Friday, December 05, 2014

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.


(How'd I miss The Dirtbombs all these years? Thanks Sherri!)

•   MRA promoter The Ole Perfesser has steered his readers to this Andrew Klavan video explaining #GamerGate to older conservatives. Klavan gives viewers a little background: "For decades left-wingers have dominated the arts, using movies, television, novels, and critical articles (!!- Ed.) to sell idiot notions like 'America is oppressive,'  'capitalism is evil,' 'gender difference is bigotry,' and 'God is dead'..." The upshot is that wingnuts own gaming and from this cultural redoubt can counter the lies of "left-wing game journalists" with the help of "honest journalists such as Milo Yiannopoulos, of Breitbart.com" (Yeah I know but that's an actual quote) to promote conservative ideas such as Eat Me, Bitch. No mention at all of the appalling harassment visited upon uncooperative females by these knight-like dorks, but lots of tit jokes.  Klavan's approach hasn't changed much since this 2009 Democrats are Like Rapists video, but at least his references move with the times: He refers throughout to "Hashtag-Gamergate," and if the geezers in his audience can figure out what it means they should be stalking Anita Sarkeesian in no time.

•   Speaking of hashtags, thanks, Simon Maloy, for reminding me of this:


Now that gas prices are plummeting, looking at those old #250Gas tweets is fun -- and so is reading Megan McArdle's unusually brief, tight-lipped post on the drop; as you might expect from an acolyte of the oil-dependent Koch Brothers she sounds nervous about it: "Texas, North Dakota and other places in the U.S. will suffer as oil prices decline and some of the high-paid jobs in oil production go away," she writes. Well, that's capitalism, comrade; I wonder if those absurd boomtown prices North Dakota oil workers are paying for their apartments will go down in response. I'm guessing not, 'cause that's capitalism, too, these days. You can also read Joseph Curl at the Washington Times: "Cheap gas prices? Obama’ll fix that" -- 'cause he'll eventually kill the good times with regulations to fix the so-called "environment," just you wait. Sigh, some people are never satisfied.

•   You can always count on Jonah Goldberg:
Reasonable people can disagree on whether racism was involved in the tragic death of Eric Garner. My own suspicion is that this misfortune could have transpired just as easily with a white man resisting arrest and/or a black cop choking him... 
But you know what reasonable people can’t dispute? New York’s cigarette taxes are partly to blame for Eric Garner’s death.
Racism? In America? Meh, Jonah doesn't see it; when he goes "WHAT IT IS" to the black guy at the deli, he doesn't get any static, man. But that cigarette taxes killed Garner -- that's indisputable!
Everyone agrees: No one should die for selling bootleg cigarettes. But if you pass and enforce a law against such things, you increase the chances things might go wrong. That’s a fact, whether it sounds callous to delicate ears or not
Just like how stop signs cause rear-end collisions! Goldberg also compares taxing cigarettes to the drug war, though for some reason he doesn't cite thousands of other cigarette-tax-enforcement deaths, or any, that would support this analogy. Here's my favorite part of this mess:
When you pass a law, you authorize law enforcement to enforce it. That’s actually why they’re called 'law enforcement.' Google it.
This mind-blanking stupidity is wonderful enough, but the supercilious tone is just so Goldberg.

•   Goldberg's traditional reign as the permanent author of the stupidest thing ever written is being challenged by the Cato Institute's David Boaz:
The violent death of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia set off the Arab Spring. Could the killing of Eric Garner lead to a springtime of police reform – and regulatory reform -- in the United States? 
Bouazizi was a street vendor, selling fruits and vegetables from a cart...
Yes, Garner's problem was that he just wanted to run his little cig biz, just like Bouazizi, but the statists wouldn't let him, so he set himself on fire was choked to death by a white cop. Unlike Goldberg (who probably couldn't help himself) Boaz studiously ignores the subject of race:
Eric Garner's death has also set off protests, not just in New York but in Boston, Chicago, Washington, and other places. Many protesters held signs reading "I can't breathe" and "This stops now." They should add "I'm minding my business. Just leave me alone."
Maybe Boaz should make this plea directly to the protesters: "You people are diluting the free-market message of Garner! Here's a script, I'll be at this steakhouse over here." I imagine years hence, after the neo-feudal conversion of America is complete, conservatives will toast Eric Garner's role in normalizing the no-benefits workplace.

78 comments:

  1. "so tell me again about the hashtags."

    "alright so whatchu wanna know?"

    "harassment is legal on twitter right?"

    "well, it's legal but it ain't a hunnert percent legal. i mean, you can't just start a twitter account, pick out some bitch journalist, and start harassin' away. they want you to do it on 4chan or certain designated places."

    "and those are hashtags?"

    "breaks down like this, okay: it's legal to question ethics in gaming journalism, it's legal to link to it, and if you're the proprietor of a twitter account, it's legal to retweet it. now, it's illegal to tell people to rape a journalist, but that doesn't really matter, cause, get a load of this, all right, if you get your twitter account suspended for harassment, you get it back after a while, i mean, look at chuck johnson. that's a right the p.c.-cops on twitter don't have."



    "oh man i'm startin' a twitter account. that's all there is to it."


    "i know baby, you'd dig it the most."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Halloween_Jack10:17 AM

    Didn't even bother putting on my headphones for this one; you've got an aging hack writer* (put your fedora away, Roger Simon, this is a different hack whose salad days are well behind them) wearing the sort of pinup-bedecked shirt formerly favored by ESA representatives until someone gave them a clue, repurposed for sticking it to The Woman (not in the literal sense, although I have no doubt that his hope springs eternal), desperately trying to convince the Yoof uv 2day that he's totally down with them. I did listen very briefly, clicking ahead to about halfway through the thing... to hear Klavan making a joke about Lara Croft's big boobs. (Please note that the redesign of the character has been out for years at this point.) Poe's Law has never been more strictly enforced.

    * In the interest of (undeserved) fairness, I should note that, unlike Simon, Klavan did win a few Edgar Awards, back in the eighties and early nineties; interestingly, he did so under pen names, including--dig it!--"Margaret Tracy."

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  3. DarkAvengRacist10:25 AM

    God Bless Sir Charles Barkley. He gets it, grew up around it and is spot on. Sir Charles, your damn right, Justice was SERVED.

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  4. DarkAvengRacist10:26 AM

    Hey Tiny,

    You and quad B finger banging each other? You just wrote all that shite? Get a life loser

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  5. DarkAvengRacist10:28 AM

    I almost forgot. God BLESS the NYPD- one additional thug off the streets of NYC. Bravo boys BRAVO

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  6. One of the many amusements #DiaperGate provides is watching the groups that are trying to recruit, or at least scam, the imagined hordes of Angry Young Men.



    I predict that in the near future, the majority of people screaming about the Journals of Ethical Gametes will be various old farts who are trying to herd The Youth into this or that fold.

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  7. gocart mozart10:34 AM

    I believe this may have been an actual conversation.

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  8. zencomix10:35 AM

    "And get this... in France, them call them Le Hashtags."

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  9. Smurch10:35 AM

    At which point I predict they will need a new name to up sell the brand. I would suggest the Protocols of Ethical Gametes.

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  10. So, just to confirm: Thanks to Obama's massive deficits, real inflation is out of control, putting us on the path to Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, historical prices for gasoline must always be given in nominal dollars. All righty, then.

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  11. "Texas, North Dakota and other places in the U.S. will suffer as oil
    prices decline and some of the high-paid jobs in oil production go
    away."

    You see, it is good to ship factory jobs overseas because that drives prices down and allows McGargles to replace her calculators, which she does frequently because they're prone to gastritis and have to be put down.

    Also, we totally have to outsource any other job we can (except writing dimwitted columns that might be about the economy or society but are mostly about about the trials of being a privileged dunderhead in a world that doesn't recognize your specialness) because the free market demands we let people in developing nations earn 1/80th of what an American worker would earn for the same job, because it is better than nothing.

    But. We have to keep gas prices high to protect the jobs of oil workers in the U.S.

    There's really nothing more to say to this brilliant insight except that as a liberal, I really hope the GOP doesn't make "Protect U.S. Jobs. Keep Gas Prices High!" a new plank in its scaffold. I mean platform. As a liberal, that sure would me off.

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  12. Frank Pastywhite10:46 AM

    Sigh. Seems both sides do this.

    Smh.

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  13. But. We have to keep gas prices high to protect the jobs of oil workers in the U.S.I just realized that Obama must have had his Muslim buddies in OPEC keep production high in order to make Keystone XL financially unattractive, thereby stealing millions of jobs from hard-working Americans. Dots ... connected.

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  14. I'm not surprised that it's only taken a week of falling crude prices before the champions of capitalism began lamenting the supply-and-demand nature of the mighty marketplace. It is, after all, EXACTLY what they've screeching at us for the last 12 years: Let us drill, baby, drill our way to lower energy prices! Get those pesky regulations outta the way and we'll frack you up all kina gas!

    We'll here ya go! Gas prices are dropping. And it's a fucking catastrophe 'cause oil-rig workers might have the market for their labor slow down. (Oh, and it also might make that Black person illegally occupying the White House look not so bad.)

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  15. GeniusLemur10:50 AM

    I hope they do. I think even diehards might balk at "keep gas prices high!"

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  16. Frank Pastywhite10:52 AM

    Chris Christie didn't shut down a bridge and he's Satan. The left has been shutting down roads/bridges for 10 days and they're heroes

    #logic

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  17. GeniusLemur10:53 AM

    Were gas prices that low on Obama's first day? I would have thought I'd have noticed $2 a gallon gas, but I didn't. Did I miss something?

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  18. it's the dismal science, baby!

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  19. Frank Pastywhite10:55 AM

    @DanRiehl:

    Black cop pepper sprays idiot white liberal down with the cause.

    God I love America!

    http://t.co/Y2RCDWVQa7

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  20. FrankWearsThongs10:55 AM

    God Bless Sir Charles. He gets it. All you libtards are fookin morons.

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  21. FrankWearsThongs10:55 AM

    These assholes are sooooo fookin stupid

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  22. FrankWearsThongs10:57 AM

    Pretty funny, right. I challenge one of these arseholes to stand in front of my car. Next thing they will know, emergency room. God Bless NYPD

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  23. FrankWearsThongs10:58 AM

    Hey Fook Tards,

    What's the deal with Al "47" Sharpton? 500k in back taxes and he isn't in jail? Instead he is inciting riots? You people are really fookin stupid

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  24. Tehanu10:59 AM

    I think you mean "the cheap gasoline that we are totally entitled to no matter how many brown people have to be beaten down to get it" -- no?

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  25. We just need to wale the tar-sands out of them!

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  26. FrankWearsThongs11:05 AM

    Justice was Served. 47's for life. Nugent style. Killing and grilling baby

    ReplyDelete
  27. Frank Pastywhite11:05 AM

    @EWErickson:

    Remember in 2012 how so many TV political analysts spoke of the GOP as a “regional party”? Good times.

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  28. susanoftexas11:06 AM

    McArdle:

    Meanwhile, lower oil prices could be better for the world economy for the same reasons that it’s good for U.S. GDP growth: Cheaper energy makes it easier to make more stuff. If the decline boosts world growth, prices will start creeping back up.

    McArdle is still pretending that manufacturing isn't dependent on demand because everyone who's rilly smart says so.

    Worldwide, lower energy prices are good for most countries -- but they are bad for many places, including some very unstable regimes. Russia will be badly hurt if this continues; so will Iran and Iraq. Venezuela is already dancing on the brink of disaster, and its production capability has been seriously degraded by Chavismo. Cheap oil seems likely to tip the country over into the abyss. I’m not very excited at the prospect of seeing how the others cope with the inevitable economic and political problems, either.
    This half-ass speculation is brought to your by her sponsers. Please thank the Koch brothers for training and supporting the author.

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  29. Ignoring Halloween Jack's very sound advice, I sat through that whole Klavan piece. And did some transcription. I don't really feel like giving a whole spiel right now, so here are the choicer bits for your reading enjoyment.

    Video games were being continually attacked in the media as violent and misogynistic. Games that didn't tow the left-wing line were getting low ratings in important trade venues that were really mouthpieces for left-wing publishers like Vox Media and Gawker Media.

    A brave band of nerds calling themselves #gamergate has taken to social media and the press to denounce the onslaught of squid-like leftists and even more squid-like feminists...

    Oh, and I'll leave this here. That's yours truly, leftist foe of video games, on the right side of this scan from Nintendo Power. Clearly, I need someone knowledgeable like Andrew Klavan or Christina Hoff Sommers to give me the real dope.

    https://kingdomofsharks.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/np.jpg

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  30. Tehanu11:09 AM

    I suppose there's no point telling the troll that "Bigoted, stupid, and loudmouthed is no way to go through life, son."

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  31. FrankWearsThongs11:11 AM

    It's just a fact jerk off. The news continues to get worse for you moron libtards. Justice baby JUSTICE.

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  32. FrankWearsThongs11:12 AM

    Hey Roy- FOOK off

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  33. Poor Jenny has been looking for a home since he was flipped out of the Garden of LGM like a burned pancake.

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  34. Frank Pastywhite11:21 AM

    BREAKING: Unemployment falls to the level Obama said it would be 5 years ago.

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  35. If you don't pay $8.00/gal gas the terrorists will win!

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  36. Ellis_Weiner11:30 AM

    "For decades left-wingers have dominated the arts, using movies, television, novels, and critical articles (!!- Ed.)
    to sell idiot notions like 'America is oppressive,' 'capitalism is
    evil,' 'gender difference is bigotry,' and 'God is dead'..."



    I defy Klavan to produce one single video clip, text extract from a popular or even esoteric piece of lit, one painting, dance performance, or anything, that asserts these things. I realize there's big--well, some--money to be made in creating straw men like the people working on the Scarecrow in Oz, but don't they have to resemble actual men A LITTLE? (Klavan: Remember the "God is Dead" Time magazine cover? It's been around for decades!)

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  37. Ellis_Weiner11:36 AM

    Avg. price, 2009, between 2.31 and 2.46:

    http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_a.htm

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  38. gocart mozart11:37 AM

    Because of the metric system right?

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  39. gocart mozart11:39 AM

    So they are almost not lying then. Progress I suppose.

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  40. gocart mozart11:40 AM

    Economic crashes tend to lower prices.

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  41. Ugg. TOE the line. You'd think someone who does nothing but spout right-wing approved phonemes would get a simple idiom right.

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  42. zencomix11:42 AM

    Yeah, That's why it's called a hashtag instead of a pound symbol.

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  43. No, that's my bad. Sorry, I'll fix that.

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  44. This is just part of the problem. For conservatives, a "liberal" by definition must not simply oppose what conservatives are for--a liberal's believe on any issue must be fully the opposite of a conservative's.

    Conservatives love America. Thus, liberals MUST hate America.
    Conservatives believe in small government. Thus, liberals MUST believe in making government bigger for its own sake.
    Conservatives believe in old-tymey morals. Thus, liberals MUST believe that everyone, everywhere should be having sex always and with everyone.br>
    This is the reasoning of a small child. But it's what passes for deep thought among top conservatives.

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  45. Video games were being continually attacked in the media as violent and misogynistic. Games that didn't tow the left-wing line were getting low ratings

    Hmmm....This would no doubt explain all the right-wing screeching over GTA and other games. I'm confused.

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  46. sharculese11:57 AM

    Exhibit #89324897349734 of it's always projection. Wingnuts assume we work that way because they absolutely do work that way.

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  47. Look, it's right here in the Alinsky playbook on page 147: The only way to keep gas prices high is by flooding the market to drive prices down. It is written: The American populace will only harken to the call for revolution during times of peace, plenty, and prosperity!

    And that's why Republicans work so hard to make sure America is never troubled by any of those things.

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  48. whetstone12:06 PM

    You were in Nintendo Power? Dude that's awesome.

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  49. But you know what reasonable people can’t dispute? New York’s cigarette taxes are partly to blame for Eric Garner’s death.

    You know what else reasonable people can't dispute? That the existence of tobacco is partly to blame for Eric Garner's death. If the Mesoamericans had never cultivated the plant, then the Europeans never would have traded it, there'd be no Big Tobacco, no backlash to the health hazards and sleazy marketing of Big Tobacco, and Eric Garner couldn't have sold cigarettes in the first place. So really, it's all on the Mexicans.

    Hey, this stuff is easy. When do I get a book deal?

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  50. I am touched by their sudden concern for the right of poor people to buy cigarettes.

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  51. John Wesley Hardin12:18 PM

    That Dirtbombs song is tha shit, as the kids used to say. Good stuff. Thanks Roy and Sherri!

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  52. sharculese12:20 PM

    In the breviary of bullshit the White Hood of the Traveling Pantload employs to avoid having to engage topics he suspects it's his job to address but really just doesn't want to I rank 'reasonable people can disagree' above 'I haven't been following the issue (which kind of gives the game away), but below 'I have a deadline to meet.'

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  53. whetstone12:23 PM

    Look, if they want to contend that freedom fighters are the guys that play GTA all day and sell loosies, I'm happy to be their Ayn Rand.

    Pre-order now for my thousand-page novel, Atlas Got Up at Noon and Went to Taco Bell, with its 10,000 word monologue about how John Galt didn't ask to be born to you two fascists, mom and dad, your demands that I take out the trash to live in the garage are imposing on my freedom.

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  54. federalist IX, "the colonief fhall have unvettered acceff to loofief"

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  55. Russia will be badly hurt if this continues; so will Iran and Iraq.

    If you count Iraq = ISIS, that's a three-part win for the good guys, at least from the Right's point of view. Why are we fretting about this, then?

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  56. mgmonklewis12:34 PM

    Bonus points for correctly using "hunnert."

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  57. susanoftexas12:35 PM

    Because geopolitical farfenuff that will embiggle the output capacity of the wiggledy because socialist.

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  58. I'm still recalling how Michelle Bachmann told us that if we re-elected The Dusky Kenyan Usurper we'd be paying $5 a gallon, if not more.

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  59. John Wesley Hardin12:37 PM

    I would like to spend the morning picking up itty-bitty little pieces of skull out of the back seat with this comment.

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  60. When you pass a law, you authorize law enforcement to enforce it. That’s
    actually why they’re called 'law enforcement.'

    Farted the author of Librral Fascism, a book about how all the liberals were passing laws that were stiffling our freedoms and would trample us with their authoritarian jackboots if we didn't watch out.

    Speaking of which: Hey Jonah, how did you do the research for your book?

    Google it.

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  61. But you know what reasonable people can’t dispute? New York’s cigarette taxes are partly to blame for Eric Garner’s death.

    Man, the right-wing hive ass has really settled on a bizarre talking point to poop out.

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  62. I look at the falling gas prices with a jaundiced eye- I can't help but feel that the oil companies want to keep us hooked on the shit.

    Can't have people switching to more efficient vehicles or driving less, gotta lower the prices! Fuckers are nothing more than pushers.

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  63. Another Kiwi12:42 PM

    Next Joberg column will be about the right to put oil into cigarettes.

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  64. The wargleblargling paint-huffing shitgoblins of #gamergate have realized that, since they are unable to tell the !!**TRUE STORY**!! of their war for freedom on the liberal SJW-hell known as Wikipedia, they must therefore write their own history in a book.

    And it's going to be as incredibly awful as it sounds.

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  65. Personally, I love how they ignore how gas went from $1.50 to $4 under bush, and how cheney and the rest of the oil men in that administration were actively rooting for higher had prices.


    Wtf are these teabaggers smoking, anyways? Why would an oil man want lower prices on oil?

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  66. Pignut oil, made from Dudley Pignuts WHICH I OWN.

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  67. Jay B.12:44 PM

    Good christ, the cigarette tax thing -- it's in the Borg. I had a twitter exchange with C.W. Cooke yesterday after following that link equating the drug war (and immigration -- ?!) with the blood on cigarette taxes hands. It was, naturally, baffling -- but why do they all choose this argument? Cigarettes, unlike heroin, cocaine or gin in the '20s, are all still legal and widely available. That people sell singles is, to my mind, completely gray market innocence that NO ONE would bust except racist cops looking to hassle someone -- but the tax alone has not only raised a fair amount of money, but also probably dissuaded many more people from, you know, dying of lung cancer. I'm not huge on sin taxes, but that of course isn't the issue, at all.


    Obtuse assholes, the lot of them.

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  68. But he wasn't in the centerfold, so foo!

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  69. Yeah, right? They have been blaming video games for school shootings for years, because they don't want to blame our insane lack of gun laws.

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  70. they want you to do it on 4chan or certain designated places

    Actually 4chan kicked them off (because they were too extreme!) and now they have to resort to 8chan, but don't tell anhyone about 8chan because it's a SEEEKRIT.

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  71. mgmonklewis12:48 PM

    Jonah, how do you do the research for your books?

    Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence.

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  72. I guess we're coming down to the home stretch for conservative philosophy: Cigarette taxes caused Garner's death. And, indeed, every law on the book leads to law enforcement enforcing the law. Therefore, we should simply eliminate ALL laws!

    The Nobel chemistry-set committee can send Jonah his Peace Prize via carrier pigeon dropping.

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  73. Another Kiwi12:48 PM

    This is transcribed from McGargle's course notes.

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  74. And she comes from an intellectually intimidating family, don't you know!

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  75. let's see here...

    the colonieƒ shall have unfettered acceƒƒ to looƒieƒ

    Fixxord!

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  76. Assumes facts never in evidence.

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  77. Another Kiwi12:51 PM

    Science sir? The righties have no need for science! It's all gut feelings and intuition, but not girly intuition which is eeew.

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  78. There's no evidence for it, of course, but those are the facts.

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