RIP Tom!
Djokovic got shelled by Sinner. The other semifinal just started as I’m writing this (because I can’t sleep). Lots of fun FA Cup matches this weekend. And there’s the NFL Conference championship games coming up too. The world lost a good one yesterday. I was fortunate enough to have met Tom on many occasions at tailgates. But his big thing was twitters where he was loved by friend and foe alike. He was a hell of a character ad he will be sadly missed. That’s pretty much all I’ve got for sports.
It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for them.
Selectively prosecuted
Equal protection is dead. I don’t know if it’s ever coming back or if we have entered the age of retribution. But this kind of shit is bad, bad, bad.
Why anybody would voluntarily live here boggles the mind. And if this guy loses, there’s pretty much no end to the fuckery they can pull off.
Oh boy. Here we go. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.
::shrug:: Oh well, he got what he deserved. I got nothing else, aside from pointing out that karma does, apparently, exist at times.
Crazy Wops
What a bunch of shit. No, for real. Although I don’t think this makes much sense if the only goal is to find the pooping pooches. I suspect there’s another motive we’re not hearting about.
I’m with the Limeys on this one. Science be damned.
Here come the CHUDs! But it’s Balmer, so nobody will notice.
Thank God I’m in Texas. I don’t know if I’d be able to tolerate that insanity. Also, how is this “good news?” That website might want to rethink its editorial process.
California legislator.
Good to know this guy took time out of his child grooming schedule to do something else. Oh wait, he’s still being an asshole. Nevermind.
What a great video! The song is pretty solid too. The same could be said for this track. The 80s were the absolute best. Enjoy them.
And enjoy this lovely Friday and weekend, dear friends. Tomorrow is my 12th anniversary with Banjos! She’s such a great wife and I’m a very lucky man.
It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for them.
learn prompt engineering
Been quite amused at the whole of the media claiming they never told coal miners to learn to code.
They are scum. They know damned well they look down on people that do manual (real) work. Heck, reveled in these people that lost their jobs misery and enjoyed telling them to learn to code, because they believed the people losing jobs were to dumb to do that anyway. I feel we have not mocked them hard enough for that reason.
Coal miners were used to being productive though, that’s the difference.
Yay! Early links!
you did not comment on a link
But I did on the linkster.
Two hats enter! One hat leaves!
Equal protection is dead. I don’t know if it’s ever coming back or if we have entered the age of retribution. But this kind of shit is bad, bad, bad.
maybe after National divorce?
Does seem like that level of reset is what its going to take. The Ivy legal schools seem to be cranking out morons who disagree with the foundations of law in this country and are more than willing to substitute their feelings for legal precedent — and they’ve moved into a lot of courts. So changing administrations isn’t going to do crap.
When you create a few generations of marxist drones through indoctrination, don’t be surprised they destroy everything they come into contact with.
That judge is balls-deep in all the 1/6 power trips. He is so drunk on power it’s a wonder he can walk straight.
Why anybody would voluntarily live here boggles the mind. – I keep hearing the geography of place is gorgeous and the weather is great
It is, and a generation or two ago it was everything you could want it to be. Then they fucked it up, and are now corpse-fucking it.
Well, it is an article about Scott Weiner. He tries to fuck everything and everyone else…..
The entire Legislature is happy to help him.
Maybe because I grew up on NE OK, but cicadas have never bothered me. No idea whatsoever why they freak people out.
I hate how loud they can be.
Who looks exactly like you think she does.
Also, I can only assume that press release was written by a local intern. Nobody with enough stripes on their trousers to warrant a UK posting could have a sense of humor.
::shrug:: Oh well, he got what he deserved. I got nothing else, aside from pointing out that karma does, apparently, exist at times.
So which insurance should cover the car damage? the policy of the stolen car or the policy of the car of the maniac?
I was thinking on the Cicada cycles, and I hypothesized that once upon a time, there were both 13-year swarms and 17-year swarms every year, but some of the swarms died out, leaving us with these long gaps between energances. It was the most reasonable explanation I could come up with that could readily occur naturally.
Safety in numbers – if one thirteenth as many locusts emerged every year, they’d be gobbled up. All at once – enough survive for the next emergence.
I’d figured each swarm started about the same size, but relative success or failure resulted in some swarms surviving where others did not. Once they reached the critical volume the pattern was settled.
Now here’s a question – when the swarms coincide like this, do the 17 year and 13 year groups crossbreed? If so, how long do tose offspring remain underground before emergance?
Genius post
The 13 year broods are different species than the 17 year broods, so no interpreting. Plus each brood is geographically localized, so little or no overlap of ranges.
Interbreeding, not interpreting. FN autodecorrect.
Thank you.
I know little about Cicadas, and from the articles I’d gotten the impression that these groups shared space.
I remember being out of the country for some time and going to see a new movie….The Last of the Mohicans. The background sounds were of cawing bluejays and chirping cicadas. Those sounds…made me literally sick. I was so homesick from hearing that – fixtures of growing up in Louisiana – that I developed almost a panic. “I gotta get the fuck out of here and go home”
So I did. I have been out of Louisiana a few times since then, to Texas (almost Louisiana, but not quite) and to Florida (used to feel like home but these days not so much). Florida has filled up with East Coast skidmarks. I have no plans to return to Florida.
That happens. There are some that are bigger, but they drift over time, some coming out a year early or a year late, and thus forming new broods. Usually the different broods are in different locations, if there were enough that drifted at the same time in the same vicinity.
I can only assume “Lots of ze bugs for ze common serf to eat, ya?”
Morning, Sloopy — morning the rest of ya early birds.
Same.
Which commonly they offer sugar or milk for their tea, but how about some salt?
I put salt in water when making pasta not tea.
Adding salt to coffee grounds is a way to make terrible coffee more palatable.
I thought that was chickory — or is that just Der Waffle Haus?
The only coffee I drink is Café du Monde’s chicory coffee and the only time I do that is when we make beignets.
My wife, who loves coffee, thinks that’s weird.
I used to mix that stuff with regular coffee. There’s an Asian coffee from Bam Me Thout that I used to buy but it had a sort of over roasted flavor but the price was right. On the shelf next to Cafe Du Monde at the Asian store.
“Bam me thot” sounds like a innuendo.
Well, you have to do something to mask the taste of coffee.
You bought terrible coffee – why?
Well, that’s the real solution. But making due with what you have is a valuable skill.
And SDF-7, chicory was used as a coffee substitute to stretch out stores of coffee.
Egg shells. Old army trick.
When I was little, someone told me you salted the pasta water to change the boiling point of the water. Since that struck me as rather pointless, I didn’t bother. Had they told me that it was for flavor, I would have been salting the water all along, instead of spending years without. I wonder if they didn’t know why and made something up.
Dammit, don’t make me want pasta, I had to give up carbs.
Yeah I’ve heard that too but my mother always taught me to salt the water and if I thought it was enough salt, I probably undersalted.
Most of it will stay in the water when you strain the pasta, you need enough to stay on the pasta after it’s removed from the water, or you won’t taste it.
A good Eyetalian pasta recipe would have you put a lot of salt and some olive oil in the pasta when cooking, to both flavor and avoid it sticking, and then to use a cup or two of that starchy water straight out of the boiling pasta pot to add to your sauce to thicken and extra flavor it…
Que bello, e che buono!
There’s never enough starch in the water to thicken anything, it always thins it down.
Ma va fare un culo!
You need to up your culinary Fu, man.. Always works for me..
I’m sorry, I don’t speak foreign.
And I’ve given up carbs for health reasons. So my pasta cooking days are over.
It isn’t necessarily to thicken but rather add body and also to loosen up the sauce if needed and marry the flavors.
The salting of the water is to help flavor the pasta. It also provides a little bit of flavor when you mix some of the pasta water into your sauce to finish the sauce up.
^^^THIS MANGETS IT^^^
“Salata come il mare” 🌊 🧂
Salting keeps the noodles a little firmer and the olive oil keeps them from sticking.
I’ll be honest . I used to do the salt thing. Then I forgot a few times and it was exactly the same as far as I could tell.
However I pretty much never eat without some sort of sauce so maybe it’s just hard to tell.
Rice or Pasta: 1 cup basmati rice
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tbl butter
Hefty dash of sweet basil or parsley, your choice
If you make rice this way you must hide it before serving. over the years I have twice caught someone sneaking in the kitchen and eating the rice out of the cooker with a spoon.
You need to lock your doors to keep people from coming in and stealing your tasty rice, Suthen….
I was waiting for someone to suggest cilantro instead of basil or parsley. Look, I can suggest recipes here, that is fine. I am not going to recommend criminal activity.
Well once you put in cilantro, a squeeze of lime would really be needed as well.
My wife likes her rice straight in a 1:1.5 rice to water ratio.
Mass or volume?
volume
I agree. Basmati and Jasmine like a little less water so they are not sticky and they come out fluffy.
I’ve been using the water/rice ratio of 1.5/1.0 for 50 years now (since I learned it from Jean Lum of the erstwhile Kwongchow Restaurant in Toronto), and it’s never failed me. The kind of rice doesn’t matter; if you’re using brown rice (not the Uncle Ben’s “converted,” that’s already been parboiled so that it cooks up the same as white rice), you need to adjust the cooking time, not the amount of water.
Has to be true rice, though; “wild rice” is a grain, but it’s not a rice, and needs separate cooking methods.
Mrs F wants her rice to be sticky, she makes a lot of it for herself. Me, not a rice person, other than the fried stuff. When we go to a hot dish party the neighbors will insist that we bring fried rice, no choice.
“If there’s any leftover, can I take it home?”
Frequently asked question
Your wife is a culinary goddess. It pays to get the simple stuff correct.
Lemon and perhaps dill would be good in there too.
Add thyme. Chicken loves thyme, and thyme loves chicken. And cut the stock/rice ratio back to 1.5/1.0.
If people didn’t click through to read the letter from the US embassy re: salting tea, you really should. It ends with some quality trolling.
Bravo, bored embassy staffers, bravo.
Yes it was.
Yeah — I think that jerkwad is single-handedly responsible for at least half of California’s outflow with the legislative shit he somehow gets to push through Sacramento’s intestines and Governor Hair Gel (mostly) just glibly signs.
I’m just glad a) I have zero intention of buying a new car these days and b) I still hope to get out of here soon and back East.
I’m almost surprised he didn’t decided to run against Schiff and crew for the “Worst Possible People for US Senator” election we have coming up. If there was ever a time for “Hell no, none of these assholes!” on the ballot, that one will do it.
Misquote? Slip of the tongue? Neighborhood speeds are 25 mph on California residential streets.
I’d vote “slip of the tongue” but I really don’t want that phrase and “Scott Weiner” in the same section of neurons of my brain, please. Ewwww.
I have no words to describe it, unfortunately. 😉
Well happy Early Anniversary you two. I’m sure you bring light and joy into your girls’ lives like you try to do here with the links. (Quite likely more since I hope you’re not inflicting too much politics on them yet…) Seriously, you two do a lot for us – you’re great… hope you have a fantastic anniversary weekend. Take her around the track a few times, Sloopy (nudge nudge wink wink say no more!)
Congrats to you and Banjos, Sloop. Seems like it was just yesterday that we learned of the event. I’m thinking you met on the Reason and both lived in CA at the time. I’ve been wrong before (once) though. Enjoy you day and every day.
I was stuck in CA but she was in PHX when we met through reason. Then a few weeks later…we got married.
Congratulations.
I remember the event from back in the H&R days.
Silk sheets would be a traditional gift.
I thought every libertarian anniversary was firearms or related accessories.
Which anniversary is a killdozer?
UK halts trade negotiations with Canada over hormones in beef ban
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68098177
“Negotiations between the UK and Canada on a post-Brexit trade deal have broken down after nearly two years, following a row over beef and cheese.
Canada has been pushing for the UK to relax a ban on hormone-treated beef, which its producers say in effect shuts them out of the British market.
Meanwhile, the UK has concerns about Canada putting import taxes of up to 245% on British cheese products.”
The Roast Beef of Old England must maintain it’s purity. Otherwise it will end up like the north Americas with inedible beef.
That’s what they get for relaxing the Empire into the Commonwealth.
could’ve kept the hormones out of Canadian beef. and the enzymes.
Say what?
He’s just trying to get a rise out of you. It’s not like he’s actually visited and had a local show him what real American food is.
I read it as making fun of UK food.
can’t it be both ?
You wagyu.
I have bought cheap imported US beef and it was not that great
There’s yer problem. You bought the cheap shit that was frozen and shipped overseas. (I doubt it would still be cheap if they moved it fast enough to arrive fresh)
There isn’t much beef in beefaroni anyway.
Pie’s experience with American beef.
but the expensive stuff is expensive.
The adage “You get what you pay for” exists for a reason.
You think we’ll send out the good stuff?
When I was in Ireland, I was greatly entertained by all of the ads touting their corn-fed beef, especially coming from the US, where that’s the default and places advertise their grass-fed beef. Talking to a couple of locals, I learned it was because corn didn’t really grow well in Ireland, so corn-fed beef was a rarity to them, thus more expensive.
I think corn fed beef tastes better.
The grass fed thing is marketing here because it’s supposedly more natural and humane. and maybe healthy too i dunno.
how can you eat meat with whore moans?
Ask Scott Weiner?
Both the Conservative and Labour parties have indicated a desire to bring down net migration.
But substantially cutting migration could reduce the size of the workforce in key sectors. Workers from non-EU countries were 16% of the adult social care workforce in 2022–23.
https://twitter.com/TheIFS/status/1750440411787567344
Now I a not for excessive immigration restrictions but… I wonder if it is not possible to accept the immigrants that specifically work where there is a need and not others… You can cut immigration significantly and still get some needed workers. Also maybe the worthless humanities educated brits can learn to care
Or — like all the wailing about agricultural work in this country when they’re trying to advocate for open borders — maybe the employers can hike wages and salaries to attract more workers instead of importing labor so they can underpay, and if that ramps up costs as the market adjusts — them’s the breaks?
Of course, for picking crops and whatnot — automation frequently comes into play. Other than some attempts at robotics in Japan, I don’t think the care industry has that going just yet.
but if the government pays the wages and the wages go up so do taxes
whaddup doh’
So the job kept pushing you and managed to push you right out the door?
I don’t think it was by design, though it certainly ended that way.
I didn’t like the way they do business, I didn’t like the equipment, and I didn’t like the way they scheduled jobs (over promising and generally stressing everyone out).
The extended travel and time away from home is a grind, but I signed on for that.
They guys I worked with were all pretty decent tho.
Do you have anything lined up, or is it a case of “I’m done here”
I had a job that was 80+% travel – I was glad to be done with that.
Good luck with the job search, seems to be a crazy labor market out there right now.
swisservator@gee mail – my Swiss Masters are often hiring.
This should be required teaching across every school in America.
https://twitter.com/chrisxmunn/status/1750219061168836886
Today in stupid. the labor fucking theory of value will not die.
How dare the fucking employer expect to make money himself!
People that think like this are the ones that invent and peddle the DEI bullshit. There your cost produces a negative result (financially and otherwise) for everyone involved.
How ’bout dis?
The “employer” pays you what your labor is worth, then raises the price of the good to represent his labor in selling it.
Why do you feel entitled to get paid for the salesguys labor?
Marxist are driven by envy/jealousy. They want to get the full pay value of their labor, but deny others that same thing when they demand free shit as rights..
It is a cult of evil straight from the biblical warnings of what not to do…
Marxists didn’t invent envy but they sure exploit the shit out of it.
The employer pays you as little as he can get by with and still have capable workers. That’s your worth.
The missing link that somebody needs to connect to put the puzzle together is “why can’t I just sell the product myself and pocket the extra money?”
–Mr. Dubois, Starship Troopers.
Dunno what they are doing today but the military used to drill that into soft heads by having people move large mounds of dirt from location A to location B and then have them move the mound back to it’s original location.
Anyone know if the wokety military is still doing that? I bet not.
“All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it”
I prefer the turd polisher analogy of labor explanation. Ask marxists if the doctor, engineer, airline pilot, or other such highly skilled professional should be paid the same as some guy or gal kept busy polishing turds for the state company. Cause marxist theory of labor would indicate that you would have to still pay that guy or gal the same high wage to do nothing of value but polish turds.
We learned that in grade school. We learned a lot of things in grade school and there were only two bathrooms and we knew the reason why. I am eternally grateful for having learned that at an early age.
He started with a valid point and gradually crossed into nonsense.
1. Obama gave speeches multiple times overtly claiming that employers responsibility was to provide employment. That they had some kind of moral obligation to dole out paychecks regardless if they made money or not.
2. The purpose of marxist demoralization is to scramble people’s brains so that they cannot distinguish reality from fantasy. The goal: People who cannot tell fantasy from reality cannot identify problems. If they cannot identify problems, they cannot solve problems. If they cannot solve problems they cannot defend themselves, their families or their country.
3. Yuri Bezmenov – “You can take them to Siberia and show them the gulags, the mass graves. They still will not believe it. They will only believe it when the boots are crushing their balls. Once they are demoralized you cannot fix them. You are stuck with them.
Professor dude is wasting his breath.
People want to believe beautiful lies. Marxism just gives people what they want, and then, what they deserve for what they wanted.
May you two have a happy anniversary!
Arr-teest: So for this piece, I want you to stand in a doorway.
Zoolander wannabee: ‘K.
A: Naked.
Z: Gotcha.
A: Where people will have to rub against your junk.
Z: Uh huh.
A: Most of these people will be old dudes who donate money to art museums.
Z: Can I have my money now?
13 years later…
Z: Waaaaah! I’ve been groped! I’m suing!
https://apnews.com/article/moma-marina-abramovic-nude-imponderabilia-b3443d3706d2a46bdd02b4f08895e1d5
The work, titled “Imponderabilia,” saw Bonafede and another performer standing face-to-face with each other in a doorway about 18 inches (45.7 centimeters) apart, fully nude, silent, and still. The exhibition, which ran from March 14, 2010 through May 31, 2010, was curated by the museum in a way that encouraged visitors to pass in between the performers as they went from one gallery to the next, the suit alleges.
WTF?
These places stopped being about art early in the 20th century, now they’re about money laundering, edgelording, and perversions.
I am seeing tons of videos by women crying and ranting in frustration wanting to know why men won’t approach them or date them anymore. Estimates put the cat lady population at around 60% in a few years. That is not just the post-wall ones, all women of any age. A lot of them are pretty hot in their sexual prime and yet men avoid them. My favorite was a singles dating event where over 50 women showed up and not one single man darkened the door.
They are clueless as to why this is.
Lets see….marriage is a contract in which a woman is richly rewarded by breaking it. Men can have women accuse of them of all kinds of shenanigans decades after the fact with no evidence, no witnesses etc and their lives are destroyed.
Men area withdrawing. Why? No one knows. It’s just a mystery. We may never know.
It’s actually a dude suing.
Which means either all the women understood what they were getting into, or the museum patrons weren’t interested in that.*
*Or, as demonstrated by women visiting strip clubs, the ones who were into penes thought they had more entitlement to be handsy.
he is playing by the rules they made. Fuck’em. Yes, they feel entitled to do that because they thought it would never come to bite them, that only happens to men.
#BelieveAllWomen and university star chambers certainly didn’t help.
Am I a fool for getting married and having kids?
haha.
Nah. It sounds shitty.
A friend of mine my age just got divorced. His kid is 18 now and he’s dating. a lot.
That’s pretty much all I’ve got for sports.
Liverpool got less assholish this morning?
Nope, asshole out, asshole in.
I’m a Spurs fan and I dislike Liverpool more than Arsenal and Chelsea because of Klopp.
I am an Everton fan and I dislike Liverpool.
“What a bunch of shit. No, for real. Although I don’t think this makes much sense if the only goal is to find the pooping pooches. I suspect there’s another motive we’re not hearting about.”
My bet is some feud exists between some asshole in government able to demand this measure and others, and the asshole wants to abuse the law to punish them for having their poochs dump wherever.
Maybe someone’s brother has a DNA testing business?
Now we talking… it’s not like there isn’t some history in that country about this sort of shit with someone’s brother selling fish and hoping not to have to chuck most of it away come the weekend…
12 years? Wait, how is that possible? I remember you two in reason pre marital. That was like 5 years ago. Tops.. I’m losing all sense of time.
That’s unpossible. As I recall, they got married before they met.
They have always been married.
They were always Poppy.
No, more like 3 weeks or so after we met.
She knew she was pregnant that quick?
/kidding
Congrats!
And I though I was fast at 11 months.
Right?
I wasn’t commenting, but I remember reading about their meeting on Reason.
No way that was over 12 years ago.
Congratulations you two.
For sure congrats on that to them. Amazingly, we share the same anniversary timeline as Sloopy as our 12 years will be in Nov.
So you too married three weeks after first meeting?
Heh, ours is a longer windier road.
I am coming up on 10 in the spring, we married 8 months after meeting, so a bit longer than sloopy and banjos.
One DEI infested company is suing the shit out of another DEI infested company, cause they need to pretend they are not a fucking accident waiting to happen t their consmers.
“No, you’re the asshole”.
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 01/26:
*24/24 words (+2 bonus words)
🎯 In the top 8% by accuracy
I played https://squaredle.com 01/26:
61/61 words (+5 bonus words)
🎯 In the top 8% by accuracy
🔥 Solve streak: 212
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 01/26:
*24/24 words (+3 bonus words)
📖 In the top 36% by bonus words
I played https://squaredle.com 01/26:
*61/61 words (+21 bonus words)
📖 In the top 13% by bonus words
🔥 Solve streak: 124
Alright… I’ve been sitting on this for a couple of days. Who wants to admit to doing this?
Man steals front-end loader from salt dome, leads Lake County deputies on slow-speed chase
Not it.
in his defense he was probably high
I think you are right cause I hear you can stab someone over 100 times and kill them, then claim to have done that cause you smoked ganja and get off…
Only if you have a vagina.
New tires every 7,000 miles? Electric cars save gas but tire wear shocks some Florida drivers
I want to save the planet, but not that much.
Much like I want everyone to have healthcare, but I didn’t think I’d have to pay for it.
I’m sure there’s no environmental impact from swapping out tires that much. We can just burn the old ones, right?
SHHHHH!
“Nanoparticles from tires” will be what they use to get EVs banned after they’re done with ICs.
Choo choos do not need tires!
Pretty sure our local municipal water company is angling for some more money from someone. Local news has been running stories about how much microplastics are filtered out at the CLE water treatment plants.
I am waiting to see how my boss’s brand new F-150 Lightning does on things like that.
That thing weighs almost as much as my quad cab 8′ bed 2500 diesel, but it has normal street tires.
unless you accelerate break too much, why would tires wear off more?
Also 1500 dollars for tires seems a lot
Because of the weight.
shit right forgot that batteries have mass
The mass isn’t the problem its the weight. If you drove it in space, the tires wouldnt wear.
The problem is Elon’s only delivered one to that market so far.
but in space there would be no traction and no thrust
There would still be thrust.
In space nobody can hear you peal out.
I’m not going to copy and paste the entire middle of the article which is subtitled “WHY THE FAST WEAR?”
Also Mr. Semel is very fancy and driving a Mercedes EV, so $1,500 seems right or maybe even cheap.
Heavier than a similar sized vehicle.
“…I thought it was time to try to save the planet,”
What a fuckin’ moran.
I hope the dealer stacked on another 10K for blinker fluid, muffler bearings, piston return springs and a new bumper valve.
That quote is probably the best laugh I’ll get all day.
It perfectly encapsulates the (at least) half of the world that lives in fantasy rather than reality.
1,400 or 1,500 dollars to replace the tires
Wut?
OEM MICHELIN PRIMACY MXM4 for my base model AWD 18 inch Model 3 is $289.99 each at Tire Rack.
So for anything like a the Merc mentioned above that’s perfectly in line with installation.
Yeah, and the Merc is at least running 20″s, if not 21″s
Palworld is the feel good story of the year
https://twitter.com/Grxit/status/1750566995890721220
The ongoing fiasco of European defence
Starry-eyed talk of continental cooperation obscures the grim reality of competing interests
The Italian government has exercised a veto against the French company Safran, a measure previously applied only to Chinese or Russian entities. The French aerospace company is in the process of acquiring Collins Aerospace, which owns Italy’s Microtecnica. After consulting with Berlin, Meloni decided to oppose the deal, citing concerns for national interest.
What exactly was the reason behind the Italian-German veto? In Berlin and Rome concerns arose over Safran potentially halting the supply of Microtecnica-produced technology for the Eurofighter, due to its involvement in the Rafale project, a French fighter jet from Dassault. However, this argument seems fragile. Collins Aerospace, which owns Microtecnica, is a key partner of Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the F-35 and it never gave rise to similar concerns. Furthermore, a company within the Safran group is a subcontractor for the Eurofighter, and so far, there have been no problems.
goddamnit no link
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-ongoing-fiasco-of-european-defence/
The hurdles of building a common defence industrial base are most evident in the Franco-German partnership, established by the 2019 Aix-la-Chapelle Treaty as a stepping stone towards strategic autonomy. A notable recent example involves the European missile shield. When chancellor Olaf Scholz chose to collaborate with the US and Israel without consulting president Macron, Paris was understandably surprised: Berlin disregarded without warning the joint Italian-French project. Natalia Pouzyreff, MP from Macron’s party and a member of the parliamentary defense committee, characterised this move as “aggressive, contemptuous, and hostile.”
The shield represents just another fiasco of “Europe of defence” in a series that includes the Maritime Airborne Warfare System (MAWS) project. Neither side appears willing to assume responsibility for formally cancelling the program. However, the Germans have sent a clear signal by opting for American aircraft instead of continuing with MAWS.
The situation is similar to that of the Main Ground Combat System (MGCS), a new tank, which is intended to be complemented by drones and communication systems. Initially, the project was to be jointly developed by the French company Nexter and the German KMW. However, under pressure from the Bundestag, where industry lobbies campaigned vigorously, another German partner, Rheinmetall, was added. This has led to a somewhat contradictory situation, as Rheinmetall is now competing with Nexter to produce the tank’s cannon. The very concept of a common tank for countries with such divergent strategic priorities seems like a misunderstanding; the French seek a light tank suitable for environments like North Africa, whereas the Germans need a heavy tank adapted to European conditions.
Should’ve named it the Main Assault Ground Asset.
And MAWS really should’ve been Joint instead of Maritime.
Sports news: Klopp leaving at end of season
bill belichick can replace him
The Real Ted Lasso?
There are many reasons to despise Jurgen Klopp, but a big one: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/oct/02/liverpool-jurgen-klopp-says-anti-vaxxers-endanger-others
Austin Butler reveals he hired a dialect coach to help him get rid of his Elvis accent.
https://twitter.com/PopBase/status/1750590367353930228
I assume when they were done he said “Thank you… Thank you very much.“
Elvis accent? Is that young Elvis talking sexy or old fat Elvis thanking people while farting?
If you don’t think Taylor Lorenz is hot you’re just straight up fucking gay at this point, I don’t know what else to say
https://twitter.com/SaladBarFan/status/1750593079751643403
discuss
He probably has the hots for Lena Dunham too.
Eeeeeuw!
I mean, that’s dumb. Taylor is maybe 6-7/10 or 5/10 if you are feeling spiteful. Lena is .5/10 generously.
Sorry, are you talking the looks scale or the crazy scale?
It’s debatable which one is crazier, but it’s probably Taylor. But Lena Dunham is so physically repulsive that Taylor is overall the more desirable person.
She is good looking for a lizard, but it comes at a cost. She’s less resilient to Earth temperatures, which is why she keeps her apartment at 90*F.
She does look good in that video with her big eyes. I think that is because she is starving herself. That’s a losing game. She is a 10 on the crazy scale which negates any attractiveness.
She may be hot, but those are crazy fucking eyes…
I don’t want to wake up to a sharp pain and see her run away with the part of my shlong she cut off in anger cause of some crazy thought she had…
Needs more melanin for my tastes. And she’s a journalist, so she’d probably be spouting leftist drivel, so that’s not helping.
She is a beautiful idiot. Looks: 10/ Personality: 0
PTSD from online harassment? Riiiiight. Is there anyone under 40 these days not playing victim?
I have had much worse happen to me for longer than that child has been alive. Such is life. Get over it.
OH, and Lena Dunham? She is a solid ‘would not’ on her best day.
I recently saw a story about groups of (ostensibly) adults who went to ERs for treatment after being exposed to “horrific images” online.
I believe the appropriate treatment for that is the immediate removal of their eyes to be transplanted into people with more need to see.
No ‘horrific images’ for them, sight for the blind.
She really does look good for 60.
She shrieks “I’m only 40”!!!
I keep coming back to The LEDs on Digikey because I can’t figure out why they’re so expensive. That’s the cheapest entry, and everything seems to imply a Single LED for $1.16. I know I was talking about “You get what you pay for” above, but I’m not able to find what I’m paying for that makes all their LEDs an order of magnitude pricier.
Then I realized there were two categories “Emitters” and “Indicators”. The idnicators were the cheap ones I was looking for…
In general, when starting out I do recommend getting a massive assortment to have around. You do not have to pay nearly that much.
Here’s a sample:
https://a.co/d/0sOziWg
$12 for 450.
Unless you plan on using them for illumination, those are perfectly adequate as indicator lights. And you could blow some up by accident and not weep. Now you can find super bright LEDs cheaper there as well. And don’t get me started on the joy of laser diodes.
Oh, I ordered a $10 box of assorted colors from Amazon when I couldn’t figure out where to find what I was looking for on Digikey. I think is also 450, but a mix of 3mm and 5mm diodes.
Good. Plenty to experiment with. Unless you are using the LEDs to pass a signal down fiber optics or light up a room you don’t need anything specialized. Honestly you could even use those cheap LEDs to pass signals, as long as the frequency isn’t too high.
Nah, I relearning how to solder. So I figured I’d get a bunch of resistors and LEDs and wire up some blinkenlights on a protoboard.
One thing which helps skills is to break stuff. See how long you can hold a soldering iron to an LED before you wreck it. Destructive learning. Keeps you from being scared as much when you have to replace capacitors on an irreplaceable vintage device, for example.
I’m still working out the space I’ll be working in, and how to keep the components from falling out when I’m working on the underside of the board.
There are some really neat silicone based mats that are solder proof and hold things still without using a vice. In addition you can get little blocks of the stuff to support difficult to hold items when you turn them over. Much better than the 70’s when you used cut up paraffin, or old cardboard boxes. The mats nowadays even have little spaces to hold components. And you can spray them clean in the sink. Really a must-have.
https://a.co/d/4dWg9Nc
Between 11 and 15 cents each https://www.jameco.com/c/Opto-Illumination.html
Where is McMaster on the border/TX thing? SC politics are garbage.
He’s listed
“Tomorrow is my 12th anniversary with Banjos! She’s such a great wife and I’m a very lucky man.”
Happy Anniversary!
Zing!
For a court to be a court, it must be able to enforce its rulings. The International Court of Justice cannot.
The Davos crowd wishes it could.
American disciples of Wilson too.
Safran Group has agreed to acquire the actuation and flight control systems business of Collins Aerospace.
Collins is divesting a unit and Safran is buying that unit. RTX (formerly Ratheon) is not selling off Collins Aerospace to Safran.
Cool. Maybe it will be even easier for middle eastern countries (and Turkey) to get US blacklisted technology to Iran. They can pass the Wall St. cost savings on directly to Iran that way.
Kidding aside I think it hysterical that Congress thinks it can stop any kind of tech from making its way to countries it doesn’t like.
Hard times create nicotine men
Nicotine men create good times
Good times create weed guys
Weed guys create hard times
https://twitter.com/bb_fresh/status/1746694729129988384
Happy anniversary! Our 25 is coming up in a few weeks.
Love that cover logo, I need a shirt.
ETAM Paris Spring 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px_dyho1xqo
I woke up in the middle of the night, as is usual, and my thought was, WTF is Joe Biden doing dying on the hill of open immigration? Hell, he’s even upset a lot of Democrats about this. And nobody is buying the bullshit about “the best way to protect a border is to not have any barriers.” Any 6 year old who’s been in a garden will tell you otherwise.
Some thoughts before I jump into the work I am avoiding:
Joe already started realizing he made a terrible mistake on immigration a month ago. Has he changed course? No. Generally what he does is silently fix his problem while trying to maintain face (see oil exports). He can’t fix this one fast enough. I don’t think he expected the courts to rule how they did either. He’s in jeopardy, he cannot unwind this problem silently now as he has done in the past.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/28/immigration-biden-trump-us-mexico-border
I did not anticipate so many states backing Texas. That is a ton. You can’t say it is just the South. The illegal alien problem has now officially blown up, and the ball is in Biden’s court. He has no idea what to do, as he is truly addled and smells of urine. So his underlings are going to fuck this up royally with a poor move that will be the final nail in the dem’s coffin come election time.
Wild card: The republicans are so profoundly incompetent, they may still blow the election.
will be the final nail in the dem’s coffin come election time – i would not be so certain of that
Me neither.
There are very powerful forces on both sides of the aisle who are driving this and are happy with the way things are, in fact want more of the same.
May? I go with “will still likely”.
Case and point the usual suspects at the WSJ
A GOP Border Reckoning
Sure – take the crap deal that will allow Team Blue 80% of what it wants and let’s Biden say he fixed the problem ahead of the November election.
All the Republicans have to do is say loud and clear, “At the very least we need to stop people from crossing the border and this does nothing of the sort.” Which of course they won’t do.
Why would they say something they don’t mean? They can’t even pass a resolution let alone something substantive. Worms are more courageous.
The left is still pretending that establishment interests are not still in full control of the GOP.
Biden has a real problem with backing down. Be it Ukraine, MAGA, etc., the guy tends to escalate every situation. He keeps doing that tuff guy Corn Pop routine. This is one of the reasons why he’s an absolutely terrible president.
They are not incompetent , they are snakes in the grass. They drop the ball on purpose because they want the same thing as the left – to loot and enslave the American people.
“Biden mulls border crackdown in face of Trump’s migrant-bashing rhetoric”
Republicans pounce!
Joe himself?
“I woke up in the middle of the night, as is usual, and my thought was, WTF is Joe Biden doing dying on the hill of open immigration?”
They are ignoring the havoc and destruction allowing this invasion to go on causes because of this….
Yeah that’s got to be it. The Dems have my mom and dad voting for them for decades because they believe Republicans will take away their Social Security and Medicaid. How hard will it be to convince all those migrants that the Republicans want to deport them?
No work at all. I had a coworker at a previous job who was an H1-B worker, and was worried about Trump getting elected because he was afraid he would be deported.
Well there you go. They must really trust their math and their ability to keep people like my mom and dad in line. Because they are screwing over a ton of their voters. They either think those voters don’t matter, or they are brainwashed enough to keep taking the abuse.
What I think most people miss is that the phenom where democrats accuse their political enemies of what they are doing or plan to do has already predicted the path forward. They recently told us all that if Trump gets elected there will be no mor elections. Their plan is to do a version of that when they steal the 2024 election. After letting in enough people they have bought through government handouts and then naturalizing them by decree, they expect to forever have an unbreakable majority in any election just like they have in NY state and California these days.
https://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Democratic-Majority-John-Judis-ebook/dp/B0036QVPEU/
The responses to this post are a good reminder that leftists really, *really* want you dead.
https://twitter.com/0xAlaric/status/1750711278442536999
Dear city dwelling leftists:
We grow your food.
I wonder how many of those are genuine. I get the notion an awful lot of stuff like that is AI generated propaganda.
This is not to say that they dont want us dead, they do. They want a civil war.
Some of the people, some of the time
President Joe Biden paused pending approvals of exports from new liquefied natural gas projects on Friday, a move cheered by climate activists that could delay decisions on new plants until after the Nov. 5 election.
The Department of Energy (DOE) will conduct a review during the pause that will look at the economic and environmental impacts of projects seeking approval to export LNG to Europe and Asia where the fuel is in hot demand.
The review will take months and then will be open to public comment which will take further time, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters in a teleconference.
Biden said in a statement: “During this period, we will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment.” He said the pause “sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time.”
Gotta keep the ecofanatics happy, at least until election day.
Yep. The least damaging thing he can do to our energy economy at this point to keep them happy. All 12 of them. Fuck the eco nuts and their votes. They amount to nothing.
This seems accurate.
“We are committed to strengthening energy security here in the U.S. and with our allies,” Granholm said.
Stop it. You’re killing me.
A strong political divide is emerging between young men and women in many countries:
https://twitter.com/DinaPomeranz/status/1750773579220709638
Confusing how conservative is labeled with blue. Maybe the rest of the world sees it that way.
Well, Red is supposed to be the Commies’ color.
The problem was with US TV coverage of our elections that resulted in a mixup.
The major networks used to alternate using blue and red for each of the parties each election cycle. I think it was Reagan’s first election when “political philosophers” starting using “red voters” and “blue voters” as shortcuts to discuss what it was that the voters wanted and why they voted that way. At that point, the colors became stuck to the parties.
This is news we can use.
Around me, political yard signs rarely show the candidate’s party and red or blue printing doesn’t always comport to party affiliation.
it wasn’t a mix-up. Bush/Gore….the commie media commies denied they were commies so they would not label themselves as red…they switched the colors deliberately.
You mean blue for men and red/pink for women?
in Europe red is usually the lefties
I love how conservative is “down”.
Somebody has to go down.
Oh wait, I didn’t mean it that way…
Abortion’s a helluva drug.
It is probably more than just abortion. free shit and give all degrees and promotions to women
Hormonal birth control is literally a helluva drug.
I have a feeling like a third or half of it is just because of Trump though.
The growth has set off protests from environmentalists, part of Biden’s base. Activists say new LNG projects can harm local communities with pollution, lock in global reliance on fossil fuels for decades, and lead to emissions from burning gas and from leaks of the powerful greenhouse gas methane.
Environmentalists hailed the move as a bold step.
It “continues this administration’s historic efforts to meet the global commitment to phase out fossil fuels and confront the climate crisis head on,” said Ben Jealous, head of the Sierra Club.
I’m sure there is a way to charge your iphone by burning cow dung.
“Mom of girl, 14, who was victim of deep fake porn at school demands sharing be made a federal crime: Joins battle with Congress to make AI regulated after Taylor Swift ‘nudes’ spread online”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13007673/Congress-says-Taylor-Swift-deep-fake-nudes-posted-line-shows-AI-NEEDS-regulated-Bill-launched-crackdown-spread-abusive-images.html
“PROTECT TAYLOR SWIFT: Fans start powerful online movement in support of singer after vile explicit AI photos of her were shared on social media”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13010085/PROTECT-TAYLOR-SWIFT-Fans-start-powerful-online-movement-support-singer-vile-explicit-AI-photos-shared-social-media.html
This reminds me of Alyssa Milano’s mom’s crusade to get all the nude photos of her daughter off the internet.
That 14-year-old girl killed herself. https://metro.co.uk/2024/01/24/teen-took-life-online-bullying-shared-fake-nudes-20162284/?ico=top-stories_news_top
The Taylor Swift one wasn’t just some nudes. It was of her being violently gang-banged (as if I have to qualify “gang-banged” with “violent”).
This is fucking terrifying. No, nobody’s going to make it of me. I don’t talk to people or go out of my house. But some rando could do it to my daughter and she’s not rich or powerful enough to be able to ignore it.
This is immediate vigilante justice level evil.
immediate vigilante justice
In truth, this is the answer, not law. That kind of anti-social behavior deserves an ass-whipping. It is appropriate to the instigator, and it properly resets his cheering followers.
Having used an AI image generator, this will unfortunately become all too common. You simply type in a description and it spits out a few CGI images. Didn’t try nekkid pics, but it was able to copy the style of a particular artist.
Requires zero skill.
As it becomes ubiquitous, every teen kid in the world is going to make deep fakes of his favorite celebrities and crushes. It is just too easy.
I don’t have any idea how we solve this one. The first few might put in censors, but it will eventually be so advanced that it is a free app.
The behavior that is anti-social isn’t have the fantasy image – it’s sharing it.
it’s sharing it.
Study up on defamation law, because we’re about to get a heaping helping of it.
Won’t help, there’s no money on the side of the perp, just some dumb kid trying to get positive social feedback from peers (which by default is a Lord of the Flies scenario).
So many things I see in the news and internet these days. I’m surprised more of the men affected aren’t slitting throats.
Gary Plauché took care of things.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/gQdS24Ahj8gA/
A Twitter friend thinks we ought to institute public caning for certain crimes (not this one).
But some rando could do it to my daughter and she’s not rich or powerful enough to be able to ignore it.
This is part of the reason why we don’t really put photos of our kids online and they will be getting access to social media much later than their peers. I’m even hesitant to have my wife doing her thing on Instagram because of this BS. We’re maybe a couple years away from being able to take a handful of photos and make a model that could be used to make a highly convincing video of you doing whatever the perpetrator wants. Right now, there’s still some uncanny valley thing going on, but it’s much less so than a year ago.
We adjust. I figure from this point on, photographic or video evidence stands a strong chance of being fake. That might even become the default, and only positive proof otherwise to establish credibility.
We adjust
From a mop up perspective, that’s fine. From a “some rando made and circulated a porn video using my 8 year old’s photos” perspective, the adjustment has to be on the proactive end. The horse is out of the barn by the time the video is made.
“that could be used to make a highly convincing video of you doing whatever the perpetrator wants”
That is a problem when it gets into crime and politics. Although, it’s debatable how much more harmful it would be than the old school lying we have now. How many people think Trump said white supremacists are good people when there is an actual real video anyone can watch clearly showing he did not?
Regardless, no one believes that Tay Tay did a gang bang video, so not seeing how it’s defamatory.
It is not fucking about “Tay Tay.” for fucks sake. It’s about every woman who’s not a celebrity.
You misspelled ‘everyone’
I did. Mea culpa.
I’m less concerned about the big and obvious lies. What happens when this shit is convincingly used in a divorce?Maybe to fabricate photos of abuse and the video of the abuse to go along with it. Maybe to show a “cheater” caught in flagrante delicto. Maybe it’s used to show me saying something insufficiently woke on a teleconference at work. People have a hard time sifting through much less convincing lies now, how much more are innocent people gonna get screwed by the manipulators and the evils with this tech?
Those are very good points. Again, on the other hand, there are all these rape cases just because someone says so.
While this tech can make it worse, there is a general epistemic problem of people believing shit that isn’t true.
I hardly ever put my kids’ pictures online. Less than 10 times ever, I’m sure. I also didn’t say their names online. My husband did a little more than that, but every once in a while, I asked him to take one down.
I’ve followed blogs that put their kids’ whole life online from birth onward and documented them. And those weren’t kid-focused blogs. I view that as equivalemt to stealing your kids’ identity and opening credit accounts in their names.
If O were a kid, I’d resent the hell out of that as I grew older.
I don’t see it as particularly terrifying or evil. Or how Swift is being hurt other than “emotional damages”.
Just like Alyssa Milano’s mom, trying to stop it is futile.
Any law would go against free speech, and any such law would be abused.
I just don’t know what to say to that. If you think AI generated images of women being tortured and raped isn’t terrifying, I just … Whatever. Good for you?
It’s not about Taylor Swift. It’s about a bunch of high school boys terorizing a 14yo girl to death.
The issue is the slippery slope. The US bill pertains to some 14 year old girl here in NJ. I think that’s different from the UK one you noted.
I get your point about terrifying. However, this is FedGov we are talking about. How long until we start emulating Canada?
https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/windsor-man-faces-child-porn-charges-due-to-cartoon-animated-images
The argument against child pornography has always been the actual physical harm in its creation. Here it is completely man made. The results may be harmful, but he creation harms nobody. Threats, harassments and the like are already illegal. Do we need to create another thoughtcrime for FedGov to abuse us with?
“If you think AI generated images of women being tortured and raped isn’t terrifying, I just … Whatever. Good for you?”
It’s because if AI generated images of women are “terrifying and evil”, then then there are no words when women actually tortured and raped.
I haven’t seen any of the images of Swift or this 14-year-old (which I think is already illegal if she is only 14), but none the celebrity fakes I’ve seen involved rape or torture. It’s just fake porn.
It’s just fake porn.
There’s a reason sexual impropriety is in a special “defamatory per se” category in defamation law. Rape and torture need not be portrayed for the “just fake porn” to be massively reputationally destructive.
“Any law would go against free speech…”
I dunno, looks an awful like the definition of Libel to me.
Speaking of…
Milano is currently shilling for her son’s baseball team fundraiser on Twitter.
Now, aside from the irony of fundraising on Twitter after permanently leaving the Nazi cesspool, people are pointing out that she is Alyssa freaking Milano and asking relatively poor strangers to pony up to pay for her rich son to go to Cooperstown is a bit tone deaf.
I’m pretty sure that it’s a parody account.
https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/1750594176784482615?t=4QgS0Brgnib7HZzznVvXbw&s=19
Maybe… but sure doesn’t look like it.
The bio is what makes me think it’s a parody.
Counter evidence:
It pimps her podcast and is followed by Bari Weiss. And it isn’t funny.
Beautiful busty babes with boundless, bountiful bosoms.
https://archive.is/sppJB
Friday Funbags.
Sure – take the crap deal that will allow Team Blue 80% of what it wants and let’s Biden say he fixed the problem ahead of the November election.
“Look how proactively bipartisan we are!”
Taibbi on fire.
You serfs better understand that you can only choose from those the cabal really destroying your futures will let you. If you wonder why congress and the Wh can ignore everything the people want, even when the people want it by 70% plus margins, it is because everyone in D.C. is bought, blackmailed, and/or both these days by the people that really run things. As Jeff told Kari, the powerful people back east.
Penn renounces libertarianism.
https://www.cracked.com/article_40871_penn-jillette-wants-to-talk-it-all-out.html
What a surprise. He stopped being a libertarian when he voted for Hillary.
When he dropped the weight, it seems he lost his balls.
Vegans, amirite?
“Biden’s done an incredible job. Accomplished almost the impossible. His stuff on Israel and Ukraine is four-dimensional chess. And what he’s done with the small amount that he has anything to do with the economy — the small amount he has to do with jobs — that’s all going well. I don’t think how well a president speaks off-the-cuff matters at all — I mean, it matters in terms of showbiz and it matters in terms of getting elected, which you could argue is all that matters. But it’s got nothing to do with the job.”
The man needs help.
The master of illusion becomes the master of delusion.
Seemed to happen around the time he had health problems and went vegan. Maybe he hollowed out too much.
He also has a trans son (his former daughter, formerly Moxie).
I am sure this impacts his affiliations.
He went vegan? What is it with people – they go from one insanity to another.
It’s the need to have approval from the cabal of fucking lunatic degenerates he now travels in (Hollyweird).
There’s no way…
oh my God that is a real quote.
He personally hates Trump.
They are actually quite similar. They both play tit-for-tat as their real life gaming strategy.
Penn will heap praise on pretty much anyone, and expects the same in return. They both go scorched earth when scorned.
A magician who believes in masks.
that don’t want to be told what to do
So, you need to be told what to do? Constantly? Did you ever consider outgrowing infancy?
Yeah? This is the kid that comes out to the people who know him expecting them to be shocked. Instead they all say “We knew that 10 years ago. You are just now figuring it out?”
How the mighty have fallen.
Delicate nrgotiations
Senior Senate Republicans are furious that Donald Trump may have killed an emerging bipartisan deal over the southern border, depriving them of a key legislative achievement on a pressing national priority and offering a preview of what’s to come with Trump as their likely presidential nominee.
In recent weeks, Trump has been lobbying Republicans both in private conversations and in public statements on social media to oppose the border compromise being delicately hashed out in the Senate, according to GOP sources familiar with the conversations – in part because he wants to campaign on the issue this November and doesn’t want President Joe Biden to score a victory in an area where he is politically vulnerable.
——-
“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is … really appalling,” said GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump.
He added, “But the reality is that, that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president not to try and get the problem solved. as opposed to saying, ‘hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’”
I trust lame duck never-Trumper Mitt Romney to do what’s best.
Once again, that deal was already dead before Trump opened his mouth. A big group of senators had already banded together to block it.
I thought it was dead in the House?
Might have died there even, I just know a fair amount of publicly said they would never sign off on it.
That’s why I’m not of the Big-L persuasion myself – there is too much self-satisfied insistence that Libertarianism answers it all.
Underscoring just how damaging Trump’s comments and campaign to kill the border deal have been in the Senate, one GOP senator on condition of background told CNN that without Trump, this deal would have had overwhelming support within the conference.
“This proposal would have had almost unanimous Republican support if it weren’t for Donald Trump,” the Republican senator said.
What Republican doesn’t want to be hailed as a hero by Joe Scarborough?
Zero chance that would have passed. Romney assuring you it would have is an obvious diversion.
If you have Twitter you can see the talking points distributed in real time.
Scarborough and Romney were among a flood of posters on X who all said the same thing last night and this morning. Within hours… clearly a centrally planned and coordinated campaign. Immediately followed up on CNN,NBC and probably the rest of them.
And pretty silly… the laws to solve the border crisis have been in place for 30 years. Biden simply ordered that they not be enforced.
It’s what they DON’T tell you that matters. Which is that we’ve never seen anything like this in the history of our country, under any president of any party. But it’s just bad luck that it happened under Biden.
I am stunned that our president ordered the border patrol to cut through barriers and welcome in illegal aliens at an illegal border crossing ….. and the political and media class are sanguine about the whole thing.
But the list of things that have evoked that reaction has grown quite long in recent years.
I know its a civil trial and he isnt under arrest, but in court can a defendant just up and walk out?
The former president, 77, dramatically walked out when Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said the jury should punish Trump and claimed ‘he thinks the rules don’t apply to him’.
Civil – yes.
Although depending how it is done you can still be held in contempt.
In truth, he doesn’t think the rules apply to him, so that’s not wrong. It’s just that there are no rules in this court proceeding – it’s straight up Calvinball.
GOP leaders face conservative, moderate pushback on bipartisan tax deal.
OK, I has confuse. What’s left of the GOP when you lose the conservatives and the moderates?
But Americans for Tax Reform, another right-wing organization, went to bat for the bill by rebutting much of the criticism about the child tax credit provisions.
“There is absolutely no change from the Trump policy enacted in the 2017 tax cuts. There are no ‘anchor baby bonuses’ in this bill as one organization alleged,” the group said, adding that the requirement for a Social Security number imposed in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed during the Trump-Pence administration “remains untouched in this bill.”
“To oppose this legislation for failing to change current law is to oppose the Trump Administration’s CTC policy imposed in the Trump Tax Cuts,” the group said.
This is pretty much true. For a tax bill, it’s pretty inoffensive and is just extending a bunch of shit from the TCJA and cleaning up some of the problems with it. Republicans continue to be stupid.
Republicans continue to be stupid.
Like pimping for the SALT deduction to be unlimited. Sorry you represent a high-tax state – maybe you should try working in the state legislature to fix that?
This just in! Zep, a Glib lurker and my bee partner. Small manufacturing company in Mpls
“There was a drug addict prowler sitting in Theary’s chair when she got to work this morning. Thug rumaged every office, ate breakroom food, and pissed by my office door. She called the police. Creep had a new Jeep in the next parking lot over, and the cops let him drive away.”
Mpls is no longer a nice place
And if you make that point and live there they will punish you for daring to point that out…
Minneapolis? Right after the Floyd riots I met a business owner from the cities hiking a waterfall on the north shore of Superior.
It was not a time to dissent from the BLM narrative. We talked while our kids played in the water. Eventually I asked what he thought about all that defend the police stuff. After a brief feeling out period, he confided that he was looking to relocate his business out of the city and into a small town north of the cities. In just a few months, things had gotten so crazy he didn’t think it was worth it to even go to the cities anymore.
Super nice guy. Quiet, genial… family man. Clearly not super political. But he was well on his way to a black pill.
That poor drug addict was cold, hungry, and had to piss. It was the least Zep’s business could do.
The real threat of a potential Trump win
Lauren Duncan, a Smith College psychologist who studies political participation, deployed the scholarly concept of political self-efficacy — a person’s belief that voting or protesting or writing a check can change anything. “You can have all sorts of opinions,” Duncan said. “But if you don’t think that what you do makes a difference, then you’re probably not going to do it.”
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Some people might read that as an indication that the Trump show has become stale. You could also read it to mean the outraged viewers whose interest in the chaos and disruption of his term drove the 2016-2020 media boom are no longer so keen on learning about the latest Trumpian fury — not a good sign if those are the folks you’re counting on to man the barricades or make the donations in the event the November election doesn’t go their way.
People who watch the ebb and flow of philanthropic dollars will tell you that there’s a reactive element to giving: Folks see images of a distant earthquake in the news and then reach for the checkbook in a moment of high emotion, even though the smarter move would have been to fund infrastructure before the calamity. For a lot of affluent progressives, 2016 had the same effect. The fallout from an unfavorable 2024 election will likely be less visceral simply because it’ll feel less novel.
“I think that there’s a sense of survivorship,” said Megan Ming Francis, a University of Washington political scientist who has written about donors. “Before, it was like an existential threat, like, ‘Oh, my God, this is so beyond our imagination of what is possible. And we have to write checks.’” But now, “some people will tell themselves that they know what to expect, that it’s only four years. And they’ve lived through this before.”
What if the cartoon villain wins and progressives don’t shovel money at the outrage mob?
Who knows- maybe the vast majority of voters, deep down in their hearts, don’t believe a Trump win represents the horrific collapse of America.
a Smith College psychologist
So glad that was right up front. Stopped right there. The rest was going to be tankie nonsense like Pie dumps on us from X.
That’s as far as I made it.
Now, you can make the argument that maybe you don’t need to mandate masks — you can make the argument that maybe that shouldn’t be the government’s job — but you cannot make the argument that you shouldn’t wear masks. It is the exact reciprocal of seatbelts because if I don’t wear a seatbelt, my chances of fucking myself up increase — if I don’t wear a mask, the chance of fucking someone else up increase.
Sure, Penn. Except the analogy is more like, “If I tape this peeps chicken to my steering wheel it will protect me in a crash.”
Masks dont work. We have known this for over 100 years. They dont work.
For people raising money around complicated, generational things like preserving democracy, the stench of conspicuous failure — like, say, America electing a quadruply-indicted admirer of autocrats — can damage fundraising as easily as it can goose it. Dave Gallagher, a longtime fundraising consultant who has worked with organizations across the political spectrum, likened it to climate change, a subject so knotty it’s lost its sex appeal to a certain breed of donor.
Like climate change: eventually, people come to notice the sky has not actually fallen.
Local news was interviewing young dude opining that the GOP will die eventually because they ignore or deny climate change which scares the shit out of young people. When will these youngsters wake up? I’d love to hear a candidate challenge them to make meaningful sacrifices (not inconsequential stuff like not taking an extra straw).
The rest was going to be tankie nonsense like Pie dumps on us from X.
If wealthy benefactors can no longer be bamboozled into supporting the cause, the
tankiespolitical consultants might have to look for productive work, and that would be tragic.Look, we have an absolutely massive parasite class in this country. Wildly out of balance with the productive, and that isn’t sustainable. The die-off is going to be spectacular.
“Sodium ions in the salt blocks some of the bitter receptors and so, the bitter compounds don’t bind and you can’t taste them. So, it makes it just a little smoother, a little less bitter,” said Francl.
Hmm…. I’ll give it a try sometime. I suspect I will like the tea better with just some honey and lemon.
Salt on fruit to make it sweeter has been a thing forever. Watermelon was the first place I saw this way back in the late 60s, and it is still a thing.
Cantaloupe
https://wentworthreport.com/2021/10/21/prominent-libertarian-flips-left-when-daughter-goes-trans/
“I think what’s missing right now is, what is Plan B if plan A doesn’t work — Plan A being, obviously Biden wins the election,” said Micah Sifry, a longtime writer and political organizer on the left. It’s complicated, Sifry says, because too much attention to the hypothetical can be demoralizing, dampening enthusiasm about the election they’re trying to win. “The very conversation that you need to use to get people to think about Plan B is in conflict with what you need to win on Plan A.”
“Nobody is talking about it,” Brock said. “People don’t want to go there right now.”
Here’s your plan B. Pack your shit and move to Venezuela, or Cuba.
“The typical strategy for strongmen and autocrats is to use the powers of the government to attack your likely opposition, and make an example of them by causing them real personal harm” via violence or prosecution, he said. “The idea of that is that if you make an example of the first few people who could be prominent opposition leaders, you chill anyone else from wanting to step into their shoes.”
Go to the mirror, boy.
Confession through projection has been a meme for some time now.