Happy Hour

I'm ahead of youse! Hic.

Afternoon Thread

Eschaton World Industries is operating with a weekend schedule. Because it's the weekend!

Good Thing We're Using the Smart Bombs

Imagine what the dumb ones could do!

The hospital was hit by a suspected US air strike at 2.10am on Saturday morning, despite the international organisation sharing their GPS location with Nato forces only days before.

MSF claimed the bombing continued for “30 minutes after military officials in Kabul and Washington were first informed.” The organisation said it was “urgently” seeking a comment to understand how the tragedy could have unfolded.

Nine staff members were killed in the strike, with 37 wounded, including 19 MSF staff. It is believed the operating theatre and emergency room were hit in the strike.

Technitudicalifragilisticality

Lying in service of the cause is one way to convince the flock that you'll do whatever it takes to stick it to the libturds. And that's mostly what they care about, proving that they are a member of Team Winner not like stupid libturds.

Stick it to libturds and you get to be the frontrunner of the week. It's hard to keep sticking it to libturds, tho. You run out of material pretty quickly.

Morning Thread

Terrific article from the Guttmacher Institute: Prosecuting Women for Self-Inducing Abortion: Counterproductive and Lacking Compassion.  Basically makes the point that outlawing abortion won't stop women from having abortions. It will just make it more dangerous, partly because she will be reluctant to seek medical treatment if anything goes wrong. The whole attack on Planned Parenthood seems to have gotten lost with all the other news last week.

Happy Hour Thread

Do you know what day it is today?

America's Worst Humans

Michael Nutter.

Don't Let The Door

One fewer incompetent (though it depends on what you were supposed to be competent at doing) asshole in the administration.

Ted Kennedy made a deal with the devil for more education funding, and it's pretty clear the devil won that round.

Not Capable Of Learning

Once again the nation is shocked to discover the tools designed for killing people are used to kill people.

Where Did All The Teachers Go

Apparently there's a shortage. Who could have predicted that demonizing them, cutting salaries and benefits, and reducing job security might make it a slightly less attractive option for people.

With the September data in hand, we can look at the number of teachers who are starting work or going back to school this year. The number of teachers and education staff fell dramatically during the recession, and has failed to get anywhere near its prerecession level, let alone the level that would be required to keep up with an expanding student population. Along with the dismal shortfall in public sector employment, due to the Great Recession and the ensuing austerity at all levels of government, public education jobs are still 236,000 less than they were seven years ago. The number of teachers rose by 41,700 over the last year. While this is clearly a positive sign, adding in the number of public education jobs that should have been created just to keep up with enrollment, we are currently experiencing a 410,000 job shortfall in public education. Short sighted austerity measures have a measurable impact, hitting children in today’s classrooms. ###

How will our great school administrators deal with this? Increasing teacher salaries is unpossible, because that might mean that the Viceroy For District Charterization and Martini Tasting might take small pay cut. From EPI (email):

Jobs

+142k. Not awesome.

Morning Mayham

Late Night Thread

Only We Can Throw Gasoline

Silly Russians.

Washington has accused Moscow of throwing “gasoline on the fire” of the Syrian civil war, rejecting Russia’s claims that its first airstrikes in the war-torn country had targeted Islamic State terrorists.

The problem with throwing gas on the fire is you're likely to burn yourself to death if you do.

I Wonder Why They'd Do THat

Just puzzling.

The Left Is Always Very Silly

Reasonably sure the UK doesn't actually need a nuclear deterrent, but expressing your unwillingness to vaporize a few hundred thousand people is Very Silly Indeed. So Utopian, unlike tax cut fairies and all that peeance and freeance spreading that Blair and Bush did in the Middle East. That was serious!

Fairness and Equity

Not against towns wanting to recoup their costs, but the city regularly shells out large amounts of money to adequately staff events dominated by suburban visitors. That's just a normal day.

One day my dream of organizing a caravan of 1000 cars to go park in some random suburban neighborhood (legally) will be realized. It'll be funny how quick the cops will be called, and even funnier how they'll likely respond.

Instincts

OK then.

An email involving passport applications was notable for the raw nerve the issue of gay rights seemed to touch. Clinton expressed anger that the application form had been changed from its reference to traditional parents, and she demanded to know who was behind it.

"Who made the decision that State will not use the terms 'mother and father' and instead substitute 'parent one and two'?" she wrote.

"I am not defending that decision which I disagree w and knew nothing about in front of this Congress. … We need to address this today or we will be facing a huge Fox generated media storm led by Palin et al."

The form was changed.

It's hard to get your back when you won't get your own. Crouch position is not a winning position.

This was in 2011. Even Politico realized Palin was a joke by then.

Great Man Or Greatest Man?

That Chris Hitchens never let go of Kissinger as his favorite chew toy never made much sense given most of his later life position on things, but he was still a good chomper for the one man that the New York Times style guide says reporters should refer to, in print, as "Dr.".

Morning Thread

Looks like the East Coast is in for some interesting weather. Batten down the hatches, maties.