A recent Reddit post asked users the following question: “The United States is a bar, what is each State doing and drinking?” Special credit goes to Reddit user motherboy, who is the individual mastermind behind many of them.

http://www.tickld.com/x/the-50-states-of-america-if-they-were-actually-people-in-a-bar

Thu Dec 28th 2006, 06:36 PM

I once made a bet that we would not invade Iraq, because it was such an unbelievably stupid move, I could not imagine the US government ever doing it.

Even with an imbecile at the helm, I thought, the White House is bluffing; this is pure brinkmanship. Saddam folded like a house of cards; agreed to every demand placed on him by the US.

Surely, I thought, we will declare victory and leave Kuwait without ever stepping on Iraqi soil or firing a single shot.

This is brilliant! - I thought - A beautiful show of force, resulting in a humiliated Saddam backing down.

For a moment, I had grudging admiration for the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, even though he was from "the other party"

And then, we invaded...

Now, we're getting ready to hang Saddam.

This is such an unbelievably stupid move. If there were any smart money left on the table, the bet would be that his sentence would be commuted. Let him rot in jail until his power and influence dissipates completely; until nobody remembers his name.

Now, I'm not so sure. Now, I'm thinking we're actually going to hang Saddam. Now I'm thinking we're actually going to make a martyr out of this thug.

It won't be Iraq's puppet government that will be blamed for this. It will be the US government; our government that will be held accountable by history.

We are about to give the Sunnis the martyr they need to coalesce into a permanent resistance force.

And we haven't a clue what we are about to do to ourselves.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Xipe%20Totec/53

Uploaded on Oct 19, 2007
Illegal Immigration is one of the most divisive issues in America today. Pinky asks Daisy for his take on what's really going on. Added bonus: Daisy tells us how to solve the whole problem in 5 minutes.



It is amazing how this 8 year old video continues to be relevant today, particularly when viewed in the light of current presidential politics.

These are piñatas:



Piñatas are toys full of candies for the amusement of children.


These, on the other hand, are puñetas:





Puñetas are jerk-offs.

In the past two decades, no fewer than five sheriffs have been busted for corruption. And from 2000 to 2013, 13 U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents went to prison.

"I was a cop who went drug dealer. That's what it is," says Jonathan Treviño, a former police narcotics squad leader who is serving 17 years in a federal penitentiary. Last year, his entire unit went to prison for seizing dope and selling it back to traffickers in Hidalgo County.

"No one forced us. No one held a gun to our heads. No one threatened the families, saying, 'You better participate in illegal activity.' No, we all decided to abuse our position," he said in an interview inside the prison.

Jonathan Treviño's father, Lupe, who was Hidalgo County's powerful and popular sheriff, is serving a five-year prison term for a separate conviction. He admitted taking $10,000 in illegal campaign contributions from a drug trafficker known as The Rooster, with ties to the Gulf Cartel.

http://www.npr.org/2015/07/06/413463836/corruption-on-the-border-dismantling-misconduct-in-the-rio-grande-valley

Jeb Bush said Donald Trump doesn't represent the views of most Republicans, offering his most aggressive comments so far on the real estate titan who's used inflammatory language when talking about immigrants.

"This is a guy who was a Democrat for most of the last decade. I don't think he represents the Republican Party, and his views are way out of the mainstream of what most Republicans think," Bush told reporters after an Independence Day parade in Merrimack, New Hampshire, according to The New York Times.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/04/politics/bush-trump-immigrants/

BZZZT! Game Over. Thank you for playing. Better luck next time, Jeb.

To those waving the treasonous rag of the confederacy this 4th of July, remember this sacrifice.

Fort Wagner and the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry



Colonel Robert Shaw

Tired, hungry and proud, the black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry stood in the light of the setting sun and awaited the call to battle on the evening of July 18, 1863. The air was filled with the rumble of big guns, and the very ground on Morris Island, South Carolina, trembled beneath their feet. The regiment’s baptism of fire had come only two days before, but the memories of that sharp skirmish had already begun to fade in the shadow of the awesome task that now lay before them.

The path that had brought these determined men to the embattled sands of South Carolina had been a long one, born of idealism and fraught with difficulty. That they had succeeded in the face of bigotry and doubt was due in great measure to the colonel who led them. Slight and fair-haired, Robert Gould Shaw appeared even younger than his 25 years. But despite his initial trepidations, the Harvard-educated son of abolitionist parents had assumed the weighty responsibilities of command, and never wavered in his fervent resolve to show friend and foe alike that black soldiers were the fighting equals of their white counterparts.

Suddenly, a mounted general and his staff rode up before the assembled ranks. The officer was handsome and smartly dressed, and grasped the reins of his prancing gray steed with white-gloved hands. Brigadier General George C. Strong pointed down the stretch of sand to the sinister hump of a Confederate earthwork that loomed amidst the roiling smoke and spitting fire of the guns. Loudly, Strong asked, ‘Is there a man here who thinks himself unable to sleep in that fort tonight?’ ‘No!’ shouted the 54th.

The general called out the bearer of the national colors, and grasped the flag. ‘If this man should fall, who will lift the flag and carry it on?’ After the briefest of pauses, Shaw stepped forward, and taking a cigar from between his teeth responded, ‘I will.’ The colonel’s pledge elicited what Adjutant Garth Wilkinson James later described as ‘the deafening cheers of this mighty host of men, about to plunge themselves into the fiery vortex of hell:’


http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/batterywagner/battery-wagner-history-articles/fortwagnerpohanka.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/



William Carney - 54th Massachusetts. Medal of Honor Winner

It's finally happened. The North American organization responsible for handing out new IP addresses says its banks have run dry.

That's right: ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, has had to turn down a request for the unique numbers that we assign to each and every smartphone, tablet and PC so they can talk to the Internet. For the first time, ARIN didn't have enough IP addresses left in its stock to satisfy an entire order — and now, it's activated the end-times protocol that will see the few remaining addresses out into the night.

IP addresses are crucial to the operation of the Internet. They're the numbers behind URLs like "google.com" or "facebook.com." They identify every device that connects to the Web, from servers to connected cars. The original designers of the Internet thought they'd only need around 4 billion unique combinations, derived from the series of dots and digits that make up IP addresses everywhere.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/07/02/weve-finally-hit-the-breaking-point-for-the-original-internet/