Guard Dog

#51 ties the all time mark for August. One more in the next two games breaks it. 31 games to go, 10 more HR to get to break 61. That sounds doable. 22 more to get 73. Not impossible, but not easy. http://m.mlb.com/news/article/251332552/nationals-anthony-rendon-beat-miami-win-80th/

I was supposed to attend a meeting in a city two hours away. I got here this morning and found out it was cancelled. Guess who didn't get the word.

I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet.

Republicans being obstructionist is not a reason to use Executive Orders to take powers or actions not permitted by the Constitution. The voters put the Republicans into Congress because they promised they would obstruct what Obama was doing. By circumventing Congress using Executive Orders Obama thwarted the will of the voters and imposed his own on them. So yes, the word Tyrant is not entirely inappropriate. It's not entirely appropriate either because it softens the word in a world where there are actual tyrants. Of course Bohner and McConnel and the rest of them did not do such a great job opposing Obama for the most part. But if you start expecting a lot of Republicans you are setting yourself up for disappointment. But the rest of your response I agree with. Particularly the part about liberty, rights, and the Constitution being freely trampled on by both parties. The Republicans have not been the party of limited government since we bid farewell to Reagan in 1988. They talk a good game during elections but when they actually get to Washington or their state capitals they show their true colors. If someone actually wants to see limited, constitutional government I suggest they forget about elephants and donkeys and pick a new animal.

Well, Trump lost the popular vote for one big reason and one smaller reason. The big reason is the Urban-Suburban/Rural divide that is becoming a bigger thing every election here. The smaller reason is voter fraud. Don't get me wrong, that didn't tip any scales. Hillary Clinton had a 2M or more advantage. You cannot get that many votes by fraud without someone noticing something is up. But suppose that was under 500k? The you have to wonder. In the city of Detroit Clinton received 95% of the vote. But in 37% of the precincts more votes were cast that they had registered voters. Think about that. That is not just a 100% turnout of registered voters, which never happens anyway. It was more votes than there are voters. In several precincts (according to one news source I'm not linking because it's The Blaze) there were three times as many votes cast a registered voters. http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2016-12-20/why-more-votes-voters.html In Chicago there were more than 14k votes cast than there were registered voters to cast them. And audit found people who had been dead for over 20 years voted last year. Clinton got 92% of the vote in Chicago. Who do you think ended up with the dead votes? https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/numbers/president-vice-president-every-neighborhood-map-election-results-voting-general-primary-illinois http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/10/27/2-investigators-chicago-voters-cast-ballots-from-beyond-the-grave/ http://chicagocitywire.com/stories/511195461-election-board-lists-more-general-election-votes-than-voters-in-chicago Voter fraud is a thing. And as long as the political parties that benefit from it control the places it happens, it won't get fixed.

I'd post this in the funny thing thread.... but it ain't funny

Well I'm oficcialy soured on fantasy & Sci-Fi again after two total time wasters. So how about some historical fiction & sports. I just ordered these two on my Kindle: &

Is it as bad as everyone says? It wasn't that great. It was like a love letter to old school video games I guess. I'm glad I didn't pay for it.

If playing a different gender changes the story of the game then I'll likely play both. My last Skyrim character was female. I must admit I enjoyed watching her backsdie in 3rd person camera much more than the previous male character. BG1 & 2 I've played both ways for the different romance stories. Dragon Age I hated too much to replay. Fallout 3 & NV it didn't make any difference. I always figured the FO3 PC is more likely to be female. Going on this long quest to find Dad and some of the interactions they had sounds more suited for a female PC to me. New Vegas it doesn't really matter I guess. It felt more like a "male oriented" story to me. PoE I've only played once as a male character. I understand it does change the story a little so the next time through I'll likely use a female PC. I can't really put myself in my PC's skin anymore than I can reading a novel. So I guess the gender of the PC does not matter. I don't feel it represents me in any way.

Today I accepted a job as Kit Harrington's body double for all nude scenes with Emilia Clarke. Then I woke up.

Responding to WoD OK, let's wave a magic wand and make Bernie Sanders President for the rest of this term. Will we be more like Sweden in 2020 or more like the US in 2016? The reason why you shouldn't worry too much is even if it happened he would not be all powerful. He would still have only a third of the political power of the federal government. If 218 Bernie Sanders get elected the house and 51 Bernie's in the Senate it still would not be the end because the States have their own political powers. And even if all of that fails the final redoubt of the United States is and has always been insurrection. And if you don't win at the very least you won't have to be subjected to what comes next. I really would not worry about this. Yes it's fun to talk about and I am not at all ashamed to engage in a little harmless hyperbole myself. One of the big things I hear from people is "I like some of the things the Libertarians stand for but..." nobody likes everything. But here is the thing, electing a libertarian President in 2020 and even a few LP candidates to congress will not make the US a libertarian paradise. At best it will more the needle away from the current statist trend a little bit. If the magical Sanders administration happened at best they would move the needle a little. You are not going to go from the USA you know to gulags, secret police, and nationalization of everything you own with a few mass murders for good measure. Right now you can drive from Key West to Pocatello Idaho and not pass through a single state or even county where the Democrats have any power at all. In 2008 it looked like the GOP was on the verge of extinctions. These things are cyclical. Four years from now it will be all different again. The only difference between now and ever in our history is the cycles are coming faster and faster. Maybe people are beginning to realize there is little difference between the two after all. I can always hope.

Says the man who's never lived in the Soviet Union. Edit: I'm sure a lot of Venezuelans thought if they elect a socialist things wouldn't be that different, now they're eating their pets. The ultimate aim of the Democrats isn't the Soviet Union. In the US most socialists favor the Democrats but most Democrats are not socialists. Socialism is not the aim of that group. Oh sure they will talk about it, even borrow ideas from it. But like I told Ben once they may flirt with the ugly red-haired girl, but they won't marry her. But as I have said many times and stand behind, the love of liberty does not abide in the US Democrat party. They do not value things like individual rights and freedoms. The Republicans are a best a tepid defender and sometimes and opponent of these ideals but the Democrats are antagonistic to them. Hence the reason I will never, ever, vote for a Democrat under any circumstance. But their dream society is not the USSR. It would be a USA with powerful corporations that buy favors from a government they control with a lot of power over a population that does business with those corporations and offers no dissent. I'd couldn't even guess what the Republicans want. They don't even seem to know themselves.

If they turned on me just with their Glocks, how long do you think I'd last? Also local police is usually pretty reasonable as far as political activity is concerned, it's the feds you've got to worry about. And they got all the fire power they want already. Actually I'm counting on Texas to protect me from the fed deep state and their ANTIFA ilk allies. That probably explains this: https://www.facebook.com/TurnTexasBlueCampaign/ It's because once Texas goes blue it's the end of America as we know it. I think you will find it far less different than you're willing to credit. There will still be a big, expensive, and wasteful government that intrudes on our liberty and disregards the constitution. The only difference will be which liberties they intrude on more than others. So once you realize Democrats and Republicans are two sour apples hanging on the same statist tree you see it really doesn't matter which one you are forced to eat.

If they turned on me just with their Glocks, how long do you think I'd last? Also local police is usually pretty reasonable as far as political activity is concerned, it's the feds you've got to worry about. And they got all the fire power they want already. Actually I'm counting on Texas to protect me from the fed deep state and their ANTIFA ilk allies. That probably explains this: https://www.facebook.com/TurnTexasBlueCampaign/

Stanton hit #50 today and the Marlins swept the Padres for their 4th win in a row. They are two games over .500, four games back in the WC chase and have a tough 3 game road trip to Washington this week. They are 12 games behind the Nats so that is probably out of reach even with six games still to play against them. http://m.mlb.com/news/article/250931730/giancarlo-stanton-hits-50th-home-run/ On this date Maris had 51 McGwire had 54 Sosa had 49 Bonds had 56 (I think 73 is out of reach) Stanton my become the first non-steroids player to break 61 since Maris. That is something.

Well, you already know I disagree with you on Dodd-Frank and bank de-regulation in general. Dodd-Frank is at it's heart a corporatist bill that suppresses competition from smaller institutions. It's two cups of regulation mixed with a gallon of anticompetitive measures. And in the end the higher cost of regulation compliance are always paid by the end user of the service. And no one complains when there are a lot of users to spread it around. If you are going to de-regulate banking, do it all the way. Take away the government safety net. The too big to fail bailout. It would certainly have me re-thinking what banks I do business with. And banks would be more circumspect with their own activities. I can't see either as a bad thing. But this half measure stuff just causes problems. Glass-Stengal made sense because it came on the heels of a crisis and incorporated lessons learned. Then they spent the next eighty ears chipping away at it. My problem with the current mess of regulatory acts isn't that they don't safeguard the consumer (they don't but caveat emptor) it's that they are not what the purport to be.

Actually I can almost hear WoD and others saying if you're not a criminal or a terrorist you have nothing to fear. Until the day the guys with automatic weapons and armored troop carriers decide you are. Or that they would just be better off without you around. Think it can't cappen here? It already has. Ask Gromnir.

As someone pointed out earlier, the farther the show gets from the source material the more it leans on tired old TV tropes and loses what made it different. It started out with the characters serving the story. Somewhere around season 5 it became the characters became bigger than the story and now it's the other way around.

No way to know how Arya's story plays out in the book but it's worth noting in the book she carried out her hit and seems to have bought into the Faceless Men all the way. That seems to suggest book Arya is going down a very different road.

Yeah. Littlefinger's end might be good fan service but the way it came about was pretty weak story-wise. Book Littlefinger was always a more interesting charcter than the TV version. And I agree Volo's last sentence. Every other episode this year was trying to cram five pounds of stuff into a three pound bag. This one kept it's scope and was a little easier on selling the improbable. Expect for Littefinger's part anyway.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-prepares-to-lift-limits-on-military-gear-for-police/ar-AAqOsCh?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp This was a bad f-----g idea in FDR's day. It was a bad f-----g idea in 1990. It was a really bad f-----g idea in 1995 when Clinton extended it to municipal police forces. It was a really, really bad f-----g idea when Obama expanded it, then limited it, then ignored. And it's a really, really, really bad f-----g idea under Trump.

Where in Alaska? It is a beautiful place. Expensive though.

The perfect day!

Stanton hit #48 & #49 last night: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/250579856/giancarlo-stanton-hits-homers-48-and-49/ The fabulous fighting fish of Miami are just 4 games back in the WC race now. After beating the Cards in St. Louis the Rays are three games back and appear to be heating up again. Football? What is football? It's still summer!