate is one that most needs trustworthy elections.
We don’t have those. A government that is (seen as) illegitimate by a big chunk of the coutry is a Bad Thing. I get it, people think that having a government that isn’t trusted is “the scales falling from people’s eyes”. To a degree, that’s true, in the sense that “we don’t truste these fuckers, so we should keep them in a box and keep a close eye on them.” That’s not what rejecting legitimacy is about, though. We are watching the social capital of the country get vaporized, which will benefit no one in the long run. In the short run, sure, low-trust countries require powerful governments, so those who seek power want a low-trust country. But eventually, low trust leads to povery and violence. Every time. Sometimes, that violence reaches even into the apparat and the nomenklatura. If you’re lucky.
I find it interesting that absolutely nobody is talking about electoral reform intended to make elections secure and thus trustworthy. So this is a problem ain’t getting fixed any time soon.
We’re not even done with the election yet. I expect some reforms to be made over the next two years.
Stop laughing at me.
The Democratic party will almost certainly do everything within their power to expand mail-in balloting. It clearly won them the presidency.
They won’t have the advantage of running against Trump again.
As if the next guy won’t also be portrayed as worse than Hitler. Think of how they portrayed Mitt Romney and John McCain?
The next guy also will have the disadvantage of his message being locked out of Twitter, Facebook, Google and potentially Youtube. We’ll see if the “alt” sites grow enough to pick up the slack.
This a professional apparatus that has no intention of anything like “the public will” getting in the way of what they want.
Oh, the Dems won’t change, of course not. Reagan was Hitler too – to them. At least until he was dead when he could be safely semi-rehabilitated to show just how Hitler-like these current Republicans are.
For people that fall for that, they’re just fucking stupid and will always cast stupid votes.
There is a difference in actual Republican candidates and how they fare based on their own words/deeds and that must matter, or you have to believe that Democratic campaign propaganda is ALL POWERFUL. I don’t buy that.
The next guy also will have the disadvantage of his message being locked out of Twitter, Facebook, Google and potentially Youtube.
I suspect that if current practices on social media had been in place in 2016, Hillary would have won. No end run around the DemOp Media for Trump probably means he would have lost. The current information ecosystem is far and away the most biased I have ever seen. In the past, at least, you could access “dissident” views via the normal and heavily used channels of information – anybody could subscribe to a magazine, and the post office would deliver it. Now, its the equivalent of the post office refusing to deliver mail that hasn’t been inspected and approved for goodthink.
I’ll quibble that if neither side had outsized ambitions for transforming society, the level of trust required to be elected and simply run the govt would not need to be so elevated. Our problem is that culturally we have very different views on what govt should do, and that is the division. Sadly, for those who believe in limited govt – we’ve pretty much lost and the only debate now is which brand of big govt.
I’d say that a majority of Americans don’t have different views on the role of government. It should run the schools and the fire stations, it should collect taxes and spend them on services and judicious handouts, it should make the world more fair (for themselves), and it should wage war against our enemies and other bad people. They might quibble over the details but this is the consensus. Socialists and libertarians are at the fringe; anarchists even more so. The socialists may occasionally get to pull the Democrats leftward, and the libertarians may occasionally get to pull the Republicans rightward, but the people who actually win elections, get appointed, or just work their way up through the bureaucracy as dyed-in-the-wool centrists (oxymoron intentional). Anything else would rock the boat and the majority don’t want the boat rocked.
It may be interesting but it’s not unexpected. The parties in power need strife and division to carve out their permanent constituencies. I’ve said it before: neither wants their pet issues decided on permanently. It’s the struggle that keeps them in power.
“In intelligence work we have to go by capabilities, not by intentions. If a potential enemy can do something to you, you have to prepare for it, without regard to what you think he wants to do.” — from The Mote in God’s Eye
This is my take on elections. Which agrees with yours, and what I have been saying for a long while (more that 4 years, at least). It is my answer to juris up above too. I don’t know what fraud did or didn’t happen, or how much of it there was, but the capability exists, regardless of intention. And that is what we must eliminate.
I still can’t believe Pennsylvania went for the senile asshole after he promised to wreck a major industry in the state. “Yes, please, impoverish us!”
We did not go for Gropey. PA was stolen from Trump.
I dunno. Looking at my precinct in Chesco, it appears about 45% of the vote was mail in. The turnout was 87% vs. the usual 70-75%. Trump’s votes went up vs. 2016 but Biden’s % was several points higher than Hillary’s. My best guess is that Trump’s
personality drove a lot more people to vote than in 2016 and that did not help him in the Philly suburbs.
Yeah, that’s the most realistic argument for Biden actually getting more legally cast votes.
Yeah, O&G is really only a major industry in the western (and part of the central) parts of the state. Those counties went overwhelmingly for Not Biden
And yet, Biden did get more votes across the state. I would guess that none of those folks actually work in that industry or see how it supports those communities. That isn’t all that hard to believe.
Biden did get more votes across the state.
I think its safe to say more votes were counted for Biden.
I am curious about how mail-in ballots are counted. Do they go to local polling places for counting? A central counting office? If all the mail-in ballots are piled up in, say, Philly, for counting, then wouldn’t that give the famously corrupt Philly machine state-wide reach?
No, they don’t go all to Philly. They go to the county level elections office. They are counted there. So now, conspiracy mongers must account for 67 election offices all being contaminated, even when they are run by locals (and Republicans at that). Because Biden performed better than Clinton across the whole damn state. I guess everyone has forgotten how narrowly Trump won this state 4 years ago. Less than 50k votes, right? Just about ANY Democrat should have been able to do better.
At least you pose this as a question – instead of as a narrative. That is a huge difference, because I’m fed up with people and their blind beliefs in narratives.
In our county, at least one of the nominally Republican commissioners had a “Ridin’ with Biden” sign in his front yard for the week before the election. I wouldn’t suggest a high level conspiracy is necessary for fraud to occur; and the election boards are not monolithically aligned with the prevailing political parties–how many of the unelected drones at the County level are really Republicans?
How DARE he not kneel before ZodTrump! Cast him into oblivion for his disloyalty.
oh, FFS, dude. I’m not even disagreeing with you. You need to stop reflexively assuming everyone here is against you.
Friends who can’t believe Biden won PA point to the success Republicans had in down ballot races, not to mention that a voter could not vote “straight” party in this election. I think it points to some Republican party popularity that just did not translate to include Trump. The O&G industry effect did not impact the suburbs – it is upstate in less populated counties that went heavily Trump but not enough to offset the burbs. In fact, the burbs are a hot bed of greenie opposition to pipelines that carry the O&G.
Not 67, “only” 63 (where Biden improved over Clinton) or 48 (where Biden improved over Clinton more than Trump improved over 2016), but still a lot. I posted some more detailed numbers a few threads above.
(though this analysis treats in-person voting and mail-in voting as equivalent, which is what of course determined the official results of the state; however, the discrepancy between the two is so stark as to raise serious questions about methodology)
Does it even matter what gets counted if the electronic data can be manipulated locally and remotely?
Papieren, bitte
Many Coloradans are wondering what a post-COVID-19 vaccinated America might look like. There’s been talk of “vaccine passports” on smart phones. Currently, a government-issued card is being offered.
If you receive a COVID-19 vaccine, the state requires providers give you a tangible vaccination card identifying which vaccine you received and when. Ultimately, it’s up to each individual if they want to show the card to anyone or ensure the information is uploaded onto a vaccine passport.
“I don’t think that it’s going to be a—’Did you want to come to the movie theatre today? Because we need to see your vaccine passport,’” said Christian Hardigree, dean of the School of Hospitality, Events and Tourism at Metropolitan State University of Denver. “I don’t think you’re going to see that kind of environment.”
Hardigree, who is also a lawyer, said some services might require proof of immunization.
Maybe some sort of pin or fabric banner to signify which team you belong to. Or perhaps a numerical tattoo.
But when we do, you’ll talk about how it is necessary?
If that becomes required, I’m not putting it on my phone. I will make an armband and wear it.
I’m going to tape mine to the middle of my face mask that I’ll still be wearing.
I’ve begun receiving popup “alerts” on my phone from WA State telling me that I can download their new COVID tracking app.
Wouldn’t surprise me if in the next 12 months it becomes an over-the-air forced download.
It’ll be the next “Presidential Alerts.”
I don’t need to carry a phone that badly, personally. I can always keep it in airplane mode unless I need to make a call. It will be interesting if my company pushes it out to our company issued mobile phones, though.
There’s been talk of “vaccine passports” on smart phones.
Note that expecting someone to get a free ID card is racist.
Requiring them to have a smartphone with a mandatory app on it, though, is just peachy.
I don’t think that it’s going to be a—’Did you want to come to the movie theatre today? Because we need to see your vaccine passport,’
Yeah, when they tried to do that with masks, it was a total failure. There’s no idiot quite like an academic idiot.
Maybe some sort of pin or fabric banner to signify which team you belong to. Or perhaps a numerical tattoo.
No need for that, or for the card or app. The microchip in the vaccination will take care of it.
+1 Real ID.
Sure you don’t need it to vote, but if you want to travel within the country via airplane, you’ll need it.
You’ll eventually need ID to buy a loaf of bread, but not to vote.
I say, in order to vote, you should have to show a couple forms of ID, show proof that you’ve passed a basic competency test, go through a background check, pay a fee, and then wait 10 days.
And if someone thinks you are going to use your vote to vote for the wrong person they can get a “temporary” restraining order forbidding you from voting.
Oh, and you can’t vote for more than 10 candidates or positions at a time.
I say, in order to
voteget an abortion, you should have to show a couple forms of ID, show proof that you’ve passed a basic competency test, go through a background check, pay a fee, and then wait 10 days.*ducks, runs
Joking aside, I’d settle for, you have registered and proved your residency in the place you are voting sometime since the last major election cycle (2 or 4 years). Voter registration should not be perpetual. Forget purging the rolls based upon guesses, just have the registration automatically lapse. If I had my druthers it’d be every year, but I can at least see the case that, with our sclerotic and incompetent government, every year is a little too frequent for either it or the people to handle (think of waiting in a DMV/MVA line for a whole day every year).
No, you won’t have to show it to get into a movie theater since there won’t be any movie theaters.
I’m gone to the movies a few times in the past few months. As much as I enjoy having an entire giant theater to myself, I kinda feel sorry for them.
Social security numbers will only be for the SSA.
A general observation, based on what has been said thus far:
It has been pointed out previously that we have, as a country, gone from “It’s a free country” to “Who said you could do that?”
I think we are now seeing a rap[id shift from a culture of “Who said you could do that?” to one of “Who said you could decline to do that?” with regard to masks, our soon-to-be (effectively) mandatory inoculations, et c. The list will only expand, in Ballgag America.
EVERYTHING NOT PROHIBITED IS MANDATORY makes it nigh unto impossible to just keep your head below the parapet and go about your life as you see fit.
Back to that NPR thing about non-voters; I do not doubt for an instant there is a vast swath of NPR reader/listenership who would be delighted to see voting made mandatory, as it is in Australia. Because justice for all, or some similar twaddle.
I could easily see that backfiring on them. If they think all the non-voters are closet Democrats, they’re going to be very disappointed.
I’ve begun receiving popup “alerts” on my phone from WA State telling me that I can download their new COVID tracking app.
Wouldn’t surprise me if in the next 12 months it becomes an over-the-air forced download.
A few sweet nothings whispered in google’s ear, and your phone is bricked when you don’t accept the latest android update.
Immediately after I read that, my phone notified me of updates.
I miss my BlackBerry.
“don’t accept” will no longer be an option
Gotta ask friends. At what point does “Big Tech employee is openly leftist, discriminates against all other viewpoints, nothing will happen” stop being news?
How about we do just one big article, call it “Every single solitary employee of a Silicon Valley company, bar none and we mean every last one of them, is an open political leftist who has expressed animus against all Republicans”. Send it out to every website in America, and let’s be done with it.