The slow collapse of our economy will bring about new fees and taxes so that the government and companies can maintain their cash flow. For example, my ... local bank decided that all savings account that have been dormant for 6 months or more will be assessed a maintenance fee of $6.00/month. While $6.00 a month is a small amount, the total cost for one year is $72.00 for digitally maintaining an INACTIVE account.
Members of the #FYF911 or #F**YoFlag and #BlackLivesMatter movements called for the lynching and hanging of white people and cops. They encouraged others on a radio show Tuesday night to “turn the tide” and kill white people and cops to send a message about the killing of black people in America.
One of the F**YoFlag organizers is called “Sunshine.” She has a radio blog show hosted from Texas called, “Sunshine’s F***ing Opinion Radio Show.”
. . .
During the show, callers clearly call for “lynching” and “killing” of white people.
A 2:39 minute clip from the radio show can be heard here. It was provided to Breitbart Texas by someone who would like to be referred to as “Hannibal.” He has already received death threats as a result of interrupting #FYF911 conference calls.
An unidentified black man said “when those mother f**kers are by themselves, that’s when when we should start f***ing them up. Like they do us, when a bunch of them ni**ers takin’ one of us out, that’s how we should roll up.” He said, “Cause we already roll up in gangs anyway. There should be six or seven black mother f**ckers, see that white person, and then lynch their ass. Let’s turn the tables.”
They conspired that if “cops started losing people,” then “there will be a state of emergency.”
He speculated that one of two things would happen, “a big-ass [R’s?????] war,” or “ni**ers, they are going to start backin’ up.”
“We are already getting killed out here so what the f**k we got to lose?”
Sunshine could be heard saying, “Yep, that’s true. That’s so f**king true.”
Hickman said Goforth was apparently singled out only because he was wearing the uniform of a law enforcement officer. The sheriff made it clear he felt the shooting was tied to a national backlash over several recent killings of unarmed black people by police officers.
"When rhetoric ramps up to the point where cold-blooded assassination has happened, this rhetoric has gotten out of control," he said. "We heard 'black lives matter.' All lives matter. Well, cops' lives matter too, so why don't we drop the qualifier and say 'lives matter' and take that to the bank."
To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
After years of struggling financially, Susan Rick thought things were looking up when her boyfriend won $250,000 from the Illinois Lottery last month. She could stop working seven days a week, maybe fix up the house and take a trip to Minnesota to visit her daughter.
But because Illinois lawmakers have not passed a budget, she and her boyfriend, Danny Chasteen, got an IOU from the lottery instead.
. . .
Under state law, the state comptroller must cut the checks for lottery winnings of more than $25,000. And lottery officials said that because lawmakers have yet to pass a budget, the comptroller's office does not have legal authority to release the funds.
. . .
"The lottery is a state agency like many others, and we're obviously affected by the budget situation," Illinois Lottery spokesman Steve Rossi said. "Since the legal authority is not there for the comptroller to disburse payments, those payments are delayed."
While Rossi said winners will eventually receive their money once a budget is in place, the promise is cold comfort for Rick.
"You know what's funny? If we owed the state money, they'd come take it and they don't care whether we have a roof over our head," Rick said. "Our budget wouldn't be a factor. You can't say (to the state), 'Can you wait until I get my budget under control?' "
Your ratings are in the single digits; your morals are in the gutter; your minds are on self-preservation; and somewhere along the way, you’ve traded your honor for political expediency.
You've violated your oaths; you've betrayed your country; you've feathered your nests; and you've sat on your hands while an imperial president has rubbed your noses in the dirt time after time.
You're no longer men. You're puppets, caricatures, jokes, a gaggle of fading prostitutes for sale to anybody who can do you a political favor.
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
We look at the darkest, most disturbing actions carried out by the most hateful people, and rather than face the terrifying reality that, in fact, rational people choose to do evil, we retreat back into the comfortable fantasy that only crazy people do bad things.
We want to reduce everything to chemicals and neurology and synapses, but we leave no room for a man’s soul, his will, his desire, his choice. And what has that achieved? I suppose it’s achieved quite a bit, financially, for the pharmaceutical industry, yet the rest of us are still left to grapple with the hatred and despair they told us the pills would cure.
Of course, I don’t discount mental illness completely, nor do I suppose Flanagan would have checked all the boxes on a “mental health” checklist. Obviously, the man had “issues,” as they say. But my radical theory is that his deepest issues were spiritual. And the same could be said for all of us.
Flanagan grabbed that camera and that gun and shot two people in the head because he was consumed by his sin, and he was consumed by his sin because he chose to follow his bitterness, loathing, and contempt all the way down into the darkness, away from the light, away from God, away from Truth. He pushed God out and let evil in, and this is the result.
And there is something even beyond Flanagan and his individual choices. There isn’t any one person who caused this attack more directly than Flanagan himself, but our whole country, our culture, is in a desperate spiritual state. Spiritual health, not mental health, is the real crisis of our time.
We have rejected God as a country, and I believe we are seeing, every day, the hideous fruits of our godless civilization.
. . .
Once you take the first step — rejecting God, embracing evil — there is simply no telling what you’ll do next. That’s the horrifying truth. Time to face it.
We're not talking about your traditional marble tub, affixed to the floor, suited to your regular Joe Blow here. Oh no, no - this is a hanging, clear glass sphere that acts as both bath and shower, with settings for you to alter its internal temperature, humidity, light, sounds and smell. It even simulates rain. How fancy! I mean, who doesn't want to expose their bits while trying to float in a glass bubble, smack-bang in the middle of the lounge room?
3. Liking white meat is racist. Writer Ron Rosenbaum said in Slate that racism accounts for the popularity of white-meat turkey over more flavorful dark meat. “White meat turkey has no taste,” he explained. “Despite its superior taste, dark meat has dark undertones for some. Dark meat seems to summon up ancient fears of contamination and miscegenation as opposed to the supposed superior purity of white meat.”
6. Complimenting America as open and fair is racially hurtful. “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” is officially listed as a micro-aggression that the University of California wants eliminated from its classrooms. Also banned are “America is the land of opportunity,” and “America is a melting pot,” because some students may regard those ideas as controversial.
When hacker group Impact Team released the Ashley Madison data, they asserted that “thousands” of the women’s profiles were fake. Later, this number got blown up in news stories that asserted “90-95%” of them were fake, though nobody put forth any evidence for such an enormous number. So I downloaded the data and analyzed it to find out how many actual women were using Ashley Madison, and who they were.
What I discovered was that the world of Ashley Madison was a far more dystopian place than anyone had realized. This isn’t a debauched wonderland of men cheating on their wives. It isn’t even a sadscape of 31 million men competing to attract those 5.5 million women in the database. Instead, it’s like a science fictional future where every woman on Earth is dead, and some Dilbert-like engineer has replaced them with badly-designed robots.
Those millions of Ashley Madison men were paying to hook up with women who appeared to have created profiles and then simply disappeared. Were they cobbled together by bots and bored admins, or just user debris? Whatever the answer, the more I examined those 5.5 million female profiles, the more obvious it became that none of them had ever talked to men on the site, or even used the site at all after creating a profile. Actually, scratch that. As I’ll explain below, there’s a good chance that about 12,000 of the profiles out of millions belonged to actual, real women who were active users of Ashley Madison.
When you look at the evidence, it’s hard to deny that the overwhelming majority of men using Ashley Madison weren’t having affairs. They were paying for a fantasy.
A Lake Elsinore [CA] man was bitten by a rattlesnake Monday as he picked it up and attempted to take a selfie.
Alex Gomez, 36, spotted the four-foot rattler in a field by his family’s ranch on Cielito Drive, shortly before he made the potentially deadly mistake.
. . .
Alex’s nephew, Ronnie, was with him when the snake was discovered, and says the reptile gave plenty of warning.
“It was really think and had ten rattles on it, it was rattling,” Ronnie said. “It was pretty mad.”
. . .
While Gomez is being treated with anti-venom, his mother says he may lose his hand.
“His skin is already rotting away,” Deborah described.
. . .
Gomez’ mother, meanwhile, says sharing his “embarrassing” story is the best way to teach her son a lesson she thought he already knew.
“I told him the news people had been calling, and he said ‘Mom, you better not’, and I said ‘I’m going to’. I’m going to teach him a real good lesson when he gets home. No mercy for him.”
A Zimbabwean guide has been killed by a lion after escorting tourists on a walking safari in the country's Hwange National Park, where Cecil the lion lived before he was killed.
Quinn Swales, 40, from Harare, was savaged by what is believed to have been a male lion as he followed it on foot in the centre of the 14,000 square mile park.
Sources in the wildlife industry suggested the lion was called Naka and had been behaving aggressively towards humans and vehicles for some time. A professional hunter is believed to be seeking the lion to put him down.
. . .
Other guides in the area said Mr Swales would have been carrying a hunting rifle of at least .375 mm to protect his clients and himself.
An employee of Camp Hwange, who did not wish to be named, said they were still trying to establish what happened.
I believe that being a full time musician who plays live (and/or in the studio) is the greatest badge of honor a musician can bestow upon himself. Why? Because it's proof you can beat the odds. It shows you have no need for the “stability” of teaching music. See, we all think we need to be teachers because that is what MUSIC SCHOOLS tell us. They have a large stock in keeping interest in becoming a music teacher, for it keeps them employed, and the cycle continues. As of today, it's spiraled out of control. Our families all want us to be teachers because they figure it's the closest thing to a “real job” that a musician can have. It's a lot safer than playing in bars, touring, and all of those “lifestyle” things that many people think are part of a music career.
When the recession began in 2007/8, things got interesting. All of the music schools, even the most prestigious ones, lost a lot of revenue and interest from young musicians. They were (are) far too expensive. So, young players began checking out smaller, cheaper, less prestigious state colleges like the one I went to. Well, the A-league schools said “We can't have that!”, so they began slowly lowering their audition and testing standards while their tuition prices have continued to skyrocket, just like their skyrocketing endowments and assistance from state and federal governments. Today, they have more money coming in than ever, and lower audition standards than ever. They are now at their most expensive in history and are turning out the least talented and equipped musicians they ever have. And I am laughing my ASS off, because this whole thing is hilarious. They have literally dug their own grave, and they are a ticking bomb.
The music business itself has also changed drastically in the last 20 years. No one makes money selling records anymore, so everyone has to play live and stay out on the road more than they used to. The steady stream of studio work is gone, it's no longer a requirement to have good musicians on your recording. The computer can fix everything, and the digital world turns talentless hacks into international stars. The ProTools engineer is now at the top of the music business food chain. Every two-bit asshole with a macbook and garage band software can call himself an “artist” or “musician” or “songwriter” or “producer”. The DJ, the karaoke bar, and the football game on large plasma screens now stand where the live band once stood.
Is there still room for highly skilled musicians? Absolutely. There is great demand for a good live band in thousands of places all over the world. Artists need sidemen to play behind them for their concert dates, churches need musicians, people need a band for their wedding or Christmas party, and the list goes on and on. These types of gigs are the bread and butter for a musician's work throughout the year. Does music school teach you what you need to know to get these jobs? Absolutely not. I make a very good living at what I do, and I got 100% of my abilities from the street. I did have a few good teachers, yes, but even they aren't making what I make or playing as much as me. Are there musicians better than me? Faster? Richer? More able to raise a family? Of course there are. But none of them are turning down as much work as I am simply because they're always booked.
I have a very old colt 45 that I'd like to sale. It's from around 1881. It's non-working, but physically in good shape. Don't know what it's worth but I'm sure it could be fixed.
John Belles said he was prepared for the inevitability of a wildfire when he built his thin-shelled, concrete dome in 1999 surrounded by dry fields in Okanogan County.
Earlier this week, Belles just happened to be working 30 miles out of town when he received a voicemail from a friend warning him about a fire approaching his home, he told ABC News today.
After shuttling three vehicles off his property, Belles said he realized he had to hurry as the fire was only a couple hundred yards away.
. . .
“I grabbed the hose, soaked my clothing down and doused the north side of the building as much as I could. [The fire] got close enough that it was super heated and getting uncomfortable out there in the smoke. I went inside, shut the door behind me and watched it move by.”
Belles said he waited out the flames for about a minute as the fire passed by his home.
“The fire just roared across my property. I could see the flames dancing up over the windows,” Belles said.
The only damage sustained was a service pole, which resulted in a loss of power.
A few years ago a Chinese fisherman from Hainan Province caught something totally unique: a torpedo-like device that was about three feet long and metallic. He took pictures of the contraption and called the authorities, who swiftly came and took it away for examination. Now, the Chinese Government has confirmed it is an elaborate spying device.
China.org.cn reports that authorities know what this silver torpedo-like device was used for and disguised to look like:
It is now confirmed that the unmanned underwater machine, disguised to look like a torpedo, is an intelligence device capable of taking pictures with fiber-optic and satellite communication. It was secretly placed in the water by a foreign country to obtain information on the Chinese navy fleet’s operations at sea.
Experts worried that the acquired information may have been sent back and that there are many other similar devices that haven’t been detected in the water, which pose great hidden dangers to information security in the South China Sea.
[SWAT trots up walkway, stops dead at the door. They are hit with the smell of barbecue. SWAT #1 looks over at the other team members, thinks it over, waves everyone to lower their muzzles. SWAT #1 knocks on the door.]
[Jonathan "Gunny Mormon" LaForce answers, decked out in his tactical apron] Can I help you guys?
[SWAT #1] We had a report of a guy waving a gun around?
[JF rolls his eyes] I've been cooking all day. Gotta get the snack bar up and running. As for my gun ... [JF turns to one side, showing the cops his gun, securely on his hip, the holster strap still over it] Now, if you guys are done, I have to get back to my business. Ribs need cooking.
[SWAT #1 frowns] Mind if we join you for lunch? We were about to call in before we were told to roll out.
[JL chuckles] I guess. You know, I'm the son of an LAPD officer. The guy who walked me through my enlistment process was a former marine turned SWAT officer.
[Female voice from inside.] Honey, are you done yet? These canning jars won't fill themselves!
[JL smiles, the chuckle turns slightly evil] As for lunch, sure fellas, come on in.
[SWAT steps inside, making sure to wipe their feet. A blonde woman steps out of the kitchen and gives a broad grin to her guests.] Oh, Jonathan! You brought help. Everyone, into the kitchen! We have a hundred jars to fill before the ribs!
[SWAT looks at each other like they were suckered. They take a deep breath, smell the ribs, and they all trudge into the kitchen, willing to work for their lunch]
[JL chuckles] If this is what it's like, I should get SWATted more often.
There have been some amazing military innovations over the years: freeze-dried food for MREs, jet aircraft, rail guns, and the soul-sucking website, Army Knowledge Online. But none of these compare to the simplest, most wonderful invention known to mankind: the poncho liner, affectionately known by all those who have felt its life-giving warmth as the “woobie.” Ask any soldier or Marine, especially those in the infantry, how he feels about his woobie, and his eyes will light up and then mist over as he waxes lyrically over the virtues of this item. Hard-bitten combat veterans grow poetic and wistful, declaring their love for this piece of equipment. If you don’t believe me, read the Amazon reviews. It is perhaps the single most-loved item in the armed forces.
. . .
No matter what you call it, is it really like a security blanket?
The answer is a resounding, “Hell yes!” A mere glance at veterans’ internet forums show a myriad of uses for this simple item. It can be used as a blanket, pillow, shelter, hammock, camo hide for concealment, jacket liner, seat cushion, mattress — when you are sleeping on the ground, anything helps — and something soft to hold onto when you’re far away from home and everything’s going to … well, you know, the stuff that hits the fan. It is remarkably resilient to extreme heat and cold, dries quickly when wet, and most importantly, can be squished up into a tiny ball that takes up barely any room in your rucksack and adds virtually no weight. I am still convinced it is magical.
Veterans often hang on to their woobies well after they leave the military, preferring to claim it as a “field loss” and pay the charges rather than turn it in. One vet claimed his woobie had outlasted several marriages, which probably says more about the stresses of military life than it does for the woobie, although many claim that woobies go missing in divorces. Young men in the military claim that “girls love it and think the term woobie is cute,” and so it is often used to begin a romantic relationship. Kids love the woobie because it is light, soft, reminds them of their mom or dad, and can be used as a cape when running around pretending to be a superhero. Many woobies get passed on through generations of veterans, with some troops deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan with their dads’ woobies from Vietnam.
. . .
Simply put, it is the greatest thing to ever be issued by the U.S. military.
“I said the Hugos were dominated by cliques that cared more about an author’s identity and politics than the quality of their work,” Sad Puppies founder Larry Correia told Breitbart. “Tonight they proved me right.”
Toni Weisskopf pulled over 1,200 first-place ballots. That’s amazing. Consider that Lou Anders got 207 first-place ballots in 2011. So, Toni Weisskopf rocked the professional long-form category. Unfortunately, the Trufans and their politically-aligned allies decided that destroying the village was necessary to save the village. It was more important for the Trufans that people lose, and get nothing, than that the “wrong” people win. If that’s worth gloating over — you who gloat — look into yourselves and see the black, shriveled, grinchy hearts that beat.
... the Puppy campaigns are just another tendril of a shoggoth we’ve seen many times over. It surfaced in GamerGate and the SFWA Bulletin flap, it rampages across Fox News, and its glazed eyes peer back at us from the MRA, PUA, KKK, and Tea Party movements. It howls with the screech of every toddler ever forced to share his toys and speaks with the soft words of every sexual predator who has slipped something into a drink, of every employer who has seen an employee’s skirt as reason enough to deny them a promotion, and of every abuser who’s shed crocodile tears while promising never, ever to do it again… right before picking up another couple of six-packs. Their arguments are flimsy because they only exist as recognition signals and cheap disguises. The reality lies underneath, in their privileged sense of entitlement: This belongs to me, and you can’t have it because you’re not one of us.
I, for one, am very glad to see fandom standing fast upon this bridge, facing the Balrog with those immortal words that nobody here needs me to repeat.
No doubt George Martin, John Scalzi, David Gerrold, The Guardian, and the rest of the SJWs will try to portray this as a resounding defeat for us, but keep this in mind: the side that resorts to a scorched earth strategy is the one that is losing and in retreat. All they have accomplished is to convert many Sad Puppies into Rabid Puppies.
They have talked about sending us a message, and we have heard it. I don't know about you, but the message I heard was "bring more Puppies."
I have my disagreements with Beale [Vox Day], as in most of the things we think are diametrical opposites and I often disagree with everything he writes, including 'the' and 'a'.
Until today I viewed him as a mirror of the SJW posturing. I retract that and I give him full measure of applause. Yes, his views are still repulsive and he still makes my skin crawl as often as the Marxists do, but you know what? At least he has a brain and uses it. Those of you celebrating might want to take a deep breath and wonder — for just a minute — if you did anything more than what Theodore Beale wanted. Because from where I’m sitting, the man that set out to destroy the field and prove that everyone calling themselves its leadership were mannerless and brainless children not only won last night, he won walking away. He won without DOING anything. He won by convincing yourselves to hit yourselves repeatedly with the obvious hammers of partisanship, lack of care for quality and INTEREST in the health of the field. And before you died, you gloated you had won. The mind boggles.
Well done, Vox Day. My laughter is tinged with tears because I don’t know if the field I loved will ever recover from stupidity displayed in such an open manner. I think today I prove the Valentine Michael Smith adage that sometimes you laugh because it hurts too much to cry.
. . .
So while I am not upset at the results (except insofar as it proves a large number of my field is running the Marxist malware to such an extent that it will vote a slate to avoid an imaginary slate) I am upset at the display of infantility or senility or perhaps roboticity in my field yesterday (Though who would program robots that way?) No one watching that live stream — and there was a lot of it captured and it will be replayed — can imagine that those who proclaim themselves the “intellectuals” of our field have an IQ above room temperature. And certainly no one can imagine they have an emotional maturity above that of a toddler displaying to one and all the magnificence of the turd just deposited in the middle of the floor.
