I'm not fully convinced you aren't in Wisconsin - Smitty_one_each.

That might be one of the most interesting fact-free statements I've heard in some time - which is saying a lot considering how many such fact-free statements I've seen in recent discussions here on drudgedot.

Thanks, friend! That really made this Monday more tolerable.

I put a conservative blowhard in his place when he wrote multiple lying comments in a short time. As facts are clearly too hard for him to comprehend, he added me to his foes list instead. Not much investment in that one. Frankly I'm surprised his foes list isn't longer; I think it is still shorter than the infamous perma-hate list of our dear friend Pudge.

I could fire up the slashdot bastard quotient script for this one, but I'm not that concerned.

There's a joke that's been circulating in liberal circles for the past few years that posits that Obama should come out publicly in favour of some kind of basic but necessary human activity, such as breathing or eating, the punchline being that Republicans will then immediately come against it and suffer the obvious consequences.

So, over the weekend, Obama came out strongly in favour of getting your kids vaccinated.

And then, this morning, we have this from Chris Christie:

Amid an outbreak of measles that has spread across 14 states, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey on Monday said that parents âoeneed to have some measure of choiceâ about vaccinating their children against the virus, breaking with President Obama and much of the medical profession.

True, he recanted those remarks when the predictable shit hit the fan, but it would be nice if Obama could make more proclamations along this line. I'd love to see how far this can go.

3-year-old toddler in New Mexico shoots father, pregnant mother. Apparently the toddler pulled a gun from mom's purse, squeezed off one shot, and in the process hit dad (first) and pregnant mom (after passing through dear old dad). As usual:

Which mens this will likely be pushed under the rug. There was also a two-year-old in the room who was fortunately not injured.

Yeah, I knew better. I really, really did. But in a moment of weakness, I fell for it. Arguably, it was closer to a couple hours of weakness, but you get the point. I came out alright on the other side, but knowing that I could have done better with my time.

Yeah, they got me this time. It won't happen again.

Yeah, that old joke, it just never gets old, right? Yawwwwwwwn...

The same old song, with the million-dollar sound, ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba-bah!

Looks who is back in Iowa, but the Kevlar Kandidate. Of course, his priority is Wisconsin, so he isn't officially running for POTUS (wink, wink) - he's just giving the best presidential speeches he can just in case there is a presidential election after his current term as governor is up.

Pop quiz - can you name a democrat who is not from Iowa who has spent more time in Iowa in 2015 than Scott Walker? Yeah, neither can anyone else.

I'm particularly looking forward to him selling himself as an outsider in light of the plain fact that

Although since nobody seems to be bothered by the fact that his budgets have led to the opposite of their promises in almost every single case, they probably won't be bothered by this either.

I visit a few threads here, on reasonable topics - like Barrett Brown case, etc.

The level of discourse has really troughed. It's like "conversation" between the Dufflepuds..

It's not worth even trolling these people. There isn't enough signal-to-noise for this to even register.

Apparently, if your leaders keep telling you long enough how awesome guns are, you eventually lose the ability to stop shooting yourself in the foot.

The FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR) has been released through 2012. While crime is generally down, it is interesting to notice the geographic distribution of property and violent crimes (Image 2/20). The highest rate of violent crime - 423.7 per 100,000 inhabitants - is in the south (Texas to Florida up to Maryland). The highest rate of property crime - 3,226.8 per 100,000 - is in that same region.

When i was looking at my email today (yes, damn.registrars@gmail.com is real) I took a moment to check for slashdot-related mail in there. I noticed that there was an email that I sent to admin@slashdot.org back in November when the message system was borked. Almost two months to the day and ... nothing.

While Taco was incompetent and irrelevant, he at least responded to email.

I noticed that my friend the fake conservative has shown up again recently to grace slashdot. I recall that some of the conservative regulars here have before claimed to not profile comments based on their authors but rather to judge them based on their content. So to see if my friend would follow their previous claims, I wrote a reply to one of his comments in a different style. We'll see if he - or any actual slashdot conservatives - bite.

hint: It's not an open letter if some people aren't allowed to respond to it. Even if there are only two people not allowed, it still isn't open.

To Nick Saban:
You can tell your team all you want that they "don't need a trophy to know they're the best" -- your team isn't the best. You got beat by a better team 42-35.

To the SEC Fans:
Your "the SEC is invincible" narrative, primary fed to you by the talking heads on ESPN (which owns the SEC Network), has been shattered. Your top teams all LOST. The so-called mini-NFL, the SEC West, was 2-5 in Bowl Season.

Ohio State beat Alabama, Wisconsin beat Auburn, TCU beat Ole Miss, Georgia Tech whipped Mississippi State, and NOTRE DAME beat LSU. That's right, LSU lost to Notre freaking Dame. You know, SEC, when your signature bowl win is against Louisville, you need to drink a nice, tall glass of warm STFU.

To Mark May of ESPN: Mark, I saw you on TV still not admitting that Ohio State deserved to be in the National Title tournament even after they handed Alabama their asses. Still think the 2014 National Champions didn't belong there?

And who was that asswipe on Fox Sports who stupidly claimed that if Ohio State played Alabama next week that OSU would lose? Butthurt much? Who's to say Alabama would even beat Wisconsin or Sparty next week much less the 2014 National Champions?

Besides, Alabama had their shot at Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl.

Ohio State 42, Alabama 35

To the fans of TCU, who thought they should have been in over Ohio State or Florida State: Dude, seriously? Win that piece of shit overrated conference you call the Big 12, then maybe we'll talk. Besides, the team that had a better argument (not a good argument, just a better one than yours) was your conference Champions, which leads me to...

To the Fans Baylor of who thought they should have been in over Ohio State or Florida State: You lost to Sparty at the Cotton Bowl, a stadium that's about 90 minutes from your home field. Any team that plays in a shitty conference that loses essentially at home TO MICHIGAN STATE has no business trying to claim that they deserve to be in the National Championship Tournament. Yeah, you were a 1 loss team who won a conference that was marginally better than the MAC this year. Big f'n deal. Seriously Baylor, the Toledo Rockets would give you all you wanted in a Bowl Game. The Big 12 completely sucked this year, and went 2-4 in bowl games thanks to TCU drumming an overrated SEC team and Oklahoma State beating Washington, a Pac-12 patsy team. Big Whoop.

Finally...

To the Big 10 Haters:
2014 National Champion Ohio State 42, Oregon 20
Ohio State 42, Alabama 35
Michigan State 42, Baylor 41
Wisconsin 34, Auburn 31

My prediction: Ohio State 35, Oregon 17

The reality: Ohio State 42, Oregon 20.

But the end result is the same -- the 2014 National Champions are THE Ohio State Buckeyes.

YES!!!