#1
I didn't mean to get fat, it was a snacksident.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/20/2018 10:15 Comments ||
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#2
That was cute. Although I'm willing to bet that some of those young ladies would look good naked. Of course, most of them are probably young endough to be my granddaughters.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
02/20/2018 17:38 Comments ||
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#3
They said the Universe was expanding. I was just trying to keep up.
[DallasNews] If you're still looking for your lost shaker of salt, better pick up the pace ‐ you might not need it much longer. We're facing a global tequila shortage. Heavens to Murgatroid!!
It's not just a rumor. As a trained journalist with a keen consumer interest in the aforementioned commodity, I did some poking around. The stories, alas, are lamentably accurate. Jimmy Buffett, Margaritaville, and Parrotheads hardest hit.
Tequila is drying up because the slow-growing succulent used to make it, agave tequilana ‐ the renowned blue agave cultivated in the Mexican state of Jalisco ‐ is in short supply.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/20/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
Can those east coast limp wristed wienies go back to their precious little single malted scotch and leave the bourbon and tequila drinkers of the world alone?
Tequila snobs?? Same crowd that ruined chili and barbeque.
You have to admit these trendy pinkie curling dilatants go from one thing to another based upon something they read in the New Yorker. They make single malted scotch more expensive because they suddenly have to drink it, then it was avocados and avocado toast. Then it was cauliflower, and on to bourbon and making those silly-assed sweet things that made Southern Comfort look like lemonade. And need I mention how they have screwed up red wine to taste like tannic acid with their precious Cabernet Sauvignons? I wish they would go back to just drinking stuff to get a buzz instead of this phony connoisseur stuff...they ruined cigars too for a while. These fucking east coast snob-assed trend followers need to stop and give us normal drinkers a break.
Who on earth in NYC or Chicago has any business drinking tequila anyway? I've been drinking tequila since the first time I sneaked across the border into boys town in Reynosa. I like the stuff its just that I like to drink tequila. I'm not trying to appear hip or trendy or part of the in crowd.
Keep you damned hands off my tequila. Its enough to make you want sit down with a jar of crunchy peanut butter and a spoon.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/20/2018 18:21 Comments ||
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#10
Friend of a friend brought friend some hand-made mescal. He had people tracked down to share, including myself. Boy howdy. I think it would be lost on the pajama bois.
[Manhattan Institute] From 1984 to 2000, energy exports grew from 264 million barrels to 380 million barrels. This rate of growth would be impressive in its own right, if it were not so dwarfed by the massive increase that followed. From 2000 to 2016, exports grew from 380 million barrels to 1.9 billion barrels in 2016. Put another way, total exports finally broke through the 500 million barrel in 2007, and they might reach 2 billion a decade later.
Moving to the individual destination countries offers yet more insight into how the U.S. energy sector has developed. U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico were the top two destinations for crude oil and petroleum product exports. In the early years of the 2000s Mexico accounted for more than 34 percent of these exports, and Canada another 11 percent. Even as the total number of exports increased significantly over time, Mexico and Canada only accounted for 35 percent of these exports in 2016. Canada finally surpassed Mexico to become the biggest destination for these exports in 2013 and remains there today.
Below the top two spots, the rest of the top 10 countries for exports showed a higher variation. In part this dynamic is due to the substantial total growth. The second-largest export destination in 2000, Canada with about 40 million barrels would be 13th in terms of export amount in 2016. Looking at the top 10 destinations for 2016 reveals the truly global reach of U.S. crude oil and petroleum product exports. Aside from the two U.S. neighbors, the list is rounded out by the Netherlands, Brazil, Japan, China, Chile, Colombia, Singapore, and India. The mixture of emerging and developed countries around the globe underscores the importance of trade agreements that open those markets to U.S. energy exports, and the corresponding development of energy transportation infrastructure that will help domestically-produced oil and petroleum products get to their final destination.
While the growth of the U.S. energy industry is a success story, it is easy to look to other countries and see the price of mismanagement and poor public policy. Venezuela, which has some of the most abundant natural resources in the world, has seen its oil production decline to the lowest point in three decades, aside from a brief dip during a failed coup attempt disrupted operations in 2002. The country has had to resort to importing crude oil from Russia for its refineries due to a lack of domestic production.
[American Spectator] I did not support Donald Trump for president. I recall arguing with some of my pro-Trump Consumer Technology Association (CTA) board members in 2016 ‐ smart business leaders who were convinced that as president, Trump would drive U.S. economic growth. I was skeptical and focused on Trump’s personal, divisive attacks.
But within hours of Trump winning the election and the Republicans holding on to the Senate, I went on record saying Trump would grow the economy by "knowing when to step back, cut burdensome rules and let businesses innovate and thrive." I also believed ‐ correctly ‐ that he would view the stock market as a "real-time measure of his economic success." Since then, I have remained bullish, based on a growing global economy and the actionable steps President Trump has taken to make the U.S. economy better.
President Trump’s plan is working. Despite recent stock market volatility, the economy is strong and the stock market has experienced growth. During President Trump’s first year in office, the Dow Jones Industrial average gained 31 percent and the S&P 500 grew 23 percent. Unemployment is down to 4.1 percent. The number of Americans working full-time has grown to a record 154 million, and we just added 200,000 jobs in January. Consumer confidence is high. Inflation and gas prices remain low.
It is a commonly held belief in Washington that the president gets too much blame and too much credit for the health of the economy. But in this case, I believe President Trump deserves much of the credit for the nation’s economic success. Here’s why:
#1
But beware the programmed traders and the market analysts with their algorithms.
It is odd but all during those dismal economic years, Wall Street was in bed with Zero. And they gave millions to Shillary (the well connected, odious, malevolent, sadistic sociopath). I never understood why wall street would support a regime that wanted to clobber economic growth and promoted socialism?
Anyway, all it takes is some of these Wall Street democrats to tweak a program trading methodology and send the market into a tailspin. I think the recent downturn was a sign of that but when several really astute market watchers called BS on their program trades they had to pull their horns in...now that the SEC is watching.
[American Thinker] If your hackles are not yet up concerning the outlook for highly indebted multinational companies such as GE in a possible looming crisis of 2018, they ought to be. From September 2008 until recently, we operated in a new world without traditional controls, prepared to believe everything and happy to own almost anything. Skeptics were mocked, as markets rocked.
However, in recent months, benchmark interest rates in the United States ‐ the largest market in the world ‐ are trending upward after ten years at historic low levels. As interest rates rise, most asset values will fall. Declining asset values are especially worrying for complex borrowers like GE.
Now, investors are, again, agonizing, trying to assess how rising interest rates will affect the values of companies. It is no wonder that GE and its stock price should be back in the spotlight.
Awaiting Crucial GE Details
GE's comprehensive annual report for 2017 will emerge soon. Meanwhile, selling pressures have accentuated following the disappointing fourth quarter 2017 "earnings call" on January 24, 2018.
#3
All that slavish simpering in support of The Won didn't buy any relief from the iron laws of the market. Rometty at IBM and Barra at GM are going to join Immelt in that sad club.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/20/2018 7:48 Comments ||
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#4
That would be the GE who's Obama loving management got the Royal Decree issued to kill the old inexpensive light bulbs in order to force Americans to buy the more expensive substitutes with mercury in them?
I was reading something (probably Zero Hedge) that GE won't be part of the Dow 30 in the near future. It's a shithole company now, and like P2K, I will not forgive a company who helped kill off the incandescent light bulb. I still have a bunch of them, but holy mother of god, how fucking PC do you have to be to make a certain kind of light bulb illegal?
#6
Of course the whole goal was make it a government revenue stream for the disposal of all of those CF with mercury. Imagine, mercury has been banned and blacklisted for years and the environazis use it like crazy without consequence.
#7
Bought a GE dishwasher once, an oven too. Never again.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/20/2018 11:36 Comments ||
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#8
GE's railroad locomotives put GM's Electromotive Division out of business, but now the GE locomotive business is up for sale. Supposedly, the locomotive business doesn't make 'enough' profit for GE.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/20/2018 12:05 Comments ||
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#9
There is no such thing as 'enough' profit. Profits must grow to the sky, or else.
[FOX] Former FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force member and Navy veteran Steven Rogers said Monday that FBI Director Christopher Wray should resign in the wake of a reported missed tip about the Florida school shooting suspect.
Rogers said there was a failure in intelligence sharing by the bureau, after a tip was received about suspect Nikolas Cruz, but apparently not acted upon, after Wray took charge of the FBI.
"The director of the FBI should not only resign, but the entire leadership [and] executive officers should resign," he said.
Rogers said that if Wray, a former attorney for 2016 presidential candidate Chris Christie (R-N.J.), does not resign, he should be fired.
"The priorities of the FBI should be [the] protection of the American people," Rogers, also a former police lieutenant in Nutley, N.J., said.
Rogers said that a "blue wall of silence" has apparently been constructed at the FBI, and that the bureau must "tear that wall down."
#1
totally disagree since this set mindsets connecting the malfeasance of the lowest worker to a CEO.
Posted by: Jack Salami ||
02/20/2018 8:42 Comments ||
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#2
So what action is Wray taking? Anyone appointed to conduct an internal investigation? Any changes in Miami Field Office leadership? Suspensions? Firings? Reprimands? Admonishments? Voluntary resignations? Shameful adminssions ?
Any explanations or reasons given for the inaction ?
#4
When somebody trumpets as loudly and repeatedly as possible his intention to shoot up a school it is a threat that needs to be taken seriously. The FBI did not take it seriously and people died. So now we have all this gun control bullshit. That's enough to make a reasonable person wonder what the hell is going on.
Yesterday was a holiday so I'll give Wray a pass on that but I'm surprised I have not heard about his resignation yet today. If he won't resign then Trump should fire him. Let the Democrats scream all they want. When a failure is this big and it's only the most recent in a whole long string of failures it's time for some heads to roll.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/20/2018 11:54 Comments ||
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#5
Wray's departure may take a little of the pressure off, but the entire organization needs a 'top down' overhaul.
[PJ] President Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney on Monday in his bid for the U.S. Senate in Utah, calling a man who once lambasted him as a fraud to be a "worthy successor" to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah.).
"@MittRomney has announced he is running for the Senate from the wonderful State of Utah. He will make a great Senator and worthy successor to @OrrinHatch, and has my full support and endorsement!" Trump wrote.
#8
Mia Love isn’t running against Mr. Romney. And she’s only been a Representative since 2014 — she needs a good deal more experience before moving up to the Senate.
#11
Mittens is champing at the bit to fill ol' Maverick's shoes. He'll have the same battered wife relationship with the press and routinely allow himself to be used in the manner of a hollow vinyl thing filled with hot air.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/20/2018 16:57 Comments ||
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h/t Instapundit
[AmGreatness] Nancy Pelosi gave a marathon speech on illegal immigration the other day. But how would she know much about the realities of open borders, given her palatial retreat in Northern California and multi-millionaire lifestyle that allows wealthy progressives like herself to be exempt from the consequences of her own hectoring? In the end, the House minority leader was reduced to some adolescent racialist patter about her grandson wishing to look more like his Mexican-American friend.
I was thinking of the San Francisco Democrat’s speech last week, during a brief drive into our local town, in a region that is ground zero of California’s illegal immigration experience.
Illegal immigrants are neither collective saints nor sinners, but simply individuals who arrive from one of the poorest regions in the Americas, without legality or much in the way of English, or high school education.
They encounter an American host that has lost confidence in its once formidable powers of assimilation and integration as well as its ability to mint Americans from diverse races, religions, and ethnicities. Instead, American culture has adopted an arrogant sense that it can ensure near instant parity as redemption for supposed past ‐isms and ‐ologies. That may explain the immigrant’s romance for Mexico to which he fights any return, and the ambiguity about America in which he fights to stay.
...In California, civilization is speeding in reverse‐well aside from the decrepit infrastructure, dismal public schools, and sky-high home prices. Or rather, the state travels halfway in reverse: anything involving the private sector (smartphones, Internet, new cars, TV, or getting solar panels installed) is 21st-century. Anything involving the overwhelmed government or public utilities (enforcing dumping laws, licensing dogs, hooking up solar panel meters to the grid, observing common traffic courtesies) is early 20th-century.
...Why is this so, and how do Californians adjust?
They accept a few unspoken rules of state behavior and then use their resources to navigate around them.
1) Law enforcement in California hinges on ignoring felonies to focus on misdemeanors and infractions. Or rather, if a Californian is deemed to be law-abiding, a legal resident, and with some means, the regulatory state will audit, inspect, and likely fine his property and behavior in hopes of raising revenue.
...2) Elite progressive virtue-signaling is in direct proportion to elite apartheid: the more one champions green statutes, the plight of illegal aliens, the need for sanctuary cities, or the evils of charter schools, so all the more the megaphone is relieved that housing prices are high and thus exclusionary to "them."
...3) California is no longer really a single state. Few in the Bay Area have ever been to the southern Sierra Nevada foothill communities, or the west side of the Central Valley, or the upper quarter of the state. Coastal California is simply far more left-wing than other blue states; interior California is far more right-wing than most red states; increasingly, the former dictate to and rule the latter.
...4) The postmodern 21st-century state media in its various manifestations is committed to social justice, not necessarily to disinterested reporting. Few read about environmental lawsuits over the planned pathway of a disruptive high-speed rail project; not so in the case of planned state nullification of offshore drilling.
...Californians, both the losers and beneficiaries of these unspoken rules, have lost confidence in the equal application of the law and indeed the idea of transparent and meritocratic government.
Cynicism is rampant. Law-abiding Californians do whatever is necessary not to come to the attention of any authorities, whose desperate need for both revenue and perceived social justice (150,000 households in a state of 40 million residents pay about 50 percent of California income tax revenue) is carnivorous. In short, California is the preview of how the entire country will look a generation from now, unless the Left is stopped - for good, not for a time as happened in Reagan's era.
#3
California is a house of cards waiting to collapse. If just one bond rating company would seriously call BS on these Ponzi scheme bonds Calfornicate issues every year to churn the debt, you would see a very interesting situation as they try to figure out how to continue these nonsense special interest programs.
When it finally reaches a tipping point and the house of cards collapses, it will be very interesting.
#4
Carnivorous is the perfect description of priorities for state government. One tiny example in my own life. Annual registration for my 2013 F-150 Ford XLT truck arrived yesterday. $478....
#5
My family has been in California since the gold rush, and I'm completely bewildered regarding our present and future state of affairs. At least the scenery is good.
#6
Carnivorous is the perfect description of priorities for state government. One tiny example in my own life. Annual registration for my 2013 F-150 Ford XLT truck arrived yesterday. $478....
Think what you'd be paying to drive a Lexus, Bentley or MB. In Georgia you'd be hammered. Keep the Ford and smile.
#7
Here in Tennessee it's about 29 bucks no matter what you are driving. Some counties have a wheel tax that can be as much as 40 bucks per vehicle though.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/20/2018 11:23 Comments ||
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#8
Too late. I'm already on the Franchise Tax Board's official shit list.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/20/2018 11:44 Comments ||
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#9
Always stay in the middle or the rear of the formation, and do not ask any questions.
#10
They encounter an American host that has lost confidence in its once formidable powers of assimilation and integration as well as its ability to mint Americans from diverse races, religions, and ethnicities.
IOW, the principle of Proposition Nation has become a bad joke that is only honored in the breach, anyway.
Another thing we'll have to come to terms with, along with what P2K said.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Manhattan Institute] From 1984 to 2000, energy exports grew from 264 million barrels to 380 million barrels. This rate of growth would be impressive in its own right, if it were not so dwarfed by the massive increase that followed. From 2000 to 2016, exports grew from 380 million barrels to 1.9 billion barrels in 2016. Put another way, total exports finally broke through the 500 million barrel in 2007, and they might reach 2 billion a decade later. 
