Reading Thread 9/28/2025

Howdy Readers! Welcome to the Reading Thread, your Sunday morning source for the insightful, lively and spirited discussion of books 'n stuff. I'm filling in for a while as this space re-invents itself under new management so please set your near-term expectations accordingly low.

What do we have this week? Why, it's none other than Moby Dick; or The White Whale, written by Herman Melville and published in 1851. As I mentioned in the other editions of the Reading Thread you may not always get such fabulous selections as this.

Anyhoo, feel free to discuss reading and books in general and share your thoughts on this week's selection if you're so inclined.

I know you're just as excited as I am, so just jump below the fold to get started!

Posted by: Weasel at 09:00 AM | Comments (303) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 28 September 2025

Top Story

• TSMC's 3nm and 5nm production is projected to be 100% booked next year. (WCCFTech)
  
  If you didn't do your Christmas shopping early, you might run into issues.
  
  
  
• Though Samsung has cut prices on its 2nm node by 33%. (Yahoo)
  
  Now only $20,000 per wafer!
  
  Samsung also scored a $16 billion deal to manufacture chips for Tesla.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (174) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Night "Club ONT" September 27, 2025 [The 3 Ds]

Welcome to Club ONT! A collaboration the 3D's - The Disco, The Dino, and The Doggo. Fall has officially arrived. The trees and leaves are doing their annual strip show, pumpkin spice is on the rise, and the Club is giving the side eye to the sweaters and dance moves. Spare flannels in the closet next to the porta-potty (the one with the grunge art).

[Top photo: by polynikes. Come to the Texas MoMe and get a chance to win the painting at the raffle. Thanks for the generous donation polynikes!!]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (432) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Walkout [Lex]

Before this year, the only movie I remember walking out of was Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (2003). Undoubtedly there were others, but I can’t recall any specifically. I’m sure I wanted to walk out of many movies in my film school years, but I took naps instead of earning poor grades.

Why do I remember, so sharply, bailing on Kill Bill? For one thing, I was having a hard time believing Uma Thurman could battle twenty men with swords, and, even more, I was having a hard time believing the man who gave us Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction couldn’t do better in his maturer years. The older Tarantino got, the more juvenile his pictures became, and I’d had enough of him.

Fast forward to July 2025 when I walked –flew— out of Superman.

It would take an entire post to detail what was wrong with the movie, but let me summarize by saying this: the writing was lousy. Its effects and action were not memorable and its glibness was irritating. Story, mise en scene, dialogue. When all three fail to intrigue early in the going, how can a movie recover?

I hadn’t thought there was much meaning behind my walkout of Kill Bill—only that I didn’t like it. But now, with the landscape of cinema irreversibly changed, I was inspired to muse on the walkout: if I was abandoning an American icon and the greatest super hero of them all that had to mean something.

What is the cultural meaning of a walkout then and now? Does the act still have relevance? Did it ever?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:30 PM | Comments (424) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - Sept 27, 2025 [Arbor Rex]

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, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. A spin of the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies (TM) landed on bonsai trees.

Your host knows nothing about zen and the art of pruning small trees. In fact, I shouldn't be trusted to take care of house plants in general. Gonna need Horde help on this one.

If you are tempted to say "I don't prune small trees, so there is nothing here for me," let the thought pass. No Moron could possibly say such a thing. Stick around. You might be entertained or learn something. You might enjoy hearing from others and seeing what others are hobbying.

I have faith that you can find something in the content that resonates or contribute your own hobbying interests. Dig around in the content and soak in the comments. Be curious. Glad you're here.

[Top: Chinese Elm Bonsai, Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee, WI]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (131) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, September 27

* * *

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 03:40 PM | Comments (49) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, Sept. 27

Long time lurker and megafan of the site.
Here's our nonfunctioning fireplace we filled with various gourds and pumpkins from several years ago. "May the pumpkin spice be with you!"

xoxo
The Pumpkin-nator

Gorgeous!

Happy Fall K.T.!

Not my container garden, but it was so pretty I had to stop and take a photo! The essence of autumn (JMHO): purple mini-mums, campfire-colored coleus, orange calibrachoa, creeping jenny; even a little ornamental kale.

The perfect complement for the beautiful fall weather we've had lately.

The Pilot

Happy Fall!

Happy Fall to All! We are now into the Fall Colors Season. And below, a photo featuring a new plant for next year, Sweet Caroline sweet potato vine 'Medusa Black". I guess you might carry this one over for Halloween! Courtesy Kim Mixon.

Posted by: K.T. at 01:36 PM | Comments (34) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Points of view come into focus

We have had some examples of irony in the news lately.

Bernie Sanders demands Nexstar air Jimmy Kimmel while denouncing 'political pressure' on TV stations

Someone isn't paying attention to his own words here.

Blast from the past: Poor Bernie,

You don't have to be a conservative to be silenced by The Left.

Posted by: K.T. at 11:04 AM | Comments (257) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

*****

Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Palmyra)

1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind, be nice. But don't be a patsy.
3) Running with sharp objects here? What are you, nuts?
4) Have a great weekend!

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:04 AM | Comments (348) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 27 September 2025

Top Story

• Two new Xbox models have just gone up for pre-order, sort of: The portable Ally X for $999 and the cheaper Ally Nothing for $599. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Can these portable devices from Asus really be described as Xboxes? They have AMD Ryzen CPUs - but then, so do the current Microsoft Xboxes. But they have AMD Radeon graphics - which the current Microsoft Xboxes also have.
  
  So I guess the answer is yes.
  
  The Ally X has a Ryzen Z2 AI Extreme, with 8 Zen 5 CPU cores and 16 RDNA3.5 graphics cores, and 24GB and a 1TB SSD.
  
  The Ally Nothing has a Ryzen Z2 A, which doesn't sound like a huge downgrade but definitely is: Just 4 Zen 2 CPU cores and 8 RDNA2 graphics cores, plus 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.
  
  It has the same screen and controllers as the more expensive model, but offers less than half the CPU performance. Comparing the desktop equivalents, a four-core Zen 2 would be one third the speed, but in a mobile device the faster chip is likely the be thermally constrained anyway.
  
  
  
• And it's sold out, for rather dubious values of "sold out". (WCCFTech)
  
  It's a pre-order, so this restriction is limited to the units from the first production batch that were allocated to the Microsoft Store. There are plenty more out there.
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (139) | Trackbacks (Suck)

I Looked, And There before Me Was A White Horse! Its Rider Held An ONT.

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (520) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Puppy In the Plastic Bubble Cafe

The tawny frogmouth.

Sad, shut-down dog in the last cage at the shelter is so happy to finally have a visitor.

Mother duck parades back and forth to get the attention of people, because her nine ducklings have fallen through the cracks of a storm drain. (It has a nice ending.)

I posted this ages ago: Orphaned baby kangaroo and orphan baby wombat become inseparable besties.

Orphaned baby bear makes a friend. Eventually.

A dog that got lost and wandered 240 miles from his home is so excited when his owners drive 20 hours to pick him up from a distant shelter.

One of the greatest, rev-you-up TV openings of all time. I think this is an edit of the opening of the original TV movie, mixed with the opening of the TV series that would follow.

Such bountiful natural* splendor. * Cite?

Top ten dogs of the week. #3 will shock you!!!

ZeFrank on the wonders of bats. Bonus: Bauhaus doing Bela Lugosi's Dead at Coachella.

Dog got himself stuck on a roof but a guy goes out to make a kinda-dangerous rescue.

Beautiful dog pogos in excitement on adoption day.

People are afraid of this pittie but he just wants to make frenz.

For Sea Otter Awareness week: Ruby the sea otter.

Posted by: Ace at 07:36 PM | Comments (238) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Week In Woke

Diversity Is Our Strength:

At Dearborn, Michigan's first city council meeting since his clash with a local Christian minister went viral after a heated exchange over a controversial honorary street sign naming, Mayor Abdullah Hammoud declined to apologize for his saying the minister was "not welcome here" and that he would "launch a parade" when he left town.

Ted Barham, the same Christian minister, opened his remarks at Tuesday's meeting by repeating the words that went viral at the previous one on Sept. 9.

"The mayor, in a way, cursed me, as was seen around the world. And I would like to repeat what I said that day to you, Mr. Mayor: 'God bless you,'" Barham said.

...

Shane Rife of Garden City said he was "shocked" to learn that Hammoud had appeared at a rally where Arab American News publisher Osama Siblani praised Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a "hero."

"We have a mayor in the United States who is sharing a platform with somebody, with [a] terrorist!?" Rife asked. "Where is your allegiance? Is your allegiance to the United States or is your allegiance to Hezbollah?"

Pastor Jeff Davis of Dearborn Evangelical Covenant Church also voiced support for Barham, stressing his long service in the city.

Nagi Almudhegi, a Yemeni-American engineer and candidate for mayor, also weighed in during an interview with Fox News Digital.

"The United States of America is built on the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. These two principles are sacrosanct," Almudhegi said.

"If I were in Mayor Abdullah Hamoud's spot at that time, I would have not said anything. The gentleman has a right, as an American citizen, to speak his mind. And he did it in a respectful, calm way. The mayor should have afforded him that opportunity instead of launching into that tirade."

He warned that Hammoud's "not welcome here" remark risked fueling a false impression that Christians are not accepted in Dearborn.

"People would get the impression, or it would feed into the paranoia that is very, very wrong, that Dearborn is a racist place, or there's no place for Christians. And that is what I'm 100% against," Almudhegi said.

An alleged "Republican" says that he's dating a trans "woman" and is very angry at Republicans who won't do the same.

Megyn Kelly does a college debate for Turning Point USA. A very unhinged leftist asks why she supports Trump, whose rhetoric, he asserts, caused Charlie Kirk's assassination.

Woke pro-terrorism Muslim and media darling Wajahat Ali: "My family in Pakistan does not want to come to America thanks to Trump! Pakistanis are staying home!"

Oh no. No no no. Anything but that.

Students at a "historically black college" chase out two White Interlopers because they're very anti-racism.

Twenty-seven Democrats in the Colorado House voted against intentionally exposing your genitals to minors a felony. You know why. The Pedo Party isn't even hiding it any more.

A very well-adjusted and sane left-wing woman.

This is what police have to deal with every day. A woman is driving around with an expired license and insists the cop has no right to stop her or ask for her identification and drivers license.

Collin Rugg
@CollinRugg

NEW: Jurupa Valley High School girls volleyball team is desperately trying to find opponents as Patriot High School becomes the *8th* school to refuse to play against their transgender star.

Girls' teams are refusing to play against trans player AB Hernandez.

According to Outkick, who attended a game, AB Hernandez's advantage is "so clear and obvious that several members of the opposing team's supporters were visibly upset by it."

According to a new lawsuit launched by three current and former volleyball teammates, Hernandez placed his hands on female players.

"Beyond the locker room, A.H. engaged in unwelcomed and offensive contact, including slapping and/or placing his hands on female players' buttocks, including Plaintiffs, during practices, games, and huddles," the lawsuit alleges.

Every adult who continues to allow and affirm this is evil.

The "news" report calls this male interloper "she."

Trans extremists are fleeing the country. Oh no.

Despite Trump's order to the military to end DEI and to reject trans recruits as bad for military discipline, the military continues promoting trans people on DEI grounds.

After seeing a transgender colleague of mine get selected for promotion over a cisgendered colleague this week, I reviewed the transgender policy of both the DOW and the Army to try to understand how this could happen given that President Trump's guidance was issued nearly 9 months ago.

First, the DOW policy delegated how service members with disqualifying conditions are to be identified to each Service Department. This resulted in Service Departments expressly forbidding commanders from directing service-wide IMRs to efficiently and effectively comply with the order. At the service department level, confusing guidance emerged regarding processing of waivers, TERA, and the establishment of "voluntary" and "involuntary" phases needlessly delaying compliance.

....

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice

-Grey's Law

Many in the military are familiar with Hanlon's Razor which implores us not to attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence, but in an environment where there are people with fundamentally incompatible values and incompetence is endemic in accordance with the nature of bureaucracy, Grey's Law is the better heuristic. We can't reflexively distinguish between incompetence and malice in such an environment, and even using the term malice is a bit misleading. Is behaving in a manner consistent with your ideals and beliefs malicious? Before I veer too far off into the realm of philosophy, let us move on and consider the career of a senior bureaucrat in OSW P&R likely involved in the development of EO18143 policy to help explain why compliance has proven so challenging.

Ms. Stephanie Miller is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Military Personnel Policy Office of the Under Secretary of War for Personnel Policy. While not reflected in her current bio, she spent much of her time at the Pentagon leading the way in the development and execution of DEI policy.

We know from retired Navy Commander Theresa Carpenter that female Naval Officers (or FNOs) seem to have a cultural affinity for extreme egalitarianism.

There also seems to be a pattern here whereby this class understands that their egalitarian beliefs need to be hidden between this post and Ms. Miller's removal of her history of developing DEI policy. Finally, the history of working for Susan Collins who voted against the confirmation of Pete Hegseth justifying this in part based on "statements... that Mr. Hegseth has made about women serving in the military"3suggests misalignment with current leadership. Then there is the involvement of Ms. Miller with the inherently egalitarian Immigrant Military Members and Veterans Initiative (IMMVI)...

Finally, there is the fact that her husband worked as a lobbyist for a firm that directly profited from policy Ms. Miller was responsible for overseeing as outlined by Sam Shoemate here. If she wasn't willing to address this blatant financial conflict of interest, why would we expect candor regarding the clear but still less obvious ideological conflict of interest?

This is only one example, but it is reasonable to infer that Ms. Miller is embedded within a network of ideologically aligned bureaucrats in the Pentagon. This likely includes relationships across each of the Service Departments, and these networks connect into the force as well. This isn't limited to any particular demographic, either, and extends to proven and respected warfighters.

Speaking of Female Naval Officers: "Mikie" Sherrill, who makes her service in the military her central argument for electing her NJ governor, refuses to release her military records.

That's because she was punished by the Naval Academy for being part of a cheating scandal. She claims that she was only punished because she refused to rat on fellow Midshipmen.

We could look at her records to confirm that -- or disprove it, and find out she was one of the cheaters -- but she won't release her records.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee for governor of New Jersey, was barred from walking with her class at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1994 as a punishment connected to the massive cheating scandal that implicated over 130 midshipmen in her class.

A copy of the commencement program from May 25, 1994, obtained by the New Jersey Globe, does not include Sherrill's name. Sherrill said that her absence from the ceremony was a consequence of failing to report classmates who had been involved in the scandal.

"I didn't turn in some of my classmates, so I didn't walk, but graduated and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy, serving for nearly ten years with the highest level of distinction and honor," Sherrill said.

However, the Sherrill campaign rejected a request that she permit public inspection of any disciplinary records from her time at the academy. Only Sherrill could authorize the release of those sealed records.

Sherrill has made her military service as a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and helicopter pilot the centerpiece of her political identity, but has never publicly discussed her class's cheating controversy in stump speeches or interviews. There were rumors that she was tied to the scandal in 2018 when she sought to flip a House seat in New Jersey's 11th district, but it was suggested to the New Jersey Globe at the time that Sherrill was not involved.

The scandal revolved around electrical engineering exam answers that some midshipmen obtained and shared with their classmates in December 1992. Two dozen of Sherrill's classmates were expelled, and one of those involved said in 2002 that he thought more than 400 out of the 663 midshipmen who took the exam had seen copies of it in advance.

The events struck at the heart of Annapolis's honor code, sparking congressional hearings and internal investigation; the resignation of Rear Adm. Thomas C. Lynch, the superintendent at Annapolis; and widespread debate over whether the institution had been too lenient in past cases of misconduct. The academy subsequently undertook significant reforms to strengthen its academic integrity system and restore public trust.

This is the same woman who says she can't remember whether or not she took $30,000 in campaign funds and turned it into $7 million by playing the stock market, trading in defense stocks while serving on the House Armed Services Committee.

She doesn't deny it. She says she can't remember. She can't even say if she made $7 million. She's just not sure.

Would you remember if you made $7 million or not? As Larry O'Connor points out, only someone worth a half-billion dollars or more would have no recollection of whether or not she made 7 million fucking dollars. Which, I think, at current conversion rates, would be forty million fucking Deutschmarks.

She is running to be NJ Governor. The race is tied. The election is in November. If you are sadly still located in NJ, register and vote. We can do this if we get off of our asses and believe we can do this.

Imagine the panic. Imagine the shrieking. Imagine the meltdowns.

Imagine the absolute chaos and demoralization it would cause for the 2026 midterms.

Go and do likewise, Gentlemen and Female Gentlemen.

More Diversity = More Strength.

Posted by: Ace at 06:24 PM | Comments (262) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Catherine Herridge: The Comey Indictment Suggests That There Are Additional Indictments About to Drop
Plus: Sinclair Caves to Democrat Political Pressure -- and Democrat Bullets

Catherine Herridge
@C__Herridge
NEW REPORTING: @Comey

I understand the indictment was ready to go.

I am told "all the evidence was there," not a "shaky" criminal case as characterized some media reporting.

Critics of former US Attorney Erik Siebert allege he was "blocking" or "slow walking" the charges.

Interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan removed the blocks

Key Factor: @FBIDirectorKash declassified FBI leak investigations codenamed "Arctic Haze"

Catherine Herridge
@C__Herridge
MORE TO COME @Comey

Based on my two decades covering @fbi
@TheJusticeDept
a thin indictment suggests a holding charge with the potential of a more complex, superseding indictment that adds more charges.

This is not only possible, but plausible in Comey's case based on the recently declassified FBI leak investigations via @FBIDirectorKash
codenamed "ARCTIC HAZE."

The "ARCTIC HAZE" records reveal several FBI senior leaders and Columbia Law Professor Daniel Richman said they coordinated media leaks at Comey's direction.

James Rybicki - former FBI Chief of Staff
James Baker - former FBI General Counsel
Andrew McCabe - former Deputy Director
Daniel Richman - Columbia Law Professor

* Revealed Comey's role authorizing media leaks (at least one involved classified information) through his FBI subordinates or through his Columbia law school professor Richman with SGE (Special Government Employee) status.

She writes more about ARCTIC HAZE here.

Catherine Herridge
@C__Herridge

FALSE STATEMENT CHARGE
18 USC 1001 @Comey

MEDIA LEAKS

Penalties: Up to five years in federal prison (or up to eight years if the offense involves domestic, international terrorism)

Fines or both

Considered the "low hanging fruit" @FBI probes.

Posted by: Ace at 05:39 PM | Comments (203) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Are Deranged Left-Wingers Now Overdosing on Tylenol to "Own the CHUDs?"
Plus: GAINZZZ

Robert Malone on Tylenol and the FDA's sloppy, Big-Pharma-Phriendly "guidance."

And also: the possible use of a specific form of vitamin B9, folic acid, to reduce the effects of autism.

Note to those suffering from TDS- do not overdose on Tylenol. Tylenol overdose can kill you. How does it kill? By depleting a key molecule called glutathione, which is involved in the biochemical pathway by which Acetaminophen (eg Tylenol) is metabolized (broken down), which happens primarily in the liver. Like all drugs (and vaccines), Tylenol is toxic when taken in sufficient doses that exceed the "therapeutic window".

The only question is whether or not the FDA has previously defined that "therapeutic window" too broadly. And, in the case of the developing brain, data suggest a strong risk that, in fact, the FDA has been too promiscuous in its Tylenol dosing guidance. For the most part, epidemiological analyses suggesting otherwise appear to have been compromised by previously unrecognized and unaccounted-for confounding variables.

Sound familiar?

The FDA and US HHS are now moving to correct that longstanding oversight. POTUS, who has a deep, longstanding, 20 year personal interest in Autism and ASD, has announced this shift in FDA policy and guidance in a press conference. And both dead media and their clients have mounted an aggressive campaign to attack and delegitimize the messengers. But unlike propaganda and marketing, data and actual objective clinical/scientific research are stubborn things.
...

What is this drug that the FDA and NIH are endorsing as a potential treatment for some cases of Autism/Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD)? Leucovorin is otherwise known as Folinic acid. It is basically a synthetic vitamin, chemically and pharmacologically related to the vitamin known as Folic acid or B9.

...

Adequate levels of folate are necessary to support fetal and child neurodevelopment. Administration of Folinic acid to a subset of children with ASD can result is marked improvements in ASD symptoms, including overall cognitive and communication function.

....

Apparently these findings are supported by expert opinion and research at the NIH. Notice anything about these publications and journals? These findings are not being published in 'big" journals. Despite the growing incidence and prevalence of ASD, this basic and clinical research area has been treated as if any research or findings relating to ASD diagnosis and treatment are outside the Overton window of allowable medical and scientific discourse.

The left, a group of arts-and-crafts majors and Theater Kids who hilariously claim to be all about The Science (TM), is furiously denying all of their previous coverage of the possible link between acetaminophen and autism.

In 2013, Reuters reported on a connection between Tylenol use by pregnant women and autism in their children.

But now, they claim there's no scientific basis for making this connection. None at all!

You know who else says that Tylenol is not recommended for pregnant women?

Tylenol itself:

Posted by: Ace at 04:27 PM | Comments (351) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Of Course: Soros DA Alvin Bragg Gives Black Leftist Who Pummeled a Black Pro-Life Activst a Free Pass

Pro-life advocate Savannah Craven Antao -- a pretty woman -- was doing simple man-on-the-street interviews about abortion.

Pro-abortion lunatic Brianna J. Rivers -- a, get this, obese ugly woman with a low executive brain function and thus an inability to control her own outbursts of retarded violence -- violently smashed her in the face, out of the blue, during a fairly calm exchange.

Posted by: Ace at 03:26 PM | Comments (272) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The "Mississippi Miracle:" Mississippi and Other Southern States Are Now Leading the Country In Literacy Rates Thanks to Common-Sense Education Standards

Southerners are illiterate and ill-educated?

Sorry, Hoss, you mean California and other blue states are illiterate and ill-educated.

Mississippi and other states are now leading most others in childhood literacy and reading achievement.

This month, the Department of Education released its latest edition of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the standardized tests better known as the Nation's Report Card. The results have left me blazing with rage.

In my home state of California, for instance, only 30% of public school fourth graders can read proficiently. Fully 41% cannot even read at a basic level -- which is to say, they cannot really understand and interpret written text at all. Eighth graders, as you might expect, look almost as bad.

These numbers have been tumbling downhill in California and more widely across the U.S. for years now, and not just because of school closures during the pandemic. Nationwide, reading scores for fourth graders peaked back in 2015, and while the especially ugly 2022 outcomes were dismissed at first as COVID-19 outliers, scores have fallen further since. The decline is the worst for the kids who were already struggling; the test scores of the bottom 10% of students have dropped catastrophically.

But scores are not slipping everywhere. In Mississippi, they have been rising year over year. The state recovered from a brief decline during COVID and has now surpassed its pre-COVID highs. Its fourth grade students outperform California's on average, even though our state is richer, more educated, and spends about 50% more per pupil.

The difference is most pronounced if you look at the most disadvantaged students. In California, only 28% of Black fourth graders read at or above basic level, for instance, compared to 52% in Mississippi. But it's not just that Mississippi has raised the floor. It has also raised the ceiling: The state is also one of the nation's best performers when you look at students who are not "economically disadvantaged."

Consider this the latest chapter of the "Mississippi Miracle," which has seen the state climb from 49th in the country on fourth grade reading to ninth nationally. This rise has received a great deal of coverage in publications ranging from The New York Times to The New York Post. And yet, it still feels as if what's taking place in the Deep South still has been grossly undersold.

First, it's not just Mississippi -- Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee have adopted the same strategies, stemmed the bleeding affecting states elsewhere, and seen significant improvements.

Second, many people who aren't too focused on education policy seem to imagine Mississippi has simply stopped underperforming, that they're now doing about as well as everyone else.

This is not true. They haven't just caught up to your state; they are now wildly outperforming it. If you live where I do, in Oakland, California, and you cannot afford private education, you should be seriously considering moving to Mississippi for the substantially better public schools. Black students are as likely to be basic-or-above readers in Mississippi (where the median Black household income was $37,900 in 2023) as in national top performer Massachusetts (where the median Black household income was $67,000 in 2022.)

...

To fail [in teaching children to read] is to lastingly abandon a significant fraction of our children to a lifelong struggle. And blue states have been failing. We have been spending lots of money on schools, but we have not been willing to muster the political will and effort necessary to hold those schools accountable for results and adopt teaching practices that actually work.

For a while, there was the excuse that it was hard to know what did work. But over the last 15 years, as Mississippi has scaled the state rankings and other southern states have mimicked its success, it has become clear that we do know -- or we could, if we wanted to.

"People are at a loss and would rather refer to it as the "Mississippi Miracle" than look under the hood to see what is really happening," Kareem Weaver, the executive director of FULCRUM, a literacy advocacy group here in Oakland, told me. "They aren't doing anything that others can't do. In fact, they are doing it with far less money than most state departments of education have at their disposal."

We just have to ask ourselves: Are we going to do it, or is it unimportant to us whether our children learn to read?

...

[T]here are some obvious commonalities among the Southern Surge states. White names three, the first of which sounds obvious in retrospect but was in fact novel: The states adopted reading curricula backed by actual scientific research. This led to them adopting phonics-based early literacy programs and rejecting ones that used the debunked "whole language" method that encourages students to vaguely guess at words based on context instead of figuring them out sound-by-sound.

I've banged the drum about this a lot. Educrats are Cargo Cultists who see what the faster-readers are doing and think, "Hey, we'll just tell the slow-readers to do what the fast-readers are doing!"

If you're good at redanig, and I asusem most of you are, you read alstmo words by a glance. You know the conxtet of the sectecen, you note the first letter of the wrod, and you see the legthn of the word. You don't read the word letter-by-lrtetel. You scan it at a glnace.

In fact, studies have shown that it doesn't matter how many misspellings occur in the interior of a word. If the first letter is right and the length is right, you'll blip right over the misspelled word and read it as the right one. As you did in the last paragraph, in which every fourth word was deliberately jumbled.

So this is what experienced readers do -- people who have read millions of words.

Fast-reading kids do this too, but with the much-smaller vocabulary they've already become very familiar with.

But before that -- they used the phonics method, reading letter by letter and sounding out the words. You use phonics to learn to read. Once you know how to read, you can start reading words-at-a-glance.

But stupid, incompetent educrats decided to stop teaching phonics to the slower readers and tell them to just read whole words via the "whole language" method the way that faster-readers do. The problem? The faster readers didn't start with reading whole words at a glance, they started with phonics.

And stupid educrats decided to saw off the first five rungs of the reading ladder and tell slower-readers to just jump up to the sixth run.

They did this with math, too, which is why parents cannot help their kids learn math any longer. Kids who are good at math begin noticing little patterns and making shortcuts in math. Like, the most simple sort of shortcut: If the problem is 350 divided by 30, you don't divide 350 by 30. You notice that both numbers are divisible by ten and divide everything by ten first, to get 35 divided by 3. A much easier problem to work out. (You might also see that 3 goes into 36 12 times evenly, so that the answer will be just a scotch lower than 12.)

But before kids can learn to do this, they have to take math step-by-step. You can't skip steps until you know the actual steps.

But just like with reading, idiot incompetent educrats decided that the kids who are bad at math should be taught the grab-bag of little tricks and short cuts the kids who are good at math have intuitively learned after doing lots and lots of math by the step-by-step approach.

This is the part of the story that has gotten the most attention -- teach phonics! And you should, indeed, teach phonics.

That's what I just said.

But making schools adopt the approach took more than a mere nudge. The Southern Surge states have tried earmarked funding, guidance to districts, and outright mandates to accomplish universal adoption.

In other words: the states had to force teachers to stop using a method that didn't work and start teaching a method that does work.

They didn't want to teach phonics because they didn't want to have to learn phonics themselves to teach it. They want to just tell kids to just look at word and magically divine its meaning. Because it's easier for them.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach for the US public school system.

"Those states all made a commitment to rigorous reviews of the highest quality published materials for students and some level of incentive -- whether it was voluntary or involuntary -- for districts to implement those curriculums," White said.

...

The third pillar is everyone's least favorite, but it's equally crucial. "Number three is clear accountability at the district level, at the school level, at the educator level, and at the student and parent level," White said.

Accountability, of course, means standardized tests, requirements that students master reading before they are advanced to the fourth grade, and rankings of schools on performance. Accountability is no fun; when there aren't active political currents pushing for it, it tends to erode. But it's badly needed.

"Schools have gotten very distracted," White told me. "And at the same time, many states have been loosening the incentive structures that exist to focus on reading and math knowledge and skills. I think you have to question that. I think you have to see that these states have all had stringent accountability as a core tenet and have done it over successive administrations even when it wasn't a popular thing to do."

Hm, what have they gotten distracted by?

Maybe on teaching that there are 57 genders with new genders being scientifically discovered every day?

Posted by: Ace at 02:20 PM | Comments (403) | Trackbacks (Suck)

JustTheNews/The Center Square: The Soros Foundation Gave $80 Million to Groups Promoting/Organizing Extremist Violence

The DOJ is deciding whether to formally open an investigation. This inquiry is based on information received from the Capital Research Center. This report notes the CRC's finding that $80 million flowed from the Soros Foundation to violent left-wing groups.

In other words, this is the information the DOJ is looking at right now.

Amid President Donald Trump officially designating Antifa a domestic terror organization, a new report details how a prominent billionaire may be funneling millions to extremist groups engaging in violent uprisings nationwide.

A new report from Capital Research Center details how billionaire George Soros's Open Society Foundations has given more than $80 million to groups "tied to terrorism or extremist violence."

The foundation has awarded more than $23 million to seven groups "that directly assist domestic terrorism and criminality" in the U.S., including engaging or providing material support to "violence, property destruction, economic sabotage, harassment" among others that meet the domestic terrorism definition, according to the report.

The report, authored by Ryan Mauro, details a nexus between domestic terror activities and support for international terrorism, specifically Hamas, in addition to communist sympathizers.

"Open Society has sent millions of dollars into U.S.-based organizations that engage in 'direct actions' that the FBI defines as domestic terrorism," according to the report. "These groups include the Center for Third World Organizing and its militant partner Ruckus Society, which trained activists in property destruction and sabotage during the 2020 riots, the Sunrise Movement, which endorsed the Antifa-linked Stop Cop City campaign, in which activists currently face over 40 domestic terrorism charges and 60 racketeering indictments."

The report highlights the Sunrise Movement, which it says has received at least $2 million from Open Society, adding that it has "endorsed and solicited financial support" for Antifa-associated groups such as Stop Cop City/Defend the Atlanta Forest coalition. The coalition has been tied to arson and violence against law enforcement and utility workers, including an attack on the construction of a police training center by throwing Molotov cocktails, bricks and rocks, as well as setting construction equipment on fire.

As part of its outreach, the Sunrise movement has urged supporters to donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which supports protestors in various capacities, including legal defense and physical supplies, according to the report.

"The Fund admits it posts bail and provides legal defenses for the arrested protestors. Prosecutors allege it also provides funds for ammunition, surveillance equipment, handheld radios, a drone, and an array of camping supplies for Stop Cop City terrorist activities," according to the report.

Among the other groups Open Society supports, according to the report, is $400,000 since 2020 to the Center for Third World Organizing/Ruckus Society/BlackOUT Collective. The report claims the group "boasts it 'threw down with people in the streets'" during the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020.

Read the whole thing. This is interesting:

The report argues that Open Society's tax exemptions could be at risk because it funds "groups that brazenly acknowledge their prohibited behavior," which could lead to investigation.

As the left continues to insist that Antifa is not an organization but "just an idea," Andy Ngo keeps revealing how this organization recruits, trains, and directs its terrorists.

A group called "Crimethinc Thinc-Exworkers," Ngo posted on Wednesday, is "one of the largest and most influential Antifa organizing sites," and just "released a guide explaining how Antifa and their co-conspirators organize to target the U.S. government."

"It explains that one should form 'tight-knit' cells for fundraising, 'intelligence gathering' and communications. They suggest committing violence to pressure agencies, politicians and institutions into cutting off ties with ICE."

Here's their handy guide to forming an Antifa sub-group of your own in just seven easy steps:

Posted by: Ace at 01:14 PM | Comments (350) | Trackbacks (Suck)

JustTheNews: 274 Federal Agents Were Present at January 6th Mostly Peaceful Dust-Up; FBI Agents Complained of Being "Political Pawns" for "Woke" Leadership

They hid this for five years. They were asked dozens of times and always claimed they didn't know or couldn't answer.

And suddenly the answer is given. All it took was an FBI Director who had learned to count when he was in kindergarten.

FBI Bombshell: 274 agents sent to Capitol for J6, many later complained they were political 'pawns'

Hidden for four years, an after-action report on FBI's involvement in Jan. 6 riot found by Director Patel shows dozens of agents feared that the FBI had become "woke" and "liberally biased."

The FBI secretly deployed more than 250 plainclothes agents to the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, an operation so disorganized it unleashed searing frustrations among many of the FBI's rank-and-file that the bureau had lost its core competencies to "wokeness" and allowed its employees to become "pawns in a political war," according to an after-action report kept from the public for more than four years.

Scores of FBI agents and personnel -- many from the bureau's premier Washington field office (WFO) -- sent anonymous complaints to the after-action team detailing how agents were sent into an unsafe scenario without proper safety equipment or the ability to identify themselves readily as armed officers to other police agencies, the report obtained by Just the News shows.

The most persistent complaint was that the bureau during the James Comey and Chris Wray era had become infected with political biases and liberal ideology that treated the protesters from the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter riots far differently than those arrested in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 episode.

"The FBI should make clear to its personnel and the public that, despite its obvious political bias, it ultimately still takes its mission and priorities seriously," one employee wrote in a stinging review. "It should equally and aggressively investigate criminal activity regardless of the offenders' perceived race, political affiliations, or motivations; and it should equally and aggressively protect all Americans regardless of perceived race, political affiliations, or motivations."

That agent urged FBI leaders "to identify viable exit options for FBI personnel who no longer feel it is legally or morally acceptable to support a federal law enforcement and intelligence agency motivated by political bias."

One agent suggested the problem extended beyond the bureau to D.C. U.S. Attorney's office, indicating a more widespread problem with political bias.

"Currently, the US Attorneys office is dictating what it is that gets investigated. This is a dangerous precedent because we can barely get them to prosecute investigations that clearly meet thresholds needed for Federal prosecutions," the agent wrote. "However, their willingness to conduct a search warrant on someone's life for a misdemeanor seems ridiculous. It is unreasonable for the FBI to conduct investigations involving misdemeanor violations at a federal level... it is not our role."

Many of the agents' feedback focused on the Washington Field Office and its culture. "WFO is a hopelessly broken office that's more concerned about wearing masks and recruiting preferred racial/sexual groups than catching actual bad guys," one worker wrote.

...

Wray, Patel's predecessor, steadfastly refused to tell Congress how many if any agents went to the Capitol that day. And a prior DOJ Inspector General Report did not divulge the number, referring only to a SWAT team the bureau sent into the Capitol and having more than two dozen informants in the crowd.

The existence of mass FBI agents at the Capitol on Jan. 6 could also be a problem in many of the cases that were subsequently brought in court. If agents were witnesses at the Capitol and did not disclose it in the subsequent affidavits during prosecutions it could create grounds for defendants to appeal.

The document also reveals for the first time that there were widespread concerns for years inside the bureau -- sentiments that boiled over after the FBI began sending SWAT teams to arrest Jan. 6 participants on misdemeanor charges -- that the FBI had become biased in favor of liberals and against conservatives.

The leftwing antifa crusader Wray denied any wokeness:

"I have found almost invariably, the people screaming the loudest about the politicization of the FBI are themselves the most political, and more often than not, making claims of politicization to advance their own views or goals, and they often don't know the facts or are choosing to ignore them," Wray added in an episode of the podcast "FBI Retired Case File Review" that aired the same year.

But frontline agents repeatedly raised issues of liberal bias and wokeness in their after-action assessments. The words "politics" or "bias" were mentioned more than a dozen times in responses, and similar sentiments scores of times in the 50 pages.

"Our response to the Capitol Riot reeks of political bias," one wrote.

Another added: "I wonder if our biases affected our preparedness."

A third suggested the agents and analysts had become engrossed in the main business of Washington -- politics -- rather than crime fighting and blamed the bureau's leadership for the slide.

"We have been used as pawns in a political war, and FBI leadership fell into the trap and has allowed it to happen," that employee wrote. "We are supposed to call balls and strikes, regardless of political pressure, now we can't even be trusted to be on the field," another agent commented."

Happy Friday!

Posted by: Ace at 12:09 PM | Comments (467) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Tricolor Auto’s Failure Has It All - ESG, Woke Capital, Illegal Immigration, Securities Fraud, Government Diversity Programs, BlackRock, etc.

Tricolor Auto Group, the nation’s seventh largest used car dealer (and 3rd biggest in Texas and California), just filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy – e.g. liquidation. Its target customer had been illegal aliens, and with President Trump deciding to start enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, there has suddenly been a major “market correction” in that market segment. Not only has the customer base largely evaporated, but so have loan repayments, which Tricolor also serviced.

The “tri colors” that the name references are the colors of the Mexican flag – red, white, and green.

While the sudden loss of customers and loan repayments was the catalyst that caused the final collapse of Tricolor, its failure has revealed so much more, including securities fraud, Wall Street ESG gimmickry, race-based federal programs, etc.

Tricolor has securitized more than $2 billion of its very high risk auto loans over the past seven years. The most recent issuance was in June of this year, with JP Morgan Chase and other money center banks peddling more than $200 million of “social bonds” to credulous investors. These securities are certified as “social bonds” by the US Treasury’s CDFI (“Community Development Financial Institution” program because Tricolor focuses on selling its cars and financial services to underserved communities, specifically Spanish-speaking non-citizens. Tricolor’s CEO, Daniel Chu, was quoted by Barron’s in 2022 as stating, “No one else is providing meaningful dollar credit to an illegal immigrant.”

As documented in this recent Barron’s article (“Tricolor Files for Bankruptcy, The Auto Lender Was Once an ESG Favorite,” “Financial institutions until recently touted their social bond purchases as part of their commitment to ESG—or environmental, social and governance—principles. BlackRock took a $90 million stake in Tricolor in 2021 as part of its Impact Opportunities Fund focusing on businesses and projects owned, led by, or serving members of minority groups.” Of course BlackRock was involved.

You may recall that a major contributor to the financial crash of 2008 was Wall Street wizards packaging up a bunch of sub-prime mortgages, securitizing them, and then selling those “mortgage backed securities” to investors as something other than perfumed garbage. That is effectively what Tricolor has been doing with its auto loans, with the help of Wall Street.

In a Tricolor press release from March of this year titled “Tricolor Closes $328 Million Securitization to Advance Financial Inclusion at Scale in Underserved Communities,” CEO Chu stated, ”By providing deserving people with access to reliable, affordable transportation, Tricolor, which operates across six states and ranks as the third largest used auto retailer in Texas and California, helps move them into the financial mainstream and reverse systemic financial inequities in America.” Like the other securities issuance I referenced, JP Morgan Chase also promoted these odious securities, along with Barclay’s and Fifth Third Bank.

Per Car Dealership Guy, Tricolor’s bonds have collapsed to a value of 12 cents on the dollar, virtually wiping out the investors who bought those bonds. But as bad as this all sounds so far, it’s actually worse. There was massive fraud by Tricolor, which is causing losses to all parties who did business with it.

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (333) | Trackbacks (Suck)