It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that, on (fake) Labor Day, (LETS GO MAY DAY) we devote our attention to a subset of the American population who should not be working, or at least not working in jobs that are entirely inappropriate for them. Children.

According to the Department of Labor, the number of minors involved in documented child labor violations (not including the ones that are never reported) increased a mind-boggling 472% between 2015 and 2023, with teenagers working late night shifts, too many hours and working in hazardous environments.

It's not hard to speculate that, as labor shortages have worsened in this country, employers are turning to those under 18 to fill those gaps.

It's not supposed to be this way.

Victoria Britain is back, baby! Don't let yourself get Oliver Twisted over the fact, Guv'nah! Now get out of school and get back in the factories!

Democrats continue to joke about false JD Vance rumor after years of criticizing Trump for spreading misinformation

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz referred to the rumor during his first speech as Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate.

These fucking losers just can't but help themselves to illustrating how un-human they fucking are at every possible opportunity.

After years of condemning former President Donald Trump for spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories, Democrats are now poking fun at his running mate using a false, vulgar rumor.

Fucking insufferable. Back in the good old days of American electioneering, we'd see presidents accusing each other of being cannibals or Tsarist pimps (Jackeon vs. Adams). Nowadays these absolute losers faint at the very thought of calling a fucking weirdo a fucking weirdo.

The rumor, first posted on X last month, involves a fake passage about a sex act and a couch supposedly in Sen. JD Vance's 2016 book, "Hillbilly Elegy."

Incredibly funny bit though.

The lie spread like wildfire, spawning jokes and memes even as the original joke's author clarified that it wasn't real and later made his account private. Several news outlets published fact-checks of the claim.

Imagine what other gold is hidden on that account

The fervor reached a peak in Philadelphia, the day Vice President Kamala Harris named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz told an arena filled with thousands of excited supporters: “I got to tell you, I can’t wait to debate [Vance]. That is if — if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

Literally the most mildest midwest dad joke that waltzing Tim can make and these fucking lizards clutch at their pearls

As the crowd roared and Harris smirked behind him, Walz, who just weeks earlier started a trend of calling Republicans “weird,” quipped, “You see what I did there?”

The Republicans aren't the only fucking weirdos you absolute dorks

The Harris campaign's TikTok account, named Kamala HQ, posted a video of the moment that has been viewed over 5.3 million times.

Tik tok dance your way into the voting booth

Republicans online were quick to chastise Walz for referring to the false story. Jonathan Turley, a conservative legal scholar, attacked “the couch story” on X as having been “debunked repeatedly.”

YOU HAVE YOUR ENEMIES FUCKING WASTING PRECIOUS TIME AND ENERGY ON WHETHER OR NOT JACKASS VANCE IS A COUCH FUCKER AND NOT BUILDING PUBLIC AWARENESS OF THEIR POLITICAL POLICIES OR RUNNING THEIR OWN ATTACKS! THIS IS LITERALLY A FUCKING STRATEGIC WIN

“We are not even in the post-convention period and our leading candidates are already 'in the mud rolling around' with trolls,” he wrote.

I guess you dont like it when the shoe's on the other door, Johnny Turkey, legal scoffed extraordinare!

The content and rapid spread of the false rumor seems made for the social media age, when information that is real, false and sometimes a blend of both is presented and disseminated in similar ways — and when fact-checks often never have the same reach as the bad information.

Dawg you know nobody has historical literacy anymore. Yet again, Jackson vs Adams, coffin handbills section.

The incident has also caused rival political camps to argue over which pieces of false information are worse than others and the fuzzy line between what is harmful or just mockery.

BRING BACK DUELING

Walz wasn't the first to joke about the viral falsehood. On July 27, nearly two weeks after the original false tweet was posted and a week after it was hidden by the author, the Harris campaign account posted a screenshot on X of a 2021 tweet from Vance deriding "cat ladies."

The post was captioned "JD Vance does not couch his hatred for women."

Lol okay this sort of humors more up my alley, I'll admit.

On July 26, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent around a news release blasting Vance. The opening sentence read, "House Republicans are couching their public praise of Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee with private criticism."

I'd normally make a "one joke" quip but I'm a fan of puns.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who at the time was considered to be on the short list to be Harris' running mate, leaned into the joke twice in the following days.

On the July 28 episode of ABC News' "This Week," Pritzker condemned Trump, saying, "He talks about all kinds of crazy stuff," before adding, "You know, his running mate, as you probably have heard, is, you know, getting known for his obsession with couches."

Thank God this fucking prickzer didn't become the VP candidate because he has the humor of a fucking bag of rocks.

On the July 29 "White Dudes for Harris" Zoom fundraiser, Pritzker told attendees: "I’ll keep my remarks short. I know that we have a lot of speakers. And afterward, of course, there’s another Zoom that I invite you all to called 'Couches Against Trump.'"

metaphorical dead horses beaten so much they turn into ivermectin paste have a better sense of humor than this prick from Illinois.

After Walz's speech, some Democrats continued to embrace the joke.

One fucking joke

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., quoted a tweet from Vance criticizing Harris for not taking questions from the media, with Moskowitz telling him: "I’ve been on Air Force 2 JD, there is a great couch on it."

At least Jared musky-twit has fragments of a humor bone to make the joke not as cringe as prickzer from earlier.

And at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, Rep. Dina Titus, who spoke before Walz and Harris, addressed Vance with the line, "You better hide behind that sofa, because we’re coming for you."

Tinnitus Dina better stick to letting people with senses of humor make the couch joke because Jesus christ that fucking sucks

Asked for a statement on Titus' comments, a spokesperson said, "I think we’ll just go with what’s on the tape."

Here's where a stick in the mud lib could make a "there's a pee tape?" Quip.

As the quips have gone mainstream, Republicans have blasted Democrats for helping spread the lie — even as Trump and his allies continue to share falsehoods about Harris and Walz.

You're blasting your own side with the hogs you shitlibs shut the fuck up

Democrats are defending their jokes as harmless fun, pointing to harmful past conspiracies spread by Trump and other Republicans about Democrats' running secret sex trafficking rings, being pedophiles or changing their identities for political purposes as far worse than a meme about a couch.

LET THE FUCKING POINDEXTERS HAVE THEIR FUN YOU FUCKING LIZARDS! it's their once ina lifetime opportunity to have fun in the sun so shut the fuck up

"For 2 years we had to hear that Joe Biden was an international super criminal mastermind from Despicable Me 3. You will listen to couch story," Moskowitz tweeted last week in response to Turley's complaints.

Holy shit you can make references to something other than fucking Harry Potter?

Also I'd take a criminal mastermind from a cartoon over the genocidal monster that is Joe Biden.

Representatives for the Trump and Harris campaigns, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Pritzker and Moskowitz did not return requests for comment.

I can't for the life of me remember what it is, but I remember hearing it 4-5 years ago. It goes along the lines of making fun of sectarians who go "I'm the one true communist/socialist/anarchist/something, follow me to revolution"

I'm interested to see what they're releasing since they've had so much time to really let their brain juices simmer. I hope it's tasty

https://archive.is/U26c8

Seriously this the first time I've ever heard of this. I'm even asking around and everyone's going reactions

At the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak, Alaska, in 2019, the Israelis successfully tested an anti-ballistic missile system that intercepts weapons in space. Now, in the Israel-Hamas War, it’s finally being used in battle, pushing military conflict above the atmosphere.

Kodiak Island is better known for its salmon-guzzling grizzly-bears than its rockets. But the forested Alaskan isle, separated from the mainland by the Shelikof Strait, has had a small commercial spaceport since 1998. Kodiak’s Pacific Spaceport Complex is intended for launching small satellites into polar orbit and got its start as the country’s first commercial spaceport. More famous facilities, like Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Vandenberg Space Force Base, are government-operated spaceports. Yet the majority of the 31 launches that have taken place at Pacific Spaceport Complex since its opening have, in fact, been for the military or government, including one foreign one: Israel. The shift towards supporting launches by the men in black has frustrated many of Kodiak’s residents, as I discovered when I visited the island last month.

Why is there a spaceport on Kodiak Island?

Kodiak might seem an unlikely spot for launching satellites into orbit. Spaceports are generally built closer to the equator to take advantage of the additional thrust provided by the Earth, which spins faster in the middle. Since the entire planet rotates once every 24 hours, objects on the equator are advancing 1670 km per hour. Those halfway to the North or South Pole are moving a mere 1170 km per hour, or 30 percent slower. Consequently, more rocket fuel is needed to launch from poleward locations to achieve the whopping speed of 40,270 kilometers per hour necessary to achieve escape velocity.

This advantage of equatorial launch sites, however, is negated when trying to launch into polar orbit. Polar orbits are used by satellites performing Earth observation or reconnaissance missions that image the entire planet. Each time a polar-orbiting satellite circles the Earth, it passes over the North or South Pole, providing full planetary coverage. Polar orbits are becoming increasingly popular as both governments and commercial firms seek to provide up-to-date satellite imagery of the entire planet.

Some northern countries and states like Alaska are hoping that satellite operators might turn to spaceports located in the world’s northern latitudes to reach polar orbits. Among them are not only the Pacific Spaceport Complex, but other other up-and-coming competitor spaceports like Andøya in northern Norway, Esrange in northern Sweden, and SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland, in the northernmost bit of the United Kingdom.

Despite the seeming advantages of polar spaceports, many of the commercial actors that the Pacific Spaceport Complex has sought to attract have swallowed the extra fuel costs of launching from the south and transported their rockets and satellites to spaceports like southern California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base. These are much closer to major infrastructure and engineering facilities in places like Los Angeles and don’t require arranging complicated, expensive logistics to transport material to the Arctic or sub-Arctic by plane or barge. The cold waters around Kodiak Island make for some of the world’s richest fish and crab stocks, as made famous in the television show Deadliest Catch, but are notoriously harsh for boats. The turbulent weather around the Emerald Isle also means that rain, fog, and wind all challenge the reliability of the airport for satellite operators, which often have short windows in which to prepare and undertake missions.

The difficulties that the Pacific Spaceport Complex has encountered in attracting market share means that only nine of their 31 launches have been orbital. The rest have been suborbital launches, or those that fly into space but do not reach escape velocity and return to the atmosphere before fully orbiting Earth. While these might sound less than spectacular, military conflict is rapidly evolving in suborbital space, with one key innovator at the helm: Israel.

Anti-intercontinental ballistic missile testing on Kodiak

In July 2019, three suborbital launches went soaring into the blackness of space over the inky waters of the Gulf of Alaska surrounding Kodiak. These launches had one purpose: to test the Israel Defence Ministry’s Arrow 3 Interceptor Missile System. The state-of-the-art technology built by Israel Atmospheric Industries and troubled U.S. aerospace company Boeing employs “exoatmospheric hypersonic anti-ballistic missiles,” which can intercept and destroy incoming long-rang missiles above the atmosphere. The system provides a top layer of defense that complements Israel’s more famous “Iron Dome”, which shields the country from rockets and bombs fired closer to the ground.

Between 2008-2021, the U.S. government contributed $1.27 billion to Israel’s Arrow 3 program. Its support for Israel’s Arrow system has been consistent, with development first beginning in 1986. In 2004, the Naval Air Station Point Mugu Missile Test Center in southern California hosted tests of Arrow 2, which uses an explosive to destroy incoming medium- to long-range missiles. In contrast, Arrow 3 destroys incoming long-range missiles through interception alone in the exoatmosphere, or the region just above the Earth’s atmosphere. They must be designed to operate in a vacuum, requiring complicated engineering to deal with low pressure [1].

In June 2017, during a Congressional hearing, U.S. Vice Admiral James Syring explained the role that Kodiak would play in testing Arrow 3:

Admiral Syring: Yes, sir. We are close partners with Israel on development of their systems, system engineering in particular, and testing support also. And I have been intimately involved with them on David's Sling and Arrow, the more recent version of Arrow 3. And, frankly, that interceptor is now up into the exoatmosphere, and it has significant range constraints within the Mediterranean. And one of the better places to test is in Alaska, from Kodiak, and we plan to do that next year.

Mr. Coffman: Okay. So the Arrow 3 is designed to defeat the over-the-horizon capability of the Iranians. Am I correct in that?

Admiral Syring: Sir, it is designed to defeat the exoatmospheric ballistic missile threat from Iran.

In other words, given the crowded airspace around the Mediterranean, Israel was unable to test Arrow 3 to its full capacities. Moshe Patel, director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, said in March 2019 during a panel discussion in Washington, D.C.: “Arrow 3 is too big for the state of Israel…It is supposed to be good against nuclear threats that are coming from Iran. (But) we have limitations in our arena to conduct flight tests because of safety.”

(Continues in comments)

I think it's generally schlock, but it's a good article describing the inner workings of the imperialist diplomatic corps and higher government facilities when it comes to their own analysis of opposing state entities. Additionally the hyperlinks to other articles go to interesting articles, trash they mostly are but still a lot higher quality than the usual trash we see on hexbear. Like for example this article that talks about Clinton's role in creating the current world we live in

That said