December 30, 2024
The accomplished actress of stage and screen (big and small) leaves the world a better place for her artistic contributions that helped enrich our culture. I have no idea what her politics were, but that said she should be admired for keeping it to herself. Insofar as I cannot recall anything she said or posted that would put her among the usual braindead fools of the entertainment industry, that's good enough for me that I can mention her passing without the need for snark or quoting some horrid opinion she might have had in the past. And so, while "Alice" may not live here anymore, sadly MALICE still has much of the world by the throat as we prepare to ring out 2024. And one of Malice's greatest exponents has finally, and mercifully, at the age of 100, drawn his last breath. I am of course speaking about Jimmy Carter, ex-president, founder of Habitat for Humanity and a legacy as an Habitué of Inhumanity, both here and to a very large extent around the world, particularly in the middle east.
The curtain has finally come down on one of the longest acts in American history: after lingering in hospice care for nearly two years, Jimmy Carter is dead at the age of 100. Now, as we all learned in Latin class, de mortuis nisi bonum, that is, only say good things about the dead, and by most accounts, Jimmy Carter was a decent fellow who tried to do the right thing by his lights. There is no Latin maxim, however, about not speaking ill of a dead president’s time in the Oval Office, and on that score, a great deal can and should be said about Jimmy Carter. Although Carter was the longest-lived president of the United States ever, it is a shame that he didn’t live even longer. The second Trump administration promises to put an end to the long, slow decline of the United States and the now well-established habit of betraying our allies that Carter did so much to initiate, and it’s too bad that Carter won’t be around to witness America’s resurgence — if, that is, the late president’s friends and ideological kin don’t manage to block any such rebound.I have an outstanding 10-part series from IBD editorials about Carter's legacy that was published back in 2007, during the run up to as the lamented Rush Limbaugh of blessed memory called it "the Immaculation" of Barack Obama, to counter the the campaign to slime Dubya as the worst president in US history. IBD no longer exists, as it is now Issues & Insights but the editorial is no longer available. I have a PDF that I shall try and post in the sidebar or otherwise make available to anyone who wants to download it. In the sidebar and linked here! It's entitled "Profile In Incompetence, A 10-Part Series on the Worst President in American History." You can find it posted in excerpts here and there, on some websites that we try to avoid as you will likely discover. Here are the intros to each section for a nice taste.
. . . As president, Jimmy Carter was as sanctimonious as he was inept. America is still paying the price for the damage he wrought during his presidency. It is a shame that he will not see efforts to reverse the effects of his disastrous legacy.
Part 1: So Jimmy Carter calls the Bush administration "the worst in history." This from the man who wrecked the world's greatest economy and made a nuclear Iran and North Korea possible.
Part 2: When it comes to economic performance, there's no contest: Apart from the early years of the Depression, Jimmy Carter's brief tenure as president was the worst in the 20th century. Part 3: After being told over and over by President Jimmy Carter that America's ability to influence world events was "very limited," the Soviet Union believed him and invaded Afghanistan. And al-Qaida was born. Part 4: In the name of human rights, Jimmy Carter gave rise to one of the worst rights violators in history — the Ayatollah Khomeini. And now Khomeini's successor is preparing for nuclear war with Israel and the West. Part 5: resident Jimmy Carter's watch, more territory was lost to tyranny than at any other time since Yalta. And he'd have us return to those thrilling days of yesteryear. Parat 6: When men of strength are presented with difficult problems, their responses are firm and decisive. Jimmy Carter spent four years as president of the United States responding with weakness.
Part 7: In foreign policy, Jimmy Carter proved his presidency the worst ever by subordinating U.S. interests to his vague "human rights" policy. All he did was enable dictators to take him to the cleaners. Part 8: It's often asserted that while Jimmy Carter's presidency was marred by error and incompetence, the peace deal he brokered at Camp David was an unmitigated triumph. Time to pop that bubble, too. Part 9: Of all the errors Jimmy Carter committed, none has earned him more well-justified scorn than his handling of the 1970s energy crisis. True enough, he didn't cause it. But he did make it much, much worse. Part 10: n 1976, Americans thought they were sending an outsider to the White House. Today, the same policies so thoroughly discredited by Jimmy Carter's disastrous presidency define the Democratic Party.
In light of that last sentence, I give you this:
It took a brutal electoral beating, but non-delusional Democrats are finally recognizing the putrid stink coming off their party. But will the left let them do anything about it? In an interview with The New York Times’ Frank Bruni, former Pete Buttigieg adviser Lis Smith, a veteran of New York politics, put it vividly: “The Democratic brand is in the toilet.” Yes: Between the obsessive demonization of President-elect Trump and his supporters, the rank incompetence of the Biden administration and the constant push toward race-and-gender-war lunacy, Democrats have transformed their party into a soup of hazardous sludge. Americans now associate Dems with high crime, high prices, migrant gangs taking over cities and biological men in women’s sports — which has about as much appeal as expired milk. Yet the trouncing of Kamala Harris proved that their favorite distraction tactic — screaming “Trump is Hitler” and his supporters are vile rubes — is a massive dud. As lefty Timesman Ezra Klein put it on his podcast to a listener complaining that he platforms Trump allies, The Donald “has been elected or almost elected president three times now,” so “Don’t expect this show to be a resistance show.” The Democrats’ way back starts with a return to common sense. One such leader is Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who spent the last year loudly supporting Israel and denouncing the Hamas-lovers; back in June, the lifelong man of the left announced he no longer claimed to be a “progressive,” saying “that label left me.” He made it clear after Trump’s win that he’s “not rooting against” the incoming administration and told his hysterical fellow Democrats to “chill out.” Progressive extremism — insane energy policies, inflation-goosing spending sprees, pro-crime “justice reforms,” divisive and hate-fueling “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” nonsense and so on — is now the face of the Democratic Party and will remain so until leading Dems unmistakably reject every bit of it and show they mean it. That likely means actively seeking parts of the Trump agenda they can support in the face of the hard left’s fury. If Democrats don’t move rapidly toward the center, they’re looking at decades in the wilderness.Emphasis mine, because it's not about messaging, not about having fossilized coprolite octogenarians as your political leaders or that Trump is literally Hitler. It's about policies that provably turn the stomachs of normal people – that is those who have been labeled as EVIL. If the Democrats want to win and actually did in fact will have to become the mythical leopard that changes its spots. That is reject and abandon everything they believe in and have done for the past 200-plus years in their quest for absolute power and control. That and beg our forgiveness. Plus WE THE PEOPLE demand REPARATIONS!!!!! It's why when the estimable Robert Spencer states about Carter "by most accounts, Jimmy Carter was a decent fellow who tried to do the right thing by his lights." I cannot disagree strenuously enough. Were he decent he never would've believed nor advocated the things and policies that resulted in rivers of blood and destruction. For me, Carter was an horrendous anti-Semite and did everything he could to dismantle the State of Israel. In later years, he wrote one of the most notorious anti-israel screeds of all time entitled "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" which lefty Jew-haters masturbated over for years. And no doubt still do. For that alone, he should be consigned to the infernal reaches. Lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know. Have a great weekend!
- ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
- . . . commuting the death sentences of 37 federal death row inmates — has sparked widespread disapproval. But is this only the tip of the iceberg? (Mumia Abu Jamal and Nidal Hassan? - jjs)
Is Joe Biden Saving His Worst Decisions for His Last Day In Office?
- “If that happens, this program could become one of the largest federal surveillance databases overnight without authorization from Congress,” said a bipartisan group of Senators in a letter to the DHS Inspector General. (Thank you and fuck you George W. Bush! - jjs)
TSA Facial Recognition Scanning Spreading, Part of Planned ‘Across The Board’ Biometric Future Carter Expires, Goes to Meet His Planter - Daniel Greenfield: And not just because he's dead.
The Carter Era is Over
- Shrewd move? Knowing anything he praises means the kiss of death from the Left - jjs
Donald Trump reacts to Jimmy Carter’s death with heartfelt statement: ‘We all owe him a debt of gratitude’
Former President Jimmy Carter Dies at 100; Oldest President in U.S. History
20th Century’s Worst President Dead at 100 (LBJ as bad, and then Wilson and FDR - jjs)
It’s Too Bad That Jimmy Carter Didn’t Live Even Longer
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Top Story
- Canadian online accounting firm Bench has 35,000 US customers, the company announced, immediately before shutting down and leaving them all in the lurch. (Tech Crunch)
Customers will be able to download their data.
Soon.
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December 29, 2024
Howdy Hordelings, and welcome to the fifth and final Sunday of December. Thanks for stopping by. You have a lot of options when it comes to where to spend your time. The fact that you chose to be here says, well, umm... Anyway - glad you're here!
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The NCAA is all in on trans lunacy, and even when the athletes themselves push back, citing absolutely reasonable objections like fear of being injured and the outrageousness of being forced to disrobe in front of men pretending to be women, the sleazy tools of the progressive movement that control the NCAA tell them to stuff it.
But sanity prevails in Texas! And the technique that Ken Paxton is using is delicious. It's false advertising! Attorney General Ken Paxton Sues NCAA To Protect Women's Sports and Prevent Biological Men from Deceptively Competing in Sex-Specific CompetitionsAttorney General Ken Paxton sued the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA” ) for engaging in false, deceptive, and misleading practices by marketing sporting events as “women’s” competitions only to then provide consumers with mixed sex competitions where biological males compete against biological females. That only biological women will compete in the events is an important reason consumers choose to support women’s sports. By falsely marketing and selling competitions as “women’s” sports only to provide a mixed sex event, the NCAA violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act which exists to protect consumers from businesses attempting to mislead or trick them into purchasing goods or services that are not as advertised. The NCAA further misleads consumers by failing to disclose which participants in its “women’s” competitions are biological males. Attorney General Paxton requested the court grant a permanent injunction prohibiting the NCAA from allowing biological males to compete in women’s sporting events in Texas or involving Texas teams, or alternatively requiring the NCAA to stop marketing events as “women’s” when in fact they are mixed sex competitions.
Good. Go after the NCAA's desire to destroy the primacy of women with every tool available. They are part of the war on our culture, and if Ken Paxton can expose them for the frauds they are, then there is hope for women's athletics, and hope for our society to return to a reality-based view of men and women. Make no mistake...the trans movement has nothing to do with the vanishingly small number of psychiatric patients who want to be the opposite sex, and everything to do with destroying traditional culture. If the post-modern progressive movement can destroy women's place at the top of our society, then they can destroy anything. Women play a unique and vital role; carrying children and raising them is the most important thing that humanity does. Diluting their uniqueness and creating a society in which women are no longer at its pinnacle dehumanizes all of us. We are not interchangeable cogs in a great machine, but breaking down the biological and religious lines between men and women is the goal of the left. Feminism blurred the lines between wage earner and homemaker. Abortion shifted the biological and cultural imperative for child rearing. Homosexual Inc. made procreation a punchline. And now the battle is for the very definition of Man and Woman. Ken Paxton is taking the fight to the progressives, and it is obviously part of the resurgence of traditional culture that Donald Trump and MAGA is driving. That culture was rocked back on its heels in the 1960s, and only now has it recovered. It remains to be seen whether we can continue to fight an offensive war, but people like Paxton deserve our support.
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Top Story
- Giving people money doesn't stop them being poor. (Yahoo)
Another UBI study fails without even asking the fundamental question of where the money comes from.
- Neither does taking their money. (Tech Crunch)
Lyft is suing San Francisco for overcharging the company $100 million in taxes.
- Neither does charging interest on their loans. (MSN)
All told, Warner borrowed a total of about $60,000 for her two advanced degrees. The amount seemed reasonable given the career trajectory that both credentials promised, but that path never materialized. Working a series of low-wage jobs, she went in and out of forbearance before ultimately defaulting. The balance ballooned to the current $268,000 total over the years due to collection fees and interest capitalization.
Warner was 30 when she took out the loan for her law degree. In the 1980s.December 28, 2024
Saturday Overnight Open Thread - December 28, 2024 [TRex][Photo: Dom St. Peter, Regensburg, Germany] Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:55 PM | Comments (478) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Music Thread: Random Cuts From Random Bands Who knew The Ramones did a Christmas song! To me The Ramones are the quintessential rock band. They never took themselves seriously, had an absolute blast, and their music was punchy and loud and short. U2 they ain't, and thank God for that!
[Found outside of Garrett's kitchen, next to a bowl of Grape Nuts]Posted by: CBD at 07:25 PM | Comments (311) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Hobby Thread - December 28, 2024 [TRex]Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread.
We gave the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies(TM) a spin and it perked up and reminded us that this was the LAST HOBBY THREAD of the year. Goodness.Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (129) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Ace of Spades Pet Thread, December 28* * * Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals. Would you like a treat? Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.Posted by: K.T. at 03:08 PM | Comments (87) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Dec. 28
'Yuletide' Camellia, courtesy Norman Winter Happy Holiday Weekend! Anything going on in your yard or garden? Decorations still up or coming down, or are you still enjoying them? Wildlife making an appearance?* Posted by: K.T. at 01:12 PM | Comments (53) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Weird Words - like Grok
GROK 2 Grok and Deconstruction Maybe this is a coincidence or maybe not. Yesterday I was prompted to consider the damage caused by the invasion of the deconstructionists into academia decades ago. I looked up Iowahawk's old piece, College Profs Denounce Western Culture, Move to Caves. Lo and behold, the first example of a professor to take deconstruction seriously in his own life named himself Grok:
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The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival
Good morning Horde. Glad you joined us for the last Coffee Break thread of 2024. From Casa Misanthrope we wish you a Very Prosperous and Happy 2025.Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian (ONT Cob Emeritus) at 08:18 AM | Comments (304) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Daily Tech News 28 December 2024Top Story
- A new Chinese AI called DeepSeek V3 outperforms ChatGPT on standard tests while costing a small fraction of the price to train because - apparently - the developers stole the ChatGPT training data. (Tech Crunch)
The evidence for this is that the model is convinced it is ChatGPT."Obviously, the model is seeing raw responses from ChatGPT at some point, but it's not clear where that is," Mike Cook, a research fellow at King's College London specializing in AI, told TechCrunch. "It could be 'accidental'... but unfortunately, we have seen instances of people directly training their models on the outputs of other models to try and piggyback off their knowledge."
Training AIs on AI-generated data leads to insanity in as little as three generations. It can improve results on specific standard tests because it biases the AI very, very heavily towards those tests, throwing everything else out the window. After setting it on fire.Cook noted that the practice of training models on outputs from rival AI systems can be "very bad" for model quality, because it can lead to hallucinations and misleading answers like the above. "Like taking a photocopy of a photocopy, we lose more and more information and connection to reality," Cook said.
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December 27, 2024
The Second Day After Christmas, My True Love Gave To Me: Another ONTWelcome to Friday night. I hope all of you Morons who are members of the tribe are having a happy Hanukkah. Chag sameach!
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Dogs Scream for Ice Cream Cafe
"40 Miles From Leeds" by Dave Hewitt
Ice cream!!! ICE CREAM!!! The goodest girl greets all of her neighbors as they pass by her fence. She made the mistake of challenging a cat to a pounce-fight. The love of a cat. I must dominate you. A cat wants to help with the Christmas tree.
All-in! Best job in the world: Puppy glamour photographer. There be whales here! Dogs tryna to be human. Steve Inman: You can only push a cat so far.
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AP: "Americans" -- By Which We Actually Mean, Partisan NPC Democrats -- Are "Mentally Exhausted" By the Election Loss and Are Tuning Out of the "News"This is a story about how brokebrain #Resistance progressives are no longer watching propaganda channels CNN and MSNBC, because they feel burnt out, and they probably feel like those propaganda channels lied to them about the likely outcome of the election.
The propaganda organization AP decides to lie and claim "Americans" are tired of political news, despite Fox News's ratings increasing by 13%.Americans are exhausted by political news. TV ratings and a new AP-NORC poll show they're tuning out
All "Americans" huh, AP?
"People" are mentally exhausted, AP? Or just the people you think are worth mentioning?
NEW YORK (AP) -- As a Democrat who immersed himself in political news during the presidential campaign, Ziad Aunallah has much in common with many Americans since the election. He's tuned out. "People are mentally exhausted," said Aunallah, 45, of San Diego. "Everyone knows what is coming and we are just taking some time off."
Oh! You don't say.
Television ratings -- and now a new poll -- clearly illustrate the phenomenon. About two-thirds of American adults say they have recently felt the need to limit media consumption about politics and government because of overload, according to the survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Smaller percentages of Americans are limiting their intake of news about overseas conflicts, the economy or climate change, the poll says. Politics stand out. Election news on CNN and MSNBC was taking up too much of Sam Gude's time before the election, said the 47-year-old electrician from Lincoln, Nebraska. "The last thing I want to watch right now is the interregnum," said Gude, a Democrat and no fan of President-elect Donald Trump. Poll finds more Democrats than Republicans stepping away from news
Here now, the ratings crash:
The poll, conducted in early December, found that about 7 in 10 Democrats say they are stepping back from political news. The percentage isn't as high for Republicans, who have reason to celebrate Trump's victory. Still, about 6 in 10 Republicans say they've felt the need to take some time off too, and the share for independents is similar. The differences are far starker for the TV networks that have been consumed by political news.
AP admits, casually, that MSNBC's audience consists of little but "Trump haters," but apparently doesn't think AP itself has any bias.
After election night through Dec. 13, the prime-time viewership of MSNBC was an average of 620,000, down 54% from the pre-election audience this year, the Nielsen company said. For the same time comparison, CNN's average of 405,000 viewers was down 45%. At Fox News Channel, a favorite news network for Trump fans, the post-election average of 2.68 million viewers is up 13%, Nielsen said. Since the election, 72% of the people watching one of those three cable networks in the evening were watching Fox News, compared to 53% prior to election day.
Oh, both sides, huh? You mean "journalism" is more than a bunch of know-nothings shouting their uninformed opinions at a rapidly diminishing audience? Celebrities are over. So is the whole legacy media:
Some of the Americans who have turned away from political news lately also had some advice for getting them engaged again. Gude said, for example, that MSNBC will always have a hard-core audience of Trump haters. But if the network wants to expand its audience, "then you have to talk about issues, and you have to stop talking about Trump." Kathleen Kendrick, a 36-year-old sales rep from Grand Junction, Colorado, who's a registered independent voter, said she hears plenty of people loudly spouting off about their political opinions on the job. She wants more depth when she watches the news. Much of what she sees is one-sided and shallow, she said. "You get a story but only part of a story," Kendrick said. "It would be nice if you could get both sides, and more research."
Speaking of YouTube, WDW_Pro says that Megan Kelly's 109 million monthly views are greater than the monthly views of CNN or MSNBC. On YouTube, that is. Not the same as ratings but an important comparison. A new report says that two very detestable people detest each other. Good, I'm glad. I don't want to do all the work for them. Let these two talentless zeroes pitch in with some detestation.
The poll indicates that Americans want less talk about politics from public figures in general. After an election season where endorsements from celebrities like Taylor Swift made headlines, the survey found that Americans are more likely to disapprove than approve of celebrities, large companies and professional athletes speaking out about politics.
Still, Gude is among those discovering other ways to get news to which he does want to pay attention, including on YouTube.ABC News legends David Muir and George Stephanopoulos secretly loathe one another and are mired in a 'historic' feud, it has been claimed.
I'm sorry, did you call them "legends?" In what sense? Stephanopolous is a malignant dwarf and maybe stole a magic ring from Siegfried or something, but "legends"?
Bonus: Now that the government is about to pass into Republican hands, it's time for the media to discover the four-years-dormant homeless problem that is just happening right now, just this second.
The two newsmen have been known to have tension and now are barely seen on screen together as a result, as revealed by Oliver Darcy in a holiday edition of the Status newsletter. 'There certainly has been historic tension -- to put it lightly -- between the two anchors,' Darcy wrote in response to a question about the dynamic between Muir and Stephanopoulos. 'That has resulted in headaches for the network's bosses. But viewers may notice that, for the last few years, Stephanopoulos has been absent during politics-focused special coverage, such as Election Night. Those duties now fall squarely to David Muir.' ... The US Sun reported in September that as the anchors moved into a new studio in New York City, Stephanopoulos 'wanted a dressing room as big as rival David Muir's space.' 'George has been interested in making sure he gets whatever David Muir gets,' the insider told the outlet. ... That rivalry reportedly goes back to Muir's rise at the network and Stephanopoulos resistance to being replaced by a younger journalist. Back in 2021, Disney boss Bob Iger flew from California to New York to broker a deal with Stephanopoulos after he threatened to leave ABC because younger rival Muir had been promoted to Chief Anchor. Stephanopoulos was irate when Muir was given the responsibility of leading the network's special coverage of breaking news stories and special events - a role Stephanopoulos had held since 2014. ... When he found out that the Chief Anchor responsibilities were being handed over to Muir, 47, even though the title wasn't, he threatened to walk. ...
Muir was given the World News anchor job. He was considerably less experienced than Stephanopoulos at the time, so the Chief Anchor role went to the latter, as did the higher salary.Posted by: Ace at 06:20 PM | Comments (262) | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Powered by Minx 0.8 beta. - A new Chinese AI called DeepSeek V3 outperforms ChatGPT on standard tests while costing a small fraction of the price to train because - apparently - the developers stole the ChatGPT training data. (Tech Crunch)