Overnight Open Thread (3-14-2015)

Quote of the Day I

It's a gathering for saints and sinners, with the prayer breakfast inside and a street preacher and two convention attendees arguing about the King James Bible outside. But the convention's sights also include booth babes and women in tight gold dresses, and at night the attendees move on to the bars, where the wait-staff necklines are low, the shorts are short, and the cowgirl boots are high. Everyone dines on gobs of barbecued pork piled high on plates and washes it down with large sodas and hard whiskey. It's everything Michael Bloomberg, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and hardline feminists hold in contempt in one place.

In this sort of environment, the average hypersensitive college student would explode from insufficient trigger warnings. (Although in their defense, they are surrounded by literal triggers.)

-- Jim Geraghty describing the NRA convention in Nashville.

Quote of the Day II

Yet there's more to a really good-handling car than just making sure it doesn't belong to you. It has to be big. It's really hard for a girl to get her clothes off inside a small car, and this is one of the most important features of car handling. Also, what kind of drugs does it have in it? Most people like to drive on speed or cocaine with plenty of whiskey mixed in. This gives you the confidence you want and need for plowing through red lights and passing trucks on the right. But don't neglect downs and 'ludes and codeine cough syrup either. It's hard to beat the heavy depressants for high-speed spin-outs, backing into trees, and a general feeling of not giving two fucks about man and his universe.

Overall, though, it's the bigness of the car that counts the most. Because when something bad happens in a really big car - accidentally speeding through the middle of a gang of unruly young people who have been taunting you in a drive-in restaurant, for instance - it happens very far away - way out at the end of your fenders. It's like a civil war in Africa; you know, it doesn't really concern you too much. On the other hand, when something happens in a little bitty car it happens right in your face. You get all involved in it and have to give everything a lot of thought. Driving around in a little bitty car is like being one of those sensitive girls who writes poetry. Life is just too much to bear. You end up staying at home in your bedroom and thinking up sonnets that don't get published till you die, which will be real soon if you keep driving around in little bitty cars like that.

-- PJ O'Rourke in How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink, Republican Party Reptile, 1978

Moe Lane: No, Hillary Clinton Is Not the Democrats' Mitt Romney.

Romney may have been stiff but he also had actual skills and accomplishments. Hillary just has her last name and a uterus.

The very suggestion is absurd, if not actually insulting. I would trust Mitt Romney to run a business, salvage a situation, make money honestly, plan an event, rescue somebody from drowning, and grill a steak properly. Oh, and not lie to me. I wouldn't trust Hillary Clinton to be able to manage any of that.

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Hillary Clinton To Nation: 'Do Not Fuck This Up For Me'

Via The Onion:

"Listen up, assholes, 'cause I'm only saying this once: I've worked way too goddamn hard to let you morons blow this thing for me," said Clinton, repeatedly jabbing her index finger toward the viewers at home while adding that if they thought she was going to simply sit back and watch them dick her over like they did in 2008, they were out of their fucking minds. "Seriously, don't you dare even think about it. If you shitheads can just get in line, we can breeze through this whole campaign in 19 months and be done with it. Or, if you really want, we can do this the hard way. Because make no mistake, I'm not fucking around. Got it?" Clinton then ended her announcement by vowing to fight for a better future for all working-class families like the one she grew up in.

Former MA Governor Now Working For Most Evil Company Ever

As We Always Suspected: Denver TSA Screeners Manipulated System In Order To Grope Attractive Passengers

But I wasn't expecting the gay angle although in retrospect it seems obvious - protect the nation's air travelers and wear snazzy, tight-fitting uniforms while also getting to fondle hot men's junk.

Study: For STEM Tenure Track Positions Women Twice As Likely To Be Hired As Men

In the first "empirical study of sexism in faculty hiring using actual faculty members", Cornell University researchers found that when using identical qualifications, but changing the sex of the applicant, "women candidates are favored 2 to 1 over men for tenure-track positions in the science, technology, engineering and math fields."

There's a term for this: sex discrimination. And it's illegal and against everything that universities claim to stand for.

See also: The 'Bamboo Ceiling' Has Its Poster Child

When Fascism Comes to America, It Will Metastasize From the University

If I had my way, I'd cancel entirely the federally-subsidized/guaranteed student loan program and stop all federal funding to college and universities. It's not just that they're not teaching students anything useful outside of the hard sciences (and even there, as the climate change fiasco shows, science bows before politics). It's that America's college campuses are copying England's campuses, and becoming precisely as anti-semitic as Germany's universities were in the 1930s. Academics are always on the frontline of cultural destruction, aren't they?

Update: Zubeidat Tsarnaeva Is Still the Hateful, Nasty Bitch We All Know

"MY SONS ARE INNOCENT, AS INNOCENT AS ALL THOSE WHO ARE BEING KILLED BY YOUR COUNTRY," Zubeidat Tsarnaeva wrote, according to the website. "TODAY THEY ARE KILLING MUSLIMS, AND TOMORROW WILL COME YOUR TURN AND HE WHO DOUBTS THIS IS DEEPLY MISTAKEN!!!!!"
HOW CAN A MOTHER FEEL WHOSE SON IS IN THE CLAWS OF A PREDATOR PREPARING TO TEAR HIM TO PIECES LIKE MEAT???" she wrote. "THEY WILL PAY FOR MY SONS AND THE SONS OF ISLAM, PERMANENTLY!!! THE TEARS OF THEIR MOTHERS WILL BE FUEL FOR THEM IN HELL, AND ALSO THEIR BLOOD...

...THAT ISRAEL, THAT THE GOVERNMENT OF AMERICA, ARE IN EQUAL PROPORTIONS! (((((((((((( SO FOR WHAT DID MY RELATIVES AND LOVED ONES PAY A PRICE!;(;(;(;(;(

Just remember that the United States offered her and her family asylum from the violence in Chechnya and in return they all suckled from the welfare teat of this country while she taught her boys to despise and kill their neighbors.

See also: The Better Integrated Young Muslims Are, The Higher Their Risk of Radicalization

New 'Food Experts' Concern: Too Much Healthy Food

Hey their phony baloney jobs aren't going to protect themselves.

Le Shock: Nutritional Science Isn't Very Scientific

WIC recipients are now allowed to buy potatoes again after they were banned eight years ago for no real good reason other than that 'experts' didn't like them.

Should the government stop creating random purchasing restrictions for people who need help getting food on the table? One interesting bit of advice came in the many discussions following the IOM's recent reversal on cholesterol-cardiologist Steve Nissen suggested that any recommendations come with a side of brutal honesty. "We are all guessing," he said. "And we have to be more humble about telling people what we know and what we don't know."

Shooting Suspect Explains to Police that He Wants 'To Chill This Weekend,' And Will Turn Himself in Next Week

Update: He apparently got his chillin' all done early and turned himself in at 10:45pm on Sunday

Teh Tweet!

Tonight's post brought to you by not so much actually:

Notice: Posted by permission of NotWearingPants Inc. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maetenloch at gmail. I am a meat popsicle.

posted by Maetenloch at 11:09 PM

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