Yeah, yeah, keep on telling yourself how “free” you are, whydon’tcha.
(Image swiped from WRSA)
California has overreached in its effort to address the challenges in today’s tech platform gig-work economy.
The live music sector, the progenitor of the term “gig” work, is being swept up by this law. The irony would be comical if it were not such a serious problem.
There are some worthy arguments to be made for Assembly Bill 5 by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, San Diego Democrat.
Like hell. There really is only the one argument, explicitly made by some Cali congresswoman or other when, in a rare burst of accidental candor, she complained that the state wasn’t glomming enough in tax dough off of rideshare drivers. Despite the property tax they pay on their cars, the fees for their license plates, the tax on every set of tires or quart of oil they buy, the tax on every gallon of gasoline, and their own yearly income taxes, they weren’t paying “their fair share,” see.
Funnily enough, though that revealing statement was fairly prominent in the reportage I saw at the time, it now seems to have vanished down the ol’ memory hole for some reason. I can’t imagine why.
Anyways, the writer quoted above is a California musician who feels “there are some worthy arguments to be made” for letting goobermint’s grubby thumbs dig deeper into any and everything it wishes, as long as they just leave him alone. His evident shock over this bit says it all:
However, the law has created a tangle of red-tape and administrative expense for large portions of California’s cultural sector.
NOOOO! Why, I can’t believe it! I WON’T believe it! Fret not, though; I’m sure things can all be ironed out with even more legislation, right? Right?!?
Under AB 5, we will be required to inform all U.S.-based musicians that they must now become employees of San Jose Jazz, or incorporate themselves before they will be allowed to perform for us.
If band leaders choose to pursue incorporation, they will then need to take on the responsibility of payroll and HR administration for the rest of their band.
In many performing arts disciplines, such as jazz, musicians are constantly reconfiguring line ups, performing as sidemen in various bands, and as one-time special guests for specific performances.
We will now be obliged to devote tremendous time and resources to constantly hiring, managing and tracking of musicians through this cumbersome process.
AB 5 unnecessarily complicates other work arrangements found in community cultural programming such as small festivals, neighborhood street fairs, parades and summer music series in our local parks.
San Jose Jazz is best known for producing our large Summer Fest which brings tens of thousands of visitors and requires hundreds of temporary roles to execute.
The vast majority of previously contract work roles will now be required to be employees.
Tough noogies, pal. You voted for it, by electing nothing but Democrat-Socialists in your state for years and years. As the old saw has it, sooner or later they always get around to something you DO care about. And now they have. More SHOCKING yet:
Typical of such legislation, AB 5 comes with a hefty list of exempted categories that are a Who’s Who of the politically connected and well-funded: lawyers, doctors, accountants, brokers, builders, and others.
Actors, choreographers, dancers, directors, producers, and musicians are among numerous roles in the performing arts that exhibit a multitude of contract work arrangements. None of these are exempt from AB 5’s rules.
So? If there are indeed “worthy arguments to be made” for handing government the power to make workplace rules of all sorts, why should performing artists be exempt from them, pray tell? Why should ANYBODY be? And can you really be so impenetrably naive as to find it surprising that the wealthy, powerful, and connected exempted themselves from the wonderful benefits of the law? Y’know, just like US Congresscritters routinely exempt themselves from having to comply with any and every piece of burdensome bushwa they roll downhill onto the rest of us?
Personally, after reading this whiny, clueless twaddle it would be a-okay with me if every last theater, concert hall, arena, neighborhood dive bar, and neo-hippie coffee house featuring annoying solo-acoustic singer/songwriters on the Left Coast closed up shop for good tomorrow as a result of this law. Voting the most intrusive, power-hungry nanny-staters extant into office again and again ought to be painful—not just for Uber and Lyft drivers struggling to eke out their meager living, but for everybody, right down the damned line. The lesson will be learned only after the misery is spread around widely enough for all to suffer. Let elections have consequences at last, I say.
Wax my goddamned BALLS, bitchez.
Jonathan Yaniv, the trans activist who goes by “Jessica” and became famous for suing beauticians who would not wax his male genitalia, is making headlines again. Yaniv is on trial for two weapons charges for owning a stun gun and brandishing it on YouTube. Stun guns are illegal in Canada. On Monday, Keean Bexte with Rebel News was covering the trial when Yaniv, on exiting the courthouse, charged at him. Bexte says Yaniv punched him in the head. The camera footage seems to back that up.
A commenter pointed out that Yaniv was mysterious without the famous scooter he normally rides around on claiming he is disabled. He doesn’t appear to be disabled as he is attacking Bexte. Normally when Yaniv attacks reporters he does it with his cane or while on a scooter.
My, how very womanly of you, Jonathan. The assaultee offered Jonny-boy a respectful tip o’ the cap for throwing a pretty hefty punch, adding “I need an Advil!” Maybe not all that big a surprise, I suppose, given Yaniv’s weight class and deep, seething hostility.
You read it here first, folks: sometime over the next year, this violent degenerate attempts suicide. And most likely fails. Not all that precarious a limb to crawl out onto, I admit. But still.
The most accomplished man in human history.
Barack Obama had something to celebrate today because the Netflix documentary he and wife Michelle produced, “American Factory,” was predictably nominated for an Oscar for best documentary.
“Glad to see American Factory’s Oscar nod for Best Documentary,” Obama tweeted. “It’s the kind of story we don’t see often enough and it’s exactly what Michelle and I hope to achieve with Higher Ground.”
Higher Ground is the name of the Obamas’ production company. Last year they were accused of “deplorable behavior” over a trademark dispute over the name of the company.
Barack Obama has already won two Grammy awards for Best Spoken Word Album, and Michelle Obama was recently nominated in the same category for her memoir, Becoming—and I’ll bet a thousand dollars she’ll win. In fact, if you look at the nominations and winners in that category, you’ll find a lot of Democrat politicians and pundits have a knack for scoring nominations and winning the Grammy in that category, while their conservative counterparts don’t even get nominated. Nominees for Best Spoken Word Album include Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Franken, and Jesse Jackson.
All of them won at least once.
Back to the Obamas. Barack Obama was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize within a month or so of taking office and ultimately won the award over several more appropriate choices. His victory was so ill-considered that the Secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Geir Lundestad, regrets Obama being given the award.
Well, Barky has certainly gotten incredible mileage out of that make-work stint as a “community organizer” back in Chi-town, you gotta give him that much. He’s parlayed it into all these major awards, even into the White House itself. Pretty heady stuff for a guy who never held a real job or did a day’s honest, useful work in his life—all the more so, after parlaying his 400k per annum presidential salary into a multimillion dollar mansion or three to boot. One can only tip one’s cap in respect for such a consummate grifter.
This. This right here.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Monday said if his fellow Republicans allow Democrats to have the witnesses they demand in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, he will demand Hunter Biden testify.
Paul tweeted:
“My colleagues can’t have it both ways. Calling for some, while blocking others. If we are going to give a platform to witnesses the Dems demand, I look forward to forcing votes to call Hunter Biden and many more!”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who also opposes witnesses in the trial, has warned against them for just such a tit-for-tat reasoning.
McConnell told Fox News Radio in December that a calling of witness by Democrats coud lead Republicans to want Hunter Biden and even the whistleblower who’s identity has never been officially revealed.
And that would be just AWFUL, wouldn’t it? Such a destructive “tit for tat” risks unearthing all sorts of worms the Deep State would much prefer to keep covered. Why, the American knave-class might even get above their station to the extreme of insisting on justice being visited on all sorts of high ‘n’ mighty, untouchable types! The whole phony “of the people, by the people, for the people” charade might collapse! IT’S UNTHINKABLE!!
Other Republicans, such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Utah’s Mitt Romney, have been more open to possibly allowing witnesses. Democrats needs only four Republicans to cross over and vote with them to get their wish. CBS News reported Monday they likely have found four Republicans to join them.
They’ll likely get more Republicrat/Uniparty turncoats than that, I’d bet, with plenty of those willing to vote for conviction, too. Well, let ’em sow that dangerous wind. Just so long as they don’t mind reaping the whirlwind, too.
In an otherwise good piece, Roger Kimball whiffs bigly on one important thing:
The disaster of Flight 752 took place in the context of the liquidation of the terrorist mass-murderer Qasem Soleimani last week by the United States on the order of President Donald Trump. But that courageous and far-seeing act itself took place in the context of Iran’s decades-long assault on American and, more broadly, on Western institutions that promote a culture of tolerance and religious freedom.
The fact that many U.S. news outlets and Democratic politicians instantly coalesced around Soleimani as a “revered” military leader tells us what great inroads Stockholm Syndrome has made among American elites.
Sorry, Rog, it does no such thing. What it actually tells us is just how low those treasonous blackguards are willing to stoop to attach themselves to true, real-world evil if they think they might somehow grub some cheap political points from it; how reflexively they will always side with America’s enemies, no matter what; how deeply, deeply desperate they are to somehow hold onto power and position by attacking Trump; and how there can be no more fitting, just, or accurate a condemnation of them than to simply name them as traitors, the unabashed enemies of this country.
Last week, Donald Trump eliminated one of Iran’s most potent emissaries of death and destruction. All the beautiful people huddled together and wailed that Trump had just “destabilized” the Middle East (had it been stable beforehand?), that his “unilateral” action was illegal, counterproductive, immature, that, ultimately, he may have started World War III.
That was then. Now it looks as though he may have sparked the great unraveling of theocratic totalitarian control in Iran. And this just in: the Iranians apparently have just arrested the British ambassador. Arrested. In civilized countries, if there is an issue with a diplomat, one expels him. In civilized countries. But this is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Someday, the world will stand back and applaud Trump for his canny and farseeing statesmanship. I do not assert that that recognition is coming any time soon. But come it will.
Most likely, yeah. But not from the Treasoncrats and Enemedia—not unless and until they can use Trump as a weapon for dishonestly smearing some future candidate as the new Second Coming Of Literally Hitler, they won’t.
Update! Schlichter calls ’em out.
You spent the last three years babbling like idiots about “traitors” and “treachery.” Well, head docs call that “projection.” You are siding with the enemy in a war against the United States. And yeah, Iran has been at war with the United States for 40 years, ever since your peanut-farming, half-wit fellow Dem handed over the keys to the country to a bunch of Seventh Century Pennywises. The least you could do is show a little respect to the people trying to clean up your party’s mess.
Your party’s latest triumph is blaming Donald Trump because these drooling morons shot down a passenger airliner the night they launched missiles at our American soldiers. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you sick? Are you stupid? Are you huffing that funny powder you found in Hunter Biden’s medicine cabinet? What would ever have possessed you to start making excuses for people trying to kill Americans?
It’s nothing new for them. After all, it was, what, like two days after 9/11 before they all started preachifying in their oh-so-superior way that we had that coming too? They can’t help themselves; it’s who they are, it’s what they do. They’ve been this way for far too long already, and couldn’t stop now if they tried. Go ahead and ask the scorpion not to sting the frog while you’re at it, you’ll end up with the same result.
Less talk, more action. Sir.
FBI Director Chris Wray announced that the FBI’s response to the agency’s FISA Abuse and the criminal spying on the Trump campaign will result in extra training.
He sent out out a training video.
And no one will be disciplined for the criminal acts.
This is unacceptable!
President Trump called out Wray and asked him if any of the “dirty cops” are going to pay the price for the fraud they committed.
TRUMP: “FBI Director apologizes for FISA Errors (of which there were far to many to be a coincidence!).” @FoxNews Chris, what about all of the lives that were ruined because of the so-called “errors?” Are these “dirty cops” going to pay a big price for the fraud they committed?
Ummm…sorry to bring it up and all, but YOU HIRED HIM. That means that you can also, y’know, FIRE HIS ASS. So why the bleedin’ hell haven’t you already? More, and worse:
But it’s not just Wray’s fecklessness in the aftermath of the Horowitz report that merits his ouster. The chief has tried to cover up and excuse the scandal since he took the reins of the agency in August 2017.
Wray strenuously objected to the release of the February 2018 memo prepared by then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, which detailed how Comey’s FBI used the bogus Steele dossier as evidence in its application to the court and then withheld disclosing Steele’s Democratic funders.
Wray appealed to then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, conflicted because he signed the final renewal on Page’s FISA application, to do whatever he could to stop Nunes from making his memo public. Rosenstein and Wray met with Trump’s chief of staff to warn that the memo’s release could “set a dangerous precedent.”
Wray refused to fire the disgraced Andrew McCabe—the acting FBI chief who served in between Comey and Wray—despite mounting evidence of McCabe’s misconduct. (Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe just hours before he could retire with full benefits.) Wray also has stonewalled requests for communications from McCabe.
During his Senate testimony in May, Wray rejected Attorney General William Barr’s assertion that the FBI spied on the Trump campaign. “That’s not the term I would use,” Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Lots of people have different colloquial phrases. I believe the FBI is engaged in investigative activity and part of investigative activity includes surveillance activity of different shapes and sizes.” Wray confirmed that a “number” of surveillance warrants were obtained on the Trump campaign.
So, spying.
Wray bristles at the term “deep state.” He has repeatedly rejected that label to describe his employees, telling ABC News shortly after the release of the Horowitz report that its an “affront” to the 37,000 men and women of the FBI to claim they are part of the “deep state.” Not exactly a reassuring response; Wray clearly does not recognize the severity of the problem before him.
Not quite there yet, Jules, you stopped well short of the mark. Wray doesn’t recognize any “severity” at all, because he doesn’t think there IS a problem. And that is why, as you say, he is NOT the man to “reform” the FBI, which cannot BE reformed anyway. Being just another power-drunk, conniving, treacherous Deep State weasel marching in a long parade of reprobate FBI heads, Wray likes it just the way it is.
Yeah, great, we’ll get right on this. After we do some other things first.
The Guardian has published an open letter from teen climate alarmist Greta Thunberg and 20 other children in advance of the World Economic Forum in Davos listing their demands of the world’s leading countries.
She also notes that “many of us who signed this are children,” so “do not make up your own quotes or twist our words.” We’ve read the whole piece and can guarantee it wasn’t written by a 16-year-old, and we were a little disappointed that it wasn’t a list of demands, but rather just one:
We demand that at this year’s forum, participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.
We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021, we want this done now – as in right now.
Kids often want things right now.
To twist a favorite retort of my dear old maternal grandma’s: “Demand” in one hand. Shit in the other. See which one gets full the quickest.
Greta is fastly evolving from a clueless, obnoxious, but still only moderately annoying little brat into a slightly more annoying little brat. Next time she decides to throw another tantrum like this, she needs to be sent straight up to bed without any dinner, made to stand in the corner for a couple hours, or bent over a knee and spanked. She “demands” a world without: transportation more efficient than horses or walking; anything made with plastic, which would necessarily include iPhones, computers, essential medical devices, many types of clothing, and way too much more to list; indoor lighting and heat; and oh, so very much more.
In other words, she demands that we revert to a way of living so primitive, so uncivilized, and so just plain miserable it’s too overwhelming to even contemplate for long. Average lifespan would go back to about 35 or so; starvation would again be the rule rather than exceptional; diseases once very nearly eradicated will once again be rampant. Tainted or spoiled food will become common thanks to the loss of modern vacuum-sealed packaging, which seals out bacteria and delays spoilage and rot. Speaking of food, everyone will pretty much be limited to whatever we can grow or hunt ourselves, without the variety, quality, and convenience of fully-stocked grocery stores and restaurants.
Yeah, no, Greta. You and all your moronic Green confreres are free to give up all that health, happiness, and ease to live the Cro-Magnon dream yourselves if you like; have at it, and best of luck to you. The rest of us like modernity just fine and will carry on as we were, thanksverymuch. We don’t intend to sit still while you regress the world into the savage, deadly conditions we spent thousands of years evolving our way out of.
There is no reforming corruption this deep; the rot goes clear to the bone, part of their DNA from the very beginning.
In June 2018, in response to an IG investigation, while denying the FBI had any political bias, FBI Director Christopher Wray promised anti-bias training for all agents. In response to the “challenges” identified by the report, the FBI “appreciates the opportunity” to provide more “support” to our employees.
In December 2019, in response to another IG investigation, while denying FBI agents would intentionally act illegally, FBI Director Christopher Wray notified the FISA court a Senior FBI investigative lawyer named Kevin Clinesmith intentionally falsified evidence on a FISA application.
In response to the FBI notification, late December 2019 the FISA court demanded to know what corrective actions the FBI was going to take; and what other applications FBI Lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, was involved in.
In response today FBI Director Christopher Wray promises more training.
Throughout 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and through today, across both administrations, the corrupt group within the FBI in DC were/are protecting themselves. The FBI redacted the Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages. The FBI removed Page and Strzok texts and emails. The FBI hid texts and emails from Lisa Page to Andrew McCabe. The FBI kept documents from congress. The FBI has leaked false information to media to cover their tracks; and yes the Trump FBI have participated.
The corrupt FBI under James Comey, Andrew McCabe and James Baker is being protected and facilitated by the corrupt FBI under Christopher Wray, David Bowditch (San Bernadino infamy) and Dana Boente.
It’s one long continuum of exactly the same behavior.
Of course it is. The FBI is a mirror-image of the Mafia they claim to abhor: both shadowy brotherhoods regard the law as an inconvenience at worst; both go to great lengths to keep their dirty doings hidden from scrutiny; and both put looking out for their own near the top of their list of priorities—not as a matter of morality and decence, but of self-interest.
Hey, remember back when they were called “public servants,” anybody?
It turns out it was Virginia State Senator Dave Marsden who called gun rights advocates “children” on a hot mic at a public meeting over the weekend. But calling them “children” was just the beginning. Things just got worse. Much worse.
Marsden is in support of Democrats’ planned rollbacks of Virginia gun laws at the behest of anti-gun PAC man Michael Bloomberg:
Democrats are calling for, among other things, a ban or curbs on AR-15s, gun rationing, limits on ammo magazines, and a red flag law – a bill that would take guns away from people on the word of a third person who labels them mentally ill.
So it was not an accident or an oopsie when Marsden said in a radio interview on Wednesday that the people who were “emotional” about losing of their Second Amendment civil rights were “mentally ill.”
“I’ve been having this experience for weeks. I’m getting calls day and night,” he said. “Obscene, vulgar, threatening phone calls. I mean, we’re not talking a couple, well over a hundred.”
Jeez, only a hundred? Shoulda been a lot more than that. Ahh, but the arrogant whackadoo was just getting warmed up.
This “man” is the living incarnation of absolutely everything the Founders warned of; he and his loathsome breed are the reason they wrote the Constitution in the first place. And if those farsighted men were still with us, they’d have already been shooting by now. Harsh, heated words are but a meager down payment on the bill Marsden is racking up for himself.
Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty. Striking some proper fear in the hearts of crawly things like Marsden is long overdue.
Update! They’re leaving no stone unturned.
But as Democrats voted along straight party lines on Friday to ban people from carrying concealed handguns at the state Capitol, they worry, despite all evidence to the contrary, that there is a real danger to letting people continue carrying guns. This vote foreshadows Democrats’ opposition to allowing people to defend themselves and their loved ones.
While Democrat House Speaker House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn can’t point any problems in their state Capitol, she claims that this ban is necessary “to keep everybody safe.” But it isn’t just that there hasn’t been a problem in Virginia where people have been able to carry for decades. There hasn’t been a problem in the other 22 states that allow legislators and/or civilians to carry guns on Capitol grounds.
The problem with gun-free zones, which ban law-abiding civilians from carrying, is that they don’t exactly scare off criminals. In fact, they have just the opposite effect. Disarming everyone, including legislators or staffers, on their way to and from the buildings leaves them easy targets to criminals and terrorists. The murderers have an incentive to disobey the law precisely because the law-abiding obey it.
Um, I can’t honestly say that I have much of a problem with politicians voting to increase their own risk of grievous bodily harm, maiming, and/or death. In fact, I think they ought to disarm the Capitol Police and their own private security details while they’re at it, to REALLY boost “safety.”
Y’all may have noticed another round of the blind staggers going on here at Ye Olde CF websty the last two days. Reason being: I went to change back to the usual theme, locking Scrooge Picard back in his closet for another year, and BOOM! Another of who even knows how many cleverly-concealed Trojan time-bombs blew my poor old hogwallow back into smithereens again. I was up until about 5 AM this morning digging through subdirectories of subdirectories, finding bogus file after bogus file just lying there waiting to be invoked so it could start the whole crash ‘n’ burn cycle all over again. It was damned dismaying. Also infuriating.
So we decided on a real deep-dive, Godzilla-style stomping of the entire site, to include setting up all-new database tables, users, fresh WP re-install, ALL directories removed, etc etc. I’ll be working the next cpl-three days on getting things chugging along smoothly around here; wish me luck, people, ’cause I’m gonna need plenty of it. In the meantime, archives will be screwed, image and links both internal and external will be broken, the site will look kinda retarded, plugins and widgets will be disabled, and such-like. It’s just generally going to be more chaotic than usual in this joint until I get things scoured, disinfected, and rejiggered again. If the posts seem even more surly and bitter than usual, well, you’ll know why.
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." – Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution
"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil." - Skeptic
"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine." - Joseph Goebbels
"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it." - NC Reed, from Parno's Peril
"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in." - Bill Whittle
If you enjoy the site, please consider donating:
- Entries
- Comments
All e-mails assumed to be legitimate fodder for publication, scorn, ridicule, or other public mockery unless otherwise specified
Recent Comments