Why is the New York Times letting Erik Prince, former head of Blackwater, now head of Frontier Services group, write a piece in their pages promoting the wonders of contractors rather than soldiers?
I have to wonder if this is undercover sponsored content.
Bex
Didn’t he sell his company to the Chinese? Or is this a new one?
Doug!
@Bex:
He has a new one.
EDIT: He’s CEO but it’s owned by Chinese.
jl
My guess is that there is a convention observed, or maybe an unconscious assumption, in US corporate media, that if you can make hellacious bank by hook or crook, honestly or not, off some random notion, then you are the most qualified person who ever existed in the infinite time streams of the multiverse, to comment (edit, and by ‘comment’, I mean ‘deliver the final definitive analysis which is assumed to be correct’) .
khead
Did Kevin Drum change his headline yet again?
Pretty sure he did. I just wish I had saved the first one.
Amir Khalid
Is that what they’re called n America? At my old newspaper, The Star, they were called “advertorials”: ads deliberately disguised as editorial content, written and laid out by editorial staff, running on space paid for by the advertiser I’ve always felt there was something hinky about that practice.
jl
@khead: What were the previous headlines?
Trump has made several comments recently to the effect that he could shoot the US economy in the head, and his base would still love him, so he’ll do it. Where the headlines something like that?
Chris Fisher
PMCs don’t commit war crimes. They commit whoopsie-doodles that get covered up and filed away in incident reports in a filing cabinet in the basement of the corporate HQ next a shredder for easy access.
Amir Khalid
LOL.
jl
@Amir Khalid:
I only remember hearing the word ‘hinky ‘ one time, in an old Dragnet rerun. Joe Friday (was the character’s name, right?). I figured out the meaning from the context on the spot. And concluded that the word ‘hinky’ is hinky.
thruppence
OK, the final straw I needed to cancel my subscription. Thanks, Erik!
Doug!
@khead:
What was it?
Amir Khalid
@jl:
“Hinky” is a perfectly cromulent word.
jl
@Chris Fisher: whoopsie-doodles: understandable and barely noticeable exceptions to SOP that some whiners and lawsuit parasites will use as an excuse to steal the profits.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Money, Dear Boy. Prince’s checks are as good as anyone else’s so why not?
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: Yep, it’s an advertorial.
@jl: Nothing hinky about “hinky” — pretty common word in my neck o’ the woods.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
declare victory and just pull out already
and then cry yourself to sleep
elm
Is there a good reason to use their euphemism of “contractors” or “military contractors”? There is a perfectly good word already: mercenaries.
efgoldman
@Amir Khalid:
Most reputable American papers (when there were papers) clearly indicated advertising content as such, although it was often hard to tell at a quick glance. Who knows what they do now.
Betty Cracker
BTW, if you’re on Twitter, consider taking a moment to blast the NYT for giving the evil huckster Prince a platform to tout his murderous wares. Newspapers do notice when they get blasted on social media, and it never hurts to work the refs…
khead
@jl:
@Doug!:
Y’all are gonna need a better Internet sleuth than I am. But the original headline was something about the economy being rigged – but rigged for the one percent. Had little to do with what Trump testing any theory.
jl
@Betty Cracker:
‘ Nothing hinky about “hinky” — pretty common word in my neck o’ the woods. ‘
But you live on an enchanted isle out in the middle of a mythical jungle full of friendly dinosaurs who speak elegant Spanish and have read Faulkner and can make tropical rum drinks. A different world. You probably say stuff like “y’all” too.
efgoldman
@elm:
Most of us encounter “mercenaries” in reference to the Hessian soldiers who fought for Britain in the American Revolution. It’s not a positive connotation.
The next-most-common usage is in the various civil wars of (mostly) African countries in the 60s-80s. Again, not positive.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Ditto, and I grew up in the far opposite corner of this fine nation (and don’t feel the least hinky about that).
jl
Trumpka sums up his experience working on a (probably defunct) WH advisory panel.
AFL-CIO Pres. Richard Trumka on working with the Trump White House, at @csmonitor breakfast.
https://twitter.com/aseitzwald/status/902899413059817472
efgoldman
@jl:
C’mon now. Betty does NOT live in Disney World.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@efgoldman: Ahem. They prefer to be called “Soldiers of Fortune”. I thought you libs were supposed to be PC!
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@jl:
And “anyhoo”… ;-)
Ian G.
Because Augusto Pinochet is too dead to write op eds for the Times.
SATSQ
jl
@efgoldman: OK, I give up. Having lived in Los Angeles and therefore having experienced the local milieu, anything associated Dragnet is tainted, at least for me.
I apologize for questioning that word.
Betty Cracker
@jl: Yeah, but I’ve told those dinosaurs a million times they needn’t use the formal “Usted” when taking our drink orders, but they’ll never learn…hinky bastids!
efgoldman
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
That was the name of their (largely fictional)(*) magazine, as well as, i think, a movie and TV show. Dunno’ that they ever called themselves that.
(*)ETA: Meaning the stories were mostly fiction. The magazine was real
Captain C
@Betty Cracker: Plus, in this case, there’s the possibility of increasing Haberman’s butthurt levels.
efgoldman
@Captain C:
She feels herself much too superior for that. Hell, Tom Levenson actually carried on an extensive, well-reasoned, no name-calling dialog with the NYT, changed nothing.
lgerard
It’s as though conservatives have never read a single dystopian novel
except for maybe The Turner Diaries and Camp of the Saints
different-church-lady
@lgerard: *cough*ATLASSHRUGGED*COUGH*
Adam L Silverman
@elm: There are some differences.
Mercenaries, traditionally, have been paid to fight. They have no allegiance and no loyalty except, perhaps, to the other men (traditionally they were all men) in their company. As such they will turn coat (literally exchange their cloaks and the origin of the term turncoat) in the middle of a conflict if offered more money to do so. I would argue that Prince’s business model since he was forced out of Academi (which was Xe and before that was Blackwater) has been of a mercenary. Especially given his being bankrolled by the PRC.
Defense contractors, as a type of government contractor, refer to any company and their employees that provide goods and services to a specific government. The largest of these are now multinational and often provide goods and/or services to multiple states. That said the type that have personnel services business development units (BDUs), what are commonly called butts in seats, often have strict rules over who they will and who they will not supply personnel too. For instance, most of the butts in seats contractors in the US and UK (BAE Systems being the primary British one) will only supply personnel for US and/or NATO operations and programs. A lot of this has to do with the security clearance issues. If you have a US issued clearance as contractor and your company is involved with working on classified US projects, then there are constraints on who and under what circumstances you can provide personnel to. Basically these companies and their personnel are constrained from turning coat.
Prince no longer feels those constraints. If he did he wouldn’t be in business with the PRC.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Amir Khalid:
Cromulent is a hinky word!
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Don’t they basically provide non-combat services, like food services and supply/logistics handling?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Adam L Silverman:
Why?
lgerard
@different-church-lady:
But no one actually reads that book, much less understands it. I maintain that the number of people who slogged through that piece of crap is very, very small.
It’s like when people bring up “Austrian Economics”. Ask them to explain it, you’ll get a good laugh.
Betty Cracker
@efgoldman: He had a brief exchange w/ Thrush yesterday and posted some thoughts on that today starting here on Twitter. I don’t know if it’ll change anything, but that technique has more of a chance of doing so than screaming “what the fucking fuck, you fucking hack!” at them. (Like I do.)
Thor Heyerdahl
Joel Osteen’s Hurricane Harvey commemorative edition Bible for sale…complete with Matthew 25 and The Beatitudes edited out.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@efgoldman:
1. I know
2. Don’t ruin the joke ?
GregB
Aren’t mercenaries the absolute worst of the bottom of the barrel of globalism?
scav
Soldiers of Fortune? All I hear is basically Lucky Killers. As in, if they’re lucky, they’ll get paid to kill. If a little less lucky, they’ll get paid to cosplay in camouflage!
Oatler.
You mean “Special Report by Larry King” has been lying to me at 3 AM when I’m most vulnerable??
kindness
Why is the estreemed NY Times whoring letting Mr Prince blow smoke up it’s pages?
Because as most of us have figured out the old Grey Lady is a whore. Not that that is a bad thing it’s just that they will do/say anything so long as they are paid properly. Their words don’t mean all that much and that should be the starting point in anything written over there.
Fair Economist
Mercenaries worked out great for the Roman Empire! Some massacres, multiple rebellions, the eventual fall of the Western Empire- all good, right?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Oatler.: Please don’t remind me of that dork and his stupid suspenders.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: A large number of them do. But my first job with the Army was as a contractor. This was because the first culture program was designated as a proof of concept, which meant that all the civilians involved had to be contractors in case the Army decided to shut it down in a hurry. We had three term appointment civil servants under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, but every other civilian was a contractor. Eventually they moved everyone to term appointments. My short stint as a senior fellow at SOCOM back in 2015 was as a contractor because the schoolhouse that SOCOM created doesn’t qualify for Title 10 civil service appointments. These are what the service academies and senior leader colleges (war colleges) use for the bulk of their faculty appointments. But in order to qualify for Title 10 lines coded for AD (academic) you have to offer a resident course that runs for one full academic year. SOCOM’s schoolhouse doesn’t do this, for legit reasons, so they have one SES who runs the place and a handful of Title 5s in administrative posts and everyone else – teaching faculty, research faculty (the fellows), and support personnel – administrative, academic, and research – are all contractors.
I’ve been with the same defense contractor that sent me to SOCOM since then doing consulting work. So when I went to XVIII Airborne Corps for a week in 2015 to do the keynote and kickoff briefing for their strategic assessment to prepare to go to Iraq and run Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve I was their as a contractor. Right now I’m waiting to hear if my boss needs to send bodies to Houston. If I’m sent there I’ll be as a contractor.
As the uniformed service was drawn down after 2011 and the sequester went into place we didn’t see a significant reduction in contractors to make up for the freeze in hiring civil servants. What we did see was pressure on what the contracts will pay. I saw a position at CENTCOM advertised about two months ago. It was for an expert in an area I am a recognized expert in. My boss didn’t even bother trying to put me in for it because it only required a high school diploma. The downward pressure on the what the contracts will pay means that jobs that required a masters degree plus 10 years experience five years ago now only require high school diplomas. This means this position will probably pay between 50 and 60K per year as opposed to the 110 to 125K five years ago. So they’re hoping to get a retired senior non-commissioned officer with full retirement package and 20 years of experience working in this area who is just looking for something to do.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@efgoldman:
I read SOF back in the early 1980’s when I was a teenage Reaganite gun-humper.
It’s porn for right wing gun nuts.
Other than the gun articles, I remember they devoted a lot of space to defending South Africa’s apartheid government and its actions in SW Africa, along with Jonas Savimbi in Angola.
IIRC, one of their ‘scoops’ was obtaining an AK-74 and a bunch of 5.45mm cartridges that they claimed to have turned over to the CIA for evaluation.
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: 1) It precludes him from holding a clearance in the US. 2) If the PRC is bankrolling him, then he works for them and ultimately does what they want. This means that 3) he has turned coat, despite what he may be publicly professing, in regards to his allegiance to the US.
If he left the defense and national security sector, became an expat in Hong Kong, and was working as an exec for a multinational corporation no one would care. He’s retired from his service. He’d be retired from trying to effect US national security policy and strategy. So whoever was paying him, as long as he didn’t violate the read off non disclosure requirements from when he stopped working for the US, wouldn’t make a bit of difference. But that is not the case here. Rather he’s being paid by the PRC while trying to affect US national security policy and strategy for his own, and therefore his PRC investor’s, profits and interests.
trollhattan
Charles Pierce has observations on the growing ecological disaster that is post-Harvey Houston.
The sad thing is it will back to “bidnez as usual” once the mess is scraped away. Nobody will convince Texas their practices lead to all this.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
Say whut?
My post is quoted, while the poster I wanted to quote isn’t quoted, and the post is formatted properly when I went to edit it.
Though it could be that I’m using an old version of Internet Exploder on Win 7.
Weird.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for that info. Important for evaluating Prince’s advertorial, and judgment of the NYT in printing it.
Makes more sense of some of the comments I’ve seen about how much did Prince have to pay to get it placed.
Does the NYT vet their guest advertorials, or did they lay off all those people too? Or is that stuff kicked over to the business side?
Lapassionara
Didn’t the Times let its omsbudsman go, and announce that no longer needed a “public editor” because the public had so many ways of criticizing its work? I nominate Betty Cracker, as well as other esteemed front pagers and commentators, for the job of expressing our disgust with this latest affront to journalism.
Adam L Silverman
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): One of the major writers for Soldier of Fortune is a professor at National Defense University. He’s an interesting character.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Adam L Silverman:
Pete Kokalis?
Adam L Silverman
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): Fixed it for you. Somehow you put the closing command “/blockquote” at the start of what you were quoting and the opening command “blockquote” at the end of what you were quoting, which just turned everything that followed that into the quote.
(I’ve left the left and right arrows out because if I put them in it basically formats the above explanatory sentence.)
efgoldman
@scav:
If they’re really unlucky, their family gets the insurance money.
Reply
Adam L Silverman
@jl: I have no idea what the Times policies are.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Adam L Silverman:
Thank you.
Adam L Silverman
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): Tom Marks.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
In other words, exactly the kind of firm the current maladministration will hire.
FlyingToaster
@jl:
Pay-to-play = business side. The only thing editorial can do is spellcheck and fit into the paid-for space.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
They probably don’t, either. How would you?
BC in Illinois
@kindness:
As Daniel W. Drezner, professor at Tufts University, tweeted:
Followed by a column by yours truly on “Why Retirees are the Backbone and Future of America.”
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: With the departure of Bannon, much less likely. Mattis and McMaster seem to have removed Prince from the picture for the time being. The Time’s guest op-ed is basically him trying to bang on the door to be let in. I read it, there are some serious historical issues. A far better historical analogy would have been the Sea Bees, who started out as contractors and were ascended into service and then became a legitimate occupational specialty in the Navy for “good contractors”. The other problem is the same one that Nagl made in his National Journal op-ed last week: this belief that we’ve actually done counterinsurgency, that we actually have baseline conventional force, specifically Army, competency in conducting counterinsurgency, and that 3rd party counterinsurgency can be effective.
Redshift
@Oatler.:
I’d really recommend blocking RT so you don’t accidentally wake up to it!
Joe Falco
Hey, Ser Erik of the Blackwater only wants just compensation for his services. That’s why he wants a bag of gold and his own castle.
Cacti
Have to agree with Amir.
Sounds suspiciously like an “Advertorial”.
trollhattan
@BC in Illinois:
Then I’m next in line, with “Buy me a damn beer, America, I deserve it. Make it a Pliny the Younger.”
efgoldman
@Joe Falco:
Maybe he’ll anoint his sister as Official Princess and get her the hell out of Dept of Ed
trollhattan
@Joe Falco:
I’m pretty sure Cersei just had the Iron Bank hire him and his entire brood. They should toss in Betsy as dragon-bait.
ruemara
My NYT op-ed is “Snarky black women (specific ones) are deserving of $10 million dollar grants and a hareem of Keanu Reeves clones” and I must say, this is the refined argument we’ve all been waiting for.
Amir Khalid
@efgoldman:
“Soldiers of fortune”? This must have been their company song.
vhh
@jl: same file folder as “hoocoodanode”
SFAW
@efgoldman:
“Dear Soldier of Fortune editors –
I used to think all the letters were fakes, and I never thought anything like that would happen to me, but …. “
SFAW
@Joe Falco:
Someone suggested that, in a just world, the “compensation” he would receive would result in a lot of people puking when they saw the PM pictures.
efgoldman
@SFAW:
I never actually read the mag/rag, just thumbed thru it. But from what I remember, there was a considerably, obviously racist element to the writing and illustrations, too.
sharl
Adam’s response at #36 is a good discussion of the appropriate terminology involved. But there’s an angle based on recent history of U.S. political rhetoric as well. For example, it came to a head in a big way in the aftermath of the ambush and killing of four Blackwater “contractors” in Fallujah in 2004, with a lot of the anti-invasion media (mostly leftist, though not entirely so) describing the Blackwater victims as mercenaries (see Reference #5 in that Wikipedia link), while big media and online pro-invasion media and individuals went with contractors, with the latter often ranting at those who used the ‘m’ word to describe Blackwater employees.
I’m not sure the distinctions are always quite as clear and crisp as they should be, and such ambiguities allow creation of legal loopholes that various parties find advantageous, at least in the short term. I assume this is a lucrative area of practice for lawyers who specialize in certain relevant areas of civil law (lawsuits by next of kin and whatnot).
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: “National Defense University”? (goes to Google). Oh! The things we learn about that we never knew existed!
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Amir Khalid:
Youtube is blocked where I work.
Is it Warren Zevon’s Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner?
rikyrah
Houston is the 4th largest city in America. And, it has been turned into one big lake.
I am stunned.
BC in Illinois
@trollhattan:
That’s a great name for a beer.
However. On further investigation, it turns out that “Pliny The Younger is a American Double / Imperial IPA style beer brewed by Russian River Brewing Company in Santa Rosa, CA.”
The Russian connection keeps going deeper and deeper. Has Robert Mueller looked into this?
Yutsano
@rikyrah: I can’t even be snarky about this. It’s a terrible tragedy and there were no real good decisions once it was happening.
Yes there was zero foresight on both the state and city level, but now the aftermath is going to be hell for those folks.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: I use hinky all the time.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: I have several friends and colleagues there.
Yutsano
@BillinGlendaleCA: I live in Washington. We use hinky and y’all up here all the time.
Ella in New Mexico
Yeah, I heard him on NPR a few weeks back while driving to work and nearly veered into a ditch I was so pissed they gave him a platform.
Seriously, Trump is a God-damn nightmare, but the people he’s installed at the behest of Pence,et. al. are all in cahoots to take over the government and implement their warped Randian Libertardian dreams.
And as far as I’m concerned, those people are far, far more dangerous to America than a guy who’s this close to either being indicted or committed for a psych eval.
Even so, I don’t see Mattis or any NatSec people taking this a s serious consideration, more likely this is a Bannon-style “attack from the outside” attempt to harass. But make no mistake: This is a fucking Koch-Mercer coup d’tat, folks. We Dems and sane people need to quit beating each other up for minor sins during the primaries and election right now, and train our sights and our energies on the enemy. Everywhere we go we need to start calling these lunatics out and labeling their “ideas” for what they are.
If we’re not united, which is what they and the Russian bots/trolls/fake newsers have been so far successfully accomplishing-we’re toast.
trollhattan
@BC in Illinois:
You are on FIRE today. Russkies everywhere we look!
Yutsano
Also: thanks Doug. That song won’t leave in my head.
Mary G
@Yutsano: Me too! I’ve been cursing DougJ because “Mississippi Moon, won’t you keep on shining for me” is on repeat in my head and my computer speakers don’t work so I can’t play something to kill the worm.
jonas
Golly, I wish I could place a 1/4 page ad in the NYT for my company for free. I guess I just have to call it an opinion column.
Roger Moore
@Thor Heyerdahl:
Don’t you know? Some words are written in red because they’re optional.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Yutsano: I know, I lived there for 3 years.
Ridnik Chrome
I wondered this myself while perusing the dead tree edition of the Times over lunch. I have also wondered why they have recently given space on that very same page to people like John Yoo and John Bolton, both of whom should be disqualified for life from discussing foreign policy in public. Anyone who gives these crooks a forum should be beaten with sticks.
Also thumbs up for “undercover sponsored content”. You know it’s a real thing.
Amir Khalid
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman):
If you were a mercenary, you wouldn’t be too keen on a song about a mercenary who gets his head blown off, would you?
Laura
@trollhattan: OMG! Russian River Brewing is building a gigantic brewing and tapping place in Windsor about a 1/4 mile from my dad’s.
The line for the younger may be as long as usual, but the supply may be able to keep up.
Also, will be on the smart train line.
efgoldman
@Yutsano:
The worst thing is, they will take no lesson from this in terms of planning or environmental awareness, regardless of whether global warming is real (which it is)
jonas
@Ridnik Chrome:
I know. The op-ed pages of the WSJ are for that shit. NYT should have a little bit more respect for its readership.
FlyingToaster
@BC in Illinois: Followed by mine on “Why Orangutans get Elected”.
Gin & Tonic
@BC in Illinois: Late coming in, but funny coincidence. My son just got Dan Drezner as his faculty advisor. He was my son’s first choice.
misterpuff
@Amir Khalid:
Patty Hearst
Heard the burst
Of Roland’s Thompson Gun
And bought it.
Yutsano
@efgoldman: Lessons are for libtards. It’s the rules: Republicans make the mess, Democrats clean it up, people get tired of the Democrats and Republicans come back and break shit even more and worse than last time.
efgoldman
@jonas:
Hahahahahahahahaha
April Fools was four months ago.
efgoldman
@Yutsano:
Except in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri… Democrats don’t get their cleanup turn.
trollhattan
@Laura:
Lucky!
Confess I’ve never sojourned to Santa Rosa to queue up for the Younger; it’s a 3-4 hour round trip to maybe get told “Come back tomorrow.” Have had the Elder on tap and it’s quite worth chasing down.
Roger Moore
@BC in Illinois:
Pliny the Elder (another of their beers) is an even better name, since he is regarded as the first person to have written a detailed description of hops. Pliny the Elder came first, and Pliny the Younger came along when they decided to make an even more extreme version. The Elder is made year-round, while The Younger is a special, once a year thing that gets people to line up for hours for one glass. The Younger is a really good beer, but no beer is capable of living up to the level of hype it gets.
trollhattan
Knock-knock
“Who’s there?”
“Irma”
Hey great, a possible Cat 5 hurricane!
Elie
@Betty Cracker:
I am actually glad to see it — no secrecy about their affiliations and/or his views. I like all the rot visible and necessarily obvious…….
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
It’s not obvious that any level of foresight and planning, beyond deciding not to build a city that size in that location, could have prevented a major disaster. That much rain would tax the world’s best drainage system.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
A limited number of other pubs- top Russian River customers, I assume- will get a barrel or two. My local pub gets a pony keg for each of their three locations. It’s all served within an hour of the keg being tapped. It’s worth checking local establishments to see if any of them will get some and when it might be on tap.
Miss Bianca
@Roger Moore: Or as my father used to say, “I wouldn’t wait in a line like that to see the Statue of Liberty jump off its stand.”
SFAW
@Mary G:
Quit whining. I had “Brandy, you’re a fine girl” stuck in my head for a couple of weeks after seeing Guardians of the Galaxy Episode 2. It didn’t make me wish for a lobotomy, but damn!
Boussinesque
For me, this is what comes to mind when I hear “Blackwater”. On the whole, I think the ghosts are probably a lot more sympathetic than anyone involved with Prince’s companies, even with the ghosts actively trying to kill you.
Laura
@Roger Moore: and most who are lucky to get a pony keg limit it to either 1 pint or 10 oz’r.
We’re luckily awash in quality craft beer and it’s impact on the local economies, but beer is not everyone’s cuppa tea
Mnemosyne
@SFAW:
I freakin’ loved “GotG vol 2.” Very fun to see a superhero movie where the problem is the villain’s toxic masculinity.
BC in Illinois
@Roger Moore:
Okay, I will now look for Pliny the Elder in the St. Louis area. The Русская река website doesn’t show any local distributors this side of Colorado.
And on the earworm topic, what this thread has given me is:
@trollhattan:
Irma? really?
Oh, shit.
rikyrah
Saw this on Maddow last night.
Their back up
and
the back up to the back up plan
HAVE FAILED
That’s why they’ve evacuated.
CEO of @Arkema_Inc says no way to prevent explosion at its Crosby, TX chemical plant because of massive flooding. #TexasFlood
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) August 30, 2017
Chemicals in plant will degrade and lead to a fire or explosion within next 6 days, warns @Arkema_Inc CEO. https://t.co/Va5cv8eCsC
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) August 30, 2017
VeniceRiley
Had a bottle of Pliny The Elder at that resto under Duke’s on Huntington Beach Pier. Sandy’s? I think. Good beer. Expensive. I prefer my usual Big Barrel 2ipa at Karl Strauss Craft brewery/resto. Man, they make a killer Farmhouse Burger at Karl’s. L/T/O, patty, cheese, beer braised pork belly, fried runny egg … sooo good.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Roger Moore: Red writing…must be for those commies or socia1ists or something
Origuy
Pliny the Elder is very good, but there are a lot of beers with less hype that are also good. There’s an Italian deli in East SJ that gets a keg on Tuesdays. I’ll stop there sometimes when I’m working at home, but it’s difficult to stay awake in the afternoon after a pint.
e.a. foster
the new York times just wants the advertising money Prince and his friends will spend.
privitizing wars is just amoral, but then America is the country of free enterprise and privitizing wars is about as good as it gets not to mention as lucrative as it gets.