I loved this tweet:

https://twitter.com/sarahmcgbeauty/status/973752973011701760

@sarahmcgbeauty
A drag queen dressed as Elsa just single-handedly freed a stuck police wagon from a blizzard in the middle of March. If that sentence doesn't perfectly encapsulate the spirit of Boston, I don't know what does.

Video credit: Christopher Haynes

https://imgur.com/gallery/uthdZ

So Trump took the moment of greatest political ferment in our generations and squandered it on cheeseburgers, mundane office squabbles, and Twitter idiocies.

We won't get these opportunities back. Conservatism as a political posture is over.

"Winning!"

> "Winning!"

It's not that simple. The Republican field in these special elections, and in the upcoming election is lackluster.

See e.g.

The GOP is full of Morons -

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/pennsylvania-special-election-rick-saccone-trump-supporters

"Lamb, on the other hand, “is the perfect candidate for that seat,” said Jack Posobiec, a fellow MAGA-ite and Pennsylvania native, describing Lamb as a “Pro-Trump Dem veteran.” The fact that he’s come out in support of Trump’s steel tariffs, which are popular in the manufacturing-heavy district; that he’s publicly called on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to step down; and that he’s not seen as a cog in the wider Democratic operation has only helped him in the swing district"

Heck, I'd seriously consider voting for a 33 year old straight white male that was pro steel tariffs, doesn't want any further gun restrictions, and is anti-Pelosi.

Compare that with Saccone -

"Aside from his lack of charisma, which even the president has privately noted, the Pennsylvania operative told me that Saccone had been backed by the state’s machine politics, propelling him past two candidates preferred by the national party, potentially at the expense of repelling Trump’s hardcore base. The fact that Saccone reportedly made no effort to reach out to these voters, either by running a get-out-the-vote operation or even by attempting to dress the part, didn’t help either"

Unfortunately, this is typical of the GOP. Most of the field for the upcoming election is lackluster, and if they support Trump, it is only tepidly. As I've said many times, it will be a bloodbath for the GOP.

If we could clone a bunch of Trumps and run them instead, I think the GOP would handily win.

> It's not that simple.

Such a surprise to hear it from a self-described "racist" who's been dropping pellet-like 'comments' of four words, or "Winning!," or "Ugg!" for the last two years.

Nuance, you say? Complexity?

Perish the thought... Just pay off your mistress and move forward.

"Such a surprise to hear it from a self-described "racist" who's been dropping pellet-like 'comments' of four words, or "Winning!," or "Ugg!" for the last two years. Nuance, you say? Complexity?"

Much better that he should simply link to someone else's tweet.

"Just pay off your mistress and move forward"

Anyone unsure of how Presidential mistress-management works please reference Wilson, Garfield, Harding, F.D. Roosevelt, Eisenhower, L.B. Johnson, George H.W. Bush, Cleveland, Washington, Buchanan, Clinton, Kennedy ...

Just make sure you're talking about affairs that happened while the President was actually the President.

Spiders are cute, yo.

Specially when they're as big as a plate

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

One COULD say they're comparing apples and oranges, given the locations of the individual shootings - but can you blame the Philly teens for speaking up?

"Philly teens to Florida teens: Would you have stood in solidarity with us?"

http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/helen_ubinas/parkway-center-city-high-mass-shootings-parkland-florida-marjory-stoneman-gun-violence-20180313.html

By Helen Ubiñas

First paragraphs:

Zamir Brown made his way to the front of the school auditorium at the gentle urging of his teacher and classmate Dena Hill. “You got this,” Hill encouraged from the front row.

The students, mostly freshmen from Maureen Boland’s English classes at Philadelphia’s Parkway Center City Middle College, were taking turns reading their papers about the National School Walkout. On Wednesday, students from across the country will protest mass shootings like the Parkland, Fla., tragedy.

Of course the Philly teens were supportive of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students who were devastated when a shooter walked into their school on Valentine’s Day and killed 17 of their classmates and teachers. How could they not be?

The pain was more than familiar to them, as was the loss. Not one student who spoke inside the school at 13th and Brandywine had been spared the impact of gun violence. One by one they talked of friends whose funerals were reminders of how growing old can never be taken for granted in some of the city’s neighborhoods, of fathers gunned down before their kids even learned how to say the word Dad. “My whole life I been afraid of the world around me,” wrote Simone Akridge, 15.

So they, better than most, knew how the Florida students felt.

It’s the attention the Florida students have gotten that felt unfamiliar and unjust when so little attention is paid to the gun violence that touches so many children in cities like Philadelphia...

(snip)

If that sentence doesn't perfectly encapsulate the spirit of Boston, I don't know what does.

A toast given by John Collins Bossidy at the Holy Cross alumni dinner in 1910:

And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod.
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.

describing Lamb as a “Pro-Trump Dem veteran.”

I have 100 quatloos that says that Lamb "grows in office" and "develops nuance" once Darth Pelosi get her tender hooks into him.

Indeed.

I wish Friederike luck with her efforts to green her profession, but I don’t see evidence of a widespread effort to stop the proliferation of large climate conferences in luxury holiday resorts which seems to be such an essential part of making the world more carbon friendly.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/11/climate-modeller-embarrassed-by-her-air-travel/

Now do cars!

https://www.lifezette.com/momzette/shoes-for-the-dead-litter-capitol-hill-thanks-global-advocacy-organization/

It’s the attention the Florida students have gotten that felt unfamiliar and unjust when so little attention is paid to the gun violence that touches so many children in cities like Philadelphia...

Because, when push comes to shove, you're the expendables. The same reason why Black Lives Matter focuses so intently on police involved shootings.

Oh, and you're not likely to talk smack about the NRA, and gun owners. Oh, and the guns? pretty much standard run of the mill handguns, not evil black rifles. One more thing: illegal guns obtained illegally by people who are for the most part prohibited from lawfully purchasing a firearm.

Physician, heal thyself.

The report, compiled by the BBC, claims that some women were so fearful of being raped or sexually abused by aid workers that they refused to enter U.N. distribution centers and went without food, shelter, and necessary supplies. Others refused to accept aid from the U.N. because they feared those around them, who had heard the rumors about sexual exploitation, would think they had offered their bodies to U.N. workers for cloth or construction materials.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/28196/report-un-aid-workers-preyed-female-syrian-emily-zanotti

Ashe Schow talks about why the Parkland kids get more media attention than those from Philly or Chicago.

Basically, the left had money and infrastructure ready to go for an all-out assault on guns and the NRA, they just needed the right moment — the right victims.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/13/the-right-needs-to-learn-from-the-astroturfing-of-the-parkland-victims/

"The Blood Unicorn Theranos Was Just a Fairy Tale:
Founder Elizabeth Holmes spun a beautiful fantasy for investors, not so much for patients."

by Matt Levine

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-14/theranos-misled-investors-and-consumers-who-used-its-blood-test

Excerpt:

"...But the fact that Theranos WAS A GIGANTIC FRAUD doesn't QUITE mean that it COMMITTED FRAUD. It isn't exactly fraud to go around lying to journalists. 2 People do it all the time! If you decide that you want to be a celebrity, and that the easiest path to fame is by convincing people that you've found a magical new blood test, you can lie about that to your heart's content, and if you fool people then that's their problem, not yours. Undeserved celebrity is a central fact of American life; if it was illegal to lie your way to fame then our politics, for one thing, would be very different..."

Oh, and Darth, from what I've heard, it doesn't count as a "mass school shooting" unless there are four victims or more. And, of course, it has to be at a school. So that's why I mentioned the apples and oranges metaphor. (Also, IIRC, when it IS a mass school shooting, the killers tend to be white. Whether they tend to target specific victims at the school is another matter, but I don't think they do.)

...from what I've heard, it doesn't count as a "mass school shooting" unless there are four victims or more. ~ lenona at March 14, 2018 1:21 PM

Australia uses a different definition. To wit (from Wikipedia): "After the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Australia, the government changed gun laws in Australia. As in the United States, figures vary according to the definition of 'mass shooting' - a 2006 paper used a definition 'one in which ⩾5 firearm‐related homicides are committed by one or two perpetrators in proximate events in a civilian setting, not counting any perpetrators,' compared to the usual U.S. definition of an indiscriminate rampage in public places resulting in four or more victims killed."

Australia has had four significant shooting events since the 1996 law. None that met the ⩾5 standard, however, so no "mass shootings."

• the Monash University shooting in 2002 in which Huan Yun Xiang shot and killed two and injured five (2 dead)
  
• the Hectorville Siege in 2011 where 39-year-old man Donato Anthony Corbo shot four people on a neighbouring property (three of whom died), and also wounded two police officers, before being arrested by Special Operations police after an eight-hour siege (3 dead)
  
• the Logan family shooting in 2014 of a neighbour family (Greg Holmes, 48, his mother Mary Lockhart, 75, and her husband Peter Lockhart, 78) by Ian Francis Jamieson (3 dead)
  
• the Hunt family murders which was also in 2014 when a farmer shot dead 4 family members then later killed himself (5 dead, including perpetrator)

See, how that works. You define mass shootings as whatever proves your argument.

That list only has shootings on it, not mass murders. And Australia has had a few of those.

• Lin killings - 18-Jul 2009 - hammer - 5 dead
  
• Quaker Hill Nursing Home - 18-Nov 2011 - arson - 11 dead
  
• Cairns child killings - 19-Dec 2014 - knife - 8 dead

Finally, let's look at how population size skews the comparison. Using the two lists, Australia has had arguably 3 mass killings between 2011 and 2016 (using the US definition of 4 or more dead). One source reports the US had 29 mass killings during that period. Australia has 23 million people. That's 1 mass killing per 7.7 million people. If the US had that rate of mass killing, we'd have had 42 mass killings, not 29. Using that statistic, Australia is actually more violent than the US.

And it didn't stop there. In January 2017, a car attack at Melbourne's Bourke Street Mall killed 16 people. The US, of course, had the Vegas shooting in 2017 (58) and the Parkland shooting in 2018 (17).

Bad week for dogs at United -

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/united-airlines-dog-japan-missouri_us_5aa949dee4b0004c04067a57

Those Mormons are at it again!

Police: Religious beliefs caused teen to stab multiple people

http://www.wpbf.com/article/police-religious-beliefs-caused-teen-to-stab-multiple-people/19421536

"empirical evidence for a fitness advantage over generations by reducing the number of children and investing more in fewer children is minimal or absent. Evidence suggests that on the one hand, low fertility increases the progenies’ socioeconomic position, but on the other hand, it reduces long-term fitness"

https://books.google.com/books?id=TyJLDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA482&lpg=PA482&d#v=onepage&q&f=false

"...homogamy along certain characteristics has consequences as well. Particularly educational homogamy may be an undervalued risk factor, resulting in less permeability of social stratification and hence a stronger segregation of the social strata. This has negative consequences for “social cohesion,” increasing the tensions within a society."

https://books.google.com/books?id=ZhBQDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT580&lpg=PT580&d#v=onepage&q&f=false

"In times of global mass migrations, the high prevalence of religious homogamy, together with its reproductive effects, may also have far-reaching implications because it may lead to the breakup of societies into “parallel societies,”"

https://books.google.com/books?id=wBBQDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA485&lpg=PA485&d#v=onepage&q&f=false

> I have 100 quatloos that says that Lamb "grows in
> office" and "develops nuance" once Darth Pelosi
> get her tender hooks into him.

Probably true :(

http://www.wpbf.com/article/babysitter-forced-4-year-old-boy-to-perform-sex-acts-on-her-police-say/12035975

At least they are arresting the women now instead of the children they molest

"Oh, and Darth, from what I've heard, it doesn't count as a 'mass school shooting' unless there are four victims or more. And, of course, it has to be at a school. "

It depends entirely on who's counting, and you need to read the fine print. The "18 school shootings so far this year" stat that even the Washington Post felt compelled to debunk included, among other things, a suicide in a car parked in front of a closed school, at night. It's like the people who point out that "infant mortality in the U.S. is the highest in the Western world": that's entirely because Europe fudges the definition of "infant". Those who die within 24 hours after birth are counted as "stillborn".