It isn't just guns, but also guns. When the response to Sandy Hook was:
I don't know what our system is capable of responding to.
Saturday, August 03, 2019
My Second Op-Ed In The New York Times Today
Is creeping on a teenage girl because she makes me so horny mad.
What a newspaper!
What a newspaper!
Saturday Saturday
While me, a man of advancing age, has not spent time on a college campuses in over 25 years, I have heard that they are just like North Korean indoctrination camps now.
Friday, August 02, 2019
What's It All About Then
CAP's VP of Health Policy saying it's absurd to focus on... health policy (resign then, bitch!)... is just part of the "whatever The Left happens to think is important that day must be shouted down" and the more general "anything which sounds like it's criticizing Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, even obliquely, must not be tolerated, at least if the wrong people are saying it" and also, too, "Biden 2020!"
The argument against Democrats and the left criticizing and distancing themselves from Obama is an argument against evolution and progress. Practically speaking, it’s also an argument against the left, which is the real crux of the argument that Obama’s defenders are making.
The underlying reason why the Obama criticism stings so much is that it equally serves as an indictment of these defenders, and of their politics over the past decade. For most of these people, a return to “normal”—life under Obama, or even George W. Bush—is all that’s needed, because life was perfectly fine for them under these presidents. As others within the Democratic Party have slowly but surely started to realize, it wasn’t fine for everyone, and so the party is now having a thorough debate about how to deal with that. And you cannot have that conversation without talking about the last president of the United States.
Why Are You Focused On This When You Should Be Focused On That?
Always focusing on the wrong thing that like [checks notes] everything else has no chance of passing the senate.
hmm...
Can't quite see. Gonna zoom in a bit.
Zooming in a bit more...
Can't quite see...
Holy shitballs
We're in a planetary emergency and we're debating health care plans that stand no chance of enactment in 2021. https://t.co/CCZeyZ6j3x
— Topher Spiro (@TopherSpiro) August 2, 2019
hmm...
Can't quite see. Gonna zoom in a bit.
Zooming in a bit more...
Can't quite see...
Holy shitballs
Move To Cherry Hill
I have no idea why people even spend time in cities if they just want door to door car service and an otherwise hostile pedestrian environment. Almost the entire country is set up that way! Take your stupid self-driving cars there.
Kim
Trump's fixation with the North Korean leader is not... normal... and is not even in the same basic framework as his love of dictators generally or his fondess for Putin. It is...weird.
They Aren't Going To Work
But they're going to do their best to finish the job that the automobile industry started a hundred years ago.
In New York, the unwritten rule is plain: Cross the street whenever and wherever — just don’t get hit. It’s a practice that separates New Yorkers from tourists, who innocently wait at the corner for the walk symbol. But if pedestrians know they’ll never be run over, jaywalking could explode, grinding traffic to a halt."Societal part" = anything outside but cars.
One solution, suggested by an automotive industry official, is gates at each corner, which would periodically open to allow pedestrians to cross.
...
“With autonomous vehicles, the technical stuff will get worked out. It’s the societal part that’s the most challenging,” said Mark Rosekind, a head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under President Barack Obama and now the chief safety innovation officer for Zoox, an autonomous vehicle developer.
Musk Versus The Monrail
Pretty sure this is never going to be completed, certainly not on schedule. But it's going to be hilarious if it is!
Sorry, Las Vegas, shoulda left this one to Shelbyville.
According to a TechCrunch report, TBC’s Las Vegas project may significantly damage support columns for the existing monorail. And it will still require human drivers. In the past, The Boring Company has promised some type of efficient travel through narrow tunnels with “electric autonomous vehicles with alignment wheels.”How is this even possible?
Loop plans submitted by TBC to Las Vegas show a modest glass structure at surface level, with elevators, escalators and stairs leading down to a mezzanine level with gates, and then down again to three platforms. With no room at the platform level for vehicles to turn around, it appears TBC’s people movers will operate in both forward and reverse.These are supposedly modified Teslas (I have no idea how this makes sense) so you're going to have to put pedals and steering wheels on both sides?
Sorry, Las Vegas, shoulda left this one to Shelbyville.
Thursday, August 01, 2019
Better Things Are Not Possible
Details vary, but basically this debate is between those who think that the only way to achieve better things is to aim for one more cookie crumb, and those who think it is better to aim for more. Those who support the former push it as smart strategy even though one more cookie crumb is really want they want.
Think what you want about Obama generally, but it is hard to defend his "if I come to Republicans with a reasonable compromise they will be so impressed by how reasonable it is that they will have to support it." This worked precisely zero times and I am not sure why anyone would think this group of Republicans (not your father's Republican party! Joe Biden keeps saying) is more receptive to this than the early groups.
And the voters who matter - swing and irregular ones - don't reward "reasonableness" no matter how often they tell pollsters it's something they value.
Think what you want about Obama generally, but it is hard to defend his "if I come to Republicans with a reasonable compromise they will be so impressed by how reasonable it is that they will have to support it." This worked precisely zero times and I am not sure why anyone would think this group of Republicans (not your father's Republican party! Joe Biden keeps saying) is more receptive to this than the early groups.
And the voters who matter - swing and irregular ones - don't reward "reasonableness" no matter how often they tell pollsters it's something they value.
And It Never Will
You might create some sort of transit service which will be useful to some people (particularly employees), but you can't build something at that spot and then as an afterthought figure out how to get a significant number of people there.
Anxious shoppers trying to figure out how they will get to the American Dream were supposed to begin seeing advertisements explaining transit options to the mega-mall last week. But, there’s one problem. The bigger plan for train and bus service to the development is still being finalized.HAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
It has a lofty goal of getting 50% of mall customers out of their cars and on trains or buses. Even the conservative estimate in a 2012 transit plan by consultants Parsons Brinkerhoff calls for one-third of American Dream customers to shun their cars for transit. The mall expects 40 million visitors each year.
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
To The Left To The Left To The Left To The Left
Trump is unlikely to quiet down the racism, because that's his one true ideology aside from "give me all the money," but otherwise he's likely to run to the left on issues. He'll rarely if ever be asked to explain himself or how he plans to pay for it because savvy reporters will be in on it and know he's full of shit - though they won't bother to tell you that he's full of shit - but Dems shouldn't be surprised when Trump starts pretending that all prescription drugs will cost $1 a prescription IF THE DEMOCRATS GET OUT OF HIS WAY or some shit like that. CRAZY BERNIE WANTS YOU TO PAY MORE FOR DRUGS.
Trump will soon start promising Nice Things, maybe even nicer things than most of the Democrats. He'll be full of shit, of course, but so are some of the Dems.
Trump will soon start promising Nice Things, maybe even nicer things than most of the Democrats. He'll be full of shit, of course, but so are some of the Dems.
The Guardians of Our Discourse
There's really no way to be "objective" or "unbiased" or whatever we call it these days in the context of political journalism. You can reasonably do a "just the facts" kind of coverage of certain things which at least strives for that, but political coverage these days is so much theater criticism and imagining "how it's going to play" and all sorts of judgments which are only "objective" if you confuse your opinions with facts, which of course is something a lot of people do.
The occasional bad tweet just reaffirms that the bad coverage generally isn't just a mistake, or an attempt to placate conservatives, but a consequence of a worldview which isn't that much different from white nationalists. Years of covering old conservative white people who like Trump (and still like Trump! just checking!) reflects the view that the are the only voters who matter, so much so that minority Americans are excluded. People in the Northeast or the West Coast don't matter. People who live in cities in the South or the Midwest don't matter. Rural minorities don't exist to them, so they don't matter. People who vote for Democrats don't matter.
Real America is what white nationalists say it is, and that drives the political coverage in the NYT and elsewhere.
The occasional bad tweet just reaffirms that the bad coverage generally isn't just a mistake, or an attempt to placate conservatives, but a consequence of a worldview which isn't that much different from white nationalists. Years of covering old conservative white people who like Trump (and still like Trump! just checking!) reflects the view that the are the only voters who matter, so much so that minority Americans are excluded. People in the Northeast or the West Coast don't matter. People who live in cities in the South or the Midwest don't matter. Rural minorities don't exist to them, so they don't matter. People who vote for Democrats don't matter.
Real America is what white nationalists say it is, and that drives the political coverage in the NYT and elsewhere.
If You Pretend I Said Something Different Than I Said
Obviously saying "lol John Lewis isn't from the Deep South" is not the same thing as saying "Atlanta is not synonymous with Georgia."
What geographic subunit of Georgia is synonymous with Georgia?
How did all the garbage people at the Times get their jobs? Meritocracy!
Saying @RashidaTlaib (D-Detroit) and @IlhanMN (D-Minneapolis) are from the Midwest is like saying @RepLloydDoggett (D-Austin) is from Texas or @repjohnlewis (D-Atlanta) is from the Deep South. C’mon. https://t.co/C8d8OWHu3j
— (((JonathanWeisman))) (@jonathanweisman) July 31, 2019
Also, I grew up in Atlanta. John Lewis was my congressman. But my first jobs were with the Marietta Daily Journal. So please don’t tell me that Atlanta is synonymous with Georgia. It isn’t.
— (((JonathanWeisman))) (@jonathanweisman) July 31, 2019
What geographic subunit of Georgia is synonymous with Georgia?
How did all the garbage people at the Times get their jobs? Meritocracy!
Garbage Newspaper
Saying @RashidaTlaib (D-Detroit) and @IlhanMN (D-Minneapolis) are from the Midwest is like saying @RepLloydDoggett (D-Austin) is from Texas or @repjohnlewis (D-Atlanta) is from the Deep South. C’mon. https://t.co/C8d8OWHu3j
— (((JonathanWeisman))) (@jonathanweisman) July 31, 2019
Deputy Washington Editor, New York Times.
Cancel your fucking subscriptions.
The Debate Winners
The important judges of this are the people who are not registered to vote in Democratic primaries, have never voted for a Democrat, and while they do not like Mr. Trump, will, at most, vote for Evan Whatshisname in November 2020 like they did in 2016, because while they could have voted for a Democrat if they had nominated [some random person they just deemed to be more "moderate" than that communist Joe Biden], sadly the Democrats are just doing this to themselves.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Also, 1989 Was The Worst Moment In Modern American History
Not quite, perhaps, but really it was a bad time. People who had their worldview solidified in 1989 did so at the worst possible moment. Like everything bad about post-war America was peaking and everything good was waning and I don't think things (not all things, but some) started to shift for the better until 1995 or so.
Buy This Book
Somebody I know rather well (20+ years!) wrote a book. It is a good book. It isn't a travel guide or a recipe book, but a history, though it does have significant discussion of the contemporary food situation and some representative (including historic) recipes.
Amazon lacks copies at the moment, but because I love you so much, dear readers, I can even give you a 30% off discount code to get it from the publisher. RLFANDF. Enter RLFANDF at the checkout page for the promo code.
...since I last checked amazon seems to also have discounted copies being sold through the site though still not from an amazon warehouse.
Amazon lacks copies at the moment, but because I love you so much, dear readers, I can even give you a 30% off discount code to get it from the publisher. RLFANDF. Enter RLFANDF at the checkout page for the promo code.
...since I last checked amazon seems to also have discounted copies being sold through the site though still not from an amazon warehouse.
Teslanos
I know Elon Musk is my latest obsession that bores most of you, but it isn't just about self-driving cars or even (though this more) about his Jetsons transportation ideas. It's about pure fraud, and how much pure fraud our system tolerates. Tesla is a publicly traded company and you aren't supposed to be able to get away with this kind of bullshit according to the SEC. This was from 2015.
Yet again, Elon Musk is setting lofty goals for Tesla, claiming the upstart EV automaker's models will have a range of roughly 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) as well as full autonomous, self-driving technology by 2020.Neither of these things has happened or is going to happen (there haven't even been incremental improvements in the batteries). Musk has actually been selling "full self driving" with the bait and switch "pay for it now it's cheaper than it will be when it exists later" and while it's hard to feel too sorry for idiots who fall for this, it's still epic fraud. And it was one thing when Tesla only sold luxury vehicles and skimming a few more thousand bucks from rich suckers isn't the worst crime in the world, but now their low end vehicle is, while not cheap, not priced at luxury car levels so less than rich people are getting scammed.
Stolen Valor
That they all lie about so many easily checkable things... they must have been doing this stuff for years and got used to the fact that no one ever checks.
During that time, Ratcliffe became a federal prosecutor, named chief of anti-terrorism and national security for the Eastern District of Texas. In 2007, Ratcliffe was named the district's acting U.S. attorney by President George W. Bush.Let the Eagle Soar
Although Ratcliffe's website says he "put terrorists in prison," there is no evidence he ever prosecuted a terrorism case.
When Obama took office, Ratcliffe went into private practice, forming the firm Ashcroft, Sutton, Ratcliffe — a Texas outpost of the Washington, D.C., law firm founded by former Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Monday, July 29, 2019
Nobody Could Have Predicted
If only someone would have given me just a tiny bit of all the money that people have been lighting on fire for this stuff.
(Reuters) - General Motors Co’s self-driving unit, Cruise, said on Wednesday it was delaying the commercial deployment of cars past its target of 2019 as more testing of the vehicles was required.They no longer have a specified timeline.
Case Closed
When the RJ Rushdoony Distinguished Chair of the Science Of The Lesser Races says someone isn't a racist there's no room for argument.
Obsessions
Whether it's Stephen Miller devoting his life to Making America White Again or Nazis shooting up a crowd just because... how did they get there? It's one thing to be major racist. They're all around us! Another thing for it to be your calling.
Related
The "seriousness" of any health plan will be judged, by the serious people, not by how nice it would be to have. Only weirdo countries can let you just go to the damn doctor.
Who Is On Speed Dial
On one side we have the various players in the health care industry and their lobbying entities. On the other side we have the public. Maybe a third set of players are non-health care businesses of various sizes and shapes. Ok, 3 sides! The first side is going to fight anything that will take away some of their money. Anything. They cannot be negotiated with, except from a position of power. As in, "go along with this or it's going to be worse." Then there's the public who need to actually like what you do so they vote to keep you in office long enough to make sure it's implemented. The third "side" is a bit more complicated. Various players with not necessarily aligned interests.
No compromise is going to make the first side happy. Start by compromising and they'll thank you for your lunch money and demand tomorrow's, too. Keep on compromising like this and the public, whose support you need, will be increasingly unhappy.
As for who reporters have on speed dial...
No compromise is going to make the first side happy. Start by compromising and they'll thank you for your lunch money and demand tomorrow's, too. Keep on compromising like this and the public, whose support you need, will be increasingly unhappy.
As for who reporters have on speed dial...
Lynching Postcards
The sad truth is a decent chunk of the population is pretty damn cruel. I don't mean indifferent or selfish or merely "I got mine, fuck you," but actively cruel, taking enjoyment in the suffering of others. Every time someone says or writes "this is not who we are" as if America is a special angelic country filled with nothing but good and nice people and any deviation from that is just a momentary aberration, I get angry. This is who "we" are. Not all of us, but enough. Trump's continued significant support is enough proof of that.
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Obummer
I don't follow Trump's polls. They don't change much. But at best he's no more popular than Obama was, and the press always treated Obama like an unpopular president, not a POLITICAL GENIUS who CONTROLLED THE NARRATIVE.
Nice Work
Another day, another New York Times column about how the readers of the New York Times are stupid and people on the internet should not be mean to New York Times columnists because that is worse than the holocaust squared.
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