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October 20, 2015

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Well, it certainly is the case that Hillary Clinton did not get the day off. The insane GOP members of the Committee of Inquisition are a disgrace to the institution in which they serve.

Characterizing them as vermin is an insult to vermin.

But my popcorn has run out. Time to watch the Seahawks vs the Niners.

One of the participants (Vigdís Finnbogadóttir) became the first democratically elected female head of state anywhere.

Indira Gandhi? Golda Meir?

Indira Gandhi? Golda Meir?

Not directly elected by the people but by the parliament (Israel's switch to direct election came decades later). Their party/coalition won the elections not they themselves.

Though, to be fair, Iceland is more like a town with nation status.

And the best genealogical records in the world.

Iceland also has a government:

http://yournewswire.com/three-more-criminal-bankers-sent-to-jail-in-iceland/

Which governs. Lots of guns, but Icelanders only shoot the right people, which is to say, hardly any. Their government and their people are a functioning trigger warning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country

And only kills citizens when the latter try to kill them, and then the police apologize:

http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2013/12/robert-farago/what-iceland-can-teach-us-about-american-gun-violence-nothing/

Maybe because of our genealogy, everyone is under constant threat of being gunned down, especially if you're unarmed or, say, if taxes exceed a certain trigger point, according to murderer Grover Norquist.

Hartmut,

Not directly elected by the people but by the parliament (Israel's switch to direct election came decades later). Their party/coalition won the elections not they themselves.

Well, maybe. But then we can say that Clinton, if elected, will have been chosen not "democratically," but by electors chosen by the voters.

Now you're being peevish, Bernard. Tsk, tsk...

There's been some hullabaloo over this story in my neck of the woods. It pretty much signals the end of America as we know it, of course.

This is what gets me, freedom-wise:

Seth Boyden has received negative feedback since the news story gained national attention, she says, but only from those outside of the community.

Isn't this something that can be sorted out among the people in this community? Or should Halloween parties in schools be mandatory, because tradition?

Or should Halloween parties in schools be mandatory, because tradition?

Shirley Jackson ruined the word "tradition".

Count, given the history of Iceland it is all the more remarkable. Blood feuds galore usually with the women intimately involved, often even as main instigators and occasionally wielding the axes themselves*. And with everyone closely related to everyone else they rarely ran out of persons to prolong and perpetuate the feuds. These days axe rampages are a rarity and the gun never really replaced it as the favorite tool of solving personal differences.

In a way the women now proceed where they had been stopped when Christianity came to Iceland, the independent spirit was always there. Ironically, most women of the first generation of Icelanders came as slaves from the British Isles.

*arson was also extremly popular, rarely directed at churches though.

...everyone is under constant threat of being gunned down, especially if you're unarmed or, say, if taxes exceed a certain trigger point, according to murderer Grover Norquist.

Now Count, that's a bit of an overstatement. You are not under all that much of a threat in most of the country, even if unarmed. (Unless, of course, you happen to be born with a permanent suntan....) It's just that the level of paranoia, fed by the need of the media for sensational stories, is enormous about the size of the threat.

HSH, what strikes me as really exceptional about that New Jersey story is that this time the cancelling of school Halloween activities was driven from the left, in the name of inclusion. Whereas, most of the time, efforts to ban them are driven from the right, on the grounds that it amounts to devil worship.

Yeah, wj. Most of the uproar has been generally of the theme that liberal ninnies are coddling a minority at the expense of everyone else, based on 20% of the kids either not participating or staying home last year.

Meanwhile, no one knows how the parents of the 80% that did participate feel about the situation. It's possible that they're sympathetic to the concerns of the 20% or that their kids participated because they'd be really upset if they didn't, but only because the parties were happening in the first place. It's not like the kids would be upset about not participating in something that wasn't happening at all.

I could see a good number of parents thinking the whole thing was a big pain in the ass, but something they had to go along with so their kids wouldn't feel left out. Now those parents don't have to deal with it and may be relieved.

And it's not like there aren't tons of other Halloween activities going on outside of school, including ... well, TRICK OR FNCKING TREATING! The school hasn't abolished Halloween.

hsh,

Maybe a better argument is that PM's, unlike Presidents, are not generally considered "heads of state." Both India and Israel have Presidents who fill that role.

notwithstanding my completely lost comment, it seems an odd thing to cancel based on a minority not wanting to participate. Culture changes, fine. Changing it for twenty percent of parents in one school with presumably a variety of objections seems overly PC. The 80% of kids don't get a school party, so they are just as sad as the 20%. I feel so much better we have disappointed all of the kids equally.

I demand we reinstate "Have A Merry Morbid All-Saints Days" as a Halloween greeting instead of this bland all-inclusive, politically correct "Happy Halloween" nonsense forced on us over the years.

Put the "D" back in "Death" and death back in the holiday, as it was intended.

And don't get me started on how crucifixion has been whitewashed out of Easter. Eggs? Eggs?

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/10/schools_ban_halloween.html

And it really pisses off ghoul Ben Carson that the Skousen dynasty's murderous views on Martin Luther King have not been placed at the center of school curricula and that if we must have a holiday for the Communist, adulterous traitor, why can't the kids dress up like Jesse Helms and lynch a black or two during social studies class to illustrate the high points of American history.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/09/ben-carson-conspiracy-theory-cleon-skousen

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1250493,1250493

http://libertythoughts76.blogspot.com/2015/06/joel-skousens-government-cover-ups.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Skousen

Carsonigen just surged past Trumpet in Iowa polling and apparently wants people to dress up in Secret Service costumes to protect his vermin mouth.

Obama alternatively has offered to provide lame guys in paper hats proffering fried chicken as bodyguards so that when a Republican with an automatic weapon tries to blow Carsoni to Kingdom come for canceling their Medicare, Carsoni can point the assassin in the direction of the innocent clerks.

Trump, for his part, twatted that he favors firing school nurses and teachers to save money, but would designate cheerleaders as honorary school nurses as long as they wore the required uniform and took his temperature at both ends, all year round, especially in private summer school.

https://www.google.com/search?q=adult+nurse+halloween+costumes&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=adult+nurse+halloween+costumes&tbm=shop

He fired an intern for trying to prevent him from sending out that tweet.


i would've loved to have the chance to opt-out of school parties. nothing says "hey, look at the poor kid" like having to spend all day in your shitty plastic Halloween costume.

Changing it for twenty percent of parents in one school with presumably a variety of objections seems overly PC.

the article said that they had 120 kids in that one school who weren't participating. so those 120 kids had to be kept busy and supervised while everyone else was at the party. that's a lot of kids! 120! that's more than you can just dump in the library for an hour.

so then you have to find four or five faculty who aren't going to go to the party to watch the kids. and you have to come up with some kind of activity to try to distract them from what their friends are doing. but that won't work, and those 120 kids will inevitably feel left out.

cancelling it was the right move.

take that hour to teach em how Congress works, instead. that'll really scare them.

apparently wants people to dress up in Secret Service costumes to protect his vermin mouth

sorry, Ben. in order to keep you from succumbing to the culture of dependency, we're going to decline your request to have the nanny state protect you from the gun-wielding lunatics that you spend your days egging-on. pay for it yourself, moocher.

Changing it for twenty percent of parents in one school with presumably a variety of objections seems overly PC. The 80% of kids don't get a school party, so they are just as sad as the 20%.

It wasn't done at the behest of the parents of the 20%. And there's no reason to think the 80% are just as sad. They're little kids who don't have the same expectation that adults do based on experience. Not participating in a party that's going on in the next room is worse than there simply being no party. There's nothing to be left out of if there isn't a party.

What started this whole controversy was the notice sent out, which was only a reminder. They didn't cancel anything with the notice. There was no plan for Halloween parties this year to begin with. It's like the kids were all geared up for a Halloween party on whatever day and had the rug pulled out from under them.

Halloween's on a Saturday this year, anyway, so they won't even be in school.

It's entirely possible that the 80%, both kids and parents, are really upset about this, even though the school hasn't gotten a lot of complaints from within the community. It's also entirely possible they don't really care all that much. And it's very, very likely the 20% are really relieved.

If there's a big uproar within this school's community over it, they may have to reconsider. If not, they probably made the right decision.

In any case, what's the solution? Mandatory Halloween parties at all schools (under whose authority)?

It's not like the kids were all geared up... is what I meant.

My sister, my daughter, my sister, my daughter .....

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/romney-loves-romneycare-again

Romney has binders full of opinions. a different one for every occasion.

I think that 480 kids didn't get a party, in my town they would know the other schools had a party. Even so, you're probably right that they weren't as sad as the kids watching them go off to the party would have been. Is this really a serious thing? We wont have any holidays celebrated at school by that criteria. We are becoming a country of selfish pricks.

On a human level, not even financial.

Romney has binders full of opinions. a different one for every occasion.

I expect Mr Romney is learning, rather too late, that Shakespeare was right: "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

A bit too late to do him any good. Especially, I suspect, with his self-esteem. Still, better late than never. Would that more politicians would get the message -- thereby cutting the pandering amazingly.

Of course, that wouldn't help with the ones who actually believe the nonsense that they are spouting....

I think Romney is suffering from what the entire sadistic Republican conservative roster is suffering (the rest of us suffer, need I say?) from: Terminal Tourette's Syndrome

Which means anything will issue from their filthy mouths, the occasional rational sentence, even a kind word.

It's a little like Regan in "The Exorcist" taking a break from the pea soup projectile vomiting and 365 degree head spinning to reveal the sweet adolescent girl deep inside.

I give it three days before Romney reappears to tinkle on the carpet in front of company and walk his statements back and then throw those on Obamacare head first through a second story window and down a flight of stairs, and then refuse to call an ambulance because it might involve taxpayer dollars.

Count, the Romney article got updated by now. He did walk it back on Facebook already, it seems.

From Business Insider:

Romney, yesterday.

"Getting people health insurance is a good thing, and that’s what Tom Stemberg fought for. I oppose Obamacare and believe it has failed. It drove up premiums, took insurance away from people who were promised otherwise, and usurped state programs. As I said in the campaign, I'd repeal it and replace it with state-crafted plans."

Usurped state programs?

Yes, it usurped state programs that ignored the medically uninsured thus, in some cases, bankrupting and killing their citizens.

Twenty-five states, was it, were allowed to remain unusurped, the f*cking cold-blooded murderers. And we know who they are.

Romneycare wasn't usurped, was it?

And no, Grover Norquist and the rest of the conservative filth in state legislatures would deep-six any attempt to do anything at the state level to provide insurance, except disallow patients to sue and license insurers to sell expensive/no benefits scams.

Romney on Thursday: Dimmy, why did you do this to me? Please Dimmy, I'm afraid.

Romney on Friday: Your mother s*cks c*cks in Hell.

wj: Who's Captain Howdy?
Romney: You know, I make the questions and he does the answers.

Standard liberal bullsh*t diagnosis of the worm that crawled up the ass of the conservative movement: "We still think the temporal lobe."

A mother knows better: "Oh what are you talking about, for Christ's sakes? Did you see them or not? They are acting like they are fucking out of their minds, psychotic, like a... split personality or ..."

Find the answer to "or". It's not an exorcism.

While typing all of that, I read Romney's lines in the voice of Mercedes McCambridge, which I do pretty well.

Scared the crap out of myself on this dark Saturday morning.


Have a fall party at school. Let kids who celebrate Halloween wear costumes if they want. Have the other kids find ways to share their own traditions with everyone else in an inclusive manner. Not like there's a shortage of fall holidays.

Or simply be happy that your neighbors are happy and want to share their happiness with you.

Stick the whole thing as close to the equinox as you can on a school schedule. Provide (dietarily safe) treats for everyone.

Done.

Has there ever been anyone who has taken back his words, after a couple of days, offered in a funeral eulogy of a dear friend?

Does anyone acknowledge how low below the scum-line that is?

The Staples Founders' family must be very hurt, unless of course they are just a bunch of shallow pig-fucking Republicans as well.

Who revises a funeral oration after 48 hours?

Was there something about the dead f*cker that Romney, the Mormon frat-boy f*ck would have so little respect for, that he felt compelled to edit his funeral oration?

These are vermin filth America is dealing with to its mortal peril.

We are becoming a country of selfish pricks.

Who was being selfish in the case at hand?

oh look, more data showing that blacks are more likely to be stopped, more likely to be searched, and more likely to be charged than whites.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/us/racial-disparity-traffic-stops-driving-black.html

i'm sure this is easily explained-away. it always is.

That's just blacks selfishly hogging all of the traffic stops and police resources.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donald-trump-not-easy-million-dollars

I bet it wasn't as small as the million dollar loan my Dad gave me.

My Dad's loan had one more zero in it than trump's did, but the zero came at the beginning of the number.

i'm sure this is easily explained-away. it always is.

Standard explanation: blacks commit more crimes. Especially per capita. Witness the fact that there are lots more of tehm in jail.

Or course, that couldn't have anything to do with them getting stopped and searched more. Or less likely to have parents with expensive lawyers on call. After all, upper middle class white kids wouldn't do drugs, commit petty theft, and all that other stuff that leaves black teenagers with a police record.

And if you believe that, especially if you were a white teenager at some point, I have this great deal on a bridge which you can get in on for just a few thousand dollars. A month. Plus adminsrative fees.

After all, upper middle class white kids wouldn't do drugs

(i know you were being ironic here, so this isn't aimed at you, wj)

from the article:

In the four states that track the results of consent searches, officers were more likely to conduct them when the driver was black, even though they consistently found drugs, guns or other contraband more often if the driver was white. The same pattern held true with probable-cause searches in Illinois and North Carolina, the two states that carefully record them.

Yes cleek, but were the white drivers upper middle class? Or just poor white drivers? How much more likely were they to search black drivers? Was it harder to get consent from white drivers? Was the higher percentage BECAUSE they were more discerning if the driver was white?

The statistics are clear.

hsh, all of those people who thought this was a good idea. Those people don't need a party because these people might not get to enjoy it. Actually the more I think about the more I think it s*cks.

Tom Delay is living proof that all the gun control in the world has not prevented the wrong people from being shot in the head.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/tom-delay-obama-impeachment-background-checks

But he changes hearts and minds --- mine.

These guys have convinced me too that the gun grabbers are deeply misguided and work against their own mortal interests:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-non-partisan-upstanding-nra.html

Liberals, including blacks, immigrants of all kinds, those who run Planned Parenthood clinics, and Obamacare beneficiaries -- we're up to the tens of millions already in that very small sample --- require ten times more weaponry, military-grade, I'd say, than your usual suspect.

I now believe, as a liberal whose mind can be changed, that it is time for liberals to inundate the gun stores, gun shows, and whatever underground sources can be accessed to stock up big time on great honking guns and ammo (the kind that explode when they pierce hard-headed armor) to protect ourselves against what is coming, not only from the usual suspects, but from their bankrupt governments whose only remaining point-of-sale will be the barrel of a gun.

Any tax collection from any conservative government at any level needs to be greeted with the safety off.

Unlike Grover Norquist, who seems wedded to a progressive program of murderous vengeance against the tax code, I believe it's the first dollar of conservative taxation that requires action, not the last.

I'll never speak against the Second Amendment again.

In fact, I want a Constitutional Convention convened to merge the First and Second Amendments so that bullets in flight to their targets are just another Constitutionally-protected species of political speech, an everyday conversational gambit ... or money, whichever seems like speech to the usual suspects in this great country of ours.

It protects my healthcare and my pension, if I can wrest it from the filth.

It protects my mother from thieves.

Time to bring the purity of mainlined caffeine to the Tea Party.

I heart guns.

At elementary school Halloween Parties, which had better take place, or else.


How much more likely were they to search black drivers?

want to know how i know you didn't read the article?

well, there's a chart right in the middle of it that gives the answer to your question, broken down by jurisdiction.

but, honestly, i didn't think you'd read it anyway. i'm pretty sure your mind is made up on this.

(I know you were being ironic here, so this isn't aimed at you, wj)

Drat! I was aiming for sarcastic.

Drat! I was aiming for sarcastic.

i originally had "sardonic" in there. but just to double-check, i looked up the difference between "sarcastic" and "sardonic" and got so many conflicting answers that i eventually couldn't tell if both or neither were correct. so i went with "ironic".

"In the four states that track the results of consent searches, officers were more likely to conduct them when the driver was black, even though they consistently found drugs, guns or other contraband more often if the driver was white. The same pattern held true with probable-cause searches in Illinois and North Carolina, the two states that carefully record them."

The police in those states and others are meeting the metrics demanded by their superiors.

It's in their job descriptions.

Besides, Americans should be harassed and arrested for NOT carrying guns.

Preferably openly.

By the way, anyone who is looking to donate to a charity that keeps an individual deserving black guy rolling in the benjamins to maintain his lifestyle even above what it was when he worked for a living and keeps him from becoming a fat, black welfare queen in his old age, here's a sure bet:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_10/is_the_ben_carson_campaign_a_p058300.php

Now that Lois Lerner is off the case, the skids are greased for every charity dollar to reach the intended beneficiary -- him and his entourage.

Courtesy of Balloon Juice, the angel-faced Cuban punk, Desi Rubio, is going to go full-on nigger-hating -- Atwater-style -- in that pigf*cker state South Carolina, against his fellow primary pig-f*ckers:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/marco-rubios-knife-fighters#.kwr8ZGXOq

He has to contract this sh*t out because it might get in the way of his day job of not showing up, because the very act of voting might make him look like a pussy Democrat:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/marco-rubio-hates-senate

"How am I losing to these people?", Lindsay Graham intones desperately, like a Muslim about to be beheaded on TV by ISIS:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/lindsey-graham-ben-carson-kill-someone

Figure it out, Lindsay. You provided the clue in you own headline. If you want your polls to surge in a Republican primary, kill somebody, or at least try.

You want to paint the country red, ride along with some cops in any number of locales and when a black person runs away from your bogus traffic stop, shoot them in the back.

Show up at Tea Party rallies and kick a protesting cripple on SS disability in the short-ribs.

If a Mexican disrupts one of your fetes, go one up on Trump and instead of delegating it to your supporters/henchmen to drag the wetback across the floor and kick him a few times, come down off the dais and do it yourself.

Pistol-whip the guy. You'll be ahead of Carson and Trump overnight.

Better yet, Lindsay (what, you think red-blooded hetero thugs in your party want a President named "Lindsay"?), change your name.

Even better, shoot YOURSELF, in the head preferably, to show your total solidarity with me and my fellow Second Amendment diehards:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/arizona-teen-homemade-gun

Hell, in this country, in 2016, you'll be the first corpse to be elected Republican President, breaking William Henry Harrison's record.

These living clowns won't be able to keep up. Hey, things happen.

Once the United States of America deliberately defaults on its obligations, we can save on the presidential salary, pensions, accommodations, and polyp removals on my ticket by striking those items from the budget for the drowned/aborted baby on the bathtub.

Those people don't need a party because these people might not get to enjoy it.

I think it's more like, "Those people don't get a particular kind of party on a particular day in a particular place because we know from experience a good number of people, who don't have much choice but to be in that particular place, will be upset by it."

I love Halloween, BTW. I've taken many a half day to go to the Halloween parades at my kids' elementary schools. I've never heard of any problems with the parties or parades where I live, so we keep having them.

They have a different situation in one school in Maplewood, so they decided not to have Halloween celebrations in that school.

That sounds like freedom to me.

Snopes has an interesting entry on the situation.

That photograph of Ann Coulter when she was an adolescent boy in the Daily Caller article-link was very disturbing.

It gives me an idea though for a costume at the next Freedom Caucus Halloween Party.

The nice part about the controversy is that the people who were so terribly upset by this excessive minority-pandering will have forgotten all about it in less than a month and will be transiently outraged by some other trifling but overblown-in-their-minds drama they believe to be threatening to rend the fabric of traditional American society - and which will, of course, amount to nothing.

Oh, my mistake, the photograph was from the Bare Naked Islam mash-up of of Daily Caller's article.

I place great importance in accuracy when parsing out the mere liars from the f*cking liars.

I should have known Tucker Carlson and Niel Patel wouldn't stoop THAT low.

Last year, I went to a Halloween Party in a Tucker Carlson get-up which consisted only of a bow-tie and a squeaky voice, but I was accompanied (to simulate reality) by the suspected gay guy who he bragged about beating the sh*t out of in a public bathroom years ago for complimenting Carlson's wide stance.

My companion was played by the same guy who played the guy who stuck a gun in Ben Carson's ribs at the fried chicken joint years ago, or was it who stuck a gun in Carson's chickensh*t face at the rib joint years ago ....

Here's how to do irony, sarcasm, and sardonicism in these last days of the Republic:

Tell the plain TRUTH with a straight face and wait 24-hours for reality to catch-up and surpass with flying colors.

I can complain about the reasons for not having a party and still completely defend their right not to have one.

Nicely said, Marty.

And I support your right to complain, Marty (even though you're deeply, deeply wrong).

If you stop complaining Marty, then I would too, and then the internet as we know it would sputter and die.

The proximity of Halloween to Election day gives one all KINDS of opportunities...

Like dressing up in a black robe, pointy hat, broomstick, warty nose and insisting to all and sundry "I'm NOT a witch, I'm NOT a witch!"

Good times, good times.

----------------------------------------------------------------That's as long as I could last on that quitting thing, darn it, whose fault is that anyway.

The Truthinator will travel to Paris to disrupt the climate talks:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/inhofe-paris-climate-talks

I hope airport security spots the tiny vial of poison this lug calls truth and arrests him at one border or another.

Failing that, the Climate talks will have security with guns to protect visiting dignitaries from terrorist threats, won't they?

Use them.

Marty, as long as you don't get to the point of the folks who are now writing members of the Freedom Caucus and denouncing them as . . . not conservative enough. And threatening them with primary challenges from the right.

Some people (not you) are simply never satisfied.

wj, the best thing about the ever narrowing definition of "right enough" is that the Democrats are continually pulled further right, see Bernie Sanders self definition as Socialist, so no matter who gets elected we win.

Yeah. But I'd prefer a world where there were two parties which were capable of governing. Against the day when people decide that they want a change, no matter what.

At the moment, competent Republican politicians in national offices are thin on the ground. And even in state-wide offices (at least in some states) there don't seem to be many of them -- which means the bench is pretty thin, too.

No matter who gets elected?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/26/1439239/-Ben-Carson-says-he-USED-to-be-a-homicidal-maniac

Maybe the surge in his Iowa poll numbers signify the building gangsta vote in addition to the "I love me some somnolent Seventh-Day Adventist End-of-the-World, Cleon Skousen murder talk" vote.

What Democrats are being pulled further/farther right?

All you've done is hollowed out your Party by pushing away mainstream republicans who don't want to be associated with or are plain frightened of the ascendant right-wing radical filth.

If anything, your crazy right enough makes the Left, even Sanders standing still, appear to be the cheerful, moderate middle by comparison.

In 15 years the political landscape will be dominated by a generation of kids that make Obama look like Ben Carson. The rights days are numbered and we are watching the death spasms. However, the race card on both sides is getting its last few hands dealt, also. Political realignment is done, waiting for us old folks to get out of the way. Our children don't give a damn about most of what we argue about. It's all decided in their minds. Some for better, some worse.

Count, it isn't a matter of individual Democrats being pulled further to the right. It's a matter of moderates, moderate conservatives, and even some fairly strong conservatives, abandoning the GOP. One can be pretty damn conservative and still recognize the nut cases who have taken over my party for the destructive crazies that they are.

".... waiting for us old folks to get out of the way. Our children don't give a damn about most of what most of us argue about."

I hate long-view political strategizing and analysis that is contingent upon me being dead.

Just me count you and my wife have 50 years left.

Marty, unless your wife is only 47, I don't like the sound of that.

"Just me count you and my wife have 50 years left."

Wait a minute Marty, does your wife approve of this plan to move in with Count after you're gone? Count can speak for himself.

But I think you're right about the issues of "the kids" being completely different. Anybody have an opinion about "free silver"? Can even explain what it IS?

The kids will get all exercised about Neural Net Neutrality, Orbital Colonist Homesteading Rights (ellipticity 0.5440 or fight!), and whether AIs can own corporations.

It'll be worth sticking around just to yell at them to get their damn hoverboards offa your lawn.

Just a heads up, anyone touches a child of mine like this, and you and your children and your grandchildren will never sleep again, except for the Big Sleep.

And the entire School Board will be corpses:

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/10/26/being-quiet-and-minding-your-own-damned-business-while-black/

Notice the cowering of the other students in the video.

My conversion to full support for the Second Amendment now behooves me to recommend that students grade 1 thru 12 be permitted to open carry in class at all times.

I witnessed a white 240 pound principal on 78-pound white student incident in the sixth grade something along these lines merely for blowing up a popsicle package and popping it loudly during cafeteria lunch.

That kid, a perfectly behaved innocent otherwise, and later an honors student at high school graduation, was bounced off a metal file cabinet to sprawl about ten feet away and picked by the scruff of the neck and frog-marched to, I don't know, Guantanamo.

Mr. Young. I heard he was fired or transferred after the school year, but if I hadn't been so bogged down with orthodontia and incipient puberty, I'd have had my people toss him head first off of one of Pittsburgh's bridges into the chemically-tainted and heavy-metaled Allegheny River to sleep with the eels.

Yeah, I had people back then. Everyone in Pittsburgh has people. What's so funny?

"It'll be worth sticking around just to yell at them to get their damn hoverboards offa your lawn."

Hell, they'll be crowd sourcing our funerals.

My wife is adamantly living to 112, I never question her ability to impose her will on the reality around her. Which means she has 55+ years left. With or without the Counts company

Our children don't give a damn about most of what we argue about.

Throughout history there has been one major theme, arguing about who gets what. Rest assured, our children will be arguing about that, too.

Some things never change.

bobbyp, a real conservative

I'm all in on this:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123227/gop-should-be-having-duels-not-debates

Too bad it would like like this instead of being lethally deadly all the way around:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-k5J4RxQdE

I think having sword fights at the "debates" would be a serious step forward. Lots of opportunities to team up against each other. Nice long duration. And minimal collateral damage amongst the bystanders.

Pity their own version of polticial correctness would probably force all these gun enthusiasts to insist on pistols. And I suppose it would be too much to insist that they only get revolvers -- which would mean that any given one couldn't single-handedly take out all the others. Just to make sure that whoever wins can either work with others, or can restrain himself while others do most of the dirty work.

And how amusing would it be if Trump spent all his shots early. Leaving him to stand there with an empty gun while someone else shot him. Wonder if his famous (in his own mind) bargaining and persuasion skills could get him out of that....

Foist ting we do heah, we try to govern even less than have been, which is to say, less than not at all, except to punish the schwartza in the White House and the lesbian Muslim lady candidate over heah who refuses to wear the burqa when she laughs out loud at our sad little republican dicks:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mo-brooks-paul-ryan-immigration-pledge

Get armed and get busy.

John Harwood is a Commie, Muslim fat black welfare fag:

http://thefederalist.com/2015/10/27/cnbcs-john-harwood-has-no-business-moderating-a-gop-presidential-debate/

John Harwood?

John Harwood.

Yeah, John Harwood.

Kasich's had it:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-kasich-had-it-gopers

John Kasich?

John Kasich.

Yeah, John Kasich.

The man who gave handjobs to Gingrich, Armey, and Delay.

Yeah, that guy.

I guess he smells ISIS all over the current killers.

McCarthey-hang the scientists:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/27/1440592/-Intent-on-discrediting-climate-scientists-witch-hunting-House-committee-chairman-subpoenas-NOAA

A firing squad for statisticians. Novel governance there.

Get armed and get busy.

Kasich may be a lot more conservative than you like. But he has seemed all along to be the most sane of the options on offer. (Which probably means that he has about as much chance this time as Huntsman had last time. Sigh.)

He sat through Gingrich's ravings and subbed in for O'Reilly, thinking maybe that would sharpen his talons in the eyes of the base so he could be the right-wing pretty boy.

He's been underbid.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/kasich-born-again-truth-telling.html

Now, he's shocked? He's SHOCKED that Ben Carson wants to get rid of Medicaid and Medicare?

For feigning that shock alone, his hero Ronald Reagan would have Nancy take him to the woodshed for a BDSM seance.

His dad was a postal worker, which allowed him to make reasonable exceptions, on a purely personal basis -- the only kinds conservatives will allow -- for them only -- to the conservative agenda of making everyone, except the well-off, suffer the right-wing agenda.

He's a decent guy in over his head in a world he flooded.

Interesting experimental evidence that overturns some widely held beliefs about the rate of genetic evolution:
http://phys.org/news/2015-10-chicken-reveals-evolution-faster-thought.html

The finding about mitochondrial genes was particularly interesting.

Can anyone tell which one is the capitalist and which one is the slave owner:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/saints-and-scrooges-by-bloggersrus.html

We can do it the first way or we can do it the second way, makes yer choice.

If we choose wrong, there will be a very messy third way.

NPR had one of Romney's campaign guys on this AM to talk about the GOP race. he was 100% sure it wouldn't go to anyone who had never been elected to anything before. which was his way of saying : No Trump, No Carson, No Fiorina. what he didn't tell anyone was who he thinks had a shot, and what the path to get there looks like.

the GOP establishment is in denial.

Thanks, Nigel! That is just way cool.

And, as so often, we find that it's not so much "the things we don't know, but the things we know that ain't so" which provide the way forward in our understanding of the universe.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sheriff-david-clarke-black-lives-matter-isis

Hey, I can comment using my iPad again. Finally, an update that fixed it.

Hey, wj, I was quite impressed, too.

Changing tack, if you were a Republican candidate, why would you even bother turning up for the undercard (aka losers) debate at this point ?
It's (almost) sad.

Though I suppose exercises in futility are part and parcel of the political game.

Rick Santelli "moderated" the CNBC debate tonight among the lesser clowns.

I repeat: Rick Santelli "moderated".

I'd like to point out that Confederate secessionists "moderated" South Carolina's separation from the Union.

Leon Trotsky "moderated" the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

Albert Speer "moderated" the Third Reich.

Billy Martin "moderated" the New York Yankees on June 18, 1977.

I "moderate" Obsidian Wings.

At this point, I can only see one reason for those who haven't made the top table to hang on. It still seems possible (not likely, but possible) that the circular firing squad which is the debates and the primaries will leave none of them standing. And that might provide an opening for someone in the bottom tier, simply because everybody is concentrating their fire on the folks at head table.

I moderate...
Genuine LOL.

Don't know about the coders here (?), but I found this fairly astonishing:
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/google-2-billion-lines-codeand-one-place/

I admit to a small measurement question. Are they talking about lines of code at the level where the engineers are changing them? Or at the level much closer to machine instructions?

Because those are two very different things. I write code all the time where I write one line, and the compiler/assembler creates a dozen or two lines of code from it, sometimes more. Code that I can read, if necessary -- and I end up doing so when trying to figure out why something isn't working as intended. But not something that I sit down and actually write myself.

Ben Carson said in tonight's debate, when expressly asked, that he had nothing to do with the Mannatech Corp. and their bullsh*t products:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQSoHRwtwvI

As a politically correct liberal, I maintain this is no reason to shoot black people in the back during routine traffic stops out of some mistaken generalization from the particular.

We judge people as individuals in this country and it just so happens that the ones the Republican Party recruits to destroy America happen to be one turn signal short of a lawful turn into the right-wing sh*tter, and they should be dealt with accordingly.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2906899/Rising-GOP-star-Ben-Carson-endorsed-sham-nutrition-supplement-company-employs-business-manager-linked-pay-play-journalism-scandal.html

This is capitalism to Republicans: lie your pigf*cking asses off, preferably on late-night TV and the internet, overcharge for the bullsh*t, and shunt the money into offshore bank accounts to avoid taxation.

And then run for President and whine your sh*t mouths off about regulation.

I call former Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott as my witness:

http://investigations.blog.ajc.com/2015/10/09/ben-carson-promoted-questionable-supplements/

He does agree with Carson that the American military is out to get us domestically and that carrying weapons openly in restaurants prevents indigestion, jaundice, and biliousness in your typical dinner.

Roger Stone, yeah, Roger Stone sez:

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/10/28/late-night-open-thread-your-wtf-peanut-gallery-comment-of-the-evening/

He must have thought Kasich popped to 2% after tonight's debate.

It WAS 1976.

Kasich had a mullet and platform shoes back then too.

Still, these were tax-free transactions which incentivized the free exchange of product without government interference.

No problema, hanh?

"Trump says he's going to change the no-guns policy at his resorts. I can't wait to see that."

Kevin Drum.

Finally, a place high tone Republicans, and the Kardashians (see how bipartisan I am) who feel a little squeamish about blowing away elementary school kids, government employees, and unarmed blacks, can go to murder their own kind.

Wanna bet its the illegal wetback trying to support his kids who gets a bullet for placing the pillow mint a little to the left.

Hey, me and the Second Amendment. Kissing cousins now.

Apparently, no one was given the opportunity to get the "n" word out:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/reince-priebus-ashamed-cnbc-debate

Also, no gunfire, which had to hurt them in the red zone.

Can anyone remember when Republicans could speak the language that inspired us:

https://powellhistory.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/if-eisenhower-had-given-the-gettysburg-address/


if you were a Republican candidate, why would you even bother turning up for the undercard (aka losers) debate at this point ?

it's free publicity, which will help future book sales, help chances of landing a wingnut pundit spot somewhere, or keep you relevant on the wingnut lecture circuit for a couple years longer.

for many of them, it's about promoting their own individual brands.

The undercard debate has really good complimentary cookies.

"The undercard debate has really good complimentary cookies."

#insert <ObligatoryChristieJoke.h>

I agree with cleek, but I'm amused at the thought of the reason being:

"Got nothin' better to do."

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/us/politics/obama-legal-authorization-osama-bin-laden-raid.html?emc=edit_na_20151028&nlid=56257216&ref=headline&_r=0&referer=

Interesting, yet vaguely familiar, article.

Another hour of debate and two more commercial breaks and Jed Bush would have been inside Trump's suit jacket with him and they'd be sharing a podium:

http://www.theonion.com/article/jeb-bush-inching-podium-closer-center-stage-during-51746

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