Friday Wide Open Comments
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59 responses to “Friday Wide Open Comments”
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Heh.
American substitute teacher who sought to help ISIS ‘doesn’t really see a difference’ between terrorists and Texans
Such has been the case for 34-year-old Warren Christopher Clark, a Texan who once worked as a substitute teacher, but was recently captured by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria, where Clark claims he offered to work for the Islamic State as an English teacher. Clark, who remains in Kurdish custody, has been open about his decision to leave the United States and seek out the Islamic State, offhandedly comparing it to living in Texas.
“I wanted to go see exactly what the group was about, and what they were doing,” he said. “Of course I saw the videos. I think with the beheadings, that’s execution. I’m from the United States, from Texas. They like to execute people, too. So I really don’t see any difference. They might do it off camera, but it’s the same.”
According to Clark, the FBI has been in contact with him since his capture by Syrian Democratic Forces, but he does not know whether or not he’ll be extradited. According to the former substitute teacher, he never fought for ISIS, though he did have a number of interactions with them. He claims to have been detained by ISIS nearly a dozen times over his refusal to “take up arms,” though he went on to claim that he suffered no abuse at their hands. He did, by his own admission, offer to help the group by teaching them English.
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Two Army Green Berets are fighting for their military careers after being associated with an anonymous email that accused their commanders of lowering standards to enable more soldiers — particularly female — to graduate from its prestigious Q-course.
The anonymous email, signed, “A concerned Green Beret,” accused the leaders of the school of “moral cowardice” for lowering the standards, and weakening instructors’ ability to discipline students as they look to get further through the pipeline.
“[The school] has devolved into a cesspool of toxic, exploitive, biased and self-serving senior officers who are bolstered by submissive, sycophantic, and just-as-culpable enlisted leaders,” the email said. “They have doggedly succeeded in two things; furthering their careers, and ensuring that Special Forces [are] more prolific but dangerously less capable than ever before.”
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John Bogle was living proof one person can make a huge difference in this world to make it a better place. He invented the first index mutual fund and changed how Americans invested and risked their money.
Warren Buffett paid tribute to fellow investing legend Jack Bogle, who died Wednesday at the age of 89.
“Jack did more for American investors as a whole than any individual I’ve known,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick. “A lot of Wall Street is devoted to charging a lot for nothing. He charged nothing to accomplish a huge amount.”
Bogle helped bring investing to the masses through his creation of the index fund and founding of the no-nonsense, low-fee investing firm Vanguard Group. He preached a philosophy of steady investing and avoidance of market timing.
Bogle’s first index fund went belly up straight away. But he didn’t give up on his idea to teach people rational, long term investing without throwing away tons of money on managers and brokers.
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I hate to break it to you guys and I know you will be heartbroken, but…
After nearly four decades at NBC covering some of the biggest national and international sporting events, sportscaster Bob Costas, 66, has officially left the network.
“It’s all settled quietly and happily for all concerned,” Costas told The New York Post.
NBC representatives confirmed to multiple media outlets that Costas was no longer working there, even though his multimillion-dollar contract was set to run through 2021, according to Sports Illustrated. The parting settlement was not disclosed and was reportedly made late last year. Costas started at NBC back in 1979.
Over $2.6 million a year over 38 years.
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Morning gang. I haven’t sorted out the weather forecast yet this morning, but right now it’s not cold out there. Trump knows that the House, under Peolousi, is out to impeach him regardless, so what has he got to lose by fighting back. The only thing he has in his favor is the same as ever – the people having his back. The eReps in Congress are quivering in their boots and wetting their pants, the Dems are on the warpath fueled by insanity and swamp fever, and we’re all he’s got. And I think he reads us well. Cancelling some of these junkets is not a bad idea either – congressional junket, administration trip to Davos – scrap them all. They are all wastes of time and money and allow the privileged elites to live high on the hog on our money. Go Trump go. Keep turning up the heat. I’m looking forward to the SOTU in a big football stadium somewhere here in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, you all have a great day.
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Yup, it’s Friday! I’m at work, I didn’t think I’d make it to Friday.
Mornin’ Gang -
#3 Texpat, I was going to post his OBIT yesterday, but didn’t have time. One thing is for sure, my 401K and IRA’s are looking pretty good thanks to his genius. I’ve had Vanguard Mutual Funds for 40 years and when I went to work for Jacobs, their 401K was with Vanguard, Lockheed had theirs with some high load fund, and I figure that they were getting a kick-back or someone’s brother-in-law owned the fund. Oh, and I started with the Wellington Fund and some adaptation of the S&P 500. When I got serious the two funds that were the most popular at the time was the Vanguard Wellington Fund and the Fidelity Magellan Fund.
Jack Bogle, R.I.P. -
TGIF Hamoustonians!
God BLESS those valiant Green Berets in their whole new type of battle……..
And remember to keep Denver Post columnist Jon Caldara in your prayers as he goes toe to public toe with those blankety blank Commies in The People’s Republic of Boulder Colorado!! -
Thank You, Jalen; Jalen Hurts Tribute – 2018 SEC Championship Highlights.
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1954 GMC 101-24 DeLuxe Canopy Express.
When GMC and light duty trucks started out, the pickup style body was called an Express body. Then a top was needed so it was called a canopy express. That body style started in the teens and continued until March 15 1955 which would mark the end of the Canopy Express body which retired with this model run so this is the last of the CE’s. Long live the Canopy Express.
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Silly me, when I heard that the Congress Critters were on a bus, I thought, why the hell would they be on a bus, it didn’t seem nice enough for royalty? Of course I was thinking of a real Air Force Bus, not the V.I.P. Bus that they were on.
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A big victory last night from the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.
At the time the videos were released, Planned Parenthood and its many defenders in the pro-choice movement repeated ad nauseam that the videos had been “heavily [and] deceptively edited.” This same line was often parroted uncritically by media outlets in their coverage of the videos.
In its ruling tonight, the Fifth Circuit not only affirmed the state’s right to terminate its agreement with Planned Parenthood affiliates, but also confirmed that the videos were undoctored. The court noted that an independent forensic firm’s review of the undercover footage found “that the video was authentic and not deceptively edited.” This directly refutes Planned Parenthood’s own false claim.
The ruling also mentioned parts of the video footage in which Planned Parenthood executives had admitted to illegally altering abortion procedures to obtain intact fetuses whose organs could then be sold to medical research firms for greater profit. This included finding ways to circumvent the federal ban on partial-birth abortion, whether by changing the way they performed late-term procedures or by signing a form saying they had not “intended” to retrieve an intact fetus.
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Indulge My Obsession With Mandy Moore, an Extraordinarily Talented Actress
PFTTT
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Wow there is hope for Texpat’s survival
N.J. minimum wage to rise to $15 an hour as Murphy, top Dems strike deal
In further news many small businesses will be shuttering their doors. McDonald’s announces the $10.00 Big Mac Meal Deal. You get a Big Mac 10 fries and an opportunity to purchase a straw to go with your 3 oz drink.
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14 Squawk
I fully empathize with B-Sue. Clearly, you are a difficult man to please.
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Texpat
Who? Me? Difficult?
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#2
It’s dangerous these days to say what everyone knows to be true. -
Yesterday evening a man shot and killed his estranged wife and critically wounded his adult daughter who were attending a regular ESL class at the church I attend.
Looks like later last night they caught up with him in a hotel near my office (which you can see in the background of one of the pics in this news story.
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Anybody heard anything out of RBG lately? I’m sure that when the time comes, the lefties will find a judge in the 9th Circus that will redefine what it takes to be dead so that Trump will be unable to fill the vacancy. Who knows, she may already be decomposing.
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Another compelling reason to have avoided Twitter, as if there weren’t enough already.
Old Twitter posts could reveal more about you than you think, according to a research paper released this month. Tweets could reveal places you visited and things you did, even if you didn’t explicitly mention them.
Researchers from the Foundation for Research and Technology in Greece and the University of Illinois found all this out after writing a tool called LPAuditor. The software mines publicly available tweet data that anyone can download from Twitter via its application programming interface (API).
Using the tool, they analyzed the metadata – hidden information about a tweet embedded in the post – to identify users’ homes, workplaces and sensitive places that they visited. In dozens of cases, they were also able to identify the users behind anonymous Twitter accounts.
plus,
The researchers took the GPS coordinates in the historical data and used publicly available geolocation services to map them to an address. It then grouped tweets mapped to the same address, producing clusters of tweets, and timestamped them to trend the frequency and timing of the user’s tweets from specific locations.
The team used some basic assumptions about home life in the US to identify home addresses, such as the tendency to leave in the morning and return at night and to be there a lot at weekends. It used similar assumptions about working hours to identify where Twitter users worked, and even accounted for variations like night shifts.
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RGB’s done.
Just another huge Deep State/Newspeak Media of the Mobs cover up.
Like the Kenyan spying on Trump and the BillHilly colluding with the Russians.
Steroidal propaganda with a dash of smoke and mirrors courtesy of Mr Potato Head and his sushi smelling pet Mako Mika.
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Texpat
Have heard about the Righthaven reprise?Warning extreme language in the link. Like we have never heard that type of language before. Warning is posted for the sake of Hammie’s granny who I love respect and adore.
Youtubers experiencing Righthaven thuggery as “fair use” is tossed out the window as companies “legally” steal monetization off original video .
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..sushi smelling pet Mako Mika.
Dude! It’s lunchtime!
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24 Squawk
Our intellectual property laws and licensing regulations are in chaos. In pre-internet days, old time publishers, record companies and movie studios
controlledmonopolized the rights and royalties of original creators like songwriters, scriptwriters, novelists, etc. With the advent of the web, this mess was entirely foreseeable and could have been avoided to a great extent if we didn’t have the worst political class ever now joined at the hip with 21st century “Tech Trust” robber barons.If I were a young man considering law school, I would definitely focus on IP law. It’s a huge target rich environment. I’m also surprised there aren’t more young lawyers pursuing this field directly on the net and promoting themselves to people like the YouTubers mentioned in your article.
This guy was the first attorney I ever saw on the cutting edge of internet IP legal work. He’s the attorney for a number of very high profile conservative websites and if I ever get involved in an internet startup, I’m hiring him. Coleman’s office is also about 10 minutes from my house.
Long an opinion leader in the interface between technology and intellectual property law, in 1995 Mr. Coleman authored the first article on Internet law in the ABA Journal, and has since become a regularly-featured speaker at major intellectual property conferences on issues as diverse as the abuse of IP law to stifle competition and innovation, copyright “trolling” programs and the controversy over registration of “disparaging” trademarks.
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They x-rayed Mr Potato Head’s skull and found his brain is the size of a tater tot.
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So if Dan Parrtick is right roughly another 4109 illegal aliens sneaked (snuck) across the border today.
He said 1.5 million get in a year.
4109×365 =1499785.Guess that’s about right, right Miss Landers?
Where’s the Wall?
Where’s Wall Dough?
Where’s e-verify?Where’s the GOOPs fighting hard to use part of El Chapo’s 14 billion like Mr Haney suggested? Or was it just a window dressing suggestion?
Where’s the National Emergency declaration?
Where’s the other Waldo? -
Where’s the other Waldo?
Ralph Waldo Emerson?
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Susan Bucher, the long-time supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County, was suspended Friday by Gov. Ron DeSantis following a series of post-election controversies. DeSantis also announced he would be accepting the resignation of Brenda Snipes as Broward County supervisor of elections. (WPEC-CBS12)
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I don’t know how Shannon and KHOU missed this one.
YORK, Pa. (CBS Local) — Meet Wally, a four-and-a-half foot long emotional support alligator with razor-sharp teeth who likes to make new friends.
Wally belongs to Joie Henney, host of Joie Henney’s Outdoors, a hunting and fishing show that ran from 1989 until 2000 on ESPN Outdoors, Fox and other outlets.
Henney recently took Wally, on a leash, to the Glatfelter Community Center at the Village at Sprenkle Drive, an assisted-living development north of York, Pennsylvania. Henney told them his gator has never bitten at anyone and is even afraid of cats, the York Daily Record reported.
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the other Waldo.
Waldo, Kansas?
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Or is it Wally, the support alligator, that you seek, phil?
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Unlike Gillette, China sees through the feminization of men and rejects it!
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Oh wow, looks like **I** killed the blog several hours ago!!
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RBG to resign soon?
https://media.tenor.co/images/78823df120e42c8693212adec564b396/tenor.gif -
Bells chiming in the distance and a soft, quiet new layer of snow covering the ground at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Friday might have made a perfect juxtaposition to the man and Marine being buried that morning.
Prior Marine Staff. Sgt. R. Lee Ermey lived his life in a way that was “outspoken, rebellious, and creative,” as his obituary states, even until his last breaths at 74 years old.
Ermey, or “the Gunny” as he’s known from his most famous acting role — he appeared in more than 60 feature films — as Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in the legendary 1987 Marine film, “Full Metal Jacket,” died April 15, 2018, in his home state of California from complications with pneumonia.
And now, nine months later, the iconic Marine drill instructor has finally been laid to rest.
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And check this out. Too cool.
If Squawk could strap enough cordless leaf blowers to his body, he might make this work. -
OK, another batch of pintos into the instant pot and manly prepared iron skillet cornbread in the oven. Weather reports are confusing, promising wind and cold, but nothing really showing on the various weather map presentations. Be about another half hour ’til it’s time to ring the dinner bell, but I’m about ready. Tomorrow’s plan is to whip up another batch of beef and vege soup, which will include a scoop of the pintos that I’m working on now, along with onion, celery carrot, whole kernel corn, stewed tomatoes, and of course rotels. OK, enough food porn for tonight.
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another batch of pintos into the instant pot
The king of the legumes.
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This didn’t take long. The special counsel is saying the buzfeed report is factually inaccurate. On Fox, may take a bit for it to get on their website.
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Well the weather forecast has something roaring through for everybody come tomorrow. Right now we have a mugly 68, but that won’t last long once the cold blast moves in tomorrow. Thankfully the worst of it will be north and east of us, though perhaps north Texas will get bitten with some snow and colder temps than here. Way farther north and east will fare far worse.
Pets come inside, pipes outside get wrapped, and don’t get that mixed up. 😉
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So is Mueller denying the information passed on to Buzzfeed is true, or is he denying leaking any information to Buzzfeed. He knows that he’s got a serious problem if he has a leaker or two, so he has to deny this to keep another investigation into his shady operations.
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Well, the beans and cornbread were ready, and I was getting ready to toss a poke chop on the George Foreman grill, but in the excitement of removing the lid from the instant pot and slicing up the cornbread I completely forgot about the poke chop. Now I’m full of beans and cornbread, so I’ll just save to poke chop ’til tomorrow. Dang those beans are good, and I didn’t really even gussy them up with a bunch of spices and stuff. Covers may be flapping a little bit tonight, and I’ll remember not to turn on the electric blanket to avoid the possibility of spontaneous combustion.
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38 Texpat
He died almost a year ago. Are they really just now burying him?
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So is Mueller denying the information passed on to Buzzfeed is true
Ferris in Paris
feeds his soul
a little spankin’
a fRanken‘ sized trollthe monster rules
the Newspeakers bleed
forever hungry
mainlining speedPropaganda in their veins
rEgressives lick sloppy insane
Potato Heads buttered cups
mako sharks suck it up -
Have another one on me phil. You’re rolling tonight.
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Now this is interesting. Amazon protects humans by making robots aware of when a human enters the room.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/18/amazon-robotic-tech-vest-warehouse/ -
Have another one on me phil. You’re rolling tonight.
No wine just mango tea tonight.
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an Extraordinarily Talented Actress
Texpat
You and me gotta talk. Just a cursory check revealed her movies were pretty much panned. I also took a peek at some more, how should we say, ummmm revealing photos (no she weren’t nekkid) the girl ain’t got no butt. -
OK, how I read the Mueller response on the Buzzfeed story: Mueller is not denying that he has leaks and that his leakers told the Buzzfeed reporters a story, or a few stories. Mueller is merely objecting that what Buzzfeed printed is not the story that the leakers told them. Now the problem is that he has leakers, not the story that they are telling. We must assume that Mueller is aware of what the leakers story is, so that’s how he knows the print story is not the same. Maybe Mueller himself is the leaker, a al Comey. Snakes roaming the swamp.
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That’s some first rate spaghetti bowl conspiracy right there 😉
I think it’s more plausible that Trump leaked the story himself to troll the unhinged fake media.
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R. Lee Ermey was cremated. His family didn’t schedule his final interment until now at Arlington. The scheduling is up to the family.
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51 Squawk
I don’t know anything about Mandy Moore’s movies. I do know quite a bit about her role in the hit TV drama, This Is Us, since I’ve watched it from the beginning. The show is into it’s third season this year. Moore’s acting in the show, along with her fellow cast members, has been remarkable covering decades of time. The writing and dialogue is extraordinary, a real cut above anything else on network TV anymore.
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So Texpat how did you end up in New Jersey?
Vocation?
You don’t have to say if you don’t wanna.
That’s ok with me. I won’t feel slighted.
My favorite thing about New Jersey was that Pace Picante Sauce commercial in the 80s.
“This stuff’s made in New Jersey.”
“Get a rope!” -
Update on pintos: I’m working on a new theory regarding cooking dried pintos in the pressure cooker. These were cooked about 40 minutes once the cooker was pressured up, and then they were left another 30 minutes for the cooker to naturally depressurise rather than just releasing it immediately. As I mentioned earlier, they were excellent if not just a little soft. But, and here’s my theory. Under pressure, those beans are not allowed to give off any steam and in fact, more gas is forced in to each bean as it is cooking. However, after being consumed, those excess gasses, in addition to the normal bean gasses, are all released in fairly short order (3 or 4 hours) and really start singing.
Night all.
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56 phil
I came up here temporarily on business. I gave my partners a maximum of 90 days, and then 6 months, before we would go to Europe and Moscow to open offices for a new company. My main partner had a serious heart attack, the other decided to marry a much younger Russian girl and move to Florida and so I was coming back to Texas, but then I met Her Highness on a blind date and I’m still being held in captivity, 16 years later.
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Hey, it’s the weekend! Wake up slackers!
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