Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• How Biden Came to Own Trump’s Policy at the Border - Haitian asylum seekers were deported under Title 42, a despised Trump-era practice that the current Administration can’t seem to let go of. - link

• The Challenges of Regulating Cryptocurrency - The S.E.C. has yet to set clear rules on cryptocurrencies, leaving the industry guessing. Maybe that’s just how the agency wants it. - link

• How Texas Abortion Volunteers Are Adapting After S.B. 8 - In addition to helping people get to abortion appointments out of state, volunteer groups have been inundated with requests to deliver Plan B pills and pregnancy tests. - link

• The Battle of January 6th Has Just Begun - Nine months after the storming of the Capitol, Trump is more popular with the G.O.P. and his Big Lie is more widely believed. - link

• The Moral Bankruptcy of Facebook - The whistle-blower Frances Haugen hoped that her revelations would prompt a reckoning. Instead, the company has doubled down. - link

From Vox

• Is Biden’s legislative agenda popular? Yes, but … -

  

  The complicated politics of Democrats’ reconciliation bill.

  On the surface, this week’s new poll from Quinnipiac University had good news for Democrats about the big spending bill the party is trying to pass through Congress. Presented with a description of the bill’s $3.5 trillion price tag and some of its priorities, 57 percent of adults polled said they supported it, and only 40 percent were opposed — good numbers for this polarized country.

  But that same poll had a more ominous finding for Democrats: A plurality of voters said they wanted Republicans to regain control of the House of Representatives. Just 43 percent of adults surveyed wanted to keep Democrats in charge of the chamber, compared to 46 percent who wanted the GOP to take over.

These are the unusual political dynamics around President Joe Biden’s top legislative priority, known as the Build Back Better Act. People think it sounds good. There’s not much of a backlash. But it doesn’t seem to be the key to Democrats’ future electoral success, either, if many swing voters vote for the party that opposes it in the next election.

This may be because many Americans simply don’t yet know what’s in the bill, so the stakes aren’t yet concrete for them. The bill has only recently started to dominate headlines, and the emphasis has often been on Democratic disarray and legislative drama rather than on what the bill proposes to do for people. I’ve written an extensive rundown of what may be included in the bill, and the information is out there for those who seek it out, but these details have often been absent from media coverage.

Another possibility is that there’s a disconnect between the forward- looking ambitions of the Build Back Better Act and the current situation in the country. As Matt Yglesias writes, this bill was largely crafted in a pre-delta-variant world. The administration expected it would be debated when the Covid-19 pandemic was all but defeated domestically and the economy was roaring back. The bill was meant to be a pivot from a successful crisis response to the Democratic coalition’s long-held priorities. But the crisis is largely still here, and voters know it.

How to think about the Build Back Better Act

It’s difficult to place the Build Back Better Act on the ideological spectrum. On the one hand, it spends trillions on progressive priorities, and Sen. Bernie Sanders is a big fan. On the other hand, it’s been carefully designed so it avoids hot-button social issues and doesn’t take anything away from anyone except rich people and corporations. The major beneficiaries include the poor and clean energy industries but also many seniors and parents. It’s a big and significant bill, but not really a radical one.

The bill is essentially a grab bag, combining the top priorities that President Biden campaigned on with those of congressional Democrats — at least, all the priorities that qualify for the Senate’s special filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process. Everything in the bill has to clearly affect the federal budget, so there’s nothing about voting rights, immigration provisions may be dropped, and its provisions are generally about spending money rather than changing regulations.

Still, the current version of the bill tries to tackle a great many things — fighting poverty, combating climate change, expanding health care benefits, helping with child-raising expenses, offering universal pre-K and free community college, housing policy, tax policy, and more. (Moderate Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia may force some of these policies to be cut back or dropped in the final version.)

The pandemic crisis doesn’t necessarily make these issues less important. Indeed, some of them, like burdensome child care expenses and gaps in the safety net, are arguably more urgent. Other problems, like the climate, certainly aren’t just going away. And the bill extends some important measures first passed in the pandemic relief bill, like the expanded child tax credit.

But overall, this is a bill crafted to advance long-held priorities of the Democratic coalition — not, necessarily, one aimed at addressing issues that are top of mind for swing voters, or that will help the party most electorally. A bill like that might be more laser-focused on the pandemic or the economy.

The politics of Obamacare compared to those of Build Back Better

In that, there’s one major similarity to the first-year legislative agenda of President Barack Obama.

Elected in the midst of the Great Recession, Obama spent his first few months dealing with the economic crisis before pivoting to trying to pass his major health reform bill — a longtime Democratic priority.

The problem was that the economic crisis was not yet fixed — the unemployment rate remained stubbornly high. And though he passed the Affordable Care Act, his approval rating dropped, and Democrats were shellacked in the ensuing 2010 midterms.

History could be repeating itself. Currently, the pandemic, the economy, and “poor leadership” are the top problems American adults think are facing the country, according to a recent Gallup poll. Relatively few respondents named climate change, health care, or poverty as their top priority, but those are the top issues tackled in Biden’s bill.

Still, there are major differences with how the debate over the Build Back Better Act has played out so far.

Obamacare polled poorly by this point in 2009; Biden’s bill doesn’t. The intense backlash on the right that ensued over Obamacare has not materialized this time around — Republican politicians are opposing it, but the GOP base seems more energized by culture war issues and the pandemic.

Biden’s bill also hasn’t dominated public and media attention like the many-months-long Obamacare debate. This may be a consequence of crafting a bill that does so many things, but that is also designed to be unobjectionable: It lacks the central story and conflict that media outlets search for when they make programming choices. Often, more dramatic issues like the pandemic and the pullout of troops from Afghanistan have dominated headlines instead. And when the bill does come to the fore, the frame is usually about how Democrats are fighting over it and struggling to reach agreement, not about what the bill would do.

Perhaps, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi once famously said about Obamacare, Democrats have to pass the Build Back Better Act so the public can find what’s in it. That is, once members of the public start getting the benefits from this bill, it will become popular — as happened with Obamacare. That does not mean that this bill will become a vote-winner for Democrats, but it could ensure achievements stand the test of time or make it more likely that Republicans shy away from repealing it once they retake power.

Moderate Democrats, though, might point to the lack of evidence that the Build Back Better Act is helping the party electorally and suggest cutting it back or dropping it. That perhaps the party should just pass the infrastructure bill that has already won bipartisan Senate support through the House instead.

But that doesn’t necessarily follow. The lowest President Trump’s approval ever dropped was in December 2017, when it looked like congressional Republicans were about to botch tax reform and make his presidency a total failure. Even hardcore Republicans started to get fed up at that point. But the GOP soon got it together and passed its tax bill. Trump’s popularity rebounded a bit and never returned to that previous low point, even after his attempt to overturn the election result. Looking like a loser can be a political problem of its own.

The reality for Democrats is that the 2022 elections will be tremendously difficult regardless of whether this bill passes or fails. A new president’s party very often loses House seats in the midterms, and Democratic majorities in both chambers are very narrow. The reconciliation bill may not save them, but losing it could well sink them.

• The best- and worst-case scenarios for Covid-19 this winter -

  

  Why this winter should be better than the last one.

  The summer wave of Covid-19 cases and deaths is finally starting to fade, but already, winter is within sight.

  Last December and January, the United States and much of the world experienced the deadliest surges of the pandemic. At one point, more than 3,000 Americans were dying every day of Covid-19. Nearly 250,000 people died in the United States over December, January, and February.

  But this winter may be different, at least in America. Last year, almost nobody was vaccinated against Covid-19. As of October 7, 56 percent of the US population is fully vaccinated, according to the New York Times’s tracker. That includes 84 percent of people over 65, who are generally the most vulnerable to dying from the virus. The Food and Drug Administration will soon consider whether to authorize a vaccine for children as young as 5, which would push vaccination rates higher.

  More than half the population being vaccinated is the primary reason for optimism about the coming months. Some number of unvaccinated people have natural immunity as well; there have been 44 million recorded cases of Covid-19 in the US to date.

  At some point, the virus starts to run out of people with no protection to infect. While there will be breakthrough cases within the vaccinated population, those people are significantly less likely to develop serious symptoms than if they were unvaccinated. At this stage, the major goals are maintaining hospital capacity to make sure health systems are not so inundated with patients that they must ration care and preventing deaths. The more people with immunity; the fewer deaths we will see. That’s the main reason this winter could be better than last.

The Covid Scenario Modeling Hub, which is a synthesis of several projections of future case and death numbers, shows US Covid-19 deaths steadily falling, from an average of nearly 2,000 per day during the last week of September to a projected 90 deaths per day in the final week of February 2022.

But that is assuming a lot of children get vaccinated and no new variant emerges that is more transmissible and/or deadly than the delta variant. Under different parameters, if few children get vaccinated and a new variant does become dominant, the coming winter could look a lot different. The Covid Scenario Modeling Hub projects about 650 deaths every day by the end of February in that scenario — and trending upward. That’s not as bad as the last winter, but it is still much worse than other possible futures. (And to be clear: All the scenarios involve significant uncertainty in the specific numbers projected.)

Which situation we end up in will depend in part on luck (hopefully, the virus does not suddenly become more virulent) and in part on our own decisions (such as whether or not to get vaccinated — which can help stave off new variants).

We likely will end up seeing both scenarios play out in different places. Areas with a lot of immunity, whether by vaccination or infection, may have an easier winter. But there are still pockets of people, in areas as small as a town or even a neighborhood, where there is not much immunity and a lot of people are still vulnerable to Covid-19. They are facing a much harder winter.

Here’s what will determine how the United States fares during the cold-weather months.

The reasons for optimism about Covid-19 this winter

More vaccinations should mean a better winter. Other factors — how much people travel, what precautions they take to social distance, etc. — will play a role, but nothing is as likely to influence how the winter unfolds as vaccination rates.

At this point, about 75 percent of Americans ages 12 and older have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Most importantly, 95 percent of people over 65 have gotten at least one dose, and the federal government has signed off on booster shots for that age group. And Pfizer has asked the FDA to approve its vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, which sets the stage for vaccinations to begin for the school-aged population in a matter of weeks.

President Joe Biden’s administration and many states, cities, and employers are doing whatever they can to encourage more vaccinations. The federal government is requiring large employers to institute vaccine mandates; some local governments and businesses are doing the same. Daily vaccination rates are still far below their peak of more than 3 million in April, but they have picked up over the past few months, from a low of about 500,000 per day on average in mid-July to about 950,000 daily in early October.

“Vaccination coverage is creeping up and that, combined with natural immunity, affords increasing protection,” Jennifer Kates, director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “Kids should be eligible soon. Even with kids back in school, we are not seeing big outbreaks. These are all signs that we could be over the significant hump.”

The US is entering a new stage of its epidemic. Covid-19 is not going away, so we will have to decide, individually and collectively, how much risk we are willing to tolerate. It isn’t possible to prevent all infections, but the goal should be to prevent as much serious disease as possible in order to avoid hospitals being too overwhelmed to care for all their patients, a worst-case scenario that was seen in the hardest-hit parts of the country this summer.

The vaccines continue to provide strong protection against severe illness for most people, and many people for whom vaccine effectiveness is more likely to wane are now eligible for booster shots. The more people are vaccinated, the more likely we can allow life to return to normal (or normal-ish) without risking overrun hospitals.

About half of unvaccinated US adults are open to getting the vaccine, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s September survey, saying they are either still taking a “wait and see” approach or they’ll get it if required. Most vaccinated people say that they would get a booster if and when they are eligible for one. And about one-third of parents with kids ages 5 to 11 now say they will get their child vaccinated right away, up from 26 percent who were saying the same in July.

All of those trends suggest there is room for the overall US vaccination rate to grow before the cold weather really sets in. That would portend a better winter than last year, even if experts caution it is still possible to see a small bump in cases under a best-case scenario.

Their goal is to have as many of the cases as possible be vaccinated people with mild symptoms that don’t require a trip to the hospital. That way, life could go on in relative safety.

“It’s no secret that Covid will likely remain endemic and still hurt people,” Kumi Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, told me. “But if we can reliably send kids to school and give our health care systems a fighting chance, I️ think that will be a huge step.”

The reasons for pessimism about a coming winter wave

But in the same data, there are trends that could result in a more difficult winter, one in which many Americans remain unprotected from Covid, fully vulnerable to the delta variant — or, in the worst-case scenario, a more virulent successor.

About 12 percent of Americans say they will “definitely not” get the vaccine, under any circumstances, according to the KFF’s September poll. They appear unlikely to be moved by any incentives or requirements; some of them have become a part of the anti-vaccine, pro-miracle cure community that has developed during the pandemic and is not persuaded by the mainstream consensus.

A lot of parents also appear hesitant to get their young children vaccinated, even after the FDA’s expected approval: Per the Kaiser poll, 32 percent of parents said in September that they will “wait and see” about it; 7 percent say they will have their kid get vaccinated only if required, and 24 percent say they will “definitely not” allow their child to be vaccinated. Such a large share of parents being hesitant about a new vaccine is actually not unique to Covid-19. As Aaron Carroll wrote for the Atlantic, it took years for chickenpox vaccination rates to reach 90 percent in the US.

So there will be pockets of the population who remain fully vulnerable to Covid-19. It doesn’t appear likely that the United States can reach sufficient vaccination levels to stop the virus’s transmission entirely. And even vaccinating many more kids may not help as much as vaccinating more older adults would in reducing severe cases overall.

“Even in the most highly vaccinated US states, there will still be a reservoir of people susceptible to the virus,” Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “No state has reached a level of population immunity that could interrupt spread — and that may not even be possible, given the highly transmissible delta variant.”

Different places will have different levels of vulnerability, though, depending how much immunity there is through vaccinations and prior infections. Some states have vaccinated more than 99 percent of their over-65 population; others, like West Virginia and Wyoming, are still hovering closer to 80 percent, meaning a lot of the people most at risk from Covid-19 lack any immunity to the virus.

That variance goes all the way to the local level. Wayne County, Michigan, is considered highly vulnerable to Covid-19, according to the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, which uses various socioeconomic measures to assess a place’s risk. The county’s vaccination rate is stuck at 46 percent, well below the overall state rate, and one in four people over 65 aren’t vaccinated.

Bill Hanage, a Harvard University epidemiologist, told me this kind of micro-trend is one reason that clusters of cases continue to appear even in highly vaccinated areas.

“One obvious and important reason is the clustered nature of susceptible individuals,” he said. “If you are 95 percent vaccinated in your town, but the 5 percent unvaccinated are all in the meatpacking plant, that’s not good.”

So the US may end up experiencing both the best-case and worst-case scenarios simultaneously this winter, depending on where you live and who you are. But experts are consistent in saying that more vaccinations should lead to less risk — and help avert what they consider the worst-case scenario for the winter if vaccinations lag.

“Worst-case scenario is that another variant emerges,” Kates said. “Covid has fooled us before and can again. And if people let their guard down — masking stopping too early, for example — we could see another surge, especially since we are entering winter.”

• The debt ceiling fight is far from over -

  

  Get ready to do this all again in December.

  Lawmakers have ended another standoff over the debt ceiling — at least temporarily.

  On Thursday, the Senate voted 50-48 to increase the debt ceiling (a legal cap to how much the US can borrow) by $480 billion, an action the House is expected to take too. That money will enable the US government to cover its loan obligations until early December, when Congress will once again have to either pass a longer-term increase or another stopgap suspension.

  The current agreement is the product of a weekslong stalemate on the issue that saw Democrats trying to pressure the GOP into giving up their roadblock of an increase or suspension of the debt ceiling, and Republicans repeatedly refusing to do so.

  The impasse had high stakes, as the US faced a rapidly approaching default deadline. According to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the US could run out of money as early as October 18. Passing that deadline without an increase or suspension would have likely triggered a massive domestic and international economic collapse.

  Ultimately, Republican senators decided to cooperate with Democrats, for now. However, in approving this short-term fix, lawmakers have failed to address the issues that brought them to a stalemate in the first place. They’ve now set themselves up for another dangerous impasse when this bill expires after December 3.

  The standoff, briefly explained

  Republicans have been intent on using the debt ceiling to make Democrats look bad.

  Prior to their offer to back an increase this week, Republicans had not only said that they wouldn’t vote for a suspension but also that they would be blocking Democrats’ attempts to approve one using regular legislative order. If Republicans didn’t previously block the vote, Democrats would have been able to pass it with 51 votes — but because they did, the measure required 60 to advance.

  Instead, Republicans pushed Democrats to use budget reconciliation — another process that would enable them to raise the debt limit with just 51 votes — to increase the cap on their own. Democrats were reluctant to use budget reconciliation both because it can be a lengthy and convoluted process and because it would have required them to specify how much they are raising the debt limit (something they ended up having to do anyway for the December increase).

  Effectively, Republicans wanted Democrats on the record as having increased the debt limit by trillions of dollars in order to portray them during the midterms as big spenders. Additionally, Republicans argued that because Democrats are working on a partisan basis to pass an expansive social spending bill, they should take care of any debt ceiling increases on a partisan basis, too.

  “Republicans’ position is simple,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote to President Joe Biden on Monday. “We have no list of demands. For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well.”

Win McNamee/Getty Images

  <figcaption>Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) talks with reporters on October 7. The Senate voted to 

Democrats, on the other hand, have argued that Republicans ought to work with them to pass a suspension or increase, or simply get out of the way. One, because avoiding a gigantic economic collapse is in everyone’s interest, and the minority party hasn’t typically blocked action to this degree in the past. And two, because both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for the actual debt that this legislation would address.

Both points are true: The debt grew nearly $8 trillion during the Trump administration as a result of massive tax cuts and pandemic relief. In that time frame, Republicans and Democrats both voted to suspend the debt limit three times. But that didn’t sway Republican lawmakers.

Because Republicans had refused to give up their opposition and Democrats were intent on keeping the pressure on the GOP, the two sides were at an impasse until this week.

How the debt deal came together

On Wednesday, McConnell reversed his position and told Democrats that Republicans would not block a short-term increase to the debt limit into December.

Adamant that they would not pursue reconciliation to raise the ceiling (and, given the deadline, likely out of time to try doing so) Democrats raised the possibility of creating a carve-out in the filibuster rules that would also allow them to pass debt ceiling measures with the 51 Democratic votes they have, rather than the 60 votes filibuster rules require.

That latter option appeared to be gaining momentum this week, although key moderates like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) were still wary of it. As a sign of its traction, however, Biden — who has traditionally been cautious of altering filibuster rules — called carving out a special debt-ceiling- related exemption to the filibuster a “real possibility.”

That possibility may have spurred McConnell’s decision to cave for the time being. According to CNN’s Manu Raju, McConnell was worried about potential threats to the filibuster when he offered Democrats a deal to increase the debt ceiling for now.

The filibuster has allowed McConnell to block a range of Democratic priorities — from police to voting reforms — despite his party being in the minority. The assumption is that exempting the debt ceiling from the filibuster would increase pressure on Democrats to do so for other issues Republicans oppose, like expanding protections for voting rights.

For now, the filibuster stands. And the GOP’s move helps prevent the US from going into default in the near term. It does little to resolve the central conflict at hand, however. Republicans are still insisting, after all, that Democrats use budget reconciliation to approve a longer-term debt ceiling increase on a partisan basis.

Democrats, meanwhile, are refusing to do so and may consider a filibuster carve-out again in December. “We’re not doing it on reconciliation,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) emphasized earlier this week.

There will be more debt drama in December

The use of the debt limit as political leverage is nothing new.

As Republicans have been fond of pointing out, Biden was among the Democratic senators who voted against raising it in 2006 in order to send a message about his disagreement with Republican policies. In that scenario, though, Democrats did not filibuster the legislation or prevent Republicans from approving it with a simple majority. Additionally, Republicans have previously withheld votes for debt ceiling increases in exchange for policy concessions, something that’s not the case this time around.

This year, as Republicans emphasized, they took issue with the debt limit in order to simply make a point, a tough position to negotiate with.

This short-term fix does help Democrats in that it allows them to focus their time and energies instead on a larger social spending bill they’ve struggled to complete.

“McConnell caved,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told reporters. “And now we’re going to spend our time doing child care, health care, and fighting climate change.”

But the larger disagreements between Republicans and Democrats regarding how to move forward remain.

And by procrastinating on solving them, lawmakers have set themselves up for a difficult December. The new deadline to address the debt ceiling also coincides with another deadline to pass more government appropriations — that is, the money needed to keep the government functioning.

That means Congress will find itself in a tough spot yet again in just a few months. Not only will lawmakers have to solve their debt ceiling disagreements and stave off economic disaster, but they’ll have to do so while fighting over how to avoid a government shutdown.

From The Hindu: Sports

• Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra wants to continue with current coach in 2024 Games as well - During a panel discussion at the ‘India Today Conclave’, Chopra said that Bartonietz’s methods suit him as the bio- mechanical expert cracks jokes even during intense sessions making training thoroughly enjoyable.

• FIFA plans to postpone Club World Cup until 2022 - FIFA is now exploring staging the event in January or February.

• PCB can collapse if India wants as ICC is getting 90% of its funds from there: Ramiz Raja - Mr. Ramiz, in a candid briefing to the Senators, also said he would unveil his plans for Pakistan cricket and the board in a week or 10 days’ time

• Jemimah thanks The Hundred for her comeback - She became youngest to reach 1,000 runs in T20I Before rain intervened

• Meet Anuradha Doddaballapur, a cardiovascular scientist from Bengaluru and Germany’s cricket captain - Anuradha is also the first woman to pick up four consecutive wickets in T20 Internationals

From The Hindu: National News

• Mamata inaugurates big-ticket Durga puja pandals, asks people to abide by COVID protocols - The CM had on Wednesday, on the occasion of Mahalaya, inaugurated Naktala Udayan Sangha in south Kolkata.

• Punjab will be free from stubble burning if AAP comes to power: Delhi Environment Minister - Gopal Rai said Delhi has provided a solution to the problem of stubble burning with the Pusa bio-decomposer and it will be distributed for free in all Punjab districts like the AAP government has been doing

• Data | Which major Indian cities exceed WHO’s revised pollution limits? - As many as 95.6 deaths per one lakh people were recorded in India due to PM2.5 exposure in 2019

• YSRCP leader seeks probe into ‘land grabbing’ activities of former MLA - ‘Kuna Ravikumar illegally transported sand worth ₹100 crore’

• CCTV cameras to be installed at schools, medical shops in Kollam - Initiative’s aim is to curb substance abuse and child trafficking

From BBC: Europe

• Nobel Peace Prize: Journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov share award - The high-profile Philippine and Russian editors face threats and intimidation for doing their jobs.

• COP26: Pope will not travel to Glasgow for climate summit - The Vatican confirms that Pope Francis will not attend the UN climate conference COP26.

• Samsung apologises for Russian app download error - The firm said a message sent to UK users saying Russian software had been installed was a mistake.

• German elections: Defeated Merkel heir Laschet prepared to resign - Armin Laschet has called a conservative party congress next week for new leaders to be decided.

• Mica: Large crowd attends Mica redress protest march - Homeowners hit by the affect of mica are marching from the Garden of Remembrance to Custom House.

From Ars Technica

• Rocket Report: Falcon Heavy delayed due payload issue, DART gets a date - Also, an update on Arca’s first orbital launch attempt. - link

• No, your antibodies are not better than vaccination: An explainer - Infection does offer some immune protection—but it’s unreliable compared with vaccines. - link

• Resident Evil reboot trailer looks like a welcome return to gaming roots - Director Johannes Roberts wanted to evoke dark tone and scary aspects of the games. - link

• iPadOS 15 mini-review: It’s all about the home screen - As an addendum to our iOS 15 review, we look at what’s new on the iPad. - link

• Lunar samples returned by Chang’e-5 tell of recent volcanism - “Recent” is relative—the samples are roughly two billion years old. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• Asked a Chick, “If I washed my dick would you…. -

  Asked a chick:

  If I washed my dick would you suck it?

  Her: “Um, Wtf?” “No!”

  Me: “You dirty cocksucker!”

  She laughed so much she eventually sucked me off as a gesture of appreciation of the joke. My sister is weird.

  submitted by /u/NotSoFunny_FunnyGuy
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• 3 guys are sitting around a campfire -

  One guy says to the other 2, “I’m the toughest guy here. One time I was out in the woods and I got attacked by a mountain lion! I wrestled with it and was able to stab it to death.” One of the other guys says, “You think that’s tough? I was out in the woods and got attacked by a full size grizzly bear. I wrestled with it and stuck my arm down it’s throat and strangled it to death!” The last guy just sat there poking the fire with his dick.

  submitted by /u/icecreamandbutter
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• I got fired from my job because I kept asking my customers whether they would prefer “Smoking” or “Non-smoking”. -

  Apparently the correct terms are “Cremation” and “Burial”.

  submitted by /u/lspatricio
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• A Chicken Goes to a Fox for Therapy -

  A chicken, Sergio Cortez, goes to his therapist , a fox named Francisco Arroyo. Francisco has a tweed jacket with elbow patches. Sergio, the chicken, says to him "Dr. I want to end my life. I want to shoot myself in the head and commit suicide.

  The therapist responds “Sergio, tell my about how you are feeling and why you are feeling this way. Sergio says”When I was a young chick, I was abused by a relative. My parents did not believe me. Then, my older brother Jesus Cortez, was killed horrifically in a farming accident. He was shredded into chicken fingers right before my eyes. My parents blamed me for his death and wished I had died instead.

  The therapist says " That’s horrible, you must feel so much trauma. Let’s talk about it before you do anything." Sergio interrupts “You don’t understand, my parents and I reconciled some years back. We have a great relationship now and I no longer feel sad about my brother’s death. But when I was 18 I signed up for the military and was sent far away from home. I did horrible things, slaughtered women and children. I still see their faces sometimes.” The therapist responds “I see, many veterans of war suffer from depression, especially if you did something that compromised your morals so deeply.” Sergio replies “Doc, I’ve never told anyone this, but I enjoyed it! People, deep down, are basically animals I believe. I was like a blood thirsty wolf and when I see the faces of my victims I smile. But after the war I became so lonely. I no longer had my war buddies and I’ve always been an ugly duckling so no woman wanted to have sex with me.” The therapists nods and says " I see, loneliness can be very very hard on a person, but i can help you with strategies to make friends, your lonliness is only temporary and suicide is permanent." Sergio interrupts “Doc its OK now. After a couple years of bumming around I got a good paying job and found a woman who appreciated what I can provide for her. I have 5 daughters and 5 sons and I haven’t felt lonely in years. Really, I’m doing great!”

  The therapist, puzzled, asks" I don’t understand, if you are feeling so amazing why are you wanting to commit suicide?"

  The chicken replies " To get to the other side."

  submitted by /u/Mobely
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• How many guitarists does it take to play Wonderwall? -

  Apparently, all of them.

  submitted by /u/theuniversaltool
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